# What game are you playing?



## mark520

What game are you playing? whatever platform. Post a screenshot of yours (if possible).Just starting up Final Fantasy XII and I have a feeling I am in for quite a lengthy game. It's actually quite good so far, far from what I would have expected even.


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## cataclysm_child

Spaghetti Marshmallows


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## vampiregenocide

I'm playing Wipeout HD ad Infamous thanks to those beautiful hackers. <3 Loving Wipeout even though I have played most of it from Wipeout Pure on the PSP. Infamour is okay, I was interested in seeing how it stacked up to Prototype as both games are kinda similar (superhuman + sandbox style) . It definitely looks better than Prototype and the gameplay mechanics are a bit more interesting (climbing up buildings is cool, instead of just running and jumping mega high). That said the storyline isn't as interesting, fleshed out in a fairly weak and rushed manner with short comic book style cutscenes, and Alex Mercer from Prototype is a better character. I think if Prototype had been done in the style of Infamous, it would have been a good game.

I'm also playing Singularity atm, which is kinda cool. It's a cross between Metro 2033 and Bioshock. I got stuck at a stupidly difficult bit in it with some exploding bugs and gave up for ages, but I got my brother to do it for me and now I'm continuing with it.


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## Sepultorture

DUKE FUCKING NUKEM FUCKING FOREVER














FUCK


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## Guitarman700

Infamous 2.
SO MUCH FUN.


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## vampiregenocide

I played a bit of Duke Nukem today. Seems alright from what I've played,


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## Joose

Forza 3, until 4 is out. And uh... Nothin else.


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## Grand Moff Tim

Fallout: New Vegas on PC, _still_. Even I can't believe how much I've been playing this game. I thought I had done enough when I got it for 360 on launch day, but as with FO3 and TES4, buying it again on PC breathed new life in to it.


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## Bloody_Inferno

Xenogears (again)






Blazblue Continuum Shift






Super Street Fighter 4 (getting Arcade edition eventually)






Sengoku Basara 3






Star Ocean The Last Hope






Bayonetta






And a whole heap of others I've procrastinated and abandoned along the way... but mostly Xenogears.


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## PostOrganic

Starcraft II and iRacing


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## SenorDingDong

Still my favorite game to play online.


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## bandinaboy

I recently just hacked my wii. So No more heroes 2, red steel 2, super mario galaxy 2 and pretty much every other wii game. But my 360 got the RROD and I am on a mac, so im super limited. but if you all have any non-lame wii games to recommend do so. becuase wii is going extinct. haha


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## Origin

Fallout 3
CS:S
Thief: Deadly Shadows
Quake 1 & 3
Kind of Oblivion, when I can forget I like FO3 way more.


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## Stealth7

I'm playing LA Noire at the moment. Awesome game! I never knew the 40's were that brutal.


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## AK DRAGON

just finished Halo Reach.. No plans as of yet though eyeballin` Duke Nukem!


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## leandroab

Duke Nukem Foreeever
Metro 2033
Far Cry 2
Minecraft
Duke Nukem 3D (Vanilla)


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## sentagoda

La Noire.
Starcraft 2


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## Edika

I am starting to catch up to the game I have and haven't played/finished.

At the moment it is:
Bad Company 2
Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl

I had actually progressed a lot on Stalker a few years back but then I got a glitch that kept kicking me out of the game. Probably needed to update the patch but that would mean to start the game all over again (really stupid game programming). Here's hoping this time it goes better.


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## Origin

Crap, forgot about Metro 2033 and the STALKER series! I ADORE them, and anyone who gets an opportunity should play them. Metro has the best immersion and tragic feel of any game I've ever played, and truly terrified me in some instances. 
Were you playing Clear Sky Edika? That one always messed up for me, imo it was the low point in the series. Shadow of Chernobyl was great though a little buggy, at least it was completely unforgiving.  If you have them on Steam they should update to the latest versions which should kill most bugs. Call of Pripyat has to be my favourite though, very balanced and a little more accessible for general audiences with the much-needed improvements to game maps and addition of home bases.


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## HighGain510

Right now I'm pretty much just focusing on COD: Black Ops so I can hit Prestige 15. I'm waiting for Battlefield 3 and Deus Ex 3 to come out this fall, and once Duke drops in price I'll grab that too!


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## AxeHappy

Right now I've been on a Heroes of Might and Magic 4 kick. 

That and I'm re-playing Mass Effect 1 as a cold-hearted bitch biotic. With the assualt Rifles talent so I don't actually have to try to win.


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## MFB

Gonna pick back up my Mass Effect character since I need to finish 1 AGAIN due to selling my old hard-drive, and then go through #2 before 3 comes out.


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## ittoa666

Been playing fable 3 (still don;t know how I feel about this game), bfbc2, BOps, just cause 2, forza 3, and blacklight: tango down. I'm getting a bit bored with my games though, so I need to hit up gamestop and buy some cheap used games or the new red faction. After seeing the vids for far cry 3, battlefield 3, and skyrim, my mind is fried and nothing looks good compared to those. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the future awesomeness around the corner. I mean, my mouth was hanging open when I was watching the bf3 vid.


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## dacimvrl

I'm playing the waiting game!! BF3!!


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## Bobo

Just replayed Halo ODST cause I was bored I guess. Now need to finish Mass Effect 2 them get Duke. Then it seems there's not much new for a few months.


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## klami

Me and a buddy just started playing Final Fantasy VII. We have a plan to complete VII - X, but its going to take some time.. 

Otherwise Im playing Mass Effect 2 and Morrowind


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## MFB

Played some Doom 3 last night, had chills the entire time  I guess the guys at id would be proud knowing it still gets me.


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## Daggorath

Duke Nukem, I'm actually pleasantly surprised. Lots of lols to be had.


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## ittoa666

MFB said:


> Played some Doom 3 last night, had chills the entire time  I guess the guys at id would be proud knowing it still gets me.



When I first played that game, I was really apprehensive about going around corners. Shit was scary.


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## Stealthdjentstic

LA Noir...its fucking boring.


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## Murmel

ittoa666 said:


> When I first played that game, I was really apprehensive about going around corners. Shit was scary.



When I played FEAR I was so afraid and I was walking so slowly that I missed some of the scary shit 

I clearly outplayed the game.


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## ittoa666

Murmel said:


> When I played FEAR I was so afraid and I was walking so slowly that I missed some of the scary shit
> 
> I clearly outplayed the game.



 I never really had a chance to play that game, though I wanted to. I only got through the first level before I had to get it back to the rental place, but Alma scared me in a short timespan.


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## Grand Moff Tim

LBP for PSP. It's just as charming as its big brother.


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## espman

L.A. Noire
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Fallout New Vegas
Singularity
Fear 2 (until 3 comes out)


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## vampiregenocide

Stealthtastic said:


> LA Noir...its fucking boring.


 
I've heard thats one of those games you have to bear with for a while, like Mass Effect. 

I just finished Singularity. Pretty solid campaign. I liked it. Frustrating at parts but good. I now have gold medals for every single race in Wipeout HD.  I'm now finishing Infamous and I've been getting back into Halo Reach again.


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## Bekanor

Just beat Mass Effect 2 for the second time. 

Now I have AC: Brotherhood and L.A. Noire to see me out until MW3, AC: Revelations, Diablo III and whatever other awesome stuff comes out in November that I can't remember.

Also there might be a PS3 with the God of War and Uncharted series and maybe Dante's Inferno for 360 somewhere in there as well.


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## Stealth7

Finished L.A. Noire the other day but I still have to finish street crimes, find film reels and whatever else there is too do, Plus get the DLC stuff for it. I still have to get the Da Vinci DLC for AC: Brotherhood. Other than that I'm waiting for November for Uncharted 3, AC: Revelations, BF3 and whatever else looks awesome!


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## iddqd

Final Fantasy 7 - damn, i kinda forgot everything of that epic game. Dunno why, it's fantastic storytelling.
Next stop, FF 8!

And a bit coop in Magicka with a friend. Pretty fun for some time.
To bad it's still a bit buggy.


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## Guitarman700

Just finished my third run through Infamous 2, getting back into Modern Warfare 2, forgot how much ass this game kicked.


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## vampiregenocide

Is Infamous 2 any good? I'm finding the first one okay but nothing amazing. It's one of the prettier looking sandbox games though. Most of them tend to have very dull looking, lifeless buildings. Come to think of it, I've never played a sandbox game that I've loved.


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## Marv Attaxx

Just started playing infamous (thanks sony ) and I like it so far!
Story and the dialogues are a little bit bland but the gameplay is awesome


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## Mr. Big Noodles

Terranigma. 
This is my first time playing through it and I love it, despite the non-canonical koalas hanging out in palm trees. Note my character's disdain.







Also, there are a lot of sailors in this game that are uncomfortable with their sexuality.






Other than that, Minecraft, Age of Empires III, Rock Band (not sure which one; whatever my brother plays with me), and, uh, dominoes.


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## Bloody_Inferno

^ Nice choice! Terranigma is still pure win to this day.


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## Mr. Big Noodles

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ^ Nice choice! Terranigma is still pure win to this day.



Yeah, this is pretty much how I felt when I started playing it:



Or maybe that was Earthbound.  The 16 bit era churned out the best RPG's, in my opinion. The technology allowed for a full range of creative expression, yet its limitations assured that its own complexities wouldn't overwhelm the consumer. The last couple generations of consoles have been more about FPS's, which is all fine and good, but I have yet to see anything that's just awesome.


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## mikernaut

I finished off Assassin's Creed BrotherHood , It was still solid but I got frustrated at alot of the "you can't be detected or you will desyncronized missions" . Made for alot of trial and error which isn't much fun.

Back to playing some Black Ops since there's kinda a "new" game drought right now.

Is it just me or is there a "super jumping dog" hack or something now where they leap/fly from like 50-75ft away? 

Also picked up the new LA Noire case to play, when I'm in the mood.

Hey Vampire Genocide... You actually liked Singularity? I thought it was the definition of "mediocre FPS" but then again I worked on it and experienced 1st hand the dumbing down of ideas and gameplay , so I'm alittle biased, hah.

I was not happy at all at how the final "Catherine" was in the game. Totally wasted opportunities for that character and they did nothing Animation-wise and character devolpment-wise to bring her to life. So she was just a talking mannequin to order Renko around. 

Alot of people got pissed off at that "Phase ticks" part, because your 1st instinct is to fight them, but basically you just have to run for it with your deadlock weapon to use as a safety sheild.

But LOL don't get me started on the puzzles.... seriously stopping fans and putting batteries in doors are challenging puzzles?  

Ok end rant


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## vampiregenocide

I thought it was pretty solid. Frustrating at parts, but a good game. Maybe a little long. You worked on it though? That's fucking badass.  The phase ticks did bother me, and the puzzles could've been cooler.


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## Customisbetter

Forza 3 on Xbox, and GTA4 on PC.


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## Ripper1134

Oblivion until Skyrim!


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## AxeHappy

Duke Nukem Forever. I seriously don't get any of the negative press it's gotten. 

And I'm in the beta for Heroes 6 so it's replaced my Heroes 4 kick. 

I'm also quite likely to get a copy of Fear 3 as I loved the first 2.


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## KDR

Rift its the only game I play on my PC
Angry Birds on my iPad.

Basically I'm cheap I dont really move on from a game til it brings me to tears boring or I've finished it.


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## MFB

Just restarted my game in God of War 3  Going through to get all Minotaur Horns, Phoenix Feathers and Gorgon Eyes then do it on Titan Mode since I got stuck at one part and didn't have enough health to get through it


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## vampiregenocide

You are a brave man.

I just got up to general rank in Halo Reach. I was going to save and get the haunted helmet, but you can't get that until the inheritor rank. Fuck that.


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## MFB

I saw someone who had one of the special super duper ridiculous classes, and holy shit it's intimidating to see them


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## vampiregenocide

I've seen a few mythics around. Thats a fuck load of credits. :|


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## Mexi

I'm pretty late to the console world, so I'm finishing up Red Dead Redemption atm. though I'm playing through Civilization V and Splinter Cell: Conviction on the pc as well


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## MFB

vampiregenocide said:


> I've seen a few mythics around. Thats a fuck load of credits. :|



That's the one! I kept thinking "Minion" and I knew it wasn't right; and yeah, it's fucking terrifying thinking of how many credits they've got and how little time.

That's part of the reason I stopped playing was that I felt like I plateaued in ranks and wasn't getting anything new, so why bother?

Mexi - Conviction is fucking sweet, I had a blast when I played it and might start over soon


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## vampiregenocide

They do credit jackpots now, so if you play in a certain gametype and don't quit, you can earn up to 30,000 credits. That helped me rank up a bit faster, I've gone from half way up Brigadier Grade 2 to about a fifth into General in a week.


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## MFB

I've known about the credit jackpot but 30,000K?! Highest I've ever gotten is like 1,200 or some where in that area, 30,000 must be after you play like eight-million games of X type.


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## guitarister7321

Lately, I've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead 2.


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## vampiregenocide

MFB said:


> I've known about the credit jackpot but 30,000K?! Highest I've ever gotten is like 1,200 or some where in that area, 30,000 must be after you play like eight-million games of X type.


 
Nah man, I normally get it within 10 games. It doesn't take long.


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## GhostsofAcid

just now getting into borderlands. pissed that i waited this long to play it. its very fun, albeit flawed in some respects. (sledge took me an hour to beat, had the ending boss down in 45 seconds, wtf?)


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## Mordacain

On my second run through on Mass Effect 2. Still loving it.


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## Guitarman700

Team Fortress 2 (SO MANY HOURS of my life into this game.)
Total War:Shogun 2
Dragon Age 2
Left For Dead 2

That's a lot of sequels...


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## Bekanor

L.A. Noire. 

So cool and 40's-ey.


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## Sofos

Starfront: Collision (Xperia Play) - It's a StarCraft ripoff by Gameloft. really good game though. fantastic controls for Android.
DJ Hero 2
Halo: Reach
Battlefield: BC2
Portal 2
Restarted my town in Animal Crossing: Wild World.


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## fallvictim21

Currently playing halo reach or halo 3.


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## AK DRAGON

just started playing iPad's version of FF3


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## Mr. Big Noodles

StarTropics and Super Bomberman 2. Why is it that retro gaming makes one feel older than one is when reading threads like these?


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## Bloody_Inferno

I just got my copy of Mortal Kombat 9.... this is going to be interesting considering I already have Super Street Fighter 4 AC, Blazblue CS, and Marvel Vs Capcom 3 on my playlist.


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## ry_z

9 pyros on one team = instant comedy.


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## Interloper

I too am playing Wipe Out HD and Infamous. I might not be in control of my personal information anymore but I got free games bitch!


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## SenorDingDong

Still my favorite RTS after all these years, and it is super challenging, very fun, unique units, love this game.


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## Lothar

Just got Nova 2 HD...






Most amazing graphics Ive seen on a mobile device


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## Rock4ever

World of Warcraft. I raid two nights a week. Just made 4/7 in Firelands content last night...and smashing face in BGs with my Frost DK is currently incredibly satisfying.


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## Bekanor

I've just had Uncharted 1, Uncharted 2 and God of War collection turn up in the mail. I feel like I should beat L.A. Noire before I immerse myself in Kratos and Nathan Drake's adventures but it's becoming a chore and I really can't bring myself to do it, I need action.


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## Bekanor

Oh snap!

Nathan Drake is Desmond Miles!


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## Bloody_Inferno

I'm gonna be locked a way with this game for a good long time....


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## ittoa666

I just bought pokemon black and dragon age: origins ultimate edition yesterday. I feel bad for all the dragon age layers that bought that game when it came out. They had to by every dlc, and I got it all for $30 brand new.


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## icos211

Start the hate now


I play the Sims 3. I have been a very serious simmer ever since I was like 5 playing carbon on my babysitter's mac. It is not that they are overly *fun* games, they are just SO addicting. It's like crack, but far more damaging to your life. Really want to get late night.


But that's just for now. When November roles around, it will be ALL about ELDER SCROLLS 5!!!!!


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## SirMyghin

ittoa666 said:


> I just bought pokemon black and dragon age: origins ultimate edition yesterday. I feel bad for all the dragon age layers that bought that game when it came out. They had to by every dlc, and I got it all for $30 brand new.



Don't know many who actually bought DLC as it was generally fairly bad and lack luster, but the expansion was alright I guess.


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## soliloquy

metal gear solid 3: snake eater
4th run in
LOVE THIS GAME!!!!


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## bhakan

Team Fortress 2, it's free now, and I can't recommend it enough. If you don't know what it is, it is a multiplaye fps. It is kinda cartoony and doesn't take itself seriously, but it is amazingly fun. I would personally take it over than Halo or CoD anyday (for free!)


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## Edika

Origin said:


> Crap, forgot about Metro 2033 and the STALKER series! I ADORE them, and anyone who gets an opportunity should play them. Metro has the best immersion and tragic feel of any game I've ever played, and truly terrified me in some instances.
> Were you playing Clear Sky Edika? That one always messed up for me, imo it was the low point in the series. Shadow of Chernobyl was great though a little buggy, at least it was completely unforgiving.  If you have them on Steam they should update to the latest versions which should kill most bugs. Call of Pripyat has to be my favourite though, very balanced and a little more accessible for general audiences with the much-needed improvements to game maps and addition of home bases.



Should have replied earlier to this post hahahaha! I am playing Shadow of Chernobyl. For the time being I have no problems but I haven't reached the point it crashed last time. I had bought a physical copy of the game so the steam idea goes out the window.

Concerning Duke Nukem Forever some non combat stuff were annoying but other than that lookin' gooood!


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## ittoa666

SirMyghin said:


> Don't know many who actually bought DLC as it was generally fairly bad and lack luster, but the expansion was alright I guess.



I haven't gotten to any of the dlc content yet, but I'm not expecting anything mind-blowing.


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## Bekanor

I just landed on Atlas' face in God of War 2.


3 still hasn't arrived yet, it had better hurry up because I'll probably have 2 beat tonight.


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## Nonservium

Dragon Age II and Batman: Arkham Asylum are what's on the menu. I'm nearly done with my second run through DA2 and once I complete the third the Batman game is up next.


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## ittoa666

Is DA2 worth it? I've heard it was a bit underwhelming.

Also, just got RE5 on demand. I only ha it for about a week when it came out and I got every achievement in that time, so I traded it in. Time to run through it again.


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## Nonservium

DA2 was much more straight forward and they simplified much of how you get around. To me, it's an improvement on DA1 in all directions. The story itself seems to be typical of middle installments in a series. It's very well written and orchestrated but ends on more preview of whats coming than climax.

The DLC's are pretty cool but not really worth what they want. I've already plowed through Legacy with one of my completed games and that came out yesterday. They add to the content without overwhelming it.

Overall I'd give it an 8.5 out of 10. I have complaints about it but they're nothing more than small nitpicks and nothing worth even writing out. If it helps, it's the first game in years to hold my attention longer than a few days. The last that did that was Infamous on PS3 and that's been out a while. If it wasn't the shit I would've done just one play through but I'm looking forward to going through a third time just to see how it all plays out with answering every question like a total prick.


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## ittoa666

Nonservium said:


> DA2 was much more straight forward and they simplified much of how you get around. To me, it's an improvement on DA1 in all directions. The story itself seems to be typical of middle installments in a series. It's very well written and orchestrated but ends on more preview of whats coming than climax.
> 
> The DLC's are pretty cool but not really worth what they want. I've already plowed through Legacy with one of my completed games and that came out yesterday. They add to the content without overwhelming it.
> 
> Overall I'd give it an 8.5 out of 10. I have complaints about it but they're nothing more than small nitpicks and nothing worth even writing out. If it helps, it's the first game in years to hold my attention longer than a few days. The last that did that was Infamous on PS3 and that's been out a while. If it wasn't the shit I would've done just one play through but I'm looking forward to going through a third time just to see how it all plays out with answering every question like a total prick.



Sounds good. Might have to pick that up soon.


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## ry_z

gtfo my base, suckers

(it's Cyberstorm 2: Corporate Wars, a game from 1998 and one of my favorites ever)


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## Reynolds666

some racedriver: GRID and some dante's inferno recently as I have been having a bit of a older, cheaper game phase while I await the oncoming wallet onslaught :S


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## Mexi

ry_z said:


> gtfo my base, suckers
> 
> (it's Cyberstorm 2: Corporate Wars, a game from 1998 and one of my favorites ever)



I actually remember playing the first Cyberstorm. The music/feel of the game was always kinda creepy/dark as I recall, but really fun game nonetheless.

edit: on topic though, I'm currently playing Torchlight and Splinter Cell: Conviction


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## vassallo

Being a game lover , I really love to play new games, at present I am playing Richstate game by *lekool* in its newly launched server 2, Opulence.


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## maj86

Battlefield 3
Skyrim
Portal 2
Minecraft


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## st2012

Mass Effect 3
Skyrim
The Witcher 2


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## mikernaut

abit of Syndicate but winding down after getting most achievements. Waiting on the xbox BF3 patch then I'll be back more into that. Also finally getting around to starting Assassin's Creed Revelations.

Played through "Journey" on PS3 last week. If you enjoy game like ICO and Shdaow of the Colossus I can't recommend it enough. 

It's one of those incredible games that prove that a video game can be an art form when done right. I felt like a little kid smiling ear to ear with wonder as I was experiencing it and exploring. The only bummer is it's only 3 hrs long and linear so there's not really any replay value other then just to run through it again. I totally want more of it though. Great visuals, emotion, music and gameplay mechanics. Goes into my top 10 list of all time.

It's best just to play and experience it but if you need to see abit this review doesnt spoil too much.


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## Bloody_Inferno

Ok, the top games sucking my life away as of late are:

Xenoblade Chronicles
Street Fighter X Tekken
Ninja Gaiden 3

Games next (will not be touched until Xenoblade is complete)
Final Fantasy XIII-2
Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword


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## brutalwizard

gettin the final song from the dragons in skyward sword.

got a preorder for xenoblade chronicles


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## HeHasTheJazzHands

Kingdom Hearts II
Majora's Mask
Skyward Sword (when I get it back from a friend)
Skyrim (Getting bored of it, might sell it  )


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## JStraitiff

As of like 2 days ago i finally started playing skyward sword again for the first time since christmas. I only got through the first few dungeons so im excited to have a long way to go.


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## Qweklain

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Ok, the top games sucking my life away as of late are:
> 
> Xenoblade Chronicles
> Street Fighter X Tekken
> Ninja Gaiden 3
> 
> Games next (will not be touched until Xenoblade is complete)
> Final Fantasy XIII-2
> Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword


Whoa whoa whoa, whoa... whoa whoa... wait now, Xeno Chronicles? That bomb-ass game is not supposed to be out until next Friday? However, knowing you Inferno, you probably imported it, didn't you?


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## Mr. Big Noodles

My band's singer and I are slowly working our way through Paladin's Quest.



The item and equipment naming system is mind-boggling. And I challenge anyone to find a clunkier battle menu system. Well, maybe Hybrid Heaven is worse, but at least you can tell what the hell is happening after playing for half an hour.


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## Don Vito

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Kingdom Hearts II
> Majora's Mask
> Skyward Sword (when I get it back from a friend)
> *Skyrim (Getting bored of it, might sell it  )*


I'm selling my copy tomorrow.

Might get the DMC HD collection if the store has it. If not, I'm getting Saints Row 3.

Anyways, right now I'm playing:
-Mario Kart 7 online
-Kid Icarus Uprising
-Assassin's Creed
-Age of Empires II: Mars Edition(Windows 7 user's will know what I'm talking about)


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## MFB

Just finished ME1 again because I lost my data a while ago, then played through ME2 with that same character and waiting to pick up ME3 to finish it all off. Also being getting back into MW3 since my wireless internet is setup, and will probably snag NHL '12 because a buddy of mine has it and it is pretty fun; haven't played an NHL game since 96!


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## Bloody_Inferno

Qweklain said:


> Whoa whoa whoa, whoa... whoa whoa... wait now, Xeno Chronicles? That bomb-ass game is not supposed to be out until next Friday? However, knowing you Inferno, you probably imported it, didn't you?



Everywhere else in the world got this game before America. Being in Australia gets it's benefits at times. 

I've already mentioned that _I've already been playing this game for months._


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## Trypios

Braid! Best puzzle game ever.


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## habicore_5150

*Seiken Densetsu 3*






even if some say it's not really a "newbie friendly" game, i gotta admit its actually pretty damn good

*Final Fantasy 5*


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## Chiba666

Deus Ex - Human Revolution (Again)


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## Don Vito

Rocksmith 

I received it as a gift. Don't get me wrong, AMAZING learning tool.

I just don't have to many practical uses for it. Selling.


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## Bloody_Inferno

habicore_5150 said:


> *Seiken Densetsu 3*
> 
> even if some say it's not really a "newbie friendly" game, i gotta admit its actually pretty damn good
> 
> *Final Fantasy 5*


 
These 2 games, along with Seiken Densetsu 2, Final Fantasy 4 and 6 were some of the most definitive moments of gaming for me. Great choices that never get old.


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## habicore_5150

Bloody_Inferno said:


> These 2 games, along with Seiken Densetsu 2, Final Fantasy 4 and 6 were some of the most definitive moments of gaming for me. Great choices that never get old.



i hear that
and also...

*Super Metroid*






*Megaman X2* (currently doing a Let's Play of it right now)


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## Mordacain

Well I just rebuilt my PC and am replaying the Mass Effect series from start to finish. Currently about to finish ME 1 and my first playthrough ever of the "Bring Down the Sky" DLC...


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## Don Vito

Picking Yakuza 4 back up tonight maybe


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## texshred777

Crysis 2. Rented it months ago but found it super cheap at Gamestop last weekend.


----------



## Alex6534

Playing through the Assassin's Creed series, had never had the urge to play them then saw 1 an 2 for £13, grabbed them an can't put it down. Got Brotherhood for £9 and will get 4 at some point. Oh and Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas and Red Dead Redemption


----------



## Don Vito




----------



## Bigsby

- WoW

-Minecraft

- Silent Hill: Downpour currently trying to find the hd collection but nobody seems to have it


----------



## mikernaut

I was really looking forward to the Silent Hill HD set but they really messed them up by changing the voice acting and then taking out some effects in SH3 such as fog and rust. Then they Desaturated all the colors.


----------



## Mexi

Bastion and Arkham City and BF3


----------



## Cyntex

I picked up Soul Calibur V today, after being bored with CoDmw3. Still got to sixth or seventh prestige and they do keep adding new game modes. The Spec Ops and Survival mode are awesome though. Tonight it's time for some asskicking


----------



## Guitarmiester

Haven't replaced my Xbox 360, so have been getting some games for the Wii that I've never played. This is a new favorite of mine, such an awesome game!


----------



## Choop

Currently I'm playing LoL, and just whatever game my friends are playing on Steam. I'd really like to play some oldschool games again. Yesterday I loaded up Rocket Knight Adventures on a sega emulator and it was pure awesome.


----------



## Fiction

I'm Currently playing through;

Terranigma and I've got FF4 in the mail for when I finish this. I also just started playing Smash Bros Brawl again seeing as I'm in a share house.. We can vent at each other through video games


----------



## Pooluke41

AntoneBigsby said:


> -Minecraft




Get some of dat Iron Golem in you.


----------



## ittoa666

kennedyblake said:


> Might get the DMC HD collection if the store has it. If not, I'm getting Saints Row 3.



Send me a pm or a friend request to Hot Buttpoop if you want some help with Saints Row 3.


----------



## JStraitiff

Im playing tiger woods PGA tour 07' for wii after watching the masters haha


----------



## Qweklain

habicore_5150 said:


> *Seiken Densetsu 3*
> 
> even if some say it's not really a "newbie friendly" game, i gotta admit its actually pretty damn good
> 
> *Final Fantasy 5*


I am just at the end of Seiken Denstsu 3, farming some Weap/Armor seeds to get the ultimate equipment for my team. I have beaten it before, but needed to beat it again!


----------



## tacotiklah

Obilivion ftw! 

I'd love to see this game updated with Skyrim-like graphics and a few other things. While Skyrim is awesome, I kinda like the plot of Oblivion a bit more. Of course I prefer slaying demons over slaying dragons, but that's just me.


----------



## Don Vito

The coding for Oblivion is probably embedded in my DNA somewhere.

I dedicated a good chunk of my soul to that game at one point. Damn Daedra.


I'm not playing anything right now =/.


----------



## canuck brian

I went and downloaded Battlefield 2142 again....found out that my accounts are still active after 3 years! 

Had a few issues with EA's Punkbuster software, but Youtube had a few videos on how to fix the issues and I'm back to playing it again. Still a really solid game.


----------



## Nonservium

Working my way through Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning. Will probably check out the new patch for SWTOR tonight and see what I think of the changes. Hoping they are enough to keep me interested. =\


----------



## TheBigGroove

path of exile beta


----------



## habicore_5150

*
+ Death/Cannibal Corpse = PURE FUCKING WIN*


----------



## Captain Axx

Just about to play this


----------



## Nonservium

Witcher 2 looks good. My wife played the shit outta the first one. I'll get to that one eventually.


----------



## Captain Axx

Nonservium said:


> Witcher 2 looks good. My wife played the shit outta the first one. I'll get to that one eventually.



It's awesome, my computer's not powerful enough to play it, or the first one (hell, it can't even do youtube now, it's like 8-9 years old.) i've been looking forward for it to come out on xbox for ages now. when i saw it in my local tesco, i had to pick it up straight away! what did confuse me is that it comes out next week though.


----------



## ittoa666

Been playing a lot of Magic Duels of the Planeswalkers on the arcade lately snce my Live is back to silver. Pretty fun.


----------



## nickgray

It's really good, if you're a fan of old school dungeon crawlers or you simply want to try something different, you definitely should give it a try.


----------



## Guitarman700

Right now I'm playing Wargame: European Escalation for the PC and Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis for the PSP.


----------



## Don Vito

It's in the mail :3

My body is not ready


----------



## habicore_5150

kennedyblake said:


> It's in the mail :3
> 
> My body is not ready



i need to get another copy of the game for ps2 since a certain culprit sleeping in my house got a hold of it

eh, once i get another copy of it, ill erase the save i do have on my memory card and try to re-unlock all the collectibles again (and maybe play some more Battle & Chase. normally not that big a racing fan, but damn is it pretty good)


----------



## C2Aye

A super modded version of Skyrim on PC (ENBseries, high quality textures, etc). I added a civil war mod as well so that getting attacked by 20 stormcloaks at once is now a regular occurance. So is dying horribly, as a result


----------



## Mordacain

C2Aye said:


> A super modded version of Skyrim on PC (ENBseries, high quality textures, etc). I added a civil war mod as well so that getting attacked by 20 stormcloaks at once is now a regular occurance. So is dying horribly, as a result



That's awesome. I just recently rebuilt my PC and have been replaying through Mass Effect 1/2 modded all to hell. I had forgotten that mods were one of the chief reasons I loved gaming on PCs. I also love the idea of playing old games with highres texture replacement at stupid high levels of AA. 

Think I'll definitely be giving Skyrim another shot once the PC price drops some (had been playing it on Xbox).


----------



## SamSam

Shining Force 3 part 2. The series is consuming my life.


----------



## C2Aye

Mordacain said:


> That's awesome. I just recently rebuilt my PC and have been replaying through Mass Effect 1/2 modded all to hell. I had forgotten that mods were one of the chief reasons I loved gaming on PCs. I also love the idea of playing old games with highres texture replacement at stupid high levels of AA.
> 
> Think I'll definitely be giving Skyrim another shot once the PC price drops some (had been playing it on Xbox).



Well, PC was a no brainer for me since it was £10 cheaper than both PS3 and Xbox 360 on release and with the modding community for Bethesda games, there was always going to be great potential for mods. I haven't tried to creation kit, but I may do soon!

I'm surprised the ME series isn't more mod friendly (from what I've read you need to download an extra program and it isn't 100% stable, causes much longer loading times etc) given that Dragon Age Origins was completely mod friendly. A full HD overhaul of ME1's textures wouldn't go amiss, although I'm okay with 2 and 3. Currently playing 3 with my 2 characters, but avoiding the ending


----------



## Sepultorture

I'm nostalgia gaming right now and took a trip through the grim and cursed lands of Transylvania in Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest


----------



## kung_fu

I had to work on saturday, but i bought some fun on friday to enjoy today: Super Mario World & Street Fighter II (both for SNES)


----------



## Sepultorture

kung_fu said:


> I had to work on saturday, but i bought some fun on friday to enjoy today: Super Mario World & Street Fighter II (both for SNES)



dude i just realized we're in the same town


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Throw this to my list.


----------



## habicore_5150

needs some more good handheld games


----------



## ThePhilosopher

Civ IV Rise of Mankind Mod.


----------



## MikeH

Diablo II for PC, and Batman: Arkham City for 360.


----------



## Don Vito

habicore_5150 said:


> needs some more good handheld games


Battle Network 3 is in my Top 5 for the entire Megaman series.

Love those game. Haven't played them in ages.

Right now I'm playing Mario Kart 7, kicking some Japanese ass.


----------



## texshred777

Alpha Protocol.


----------



## Qweklain

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Throw this to my list.
> 
> Warriors Orochi 3


Whhhyyyyyyyy?! They need to just stop already! it is just the same game over, and over, and over again. My friend got the last one (Warriors 7??) and it was absolutely terrible. The co-op was garbage, and that is like the only good thing about the series. I like Warriors 3, but they should have just stopped after 4, maybe 5.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Qweklain said:


> Whhhyyyyyyyy?! They need to just stop already! it is just the same game over, and over, and over again. My friend got the last one (Warriors 7??) and it was absolutely terrible. The co-op was garbage, and that is like the only good thing about the series. I like Warriors 3, but they should have just stopped after 4, maybe 5.


 
Which ones? I'm assuming you're talking about Dynasty Warriors 7. The Musou games while, essentally all variations of the same thing, are guilty pleasures for me. Never got into the individual Dynasty/Samurai Musou series until I found out they were making a crossover fanservice game (Orochi 1). Despite being rather simplistic and repetitive, I was hooked afterwards.  Of course I got into Capcom's version too (Sengoku Basara), and even Musou Gundam (only 2 onwards). And knowing that One Piece: Pirate Warriors is being localised makes me happy for some weird reason. 

Orochi 3 is still the same game as all the other musou games, with a whole heap of other new frills. Of course that's not gonna stop my Xenoblade completion. 

Speaking of which...


----------



## Black_Sheep

I bought Fallout New Vegas last week, and i've been playing it for two days now. It's alright, i like it much more than Fallout 3. Skyrim own all however... 

Apart from that i've been playing Mass Effect 3, my second playthrough on insanity, and Battlefield 3


----------



## Qweklain

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Which ones? I'm assuming you're talking about Dynasty Warriors 7. The Musou games while, essentally all variations of the same thing, are guilty pleasures for me. Never got into the individual Dynasty/Samurai Musou series until I found out they were making a crossover fanservice game (Orochi 1). Despite being rather simplistic and repetitive, I was hooked afterwards.  Of course I got into Capcom's version too (Sengoku Basara), and even Musou Gundam (only 2 onwards). And knowing that One Piece: Pirate Warriors is being localised makes me happy for some weird reason.
> 
> Orochi 3 is still the same game as all the other musou games, with a whole heap of other new frills. Of course that's not gonna stop my Xenoblade completion.
> 
> Speaking of which...


I was talking about 7, hence why I had in parenthesis "Warriors 7??"

I have never heard of Pirate Warriors, but I looked it up and it actually looks fairly interesting! It is also good to see that they are not following the Dynasty Warriors formula of putting 40+ characters in, and yet, they are all so similar to each other it seems mundane. I much prefer having the less characters and having them all completely independent. It better have some co-op, especially online accessible co-op, otherwise that would be pretty lame. I still do not understand how the current Dynasty and Orochi games are not completely online co-op, only split-screen.


----------



## Don Vito

Well, my Megaman X collection got here safely today.


----------



## Don Vito

awww yeahhh....oh and Mario Kart 7. I play that game too much.


----------



## Lagtastic

Tribes Ascend. Free, super fast FPS. Just got out of beta, it's very fun, especially for free.


----------



## habicore_5150

I pick the SNES version of this game over the PC/PS1 version for a few reasons


----------



## nickgray

Just started the second CD, really like it so far.


----------



## Rojne

&#8226; Fable III and Alan Wake on 360
&#8226; GTA IV and MGS 4 on PS3
&#8226; Zelda: Skyward Swords on Wii
&#8226; Resident Evil 4 on Gamecube
&#8226; Super Mario 64 on N64

Mainly playing Fable III atm!
I have about 25 other games laying around that I haven't got around to finish!


----------



## AxeHappy

Largely a mix between:

Mass Effect 3
Mass Effect 1
Dawn of War: Soulstorm


----------



## texshred777

Finished first play through of Alpha Protocol, picked up Deus Ex:Human Revolution today. So far it's pretty cool.


----------



## TheSixthWheel

Lagtastic said:


> Tribes Ascend. Free, super fast FPS. Just got out of beta, it's very fun, especially for free.



Got this last night and have been having fun with it. It takes a while to earn stuff without paying, but you can still do it with patience. It's a fast game alright, and loads of fun. I'm CrouchingShoe on there.


----------



## M3CHK1LLA

tetris...

i should prob turn in my scores cause im pretty sure i own the top 3 in the world...no joke.


----------



## x360rampagex

Star Wars The Old Republic, 

Its looking like its on its way out.


----------



## Don Vito

I'm close to finishing Megaman X4.

The easiest game in the X series IMO.


----------



## Qweklain

I am now playing an old PS1 game called PO'ed. Man, it is a classic for me, but nearly as good as I remember it. 

For the most part it is cool, but a lot of the level designs are so bad it makes it hard to play, especially when you spend most of the time in the level just trying to find the damn exit! Then other times, you find the exit for the level without even doing 25% of the level. Just ridiculous....


----------



## Bobo

I'm addicted to Gears of War 3 MP, so it's almost all I play. I'm such a loser.

I'll be able to get Minecraft soon for the 360 (go ahead, laugh, but my lil laptop will not play the game). That'll pull me away from this Gears silliness.


----------



## edrod

I've been playing this a lot.


----------



## Don Vito

^ Your image didn't work dude, but Plants vs Zombies is a sick game.

I've got it on three different platforms. I just finished Megaman X4, so I'm starting X5 right now.


----------



## edrod

I'll try to fix it, i tried posting through my iPad but it has a hard time getting the .jpg file. I agree, it's an awesome game


----------



## All_¥our_Bass

METAL GEAR!!
On an MSX emu.


----------



## Stealth7

Red Dead Redemption


----------



## Don Vito

Yakuza

Taking a break from Megaman and Mario Kart for a bit.


----------



## texshred777

The Witcher 2.


----------



## Guitarman700

Playing ArmA II again. Getting psyched for ArmA 3. I had forgotten how fun this was. So much better than that Micheal Bay-esque crap that most shooters are nowadays.


----------



## marked

Counter Strike: Source! played it heaps when i was younger, felt like playing it again, still heaps of fun, 
although new generation of gamers aren't as cool as they used to be :\


----------



## GazPots

Constantly playing the Sniper Elite V2 demo. Such magnificent gore when you get the kill cam.


Nut shots never looked so brutal.


----------



## MetalGravy

Switching off between Rayman: Origins, Hard Corps:Uprising, and Star Ocean: First Departure.


----------



## Faine

GazPots said:


> Constantly playing the Sniper Elite V2 demo. Such magnificent gore when you get the kill cam.
> 
> 
> Nut shots never looked so brutal.





Is that for the computer?? I want to play that!


----------



## GazPots

Pc, xbox 360 and ps3 on the 5th of May.


Demo is out of all formats now.


----------



## Faine

^ thanks man, I'll definitely be picking this one up.


----------



## Fiction




----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Add this to the list of games I'm gonna play once Xenoblade is complete...


----------



## Tang

Uncharted 1 on PS3 and Arkham Asylum on 360.

I also just bought the Jak and Daxter HD Collection. I'm on a real Naughty Dog fix


----------



## Faine

Currently playing, perfect dark and conkers bad fur day on n64. And skyrim on the 360


----------



## VILARIKA

Almost finished with Resident Evil 5 (again) and Resident Evil 4, then I'll be onto Code Veronica.


----------



## vassallo

Presently I am enjoying playing BEAT SADIRA by lekool It offers chance to win XBOX KINECT




.


----------



## Mexi

Bastion. such a beautiful game, both the music and visuals

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-95BeFyMFYY&feature=related


----------



## Black_Sheep

Just downloaded Episode one of Walking Dead (telltale games) from psn. Really liking it so far, the graphics are cool and the story as well. Only thing to complain is that it's not very long, must wait for episode two (they release the game in small parts, "episodes" instead of a complete package)

I strongly recommend, especially if you're liking the TV series, or the comic (the game is actually based on the comics instead of the series, but that doesn't really matter as there are only small differences)


----------



## Don Vito

Replaying Megaman X4 with X.


----------



## GazPots

Currently playing the full game of Sniper Elite V2 and just finished off my day by sniping Hitler.

Yes, I shot Hitler in the face.

T'was satisfying.


----------



## Pav

Alternating back and forth between Crysis 2 and Dota 2.


----------



## Bekanor

GazPots said:


> Currently playing the full game of Sniper Elite V2 and just finished off my day by sniping Hitler.
> 
> Yes, I shot Hitler in the face.
> 
> T'was satisfying.



I saw a marketing shot of the game with crosshairs on Hitler and thought it was just a gimmick, it's awesome that you actually assassinate Hitler.

Your post makes it all the funnier too.


----------



## Konfyouzd

Dragon Age II... again...


----------



## Jakke

Dungeon Siege III, a lot better than I expected


----------



## Guitarman700

Just got Final Fantasy IV the complete collection for PSP. It's still as amazing as the first time I played it.


----------



## Bekanor

I started playing Medievil again for the first time in years. 


It's really weird traversing a 3D plane with D-Pad controls. 

Other than that though, still just as fun and hilarious as I remember.


----------



## teamfive

Im currently playing Torchlight today.. hehe..
I just bought my laptop last monday and then I saw this free acer games on it.. I tried to play the trial version and it was pretty awesome..
I dont know where can I get the full version of the game..


----------



## GazPots

Bekanor said:


> I saw a marketing shot of the game with crosshairs on Hitler and thought it was just a gimmick, it's awesome that you actually assassinate Hitler.
> 
> Your post makes it all the funnier too.



Yeah, it's great. Next time i'll shoot him in the balls to finish him off.


----------



## Bekanor

GazPots said:


> Yeah, it's great. Next time i'll shoot him in the balls to finish him off.



"Ack! Mein ballen!"


----------



## habicore_5150

just finishing up a little co-op game on


----------



## Empryrean

Street Fighter x Tekken... 

I feel out of place


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Empryrean said:


> Street Fighter x Tekken...
> 
> I feel out of place



I've been playing that too.

Unfortunately, not as much as I would like due to other games...


----------



## Maniacal

Just completed Prototype 2, now playing Space Marine.


----------



## Marv Attaxx

Prototype 2. Story sucks but I enjoy the smashing 
Radical Entertainment really need to make another Hulk game!

EDIT: I've never played a game that contains this much swearing


----------



## Maniacal

Yeah I got bored of it pretty quickly. The game is also far too easy. 

I want to play DAO 2 but I just couldn't get into it, which is a shame as I have an eyefinity PC just not being used.


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

currently on hiatus on my Skyrim game since January because the damn thing is so huge

was playing Halo: ODST and Gears of War 3 co-op with my best friend today, gears is still on, might play a bit more


----------



## GhostsofAcid

Finally got around to playing the first Portal yesterday, beat it in a few hours. I forgot how good a game Valve makes, now i'm going to spend today playing through HL2 again.


----------



## Don Vito

Temple Run


----------



## MFB

Fuck yeah woo TEMPLE RUN!

I've never been able to play after I scored over 3.3 million, it's too infuriating


----------



## Guitarman700

Currently leading Austria to complete domination of Europe in Europa Universalis III.
I love me some grand strategy games.


----------



## Pav

My life is over. I am now re-hooked on BATTLEFIELD 3, ARRRRRRGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Bigsby

i dont know if you guys have ever heard of/played happy wheels but i've been playing the hell out of it






i laugh my ass off at this game and best of all....... its free 

Totaljerkface.com - Home Of Happy Wheels - Happy Wheels Full Version


----------



## Pav

Oh yeah? I'll see your Happy Wheels and raise you Street Cleaning Simulator.


----------



## Electric Wizard

I've been trying desperately to play Orion: Dino Beatdown, but my poor laptop can't run it.


----------



## synrgy

For the past couple weeks, I haven't been playing much of anything. Going through Post-Mass-Effect-Depression, I guess.  Messed around a bit with Red Alert 3 and Civilization Revolution, with a splash of WWE All Stars..

On my lunch break today, I picked up used copies of Mirrors Edge and Bayonetta. About $20 for the pair. I guess I'll be playing those.


----------



## kostein

Grand slam tennis on the wii. great fun with friends!


----------



## Bekanor

I started playing God of War III last night.

Holy fuckballs. 

I think I have to leave this until after I finish house sitting so I can get the full effect on my huge TV instead of the small, very far away one where I'm staying.


----------



## unclejemima218

still hooked on Battlefield 3. need something new though. 
anxious for Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2


----------



## Don Vito

San Andreas, we meet again.....


----------



## Gemmeadia

Been playing Borderlands on my new PC with full settings and this adapter so I can use my wireless xbox 360 controller  its SO awesome

Amazon.com: Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver Black: Video Games


----------



## Pav

unclejemima218 said:


> still hooked on Battlefield 3. need something new though.
> anxious for Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2


Something new? Pfffft, the CQC pack comes out next month and looks completely badass.


----------



## Mexi

been playing Anno 2070 a lot lately. sorta like sim city or tropico but with an economy sim aspect to it. really addictive game. but I imagine once Diablo 3 comes out then my time will be occupied with that


----------



## synrgy

synrgy said:


> On my lunch break today, I picked up used copies of Mirrors Edge and Bayonetta. About $20 for the pair. I guess I'll be playing those.



Well, Bayonetta proved a waste. Just not my thing, I guess. Too nonsensical, and animated in such a way that it's really difficult to keep track of what's happening at any given moment, which - as I'm finally starting to figure out - is a recurring theme with Sega.. 

Got through the first level or two of Mirror's Edge last night. That was fun, minus the whole _falling several stories to my horrible death every 30 seconds_ thing.


----------



## canuck brian

I just found an Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny recreation using the Dungeon Siege engine. I'm probably going to play thru it in a week on my vacation.

Also started playing the free Star Control 2 again. Old games still rock.


----------



## synrgy

canuck brian said:


> Star Control 2





I thought I was the only one! I used to play the bejeezus out of that on my family's old 286. One of my favorite games ever! Memories..


----------



## myrtorp

Super Metroid!
My favourite game of all time.


----------



## ShreddingDragon

Mass Effect 2, but while it is 99,9% awesome, it's also very emotionally "heavy" to play. It takes so much dedication and concentration. So I reset sometimes by playing some secondary games. Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas, even Tomb Raider Underworld (yes, the camera behavior sucks).


----------



## canuck brian

synrgy said:


> I thought I was the only one! I used to play the bejeezus out of that on my family's old 286. One of my favorite games ever! Memories..



I managed to get thru that entire game without using any hint guides...it took SO long, but it was SO rewarding to finish. 

When i started up the new version of it, it was really a shock to play something that involved and difficult again.


----------



## All_¥our_Bass

Just got the PS3 Orange Box, so HL2, Portal and Team Fortress.
For the PSP I just picked up Twisted Metal Head On, Final Fantasy Dissidia, and MGS: Portable Ops.


----------



## Don Vito

All_¥our_Bass;3005034 said:


> Just got the *PS3* Orange Box, so HL2, Portal and *Team Fortress*.
> For the PSP I just picked up Twisted Metal Head On, Final Fantasy Dissidia, and MGS: Portable Ops.



I'm..... I'm sorry......


----------



## Black_Sheep

Street Fighter X Tekken on PS3. Playing online and getting my ass kicked pretty badly, man, it's insane. Great game  


Also always playing BF3.


----------



## Pav

Re-installing Starcraft II now. Wish me luck, although this will likely taper off when Diablo III comes out next week.

EDIT: Well that was a waste of time.


----------



## All_¥our_Bass

kennedyblake said:


> I'm..... I'm sorry......


Sorry about what? I kinda fell out of the loop gaming wise and when I got back into it, I never had a very capable computer so I couldn't have played them if I wanted to.


----------



## Don Vito

All_¥our_Bass;3006153 said:


> *Sorry about what?*



Team Fortress on PS3


----------



## Pav

The PS3 version of the Orange Box is notorious for looking and running _very_ poorly compared to its Xbox 360 counterpart, let alone being even remotely close to the original PC version in the way the game plays and feels.


----------



## Don Vito

From what I know, the PS3 version of TF2 was never patched or anything.

It's probably been abandoned like the 360 version.


----------



## klutvott

The dream machine. Best point and click game i have ever played.


----------



## vassallo

Being a game lover I really love to play new games, at present I am playing Crystal Saga new game launched by* lekool.*


----------



## myrtorp

Now that I finished Super Metroid (again) its time for a new game!
That last fight with the Mother Brain is always as awesome, and sad when the metroid dies. 

Anyho!
ARMA II, a military war game/simulator. I recently found out about a mod for that game called "Day Z" which is a zombie mod. You have the open landscape, forests and cities to explore, loot for food and ammo, and crazy zombies that run insanely fast. Full pvp too, if you find another survivor, take a chance and try to co-op with him, or shoot him and take his stuff. 

I havent played it yet but from what I've seen it looks pretty damn fun. Downloadning it from steam now!


----------



## Don Vito

Not playing anything right now, but the 3DS is getting sold, and I'm going to pick up some new stuff.

I think I'm going to get Splinter Cell HD collection and InFamous 2.

I also might get Sly Cooper 2. I'm in the mood for stealth games


----------



## CapinCripes

managed to get delta working with pcsx2 so i can play my old ps2 and ps1 disks in my pc (dont want to dig out my old ps2 and try to get it working with a monitor that only has hdmi ports) so i have been playing the ps2 dbz games a lot lately.


----------



## MFB

kennedyblake said:


> Not playing anything right now, but the 3DS is getting sold, and I'm going to pick up some new stuff.
> 
> I think I'm going to get Splinter Cell HD collection and InFamous 2.
> 
> I also might get Sly Cooper 2. I'm in the mood for stealth games



The only SC I didn't like was Double Agent, but I've put probably a solid two to three full days worth of play into Conviction and it's a blast. Might replay the campaign some time in the near future too and do some more achievement hunting.


----------



## Don Vito

Yeah, I didn't like Double Agent either. I haven't played Conviction yet, but Chaos Theory remains my favorite. I was supposed to go get it today, but that didn't happen.

Right now I'm trying to play San Andreas, but the damn disc won't read and CJ keeps running in the opposite direction.


----------



## Kraid

Runescape, just signed up for the new combat system BETA, it's gonna be epic!


----------



## Don Vito

Finally got Chaos Theory tonight.

I also nagged LOTR: Return of the King
Farcry 2, and Devil May Cry. Got them all for under $20. I'm gonna have to buy more PS2 games at Gamestop now(buy 2 get 1 free)

I'm also playing Tekken 6, which I bought for a friend and I to play(he recommended it). I'm hooked now.


----------



## MFB

Return of the King is a fucking BLAST for co-op, namely when you get to the battle at Minas Tirith and such. I remember just burning hours into that game with a buddy of mine and throwing some cheats for unlimited ammo and having my arrows maxed (I always played Legolas) and it was even more ridiculous


----------



## GhostsofAcid

kennedyblake said:


> Farcry 2



This. Can't wait for Far Cry 3.


----------



## Don Vito

MFB said:


> Return of the King is a fucking BLAST for co-op, namely when you get to the battle at Minas Tirith and such. I remember just burning hours into that game with a buddy of mine and throwing some cheats for unlimited ammo and having my arrows maxed (I always played Legolas) and it was even more ridiculous



haha yeah, I kind of bought it for nostalgia purposes


----------



## Don Vito

Okay, so i forgot how fun Far Cry 2 can be.


----------



## habicore_5150

About an hour into this game, and I'm already loving it


----------



## Handbanana

EVE/BF3/Diablo 3


----------



## Mexi

Diablo 3/Anno 2070 and BF3


----------



## wrongnote85

shining force 2 on my sega


----------



## teamfive

Honestly, Im not playing anything at the moment..
I had here a game and Its just Torchlight..
I just bought my laptop recently..
Dont know where can I Download free games.. xD


----------



## Don Vito

PS2 Chaos Theory replaced with HD Collection.

Time to get stealthy.


----------



## Jakke

Arkham City... Bat-suit up!


----------



## Bobo

MFB said:


> Return of the King is a fucking BLAST for co-op, namely when you get to the battle at Minas Tirith and such. I remember just burning hours into that game with a buddy of mine and throwing some cheats for unlimited ammo and having my arrows maxed (I always played Legolas) and it was even more ridiculous



Yes sir. Me, my uncle, and cousin played this game for way too many hours. I was the only super game nerd so I was surprised they got in to it so much


----------



## Black_Sheep

Max Payne 3 (second playthrough) and Battlefield 3 (new maps!)


----------



## kerska

I just picked up Ghost Recon Future Soldier. The campaign is bad ass, but the multiplayer is so-so to me. It's growing on me a little bit but it seems there are some problems with lagging and every team I get put on always seems to get it's ass kicked.

Also stoked for BF3 Premium to come out.


----------



## Cyntex

Got bored with Diablo, so I picked up BF3 for the playstation. I am probably going to get owned so hard, when the competition has had a headstart of months/


----------



## Handbanana

BF3 Premium is out.


----------



## ShreddingDragon

myrtorp said:


> Now that I finished Super Metroid (again) its time for a new game!
> That last fight with the Mother Brain is always as awesome, and sad when the metroid dies.



Super Metroid! 

Went through Ace Combat Assault Horizon a while ago, and right now I'm happily hooked to Demon's Souls. That game just keeps getting better and better. Everything works. The different worlds are awesome and desolate. The melee system is pure gold, not to mention the pretty groundbreaking multiplayer concept. I love the difficulty, it just makes the game more believable and worth your time. It feels like you're *playing* the game, not watching the game do the playing for you.

Gotta get Dark Souls for PC, just because it is the "Prepare To Die Edition"


----------



## kerska

Handbanana said:


> BF3 Premium is out.



Was not aware. Actually downloaded it today but Close Quarters doesn't even come out until Monday on Xbox so I started working on the new assignments. And I just received Darkness 2 in the mail from Gamefly. So between those two and still working on Future Soldier as well I got my work cut out for me...


----------



## Handbanana

kerska said:


> Was not aware. Actually downloaded it today but Close Quarters doesn't even come out until Monday on Xbox so I started working on the new assignments. And I just received Darkness 2 in the mail from Gamefly. So between those two and still working on Future Soldier as well I got my work cut out for me...



Its dope, i think premium as mad as people are getting about it, is a pretty good deal. Future Soldier comes out next week for PC, so im kinda stoked about that.


----------



## LudoCluedo

Can't stop playing Endless Space at the moment...
Just. One. More. Turn.
Endless Space / Products / Amplitude - Endless-Space


----------



## TheStockholmChainsaw

As usual, I have several games going on at the moment. 

Skyrim (only a couple hours in)
MGS4 Guns Of The Patriots (Ratchet And Clank, Legacy Of Kain and MGS are my favorite series)
Dead Island (I quite enjoy it but dislike the fact that enemies level up with me)
Blood Omen (this series features the saddest and most tragic story, as well as the FINEST voice acting of any game I've ever played, bar none)
Earthbound (SNES)
Phantasy Star III (Genesis)

Looking forward to Darksiders II (looks ricockulous and I loved the first one), Dishonored, and Dead Space III. (Only played a bit of the 2nd one, will be buying all 3 soon). Also waiting for the Ratchet And Clank collection for PS3. May get another 360 just for Forza 4, because I found out that you can have awesome muscle cars in it such as Trans Ams, Camaros and 'Cudas.


----------



## ShreddingDragon

TheStockholmChainsaw said:


> As usual, I have several games going on at the moment.
> 
> Skyrim (only a couple hours in)
> MGS4 Guns Of The Patriots (Ratchet And Clank, Legacy Of Kain and MGS are my favorite series)
> Dead Island (I quite enjoy it but dislike the fact that enemies level up with me)
> Blood Omen (this series features the saddest and most tragic story, as well as the FINEST voice acting of any game I've ever played, bar none)
> Earthbound (SNES)
> Phantasy Star III (Genesis)
> 
> Looking forward to Darksiders II (looks ricockulous and I loved the first one), Dishonored, and Dead Space III. (Only played a bit of the 2nd one, will be buying all 3 soon). Also waiting for the Ratchet And Clank collection for PS3. May get another 360 just for Forza 4, because I found out that you can have awesome muscle cars in it such as Trans Ams, Camaros and 'Cudas.



Oh man, Soul Reaver and its dialogue is insane... it's like poetry  I'm also waiting to get MGS4 and the HD Collection. My favorite series.

Isn't Earthbound that crazy RPG which suddenly changes from a "kids beat robots with yo-yos" thing into some tragic alien horror spectacle?


----------



## Don Vito

Well I'm almost done with Chaos Theory, so I'm about to start Alpha Protocol!


----------



## Lagtastic

Obliterating the masses in Tribes: Ascend. 

Checked out the second GW2 beta weekend this weekend. I couldn't stop playing. I haven't been one for MMORPGs for a few years, but this one has really caught my attention.

Planetside 2 is going into beta in the coming months and looks absolutely amazing. MMOFPS, thousands of people in a base battle. Fully persistent world.


----------



## Jakke

Far Cry 2, never knew fighting in an african civil war could be that fun.....


----------



## Don Vito

I have Tom Clancy's Vampire Hunter in the mail












i also have splinter cell conviction on the way


----------



## dantel666

My best friend let me borrow his old playstation 2 since he wasn't using it so now I am playing the Devil May Cry series, hopefully I can find some copies of the legacy of kain series so I can play through those again as well.


----------



## MFB

Going back and getting all Riddler Trophies in Arkham City, then finishing up Mass Effect 3 maybe and picking up Skyrim for the summer as well


----------



## Don Vito

Deus Ex Hunan Revolution 

I've had this game since it launched and never got around to playing.

The main menu theme somehow assures me that this game is going to rock.


----------



## L1ght

BF3 and MW3 on Xbox 360! I'm also playing Gears 3, but i get way too frustrated haha. Battlefield 3 is probably my favorite game though. 

Also, can't wait for BioShock Infinite and Halo 4!

If anyone on here wants to play on the 360, send me a message! I'm always down for a game!


----------



## vampiregenocide

World of Warcraft is owning my life at the moment. Got into it last week. Luckily, I have three months off uni to waste.


----------



## maliciousteve

BF3 on Xbox. Starting to get the hang of it now. I'm not sucking too bad now 

Can't wait till Fallout 4


----------



## Don Vito

THE MASTERPIECE HAS ARRIVED


----------



## tacotiklah

Going a bit old school and really trying to get better at Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction. I have a bunch of save files that have various amazing items (including socketed weapons/armor and runewords). I just trade them between myself for single player via setting up a LAN between my desktop and laptop. Right now I have a level 79 Bowazon that deals at 500-1500 damage per arrow and spits out about 10 of them per second. Add in my freezing arrow which adds about another 1k of cold damage when I use it and has a splash effect that freezes anything near the enemy I hit for a few seconds and it just tears everything to shreds. For the first time, I've found something I like other than a cold sorceress or a summoning necromancer.


----------



## habicore_5150

Got finished with Deus Ex Human Revolution
Definitely worth the $20 I've spent

Now...to actually play the game as a ghost for once, and hack EVERYTHING in sight


----------



## Jakke

I'm right now trying to make the Third Age-mod work for my copy of Medieval 2 Total War, for the uninitiated it turns your Total War game about medieval Europe to a Total War game set in Middle Earth. Right now it's not going too well, but I remain hopeful


----------



## Don Vito

Started Splinter Cell Conviction.

So fluid.


----------



## ShreddingDragon

Lagtastic said:


> Obliterating the masses in Tribes: Ascend.
> 
> Checked out the second GW2 beta weekend this weekend. I couldn't stop playing. I haven't been one for MMORPGs for a few years, but this one has really caught my attention.
> 
> Planetside 2 is going into beta in the coming months and looks absolutely amazing. MMOFPS, thousands of people in a base battle. Fully persistent world.



If you haven't yet tried, and are liking Tribes Ascend, I *highly* recommend you to try Tribes 2. It's free (and legally so) nowadays, under the name of TribesNext. Sure the graphics aren't in the same ballpark as T:A, but they are good enough and the game is preferred by veterans across the board. Try it and you'll see why!

Yesterday I finished a really, really bad NES game - *Predator*. *30* levels of totally random platformer crap... and the enemies, wtf, like something ripped out of Teletubbies??  Entirely unrelated bubble-bobble-like amoebas and other unidentifiable objects... And the end boss was a big, flying Predator head that shoots some projectiles. At least the character WAS Major Dutch with Arnie's face, but he was wearing pink pants, so... The best part were the "cutscenes", they were actually some quite good NES graphics 

Now playing Secret of Mana. <3


----------



## MFB

Man, getting Riddler trophies after you've beaten a game is only fun for so long  Now I'm just getting tired of it, BUT I'M SO CLOSE TO HAVING ALL OF THEM


----------



## metalstrike

Deus Ex: HR on PC - 11 hours in, awesome game except for the occassional crashing

Max Payne 3 on Xbox 360 - MP only so far, pretty fun


----------



## Pav

Just massively upgraded my PC's video card so now I'm going back through most every game I have just to see how fucking nice and smooth it looks.  Just got BF3 Premium and still haven't forgotten about Diablo III.

And now excited as all hell to go back through the Crysis games with the settings turned up.


----------



## nojyeloot




----------



## synrgy

I just keep going back to Civilization Revolution..


----------



## Black_Sheep

Battlefield 3 still... 

And Borderlands. Bought it last week, awesome game!


----------



## Don Vito

I dusted off my Asus laptop and started playing Stalker Call of Pripyat.

I can only play it on medium graphic settings without getting any lag.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Just got my Wii back, so I really need to get back into Skyward Sword... It sucked not having Zelda for these months...


----------



## Murmel

GTA: San Andreas

So many hilarious comments.


----------



## Jakke

Took the plunge and broke out Neverwinter Nights again... Ahh, the magic of childhood.



Installed the PCR-mod, took a look, saw that there where a metric fuckton of classes that I would never use in 100 years. Proceeded to uninstall the mod -> enjoys pure NWN gameplay


----------



## tacotiklah

Finally got my scratched cd of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter to work again and I'm remembering why I didn't play it much; AI is a little too damn good for me. 

Even on easy, I find myself spending hours trying to at least just get to the next checkpoint. Damn teammates love to run into the line of fire despite me telling them to stay back too. I feel like they picked my team off of the suicide hotline or something.


----------



## metaljohn

Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night.

Just beat it with less than 100% completion. Now I'm going for the full 200% completion. I have a long way to go.


----------



## Repner

Just finishing off Secret of Mana. About to do another playthrough of Chrono Trigger.


----------



## Don Vito

Tekken 6


----------



## Black43

Need for Speed The Run: possibly the corniest racing game ever


----------



## Pav

Repner said:


> Just finishing off Secret of Mana. About to do another playthrough of Chrono Trigger.



Chrono Trigger =


----------



## habicore_5150

flipping through a few SNES games

been playing bits of Tales of Phantasia
might give either Contra 3, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, or even LttP: Parallel Worlds a spin a bit later on


----------



## ThePhilosopher

synrgy said:


> I just keep going back to Civilization Revolution..



I keep playing Civ IV: Rise of Mankind, A New Dawn and Lux Delux.


----------



## Qweklain

habicore_5150 said:


> flipping through a few SNES games
> 
> been playing bits of Tales of Phantasia
> might give either Contra 3, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, or even LttP: Parallel Worlds a spin a bit later on


Phantasia was a good game (like all Tales games), but the amount of battles is absolutely ridiculous! Every 3-6 steps is a battle, EVERY, SINGLE, TIME. Eventually you just start running Holy Bottles 24/7, otherwise the later dungeons end up taking FOREVER!


----------



## habicore_5150

Qweklain said:


> Phantasia was a good game (like all Tales games), but the amount of battles is absolutely ridiculous! Every 3-6 steps is a battle, EVERY, SINGLE, TIME. Eventually you just start running Holy Bottles 24/7, otherwise the later dungeons end up taking FOREVER!



Might hop back on Phantasia, battle system on there is a bit different from a few other RPGs that I've played before, but hey I could use a bit of change for some RPGs

I'm still laughing at the fact that when I was fighting that one Devil monster in the sewers, my main guy died and the second I revived him, my support character did 1 point of damage to the boss and just killed it


----------



## tacotiklah

With my unlimited access to internet, I decided to hop back onto Counterstrike for a bit. 2 kills 24 deaths. Goddamn I suck...


----------



## Black_Sheep

Battlefield 3 (full double-xp week starting on monday!) still. And Borderlands for now. Hopefully getting Arkham City soon, waited so long to play that awesome game...


----------



## Mr Violence

Super Mario RPG. Already to Bowser's Keep. Such an addicting game.


----------



## Tiger

Tribes: Ascend. Now have nostalgia for Starsiege: Tribes...


----------



## NovaReaper

Quakeworld and quake live


----------



## Don Vito




----------



## Repner

Pav said:


> Chrono Trigger =


Chrono Trigger = The best reason to import games (we didn't officially get Chrono Trigger until the DS version).


----------



## ShreddingDragon

Repner said:


> Chrono Trigger = The best reason to import games (we didn't officially get Chrono Trigger until the DS version).



I got CT on an emulator and played it for a couple of hours. Secret of Mana somehow feels a lot better to me. Granted, SOM has its nostalgia value from my childhood and I haven't given CT an equal chance yet.

On topic: some Street Fighter 4 last night!


----------



## Mexi

been playin Tropico 4, BF3 and Diablo 3 every now and then


----------



## AgentOrange

Silent Hill Downpour , Diablo III and Bulletstorm


----------



## SenorDingDong

Borderlands on the PC.


----------



## tacotiklah

Still pissing away time on counterstrike. Now that I have regular internet service, I've been spending time in this one modded server where you can respawn after you die, and I have it set up where each time I die, I get a new load out of gear at random. Oh and flashbangs fly at people like tomahawk missiles. It's a crazy server. 

Last night I went at 439 kills and 683 deaths and was second overall in most kills; leading my team in most kills. I should be happy about that, but I wasn't due to the low kill:death ratio. More time is needed to get better at this...


----------



## TaylorMacPhail

Before my BF3 got stolen, I played that for the xbox 360 a fair bit; great game.

But I just bought a new gaming pc so I've gotten back into CounterStrike Source (I'll probably get CS: Global Offensive), Starcraft 2, and Team Fortress 2.


----------



## tacotiklah

TaylorMacPhail said:


> Before my BF3 got stolen, I played that for the xbox 360 a fair bit; great game.
> 
> But I just bought a new gaming pc so I've gotten back into CounterStrike Source (I'll probably get CS: Global Offensive), Starcraft 2, and Team Fortress 2.



Sweet! My steam username is ghstofperdition if anyone wants to shoot it up with me in Counterstrike Source.


----------



## Don Vito

Trying to get better mission ratings in Splinter Cell Chaos Theory.

Frustrating.


----------



## mlp187

Rage Anarchy Edition on PS3. This game is beautiful and simple in concept. The mechanics are super-fluid and graphics are definitely pushing the envelope. I'm on my 4th play-through right now, hitting everything possible. 

I would love to see this game in FO3 and FNV format.


----------



## habicore_5150

Played a bit of Seiken Densetsu 3, Final Fantasy 6, and Contra 3

And as it turns out, I'm not a real gaming man because I suck at Contra


----------



## DarkRain93

Clay Fighters and MK3


----------



## Alex6534

Fallout 3 with FWE an a few other mods, holy shit I'm dead


----------



## wespaul

A lot of Super Street Fighter 4. Add me on 360 if you wanna go a few rounds - Steelbath


----------



## Pav

Do we have any team Sevenstring BF3 action going?


----------



## tacotiklah

The first Dead Space. 

So. Much. Fun!


----------



## Don Vito

Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection.

Should keep me entertained for a while.


----------



## Don Vito

Okay so I don't really like anything in the Sega Collection except for Phantasy Star.

I'm just going to keep playing that, although I'm sure Golden Axe could be fun with a friend.


----------



## tacotiklah

This was my CSS score the other night. Not bad for barely playing against other people for a short time. (normally I'd have steam offline and play against bots):


----------



## Qweklain

kennedyblake said:


> Okay so I don't really like anything in the Sega Collection except for Phantasy Star.
> 
> I'm just going to keep playing that, although I'm sure Golden Axe could be fun with a friend.


How can you not like Shinobi 3: Return of the Ninja Master?! That is by far the best Genesis game ever. I have beaten that game more times than I can count. I used to be so good I could beat it on expert without getting hit once throughout the entire game...  I can still beat it without dying, but not so much flawless.

Also, you no like the Sonic games? Or Kid Chameleon? I have not played the Collection in awhile, but there were some other sweet games too.


----------



## Devyn Eclipse Nav

Basically the only game I play anymore is Team Fortress 2 

I did play the Portal games for a while, but those were easy to beat. Now I'm just waiting for the new Pokemon games...


----------



## Repner

ShreddingDragon said:


> I got CT on an emulator and played it for a couple of hours. Secret of Mana somehow feels a lot better to me. Granted, SOM has its nostalgia value from my childhood and I haven't given CT an equal chance yet.
> 
> On topic: some Street Fighter 4 last night!


I would definitely recommend you try to play it all the way through to get a better idea of it. I don't think it can be summed up in a few hours. It's one of my favourite games ever.

Strangely though I didn't bother to start it, and went for Dragon Age: Origins instead.


----------



## Don Vito

Qweklain said:


> How can you not like Shinobi 3: Return of the Ninja Master?! That is by far the best Genesis game ever. I have beaten that game more times than I can count. I used to be so good I could beat it on expert without getting hit once throughout the entire game...  I can still beat it without dying, but not so much flawless.
> 
> Also, you no like the Sonic games? Or Kid Chameleon? I have not played the Collection in awhile, but there were some other sweet games too.


Shinobi is pretty good, but Sonic gives me motion sickness


----------



## SenorDingDong

Just bought Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Deadspace, Deadspace 2 and Alice: Madness Returns for a grand total of $22.


I've got my gaming needs covered for months.

Currently going through Bioshock.


----------



## MFB

I love, love, LOVE the style of Bioshock, but I never finished it or played the second. They're solid games, just not my cup of tea.


----------



## SenorDingDong

MFB said:


> I love, love, LOVE the style of Bioshock, but I never finished it or played the second. They're solid games, just not my cup of tea.



I love horror, and for me, they're about as close to a good story in a game as possible (of course, not counting the Baldur's Gate series, or any other Black Isle game for that matter).


----------



## Fiction

Gran Turismo 2


----------



## devolutionary

DayZ. Killin and shootin and killin and hatin and robbin and killin and killin.


----------



## Don Vito

Pokemon Silver

Also, got RAGE in the mail.


----------



## TaylorMacPhail

ghstofperdition said:


> Sweet! My steam username is ghstofperdition if anyone wants to shoot it up with me in Counterstrike Source.



Sounds good brudda, I added you. <---- Corey Lahey


----------



## tacotiklah

TaylorMacPhail said:


> Sounds good brudda, I added you. <---- Corey Lahey



Awesome, accepted the invite. With dead space beaten, I'll have a bit more time to play CSS. 

But for my next game, I'm thinking of firing up the n64 emulator and playing some LoZ:OoT.


----------



## Bobo

SenorDingDong said:


> Just bought Bioshock, Bioshock 2, Deadspace, Deadspace 2 and Alice: Madness Returns for a grand total of $22.
> 
> 
> I've got my gaming needs covered for months.
> 
> Currently going through Bioshock.



Didnt' play Alice, but those other 4 games are great choices. And for $22? Patience pays off I guess 

If you haven't played it already, the first Gears of War game has a slight horror element to it, and it should be really cheap now.


----------



## Semichastny

Rainbow Six: 3, Minecraft, Deux Ex, and Elder Scrolls III & V


----------



## Don Vito

Semichastny said:


> Elder Scrolls III


I never could get in to this game.

The combat system is really odd and clunky to me. Any tips? I'm probably doing something wrong.


----------



## Mega-Mads

Ghost Recon - Future Soldier
League of Legends


----------



## tacotiklah

kennedyblake said:


> I never could get in to this game.
> 
> The combat system is really odd and clunky to me. Any tips? I'm probably doing something wrong.



I've had this same problem with Morrowind and hence why I didn't spend more than a day playing it.
It's just felt odd and weird doing so.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Bobo said:


> Didnt' play Alice, but those other 4 games are great choices. And for $22? Patience pays off I guess
> 
> If you haven't played it already, the first Gears of War game has a slight horror element to it, and it should be really cheap now.



I tried to get through Gears, but I had trouble dealing with the controls, i.e. the fact that running makes the dude strafe to the side. 

I need to try it out again, though. I'll be buying my third 360 soon (I have problems with buying something, losing interest, selling and needing to buy again later when I want it again) so I'll pick up a copy. I've seen them go super cheap.


----------



## Don Vito

Okay, so RAGE is excellent.

Rarely do you see proper FPS games these days(I'm looking at you Call of Battlefield: Important Shooter Person). RAGE has great graphics,smooth framerate,satisfying gunplay(I only have pistol so far, and it feels awesome),non retard enemy AI, and good use of vehicles. All for a couple bucks on Amazon 

I'm also playing Pokemon Red,Megaman BN3, and Super Castlevania IV on emulators.


----------



## ShreddingDragon

kennedyblake said:


> Okay, so RAGE is excellent.
> 
> Rarely do you see proper FPS games these days(I'm looking at you Call of Battlefield: Important Shooter Person). RAGE has great graphics,smooth framerate,satisfying gunplay(I only have pistol so far, and it feels awesome),non retard enemy AI, and good use of vehicles. All for a couple bucks on Amazon
> 
> I'm also playing Pokemon Red,Megaman BN3, and Super Castlevania IV on emulators.



I love the Sunken City music in Super Castlevania 4. Jazzy stuff  That game is full of great music.


----------



## texshred777

Haven't been playing much of late, but played Dark Souls again the other night. Will get back to finishing The Witcher again at some point.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Just finished Bioshock, starting Dead Space. Haven't played the PC version before. It's a bit clunkier, so I sense some future frustration. Will probably wind up playing Bioshock 2 to alleviate said frustration 




Also, Steam Summer Sale is going to wreak havoc on my wallet, seeing as I just bought a PS3. Going to try and control myself.. So far I just picked up Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 bundled together for $7.50.


PS3 and Rage will be here Monday.


----------



## Don Vito

Megaman Battle Network 3 and 6.


----------



## Qweklain

I am playing the Xbox Arcade release of Dungeon Fighters. Damn addicting game! Played it for around 10 hours straight before coming to work for a 12-hour shift.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Team Fortress 2. For some reason I only like to play it in summer. Very amusing game, especially with friends but also very frustating if you lose or your team sucks.

Edit: And kind of Dead Island as I bought it from Steam yesterday. Not so excited about it. It seems kinda laggy and boring. Although it is always fun to smash some zombie skulls with an iron pipe.


----------



## Don Vito

Yeah Dead Island is a seriously flawed game, but I had a lot of fun with it anyways.


----------



## Fat-Elf

kennedyblake said:


> Yeah Dead Island is a seriously flawed game, but I had a lot of fun with it anyways.



Yeah, my friend persuaded me to buy it because he said it has a very nice co-op mode so I have to test that before making the final judgement. (or just completing the whole game )


----------



## devolutionary

Still playing DayZ. Our little team of 10 now has a camp with 5 vehicles, all ransacked from others. We're a vicious little bunch of bandits.


----------



## pink freud

So I just started playing League of Legends.

First impressions:

I like how the game recommends that you start off playing with humans against bots. After I played a game against humans I understood why. The average human player in a pickup unranked game of LoL has NOTHING on the roaming packs of rapists that are bots. Those blighters will WTFPWN you in a second.


----------



## Edika

I have played Dead Island extensively the last few months solo and co-op. While the game is a bit flawed and the story has some plot holes it is quite entertaining especially if you built up your character. The co-op is nice and smashing zombie heads and cracking bones is fun. The only thing missing is strong bosses but that is overcome by hoards of zombies coming at you.

I was also playing Fallout 3. I was really into it in the beginning but I got to sidetracked by the various sub-quests and got a bit tired. I will take it up again to finish the main quests and then decide if I'll do the sub-quests. 

I tried Alan Wake at a friends and really liked the story and atmosphere. The controls were a bit awkward but I liked it. I am waiting for the price to decrease to drop to buy it.


----------



## texshred777

Playing some Dark Souls again of late. I can't believe I've already sank 36 hours in this game and have barely scratched the surface.


----------



## Qweklain

texshred777 said:


> Playing some Dark Souls again of late. I can't believe I've already sank 36 hours in this game and have barely scratched the surface.


The first playthrough will no doubt take the largest amount of time since you simply know where nothing is. However, you will be able to blaze through the game, if so desired, after that.


----------



## texshred777

Qweklain said:


> The first playthrough will no doubt take the largest amount of time since you simply know where nothing is. However, you will be able to blaze through the game, if so desired, after that.


 
It doesn't help that I learned a while ago that the fastest way throught his game is to go slowly.


----------



## tacotiklah

Just found my cod4 cd and cdkey. Now with my regular internet access, this will be a lot of fun since I love the killhouse 24/7 servers.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Been playing Rage on PS3. The texture popping is driving me insane. The fact that they would release such a buggy game after touting it for so long


----------



## Mexi

hehe, funny you should mention Rage. I just grabbed that for $10 from the Steam Summer Sale, and was also dismayed by the ridiculous texture issues the game has, despite having a solid gaming rig. pretty unacceptable for a veteran game developer. that aside, I am enjoying most of the post-apocalyptic world they made for it. the twisted metal-esque racing is also pretty cool


----------



## texshred777

Playing The Witcher 2 again. I love this game! I'll get back to Dark Souls after a bit, but I'm about to start the 3rd Act/Chapter and want to finish it off.


----------



## Don Vito

Demon's Souls + Emperor playlist

It's been a good day.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Mexi said:


> hehe, funny you should mention Rage. I just grabbed that for $10 from the Steam Summer Sale, and was also dismayed by the ridiculous texture issues the game has, despite having a solid gaming rig. pretty unacceptable for a veteran game developer. that aside, I am enjoying most of the post-apocalyptic world they made for it. the twisted metal-esque racing is also pretty cool



That's the other part that forced me into selling my copy  

After a while, I got ridiculously tired of doing fetch quests and being chased by the same 3-4 bandit cars en route. It was fun fighting them the first time. Almost enjoyable the second. Kind of annoying the third. Really annoying the fourth. Pissed me off the next dozen or so times. 

That, and the fact that when you shoot someone in the head they get right back up and keep fighting  





I'm going to be playing _Alice: Madness Returns_ and _Dead Space_ until Skyrim gets here.


----------



## Alex6534

I'm thinking of selling my Xbox 360 and games, I'm spending less and less time on it and either A)Messing about with Revalver/music forums. B) Modding the fuck out of the few games I hae on steam  Plus would give me some cash for the steam summer sale............... Not to mention a new console will likely be out in the next year or so.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still playing Xenoblade. All characters on level 92 and on the home stretch. I could just easily complete the game and be done with it, but there's still so many sidequests to do...


----------



## Don Vito

FF13-2

I'm getting Pokemon Conquest tomorrow.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Spyro the Dragon.



Aw yeah


----------



## Don Vito

Thanks for reminding me about that one! Awesome game.


----------



## SenorDingDong

kennedyblake said:


> Thanks for reminding me about that one! Awesome game.



No problem. It is so short, but so much fun. The first three games are timeless. I can't count the number of times I have played them.


----------



## Pav

SenorDingDong said:


> No problem. It is so short, but so much fun. The first three games are timeless. I can't count the number of times I have played them.



I can't even count the number of hours I burned playing the demo back on the original Playstation.


----------



## Stealth7

Red Dead Redemption/Undead Nightmare


----------



## SenorDingDong

Pav said:


> I can't even count the number of hours I burned playing the demo back on the original Playstation.



Longevity. Some newer games could take a page out of the Spyro books; a five hour game that is still fun after a decade.




My copies of Borderlands, Arkham Asylum and Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions just came in. 


I'll be playing some Borderlands tonight... that is, if Spyro: Ripto's Rage doesn't steal my attention first


----------



## dvon21

I've been playing a lot of Smash Bros. Melee. I used to play Brawl competitively. Well online competitive, couple of regional tourneys. 

But ever since Project M came out.. Brawl's been collecting dust.


----------



## axxessdenied

Working on GTA IV on the PC. Also got San Andreas and Vice City ready to go


----------



## Don Vito

axxessdenied said:


> Working on GTA IV on the PC. Also got San Andreas and Vice City ready to go


Are you from the past, time traveler?


----------



## Pav

kennedyblake said:


> Are you from the past, time traveler?



Genuinely good games know no time period. Fifteen years later I'll still pull out FFVII and enjoy it more than most of the repetitive crap coming out these days.


----------



## axxessdenied

I still play Baldur's Gate! Being able to convert BG1 to the BG2 engine is the best!!!
Fallout 1 & 2 are also timeless classics!


----------



## Don Vito

Pav said:


> Genuinely good games know no time period. Fifteen years later I'll still pull out FFVII and enjoy it more than most of the repetitive crap coming out these days.


 I think you misunderstood my post greatly.

I'm not even going to bother explaining either.


----------



## Pav

kennedyblake said:


> I think you misunderstood my post greatly.
> 
> I'm not even going to bother explaining either.



...alrighty then.


----------



## CrownofWorms

I recently finished Saints Row the third...........................................................................



MY GOD THAT GAME WAS SHIT


Back to Skyrim


----------



## habicore_5150

soo, lemme see, what did I play today


----------



## CrownofWorms

SenorDingDong said:


> Will probably wind up playing Bioshock 2 to alleviate said frustration
> 
> .



I wouldn't recommend Bioshock 2. Its notas open and its more of a game where it is straight forward. I'd say rent it


----------



## klutvott

I'm playing Lego Batman 2, Vessel and Doom II.


----------



## Luke Acacia

Im still smashing out DC Universe Online and Skyrim.


----------



## SenorDingDong

I'm playing Borderlands 2, trying to finish it for the first time _before_ I get my pre-order next month 


Hard part is, I always end up playing one of the Spyro games.


----------



## Pav

Back the staples of the current time - once again hooked on Battlefield 3 and Dota 2. I'm a competitive gamer at heart.


----------



## bhakan

SenorDingDong said:


> I'm playing Borderlands 2, trying to finish it for the first time _before_ I get my pre-order next month
> 
> 
> Hard part is, I always end up playing one of the Spyro games.


I'm confused, do you mean playing Borderlands? It seems difficult to play Borderlands 2 before you get you get your preorder.


----------



## Pav

bhakan said:


> I'm confused, do you mean playing Borderlands? It seems difficult to play Borderlands 2 before you get you get your preorder.



Only a true noob would succumb to such minor obstacles.


----------



## Don Vito

Megaman X6

I want to strangle the level designer.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Pav said:


> Only a true noob would succumb to such minor obstacles.








bhakan said:


> I'm confused, do you mean playing Borderlands? It seems difficult to play Borderlands 2 before you get you get your preorder.



Yes, a typo on my part.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Still playing Xenoblade. All characters on level 92 and on the home stretch. I could just easily complete the game and be done with it, but there's still so many sidequests to do...


 
Almost there. Level 98, and only a few quests left before I go and finish it off...

Also since I got a new phone:












Playing these among a bunch of other classics.


----------



## Choop

I'm so late to the party, but I've recently been playing Super Street Fighter 4 (AE) and so far I really like it. I was previously a pretty avid Tekken player during the ps2 days before I moved on to PC gaming and frankly just kind of got tired of the Tekken gameplay style.
A few friends and myself play online and I've been slowly getting better playing some ranked matches. Blanka is my main focus, but I play Gouken and Chun-li fairly often also.


----------



## TheDivineWing22

Playing through Darksiders again to get ready for Darksiders 2. I love this game. It's basically Legend of Zelda meets God of War.


----------



## Don Vito




----------



## Luke Acacia

DayZ  Im lost in it!


----------



## Don Vito

Pokemon White version


----------



## Choop

kennedyblake said:


> Pokemon White version



ha! I'm actually restarting this too! I had beaten it like 8 months ago and want to experience the world again, it really is a good game that I think many shrug off because of the new pokemon designs. Some are derpy, but there are many that are pretty cool. Also I want to pick a new starter...


----------



## Don Vito

I was actually going to buy it at launch, but it just..never..happened. I haven't really formed a good opinion yet because I'm still in the first couple of towns so far.

The best/coolest Pokemon I have so far are Herdier(HURRDURR) and Munna(sucker for any Psychic types). I picked Oshawott as my starter because I've seen what he Evolves into later. Snivy was very tempting and has some great evolutions as well. For whatever reason, I'm just not very prone to grass type Pokemon 

Oh and I got a lvl 20 log swinger guy now.


----------



## Pedrojoca

Counter-Strike : Global Offensive, just got the beta


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So I'm finally going to start this game:






Or this, I can't decide:






hmmmm 

EDIT: Crap, still haven't started this game...






And I really need to find a copy of this game stat.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Bloody_Inferno said:


> So I'm finally going to start this game:



If you do start it, let me know how you like it. 

I have played a few FF games I loved, and a few I didn't even both finishing. I've been looking into XIII-2 for a while--I think I would enjoy the combat system much more than XIII's.


----------



## Don Vito

I like XIII-2 myself(I just started it about 2 weeks ago). Not really the JRPG expert though, so I'd value Inferno's opinion a little more .

I can say it's better than XIII, but I can't really pinpoint reasons why.


----------



## Pav

Pedrojoca said:


> Counter-Strike : Global Offensive, just got the beta



Oooooooohhhhh shit how is it???


----------



## st2012

Playing the new Counter-Strike beta. And getting my ass kicked...


----------



## Pav

st2012 said:


> Playing the new Counter-Strike beta. And getting my ass kicked...



Same question!!! How does it look/feel? How are the mechanics as compared to Source or 1.6?


----------



## Jakke

I bought Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and the Witcher on the Steam Summer Sale. I'm gonna go ahead and play through those next.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> And I really need to find a copy of this game stat.



Totally want this too..after getting re-addicted to fighting games. :X


----------



## guitarister7321

I just started Saints Row III.


----------



## Don Vito

I've restricted my spending as of late to save money, and Pokemon was supposed to be my last game purchase for a while. 

Out of no where, my Mom decides to buy me a game because we went to a car wash next to a Gamestop. I ended up getting Sleeping Dogs(True Crime Hong Kong). I was so bummed when Activision cancelled it, so I'm really looking forward to playing it.


----------



## texshred777

Finished The Witcher 2. Playing the last chapter again and started a new playthrough.


----------



## galca002

The war-themed hat simulator, otherwise known as Team Fortress 2


----------



## st2012

Pav said:


> Same question!!! How does it look/feel? How are the mechanics as compared to Source or 1.6?



I like the look of it a lot, I play mainly hostage/ bomb maps so pretty much all of the maps in those rotations seem to be updated versions of old maps. I never played much 1.6 so I can't really compare the mechanics there but it seems very similar to Source in most respects. I really only have 2 complaints so far. First, I sometimes have trouble telling terrorists and CT's apart. I'm guessing that I'll adapt to the new models after a few weeks of playing but for now it's pretty annoying. Secondly, There doesn't seem to be any slowdown when I shoot someone. Meaning when someone is strafing or running away from me and I land a few hits on him, his movement speed doesn't decrease. Again, not a gigantic downside to me but it will take a little getting used to. Other than that I'm having a damned good time.


----------



## galca002

st2012 said:


> I like the look of it a lot, I play mainly hostage/ bomb maps so pretty much all of the maps in those rotations seem to be updated versions of old maps. I never played much 1.6 so I can't really compare the mechanics there but it seems very similar to Source in most respects. I really only have 2 complaints so far. First, I sometimes have trouble telling terrorists and CT's apart. I'm guessing that I'll adapt to the new models after a few weeks of playing but for now it's pretty annoying. Secondly, There doesn't seem to be any slowdown when I shoot someone. Meaning when someone is strafing or running away from me and I land a few hits on him, his movement speed doesn't decrease. Again, not a gigantic downside to me but it will take a little getting used to. Other than that I'm having a damned good time.



I agree for the most part. Personally, I'm liking CS:GO a lot. It's not better than 1.6 but if you play the game, you feel like you want to avoid that comparison. It's just a bit different.


----------



## Pav

Excellent to hear. I just caved and bought it myself so I'll find out shortly.


----------



## 7stringDemon

Mostly FEAR 2 though. And since I've beaten them all, I usually just play online.

PSN ID:
mohican-punk


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SenorDingDong said:


> If you do start it, let me know how you like it.
> 
> I have played a few FF games I loved, and a few I didn't even both finishing. I've been looking into XIII-2 for a while--I think I would enjoy the combat system much more than XIII's.


 
So I chose this over Pandora's Tower as my time consumer of choice. I'm not that far into it as yet, but at the moment, it feels more or less a refined sequel. There's more freedom than the first so it doesn't feel like a long winded overstretched dungeon crawl so that's a definite plus. 

The combat system is almost identical but with more extra frills and the odd quick time events that turn up here and there. Not recommended if you didn't like the first game and would recommend Xenoblade instead. (Think Final Fantasy XII but far more refined and improved)


----------



## shadroc718

KOA: Reckoning. Status: Addicted.


----------



## Don Vito

I'm hooked on Sleeping Dogs. I've stopped playing everything else for now.


----------



## vampiregenocide

Been playing Limbo, Darksiders (figured I'd play the first before getting the new one) and World of Warcraft. Looking forward to Guild Wars 2 at the weekend.


----------



## Bekanor

Darksiders 2. Love it. 


I might start Sleeping Dogs today.


----------



## Don Vito

What's the appeal of Darksiders/Darksiders 2? I don't know anything about them.


----------



## Bekanor

kennedyblake said:


> What's the appeal of Darksiders/Darksiders 2? I don't know anything about them.



I went into Darksiders 1 expecting just a god of war style slasher (which is a format that I love to bits) but there's actually more to it than that in that it has a really big Metroid style adventure element to it. Very underrated titles both.


----------



## Don Vito

Is it open world, or just big, spacious stages?


----------



## Pav

All of this about Darksiders 2 may just be enough to get me to dust off the old PS3.


----------



## Don Vito

I play my PS3 everyday and it stays dusty.


----------



## Bekanor

kennedyblake said:


> Is it open world, or just big, spacious stages?



The first one is fairly open, you have your hub overworld and then pretty big stages that run off that. The second one so far seems a lot bigger and a lot more open.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

I started Mass Effect 3 a few days ago, loving it so far.


----------



## Pav

kennedyblake said:


> I play my PS3 everyday and it stays dusty.



Touche. The black shows everything.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Started playing CS:GO Beta a week ago and pre-ordered it after two matches. 7 more hours to go. Thank god the school starts at 12:15pm tomorrow so I can play all night.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Bloody_Inferno said:


> So I chose this over Pandora's Tower as my time consumer of choice. I'm not that far into it as yet, but at the moment, it feels more or less a refined sequel. There's more freedom than the first so it doesn't feel like a long winded overstretched dungeon crawl so that's a definite plus.
> 
> The combat system is almost identical but with more extra frills and the odd quick time events that turn up here and there. Not recommended if you didn't like the first game and would recommend Xenoblade instead. (Think Final Fantasy XII but far more refined and improved)




I haven't played the first one--I hesitated due to the dungeon crawl issue (I hate dungeon crawler games).





kennedyblake said:


> I play my PS3 everyday and it stays dusty.



I vacuum mine once every two weeks 





I have afraid-to-ruin-shit OCD


----------



## Prydogga

I think the best way to describe Darksiders II is Zelda with pure evil.

Right now, and for the past 10 months or so, I've been pretty much been playing nothing but Starcraft 2. Finally in the past few months after playing for hours most days, and keeping up to date with builds and watching a lot of pro gameplay, I'm getting into the swing of it, and am currently on a nice win streak. Waiting for the new season to start to maybe get into Platinum, if not just gold.


----------



## SeductionS

COD2, love the SP


----------



## Don Vito

SeductionS said:


> COD2, love the SP


Need to replay this


----------



## SeductionS

kennedyblake said:


> Need to replay this


You won't regret


----------



## Choop

Playing Limbo in between LoL games. So far I really like it, and it's the latest in my spree of indie games that I've been meaning to play. +1 for awesome indie games!


----------



## Qweklain

Received Transformers: Fall of Cybertron yesterday, and it is as every bit as great as War for Cyberton. It is an awesome multiplayer game too that is not fudging CoD. I have been playing a lot of BF3 as well when I have some friends on.


----------



## MetalBuddah

Just started playing Infamous 2, very very solid game. Getting it for free from my buddy also made it better  Just love being able to kill EVERYTHING....a general requirement for the majority of my games. I am not a violent person, I promise


----------



## Lagtastic

Trying to beat Darksiders 2 before GW2 comes out tonight. Not going to happen.


----------



## MetalBuddah

Lagtastic said:


> Trying to beat Darksiders 2 before GW2 comes out tonight. Not going to happen.


----------



## Triple-J

Resident Evil 4....ok I know it's old but I didn't click with it when it was first released on PS2/GC so I traded it in but my girlfriend has a Wii so I bought it again and I'm enjoying it more now due to the awesome control scheme.


----------



## Don Vito

Wii version is best version.


----------



## Don Vito

I'm almost done with Sleeping Dogs, so I'm going to start back with Pokemon White.

Just have a few more trophies to round up


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Also since I got a new phone:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Playing these among a bunch of other classics.



I don't know what possessed me to prioritise these games over the countless SNES classics for my phone but I just had to remind myself... DAMMIT THE FIRST GAME WAS INSANELY HARD!


----------



## Furtive Glance

Rayman: Origins. Such a fun, genuinely pleasant game! Good to play in small segments too, due to my work schedule


----------



## Prydogga

Triple-J said:


> Resident Evil 4....*ok I know it's old* but I didn't click with it when it was first released on PS2/GC so I traded it in but my girlfriend has a Wii so I bought it again and I'm enjoying it more now due to the awesome control scheme.



Dude, it's fine, I still love me some RE2 and 4, despite the age.


----------



## tacotiklah

Played the Sims 2 for most of today, then got down on the original halo for a little while. Fuck yeah!


----------



## SenorDingDong

Arkham Asylum.


----------



## Threex4

WoW and a bit of Link to the past on my snes.


----------



## SirMyghin

Riven... and it is kicking my ass


----------



## Taerix

GUILDWARS 2!!!! (ive been waiting YEARS for this release)


----------



## Don Vito

Yakuza 4

Sleeping Dogs got me in the mood for a good gangster brawler


----------



## CrownofWorms

Counter Strike Global Offensive is great. 

Too bad I just noticed that there is no crossplay for ps3


----------



## Don Vito

I started a new character on Fallout New Vegas, but I'm already bored with it :/


----------



## CrushingAnvil

Gran Turismo 5

Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3

Lego Star Wars: The complete Saga


----------



## SenorDingDong

Bioshock 2


Waiting for my new copies of Baldur's Gate 1&2, Icewind Dale 1&2, Planescape: Torment, and The Temple of Elemental Evil in the mail. Then I'll be in RPG heaven for the first time in years.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

CrushingAnvil said:


> Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 3


 
Such a fun game. 

EDIT: Sonic Boost abuse kinda breaks the game though.  Still fun regardless.


----------



## habicore_5150

Been playing a little bit of Super Mario World
The fastest time I've ever gotten on Yoshi's Island 1: 260



I came to the realization that some people can finish the level at about 263


----------



## Fiction

Just been playing Skyrim again, but after last post thing i'll bust out the snes


----------



## Mwoit

Finished Deus Ex Human Revolution last weekend, starting Max Payne 3 and FF 13-2.


----------



## brutalwizard

Final fantasy 2/4 for the SNES is been pretty fun, kinda hard and full of grinding but fun


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

SenorDingDong said:


> Arkham Asylum.


 
I can find every riddle on the island in a hour. Fucking great game.


----------



## MFB

Went to Gamestop today and picked up Deus Ex Human Revolution, Bioshock 2, and Devil May Cry HD Collection.


----------



## Pav

^^ Human Revolution is a game I really need to go back to. Bought it and was immediately sidetracked with other real life things and played all of 15 minutes of it.  Looked excellent though and should look even better as I've since rebuilt my PC.


But seriously, am I the only Dota player here???


----------



## MetalBuddah

Slender....


----------



## Mwoit

MetalBuddah said:


> Slender....



How far you get? I'm a total coward when it comes to horror, so I gave up after 2 pages. 

"COME AT ME BROOOOO"


----------



## MetalBuddah

Mwoit said:


> How far you get? I'm a total coward when it comes to horror, so I gave up after 2 pages.
> 
> "COME AT ME BROOOOO"



I got to two pages then almost shat myself


----------



## MFB

Man, Bioshock 2 is WEIRD. Playing as a Big Daddy, seeing Big Sisters, going underwater at times? WHAT IS ALL THIS?!


----------



## SenorDingDong

MFB said:


> Man, Bioshock 2 is WEIRD. Playing as a Big Daddy, seeing Big Sisters, going underwater at times? WHAT IS ALL THIS?!



So far (I think I'm about half way through), I really dig it. At first the controls are really clunky, and dying is easier than it should be. But once you get some good plasmids and gene tonics, it almost beats the combat in the original. Almost.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, it's by no means bad just different. 



Spoiler



Unfortunately, I DID predict that my little girl was going to be this Eleanor Lamb person before Tenebrau (or whatever her name is) told me. I mean, it was fairly easy to see coming if you know how the first game ended. Big twist? Yup, so what could this one be. Looks like it was right.


----------



## Murmel

Been trying to get into gaming again with some Black Ops.

"Holy shitty spawn system, Batman"


----------



## Don Vito

I love Black Ops, but most of the maps are too damn small. 

Small maps=cluttered spawning. The bigger maps, like the snowy satellite map(Hoth as I refer it do), didn't have this problem as bad.

I miss my fast internet  Playing a well made single player game is still fun and rewarding.... but sometimes you just want to shoot interwebz ppl


----------



## Pav

Something about the goofy ass weapon camo and reticle patterns/colors made the game feel downright cartoony to me. I wasn't a big fan.


----------



## Don Vito

That was my favorite part

I couldn't get kills for shit without certain reticles(srs)


----------



## Pav

I was the same way, certain reticles and colors worked really well for me. Then I would be killed by some fool running around with a bright pink smiley face on top of his rifle and my masculinity would feel rather damaged.

Then those damn exploding RC cars...makes me irritated just thinking about it.


----------



## ittoa666

Black Ops over MW all day every day for me. They always add new, fun things to the game.


----------



## Fiction

I'm juggling 'The realm of the mad god' and 'skyrim' at the moment.. Also got a save half way through in both FFX and FFXII that be been meaning to finish, and it been 2 years since I've finished FF7 so I'll probably get on that soon as well.


----------



## Bekanor

Fiction said:


> I'm juggling 'The realm of the mad god' and 'skyrim' at the moment.. Also got a save half way through in both FFX and FFXII that be been meaning to finish, and it been 2 years since I've finished FF7 so I'll probably get on that soon as well.



I'm trying to decide between playing FFVII or Ocarina of Time again in my xmas break.


----------



## Fiction

That's another one I'd like to play through 

Too many games, too little time.


----------



## MFB

OoT > FFVII


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

KOTOR.


----------



## Fiction

MFB said:


> OoT > FFVII


----------



## MFB

I'm an FFVIII fanboy, and never saw the hype for VII so


----------



## Fiction

I do prefer 8, but finished that earlier this year


----------



## Don Vito

Grand Moff Tim said:


> KOTOR.


Is this game backwards compatible on 360? I've always wanted to try it out.

How does the combat work? Is it turn based or a more action based system?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Comparing Zelda to Final Fantasy is like apples and oranges. 

That said:

Majora's Mask > Ocarina of Time (though all Zelda games have been consistantly good sans the garbage CDi games)

FFVI >> FFVII and FFVIII 


Now I've fully immersed myself with playing FFXIII-2 the sequel is definitely much much better than the first. So much to do.


----------



## Fiction

Well, both apples AND oranges are delicious.


----------



## Bekanor

Just to be clear, mine is not a decision of which is better, they're just two games that I love to bits that I haven't played through in a while. 

But I guess it's too much to ask to mention two things and not have the internet compare them. 

Time available will probably be the deciding factor. Hell if it was up to me I'd take a sabbatical and play through OOT, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, FFVII, FFVIII, Super Metroid, and all the new games I have that I haven't beaten yet but I don't think I can sell that idea to the CEO.


----------



## SuperMutant

I use to be into COD more but recently I've been mostly playing fallout new vegas/3, Assasins creed 1 and revalations, Diablo 3 and I just got skyrim 2 days ago and I haven't stopped playing it since! I already beat the "story" and I'm lvl 25.


----------



## Qweklain

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Comparing Zelda to Final Fantasy is like apples and oranges.
> 
> That said:
> 
> Majora's Mask > Ocarina of Time (though all Zelda games have been consistantly good sans the garbage CDi games)
> 
> *FFVI >> FFVII and FFVIII*
> 
> 
> Now I've fully immersed myself with playing FFXIII-2 the sequel is definitely much much better than the first. So much to do.


*Ding Ding Ding* We have a winner!!!!! 

However...

Star Ocean: 2nd Story & Grandia series >>>>>> Every Final Fantasy (Except maybe Tactics...) (and I F'in love FF)

I am just about finished with Transformers: FoC (only need 2130 XP on my Scientist for the final two achievements), then I move onto doing my third and final playthrough of Deadly Premonition (best X360 game ever). I will be done just in time for some BORDERLANDS 2!!


----------



## Mendez

Bloody_Inferno said:


> That said:
> 
> *Majora's Mask > Ocarina of Time* (though all Zelda games have been consistantly good sans the garbage CDi games)



It's rare to see this opinion. But +1, I love majora's mask so much that I've gone through 9+ gameplays of that game over the past 5 years


----------



## Don Vito

I never played Major's Mask. Didn't it need some sort of attachment?


----------



## Mendez

Yeah, it needed an "n64 expansion pack".

But it was later released in the zelda collection for gamecube.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

kennedyblake said:


> Is this game backwards compatible on 360? I've always wanted to try it out.
> 
> How does the combat work? Is it turn based or a more action based system?


 
It is. In fact, the first time I played through it was on my 360. It's on Steam now, though, and your computer'd have to be pretty damned shitty to not be able to handle KOTOR, so I'd take that route if you can.

The combat is turn-based in that once you attack, your opponent gets a chance to attack before you can attack again, but it at least looks and feels more dynamic in that you're free to run around while it's all happening and pause/unpause the action at will, instead of just watching some dudes lined up on one side of the screen take turns attacking more dudes lined up on the other side of the screen.

EDIT: and your AI squadmates continue to fight other dudes on the screen at the same time you're figthing someone else.


----------



## Edika

I finally finished Fallout 3. I was playing it maniacally for a period but I tried to do all the side quests and burned out after a while. I let a good time pass by killing zombies with a couple of friends in Dead Island. The Dead Island game is good and quite atmospheric. After a while there some plot holes that get annoying but it is a fun game. I found it more difficult when playing with more people as it is difficult to coordinate.

I have currently started Mafia II and it's very addictive. I like the story so far even though it seems similar with the first game.


----------



## tacotiklah

Just saw that my cousin has KOTOR II for her original XBOX, so between that and school I may post less here. (inb4 cheers and thunderous applause)

Also I've been playing some Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance and an awesome game called Psychonauts.


----------



## MFB

Oh no, not KOTOR ...II! 

Seriously, that's got NOTHING on the original


----------



## texshred777

Just bought KOTOR again..


----------



## Mendez

MFB said:


> Oh no, not KOTOR ...II!
> 
> Seriously, that's got NOTHING on the original



Definitely, although the gameplay was improved.


----------



## SenorDingDong

My RPGs won't be here for at least another week 


So I picked up Arkham City GOTY Edition from Amazon for $30 while it was on sale. It'll be here tonight


----------



## MFB

Arkham City DESTROYS Asylum, trust me.


----------



## texshred777

^
Have had both for months, haven't touched either.


----------



## MFB

I played City before I even OWNED Asylum and I loved it. It felt like the game that Batman deserved whereas Asylum felt like he was caged in and couldn't be as Batman-y as he is ya know? I know he was literally in buildings and such with Asylum so it's kind of tongue-in-cheek to say it that way but you get the jist.


----------



## flexkill

No one playing Sleeping Dogs? I have had it since release but only play for about 2 hours. Seems pretty damn cool so far....fucking Madden has got me tied up!


----------



## Vicissitude27

flexkill said:


> No one playing Sleeping Dogs? I have had it since release but only play for about 2 hours. Seems pretty damn cool so far....fucking Madden has got me tied up!



I just beat it actually, and I gotta say its a damn good game. I usually dig the stuff Square Enix puts out, and this was no exception. I will say however, once you get about 8 hours into the game, you can call about every major story plot.


----------



## Don Vito

flexkill said:


> No one playing Sleeping Dogs? I have had it since release but only play for about 2 hours. Seems pretty damn cool so far....fucking Madden has got me tied up!


Beat it a few weeks ago.


----------



## Don Vito

Not playing it yet, but I've got a copy of Two Worlds 2 coming tomorrow. It can't be any worse than the first game.

I'm also trying out/ordering KOTOR soon.


----------



## TheDivineWing22

Just beat Fall of Cybertron. I loved the first game and the second one is even better. I'm also really enjoying the multiplayer. It's an awesome switch up from typical shooters.


----------



## SenorDingDong

MFB said:


> Arkham City DESTROYS Asylum, trust me.





My god, it is phenomenal


----------



## troyguitar

Been playing the "What's wrong with my computer?" game this week. It runs for weeks on end if I don't play any games, but locks up in 1 minute to 1 hour during gaming. New-ish AMD 7770 shouldn't have this problem  Got a new power supply from newegg to try this weekend and see if it makes a difference - mine is kind of old and slightly underpowered by today's standards but seems like it should be fine for the 75W 7770 card... that's only 6.25 Amps at 12 Volts and I have 2x 17A 12V rails.

I think it might just be shit AMD drivers though, at first my screen was going black like the monitor going to standby when it locked up. After reinstalling the latest drivers the other day the screen now stays on but frozen


----------



## Qweklain

troyguitar said:


> (previous rant)...
> 
> *...I think it might just be shit AMD drivers though*, at first my screen was going black like the monitor going to standby when it locked up. After reinstalling the latest drivers the other day the screen now stays on but frozen


*Ding Ding Ding* I have had many, many problems with AMD/ATI drivers. The one currently on my grandparents computer is quite an interesting one. Everytime you right click the desktop, Explorer crashes and that DrWatson thing freaks out, so in order to create folders and whatnot I need to do so inside another folder.

ATI has good hardware, but their software side is 100% trash and I will never even consider ATI as an option because of it. I have had many problems along with everyone else I know that has had ATI. It is really too bad after this long they still can not get a working driver set...


----------



## Bekanor

Qweklain said:


> *Ding Ding Ding* I have had many, many problems with AMD/ATI drivers. The one currently on my grandparents computer is quite an interesting one. Everytime you right click the desktop, Explorer crashes and that DrWatson thing freaks out, so in order to create folders and whatnot I need to do so inside another folder.
> 
> ATI has good hardware, but their software side is 100% trash and I will never even consider ATI as an option because of it. I have had many problems along with everyone else I know that has had ATI. It is really too bad after this long they still can not get a working driver set...



FWIW Nvidia aren't doing what I would call a great job with their 64 bit drivers either. Even the latest drivers for my card crash randomly with the usual black screen for a few seconds then "Nvidia driver stopped working but has recovered" message. 

On topic, I started playing Sleeping Dogs this afternoon. Am I the only person not clicking with this game? Running around feels fine but the fight mechanics are really sloppy and there's a weird delay on button presses that makes putting precise combos together pretty clunky. Also, I'm really not a fan of having a counter as your only defensive option, counters should be an incentive to getting more xp from fights not the only way to stop yourself from eating every punch and kick that comes your way (especially given the delay I mentioned before, if you're in the middle of a combo you're basically going to eat shit if someone else decides to attack), everyone else in the damn game can block, why can't I? People have compared the system in play to the new batman games, that's obviously what they were going for but the execution falls very short of that mark.

As for the driving mechanics, why the hell does the camera do that weird thing where it stays in place for a couple of seconds while you accelerate or god forbid, try to turn around? You just end up slamming into stuff you can't see when all you want to do is go in a different direction than what the vehicle was facing. As for actually driving around, is any vehicle smooth or are they all really twitchy?

I haven't even gotten to any gun battles yet but I don't think I want to, it's really easy to get 3rd person shooting mechanics wrong these days and I have this gut feeling like I'm going to hate everything about that side of things. 

I had high hopes for this game and I really want to like it despite its flaws but it keeps reminding me of the first True Crime game (an obvious parallel to draw given that it was originally slated to be a True Crime game) in that while it offers a variety of gameplay, none of it is done very well (although this is a world of improvement over the first True Cime, that was one of the worst games I've ever played, I could never figure out how they managed to make more of them).


----------



## Fiction

True crime was awesome.

But then again I played it when I was ~10 and slow-mo anything was exciting.


----------



## Don Vito

I'm just not picky about most flaws in video games There wasn't anything game breaking for me, so I just kept playing and had fun.

With that being said, I have no desire to play it again. Only bad part about short action games=little replay value once the thrills are over.


----------



## Metal_Webb

Recently finished Deus Ex: HR. Rather enjoyable game. But that ending  Laziest way to finish a game ever imo.

Started messing around in Saints Row 3. Haven't done many of the missions, just spend hours running around capturing territory and being a menace. Hell, I spent an hour the other day running around butt naked pwning police and swat with the penetrator 

Also made the mistake on getting LoL.....there goes a huge slab of time.


----------



## Fiction

Metal_Webb said:


> Started messing around in Saints Row 3. Haven't done many of the missions, just spend hours running around capturing territory and being a menace. Hell, I spent an hour the other day running around butt naked pwning police and swat with the penetrator



A couple years back when Saints Row 1 came out, one of my friends was over and we spent about 2-3 hours literally running around the free/highway thing, because the cars slowed down behind you and followed you and then tried to swerve past, so we just kept blocking it, and you would get pile ups eventually.. It was hilarious, and somehow we stuck at it for that long.


----------



## Pooluke41

SenorDingDong said:


> Bioshock 2
> 
> 
> Waiting for my new copies of Baldur's Gate 1&2, Icewind Dale 1&2, Planescape: Torment, and The Temple of Elemental Evil in the mail. Then I'll be in RPG heaven for the first time in years.



I've tried getting it to run on windows 7.

I ended up crying.


----------



## Don Vito

Fiction said:


> A couple years back when Saints Row 1 came out, one of my friends was over and we spent about 2-3 hours literally running around the free/highway thing, because the cars slowed down behind you and followed you and then tried to swerve past, so we just kept blocking it, and you would get pile ups eventually.. It was hilarious, and somehow we stuck at it for that long.


I don't even think most people acknowledge that game anymore. It was so overshadowed.

I still love it in all of it's primitive glory Best part about the freeways?

Throwing grenades under oil trucks(a.k.a FUCK YOU FRAMERATE)


----------



## SenorDingDong

Pooluke41 said:


> I've tried getting it to run on windows 7.
> 
> I ended up crying.



I will make it work! I've seen there are a lot of patches and fixes to get the DVD versions to work on Windows 7. I think the ones I bought are specifically compatible with newer OS.


----------



## imlikemike

Let's see... I just caught up on episode 3 of The Walking Dead game (which is great btw) and now I'm catching up on my catalog of games I picked up during the Steam summer sale lol. 

I've already sunk 35+ hours into The Binding of Isaac over the last couple weeks or so. For $1.25, it was definitely the best bargain of the bunch. I absolutely love this game and would probably rate up into my top 5 of all time!


----------



## Korbain

been playing GTA IV since i downloaded the icenhancer 2.1 graphics mod...amazing stuff, highly recommend if you got GTA IV on PC. 

here's a vid (awsome song choice )



also been playing STALKER: call of pripyat with the complete mod...

and counter strike: Global operations


----------



## Metal_Webb

Randomly bought "To the Moon" earlier today as I like picking up nice looking indie releases on Steam.

Wow. Just wow.

The story it tells is extremely well written. So sweet and heart-touching. There's also enough absurd humour in there to lighten the mood. The soundtrack is brilliantly written and arranged (and is a total steal for an extra $2!!!)

I'll say, there's not much that makes me cry, but this game did. If you like games with a story, get this. 10/10


----------



## SenorDingDong

Baldur's Gate.


----------



## Pav

Korbain said:


> also been playing STALKER: call of pripyat with the complete mod...



Complete mod? Please elaborate!


----------



## Korbain

Pav said:


> Complete mod? Please elaborate!



Call of Pripyat Complete mod - Mod DB

whole bunch of tweaks on the graphics, gameplay, AI, pretty much makes the game even better! there's a complete for for all 3 of the STALKERS.

Highly recommend it! the core game is untouched, just tweaks to make it heaps better (even though it's awsome as is )


----------



## tacotiklah

I've been playing a LOT of MW2 lately. Dear god I love that throwing knife combined with last stand.


----------



## Curt

MW3 and Black Ops. But i'm replaying fallout 3 at he moment. <3


----------



## Amonihil

Started playing Ocarina of Time a couple days ago. This shit is addicting!


----------



## Mexi

Black Mesa


----------



## MFB

Cracked open my copy of DMC Collection and man, the writing is number one is atrocious/wooden and the game isn't very challenging to begin with.


----------



## Ryan-ZenGtr-

Best games ever on PC (from 3.5" disc to CD-ROM to DVD eras)

The Secret Of Monkey Island Complete Collection
Tales of Monkey Island Complete Pack on Steam

Thank me later... by sending a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. Enjoy!


----------



## peldikuneptun

Hmm, not a single mention of Super Meat Boy?

I got cramps in my hands from this the first time I played it. Nintendo-hard, very playable.


----------



## Maniacal

Fable 3, so far this game looks terrible.


----------



## Scar Symmetry

The 'Chase The Girlfriend' Game. It's fucking boring.


----------



## Qweklain

Maniacal said:


> Fable 3, so far this game looks terrible.


Yeah, Fable got pretty lame after the first one IMO. The second one was not too bad, but the 3rd one was just plain blah all the way around. I especially was disgruntled with Lionhead when they basically said "Fuck you players/buyers" when they did not care about fixing some glitches. I no longer have any interest whatsoever in anything Fable.


----------



## SenorDingDong

BORDERLANDS 2. SHOUT.


----------



## tacotiklah

My cousin bought a new PS3 yesterday, so we've been playing a LOT of Mortal Kombat 9 and Mortal Kombat Vs. DC the last two days.


----------



## Bekanor

In 10 minutes, Borderlands 2.

Have to poop and read the manual first.


----------



## Bekanor

Damn, I ran out of manual to read before I ran out of poo. 


Why are modern game manuals so lame?


Oh well, time to get my loot on.


----------



## Empryrean

TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT 2!!!



also Street Fighter x Tekken. Nobody from this forum has added me on psn 



..guess musicians don't like fighting games.


----------



## klutvott

Mexi said:


> Black Mesa


Now downloading


----------



## tacotiklah

Empryrean said:


> TEKKEN TAG TOURNAMENT 2!!!
> 
> 
> 
> also Street Fighter x Tekken. Nobody from this forum has added me on psn
> 
> 
> 
> ..guess musicians don't like fighting games.



I have to setup the new PS3 for the PSN. I'll do that this weekend when I have time. But you can PM me your id if you want.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Empryrean said:


> ..guess musicians don't like fighting games.


 
Oh I play fighting games, unfortunately, online gaming is still something I've constantly neglected... 

....which sucks, because half of the SF X Tekken characters are DLC that I'll have to pay for.


----------



## Mexi

after Black Mesa, I've just gotten into Torchlight 2, really solid game.


----------



## Aevolve

Torchlight 2.


HNNNNGGG.


----------



## Luke Acacia

Lord of the rings war in the north. 
Playing well, only fun because me and my mate have up lort quotes and go to town.


----------



## axxessdenied

Torchlight 2!
So good!


----------



## Marv Attaxx

Tekken Tag Tournament 2!
It's awesome!! Oh, and my psn name is BLAKKOUT (I think lol).
In case anyone wants to add me, tell that you're from this forum (I usually don't add people I don't know)


----------



## Fat-Elf

Bought Tony Hawk HD last week, played it for 6 minutes and sent a message to Valve demanding to give my money back. Seriously, first it felt like the worst game ever made since Big Rigs but in the end, it has some SERIOUS flaws but it is kinda enjoyable when you get used to it but I would still say that no-one should support the game developers and buy it. Don't even bother to pirate it. Also, I'm pretty embarassed as I didn't get an answer for my demand until today and they said that they don't tend to give money back for bad games and I had already played 6 hours of it..

Also, started Skyrim today again. Was planning on creating some sort of magic dude but I'm sticking with the warrior again as it is the most fun to play with.


----------



## tacotiklah

So I'm giving Dawnguard for PC a whirl and I'm honestly pretty disappointed so far. The storyline and everything is great, but this DLC is so damn buggy that I have to pretty much use command line after command line just to get through all of this. I mean, Bethseda has been pretty notorious for buggy TES games, but this is fail even by their standards. I'm hoping they will release a patch with fixes for this soon because it's really starting to take away from the game.


----------



## Qweklain

I have been playing Borderlands 2 at home (friggin' awesome BTW) and playing Super Metroid: Eris Station hack at work. Unfortunately I have been playing the old 2010 version of Eris instead of 2012, so it is much more confusing, but still fun once you get into it! After this I may try to finish Secret of the Stars or move on to Super Metroid: Redesign.


----------



## Miek

Dark Souls, hurt me more


----------



## axxessdenied

FTL: Faster Than Light... incredible game


----------



## Don Vito

I got an Xbox 360 copy of Skyrim. It actually works(had a PS3 copy)

I'm also replaying the excellent MGS4. I haven't played it since 2008, so everything is fresh!


----------



## Curt

Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's decade duels. Fawk the haters..

Mostly just waiting for my Borderlands 2 to come in. After replaying fallout 3 AND New Vegas, every other game I own bores me. :/


----------



## tacotiklah

After setting my cousin up with her PSN account, we discovered the playstation store. I foresee a purchase or two of my own in my future.


----------



## Don Vito

Just bought GTA III 10th Anniversary edition for my XPeria Play. I feel robbed and cheated...


----------



## texshred777

Battlefield 3


----------



## axxessdenied

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Torchlight 2
Anno 2070
UFC Undisputed 3


----------



## Fat-Elf

Left 4 Dead 2

Nothing against Russians, but honestly, it's a pain in the ass to play with them.


----------



## subject aftermath

football manager 2012... yea im that cool haha


----------



## habicore_5150

It's a damn good game


----------



## MFB

On day #2 of my Borderlands replay, god damn this has been so fun


----------



## texshred777

I should have said, getting my ass kicked in BF3. I'm trying my damndest to be a squad/team player, dropping medkits and ammo left and right. Also trying recon kit a little bit but damn, I need to learn these maps. I'm getting pwned left and right.


----------



## Bekanor

Played the Forza Horizon demo this morning, after it was over I came upstairs and ordered the collector's edition. I'm a bad man.


----------



## TreWatson

Dishonored, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect, Mirror's edge, and once i get internet back, Borderlands 2.

oh! and Elsword one the internet comes back as well.

PC gaming FTMFW


----------



## sentagoda

Fat-Elf said:


> Left 4 Dead 2
> 
> Nothing against Russians, but honestly, it's a pain in the ass to play with them.



Agreed. If you are playing expert . Add me.
Steam Community :: ID :: norwegian


----------



## sentagoda

anyway. 

Playing Starcraft II , Left 4 dead 2, RE 6 on ps3 atm.


----------



## Fat-Elf

sentagoda said:


> Agreed. If you are playing expert . Add me.
> Steam Community :: ID :: norwegian



Sorry, I play strictly Versus nowadays.


----------



## Miek

Just beat Dishonored, I totally think it's worth the full asking price. Back to Dark Souls I go.


----------



## Maximal

Atm I play Dishonored, after the escape i have to admit that I'm not sure that it is worth the full proce but we'll see. Also i've been playing League of Legends for about a year now... so much wasted time


----------



## Kidneythief

Deus ex: Human Revolution

I love the atmosphere, storyline is good also, weapons are neat, and yeah I'm a Deux Ex fanboy


----------



## HerbFarmer

Currently Im playing Halo: Reach game which I bought very recently. It is a very interesting shooting game and I like to play it a lot.


----------



## Sepultorture

i finally got around to picking up Deus Ex Human Revolution

awesome game, i love the depth and the direction this game took, there's more than one way to approach the game and you can easily fuck everything up, which makes it fun and challening. while the graphic are still pretty damn good, the facial animations and some "body language" still looks rather wooden, almost takes me out of the ecperience, almost.


----------



## Onegunsolution

Legend Of Dragoon because I need to stimulate my mind with 4 disk worth of X button mashing in style


----------



## Miek

Sepultorture said:


> i finally got around to picking up Deus Ex Human Revolution
> 
> awesome game, i love the depth and the direction this game took, there's more than one way to approach the game and you can easily fuck everything up, which makes it fun and challening. while the graphic are still pretty damn good, the facial animations and some "body language" still looks rather wooden, almost takes me out of the ecperience, almost.



Human Revolution is actually my favorite game ever, but I still can't help but laugh every time someone uses the karate chop conversation animation.


----------



## DMONSTER

Torchlight 2, very addicting game


----------



## MFB

Onegunsolution said:


> Legend Of Dragoon because I need to stimulate my mind with 4 disk worth of X button mashing in style


----------



## tacotiklah

I'll probably get back to playing Company of Heroes here pretty soon. Not a bad game for only being $2.49. 
Add me on steam if you guys want:
Steam Community :: ID :: jessicametal69


----------



## Black_Sheep

Dishonored. It's awesome.  ...Sometimes reminds me of Deus Ex, and that makes it even more awesome.


----------



## Bobo

Happy Wars. It's a free Xbox Live Arcade game. Fun not serious game to play with friends, but they are working out connection bugs right now.

Also loving Minecraft for the Xbox now that it finally has creative mode.


----------



## Don Vito

Some mech game from the bargain bin at Wal Mart

I've been playing it all morning, but forgot the name of it =/


----------



## foxyfluff

Gonna start up Half Life 2 in a while. Beat it on easy,now playing normal,and later will play it on hard.


----------



## Lagtastic

Planetside 2 Beta. It comes out next month, and its free to play.

FPSMMO, fully persistent. Gaming technology is finally to the point where this can be done properly. All I can say, is if you like FPS, spend some time checking it out. Too many cool things to list.


----------



## Brill

Playing Dragon Age: Origins... I love this game very much.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Borderlands. Right now I'm a level 7 hunter (just started), loving it so far. The patrol SMG and the Clipper kick ass.


----------



## subject aftermath

the football manager 2013 beta


----------



## TheDivineWing22

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Trying to get through it and Revelations before III comes out next week. Damn research papers getting in the way!


----------



## Compton

FF VII


----------



## Stealth7

TheDivineWing22 said:


> Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. Trying to get through it and Revelations before III comes out next week. Damn research papers getting in the way!



AC 3 is a new character and story so no real need to play through the others, the only thing that will follow on from the previous games is the story that involves Desmond.. but if you still want to play them there's no harm in that.


----------



## Somnium

Last game I beat was Final Fantasy VII for the first time. Not like this needs to be said again, but fuck was that game good. I've been bored with videogames lately though, even though I have more games that I've never played than games I actually have played. I need to get around to playing through Xenogears/Xenosaga, they're all just sitting around collecting dust.


----------



## Mexi

started playing medal of honor: warfighter earlier this week. not the most original story/themes and in a lot of ways a very typical modern war shooter, but the buddy system in the multiplayer makes for some pretty dynamic gameplay. the game also makes great use of frostbite and looks gorgeous on PC. will probably be playing this until AC3 comes out


----------



## CM_X5

Playing The Walking Dead. I didn't think I'd like it as much as I do, kinda weird at first first but it's worth the $14 (steam sale)


----------



## Metal_Webb

League of Legends.

So much League of Legends


----------



## OneMustFallChicago

Been spending quite a bit of time on Guild Wars 2. (Sea of Sorrows server, and in the Sea of Sorrows Alliance [SOS]). ID name is: Raz.1470 send me a mail saying you're from sevenstring and I'll add you as a friend.
Also been playing Borderlands 2. Mechromancer is too much fun.


----------



## feistyninja

GuitarBots, all the way! Makes my fingers hurt, tho


----------



## texshred777

Picked up the DA:Origins Ultimate Edition. Played that for several hours yesterday.


----------



## devolutionary

World of Tanks, Borderlands 2, Guild Wars 2, and Pokemon Leaf Green, depending on who's online and whether or not I'm at work


----------



## Webmaestro

I'm still playing WoW. I can't believe I've been playing that damn game since it came out. So that's like, what, 6 years now? Don't hardcore raid or any of that stuff anymore... and frequently let my membership lapse for months here and there. But otherwise, STILL playing.

My girlfriend likes to play a bit too. How lucky is that!?


----------



## isispelican

FFVII PC remake


----------



## RustInPeace

Every time I try a run through of FFVII, I always get about halfway then get discouraged. I always remember how many countless hours I spent with this game, even as far as duplicating KoTR materia! Better time spent playing guitar 

But for now I'm still playing Borederlands 2, Max Payne 3 and Skyrim.


----------



## troyguitar

Webmaestro said:


> I'm still playing WoW. I can't believe I've been playing that damn game since it came out. So that's like, what, 6 years now? Don't hardcore raid or any of that stuff anymore... and frequently let my membership lapse for months here and there. But otherwise, STILL playing.
> 
> My girlfriend likes to play a bit too. How lucky is that!?


 
I have been playing off and on since one of the first alpha tests with a level cap of 30 and Deadmines as the only instance. These days I play maybe 4 hours a month though 

You are extremely lucky, mine has no interest in any games whatsoever and as a result does not understand spending any money on computers.


----------



## Mexi

Assassin's Creed 3


----------



## Compton

doing the battles in golden saucer in ff7 and hating life.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Trying to make my way through the story missions, i find this game quite boring as it's just the same thing over and over again. It's like watching a great movie for the 50th time.... 

But, I have AC 3 waiting in my shelf, can't wait to play that but i need to be up to date with the story first....


----------



## Don Vito

Yakuza 4


----------



## WaffleTheEpic

Been playing Bioshock, lately. Also got The War Z beta, but I suck so much at it (you have to practically run around with a target on your chest before you find any weapons) that I don't play it often.

Just recently finished Dishonored. GOOD FREAKIN' GAME.


----------



## Triple7

Just bought Aliens vs. Predator, figured I'd run through this while I wait for Colonial Marines.


----------



## devolutionary

WaffleTheEpic said:


> Also got The War Z beta, but I suck so much at it (you have to practically run around with a target on your chest before you find any weapons) that I don't play it often.



Don't run. Find a server where it's night time, then crawl in to a town. Find something cheap and easy, then carry on to the next town. I haven't looked at the stand-alone Beta yet, but if the Hatchet is still in it, USE IT. It's the best damn weapon in the game until you're loaded up with something automatic and with loads of ammo.


----------



## WaffleTheEpic

devolutionary said:


> Don't run. Find a server where it's night time, then crawl in to a town. Find something cheap and easy, then carry on to the next town. I haven't looked at the stand-alone Beta yet, but if the Hatchet is still in it, USE IT. It's the best damn weapon in the game until you're loaded up with something automatic and with loads of ammo.



Best thing I've managed to get so far was a hammer and a pistol with one clip of rounds, and yeah the run was sort of a figurative/exaggeration thing. The flashlight is your only weapon until you find anything else, and you can't turn it off.


----------



## Tang

Just started the first Uncharted for the first time. At the German U-boat. This game is beautiful.


----------



## Don Vito

About to bust out my 3DS again for some MK7. I really want Resident Evil Revelations though.


----------



## kamello

I was playing Dead Space.........with the lights off.........and with headphones..........at 2 am.........Im such a Badass..........with nothing better to do


----------



## FunnyDay

Right now I am playing Sleeping Dogs, which has a best graphics and its like a GTA San Andreas.


----------



## Korbain

been hooked on just cause 2 again...finally trying to finish it! and skyrim...2 games that will eat away at someones social life lol


----------



## kamello

Korbain said:


> been hooked on just cause 2 again...finally trying to finish it! and skyrim...2 games that will eat away at someones social life lol




a friend insists that I should buy Skyrim so we could slay shit together..........and I have one of the most important exams of my life in 3-4 weeks  (I think it is similar to that SAT thing that the guys in USA have in terms of relevance)


----------



## L1ght

I'm playing a ton of L4D2 and Dead Island, but with Halo 4 coming out tomorrow, I will undoubtedly be playing that uncontrollably.


----------



## DTSH

Just finished Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Playing catch up for 3. Fun game but man is the plot a load of nonsense.


----------



## kamello

aaaaaaaand just finished Dead Space , awesome game, when it just came out I just though ''meeeh, another Resident Evil Rip-off'' but the game slays! (boring as hell pun intended), the final boss was very dissapointing though


----------



## TristanTTN

The last game I played was Borderlands 2. I miss those days where I would spend all of my time on Maplestory and Call of Duty 4.


----------



## jon66

So my wife bought Mists of Pandaria. Of course, as a wowcrack addict myself in the past, I scoffed at her, ridiculing her for her silly panda-bear purchase. Then over the next few weeks, I'd find myself strolling up behind her "wutcha doing...?"  watching more and more, asking questions, etc.

Then she says to me, "you know, if I send you a scroll of resurrection, I can get myself a sweet new mount, and you'll get 7 days to try it out for free". (She's a mount and pet collector)

"Yeah whatever, but I probably won't play much, if at all" I reply.

So I get the email. Figure, what the hell, I may as well make myself a lowbie character on her server (she joined a new one to play with a friend from work who also just picked up MoP).

.
.
.

Fucking hell! What is it about this game, that is SOOOO addicting? I've probably leveled close to 100 different characters over the years to level 10-20 at least, and eventually I just delete them and do it all over again.

WHYYYYYY?  Oh and to top it all off, she even bought me a time-card "so she could get her mount" and left it on my computer chair for me with a little "xoxo" on it.


----------



## Don Vito

DOOM

One of the most simple, yet chaotic games I've ever played. It's perfect.


----------



## Lagtastic

Planetside 2

Frag the weak

Hurdle the dead

Run and Gun


----------



## Don Vito

Resident Evil Revelations... in the dark!

Also going to try and get Megaman Legends to run on my computer via emulator.


----------



## troyguitar

jon66 said:


> So my wife bought Mists of Pandaria. Of course, as a wowcrack addict myself in the past, I scoffed at her, ridiculing her for her silly panda-bear purchase. Then over the next few weeks, I'd find myself strolling up behind her "wutcha doing...?"  watching more and more, asking questions, etc.
> 
> Then she says to me, "you know, if I send you a scroll of resurrection, I can get myself a sweet new mount, and you'll get 7 days to try it out for free". (She's a mount and pet collector)
> 
> "Yeah whatever, but I probably won't play much, if at all" I reply.
> 
> So I get the email. Figure, what the hell, I may as well make myself a lowbie character on her server (she joined a new one to play with a friend from work who also just picked up MoP).
> 
> .
> .
> .
> 
> Fucking hell! What is it about this game, that is SOOOO addicting? I've probably leveled close to 100 different characters over the years to level 10-20 at least, and eventually I just delete them and do it all over again.
> 
> WHYYYYYY?  Oh and to top it all off, she even bought me a time-card "so she could get her mount" and left it on my computer chair for me with a little "xoxo" on it.



It's just a really good game. I'm probably going to start playing a bit more myself soon now that I've been doing some upgrades to my PC over the past couple of weeks. 

I'm also seeing what the deal is with EQ and EQ2 since they're both f2p now. I didn't realize that they were both still going, there is a new expansion for each of them coming out this month


----------



## Miek

kennedyblake said:


> Resident Evil Revelations... in the dark!
> 
> Also going to try and get Megaman Legends to run on my computer via emulator.



If you need any tips let me know, I replayed it some time last year. ePSXe and psxfin should both work fine.


----------



## Somnium

Only game I've been playing lately is Halo 4 with a little Smash Bros. Melee (greatest stoner game ever, btw) at a friend's every now and then. Before I kind of took a hiatus from video games I was stocking up on Squaresoft PS1 RPG's. I ended up getting Chrono Cross, FF1&2, FFIV&Chrono Trigger, FFV&VI, FFVII (last game I beat before Halo 4), FFVIII, FFIX, SaGa Frontiers 1&2, Xenogears, and Silent Hill 1 to complete my Silent Hill collection. Also picked up all of the Kingdom Hearts games (only played through the first one), Xenosaga 1-3, The Last Story, and next on my list is Lost Odyssey. Chances are I won't get around to playing any of these games for years to come lol.


----------



## Compton

Still grinding FF7 lvls and getting gearz, gonna hit up ffiii (6) after this and than onto 8! I'm gonna be playing a lot of black ops 2 with my roommates soon. I've wanted to pick up skyrim again, even though i have like 200 hours on it total. and I REALLY wanna play Forza Horizon, that game looks like a ton of fun.


----------



## smj

Been playing Dead Island a lot recently, also anyone who has a wii and wants a great RPG I would highly recommend Xenoblade Chronicles. It has a great storyline and massive free roam maps that are more like MMO maps.


----------



## axxessdenied

jon66 said:


> So my wife bought Mists of Pandaria. Of course, as a wowcrack addict myself in the past, I scoffed at her, ridiculing her for her silly panda-bear purchase. Then over the next few weeks, I'd find myself strolling up behind her "wutcha doing...?"  watching more and more, asking questions, etc.
> 
> Then she says to me, "you know, if I send you a scroll of resurrection, I can get myself a sweet new mount, and you'll get 7 days to try it out for free". (She's a mount and pet collector)
> 
> "Yeah whatever, but I probably won't play much, if at all" I reply.
> 
> So I get the email. Figure, what the hell, I may as well make myself a lowbie character on her server (she joined a new one to play with a friend from work who also just picked up MoP).
> 
> .
> .
> .
> 
> Fucking hell! What is it about this game, that is SOOOO addicting? I've probably leveled close to 100 different characters over the years to level 10-20 at least, and eventually I just delete them and do it all over again.
> 
> WHYYYYYY?  Oh and to top it all off, she even bought me a time-card "so she could get her mount" and left it on my computer chair for me with a little "xoxo" on it.


It's all fun and games until you realize why you quit in the first place... and the second.... and the third.......................................... and the fourth...................


----------



## troyguitar

Started playing Pandaria last night, it's pretty cool. Seems like they've improved the graphics quite a bit too. It looks great but I'm often down at 25-35 fps with my new GTX 670


----------



## Don Vito

Sanic Hegehog


----------



## SeductionS

I'm freaking on Unreal Tournament


----------



## troyguitar

New CPU for my computer coming in the mail today or tomorrow, finally moving up from dual to quad core. I'm hoping it doubles my minimum frame rates so that I can finally try out some newer games with good settings. Probably going to pick up Skyrim and Guild Wars 2. Anything else good come out recently (and by recently I mean 2010 onward) that is not an FPS?

I like stuff that is fun and requires a small but non-zero amount of thought and skill. StarCraft 2, for example, is just too much work to get any good.


----------



## Bekanor

Forza Horizon got a controller throw out of me last night so I'm going to go back to beating Mass Effect 3.


----------



## troyguitar

Playing a racing game with a controller? booo


----------



## Bekanor

I'm not baller enough for a wheel, that and I've never found one where the force feedback didn't make everything awkward as hell.


----------



## Korbain

kamello said:


> a friend insists that I should buy Skyrim so we could slay shit together..........and I have one of the most important exams of my life in 3-4 weeks  (I think it is similar to that SAT thing that the guys in USA have in terms of relevance)



do it! it's awsome on pc, so many great mods to immerse you into it even more!!

Im currently deciding what game to fire up...i got a strong urge to play deus ex GOTY or deus ex human revolution! been craving those games lately just haven't got around to doing it lol


----------



## x360rampagex

Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ok, sister just got the Wii back.

Time to stop neglecting Skyward Sword and actually start playing it!


----------



## Don Vito

Pillaging in Skyrim. 

Getting Dues Ex Human Revolution tommorrow.


----------



## tacotiklah

Just bought Diablo III and Black Ops II. I'm kinda burned out on CoD, so I'll be getting my ass handed to me in Diablo III first. I will say that I love the zombies mode in BO2 though.


----------



## heregoesnothing

x360rampagex said:


> Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines.



One of the most underrated RPGs ever made.


----------



## Korbain

kennedyblake said:


> Pillaging in Skyrim.
> 
> Getting Dues Ex Human Revolution tommorrow.



fuck yeah, human revolution is a brilliant game. Great story, not as good as the original, but damn close!


----------



## x360rampagex

DTSH said:


> Just finished Assassin's Creed: Revelations. Playing catch up for 3. Fun game but man is the plot a load of nonsense.



Yeah, I thought revelations was awful. I found so many bugs and glitches. Poor story in Revelations too, brotherhood was great, but I didn't like Revelations.

Hoping to get 3 soon.


----------



## SirMyghin

axxessdenied said:


> It's all fun and games until you realize why you quit in the first place... and the second.... and the third.......................................... and the fourth...................



I only had to quit once. 4 years clean.  I did play EQ before that though, so you could stretch it to twice I guess.


----------



## kamello

playing Assassin's Creed ll, just got Altair armor and sword 


hey, and I have a question to the guys who played Revelations and Brotherhood, are they worth it?


----------



## MFB

Yes.

Much more so than III is unfortunately, at least in my opinion


----------



## Miek

In my opinion, not really. But I seem to be in the minority about it, and people really love Brotherhood. It plays very well, the combat is more refined, and the environment is good. The Desmond parts are pretty good, too. I just didn't like it as much as II. Revelations is...kinda pointless. Storywise, you don't really get that much new information or anything shocking, but you do get to play with a few cute new toys.


----------



## myrtorp

I got me a 3ds. Playing Ocarina of time once again but on this format! I never get tired of this game. Also Mario Kart 7, fun stuff!


----------



## x360rampagex

Miek said:


> Revelations is...kinda pointless. Storywise, you don't really get that much new information or anything shocking, but you do get to play with a few cute new toys.



Yeah I thought the same. However I did love brotherhood, as it kept me busy even after completing the story; plus multiplayer was entertaining.


----------



## TheDivineWing22

x360rampagex said:


> Yeah I thought the same. However I did love brotherhood, as it kept me busy even after completing the story; plus multiplayer was entertaining.



I kind of thought the opposite. I felt like Brotherhood was more filler than Revelations was. I just loved the end of Revelations. To each his own though.


----------



## kamello

ok, gonna wait to find both of them used  

I rarely play multiplayer unless the game was specifically designed for that (Battlefield, most Racing games, etc.)


----------



## Don Vito

Korbain said:


> fuck yeah, human revolution is a brilliant game. Great story, not as good as the original, but damn close!


 it's soooooooooooo good


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Corrosive guns in Borderlands are so much god damn fun!


----------



## habicore_5150

Ooh, where do I start, since I just got another PS2...

*Megaman X Collection*






*Shadow of the Colossus*





*Breath of Fire 5: Dragon Quarter*





*Oni*





*Devil May Cry*


----------



## kamello

666 post on this thread bitches!  


(on topic, just reinstalled GTA SA, gonna have some fun online later)



edit; 667...........oh fuck it!


----------



## TristanTTN

Black Ops II...

I told myself not to buy it after getting tired of Call of Duty, but then my brother bought it instead.


----------



## Don Vito

habicore_5150 said:


> Ooh, where do I start, since I just got another PS2...


My PS2 controller broke so I can't play any of these games right now  

Everytime I go online to order a new controller, I'm tempted by bargain bin PS3 games Oh, and is Oni any good? I've known about the game since it came out, but have never actually played it..


----------



## habicore_5150

kennedyblake said:


> My PS2 controller broke so I can't play any of these games right now
> 
> Everytime I go online to order a new controller, I'm tempted by bargain bin PS3 games Oh, and is Oni any good? I've known about the game since it came out, but have never actually played it..



Haven't gotten far into Oni, been playing Devil May Cry much more often than the other ones I listed, just wanted to get into the game. Turns out I really need to work on my combos


----------



## LukeChadwick

*[FONT=&quot]I am still playing championship manager 01/02, definitely its the best game new versions are too much detailed so wont play the new versions.[/FONT]*


----------



## SirMyghin

kennedyblake said:


> My PS2 controller broke so I can't play any of these games right now
> 
> Everytime I go online to order a new controller, I'm tempted by bargain bin PS3 games Oh, and is Oni any good? I've known about the game since it came out, but have never actually played it..




Oni was a fun game, I played it a good 4-5 years after release (aka 2005 or 2006) and it was still a lot of fun.


----------



## ASoC

I've been playing tons of Tribes:Ascend lately. Finally starting to get decent at it


----------



## Don Vito

I'm almost finished with Resident Evil Revelations. Dissapointing to say the least.

Started out creepy and atmospheric like the old games, but quickly turned into a clunky action game


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Warhammer 40k Space Marine

So far, it's a lot of fun. I love chainswording orks


----------



## hairychris

Assassin's Creed II. Quite enjoying it, the first one bored me.

Also Dishonored. Not sure what to make of it but it looks stunning. StealthstealthstealthMASSMURDER.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Just finished Borderlands

Doesn't exactly inspire me to play the sequel.


----------



## scherzo1928

Playing God of War III in 3D... Shit is EPIC!


----------



## Mexi

just got around to getting Portal 2 on the PC, so much fun(ny) in this game. Also got around to getting KKND from gog.com, classic RTS from my childhood brings back many smiles


----------



## Fiction

It's that time of the year again! The time I play through various titles from the final fantasy franchise.

Ka-pow!


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

Currently on a bizarre cycle alternating between Skyrim (most of the way through the Dawnguard DLC), Halo 4 multiplayer (mainly on the weekends with a bunch of my friends) and replaying the Mass Effect trilogy (currently finished the main part of 2 and now on the Shadow Broker DLC). Considering starting up another replay of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (my favourite game ever).

I pretty much just like to play the very few games I love over and over and over and over and over and over and over again


----------



## Don Vito

Saint's Row 3 I ordered was actually out of stock, so nothing....

Need to find something else to order now so it will be here Friday.


----------



## Bekanor

Bought and started playing FarCry 3 tonight, finally a FarCry game where it doesn't take a full clip of ammo to the face to kill a single guy. With the damage modelling being like a normal goddamn shooter I'm loving every minute of this game. Still early days and honeymoon period and whatnot but so far it's a strong contender for shooter of the year for me. Please let it stay that way, please don't let me come across some aspect of it that ruins the whole thing.


----------



## Rojne

Skyrim at the moment, damn awesome game!


----------



## Don Vito

Yakuza yet again.

I need new games  I do have Call of Duty 2: Big Red One in the mail. Probably my favorite CoD in terms of single player. Wonder if anyone still plays it online.....


----------



## Don Vito

kennedyblake said:


> Yakuza yet again.
> 
> I need new games  I do have Call of Duty 2: Big Red One in the mail. Probably my favorite CoD in terms of single player. Wonder if anyone still plays it online.....


It came in. Still holds up pretty well outside of the awful enemy AI. Time to crank up the difficulty level..


----------



## ittoa666

Gothic Headhunter said:


> Just finished Borderlands
> 
> Doesn't exactly inspire me to play the sequel.



Do it. Trust me.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

ittoa666 said:


> Do it. Trust me.



Well, I still need to finish Killzone 3 and WH40k Space Marine, and then start Bioshock, so I don't think I'll be picking up Borderlands 2.


----------



## Mexi

playing Portal 2, Dishonored and just got the THQ humble bundle so probably get my fix of Company of Heroes in too.


----------



## SeductionS

Yesterday I joined the LAN-party of our class.
Played Unreal Tournament 2004 and Age of Empires II all day and night (we kept on going for about 23hours)

I just love the team defender game mode with instant kill on Unreal Tournament 2004.


----------



## leandroab

Battlefield 3
Mechwarrior online
Planetside 2

Very soon I'll be playing fucking Farfuckingcry 3


----------



## Don Vito

Streets of Rage 2!


----------



## I Voyager

Just played through Assassin's Creed III (hated it), Black Ops II (loved it), and the Omega DLC for Mass Effect 3 (it's more Mass Effect. Never a bad thing!).


----------



## habicore_5150

*Gunstar Heroes (SEGA!)*







I'm probably the only one here that thinks of Gunstar Heroes as Contra but with a couple of tweaks here and there


----------



## tacotiklah

I decided to try out some of the league play on black ops 2 and I made it all the way to silver division #8. I lost a couple matches afterwards and got bumped way down to silver division #24, but still I whooped ass and got amazingly far. And my skill level on the game is amazing even myself. Not too often that I get games where I'm at 23 kills and 2 deaths.


----------



## guitarister7321

I just got Batman Arkham City and I can't stop playing it. Great game!


----------



## Spazinator

After being a WoW player for a solid 6 or so years (quit shortly before MoP came out) I figured I would give Guild Wars 2 a shot. Great game! Classes are reasonably well balanced and not having to pay an annoying $15.00 a month is nice.


----------



## Don Vito

Just Cause 2 should be here in the mail in an hour. The gameplay I watched on Youtube was crazy, so I'm hoping I'll have fun with it as well.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Been playing a lot of L4D2 again. Not so fun getting destroyed by Russkies 5 times in a row.


----------



## Radau

I'm still playing Skyrim!


----------



## Compton

I'm gonna start up skyrim again, watched some videos for online and got stoked, plus i haven't played any DLC and i put like 100 hours into it pre dlc.  

I wanna play black ops, and im gonna play bl2 and dishonored after xmas. I haven't gotten into a game for probably 8 months so i think its time!

Also, i have been meaning to check out project 99 Everquest but I cant get a eq titanium pack yet.


----------



## Compton

also, assassin's creed ii


----------



## Don Vito

Megaman X6

Some of these levels are im-fucking-possible....


----------



## Hyacinth

Just finished Dishonored. It's a really good game if you like stealth gameplay. Currently I'm working on The Witcher 2.


----------



## habicore_5150

kennedyblake said:


> Megaman X6
> 
> Some of these levels are im-fucking-possible....



One thing I remember that I was having some problems with was getting one of the Shadow Armor pieces in Rainy Turtloids stage. Think you gotta have the Blade Armor (think that's what it's called) and you have to do a mach dash at a very precise spot between some spikes to get to it. Can't tell you how many times I got skewered while trying to get that

I've been playing a bit of F-Zero, cause a couple of friends of mine in a Let's Play community are holding a challenge right now


----------



## Berti_smb

Blackshot by TwoWar.com

massive multiplayer first person shooter


----------



## troyguitar

Compton said:


> Also, i have been meaning to check out project 99 Everquest but I cant get a eq titanium pack yet.



It's pretty sweet, just torrent titanium. It takes a few tweaks to get everything working and looking as good as possible though - and the game itself eats your life. I was in a raid guild for awhile and had to quit because it just took too much time to do anything. It was a lot easier to find time to play when I was 13!


----------



## Aevolve

Little bit late to the party but I got Dragon Age: Origins a while ago during the autumn Steam sale, and I'm just now playing through it as a mage. Now that finals are over I'm okay with wasting all my time at my computer.


----------



## ToMurderAMachine

MatthewLeisher said:


> Just finished Dishonored. It's a really good game if you like stealth gameplay. Currently I'm working on The Witcher 2.




Really wanted that game, but i gotta finish Deus ex and Hitman absolution first.


----------



## Compton

I started skyrim again last night, i deleted some old toons in their 30s cause i had no idea where i was at. Gonna buy the DLC. Also played some CS:S last night.


----------



## All_¥our_Bass

Lots and lots of Black Mesa.

(Vids are not mine, duh)


----------



## Somnium

About to pick back up on the Kingdom Hearts series in anticipation for the HD remake being released next year. So far I've only played through the first one so next up is Re: Chain of Memories. I don't anticipate it taking too long ot complete since it's basically just a reworked gameboy game but does anyone know if the second playthrough as Riku is essential to the story? Or is it just some sort of perk for completing the game?


----------



## JP Universe

Gonna finish Goldeneye 64 again as I havnt played it in years. Just as frustrating as I remember 

NBA 2k13


----------



## Aevolve

I shouldn't have picked up Torchlight 2 again.. I forgot how great this game was for a while.


----------



## scherzo1928

Just got the Mass effect trilogy. Many hours of awesomeness to come!


----------



## Darkened

Brave Story on PSP, good game but it can really mess with you sometimes


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

scherzo1928 said:


> Just got the Mass effect trilogy. Many hours of awesomeness to come!



have fun, best new IP of this current gaming generation IMHO


----------



## larry

double dragon neon.
i love beat-em' ups, and its fair to say i'm currently 
addicted to this one. 

then, on the 17th megaman X street fighter releases
for free on PC. so, i'm definitely going to play that.


----------



## tacotiklah

I've been playing a lot of Diablo 3 over the last couple of days. Got my barbarian up to level 57, over 30,000 health, and I do about 13,000 DPS. (Messerschmidt's Reaver ftw!) I'm in Act 2 on Hell difficulty and with this great gear, I'm still one-shotting most anything that moves. With the passives I have on I have regenerative fury and I gain life for everything I hit and kill.

This game is pretty damn fun. I won't lie, the auction house can be addictive. AH and farming is pretty much how I make money and it's awesome how I can buy a nice legendary item for cheap and make a decent profit on it.


----------



## texshred777

Halo 4.


----------



## Aztec

Was playing Guild Wars 2, but my GPU failed so now....nothing.


----------



## scherzo1928

scherzo1928 said:


> Just got the Mass effect trilogy. Many hours of awesomeness to come!


 
Just wanted to say "no wonder so many people love this game." 

Having a blast!


----------



## Mordacain

scherzo1928 said:


> Just wanted to say "no wonder so many people love this game."
> 
> Having a blast!



Yea, and it's totally worth playing through a few times. There's is actually pretty significant changes happening at a story level depending on how you play.


----------



## pink freud

scherzo1928 said:


> Just wanted to say "no wonder so many people love this game."
> 
> Having a blast!



Don't buy into everybody's reactions to ME3. That game is excellent. Too many people focused purely on the last 5 minutes and ignored the previous tens of hours of great game.


----------



## Aevolve

Currently playing through Final Fantasy VII again, as I realized you can buy a PC version for like $6. That makes it the third time I've bought the same game, and it was worth it every time.


----------



## BillNephew

I'm currently playing Planetside 2. Ridiculously system crippling, but so worth it.


----------



## AngstRiddenDreams

Skyrim. So much Skyrim.


----------



## Mordacain

Asura's Wrath

Fucking awesome game if you also happen to be an anime fan. Lot's of serious, old-school, over the top, completely batshit insane action sequences. Like DBZ on crack...


----------



## Mendez

Majora's Mask. It's maybe, my 8th playthrough or so. It never gets old 

Edit: Oh and the new megaman x street fighter game. Its so much fun!


----------



## Netherhound

Persona 3 FES (or FFS as I currently been screaming at my CRT) 

Holy shit, I never knew I could rage quit so many times in one game.

Amazing game but goddamn, the ability to only control the main guy (and if he dies, game over, no one can rez you) vs your entire time like in Persona 4 or P3P really screws you.

Next time one of my party members decides to fight an enemy themselves, let them...

Anyone who hasn't played it and loves RPGs would get a lot of enjoyment (and just as much rage) out of it. Totally recommend it.


----------



## Don Vito

Saints Row The Third

Not as good as Saints Row 2 IMO. Still fun doe.


----------



## texshred777

Nothing now. My Xbox has decided to no longer eject. Oh well, a refurbed or new one isn't expensive. Still irritating, though.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Mass Effect 1

So far, not really impressed. It certainly has it's moments, but the combat is a little irritating.


----------



## texshred777

Gothic Headhunter said:


> Mass Effect 1
> 
> So far, not really impressed. It certainly has it's moments, but the combat is a little irritating.


 
The combat in ME1 is definitely more based on the behind the scenes dice rolls than ME2 or ME3. The story elements are great though. I enjoyed the elevator rides on the Citadel, I like the random interaction between party members.


----------



## Choop

texshred777 said:


> The combat in ME1 is definitely more based on the behind the scenes dice rolls than ME2 or ME3. The story elements are great though. I enjoyed the elevator rides on the Citadel, I like the random interaction between party members.



Yeah exactly, I didn't really play any of the ME games for the combat tbh. Everyone praised the second one for having an improved combat system, but it's not ever really great, it just is less clunky haha. I feel like the characters and story drive these games, and that's how it really survives as an RPG despite trying to be an action/shooter.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

texshred777 said:


> The combat in ME1 is definitely more based on the behind the scenes dice rolls than ME2 or ME3. The story elements are great though. I enjoyed the elevator rides on the Citadel, I like the random interaction between party members.



I will say that I prefer the elevator conversations as opposed to load screens in ME2/3. It just seems like I've been thrust into this game with not a whole lot of understanding about what's happening. Hopefully it'll get better as I keep playing. After this I'll playthrough 2 and 3 again with more DLC.


----------



## texshred777

You'll be fine. ME1 does kind of throw you into the middle of something without knowing anything. You've played the second two so it'll fill you in nicely and clear up things for you. 

I actually need to get a copy of the first game. First of course, I need to replace my Xbox. 

On that subject, anyone know if those HDD covers(for using a pre slim model HDD in a slim Xbox) are any good? 

Amazon.com: Gen Hard Disk Drive Case Enclosure for Xbox 360 Slim Hard Drive (Enclosure Only, Hard Drive NOT Included): Video Games


----------



## klutvott

Lego Lord of the Rings. It's great


----------



## Yo_Wattup

Awesomenauts. For those who like HON or DOTA, this game is great fun. Seriously, its only $5 AUD on steam.


----------



## Jake

Mendez said:


> Majora's Mask. It's maybe, my 8th playthrough or so. It never gets old
> 
> Edit: Oh and the new megaman x street fighter game. Its so much fun!


finished yet another playthrough of majoras mask earlier this week in anticipation for the apocalypse. Now I'm doing about my 100th run through of Ocarina of Time 

and halo 4


----------



## Korbain

Dishonored, fucking wow, amazing game considering i got it for 50% of in the steam sales lol. Been waiting to play it since it first was announced because of who was developing it, it is well and truely living up to my expectations 

Also, planetside 2, so good! for an MMO, the level of detail, sound and everything are just, unreal when you crank up everything. Combat is fucking intense when you have heaps of people fighting for control of a certain area.

Got an xbox360 yesterday so i can play halo 4 lol. Bout to start playing that in 5 mins or so, loved all the other halo games (love my sci games/movies) so im pumped for this after all the good stuff i heard about it!


----------



## Kryss

i'm actually replaying mass effect 1. forgot how clunky the battle system is after playing so much of 3 online for a few months. combat flows better in 3 but mass effect 1 was such a great game as far as the story and characters go. mass effect 2 a little more streamlined. overall one of my favorite game series. 

probably my favorite game series to this day would still be
1. final fantasy (the early games, 2, 3, 7, 8) still make this series awesome
2. legacy of kain
3. mass effect

although generally each final fantasy game is of it's own and not really a series or expanding storyline. there was never a sequel until 10 and 13. 9 was ok but they really have dive bombed since 8 and 9. the online 11 was fun and i really enjoyed that though as well.

planetside 2 is freaking awesome lately too. definitely check that out if you haven't yet.


----------



## Timelesseer

Having a major love/hate relationship with NCAA Football 13 right now. I'm addicted to playing the online ranked matches, but there are so many annoying people to play against it almost makes it not fun. Nothing beats making someone rage quit after a pick 6 though.


----------



## texshred777

One thing I hated about a previous year NCAA game was the automatic TD celebrations which would get you a flag if you didn't start hitting the start button quickly. It makes me sad that shit like TD celebrations(which I hate in NFL btw) are in a college football video game.


----------



## Mendez

717ctsjz said:


> finished yet another playthrough of majoras mask earlier this week in anticipation for the apocalypse. Now I'm doing about my 100th run through of Ocarina of Time
> 
> and halo 4



Working on the 3DS version of Ocarina of Time! 
I'm hoping they re-release Majora's Mask on the 3DS...just sayin' 

Just bought black ops 2 (for my bro) and dishonored (for me), after some video gameplay vids, I got hooked. Damn ps3 is taking forever to install, but once its done....


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I ignored a bunch of Wii games, as I don't officially own one, but my sister gave this to me along with Warioware thinking I needed something different. 

Then I realised that it was made by the same makers of Odin Sphere. Needless to say, I'm enjoying this very very much.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Still ME1, enjoying it A LOT more now. It just takes some time to really develop.


----------



## tacotiklah

Been playing MW3 a lot more lately, but luck has worked out in my favor a bit. I found my walmart receipt (purses are handy as hell for that.  ) for Black Ops 2 for the ps3 and I did indeed do the stupidly smart thing and paid the extra few bucks for the extended warranty. Basically it's a 2 year warranty that even if I ragequit the game and smash the disc to pieces and it's my fault, I can exchange it for a new one for free. Well since mine randomly cracked and broke inside the ps3, I just gotta head to wally world for a new one.

So hopefully in the next day or two, I'll be back playing BO2 again and getting gold weapons.


----------



## MrPepperoniNipples

PLaying through the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the 800th time!

In Sanctuary Fortress in #2 as I type this!


----------



## Vicissitude27

Dark Souls.


----------



## 3074326

Still playing Skyrim. Second character. Level 35 and haven't touched the main quest, other than what you have to touch to get the game started. 

I am playing Skyrim despite buying 6-7 games from the Steam sales this holiday season. I'll probably never play those..


----------



## Handbanana

I jump back n forth between EVE and BF3....Far Cry 3 was my fix a couple weeks ago. Great game.


----------



## WaffleTheEpic

Dragon Age: Origins.

I don't know if it's just me, but it feels like this game drags a bit.

But it's okay though, because Morrigan's side boob is so glorious


----------



## Compton

We just got Borderlands 2 and Dishonored, good bye life!


----------



## AxeHappy

I've been rocking the Mass Effect 3 multi-player as pretty much my only game for the last little while. The new stuff they've added has made it feel pretty awesome.


----------



## texshred777

Once I get home, I'll be playing Skyrim. Waited around for hours last night and download was only at 76%.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Got back into Team Fortress 2 again. I just love the feeling of having one server where to play and seeing all the same people there everytime.


----------



## SirMyghin

Xcom : Enemy Unknown. 

Best game I have played in a long time, and damn it can get tough.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

ME1 Status Report:

Completed Virmire, Kaiden died, romancing Ashley, did 2 or 3 side quests on the Citadel, and I started "Bring Down The Sky". Honestly, even though the beginning was a little confusing and the combat is.. different, in some ways this one is better than the other two games.


----------



## Choop

Still playing Darksiders II. Honestly I really like this game from a gameplay stance, but the story/pacing makes it feel like it drags a bit. Many of the quests feel more tedious than they need to be comparative to how difficult the puzzles are.


----------



## habicore_5150

*Illusion of Gaia*





I'm kicking myself because I missed out on playing this game ages ago


----------



## LudoCluedo

Planetside 2 - Reporting in...

Any other SS.org chaps play on EU-Miller server?


----------



## SirMyghin

habicore_5150 said:


> *Illusion of Gaia*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm kicking myself because I missed out on playing this game ages ago



Loved that one and Soul Blazer, never made it far enough into Terranigma due to getting lost at one point (lack of translation hurts a lot )


----------



## habicore_5150

SirMyghin said:


> Loved that one and Soul Blazer, never made it far enough into Terranigma due to getting lost at one point (lack of translation hurts a lot )



Terranigma is a great game.

Do you remember where you got lost at?


----------



## texshred777

Playing Skyrim. Hopefully I get a PC soon so I can play it in the best form, but for now on X360 it's a blast.


----------



## SirMyghin

habicore_5150 said:


> Terranigma is a great game.
> 
> Do you remember where you got lost at?



Been a long time, but I think it was after the bird mountain.


----------



## Koloss85

starting a metal gear run...all of them starting with 3


----------



## Captain Butterscotch

Guild Wars 2. Finally got some time over break and am trying to get my Warrior to 80 before I roll a Guardian.


----------



## OhMyGoliath

Natural Selection 2. a blend of FPS and RTS. requires a huge amount of team work.
So fun.


----------



## TheDuatAwaits

Gran turismo 5 
Far cry 3
Skyrim


----------



## CapinCripes

brutal doom Brutal Doom mod - Mod DB I grinned from ear to ear.


----------



## CrownofWorms

Borderlands 2. I noticed playing as a siren is not for me. The magic and stuff is cool, but I feel the game is more slow and tedious. I'm more of an assassin and I've been spending new years night till about 5 am playing as that class. Alot more fast paced, accurate, and fun since I'm more ranged weapon and melee type guy

Dead or Alive 5. I feel doa4 is better cus like 80% of all the costumes are DLC, The other you had really play the game to get everything, now most of it is meaningless

Dishonored

Halo 4 (finished campaign, now just need to rank up to 50+ to use all the specialization classes)

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance 3DS

Darksiders 2 

Imma go back to FFXII-2, Skyrim, Mortal Kombat and Catherine sometime soon.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Just downloading League of Legends. I got one girl to teach me so why not.


----------



## Ocara-Jacob

Right now, I'm jumping between Black Ops 2, ACIII, Final Fantasy (The original) and Happy Wheels XD


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SirMyghin said:


> Been a long time, but I think it was after the bird mountain.


 
Been a while since I've played the game extensively, the bird mountain may be a bit confusing though it's not all too bad. The lattter dungeons do get very taxing though, but it's worth it as the game gets better and better. 

If you get the chance to play Terranigma again, by all means do so. It's the best non Zelda Action RPG that came out on the SNES' dying days and my sister and I tend to revisit this game every couple of years. 

Methinks she and I should do a speed run contest.


----------



## SirMyghin

^^

I made it through the birds, but couldn't figure out where to go after (didn't even get to the next dungeon )

I may be overly nostalgic, but all the best games were on SNES.


----------



## Yo_Wattup

Chivalry: Medieval Warefare.

Funniest game ever.


----------



## WaffleTheEpic

I actually just got myself the Playstation Move setup (at Walmart they had a Littlebigplanet 2 bundle with the Move controller, navigation controller, EYE and LPB2 for 60$, couldn't say no) and have been playing Littlebigplanet 2 and Infamous 2 for the past few days. Finally blew the dust off my PS3 

Loving this thing! It's so much fun to play with. Playing some of the demos really makes me upset that this didn't take off, seeing all the potential. But, seeing as to get a Move controller, a Navigation remote, and the EYE separately is 100$... I guess I can understand. *shrug*

Oh well. Still, I'm loving this. May pick up Littlebigplanet Karting soon!


----------



## Onegunsolution

Playin through FF7 (gonna do a stat maxing  ) and playing this when I A. get frustrated with FF7 or B. Get bored:






LSD (Little Sweet Dreams) Dream Emulator 
This game can get freaky, funny, confusing, and addicting along with the shit load of music loops that mash together and not a single loop ever gets repeated. It was made by an Asian man who clearly is fucked up in his brain. It has no goals other than explore, observe and experiment.

Great to be played in the middle of night in the dark  .


----------



## Curt

Scribblenauts unlimited. 

Awwwwwwww Yeahhhh.


----------



## Aevolve

Yo_Wattup said:


> Chivalry: Medieval Warefare.
> 
> Funniest game ever.



+1


----------



## Stealth7

Got Far Cry 3 yesterday so I've been playing that, awesome game!


----------



## wookie606

XCOM: Enemy Unknown.
Its so intense


----------



## Don Vito

I'm almost finished with Saints Row 3, so I'm going to start a new game of Pokemon Red.


----------



## habicore_5150

Kefka, I think you're a cool FF villain and all, but sometimes you can be a bit of a dick.

Sabin used Pummel on you, you kill him.
I use Phoenix Down on him, you kill him again.
I revive him again, you Bolt him to death.
And I get no chance to revive him after I beat you.

Oh the joys of playing Final Fantasy 6 again


----------



## tacotiklah

habicore_5150 said:


> Kefka, I think you're a cool FF villain and all, but sometimes you can be a bit of a dick.
> 
> Sabin used Pummel on you, you kill him.
> I use Phoenix Down on him, you kill him again.
> I revive him again, you Bolt him to death.
> And I get no chance to revive him after I beat you.
> 
> Oh the joys of playing Final Fantasy 6 again




Hey it's Kefka. Funny you feel that way because I was thinking along similar lines. I mean I kill Sabin and the bastard just keeps reviving. I'm like "WHAT. THE. FUCK." How many times do I have to kill that asshole before he stays dead?


----------



## Qweklain

I just finished Aliens: Infestation and now I am bouncing between Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light and Dementium: The Ward. Kind of sucks being stuck 7 hours from home and not able to play Xbox or guitar here...


----------



## peldikuneptun

toy story 3 on xbox 360, with my 4-year old kids.


----------



## Choop

Taking a break from Darksiders, I bought Dark Souls and also have been playing Black Mesa lately. It feels like a whole new game, way cool.


----------



## wookie606

Choop said:


> Taking a break from Darksiders, I bought Dark Souls and also have been playing Black Mesa lately. It feels like a whole new game, way cool.



I stupidly did an all day/all night session of Black Mesa and finished it too quick. 
Its so good, just felt short.


----------



## texshred777

Not really playing anything..but writing out backstories for characters and NPC's tied to those characters for our weekly Pathfinder session(I'm not the GM, just like to have characters fleshed out and make it easier for the GM and character interaction)-I don't like RP sessions that are nothing but combat and looting.

Best version of DnD ever(imo).


----------



## Choop

wookie606 said:


> I stupidly did an all day/all night session of Black Mesa and finished it too quick.
> Its so good, just felt short.



It really is so good, I'm mostly just admiring how well it was all put together. Super impressive, and kind of a testament to how good Half Life still is years and years later.


----------



## oracles

I've been playing a whole lot of Darksiders II lately, absolutely loving that game


----------



## Lagtastic

Fkn GW2....again.... I'll probably keep coming back to it on and off for 5 years like I did with GW1


----------



## Webmaestro

Thinking about reactivating my Eve Online account. I have a love/hate relationship with this game. I'll play for a couple months, then get extremely pissed off and stop playing for a year. Then, I'll start craving it again. Wash, rinse, repeat for the last 6 years.

It's just not the kinda game that lends itself to casual players (which is what I am). Requires such a huge time commitment :/


----------



## Alex6534

Tekken 3


----------



## Don Vito

I beat Megaman X6 out of the blue an hour ago. Now I'm playing Persona 3. I suck at JRPG's, so wish me luck...


----------



## Kidneythief

Alice: Madness returns...
but I get to play only in the fighting scenes, the puzzle, and running around is done by my "girlfriend" 

And occasionally Hawken or Deus Ex: Human Revolution


----------



## Aevolve

Right now-

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition
Solar 2

You all know about Dark Souls already, but if you haven't checked out Solar 2- I highly recommend you do. Especially if you like space. Simple, awesome fun.


----------



## tacotiklah

Still plugging away at those camos on Black Ops 2. I think this game has eaten up my life now. 2 camos away from having a gold crossbow, then it's on to the assault shield camos before I get diamond camo for my specials. 

Crap.


----------



## Netherhound

kennedyblake said:


> I beat Megaman X6 out of the blue an hour ago. Now I'm playing Persona 3. I suck at JRPG's, so wish me luck...



May god have mercy on your soul


----------



## Don Vito

Netherhound said:


> May god have mercy on your soul


Thanks.

It's eating my life right now.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Just got the freebie Street Fighter X Megaman and Transformers: Fall of Cybertron so I'll be going through these. Nostalgia/fan service overload. 



SirMyghin said:


> I may be overly nostalgic, but all the best games were on SNES.


----------



## Repner

I'm playing Xenoblade Chronicles (finally). Pretty good.


----------



## Miek

rocksmith, mark of the ninja, sr3 co-op


----------



## Korbain

dishonored at the moment. great game! followed its development closely for ages and just got it in the steam sales a few weeks ago...worth the wait


----------



## Choop

Just beat Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition. What a sweet game! My first character was a Cleric that I made into a divine claymore-slinging, lightning-throwing sunbro. :V

Dunno what I even want to do next. That character was kind of a combination of a warrior/melee and a ranged caster already.

edit: Decided to start as a wanderer and use him for a dex build of sorts. I don't really care about min/maxing him much for pvp or anything, it just seems like it'd be a fun build.


----------



## groph

I just (finally) got through the Mass Effect series. I knew the ending was supposed to be bad going in, and indeed it was, but I enjoyed the hell out of playing those games. So replayable. A great switch from the FPS games which are essentially the same damn thing repackaged for $59.99


----------



## hairychris

Bits of the following:

Batman: Arkham City
XCOM (I'm shit at turn-based strategy games...)
Prototype
Crysis 2


----------



## Aztec

Puzzle Quest 2


----------



## Mexi

I just started playing Total Annihilation after years of hearing how good of a strategy game it was. man, why did it take so long for me to play this shit? too much of a Starcraft/C&C fanboy I suppose, but what a brilliantly conceived game. resource system was pretty ahead of its time and being the first foray into 3D strategy games, it still looks pretty decent (robots lend themselves to blocky figures quite nicely) Music/sound is top-notch and the battles are EPIC


----------



## tacotiklah

Mexi said:


> I just started playing Total Annihilation after years of hearing how good of a strategy game it was. man, why did it take so long for me to play this shit? too much of a Starcraft/C&C fanboy I suppose, but what a brilliantly conceived game. resource system was pretty ahead of its time and being the first foray into 3D strategy games, it still looks pretty decent (robots lend themselves to blocky figures quite nicely) Music/sound is top-notch and the battles are EPIC



That was the first RTS game I'd ever played. (Starcraft and then Command and Conquer being afterwards)

Brilliant game and very fun once you get the nukes going.


----------



## MFB

I remember playing Total Annihilation after the first three C&Cs and it just didn't feel right; I never got really got good at it unfortunately, even as just a regular RTS game.


----------



## groph

I'd love to get playing Total Annihilation. I know it's a free download somewhere, you need to download the Spring client and a bunch of other shit that's too complicated for me to understand. If anyone could walk me through this process there will be sexual favors in store.

Supreme Commander was the spiritual successor to TA and SupCom is basically my perfect game - if it didn't crash randomly, slow down to a crawl half an hour into the game, and have a million useless units. Supreme Commander 2 is a little better streamlined but it doesn't have anywhere near the depth and scale the original game had and the economy system isn't as good.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Repner said:


> I'm playing Xenoblade Chronicles (finally). Pretty good.


 
 Easily one of my favorite games to come out over the past few years.


----------



## Tang

Kerbal Space Program and Rayman on the iPhone. Rayman is one of the most gorgeous games I've ever played, lovely art.


----------



## thedonal

I'm on TES:Oblivion at the mo and I'm wondering whether to abandon it.

Having just loved the hell out of Far Cry 3, I think Oblivion is way too much RPG for me. I may need to start a thread of its own though..

It's mainly the combat that drives me up the wall- constantly in a state of stunned paralysis, having the hell beaten out of me. Too much grrrrr factor. Other things- like experience being based on using skills, rather than just random XP points being used to buy skills, are fantastic though..

That aside, I think it's just too big. Don't get me wrong- I like a lot of game, but some of the quests just bore me to tears and I can see a lot of that happening. I think I'll give Skyrim a miss based on this...

I may just get my N64 out and enjoy Ocarina again. 

Or buy Dishonoured...


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Mass effect 2

This was my second playthrough of the game and I did slightly better than on my first try. I only lost one character this time (thanks, Zaeed) and I had a lot more fun as an Infiltraitor than as a Soldier. Some of the side quests are great, too, like the blue suns missions and the Loki-mech army one. Right now, I only have 3 clusters that aren't at 100%. I'll be starting ME3 shortly.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch

Gothic Headhunter said:


> Mass effect 2
> 
> This was my second playthrough of the game and I did slightly better than on my first try. I only lost one character this time (thanks, Zaeed) and I had a lot more fun as an Infiltraitor than as a Soldier. Some of the side quests are great, too, like the blue suns missions and the Loki-mech army one. Right now, I only have 3 clusters that aren't at 100%. I'll be starting ME3 shortly.



Love that game so much. I've beaten it so many times that I've started to lose count 

I just started playing FFXIII a few days ago and am about 9 hours in. Holy crap, I love it like most of the other FF games but the camera sucks and it is extremely linear so far.


----------



## WaffleTheEpic

Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic 2


----------



## Korbain

firing up metro 2033 for the first time atm...heard good things about this!


----------



## Don Vito

Today I bought:

- Darksiders
- Binary Domain
- and Silent Hill Downpour

so I'll be busy for a while.. I'm still playing Persona 3 as well.


----------



## SpaseMoonkey

Ps3: Ni No Kuni , Black Ops 2 , DMC.

Pc: Scribblenauts Unlimited and Dark Souls with a friend.


----------



## Oxygen42

Right now I'm playing Black Ops 2, AC3, Halo 4, and AC:Brotherhood.


----------



## Oxygen42

thedonal said:


> Or buy Dishonoured...



I would not recommend buying Dishonored unless you're the sort of person who gets a kick out of replaying games with different play styles. It's about half as long as any regular game, but there's probably at minimum 10 ways to play each level, as well as two ways to play through the whole game. I'm the kind who gets a kick out of that sort of stuff, so it was great for me. Just be forewarned.


----------



## 7stringDemon

Know what game kicked ass?

The Simpsons Hit & Run on PS2. They should modernize that game and either remake it or make something different like it.


----------



## Don Vito

I loved that game. It was like GTA, except I was allowed to play it.


----------



## Blackheim

I am playing: 

Halo 4 (everyday and need people to add me to play Spartan Ops). 

DMC on PC (Just because I am fan of Devil May Cry, this is kinda meh)

If you wanna play Halo 4 please add me (MrBlackthorne19). I am know on SR66.


----------



## I Voyager

Finished playing both Far Cry 3 and Resident Evil 6. Far Cry was fun, though I felt it was unfairly difficult at times and that the ending was very anti-climactic. RE6 was awesome, if you ask me. I started the series with 4 so I'm used to the more action oriented gameplay. Very cool to see how the different campaigns interacted. But I will mention that I had to go into the settings and lower the controller sensitivity and change the reticle to a laser. Wasn't about that life. 

Anyway, will probably start Hitman: Absolution soon and then Dead Space 3 after that.


----------



## Korbain

7stringDemon said:


> Know what game kicked ass?
> 
> The Simpsons Hit & Run on PS2. They should modernize that game and either remake it or make something different like it.



haha i remember that! was a pretty cool game


----------



## Fat-Elf

Just started Need For Speed Underground 2 last night because my friend started playing it. Probably also going to play some Dirt 2 after that.


----------



## Don Vito

I stopped playing Persona 3 because it was eating all my time. I stopped playing Silent Hill because it was 2spooky4me. Binary Domain is boring, so all I'm playing now is Darksiders, which is awesome.

I've also got Skate 3 in the mail, and it should be here Friday.


----------



## Choop

Think I'm almost done with Dark Souls..I've beaten it twice and almost a third time, and started a new character to boot. Currently I'm also still playing Street Fighter 4, and after getting a fight stick and basically relearning how to play I've started working my player points back up! 

There's a bunch of stuff in my steam library that I haven't played yet due to steam sales. Will pick something soooooon.


----------



## Don Vito

Skate 3 and Chrono Trigger. I've never played Chrono Trigger, but I've been told it's the bees knees.


----------



## Galius

<< The idiot that has owned Red Dead Redemption for 2 years and just now is playing the hell out of it...


----------



## Mordacain

Don Vito said:


> Skate 3 and Chrono Trigger. I've never played Chrono Trigger, but I've been told it's the bees knees.



Chrono Trigger is seriously one of the finest JRPGs ever.

I'm currently playing Lunar: Silver Star Harmony as a lead-up to finally playing the Eternal Blue remake.

I've played and completed the SegaCD game more times than I can count, but got side-tracked during my first playthrough of the PSX version. Fast-forward more than a dozen years later and I've got my PSP setup to give it a fair play-thru finally.


----------



## Chris_H87

I've just finished up Farcry 3! What an awesome game!


----------



## Korbain

playing batman arkham city again now i have an xbox 360 controller to use on my pc. so much easier to play. Such a brilliant game, if you haven't played it, get it for sure! 

Trying it on the hard difficulty, makes the fighting more intense with your counter attacks and that


----------



## HOKENSTYFE

While I'm waiting for Metal Gear: 'Revengeance', I'm playing Resident Evil 4.

I got it in the Limited Edition, Resident Evil 6 pack I bought. I beat it back in the day on Playstation 2 but, never got the P.R. something gun, when you beat it on Professional. So I'm half way through on normal. I'll beat it and get the Infinite Ammo Rocket Launcher, to go through Professional. 

RE6 wasn't too bad.


----------



## TheDivineWing22

Playing through Majora's Mask again. I've only beaten it once and that was when it first came out. Forgot how good it is.


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

Prince of Persia (2008), such a beautiful game


----------



## Jake

Motherfucking Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. The nostalgia.


----------



## Don Vito

717ctsjz said:


> Motherfucking Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. The nostalgia.


Best skateboarding game ever all years.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Playing Zelda: Link's Awakening on the phone while on tour. 



Captain Shoggoth said:


> Prince of Persia (2008), such a beautiful game



I really need to play that game again.

If you like that, you should check out Okami if you haven't done so already. Another gem that PoP 2008 borrowed heavily from. 



Mordacain said:


> Chrono Trigger is seriously one of the finest JRPGs ever.



I can tell you all the flaws and moments where Chrono Trigger falls short, and I'll still agree and believe the hype that everybody says about this game. Play it already!


----------



## angus

Mordacain said:


> Chrono Trigger is seriously one of the finest JRPGs ever.
> 
> I'm currently playing Lunar: Silver Star Harmony as a lead-up to finally playing the Eternal Blue remake.
> 
> I've played and completed the SegaCD game more times than I can count, but got side-tracked during my first playthrough of the PSX version. Fast-forward more than a dozen years later and I've got my PSP setup to give it a fair play-thru finally.



+100000. 

Lunar: Silver Star for SegaCD will forever be my favorite RPG- I played the original on SegaCD as a kid and I still try to play it through again every couple years. Love it. 

The PS version was muuuuuuch worse. I hated the way they changed the battle system and leveling system, and I just didn't enjoy it as much. The PSP version, though, was much more enjoyable even if still not as good as the SegaCD version. 

Same for Eternal Blue, though I didn't like any of that range as much. 

(I do the same ritual for Chrono Trigger, FF3 and Phantasy Star IV about every 4-5 years.)

I largely stopped playing video games mid-PS2, so Genesis/SNES is where it's at for me.


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I really need to play that game again.



I rented it for about a week in December 2008 and decided it was meh, time matured my opinion and I've decided to come back to it, realising just how wrong I was in doing so, parts of this are jaw-droppingly beautiful, the royal palace (oddly especially whilst still corrupted) stands out as being so, likely due to the similarity to the night-time aesthetic of parts of Sands of Time.



> If you like that, you should check out Okami if you haven't done so already. Another gem that PoP 2008 borrowed heavily from.


Considering Okami, but I get games so rarely that if I do play it, it probably won't be soon  

Sands of Time will still remain my favourite PoP game (indeed my favourite game period) though. There are better franchises sure, Elder Scrolls, Half-Life, Halo, Mass Effect, but never have I played a singular better game in my life.


Oh, I'm also playing Portal 2-extremely late to the party despite playing the first one years ago  <3<3 Wheatley


----------



## Don Vito

I got Portal day 1, but still haven't played Portal 2


----------



## st2012

Just finished Ni No Kuni on the PS3. Hit the spot for my old school RPG obsession.


----------



## sentagoda

Dead space 3, and its fucking awesome. I know alot of people complaing about co-op. But its fucking fantastic.


----------



## Mexi

just picked up Uncharted 3 and the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus hd collection for the PS3 but I've yet to play either


----------



## texshred777

Skyrim right now, but the talk about Witcher 2 has me thinking of starting another play through.


----------



## Mordacain

angus said:


> +100000.
> 
> Lunar: Silver Star for SegaCD will forever be my favorite RPG- I played the original on SegaCD as a kid and I still try to play it through again every couple years. Love it.
> 
> The PS version was muuuuuuch worse. I hated the way they changed the battle system and leveling system, and I just didn't enjoy it as much. The PSP version, though, was much more enjoyable even if still not as good as the SegaCD version.
> 
> Same for Eternal Blue, though I didn't like any of that range as much.
> 
> (I do the same ritual for Chrono Trigger, FF3 and Phantasy Star IV about every 4-5 years.)
> 
> I largely stopped playing video games mid-PS2, so Genesis/SNES is where it's at for me.



Eternal Blue was actually my favorite of the two (tho both pretty much equal) but there was just something special about the original games that wasn't there in the remakes.

Generally I'm not really a retro-gamer I just have a few standout titles that I replay every so often when I have time. I still have my SegaCD (though I'm not sure if it works, haven't hooked it up in over a decade. I've mainly played my old titles on emulators.

Actually just finished rebuilding my PC to use Steam Big Picture on my TV so first game up on that list is probably going to be Dead Space 1 & 2.


----------



## Korbain

still smashing through batman arkham city! this game is huge, especially with all the side missions and riddler puzzles. I still can't get over the amount of detail they have put into this game. Makes doing the riddler stuff more rewarding because it gives you more insight into the characters and lore of batmans history!! BRILLIANT!!


----------



## Aztec

Fallout 3, capital wasteland baby


----------



## Rojne

Skyrim.. level 29 and about 90h in, I don't know how much is left of the game.. thats what I like about it!


----------



## Don Vito

I bought Yakuza 4 in early 2011. For whatever reason, I still haven't finished it.


----------



## Korbain

Rojne said:


> Skyrim.. level 29 and about 90h in, I don't know how much is left of the game.. thats what I like about it!



90 hours in!? there is ALOT! haha get the DLC too, skyrim is a magical place we all invest a lot of time into


----------



## Don Vito

I actually sold my copy of Skyrim because I was playing it too much and it was getting in the way of life.


----------



## Chris_H87

I'm playing GTA IV all over again. Just for shiggles!


----------



## Francis978

Right now I am playing Rome: Total War on the PC (well, I shouldn't say right now, starting in a few  )

Brilliant RTS game


----------



## Mexi

recently got back into Anno 2070. I originally stopped playing because it became almost frustrating to get everything going but I loved the look/feel too much so I worked at it and I'm finally getting good at it, shame I'm writing a paper so I can't get back to my city building


----------



## Repner

Dishonored. I really want to play Chrono Trigger afterwards again.


----------



## Dalcan

Everquest 2, Battlefield 2


----------



## thedonal

Dishonoured for me. 1st play through nearly done and I missed loads on the way.


----------



## LuizPauloDT

I always play two things: One FPS and one RPG. Right now, when i have time, i play some Skyrim and Battlefield 3


----------



## Miek

How do I make Ghost Recon fun


----------



## MicrobeSS

Right now I'm playing Battlefield 3 and Batman Arkham City


----------



## Don Vito

Miek said:


> How do I make Ghost Recon fun


You don't. Ghost Recon is a tactical shooter, therefore wasn't mean't to be enjoyed by people with hearts and dreams.


----------



## Don Vito

Morrowind
Persona 3
Battlefront II
Deathsmiles 

I'm awful at 3/4 of these games.


----------



## Fiction

Pokemon heartgold and Chrono Trigger at the moment, it's hard juggling 2 games, but Pokemon has my current attention. I seem to go in 2-3 day phases of each game and am enjoying both a lot.


----------



## Robtheripper

Fiction said:


> Pokemon heartgold and Chrono Trigger at the moment, it's hard juggling 2 games, but Pokemon has my current attention. I seem to go in 2-3 day phases of each game and am enjoying both a lot.



If you go onto smogon Ill battle you sometime! As for me I have been playing Crysis 3 and all of the old school mega mans haha, I just love the theme music in Mega man, and its difficulty. Crysis 3 is pretty good but nothing revolutionary lol


----------



## tacotiklah

I'm enjoying Knights of The Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. Finally found a legit copy for sale recently so I nabbed it. It runs so well on my computer now.


----------



## Miek

Try grabbing the restored content mod.


----------



## MrMcSick

2nd playthrough of Fallout 3 and 3rd playthrough of Final Fantasy 1 at the moment.


----------



## Adrian-XI

Just built a new pc and the gpu came with crysis 3 and bioshock infinite, so I'm playing crysis. I'm enjoying the sweet graphics after years of only a laptop.


----------



## Korbain

Adrian-XI said:


> Just built a new pc and the gpu came with crysis 3 and bioshock infinite, so I'm playing crysis. I'm enjoying the sweet graphics after years of only a laptop.



can't wait to upgrade later this year! Mines about 3 years old, got it when the nvidia 400 series came out. Then i shall attempt crysis 3 maxed out lol

Anywho, playing halo anniversary edition at the moment, so good playing it again with better graphics. A lot of detail went into it for sure  

Picked up the metal gear solid HD collection for my ps3 as well, gonna get into that this weekend! need to save some cash and stop partying as hard, so i think that should keep me hibernating for a while


----------



## Don Vito

Okay so I'm playing Demon's Souls right now, and is there anything I can do with unwanted items?(mailbreakers for example),


----------



## thedonal

Repner said:


> Dishonored. I really want to play Chrono Trigger afterwards again.



I never finished Chrono Trigger. Played it on a SNES emulator a few years ago.

When I started the game, I made the inspired choice of naming the characters Waaagh, Aaargh And Gaaaah (or something very similar)- mainly through impatience and indecision.

It meant that I never really knew who was who or what was going on, but it made all conversations fricking hilarious as it always looked like they were exclaiming to an epic degree.


----------



## Miek

Don Vito said:


> Okay so I'm playing Demon's Souls right now, and is there anything I can do with unwanted items?(mailbreakers for example),


I think you just have to foist them off onto the inventory keeper. Stockpile Thomas or something, I think


----------



## whatupitsjoe

me n my girl started Ni No Kuni last night, something we could both get into. other than that im still on Assassins Creed 3, and i just started the first Devil May Cry int he HD re-release (however im finding it frustrating)


----------



## Don Vito

Miek said:


> I think you just have to foist them off onto the inventory keeper. Stockpile Thomas or something, I think


So there's not any way to sell them?


----------



## MicrobeSS

Don Vito said:


> So there's not any way to sell them?



Nope. You're stuck with all the stuff you pickup.


----------



## Don Vito

MicrobeSS said:


> Nope. You're stuck with all the stuff you pickup.


Well shit.. thanks for the replies anyway.


----------



## Jake

Battlefield 3 for the past 2 weeks


----------



## Don Vito

Fallout 3 GOTY

Haven't played this game in at least 3 years.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

whatupitsjoe said:


> me n my girl started Ni No Kuni last night, something we could both get into.



The first thing I'm gonna do when I fly back to Melbourne is to get this game and play it to bits.


----------



## thedonal

Just started Mass Effect 2. Finally got there...


----------



## MetallicMike

i am hooked on Skyrim


----------



## Don Vito

I'm trying to get Minecraft Classic to work on my computer, but it keeps closing the program every time I try to login with the client 

halp


----------



## Don Vito

Some atrocious looking browser MMO I found on Chrome. I should have went to class today.


----------



## Miek

Fable I, this is pretty nostalgic


----------



## Mexi

Right now I am really enjoying Heart of the Swarm, though I've finally got around to playing Dishonored (and still struggling to get good at Anno 1404)


----------



## axxessdenied

Sim City... so good!

Anyone play? Add me on Origin, we got a SSO region going on North America East #4


----------



## synrgy

Been playing a shit-ton of X-Com: Enemy Unknown, and I've also been playing a bit of Skyrim, again..


----------



## thedonal

So I finished Mass Effect 2 yesterday and am kind of between games. I have a friend's copy of AC-Brotherhood sitting there but no inclination to play it for some reason.

I might just have a break from games for a few weeks and then play a few old favourites (it must be about time for Half Life 2 _again_!!)


----------



## hairychris

Bought FarCry 3 at the weekend.

I spend too much time/money with Steam.


----------



## Rook

Just started GTA San Andreas again, best game ever.

Ever ever.


----------



## Ralyks

Rotating around Skyrim, Dead Space, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and something like my 15th play through of Final Fantasy VII (VIII is next. The goal is to revisit FFV - IX. Although I started at VII in the middle, go figure...).


----------



## Futurian

Dragon Warrior 1.. I just bought the Mass Effect trilogy and I'm still running with the classics. I've been meaning to do Super Mario 64 again as well. Gotta love buying games new and not playing them until they can be bought used at 1/3 of the price..


----------



## Fat-Elf

Started Pokemon Emerald couple of days ago. I have so horrible party at the moment that I don't think I even bother finishing the game as it has been difficult enough already. 

Got also back in LoL, finally had enough points to buy Nautilus. Now I kill everything that moves.


----------



## Don Vito

Rook said:


> Just started GTA San Andreas again, best game ever.
> 
> Ever ever.


----------



## thedonal

I got Dust: An Elysian Tail yesterday. Not normally my style of game (looks like an Anime styling of the SNES/Megadrive Disney games of yore) but I have to say its loads of fun.

Things like this and Shadow Complex are a refreshing look back to classic gameplay with modern twists and looks. Immediate on one hand, but with enough depth to keep you interested.

Dust.. Is beautiful. And the fighting is intensely mental and gratifying.


----------



## Fiction

Finally managed to get back into skyrim. This is probably my 10th roll since I got it, and only the second time I've played the game more than twice.. (The first roll being the first).


----------



## MicrobeSS

Don Vito said:


>




Fuck that mission. 


PLaying Metro 2033 right now.


----------



## Sofos

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity. Also picked up Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.


----------



## Miek

Warframe

if you want to add me, my name is muike


----------



## jenagrey8585

I am playing Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag on my PS3


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Digging this up from years of neglect:







Because I owe myself to completing this game dammit!


----------



## Compton

I just picked up Final Fantasy VIII at a thrift store yesterday, having just beat 7 and played through about half the content of III my understanding is that VIII is going to be awesome.


----------



## TheDuatAwaits

Terraria.


----------



## Mexi

finally got around to playing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. solid game, unique combat system. overall, the game feels like a Skyrim-meets WoW/MMO type game. fairly derivative story line, but fun game


----------



## Alexxx

WOW on a private Blizz-like server. Cataclysm, no MoP.


----------



## tacotiklah

I'm about to finish up Ganon's Tower on Ocarina of Time for the umpteenth time. I think I'll hit up my Left 4 Dead bundle after this.


----------



## Don Vito

I don't have any money for new games, so I'm playing Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi Kaznapped! on a GBA emulator. Surprisingly fun.


----------



## habicore_5150

Killing Floor + Me dual wielding Handcannons + Listening to Pantera's "Suicide Note Pt. 2" = Chaos


----------



## OhMyGoliath

^ Message me if you want to play sometime.


----------



## Francis978

Playing some Payday the Heist, soon to be playing some Rome: Total war


----------



## The Spanish Inquisition

I have been playing a lot of Skyrim and Morrowind lately. Morrowind for nostalgia, and Skyrim for my Viking urges (even though I'm an Argonian)


----------



## Fat-Elf

habicore_5150 said:


> Killing Floor + Me dual wielding Handcannons + Listening to Pantera's "Suicide Note Pt. 2" = Chaos



Oh man, Killing Floor is one of the best games to have your own BGM going on, especially as it doesn't have any music in it. 

For me, still playing LoL but I'm starting to get more serious with it. Spending time reading strategy guides and such.. We still suck with my friend but we're getting there.


----------



## ferret

Recent completions in the last two weeks or so:

Starcraft II, both episodes
Dishonored
Bioshock Infinite

Go-to for wasting some time:
Mechwarrior Online


----------



## berzerkergang

PLaying MLB the show 13, just started my franchise, glad they took some of the really pointless and tedious shit out of franchise mode. Like what the fuck do I care how many hot dog vendors are in the ballpark and what the price is etc etc. Great game so far but god damn I wish they would get rid of the dry, horrible main play by play guy.


----------



## Bennykins

Just picked up Tera and Torchlight in a 2 for $20 sale. I tend to like MMORPG's and dungeon crawler type games, although the only one's I have been able to stick at for a significant length of time are WoW and the Diablo series.

Also been playing Civilization 3 and Heroes of Might and Magic 3 for some turn-based goodness.

Oh, and I had my first game of WoW Monopoly last week, which was cool because I got to explain all the WoW lore and concepts to my sister with nerdy enthusiasm. Was great fun, even though she majorly kicked my butt.


----------



## DarkRain93

Sim City 2000 on DosBox


----------



## Don Vito

Bennykins said:


> Civilization 3




I'm playing Shinobi III.


----------



## aikupu

Deus Ex (first one) and San Andreas


----------



## ASoC

Been playing:

MGS1-3
Shadow of the Colossus 

Tonight I'm playing DotA 2. Add me on steam, name is Benderbot50

Edit: I play Tribes fairly frequently and also play Borderlands, TF2, and CS:S


----------



## Mordacain

Well, I just recently finished the new Tomb Raider (couple of weeks ago). My 3rd (or 4th) playthrough of Dragon Age 2.

but I'm mainly slogging through Bioshock Infinite and loving every second of it.

Gotta say, I was quite pleased with the AMD Reloaded package. Got two games that I was planning on buying anyway which made my 7850 really only about $80...


----------



## Don Vito

I've actually invested some time with Demon's Souls and stopped quitting and getting frustrated every time I tried playing the first world. I just beat Armor Spider, and am having a great time.

I'm also playing Pinball of the Dead. Greatest spin off to the greatest game series.


----------



## Orsinium

I am playing God of War Ascension multiplayer and the oddworld hd remakes so many childhood memories coming back.


----------



## MicrobeSS

Don Vito said:


> I've actually invested some time with Demon's Souls and stopped quitting and getting frustrated every time I tried playing the first world. I just beat Armor Spider, and am having a great time.




Try world 5


----------



## kamello

finished Dead Space 2 (wich was awesome), starting 3, the game feels really different through the first 2 chapters, but now is feeling a bit more familiar


@Vito: ohh god, the childhood memories.....and nightmares, I played House of the Dead with my cousins every weekend, and I was like 7 years old 



edit: I was wondering, nobody heres plays Age Of Empires ll online?, 14 year old game, still better than most RTE games nowdays


----------



## Metal_Webb

kamello said:


> edit: I was wondering, nobody heres plays Age Of Empires ll online?, 14 year old game, still better than most RTE games nowdays



They've just done a HD remake of it and released it on Steam for like $15. The multiplayer uses steam's infrastructure so there's no need to have to mess around with it any more.


/OT Dark Souls. So much fun but so much  it hurts. Example, first run against Quelaag. I go to dodge, she somehow turns on a dime, knocks me into a wall. Before I can stand up, I get covered in lava and that's a GG.


----------



## Don Vito

MicrobeSS said:


> Try world 5


k



kamello said:


> @Vito: ohh god, the childhood memories.....and nightmares, I played House of the Dead with my cousins every weekend, and I was like 7 years old


Brave. I wouldn't as much stare at artwork on the cabinet, let alone attempt to play.

As far as I was concerned, that game was pure evil, and would eat me whole if I died.


----------



## Syriel

Just finished playing the story mode of Super Smash Bros. Brawl again with my brother. Finished that thing just for nostalgia.

Oh and I play these online :

Heroes of Newerth, IGN : RavenSung
League of Legends, IGN : FlashTrip

Also playing Hatsune Miku : Project Diva 2nd on PSP just because.


----------



## thedonal

So I seem to have been sucked right into EVE online..


----------



## Jakke

Far Cry 3


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Kinda late to the party but I picked up The Witcher 2 today, I'm coming off of Skyrim because I need to give it a rest but I wanted to stick to something similar because I dig that kind of gameplay.

It was either Witcher 2 or Dragon's Dogma, did I make the right choice here?


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Mexi said:


> finally got around to playing Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. solid game, unique combat system. overall, the game feels like a Skyrim-meets WoW/MMO type game. fairly derivative story line, but fun game



Agreed, definitely felt like a mish-mash of those games, with a touch of God of War. Some of the landscapes were nicely done too.


----------



## Daf57

Borderlands 2


----------



## Michael T

GatherTheArsenal said:


> Kinda late to the party but I picked up The Witcher 2 today, I'm coming off of Skyrim because I need to give it a rest but I wanted to stick to something similar because I dig that kind of gameplay.
> 
> It was either Witcher 2 or Dragon's Dogma, did I make the right choice here?




Out of the 2 I prefer Dragons Dogma, Witcher 2 you were basically on a set path not much open world stuff. Dragons Dogma is a little better about that and honestly I just found it way more enjoyable to play. 

If you haven't played Kingdoms of Amular GET IT NOW !! I still go back and play it from time to time. It's what Fable should've been.


----------



## Anonymous

Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS lol)
For a handheld game its crazy addictive (got it last thursday evening and I already have 20+ hours on it) has a ton of stuff to do and lots of items/weapons/armor. Not got to do the online yet.
Here's a review if there are any other 3DS gamers or anybody interested.
Review: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (3DS) : The Gaming Vault


----------



## pullingstraws

I started playing my Gamecube again.
I've been playing Resident Evil(remake) and Super Mario Sunshine.
Both games are great, in my opinion.


----------



## Francis978

I have also been playing my gamecube, Super Smash Brothers Melee! Great game

I have also been into Killing Floor, Minecraft, and Halo: Combat evolved


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Michael T said:


> Out of the 2 I prefer Dragons Dogma, Witcher 2 you were basically on a set path not much open world stuff. Dragons Dogma is a little better about that and honestly I just found it way more enjoyable to play.
> 
> If you haven't played Kingdoms of Amular GET IT NOW !! I still go back and play it from time to time. It's what Fable should've been.



Sounds like i'm gonna pick up Dragon's Dogma as well 

Oh i definitely played Kingdoms of Amalur, i was following it long before it came out and i got it on the release day. Great game, underrated, and feels like it flew under the radar of a lot of people for whatever reason. Also, it's a completely different beast from the Fable series, i love both either way.


----------



## Onegunsolution

Injustice


----------



## SkyIllusion

Just beat BioShock Infinite, now I'm replaying through Bastion, playing Darksiders 2 and League of Legends


----------



## thedonal

GatherTheArsenal said:


> Sounds like i'm gonna pick up Dragon's Dogma as well
> 
> Oh i definitely played Kingdoms of Amalur, i was following it long before it came out and i got it on the release day. Great game, underrated, and feels like it flew under the radar of a lot of people for whatever reason. Also, it's a completely different beast from the Fable series, i love both either way.


 
I think Amalur is the only x-box game I've payed near to full price for.

Very good game in lots of ways. Some of the voicework is a bit annoying and dungeons are very over-repetetive. Also, I think the level cap is too low, given the size of the game and the downloadable content. Caused me to give up on my second playthrough. 

Would happily recommend it though.

I love Fable 2- played through it about 6 times. But eventually got tired of it. Great game, despite its flaws. Persistent world stuff (like the landlording aspects- ie game activities continuing offline) were visionary and helped keep interest. I think that's what has got me so into EVE so quickly...


----------



## Steinmetzify

Just started Skyrim about 2 weeks ago(I know, I know). Not bad....haven't played anything like a good dungeon crawl in YEARS....mostly been playing Black Ops and RE5 on PS3 with my woman...anything we can team up on and blast the hell out of, we're good.

Skyrim has to remain a guilty pleasure once or twice a week, though.....if I sit down to play it, I get caught up and then 4 hours has gone by...


----------



## habicore_5150

Just made it to the World of Ruin, and I already picked up Sabin

Note to self, be sure that if Gau is in your party, and if he has ChickenLip's rage, be sure to have Float cast on everyone before using it...almost wiped out my whole party


----------



## tacotiklah

Well fellow Steam fans, for those that haven't gotten the memo, Steam is now offering Portal 1 and 2 in a bundle for less than $7. You heard me right, you can get both Portal titles for under $7. 
Naturally I swooped up and grabbed that while I could. So I'll be playing that soon when I can get un-buried from some of this homework. But in the meantime, I've been having a LOT of fun smacking zombies in the face with a frying pan in Left 4 Dead 2. The access to the workshop is so goddamn awesome too. The mod that changes the katana into the Master Sword and Hyrulian Shield is top notch and I've actually gone entire campaigns using nothing else but that.


----------



## axxessdenied

Valve games are one of the few games worth paying full price for, imo. Production quality on Portal 2 is fucking stellar! Get it if you don't have it yet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Jake

Sucked back into Forza 3.


----------



## jbab

Ni No Kuni - Wrath of the White Witch!


----------



## habicore_5150

Still on Final Fantasy 6 (SNES version)

Gotta love how I went through all that trouble just to win the Merit Award for Gau (yes, I'm doing the Wind God Gau trick)

I fight a pair of Tyrannosaurs, and win two Imp Halberds. After stealing about 4 Imp Armors (which I bet for TortiseShield, then Titanium, then the Cathood [Brachiosaur's coming out swinging at me like a motherfucker], then finally the Merit Award) long before then


----------



## Webmaestro

Back to playing WoW.

I'm off and on... so I'll probably play for a month or so then let my subscription lapse again.


----------



## ferret

Age of Empires II HD

Go-To's for wasting time:
Still Mechwarrior Online
Little bit of CSGO this week


----------



## i-iz-hulk

Mirror's Edge
Tomb Raider (new one)
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl


----------



## Repner

Finished Ni no Kuni. Now started a new game of Chrono Trigger.


----------



## Choop

Beat Darksiders II today. Pretty cool game, though I feel like many of the quests were longer/more tedious than they really needed to be.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Trying out Chrono Trigger. I thought I wouldn't like it since I'm not a fan of turn-based RPGs, but I'm liking this one.

EDIT: Also found my ancient copy of Halo: CE. Aw yeah.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Still doing Skyrim off and on.....although when I started, a buddy told me to work on my smithing, and I did.....now I have armor/weapons that make it so I haven't died in about 3 weeks, so I'm getting a little bored with it. 

Waiting on The Last of Us.


----------



## Choop

So I started playing Dota 2, after having played LoL for almost 2 years. I've never played the original Dota, but Dota 2 is really fun. It's initially a little more complicated than league, but it isn't very hard to learn and above everything else I like the community more, as well as the neat character designs.


----------



## Marv Attaxx

Downloaded Crash Team Racing on PSN. God, did I miss this game


----------



## Santuzzo

I'm playing two really cool Star Wars games: The Battle of Endor and The Battle of Yavin.
Both are freeware.


----------



## thedonal

717ctsjz said:


> Sucked back into Forza 3.


 

Aaaaaaah- the New York street track! Noooo! The ruiner of many a controller for me! 

The game would have been so much better without this circuit...


----------



## remorse is for the dead

Just started digital devil saga.


----------



## st2012

Just finished Bioshock Infinite a few days ago...


----------



## habicore_5150

So far, even though I've just started with the game, its pretty good. Just gotta get used to the game


----------



## Michael T

Just started Dead Island Riptide. Anyone with some badass weapons hit me up on Xbox Live XIIIth Disaster


well....back to killing some Zombies !! Hells Yes


----------



## Don Vito

Playing the same old same old(Binary Domain and Demon's Souls) until my GTA IV Episodes from Liberty City gets here. Didn't go for the GOTY because it was more expensive and I've already played the main game. I'm going to try and beat Binary Domain before it gets here. It's so generic but god damn it has that quirky Japanese charm that I love. The story is 100% srs but it actually never takes itself too serious. 

I'm so sick of being broke. I had to totally scrape to get that GTA game


----------



## Choop

Aside from Dota 2 I'm playing LoZ: OoT again and am probably going to play Zeno Clash, if for nothing else then because it's been in my steam library forever and I've not even loaded it up once. D:


----------



## Jakke

KOTOR II, now with restored content


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Kingdom Hearts 3D. Stopped playing it a few months ago, but now I'm getting into it again.


----------



## Aevolve

A mixture of Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, Dirt 3, and Tomb Raider.

Good stuff. Good. Stuff.


----------



## Vinchester

Don Vito said:


> Playing the same old same old(Binary Domain and Demon's Souls) until my GTA IV Episodes from Liberty City gets here. Didn't go for the GOTY because it was more expensive and I've already played the main game. I'm going to try and beat Binary Domain before it gets here. It's so generic but god damn it has that quirky Japanese charm that I love. The story is 100% srs but it actually never takes itself too serious.



You won't be disappointed  I find the standalones especially Ballad of Gay Tony more fun than the main game!

I just finished The Walking Dead game, all 5 episodes of them. The story is not as open-ended as advertised, but still quite immersive.


----------



## Don Vito

Vinchester said:


> You won't be disappointed  I find the standalones especially Ballad of Gay Tony more fun than the main game!


I briefly played The Lost and Damned when it came out, and I instantly liked it better than the main game. The biggest problem of GTA IV is the controls. Niko just casually walks unless you hold down the sprint buttom iirc they fixed this in TL&D.


----------



## Triple7

Bioshock


----------



## ferret

Neverwinter (The F2P one)


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Digging this up from years of neglect:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Because I owe myself to completing this game dammit!


 
Cross off the list and moving on to the next one:


----------



## TheDuatAwaits

Sleeping dogs. Damn good game!


----------



## vilk

pokemon white

I swear these games will never get old


----------



## Origin

CS:GO. I got sucked back in, after a long hiatus from Source back in the day. Lord help me.


----------



## Don Vito

levijaymz said:


> Sleeping dogs. Damn good game!


My personal GOTY for 2012.


----------



## Mendez

Just got pokemon black, its been pretty good so far.


----------



## tacotiklah

Gave Battlefront II a good flogging, so I'm looking for my next game to hit up.


----------



## Compton

I just bought Everquest Titanium and have been playing Project 1999!!!

I have a ton of games I still wanna play though. Dishonored, CoD BopS2, BL2... I just haven't had the motivation to get into them yet. 

I also bought FF8 a few months ago, i'll be playing that through soon!


----------



## Curt

Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's Decade Duels
Pokémon Heart Gold
Fallout: New Vegas(6th playthrough.)


----------



## tacotiklah

Since it's a double xp weekend, I went ahead and put a few hours into Black Ops 2. Found that people have been playing my profile, so I magically made it to level 55 of Prestige 6 without even playing the game. 

All good though since in just a couple of hours of playing hardpoint and kill confirmed, I managed to get to level 20 of prestige 7. 


Edit: Oh and the greatest thing happened...
I was checking my messages on PSN and discovered that I was given a free code for $10 for the PSN wallet. I went ahead and nabbed me Final Fantasy VII with it. I have too many problems trying to get the PS one emulator working, so having it on the PS3 is my best bet.


----------



## liamh

AW YEAAAAAAAAAAA


----------



## tacotiklah

Playing Final Fantasy VII. Forgot how hard this game can be.


----------



## KBurks

Playing through Diablo III again. Seems as though alot has changed since the game first came out :/


----------



## Don Vito

GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony.

I'm not so much playing it as I am watching the in game TV and surfing the in game internet.

REPUBLICAN FUCKIN' SPACE RANGERS


----------



## texshred777

Picked up NBA 2K12 the other day. Pretty damn good. Hard, though. I'm still trying to get down the Isomotion controls. I can't seem to crossover a center with D. Rose..


----------



## piggins411

Crash Team Racing. The nostalgia is hitting me HARD


----------



## Mexi

ah nostalgia. been feeling that myself, been playing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri lately. so much fun


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Just found Sparkster for the SNES. Holy shit, this game is amazing.


----------



## habicore_5150

Currently doing a Let's Play on this, and apparently the 3 Goblins that I had to fight in my most recent episode, they hate Lufia


----------



## Don Vito

Link?


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Shit's pretty fun, especially now that I'm on my second playthrough of Season mode and I'm using cockpit view exclusively.


----------



## ferret

The new Tomb Raider. Tessellation effects are stellar.


----------



## Sicarius

Well, I've been bouncing back and forth between Blood Dragon (which is hilarious and awesome. I might 100% the game) and Ragnarok Online 2, because I wanted an MMORPG that I didn't have to pay for. I was always interested in the first RO, but never got around to playing it. 

But, a friend of mine bought me GW2. And I hate him for it. -_- I didn't want to play it, but they need more people to play with since they refuse to PUG 2 extra people. So I'm going to be a good friend and wallow in hate.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Playing GRID now. I didn't realize how utterly reliant I was on the braking line driving assist in racing games until I played a game where it isn't an option, haha. It'a been pretty rough going so far, ESPECIALLY Le Mans. I've come in dead last every time I've raced it.


----------



## 5thFaceOfBrahma

Played a lot of "Kingdoms of Amalur" these days, great RPG, kind of WOWish graphics, but even the side quests are pretty diverse, and there are a lot of side-quests 
Had the game laying around for a while, but just recently started playing...happy I did.


----------



## ferret

Endless Space
LA Noire


----------



## RustInPeace

I played Amalur for a while, but it wasnt wowing me or sucking me into it at all. I bought it but I cant remember if I still own it anymore.. Should give it another shot if I do. 

Back into Dark Souls lately... god damnit....


----------



## 5thFaceOfBrahma

RustInPeace said:


> I played Amalur for a while, but it wasnt wowing me or sucking me into it at all. I bought it but I cant remember if I still own it anymore.. Should give it another shot if I do.


 
I kind of had he same feeling with Witcher 2 in the first run, played it a few month later and enjoyed it alot. Yeah, maybe you should give Amalur a 2nd chance, sometimes you just have do be in the right mood for a specific game.


----------



## Choop

RustInPeace said:


> I played Amalur for a while, but it wasnt wowing me or sucking me into it at all. I bought it but I cant remember if I still own it anymore.. Should give it another shot if I do.
> 
> Back into Dark Souls lately... god damnit....



I can't wait for Dark souls 2. After playing the crap out of the first, and playing through Demon's souls...I want a similar experience but there isn't one really right now. D:


----------



## Joseph Kimbrell

What I am probably about to buy is Shadow Warrior from GOG.com.

Recently I've actually been playing Blake Stone for PC. Awesome Wolfenstein 3D clone.


----------



## Judge_Dredd

Black Ops 2


----------



## texshred777

Started playing Forza 4 a couple days ago. It's the "essentials edition" that came free with the new xbox. I'll eventually get all the disc two car packs, but at this point having only downloaded the 2001-2005 pack I'm pretty happy with the car selection as is. It'd be nice to get the S14 and S15 Silvias, perhaps the R32 GTR. I doubt I'll ever get the Porsche pack. 

So far I'm liking the changes. I like that the level rewards are a choice of cars, all already tuned to the top of their respective classes. The Lamborghini Countach was a nice surprise as a reward. As was the Nissan 370z. 

My go to cars so far are:

Class D-Nissan Silvia Club K(s13)
Class B-R33 Skyline GTR 
Class A-Lamborghini Countach
Class A-Nissan 370Z
Class A-2010 Audi TT RS 
Class S-Lexus LFA
Class S-Ferrari 458

So far I'm loving it. Best racing game I've played in memory.


----------



## Judge_Dredd

Brutal Legend. Half way through. Awesome game


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Just played Yoshi's Story for the first time in years. 

I forgot how terrible this game is, especially after playing Yoshi's Island.


----------



## Mexi

I've been playing Blood Dragon for its hilarity and pure awesomeness (I might actually enjoy this more than FC3, tbh) but and also Sins of a Solar Empire. I've really been enjoying that one for the sheer scale of it; it's sort of like Supreme Commander (which I didn't like very much) but with the massive scale of star systems to explore and conquer. The space battles get quite epic, something I've yearned for lately. Though 4x games like these are definitely time-sinks and easy to lose track of time playing them.


----------



## Korbain

skyrim...again. I think i have an addiction. Big time lol


----------



## MFB

Picked up Dead Space 1 and 2 at Gamestop so once finals are done I'll have a chance to plow through those. Going back through Halo 4 on Legendary solo at the moment as well and man, ..... that.

You run out of ammo near Prometheans and you're SOL.


----------



## st2012

Bought Alan Wake on sale about a week ago and started playing last night. Seems pretty solid so far.


----------



## piggins411

Playing Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped and getting my ass kicked trying to get the platinum relics


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

Dead Island Riptide (PS3)

anyone else here playing too?
can i get a hell yeah!?!?


----------



## texshred777

Mass Effect series again.


----------



## Jlang

Tomb Raider on PC - JUST started so I can't really comment.

Uncharted 3 on Ps3 obviously - Im about half way through the way game me thinks.. and its not holding my attention like the first two did. Especially 2. I will beat it but it may take a while.


----------



## Mordacain

Jlang said:


> Tomb Raider on PC - JUST started so I can't really comment.
> 
> Uncharted 3 on Ps3 obviously - Im about half way through the way game me thinks.. and its not holding my attention like the first two did. Especially 2. I will beat it but it may take a while.



Tomb Raider was surprisingly awesome and PC is definitely the way to play it. 

I just started playing Uncharted 3 again yesterday myself. Give it some time. It gets pretty damn awesome about halfway through. You'll encounter one of the most amazing set-pieces ever pretty soon if you are where I think you are. I would agree the pacing is perhaps not as consistent as Uncharted 2, but on the whole I think it is it's equal.


----------



## Mordacain

st2012 said:


> Bought Alan Wake on sale about a week ago and started playing last night. Seems pretty solid so far.



I just picked it up on Steam last night for $4. Man, do I love when they do an insane sale.

I think it'll be worth it for that...will probably give it a whirl this weekend after I finish my Uncharted replay.


----------



## Jlang

Mordacain said:


> Tomb Raider was surprisingly awesome and PC is definitely the way to play it.
> 
> I just started playing Uncharted 3 again yesterday myself. Give it some time. It gets pretty damn awesome about halfway through. You'll encounter one of the most amazing set-pieces ever pretty soon if you are where I think you are. I would agree the pacing is perhaps not as consistent as Uncharted 2, but on the whole I think it is it's equal.



Well thats a relief. I love the uncharted series and was always a huge Crash Bandicoot fan back in the day so I have a soft spot for naughty dog and was hoping three kept up the consistency of the first two.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

SW:KOTOR was just released on iOS, so I've been playing that on my ipad.

I also snagged FF3 for my iPad the other day, but then got a wild hair up my ass and decided I want to play the series in order, so I bought FF1 for my iPhone last night and started playing that. I've always kinda sucked at JRPGs, so here's hoping it's different this time around. Good luck, Billy, Bobby, Betty and Hat! Find dem crystals!


----------



## texshred777

I did not know that! 

Will definitely be getting KOTOR for my iPad soon. How does it compare to the original PC or Xbox version?


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

texshred777 said:


> I did not know that!
> 
> Will definitely be getting KOTOR for my iPad soon. How does it compare to the original PC or Xbox version?



The ups: 

It actually looks a bit better, especially compared to the console version, though that's mostly just because you're playing it on a smaller screen so the graphics look a bit smoother/crisper.

Inventory/menu sorting is nice and easy using a touch interface, as is targeting enemies. Since it was originally designed to be played with a mouse/pointer, that only makes sense.

The downs:

The camera/movement controls are wonky.

The camera/movement controls are frustrating.

Seriously, .... the camera/movement controls.

I havent gotten too far yet and haven't come across any situations so far where the controls have seriously hampered me in battle or anything (and hopefully I never do), but good LORD, they're awkward. It's almost enough to make me wish for one of those stupid on-screen joysticks that never work quite right that some iOS games have.


----------



## Don Vito

As you can see from my avatar, I'm a fan of 1st gen Pokemon(like a billion other people). But admittedly, I never played the remakes. 

Running shoes ftw


----------



## Francis978

I have been playing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind lately, a few days ago it was on sale on Steam for like 7 bucks for the game of the year edition! I'm reliving my youth!


----------



## Goatchrist

Playing Bioshock right now, yeah the first one.
Don't know how I could miss out on this game, absolutely love it! Gonna play Bioshock II and Bioshock Infinite as well, for sure!


----------



## Datura

Cubefield


----------



## Johnson_LACS

XCom:Enemy Unknown - like it, especially death screams of those small stereotypic aliens. Somehow, those screams reminds me the "Angry Beavers" show.


----------



## Choop

Been replaying Ocarina of Time lately, still super fun! Also after beating FF4, I found a copy of FF5 for GBA that someone had given me and I've played that some more. Definitely much slower of a start than FF4, but I can't say I've played enough to judge yet.


----------



## Veritech Zero

Just beat Mass Effect 3 again, and now I can sleep soundly knowing that Shepard will see Tali again some day ^_^


----------



## Jakke

Got Dungeon Keeper 2 to work! Woho!


----------



## Judge_Dredd

Bioshock


----------



## Judge_Dredd

Super Mario World (SNES)


----------



## tacotiklah

Playing through Unreal Tournament 2004. Christ this game is so fun. 

M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!!! 


Edit: To do it proper justice...


----------



## Don Vito

I used to watch this show on G4/Tech TV called "Arena". It was a competetive gaming show before the days of Youtube and such, and they played a LOT of UT 2004. I would sit and watch out of jealousy as I didn't have a computer back then to play games on.


----------



## flexkill

I am stuck on NBA 2K13 atm........cant stop playing.......


----------



## Judge_Dredd

Donkey Kong Country


----------



## RustInPeace

UT 2004 is hardcore! We used to have LAN parties and play tons of it... one of our friends was so good, we had to team up 4 on 1 to be fair. We would then sit around and watch him play online and get slaughtered... not for n00bs!


----------



## jbab

Finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution yesterday


----------



## Vinchester

After finishing uni I'm having some time off. I have been playing;

Bioshock Infinite
Far Cry 3
I also dug up Shogun 2 Total War and try to play it again.

The problem is I can't give a damn... I played both Bioshock and Far Cry up to about 2/3 of the storyline and then stopped. Suddenly it feels so boring. Shogun 2 is also somewhat annoying to play. And Borderlands 2, after 180 hours, is just.. ugh. 

I really want to get into some RTS/sim that I can sink my teeth into. Suggestions are welcome.


----------



## texshred777

Grand Moff Tim said:


> The ups:
> 
> It actually looks a bit better, especially compared to the console version, though that's mostly just because you're playing it on a smaller screen so the graphics look a bit smoother/crisper.
> 
> Inventory/menu sorting is nice and easy using a touch interface, as is targeting enemies. Since it was originally designed to be played with a mouse/pointer, that only makes sense.
> 
> The downs:
> 
> The camera/movement controls are wonky.
> 
> The camera/movement controls are frustrating.
> 
> Seriously, .... the camera/movement controls.
> 
> I havent gotten too far yet and haven't come across any situations so far where the controls have seriously hampered me in battle or anything (and hopefully I never do), but good LORD, they're awkward. It's almost enough to make me wish for one of those stupid on-screen joysticks that never work quite right that some iOS games have.


 
The downside..must be iPad2 or newer to work. Well shit.


----------



## texshred777

Veritech Zero said:


> Just beat Mass Effect 3 again, and now I can sleep soundly knowing that Shepard will see Tali again some day ^_^


 
Playing ME3 again myself. This time with some Leviathan thrown on it. 

There will be little blue Shep spawn. This time it's destroy, no Shep God Reaper this time around.


----------



## Mordacain

Just finished Uncharted 3 on Hard, think I might go back through Uncharted 1 & 2 again while I wait for "The Last of Us" to drop. Seriously toying with picking up a used PS Vita just to play through Golden Abyss.

/EDIT - just started Star Ocean: First Departure on the PSP


----------



## baptizedinblood

I'm pretty much playing Dota2 consistently, but as of lately I've been playing a lot of Warframe.

I also reinstalled Morrowind GOTY Edition and installed the Morrowind Overhaul texture pack. Looks good.


----------



## Mexi

Been playing the hell out of Sins of a Solar Empire lately, such a timesink but so good. I also got around to installing Metro 33 (figured I should play the first before Last Light) and have heard good things, essentially that it was what Rage was _supposed_ to have been


----------



## Valennic

Dragons Dogma has me absolutely ensnared right now. Cannot put it down.


----------



## texshred777

Conrad Verner agrees, thermal clips are a step backwards.


----------



## MFB

texshred777 said:


> Conrad Verner agrees, thermal clips are a step backwards.



You never really run out though so it's not a huge deal, but makes me wonder "Why add them if you don't run out?"


----------



## texshred777

True. I found that convo with Verner hilarious. I didn't get that in my first ME3 playthrough. I didn't get anything with Verner..and I'm pretty sure the import file should have him as alive. Perhaps I just missed the medi gel station sabotage mission the first time. 

ALSO..
When Miranda tells Shep to pick up the thermal clip at the beginning of ME2, how was Shep not confused by that? 
"Clip? Like those ancient ammunition clips? We haven't used those in 30 years"


----------



## Judge_Dredd

Ultraman! (SNES) Worst game I've ever played


----------



## Judge_Dredd

Bought Borderlands 2. Nice game so far.


----------



## Nosedevil

Half-Life 2: Episode Two. It's the only game in the series that has had some stuttering on my PC.


----------



## Kaickul

Dragon Nest
TERA Online


----------



## Osorio

Just finished Okami. Absolutely HATED it. Can't understand why people liked this game...

About to start Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Looking forward to some mindless shooting fun. I'm in desperate need of it. Maybe I'll continue the rampage with Saints Row 3 when it becomes available with PS+ later this month.


----------



## texshred777

Currently splitting my time between yet another ME3 playthrough, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, and Halo 4.


----------



## Curt

Dishonored 
Amazing game so far.


----------



## Nosedevil

Alan Wake


----------



## Compton

I started multi on bops2. I usually end up getting into these games so much that I put off buying them telling myself I wont play them, than like 4-6 months later i do. So far, its my least favorite of all the cod games by far. But, it's a good time filler.

I want to play through dishonored, but i have it for xbox right now and think i would enjoy it more for pc. I haven't decided if its worth it.

I also was thinking of getting back into Skyrim, but thats pretty much always something I consider when I get bored and wanna game.


----------



## Jlang

Started up Gears 3, never actually played it, but was a huge fan of the the first 2 offerings. Also still playing Uncharted 3.


And just for the record Play Dishonored on PC. Its kind of like comparing Dragon age from pc to platform.


----------



## Don Vito

Yakuza(PS2)


----------



## texshred777

Finished up the Force Unleashed and Double Agent. I'm a bit Mass Effected out for now, so it's Dragon Age: Origins again. I got my ass utterly handed to me the first couple encounters, it's been awhile.


----------



## texshred777

MFB said:


> You never really run out though so it's not a huge deal, but makes me wonder "Why add them if you don't run out?"


 
My main issue with the "reload" mechanic vs waiting for cooldown is that the only difference between a "thermal clip" and "ammo clip" is fluff, pure and simple. I just liked that in ME1 it was something different and more futuristic.

Post 1000.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Started to shallowly flirt with this game in between Shadow Hearts: From The New World, though not all too much. Plus I finally bought Ni No Kuni and Dark Souls (no idea why I took so long to buy that one), but those are on hold until Shadow Hearts is done. 



venneer said:


> Just finished Okami. Absolutely HATED it. Can't understand why people liked this game...


 
Wow really?  Okami was AWESOME. What did you hate about it? And if you hated it, what made you go so far as to finish it?


----------



## Mordacain

Almost finished with the "The Last of Us." It is just as amazing as all the reviews say it is.

I almost have to force myself to start playing it again once I've taken a break though because it is supremely emotionally and mentally taxing.

It is not a game one plays for "fun."


----------



## Fiction

I was playing Torchlight II Last night, cool game, but was pretty boring to me. Far too easy, My inventory was always full, controls are odd IMO. For the fact that you fight anywhere from 1-20 monsters in one time it should be harder for regular difficulty, I don't think I used a health potion in the hour I was playing


----------



## Osorio

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Wow really?  Okami was AWESOME. What did you hate about it? And if you hated it, what made you go so far as to finish it?



Trophies. I started the game with a mindset of getting the platinum for it, as I do for most games I play (or at least try to) and did most of the grunt work for it before my patience had completely run out.

In as few words as I can: I hated Okami because it constantly insulted my intelligence in ways I didn't felt possible up to that time. I'm used to slow exposition of J-RPGs, but Okami is in a league all of its own... I hated how Issun had to interject on every single conversation with "Hey, Ammy. Did you listen!?" and the proceed to repeat the exact same text I had just read, at times word for word. And making sure to mark the important bits with jarring red font. After repeating the same sentence about 4 times, the game just abruptly "quits" the conversation and I have to talk to whoever person more 2 times until the quest is ACTUALLY given to me. And one of those times would generally start with "would you listen to my troubles?" at which point I would reply (in my mind) "what the .... was I doing up until now!? Having TEA!?". After a while... I just couldn't take it anymore.
After the battle with Ninetails, this became the FIRST game I have ever played in which I made a conscious effort to ignore it while I was playing. Whenever a cutscene would start I would immediately sigh and turn the TV back to watching TV, or go on the computer to look something up on the internet... It's one thing if the story was GOOD, but to me, up to that point, it was just average. I did pretty much the whole Kamui area completely blind. 

Just couldn't be bothered to keep paying attention to the game, since the game was so set on believing I couldn't be bothered to pay attention to it. The irony.

Also, the game is piss easy. No challenge at all, at any moment of it... Even though the gameplay is otherwise solid, I don't remember ever being hit more then 3 times in ANY battle during the whole game. I don't believe games need to be difficult to be entertaining, but SOME challenge that is not simply to ENDURE to exposition would have been nice. The race against Kai was the hardest part of the game for me. It took me a glorious 30 minutes to complete...

/rant

I'll say this though: I came out on the other side of this with a much larger appreciation for my own time and patience. I've tried to get (and either got or failed) hard, or time consuming trophies before. I'll give FF13 as an example, 160 hours on that one. Some of it was grind, but I had honest, good fun, throughout most of the game, even if it wasn't as good as the ones before it, it was still a good game. And upon getting my Platinum on it, I felt rewarded. It was a good feeling of those 60+ hours of sheer grind paying off. It was in a sense, the same thing as defeating (whatever color) Weapon. It was a good feeling. Meanwhile, I don't have a single good memory about the entire time I spent with Okami.

I am still trying to "decode" this experience. In one way, Okami made me sort of give up on playing HD remaster of games I have never played before. It definitely seems like Nostalgia is a huge part of the deal. I was recently given Nocturne as a birthday present, after years of looking for it. When I actually got to play it, surprise, I didn't really enjoy it that much. The design is just DIFFERENT. Like with Persona 1 and 2: I love P3 to death, but could never get into the previous iterations. Maybe I lost the "window" in which these games made sense.


----------



## Curt

Don Vito said:


> Yakuza(PS2)


 I ....ing love that game! Seriously wish the sequels didn't suck...

Thanks for reminding me of that one. 

I am playing Dead Island: Riptide, which is decent thus far.


----------



## DrZoidberg

Just finished the Last of Us last night. It deserves all the hype it has been getting. I've heard some folks had issues with the ending, which I thought was great. They have no plans to Mass-Effect the ending, which is good.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

venneer said:


> Okami rant



Fair enough. Some well argued points. 

I'm gonna compare my Okami experience with Ocarina of Time due to the similar gameplay:

Issun was Navi all over again. It's annoying, very very annoying. Yes I agree with that. Arguably even more so with the "unique" speech this game has. But I don't remember any of the Hey! Listen! stuff annoying me that much in Ocarina, so it didn't really bother me all too much here. In fact it's probably because of that "unique" mrmrmrmring that made me breeze through the dialogue going on my TL;DR autopilot mode. 

Agreed that the game was too easy as well. I'm gonna compare the difficulty to Ocarina here as well because that game was also too easy and why I preferred Majora's Mask due to a more challenging difficulty. And the race against Kai was the hardest part of the game, period. Everything else, including the final boss was a walk in the park. 

Having said, I enjoyed the game's positive merits. Plot-wise, anybody exposed to tons of Japanese gaming will know that this your typical trope driven stuff (the whole restoration shtick was done during the Soul Trilogy, go figure that the PS2 Prince Of Persia just downright ripped that off), but it is uniquely Japanese, a ballsy thing for Capcom to release outside Japan. And I've been getting off on that for donkey years.  Gameplay is your typical Zelda affair done decently well but adding all the calligraphy stuff is definitely a nice touch, which is why I regret playing this on the PS2 instead of the Wii, where it really shines. 

Funny how I often ignore Trophies and their novelties in games, yet I completed this game 100%... again yeah, too easy. 




* _Also for the record: Anyone reading this and tries to counter-argue my statement to OoT being too easy with a Water Temple related retort: Please. Don't bother wasting your time. Water Temple is *NOT THAT DAMN HARD! * I don't even need to prove it because it's been done. If it's still too hard, you suck, get better._


----------



## Curt

I never found the water temple to be overly difficult, and even if it were... the rest of the game is just too easy to raise a stink about.


----------



## halomojo

I just started Crysis 2. I picked up all 3 on a sale last month for PC. Enjoyed the first one. Seems like the second one fixes a lot of control issues. I love the sci fi setting of the game, but the story/characters are pretty lackluster. Hopefully things pick up.


----------



## Osorio

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm gonna compare my Okami experience with Ocarina of Time due to the similar gameplay: Issun was Navi all over again.



I had many flashbacks of Ocarina of Time playing through Okami, and I do think it is pretty close in many regards (like you pointed out), just that Ocarina of Time is superior in every possible way. But I do understand this MAY be just MY nostalgia talking. Since Okami holds absolutely NO nostalgia factor for me, and Ocarina holds A TON, there is much potential for me to be extremely biased about it. 

Having said that, I truly believe that Navi was not this abrasive. Maybe it is just because I already know the game inside out and remember pretty much every time she is about to open her mouth, but last time I played Ocarina, I was really not that bothered by it. I also think that Ocarina of Time is a much more varied game than Okami. Better "puzzles" too.



Bloody_Inferno said:


> Plot-wise, anybody exposed to tons of Japanese gaming will know that this your typical trope driven stuff (...), but it is uniquely Japanese, a ballsy thing for Capcom to release outside Japan.



I dig my japanese stuff too. Have been trying to learn the language on and off for years now; I love their culture and I think they have interesting ways of approaching a few subjects. But I have to saying I appear to be growing tired of their games, or they have become bat shit crazy bad at DOING their own games. For example: I was throughly enjoying my play through the story of Final Fantasy 13, sure, there are some storytelling mishaps that are borderline sinful (treating the player like s/he knows what he is talking about when s/he has no way to. I'm so freaking tire of this... Half sentences are not good storytelling), but the game was good. I was entertained and engage. Then I go to the last boss battle and have to sit through the oh-so-predictable "the power of friendship" speech.
I don't mind it every now and again, but the story was interesting enough to not have to fall on that as motivation. Or at least put it in some better, less worn out, words... And I can't seem to stand the less high-production value stuff like NIS. Last game by them I played was Cross Edge and this is probably my number 1 game I bought and ABSOLUTELY regret. Right there with Eternal Sonata.

If you have some games up your sleeve that you think I should try, I'm all for it. The funny thing is that I have been having this JRPG itch that I just don't know how to scratch. I just bought Dynasty Warriors 7 last week (ye to arrive, also not really Japanese or RPG, but kind of getting there) and am looking up on getting Start Ocean 4 and Yakuza 4... Hope those are better.


----------



## Mexi

Last of Us, as should everyone else who has not played (beaten) it already.

probably one of the best games to come out in years (next to Bioshock Infinite)


----------



## Don Vito

Curt said:


> I ....ing love that game! Seriously wish the sequels didn't suck...
> 
> Thanks for reminding me of that one.
> 
> I am playing Dead Island: Riptide, which is decent thus far.


I never played Yakuza 2, but 3 and 4 got WAAAAAAAAAAYYY too gimmicky at times. Like come on, I just wanna beat some people up.

I want to play Riptide becuae I loved the hell out of the first Dead Island.

Dead Island proves that you don't exactly need a polished graphics or a good story to have fun .

Lest of Us is on my hit list since I've got a PS3.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

venneer said:


> If you have some games up your sleeve that you think I should try, I'm all for it. The funny thing is that I have been having this JRPG itch that I just don't know how to scratch. I just bought Dynasty Warriors 7 last week (ye to arrive, also not really Japanese or RPG, but kind of getting there) and am looking up on getting Start Ocean 4 and Yakuza 4... Hope those are better.


 
Assuming you haven't played these yet...

For recent games, Xenoblade Chronicles is the J-RPG to go to (Wii exclusive though). Just when the genre was well on it's way south, this game comes along and brings it back to the right direction. It still has it's flaws and J-cliches but it's a fantastic game. For slightly older games, if you can hunt down the Shadow Hearts series, they're quirky as hell but definitely refreshing. 

I've heard rave reviews on Dark Souls and Ni No Kuni but can't personally recommend them yet (got them sitting at home but haven't started them).


That reminds me... I need to get back to playing Star Ocean 4... another game I've abandoned...


----------



## Mordacain

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Assuming you haven't played these yet...
> 
> For recent games, Xenoblade Chronicles is the J-RPG to go to (Wii exclusive though). Just when the genre was well on it's way south, this game comes along and brings it back to the right direction. It still has it's flaws and J-cliches but it's a fantastic game. For slightly older games, if you can hunt down the Shadow Hearts series, they're quirky as hell but definitely refreshing.
> 
> I've heard rave reviews on Dark Souls and Ni No Kuni but can't personally recommend them yet (got them sitting at home but haven't started them).



I missed out on Xenoblade Chronicles while it was still for sale stateside. Still need to pick up Ni No Kuni (might as well continue the PS3 lovefest I've been having lately).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Also, venneer, considering you enjoyed FFXIII, the sequel XIII-2 is an obvious choice. And it's actually quite fun as it addresses a lot of the problems of the original.



Mordacain said:


> I missed out on Xenoblade Chronicles while it was still for sale stateside. Still need to pick up Ni No Kuni (might as well continue the PS3 lovefest I've been having lately).


 
Don't give up on hunting this down. It's worth it.


----------



## Osorio

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Assuming you haven't played these yet...



I don't have a Wii, and I'm generally don't get more than one console, so there is no way I'm getting Xenoblade, which is a shame because I hear it really is quite good. It killed me that Nintendo bought Monolith, that used to do the Xenosaga games. Those were some of my favorite games back on the PS2, but there is no chance I'm going to buy a Nintendo console again on the off-chance that they release something as good.

Ni No Kuni is a game I really wanted to get, but I'm waiting until I'm able to either go to Japan (I was going back in April but had to cancel) or decide to outright import it. I hear it is very Japanese-noob friendly and I wanted to give it a shot.

Haven't played DARK Souls, but I did get Demon's Souls and didn't really enjoy it (though I have the platinum for it as well). I'm sure I'm in the minority on this on, but I thought Demon's Souls too was too easy (at least after all the hype regarding its difficulty). It had a FANTASTIC story that was not spoon-fed, which I absolutely adored, but the found the actual gameplay pretty lackluster. I'm willing to give Dark Souls a try though, it has been on my "to buy" list for a while... Along with Dragon's Dogma, which also seems great.

Why have you abandoned Star Ocean 4? Is it bad? I've heard very mixed reviews about it. Still, it looks like a more classic, albeit modern-designed JRPG that could be just the thing for my itch. Hope I'm not mistaken...

And yes, I have played (and Platinum-ed) FFXIII-2. I really enjoyed it! And am probably the only person I know that is really looking forward to Lightning Returns... It's a shame that A LOT seems to be going wrong with that game. I find it a shame that they decided to pimp out Lightning, of all things. But I hope the gameplay will be decent. I have little hope for the story though. Also really hope they will easy up on the DLC crap.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

venneer said:


> I don't have a Wii, and I'm generally don't get more than one console, so there is no way I'm getting Xenoblade, which is a shame because I hear it really is quite good. It killed me that Nintendo bought Monolith, that used to do the Xenosaga games. Those were some of my favorite games back on the PS2, but there is no chance I'm going to buy a Nintendo console again on the off-chance that they release something as good.
> 
> Ni No Kuni is a game I really wanted to get, but I'm waiting until I'm able to either go to Japan (I was going back in April but had to cancel) or decide to outright import it. I hear it is very Japanese-noob friendly and I wanted to give it a shot.
> 
> Haven't played DARK Souls, but I did get Demon's Souls and didn't really enjoy it (though I have the platinum for it as well). I'm sure I'm in the minority on this on, but I thought Demon's Souls too was too easy (at least after all the hype regarding its difficulty). It had a FANTASTIC story that was not spoon-fed, which I absolutely adored, but the found the actual gameplay pretty lackluster. I'm willing to give Dark Souls a try though, it has been on my "to buy" list for a while... Along with Dragon's Dogma, which also seems great.
> 
> Why have you abandoned Star Ocean 4? Is it bad? I've heard very mixed reviews about it. Still, it looks like a more classic, albeit modern-designed JRPG that could be just the thing for my itch. Hope I'm not mistaken...
> 
> And yes, I have played (and Platinum-ed) FFXIII-2. I really enjoyed it! And am probably the only person I know that is really looking forward to Lightning Returns... It's a shame that A LOT seems to be going wrong with that game. I find it a shame that they decided to pimp out Lightning, of all things. But I hope the gameplay will be decent. I have little hope for the story though. Also really hope they will easy up on the DLC crap.



Yeah it sucks that Monolith Soft are only releasing Nintendo console exclusive games. I borrowed my brother in law's Wii just to play Xenoblade. It was well worth it.  At least there's a few nice RPGs on the Wii like Pandora's Tower (got it but haven't played yet) and Last Story (still need to get), so its all good. 

Dark Souls is supposed to be a good challenge, akin to Ninja Gaiden difficult. So that should be fun. But I'm going to discipline myself and not play them until I finish Shadow Hearts: From the New World (another abandoned gem from 2005)...

I abandoned Star Ocean 4 because I allowed myself to play too many games at once. I was going through a ton of fighting games and FFXIII just came out, and add to my then very busy schedule with multiple bands recording and touring, it fell by the wayside and I ended up prioritising XIII instead.  After Xenoblade, I made sure to only concentrate on 1 RPG at a time from now on, with a few short games in between. 

And I'm looking forward to Lightning Returns as well. I have to. JRPGs have been in my blood since the early 90s.


----------



## Joseph Kimbrell

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Yeah it sucks that Monolith Soft are only releasing Nintendo console exclusive games. I borrowed my brother in law's Wii just to play Xenoblade. It was well worth it.  At least there's a few nice RPGs on the Wii like Pandora's Tower (got it but haven't played yet) and Last Story (still need to get), so its all good.
> 
> Dark Souls is supposed to be a good challenge, akin to Ninja Gaiden difficult. So that should be fun. But I'm going to discipline myself and not play them until I finish Shadow Hearts: From the New World (another abandoned gem from 2005)...
> 
> I abandoned Star Ocean 4 because I allowed myself to play too many games at once. I was going through a ton of fighting games and FFXIII just came out, and add to my then very busy schedule with multiple bands recording and touring, it fell by the wayside and I ended up prioritising XIII instead.  After Xenoblade, I made sure to only concentrate on 1 RPG at a time from now on, with a few short games in between.
> 
> And I'm looking forward to Lightning Returns as well. I have to. JRPGs have been in my blood since the early 90s.



How is Shadow Hearts: From The New World? I loved the first two (though I liked the darkness of the first one better) Ive always meant to play that but Ive never gotten around to it


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Battlefield 3

Started playing again for the first time in a few months and was still surprisingly good at it (by my standards, at least) having tons of fun so far. Might have to pick up some DLC for it. Anyone have any suggestions as to which one to get?


----------



## Captain Butterscotch

Mordacain said:


> Still need to pick up Ni No Kuni (might as well continue the PS3 lovefest I've been having lately).



Yes, pick this game up. I'm playing it right now and it's probably the most fun I've had in a while.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Joseph Kimbrell said:


> How is Shadow Hearts: From The New World? I loved the first two (though I liked the darkness of the first one better) Ive always meant to play that but Ive never gotten around to it


 
It's certainly rather different than the first 2 games. A lot more light-hearted, perhaps _too_ light-hearted that it has put off a lot of fans of the first 2. That and it's really more of a spin-off/side story than anything else. 

Still, don't let any of that put you off, it's still a Shadow Hearts game through and through. The battle systems has some nice improvements and added depth (the stock guage, combos/double attacks etc) and the story has some nice surprises, especially if you're very familiar with the first 2.


----------



## Mordacain

Playing Heavy Rain... Trying to hit all the major system exclusives for PS3.

Sadly, I'm finding that I have very little desire to play any game after finishing "The Last of Us." It seems to be similar to what my wife went through when we started watching Doctor Who...it's ruined all other TV for her since nothing is going to be quite as good.


----------



## texshred777

Dark Souls is actually pretty difficult. It's not however the ninja gaiden TYPE of difficulty. It's not twitch and button marshy in the least. Quite the opposite.


----------



## Choop

Rocking Final Fantasy 3 on the DS lately...had it forever but haven't beaten it yet so that's the point of it all. Not the most developed story ever, but the job system is pretty fun to mess around with.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Pokemon Heartgold. My first time properly playing a Pokemon game in like... 5 - 7 years.


----------



## Choop

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Pokemon Heartgold. My first time properly playing a Pokemon game in like... 5 - 7 years.



Great choice!  It was my first one in a long time too, and is maybe my favorite one. Everything just felt really polished, and it is a visit back in time but manages to keep the experience fresh too. Plus having Gen 4 pokemon available (and even some gen 3) made for some cool team varieties. One thing that HG/SS had that I really missed when playing White was having the menu always open on the touch screen. W/B just had the C gear thing..I'm not sure why it wasn't just optional to have that thing pulled up.


----------



## Osorio

Saints Row (3): The Third.

Just a great game. There is something about the overall silliness that I deeply appreciate. I have some issues with how videogames have all become so goddamn serious in the past years; my only relief since I left Nintendo has been the Ratchet & Clank series, but this is great. There are so many things I enjoy about the game.

REALLY wish it could have a better soundtrack though.



texshred777 said:


> Dark Souls is actually pretty difficult. It's not however the ninja gaiden TYPE of difficulty. It's not twitch and button marshy in the least. Quite the opposite.



I'm about to pass judgment on a game that I haven't played, based on it's predecessor. Just a heads up if you want to skip the next paragraph or two.
Demon's Souls was actually pretty easy if you were not playing it like Call of Duty. You are right, it is not a game of combos and maneuvers, is a game about being "delicate" and patient. Personally, I'm pretty patient, so the simple fact that I didn't just try to mindless RUSH the game and didn't had my fingers glued to the "sprint" button made it a lot easier for me than it did for most people. I hardly ever died playing it. I think about 10 times, tops.
I think it is great that the game exists, because apparently A LOT of people don't "know" how to play this game, probably because they did not experience older, harder, much much much more punishing games. But if you DO know how to play it, it's sort of not the game for you, because it can get kinda boring. At least it did for me.

Having said all that, I'm still interested in playing Dark Souls and see how it measures up.


----------



## Radau

Beat The Last of Us yesterday, brilliant game!


----------



## Mexi

Mordacain said:


> Playing Heavy Rain... Trying to hit all the major system exclusives for PS3.
> 
> Sadly, I'm finding that I have very little desire to play any game after finishing "The Last of Us." It seems to be similar to what my wife went through when we started watching Doctor Who...it's ruined all other TV for her since nothing is going to be quite as good.



Haha, I used to say that after The Wire and Six Feet Under ended, and now we have shows like Breaking Bad. never give up hope for good tv!

edit: though you really should finish Heavy Rain, I still haven't beaten the Last of Us, but Heavy Rain was probably the grittiest game out there up until then. 

Beyond: Two Souls looks like one of the last great games that are coming out for the current gen. I can't wait to see Quantic Dream's next-gen titles


----------



## Mordacain

Mexi said:


> Haha, I used to say that after The Wire and Six Feet Under ended, and now we have shows like Breaking Bad. never give up hope for good tv!
> 
> edit: though you really should finish Heavy Rain, I still haven't beaten the Last of Us, but Heavy Rain was probably the grittiest game out there up until then.
> 
> Beyond: Two Souls looks like one of the last great games that are coming out for the current gen. I can't wait to see Quantic Dream's next-gen titles



I'll finish it for sure, but it's a struggle. I have a hard time playing games where I am not in direct control (using buttons for scripted actions in lieu of direct controls is not really my bag). I'm really hoping that Beyond plays more like the 3rd person shooter it looks like it could be.

My main problem with Heavy Rain aside from the controls / game structure is the voice acting and scripting....it's just sooooooooo obviously bad after the amazing voice acting we've come to expect in the modern game.

I do like the concept though, but the presentation...needs work.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

I broke down and bought the Krieg DLC for Borderlands 2 to give me another excuse to play it in anticipation of final DLC coming out this week.

Other than that, I had somehow found motivation to play even _more_ Skyrim over the last couple weeks. Broke the 540 hour barrier, haha.


----------



## Osorio

Going for the plat on Dragon Age 2, second playthrough. So much missable stuff on this one... Buggy stuff too.. At least I really enjoy the game. Definitely don't understand all the hate it got. Sure, it is VERy different than DA:O, but it is great in its own rights. I personally really enjoyed the story.


----------



## tacotiklah

Plants VS Zombies! 
Even for a relatively "basic" game, it is still very addictive.


----------



## Black43

Jetpack Joyride 
I don't care what you think, it's awesome


----------



## H-Chan

Sly 2: Band of Thieves from The Sly Collection

Just finished Thievus Racoonnus, now 2 is on it's way.


----------



## Curt

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Pokemon Heartgold. My first time properly playing a Pokemon game in like... 5 - 7 years.


 I just finished that one. 

Have the pokédex filled, and finished everything. Took so long. 

I am currently playing through the entire Assassin's Creed series to get all the achievements, and it is a pain in the ass.


----------



## habicore_5150

Still doing a Let's Play on this, kinda taking a break on it for the next few days


----------



## DrZoidberg

Just started playing League of Legends for the first time with my roommate. Fun game so far, it seems like there's a decent amount of depth and strategy.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Injustice

Getting my ass kicked in multiplayer


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Took a break from Shadow Hearts: From The New World (almost finished that one) to finally start this:






I gotta start Dark Souls some time soon too...


----------



## Mexi

finished up the Last of Us, and starting up Metro 2033


----------



## Choop

Beat Mega Man 2 last night. I have NO idea why I'd never beaten it before, it is a really fun game even today and isn't so terribly hard. Definitely not as hard as Mega Man 9. Ughhh.


----------



## ferret

Baldur's Gate Enhance Edition, following the $5 steam sale.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Half-Life.


----------



## SnowfaLL

Just bought a 3DS and found Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward and Professor Layton Miracle Mask for $60 for both.. Pumped! 

I'll probably end up selling all 3 after I finish them though.. only other 3ds games I wanna play is the Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright, and the last Ace Attorney game. By that time, a 3DS will probably be like $50 used.


----------



## InfinityCollision

NickCormier said:


> Just bought a 3DS and found Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward and Professor Layton Miracle Mask for $60 for both.. Pumped!
> 
> I'll probably end up selling all 3 after I finish them though.. only other 3ds games I wanna play is the Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright, and the last Ace Attorney game. By that time, a 3DS will probably be like $50 used.



If you haven't played 999 already I highly recommend playing it prior to Virtue's Last Reward. It's not necessary, but there are some things in VLR that will make more sense if you do. It's also a great game in its own right.

Either way, prepare for a total mindf_u_ck 

I'm currently playing SSB: Melee and SMT: Devil Survivor 2


----------



## SnowfaLL

I did play 999.. I didnt play every ending though, but I read up online on it after I "beat" it.. so hopefully thats enough. Sadly, I dont like playing single player games over again. Oh well.


----------



## Don Vito

Mortal Kombat 9


----------



## Jakke

Borderlands 2, Pooluke and CooleyJr got me onto the dark side...


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

Playing through Dark Souls veeerrrrry slowly with my best friend, shit is HARD.

Also doing _another_ Mass Effect trllogy playthrough (I think I have a problem...) and considering going through FC3: Blood Dragon again for the hell of it.


----------



## Chocopuppet

Dark Souls is my favorite game! I've beat it twice but my brother just got the DLC so I gots to man-up and beat Manus. I really want to play The Last of Us as well.


----------



## Osorio

Took the dive on Magic 2014. Haven't played Magic in a HUGE while. Having lots of fun so far.


----------



## ThePhilosopher

I'm giving Civ5 a go.


----------



## texshred777

Taking a break from the current ME trilogy playthrough, and finally playing Batman:AA. I've had this forever and never played it, but don't know why. Fantastic game.


----------



## straymond

Mega man 1 through 6.


----------



## Vinchester

Have been playing FTL :Faster Than Light. It's frikking awesome!

While it's very addictive (I spent 23 hours playing it in 3 days) It's possible to play a session in 30 minutes or less than an hour. 

It's amazing how two guys can make such a great game in 6 months or so and ,if I recall correctly, within $10,000 budget.

Totally recommend it. Very entertaining.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Arkham Asylum

I ....ing love this game. The atmosphere of it is just so good. I feel like they really put a lot of detail into everything. Also, as this is my first playthrough after reading A Serious House On Serious Earth, there are a few things I picked up on this time around that were really cool.


----------



## M3CHK1LLA

tetris...

going for the world record again.


----------



## Kaickul

Pokerstars on Facebook.


----------



## Shaynos

venneer said:


> Took the dive on Magic 2014. Haven't played Magic in a HUGE while. Having lots of fun so far.



Yeah, I got it as well. Fun times. 

My gf asked me to explain it, I got about a minute into my explanation before she couldn't control her laughter at my closet nerdiness. Whatever, I'm cool.

Also recently clocked The Last of Us - really enjoyed it.

Playing Phoenix Wright - Trials and Tribulations on DS as well. Love that series.


----------



## Osorio

Shaynos said:


> My gf asked me to explain it, I got about a minute into my explanation before she couldn't control her laughter at my closet nerdiness.



Been there. I tried to get my fiancee to play some of Magic 2013 last year. Pretty much same result. Oh well...


----------



## Radau

Well I just beat Fallout 3 again
Man I love that game!


----------



## r134

Fallout new vegas. 
on my PC im into 220 hours..

Modding is were all the fun is


----------



## Choop

Been replaying Mega Man X, and have been heavily considering maybe doing a let's play with some of these games I've been on a kick with lately. Maybe I'll just do a practice LP and see how good it is before actually releasing it into the wild blue internet-yonder. Anyways, been playing Mega Man X and it's still killer!


----------



## Don Vito

Megaman X and Touhou 6


----------



## Marv Attaxx

The Last Of Us


----------



## ferret

Cube World.

but then, even though I thought I had broken free.... more Baldur's Gate.


----------



## Ibz777

I'm alomst done with the Skyrim and the DLCs.
Love This Game!


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

^I reeaaaally want to go back to Skyrim, but I've done everything ingame and on Dawnguard/Dragonborn barring a couple of Daedric quests and getting married (couldn't decide who)-and lack the time, effort or inclination to invest in a new character.


----------



## habicore_5150

Finished up my Let's Play of Lufia & The Fortress of Doom

Now I'm trying to decide what game I wanna LP next


----------



## mulgreaux

Currently addicted to Badland on iOS. Snagged it for free last week, but I think it's gone back up in price now. Excellent controls and graphics. Some people compare it to Limbo, but it doesn't really have much in common with that game, except that they both have a 2D silhouette vibe and they're both awesome.


----------



## MicrobeSS

Snagged Xcom on the steam sale. It's take. Quite a lot of my time up


----------



## Vinchester

Just finished Bioshock Infinite, which I bought from Steam Summer Sales for 17 quid.

Dat. Plot.

Recommends this to everyone. Great art and great plot. Floating. City. 

Already bought the season pass


----------



## MFB

Recently started playing Dead Space 2, and I like the changes made from the first. Still got that vibe to it but some minor changes overall.


----------



## DSilence

Recently purchased Far Cry 3 & Dishonored, Just started Far Cry 3 & heaps impressed with it. Gameplay, graphics & the rest. Looking forward to Dishonored too.


----------



## Osorio

After conquering Dragon Age 2 (felt like AEONS passing me by... Had a horrible run), and a deep foray into SSX (which is possibly one of the funnest games I have played on the PS3), I'm finally going through Castlevania: Lords of Shadow... Mixed reactions so far, but I've only just started it.


----------



## ferret

Rogue Legacy


----------



## tacotiklah

CounterStrike Global Offensive. This game is already taking up several hours of my life, and it looks like that's just the tip of the iceberg compared to how many hours I'll end up putting into this game.


----------



## Rojne

After seeing _The Lone Ranger_ a few weeks ago I got the urge of playing through _Red Dead Redemption_ again.. for the 8th time haha!
Best game ever IMHO!

Beside that Im playing: 
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Heavenly Sword
Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition

When Im done with RDR, Batman and HS I might pick up Skyrim again..


----------



## kamello

Finished the Last of Us recently (BEZT GAMEH EVAH!, never had been so immersed in a videogame) and going up for Fallout New Vegas again cause I feel that I rushed a bit the first time I played a few years ago.
It's weird, I like the game, but some times I think it can get boring as .... (walking through the Mojave dessert for a few hours just can get a little tiring to me ), yet at the same time I can't stop playing 

ohh, and also the old Need For Speed most wanted, I can't believe that after so many games later EA still can't top that one in fun factor


----------



## Trance7s

Dante's Inferno... brutal.


----------



## Xaios

I've been playing Fallout 3. I liked it a lot at first, but I'm finding the relative humourlessness (compared to Fallout 1 and 2) and the constant, unrelenting grey palette and grimy, dirty look that pervades _everything_ to be off-putting. On top of that, the design of the Capital Waste seems disjointed, Downtown DC is just a pain in the ass to get around, and I hate*hateHATE* subway-crawling.

I bought both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas off the recent Steam sale, so last night I downloaded New Vegas as well. I know that the general consensus is that FO3 is a better game, but so far I'm actually enjoying everything about New Vegas more. Granted, I'm not very far in, but the color palette is much more palatable than FO3, and the humour is a lot more entertaining. It just feels truer to the original games than FO3.


----------



## Don Vito

Trance7s said:


> Dante's Inferno... brutal.


That Medusa fight is some sick shit. I had to turn off the game.


----------



## kamello

+1 on Xaios, I forgot how lifeless Fallout 3 felt, New Vegas still has the Strip and the NCR camps (......well.........a ....ing nuke hit DC ) although I remember the combat along the brotherhood of steel in Fallout 3 to be so much fun, shame it only happens on the later quests

oh, and Xaios, try to find Oasis in fallout 3, only place with some green in the game


----------



## Don Vito

Xaios said:


> I know that the general consensus is that FO3 is a better game


Nope! Most hardcore Fallout fans prefer New Vegas, this one included.


----------



## mikernaut

Playtesting Batman Arkham Origins on the WII U over and over and over......

At home playing Metro lastlight, TombRaider and Borderlands 2 Dlc's


----------



## Labrie

ghstofperdition said:


> CounterStrike Global Offensive. This game is already taking up several hours of my life, and it looks like that's just the tip of the iceberg compared to how many hours I'll end up putting into this game.



I bought GO on sale but honestly I just can't get into it. It's so slow and sluggish compared to Source imo. I think I just haven't adjusted to it yet, maybe it'll get better.


----------



## Bekanor

So I'm a giant pussy. It's just about midnight here, I got home from dinner and figured I'd check out Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I turned off all the lights and put on my headphones.

Ten minutes later I went "nope nope nope" after being faced with having to walk down a dark hallway with no lantern oil (I used it all up being a pussy in the hallways only to find a locked door). 

I thought I was more resilient than this but my own imagination really got to me and I'd really like to sleep tonight so maybe tomorrow will be a bright sunny day and I can summon a bit more testicular fortitude.


----------



## Xaios

So yeah, Fallout: New Vegas kicks Fallout 3's ass, hands down. Having WAY more fun with this game. The only thing that I found felt like a chore was constantly going up and down and up and down in the rocket facility with the ghouls/nightkin.


----------



## ferret

I played way more FO3 than FONV. I need to go back to NV at some point, but I didn't like the weapons as much, or the interface changes. But then, I had dozens and dozens of hours into FO3 already so changes were more painful.


----------



## kamello

Xaios said:


> So yeah, Fallout: New Vegas kicks Fallout 3's ass, hands down. Having WAY more fun with this game. The only thing that I found felt like a chore was constantly going up and down and up and down in the rocket facility with the ghouls/nightkin.



Im just going to skip that quest until Im level 40 and I can Gauss the shit out of everyone in there 

I just spoke to Yesman and I gained acces to a few quests (killing Mr House, Ally with the other factions, etc) wich was the best way to go around this? I remember that on my klast playthrough I just killed Mr House cause I wanted to see him in the chamber , oh and Allied with the Brotherhood of Steel, the NCR, Boomers and Kahns


----------



## TIMEwaveXERO

Just picked up Crysis 3


----------



## Vhyle

I just started playing Fallen Earth.

As much as I love MMOs, and anything post-apocalyptic, I'm really unsure how I haven't even heard of this game until now. The addiction is coming on strong...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So I finished Shadow Hearts From The New World (finally) and Castlevania Lords Of Shadow and diving into the next batch:












Both of those are far long overdue. 






This because I don't mind mindless wipe-my-face-with-control-pad gameplay to relax every now and then. 

EDIT: Hmmm, seriously thinking of playing this again, the last game made me kinda miss the old cast:


----------



## Fiction

Awesomenauts, bought it on the Steam sale, if anyone else wants to play PM me, My Steam profile is http://steamcommunity.com/id/fiction93 if you want to add me.


----------



## Mexi

just started playing Fallout New Vegas, pretty cool game. have never played a fallout game before, has a sort of post-apocalyptic skyrim thing going on.


----------



## Jakke

Mexi said:


> just started playing Fallout New Vegas, pretty cool game. have never played a fallout game before, has a sort of post-apocalyptic skyrim thing going on.



Or is it Skyrim that is a non-post-apocalyptic Fallout?

#mindblown


----------



## ferret

The original first two Fallouts are completely different game styles than FO3 and FO:NV. FO3 is a reimaging based on Elder Scrolls, and ran off the Oblivion game engine.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Beat Tomb Raider: Legend yesterday and started on Tomb Raider: Underworld. Considering playing the previous 6 just to get the entire story, assuming it is all one solid story.


----------



## Choop

Got amped up for the announcement of Ultra Street Fighter 4, so I've been getting back into playing some sf4. Currently still playing Blanka, but also working on Juri and a little Makoto. Fun!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> Got amped up for the announcement of Ultra Street Fighter 4, so I've been getting back into playing some sf4. Currently still playing Blanka, but also working on Juri and a little Makoto. Fun!



I really should be doing the same. My SF skills have been sorely neglected it's embarrassing. 

Plus my PS3 has been crashing lately so that sucks a lot.


----------



## Netherhound

Been playing Shin Megami Tensei IV for the last two weeks.

Hands down the best game for the 3DS for all the rpg people out there.

Fire Emblem awakening and Etrian Odyssey 4 are also fantastic titles which I recommend.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I really should be doing the same. My SF skills have been sorely neglected it's embarrassing.
> 
> Plus my PS3 has been crashing lately so that sucks a lot.



Same here. I was never really that good anyway...think the highest PP I ever had was around 2500, but I'm just absolute trash now!  Which character(s) do you play most?

Hope your ps3 doesn't kick the bucket.


----------



## ferret

Civ 5 got it's first run today. Just played it through on easy since I've somehow avoided Civ up till now and wanted to learn the interface.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> Same here. I was never really that good anyway...think the highest PP I ever had was around 2500, but I'm just absolute trash now!  Which character(s) do you play most?
> 
> Hope your ps3 doesn't kick the bucket.


 
I'm a poster-boy addict so I've been using Ryu in almost every game he's been in. I was competent enough to be at a semi-tournament level and did do a few tourneys in Melbourne, but definitely not Evo/Tougeki level, so all my peers have all surpassed me. 

The PS3 crashing seems to have started when I started playing Dynasty Warriors 8... incidentally enough the same time I made a recent Systems Update. Suspicious...


----------



## Osorio

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow rant below. Spoiler tag because, you know... You never know:


Spoiler



Goddamn, I really really REALLY disliked this game. WAAAY more than I thought I would at first... Meaning: Combat and slowness aside. The story is not even that interesting or well realized within the game (the poorly told spoilers I heard a few months back were MUCH more entertaining than the game turned out to be).
Before going in, I read that the game picks up about after chapter 3 and that is absolute and complete bullshit... The story kinda goes somewhere after the very end of chapter 8... Terrible, terrible game... Never going to play this ever again... URGH. Whatever.


 /rant

Now heading towards Need For Speed: Most Wanted for some mindless fun. YAY.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

venneer said:


> Castlevania rant


 
Finished the game last week as well. As a massive Castlevania fan... yeah it was pretty flat.  The voice acting was the only thing that left a lasting impression. It's like they've thrown all the mediocrity of modern day gaming into a blender and released it under a Castlevania name. The extra story DLC can bite me for all I care and ended up just youtubing the cutscense from this and Mirror of Fate just to amuse my story OCD cravings. I don't mind the reboot concept but the excecution was pretty cack as well. 

Kinda miss the Rondo/Symphony days.


----------



## Osorio

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's like they've thrown all the mediocrity of modern day gaming into a blender and released it with under a Castlevania name. (...) Kinda miss the Rondo/Symphony days.



Yeah. Pretty much this. I'm not the most die hard of Castlevania fans, but I do like the franchise and I think they approached it in a very... shoddy... way. Massive flashbacks of Tomb Raider being turned into Female Uncharted, in a way. Symphony was great, and I also liked the previous titles, like Simon's Quest. I lost touch with the franchise when they started releasing stuff primarily on handhelds, so I was very excited about this game. It could have been grand.

The story was pretty great IN THEORY, but the actually interesting part was pretty much the only one they never showed. 
I'll youtube the DLC cutscenes as well, but aside that I'm absolutely through with this game... And killed is ALL of my internal hype for Lords of Shadow 2. Shame. I don't even feel like attempting the Plat (which, for me, is almost the hugest insult I can throw at a game, being that I am a massive trophy whore). I'm just glad it is over.


----------



## MFB

venneer said:


> Massive flashbacks of Tomb Raider being turned into Female Uncharted, in a way.



Uh, well, Uncharted was inspired by Tomb Raider, and then the new Tomb Raider just happened to be made by the same team that did the - you guessed it - Uncharted series, so they took the mechanics that worked with the games that people liked made by - you guessed it - so the series kind of collapsed in on itself and that's why they play so similarly.


----------



## Osorio

MFB said:


> (...) and then the new Tomb Raider just happened to be made by the same team that did the - you guessed it - Uncharted series (...)



Never heard this before. 

At any rate, I'm comparing both situations because the two original franchises (Tomb Raider and Castlevania) had a lot of character and personality, and both reboots managed to strip them of their identities. The main thing that killed Tomb Raider for me was how pointless gruesome and murder-focused the game become, whereas other, previous, iterations were always more about exploration. I pretty much adore Tomb Raider Underworld mainly because pretty much every "boss battle" is a puzzle. It is all about the environment. The reboot felt nothing like any of the previous games.. I'm aware that that's sort of the POINT, but I just think it is a pretty shitty point to make; in the same way, playing Lords of Shadow NEVER felt like playing a Castlevania, and that is nothing short of a damn shame.

I digress. Need For Speed! Not really feeling it. It feels really slow and sluggish. I really liked the "handling" on Hot Pursuit and Burnout Paradise, so I had high hopes for this, but it feels nothing like them. Will keep at it and hope it gets better.

EDIT: I'm kinda pissed about the DLC in this game... About 6 times now I found cars, got all giggly, went up to then and pressed Triangle to hop in and do some racing, and was actually lead into the store to buy DLC packs that cost an arm and a leg. I almost purchased one before I realized what was going on the first time around. A tad absurd that the DLC cars just SIT around in a game that doesn't have them... If I was playing Multiplayer I would have sort of understood, because, hey, maybe one of the other players has it, but no... Single player.


----------



## Mendez

I'm pretty sure the new tomb raider wasn't made by naughty dog, but some of the mechanics from the uncharted should of been part of tomb raider anyway, hence why the reboot took em 

The castlevania reboot was a huge disappointment to me. I'm a huge fan of the all the gb, gba, and ds games. The new one felt like it was trying to compete with god of war and the story wasn't all that amazing to me.

I liked tomb raider, but as stand alone action game mostly. 

Well on topic: I'm playing chrono trigger (first time, never played the original), psychonauts, tried to play witcher but my computer is being retarded.


----------



## MFB

You're right, it was Square Enix apparently but I could've sworn at one point it was in talks for Naughty Dog to do since they've done a great service to the action-adventure genre


----------



## piggins411

I'm playing Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, and Crash Bandicoot 1 and 2. The first one is Crash ridiculously frustrating


----------



## Repner

I was contemplating getting Fallout: New Vagas as I enjoyed the third one, and just noticed today that both games are on Steam for £3.74. Yes please!


----------



## Mordacain

Just picked up Ni No Kuni yesterday and really digging it so far. Might actually turn the wifey onto this one as well.

Also ordered Metal Gear Legacy collection so will probably start making my way through that next week.


----------



## Repner

Mordacain said:


> Just picked up Ni No Kuni yesterday and really digging it so far. Might actually turn the wifey onto this one as well.
> 
> Also ordered Metal Gear Legacy collection so will probably start making my way through that next week.


Ni no Kuni is brilliant indeed. We don't get the MGS Legacy collection until next month, but that's something I need as well. Need to replay the series in preparation for the new one.


----------



## M3CHK1LLA




----------



## Don Vito

I bought it a few months ago, but I'm just now getting around to playing and finishing GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony.

Why did it have to end?


----------



## Repner

Repner said:


> I was contemplating getting Fallout: New Vagas as I enjoyed the third one, and just noticed today that both games are on Steam for £3.74. Yes please!


...and today they have Morrowind and Oblivion for around that price. I loved Morrowind when it came out, but that was the Xbox version. I can already see why this one is far superior on PC.


----------



## habicore_5150

*Cave Story*




​
After finishing this, this is definitely one of my favorite indie games that I've ever played [and yes, I am kicking myself for not playing it sooner]


----------



## Compton

I need to finish Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored, and Akrham City. I also picked up FF8 a while ago and haven't started it yet. 

I unfortunately started playing LoL with my old wow arena partners, not gonna lie, that game is stupid fun.


----------



## kamello

anybody saw my post here where I said that I thought Fallout New Vegas was a bit too boring?





....well, 22 hours In, lvl 22, and I think I've done just a tiiiiiiiiny percent of the actual main quest


----------



## Osorio

I'm finally going through Batman Arkham ASYLUM. Yes. Major backlog is major... I'm really trudging on this one, playing very small sections at a time, it will probably take me a while to finish it... With some luck, once I do, Tales of Xillia will be in my hands!


----------



## tacotiklah

I've taken a brief interlude from playing games just to run through the pokemon animated series, but once I knock that out, I'll try out the modded rom Pokemon Snakewood:






This looks seriously legit!


----------



## Kaickul

habicore_5150 said:


> *Cave Story*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ​
> After finishing this, this is definitely one of my favorite indie games that I've ever played [and yes, I am kicking myself for not playing it sooner]




I've had this game on my home pc for the longest time and I haven't really played it. I think I need to start playing it now.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

f uck tons of Arkham City

didn't really like the TDKR skin that much at first, but it's grown on me. 

oh, and f uck lost city extreme


----------



## Curt

M3CHK1LLA said:


>


 
 Dunno if I agree with that action.  I am employed and have no children and the PS4 will already take up a whole month of disposable income.


----------



## Jakke

Is it just me, or is the plot to New Vegas at least fairly similar to that of The Postman?


----------



## MFB

Since I finished Dead Space, and Dead Space 2, I'm in the market for a new single player game and it's a toss up between Dead Space 3 to finish off the trilogy (possibly since I don't know the ending ) or Dishonored.

Which one would you guys say is worth it? Minus the fact that they're rather different play-styles obviously.


----------



## texshred777

I'd go with Dishonored, but I'm not a huge fan of Dead Space.


----------



## Osorio

I'd go for Dishonored as well... I really REALLY liked Dead Space 1, but 2 was such a huge let down, I don't feel any interest at all in Dead Space 3...

Finally finished Batman Arkham Asylum. Fun game. The hard playthrough was a bit of a pain in the ass, but at least it took much much less than I thought it would. Now I have a few days to kill until my copy of Xillia arrives and I'll probably be doing some Dynasty Warriors 7 button mashing until them.


----------



## tacotiklah

^The real pain is trying to beat every one of the Riddler's challenges. That makes the game take days for me.


----------



## Osorio

Are you talking about the hidden stuff in the game, or the separate challenge mode with the predator and combat things?

I had played this game before on PC, and there it took me quite a while to find most of the stuff, but playing on the PS3 again, I remembered where to find most of it, and I have no shame in saying that I used a guide to find some of the remaining things (and I followed one to get all the teeth without having to backtrack later... (Since in my original playthrough I managed to miss 3. That pissed me off so much). But detective vision is REALLY broken and about 95% of stuff was fairly obvious.

The combat challenges I had never done and they were a SOLID pain in the ass... Took me a good 4 hours to do Shock And Awe (Extreme) alone. And I have no idea how I did it... I was consistently dying every single time, either by people beating the living crap out of me, or by the timer ending. I only actually FINISHED the challenge alive twice. One time was my about third try, with 42.000 points. And I thought "Man, this is going to be CAKE". 3h30 hours later I was still at it and not getting anywhere... Then I suddenly score 56.000 with 10 seconds to spare on the last round  Could never and will never do it again.


----------



## Mexi

been playing Electronic Super Joy early access on steam and having a blast. extremely unforgiving, twitchy platformer with a soundtrack that sounds like a german rave. great stuff for $5


----------



## Choop

I played Injustice: Gods Among Us yesterday, and all I gotta say is, "Holy balls, that game is cool." Characters I liked most were: Hawkgirl, Green Arrow, Nightwing, and Sinestro. I'd really like to get good with Hawkgirl if I ever got it because she seems like she has good combo potential, but apparently not many people play her because her trait isn't the best. :<


----------



## habicore_5150

Playing Eden Eternal right now. I will say this, its a pretty damn good MMO

Needed to get back into playing some MMOs since I'm still (im)patiently waiting for Phantasy Star Online 2 and Closers Online to come out.


----------



## Tommy

A buddy and I are gonna put down some hours into borderlands 2. Sounds like a pretty awesome night. 

I need a life.


----------



## tacotiklah

Couldn't wait any longer so I'm doing a play through on Pokemon Crystal. So far I've gotten all the way passed Ecruteak City.


----------



## isispelican

Anybody remember The White Chamber? Very small, almost flash-like game but amazing cyberpunk-horror vibes!


----------



## Jake

Just got Fallout New Vegas for $3 on ebay. Loved the shit out of Fallout 3 and my friend finally convinced me to get NV last night. Cant wait til it gets here.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Just started Hitman: Absolution last night (after ragequitting Borderlands 2's Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, haha), and so far it's everything I need it to be. Good ol' sneak-or-slaughter Hitman fun times. I've only done the intro/walthrough mission, but if the rest is more of the same, I won't be disappointed.

As a long time fan of the series, though, it was a bit disheartening


Spoiler



to see Diana killed in the very first mission of the game.


----------



## MFB

Snagged "Dishonored" last night for a grand total of $17 after price matching/employee discount

 yeah.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Grand Moff Tim said:


> Just started Hitman: Absolution last night




Hahahahahahaha.









Nailed it.


----------



## Sicarius

Finished Saints Row the Third last week, did all I could, the Professor Genkii achievements are hard as balls.

Been playing Resident Evil Revelations. I don't hate it like I did 6, but it's got some weird quirks, but they're not game breakingly bad.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Grand Moff Tim said:


> Hahahahahahaha.
> 
> Nailed it.


How I stealth? 

I can't wait to start playing this game.


----------



## mongey

been playing state of decay but think I'm over it. 1st 5 or 6 hours were fun but now seems repetitive as hell.And i could not care less if my companions are sad again .they need to toughen the hell up . not sure it'll get played again. 

local shop is selling dishonoured cheap . think I'll get that to tide me over to GTA5


----------



## tacotiklah

Just gave Audiosurf some play time. I was feeling all happy and proud when I ran through casual mode. I tried "The Time to Kill is Now" by Cannibal Corpse on intermediate (mono mode) and hit just about every grey block there.


----------



## Kaickul

Seriously fun and addicting.


----------



## Osorio

I've been playing Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends like CRAZY  Game is ridiculously addicting. I bought it in the hopes of having some honest button mashing fun and to just past the time when I was bored. I wanted it to be good, but I honestly did not think the series would have evolved as much as it did. As someone who had not touched the series since DW3, the amount of refinement they have done up until now is pretty great... And now I am effectively contemplating buying DW8, since I have been hearing it makes for the best Dynasty Warriors experience yet, with a really robust and refined set of mechanics... Decisions...


----------



## AxeHappy

The Old Republic. Decided to finally give it a shot. 

Aside from the fact that they are *constantly* reminding you that Subscribers get a whole host of benefits, the game is actually surprisingly good. And I hate MMOs.


----------



## Kaickul

I am a slut to 2D platformer games. Similar to games I grew up with. I love the challenge and simplicity of these types of games.


----------



## ferret

Rogue Legacy is fantastic.


----------



## Mexi

Ducktales Remastered


----------



## tacotiklah

They just added Red Alert 3: Uprising and Populous to the humble bundle, so two more awesome games just for me since I paid above the average amount.


----------



## Osorio

Tales of Xillia for me. LOVING IT. Best JRPG I've played in a real long while. Probably since FF10 (which is my second favorite FF after FF9).


----------



## kamello

a friend gave me Medal of Honor (2010) first time I play a modern shooter online (last one was Battlefield 2 around 3 years ago, until I lost my disk  ) and man....I suck at this  visuals are lovely and the sound is just the best thing I ever heard in a videogame, but the maps are so little that is hard to stay alive for more than 30 seconds 
(it feels like the arcade version of Battlefield 3, same engine, but with COD size maps)


----------



## Sicarius

venneer said:


> I've been playing Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends like CRAZY  Game is ridiculously addicting. I bought it in the hopes of having some honest button mashing fun and to just past the time when I was bored. I wanted it to be good, but I honestly did not think the series would have evolved as much as it did. As someone who had not touched the series since DW3, the amount of refinement they have done up until now is pretty great... And now I am effectively contemplating buying DW8, since I have been hearing it makes for the best Dynasty Warriors experience yet, with a really robust and refined set of mechanics... Decisions...



I go back to DW7 anytime I have a bad day. It's just a fun mindless game, that doesn't require a lot of concentration. Just kill, kill, kill.


I've been playing BF3 far too much. Though, I'll probably play less of it, since the guys I played with before and I had a falling out. Picked up SRIV today, though, and so far it's great.



kamello said:


> a friend gave me Medal of Honor (2010) first time I play a modern shooter online (last one was Battlefield 2 around 3 years ago, until I lost my disk  ) and man....I suck at this  visuals are lovely and the sound is just the best thing I ever heard in a videogame, but the maps are so little that is hard to stay alive for more than 30 seconds
> (it feels like the arcade version of Battlefield 3, same engine, but with COD size maps)



There were a lot of things that I liked about MoH (2010), it had an amazing single player story, and the MP areas were awesome. You could get into a really nice groove, and just dominate. 

And all of that went to shit when they released the 2nd one. I really liked MoH '10 a lot, despite it's numerous faults, but it didn't seem like any of that came over to MoH 2, and a couple of those features (extra optics, sliding) and put them into BF4 from the looks of it. I'm just glad they shelved the franchise before it could get any worse.

Now it's up to Dice to make a good SW: Battlefront and Bad Company 3.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Started Saints Row 3 last night. The controls are wonky as shit, but I was laughing so hard at just the character customization alone and then subsequent cutscenes with my ridiculous looking character that I'm going to stick with it until the controls don't bother me anymore. 

Seeing an obese asian Hitler with a Prince Valiant haircut who talks in unintelligible zombie belches and moans is worth a little bit of dodgy combat, hahaha.


----------



## Cloudy

Grand Moff Tim said:


> Started Saints Row 3 last night. The controls are wonky as shit, but I was laughing so hard at just the character customization alone and then subsequent cutscenes with my ridiculous looking character that I'm going to stick with it until the controls don't bother me anymore.
> 
> Seeing an obese asian Hitler with a Prince Valiant haircut who talks in unintelligible zombie belches and moans is worth a little bit of dodgy combat, hahaha.



Man if you think SR 3 is wonky give SR 4 a gander, the added super powers just make the game insanely hilarious.

In respect to WaffleTheEpic I have my horsemask on in game so I'm an amazing obese super hero space horse man with a british accent. That paired up with the super awkward mass effect sex scene rip offs is just side splitting.


Also bought Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Sir, You are being hunted, both excellent games. Id recommend Sir, You are being hunted to just about anyone its an open world survive, you're hiding from killer british robots with guns/attack dogs.

Outlast is on my list for september 4th as well, if you're a big horror game buff like myself. Suppose to be the 'scariest' full release title, going to give Amnesia 2 a run for its money next month


----------



## Sicarius

Yeah, you can tell that they just built on top of the SR3 engine with 4. That's not a slight at all, though. The wonkiness gives it a heap of character.

Not to mention I love Kenzie, and SRIV makes it so much easier to do so.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Cloudy said:


> Man if you think SR 3 is wonky give SR 4 a gander, the added super powers just make the game insanely hilarious.



I probably will, once I've finished SR3. I got it in a Humble Bundle ages ago and never got around to starting it until this weekend, and I only really started it because I've been reading rave reviews for SR4 and didn't think I could justify buying it while I still had the 3rd sitting there unplayed .


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I've gone back to play the BFG Edition of Doom 3... and I still hate it. I would play some more Enemy Unknown, but I've wasted so many days and soldiers with my countless alien base assault attempts that I've already had five countries back out of the project, and I just don't have the time to start a new campaign.


----------



## tacotiklah

Went to play the 2010 version of Medal of Honor. I have seldom been as disappointed in a story mode of a game as I was in this. Too few missions, with more emphasis on movie sequences than on any real action. If the multiplayer is as bad as the single player, then I will be pissed.


----------



## texshred777

ghstofperdition said:


> Went to play the 2010 version of Medal of Honor. I have seldom been as disappointed in a story mode of a game as I was in this. Too few missions, with more emphasis on movie sequences than on any real action. If the multiplayer is as bad as the single player, then I will be pissed.


 
Prepare to be pissed.


----------



## mike90t09

Making my way through farcry 3 right now.


----------



## Don Vito

Arkham City. I'm stuck on clayface.

The best part about this game is the realistic snow that falls on Batman's realistic cape.


----------



## youngmanblues

i play final fantasy vII, pokémon soulsilver and league of legends
i used to play warcraft 3 but osx doesn't support it that well


----------



## frogunrua

I am playing arkham asylum, pokemon rumble u, cloudberry kingdom, pokemon platinum, and adventure time: ice king why did you steal our garbage.


----------



## Choop

Started playing Street Fighter 4 again. I finally got set up in a place with decent internet so I'm excited to get back to playing it. Also there's some more news about Ultra which has me pumped (suggested changes about Blanka that I think would really help him out...for people who actually want to play him well and not just spam). I've messed around with a bunch of characters to try and find an alt character to learn, and have decided that it should be Chun-Li. Shes really fun and pretty solid IMO, and having charge moves makes the transition to her not super painful.

I've been playing L4D2 again a little bit with a friend or two in online versus. It's fun when you get a real game going, but that's incredibly hard to do with all of the leavers and premades...and just generally shitty people in the community. All of that was an annoyance before when the game was newer and more popular, but now it's just on a whole new level of awfulness. :< Shame too, because the game is genuinely really fun on its own.


----------



## Fat-Elf

I've been really into Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles lately. I already have A or S-rank from all the chapters so there really isn't much to do anymore. Great game with some minor flaws. The OST is awesome. Luckily it's in Spotify.


----------



## Khaerruhl

Choop said:


> Started playing Street Fighter 4 again. I finally got set up in a place with decent internet so I'm excited to get back to playing it. Also there's some more news about Ultra which has me pumped (suggested changes about Blanka that I think would really help him out...for people who actually want to play him well and not just spam). I've messed around with a bunch of characters to try and find an alt character to learn, and have decided that it should be Chun-Li. Shes really fun and pretty solid IMO, and having charge moves makes the transition to her not super painful.
> 
> I've been playing L4D2 again a little bit with a friend or two in online versus. It's fun when you get a real game going, but that's incredibly hard to do with all of the leavers and premades...and just generally shitty people in the community. All of that was an annoyance before when the game was newer and more popular, but now it's just on a whole new level of awfulness. :< Shame too, because the game is genuinely really fun on its own.



A LOT of Street Fighter 4 for me! Goddamn the game is hard to get into.. But I love it!  So terrified of even looking at online games against others though D: 

Where did you find the news about Ultra by the way?


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

this


----------



## goherpsNderp

bouncing back and forth between a lot of stuff recently:

PS3:
Dragon's Crown
Killer Is Dead
Unfinished Swan (beat, but going back to get all balloons)

Vita:
Dragon's Crown (another character)
Soul Sacrifice
Jetpack Joyride (for on the toilet)

PC:
Planetside 2
Torchlight (no idea why i never beat it years ago when it first came out. finally getting off my ass and pushing forward.)


----------



## Choop

Khaerruhl said:


> A LOT of Street Fighter 4 for me! Goddamn the game is hard to get into.. But I love it!  So terrified of even looking at online games against others though D:
> 
> Where did you find the news about Ultra by the way?



Nice! It definitely has a learning curve if you want to get serious, but I like that whole "learning the ins and outs of a character" process. 

Who are you playing most?

I saw most of the talk of changes on shoryuken.com but mostly it's just stuff that the capcom staff have mentioned at like panels and interviews, nothing official yet.


----------



## Khaerruhl

Choop said:


> Nice! It definitely has a learning curve if you want to get serious, but I like that whole "learning the ins and outs of a character" process.
> 
> Who are you playing most?
> 
> I saw most of the talk of changes on shoryuken.com but mostly it's just stuff that the capcom staff have mentioned at like panels and interviews, nothing official yet.



I've been practicing a lot with Ken, Akuma, and Ryu, in that order. Juri seems pretty nice, especially since you can dodge underneath fireballs by dashing forward, I heard. Im trying really hard to find the right character for me though.

Gotta check that site out then. Any idea on other nice sites about the game?


----------



## Choop

Khaerruhl said:


> I've been practicing a lot with Ken, Akuma, and Ryu, in that order. Juri seems pretty nice, especially since you can dodge underneath fireballs by dashing forward, I heard. Im trying really hard to find the right character for me though.
> 
> Gotta check that site out then. Any idea on other nice sites about the game?



Nice, I don't really play the shotos much, but Ken is probably my favorite out of 'em. Juri is really fun too when you play more aggressively with her, though I think most people consider her a zoner. Just play around with the cast. What platform are you playing on?

I don't really know of any other good sites...that one has pretty much all of the latest news on the main page feed, and a bunch of individual forums for street fighter and many other fighting games. Youtube has some cool fighting game channels! Most of the ones I watch are for entertainment, but there are instructional ones too.


----------



## Michael T

The wife & I just picked up Diablo 3 (360) today. Not bad, typical Diablo but just on a console, its a game we both can play together.


----------



## Osorio

Just started Mortal Kombat... Mixed reactions so far. 

There is a high chance that I'm playing the wrong game, but the gore just doesn't sit all that well with me  It's just SO over the top. I also find the game mechanics to not be my taste, they remind me of the highly regarded in the previous posts Street Fighter... In that the movement is extremely clunky and slow and yet the button presses are absurdly precise and fast; this particular mechanic combination doesn't feel like it FLOWS for me... It's pretty much the opposite of Dead Or Alive, which happens to be my favorite fighter (think what you will).

Having said all that, I used to really like the original Mortal Kombat and thinking back, this certainly feels like it, so it is good that they managed to maintain the feel of the franchise, even if is a feel I've come to dislike. The fact that I've been hearing nothing but praise about this game and its story mode since it came out has me determined to enjoy the story and the wealth of content for as long as I can endure the "juvenile maturity". 

I really wish there was a "tone down the gore" option though...


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm in the middle of a no love, all hate relationship with Midnight Club: Los Angeles. I haven't played a midnight club since 2 so I have no idea where this series got ....ed up, but I will beat this game just to spite it.


----------



## Ralyks

My friends decided to get into Borderlands 2... About damn time I had a reason to finally play.


----------



## wat

Mass Effect 3 multiplayer.

God that game's MP is so good.


----------



## shadowvault

assassins creed/bioshock


----------



## texshred777

wat said:


> Mass Effect 3 multiplayer.
> 
> God that game's so good.


 
Fixed.

Well, I'm back in Tamriel for the moment. 

Unfortunately, Adrianne Avenicci was killed during a vampire attack last night. 

Also finally managed to get through to acquire Calcemo's translation guide without alarming anyone in the museum. Almost gave in and murdered everyone, but that wouldn't be in character for Johann. He may be a misguided spy and double agent, but he's not a monster.

Not until I start Dawnguard, that is.


----------



## Sicarius

I forgot that Diablo 3 came out this week.

But, I'd rather play DW8 if I can find it for a good enough price.


----------



## wat

texshred777 said:


> Fixed.



IDK, I thought the campaign was a disaster compared to the first two. The ending is the least of its problems. Between the lack of past squadmates, the linear level design, how many of the choices you made don't even matter(rachni), & auto-dialogue, I think it's safe to day the game never really was finished and needed another year in development.


----------



## The Uncreator

Outlast

Why the .... am I playing this? Single best horror game, none top it for sheer terror, simply none.


----------



## ayaotd

Mario and Luigi Dream Team on the 3ds


----------



## Volsung

Lately I've revisited the Metal Gear series in the HD collection. I finished Peace Walker not to long ago so I'll probably start the original MSX Metal Gears here in a bit. 

Playing these games does not help my anticipation for MGS5 Ground Zeroes/The Phantom Pain. The wait already sucks.


----------



## texshred777

wat said:


> IDK, I thought the campaign was a disaster compared to the first two. The ending is the least of its problems. Between the lack of past squadmates, the linear level design, how many of the choices you made don't even matter(rachni), & auto-dialogue, I think it's safe to day the game never really was finished and needed another year in development.


 
Fair enough. All of those flaws acknowledged, was still a great game for me.


----------



## The Uncreator

Well auto-dialogue was just an option so it's not really a flaw. Despite adoring all of ME and loving ME3 I do REALLY wish old squadmates were more prevalent. But considering the grand scope of the series, it's a flaw I am not willing to let inhibit my enjoyment of an otherwise AMAZING game.


----------



## Cowboyfromhell

Currently playing dead space 3 i can say its pretty amazing .


----------



## texshred777

The Uncreator said:


> Well auto-dialogue was just an option so it's not really a flaw. Despite adoring all of ME and loving ME3 I do REALLY wish old squadmates were more prevalent. But considering the grand scope of the series, it's a flaw I am not willing to let inhibit my enjoyment of an otherwise AMAZING game.


 
Yeah, I went for the classic ME style and didn't use auto dialog. 

That said, one of my main gripes was that even with auto dialog off..there were just too many sequences where Shep responded in a predetermined way.


----------



## wat

------------


----------



## wat

---------


----------



## wat

texshred777 said:


> Fair enough. All of those flaws acknowledged, was still a great game for me.



Yeah, it was for me too, it just sucks to think about how it COULD have been without EA pressuring them to release the game by an unfair deadline.



The Uncreator said:


> Well auto-dialogue was just an option so it's not really a flaw.



No I mean there were entire conversations that were completely auto-dialogue, with no choice.



texshred777 said:


> That said, one of my main gripes was that even with auto dialog off..there were just too many sequences where Shep responded in a predetermined way.



^^That too

And then the level design was just so linear. You just move from one room to the next, and then the door closes behind you and you can't go even go back. No multiple paths to choose from or anything. Remember Peak 15 on Noveria in ME1? How the level was one big interactive maze where you had to actually figure out what you need to do, and where you need to go to do it? There were multiple objectives, some of which you could do in whatever order you like, that opened up new sets of objectives and you had to use your brain and remember where stuff is on the map?

Now fast forward to ME3. When you get to the Mars base, it seems like it's gonna be the same kind of thing, but it turns out to be just a linear progression from one room to the next with shootouts and dialogue interspersed. The whole game was that way.

And then so many of the choices you made in previous games didn't even matter or were tossed aside, like who you chose to be the councilor in Me1, what you did about the Rachni Queen. And then all the war assets you collected only added up to different versions of the same ending cutscenes, you didn't get to allocate your forces in the final battle or anything. 

It was like every aspect that made the 1st two games great was cut way back so it could just be another linear corridor shooter game instead of a MASS EFFECT game. The combat is great, which led to a great and addictive multiplayer, but as an RPG, the campaign is just sad.


----------



## Vhyle

I just started playing Minecraft, and I think I may need rehab already.


----------



## Osorio

All the recent drama about Kojima and his designs got me in the mood for the series and I plan to play all of the MGS games I own this month...

As such, I just finished my playthrough of MGS1 and god damn, that game did NOT age well... Super clunky. The story is still pretty excellent but jesus is the gameplay sort of annoying. I hope the others fair better... Onto MGS2!


----------



## Choop

venneer said:


> All the recent drama about Kojima and his designs got me in the mood for the series and I plan to play all of the MGS games I own this month...
> 
> As such, I just finished my playthrough of MGS1 and god damn, that game did NOT age well... Super clunky. The story is still pretty excellent but jesus is the gameplay sort of annoying. I hope the others fair better... Onto MGS2!



Eh I think it's fine. The biggest thing is just the fixed camera angles in many of the rooms, but I dunno if I'd really call it clunky. MGS 2 basically plays the same way too...


----------



## TheDivineWing22

Just got a 3ds yesterday along with Mario and Luigi: Dream Team. A lot of fun so far, although I'm not very far into it.


----------



## Don Vito

I replayed MGS in 2007. It's timeless as far as I'm concerned! 


Anyways, I'm playing Skyrim again after a years break. Playing a straight up Wood Elf archer, which is something new for me, as I've always made either brute or magic characters.

I'm also addicted to Tenchu Z right now. I'm about 25 missions in, but the box says 100 or something like that, so I've got a lot more game to play. One reason I'm not further in the game is because I keep going back to previous missions to get the highest rank. I also end up spending way too much time customizing and worrying about how my character looks, which is a problem in Skyrim too.


----------



## Osorio

I've been observing that revisiting old games doesn't work particularly well with me... There are some that still click, but in general, the experiences seem to be pretty much all bad. You gotta understand, I used to be BOSS at this game (and all of the other ones as well) and for some reason, I died 4 times on the OPENING sequence (that one before the Elevator ride) on EASY. It was so freaking heartbreaking. It took me several tries to beat REX as well...
I guess I just got used to all the stuff you could do with the more recent Metal Gear titles. All subsequent titles are LEAPS ahead in terms of gameplay of each other... I remember going back to MGS2 right after I finished MGS3, when I first got it, and it was somehow barely playable to me, even though it was miles ahead of the first... I'm eager to see how I will react to MGS2 and 3 now that I have played MGS4 extensively.


----------



## Choop

venneer said:


> I guess I just got used to all the stuff you could do with the more recent Metal Gear titles. All subsequent titles are LEAPS ahead in terms of gameplay of each other... I remember going back to MGS2 right after I finished MGS3, when I first got it, and it was somehow barely playable to me, even though it was miles ahead of the first... I'm eager to see how I will react to MGS2 and 3 now that I have played MGS4 extensively.



Guess it depends on which aspects of the gameplay you're talking about. MGS1 definitely was pretty simple gameplay-wise, but I wouldn't want to discredit it by saying it's got bad gameplay or anything like that. Also I think playing a game you've beaten many times makes the experience more stale than replaying an old game you maybe beat once or twice (felt the same when I went to play Ocarina of Time again for like the 6th time or something. It was still fun, but lacked the wonder because I knew where everything was).

MGS 3 is definitely my favorite out of the series. The whole survival aspect, the designs of the different zones, different ways to approach fights, and the bosses were all really killer parts of that game. Haven't played any of the handheld ones so I can't comment on them. :C


----------



## wat

Started playing Deus Ex. Human Revolution again.

Gawd, that is some good digital crack.


----------



## Sicarius

I started playing DayZ Epoch last weekend.

Adventures with Morgan Freeman was the server title, and you just can't turn Morgan Freeman down.


----------



## Osorio

Choop said:


> Guess it depends on which aspects of the gameplay you're talking about. MGS1 definitely was pretty simple gameplay-wise, but I wouldn't want to discredit it by saying it's got bad gameplay or anything like that. Also I think playing a game you've beaten many times makes the experience more stale than replaying an old game you maybe beat once or twice (felt the same when I went to play Ocarina of Time again for like the 6th time or something. It was still fun, but lacked the wonder because I knew where everything was).



Aside the fact that I just found out that this game has no strafing, which makes moving around in First Person INCREDIBLY cumbersome (there are some challenges related to the first person perspective), I'm having way less of a struggle with the game than I had anticipated. It was a pleasant surprise that I could still get around pretty well, and not make ridiculous mistakes like I was doing on the first one. Having loads of fun running through this thing!

I'm very eager for 3, which is my favorite as well. I particularly like how "contained" the game is, since it really is the only game on the series that can make "complete" sense on its own.


----------



## Sicarius

DayZ server got super hacked last night and apparently got DDOS'd, too. Crazy shit, we had to change the IP of the server in order to get it back up properly.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

Dishonored

I picked it up from Blockbuster (we live in the past here) because it had Bethesda's name attached to it. It's not quite Morrowind, but it's pretty kickass. Kind of like a steampunk Metal Gear Solid.


----------



## Repner

wheresthefbomb said:


> Dishonored
> 
> I picked it up from Blockbuster (we live in the past here) because it had Bethesda's name attached to it. It's not quite Morrowind, but it's pretty kickass. Kind of like a steampunk Metal Gear Solid.


It's very good indeed. I think I'll do a violent playthrough next after all the sneaking I did last time. It becomes a lot more tricky. The more kills you make, the more rats and weepers you have to deal with.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I started playing Mortal Kombat again. Got to Kung Lau's chapter but the majority of the story mode is just filler, especially those awful tag team fights. And Shao Kahn is still a spamming bitch in arcade like he's always been.


----------



## Choop

Carrion Rocket said:


> I started playing Mortal Kombat again. Got to Kung Lau's chapter but the majority of the story mode is just filler, especially those awful tag team fights. And Shao Kahn is still a spamming bitch in arcade like he's always been.



I just got this game on PC like 2 weeks ago or so since it was on sale! Still trying to pick out a character that I like. ;_; It's a pretty neat game, I can definitely tell after playing this just how much Injustice was designed after it.


----------



## MFB

Choop said:


> I just got this game on PC like 2 weeks ago or so since it was on sale! Still trying to pick out a character that I like. ;_; It's a pretty neat game, I can definitely tell after playing this just how much Injustice was designed after it.



Smoke.

Easiest combos to not only pull off in quick succession (at least on PS3 controllers [smaller buttons, faster presses]) but best linkage between them and good specials while also moving at a faster speed then some fighters (Kratos, Cyrax, etc...)


----------



## fwd0120

Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08 with some 3rd party content.... Might break out the good 'ol MS Links soon. Also been doing IL-2 Sturmovik, Janes WWII Fighters and Scorched Earth. Keepin' it real.

Also REAPER.


----------



## Choop

MFB said:


> Smoke.
> 
> Easiest combos to not only pull off in quick succession (at least on PS3 controllers [smaller buttons, faster presses]) but best linkage between them and good specials while also moving at a faster speed then some fighters (Kratos, Cyrax, etc...)



Awright! Will definitely give him some more practice time next time I play.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Stopped playing Motal Kombat and Need for Speed: Most Wanted to start Grand Theft Auto V. Already redeemed by Atomic Blimp disc-locked-content. I'm split on my feelings about multilayer being delayed two weeks as one of my closest friend lives in Toronto and I know he's going to be playing this as well. But at the same time maybe that means they're fine tuning it and the trophy won't be a pain in the ass to get.


----------



## Jake

GTA V for the rest of forever


----------



## TheDivineWing22

Today is the day that this thread is flooded with GTA V. I myself will be one of those people after work today.


----------



## Osorio

Not GTA V. 

More precisely, I'm playing MGS3 HD. Loving every single second of it. Good stuff. Once that is done I'll probably start Peace Walker... I'm eager to see how that game is really like. I never got past the first mission on PSP because I really disliked the control scheme for that version.


----------



## Khaerruhl

Choop said:


> Nice, I don't really play the shotos much, but Ken is probably my favorite out of 'em. Juri is really fun too when you play more aggressively with her, though I think most people consider her a zoner. Just play around with the cast. What platform are you playing on?
> 
> I don't really know of any other good sites...that one has pretty much all of the latest news on the main page feed, and a bunch of individual forums for street fighter and many other fighting games. Youtube has some cool fighting game channels! Most of the ones I watch are for entertainment, but there are instructional ones too.



I Want to be good with the shotos, but I suck with all of them except Ken. I have no idea why either. Is it just me or is Ryu a bit harder when it comes to his frames? Juri was pretty much just a dip.. Been trying out some charge characters. Favourite of the bunch has to be Chun-Li and Balrog. Im playing on the PC btw! If you wanna try a match or two, send a PM!  

I tried out looking on youtube.. Found a really helpful channel called Beyond Technical. Works wonders for explaining the basics and stuff for people like me.



wat said:


> Mass Effect 3 multiplayer.
> 
> God that game's MP is so good.



It's bloody amazing! Me and a friend used to play it like crazy all the time before. We had a lot of fun when we (read: I) discovered the Vanguard.. He went for the sniper role, and I went for all out vanguard. As soon as he had his aim set for a headshot, BOOM and I was there.


----------



## Choop

Khaerruhl said:


> I Want to be good with the shotos, but I suck with all of them except Ken. I have no idea why either. Is it just me or is Ryu a bit harder when it comes to his frames? Juri was pretty much just a dip.. Been trying out some charge characters. Favourite of the bunch has to be Chun-Li and Balrog. Im playing on the PC btw! If you wanna try a match or two, send a PM!



Oh snap! Yeah, you can add me or whatever if you like. My GFWL username is Felix4u (reference to the book Armor when I was playing as a black master chief in halo 2 (out of context it just seems extremely lame)). 

I honestly probably haven't played Ryu or Ken enough to notice any differences, and only can do like 2 or 3 easy combos with either of them haha. I just like Ken's set of normals and his combos into shoryuken.  I like Chun-Li a lot too, probably my favorite other than Blanka!


----------



## Khaerruhl

Choop said:


> Oh snap! Yeah, you can add me or whatever if you like. My GFWL username is Felix4u (reference to the book Armor when I was playing as a black master chief in halo 2 (out of context it just seems extremely lame)).
> 
> I honestly probably haven't played Ryu or Ken enough to notice any differences, and only can do like 2 or 3 easy combos with either of them haha. I just like Ken's set of normals and his combos into shoryuken.  I like Chun-Li a lot too, probably my favorite other than Blanka!



Mine's pretty lame too, KaloHanaka after an old star wars character I made. Then again, who Doesn't have a lame username?  

Ryu and Ken just feels... Different. I read on Shoryuken.net that Ryu was total defense and Ken being total offense and Akuma somewhere in the middle. Makes a lot of sense if you ask me. I can barely do One combo with each really. But the good part is that if you know a combo with one of the shoto characters, you really don't need that much of an adjustment to make it fit into any other of the shotos. 

Adding you right now!


----------



## CrushingAnvil

None.

I've posted this a few times, but I've pre-ordered a Playstation 4 which I'll probably be able to pick up in January or February of 2014. Bit of a bummer since I'll have to wait so long, but my brother got a pre-order in for the release date so I'll probably get myself around to his to play some vidyas. 

I've already made a thread about what I'm wanting to play, but I'm basically wanting to play Watchdogs, Battlefield 4, and actually Need For Speed: Rivals (willing to give a PS4 NFS title a shot). 

First game I buy WILL be Watchdogs without a doubt since I won't be able to afford anything else I might want as well as that.


----------



## wat

Just started Dragon Age: Origins.

Not sure if I'm digging it yet, it gets tedious and boring, I'm thinking it might not be my kind of game. A lot of times during fights I'm just like "wtf is happening"


----------



## Mexi

Started playing GTA V

but honestly, Outlast has been quite gripping. probably the scariest shit I've played yet


----------



## Repner

wat said:


> Just started Dragon Age: Origins.
> 
> Not sure if I'm digging it yet, it gets tedious and boring, I'm thinking it might not be my kind of game. A lot of times during fights I'm just like "wtf is happening"


It's a slow start, but picks up early in the game. I thought it was boring when I started as well, but ended up loving it.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

After originally blasting through this game and quickly (and wrongly) dissing it and putting it away for years, I decided to give this game a second chance and playing it properly:


----------



## HubertCumberdale

RAEntertainment - YouTube

Click here and find out what I'm playing


----------



## MFB

Tomb Raider

Picked it up like, a month and a half ago dirt cheap and still didn't get to open it until two days ago. I'm really digging it though.


----------



## Osorio

Bloody_Inferno said:


> After originally blasting through this game and quickly (and wrongly) dissing it and putting it away for years, I decided to give this game a second chance and playing it properly: *FFXII*



I have a save file with about 300 hours poured into that game. It is actually quite excellent and possibly one of the best stories Final Fantasy has ever told. Too bad there is Vaan. 
If he didn't existed, this would probably be my favorite Final Fantasy.

TIP: Make up character classes for yourself. Like, don't give Basch healing magic or whatever. Don't just put what is best for everyone or the game will get quite boring quite quickly.


----------



## HubertCumberdale

Fez - AtomicLukai Plays Fez - Episode 1 - YouTube

It's pretty f**king good so far and I digg the chiptune OST.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Osorio said:


> I have a save file with about 300 hours poured into that game. It is actually quite excellent and possibly one of the best stories Final Fantasy has ever told. Too bad there is Vaan.
> If he didn't existed, this would probably be my favorite Final Fantasy.
> 
> TIP: Make up character classes for yourself. Like, don't give Basch healing magic or whatever. Don't just put what is best for everyone or the game will get quite boring quite quickly.


 
Oh, I've played and completed the game ages ago. What put me off was the fact that the whole game felt so flat. I abused the gambit system to a point where most battles were being played with only one hand (insert wanker joke here). The story was great, arguably the most mature of all Final Fantasy games, but the whole game just didn't excite me all that much, so I rushed it the first time. 

Now I'm trying to fully appreciate all the great bits of the game.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Marvel Alliance on FB...it's kinda fun in an offhand way. Setup all your stuff in the morning (flight missions, training, etc...) and play throughout the day off and on. All I have time for, really. Cool to see some characters that not a lot of people know about; nice they did their homework.


----------



## Shimme

Starcraft 2 and CS:GO


----------



## Jakke

Diablo 3, grinding my 62 Demon Hunter


----------



## tacotiklah

I completed the storyline for Saints Row 3 last night. Strange, blue humor always seems to tickle my fancy.


----------



## Rock4ever

In addition to WoW 5.4m I've been playing Diablo 3 with the wife alot lately, and having a lot of fun with Dragon's Crown lately. DC's art style is a little out there and over the top but it's really fun!


----------



## Osorio

I've finally started with Far Cry 3. 

Impressions so far are mixed. Story seems interesting, which is definitely a plus, but the controls feel wrong to me. Shooting is "too easy". The weapons feel light-weight and there is no bullet fallout. To me, this means that most of the encounters I jump on people and stab them to death.

Also got somewhat irritated with how limited the starting setup is. I've outgrown it by now, but I really wanted to follow the story along head first and yet had to do a lot of random hunting because I would max out the wallet and sack halfway to the mission locations.

Game is pretty great though. I like the "openness" of it. A lot of games try to have you doing stuff in a lot of ways, and I ultimately do stuff in a single way, always, because it works, but a lot of stuff actually works here. I've taken 3 outposts so far, and one was all out fire fight, one was sniping madness, and the other was pure takedowns. Everything works if you do it right, and they are all equally fun and satisfying. Good stuff right there.

*EDIT:* I have to say... I adore Vaas. His character is freaking excellent and probably the best voice acting on a shooter ever.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

None. 

Haven't played a vidya in weeks. 

Instead I'm matching Spock in the amount of logic I've absorbed.


----------



## Señor Voorhees

I recently found out Shadow Warrior got a reboot. I wasn't expecting much, but I was pleasantly surprised. Towards the end it started getting a little tedious, but overall it was a pretty decent game. My fiance's computer has been acting up, otherwise we would have been finishing up Saints 4 co-op.


----------



## Vinchester

The past month I have put in 94 hours on Rome 2 TotalWar.

After 3 major patches it's much faster and somewhat more balanced. There are still stupid AI moves, diplomacy is still broken and occasional slowdowns in siege battles. I'm currently in a Spartan civil war.

FYI I still would not recommend buying this game, not until it's more "fixed".


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I don't know if it has to do with the Super Slim or what but I'm having a lot of issues playing Uncharted 3. After I beat it though I'll go back to Human Revolution to finally beat that. Hopefully GTA Online will be fixed by that point.


----------



## Choop

Got super addicted to FTL. I swear it's more exciting than many other big title games that I've played in at least the last year.


----------



## HubertCumberdale

I have been doing all the WRONG things in Saints Row 4...

Take a look...

Saints Row IV: The Hotdog Shenanigans - YouTube


----------



## Don Vito

I'm replaying GTA V, but I plan on playing through FEAR 2 this weekend.


----------



## texshred777

Back doing another playthrough of Alpha Protocol.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Uncharted 3 and Hitman: Absolution. I really want to finish GRID 2, but that game makes me want to throw up playing it. I don't know who decided those digital camera effects were a good idea but I hope they're out of a job.


----------



## straymond

Just fired up alan wake, which is one of the reason that i got a xbox. A groovy controller is another reason


----------



## Mexi

been playing GTA V, but recently got Beyond: Two Souls and should be getting into that real soon


----------



## CrushingAnvil

I'm playing a strange and antiquated selection of games at the moment since I haven't had a Playstation 3 in the house for at least 10 months or so. 

All on PC, of course:

Call of Duty: Black Ops
Need For Speed: Underground 2
Need For Speed: Most Wanted

I was playing Mirror's Edge, Medal of Honour (2010), Dead Space (nope.jpg), and Skyrim also, but for some reason my lappy isn't really handling vidyas too well at the moment. I'm probably replacing it by the year's end.


----------



## LudoCluedo

Slowly working my way through the mountain of games I've acquired through the "humble bundles", liking FTL an awful lot at the moment, also hating FTL an awful lot. If you play it you'll understand...


----------



## habicore_5150

​
Just got this earlier this afternoon. Already at Chapter 2 and I'm liking it. Taking me a bit to get used to the controls


----------



## kamello

CrushingAnvil said:


> I'm playing a strange and antiquated selection of games at the moment since I haven't had a Playstation 3 in the house for at least 10 months or so.
> 
> All on PC, of course:
> 
> Call of Duty: Black Ops
> Need For Speed: Underground 2
> Need For Speed: Most Wanted
> 
> I was playing Mirror's Edge, Medal of Honour (2010), Dead Space (nope.jpg), and Skyrim also, but for some reason my lappy isn't really handling vidyas too well at the moment. I'm probably replacing it by the year's end.




man, replace Skyrim with Fallout new Vegas, add NFS The Run, and we've been playing litearlly the same stuff 
what's up with Dead Space though? I thought the first 2 games were awesome, but 3 feels completely akward to me


anyways, Im still playing Medal of Honor and got NFS The Run for free a few days ago, story is a joke, the game is extremely short, but everything is forgiven cause you can drive a ....ing 68 Mustang GT through Nevada 

I'll probably get Battlefield 3 Premium Edition after the massive price-drop, I doubt that my laptop can handle BF 4, can anybody tell me how many servers are still running aprox.? (...well...people still play BF 2, so surelly there is still a bunch of people on 3  )


----------



## CrushingAnvil

kamello said:


> man, replace Skyrim with Fallout new Vegas, add NFS The Run, and we've been playing litearlly the same stuff
> what's up with Dead Space though? I thought the first 2 games were awesome, but 3 feels completely akward to me
> 
> 
> anyways, Im still playing Medal of Honor and got NFS The Run for free a few days ago, story is a joke, the game is extremely short, but everything is forgiven cause you can drive a ....ing 68 Mustang GT through Nevada
> 
> I'll probably get Battlefield 3 Premium Edition after the massive price-drop, I doubt that my laptop can handle BF 4, can anybody tell me how many servers are still running aprox.? (...well...people still play BF 2, so surelly there is still a bunch of people on 3  )



Need For Speed: The Run has always sounded good to me but I've not played it yet. Dead Space is ....ing terrifying, and I didn't have the system specs to install it and play the third one...or the second...whichever came with the humble bundle I bought.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I got around to finishing Yakuza 4 the other day. Anyone who rips on MGS for having a ton of dialogue and little gameplay has clearly never played Yakuza. To be fair, the story in Yakuza is really good, but you only play about 15% of that game.

Then I played about ten minutes GTA Online: won a single race then got booted the .... out. $60 well spent.


----------



## Repner

Finished playing through MGS: Legacy Edition. It's amazing how much I didn't remember, and I had never played Peace Walker before. Ready for MGS5 now.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

Repner said:


> Finished playing through MGS: Legacy Edition. It's amazing how much I didn't remember, and I had never played Peace Walker before. Ready for MGS5 now.



I wish I had a Playstation 3 - I'd play the .... of the MGS: Legacy Edition.


----------



## SamSam

Back on Shining Force 3. Just bought the Premium Disk


----------



## Bennykins

Hearthstone beta - at first I thought it was just a Warcraft themed ripoff of Magic the Gathering, but after playing it for awhile I think it has its own charm. I can't really see myself getting into it competitively, much less dropping actual money on it. An android version would be cool.


----------



## Khaerruhl

Don Vito said:


> I'm replaying GTA V, but I plan on playing through FEAR 2 this weekend.



That deserves a hump.


----------



## tacotiklah

Entered a Super Street Fighter 4 tourney and lost first round. 
In fairness, the other guy was REALLY good and for most of the match, he had me pinned against the edge of the screen with Seth and despite my prowess with Akuma, I was quickly overwhelmed.

Damn.


----------



## Osorio

I've finally come around to Dragon's Dogma and DAMN that game is excellent. Totally addicted to it. Really nice mix of Dark Souls (but without the pretentiousness), Monster Hunter (but without the absolute boredom and obtuse control scheme) and... I don't know, Shadow of The Colossus-ish epicness? Cool stuff all around.


----------



## Choop

ghstofperdition said:


> Entered a Super Street Fighter 4 tourney and lost first round.
> In fairness, the other guy was REALLY good and for most of the match, he had me pinned against the edge of the screen with Seth and despite my prowess with Akuma, I was quickly overwhelmed.
> 
> Damn.



Awww. *Sadface* haha. I've never even entered a tournament, but I'm sure if I were to (especially on the east/west coast) I'd go down pretty quick too XD. Do you play online/what are your points on Akuma?


----------



## frogunrua

I have been playing a lot of windwaker hd since beating pokemon y. I just finished the wind temple.


----------



## Sithman55

ive been playing a lot of borderlands 2 on my pc. competing in the 100k loot challenge next i will be on the new batman


----------



## tacotiklah

Choop said:


> Awww. *Sadface* haha. I've never even entered a tournament, but I'm sure if I were to (especially on the east/west coast) I'd go down pretty quick too XD. Do you play online/what are your points on Akuma?



I try to play online, but I get matched with people that are too good. 
Not sure what my points are. I should mention that this is the PC version of the game as well.


----------



## Choop

ghstofperdition said:


> I try to play online, but I get matched with people that are too good.
> Not sure what my points are. I should mention that this is the PC version of the game as well.



Yeah. :\ The matchmaking system is pretty weird, especially when starting out. There are a lot of dudes who obviously have experience with the game and will roll you even though they have low online points. I play on PC too! If you ever want to play, my gfwl thing is: Felix4u

Tried playing again the other day after having not for a while and I've become complete and utter garbage. :C


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Arkham Origins. I just beat it about an hour ago. Definitely a great game, I really enjoyed myself playing it. Good story, great fights (with one exception), the only thing is that it doesn't quite feel the same as Asylum or City (mainly Asylum) but still so much fun and worth checking out. It's not exactly of the same caliber of the first two, but I think it's pretty damn close.


----------



## ayaotd

Ace Attorney Dual Destinies. I love the series so much.


----------



## MikeH

Just got Black Ops II. Haven't gotten to campaign, as I'm a whore for TDM. So far, I like it. One game I really want to get is Arkham Origins, but I haven't finished City yet, so I have to wait.


----------



## tacotiklah

MikeH said:


> Just got Black Ops II. Haven't gotten to campaign, as I'm a whore for TDM. So far, I like it. One game I really want to get is Arkham Origins, but I haven't finished City yet, so I have to wait.



If you wanna get down on black ops II tdm sometime and are on PSN, hit me up:


PSN: ghstofperdition


Edit: Oh and Choop or anyone else that wants to school me on SF4, my gfwl account is tacotiklah69.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm playing Sleeping Dogs right now and while I'm interested in the story, the controls make it a chore to play.


----------



## MikeH

ghstofperdition said:


> If you wanna get down on black ops II tdm sometime and are on PSN, hit me up:
> 
> 
> PSN: ghstofperdition
> 
> 
> Edit: Oh and Choop or anyone else that wants to school me on SF4, my gfwl account is tacotiklah69.



Xbox 360 is the master race.


----------



## tacotiklah

MikeH said:


> Xbox 360 is the master race.


----------



## taysil11

dude. grand theft auto 4ever.


----------



## MFB

At the moment, it is

When the PS4 drops, who knows


----------



## Sicarius

Started playing Pokemon Yellow the other day on a random fit of nostaligia, then got bored of Pikachu's annoying ass and started playing Pokemon Snakewood instead, and I have even less of an idea of what's going on. 

State of Decay (PC) is fun, need to really sit down and play it a little longer than an hour at a time. 

Started Deadpool after it was on sale, it's pretty amusing so far.


----------



## Kullerbytta

Crash Bash and Crash Team Racing on our newly aquired used PS2 with my fiancee. Good times!


----------



## Fat-Elf

^This. The story was ....ing odd. I really tried to concentrate on understanding it but I just gave up after the first few missions. Even the fighting got boring pretty quickly so I just took it back to the Gamestop after a week.


----------



## synrgy

Yeah, I found little redeemable value in Sleeping Dogs. I mean, the whole 'sandbox in China' element was relatively fun for at least a few minutes, but by the time I got through the story, I was pretty mad at myself for having wasted so much time on it.


----------



## Vhyle

I just played through Dear Esther last night, after a friend told me about it. Being a fan of the old Myst games, I wanted to check it out.

It's a very relieving breath of fresh air from the norm of action-packed, blow-shit-up games. Don't get me wrong, I like blowing shit up and the like, but Dear Esther is a nice relaxing change of pace for once. The story and atmosphere were absolutely captivating. That game truly is a work of art - the graphics, environment, atmosphere, narraration, story line, everything. The luminescent caves blew my mind. The scenery in that game is gorgeous. All you do is walk through it and absorb the story. There's no fighting, no weapons, no item interactions, no running.

A lot of people bash on it because of that very reason - it's slow paced and scenic, with no interaction. But honestly, those people can wake the hell up. They are the players who need to slow down, take a minute and observe the phenomenal artwork and detail in a game like Dear Esther.

With that said, I highly enjoyed it. After I finished it, it was like being completely absorbed in a good book. You feel emotionally drained afterwards.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Having recently regaining a PS3 again, I've dived into the following:

Ni No Kuni (actually playing it this time as opposed to "yeah I'll play it soon" )
Dark Souls (see above)
The Last Of Us
Dynasty Warriors 8 (restarting again due to lost data from my other PS3)
Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend (see above, plus I need to rekindle my fighting game chops)

Starting soon:
Grand Theft Auto 5
Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag
Bayonetta (horribly neglected for months... )


----------



## Osorio

I've been playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen for the past week or so and it might just be may favorite game this gen... 

Funny thing about, I bought it in September, thinking it would never appear on PS Plus since it wasn't exactly a high profile game and their collaboration with Capcom pretty much boiled down to fighting games. Since I was still finishing up some games at the time, I decided to put it aside for a while, given as I was still unsure if I wold renew plus or not, I wanted to get the stuff there out of the way. IRONICALLY, It appeared on EU Plus 2 weeks after my purchase. And now it is on NA Plus as well... Which is awesome because the game is fantastic and I urge anyone that can to give it a fair chance...

I don't know what got me into playing it. I guess it was just one of those "let's see what this thing is about" moment. My overall impression of it is that it would be a Demon's Souls type of affair (in terms of medieval atmosphere), without the pretentiousness, which is good in my book. What I actually got was a Tolkiein-esque fantasy RPG with Hack And Slash combat, deep character customization, the best part of Monster Hunter (the openess of the world and scale of battles) and a pinch of Shadow of The Colossus.

Basically, I like everything about this game. Even the stuff that most people hated, like the repeating dialogue lines for the pawn or the rough-around the edges fast travel. I've played probably 40 hours so far, across multiple accounts and playthroughs, and I haven't fast travelled once. I didn't want to. The game made a stellar job of making every journey an ACTUAL journey. I plan, I wait for the weather to improve, I double check my equipment, I make sure to know the way. I plan stops along the path to easy on the "driving fatigue". I stop and watch the scenery when the sun is either setting or rising, right before remembering that night is a huge bitch and I better find some high ground... The fact that I also get to stab goblins in the face with flaming daggers is icing on a pretty deep and well structured cake. I love the combat system, it is fluid and deep, a lot of customization possible and every class is equally viable but plays very differently... 

I'm in love with this game, and I see myself playing it for quite a while. My only complain is the lack of saving options, you only get one slot per account, and with a game this deep and varied, multiple characters are a must... At least, the files can be backed up with easy and I have multiple characters stored in my laptop and I swap on the console as my playing needs demand. 
Having said that, the game allows you to change classes almost always, and I just don't do it because it would screw up my playing path (you gain stats on level up according to the class you have equipped)...


Anyway... I digress, this is not a review, just a really enthusiastic, heartfelt recommendation, if you fancy the RPG genre with a healthy dose of fluid action-style combat, have Plus and can spare the 12 GB download... Do get it, at least try it out. You might, like myself, find yourself very pleasantly surprised.


----------



## Necrocous

Guild Wars 2 and GTA 5.


----------



## straymond

I've gotten hooked on zelda again. 
Windwaker, man. Windwaker.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I gave up on Sleeping Dogs and got Hotline Miami off of PS+. Pretty fun and frustrating, but it at least doesn't start you back at the beginning of the level when you die.


----------



## Bennykins

Just achieved my main goal for this WoW expansion - 1 x lv90 of every class. Now with that off my back maybe I can get around to finishing some of my many neglected console games - first stop Brutal Legend


----------



## bcolville

I just got my 500k in gta. Needless to say I bought 10 sandkings.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham City

*City>Asylum 

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

*My save-game is corrupted. 

In 18 days I'll be playing my copy of Killzone: Shadow Fall at my bro's place (hopefully, haha) since he managed to secure a release-day PS4. 

I want to try F.E.A.R 2 but am running low on hard drive space - might have to move all my games to my EXT.HDD.


----------



## MFB

^ I would certainly hope City is better than Asylum since it is a sequel, where you learn from what works and what doesn't in the original and can build off that

Origins however?


----------



## CrushingAnvil

MFB said:


> ^ I would certainly hope City is better than Asylum since it is a sequel, where you learn from what works and what doesn't in the original and can build off that
> 
> Origins however?



I saw part of a walkthrough of it on YouTube and I thought it looked cool


----------



## Stealth7

Battlefield 4 is owning my life!


----------



## Steinmetzify

Started both GTAV and The Last of Us recently......both are good, TLOU is pretty intense....it's got me on the edge of my seat a lot of the time, wondering when a huge mob of infected are gonna jump me. Glad I finally got a ....in shotgun. 

GTAV is a nice respite from it, as it's nothing but comedy.....playing online and having a blast just jamming around and robbing stores and doing races. It's pretty fun, but like all GTA games I don't think this one is going to hold my attention very long. I play it for a month or so and then it gets ditched.


----------



## MFB

CrushingAnvil said:


> I saw part of a walkthrough of it on YouTube and I thought it looked cool



Oh no, it definitely looks pretty but ...you know how like Morrowind was awesome (or so everyone says) and then Oblivion came out and it was shiny, and new, but felt like it was sort of lacking heart? It's like that. Like, I see Batman, and he _fights_ like Batman, but he's just ...not Batman; a piece of the puzzle is missing somewhere. 

I made it past the fight with Deathstroke and even that was a joke. Came down to a shit load of counter-attacks really, yet Deathstroke is IMO the top ranked mercenary in the DC world and he can't be beat by a dude who's just starting his vigilante career? 

That's all from me on it though, but I've heard from others who felt the same way


----------



## Don Vito

I finally bought Dark Souls. I played Demon's Souls a bit, but gave up at the Man Eaters. This game is like 3x harder than the original. The first real area of the game is just as relentless as some of the later worlds in the first game.

Extreme metal goes well with these sorts of games.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Playing Mario 3D Land again. Trying to 100% it.

EDIT: Aaand got all the star coins for the normal stages. Now to get the star coins for the special stages and actually beat them.


----------



## Alex6534

Currently in the process of building my hackintosh with windows 7 strictly for gaming and steam, this will be my first gaming pc, bout time as I must have 150-200 games on steam  first up is....


----------



## Jakke

^Borderlands 2, always Borderlands 2


----------



## CrushingAnvil

MFB said:


> Oh no, it definitely looks pretty but ...you know how like Morrowind was awesome (or so everyone says) and then Oblivion came out and it was shiny, and new, but felt like it was sort of lacking heart? It's like that. Like, I see Batman, and he _fights_ like Batman, but he's just ...not Batman; a piece of the puzzle is missing somewhere.
> 
> I made it past the fight with Deathstroke and even that was a joke. Came down to a shit load of counter-attacks really, yet Deathstroke is IMO the top ranked mercenary in the DC world and he can't be beat by a dude who's just starting his vigilante career?
> 
> That's all from me on it though, but I've heard from others who felt the same way



For me it's the voice. I cannot remember his name, but the guy who did 1990's 'Batman: The Animated Series' did _Asylum_ and _City_, but *not* _Origins_.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

I start my summer paper tomorrow, so I won't be playing vidyas until the 29th probably, but I started a new character on Skyrim: two-handed Nord viking guy - bald with a beard and that blue facepaint, but I realised that sort of setup was limited, so I changed all my skills out for sneaking, speech, archery etc. - I'm now the Guild Master of the Thieve's Guild. Still the Harbinger of the Companions though. I just killed Paarthurnax today to advance the Blades storyline, but I regret it now  I love Paarthurnax - the Blades are dicks and don't know shit about .....


----------



## Repner

Finished Beyond: Two Souls. Really good if you're into that Heavy Rain style gameplay. The actors did a really good job.


----------



## klami

Battlefield 4 and Baldurs Gate Enhanced Edition. I never got around to play BG when it originally came out. So far, Im enjoying it!


----------



## Chuck

Sleeping Dogs


----------



## Distracter

Gonna have a great week with 2K NBA13 soon!


----------



## ferret

COD Ghosts... and ....

Oh no, it came back 

.... WoW.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Welp, I gave up on 3D Land. Final world is fvcking impossible. 

And now we wait for black Friday...


----------



## Don Vito

Gave up on Dark Souls. It's eating my dark soul....

Right now I'm trying to get all pp stickers in Dead Rising(1). I'm also playing Shadowrun on snes emu.


----------



## Repner

Playing the Killzone Trilogy boxset in preparation for the PS4 european release next friday.


----------



## Compton

Going to pick up D3 on black friday, RoS looks pretty rad so i figured i'd cave. Also playing the elder scrolls online beta over the weekend. Just beat Arkham City finally,onto Origins!


----------



## Force

NFS Rivals - Good but just a lesser version of Hot Pursuit.

Playing as a cop is alot of fun but playing as a racer sux, the cops are the most relentless Ive ever experienced in a game. They're magic too, you lose them & 1 sec later the pursuit resumes even though they aren't on the radar, wtf?

Quite a bit of freezing/lock up going, graphics are pretty ordinary too.

At least they brought customizing back, albeit very limited.


----------



## TheDeathOfMusic

Star Wars Battlefront 2 on PS2. Aw yiss


----------



## Alex6534

Just got my Hackintosh built, with windows installed on a separate SSD, bring on Steam Winter Sale


----------



## Steinmetzify

Finished The Las of Us yesterday........in awesome game. Naughty Dog just knocked it out of the park with that one.

Got GTAV to beat on for awhile....and Rocksmith 2014 is around here somewhere, pretty much only for the Pantera DLC, cause I've always wanted to learn Domination note for note.


----------



## MikeH

Just got Arkham Origins. Literally just started the story mode and I already love it.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Bought The Last of Us yesterday and just finished it five minutes ago. Really good ....in' game and I love the fact that it doesn't end on a cliffhanger. And I was not expecting how depressing some of the parts in that game were. Now to get what little sleep I can for work tonight.


----------



## Jake

Finally picked up Forza 4 and Horizon. Should be a good time waster


----------



## Repner

Carrion Rocket said:


> Bought The Last of Us yesterday and just finished it five minutes ago. Really good ....in' game and I love the fact that it doesn't end on a cliffhanger. And I was not expecting how depressing some of the parts in that game were. Now to get what little sleep I can for work tonight.


That game is such a masterpiece. So many goosebump moments.


----------



## F1Filter

This.






Have to say. Although I originally had zero intention of picking this up (or an XB1). This has been somewhat a pleasant surprise for even a jaded sim-racer like myself. There's a lot missing in features/tracks compared to the previous versions. And I do think this has a somewhat 'rushed out the door' feel to it. But there's definitely a lot of potential here; providing that Turn10 manages to patch up some glaring issues.


----------



## Ralyks

Halfway through GTA V. Before that, I beat Bioshock Infinite and the new Tomb Raider in the span of two and a half weeks.


----------



## Don Vito

I picked up a used Wii last Friday, so I'm playing Sin & Punishment: Star Successor, which is kicking my ass.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

Got Killzone: Shadow Fall in the mail yesterday, but won't be playing it for roughly 15 days because a) my PS4 pre-order won't be available to me until roughly December 20, and b) I have a shitload of work to do from now until December 19...so.... yeah, also, not playing anything else, either


----------



## WaffleTheEpic

Osorio said:


> I've finally come around to Dragon's Dogma and DAMN that game is excellent. Totally addicted to it. Really nice mix of Dark Souls (but without the pretentiousness), Monster Hunter (but without the absolute boredom and obtuse control scheme) and... I don't know, Shadow of The Colossus-ish epicness? Cool stuff all around.



god dammit yes this game is so underrated.


----------



## texshred777

Currently splitting what little gaming time I have between Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Alpha Protocol.


----------



## Aevolve

Jesus tapdancing christ... Starbound is so good. _SO good._


----------



## TimothyLeary

I'm playing borderlands 2 on my mac. Very nice but some levels are a pain in the ass.


----------



## MFB

Anyone here playing the new NFS? I'm tempted to grab it since I really enjoyed Underground/Underground 2 but I picked up ...ProStreet and hated it. This one looks to be a return to the roots of the series, and I don't really care to pick up the new CoD since last time it met with disastrous results (which means I made it to level 8 full Prestige and had 12 full days of play-time invested in it )


----------



## Choop

Just picked up Injustice: Gods Among Us Ultimate Edition today on sale! It's really fun so far from what I've played! I'm excited to get good at this one. Characters so far that I jive with: Hawkgirl, Sinestro, Green Arrow


----------



## Force

GT6..........& loving it


----------



## Don Vito

Tried out infinite mode in Dead Rising and holy shit is it boring. I had like 3 pizzas and 2 billion gallons of orange juice and milk, just hiding in a book store waiting for time to pass.


----------



## Mexi

sonic racing all stars. such good cart racing


----------



## Choop

I just started playing Dust: An Elysian Tale. Despite the art being pretty furry and the dialogue sounding like somebody's fanfiction, it's actually turning out to be really fun. :B


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The Last Of Us


 
Man, I'm so terrible at modern games. I'm doing so badly in this game it's embarrasing.


----------



## JoshuaVonFlash

Man do I wish the new Killer Instinct was on PS4, I've never felt so tempted to get a Xbone One.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

After the recent 3DS update (Miiverse and merging 3DS and WiiU NNIDs), decided to give Kingdom Hearts 3D a spin.


----------



## TheSeventhHead

Played the Elder Scrolls on Xbox from Morrowind to the last DLC in Skyrim... and was looking for a new game. Bethseda and what not so I got Fallout 3... ...so far I'm having trouble getting into it...


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Finally got A Link Between Worlds.

Oh god it's so good.


----------



## Ralyks

Just got Rocksmith 2014, and it looks like I'll be reclaiming my copy of Deus Ex Human Revolution from my friend that I sold it to in the first place.


----------



## texshred777

FINALLY playing MGS4. 

So far, despite some clunky controls(when shooting mostly) I'm really enjoying it.

Not as impressed as I was the first time I played MGS on PSone, few gaming experiences will match that. I appreciate that they kept the cardboard box, too.


----------



## Chuck

Fire Emblem: Awakening

Holy shit it's awesome


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

I got the demo of Fire Emblem, and while I'm not a strategy game guy, that was a pretty fun one.


----------



## Chuck

I'm 3 hours in right now, the combat and it's accompanying system is fantastic. And do far the story is neat too. And the cut scenes ....ing rule. Lastly, when there is voice acting, it's great


----------



## CassDarkwing

I've been playing Planetside 2 a lot lately. I've also started replaying Crysis 2 again. And I've also been playing Bioshock Infinite, as well as Just Cause 2. 

Any good F2P MMOs anyone can recommend to me?


----------



## Choop

CassDarkwing said:


> I've been playing Planetside 2 a lot lately. I've also started replaying Crysis 2 again. And I've also been playing Bioshock Infinite, as well as Just Cause 2.
> 
> Any good F2P MMOs anyone can recommend to me?



Neverwinter isn't too bad, but I generally tend to not like F2P MMOs very much. Try it and see if you dig it though.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

Blacklight Retribution:

Took a while to get into it but I started having fun, surprisingly. Playing against bots is actually more entertaining than playing against people. Having to pay for weapons isn't objectionable, but I just don't have the money right now. 

Killzone Shadow Fall:

I'd mentioned this before, crappy HUD, annoying lens flares, un-intuitive in terms of telling you what you're supposed to do. The OWL feature is cool but it's awkward to use. Other than that, there aren't really any next-gen. features in the game to my knowledge. Oh and the movement is awkward.

DC Universe Online:

Brilliant game. It mightn't be flashy or next-generation, but it's free and it's cool. It has the same problem as Killzone Shadow Fall in that it doesn't really make it clear enough what you're supposed to do. 

I'm wanting to sell/trade Killzone to get Battlefield 4. By the time that happens, most of the major bugs will have been fixed.


----------



## MFB

Been plowing through the last bits of Arkham Origins so I can get rid of it, and man, the last Bane fight is ....ing horrifying. He's not even a real person but I was scared _for_ Batman.


----------



## Michael T

Finished up AC4, after starting it over when I got the XB1. 


Played about half of Dead Rising 3 and got bored. 


Picked up NFS Rivals, playing as a racer sucks ass because one wrong turn during a race and there is NO catching back up. Playing as a cop tho is fun as Hell. 


Just picked up Ryse today and it's proving to be a good, fun & enjoyable game, good old hack n slash with beautiful graphics.

We see where all my gear money has been going.


----------



## JoshuaVonFlash

About to upgrade to Civ 5 Gold, tomorrow going to lose so much sleep.


----------



## loqtrall

Choop said:


> Neverwinter isn't too bad, but I generally tend to not like F2P MMOs very much. Try it and see if you dig it though.



^This

Neverwinter is about the only noteworthy F2P MMORPG that's come out recently. I get burnt out on it pretty quickly, but it's still pretty fun to pass the time with it.


----------



## loqtrall

As for me, I've been sniping on Battlefield 4 for the past 2 months straight. Can't get enough of the SRR with an ACOG sight in Hardcore TDM.


----------



## Church2224

Right now-

PS2- 

Freedom Fighters
Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm/ Island Thunder
Star Wars Battlefront 

Xbox 360-

Fallout 3
Red Faction Guerrilla 
All of the Halos


----------



## WaffleTheEpic

CrushingAnvil said:


> Blacklight Retribution:
> 
> Took a while to get into it but I started having fun, surprisingly. Playing against bots is actually more entertaining than playing against people. Having to pay for weapons isn't objectionable, but I just don't have the money right now.



Don't then. 
Play a few online matches and you'll have plenty of GP to spend on either pre-built weaponry or build your own using parts you like.

I haven't spent a dime on BLR and am fairly good at it.


----------



## mikernaut

Started playing Day Z standalone alpha, trying to find a weapon and night time is sooo dark and long. Best thing I found was an fire axe but then starved to death :/


----------



## loqtrall

mikernaut said:


> Started playing Day Z standalone alpha, trying to find a weapon and night time is sooo dark and long. Best thing I found was an fire axe but then starved to death :/



My gaming clan is so in to the new standalone Day Z it's almost creepy. I just don't think a still-in-development public Alpha of a game (though my mates in the clan say they haven't encountered many bugs yet) warrants spending $30. Maybe when it's a full release I'll consider getting. I have to say it looks quite fun from what I've seen of it.


----------



## JoshuaVonFlash

Just got done with my first run of Chivalry and it's Addicting as F**K. My only gripe is that it doesn't fully support Win8 so it's running a window and using DirectX 8.


----------



## Electric Wizard

mikernaut said:


> Started playing Day Z standalone alpha, trying to find a weapon and night time is sooo dark and long. Best thing I found was an fire axe but then starved to death :/





loqtrall said:


> My gaming clan is so in to the new standalone Day Z it's almost creepy. I just don't think a still-in-development public Alpha of a game (though my mates in the clan say they haven't encountered many bugs yet) warrants spending $30. Maybe when it's a full release I'll consider getting. I have to say it looks quite fun from what I've seen of it.


Been playing this too. I've got a ton of hours on the mod and so far that's what I'd still rather be playing.

It just isn't obvious to me what they've really done in the time since it was announced. The game is still full of glitches, the controls are still clunky, and overall I just don't see where any progress was made. I realize it's an alpha, but essentially the mod was as well, and in the time since SA's announcement other modders have already accomplished a bunch of the big promises like fort building.


----------



## Don Vito

Rented Minecraft 360. Built a house and fell asleep to the music.


----------



## Jackzaa

Back into Demon's Souls. I don't know why this game kicks my ass SO much harder than Dark Souls ever could.


----------



## troyguitar

Apparently I'm a console gamer now, gf bought a wii the other day with a couple of games. Lego Star Wars is the best so far. Looking to pick up Rock Band cheap on craigslist soon so that I can sing and play drums to become Phil Collins


----------



## Choop

Jackzaa said:


> Back into Demon's Souls. I don't know why this game kicks my ass SO much harder than Dark Souls ever could.



Trying to beat Dark Souls on my wanderer after having not played in a really long time. I forgot Gwyn's swing pattern for parries and just keep getting f'd in the a. D:

It's fun though. I love both games, probably Demon's Souls a little more just for the style of it alone. They're really similar, but Demon's souls just has a unique sort of tone.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Just beat Kingdom Hearts 3D. 

Eh.


----------



## Eclipse

Playing some DayZ Standalone. Just found an M4A1 with my buddies. 

DayZ me rollin.


----------



## Mendez

Just started playing fallout 3 for the first time. Since I started it late, I only managed to get out of the vault. So far though, I'm enjoying it, but I know I will get sidetracked by all those sidequests. Just hoping it doesn't frustrate me to have so many quests on standby


----------



## Rypac

I've been getting really into PayDay 2 lately. It shines when playing co-op with a group of friends.


----------



## Vinchester

Playing the crap out of XCOM Enemy Within. I haven't had this much tactical shooting fun in quite a while.


----------



## Don Vito

I made the mistake of getting my step brother Little Big Planet for x-mas, because now I want it for myself


----------



## CrushingAnvil

WaffleTheEpic said:


> Don't then.
> Play a few online matches and you'll have plenty of GP to spend on either pre-built weaponry or build your own using parts you like.
> 
> I haven't spent a dime on BLR and am fairly good at it.



I'm the ....ing king at that game when my internet isn't stabbing me in the back. I just flatten anyone I see for some reason  

The thing about GP is that you can't buy stuff permanently. I'd rather just gradually invest money in getting all the sweet shit  Besides, as it's a beta, the revenue it generates will make the game better somewhat


----------



## loqtrall

tristanroyster said:


> DayZ me rollin.


----------



## mikernaut

DayZ can be pretty tense, can't really trust anyone. Been rollin with my brother and good friend we met up with another guy that was nice and joined us then we got a 5th guy who seemed like he was going to be friendly but after 20 mins or so he turned on his hacks and lag warped around and killed us all. 

Humans... we are our own worst enemy.


----------



## Don Vito

Nothing atm, but I went to Best Buy half asleep last night and picked up a big X-mas haul. I can barely remember what I got, but I can tell you I was disappointed in the fact that they didn't have Farm Simulator 2013


----------



## Choop

Don Vito said:


> Nothing atm, but I went to Best Buy half asleep last night and picked up a big X-mas haul. I can barely remember what I got, but I can tell you I was disappointed in the fact that they didn't have Farm Simulator 2013


----------



## Don Vito

Choop said:


> They're really similar, but Demon's souls just has a unique sort of tone.


IMO, Demon's Souls was an easier game, which gave the player more time to enjoy the atmosphere without having to watch their back at every corner.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

Can't say enough about the beta (!) for Blacklight Retribution. 






Building guns adds a really awesome dynamic to the game.


----------



## thedonal

Still on the late to the party tip here.

Crysis 3 played through twice this week on X-Box. Good game- a tad short. A touch derivative, but reasonable story. Looks gorgeous. Will have to play again to find the missing suit upgrades..

LEGO Batman- on and off at the mo.

Diablo 3 currently installing. VERY much looking forward to this.

And the EVE career continues...


----------



## Repner




----------



## Señor Voorhees

Repner said:


>



Just dropping in to say that Daggerfall is by far my favorite Elder Scrolls game. I really need to get back into it.


----------



## Repner

I got into the series when Morrowind came out, so I never got into the first two. solving that now


----------



## Fiction

Final Fantasy iv

I purchased FF1-5 + Tactics for iPhone cause I got a new 5s and these games + a skateboard were my presents to myself.


----------



## Choop

Finished Dark Souls my third time today! Thinking about doing a SL1 run. :V


----------



## Don Vito

Minecraft is so boring but I can't stop playing it. digdigdigdigdigdigdigdigdigdig


----------



## CrushingAnvil

Don Vito said:


> Minecraft is so boring but I can't stop playing it. digdigdigdigdigdigdigdigdigdig



Me: Minecraft is boring; it is not difficult to stop playing it.


----------



## Señor Voorhees

Repner said:


> I got into the series when Morrowind came out, so I never got into the first two. solving that now



Daggerfall was the game of my youth. Back when the 400MB "huge" installation size would take up an entire hard drive all by itself, and other games (most notably "DOOM") came on floppy discs. There's a huge amount of nostalgia when it comes to Daggerfall and I'm sure anyone picking it up these days for the first time wouldn't even want to bother dealing with all the glitches and stuff involved. 

One of the few things I remember about Daggerfall is that if you go to the Rusty Ogre Lodge in Daggerfall, steal from all the foot lockers, save, load, then steal again (rinse and reapeat) you could get all sorts of Daedric weapons. Super convenient for selling to buy a house. Morrowind was also pretty great, and I started playing around with it recently. If you can get past the aweful graphics, it's definitely a great game.


----------



## Don Vito

CrushingAnvil said:


> Me: Minecraft is boring; it is not difficult to stop playing it.


 I had to take it back. I ended up digging to the bottom of the earth, only to find some diamonds I couldn't have because I needed an iron pick ax. The elevator music and cow noises were starting to get on my nerves as well.


----------



## Jake

Got Assassins Creed 4 for Christmas started the first few missions and love it already. Havent played AC since AC2 but I played that game for like 19 hours straight until I beat it


----------



## BlackMastodon

Finished up Arkham Asylum the other day and got the other two for Christmas so I'm gonna make my way through those.

Still have to finish Pokemon Y and Hitman: Absolution some time.


----------



## JEngelking

I've been procrastinating beating HeartGold because I'm on Victory Road and need to level grind. Other than that, I've been playing through GTA4 again, I just picked up Metro: Last Light and New Vegas the other day, and for Christmas I got GTA5.

I'll be kept occupied for a while.

In other news, I've felt like playing through Dark Souls again (I've beat it once so now I'm on NG+) but I'm stuck at Ornstein and Smough and they're a pain to beat while going solo on NG+.


----------



## Mexi

feeling some oldschool gaming so I'm finally getting around to playing Deus Ex and System Shock 2


----------



## CrushingAnvil

I'm just going to hound this thread for months until Blacklight exits the beta.

Fun fact: they give you all the Z-coins (purchased with real-world money) you invested in the game back when the full-game is released. So essentially if you buy shit before the Beta is over and the full-game is released, you'll be getting free stuff and then more Z-coins for more stuff 

I LOVE THIS GAME. I WAS UP UNTIL 4:00 a.m. this morning playing it


----------



## Don Vito

Ghost Recon Future Soldier. Not a bad game, but I'm just waiting for the dubstep to kick in as I pull off a siq slow mo headshot. Definitely a step back from GRAW.

edit: okay, it's actually a lot harder than I thought but w/e


----------



## caskettheclown

Now that I have a decent laptop I can finally try and play League of Legends.


My friends won't STFU about it so I figured I might as well try it. Even if I don't like it much i'll have fun doing something with my friends.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Rocksmith 2014, cause why not? Can always improve.


----------



## caskettheclown

currently playing a game at work. No its not a videogame or a board game.


Its called DOUBLE TIME!
I work at a gas station so I see customers almost 24/7 so this is a great game to play if you're easily amused.

Double time is...
Say everything twice until someone says normal/regular time. 
Customer walks in you say hello or w/e, during double time you say it twice.

You do it long as you can till a customer notices and verbally says something.


----------



## Don Vito

Don Vito said:


> Ghost Recon Future Soldier. Not a bad game, but I'm just waiting for the dubstep to kick in as I pull off a siq slow mo headshot. Definitely a step back from GRAW.
> 
> edit: okay, it's actually a lot harder than I thought but w/e



So I started playing GRAW 1 agaain, and now I'm stuck at the part where you have to protect Mexico's president from EVERYTHING. I gave up on that and started GRAW 2. I think this is the best one out of the modern Ghost Recon games.

I'm also playing the console version of Diablo 3. Wish I had a split screen buddy 2 l00t with


----------



## coreysMonster

Finally got Street Fighter IV on the last Steam Sale.

I have yet to figure out how to do the Super or Ultra moves consistently. It seems like they just work whenever they feel like, and beating Seth without having complete control over your character seems impossible. 

That being said, it's amazing fun. I love it.


----------



## Miek

a ....in lot of TF2

oh we have a swear filter now, i guess i should visit more often than a few times every other month


----------



## Don Vito

I miss TF2 so much. I played it from launch day until summer of 2011, but had to quit because shit internet. I'm going to get soooooooo re-addicted when I leave for Uni next year.


----------



## Miek

I stopped playing for less than a year and there's so many new weapons I'm still playing catch up.


----------



## Osorio

Been diving into "DmC: Devil May Cry". Extremely mixed reactions, but mostly very bad impressions so far (I've cleared it once and am now working on collectibles). All the possible bias because I really liked the first titles aside, the game has been very unstable and twitchy with me. A lot of commands don't seem to register properly and the game has a lot of frame rate issues and hang ups. Frozen my PS3 a bunch of times... (specially annoying after completing some of the harder missions).

The characters are really bland and the game rather excessive cussing in hopes of being edgy is dated as all hell. The story is very good though, I actually quite liked it and along with the level design are, are the redeeming qualities of the title for me; but I miss a certain degree of subtlety to the narrative. Everything is very spelled out and obvious... A certain effort to make the stuff more nuanced would have probably been appreciated; but DMC was never subtle in the first place, so I'm not sure that is a valid complain to have. Anyway... I like the concept, I really think it could have been stellar, but I don't think it was all that well realized.

(and the thing with the wig on chapter 1 is completely unnecessary, uncalled for and insulting.)


----------



## texshred777

Finishing off another Mass Effect series play through. Renegade Vanguard Talimancer. Really need to pick up Omega and Citadel soon.

Once I finish that, I have the Splinter Cell classic Trilogy HD for PS3 to get started on.


----------



## Michael T

Picked up a PS Vita just so I could play Ys: Memories of Celceta. Damn it's such a great game !! 

Also picked up Persona 4 golden, after playing the others & reading reviews of P4G I can't wait to get started on it.

Any must own RPGs for the PS Vita anyone ??


----------



## Pedantic

Michael T said:


> Picked up a PS Vita just so I could play Ys: Memories of Celceta. Damn it's such a great game !!
> 
> Also picked up Persona 4 golden, after playing the others & reading reviews of P4G I can't wait to get started on it.
> 
> Any must own RPGs for the PS Vita anyone ??



I just picked up a vita too, and even though I haven't gotten it yet Dragon's Crown looks really good.


----------



## Ralyks

Just beat GTA V. Why in the bloody hell did the ending credits take FOURTY FIVE MINUTES?!?

Anyway, I've recently spent a total of $20 and obtained Fallout 3 GOTY Edition, Fallout New Vegas, LA Noire, Sleeping Dogs, and Deux Ex Human Revolution. Also have WWE 2K14 out through Gamefly and am very close to completeing 30 Years of Wrestlemania mode. And I want to start through Mass Effect from the beginning.

Anyone else notice how easy it is to obtain games once the next gens are already out?


----------



## EcoliUVA

Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Just got it yesterday at the behest of my other guitarist. He and my wife watched me play and scream like a little girl (and curse like a sailor). The folks behind this game are evil geniuses.


----------



## pink freud

Got The Last of Us for x-mas. That opening scene was pretty powerful. The audio really made it.


----------



## Marv Attaxx

The Last of Us and GTA 5


----------



## Don Vito

Dead Space 2

Had to turn it off when some blue eyed entity decided to hop on my elevator and proceed to spook the f_u_ck out of me. (I'm a big scaredy cat. Never finished a horror movie and had to sell Silent Hill: Downpour a few months ago )


----------



## Xaios

I resubbed to WoW after 3 years away. Mists of Pandaria is a big improvement on Cataclysm, which I really ended up hating (which isn't really fair, the new leveling content is good, it's just the end-game which annoyed me to no end). So far I'm actually having fun again.

Anyone who's read the press stuff for WoW: Warlords of Draenor knows that everyone is going to get one free level-up per account to level 90 once it comes out (the new level cap will be 100). Apparently Blizzard is actually circulating a survey to some people asking how much they would pay to level a character to 90 right out of the gate, in a similar fashion to doing a character transfer.

On one hand, despite the fact that a lot of people will interpret it as a cash grab on first glance, I think it's fair to offer a service like this at this point in time. World of Warcraft turns 10 years old in November 2014. That means that, for old and returning players, they've likely already done the leveling content, possibly multiple times.

Having said that, I think some restrictions would be a good idea. I think that for someone to use this service they should have at least one toon beforehand that had been naturally leveled right from level 1 (just like how you have to have at least one other level 60 toon in order to create a Death Knight). The pre-leveled toon you'd get for free with Warlords of Draenor wouldn't count for this. That will make it so that new players will still be able to get into the end-game fairly quickly with one toon, but will also have to level at least one toon naturally in order to do anything more.


----------



## thedonal

Don Vito said:


> Dead Space 2
> 
> Had to turn it off when some blue eyed entity decided to hop on my elevator and proceed to spook the f_u_ck out of me. (I'm a big scaredy cat. Never finished a horror movie and had to sell Silent Hill: Downpour a few months ago )



Lol. I've yet to go back and finish DS2. Had to abandon it once as I needed a break with dark corridors and death. Then I got to a battle near or at the end (not entirely sure yet) on a drilling machine and didn't have the ammo etc to manage it. It's a tough game.

It really has some great moments (some of the space sections are fantastic) but I think I prefer the first game as an overall experience.

Doom 3 spooked me a lot, as did the old AVP games- had to do them a level or two at a time!  especially with face huggers in the level..


----------



## TIMEwaveXERO

Age of Empires II HD


----------



## necronile

Playing through Serious Sam 3 now...


----------



## Cyntex

Final Fantasy XIII (just arrived at the open world part, so I am taking a break) and Dead Space


----------



## MailMan

necronile said:


> Playing through Serious Sam 3 now...


I love Serious Sam games (apart from SS2 maybe), very good for letting off steam, and man, that humour...

Right now playing: Dead Island (just reached Act IV)


----------



## texshred777

So I lied. Finished ME3 but decided I needed to start a fourth trilogy playthrough instead of moving to Splinter Cell trilogy. I haven't played the first game in a couple years.


----------



## Fiction

Borderlands, it's aight. Pretty fun, but the story is almost non existent, all I know is I'm after a vault and that's it.


----------



## Ralyks

Pretty much rotating games, as I mentioned before, obtained a bunch of new games in a short period of time. Xbox Live had Sleeping Dogs FO' FREE, so I grabbed that too.

Started the first Mass Effect last night, and getting regular amounts of Rocksmith 2014 in.


----------



## caskettheclown

I got steam a week or so ago SO all i had was team fortress 2 for it.


My cousin has steam and has had it for years, he gave me 37 games total for FREE!!!!!!! and so I went from having 1 game to 38. My account is worth over 400 bucks now 


Also I just bought Fallout New Vegas, FEAR and the new Slenderman game. so i'm excited to play all those! Been downloading and installing all day


----------



## Don Vito

caskettheclown said:


> Now that I have a decent laptop I can finally try and play League of Legends.





caskettheclown said:


> I got steam a week or so ago SO all i had was team fortress 2 for it.


What laptop are you playing TF2 on? I know it doesn't take ridiculous specs to run(friend got it to run low settings on macbook air), but I used to play it on a built rig that probably wasn't necessary.


----------



## caskettheclown

Processor	AMD A10-5745M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Manufacturer	AMD
Speed	2.1 GHz
Number of Cores	4
Video Card	AMD Radeon HD 8610G
Manufacturer	ATI
Chipset	AMD Radeon HD 8610G
Dedicated Memory	768 MB
Total Memory	3.1 GB
Memory	5.3 GB
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 8 (build 9200), 64-bit
Service Pack	0
Size	64 Bit
Edition	Basic
Display Maximum Resolution	1366 x 768


copied and pasted so it looks weird, but while its no top of the line machien it gets the job done and can handle light to medium gaming so i'm happy with it.


----------



## habicore_5150

Since it came out yesterday, I've been playing the open beta of Aura Kingdom and I'm having fun with it
It makes me think about another MMORPG of theirs called Eden Eternal


----------



## Devyn Eclipse Nav

Playing through Pokemon Y and VVVVVV right now, since I just got a 2DS for christmas. I'm also playing NightSky on occasion, which is also a fantastic game. VVVVVV is probably the best platformer I've played in a while, however.

After that, I need to finish Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (....ing striders), then go back and play Blue Shift and Opposing Force, which my friend got me a few days ago (she has officially gotten me all the Half Life games)

NOT TO MENTION my 2DS came pre-loaded with pokemon X on it.

EDIT: Forgot that Valve was giving away L4D2 for free on christmas, so I also have that in my queue


----------



## timbucktu123

fire emblem awakening is consuming my life right now 

but other than that killzone shadow fall, super marios 3d world, sonic lost world and the wind waker hd release


----------



## Don Vito

Everyone's playing awesome new games on their 2ds/3ds and I just bought a PSP 

Emulator was killing my phone's battery.


----------



## JEngelking

Just finished up Metro: Last Light the other night (REALLY good game by the way, I think I enjoyed it a bit more than 2033, though they're both very enjoyable.) Now I'm off to start New Vegas. Never played it, though I've played through FO3 multiple times and love it, so it'll be interesting to see how NV compares.


----------



## Osorio

Been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2. Fantastic game; I'm really enjoying it.

Also playing to waiting game on PS+ release of Bioshock Infinite. Looking forward to giving that a go.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

*PS2*: WWE Smackdown: Shut Your Mouth and Grand Theft Auto III
*PS3*: Need for Speed: Most Wanted


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally got back to playing Super SF4 AC. Seriously rusty and need to dust off them FADC skills... 

That and a bit of Dark Souls here and there depending on my mood... 
...Ni No Kuni and The Last Of Us getting less attention, kinda makes me feel bad particularly on the latter and it's stunning... 

I finally unwrapped my copy of Assassins's Creed 4. Unfortunately, I still didn't play it...


----------



## katsumura78

PS3: Splinter Cell Blacklist 

I'm loving this game. It feels like they mixed in some mass effect elements when you're in between missions. Lots of cool and intense gameplay.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Finally got back to playing Super SF4 AC. Seriously rusty and need to dust off them FADC skills...
> 
> That and a bit of Dark Souls here and there depending on my mood...
> ...Ni No Kuni and The Last Of Us getting less attention, kinda makes me feel bad particularly on the latter and it's stunning...
> 
> I finally unwrapped my copy of Assassins's Creed 4. Unfortunately, I still didn't play it...



I'd totally play you in some SF4 but the connection would likely be bad. :C

Feel you on The Last Of Us. I had to stop playing for a while due to school things, and I just haven't been able to pick it back up. It feels like a really big emotional commitment that I can't afford to devote a lot of time to right now.


----------



## wrongnote85

chrono trigger


----------



## goherpsNderp

***DISCLAIMER***
I bounce around a lot of different games in order to keep myself from getting burned out on any particular thing. I also have a massive backlog of PS3 games because I've been so busy being engaged and getting married over the last year or so. Be gentle!
***************

*Completed Recently:*
The Wolf Among Us - Episode 1
Walking Dead: 400 Days
Puppeteer
DeathSpank: The Baconing

*Currently Playing - PS3:*
*Papo & Yo*: starting this sometime this week FINALLY.
*Warhammer 40k Kill Team*: got stuck a while back and need to finish it soon.
*Borderlands 2*: finishing up DLC i'm behind on.
*Killer is Dead*: the combat is really hard for me for some reason. trying my hardest to get through it in a timely fashion.
*Bioshock Infinite*: starting the Burial at Sea DLC soon when i can.

*Currently Playing - PS4:*
*Knack*: probably halfway through, and need to finish soon after i complete a few more gadgets.
*Killzone Shadow Fall*: near the end, just need to commit a long morning this weekend to it. will pick it up for MP every now and then after that.
*flOwer*: loved it on PS3 and going through it again on PS4 to keep myself calm and to reduce stress. very soothing stuff.
*Don't Starve*: loved it on PC and can't wait to start this tonight with all the updates and additions.

*Currently Playing - Vita:*
*Rayman Origins*: trying to finish these last handful of bosses but the controls are fighting with me. i keep messing up wall-runs somehow.
*Sly Cooper 4*: was going to play on PS3 but this works on Vita really well. almost 100% on the first city.
*Killzone Mercenary*: farming money and unlocking stuff before i finish it.
*Uncharted Golden Abyss*: trying to finish it so i can sell it. it's interesting but not a keeper to replay later on or anything.

*To-Do List for the Near Future:*
*The Last of Us*: my wife beat it a long time ago and i have been waiting to borrow her Slim PS3 so i can play it. (i have a 60GB launch unit and supposedly this game will kill it- literally)
*Assassins Creed 4*: got it on PS4 free from Amazon but want to set aside a lot of time so i can explore and ignore the campaign.
*Battlefield 4*: still a broken piece of scat from what i hear, so won't pop it into my PS4 until i hear better things.
*Ni No Kuni*: i need to set aside a MASSIVE amount of time to finish this. such a great game so far.

Not playing any PC games at the moment, as my PC isn't all that awesome and I don't feel as pressured to finish my Steam backlog as I am with my collection of retail console games. I also keep a spreadsheet in my Google Docs to track everything I am playing, my progress, what I have completed, what I intend on selling, and what upcoming games I'm going to get.


----------



## mongey

BF 4 on my PS4. really gotten into it. maybe its cause its the only game I have for PS4 right now but I never really took to BF3 but I'm playing the ass out of BF4 online


----------



## Jake

Bought Mortal Kombat 9 for xbox 360 last year and it was around the time my life got all turned upside down and crazy for a few months with family deaths and such so I actually never played it, but I just re-discovered it with the stuff I brought back to college and man is it a fun one.

Also Forza Horizon Rally pack is super fun, and Assasins Creed 4 kicks serious ass


----------



## Fat-Elf

Don Vito said:


> Everyone's playing awesome new games on their 2ds/3ds and I just bought a PSP
> 
> Emulator was killing my phone's battery.



Bitch, please. I just started playing Super Mario World (for GBA) on the original DS which my dad's colleague bought from Japan like 12 years ago.


----------



## Don Vito

Fat-Elf said:


> Bitch, please. I just started playing Super Mario World (for GBA) on the original DS which my dad's colleague bought from Japan like 12 years ago.


Pfft.. Only old people play mario. Get on my level nerd.


----------



## Miek

Hearthstone


----------



## Pav

Battlefield 4!  Everyone should add me (PavilionParty) if you play on the PC!


----------



## Shawn

Been playing a lot of Madden as of late. Although I've completed both Oblivion and Skyrim a while back, I still play them from time to time as well as the Fallout games.


----------



## Jakke

Picked up New Vegas again, a lot of fun


----------



## caskettheclown

Playing new vegas as well  Its very fun.


ALSO I just bought vanilla skyrim for ten bucks (On PC). Never played it but i'm going to after work! Super excited. I could play at work with little issue BUT I have a rule about playing games at work. 

Yes I know i'm probably the only one who hasn't played Skyjimbob so please be gentle.


----------



## Don Vito

Whatever you do, don't start the game thinking "I can take on that frost troll!". You can't.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch

Assassin's Creed: Black Flag

I've been waiting so long for a pirate game like this.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Decided to play Bayonetta properly after over a year of serious neglect. 

And I may finally unwrap and start Assassin's Creed: Black Flag... hopefully by the end of the week.


----------



## Dcm81

Riddick just got released on Blu-Ray over here so I had to pull Escape from Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Arena out of the old pile and give them another play-through!

Anybody else get the urge to play some older game after watching a specific movie?


----------



## Neilzord

GTAV. Only game I play! Its perfect haha 

Used to love Driving sims but since selling the track car and putting my gaming steering wheel set-up in the roof and they just aren't the same with a pad!


----------



## Rosal76

Dcm81 said:


> Anybody else get the urge to play some older game after watching a specific movie?



Watching the first Silent Hill (2006) movie made me want to go back to the older games. Watching "The Hunted" (2003) makes me want to play the first 3 Splinter Cell games.


----------



## Shawn

Actually playing Fallout 3 again.


----------



## SpaceDock

Ive played almost all of the major releases from 2013, my picks are:

action: Tomb Raider 2013
shooter: Shadow Warrior, close second from Bioshock Infinite but SW is more fun
fighting: Gods Among Us, best fighter in years IMO
driving: NFS Rivals

I play all on pc, best graphics and controls, imo....


----------



## DoomJazz

Flappy Bird on Android.

Play, but keep all razors out of reach to avoid self inflicted injury.

Most frustrating game ever.


----------



## Repner

Breath Of Fire 2


----------



## Osorio

Playing Bioshock Infinite and, right now, I'm a bit puzzled. 

I don't get the hype... I mean, yes, the story seems to be interesting enough (I know a thing or two about it), and the way it unfolds seems to be intriguing... But god damn, the actual gameplay is so incredibly boring.

This is the first game I have ever played where I'm seriously considering just going to youtube and watching a playthrough and never touch this thing ever again. 

Also worth mentioning that, so far, Infinite has crashed my PS3 about 7 times. That's in the spam of 3 hours or so. A whole lot, if you ask me.

Such a massive disappointment...

*EDIT*: NOPE. F*ck this game. 1 more hour of "play" (read, walking around and collecting random crap) and it managed to crash my PS3 4 more times. No, thank you. YouTube it is.


----------



## Choop

Osorio said:


> Playing Bioshock Infinite and, right now, I'm a bit puzzled.
> 
> I don't get the hype... I mean, yes, the story seems to be interesting enough (I know a thing or two about it), and the way it unfolds seems to be intriguing... But god damn, the actual gameplay is so incredibly boring.
> 
> This is the first game I have ever played where I'm seriously considering just going to youtube and watching a playthrough and never touch this thing ever again.
> 
> Also worth mentioning that, so far, Infinite has crashed my PS3 about 7 times. That's in the spam of 3 hours or so. A whole lot, if you ask me.
> 
> Such a massive disappointment...
> 
> *EDIT*: NOPE. F*ck this game. 1 more hour of "play" (read, walking around and collecting random crap) and it managed to crash my PS3 4 more times. No, thank you. YouTube it is.



I dunno about the crashing problem (we have it at my parents' place and it never crashed our ps3) but yeah, tbh I've felt the same way about all of the bioshock games. The style and concepts are really cool, but then the gameplay is always just kinda meh.


----------



## MFB

One was really unique because of it's story in conjunction with it's setting; I mean, no game had been set in a city that was not only underwater, but still 1920-1930's-esque especially a FPS. The gameplay has never really been that strong selling point of it because it boils down to "Kill bad guys, stay alive," but so do most games.

Infinite was beautiful in it's art and story, with the gameplay being somewhat new because you had the options of Tears (at least later in the game) and all the Vigors were different from before and IMO - the best ones they've done.


----------



## Osorio

Hindsight opening comment: This turned out big, feel free to ignore. Only the last paragraph pertains to Bioshock Infinite.

I was talking with a friend yesterday about the "validity" of emphasis on gameplay. I take that some games have better stories than they have gameplay; hell, I enjoy visual novels and there is literally no gameplay at all there. Just walls of text. Literally. 
What irks me is when games have bad (or just bland) gameplay and try to justify it as "the story is the strong point". People can say whatever they want about Metal Gear, when you get to act, however rare that may end up being if you elect to watch all the cutscenes, the gameplay is GREAT. It is responsive, it is open, and most of all, it is satisfying as F*CK. MGS3 remains to this day as one of the most entertaining games, the whole package, I have ever played.

Killzone's story might be ever so "meh", but I really enjoy the weighty gameplay and impactful sound design they employ over the airy and arcade style of Call of Duty (even if the story on Call of Duty can be better).
This was a realization for me, because for the longest while I would endure whatever virtual punished I had to so long as the story was good. As a JRPG fan, I guess it took me a while to realize that their story telling chops had been failing hard, but I still trudged. Thinking back, I think that they mechanics might have pushed me through the game more than the story. In hindsight, the story of FFX was good, but god damn, that gameplay. Sphere Grid, the plethora of immensely satisfying mini-games. Good game. Uneven story, but GOOD GAME.

I obviously didn't got far into the story or the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite. I wish I could have. I was hyped for the game, I wanted it to be good. I was all willing to trudge through the amorphous mass that it is the gameplay to get to the meat of the story. But then it started crashing like crazy and it just sucked all the good will I had for it. Some google-ing revealed that this might be a common issue with "phat" PS3s. 
Maybe I'll get to try it again on PlayStation Now in a gazillion years when it hits and my internet is good enough to take it. I would like to experience it by my hand, even though I am finding the youtube run rather enjoyable.

/rant. 

Sorry.

Anyway. I've also started playing "Puppeteer". I'm still on Act 1, but I like it so far. The presentation is really charming and a thousand miles north of adorable.


----------



## Mordacain

Osorio said:


> I obviously didn't got far into the story or the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite. I wish I could have. I was hyped for the game, I wanted it to be good. I was all willing to trudge through the amorphous mass that it is the gameplay to get to the meat of the story. But then it started crashing like crazy and it just sucked all the good will I had for it. Some google-ing revealed that this might be a common issue with "phat" PS3s.
> Maybe I'll get to try it again on PlayStation Now in a gazillion years when it hits and my internet is good enough to take it. I would like to experience it by my hand, even though I am finding the youtube run rather enjoyable.



If you can dude, try Bioshock on a PC. Still one of the most amazing gameplay experiences I've ever had.

Not sure what problem there could be gameplay-wise as I found it immediately intuitive and utterly responsive; tight controls, and easy to switch between abilities, gunplay and melee fluidly.

Bioshock Infinite is one of those complete package games for me, far above and beyond the average title and well deserving of all the praise it received.


----------



## Osorio

PC is out of reach, sadly. I have absolutely no patience for PC gaming. _(And I have been realizing that my patience for console gaming is running out as well. I hope this next generation proves more entertaining and less... I don't know. Contrived? Whatever. I miss when there wasn't patching or installing on consoles. Just put that disc in and play away. This is not the issue here. I believe I have ranted about this a thousand times over in these forums. Moving on.)_

I'm not saying that the gameplay in Bioshock Infinite is objectively bad, it is just run of the mill boring for me. Maybe it evolves and by the end of the game things feel different and emerge as some kind of delightful trance of carnage-full massacre, but the impression that struck me was exactly like you said. It is responsive and intuitive ("and all those big words from the GameSpot review generator") and also the exact same as every game ever with a gun on the right center of the screen... It has no character.

Maybe if the game wasn't crashing so hard, that wouldn't be an obstacle to me enjoying the experience (because in the end, that's what did it for me, the crashing, not the blandness), but on hindsight, I wasn't entertained by the firefights. I was bored. If I wanted to shoot people in the face, I could think of at the very least 15 other games I would rather do that in. 
On the one hand, I get a feel that this game was attempting what Spec Ops: The Line managed. To make killing feel so incredibly mundane that you can't help but feel a little bit weird by it. It feels so integral that you start questioning just how familiar this all got. Alas, I never got to that point. On the other hand, I seriously doubt such a feeling would be ever possible, because, after all, the game has "super powers" and you don't give players super powers unless you want them to feel special. It may even be (or at least get) fun; I wouldn't, and won't, know. I'm cool with that. There are other games out there.

I'm sort of used to being disappointed by this "kind of game" (the AAA "experience" that gets 90s everywhere and GOTYs like there is no tomorrow and in the end I find it "excessively average")... This generation lost me COMPLETELY as a gamer. I went from being full hardcore, 100% everything, to hardly wanting to play games on Normal because I'm just not feeling these games anymore. "Meh..."

Puppeteer is looking great though. Hope it keeps the momentum going.


----------



## Don Vito




----------



## Osorio

^ too true. 

I really hate that argument though. I am capable of relating to games nowadays, it just seems that game designers / creators are fascinated with graphics, and idea that, for me, just doesn't pan out. Whatever. Still true. Gaming has changed a lot and I don't think I can keep up anymore. Sad times.


----------



## habicore_5150

Been playing Megaman X 1 - 3 while listening to ATB's Wolves Within (still think that Virga is a perfect fit, lol)

And I just DL'ed a game called Katawa Shoujo after hearing about it from another YouTuber who died sometime last week. From what I've seen, looks a bit interesting... (I'm probably expecting a bunch of )


----------



## Repner

habicore_5150 said:


> Been playing Megaman X 1 - 3 while listening to ATB's Wolves Within (still think that Virga is a perfect fit, lol)
> 
> And I just DL'ed a game called Katawa Shoujo after hearing about it from another YouTuber who died sometime last week. From what I've seen, looks a bit interesting... (I'm probably expecting a bunch of )


JewWario, right? He seemed like a fun guy  Never saw too many of his videos though.


----------



## Drusas

I picked up a WiiU recently.. Played through Pikmin 3, probably the most fun I've had in a game since N64. Very rewarding, recommended. That said, I haven't really touched consoles since the N64.. From time to time I still just hook up the old consoles and play Megaman 2-3, x-x2 and all of the contras. Too much money goes towards new gear and I don't feel there's very much wrong with the old games that maintained replay value vs todays.

I'd ask for suggestions for games for WiiU, but I think the answer there is that there isn't any.. lol. Too much residual die hard nintendo fandom still in my blood I guess.


----------



## Repner

Drusas said:


> I picked up a WiiU recently.. Played through Pikmin 3, probably the most fun I've had in a game since N64. Very rewarding, recommended. That said, I haven't really touched consoles since the N64.. From time to time I still just hook up the old consoles and play Megaman 2-3, x-x2 and all of the contras. Too much money goes towards new gear and I don't feel there's very much wrong with the old games that maintained replay value vs todays.
> 
> I'd ask for suggestions for games for WiiU, but I think the answer there is that there isn't any.. lol. Too much residual die hard nintendo fandom still in my blood I guess.


All I can do is point you to the Virtual Console I suppose. Not big on the lineup either. I use it for the few Wii games I wanted to play, since I wasn't going to buy a console at the end of it's lifespan, with only around 4 games I was keen on playing.


----------



## habicore_5150

Repner said:


> JewWario, right? He seemed like a fun guy  Never saw too many of his videos though.



At least someone knows the guy. Only wish I could have met him YEARS before all of this

*EDIT*
My killcount in a custom Killing Floor server


----------



## tacotiklah

Managed to take advantage of that PlayStation plus and I nabbed me my own copy of Borderlands 2 (I was using a friend's disc prior) and Bioshock Infinite. Both are a lot of fun. Love the visuals in the latter.


----------



## Osorio

^ Borderlands 2 is pretty good. It is a shame that it doesn't seem to work as well with local co-op, maybe its just me, but since the game got more detailed (as compared to BL1), distinguishing things in split screen became way harder. The game itself feels harder as well, so there is less room for error. Still very good stuff.

Been playing Silent Hill 3 HD on the PS3. It is... Different from what I remember. I think I got a glitch that going into menus sometimes kill the music, because I don't remember the game being "this" silent (ironically). I'm sure it happened at least once, but now that I'm half way through and most of the game has been music-less (SFX still play, thankfully), I'm contemplating how much of this was actually by design. Great game nonetheless, but after replaying I think I would probably place Downpour over it on my personal Silent Hill ranking system.


----------



## Preciousyetvicious

Just got back from Best Buy with the boyfriend, as he just bought us StarCraft 2 so we can play together. Woot!


----------



## SpaceDock

Just played through Broken Age : Act 1 last night, very cool, but so very short.


----------



## texshred777

Deus Ex Human Revolution


----------



## Rock4ever

I bought FF13 and 13-2 to play before Lightning Returns hit.

IGN gave the game a 7.0
Gamespot a 5.

FFS what the hell is square doing and how the hell do they expect ppl to buy FF15 when it's really FF Vs 13.


----------



## Osorio

^

I actually really liked both games.. The post game on 13 is ass, and made me actively dislike the game, but the campaign... I don't know, it was pretty great IMO. It was the first FF since 10 which made me neglect sleep so I could finish "just one more" area. The story was pretty great up to the last moments, where it is ruined. Which added to my post game hate.
13-2 was in general a much better game in terms of "design". I really liked it as well. Story was absolute nonsense though. But it was mostly really fun. Ending DLC really puts a dent on this though. But it was a very good GAME. Cool mechanics and stuff.

From reviews, story in LR seems to be crap as well.... I fear for 15 on the simple basis that I think the story will be so incredibly cringe-worthy that I won't be able to actually finish the game this time. Something that seems to be approaching with each new FF title. I'm eager for LR, but not enough that I would get it a full price. But once it drops to something more reasonable, I'll be all over that... Looks "interesting enough".


---
I've been playing Tekken Tag Tournament 2. Trying to come to terms with it... Failing.


----------



## warpedsoul

Right now I'm wanting to finish Dark Souls before Dark Souls 2 comes out. I still yet have to play the DLC . Considering this is my fav series of all time I'm ashamed of myself.

Playing Madden 25 and NFS Rivals on PS4.

Getting Nascar 14, and Dark Souls 2 in the coming weeks.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Hoping to get into the Titanfall Beta!!!!!!!!


----------



## PAZ

Attack on Titan free browser game!


----------



## stevexc

PAZ said:


> Attack on Titan free browser game!



I need a new free browser game, is it dece if I've never heard of the anime before I googled it?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

What game am I NOT playing:

So I picked up my preorder of Lightning Returns only to open the limited edition box and find it with no game, no instructions, just the DLC code for a damn Cloud Strife costume I don't really care for. Calling the store to escalate this today. Not happy.


----------



## Mordacain

Bloody_Inferno said:


> What game am I NOT playing:
> 
> So I picked up my preorder of Lightning Returns only to open the limited edition box and find it with no game, no instructions, just the DLC code for a damn Cloud Strife costume I don't really care for. Calling the store to escalate this today. Not happy.



That sucks man. I was just playing the demo the other day. Hope they get it sorted for you.

Me personally, not playing anything...though considering taking another stab at FF XIII. I keep picking it up and playing for a couple hours every month or so.


----------



## sunken0887

DARK SOULS mutha ....as, can't wait for the second installment to come out


----------



## warpedsoul

sunken0887 said:


> DARK SOULS mutha ....as, can't wait for the second installment to come out



I ordered the collectors edition off of namcos website just to get a free tshirt with it lol. If you are on PS3, add me, ChrisMilenko


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ok. Sorted out the Lightning Returns debacle and playing that now. It's actually pretty weird to play. It takes plenty of the gameplay elements of the prequels but feels nothing like them. It's refreshing for a Final Fantasy game. Plus I love the race against time motif. It's gonna force me to do multiple play throughs.


----------



## MFB

Snagged "Transformers: Fall of Cybertron" from my work since I was in need of something new and light-hearted to play through and it's been pretty fun. Obviously it's not a very forward thinking game and in one day I did manage to go through half the game (it's 12 chapters) but oh well. I really enjoy the models of all the characters and seeing Metroplex stomp through the city was awesome.


----------



## Mordacain

I friend on FB posted about the GoG Valentine's sale so I scored for Metal of Honor Allied Assault, Rise of the Triad (2013 version that I didn't know had been released yet) and Painkiller (black edition) for $7.

Going to have a bit of nostalgic fun here for a few weeks.


----------



## PAZ

stevexc said:


> I need a new free browser game, is it dece if I've never heard of the anime before I googled it?



The browser game & the anime are incredible! IMO Attack On Titan is the game Of Thrones of the Anime world - ruthless, dark and extremely captivating.
I recommend watching the show before diving into the game because the game is highly based on the tactics used in the show its self.

A word of warning - the game is very hard at first but once you get the hang of the physics you will not be able to put it down haha!


----------



## mikernaut

Working on a 2nd playthrough of Last of Us after playing the DLC. I'm about halfway through already.


----------



## pink freud

Some people were complaining about how there aren't any good horror games anymore.

After watching a play-through of Outlast, if you like horror you'll love this game.


----------



## MFB

pink freud said:


> Some people were complaining about how there aren't any good horror games anymore.
> 
> After watching a play-through of Outlast, if you like horror you'll love this game.



Eh, it looks like an interactive version of "Grave Encounters." Horror nowadays comes down to pale, dirty white skin, black eyes, and usually an elongated face of some sort so once you get past that; it just comes down to jump scares.

The atmosphere of the game is gonna do 90% of the work too


----------



## tranqx

I'm also thinking about starting up a second playthrough of The Last of Us on survival mode. I checked out the Titanfall beta this weekend, very similar to COD and I'm not sure if I'm bored of it yet already or not... theres a Gamefly discount for it though for about 13 bucks off.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

tranqx said:


> I'm also thinking about starting up a second playthrough of The Last of Us on survival mode. I checked out the Titanfall beta this weekend, very similar to COD and I'm not sure if I'm bored of it yet already or not... theres a Gamefly discount for it though for about 13 bucks off.



And that's what scares me about Titanfall. I already hated how fast paced COD was. Coming from Halo CE and being a huge Halo nerd, I totally prefer the pacing of H1, H2, & H3 multiplayer. I'm in a wait and see mode on that game. I want to see the fallout.


----------



## tranqx

TheShreddinHand said:


> And that's what scares me about Titanfall. I already hated how fast paced COD was. Coming from Halo CE and being a huge Halo nerd, I totally prefer the pacing of H1, H2, & H3 multiplayer. I'm in a wait and see mode on that game. I want to see the fallout.


 
It could be that theres only two modes in the beta and two maps... and playing the same maps over and over is a little bore-inducing. This game is definitely COD fast... hell its made by ex-Infinity Ward people, which I'm sure you knew. I just think I'm at the point where run of the mill, standard multiplayer games just don't really do it for me. I can't play them on my own like I used to be able to do and actually have fun - I have to have a group of friends.

Now Evolve... that might change things.


----------



## myrtorp

I've been hooked on King Arthurs Gold lately, a 2d multiplayer game which is quite simple and hilarious. 

In recent years i've been enjoying more casual games and find it harder to dig into RPG's and FPS games like I used to. I think I might have turned slightly casual! Oh my


----------



## caskettheclown

Been playing a game called
"Giana sisters. twisted dreams".


Friend gifted it to me on steam and its a REALLY good puzzle/platformer game!
Definitely check it out if you like that style of games!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I help a friend of mine get set up on GTA V Online and so now I'm probably gonna spend my whole vacation playing it. At least until padyay when I can actually do something.


----------



## Nyx Erebos

Right now I'm playing bard's tale on my phone. The dialogs are hilarious and the gameplay is fun for this phone version. I'm playing Grim Fandango too. Great story, amazing music but damn those old school adventure games are hard, the things you need to do in order to progress don't make any sense to me.


----------



## Preacher

Mostly Guild Wars 2. Had it for ages and got bored after the 1st zone, but been playing it a lot more the last few months to the point I actually managed to get a character to max level.

Probably start on StarCraft 2 which I got for Christmas in a bit.


----------



## Fiction

Working my way through FF: XIV ARR, Almost completed the main story and maxed my first class, but it has taken me almost 6 weeks, as I only really get on for around 4-5 hours a week, if that. Really enjoying it, great crowd as well in all the dungeons, although I decided to give a Tank and a run (First time ever as a tank in any mmo), and haven't really enjoyed it, but once I max him, I'll probably start training up my Lancer Class and aim for a Dragoon (DPS).


----------



## Repner

Fiction said:


> Working my way through FF: XIV ARR, Almost completed the main story and maxed my first class, but it has taken me almost 6 weeks, as I only really get on for around 4-5 hours a week, if that. Really enjoying it, great crowd as well in all the dungeons, although I decided to give a Tank and a run (First time ever as a tank in any mmo), and haven't really enjoyed it, but once I max him, I'll probably start training up my Lancer Class and aim for a Dragoon (DPS).



I just downloaded the beta for the PS4. Gonna try it today. It looks like a far cry from the original XIV they ruined.


----------



## Don Vito

Finally mustered up the courage to play Dead Space 2 further. Those kid monsters are so ....ing annoying.


----------



## Rosal76

Don Vito said:


> Finally mustered up the courage to play Dead Space 2 further. Those kid monsters are so ....ing annoying.



Those are annoying but my pet peeves are the "Hunters" who regenerate their lost/dismembered limbs. The first time I played the first Dead Space game, I didn't know they could do that and there I am, walking towards it, thinking he's dead and trying to see if he dropped any ammo/health and he's getting up and more pissed off than ever.


----------



## Repner

Tried FF XIV beta on PS4 and I'm really liking it. Not sure how I'd compare it to Guild Wars II yet, but so far I'm impressed.


----------



## The Q

Thief. They ruined it. Bastards...


----------



## Repner

The Q said:


> Thief. They ruined it. Bastards...



Really? I was looking forward to playing it. What's wrong with it?


----------



## Choop

So this happened.


----------



## The Q

Repner said:


> Really? I was looking forward to playing it. What's wrong with it?



Well... From where to begin with...

Understand that for me, the Thief series is one of the best games ever made. The atmosphere, the concept, the awesome performance by Stephen Russell (Garrett, Benny, Karras) and the scripts. The first three games, along with the first two Deus Ex and Planescape Torment, make my "best games ever" list. You don't need "the best" in any section (gameplay, visuals, audio, story); you just need to strike the perfect balance.

Even the third game which was the weakest of the three did manage to capture the feel and atmosphere of the first two. I rarely play games any more but I've completed each of the above 2-3 times. Did I mention I love those games?



A few years ago we got Dishonored. The game started Thief-y enough (its creators claimed there were inspired by it), before ending up like a crapfest of bad design choices and a gameplay that was far from what Thief had been. I regretted buying it ever since.


Why did I mention Dishonored? Imagine my surprise as I found out that the new thief:

1) Follows an art style extremely close to Dishonored. In fact, what was medieval-steampunk in the older games, has turned into Dishonored-steampunk. The antithesis that enriched the past games is simply not here; the City is larger but the inspiration is just not there.

2) The controls again, are Dishonor-y. Instead of having the freedom you had in the older games (jumping, climbing, rope-arrowing in every wooden surface or even climbing gloves), you are restricted to "interaction hotspots" using the context-sensitive Space button.

3) Gone are the factions of the past. Keepers, Pagans and our all-time favourite fanatics, the Hammerites (along with their cousins, the Mechanists) are long gone. They never existed. All we have now is the City watch that consists of two soldier types (and look like Nazi enforcers).

4) You have a sidekick. That's right. I'm guessing later in the game you'll probably have a romance scene as well, because hey, that's how we do it nowadays. Your sidekick is a nice piece of a.. and that's about the only positive thing I can say about here. She's the annoying typical know-it-all cocky sidekick that gets in trouble, and (of course) she is SO. FULL. OF. ANGST.

5) While thankfully so far she's present on the beginning of the game only, apparently Garrett spends the rest of the game searching for her. Yes, Garrett who was all about snarky comments, detached approach to things and absolute greed, now goes on a quest to find his lost sidekick. Also, Garrett is not voiced by Stephen Russell and trust me when I say that it makes a definitive dent in the whole atmosphere. Garrett simply doesn't sound like a Master Thief now, he sounds like a worried brat. A classy anti-hero turned into a I don't know what.

6) Can't confirm this, but almost everyone heavily criticises the whole story, claiming that the script was weak. It was amazing in the older games how Garrett wanted to stay away from all things and not only he ended up being entangled in it, but actually saving the world (the City) in the process.

7) "Noob"-mode is engaged. Yes, you can disable focus and aim-assists. It's still not like in the older games that introduced extra objectives as you increased the game's difficulty. It's unfortunate, but the game seems to be focused on new players rather than Thief aficionados, which...

8) ... While it's a sound approach from a sales perspective, the Thief moniker only appeals to people who liked the older Thief games. Why capitalise on the name of a game that won't appeal on gamers that play Call of Duty et al?

9) Driving Russell & Brosius away and making stupid in my opinion design choices, is *evidence* that those guys don't really know what they wanted to do with the franchise. Making significant game changes late in the development (removing XPs and quick-time events) is *proof *that they couldn't get into the franchise at all. They vehemently defended their choices all this time the game was in development, but the end product is lacking.

10) The sound design which was HAILED by everyone in those days, by using sound effects, source positioning (3D sound), droning music and basically relying on sound was perhaps equal or even superior to relying on visuals is not here. The dialogues sound all over the place and it won't even recognise a 5.1 sound system.


In the end, this is not necessarily a bad game, but it's not a Thief game. It feels so close to being a 'Plan B' for Dishonoured that I wonder who copied who. If you try to get into it expecting a Thief experience, you will be disappointed. If you want an OK-ish 1st person stealth game, it will do the trick. Probably. But if you're asking whether it's worth 60 bucks? No, no way. I wouldn't pay 60 bucks for it if it weren't labelled as Thief; I'd pay much less for a game that so grossly insults its past.


----------



## The Spanish Inquisition

I've been playing Borderlands 2 for a while now, it's a great game, one of the first shooters I actually like. But I only play it multiplayer.


----------



## Repner

The Q said:


> 3) Gone are the factions of the past. Keepers, Pagans and our all-time favourite fanatics, the Hammerites (along with their cousins, the Mechanists) are long gone. They never existed. All we have now is the City watch that consists of two soldier types (and look like Nazi enforcers)



Why the hell would they get rid of the Hammers, Pagans and Keepers? One of the really cool things about the Thief series was the world they created for it. Is setting not important? It's not exactly a Thief game if they made a whole different world for it. I agree with your other points as well, but this one caught my eye.


----------



## The Q

Because it's not only a reboot, it's essentially a complete re-imagining. There are no factions, because in their universe there never have been. This "quest" to create something that must have so many traits and yet be completely different at the same time shows their delusional approach towards that re-imagining.

An OK stealth game, not a great one and not a Thief one.


----------



## Rosal76

The Q said:


> In the end, this is not necessarily a bad game, but it's not a Thief game. It feels so close to being a 'Plan B' for Dishonoured that I wonder who copied who. If you try to get into it expecting a Thief experience, you will be disappointed. If you want an OK-ish 1st person stealth game, it will do the trick. Probably. But if you're asking whether it's worth 60 bucks? No, no way. I wouldn't pay 60 bucks for it if it weren't labelled as Thief; I'd pay much less for a game that so grossly insults its past.



Awesome review. 

I am/was interested in this game because I'm a huge fan of stealth games. In your opinion, do you think this game is better than Splinter Cell: Blacklist in terms of stealth gameplay?  

I have not played Dishonoured so I don't have a general feel for that game.


----------



## InfinityCollision

Fiction said:


> Working my way through FF: XIV ARR, Almost completed the main story and maxed my first class, but it has taken me almost 6 weeks, as I only really get on for around 4-5 hours a week, if that. Really enjoying it, great crowd as well in all the dungeons, although I decided to give a Tank and a run (First time ever as a tank in any mmo), and haven't really enjoyed it, but once I max him, I'll probably start training up my Lancer Class and aim for a Dragoon (DPS).



Which tank are you running? PLD is boring as sh*t, WAR has a lot more to offer from ~38 onwards and especially at 50. They're pretty comparable in performance (some situations favor one or the other, mostly insignificant) and pair well together for 8-man content. DRG rotation is by far the most mechanical among the DDs, very love or hate.



The Q said:


> 2) The controls again, are Dishonor-y. Instead of having the freedom you had in the older games (jumping, climbing, rope-arrowing in every wooden surface or even climbing gloves), you are restricted to "interaction hotspots" using the context-sensitive Space button.



I agree with most everything you said about Thief, but I feel you've been unfair to Dishonored, particularly this bit here. Dishonored offers substantially more freedom of movement than the Thief reboot. Not quite old-school Thief mobility, but the game did diverge from that series in several notable ways even if it did offer the option of a Thief-ish experience as part of the package.

Basically the new Thief is a watered-down, poorly executed Dishonored clone with less magic (basically only a weak Blink, which doesn't even fully translate because you can't jump for some reason) and forced emphasis on stealth. It's only incidentally a Thief game in any way. The old Thief games were excellent, Dishonored was pretty good in my opinion, Thief: The Reboot sucks.

Did I mention you can't jump in the new game? Yes, this is 2014.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Not gonna lie...my 4-year old daughter came home a few weeks ago talking about Mario (cause some boys at her school have DS's) and I got all nostalgic after watching tons of youtube videos on the new mario games and got myself a Wii U (after all, got my NES when I was 6 in 1987!! Haha!). So, playing through New Super Mario U right now but can't wait to get Mario 3D world and the new Donkey Kong.

As a bonus, picked up a couple new wii remotes and my daughter CAN do the tennis and bowling, score!! Hahaha!

Now just waiting for my neighbor to get Titanfall and see if it's worth getting an XBONE or not. Otherwise I'll just hang on to my PS3 till something comes along that makes me want to upgrade.


----------



## caskettheclown

League of Legends

Borderlands 2

and Loadout! Very good game if you like TF2 and old arena shooters with a sense of humor and upgradability for weapons!


----------



## The Q

Rosal76 said:


> Awesome review.
> 
> I am/was interested in this game because I'm a huge fan of stealth games. In your opinion, do you think this game is better than Splinter Cell: Blacklist in terms of stealth gameplay?
> 
> I have not played Dishonoured so I don't have a general feel for that game.



Rosal, I'm afraid I haven't played any of the Splinter Cell games (not sure why, it just never occurred) so I cannot offer any meaningful comparison between the two. As I said, it's not a bad game, it's not even a bad stealth game (it's far from great but it's OK), but it's not Thief; it does not live up to that name, mostly due to the creative departure from the series.
If you just want to play a stealth game, it might be worth paying the full price (considering the lack of worthwhile games out there at the moment). If you want to treat this to be a proper Thief prequel/sequel/remake that respects its root, this is not it.




InfinityCollision said:


> I agree with most everything you said about Thief, but I feel you've been unfair to Dishonored, particularly this bit here. Dishonored offers substantially more freedom of movement than the Thief reboot. Not quite old-school Thief mobility, but the game did diverge from that series in several notable ways even if it did offer the option of a Thief-ish experience as part of the package.



InfinityCollision, you are right about freedom of movement in Dishonored, it's just that I didn't like the fact that you become a god with all the abilities you get early in the game, making the gameplay on full stealth & no kill runs rather trivial (I try to avoid murder in stealth games if I can manage it).
It did have its moments and after my initial "this-is-totally-not-thief" disappointment I admit I could get into the game a bit easier. However, I completed Dishonored and I don't feel like playing it again, ever. Disappearing bodies, I mean, come ON!





InfinityCollision said:


> Basically the new Thief is a watered-down, poorly executed Dishonored clone with less magic (basically only a weak Blink, which doesn't even fully translate because you can't jump for some reason) and forced emphasis on stealth. It's only incidentally a Thief game in any way. The old Thief games were excellent, Dishonored was pretty good in my opinion, Thief: The Reboot sucks.
> 
> Did I mention you can't jump in the new game? Yes, this is 2014.



I tend to call it "Stuff Stealer 2014". In my mind it helps me disassociate it with the Thief series and will play it without bothering me much. Your point here is the one I made as well and indeed, it's as if they decided to clone Dishonored to a scary degree.
The lack of jump is the most profound indication of your limited agility; what would be a world ready to be explored, is now but a collection of hotspots; just press the Space bar and "do stuff".
This adds an incredible rigidity to the whole game which is one of crucial factors in the game's lack of proper Thief atmosphere (the second is the non-steampunk medieval setting and the third is the lack of Garrett's essence: Stephen Russell and a script that focuses on Garrett being a master thief by not having loose ends, such as an angsty apprentice. It's intriguing how one could claim that the existence of your apprentice is somewhat justified thanks to the end of the third Thief and I might have agreed if it was done better).


----------



## Repner

Hmm. Well it sounds like I'm not going to bother with this one, which is a shame, as it was one of the games I was really looking forward to this year. Thanks guys.


----------



## The Q

Still, if I were you I'd give it a try, but only after it drops a few quid in price.


----------



## Repner

The Q said:


> Still, if I were you I'd give it a try, but only after it drops a few quid in price.



Yeah. If it appears on PS+ on month. Still love stealth games. Probably have to approach it the way Final Fantasy fans have to approach newer Final Fantasy games (pretend it's not a Final Fantasy title).

*Flame shield up*


----------



## InfinityCollision

The Q said:


> InfinityCollision, you are right about freedom of movement in Dishonored, it's just that I didn't like the fact that you become a god with all the abilities you get early in the game, making the gameplay on full stealth & no kill runs rather trivial (I try to avoid murder in stealth games if I can manage it).
> It did have its moments and after my initial "this-is-totally-not-thief" disappointment I admit I could get into the game a bit easier. However, I completed Dishonored and I don't feel like playing it again, ever. Disappearing bodies, I mean, come ON!


Fair point  It's very, very easy to slip into god-mode given how the game practically throws runes at you. I tend to limit my use of magic as much as possible to retain some challenge, though I do enjoy abusing Blink to explore different routes. Kind of like how I spent more time in Assassin's Creed running across rooftops than actually doing missions 




> I tend to call it "Stuff Stealer 2014". In my mind it helps me disassociate it with the Thief series and will play it without bothering me much. Your point here is the one I made as well and indeed, it's as if they decided to clone Dishonored to a scary degree.
> The lack of jump is the most profound indication of your limited agility; what would be a world ready to be explored, is now but a collection of hotspots; just press the Space bar and "do stuff".
> This adds an incredible rigidity to the whole game which is one of crucial factors in the game's lack of proper Thief atmosphere (the second is the non-steampunk medieval setting and the third is the lack of Garrett's essence: Stephen Russell and a script that focuses on Garrett being a master thief by not having loose ends, such as an angsty apprentice. It's intriguing how one could claim that the existence of your apprentice is somewhat justified thanks to the end of the third Thief and I might have agreed if it was done better).


----------



## ZeroS1gnol

Ive finished Spec Ops: the Line last week and oh boy...that game is just utterly brilliant.

It's a not so original third person shooter, heavily inspired by Gears of War gameplay. The gameplay is decent, but that's not where it shines. It's a very clever game that criticizes the glorifying of violence in other contemporary shooters (COD etc). This one actually makes you feel bad about the fact you are killing people. There's also a fair share of weird psychological things going on...I will not spoil anything, but this game will f* you up. The artistic value of that is something you don't see every day in games. MUST PLAY!


----------



## The Q

ZeroS1gnol said:


> Ive finished Spec Ops: the Line last week and oh boy...that game is just utterly brilliant.
> 
> It's a not so original third person shooter, heavily inspired by Gears of War gameplay. The gameplay is decent, but that's not where it shines. It's a very clever game that criticizes the glorifying of violence in other contemporary shooters (COD etc). This one actually makes you feel bad about the fact you are killing people. There's also a fair share of weird psychological things going on...I will not spoil anything, but this game will f* you up. The artistic value of that is something you don't see every day in games. MUST PLAY!



What he said. An absolutely fantastic experience that makes you think.


----------



## Tang

Inspired by the greatness of Twitch Plays Pokémon, I've started a new game of Pokémon Silver, the greatest of all times.


----------



## Decreate

Still deciding whether to get Outlast or Resident Evil 4HD...


----------



## Mexi

outlast, that game is scary as ....


----------



## Fat-Elf

Carma Free on Android. Must get the full version...


----------



## Guitarmiester

Recently picked up Battlefield 4. The game seems awesome but I absolutely suck at it, which totally baffles me because I'm pretty decent at COD. Yes, I realize they're two totally different games but I didn't think it'd be such a struggle to grasp BF4. 

When I play COD I have no problem playing the objectives and easily doubling, if not tripling my K/D yet BF4 I straight up suck. I'm _that_ _guy_ I usually don't want on my team in COD lol. 

Anyone have tips? I've got some learning to do as far as the maps and realized I need to stop rushing like I do in COD but there's gotta be something I'm missing?


----------



## habicore_5150

Goldeneye for the N64

I got bored so I captured this


----------



## Choop

Guitarmiester said:


> Recently picked up Battlefield 4. The game seems awesome but I absolutely suck at it, which totally baffles me because I'm pretty decent at COD. Yes, I realize they're two totally different games but I didn't think it'd be such a struggle to grasp BF4.
> 
> When I play COD I have no problem playing the objectives and easily doubling, if not tripling my K/D yet BF4 I straight up suck. I'm _that_ _guy_ I usually don't want on my team in COD lol.
> 
> Anyone have tips? I've got some learning to do as far as the maps and realized I need to stop rushing like I do in COD but there's gotta be something I'm missing?




I haven't played BF4, but have BF3. Not sure how helpful this will be, but try to be aware of your surroundings at all times, and use cover. Don't sprint anywhere that may leave you open, and abuse the crouch/prone position feature if you start being shot at with cover around. 

Also I haven't played CoD in a while, but bursting is like a must in BF to have consistent shot control.


----------



## Guitarmiester

I've been noticing a lot of my deaths come from people hidden around objects or from behind. It's a very camp-y game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's another aspect that makes the game more realistic than COD. For someone who's all about rushing in COD, it's a hard transition. 

I've messed around with the firing options quite a bit. In COD, I'm a big burst gun user from the Type 95 from MW3 to the MSBS in Ghosts or even slapping Select Fire on the Scar in Black Ops2. The single shot seems to get me killed so it's either two round burst or keeping it auto and manually bursting. I've got a ways to go though, that's for sure.


----------



## Choop

Been playing Street Fighter 4 some more! I thought I was mad-crap after having not played in so long, but got pretty warmed up today and got nearly 1000pp in one ranked session. I'm going to play Blanka until I get rank B+ and then start working on a secondary character. Ultra is supposed to have a mode where you can play 3v3 sort of like KoF, so that's going to be hella fun!


----------



## Mexi

recently updated my videocard so I'm finally getting around to playing Tomb Raider, Battlefield 4 and Arkham Origins.


----------



## ThePhilosopher

I've been on a Banished kick lately.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Picked up Dishonored over the weekend and started it today. I'm liking it so far, really digging the world that they created for it. Also, I'm only on the second mission and I'm already regretting killing every enemy I see. :ugh Damned rats..


----------



## The Q

BlackMastodon said:


> Picked up Dishonored over the weekend and started it today. I'm liking it so far, really digging the world that they created for it. Also, I'm only on the second mission and I'm already regretting killing every enemy I see. :ugh Damned rats..



My recommendation is to restart it and go for a sneaky no kill playthrough. It makes the game a bit more worth your money.


----------



## Deadnightshade

The Q said:


> My recommendation is to restart it and go for a sneaky no kill playthrough. It makes the game a bit more worth your money.



I think that low chaos playthrough requires a bit of OCD to be honest...It's nice to be 100% sneaky and get the good ending,although I don't get why any other ending is in essence a bad one.


Spoiler



Come on why can't Sokolov and Pierro invent the cure at least in the medium ending (high chaos-Emily saved)?



However never playing in high chaos makes you miss the refined combat system of the game.It's hilarious using rat swarm on people and then throwing them grenades while they are occupied with being eaten alive,or placing razor mines while backpedaling and seeing the enemies walk right towards them.

Personally I enjoyed both going straight-on the enemies,as well as going for a bit more silent assassinations or hiding more frequently later in the game when the enemies become greater in number.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Yeah I'll most likely do another play through using stealth and not killing anyone, as for now I enjoy the challenge of the high chaos playthrough.


----------



## Deadnightshade

BlackMastodon said:


> Yeah I'll most likely do another play through using stealth and not killing anyone, as for now I enjoy the challenge of the high chaos playthrough.



Yes if anything there is a degree of re-playability in this game due to the different approaches.

I wish there was a dedicated ending for ghosting but still being an assassin.


----------



## alvo

Guitarmiester said:


> Recently picked up Battlefield 4. The game seems awesome but I absolutely suck at it, which totally baffles me because I'm pretty decent at COD. Yes, I realize they're two totally different games but I didn't think it'd be such a struggle to grasp BF4.
> 
> When I play COD I have no problem playing the objectives and easily doubling, if not tripling my K/D yet BF4 I straight up suck. I'm _that_ _guy_ I usually don't want on my team in COD lol.
> 
> Anyone have tips? I've got some learning to do as far as the maps and realized I need to stop rushing like I do in COD but there's gotta be something I'm missing?


Always scan your environment, don't always be looking dead center. Maneuver through cover, use the environment to your advantage. Use crouch more, improves your accuracy and you don't stick out.

For the love of god *DO NOT SPRINT AROUND CORNERS*. Take your time. *And ALWAYS HAVE A BATTLE BUDDY*. BF4 is all about the *TEAMWORK*.

Oh and respect your kit/classes unique duties/abilities. Throw down ammo and med kits. Make sure the coast is clear if you're going for a revive. If you're gonna be a tank gunner, it's generally advised you're an Engineer so you can jump out with a rocket or repair tool.

*SPOT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING* I am mashing the spot button constantly.

I haven't played for a week so that's all I can think of at the moment.


----------



## alvo

Playing DARK SOULS lately, getting amped up for DARK SOULS II! Too scared to continue through OUTLAST atm.....


----------



## InfinityCollision

Re: Dishonored, the game does give you some wiggle room to kill people and still get the low-chaos ending. A Ghost/Clean Hands run requires a lot of patience, planning, and potentially reloading, yeah, but you can definitely kill the occasional guard and/or target and still get the good ending.

EDIT: Finally got around to playing Antichamber recently, interesting game. Ought to go back and put some time into Dark Souls with the new game coming soon.


----------



## eddygdk

I've been playing Tomb Raider thanks to PS+. I've heard its a great game so i figured since its free that id play it


----------



## Repner

Replaying FF XIII. Reminding me of everything I hate about this one.


----------



## BlackMastodon

BlackMastodon said:


> Yeah I'll most likely do another play through using stealth and not killing anyone, as for now I enjoy the challenge of the high chaos playthrough.


Finished the high chaos playthrough, the weepers and rats weren't nearly as big of a problem as I thought they would be and it was definitely a lot of fun just running at everyone, dick swinging and gun blazing.  Now it's time for the stealth/ghost playthrough. This one will require much more patience and saving and loading.


----------



## asher

STICK OF TRUUUUUTH


----------



## canuck brian

I recently started playing Dota2 with 4 other guys from work. Pretty fun game and i love that it's free.


----------



## Taylor

Playing through all of the Halo games again. Such nostalgia.


----------



## mikernaut

Did a 2nd play through of Last of Us, now totally hooked on Diablo 3 after the patch.


----------



## j0eyaces

Playing South Park Stick of the Truth. Pretty good game if you are a long time South Park fan very dirty game so far. Only have been able to play for a few hours but so far its decent.


----------



## alvo

DARK SOULS II


----------



## asher

j0eyaces said:


> Playing South Park Stick of the Truth. Pretty good game if you are a long time South Park fan very dirty game so far. Only have been able to play for a few hours but so far its decent.



Honestly even if you're not that familiar the gameplay is fun, the Facebook thing is pretty well integrated (no, doesn't need actual FB), and the humor mostly stands on its own, as long as you're okay with the style.


----------



## ZeroS1gnol

I picked up the first Bioshock again and you know what? It's amazing. I came to think this one is a timeless gem, a game that doesn't really age. A bit like HL2.


----------



## ErkerAsylum

Pokemon X, just doing random endgame content, 

and Diablo III.


----------



## Khaerruhl

Im not sure if I wanna keep going with Borderlands 2. I just might try and go with a new Krieg build for solo or something...

Also, Im not sure on what to play. Dishonored, Street Fighter, modded Skyrim or something else. Too many choices! Argh!


----------



## Don Vito

stick of truth

the gnome part is the most insane thing i've ever witnessed in a game

i was utterly ....ing speechless


----------



## shanike

Fallout 2 at the moment


----------



## Guitarmiester

Was at Best Buy looking to replace my iPod and rummaged through the 360 games. Found Borderland with all dlc for $15. Seems like I got a steal. I'm only 45 minutes into the game and really liking it. Guns galore, too.


----------



## caskettheclown

Really want to play stick of truth!


----------



## goherpsNderp

i fell off the wagon with some of my other games, so i've now moved on to:

-Thief - PS4
-Luftrausers - Vita
-Steamworld Dig - Vita
-Outlast - PS4
-Strider - PS4 (played the demo and unlocked the full version, but haven't picked it back up. will try to tonight.)

haven't played Planetside 2 since they changed up the Amerish continent because suddenly my faction is doing extremely poorly on every single continent and i don't understand why.


----------



## YolandaSargent

*I'm playing Second Life which is pretty exciting since I always wanted to have super powers  It's not so brilliant in terms of design and characteristics but the idea itself makes me happy. 
*


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I got sick of waiting for heists in GTA Online so I got PayDay 2 off PS+. Not a great game but fun enough with a few friends playing as the offline AI leave you to do all the work.

I started DMC: Devil May Cry also. I've had the HD versions of the original series for a couple years now but never bothered to actually play them so I might actually get around to it afterwards.

I really want to get the Left Behind dlc for The Last of Us but I was so depressed after playing that game that I couldn't play any other games so I don't know if I can handle another gaming slump.


----------



## wat

Fallout 3, downloaded it a few weeks ago. Great game.

I was playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer and was close to having all my Ultra-Rare guns maxed but my disk drive took a shit so now I can't play it. Oh well, most of my friends moved on to other games and it's hard to find decent team mates for Platinum matches anymore anyway.

Some other games I've recently completed are Dead Space 2(3rd playthrough), Bioshock 1 and Infinite, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Sleeping Dogs.


----------



## bouVIP

Just got FFX/X-2 for Vita so gonna spend all my time at work playing that now.


----------



## habicore_5150

*Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
*







First time I've gotten the chance to play this, and I'm having quite a bit of fun with it​


----------



## Fiction

Just finished FFX, and ordered a Ps3, so I'll be doing a playthrough of Hitman Absolution, and eventually buying FFXIII-2/LR so I can finish that little saga off.


----------



## thedonal

Just re-installed Dead Space to the hex box.

Figure I'll watch a fillum first, then play it later when I'm full of wine and more scare-able.


----------



## Mexi

Just finished up Splinter Cell: Blacklist and now I'm playing Max Payne 3 and Titanfall


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Gone right back to juggling games. So far I'm juggling the following:






...almost finished with this one. Really ploughing hard to get this out of the way as quickly as possible.





No way am I just gonna let this one sit on the desk. 





Just taking this one casually...

Also got this lying around right now. No real rush to play it but I'll start after I'm done with one of the above:


----------



## goherpsNderp

once again my plan to work on my backlog has been stopped dead in it's tracks by another game: inFamous Second Son. going to try my best to finish another game i'm almost done with before continuing, but in the meantime, here's a screenshot of it running on my Vita over Remote Play:






(please excuse the graininess, you can't take native screenshots on Vita when using Remote Play so i just snapped a shot with my phone without the flash)


----------



## BlackMastodon

Holy shit that looks really good for being on a Vita.


----------



## Decreate

Back to playing Diablo 3 recently.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Got MGS V: Ground Zeroes off PSN. Took me a lot longer than ten minutes to beat it and I can see myself playing it multiple times which isn't something I can say about most games.


----------



## Osorio

Finally got around Dragon's Crown and it is one of the best games of this generation for me. Just so much damn fun. 

All the bells and whistles aside, the gameplay is so incredibly satisfying. Love it.


----------



## Don Vito

Fat-Elf gifted me CS:GO on Steam. ilybby<3


----------



## goherpsNderp

finished Killzone Shadow Fall and now moving on to finish Thief.

i don't get the hate for Killzone SF. amazing graphics, really good sci-fi designs and atmosphere, the gunplay was improved over the previous games in the series, the voice acting was improved, and it just felt like a solid game the series really needed at the time. PS4 needed it too. so i feel like all of the hate comes from people that never liked the series to begin with and gave it a bad score because it didn't change into a completely different game.

i also finished Thomas Was Alone on my Vita. great game. puts a lot of other game's story telling and narrative to shame- and the whole thing is done with basic colored squares.


----------



## MFB

I felt like Killzone failed in the fact that the first few missions I couldn't tell what the .... was going on either by sight or by just the layouts. During the forest bit the sun is constantly coming at you through the trees and that's the same direction that the enemies are coming from, so you're left to blindly fire into this massive silhouette in front of you and hope that the firing stops. And the alarms that get set off are ....ing infuriating and you really have to fight your way to them to stop them. The Helghast seemed to immediately know where I was at all times and kept spawning to swarm me until I ran out of ammo and inevitably died.


----------



## timbucktu123

i thought killzone was awesome. it was great for a launch title and gave me somthing to play when when the ps4 first came out


----------



## Sofos




----------



## Fiction

Ni No Kuni, really enjoying it at the moment, great story, artwork is excellent and really immersive, although I find some of the areas rather annoying with the endless amount of monsters, kind of breaks the nice flow of story.


----------



## Choop

Don Vito said:


> Fat-Elf gifted me CS:GO on Steam. ilybby<3



Dood, I'd play with you guys if you like!

I'm terrible, like really. It'll be great.


----------



## Don Vito

Choop said:


> Dood, I'd play with you guys if you like!
> 
> I'm terrible, like really. It'll be great.



Steam Community :: nims

I'm in the top 50 leader board for worst CS player. I could be standing directly behind an enemy with a loaded shotgun and still manage to die somehow.

edit: I added you.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Choop said:


> Dood, I'd play with you guys if you like!
> 
> I'm terrible, like really. It'll be great.



The lag would kill me if I would play on an US server.


----------



## Don Vito

I can play on that one Finnish server you showed me just fine.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Don Vito said:


> I can play on that one Finnish server you showed me just fine.



Really? I don't even remember we played on the same server.


----------



## Don Vito

you were drinking


----------



## metalstrike

Dark Souls II is my current obsession.


----------



## InfinityCollision

Decided to replay Xenoblade Chronicles, but this time I'm using a code to reduce EXP gain to 1/4 of normal. Thus far it's been just about perfect, I can kill a few monsters as I go and do all the quests I find without constantly overleveling everything around me. I've actually been a few levels under story fights and unique monsters thus far, pretty fun so far.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Nephew dropped by with some stuff and let me pick; I grabbed Far Cry 3 and Dishonored.

I dug FC3; really got a sense of 'I'm a normal guy put into this situation, and I'd never really contemplated killing someone before, but I'm getting good at it so let's keep doing it' type of thing. Some of it got really frustrating for me, but it was manageable.
I got stuck twice in the framework....that is a sign of bad game design to me....there shouldn't be any reason a game should come out where someone can just get locked into a piece of the game (a rock or wall) and not be able to move or kill themselves.....had to end and reload from last save and that's incredibly annoying to me. Just kills it, in terms of suspension of disbelief. I've never been materially fused with a rock in my life, that I can remember. 

Dishonored was a treat for me and my daughter.....started immediately after finishing FC3, and it was slower paced...we had to be a lot more sneaky throughout this game and rushing got us killed. A LOT. Once we figured out (halfway thru) that we had to slow down and take our time with these missions, it was infinitely more enjoyable to both of us....creeping along rooftops, figuring out ways to jack someone without killing them, finding hidden rooms, etc...started a second playthrough the day after we finished it, focusing on finding every treasure/coin/rune/bone charm on each mission. I seriously can't remember the last time I played a game again immediately...I don't know that I ever have, unless it was way back in the day and maybe replayed the very first Tomb Raider on PS.

Either one would give you a few hours of fun if you hadn't played em before. NEXT!


----------



## Ralyks

Grabbed InFamous Second Son and Rayman Legends for PS4 last night. Both hella fun so far. Almost grabbed MGSV: Ground Zeroes, but hear its incredibly short, so going to wait on that for a bit.


----------



## caskettheclown

GOAT SIMULATOR!!!


Also getting into WoW , played a bit a few years ago but had no time to play it. Now I have a bit more time to play. 


Plus my girlfriend is getting a new laptop in the next month or so , so she'll be playing with me.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Just got Reaper of Souls today and ran through Act 5 with my friend. Pretty short it seemed but playing with him is always a speed run. He doesn't give you a chance to read any of the dialogue or absorb the story so I do it on my own later. The new loot system is WAAAAY better than before and I'm enjoying the game again.


----------



## Repner

Metal Gear So...no wait....finished.


----------



## pink freud

Picked up the full-expansion Civ 5 finally. Just getting the hang of the game. Won with Science, Culture and War, now I need to figure out the Diplomatic victory.


----------



## asher

pink freud said:


> Picked up the full-expansion Civ 5 finally. Just getting the hang of the game. Won with Science, Culture and War, now I need to figure out the Diplomatic victory.



Including Brave New World?

Also, which AI setting are you on?


----------



## asher

BlackMastodon said:


> Just got Reaper of Souls today and ran through Act 5 with my friend. Pretty short it seemed but playing with him is always a speed run. He doesn't give you a chance to read any of the dialogue or absorb the story so I do it on my own later. The new loot system is WAAAAY better than before and I'm enjoying the game again.



Yeah, I've started playing a lot of D3 again.

Act V is pretty meh IMO, but oh god the gameplay is so much better. Adventure Mode is also pretty good, because it's what everyone was already doing distilled - hunting champion/elite packs/bosses for dem phat pixels


----------



## pink freud

asher said:


> Including Brave New World?
> 
> Also, which AI setting are you on?



Yeah, I just bought the whole thing off Steam.

Whatever the default is. I've never played that many strategy games, so I'm still learning the depths of the menus. There's a lot of little hidden synergies that take some time to figure out (like the set bonuses for the archeological finds).


----------



## asher

pink freud said:


> Yeah, I just bought the whole thing off Steam.
> 
> Whatever the default is. I've never played that many strategy games, so I'm still learning the depths of the menus. There's a lot of little hidden synergies that take some time to figure out (like the set bonuses for the archeological finds).



Nice. Just checking - Brave New World seriously overhauls culture and global diplomacy and makes it a lot better, IMO.

The AI is pretty goddamn stupid at default, but that totally makes sense. I also usually play down there with my ladyfriend, because we kinda just want to team up for the research bonus and compstomp instead of actually, you know, having to get stressed over it


----------



## pink freud

asher said:


> Nice. Just checking - Brave New World seriously overhauls culture and global diplomacy and makes it a lot better, IMO.
> 
> The AI is pretty goddamn stupid at default, but that totally makes sense. I also usually play down there with my ladyfriend, because we kinda just want to team up for the research bonus and compstomp instead of actually, you know, having to get stressed over it



So far, out of my three victories war was the hardest. Just positioning units took up a lot of time. Got there two turns before the first World Leader vote.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Finished Dishonored with 100%, so hit Gamestop with the kid.....she grabbed Bioshock Infinite (which I hate, this thing looks like a cartoon and the cutscenes just kill it for me), and I got Dead Island and Batman Arkham Origins for us to do together. 

When she beats BI we'll take on Dead Island...also grabbed COD Ghosts for me and my wife....I dig it more than she does; she's bent that there's no Nuketown.


----------



## Choop

Made a Dee Jay player ragequit in SF4 today. Feels good man!


----------



## Orandje

Space Engineers.

Recommend it!
Sandbox/Space Sim that can make one addicted (y)


----------



## Alex6534

Just got Skyrim for the PC and trying my hardest not to play it until May with coursework exams coming up....as I know my life will cease for about two weeks once all the mods are installed


----------



## Don Vito

Orandje said:


> Space Engineers.
> 
> Recommend it!
> Sandbox/Space Sim that can make one addicted (y)



What do you like... do in this game? I thought about getting it a few weeks ago.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Took a break from DMC to play some more Binary Domain. Holy shit are the boss fights getting more ridiculous. I just got done fighting Demolisher from Revenge of the Fallen and a tentacle graping chandelier.


----------



## ZeroS1gnol

Deadlight! Free on xbox live now. Nice side scroller zombie game.


----------



## hairychris

Going back to *STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl* as I feel like some post-apocalyptic mayhem.

Damn it's frustrating, I really need to get used to the mechanics again as accuracy without a scope is minimal.

Am mainly waiting for *Elite: Dangerous* to come out, as I supported the Kickstarter. The alpha footage looks immense. I may need to buy a new laptop to run it on though.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Argh.....started Arkham Origins. Man this game is terrible compared to the first two....it's like a train wreck, I can't look away. Still Batman though, so I'll finish it.


----------



## wat

Finished Fallout 3 and Now I'm back to ME3 Multiplayer. Knocking out Platinum matches and trying to get my Ultra Rares maxed.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Binary Domain. Good game but the boss fights definitely peaked in act five, and I'm so fraking sick of cliffhanger, sequel bait endings.


----------



## MFB

steinmetzify said:


> Argh.....started Arkham Origins. Man this game is terrible compared to the first two....it's like a train wreck, I can't look away. Still Batman though, so I'll finish it.



This.

It done by a different studio which explains 99% of it, but it's still really terrible compared to the originals


----------



## Steinmetzify

MFB said:


> This.
> 
> It done by a different studio which explains 99% of it, but it's still really terrible compared to the originals


 
Yeah, it's pretty bad....the combat is good and I'm digging the boss fights, but man the story sucks.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Just fired up the campaign on Black Ops (CoD) and oh god.. It's much more horrible than I remember it being. Literally everything sucks, voice acting/design, graphics (well, it's a 4-5yo old game but they weren't that pretty back in the day either), level design.. 

Won't be playing it much anymore. Now give me a Call of Duty 2 and I'll play the shit out of that game!


----------



## asher

Fat-Elf said:


> Just fired up the campaign on Black Ops (CoD) and oh god.. It's much more horrible than I remember it being. Literally everything sucks, voice acting/design, graphics (well, it's a 4-5yo old game but they weren't that pretty back in the day either), level design..
> 
> Won't be playing it much anymore. Now give me a Call of Duty 2 and I'll play the shit out of that game!



CoD1 rifle/SMG combo ftmfw


----------



## kamello

recomendations for something with a cool singleplayer and a decent story?, lost my Fallout 3 and New Vegas saves so I don't feel like doing everything again for atleast some time  

just drop names and I'll check em , my laptop can run games like Bioshock Infinite or Battlefield 3 at medium, medium/low


----------



## ghost_of_karelia

Decided to give Borderlands a proper try. I've owned the game for at least one or two years now and have played it sporadically, but I've never really knuckled down and got into it beyond the first few missions. Something about quest/hand-in/quest/hand-in gameplay makes it a massive turn-off for me.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I'm very much enjoying it. Aside from having to lower the resolution to get a high enough FPS to make it enjoyable (story of my life) and the computer sporadically overheating when trying to play it, it's a lot of fun. Challenging even at more basic difficulty settings, and it's a beautifully atmospheric game.


----------



## BlackMastodon

kamello said:


> recomendations for something with a cool singleplayer and a decent story?, lost my Fallout 3 and New Vegas saves so I don't feel like doing everything again for atleast some time
> 
> just drop names and I'll check em , my laptop can run games like Bioshock Infinite or Battlefield 3 at medium, medium/low


Mass Effect. All of them.


----------



## necronile

South Park The Stick Of Truth,Funny game!


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Had a chance to play Dynasty Warriors 8 for the PS4. Holy shit was that fun.


----------



## JEngelking

BlackMastodon said:


> Mass Effect. All of them.



I picked up the first one a few months ago, because I thought I'd really like it.

I started playing through it, and I _still_ think I'd like it, but I made the mistake of choosing the pistol/sniper class, under the assumption I'd be able to use other weapons later, and it's made the game more of a chore. 

Now that I finished DS2, I think I'm gonna start ME1 over again with a different weapons class, I really do like what I've played through so far.


----------



## Don Vito

*Morrowind*

- Love the atmosphere of this game, and the combat doesn't annoy me like it did back in the day due to having experienced some of the stat based 90's rpgs like Fallout 1/2. It can get a little frustrating trying to find new quests, as you have to walk around and sit through text to get any information. 

*Quake Live*

- You shoot things and its f2p without micro transactions and balancing issues. It's fun.

*Euro Truck Simulator 2*

- Haven't touched the full game since I bought it, but I played the demo a little, and damn, this is the ultimate soundtrack game other than like audiosurf. It is a little boring to drive with the keyboard, but I didn't have any control issues due to the speed of the trucks.

*Counter Strike: GO*

- This is an enjoyable game when I'm not getting AWP'd every round. Don't have a lot to say about it other than that. I really do hate the ultra competitive douchbaggery this game attracts though. Many of the people who play this game at a serious level have just lost all sight about the joy of gaming.

*Word of Tanks*

- This might be one of the priciest f2p games I've ever seen. There's no telling how much WoT enthusiast drop on gold bundles and stuff. The actual game is pretty fun, but very hard to lean into for newbies. I can never learn from my mistakes, as I'm never quite sure where I'm being shot from. I've noticed by spectating better players, that the sure strategy to win, is to camp in a bush until the very end of the game, and then decide whether or not to rush the enemy base for a capture. Anyone who rushes out with a fast scout tank like mine, is basically cannon fodder. I want to like this game, but I'm very unsure about it.

*TF2*

- Been playing since launch. I'm a little bitter about it these days, but it's still very enjoyable. The weapons they have added over the years have only ruined a few characters, one being the Spy. The Spy's new knives and gadgets are often cheap and really take the fun out of playing the class. But in all fairness, the spy is still at a disadvantage on the field, no matter what layout he uses. The worst offender is the Sandvich. I could live without the ridiculous hat culture, but the only real problem about it is that Medics will NOT stay on you if you aren't adorned in all the latest wear. Even if you're beast as .... and are dominating the whole team, they only heal the Heavy with the neon green sneakers and wolf hat -_-. It's frustrating for me because I'm good(sometimes), but I'm on a fresh account after 3 years, and have no hats(besides the ghibus ).

*GunZ 2*

- Weird Korean TPS game, that aims at recreating over the top anime style battles in a multiplayer platform. Almost everything about this game scream "cool!", especially the controls(wall running anyone?). Problem is; the game just doesn't work. It has lots of.. natural lag so to speak. Characters are statically moving all over the place, and its common to be getting diced up with a katana from 5 ft away. I guess the frantic of the nature of the game ....s with the code or something.. idk. I want to like this game, but it NEEDS to be a smoother experience. 

*Star Trek Online*

- I installed this for the sole purpose of piloting a space ship. I need to get an EVE subscription. 

*Fallout 2*

- Grabbed this when GOG made it free last year. I haven't made it past the first section of the game ;_;. If I can say anything, I love the atmosphere. That's my #1 thing about RPG games. The game play and story can be completely dismal, but I'll play the hell out of your game if you can get the atmosphere brewing. This is my favorite thing about the Demons Souls/Dark Souls franchise, not the gameplay or challenge.

*K-On! for the PSP*

- Wow. Such Kawaii. Much music.


----------



## kamello

Don Vito said:


> *Fallout 2*
> 
> - Grabbed this when GOG made it free last year. I haven't made it past the first section of the game ;_;. If I can say anything, I love the atmosphere. That's my #1 thing about RPG games. The game play and story can be completely dismal, but I'll play the hell out of your game if you can get the atmosphere brewing. This is my favorite thing about the Demons Souls/Dark Souls franchise, not the gameplay or challenge.



oh, you mean....






...blue, moist, and atmospheric? 

seriously though, exams are near, so bye bye gaming for a while , I'll keep Mass Effect, Fallout 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and TF2 in mind...


----------



## Don Vito

kamello said:


> oh, you mean....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ...blue, moist, and atmospheric?


I seriously love you right now. Marry me.


----------



## kamello

Don Vito said:


> I seriously love you right now. Marry me.



b- but....I always thought that you and Fat-Elf had something going on


----------



## Don Vito

kamello said:


> b- but....I always thought that you and Fat-Elf had something going on


He's in the army right now, so I get lonely.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Started Just Cause 2 this afternoon. Could get used to the grapple. The missions aren't the much fun, but blowing up or shooting nearly everything is the game is dope. Been sick, so playing a lot of games lol.


----------



## Bennykins

Been playing the Wildstar Beta, looking good so far.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Started Metro: Last Light last week. I like the atmosphere but I have the same problem with it as I did with BulletStorm where when you're not fighting human enemies it becomes a chore to play.


----------



## alvo

my friend convinced me to get Elder Scrolls Online. However my PC can only run it on minimum and the graphics I get are a total turnoff, so now I'm getting an Aorus x7 .


----------



## Ralyks

Picked up The Last of Us and South Park: The Stick of Truth last night.


----------



## SkyIllusion

Anyone else here start playing Child of Light on steam? It came out a few days ago and I think it's fantastic.


----------



## kamello

fvck all the posible games I listed in the last page, in a nostalgia moment I downloaded a Snes Emulator and Chrono Trigger (my bandmate recorded a cover of the game OST  ), and I've never beat this since I was like 10 years old the last time I played it and didn't understood shit about the game mechanics or English, but I loved the game


----------



## Don Vito

Had some time away from the PC last weekend or so, and I rented the newest Thief game. Not sure why, but I couldn't get into it. Felt like it was holding my hand in some inadvertent way.


----------



## broj15

currently doing (another) run on Final Fantasy tactics on ps1. Because nothings more fun than spending 50 turns running away and yelling.


----------



## Trainwreck1446

ESO! It's so good. Only a level 27 Dragonknight at the moment, but it's the bees knees


----------



## wat

JEngelking said:


> I picked up the first one a few months ago, because I thought I'd really like it.
> 
> I started playing through it, and I _still_ think I'd like it, but I made the mistake of choosing the pistol/sniper class, under the assumption I'd be able to use other weapons later, and it's made the game more of a chore.
> 
> Now that I finished DS2, I think I'm gonna start ME1 over again with a different weapons class, I really do like what I've played through so far.



Sounds like you're an infiltrator. Keep in mind pistols have the best damage per second especially during the early game because Assault Rifles are really innacurate until you put a lot of points into assault rifles skill.

And you can still use shotguns reasonably effectively on a class without shotguns training because you don't really need to be able to zoom in with them. Good for close quarters.

If you really want training in all weapons you can be the soldier class. It's what I did for my 1st playthrough of ME1 and ME2, though nowadays I think sentinel and adept are a lot more fun. I like the vanguard in me1(shotgun caster) but in me2 and me3 the vanguard is too OP and cheesy, imo. 

:2cents:


----------



## Fiction

Banished. I don't know where the past 4 hours of my life went, but I'm content


----------



## Steinmetzify

COD Ghosts. Quickscopers suck.


----------



## Ralyks

Downloaded Final Fantasy IX last night. I seriously think I've used my PS3 more in the 4 or 5 days I've owned it than I have my PS4 that I've owned since January.


----------



## gizmi7

I am currently addicted to Hearthstone. Arenas are so cool...


----------



## JEngelking

wat said:


> Sounds like you're an infiltrator. Keep in mind pistols have the best damage per second especially during the early game because Assault Rifles are really innacurate until you put a lot of points into assault rifles skill.
> 
> And you can still use shotguns reasonably effectively on a class without shotguns training because you don't really need to be able to zoom in with them. Good for close quarters.
> 
> If you really want training in all weapons you can be the soldier class. It's what I did for my 1st playthrough of ME1 and ME2, though nowadays I think sentinel and adept are a lot more fun. I like the vanguard in me1(shotgun caster) but in me2 and me3 the vanguard is too OP and cheesy, imo.
> 
> :2cents:



Thanks for the tips man! I've been in need of a new game to play through lately, definitely gonna take what you said in to consideration and start Mass Effect over later tonight.


----------



## Mordacain

JEngelking said:


> Thanks for the tips man! I've been in need of a new game to play through lately, definitely gonna take what you said in to consideration and start Mass Effect over later tonight.



That's actually what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks. I've played both ME 1 & 2 a few times over each, but only played through ME3 once, and that was before they released the extended cut ending so I rolled a new Renegade character starting from ME2 and busted out all the higres texture replacements I could find.

ME3 is looking damn fine.


----------



## synrgy

I recently got back a whole stack of games I'd loaned to a friend a year or two ago. Among them was the Orange Box, and I've subsequently been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2. 

That, and Civilization Revolution, which my go-to for "I need to turn my brain _off_ for an hour or two. Or five."

*edit* also, Vanguard is the bee's knees in ME1. In ME2 and ME3 they kinda nerfed the class a little bit, but it can still be great once you unlock a few skills for custom slots after playing through a few times. Basically, what I'm trying to say is: Shotgun + Lift = God Mode.


----------



## Defi

The Witcher 2. Amazing game. My ONLY complaint is the stealth mechanics are awful. But there has only been about 30 minutes of it in the 30 or so hours I've played the game.

I will move to a new place in the next few months and in that place I will have a projector, purchase a well informed set of speakers and amps/processors... a comfy as .... couch... an ounce of green happiness, and then slip into game coma for a few weekends. I look forward to this, and this thread may supply the inspiration to pick up a few games.


----------



## wat

JEngelking said:


> Thanks for the tips man! I've been in need of a new game to play through lately, definitely gonna take what you said in to consideration and start Mass Effect over later tonight.




Cool beans. When you import your me1 file save into me2 you'll also have a chance to change your character's class early in the game.


----------



## tacotiklah

Putting some more time into CS Global Offensive. I hadn't played this game in like a year, so I figured I'd dust it off and shoot some terrorists.

And here's my ode to all the times I couldn't diffuse the bomb in time:


----------



## Choop

Ranked up to a B+ with Blanka on SF4 last night! 

Time to pick up a secondary character. Guh. I dunno who to play to compliment Blanka. I'm thinking someone with projectiles, probably either Guile or one of the shotos.


----------



## ThePhilosopher

I started playing PayDay2 recently (a friend suggested it) and I quite like it, but being low level with people in the 50+ range sucks sometimes.


----------



## Cloudy

ThePhilosopher said:


> I started playing PayDay2 recently (a friend suggested it) and I quite like it, but being low level with people in the 50+ range sucks sometimes.



Pro tip for leveling up quick,

Farm the level "rats" and blow up the meth lab ASAP. You get huge bank and tons of XP.


----------



## tacotiklah

Choop said:


> Ranked up to a B+ with Blanka on SF4 last night!
> 
> Time to pick up a secondary character. Guh. I dunno who to play to compliment Blanka. I'm thinking someone with projectiles, probably either Guile or one of the shotos.



Kinda depends upon whether you like using charge moves or doing 1/4 circle type moves. Judging from your prowess with Blanka, it would be a fairly easy transition to use Guile.


----------



## habicore_5150

Been a while since I last played this. Needed to get more into some of the Tales games since I'm planning on picking up Tales of Xillia (had a few friends of mine tell me how good this game is). Hopefully I might get a chance to play some of the other Tales games like Symphonia, Vesperia, or Graces


----------



## asher

Picked up Final Fantasy XIV to poke around in, mostly because my friend wants to check it out


----------



## ThePhilosopher

Cloudy said:


> Pro tip for leveling up quick,
> 
> Farm the level "rats" and blow up the meth lab ASAP. You get huge bank and tons of XP.



Does offline matter?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

habicore_5150 said:


> Been a while since I last played this. Needed to get more into some of the Tales games since I'm planning on picking up Tales of Xillia (had a few friends of mine tell me how good this game is). Hopefully I might get a chance to play some of the other Tales games like Symphonia, Vesperia, or Graces


 
 Phantasia was the only Tales game that I played extensively (on SNES more than PS), great memories. I really should pick up Xillia by now.


----------



## OmegaSlayer

Puppeteer.
Really a game with some magic.


----------



## Choop

:V


----------



## Mason Bruce

Final Fantasy Tactics, then after I'm done with that, I'll move on the Tactics Ogre:LUCT, heard TO is better, we'll see.


----------



## Ralyks

Added to my PS3 library: Every freakin' God of War, Heavy Rain, and Final Fantasy XIII

Edit: looks like you can add SSX and Metal Gear Solid 4 to the list...


----------



## tacotiklah

Steam is giving away Arma: Cold War Assault for free right now. I'll play it when I get back home tonight.


----------



## InfinityCollision

More or less wrapped up with Xenoblade for the time being... a few quests left to finish, some art books left to grab, but the story's done, gems are maxed, superbosses beaten. Level 80 right now 

Side note, the game looks _gorgeous_ on Dolphin. Internal 1080p rendering + HD texture pack + naturally gorgeous game =  Only complaint about the graphics is that I haven't figured out how to fix the pop-in yet. The HD pack project is getting a major update soon so I'll probably revisit the game again in the near future. Maybe a NG+ lowbie run with everyone's levels reset or something.

Currently replaying Legend of Legaia for the first time in probably 15 years. Likely going to revisit Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and the Shadow Hearts series after that.


----------



## mongey

Choop said:


> :V


 
nice


----------



## Don Vito

ghstofperdition said:


> Steam is giving away Arma: Cold War Assault for free right now. I'll play it when I get back home tonight.


My god these graphics 

The game is actually really hard though. Can't even get through the second mission because my squad gets slaughtered in around a minute.


----------



## tacotiklah

Don Vito said:


> My god these graphics
> 
> The game is actually really hard though. Can't even get through the second mission because my squad gets slaughtered in around a minute.



I ragequit the game after about 30 minutes. I finished the training, but on the actual mission I kept getting shot by people that are supposedly completely obscured by hills. 

And yeah, those graphics are pretty 90s-ish.


----------



## Don Vito

Should have just named it Crawling Simulator 2001.


----------



## possumkiller

I have been addicted to War Thunder for a while now. I am a sucker for a good WW2 combat flight game. I am soooooo happy the latest patch got a Mig3 with 20mm cannons. The Mig3 is my favorite fighter and the early versions were armed quite weakly. For my American ships I mainly use bombers. The B25s and the early B17E. The last patch also brought the PBJ which is a naval B25 with an all metal nose housing an ass load of .50s and a very large artillery cannon. I am working on acquiring this model now.


----------



## Mendez

Picked up dark souls 2 on release for PC, but my job doesnt really let me spend time on it. Also picked up The binding of isaac and I'm planning on buying watch dogs. 

It's gonna be a great summer once I can play these games


----------



## TremontiFan16

Battlefield 4 and gtaV
Bf4 is my first battlefield and it seriously crushes every FPS war game I ever played.
GTAV is so much fun.Especially when your drunk


----------



## asher

Back to my "what do I do with my life right now that doesn't involve thinking? I don't know, let's play more Diablo III!" mode. New patch forced a build swap on my Thunderhammer Crusader, but now I actually feel _more_ like a Space Marine, and I'm facerolling Torment 2


----------



## tacotiklah

Don Vito said:


> Should have just named it Crawling Simulator 2001.



Yeah I agree with you there. Tbvh, the Delta Force series was out around that time and was infinitely a better franchise. I wish steam would release those games for free. I remember my days on ozi squad for black hawk down. Miss those guys.


----------



## habicore_5150

Been a long time since I last played this, even though I really don't play racing games that much.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Played Chivalry: Medieval Warfare last night with sine buddies. Holy shit that game is a lot of fun and super ridiculous.  It's great playing a multiplayer game and bit taking it seriously. 

Also still playing D3 every now and then with friends. Got a level 70 Crusader and DH, lvl 34 paragon I think? Still having fun trying to hunt down legendary items.


----------



## blastgatr

Team Fortress 2 (my friend got me addicted again -_-), Ratchet & Clank Collection, Mass Effect 3, Dark Souls II, Dragon's Dogma, Oblivion, Adventure Quest Worlds (yes, I happily play that game).


----------



## Steinmetzify

Ralyks said:


> Added to my PS3 library: Every freakin' God of War, Heavy Rain, and Final Fantasy XIII
> 
> Edit: looks like you can add SSX and Metal Gear Solid 4 to the list...


 
SSX kills.....never played a more fun snowboarding game and I rule on it. 

Still doing COD: Ghosts, but I've gotten better.

I actually heard a few people bitch that I joined their game. "Shit, that Stein guy is in; we're all dead."

I had to laugh....don't know when it happened, but I went from sucking all day long to winning more often than not. Yay.


----------



## asher

BlackMastodon said:


> Played Chivalry: Medieval Warfare last night with sine buddies. Holy shit that game is a lot of fun and super ridiculous.  It's great playing a multiplayer game and bit taking it seriously.
> 
> Also still playing D3 every now and then with friends. Got a level 70 Crusader and DH, lvl 34 paragon I think? Still having fun trying to hunt down legendary items.



My Crusader looks and plays like a Space Marine, I love it  will grab a picture when I'm home.

I also highly recommend this build:

Lightning Hammerdin - For Those Who Want To Destroy Torment - Crusader: The Church of Zakarum - Diablo III Class Forums - Forums - Diablo Fans


----------



## F1Filter

Started on "Wolfenstein: The New Order" this morning. Liking what I'm seeing so far. But I somehow am having a hard time believing that multiplayer was never considered for this. Some of these maps are enormous. Why waste all of this on a single player campaign? Seems a bit odd to have a player wander around all these multi level maps for no reason.


----------



## MFB

F1Filter said:


> Started on "Wolfenstein: The New Order" this morning. Liking what I'm seeing so far. But I somehow am having a hard time believing that multiplayer was never considered for this. Some of these maps are enormous. Why waste all of this on a single player campaign? Seems a bit odd to have a player wander around all these multi level maps for no reason.



Is there really no multiplayer? The single-player better be god damn AMAZING if they expected people to pay $60 for a strictly single-player game


----------



## blastgatr

asher said:


> My Crusader looks and plays like a Space Marine, I love it  will grab a picture when I'm home.



My Space Marine from Space Marine looks like a Space Marine. If only the multiplayer wasn't dead.


----------



## asher

blastgatr said:


> My Space Marine from Space Marine looks like a Space Marine. If only the multiplayer wasn't dead.



That game was pretty fun, but damn shallow.


----------



## stevexc

asher said:


> That game was pretty fun, but damn shallow.



Shallow? There was tons of depth! You got to kill orcs with a chainsword AND a bolter AND a plasma gun! If that's not depth, then I don't know what is 

But seriously, that game was stupid straightforward fun.


----------



## blastgatr

asher said:


> That game was pretty fun, but damn shallow.



I just love the 40k universe, so when this badass 3rd person shooter/hack n' slash was released, I LOVED it. The story didn't grab my attention (I beat it anyway) but the co-op horde mode style multiplayer was great. And I was pretty damn good at the competitive. Then it went and died on me.


----------



## asher

blastgatr said:


> I just love the 40k universe, so when this badass 3rd person shooter/hack n' slash was released, I LOVED it. The story didn't grab my attention (I beat it anyway) but the co-op horde mode style multiplayer was great. And I was pretty damn good at the competitive. Then it went and died on me.



I do too, and I thought it did a phenomenal job with animations and feel and such, but MP gameplay was really shallow  also matchmaking sucked.


----------



## blastgatr

asher said:


> I do too, and I thought it did a phenomenal job with animations and feel and such, but MP gameplay was really shallow  also matchmaking sucked.



Matchmaking was one of the worst I've ever encountered. To this day I still toss it in every now and then to see if I can find a match to kill some greenskins. Always fails 

Had they done a R6V2 style character customization for story, I would play that story nonstop, just changing which chapter I looked like and which weapons I used. (Of course the story would then make little sense but still).


----------



## asher

blastgatr said:


> Matchmaking was one of the worst I've ever encountered. To this day I still toss it in every now and then to see if I can find a match to kill some greenskins. Always fails
> 
> Had they done a R6V2 style character customization for story, I would play that story nonstop, just changing which chapter I looked like and which weapons I used. (Of course the story would then make little sense but still).



By the end, the story made no sense anyway (as in, how the hell did they decide this was okay?), so


----------



## asher

Plus he's got the yellow/orange wings when actually running around.


----------



## Herrick

Herrick is playing...Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition.


----------



## Stealth7

Quickscope simulator



BEST GAME EVER!


----------



## asher

wtf


----------



## F1Filter

MFB said:


> Is there really no multiplayer? The single-player better be god damn AMAZING if they expected people to pay $60 for a strictly single-player game



I've been a fan of the Wolfenstein series anyway (which the exception of the last installment) so I'm enjoying this game a lot. But if you liked RTCW, then this is more of the same. Good campaign mode that includes a massive easter-egg hunt. While that gameplay might have worked in 2001, not sure if that's necessarily going to be the case now. This definitely needs a multiplayer mode. Hopefully it's going to be released sometime down the road. 

Got to the part where Fredrik Thordendal's track appears. They sure picked an appropriate time to use it.


----------



## Don Vito

Stealth7 said:


> Quickscope simulator
> 
> 
> 
> BEST GAME EVER!





smoke weed everyday


----------



## goherpsNderp

i'm playing Wolfenstein right now on PS4 and it's absolutely incredible.

it just feels so good to play. i'm not sure i'll find any other run-n-gun FPS that has gunplay and controls this tight and fluid. running around with 2 AR's in my hands blowing away nazi's. OUTRAGEOUS FUN.


----------



## Crometeef

dark souls 2. also trying to play arma 3 but that game is a nightmare to optimize even with a pretty decent comp. also dayz. looking forward to watch dogs. hope it lives up to all the hype


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Beat Metro: Last Light today. Got the sacrifice ending, not sure what to do differently to get the other ending but I might actually go back for a second play through.

Ordered South Park: Stick of Truth and it should be here by Thursday so I'll probably be playing Puppeteer until then.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Got Watch Dogs yesterday (yea, 5 days before the official release, one of the perks of being friends with a guy who works at a video game store) and I've been playing it for a couple of hours now, kinda having mixed feelings about it. Some things are awesome, some things are disappointing, the graphics for once... Damn Ubisoft really overhyped it, looks like a PS3 game, only difference is that it's running super smoothly on the PS4, but.. I was expecting something so much better on that area. Overall I feel that the game was rushed out (even though it got delayed like 3 times) and not finished properly, something I see (or think I see) a lot in new games these days... 



I'll "review" the game once I've played it more.


----------



## asher

SC2 3v3s a couple times the last week. We either crush or get crushed, there is no middle ground =/ The latter has been happening quite a bit more than the former too..


----------



## SjPedro

got a ps3 recently and I've just been playing the good ones, finished GTA V and will try the online stuff of it soon; finished Infamous,Infamous 2 (which have an amazing story) , Tomb Raider (the latest one) which is also awesome. And I'll probably play Uncharted 3 just because it was free on PSN a few months ago. 
Probably will buy Battlefield 4 to see what all the fuzz is about


----------



## tacotiklah

I'm gonna reinstall Diablo 3 and give it a whirl. I had a Barbarian that was a Paragon 2 or 3 before I kept getting my ass handed to me in Act 3 on Inferno and ragequitting, so I'm curious to see how all the changes will affect the game now.


----------



## rectifryer

goherpsNderp said:


> i'm playing Wolfenstein right now on PS4 and it's absolutely incredible.
> 
> it just feels so good to play. i'm not sure i'll find any other run-n-gun FPS that has gunplay and controls this tight and fluid. running around with 2 AR's in my hands blowing away nazi's. OUTRAGEOUS FUN.



Oh it is fantastic. I didn't play the original, but this one is like doom with some fallout 3 styling. No more recharging health, can carry every gun you want, etc. I appreciate the throwback in game play. It's also much longer than other fps campaigns that are pretty pathetic in length like BF4 and COD series.

I beat one story line so now I am playing it to complete the second storyline. Gonna save the private this time lol.


----------



## thedonal

rectifryer said:


> Oh it is fantastic. I didn't play the original, but this one is like doom with some fallout 3 styling. No more recharging health, can carry every gun you want, etc. I appreciate the throwback in game play. It's also much longer than other fps campaigns that are pretty pathetic in length like BF4 and COD series.
> 
> I beat one story line so now I am playing it to complete the second storyline. Gonna save the private this time lol.



Glad to hear that. I may give it a spin at some point. I loved Return To Castle Wolfenstein.

I got Land Air Sea War on my ipad yesterday. Quite a fun and re-playable real time strategy to waste a few hours with. Only shame it's all one off games- no sense of progression..


----------



## Deadnightshade

rectifryer said:


> Gonna shave the private this time lol.



Well there nobody wants to hear about that!


----------



## mongey

wolfenstein on ps4. I grabbed it the other day thinking if I dont like it i'll trade it on watch dogs this week. for the 1st hour I wasnt in to it but then it clicked .

think I'll keep it , and still get watch dogs of course


----------



## tacotiklah

rectifryer said:


> Gonna shave the private this time lol.





Deadnightshade said:


> Well there nobody wants to hear about that!



Go on...


----------



## piggins411

Finally have the chance to go through MGS4. It's been awesome so far but the first part of the last act is kicking my ass


----------



## XeoFLCL

just rage uninstalled SMITE because I just can't take the playerbase anymore. I think I might actually play Dark Souls 2 now...


... or finally beat metroid prime 3. God I wish I could just use a gamecube controller on it. I hate the wiimote controls for it.

Actually, I think I'll go play PSO2JP again. Anyone here play aswell? I'm on ship 10.


----------



## RustInPeace

Still playing FTL and the Advanced Edition is so awesome! I just beat it on Hard last night.. easily the most intense 90 minutes of gaming I've had in a long time.


----------



## Mexi

finished up Assassins' Creed 4 and now I'm playing through Wolfenstein. I'll also be starting up Watch Dogs soon enough.


----------



## Mason Bruce

FFIV the psp version


----------



## Psionic

Diablo 3, with the release of Ros they finally made it something worth to play
even if D2 was a lot better.


----------



## asher

Psionic said:


> Diablo 3, with the release of Ros they finally made it something worth to play
> even if D2 was a lot better.



D3 might not have nearly as much soul, but it's a vastly better _game_.


----------



## Psionic

asher said:


> D3 might not have nearly as much soul, but it's a vastly better _game_.



I just loved the mean pvp in D2 just set Hostile and have fun, of course it was pretty unfair if you started playing but if you were stuffed right it just was really fun. 
Also i liked to lvl characters for specific gear (my pala had like 5k life with bo) 
i wasted so many Time playing this....
Nothing can touch D2 in the hack and slay genre but thats just my .


----------



## asher

Psionic said:


> I just loved the mean pvp in D2 just set Hostile and have fun, of course it was pretty unfair if you started playing but if you were stuffed right it just was really fun.
> Also i liked to lvl characters for specific gear (my pala had like 5k life with bo)
> i wasted so many Time playing this....
> Nothing can touch D2 in the hack and slay genre but thats just my .



I have no honest idea how PvP works in D3  It could definitely be fun in D2, but it was also super incredibly grieftastic.

You can still grind for specific gear though?  Only there are more viable builds now, if you misclicked a couple times on levelling you don't have to reroll, etcetc  just mechanically, it's way better.


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

I get real bad game ADD so I will be in one game, and I will find something to remind me of another and ill have to start that one. A day or so later and I will be in the middle of 3 or 4 different games. 
Right meow im playing 
Wolfenstein New Order (PS4)
Wolfenstein 3D (XBOX 360)
Gex Enter The Gecko (PS1)


----------



## Psionic

asher said:


> I have no honest idea how PvP works in D3  It could definitely be fun in D2, but it was also super incredibly grieftastic.
> 
> You can still grind for specific gear though?  Only there are more viable builds now, if you misclicked a couple times on levelling you don't have to reroll, etcetc  just mechanically, it's way better.



Pvp in D3 is only in a area to which you get teleported when talking to nek, they wanted to implement some kind of arena mode but dont know if they are still working on it.
The ability to change your skills everytime you want is nice but in D2 chars were more unique, they added the skill reset with one of the last patches for D2 but since they didnt do any balance work for a long time a reroll was only needed if you got some new gear which would save you some points you put in str or dex.
In D3 you have a loot chart of which item can drop for you in a game it aint monster specific which means you have to change games if you dont get the drops you want and you never know if the item is on your drop chart.
At least this is what someone claimed on the bnet forums but its pretty much the pattern i see in drops.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I know I'm late to the party on this but I finally listened to Herr Faust from Wolfenstein: The New Order. I liked it more than all of Koloss.


----------



## rectifryer

Psionic said:


> Diablo 3, with the release of Ros they finally made it something worth to play
> even if D2 was a lot better.


I didn't buy RoS yet but it seems like D3 is alot better now. I haven't played it in two years until this week. Before, I would never get rare drops. I didnt even know about legendary. Now I get legendary drops in every act. WTF lol. They game is actually fun to play now.

Before this, I was playing Path of Exile. I love that game.


----------



## asher

They recently doubled the drop rate of legendaries (possibly also sets and such) for a long weekend to commemorate the game's two year birthday, then made it permanent.


----------



## Choop

I was messing around on a free 10-day trial for my WoW account, and somehow got sucked into playing hearthstone. 

It's really fun! Kind of similar to mtg.


----------



## Danukenator

Finally made Master Guardian 2 in CS GO! I love the competitive structure a lot of games are beginning to incorporate. It's really satisfying to look back and see how far I climbed since Silver 4.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Got Wolfenstein in the mail from my free trial of gamefly and so far a little disappointed. Mainly talking about how dreadfully dumb the AI is and the recoil on the guns is so awful I'll start by aiming at chest/head area and end up shooting well over an enemy's head after a second or two. ADS takes up so much real estate you can't even see that the enemy is still standing unharmed! Gonna try the free Halo Spartan Assault tonight but not getting my hopes up based on reviews.

Anyone pull the trigger on Mario Kart 8?


----------



## Don Vito

WataMote: dating sim

what am I doing with my life

edit: that was the most depressing game I've ever played ;_;


----------



## Don Vito

CS:GO just reconfirms my need to quit online gaming. I did go on a 6 man killing spree with the tech 9 that made me happy, but that will never happen again.


----------



## RickSchneider

I got Dragons Crown on vita as a part of the IGS and I'm loving it. Got it just over a week ago and have already clocked over 24hrs of play time. First time i've been hooked in a game in a very long time!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I took a break from Stick of Truth and started playing Borderlands 2 again.


----------



## Rosal76

I am officially done with the first Borderlands game. 

After 5 years of on and off playing, I have finally leveled all 4 classes (Brick, Lilith, Mordecai and Roland) to their max, which is 69. Killed Crawmerax 2 times last night and that is it. Thank you Gearbox for releasing such an awesome game. It was worth the 5 years I spent on it. 

I am now looking forward to start and max level up the other 3 classes in Borderlands 2. I already have a level 50 Axton (Commando) but want to try out the other 2 guys/gal. Another 5 years of killing, opening chests, running, searching, comparing weapons and time at vending machines???

Let it begin.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I got a copy of Mirror's Edge on ebay. I heard it was a little buggy but that was more towards the end of the game, and then it froze on me in the last part of the first mission.


----------



## asher

I had zero bugs with ME. What platform are you on?


----------



## Ralyks

Just got Watch_Dogs on PS4. Neat game so far!


----------



## MesaBeno

Watch Dogs and FIFA14


----------



## danpluso

Starcraft 2! Every day! All day!

Other than that, I currently have these in progress:
-Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword
-Super Meat Boy
-Bioshock Burial at Sea
-Warthunder
-Insurgency


----------



## Repner

Still enjoying Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. Addictive.


----------



## OmegaSlayer

Everybody Golf (Hot Shot Golf) on PSVita


----------



## Steinmetzify

COD Ghosts again; grabbed some map packs and some Snoop to do my announcing.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Mirror's Edge. Fun game but the last third almost ruins the game. There were too many times when it put me in a room full of enemies that I had to fight to get out of. And with the game ending on a cliffhanger I have to wonder why the sequel is a prequel.


----------



## UnderTheSign

Wildstar, Forced, Skyrim, GTA IV and Bioshock Infinite... Finally have a new laptop so I sort of went crazy


----------



## Don Vito

I thought I beat Castlevania Dracula X chronicles last night, but it's one of those games with a ....ing fake ending. ugh...


----------



## Jarmake

Second round of far cry 3 and just started Watch_Doges. Very hacking, much driving. Wow.


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

Playing through Final Fantasy XII again. So good. Terribly underrated


----------



## Grindspine

METAL_WIZARD said:


> Playing through Final Fantasy XII again. So good. Terribly underrated


 
I just sold FFXII. I just could not get into that storyline...


----------



## Taylor

Jarmake said:


> Second round of far cry 3 and just started Watch_Doges. Very hacking, much driving. Wow.









I am also playing Far Cry 3. Thank/Damn you Steam Sale!


----------



## twizza

Might try Age of Wonders 3. Haven't played a strategy game since CIV IV.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Bought and beat Portal 2. Didn't make me feel as dumb as the first game did but it did have its moments.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Going for a concealed cobra suit on COD:Ghosts. Sniping is hard. 350 kills with this scope? REALLY?! 

I'm at like 125. Grinding away.


----------



## tacotiklah

Carrion Rocket said:


> Bought and beat Portal 2. Didn't make me feel as dumb as the first game did but it did have its moments.



Portal 2 seemed to be more story oriented than the first one, which I'm perfectly fine with. The one thing that puzzle games seemed to lack and the one thing that sucks me into games; a damn good story.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Concealed cobra suit is almost mine. 85 kills to go. Jesus. I'm never gonna snipe anyone again after this.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Snagged! No more sniping, ever.


----------



## Jarmake

Watch_Doge is disappointment. Very very mediocre game after all the hype. Meh. Waiting for FarCry4.


----------



## Compton

Project 1999 and my gf got me the stick of truth for mah bday


----------



## Xaios

Seeing the old Pokemon anime on Netflix gave me a MAJOR itch to play. Since the start of the month, I've beaten Pokemon Y on 3DS, I'm now playing through Pokemon Black 2 and I've just purchased a copy of Pokemon Diamond, as well as a cheap used DSi so I can get the Pokemon moved over from that one to Black 2, and from there to Y.

*Gotta catch em all*.


----------



## InfinityCollision

All the Smash hype inspired me to pick up the old games again. Decided to check out Project M... pretty cool. Basically a whole new Smash game in its own right. It may have started off as an attempt to make Brawl more Melee-like, but it's gone off in a completely different direction since then.


----------



## asher

My roomie just got that, as he and another friend are going to train for a con in August. I dicked around with it some last week.

I'm definitely better at Brawl. It feels heavier to me. Some of the character changes I get, but some also really don't make sense to me. Kinda neat though.


----------



## InfinityCollision

Brawl is definitely the slowest/most deliberately paced game in the series. Lots of camping and defensive play, not a lot of combos or crazy high-level techs. I'm more used to playing Melee (soooooooo many hours on it back in middle/high school), so PM is semi-familiar to me. It helps that my Melee mains, Marth and Peach, were mostly restored to their Melee specs. I'm basically relearning Wolf and Snake though (Brawl secondaries), and I want to pick up some new characters since it's basically a new experience. I'm playing catch-up too, as I'm super rusty and never really got into the competitive scene either. I think the most advanced techs I did when I was playing Melee regularly were dash dancing and some short hop/fast fall aerials. Relative to what a lot of PM players seem to be doing, I suck 

A lot of the changes seem to have been implemented around the restoration of Melee mechanics like increased hitstun, different movement/canceling options, overall faster gameplay, things like that. Some are probably just general balancing (MK/IC nerfs, Zelda/Link buffs, etc). Then you have stuff like Lucario's total overhaul where I think they just wanted to differentiate and allow for different playstyles. Dunno, still have a lot to learn. Any characters in particular you checked out?

Speaking of camping though, dat ranged game  Diddy, Link, Zelda, Snake, Samus, etc are scary. It was kind of weird coming in and discovering that Link and Zelda in particular are pretty strong, as they've consistently been mediocre to terrible in the official games


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

My TV's playing up so it's a little bit disorienting to play games to atm... so holding back Lightning Returns, FFX HD and Dark Souls 2 again... 

So instead I've gone back to some classics in the following order:

















...and hopefully I'll have time for this too.






...or maybe I should just buy a new TV.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

I've been playing this F2P game called Elsword. It's surprisingly fun and well-made, from what I can tell. It's pretty much an arcade-style game with MMO elements.


----------



## habicore_5150

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ...and hopefully I'll have time for this too.



I'm playing through that right now. Only played it a few times a couple of years back, but for the past few days, I've been playing through more of it
If you want a rough idea as to where I'm at in the game, I'll sum it up to you in three mere words: "Fvck you Gades!" (because my dumb ass really wants the Gades Blade)






Also doing a play through of this right now


----------



## Veritech Zero

I think I could probably put another solid 1000 hours into Skyrim...


----------



## Preacher

World of Warcraft, working on my umpteenth 90 before the expansion comes out, but I did notice Wolfenstein was in the steam sale with 33% off...


----------



## Choop

Preacher said:


> World of Warcraft, working on my umpteenth 90 before the expansion comes out, but I did notice Wolfenstein was in the steam sale with 33% off...



I'm playing WoW at the moment too! I have a couple that will both be at 90 by tomorrow most likely and another that's close. I doubt i'll level any others, unless I boost something with a WoD preorder. I dunno what I really get out of WoW, but for some reason I find it fun .


----------



## Don Vito

habicore_5150 said:


> Also doing a play through of this right now


Are you doing this one on twitch? I get the emails when you do a stream, but I'm always checking them an hour late.  I'm a fan of the Battle Network games, but oddly enough I never played the first one. Started with 3, and then went 2, 4, and recently 6.

Any how, I'm playing a .... load of Skyrim since it was on the Steam sale.


----------



## Black43

I'm giving Forza 5 a solid play, only got an Xbox One a few weeks ago...
I don't know about you guys but I'm pumped for Horizon 2.


----------



## SamSam

Dragon Age: Origins, which ....ing rules and Final Fantasy III on android. Which is also great.


----------



## habicore_5150

Don Vito said:


> Are you doing this one on twitch? I get the emails when you do a stream, but I'm always checking them an hour late.  I'm a fan of the Battle Network games, but oddly enough I never played the first one. Started with 3, and then went 2, 4, and recently 6.
> 
> Any how, I'm playing a .... load of Skyrim since it was on the Steam sale.



Only doing MMBN as a Let's Play on Youtube. Sry man


----------



## Ralyks

Grabbed Kingdom Hearts 1.5 for myself and Catherine for my girlfriend the other night.


----------



## asher

I switch between Marth, Ike, Wolf and Lucas primarily in Brawl. The extra speed, glowy hands and more hangtime on his up-b are nice. Wolf still feels good though I much dislike the slower gun. Marty feels much slower to me and a bit fatter. I fooled around with a lot of people though. And yeah, new Zelda side B is craaaazy 

I'd probably adjust to the timings and such. You really feel the longer hitstun when playing someone a bunch better than you and that might be doing it.


----------



## SpaceDock

I had played the new Max Payne on 360 when it came out; I just got it on pc, oh my god like a different game. Just looks incredible with everything maxed out.


----------



## InfinityCollision

Veritech Zero said:


> I think I could probably put another solid 1000 hours into Skyrim...




I'll likely play it on and off until whenever the next one comes out, if not after. It just lends itself to so many different experiences so easily. 



habicore_5150 said:


> Also doing a play through of this right now


I loved these games so much. 3 in particular is amazing; I've been thinking about picking it up again and doing a new playthrough from scratch. Haven't touched the Battle Network series after the fourth game; I've heard the fifth and sixth games were better (4 is a low point in the series for sure) but never checked them out.



asher said:


> I switch between Marth, Ike, Wolf and Lucas primarily in Brawl. The extra speed, glowy hands and more hangtime on his up-b are nice. Wolf still feels good though I much dislike the slower gun. Marty feels much slower to me and a bit fatter. I fooled around with a lot of people though. And yeah, new Zelda side B is craaaazy
> 
> I'd probably adjust to the timings and such. You really feel the longer hitstun when playing someone a bunch better than you and that might be doing it.



Lucas is disgusting  Especially how easily he can recover offstage. I checked out a Lucas vid yesterday, he can definitely tear it up. I could go either way on Wolf's gun; I liked it in Brawl but you can do some interesting things in terms of spacing and approach with Project M's version too. It's less a tool for its own sake and more to set up other things.

Marth is definitely faster than in Brawl (same dashing speed as Brawl Charizard; some attacks are faster too), weight is the same... I think he falls faster than in Brawl though, so that may have something to do with the heavier feel. Some other properties might have changed too.

That said, most of the cast got a speed boost (looking purely at dashing for simplicity's sake). Jiggs, Ivysaur, Mario, and Luigi stayed the same; Yoshi, Sheik, Toon Link, G&W, Peach, and Dedede got slowed down by varying degrees. I'm pretty sure Roy and Mewtwo are both faster than their Melee versions. So that's 29 (31) characters that got faster, 4 that stayed the same, and 6 that slowed down. As a result, Marth actually went from 10th fastest in Brawl to part of a four-way tie for 11th in PM. He's technically faster, but it's far less apparent when put in perspective of the cast as a whole.


----------



## asher

Neat to know. Might be I fail at dashing regularly 

There really is lots of rust to fight against. I'm sure I'd get into it more. I was pretty dismayed by Snake's tranq gun at first and then realized it's probably a lot better for combos.


----------



## InfinityCollision

Tranquilizer is dirty as f_u_ck when you look at his grabs, forward smash, etc, but especially at the changes to C4. Tranq, plant C4, blow them sky-high later for a kill. Not the only way to stick C4, but it's such a safe option if you can land it.

And yeah, so much rust... Not to mention built-up expectations of how certain things work. It's taking me some time to adjust.


----------



## Azyiu

Once in a while I would go back and play some pretty old games.

Recently I re-played *Dead Space* and then *Dead Space 2*. Good times 

Just this past weekend I re-played a little bit of *Resident Evil 4*, the HD version on the PS3.


----------



## asher

I'm partway through Dead Space. I liked itnwell enough. I should go finish that...

I just picked up Transistor, too.


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

soooooo good


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Snake Eater HD. Working on Sons of Liberty now. Then I'm gonna start Peace Walker afterwards. I heard it was meant to be played co-op so hopefully it's not a grind to play solo.


----------



## asher

Just went through Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.


Damn.


----------



## TheDivineWing22

Splitting time between Wind Waker HD, Mario Kart 8, Mario Bros U, Mario 3d World, and Pikmin 3

Just picked up a Wii U last night. I figured I'd get one eventually, but decided to go to Target and get one last night. Right now it's $25 off the Super Mario Brow U bundle, buy two get one free on all Wii U games, and if you register Mario Kart 8 (one of the 3 I purshased) and register it, you get a free downloadable game. So a Wii U and 5 games for around $400. I'll take that deal.


----------



## LLink2411

Divinity Original Sin


----------



## Bennykins

Warlords of Draenor beta. Much more playable today now that Velen isn't phasing out the whole SMV zone when he talks.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Beat MGS2. Tried to do a no kill playthrough and ended up with one kill. Don't remember ever killing anyone though. Goddamnit.

I'm gonna finish some other games before I play Peace Walker. Right now it's time to finish Human Revolution. Had it since launch and only played it in short bursts.

Update: Beat Deux Ex. Didn't find Sarif so I only got three ending options, but at least it's another game done.


----------



## tacotiklah

Came home after a long day and found that someone had gifted me Borderlands 2 Game of the Year edition on steam. Holy shit! 

So I fully plan to make a return trip to Pandora and break one off in the collective asses of every bandit I encounter. Also if anyone else wants to join me, my steam account:
Steam Community :: tacotiklah


----------



## Experimorph

I survived the Steam Sale with very minor expenses! I only got myself Dragon Age: Origins, FEZ and Alan Wake. Really enjoying the story and conversation options in DAO, though I'm not sold on the gameplay and restricted area access. FEZ is creative beyond imagination and fun for short sessions on the laptop. Alan Wake's on the wait list.

Other than that, I still spend too much time playing Counter Strike: Global Offensive.


----------



## SpaceDock

Shovel Knight y'all, get your 8-bit on. Game is sick


----------



## asher

Experimorph said:


> I survived the Steam Sale with very minor expenses! I only got myself Dragon Age: Origins, FEZ and Alan Wake. Really enjoying the story and conversation options in DAO, though I'm not sold on the gameplay and restricted area access. FEZ is creative beyond imagination and fun for short sessions on the laptop. Alan Wake's on the wait list.
> 
> Other than that, I still spend too much time playing Counter Strike: Global Offensive.



FEZ is one of my favorite games of recent years. Absolutely brilliant in almost every way. See how many things you can figure out by yourself (completion % caps around 270?) and then hit the internet to see the crazy depth in a couple of the puzzles.

Also a _fantastic_ soundtrack. Of which there are two excellent remix discs, too.


----------



## tacotiklah

The coolest thing ever happened to me wednesday. I had a long day handling business and when I came back home, I found that a friend went out of her to to not only sign up for Steam, but did so for the sole purpose of gifting me Borderlands 2 Game of the Year edition for PC as an early bday gift. This was post-steam sale, so that was $40 easily. 

One of my all time favorite games and she bought it for me. Happiness doesn't even describe my mood right now. Brb, blowing up ALL the things on Pandora!


----------



## AxeHappy

I recently acquired:

Dark Souls 2, The Stick of Truth, Age of Wonders 3 and Bioshock: Infinite. 

So far:

Dark Souls 2: ...I haven't really given it a fighting chance (ha) but the control scheme is just so ....ing stupid that I have trouble getting into it. 

The Stick of Truth: It's hilarious. But it's not really a good game. The amount of hand holding is frankly ridiculously and there isn't any challenge at any point. But, it's like playing an episode of South Park that didn't have to worry about TV censors. So it's enjoyable, but not a good game.

Age of Wonders 3: This entire series is a straight rip off of Master of Magic. Which is good, as that is probably the best 4X fantasy game ever made. I haven't made it too far into this, but player choices seem to have a meaningful effect on your success. 

Bioshock: Infinite. I'm going to keep giving it a chance but...sloppy ....ing gameplay. Really "gunky" combat and mechanics. Also, the game plays too much of it self. ....ing magnetic jumping. Make me do it you ....s. It's also not nearly as pretty as I was lead to believe which doesn't really matter at all, but I was shocked to load it up and see what it looked like after all the fawning I remember going on over it. 

Also, any game I can play for the first time on the hardest difficult and not get horribly slaughtered irks me a bit. Which is why I will continue to give Dark Souls 2 a chance, but Bioshock and The Stick of Truth are a joke in regards to being a game.


----------



## wespaul

All of my gaming activities these past few months (well, since January, I guess) has been limited pretty much to just Hearthstone. My school schedule is so busy that it's hard to sit down and invest any large amount of time into a game. I love card games in general, so this game is perfect for me whenever I have 10 minutes to kill. The fact that it pairs perfectly with my ipad is only a bonus. When I'm not playing it, I'm watching streams of professional players to get deck/combo ideas.

If anybody else plays, hit me up -- GT: Soilwork#1642

(some ranked fun from a few days ago)


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

AxeHappy said:


> Bioshock: Infinite. I'm going to keep giving it a chance but...sloppy ....ing gameplay. Really "gunky" combat and mechanics. Also, the game plays too much of it self. ....ing magnetic jumping. Make me do it you ....s. It's also not nearly as pretty as I was lead to believe which doesn't really matter at all, but I was shocked to load it up and see what it looked like after all the fawning I remember going on over it.



After hearing about all the gameplay issues, I'm not surprised talk about this game REALLY dropped off a month or so after it released, even after all the pre-release hype.


----------



## texshred777

Forza 4

I've been completely swept up in Forza of late. If not racing, it's been doing paint job designs with vinyl layers. I'm pretty impressed with what can be done with applying 1000 layers of simple shapes in various opacity.

I don't have any one favorite car in the game, but in the various classes these are the favs in my garage right now.


Class B

R33 Skyline GTR Spec V-purple-"Joker"
Black BBS rims. RWD conversion, minor power mods,drift tune. 
Got this car as a reward car, used it for the japanese feature races mostly. 
Will get a Joker theme. 


Class S


R34 Skyline GTR Spec V - White- "Azula"
Black BBS rims. AWD intact. Major power and stability upgrades. Tuned for grippy acceleration. 
Bought this car to make an Azula themed car. I've pretty much only built and tuned with a quick test drive. Working on the paint currently. Coming together nicely so far.


Diablo GTR - Yellow-
Currently mostly stock. I got this car late during my time doing S class events. I really like the way it handles, I tend to use this for S class technical/windy tracks. Lacks power/acceleration compared to other S class exotics but handles like a dream. 


Lexus LFA - White-
Love this car in S class. Also like it in R3 but downgraded back to S. Great for high speed tracks. 

Not sure what theme I'll use for this.


Nissan GTR - Red-Deadpool
Don't remember what mods it has currently. Not in current rotation. 
Will do a Deadpool paint job.

Class R3
Way too many in this class that I love to use


Ferrari 458 Italia - Red
All around beast car. Super fast and handles pretty well.
Enzo engine swap,all platform/stability/braking mods,Aero front/back. Spent a short time as AWD. 

Not sure what design I'll go with yet. Possibly Akira. 


Diablo GTR(yes, another one)-White-
High speed track car. Twin turbo conversion, most performance mods. Aero front/back. Love this car for pure speed. Plenty stability to handle 200+mph straights like Le Mans. Picked up as level reward because I loved the first one I had. Immediately built into R3 machine. 
Not sure what theme for this yet either. Thinking a cyberpunk type paint job.


Audi TT RS -white "Blair"
I've gotten more use out of this car than any other. First car to purchase after the starter vehicle. Currently sitting at 971 PI. Works surprisingly well in R3. Super fast. Still has AWD. All mods. Aero front/back. Handles decently, used on occasion for amusement.

Will be doing a Blair(from Soul Eater) fanservice'y paint job. 


Audi R8 LMS - "cyber Kraken"
Haven't used it much yet, mostly just test runs and tuning currently. I have it at the 800 PI max. Only R3 car purchased. Will be getting a cyberpunk kraken paint job.


Audi R8 5.2 - "Avatar State"
RWD conversion. Twin turbo. All platform mods. Most performance mods. Fun car to use, would never replace the 458 though. 

Will do an Aang Avatar state paint job.


#83 F430 GT - white-
Love this car. First R3 car to acquire. Got as level reward. Fantastic braking for R3 GT car. Tuned for grip and acceleration. Used a lot for technical tracks. Got rid of the racing designs on it, currently all white. 
Not sure what theme yet. 

Forza is almost enough to make me want an Xbone instead of a PS4.


----------



## Grindspine

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm

Last week I did play some Mega Man X2 (SNES) and Sonic Advance 2 (GBA).


----------



## Steinmetzify

Man, it's not often I pick up a really really crappy game; I read reviews and what you guys post here, but I ....in HATED Bioshock:Infinite. 

Kid wanted it and she loved it; that's how I knew I was going to hate it. She played it for about a week straight and moved onto other things and it never got touched again. I was kinda shocked after all the reviews. 

Still playing COD Ghosts. Not grinding on it, but decided to run for the Ghillie suit. It's gonna take a looooooong time.


----------



## Rosal76

Just finished Sniper Elite 3 on Cadet (Easy) and now starting on Marksman (Normal). Very pleased with the game. There are some glitches in the game that are creepy and would otherwise look normal in a Silent Hill game. 

Fans of the Hitman, Metal Gear Solid, and older Splinter Cell games, you may want to take a hard look at this game. If you are a hardcore stealth gamer; never to be seen, never shooting your gun, leaving enemies alive, etc, etc, etc, you may like this game. Don't let the trailers (for the game) and Youtube videos fool you. They are only showing the, "shooting without stealth, run and gun, and being loud" side of the game. I have finished certain levels without ever firing a shot from the sniper rifle.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Really liking the new Tomb Raider, not as platformy as previous ones but a very well told story and it looks awesome. And Xbone controller on PC is always fun.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I really want to just run out and buy a PS4 but I still have so many games that I either never started or never finished. I just finished MK9 story mode. I'm suffering through MC:LA right now. And I'll probably finish off GRID 2 after that.


----------



## ghost_of_karelia

Playing through Mirror's Edge at the moment on PC. It's actually pretty challenging, plus the fact that I'm videoing it and attempting to provide humorous and/or insightful commentary while trying not to fall off buildings is a huge ask for a berk like me.

Story's not too engaging, but the colours are intoxicating and I actually find it more immersive than games like Skyrim.


----------



## asher

Mirror's Edge so much. It really deserves a proper sequel that gets the story a bit better and doesn't make you slog through a couple awful forced combat sections.

Artist in Residence: Mirror's Edge - IGN


----------



## MFB

I think Mirror's Edge was the only game where I felt genuinely bad for the protagonist when I got them killed. Most games it's, "Aw god damn it, where the hell did that guy shoot me/come from?!" but in this it was, "OH FVCK I JUST CAUSED HER TO FALL HUNDREDS OF FEET TO HER DEATH, I AM AN ASSHOLE"


----------



## asher

MFB said:


> I think Mirror's Edge was the only game where I felt genuinely bad for the protagonist when I got them killed. Most games it's, "Aw god damn it, where the hell did that guy shoot me/come from?!" but in this it was, "OH FVCK I JUST CAUSED HER TO FALL HUNDREDS OF FEET TO HER DEATH, I AM AN ASSHOLE"



Thank god it never gave me the falling-in-pit-of-stomach feeling.

I also thought the controls, for the parkour, were damn good with a gamepad.


----------



## naw38

Just downloaded Ni No Kuni, 'cause my daughter loves studio Ghibli films so it should be fun to play that with her, even if I haven't enjoyed a JRPG since FF9. Is it awesome?

Also, I can't look at the abbreviation for Final Fantasy games without thinking fanned frets.


----------



## cjms1997

Morrowind. I love that game probably too much.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Getting back into Warcraft 3 with some friends. F**k yeah, I love this game.


----------



## Steinmetzify

MFB said:


> I think Mirror's Edge was the only game where I felt genuinely bad for the protagonist when I got them killed. Most games it's, "Aw god damn it, where the hell did that guy shoot me/come from?!" but in this it was, "OH FVCK I JUST CAUSED HER TO FALL HUNDREDS OF FEET TO HER DEATH, I AM AN ASSHOLE"



Interested; on the hunt for a used copy. Looks like fun!


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

Started ANOTHER Mass Effect trilogy playthrough. I genuinely prefer these games to human company


----------



## ghost_of_karelia

Anyone interested in seeing some Mirror's Edge playthrough, give my shockingly bad and overly cynical videos a look! Appreciate any and all support at this early stage 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMsFimvUt82SUr39cnzZFw2SRFz7B1G-O


----------



## neotronic

Divinity: Original Sin.

It reminds me of Bauldurs Gate series. Rpg fans might want to check it out.


----------



## MFB

steinmetzify said:


> Interested; on the hunt for a used copy. Looks like fun!



I've got a copy I can send if you wanna borrow it. I haven't played it in forever so I won't really miss it


----------



## Steinmetzify

MFB said:


> I've got a copy I can send if you wanna borrow it. I haven't played it in forever so I won't really miss it



I will totally take you up on that offer man. Let me know what you'd need for shipping and I'll take it, beat it like a drunk Southern widow and send it right back. Thanks!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finally beat the story in MC:LA. Don't feel like grinding to race the other four class champs I have left, so now it's time to finish GRiD 2.


----------



## Steinmetzify

jarvncaredoc said:


> Anyone interested in seeing some Mirror's Edge playthrough, give my shockingly bad and overly cynical videos a look! Appreciate any and all support at this early stage
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMsFimvUt82SUr39cnzZFw2SRFz7B1G-O



Grabbed one to watch as I'm going to start this game soon. Was funny as hell man. Good job. I'll watch the rest soon.

"Unit?"


----------



## Preacher

Started on Wildstar, its fun, and also insane, if you like MMO's check it out, may not be a long term thing, but its holding my attention pretty well for now, and the changes it has made to what can be a very cookie cutter genre are cool, such as making the combat (including healing!) very much more involved and action based instead of having your avatar sit in one spot while you spam button 1.


----------



## ghost_of_karelia

steinmetzify said:


> Grabbed one to watch as I'm going to start this game soon. Was funny as hell man. Good job. I'll watch the rest soon.
> 
> "Unit?"



Haha, cheers man! Really glad you enjoyed em.


----------



## Xaios

Captain Shoggoth said:


> Started ANOTHER Mass Effect trilogy playthrough. I genuinely prefer these games to human company



I loved the original Mass Effect. However, I quit playing the second one probably about half-way through though because that game just couldn't make me care about the story or characters (except Mordin Solus, he ruled).

Had an awkward conversation with my sister a few weeks ago (who has played the entire trilogy, and is also older than myself) in which she expounded upon why she's a Tali shipper.



(This forum lacks the proper smilie to properly convey my indifference on the subject of most videogame relationships.)


----------



## fwd0120

The one we just lost....


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

Xaios said:


> I loved the original Mass Effect. However, I quit playing the second one probably about half-way through though because that game just couldn't make me care about the story or characters (except Mordin Solus, he ruled).
> 
> Had an awkward conversation with my sister a few weeks ago (who has played the entire trilogy, and is also older than myself) in which she expounded upon why she's a Tali shipper.
> 
> 
> 
> (This forum lacks the proper smilie to properly convey my indifference on the subject of most videogame relationships.)



I am a Talimancer through and through 

And man, I LOVED the ME2 crew. No love for Legion???


----------



## BlackMastodon

Legion is my homeboy. And #Liara4lyfe


----------



## ghost_of_karelia

I've had Mount & Blade: Warband in my steam list for aaages. Recently upgraded to fibre optic internet and decided to download a bunch of shit, gave M&B a shot.

Played four hours solid into the early hours of the British morning. I think I'm in love with this game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Grid 2. I might finish Twisted Metal now.


----------



## XeoFLCL

Had a megaman marathon craze lately; played through X, X2, X3, Zero 1, 2, 3, 4, ZX, and now I'm on ZX advent and so far I'm really not sure if I like ZX advent. ZX wasn't so bad, but ZX Advent well.. feels like it lost all the charm that ZX brought to the table. Plus.. the voice acting is rubbing me the wrong way.

Should I play Battle Network/Star Force aswell? Never tried either, tbh.


----------



## Captain Axx

Been playing the destiny beta, loving it so far!

Got a beta code left for ps4 if anyone wants it?


----------



## Taylor

Captain Axx said:


> Been playing the destiny beta, loving it so far!



Waiting for the Beta on 360


----------



## jbab

AC4 Black Flag.
I got the Mass Effect trilogy and started the first one, but I haven't really gotten into it yet. The story is cool, but combat is not the best. And those menus were designed by goddamn idiots.
Dead Space 3 is free on PSPlus this month, so it's next on the list along with MGS Ground Zeroes.


----------



## BlackMastodon

jbab said:


> AC4 Black Flag.
> I got the Mass Effect trilogy and started the first one, but I haven't really gotten into it yet. The story is cool, but combat is not the best. And those menus were designed by goddamn idiots.
> Dead Space 3 is free on PSPlus this month, so it's next on the list along with MGS Ground Zeroes.


The first Mass Effect is kind of a grind with the combat. But ME2 and 3 are huge improvements in that department.


----------



## Don Vito

XeoFLCL said:


> Had a megaman marathon craze lately; played through X, X2, X3, Zero 1, 2, 3, 4, ZX, and now I'm on ZX advent and so far I'm really not sure if I like ZX advent. ZX wasn't so bad, but ZX Advent well.. feels like it lost all the charm that ZX brought to the table. Plus.. the voice acting is rubbing me the wrong way.
> 
> Should I play Battle Network/Star Force aswell? Never tried either, tbh.



Well it's hard to recommend Battle Network because it's not even in the same genre as the other Mega Man games. I love them personally, but that's because I grew up playing them as a kid in the early 2000's or whatever. I've played all of the Battle Network games except 5(there are 6 iirc), and 3 is by far my favorite. Never played any of the Star Force games.


----------



## XeoFLCL

Don Vito said:


> Well it's hard to recommend Battle Network because it's not even in the same genre as the other Mega Man games. I love them personally, but that's because I grew up playing them as a kid in the early 2000's or whatever. I've played all of the Battle Network games except 5(there are 6 iirc), and 3 is by far my favorite. Never played any of the Star Force games.


Well I hear it's an RPG, is that correct? If so, I'm almost certain I'll enjoy it as I absolutely love RPGs.

I'll give it a shot!


----------



## Don Vito

Yeah, I guess it would fall into the action RPG genre.


----------



## InfinityCollision

The BN games get steadily better from 1-3 (and more expansive - BN3's postgame content in particular is insane), then 4 drops off pretty bad, but 5 and 6 pick up a bit. Never played Star Force.

BN3 is easily one of my favorite games on the GBA.

Also play the Legends games! Especially Legends 2.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Who ever thought to add races into the latest Twisted Metal is a jackass.


----------



## 7 Dying Trees

Captain Axx said:


> Been playing the destiny beta, loving it so far!
> 
> Got a beta code left for ps4 if anyone wants it?


would love it!


----------



## 7 Dying Trees

Been playing Wolfenstein on PS4, has got me completely hooked, love it!


----------



## jbab

BlackMastodon said:


> The first Mass Effect is kind of a grind with the combat. But ME2 and 3 are huge improvements in that department.



That's good to hear, did they improve the menu design too?


----------



## MFB

I've noticed that Borderlands 2 jumps up in ridiculousness from the Wilhelm fight onward. Seriously, that fight is such bullshit if you don't know what you're in for and the only way to really win is to have amazing gear and hopefully a corrosive gun. I had an orange Jakobs rifle, a Blue sniper rifle with shock damage, green Corrosive revolver, a separate-yet-equally-powered green revolver, and a shield that deals a .... ton of Nova damage as well as upgraded Phaselock and it took me somewhere around 6 tries before I noticed I had a corrosive. Then the ....ing Thresher that you deal with later is also stupidly over-powered and they expect you to deal with eight billion things at once. It's bullshit.


----------



## Taylor

Oh, Dayz (Standalone). When you're not throwing zombies at me that run through closed doors and spawning me right next to them, you're having me fall 6 feet to my death. 

Edit: just encountered my first other player. He told me he wanted to play me a song from his homeland, proceeded to play some Scottish Bagpipe music, whilst dancing around. Another player eventually showed up and started dancing too. Pretty soon I was dancing and bobbing away. Then someone sniped me in the head.

10/10 would play again.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Burned on sniping on Ghosts....still looking for a used copy of Mirror's Edge and trying to hunt down info on replacing my hard drive. This 12GB stuff blows.


----------



## texshred777

Still playing a shit ton of Forza 4 and GT5. About to begin constructing a racing cockpit to use with a Fanatec wheel set. 

Picked up a Miata seat at a junkyard just down the road for the cockpit. Great condition, looks good and only $30. Even better, somone had already unbolted it so I didn't have to bother.

Wheel/pedal set will have to wait until next week. Will likely go with the CSR set. I may splurge for the Elite pedals, but unsure as of now. I'm pretty sure I have plenty of PVC pipe and plywood(or MDF) laying about from various other projects. Shouldn't cost much(except for the wheel of course) for a full setup.


----------



## Choop

steinmetzify said:


> Burned on sniping on Ghosts....still looking for a used copy of Mirror's Edge and trying to hunt down info on replacing my hard drive. This 12GB stuff blows.



Pretty sure any SATA slim 2.5" hard drive will work in a ps3. I'd go with a 7200 rpm drive to get slightly faster load times, but it's not THAT much faster than a 5400 rpm one in a ps3, so get the one that is the best value for you.

Here's the site with info about changing drives if you don't already know this stuff:

https://support.us.playstation.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/362/~/upgrade-the-hard-disk-drive-(hdd)

Need to backup your stuff onto an external hard drive if you want to keep it. If you have a high capacity flash drive that may be best.


----------



## Veritech Zero

Just finished Wolfenstein on PC, may play it a second time. Then back to Skyrim haha.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Twisted Metal (2012) might the worst game I'll play this year.


----------



## texshred777

I'm probably about to get rid of GT5. I spent a bunch of time playing around in arcade/free mode to familiarize myself with controls, which was fine at first. The more I play though, the more I'm disappointed by the controls. It's nowhere near as "realistic" as I always hear. I'm not expecting PC racing sim levels of realism, but this is more arcade feeling than Forza. Forza 4 was way better imo on the control end. 


Perhaps with a wheel/pedal set I'll feel different, but for now I'm very disappointed.


Then there's career/GT mode. I'll summarize it as meh. I won't bother going into it, I'm sure there's been someone else equally disappointed by the experience. The last GT I played was 3, back on the PS2 twelve years ago. I remembered that being much better, even without Ferrari, Lambo, etc.

Edit: One other thing. A fvcking Yaris race? No one thought they may want to do a model race using a car people actually buy for said purpose? Perhaps something like a Miata or something? I've heard of people buying/building Spec Miatas to get into motorsports. The Yaris? Not so much.


----------



## Orzech

The only game I've been playing lately is Spelunky HD and I think I'll stick to it for some time


----------



## Carrion Rocket

texshred777 said:


> ...



If you had played GT4 you'd probably like GT5 a whole lot better. GT4 was a chore to play because of the controls. The rally races in particular were a pain to playthrough.


----------



## Danukenator

Finally found a 128tick DM server that I like! I've found practicing against the average people in DM was too easy and I was developing bad habits. Nothing like playing against people who will destroy you across the whole map before you can even notice them. 

Also...PLAY CSGO WITH ME! I don't care about skill/rank. I just like having people to shoot the shit with while playing match making.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Another one for Wolfenstein. This is how games should be, IMO. It's intense as hell, but it's not all whinny like most other games now are. It's not afraid to have emotions here and there, but it doesn't sacrifice the fun of butchering sci-fi nazis with laser guns. I'm almost done and I could easily see myself playing it through again this summer.


----------



## Veritech Zero

Gothic Headhunter said:


> Another one for Wolfenstein. This is how games should be, IMO. It's intense as hell, but it's not all whinny like most other games now are. It's not afraid to have emotions here and there, but it doesn't sacrifice the fun of butchering sci-fi nazis with laser guns. I'm almost done and I could easily see myself playing it through again this summer.



Yeah I'm going through it a second time with the other story line (trying not to spoil it for those who haven't played), there are a few changes, but not as many as I would have liked to see. Still, I played all sneaky the first time, this time is double shotgun madness all the way haha.


----------



## Deadnightshade

MFB said:


> I've noticed that Borderlands 2 jumps up in ridiculousness from the Wilhelm fight onward. Seriously, that fight is such bullshit if you don't know what you're in for and the only way to really win is to have amazing gear and hopefully a corrosive gun. I had an orange Jakobs rifle, a Blue sniper rifle with shock damage, green Corrosive revolver, a separate-yet-equally-powered green revolver, and a shield that deals a .... ton of Nova damage as well as upgraded Phaselock and it took me somewhere around 6 tries before I noticed I had a corrosive. Then the ....ing Thresher that you deal with later is also stupidly over-powered and they expect you to deal with eight billion things at once. It's bullshit.



Some midly-off topic tips:

Borderlands 2 is really unbalanced (at least for solo) in Ultimate Vault Hunter mode. I mean come on, the defending missions later on become almost impossible, and bosses like the metal tyranossaurus in Torgue's DLC essentially become raid bosses. I'm not going to farm like an insane idiot this time, I've had enough with General Knoxx's DLC from the original game.

In Normal mode and True Vault Hunter it's fine. Some occasional difficulties in where dealing with many enemies solo is a problem (although in boss fights they can help for second winds, especially in conjuction with launchers), but all in all nothing a few focused tries can't win. If you find yourself needing too many tries, plan ahead your movements, learn the attacks of the boss (or the enemies that spawn), and don't forget to spam the corresponding elementary grenades.

Usually doing the sidequests, although boring, guarantees that you start each mission with an advantage since enemies have level caps (Normal and True Vault Hunter modes), and that you've killed enough enemies to get better loot, or just common loot with the elemental/manufacturer/weapon type that you prefer.


----------



## Vhyle

My current obsessions are Minecraft and Fallen Earth (F2P post-apocalyptic MMO). I'm pretty set, in all honesty. I'm way out of the loop on new games, but these two suit me just fine for the little time that I have to play games.

Besides, Minecraft is a helluva drug.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Still working on Tomb Raider but I also started The Wolf Among Us. Just finished up Chapter 1 yesterday and I'm quite enjoying it.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Finished The Wolf Among Us and Tomb Raider this week. Enjoyed the hell out of both stories and loved the gameplay of Tomb Raider, wasn't too easy and had a decent mix of platforming and gunplay (focused a little more on the latter than the last couple TR games). Wolf Among Us was like watching an interactive show (I think that's probably what Telltale Games were going for with this and The Walking Dead series) and it was very enjoyable. Your choices felt like they actually had some weight to the story and you had to make them on the fly which I thought was a really nice take on it.

Probably will start Bioshock Infinite soon and see what all the hate is about.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Recommend Tomb Raider dude? I fully loved the first one way back when, but haven't dug the odd ones I've played since then...nothing seems to measure up to the groundbreaking stuff the first one did. 

Burned on sniping on Ghosts though, and need something to get into.


----------



## Repner

steinmetzify said:


> Recommend Tomb Raider dude? I fully loved the first one way back when, but haven't dug the odd ones I've played since then...nothing seems to measure up to the groundbreaking stuff the first one did.
> 
> Burned on sniping on Ghosts though, and need something to get into.



This new Tomb Raider is something very VERY different, but yes, it's really worth it. It's such an amazing game.


----------



## MoshJosh

I loved Tomb Raider, the combat (shooting and stealth), platforming, RPG type skill stuff, and story were all nicely done.

EDIT: I just picked up Doom 3 BFG Edition. I remember when this game came out on PC and thinking "OMG THAT IS THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER!" but I never got to play it until like 2 years ago when I played a tiny bit of the xbox version so. . .Figured I'd give it another try


----------



## Ralyks

Just recently picked up Trials Fusion and Fez on PS4, and got the disc version of the first season of Telltales Walking Dead game for PS3, as well as downloaded Limbo.

Fez and Limbo, in particular, I feel I am going to have a lot of good times with.


----------



## asher

FEZ is one of my favorite games of all time. I just can't recommend it enough. Amazing soundtrack too (which you can get along with some excellent remix discs on bandcamp).

LIMBO is pretty heavy. There are also some challenging spots so be prepared to get frustrated


----------



## will_shred

I just started playing Planetside 2, my god is it fun. I was a little worried about the pay to win aspect of it, but I feel like the game is designed even so that low level players can make meaningful contributions to the team, I don't really care about the leveling it's just a ton of fun to play either way.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm trying to finish Sleeping Dogs but it's such a goddamn chore to play.


----------



## TimothyLeary

F.3.A.R


----------



## loqtrall

will_shred said:


> I just started playing Planetside 2, my god is it fun. I was a little worried about the pay to win aspect of it, but I feel like the game is designed even so that low level players can make meaningful contributions to the team, I don't really care about the leveling it's just a ton of fun to play either way.



I just started playing yesterday! It's absolutely ....ing awesome. Reminds me so much of the first game, firefights are just immense! Can't wait to explore a bit.

Anyone add me on Steam, I'm on all the time: openedlord


----------



## Redoubt9000

Dragon's Crown. I love it hahah, too damn easy to pick up and just roll with it. I just haven't had the patience to get kneedeep into a newer title for a long while now (Dark Souls 2 still sits on the shelf unopened...)


----------



## Don Vito

Carrion Rocket said:


> I'm trying to finish Sleeping Dogs but it's such a goddamn chore to play.


I was disappointed at how short the main game was, and how little post-game content there is. Only game I ever platinumed on PS3.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Tried to continue my Halo 2 Legendary play through but the game just wont play Metropolis so I'm gonna have to buy another copy.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Grabbed Tomb Raider based on thread recommendations...just started but it looks GREAT and the controls are pretty intuitive. Digging it so far.


----------



## Taylor

Carrion Rocket said:


> Tried to continue my Halo 2 Legendary play through but the game just wont play Metropolis so I'm gonna have to buy another copy.



Mine won't play The Great Journey anymore.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Few hours into Tomb Raider. Man I missed this series. The platforming and hidden secrets and the puzzles are all top notch. Uncharted was a cool standby but the original still rules!


----------



## jwade

Started playing GTA Online again. 

Nobody to play with, still full of douchey children with exploits/hacks making shit annoying.


----------



## Jobam-Martins

When I have some free time in the week I try to play one of these games:
Ps3 : Dark souls 2 ,Demon's souls , Metal gear solid series, Red dead redemption(online only).
Psx: Final fantasy tactics, Final fantasy 6 
Gamecube: Fire emblem: Path of radiance.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Sleeping Dogs. Logged into GTA Online again for the first time since March and it was like I never stopped playing because I was so goddamn bored I had to exit out of it after a few minutes.


----------



## jwade

This happened last night. I was driving along, trying to get away from mercenaries, when suddenly these fell from the sky:






After about 10-15 crashed all over the same area (Legion Square), a UFO fell from the sky:


----------



## Repner

I hate it when that happens.

...Wait. Are we talking about a game? Oh.


----------



## asher

Saint's Row?!?!


----------



## Vrollin

GTA5 online, can not get enough of it, favourite thing is to hunt people who have microphones just so I can hear them bitch and moan.


----------



## jwade

I have a headset but rarely speak. I often just put it on while eating chips/popcorn while playing so that my chewing noises piss off the douchey highschool kids that just swear incessantly during missions.


----------



## texshred777

Forza 2/3/4. Still.

My racing cockpit is coming along quite well. My racing wheel will be in tomorrow, and after I finish wiring up the tactile transducer/amp into the seat section It'll be ready to go.

Went cheap on the feedback system. Instead of buying a Buttkicker setup(probably will eventually), I found one of those old Aura Interactor backpacks(from the SNES/Genesis days). Just need to remove the woofer from the backpack and mount it under the seat.


----------



## Vrollin

jwade said:


> I have a headset but rarely speak. I often just put it on while eating chips/popcorn while playing so that my chewing noises piss off the douchey highschool kids that just swear incessantly during missions.



haha awesome! The worst is the little kids, they have the dirtiest mouths on them than anyone in the game.

Also anyone playing GTA5 online feels free to ad me and we can .... shit up vrollin86 is my psn


----------



## jwade

Vrollin said:


> haha awesome! The worst is the little kids, they have the dirtiest mouths on them than anyone in the game.
> 
> Also anyone playing GTA5 online feels free to ad me and we can .... shit up vrollin86 is my psn



Ima hit you up: ISAIDGODDAMN


----------



## Don Vito

Trying out the free weekend for the new version of Insurgency, and damn, I might have to buy this one. The controls are _perfect_, and this is coming from someone who didn't like the original mod very much. Well, they're almost perfect accept for Z being the prone key.. but I'm guessing you can change that. 

It's basically like Counter Strike with iron sites and crawling.


----------



## HurrDurr

I've been playing a lot of Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn. Never been a fan of the DW series', but boy do I love Gundam!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I was playing GTA Online until my goddamn Time Warner internet shit the bed again so I've been playing Rock Band 2 since then.


----------



## Sicarius

idk why, but it was a chore for me to find The Last of Us Remastered around me. Found it at a local Wal-Mart, and started playing it.

It's very good, but some of the large infected encounters are infuriatingly hard.


----------



## Repner

Sicarius said:


> idk why, but it was a chore for me to find The Last of Us Remastered around me. Found it at a local Wal-Mart, and started playing it.
> 
> It's very good, but some of the large infected encounters are infuriatingly hard.



Oh yeah. It definitely has it's challenging moments. Don't worry about the other characters getting caught. They could hold a party in front of the enemy and they still won't be noticed.


----------



## Sicarius

Yeah, I noticed that when I was surrounded by clickers.

I finished it today, took me 3 days to finish it. The story is phenomenal, I can easily see why so many people voted it as Game of the Year. 

I started the Left Behind side thing, so I'll have to finish that up a little later. Not sure if I care enough to try the Multiplayer, I don't really like MP on consoles much anymore.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm trying to finish Operation Flashpoint: Red River. This flimsy ass controller is on borrowed time because there is so much broken/glitched shit in this game that pissed off I spent the $15 Blockbuster wanted for it.


----------



## Sicarius

Welcome to Bohemia Interactive.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Sicarius said:


> Welcome to Bohemia Interactive.



Welcome to Codemasters Driving a Series into the Ground.

EDIT: beat Red River. Might be time to go back to Stick of Truth.


----------



## MoshJosh

Today I downloaded Child of Light and Outlast. So far I'm loving CoL, very beautiful game and the combat system is really fun (can get a bit hectic at times trying to manage the timeline and Ignictus at the same time but still quite enjoyable.) I only played a tiny bit of Outlast, mostly because I was having to much fun with CoL but party because scary games SCARE THET SHlT OUT OF ME (even if there not scary haha), and so far its pretty cool.


----------



## Necris

Shovel Knight


----------



## Choop

Necris said:


> Shovel Knight



I want this game! It'll be my next purchase for sure.
 
Right now I'm getting my druid level-capped in WoW before I put it away until the next expansion comes out.

That and I've been playing lots of Ultra Street Fighter IV!  Despite it being kind of laggy online atm, I've had some good games. Currently I'm running Blanka as my main, and training up with Bison and Ryu/Evil Ryu. I'm also heavily considering spending more time learning Adon or Abel.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

I'm...
I'm playing WoW again.


----------



## maliciousteve

Finished playing Wolfenstein: The New Order. PRetty decent game overall but I wish it was a bit longer.

Now I'm back to playing Skyrim again


----------



## Repner

Tried to start Watch Dogs again after not being interested enough to get more than a few hours in the first time around. Still don't feel like this type of game for now. Decided to replay Final Fantasy VII instead.


----------



## loqtrall

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I'm...
> I'm playing WoW again.



I feel your pain. I started again a couple weeks ago.


----------



## Choop

loqtrall said:


> I feel your pain. I started again a couple weeks ago.



What realms are you guys on?


----------



## TimothyLeary

I'm playing OCD 4: Modern Warfare. To be honest I prefer this to "Ghosts". The graphics are not so good but man.. the action is awesome. I love killing people from the plane.


----------



## John Matrix

Over the weekend I'm going to play an indie game called Kentucky Route Zero. I haven't gamed in a long time but my bandmate wants me to play it to help work on album/lyrical concepts.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I started playing Ico. Got it off PS+ a while ago. I'll probably go back and beat Zone of the Enders afterwards because I completely forgot the game didn't have an autosave feature and turned it off after I kept getting killed during the Tyrant fight.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

loqtrall said:


> I feel your pain. I started again a couple weeks ago.



Yeah, main reason I started was because I finally got my gaming rig built and saw Mists on sale. Couldn't resist. 



Choop said:


> What realms are you guys on?



Mal'Ganis. Currently trying to level an ele/resto Shaman.


----------



## Entropy Prevails

I recently got Rayman Legends and man this game rocks my socks off. One of the best, innovative and imaginitive games I´ve ever played. This may even best Rayman 2. Anyone who likes Jump-n-runs or even anyone who likes fun games should give it a try! Get the demo people!


----------



## The Q

maliciousteve said:


> Finished playing Wolfenstein: The New Order. PRetty decent game overall but I wish it was a bit longer.
> 
> Now I'm back to playing Skyrim again



This Wolfenstein had simply *AMAZING* writing. It's one of the best single player experiences I've ever had and I don't throw such characterisations lightly.


----------



## mongey

picked up diablo 3 for ps4 on the weekend and I'm liking it allot .never played a diablo game before . already had two 4 hour + sessions on it. I havent done that in a game for a long time


----------



## Ralyks

Anxiously waiting for the next 4 and a half hours to pass so I can get out of work and go grab Madden 15.


----------



## SeanSan

Demon's Souls.

Yes, old, but I had to buy it after my amazing experience with Dark Souls + I can't afford Dark Souls 2


----------



## Don Vito

SeanSan said:


> Demon's Souls.
> 
> Yes, old, but I had to buy it after my amazing experience with Dark Souls + I can't afford Dark Souls 2


I've been playing the hell out of Dark Souls 1 lately, and I won't buy Dark Souls 2 until I finish it(have had it since last year, and I'm only now getting past the first 4 or so bosses). I wish I could go back to Demon's Souls again, because I was only able to clear World 2, and most of World's 1 and 3. Gave the PS3 to my little step brother for Christmas, and they never ported it to any other devices .


----------



## SeanSan

Don Vito said:


> and they never ported it to any other devices .



Isn't there a PC version? You should try to get that then if you have a gaming PC!


----------



## InfinityCollision

Not for Demon's Souls, no.


----------



## Choop

SeanSan said:


> Demon's Souls.
> 
> Yes, old, but I had to buy it after my amazing experience with Dark Souls + I can't afford Dark Souls 2



Demon's Souls is fantastic...probably one of my favorite games. It's similar enough to Dark Souls, but still manages to capture a totally different vibe. Luck build with the blueblood sword is the bee's knees.


----------



## Cloudy

Just finished Walking Dead Season 2

Wowwy, it was good. Not as good as Season 1 but still fantastic.


----------



## WarMachine

Just tore through Silent Hill Homecoming for the first time in forever, man that game is still cool as fak. Now, maybe Resident Evil 6 (AGAIN! ) ? For some reason Modern Warfare 2 is calling to me, haven't touched it in a while....sigh, decisions decisions


----------



## warpedsoul

I play too many games at one time. Lets see..

Madden 15
Walking Dead Season 2
Watch Dogs
Dark Souls 2 (Gotta get the 2 new DLC)
Mario Kart 8
Call of Duty Ghosts


----------



## VBCheeseGrater

Just started getting back into PC gaming.

Ys: Oath of Felghana
Aliens: Colonial Marines (I know, but hey it's pretty fun for someone getting back into gaming)


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I got Skate 3 earlier today and I'm already sad that Black Box is no more.


----------



## tacotiklah

I'm gonna go older school and give Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages a playthrough.
This should let me recover a bit from my BL2 burnout.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn and Ultra Street Fighter 4...

...still with an out of focused TV.


----------



## Grindspine

StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm: my friends have been inviting me to games of Mafia a lot. I generally prefer Nexus Wars mods.


----------



## hairychris

Elite: Dangerous Beta.

Hoping that they optimise the engine a bit more as I can't play at native 1080p with my laptop (1st gen Xeon, 12gb RAM, SSD, GTX485m GPU) even at low detail.

Beautiful game even at lower resolution, trading is pretty in depth, and enemy AI is fairly tough to beat when playing with the stock ship. I haven't entered the PvP domain yet either.

I've only scratched the surface and am getting used to the functionality (and need set up shortcuts & voice recognition).

I don't think that I'm going to get much of anything else done for months now. Complete time sink.


----------



## Taylor

Cloudy said:


> Just finished Walking Dead Season 2
> 
> Wowwy, it was good. Not as good as Season 1 but still fantastic.



Yup... 

If I may ask, what ending did you choose?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I've already sold one million boards in Skate 3 so I'm pretty sure after playing it tomorrow I'll be completely done with it.


----------



## Xaios

Pokemon Black 2. Beat the gym leaders and the the big baddies. Now just gotta level up a bit to challenge the Elite 4, then post-game.


----------



## tacotiklah

Blizzard says they're giving me 30 days of access to World of Warcraft and all of its expansions for free.
They actually believe that I'd sink so low as to play that game, as if I lost all taste and discernment in gaming in one momentary lapse of judgment.



















So, suggestions for what to listen to while it downloads and installs?


----------



## troyguitar

How'd you manage to get it free?

I still think it's a good game but I don't play enough to pay $15 per month for it.


----------



## tacotiklah

troyguitar said:


> How'd you manage to get it free?
> 
> I still think it's a good game but I don't play enough to pay $15 per month for it.



I got this email from Blizzard:



> Jessica,
> You've proven your worth in the battle for Sanctuary. Now come and test your skills in World of Warcraftabsolutely free! To help you get started, we're giving you the full digital version of World of Warcraft, which comes with 30 days of game time* and includes all of the content from The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Cataclysm.



So basically because I've had Diablo III for a couple of years, they gave me some WoW access out of loyalty.
But I have literally no interest in paying every month for a game. That was the only real reason I never bothered with WoW to begin with. I feel that once I pay for something, it belongs to me and that I shouldn't continue to be charged for it. Hence why I never really played many MMOs.

However, a free game is a free game to me so I'll take advantage while I can.


----------



## no_dice

After dumping a ton of hours into Dark Souls, I was hungry for more of the same type of game. I was going to get Dark Souls II, but a lot of unfavorable reviews made me decide to go for Demon's Souls instead.


----------



## habicore_5150

Well, decided that I'd boot up some DOOM. Well, specifically I was playing it through the Zandronum engine (Think of Skulltag, but more MP oriented. Of course I prefer co-op over deathmatch)

Before that I was playing a few rounds of Killing Floor with a few friends of mine, and one of em managed to get this during our last run through the game


----------



## thedonal

Dead Space 2 on the 360. Abandoned my original playthrough, I'm guessing close to the end, so it's time to finish it.

Those [email protected] that hide around corners and then charge at you are a right pain, even with mines.

I'm gonna get closure on a few games before I go Destiny, I think.


----------



## thedonal

Christ almighty. The last few chapters of Dead Space 2 are relentlessly tough! Had to abandon the final battle tonight. An hour of swearing led up to it and it's past 1 am.

Great game, but seems way difficult- even on normal. The story content is amazing.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Civ 5 again, for some reason. I'm fucking terrible at it, and one game takes for-fucking ever, but man does it draw me in.

Also Infinity Blade 3 in fits and spurts throughout the day.


----------



## JEngelking

X-Com: Enemy Unknown. After a few different tries of having to delete my game and start over again, I'm finally on the final mission.


----------



## Choop

I'm trying to play through some of my backlog of games on steam. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition has been in there for a really long freaking time since getting it for cheap on a sale once, and it's not been played in a while because when I first played it I hated it. Now I'm just trying to complete it for the sake of having done it. Halfway through, and it's still probably one of the most hollow, joyless games I've ever played. Maybe the sequels are better, I dunno, but this one is pretty darn bad.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Skyrim, for the hundredth time. Pretty much the only game since 2011 that I've been interested in (apart from occasional Valve multiplayers and LoL). 

I didn't even realise how much I still have to explore the map. I probably haven't cleared even half the dungeons yet and I'm already clocking at +90, lol.


----------



## Don Vito

Fat-Elf said:


> Skyrim, for the hundredth time. Pretty much the only game since 2011 that I've been interested in (apart from occasional Valve multiplayers and LoL).
> 
> I didn't even realise how much I still have to explore the map. I probably haven't cleared even half the dungeons yet and I'm already clocking at +90, lol.


And I cant believe you haven't been to #getrekt mountain near Whiterun farms, home of the triple corpse nordic hammerblow.

I'm playing Morrowind because I am real neckbeard RPG fan who likes terrible combat, ugly character models, and reading lots of mostly meaningless text. But hey! I have a spear as my primary weapon, something you can't have in Oblivion or Skyrim. I also have the comforting howl of the silt striders to aid me on my quest.























dear god someone please buy me a fun game like deus ex: human revolution pls ;-;


----------



## MFB

> Wants someone to buy them a game
> Claims to want a "fun game"
> Something like Deus Ex



I don't think I've ever seen those two phrases used together


----------



## Don Vito

Played through it 3 times on PS3.


----------



## habicore_5150

Playing through Lufia 2
Finally got my light capsule monster (which I named Jude, some may understand why) fully evolved
Of course, my reactions to getting both the item needed, as well as one of the best multi-targeting attacks for my fire capsule monster were accompanied by a minute into the song Ataxia done by Within the Ruins


----------



## ZeroS1gnol

Playing titanfall. They added a 8 vs 8 pilot only gametype, straight up deathmatch, so no titans. Oddly, this is much more enjoyable than the game with AI running around. They should make the same gametype, but with titans...


----------



## hairychris

Still on the Elite: Dangerous beta. Not playing anything else at the mo. I'm avoiding PvP at the moment, but have discovered the following things:

- The walls of the space stations are very unforgiving.
- Don't fly after a few beers. See above.
- If you spend all of your cash on expensive cargo and hit boost when leaving the station, there's a 100% chance that a NPC ship will block you in. Boom. Lose all your money.
- If you have a 500K value cargo the docking computer might forget where the station entrance is. Boom. Lose all of your money.
- Combat is tough, even against NPCs.
- The Lakon Type 6 hauler is ugly and boring, but damn it has an impressive jump range.
- Trading is a complete mindfark, but if you fly a hauler you can make loads of cash pretty quickly.

Looking forward to Beta 2 being released on the 30th September. More ships to fly, additional station types, 500 systems instead of 50. It's already a monster, the completed version is going to be insane.


----------



## BlackMastodon

You can get spears in Skyrim through mods, but they handle like regular 2H weapons. Unless there's another mod I don't know about??
On topic, I'm strongly considering buying Shadow of Mordor. I love the mechanics they introduced to it and it sounds like a way better Assassin's Creed (which I gave up on after Revelations).


----------



## Black_Sheep

Endless Legend: Endless Legend on Steam 

Great 4x strategy. Kinda like Civ, with a nice fantasy setting. Bought it today, played 14 hours. Damn. Seriously addicting. Highly recommended for anyone who likes the genre. 

Also been playing Destiny, lots and lots of it.


----------



## Preacher

I preordered Borderlands - The Pre-Sequel, and am far to excited about playing that to play anything other than BL2 with my level 61 Krieg in UVHM right now.


----------



## Azyiu

Playing The Last of Us on the PS4


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Got to play Hyrule Warriors in my sister's house last night. It's the usual mindless Dynasty Warriors pad-face-wipe game, but damn it's so fun.


----------



## Decon87

Just got my hands on an Oculus Rift DK2 so I've been messing around with a lot of the games/tech demoes on that. 

Damn is this thing cool. It does a great job of tricking you into really feeling like you're there. On the rollercoaster tech demo that's floating around in youtube videos, when the rollercoaster banks, your body naturally wants to lean with the bank, it's a very odd feeling.


----------



## Choop

Decon87 said:


> Just got my hands on an Oculus Rift DK2 so I've been messing around with a lot of the games/tech demoes on that.
> 
> Damn is this thing cool. It does a great job of tricking you into really feeling like you're there. On the rollercoaster tech demo that's floating around in youtube videos, when the rollercoaster banks, your body naturally wants to lean with the bank, it's a very odd feeling.



That sounds really fun! Haha. It'd be great if a future Roller Coaster Tycoon game could utilize the Oculus Rift.

On another note, I beat Lost Planet: Extreme Condition! The nightmare is over!  I seriously just don't even get that game. It goes full on Armored Core at the last mission, and while I didn't hate that part it just seemed so out of place. I'm just glad it's over. Now onward to something fun.


----------



## Anchang-Style

habicore_5150 said:


> Playing through Lufia 2
> Finally got my light capsule monster (which I named Jude, some may understand why) fully evolved
> Of course, my reactions to getting both the item needed, as well as one of the best multi-targeting attacks for my fire capsule monster were accompanied by a minute into the song Ataxia done by Within the Ruins



One of the most underrated JRPGs of the 16 Bit era.

Right now playing Portal 2 (got it through Steam Sale) and loving it. The stronger narrative is a nice addition to what basically is a collection of puzzle rooms. Steven Merchant and GlaDOS voiceacting and jokes basiucally sell the game aside from the basic gameplay.

Tested Black mesa but really didn't do much for me. It is too similiar to the original one. It shows that they basically work of the original assets and level layouts and rarely even changed Textures...rooms feel empty and clunky for an engine like Source. Yeah there are nice shaders but the human models look like no one ever took a look at humans in real life. Not wanting to devalue the work the people done here which is a lot...i just don't have enough nostalgia for HL1 in me...played it too often.


----------



## Cloudy

Downloading the new Shadow of Mordor game, not really a big LOTR fan but it looked kind of interesting. I'll give my verdict on it tomorrow.


----------



## Qweklain

habicore_5150 said:


> Playing through Lufia 2
> Finally got my light capsule monster (which I named Jude, some may understand why) fully evolved
> Of course, my reactions to getting both the item needed, as well as one of the best multi-targeting attacks for my fire capsule monster were accompanied by a minute into the song Ataxia done by Within the Ruins


Lufia 2 Rise of the Sinistrals... Such an awesome game. I remember the first time I played it when I was a kid (back when renting games from the video store was the greatest thing ever) I cried when I got to one of the puzzles in a shrine that had I think blue and yellow blocks? 

I've beaten it I don't even know how many times. One thing I was always aggravated with is you don't keep Dekar.

Word of advice, don't forget to get the water capsule-monster! I missed it I think the first three or four times I beat the game since I totally forgot about going underwater when you get the submarine functionality of your ship.


----------



## ferret

Rotated back to Counter-strike: Global Offensive.

Brief forays into Quake Live for nostalgic sake, since it appeared on Steam.

Heroes of the Storm is getting a lot of attention from me too, but just started a week long outage.


----------



## Anchang-Style

Portal 2 done and love dit. Freaking amazing game. Every line was brilliant, gameplay fun and the narrative just exciting without coming interfering too often with the whole puzzle solving. There are some spectecular scenes.


----------



## F1Filter

Forza Horizon 2.

HATED the original. But this is surprisingly good. In fact, this is everything that "Test Drive Unlimited 2" should've been.


----------



## Cloudy

Played Shadow of Mordor for a good chunk of yesterday and I have to say its not too bad. Game feels a bit scattered and I don't quite follow the story line but combat is interesting and it can actually get pretty tough in combat situations unlike assassins creed where you should just counter everyone to death.


----------



## Alex6534

Far Cry 3, never get bored of ninja'ing a few campsites


----------



## Repner

Cloudy said:


> Played Shadow of Mordor for a good chunk of yesterday and I have to say its not too bad. Game feels a bit scattered and I don't quite follow the story line but combat is interesting and it can actually get pretty tough in combat situations unlike assassins creed where you should just counter everyone to death.



Worth picking up?


----------



## mikernaut

Just picked up "The Vanishing of Ethan Carter" for $20 via Steam. So far I'm digging the vibe, it doesn't hold your hand. It's kinda close to Myst and Dear Ester. So... walking thru environments finding clues , listening to some narrative. Feels a bit linear so far, but there was one puzzle I didn't figure out and I'm wondering about what I missed out on.

I am really enjoying the beautiful nature environments/scenery and the music seems to do a decent job of filling the "downtime" voids and adding tension in parts. There are some moments of "Wtf am I trying to do/find?" but then some beautiful environment set pieces or music break it up and keep my fascination going to push on.

There was one completely random event which I loved because it didn't seem to fit into the game so far, but really got my imagination going on what path this game could possibly take or was it just a weird easter egg?

Personally I'm working on a game that could have taken a lot of cues/inspiration for what this Dev team is doing with their game.


----------



## Cloudy

Repner said:


> Worth picking up?



At this point I'd say maybe wait for assassins creed unity or for it to go on sale, it honestly just feels like a poorly skinned assassins creed at times with wayyy less content.

A little surprised that they just 'throw' you into the game and have no cities/stores/safehouses or anything its kind of just 'go kill things' with absolutely no direction or pace.

Not to say the game is super terrible, I really enjoy how they handle the 'sauron army' part of the game where you can get intel on every captain/warchief thats in your zone. The combat is also pretty solid, a lot more challenging than assassins creed.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I went back and finished Stick of Truth yesterday. 

I tried to play so more Hot Pursuit (2010) the other day but I'm just gonna have to admit that it's not fun play, I wasted money buying it and it ruined any nostalgia I had for the original.


----------



## schecter58

Currently playing Batman Arkham Asylum. I have played the other two main games in the series but only started this one recently. I am really liking it so far.


----------



## Anchang-Style

Carrion Rocket said:


> I went back and finished Stick of Truth yesterday.
> 
> I tried to play so more Hot Pursuit (2010) the other day but I'm just gonna have to admit that it's not fun play, I wasted money buying it and it ruined any nostalgia I had for the original.



Did you play Burnout Paradise? I always was interested in hot Pursuit since i loved Burnout and it's the same guys.


----------



## The Q

I'm afraid everything they released after Burnout: Paradise can't compare to it.

If only they hadn't shut down the multiplayer servers...


----------



## ThePhilosopher

I've been playing The Long Dark when I get some free time, damn those wolves.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Fallout: New Vegas, for some reason. I think I just felt like wandering through someplace bleak and shooting things with old-timey guns. It's been long enough since I last played it that it's actually more enjoyable again, since I've forgotten alot of the plotlines and locations .


----------



## BlackMastodon

Started Shadow of Mordor last night. Only got an hour in but so far I really like it. It's everything I wish the Assassin's Creed series was. Also playing some Super Smash Bros 4, trying to main as Ike now, might give Greninja a try soon to get another fast character along with Sheik.


----------



## The Q

I loves me the cockney accent in them orcs I do, it always puts a smile in my face (as I'm reminded of the first Hobbit movie). It's a pity the game is a bit tiring for me to bother with it, in what little time I've left in a day.


----------



## MoshJosh

I picked up Shadow of Mordor when it came out and I've been enjoying it quite a bit. Got to love the satisfaction of finding a captains vulnerability and then one shooting them haha.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I think my favourite part of the game is getting the shit kicked out of me. Last night I dropped down on a patrol of 3 uruks and before I knew it another dozen ran into the fray along with 2 mid and high level captains who promptly kicked my ass. The fact that they get stronger and give you an incentive to hunt and kill them for revenge is awesome and just adds more flavour and a more fun challenge to the game.


----------



## troyguitar

Has anyone played SWTOR in recent months? I played it a bit when it came out but didn't have time, now I'm thinking about maybe starting up again since there is more free time in winter - does anyone even play anymore?


----------



## Jarmake

Just bought wasteland 2 for a bit under 15 euros (it also came with wasteland 1), made my group of rangers and went to the wasteland. This seems quite good to me. I love how it feels familiar like fallout 1&2, yet totally different.


----------



## asher

Gonna start getting into Persona 4 Arena Ultimatix now


----------



## MoshJosh

So pretty sure I just killed 3 war chiefs in 5 minutes! (Shadows of Mordor) Went after one chief, annihilated his sorry ass, his body guard got promoted and tried to run away, chased his sorry ass down for some annihilation, and what do you know another war chief and body guard show up and BAM feel my pimp hand!


----------



## Dcm81

Rented Forza Horizon 2 over the Weekend after buying the HUGE dissapointment that is Destiny. Loved it! Online is soooo much fun and it's got a really stable connection. Racked up over 11 hours of gameplay between Friday and Sunday night!

Rented Alien Isolation yesterday so I've only just started but I'm digging it so far.


----------



## MoshJosh

^^^ more info on Alien as you play would be great! I'm a huge fan and I'm hoping it's worth picking up.


----------



## mikernaut

I picked up a PS4 last night, along with Aliens and Infamous 2nd son.

Alien's look and vibe or great so far. I was a little underwhelmed with the character models and the lip syncing. But the game does IMO feel like the original movie so far. Once you get into exploring the environment and feeling the atmosphere/tension I can forgive them a bit for the character models.

So far just learning the layout of the ship/gameplay mechanics and gathering supplies. I haven't ran into the Alien yet but I am very much enjoying the experience because its about "when is it going to attack?" and the build up of the "calm before the storm". Also sounds like the Alien has somewhat unique AI and could appear and attack whenever, making it even more terrifyingly random and unpredictable. 

One pet peeve is they give the objects/supplies the "gamey" shimmer effect letting u know for sure u don't miss it and to pick it up. So in a sense slight "hand holding", took me out of the experience a little. Wish you would really have to just walk up to the object and see if you can collect it.

Played the start of Infamous, was really enjoying their character models and how they brought them to life so far. Wish ALiens would have had that level of polish and "life" to their 3d models.

Then downloaded PI /Silent Hill teaser demo and that really did make me jump a few times playing in the dark. very creepy.


----------



## Dcm81

^^^couldn't agree with you more about Alien. Although the rest of the game, grafically, looks great. Also worth mentioning is the sound which is a critical factor for my emersion in a game is amazing through a headset - I imagine a 5.1 speaker setup would be great too.
As gamers we all know that you won't be hunted by the alien from the very beginning as the character first has to be introduced to the concept or see it themselves so until that point the fear factor isn't really there yet. So I was trying to get a feel for the controls and just admiring the all the things to see on ship and station.

Last night I did get introduced, or saw it, for the first time (I won't let you know which it is). After that I was pretty much shitting myself half the time!
A litttle feature that isn't exactly usefull but I find myself really liking, is the fact that the kinect can be used in game. You can move your head to peek around while hiding (which often happens unintentionally anyway to me on similar games). Also all characters and the the alien are attracted to all kinds of noise made in the game and the kinect mic also picks up on sounds in the room you're playing in.....can't wait to see the effect when my wife starts playing and screams every 30 seconds - already know I'm gonna love that show! No worries though, the kinect functionalities can be turned off.


----------



## MoshJosh

So I beat Mordor, awesome game really enjoyed it, and grabbed Alien Isolation and. . . not sure how I feel about it yet. Atmosphere is awesome, really feels like the movie, and I dig all the "futuristic" tech haha. But I feel like I'm just not getting it when it comes to the game play. I find myself getting frustrated playing the same little section over and over until I figure out the perfect way or get kind of lucky. I haven't used any of the items, well successfully at least. I just feel like I'm missing something. 

any advice guys?

wouldn't say I don't like it, just think I need a little more time with it, at least I hope thats the case.


----------



## Dcm81

Well that was quick! Didn't think Mordor would be through that fast.

As to Alien. I'm bringing it back to the rental place today. I'd need to keep a hold of it too long because it's so hard. Can't justify paying that much for rental ;-)
I think it's just a matter of getting used to it MoshJosh. Getting to know the map layouts better and finding good ways of distraction. At least that's my impression after a couple hours of gameplay.


----------



## Choop

Playing through The Last of Us, and so far it's pretty dope. The story is super good and characters are also super good. The only downside I'm experiencing right now (about 25% through) is that the combat is already starting to feel kind of samey and repetitive, to the point where I don't like it and just want to get back to traveling with the characters and exploring the world. I guess sometimes I feel like it works given the situation and sometimes I feel like you're forced into long combat situations to remind you that it's a video game.


----------



## Azyiu

Choop said:


> Playing through The Last of Us, and so far it's pretty dope. The story is super good and characters are also super good. The only downside I'm experiencing right now (about 25% through) is that the combat is already starting to feel kind of samey and repetitive, to the point where I don't like it and just want to get back to traveling with the characters and exploring the world. I guess sometimes I feel like it works given the situation and sometimes I feel like you're forced into long combat situations to remind you that it's a video game.



The combat system is actually quite good IMO. Of course, if you play the game like it is a shooting game, sure I can see how it feels dope in places.


----------



## Repner

Finished Ys Book 1 and 2 Tubrografx CD version on Wiis Virtual Console. Definitely desperate to check out other games in the series now


----------



## Choop

Azyiu said:


> The combat system is actually quite good IMO. Of course, if you play the game like it is a shooting game, sure I can see how it feels dope in places.



I guess its about as good as it could be for this kind of game haha. I do like that you get limited ammo so you can't just go ham all the time, and I didn't play it like a shooting game anyways. It definitely works, but for me it's not why I liked the game; sort of the same thing as the Mass Effect games for me. 

I beat this like 3 days ago, and it was real good! The combat situations became more varied as the game progressed so I really can't complain about it feeling samey. The characters are great, environments are great, there are some other neat scenarios you get involved in. Great game!

Now I'm playing Smash 4 and it is way fun.  So far I'm really digging Mega Man.


----------



## Anchang-Style

Final Fantasy 13 on PC. Yes the port is awful. 2 Options...Fullscreen and Windowed, that's it. /20p resolution, lesser Quality videos than on the PS3. Heavily flawed plot, linear as hell, flawed fight system (why are there so many tutorials for a fight system that boils down to L1 for fight or L1 to heal and sometimes summon to win) that pushes you into fights that are rigged one way or the other or are just relying to hit one enemy with a certain element). Still i kinda enjoy it. The japanese voice cast is superb, the drama is cheesy as i need it, the visual are for the most part great and the art style is awesome as per usual for FF.
Yet the game shows it probably went through a lot of problems, cuts and a generation change, because a lot of models and assets are barely PS2 level while others are knocking it out the park and i guess also the linearity is due to that the game went over budget badly or lack of experience with the hardware (considering that the last remnant in some aspects looked way better...atleast some models).


----------



## Qweklain

Repner said:


> Finished Ys Book 1 and 2 Tubrografx CD version on Wiis Virtual Console. Definitely desperate to check out other games in the series now


If those are the first Ys games you've ever played, you are in for a treat. 1 and 2 are but a fraction of the awesomeness that the others ooze!


----------



## hairychris

BlackMastodon said:


> I think my favourite part of the game is getting the shit kicked out of me. Last night I dropped down on a patrol of 3 uruks and before I knew it another dozen ran into the fray along with 2 mid and high level captains who promptly kicked my ass. The fact that they get stronger and give you an incentive to hunt and kill them for revenge is awesome and just adds more flavour and a more fun challenge to the game.



Have picked this up - 32GB download... WAT - and been dicking around with it. Only done the first story mission but have spent the rest of the time exploring & stabbing. Definitely feels like a cross between AC and Arkham.

RUN AWAY is a very useful tactic sometimes!


----------



## mongey

I overdosed on diablo 3 and have gone back to wolfenstein which I never finished. Its a good game but I'm over the "housekeeping" missions in the bunker. go get your own peice of moldy conctete fool


----------



## Anchang-Style

Almost done with FF XIII and especially now towards the end i totally get why people hate it. This point "where it gets fun" was just another meh point to grind, bosses become more and more unbalanced and are hard just by beeing unfair (like the chapter 12 boss which is just spamming you with heavy atttacks all 2 seconds). The writing gets worse and worse and the fights feel unnecessary frustrating simply because you are so limited thanks to the system (like game over when my team lead is done with...the very first time in FF). .... this game.


----------



## MoshJosh

F*CK! I finally beat Alien: Isolation, I now understand why so many people have been complaining about its length, it's long haha

It definitely had me at the edge of my seat at times, and the game is incredibly successful at bringing the tension, so much so that it can be stressful to play. 

Over all it gets a lot right, and it gets some wrong, but after the 20 so hours of story mode, the flaws really start to wear out their welcome.

If you're a fan of survival horror and the movies definitely check it out, if not, well. . . at least try before you buy.

Review over.


----------



## Rosal76

MoshJosh said:


> F*CK! I finally beat Alien: Isolation,



Questions:  

Is there a lot of stealth play in this game?
Can I finish missions/levels without any alerts/the Alien finding me?

Reason I'm asking is because I'm a huge fan of stealth games (Hitman and Splinter Cell) and the idea of trying to sneak past the Alien has me intrigue.


----------



## MoshJosh

yeah its pretty much all stealth, you cannot kill or even hurt the alien, it is much faster than you so alerting it is pretty much instant death. around half way through the game you get the flame thrower that will scare the alien off momentarily which does change the dynamic a bit.

The other enemies humans, androids, and hazard androids can be killed but stealth is an option, in fact there is an achievement for getting through one of the more android infested levels without fighting them.

Now the stealth isn't your traditional wait for this guy to move then get a stealth kill and retreat to the shadow, hitting someone from behind isn't an instant kill, at least for the androids, and combat attracts the alien. The alien will show no interest in the android you are fighting and go straight for you so. . .

your best weapon agains the alien is usually distraction, noise makers and flares allow you to lure the alien to a specific locations and give you enough time to sneak by


----------



## Rosal76

^ Sweet!!!

Definitely gonna get the game when the price goes down in price.


----------



## MoshJosh

Started The Evil Within today and so far, pretty cool. It plays like a cross between Resident Evil 4 and The Last of Us, more the the former than the later though. You can tell this comes from the maker of RE4 they play/feel so similar, not a bad thing cause that game kicked a$$, so if you liked that I recommend picking this up.


----------



## habicore_5150

Bouncing back and forth between my LP of Lufia 2, and just simply playing on modded servers on Killing Floor

Since I was one of the few that was running as a sharpshooter throughout most of the game, is it THAT hard to not bunch up in one place where I can't see what all is coming my way? /rant


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Grabbed this for a dirt cheap price, so I'll be going through this for a bit:


----------



## Stealth7

Got Chivalry: Medieval Warfare the other day, played a few games last night and it's so much fun!


----------



## Anchang-Style

So got my self Legend of Grinmrock 2 and Assassins Creed 2, 3 and all the games in between (2,5, 275 or whatever they arew called).


----------



## Ralyks

My fiancee recently disocvered The Last of Us: Remastered among my games while I was at work, so we've been enjoying that together (Enjoying games with your significant other, especially awesome ones like The Last of Us = total win).

Also, Velocity 2X, which I got fo' free last month on PS4, SO MUCH FUN!


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Amazing game


----------



## Defi

I just got a wolf among us cause I wanted to try out a story based game with decisions and stuff and liked the graphical style. 15 minutes in "wait what, they're serious about this fairy tale character past stuff?" Didn't know what I was getting myself into.

Meh, might as well keep going.



Bloody_Inferno said:


> Grabbed this for a dirt cheap price, so I'll be going through this for a bit:


Man I played the shit out of that game (is it the same game?) on gamecube when it came out.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Defi said:


> Man I played the shit out of that game (is it the same game?) on gamecube when it came out.


 
Same game. Both Symphonia games in HD and in one package really. I'm trying to hastily complete the first so I can jump into the second and finish that quickly too.  Since that post, so far, I just got the Rheairds.


----------



## Anchang-Style

Finally completed AC2. Great game eventhough it pissed me off big time when most mission designs uddenly feel weirdly and pointlessly limited (kill him without beeing seen...why? every other mission in this game i raked a body count like a mid sized nuke ...now i have to kill some random farmer and suddenly i have to tip toe it?). Also the last mission was just a let down...linear level design and action arcade sections that forced you to go in guns blazing...way to go against every design of the game.


----------



## Choop

I've been playing WoW, in preparation for the expansion to be out soon. Also, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth came out today and it's hella good. I love the art style, and just how generally smooth the game runs now. It's kind of jarring to play it running so smoothly, because it's actually harder that way I feel .


----------



## musicaldeath

Wolfenstein: TNO. Great game. I may play it again after I finish it, except play on the hardest difficulty. The step down from that doesn't seem super challenging.


----------



## loqtrall

Been playing Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare pretty hardcore. I'm about 75-80% through the campaign and first prestige level 36 and all I can say is "WOW". I've vehemently disliked every Call of Duty since MW2, specifically because they've just been copy and paste versions of the last game just with different perks, killstreaks, and weapons. But Advanced Warfare, man is it a breath of fresh air for the franchise. It's got a very Arena-Shooter vibe to it, and it's definitely the fastest Call of Duty yet. The exosuit movement changes are more than welcome here, and they give the game so much more dynamic (like Unreal, Tribes, Quake, etc.) Sledgehammer should definitely take over the CoD franchise from now on, in terms of development anyway.

Other than that, I've been playing a little of Sunset Overdrive (got it from a friend) and it's definitely fun. I understand why most review sites gave it a 9 out of 10 or somewhere around there. I love Insomniac Games, Spyro is still in my top 5 favorite franchises of all time, and this was a fantastic effort on their part. They definitely hit the mark they were aiming for. Unfortunately I wish I had more time to play it, but Advanced Warfare has surprisingly taken up a lot of my time, and Halo MCC is coming out, sooooo.


----------



## Brodessa

Always got some CounterStrike: Global Offensive every now and then. Not that great. I'm a Nova 4. 
Lately, all it does is piss me off. BUT AYE I PLAY ANYWAY.

Also bought a pack containing all 3 Penumbra games, (or the 2 with 1 expansion.) Haven't played much, but they're on my list.

Mainly, I've been playing a buttload of Forza: Horizon on the Xbox 360 during my downtime. I've been browsing for a new car, as it's possible I may have to sell or trade my 92 Camaro.  Looking and thinking about cars so much has basically demanded me to play.


----------



## The Q

Defi said:


> I just got a wolf among us cause I wanted to try out a story based game with decisions and stuff and liked the graphical style. 15 minutes in "wait what, they're serious about this fairy tale character past stuff?" Didn't know what I was getting myself into.
> 
> Meh, might as well keep going.
> 
> 
> Man I played the shit out of that game (is it the same game?) on gamecube when it came out.



It's based on the Fables comic series. I played the first episode which is in classic Telltales style that I like and am about to play the rest, though it struck me as odd the fact that it appears to be diverging from the original series.

Here's the Fables comic: Fables (comics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## Ibzzus

Hearthstone and WoW


----------



## musicaldeath

I may actually go buy a CoD game for the first time since World at War...


----------



## Stealth7

Wolfenstein: The New Order. Just did the first mission and it's pretty awesome so far!


----------



## Ralyks

Grabbed Advanced Warfare the other night. So far, at least its way better than Ghost


----------



## MFB

Grabbed _Advanced Warfare, Wolfenstein: The New Order,_ and _The Last of Us Remastered_ from work during our B2G1 sale; so far AW is really fun. Controls are fluid, the EXO suit is really easily integrated into the controls, the guns (for the campaign at least) are varied and it looks great as well. I'm eager to jump into the online but I'm waiting till I finish the campaign; I also really like Kevin Spacey as an actor and so far he's been a little cheesy but nothing you wouldn't expect.


----------



## loqtrall

3rd prestige on Advanced Warfare, been slowing down on it quite a bit. Still on my list to get The Master Chief Collection, though I don't know when that'll be.

Right now I'm playing a FTP game on Steam called Double Action: Boogaloo, and it's actual pretty fvcking great. Reminds me a lot of Gunz: The Duel without the exploitable abilities and ridiculous rocket launcher and sword play. Probably gonna pick up Insurgency because I've been wanting to play it for a while, just never got around to it.


----------



## texshred777

Arkham Asylum. 

I actually already finished Arkham City and loved the shit out of it. Going back and playing Asylum now. I've had them both for quite a while just barely touched them. 

So damn good. Will be getting Arkham Origins in the next few days probably.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Be prepared for a pretty big quality dropoff 

I've been trying to finish Killzone: Shadow Fall's campaign, so far I have mixed feelings about it. I'm on mission 7 and it seems like it's only just starting to get good. The AI is really stupid and there's only been about 2 missions I actually had fun playing so far. Oh well, at least the game looks amazing.


----------



## Repner

Playing through Dragon Age Origins and 2 again in preparation for Inquisition


----------



## Decreate

Just started playing Dragon Age Inquisition...


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Started playing Saboteur again.


----------



## The Q

Far Cry 4. It's not a great game, it's got no great story or great gameplay, but it's very enjoyable.


----------



## Rosal76

Carrion Rocket said:


> Started playing Saboteur again.



The 2009 game set during World War 2 in German occupied France?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Yeah, that's it. I keep thinking I'm getting close to finishing it but I've been playing it for the last three days and I'm still not done.


----------



## Axel_Blaze

Super Smash Bros. for my 3DS on top of Alien: Isolation (was completely hesitant at first because I still suffer from Colonial Marines trauma, but I actually enjoy it)


----------



## Jarmake

Far cry 4 on pc. Only played for about a half an hour, but already thinking this might be great (just like fc3 was). Who wouldn't like to throw a bait and watch as a huge bear attacks your enemies?


----------



## asher

Basically played the new Smash on Wii U all day Saturday


----------



## Rosal76

Carrion Rocket said:


> Yeah, that's it. I keep thinking I'm getting close to finishing it but I've been playing it for the last three days and I'm still not done.



It is such an awesome game and seriously thinking of replaying it. Going to the top of the Eiffel Tower and jumping off and landing in the water basin is such a high. I had one car, one f__king car to collect and would have 100%/Platinumed the game. Could not find it anywhere in the game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I just finished it a few minutes ago. Fun game but I have no desire or patience to plat it. I have two bookcases worth of games that I still need to start or at least finish.


----------



## RickSchneider

Started playing far cry 4 just the other day. Definitely no huge leap since far cry 3 but I'm still loving the hell out of it - if it ain't broke don't fix it!


----------



## Fat-Elf

Started playing Final Fantasy XIV last week. I only have the free trial going on so today I reached the level cap (20). I kinda want to buy the whole thing but I don't have any money and I don't think it would keep my interest that long. I used to play WoW but only managed to reach level 33 with my character until I just got bored.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I tried to play WET but after about fifteen minutes I contemplated throwing it in the burn barrel. So I started playing F1 2010 instead.


----------



## Taylor

Dragon Age: Inquisition right now, and I'm enjoying it thoroughly.


----------



## Axel_Blaze

Torchlight. Got it for free, so might as well.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Sonic Adventure. 

This game did not age well AT ALL.


----------



## Vrollin

Just bought a PS4 with GTA5 tonight, I thought it was good on PS3 already, wow!


----------



## DslDwg

Completely sucked in to Dragon Age Inquisition at the moment. 

Was pretty damn good already at about 20 hours in in shifted into overdrive.


----------



## BlackMastodon

My buddy let me borrow his PS4 and The Last of Us Remastered while he goes nuts on the new WoW expansion. Only about 3-4 hours in but really loving it. My only problem is when the game breaks my immersion by having Ellie just run around all willy nilly while I'm trying to sneak around people and they can clearly see her. Or when I noticed that Bill had unlimited ammo for his part of the game and I was just like "eh, f**k it, let Bill use his ammo." Hopefully gonna put a big dent in it tomorrow.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

BlackMastodon said:


> Only about 3-4 hours in but really loving it. My only problem is when the game breaks my immersion by having Ellie just run around all willy nilly while I'm trying to sneak around people and they can clearly see her.



I noticed that despite the game telling you that you can't push clickers off, the NPCs do it all the time.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Chivalry. So much damn fun


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

I also snagged KOTOR and total war shogun 2 on the steam sale. Does anyone know any good mods for KOTOR to get it to run properly? Namely widescreen because right now it displays in a tiny square on my monitor.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Played Chivalry yesterday for the first time in I don't even know how long (easily more than 7 months) and and it and it was and it was a and it was a huge improvement over what it used to be. Plus playing it on my much more powerful new PC was great. The team killing gets a little annoying after a while but still a ton of fun.


----------



## loqtrall

BlackMastodon said:


> Played Chivalry yesterday for the first time in I don't even know how long (easily more than 7 months) *and and it and it was and it was a and it was a* huge improvement over what it used to be



I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to read that.


----------



## BlackMastodon

loqtrall said:


> I'm not even sure how I'm supposed to read that.


F**k's sakes.  My phone likes to sneak that in every now and then. I usually catch it but yeah, obviously missed it this time.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Grabbed this for a dirt cheap price, so I'll be going through this for a bit:
> 
> Tales of Symphonia Chronicles


 
Finished mad rushing the first game last night and immediately began Dawn Of The New World. Gonna try to finish this as quickly as the prequel.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Killzone: Shadow Fall. Graphically amazing but pathetic in every other way.


----------



## Danukenator

Anyone here play QuakeLive? I was getting bored of Counter Strike and wanted a more individual game that was faster paced and greater aiming. Oh man is it fun.

I'm thinking about getting Reflex once it's further into it's alpha.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Finished The Last of Us this past weekend and just finished the Left Behind DLC. My god, that game is incredible. Easily the best written game I've ever played, and talk about a f**king emotional roller coaster.  This game makes my top 5 favourite games ever, easy.


----------



## SjPedro

I'm playing Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor on the Playstation 3.... love the Lord of The Rings Universe but this game is really frustrating on the ps3 because development kinda cut some corners and the game sometimes stutters and gets nearly unplayed. seen videos of the ps4 version and I see no issues with it...half-baked product for the current gen systems and the next gen systems getting all the love. 
What I don't get is they delayed the release and this is what they come up with. and Destiny which is this massive MMO plays great on the PS3 (played the demo but still...)


----------



## BlackMastodon

I remember them saying that last gen hardware couldn't handle a lot of the features so they had to be scaled back a lot, didn't realize it would be buggy/choppy too. I played on PC and it ran with absolutely no problems.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Carrion Rocket said:


> Killzone: Shadow Fall. Graphically amazing but pathetic in every other way.



Have you tried multiplayer? I think they kept Killzone's always awesome multiplayer alive, but they campaign is pretty bad. AI especially is basically broken.


----------



## habicore_5150

Cards Against Humanity for the first time ever


----------



## Curt

Blast from the past. My favorite playstation game when I was 12. Digimon World 3. Go on... Judge me.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Gothic Headhunter said:


> Have you tried multiplayer? I think they kept Killzone's always awesome multiplayer alive, but they campaign is pretty bad. AI especially is basically broken.


I haven't tried the multiplayer yet. I just finished the campaign yesterday and I really want to start inFamous: Second Son. I remember KZ3 having great multiplayer compared to the campaign though.



Curt said:


> Blast from the past. My favorite playstation game when I was 12. Digimon World 3. Go on... Judge me.


I had the original Digimon World when I was a kid and I wish I never got rid of it, mostly because a disc only copy on eBay is about $35 USD.


----------



## Decreate

Back playing GTA 4 while waiting for the PC version of GTA 5...


----------



## bobbykaiden

Been taking a trip back in time with Banjo Kazooie recently, then I'm gonna hit up Zelda - Ocarina of time soon too, such epic and legendary games! Sometimes you cant beat a classic!


----------



## goherpsNderp

-STILL playing *Destiny* (my wife's addicted)
-completed *Unfinished Swan* last night on PS4 - such an amazing game.
-just got *Freedom Wars* on Vita and slowly getting into that
-finally getting around to working on *Murdered Soul Suspect* on PS4
-*Far Cry 4* on PS4 is absolutely blowing my mind too... but i'm such a completionist that it's going to take me a while to even start chipping away at the story because i want to collect ALL THE THINGS FIRST.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Got the Hitman HD Trilogy off PS+. Effectively using the fiberwire in Silent Assassin is harder than I remember it being.


----------



## loqtrall

goherpsNderp said:


> -*Far Cry 4* on PS4 is absolutely blowing my mind too... but i'm such a completionist that it's going to take me a while to even start chipping away at the story because i want to collect ALL THE THINGS FIRST.


 
Feel free. I've completed every campaign mission, Yogi mission, Longinus mission, Shangri-La mission, liberated all the towers, captured every outpost and all 4 fortresses, unlocked every weapon, every vehicle, have every skill, found every mask of Yalung, did every Kyrat Fashion Week mission and have almost half of everything else completed/found and I STILL only have the game 64% completed.


----------



## Azyiu

Decreate said:


> Back playing GTA 4 while waiting for the PC version of GTA 5...



Dude, maybe it is just me... but GTA 4 feels like crap after I played GTA V last year on the PS3. In fact, I went as far as deleting the game data on my PS3, as I have zero desire to ever play it again. In comparison to GTA SA and GTA V, 4 just doesn't feel as inspired game play-wise; and I am just not a big fan of Niko. I will double dip GTA V on the PS4 a bit little.

Back on topic, I am re-playing The Last of Us on Normal... after beating it on Grounded Plus mode!!


----------



## loqtrall

Been playing a ton of Insurgency, and it's a blast. Incredibly tactical and immersive. Non-linear map design, which I love. Gunfights get incredibly intense! I let my brother hop on for a round and he was jerking around and dodging bullets in his chair like he was actually in the game.

I've been eager to try Chivalry, but I don't know about pulling the trigger on it yet.
Feel free to gift it to me, though!


----------



## Jackzaa

Just completed shadow of mordor, it was alright but there was nothing to it really.

Anyone recommend me some decent xb1 games? Picked up a console recently but everything I've played seems to be a let down.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Started playing Infamous: Second Son. Never played 2 but it's plays no different that I remember the first on playing.


----------



## Electric Wizard

loqtrall said:


> I've been eager to try Chivalry, but I don't know about pulling the trigger on it yet.
> Feel free to gift it to me, though!


I always see Chivalry included in sales, I bet you can get it cheap during the winter sale soon.

It's a lot of fun and I think it's kind of like Insurgency in some ways. Timing and positioning are everything, and it's fast paced. Just don't pay any attention to the Deadliest Warrior version, that one doesn't play the same IMO.


----------



## tacotiklah

A friend gifted me Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 on steam. The first one wouldn't load on my laptop, but I'm able to run the second one pretty well. This game reminds me a lot of KOTOR II, and I love it!


----------



## Stealth7

Electric Wizard said:


> I always see Chivalry included in sales, I bet you can get it cheap during the winter sale soon.
> 
> It's a lot of fun and I think it's kind of like Insurgency in some ways. Timing and positioning are everything, and it's fast paced. Just don't pay any attention to the Deadliest Warrior version, that one doesn't play the same IMO.



This! I picked it up for $6.24USD about a month ago and the Autumn sale last week had it for the same price.


----------



## Deadnightshade

tacotiklah said:


> A friend gifted me Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 on steam. The first one wouldn't load on my laptop, but I'm able to run the second one pretty well. This game reminds me a lot of KOTOR II, and I love it!



Do play the first one too. All freaking choices count in the second and third game, so I suggest loading the same character throughout the playthroughs. Makes it feel even better. Or you just use mass effect saves from the internet and/or a save editor  That shit's hooking believe me.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Infamous: Second Son last night. Fantastic game. A little on the short side but that means that I can do a evil playthrough in a reasonable amount of time. The Nirvana cover during the credits was terrible.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Whilst still ploughing through ToS Dawn Of The New World, I've got a few other games on the side:







Got it dirt cheap, and since it's practically a J-RPG anyway, I'll feel right at home. 











One of my favorite albeit very taxing series back in the day. Thought I'd give them both a run again. I really loved the sequel even more too. Tim Follin's score probably helped that.


----------



## thedonal

I just downloaded Minecraft on the 360 last night. What have I done?!!!

I was already up until 2am playing it last night! Already, it's far more rewarding than Destiny!


----------



## Chokey Chicken

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Whilst still ploughing through ToS Dawn Of The New World, I've got a few other games on the side:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Got it dirt cheap, and since it's practically a J-RPG anyway, I'll feel right at home.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> One of my favorite albeit very taxing series back in the day. Thought I'd give them both a run again. I really loved the sequel even more too. Tim Follin's score probably helped that.



Solstice was my jam way back in the day. Something about the atmosphere and that one gameplay song gave me the willies when I was a kid. I'm fairly sure I had a nightmare or two involving that game.


----------



## tacotiklah

Ah yiss! Almost beat F.E.A.R. 2. I think the first one had a better story, and was definitely scarier, but I prefer the weapons and interactions of this one. The only thing I can't get my head around is why they defaulted the right mouse button as melee instead of the scope. I get that I can switch it if I want (so yeah I'm nitpicking), but it just seems REALLY weird to me that an FPS game would do that.


----------



## Jacksonluvr636

thedonal said:


> I just downloaded Minecraft on the 360 last night. What have I done?!!!
> 
> I was already up until 2am playing it last night! Already, it's far more rewarding than Destiny!


 



Never understood the point of that game. You just build? I don't get it.


----------



## JustMac

Jacksonluvr636 said:


> Never understood the point of that game. You just build? I don't get it.



I think it has survival elements to it. Effectively using resources and whatnot. I think the building stuff looks pretty neat!


----------



## Repner

Yeah. The main mode of the game has you crafting weapons and tools and collecting resources to work with. You're basically dumped in the middle of a randomly generated world and left to your own thing.

There is also Creative mode for people who just want to use it purely as an artistic outlet. You get unlimited access to all resources and can fly.


----------



## Jacksonluvr636

Oh cool, sounds much better reading that than watching my kid play it haha.

I am still hooked on Destiny until The Division or until H-Hour comes out.


----------



## loqtrall

I just got Just Cause 2 and Chivalry for a whopping $6 for both in the Steam Sale.

Anybody got any suggestions for games currently for sale on Steam?


----------



## JustMac

Any you guys checked out that Rainbow Six:Siege? Not out til next year- It's honestly the first next-gen game I've actually gotten hyped about. Love the RS series, the tension of tight tactical CQB is so much more rewarding than running about with dual-wield laz0r cannons (although that too can be appealing).


----------



## habicore_5150

Yes, I finally got a copy of my first ever Tales game, and even though I stopped at the end of Tataroo Valley, I'm really liking what I'm seeing. Can't wait to go a bit further into this game later on


----------



## Rosal76

JustMac said:


> Any you guys checked out that Rainbow Six:Siege? Not out til next year- It's honestly the first next-gen game I've actually gotten hyped about. Love the RS series, the tension of tight tactical CQB is so much more rewarding than running about with dual-wield laz0r cannons (although that too can be appealing).



I am interested in the game. Like you, I prefer stealth/silent kill/no kill/no knockout games over run and gun type games. I was actually thinking of replaying the 2 previous Rainbow Six games but the next game I want to buy/play is Splinter Cell: Conviction. Which is funny because both games, Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell are both by Tom Clancy.


----------



## loqtrall

Well, I nabbed Chivalry in the Steam Sale, and holy shit. Can't get enough.

There's not many things better than a group of 10-15 people in a huge fight mostly teamkilling each other with off-swings.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Fell balls deep into Skyrim again. This time I started on an Orc Berserker, using 2 handed weapons and heavy armor. For some reason Frostfall isn't working on this file, though, as my exposure doesn't change at all but there seems to be weather and fog.


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Total War: Shogun 2

I had a katana hero unit of 30 men rack up 384 kills in one battle.


----------



## MoshJosh

I'm rocking Sunset Overdrive. 

So far it's pretty good, a very "video gamey" video game, if that makes sense.


----------



## Axel_Blaze

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor


----------



## asher

MoshJosh said:


> I'm rocking Sunset Overdrive.
> 
> So far it's pretty good, a very "video gamey" video game, if that makes sense.



Played a bit of that at a friends place at home for the holidays.

It's both fun and *fvcking hilarious*. And self aware.


----------



## mongey

Grabbed shadow of mordor over my Xmas break and got 12 or so hours into it. Great game. Yeah it borrows heavily for a few games , well flat out rips off really , but it's a fun game. It does have its flaws but all in all probably my pick for game of 2014.


----------



## BlackMastodon

mongey said:


> Grabbed shadow of mordor over my Xmas break and got 12 or so hours into it. Great game. Yeah it borrows heavily for a few games , well flat out rips off really , but it's a fun game. It does have its flaws but all in all probably my pick for game of 2014.


To be fair about it ripping of the Arkham games, both were published by WB so I assume that's where they got that. Maybe. I could just be connecting 2 random dots but I agree 100%.


----------



## mongey

BlackMastodon said:


> To be fair about it ripping of the Arkham games, both were published by WB so I assume that's where they got that. Maybe. I could just be connecting 2 random dots but I agree 100%.


 
yeah thats a fair point on WB

have to say I found the batman games allot eaiser to start with. for the 1st 8 hours I was getting whipped by orc's . it was allot easier to escape a bad situatiuon early on in batman


----------



## The Q

I downloaded Burnout: Paradise from Steam (3 bucks, pittance) and guess what? They've restored the multiplayer! And I have a paper to write, things don't look good.


----------



## Kobalt

I've finished Far Cry 3...quite an underwhelming story...but for $19.99, I'm not going to complain, just glad I didn't dish out $59.99 when it came out.

Great game, nonetheless. The concept and the mechanics are fun. Stealth outpost takeovers are the best.


----------



## loqtrall

Since I just happened to acquire Counter Strike: Source in a bundle I bought in the holiday sale, I decided to hop on for a couple matches since I hadn't played since somewhere around 2006.

Boy, was that a disappointment. That game went from a tactical fast-paced shooter to a slow, flash-spamming campfest.

I must have played around 9-10 games and all of them were full of flash grenades, awps, and camping. I experienced several moments where I'm waiting for the round to be over (spectating) and everyone still alive is literally camping and moving inches at a time. Constantly ran out of time (CT-autowin) on de_dust2 matches because nobody wanted to move.

Decided to give CS:GO a try, though, and it seems all the older CS:S players have moved there. Aside from the occasional 7-14 year olds, it's actually pretty enjoyable.


----------



## texshred777

Back in Skyrim. 

Again.

I don't know if this will ever stop.


----------



## Kullerbytta

League of Legends  guilty pleasure... 

Single-player I usually go for Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, Fallout 3 and re-playing the Final Fantasy games.

Me and some friends purchased Worms Armageddon while it was on holiday-sale and we've been having loads of fun with it  too bad they don't have World Party... That's the best one in my opinion.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Pure. Going through old games I never beat on the PS3, again. Might finish off Fuel after I'm done with this one.


----------



## pink freud

I'm 48 hours into my first run-through of DA Inquisition. It's soooo much better than DA2. Hard to imagine the same company made them.

Also, I guess one good thing came out of Bioware working on the Star Wars MMO, they figured out how to make character _jump_. Still haven't figured out swimming though.


----------



## jwade

Picked up Dishonored for $13 on New Years. not a fan of 1st person stuff usually, but I don't mind this.


----------



## tacotiklah

Bought Dragon Age Inquisition. Laptop can't handle it. 
Come on financial aid, I need that new PC bad...


----------



## mongey

still slogging away on shadow of mordor. I am up to the last mission. was gonna finish it off last night but decidied to turn it off and save for after work today with a few beers 

great game , really enjoyed it . and I have clocked 17 and a half hours . pretty long for a game these days . I have done allot of side missions but not all, problably 3/4


----------



## MetalGravy

Really into Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Ignoring the story and spent waaaaay too much time Gumping it.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Played Diablo 3 for the first time in a long time with some friends. Rolled 2 seasonal characters: a Barb and a DH and got both to level 70 with level 60 paragon to tack on, all in like maybe 6 hours. In one afternoon I got further with both characters and got way better gear then my previous non-season DH and Crusader.  Getting rushed through Torment VI made it a hell of a lot easier but it was also a lot of fun.


----------



## MoshJosh

Think I'm gonna go pick up Metro: Redux tomorrow. I enjoyed Last Light and I'm pretty interested in trying 2033 for the first time. 

Any of you guys play it yet?


----------



## Chiba666

Yakuza 4 on the PS3, Shogun 2 total war gold edition should be here today so load that on the laptop. Thihking of picking up a few more Japanese PS3 games for something different as well as DOA 5, I mena its DOA and its just fun, with lots of bouncy bouncy.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Got into the Evolve beta today!  Been playing a few rounds and man is this challenging. Lots of fun, though.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Bought the Resident Evil HD Remaster yesterday and holy shit that game still spooks the out of me even though I have seen tons of gameplay videos of it (last time I played it myself was back in 2002).


----------



## Kimling

Just installed Skyrim on my new PC.
Going from 1280*720 - low to 1920*1080 - Ultra w/texture mods
I've fallen in love with this game all over again


----------



## Rosal76

Fat-Elf said:


> Bought the Resident Evil HD Remaster yesterday and holy shit that game still spooks the out of me even though I have seen tons of gameplay videos of it (last time I played it myself was back in 2002).



I am interested in revisiting this game. Last time I played it was on the Gamecube in 2004. Trying to finish up Resident Evil Revelations: Raid mode and so, so sick of killing those damn Hunters.  Would be nice to go back to killing old fashioned, slow moving zombies.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Rosal76 said:


> I am interested in revisiting this game. Last time I played it was on the Gamecube in 2004. Trying to finish up Resident Evil Revelations: Raid mode and so, so sick of killing those damn Hunters.  Would be nice to go back to killing old fashioned, slow moving zombies.



Well, it's not like the Remake doesn't have Hunters and on top of that, even the zombies are fast as fvck (when they turn into Crimson Heads).


----------



## Rosal76

Fat-Elf said:


> Well, it's not like the Remake doesn't have Hunters...



True, true. But they (Hunters) are extremely excessive in Raid mode. I much rather deal with 20 zombies than 5 Hunters. Also, some of them (Hunters in Raid mode) are invisable (though they will appear when taking damage). Very, very hard to achieve a "no hit" bonus. 

That's what I like about the first Resident Evil. It's fun to play, but not too stressful.


----------



## tacotiklah

Rolled a new Zer0 on Borderlands 2 because sniping. B0re ALL the things!


----------



## Michael T

Hammering away at Dragon Age Inquisition. I hadn't played the others. I have sat and watched the wife play them all though so I knew whats going on basically. I got a wild hair that I wanted it, the wife has been playing Assassins Creed Unity (that was her xmas present from the kiddo) I NEEDED a game to play so Inquisition was on sale for $39, i used some of my power play points and got an additional $25 off plus applied the $10 we had put down of the AC Unity PreOrder forever ago (got AC Unity from Amazon for 50% off during a flash sale, screw 60+ @ Gamestop). 

Anyways I had like $7 invested in Inquisition so if I hated it oh well the wife would play it. Not here is the issue, I love it, but the wife is really digging AC Unity and we only have one Xbox One (ugh major first world problem ) so needless to say the xbox is being put through trial by fire lol. 

I find Inquisition filling the RPG void for me until Final Fantasy or Elder Scrolls hit the consoles. I highly recommend it.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I beat the story mode in Injustice: Gods Among Us a few days ago. Fun game, but some of the characters are just pushovers, namely Harley Quinn. Might do some of the Star Labs stuff but not tempted to do online.


----------



## Choop

Carrion Rocket said:


> I beat the story mode in Injustice: Gods Among Us a few days ago. Fun game, but some of the characters are just pushovers, namely Harley Quinn. Might do some of the Star Labs stuff but not tempted to do online.



I've recently taken more interest in playing Injustice also! Initially I wanted to play Hawkgirl, but now I've gravitated to playing Green Lantern as my "main", or as much of a main as I can have in this game so far.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Shadow of Mordor. I love the nemesis system, hate the gameplay. I'll echo Yahtzee in that it's a better Assassin's Creed than Assassin's Creed, but I can't stand the goddamn combat.


----------



## myrtorp

Chivalry still.. around 550 hours I think? I wonder when I'll tire


----------



## TurnTheAirBlue

Just trying to Platinum First Light on ps4, more of the same really. The battle areas are a bit of a pain.

Anyone getting Dying Light?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Just beat Shadow of Mordor. A quick time event final boss with sequel bait ending. Glad I only paid $25 for it.


----------



## MoshJosh

So I did end up getting Metro: Redux. . . And it's pretty sick.

I already played and beat Metro: Last Light when it was first released and figured this was a good way to check out 2033 and revisit a game I already liked.

Personally Last Light is my favorite of the two, I think atmosphere and immersion are the selling points for both games, but the sequel does it just a bit better. Combat, stealth and noisy, is very enjoyable with a bunch of interesting and fun weapons, which brings me to one of my biggest gripes. They don't let you try out/use different weapons as often as I would like(though I guess if you are trying to create a realistic game world you can't exactly have rail guns and full auto shotguns around every corner) , and some weapons that aren't introduced until the very end. . . Still awesome game. . .


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood after nearly five years of not playing it.


----------



## RickSchneider

Finally platinum'd far cry 4 and borrowed shadow of mordor from a mate. Just an hour and a half in so far and I'm enjoying it relatively well. The gameplay isn't amazing but the progression systems seem to be enough to get me hooked for awhile.

I'm still super excited for the Order... Well, atleast I'm cautiously super excited. If reviews turn out to be 7+ I'm all over it, but a part of me says 'good luck'.


----------



## mongey

Carrion Rocket said:


> I beat the story mode in Injustice: Gods Among Us a few days ago. Fun game, but some of the characters are just pushovers, namely Harley Quinn. Might do some of the Star Labs stuff but not tempted to do online.


 

I fnished it last weekend too. the stoyy mode was half enganaging for a fighting game


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Went back to playing WET. I like the visual style but the gameplay is pathetically mediocre and the game feeling the need to _remind_ you that it's influenced by grindhouse cinema every few minutes gets old really ....ing fast.


----------



## VBCheeseGrater

Eurotruck Simulator 2...still...i just keep coming back to it like a hot but crazy girlfriend, even after spending $100 on other games. Can't wait for Scandinavia DLC, prepping new mod-free profile now so when it comes out i'll be all set!


----------



## Kimling

Just installed Sleeping Dogs and waiting for the High-Res DLC to download on Steam. Haven't played this game a lot, but looking forward to trying it on the new computer instead of the old, which could barely run it at minimum settings


----------



## myrtorp

My friend and I got Dying light, man killing zombies toghether great fun! Lots of hilarious zombie killing moments. Starting multiplayer is easy as well and you can play the entire campain in co op. Recommended


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Just finished WET. Awful, don't waste your time or money playing it.


----------



## naw38

I've been playing Chess, because there are no new games I want to play, I've leant Dark Souls to a mate, and Dark Souls 2 has worn pretty thin for me.

I'm actually really enjoying it. My daughter's picking it up well, and my wife's got to the point where she can beat me and I no longer think I'm really good at the game - in fact I'm pretty sure we both suck.


----------



## monkeybike

Just finished Far Cry 4 and moved on to Dying Light. Really enjoying it so far!


----------



## myrtorp

monkeybike said:


> Just finished Far Cry 4 and moved on to Dying Light. Really enjoying it so far!



I've yet to finish Far cry 4 (dammit) 

I recommend getting drop kick in Dying light, and upgrade it, kicking zombies so that they fly literally 5-10 meters or more haha!


----------



## asher

I've started poking around in Guild Wars 2 again, because the expansion trailers got me hyped up.

There've been quite a few nice improvements, it seems.

And I just made BAAAAANK on speculation of some festival chests from before I stopped playing almost two years ago


----------



## TurnTheAirBlue

Play Metro Last Light Redux, pretty good, better than the first game. Hoping to have it finished by the time Evolve comes out.


----------



## Grindspine

I finished Postal 2 and Crysis 2 last week.

I installed a GTX 960 on Friday night.

I have played Team Fortress 2, StarCraft 2, Crysis 2, Rage, and Skyrim in the last 24 hours to test the graphics card.


----------



## habicore_5150

Decided to pick Aria of Sorrow back up. Finally finished the whole thing with 100% (of course, I already cleared out the map long ago. Just wanted to go back and pick up all the souls and the valmanway)


----------



## Chokey Chicken

asher said:


> I've started poking around in Guild Wars 2 again, because the expansion trailers got me hyped up.
> 
> There've been quite a few nice improvements, it seems.
> 
> And I just made BAAAAANK on speculation of some festival chests from before I stopped playing almost two years ago



I forgot that game even existed. I was really enjoying it a while back, and then my wife's computer fried and we couldn't play together so I stopped. I really ought to pick it back up again.

I've been playing gta5 because we just got an xbox one, and I was too impatient to wait for the PC version to play it in first person. I'm really liking it so far. Most definitely a step up from IV, and I'm hoping future games incorporate the first person thing. I've always been a fan of games that allow the choice of 1st and 3rd person.


----------



## mikernaut

nothing, PSN down again GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. 

Have been playing a ton of "The Crew" but online only games are sooo lame.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Beat the last boss on in Twisted Metal. I really hate the boss battles in that game. But it's another game I'm done with.


----------



## Stealth7

Started playing the Battlefield: Hardline beta, not sure what to make of it yet...


----------



## TurnTheAirBlue

Just playing The Last Of Us remastered, great game and even better in 60fps!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Grinding my way through Fuel. The stock music they used is painful. Luckily I'm next to my computer when playing so I can catch up on podcasts and such.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Just bought Call of Cthulhu: DCotE on Steam. 40 minutes in and the game crashed for the first (and definitely not for the last) time.


----------



## RustInPeace

Playing Darkest Dungeon. Very difficult but awesome game!


----------



## Cloudy

Lotsa CS:GO


----------



## JoshuaVonFlash

Just bought Shadow of Mordor, AC:Unity, Wolfenstein: The New Order, and Watch Dogs for a little under $100. Gonna be busy this month!


----------



## goherpsNderp

*Dying Light
Apotheon
Super Stardust Ultra*

i kicked the Destiny habit once i hit level 31 with all three of my characters. decided to shelve the game for a bit until the next expansion. going to work on the above games until *The Order 1886* is out next week. probably bounce between that and Dying Light or Far Cry 4.

love my PS4, i tell ya' what.


----------



## habicore_5150

Playing through a bit of Contra so I can get ready for a race with a couple of friends of mine (I know I'm probably gonna lose though)


----------



## AxeHappy

I was rocking Wasteland 2 for a while, but I'm giving Dungeon Siege 3 a shot. It...suffers badly from being a console port...


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I put AC: Black Flag into my PS4 but didn't actually play it. Haven't played fuel in about a week. I honestly haven't been in the mood to play games since I started my new job. It's not like I don't have time to, I just don't. Getting old is weird.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Started both FarCry 4 and Dying Light today. Damn good games, but I think DL has the edge.


----------



## Choop

Dying Light looks pretty fun tbh! I have a lot of other stuff to play but I'll be keeping it on my "to get" list. 

I've just been playing LoL some, street fighter and guilty gear xrd. picking up Ky Kiske to learn xrd with. It's real fun!


----------



## Cloudy

Been playing a lot of Dying light, great game with coop.


----------



## Steinmetzify

To be honest I never really got why people would be afraid of zombies. They're slow as hell, one pop to the head, done. 

THIS game made me afraid...running like an idiot at night with those nightmare things screaming and chasing me, falling off of a roof and into a whole pack of the walkers and fighting to get out, knowing that nightmare is coming freaked me the hell out. The nighttime cycle is terrifying lol.


----------



## Azyiu

steinmetzify said:


> To be honest I never really got why people would be afraid of zombies. They're slow as hell, one pop to the head, done.
> 
> THIS game made me afraid...running like an idiot at night with those nightmare things screaming and chasing me, falling off of a roof and into a whole pack of the walkers and fighting to get out, knowing that nightmare is coming freaked me the hell out. The nighttime cycle is terrifying lol.



Zombies are like clowns! Only they don't jump out of cars!


----------



## Steinmetzify

Grabbed Advanced Warfare earlier tonight. Having a blast. This is seriously fun; totally COD but in a new way. Dig it.


----------



## Bearitone

Super Smash Bros for Wii U.

So addicting


----------



## asher

steinmetzify said:


> To be honest I never really got why people would be afraid of zombies. They're slow as hell, one pop to the head, done.
> 
> THIS game made me afraid...running like an idiot at night with those nightmare things screaming and chasing me, falling off of a roof and into a whole pack of the walkers and fighting to get out, knowing that nightmare is coming freaked me the hell out. The nighttime cycle is terrifying lol.



Totally depends which canon you're looking at.

Left 4 Dead zombies would actually be pretty scary, as might the 28 Days Later ones.


----------



## MFB

The two types of zombies people often refer to are scary for different reasons - the original Dawn of the Dead type, are terrifying by sheer number. You can kill, and kill, and KILL, but you're still one person fighting against an entire planet; and resources have now come to a screeching halt since there's no one to run the factories so you also have that looming over your head.

L4D/28 Days Later style still have those same factors, but unless you've got a means of transportation besides your feet to get you out of there - good luck. Those SOBs don't feel the same things we do, they just feel hunger, so they'll chase until their muscles give out. Take that into account along with the aforementioned deadline, as well as that some of them don't even have to bite you to infect.

I'm not sure which group Dying Light falls into, but the parkour aspect of it kills it for me. I'd be more a fan if you could still climb onto stuff like roofs, and do some light vaulting/rooftop jumping, but the Mirror's Edge level they drove it to kind of killed it for me. I need a mix between the amount of zombies in Dead Rising with the realism of ...say Last of Us?


----------



## Azyiu

^ glad you mentioned The Last of Us. It is such a great great game!!


----------



## tacotiklah

Bouncing back and forth between Crysis 3 and Bioshock Infinite. Both games look amazing on this new PC and even with cranking the DSR settings to 4k in Bioshock Infinite along with every other graphic setting to max, I still get over 60 frames per second. So not only is the game fun, but it's become visually jaw-dropping and smooth as can be. I didn't even know games were supposed to look this good.


----------



## Defi

Divinity: Original Sin. I can barely play video games more than a few hours a week, not that I don't have the time, but I just don't like them very much anymore. This, regardless, is a great game; the best I've played in at least a year maybe two. civ V being a runner up. Would recommend to anyone who likes anything remotely close to fantasy games.

a few games i've played over the past year that were alright - good: far cry 4, borderlands pre sequel. good games but both of them are worse than their predecessors.

Here's a list of games I've played the past year that were overrated as hell: Dragon Age inquisition, lord of the rings mordor thing, anything assassins creed


----------



## VBCheeseGrater

Raceroom Racing Experience. Really got into Sim Racing playing Assetto Corsa, But when i tried Raceroom again, it just hooked me with the immersion factor - love it!

FYI - my profile is "Nino Scholz"


----------



## BlackMastodon

I have been having a wicked hankering to play Dishonored again for the last couple weeks. I just keep thinking about it and how great the universe they made and the story are. Gotta dust off the ol' 360 and start a third play through. Gotta properly get the achievement for only using the knife and blink anyway.


----------



## MikeH

Picked up The Evil Within and Gears 3 last night. Gears is actually just so my brother and I can play some arcade-style online stuff. Started TEW and got through the first chapter. I can tell this game is going to cause some swearing and ragequitting.


----------



## MFB

Got Project64 running with my Logitech controller, been playing Ocarina of Time all day. I haven't made it this far into the game in years since mapping keys to the F310 is much more natural than all over a keyboard. Only downside is I keep trying to rotate a camera that doesn't have that functionality.

Curse you modern gaming and your technological advances


----------



## musicaldeath

Finished Alien: Isolation on the original hardest difficulty. And now I am playing it on Nightmare. Broken motion tracker makes this a lot more stressful lol. I think I have been crouched now since the Alien first showed up.


----------



## Decreate

Back exploring Skyrim again...


----------



## asher

I've gotten pulled back into Guild Wars 2 for the last two-three weeks. I saw all the stuff when they announced the new expansion and went... shit, I've gotta catch up 

My best friend and I also got another of our good friends to try it, and she's really enjoying it, so we've been pretty consistently been playing like an hour every night or every other night on Skype while she explores and I work on leveling an alt. It's been really fun.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

After Dawn Of The New World left a rather bad taste, I was still in a Tales kick, so I got this from the bargain bin:







The 2 dual protagonist shtick means I'll be replaying this long before I grab Xillia 2.


----------



## BlackMastodon

MFB said:


> Got Project64 running with my Logitech controller, been playing Ocarina of Time all day. I haven't made it this far into the game in years since mapping keys to the F310 is much more natural than all over a keyboard. Only downside is I keep trying to rotate a camera that doesn't have that functionality.
> 
> Curse you modern gaming and your technological advances


I did literally this exact same thing in high school.  It held me over until the 3DS version came out.



asher said:


> I've gotten pulled back into Guild Wars 2 for the last two-three weeks. I saw all the stuff when they announced the new expansion and went... shit, I've gotta catch up
> 
> My best friend and I also got another of our good friends to try it, and she's really enjoying it, so we've been pretty consistently been playing like an hour every night or every other night on Skype while she explores and I work on leveling an alt. It's been really fun.


My buddy brought this up to me last week and I've been strongly considering going back. I still have the hard copy discs so I might give it a whirl.

The only thing holding me back is that I got bored of it the first time around really quick, but then again the same happened with Diablo 3 and now it's a completely different game and is way better. But I also feel like I'm just done with MMOs as a genre? I dunno, I'll probably cave and try it anyway. Get back to my Charr engineer and maybe work on my low level Mesmer since they were a lot of fun, at least early game.

Also, dat Majora's Mask 3DS. Mmf, too good. Only played it a bit but already love that they changed Clock town around a bit to be more convenient. Gonna do a 3 heart, no deity's mask run for this playthrough, Man Mode activated.


----------



## akinari

Vampire the Masquerade Redemption and Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne because I like RPGs with long names and I'm old as hell.


----------



## asher

They've changed quite a lot of stuff in the meantime, and since it's free you should at least give it a shot


----------



## AndrewFTMfan

Just finished Dying Light. Not a bad game.

Working on MGS5: Ground Zeroes now. I heared it got some bad reviews but for $10 I figured I would try it out.


----------



## Repner

AndrewFTMfan said:


> Just finished Dying Light. Not a bad game.
> 
> Working on MGS5: Ground Zeroes now. I heared it got some bad reviews but for $10 I figured I would try it out.



See you in an hour or two.


----------



## Cloudy

AndrewFTMfan said:


> Just finished Dying Light. Not a bad game.
> 
> Working on MGS5: Ground Zeroes now. I heared it got some bad reviews but for $10 I figured I would try it out.



Better than the 30$ game demo they initially released it as. 

I'm still mind blown that they were able to get away with that launch.


----------



## AndrewFTMfan

Cloudy said:


> Better than the 30$ game demo they initially released it as.
> 
> I'm still mind blown that they were able to get away with that launch.



That's what my friend was saying. He was pissed off about it but is a slave to Hideo Kojima so he bought it anyways. The game looks great on Xbox One. I'm glad I only spent $10 on it though. It's not worth anything more.

Kiefer Sutherland is really throwing me off, it's just not right


----------



## Steinmetzify

COD AW...up to 42 with some cool weapons and perks. 

Started Destiny, and while it's beautiful....SERIOUSLY beautiful, it seems like it'd be a huge grind and I really don't have the time....it's too bad, I'd like to get into it and have a few friends that play.


----------



## InfinityCollision

akinari said:


> Vampire the Masquerade Redemption and Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne because I like RPGs with long names and I'm old as hell.



Aww yiss.

Wanted to dive back into Homeworld with the Remastered collection, but from the sound of it HW1R is updated HW1 graphics with the HW2 engine (for the uninitiated, HW vets generally consider HW1 to have the superior engine). Gonna pass for now.

So instead I'm gonna play some Zelda. Probably Zelda II, MM, WW, and maybe a TP run. MM and WW will be in 3D on Dolphin  Not sure if my comp's up to handling TP in 3D - it's a rather demanding game to emulate, sadly.

After that I'm thinking some 3D Metroid Prime...


----------



## Bekanor

I'm in a dirty 5(?) way with Pokemon Omega Ruby, Diablo 3, South Park: Stick of Truth, Dying Light and Shovel Knight.


----------



## michblanch

Call of Duty Advanced Warfare - Zombies. 

Clan wars just ended. 

Anyone interested in joining a clan let me know. 
We are 55 members. Have won the last 4 clan wars Platinum division. 
All adults , no kids. We want to be able to pick on each other without watching our language.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Is it bad that I beat Last of Us Remastered and Left Behind but now want to start all over on survivor difficulty and play it again?! Haha! Multiplayer is pretty fun too, but my 2 free days expired and I guess I need to pay for PS+ and stop being a cheapskate.


----------



## Rosal76

TheShreddinHand said:


> Is it bad that I beat Last of Us Remastered and Left Behind but now want to start all over on survivor difficulty and play it again?! Haha!



Absolutely, 100%, positively, not. Praises and thumbs up for gamers who play games on their highest difficulties.  

I love playing games on their hardest levels. I'm playing Resident Evil: Revelations on Infernal mode (Hard) and boy, Capcom did not screw around with this difficulty. You absolutely must know how to conserve ammo, know enemies weaknesses and their attacks, know what enemies will appear where and when, know the maps inside and out etc, etc, etc. 

V Pretty much how you'll play Resident Evil: Revelations on Infernal mode if you don't know what you're doing. 






I am interested in the playing "The Last of Us" because I like the stealth element of the game. I'm a huge fan of stealth games like Hitman, Metal Gear Solid, and Splinter Cell, so I figure, The Last of Us has stealth and creatures, the best of both worlds for me.


----------



## habicore_5150

Super Castlevania 4

And I'm getting my ass handed to me on a silver platter (thanks revolving platforms and the clock tower stage)
As of now, I'm up to fighting Slogra....ooh this is gonna be fun 

*EDIT as of 1:39 PM CST*
And I beat Super Castlevania 4

Of course it took me a goddamn long f'king time with Slogra. Dracula didn't give me that much of a headache though (kinda weird since they're both pretty random)


----------



## vividox

Just glossed over a few pages in here. I think I need to give Dead Space another shot. I tried it out one time and something about the controls (on computer) threw me for a loop. I ended up quitting a few hours in.

Also, it's been almost a year since I've done a Mass Effect play-through, so I might have to do that again sometime soon.

[I don't play a lot of video games, but the few I do play I get ridiculously obsessed over.]


----------



## MFB

Dead Space 1 is absolutely fantastic if not for just the atmosphere alone


----------



## loqtrall

Randomly picked up Guild Wars 2 and DayZ on Steam, just because I was bored. GW2 is better than I thought it'd be. Solid MMO, really engaging, makes me want to keep playing it. DayZ is okay, compared to what people were telling me about it. It's a solid zombie apocalypse/survival/sim thing, but it's incredible glitchy-ness and the immediate predisposition for literally EVERY player to shoot first and ask questions later really turns me off, especially for a game that makes you start over from scratch after you just searched for gear for 5 hours then get dropped by some asshole who you didn't even know was there and probably wouldn't have even messed with.

On the other hand, Rayman Legends is free on Xbone this month, so I'm replaying it (for the third time). It's still just as good.


----------



## Choop

I had some fun on Day Z for sure (only played the mod version though) but it loses its appeal after a while, at least it did for me. Hackers really put a damper on the game as well. After you get geared up the zombies are at a very low threat level, so there isn't much left to do but find ways to kill other players.


----------



## goherpsNderp

PS4:
-*Dying Light* co-op with my wife. having a blast.
-took a buddy of mine through the VOG raid in *Destiny* for his first time last night.
-just finished ep1 of *Life is Strange*. REEEAAALLY liked it. can't wait for the next episode.
-*The Order 1886* is treating me well so far. lot's of undeserved hate thrown it's way.

working through my PS3 backlog:
-*Resident Evil Revelations*
-*God of War Origins Collection*
-*Doom 3 BFG*


----------



## Rosal76

goherpsNderp said:


> working through my PS3 backlog:
> -*Resident Evil Revelations*





Are you gonna play it on Infernal mode or just normal/casual playing?


----------



## Steinmetzify

Just prestiged on COD AW. Irked as hell that the DLC is buggy...the maps short every once in a while and the AE4 is unavailable. That gun was pretty much the reason I bought the pack, too. Hope they fix it.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Rosal76 said:


> Absolutely, 100%, positively, not. Praises and thumbs up for gamers who play games on their highest difficulties.
> 
> 
> I am interested in the playing "The Last of Us" because I like the stealth element of the game. I'm a huge fan of stealth games like Hitman, Metal Gear Solid, and Splinter Cell, so I figure, The Last of Us has stealth and creatures, the best of both worlds for me.



You'll very much enjoy it then! It's a fantastic game!


----------



## Fat-Elf

Being playing Survarium for last few days. It's pretty fun. Like STALKER deathmatch.


----------



## goherpsNderp

Rosal76 said:


> Are you gonna play it on Infernal mode or just normal/casual playing?



just normal. i kinda want to hurry and get through it so i can buy/start the sequel. 

so far i like it more than i expected, but there are some issues here and there that bug me. i like the scanning feature, and i like some of the throw backs to the older games as far as mechanics are concerned.

i'm only on Episode 6, but i'm so far not understanding the point of the chest other than to store guns you find. would be cool if it worked like the chests in the olden days.


----------



## Necris

Resident Evil Revelations 2: Episode 1

I'm pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this game is (I've passed on every game after 4). 

I have one minor complaint though:
As of when I last played the game (last night), If you play on PC with a mouse and keyboard the chest unlocking puzzles become purely luck based. There are absolutely no audio cues or anything else that will tell you when you're near unlocking it because the game just assumes you'll be using a controller that has a vibration function. Since every time you attempt the puzzle the solution is randomly placed that turns these into a bit of a roadblock. I'd spend 10+ minutes just trying to open a damn chest by guesswork hoping that this time would be the one where I got it right, could get my upgrade material or whatever and move on.

I hope they come up with a patch for that.


----------



## Preciousyetvicious

Trine 2, with the boyfriend. I like puzzle games.


----------



## habicore_5150

Castlevania 3: Dracula's Curse
First time really playing the game...In a race against a couple other friends of mine, only made it to 7-5 or whatever (I dub as Tetrisvania)


----------



## Kimling

Just bought Crysis 3 and is waiting for the download to complete.
I quite enjoyed the first one back when it came out, so I'm quite excited for this one. (Eventhough it's 2 years old)


----------



## Gothic Headhunter

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2- Enma's fang f ucking wrecks shit, I love using it


----------



## michblanch

Looks like Sony has climbed on the up charge bandwagon with vigor. 

New games coming out start you with basic gear. Instead of ranking up thru play, you can buy upgrades for $$$. 

I hate this. It's the same BS that every Ap. does. 
Just charge me a flat rate upfront , let me play the game with people who don't want to get Nickle and dimed to death.


----------



## Don Vito

michblanch said:


> Looks like Sony has climbed on the up charge bandwagon with vigor.
> 
> New games coming out start you with basic gear. Instead of ranking up thru play, you can buy upgrades for $$$.
> 
> I hate this. It's the same BS that every Ap. does.
> Just charge me a flat rate upfront , let me play the game with people who don't want to get Nickle and dimed to death.


Welcome to PC multiplayer games.



Necris said:


> Resident Evil Revelations 2: Episode 1
> 
> I'm pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable this game is (I've passed on every game after 4).
> 
> I have one minor complaint though:
> As of when I last played the game (last night), If you play on PC with a mouse and keyboard the chest unlocking puzzles become purely luck based. There are absolutely no audio cues or anything else that will tell you when you're near unlocking it because the game just assumes you'll be using a controller that has a vibration function. Since every time you attempt the puzzle the solution is randomly placed that turns these into a bit of a roadblock. I'd spend 10+ minutes just trying to open a damn chest by guesswork hoping that this time would be the one where I got it right, could get my upgrade material or whatever and move on.
> 
> I hope they come up with a patch for that.


You might want to try the first game sometime. The second half is boring action levels, but the first half is OG RE goodness.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm trying to play GTA Online. I've been able to do one heist so far, but any other attempt leads me either getting booted from the job or online entirely. It's been a year and a half, even basic shit still doesn't work properly. I guess I'll come back in a few weeks. If I haven't sold the game already.


----------



## pink freud

Bought The Talos Principle. Somethings going on and I'm looking forward to finding out what's up.


----------



## stevexc

Cities: Skylines. This is the SimCity I've been waiting for since '95.


----------



## Electric Wizard

^Skylines looks great, definitely on my list of games to try some day.

Been playing Hotline Miami 2 since it dropped on tuesday which has been a blast so far.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Got drawn back into Halo Master Chief Collection. I can confirm that yes it is finally working right (matchmaking). Played in a party last week and got in 6 straight games in an hour. Played yesterday for an hour and a half by myself in all different playlists and had no troubles.

And had some epic custom game CTF battles on blood gulch with my old buds from college on Saturday night no problem!


----------



## Defi

Pokemon Yellow.


----------



## Pav

I just put down a pre order for Bloodborne. Very excited to dive onto it next week.


----------



## Jake

Just started Bioshock Infinite since it's free with XBL gold


----------



## boogie2

Firefall. Its just fun.


----------



## Repner

Waiting for FF Type 0. From what I've heard from people who've played the fan translation of the PSP version, they say it's one of the best FF's they've released in a damn long time.


----------



## mongey

playing The Order. really not enjoying it much. too many cutscenes or just walking secitons , and when you do get to play its very mediocire, cover based , gunplay .

forcing myself to finish it so I can trade it on bloodborne next week, but I may not even bother finishing as the 2nd half is boring me worse than the 1st


----------



## goherpsNderp

Playing some FF Type-0 because I just couldn't help myself. So far I like it, but for every game mechanic that I find to be simple and easy to use, there is another mechanic that's super complicated and so far hasn't been explained in the least. The how to play section just shows controls too, so that's disappointing.

Also playing Far Cry 4 some. Trying to unlock the other half of Kyrat. Also playing RE Revelations slowly but surely. I like to diversify my gaming diet so I don't get burned out or bored.


----------



## Rosal76

I have finally beat Resident Evil: Revelations on Infernal (Hard) mode. What a freaking journey!!! The last boss in that game was unbelievably hard to beat. 

Now should I purchase Resident Evil: Revelation 2 and start on it? Not just yet. I gotta go through Revelations one more time with my newly aquired Infinite rocket launcher and say hello and goodbye, real fast, to those asshole enemies one more time.


----------



## matt till

Been itching to play a sim-cade racer for a while, and since I gave away the Ps3 there has been no Gran Turismo to keep me satisfied. so I ended up going for NFS: Shift 2 since it was on steam for cheap. 

wouldn't recommend it! hopefully Project Cars is alright when it comes out...


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Sick of playing GTA Online so I went back to Borderlands 2 since they recently released a patch for it and I never finished it.


----------



## ferret

Been digging into Farcry 3 the last couple weeks.


----------



## Hbett

Preciousyetvicious said:


> Trine 2, with the boyfriend. I like puzzle games.



Been meaning to try that one. I'm currently loving Kerbal Space Program... not strictly speaking a puzzle game, but involves lots of problem solving, experimenting, and tweaking.


----------



## vividox

vividox said:


> Just glossed over a few pages in here. I think I need to give Dead Space another shot. I tried it out one time and something about the controls (on computer) threw me for a loop. I ended up quitting a few hours in.
> 
> Also, it's been almost a year since I've done a Mass Effect play-through, so I might have to do that again sometime soon.
> 
> [I don't play a lot of video games, but the few I do play I get ridiculously obsessed over.]





MFB said:


> Dead Space 1 is absolutely fantastic if not for just the atmosphere alone



Bah, I tried Dead Space again this weekend. Same controls issue. Apparently the PC version has some major mouse response issues related to processing speed and FPS. I found a quick fix that helped a little bit, but mouse response was still sluggish at best. No fun running from space monsters when it's all you can do to aim or turn. Bummer. I've got a buddy who has it on XBox, maybe I'll see if I can do a playthru at his place sometime.

So in lieu of playing Dead Space, I'm obsessively doing another Mass Effect playthru.  I've always done ridiculously long completionist playthrus, so this time I'm just doing main objectives and that's it. It's crazy how fast you can play this game if you only play the main missions. I'm guessing I'll be done after about 4 or 5 hours of game time.


----------



## Peter.F

Mad addicted to Cities: Skylines atm. Also just finished doing everything in the Subnautica early access title. Lots of fun


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Still playing Borderlands 2. I'm not sure if that BNK3R boss fight is the perfect parody or just ....ty unoriginal boss fight.


----------



## naw38

Bloodborne! I'm playing Bloodborne!

God I've been looking forward to posting that.


----------



## habicore_5150

Been going through Doom again (just running the Zandronum engine)

Picked back up on Tales of the Abyss. Only made a little bit of progress though


----------



## hairychris

Not gaming much currently but managed a fairly long Elite: Dangerous session on Sunday. Put some time into bounty hunting and low-intensity combat zones. Also got my name down as the first discoverer of some planets. I need to get another 10 mil in the bank and upgrade to a long-distant explorer.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Borderlands 2. The boss fights are easily the weakest part of the game.


----------



## mongey

Bloodborne for me. I am liking it allot . suprised , as I tried demon souls back when it came out and hated it


----------



## Steinmetzify

Got some errands to run and gonna stop by my local shop and pick up Bloodborne and see what's up. Got some good reviews.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Playing Mercenaries 2. It's not very good.

EDIT: Finished Mercs 2. Used cheats which means I didn't get trophies but .... it. I'm moving onto another game.


----------



## Choop

Castle in the Darkness. Fantastic $6 investment!


----------



## Cloudy

Just bought a new PC, now I can finally play the kingdom come: Deliverance tech alpha.


----------



## Decreate

Been playing Pillars of Eternity for the last couple of days.


----------



## Kimling

Been playing a bit of Far Cry 3
Man, that Buck-fellow is a f**k!


----------



## JPhoenix19

Decreate said:


> Been playing Pillars of Eternity for the last couple of days.



Me too! I like how it captures some of that "tabletop" feel, as well as the old-school Baldur's Gate era of games.

Last night, though, I got together with my gaming group and enjoyed some real tabletop RPG fun.

I spent the better part of the last week developing a plot-driven storyline for our campaign... and the party decided to role play and bar fight the whole session. 

It was still fun, though.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Bloodborne for the last few days. This thing is hard.


----------



## Decreate

JPhoenix19 said:


> Me too! I like how it captures some of that "tabletop" feel, as well as the old-school Baldur's Gate era of games.
> 
> Last night, though, I got together with my gaming group and enjoyed some real tabletop RPG fun.
> 
> I spent the better part of the last week developing a plot-driven storyline for our campaign... and the party decided to role play and bar fight the whole session.
> 
> It was still fun, though.



Loved Baldur's Gate, never got tired of hearing Minsc say "Go for the eyes Boo, go for the eyes!!!"


----------



## Repner

Still playing through FF Type 0, and a bit of Bloodborne. Type 0 seems to be a game you get more into the more you play it. Great story as well.


----------



## mongey

still chipping away at bloodborne. beat cleric amelia yesterday


----------



## Alberto7

I'm starting my yearly playthrough of Super Metroid!  I like it that I absolutely adore this game, but I actually always forget where some items are (especially when I try to do 100% runs) and how to access some areas, so that each time I play through it I still have to make some sort of effort, and so it's still fun and challenging every time.

After this, it will be my yearly playthrough of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, then hopefully Chrono Trigger.

This summer I also mean to grow some cojones and pick Cry of Fear back up and finish the damn thing.


----------



## stevexc

Picked up Story of Seasons, it's a solid entry in the Harvest Moon series despite not technically being a "Harvest Moon" game.


----------



## michblanch

Elite sniper. 

Great WW2 game play. 

Horrible multiplayer. It's crawl on the ground and look for other snipers. 
Drag your dong in the mud, for 20 minutes. It's horrible. 

But the game play is pretty cool.


----------



## InfinityCollision

Any decent successors to the Ninja Gaiden games out there right now? I'm in the mood for that sort of fast-paced, challenging hack&slash but I'd like something new, preferably something other than NG3RE.


----------



## Pav

steinmetzify said:


> Bloodborne for the last few days. This thing is hard.



But so, so good.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Figures the f**king day after I buy it, Mordheim goes on sale for 33% off on steam. 

I'll post my thoughts when I get a chance to play it, for now my expectations are low since its early access. This is the only game that I broke my 'no paying for early access games' rule for, because I love Warhammer and this gives me the nostalgia something fierce. Once they implement warband experience, permadeath, individual items and customization, this should be really freaking cool. Hopefully it's sooner than later but so far the reviews are pretty positive. Here's hoping.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Pillars of Eternity on PC. It's the spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale/Planescape Torment games from BioWare/Black Isle, and it's probably my game of the year...so far...bring on The Witcher 3.

Rock on!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So I completed Tales of Xillia (plowed through Millia's story as it felt like a chore playing it twice especially after playing Jude's) so I jumped straight to the sequel:







...it's fun so far, except the stupid Debt System. It's bad enought I have to do that in real life but in a game...


----------



## Xaios

Kerbal Space Program has now gone retail, thus recapturing my attention.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Playing more Doom 3 BFG Edition. Still not a fan of the gameplay, but I figure that if I paid money for it I might as well finish it.


----------



## Glass Cloud

BF4. Only game I really play anymore. Close to selling my ps4 but this is the first console I've gotten just a few months after launch so I know I'd regret if I got rid of it. I mostly just use it for netflix but it runs much better than plugging my laptop into my tv, and I have a bunch of movies on psn that I stupidly can't play anywhere else.


----------



## Legion

Shadowrun Returns!
WHAT a f*cking amazing game.

After this I plan to drop some cash on Pillars of Eternity. One question: Steam says it need 4 GB RAM. Windows shows me 3.96. Am I screwed?


----------



## JPhoenix19

Legion said:


> Shadowrun Returns!
> WHAT a f*cking amazing game.
> 
> After this I plan to drop some cash on Pillars of Eternity. One question: Steam says it need 4 GB RAM. Windows shows me 3.96. Am I screwed?



No, you're not screwed.

Shadowrun Returns is awesome! I'm playing Dragonfall now and it's even better than the first (in my opinion).


----------



## Legion

Awesome! PILLARS OF ETERNITY HERE I COME. Dragonfall is after that.

Hehe yeah I'm a pretty big RPG nut 

EDIT: The reason I asked if I was screwed was that Steam has this unfair policy of locking you out of games if they do not meet the system requirements posted on their website irrespective of whether or not the game actually needs that much.


----------



## loqtrall

The wait for The Witcher 3 is killing me.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished the BFG Edition of Doom 3. Not very good.


----------



## Choop

Playing a lot of The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth now that I've finally gotten into the mood of it again. Had platinum god on the old game! Still working on it on this one heh.


----------



## Stealth7

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, picked it up last week along with FC3: Blood Dragon.


----------



## Pav

I'm so hooked on Tropico 5 atm it's absurd.


----------



## SjPedro

I'm playing Destiny on PS3. waiting for the House of Wolves expansion to hit next week ...can't wait! 
if anybody here does share on this guilty pleasure add me on PSN: SjPedro22


----------



## Kobalt

Decided to restart the Far Cry 3 singleplayer, a week ago.

Couldn't resist staring at this for a little while.


----------



## Repner

KingVee said:


> Decided to restart the Far Cry 3 singleplayer, a week ago.
> 
> Couldn't resist staring at this for a little while.



This was the first game I played with my new PC build. I found that every now and then when I'm playing, my PC blacks out. I was ....ting myself thinking I had a faulty GPU, even though it only seemed to happen with this game. I found out that it was a common issue with the game. Shame, since I was really enjoying it.


----------



## thedonal

Nice. I was thinking of delving into Far Cry 2 again. Despite its flaws, I love that game. 3 is better still. Haven't played the fourth instalment yet tho.


----------



## Sofos

Currently playing Persona 3: FES and Persona 4, preparing for Persona 5 haha. Also playing the Pre-Sequel.


----------



## JPhoenix19

Witcher 3!!!

OMG so goooood!


----------



## Kimling

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Not sure how to feel about i yet. I have about 2hrs of gameplay, but for some reason I do not find it terribly engaging yet


----------



## tacotiklah

After playing this game for what seems like forever, I finally managed to kill a treasure goblin in D3:RoS that opened up a portal to "The Vault". I went in and kicked the crap out of the demon Greed and got the legendary gem "Boon of the Hoarder" (at 0 level, it has a 25% chance to make any enemy I kill explode into a fountain of gold). I sorely needed that too because trying combine gems to get flawless royal ones is expensive as all hell. Also found an ancient version of the Grandfather two-handed sword that does a base damage of about 4k. Probably the highest damaging single weapon I've ever found in this game. You have no idea how stoked I am about it. Namely because a lot of my tertiary damage is based on a percentage of the weapons damage, so when I have stuff like "whirlwind now does a bonus +313% weapon damage" + "15% chance on hit to cause bolts of lightning to fire out and cause 600% weapon damage", that stuff adds up to some crazy destruction. My barbarian now feels like a goddess.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Played a heist in GTA earlier. GTA Online isn't updated nearly enough to keep it interesting.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

None. I'm 1-2 weeks away from finishing my degree, so - naturally - I'm posting about it instead of completing the last bits of work


----------



## RustInPeace

Playing through Ni No Kuni for the first time with my kids (my 5 year old daughter loves it so far). Really excellent game.


----------



## jarnozz

mostly destiny and some dragon age inquisition.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Witcher III; probably the most involved RPG I've ever played. There is TON to see and do. I could play this for months, and probably will. Amazing.


----------



## troyguitar

I started playing Heroes of the Storm a couple days ago. It's fun. I like how it is much simpler and faster than LoL/DotA.


----------



## oneblackened

Been playing TERA as of late, along with a bit of League of Legends. Kinda tired of MOBAs (though they are quite fun to watch competitively), but MMOs are still fun!


----------



## RobbYoung

Counter Strike:GO. So much fun with friends.


----------



## thrsher

mortal kombat x all day


----------



## Repner

I've decided to to a playthrough of the entire Dragon Quest series up to IX. Starting with the fan translations of the Super Famicom remakes of the first three. Radiant Historia on the side as well.


----------



## habicore_5150

Been playing Eden Eternal for quite a while now. Just hit Lv84. Been running around as samurai a lot (yay pdps)


----------



## Nyx Erebos

thrsher said:


> mortal kombat x all day



Let's talk frame data in the http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/computers-electronics-gaming/266103-fighting-game-thread-10.html


----------



## Shewter

Everquest. They opened up a new Progression/Timelocked server and I dig me some orc slaying!


----------



## Taylor

Started a second playthrough of Dragon Age Inquisition. I should probably pick up The Witcher 3 soon.


----------



## troyguitar

Shewter said:


> Everquest. They opened up a new Progression/Timelocked server and I dig me some orc slaying!



Like old school 1999 EQ? I love that game.

Check out project1999.com for a legit classic EQ experience if you haven't already. I played it for awhile and then kind of quit because it was taking over my life all over again.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Went to Wally World to buy Witcher 3 (because it's the only place open when I'm awake) but they didn't have it for the PS4. So came home and loaded up Injustice God's Among Us and played some arcade mode.


----------



## Masoo2

CSGO, Hearthstone, The Witcher 3

CSGO: Competitive is soooo fun, shame most of my friends are either banned for a few more days or too low of a rank to play with me without a full 5 man team.

Hearthstone: Just started to get into it, fun game to play with others

The Witcher 3: Not sure how I feel about it, haven't played that much.

I'm considering purchasing Cities: Skylines, but with no hints from the devs suggesting multiplayer is putting me off.


----------



## asher

How'd your friends get banned?


----------



## stevexc

Masoo2 said:


> I'm considering purchasing Cities: Skylines, but with no hints from the devs suggesting multiplayer is putting me off.



Don't get your hopes up - the devs have been pretty firm in saying that they're not going to add multiplayer unless there's large vocal demand for it. Which isn't a big surprise, it proved to not work well in other city builders.


----------



## Masoo2

stevexc said:


> Don't get your hopes up - the devs have been pretty firm in saying that they're not going to add multiplayer unless there's large vocal demand for it. Which isn't a big surprise, it proved to not work well in other city builders.



I know, it's a shame because (With a lot of work and testing) it could be really fun. However, a good portion of the community (Looking at you /r/CitiesSkylines) is against the idea, so it's understandable that the devs won't implement it.



asher said:


> How'd your friends get banned?



Oddly enough it seems that a lot of them have been getting kicked from games, don't know why though. Their median rank is roughly silver elite master, while I'm over here at nova master. However, today I probably had the worst game of my time playing CSGO. We won, but I came in last with a nova 2 at the top and silver elites-nova 1s in the middle.

I should have warmed up.


----------



## thedonal

Mass Effect 3 finally. Seems like they got a lot of the faffing about out of the game- materials, minigames et 

Looks and plays great and the story/ emotional content is still just as strong.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaned up some trophies in Injustice and decided to go back and play some MK9. I have to say this, MK9 is sooooooo slow compared to Injustice. I can't believe the same developer made both, there's such a gap between the two in quality.


----------



## MFB

Carrion Rocket said:


> Cleaned up some trophies in Injustice and decided to go back and play some MK9. I have to say this, MK9 is sooooooo slow compared to Injustice. I can't believe the same developer made both, there's such a gap between the two in quality.



Really? I felt the exact opposite playing the two, so I wonder if it comes down to which one you play first. I hated Injustice because characters like Batman and Wonder Woman moved like Kratos in MK9 or Ganondorf in SSB (aka molasses through a funnel)


----------



## Sumsar

Checked out withcher III, but honestly I can't get into the game at all: The voice acting is super annoying and I can't immerse myself in the game 
Gonna give it a few shorts more, but I think I am skipping this game.

I also checked out "Stranded Deep" which is in a very very early alpha 0.03 right now - it is a great game and I look forward to the very small dev team adding more content - right now there is only 1 or 2 hours worth of gameplay in it, but it has a lot of potential.


----------



## Repner

Played the new version of FF XV Episode Duscae that includes the changes after they took feedback. Such a huge improvement. The camera backs off during battles, and stays focused on the locked on enemy. The camera is much faster, and the controls feel more responsive. I'll need to check out a bit more, but i really appreciate that Hajime Tabata is putting in the effort and encourages honest criticism.


----------



## Steinmetzify

About to finish up Witcher 3; GOTY for me. 

Stoked for Batman but it's got a lot to live up to after this. This game ticked so many boxes for me; after the main storyline finishes up I'm gonna 100% it.


----------



## Don Vito

*Ikaruga*

An old arcade shoot em' up that was also on Gamecube and Dreamcast I think. I have the Steam version, because vertical monitor support and the fact that an original copy goes for quite a bit of dosh.

I checked this game out because I really liked the Touhou series of danmaku, and wanted to expand my horizons. Also Discordance Axis have a song named after the game.

It's really straight forward. Just shoot things as the game automatically progresses your ship. But like many other games of the genre, the concept is simple, but you learn quickly that it takes a lot of reflex skills and memorization of enemy patterns to make it through even the early levels. I don't even have an hour of gameplay put in because I can't clear the second stage. Frustrating, but fun and highly addictive!

*Teddy Floppy Ear: Kayaking*

This is some random edutainment title from some random eastern Europe developer. I got it on sale for like a dollar because why not. I thought it would be a fun way to kick back and relax, but since it's made primarily for the pre school/early grade school demographic, it lost my interest quickly. Also, I hate the voice they picked for Teddy. He's supposed to be a kid, not a middle aged English man.

*Two Worlds: Epic Edition *

I've finally gotten a chance to play this infamously bad action RPG on the PC, thanks to it, and it's sequel's extremely frequent Steam sales. I originally rented this game back when it was released on the Xbox 360, and like many, was so ....ing crushed and disappointed when I got home and played it. For those of you who aren't familiar with this game, look up ProJared's video about it on Youtube, because there's more to say than I'm willing to type right now.

So why did I give it a second chance on PC? Boredom mainly, but also because I had heard for years that the PC version didn't suffer the same technical issues as the Xbox version. Who ever I heard that from back in 2007 or whatever was WRONG. Okay, it's a little better I'll admit, but still not acceptable for a commercial release. Of course, this game's issue is not primarily technical either, but again, watch the video.

I might sound upset, but I actually got a kick out of playing this game again. It's almost nostalgic for me in a weird way. If I can say one nice thing about this game, it's the real sense of danger in the world. Unlike a lot of action RPG's, even the low level grunts and wolves in the starting area of the game can .... your .... up if you're not careful. This gives the game a better sense of immersion, and makes you feel good when you single handily take out an entire gang of bandits by luring a pack of wolves to their camp to weaken their numbers down.

*M.U.S.H.A*

Another shoot em' up I've been playing along side Ikaruga. I heard about this game from Mark of CGR, who has a thing for Genesis stg's I think.

My feelings and experience of this game are about the same as what I wrote for Ikaruga. The main difference here is that MUSHA isn't a bullet hell game, but don't let that fool you, because it's still hard as hell. The bullets, while fewer, travel faster, and the windows to dodge them feels smaller to me. The gimmicks are also different. MUSHA has these assistant robots that help you by shooting enemies, and Ikaruga has the color changing system that absorbs bullets. Also similarly, I haven't passed stage 2.

*Phelios*

Another Genesis/arcade stg. Again, haven't cleared stage 2, but tons of fun!

*FTL: Faster than Light*

Indie as .... space ship RPG, where you fly around getting into random encounters, usually advancing to a battle. Not much to say about this game, because I haven't gotten very far without my crew suffocating to death.

*Stronghold Crusader HD*

One of my favorite childhood games, and a fun, but super challenging RTS, which feels a lot like AoE to me, but with a more complicated resource management system. I mainly just set up custom maps and have all my farms burned down 10 minutes into the match. Good times!

*Go! Go! Nippon: My first trip to Japan*

Literal weeaboo simulator. Sadly, I completed Akira's path rather quick, so I haven't been compelled to play it again because lack of content. The girls are great, almost thought about waifu'ing Akira, but the best part of the game is that it's actually educational. You go on tours to different parts of Japan, and the girls just happen to be ....ing history majors or something.


----------



## Pav

Just picked up the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection so I can play through Peacewalker before September and know what the hell is going on.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaning up trophies in BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger.

Really want to get Witcher III but considering I have two shelves full of games, 90% of which I have yet to finish, I think it'll have to wait a little while longer.


----------



## Arkeion

Currently trophy hunting on Advanced Warfare and Kingdom Hearts 1.5 FM.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Hit a road block in BlazBlue, some of those combos are a bitch to pull off, so I'm trying to platinum Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I've had it for a while but I was a Nintendo kid so I didn't have much interest in the games (outside of the Sonic titles) when I bought it. And if I had played Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine as a kid I would have probably broken my controller over my system over my television.


----------



## Repner

Carrion Rocket said:


> Cleaning up trophies in BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger.
> 
> Really want to get Witcher III but considering I have two shelves full of games, 90% of which I have yet to finish, I think it'll have to wait a little while longer.



I know the feeling. I have a list of games I wanted to complete for a long time that just keeps growing rather than shrinking.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Plat'd Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection and now I'm playing Prince of Persia (2008). It's a chore to play. I can't tell you how many times the games has had Elika save me eventhough I clearly would have made the jump.


----------



## myrtorp

Me and 3 friends grabbed Titan Quest on the steam sale, easier multiplayer and whatnot. Nooope! Apparently you cant play with eachother on steam, but gameranger did the job. 
On act 2 now!


----------



## Ralyks

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number has been the latest addiction/cause of extreme anger.


----------



## asher

I need to finish the first one..

Picked up the Talos Principle on sale the other day. I should grab Ori and the Blind Forest also, and maaaybe Life is Strange.

Also, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns is finally available to prebuy


----------



## Ralyks

I beat the first Miami Hotline, but need to go back and do all the "extra" stuff. Wrong Number is pretty damn sweet, but just as fury inducing add the first one.


----------



## asher

Ralyks said:


> I beat the first Miami Hotline, but need to go back and do all the "extra" stuff. Wrong Number is pretty damn sweet, but just as fury inducing add the first one.


----------



## Alberto7

Started playing the latest Another Metroid 2 Remake (Am2r) demo. It's exactly what its title suggests, but it's so perfectly done. It feels exactly like playing a classic 2D Metroid game. As atmospheric as any other Metroid, and the music is fantastic. Really does the franchise justice so far. The game seems to be almost complete, so I look forward to its final release.


----------



## thedonal

Mass Effect 3 is done. Generally loved the story on it (not sure about the ending- even with extended cut), but it was VERY Gears a Of War in combat- cannibals were a lot like GoW monsters. Not so keen on that- didn't really like Gears a great deal. But glad I finished the trilogy.

A bit of fun on Shadow Complex (continuing on hard), some Diablo 3- started a Crusader- a class I quite like,but the game is fairly boring after a time. Doesn't have the vibe of D2 at all- and looks very Capcom.

So I reinstalled Crysis on my Hex Box. Enjoying it. it's tough! Stealth has quite a short battery life on it when you're moving, really forcing tactical use of cover to recharge. It's a shame the aliens went so humanoid in the sequels- quite liked the Ceph as flying tentacly things. Top series though. Would love to have a top notch PC to get the best visuals for them.


----------



## Konfyouzd

Any of y'all part of the Xbox Preview program tryina invite a brotha? I'm Konfyouzd on XBL...


----------



## Pav

I finally let the girlfriend talk me into playing Heavy Rain and I'm very glad she did. Such an absorbing game.



thedonal said:


> So I reinstalled Crysis on my Hex Box. Enjoying it. it's tough! Stealth has quite a short battery life on it when you're moving, really forcing tactical use of cover to recharge. It's a shame the aliens went so humanoid in the sequels- quite liked the Ceph as flying tentacly things. Top series though. Would love to have a top notch PC to get the best visuals for them.



The original Crysis on PC was an incredible experience and still one of the most visually beautiful games ever made (same with Warhead). Crytek could have made a dominant franchise if they had stuck to what made it so unique rather than morphing it into Call of Duty.


----------



## asher

I STILL need to sit down and do Heavy Rain.

In one playthrough.

I have it on very good authority that's the way to experience the game.


----------



## Jake

Just beat GTA V on Xbone, since I finally upgraded from my ancient 360 which I also have GTA V for 

anxiously awaiting the arrival of Fallout 4


----------



## Ralyks

asher said:


>




   other than the whole visor thing, that EXACT scenario happened to me at that level.

Although the next time around, I managed to rack up a 19x combo in that sections (ONE shy of the Combo God trophy  )


----------



## asher

The timing on that video is just... spectacular


----------



## thedonal

Pav said:


> I finally let the girlfriend talk me into playing Heavy Rain and I'm very glad she did. Such an absorbing game.
> 
> 
> 
> The original Crysis on PC was an incredible experience and still one of the most visually beautiful games ever made (same with Warhead). Crytek could have made a dominant franchise if they had stuck to what made it so unique rather than morphing it into Call of Duty.




I like the story driven aspects that evolve in the series. I still see games like this as more a showcase for the engines they develope. I'm sure dev companies make more money licensing the engines out over time than they do with the showreel game. The Unreal engines being a prime example.

Anyway. First one done. I forgot how utterly frustrating the final two bosses are to fight through. It does look pretty good on PC. Onto the next...


----------



## Vhyle

Still addicted to Fallen Earth, slowly but surely leveling my character. In the process of crafting a combat dune buggy. It's like 80 hours total craft time, if you include starting from just the inital knowledge.

I wish some of you guys played that. It would be fun to play with some fellow SSOers.

BUT DAT FALLOUT 4 DOE


----------



## ferret

Banished has eaten hours and hours of my time this last week. And I honestly don't know why, I just can't quit playing. I tell myself "get off at 8pm" but then it's 10pm when I next check the clock...


----------



## asher

GW2 patch day.

Skills and trait lines overhaul! Couple things are a little bonkers atm (engineers dropping 8k damage burn stacks....), but overall the trait lines are a lot tighter and better designed than before. Some more nice quality of life improvements. And they've totally rebuilt Lion's Arch and my god is it gorgeous.

Inside of the new light house:


----------



## thedonal

Well. Not having played a Tekken since no.2 on PS1, I finally got Tekken 6 on X-box 360.

Christ almighty that arcade mode is tough. Even stage 4 is a serious arse kicker and Xbox Rage inducer.

I can only surmise that not buying a replacement controller for the next month or so can only be a good thing for my musical productivity!


----------



## JPhoenix19

Just finished the main questline for Witcher III.

There is now a deep void in my life.


----------



## MoshJosh

Just started Tomy Raider Definitive Edition on PS4. I beat the game already on PS3, but it's was so fun I decided to play it again. Also borrowed The Last of Us on PS4, another game fun enough to play twice.


----------



## mongey

Some batman and trying to finish some levels in Ollie Ollie 2 when I only have a quick gaming time.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Been cleaning up some trophies collection lately. Cleared Classic Battle mode in Injustice on the PS4. Just suffered through the last few levels of Duke Nukem Forever. Haven't plat'd PoP yet but all I have left is the combo stuff. Got the PS4 version of Ground Zeroes off PS+ so I played some of that. Cleaned up some misc Gran Turismo 5 trophies as well as some in WWE 2K14.

Basically, I have a lot of time on my hands now that our guitarist disappeared on us/moved for work.


----------



## Pav

^^ I've been on a trophy binge myself. Just platinum'd Heavy Rain, now time to go back and finish Mirror's Edge that an old roommate started in 2008. Then I get started on the entire Uncharted series, which I hear is quite good.


----------



## Stealth7

Started playing The Witcher 2.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Based on some of the Steam reviews I want to play Elite: Dangerous, but I know my laptop won't be able to handle it and my PC is back at home in Ontario. 

I am about to finish up with Hitman: Absolution, though. Finally, after a few years.

Overall I enjoyed it. It could get frustrating getting caught and restarting when you're trying to do good playthroughs without being caught and so on, but it was also a good challenge. I only played on Normal mode but it was quite fun. Might have to give Blood Money a shot next time it's on sale since I heard that ones better.


----------



## Rosal76

BlackMastodon said:


> I am about to finish up with Hitman: Absolution, though. Finally, after a few years.





It was freaking brutal trying to finish missions without changing suits in Absolution. 



BlackMastodon said:


> Might have to give Blood Money a shot next time it's on sale since I heard that ones better.


 
Another excellent game. I also highly recommend Hitman: Contracts. So freaking amusing performing silent assassins on some of your targets in that game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Plat'd Killzone HD. Might try and suffer through those Speed Runs and Time Trials in Mirror's Edge since they announced the contents of the collector's edition of Catalyst a couple days ago.


----------



## mongey

I had no real time to put into batman over the weekend so I had a few short goes on Rocket League

I wasn't sure what to expect when I downloaded it but that game is fun as hell online


----------



## Kimling

I generally wait for games to go on sale or come down in price, so I just got Bioshock Infinite now.
Holy smokes! I am more immersed in this game by just playing the intro than I have been in games for a long time!
This gun' be guud!


----------



## Beowulf Von Thrashmeister

Fallout: New Vegas.





I love this game !!!. 

Just finished the `Dead Money` DLC on hardcore mode, it can be bloody stressful sometimes to play, but fun. 

It would be nice if you could equip the Hazmat suits that the Ghost People wear in the Sierra Madre (you can find one in the big MT in a ruined building), to protect you from the gas clouds. 

Looking forwards to Fallout 4 when it comes out !!!.


----------



## Pav

Carrion Rocket said:


> Might try and suffer through those Speed Runs and Time Trials in Mirror's Edge since they announced the contents of the collector's edition of Catalyst a couple days ago.



I'm finishing up the speed runs right now and I want to kill myself. I'd never force myself through this if I didn't crave teh platinums.


----------



## mongey

Kimling said:


> I generally wait for games to go on sale or come down in price, so I just got Bioshock Infinite now.
> Holy smokes! I am more immersed in this game by just playing the intro than I have been in games for a long time!
> This gun' be guud!





It's a great game. But the intro is def up there with the best gaming intros ever


----------



## goherpsNderp

*PS4 - Vanishing of Ethan Carter:* incredibly eerie, and the world (namely foliage) design is astounding. it's exactly the type of game i've been craving this year. (first person exploration + murder mystery crime solving-ish type gameplay)

*PS4 - Shadow Warrior:* i feel bad for passing on this awesome reboot until now, but it's AMAZING. super gory, easy to control, super smooth, feels good, just the right amount of humor, decent story, and lot's of fun using all the different weapons and abilities. can't wait for the sequel! (just preordered it today)


----------



## Steinmetzify

Nothing. PS4 bricked last week and I'm stuck waiting on Sony to fix and ship back. I'm sad.


----------



## Seventhwave

goherpsNderp said:


> *PS4 - Vanishing of Ethan Carter:* incredibly eerie, and the world (namely foliage) design is astounding. it's exactly the type of game i've been craving this year. (first person exploration + murder mystery crime solving-ish type gameplay)
> 
> *PS4 - Shadow Warrior:* i feel bad for passing on this awesome reboot until now, but it's AMAZING. super gory, easy to control, super smooth, feels good, just the right amount of humor, decent story, and lot's of fun using all the different weapons and abilities. can't wait for the sequel! (just preordered it today)



Reboot of the 90's Shadow Warrior  that game was a riot online back in the day. Sticky bombs!

Does the PS4 reboot have multiplayer?


----------



## Chokey Chicken

goherpsNderp said:


> *PS4 - Shadow Warrior:* i feel bad for passing on this awesome reboot until now, but it's AMAZING. super gory, easy to control, super smooth, feels good, just the right amount of humor, decent story, and lot's of fun using all the different weapons and abilities. can't wait for the sequel! (just preordered it today)



Hoji was one of my favorite random characters in recent history. His interactions with Lo Wang are just precious.


----------



## TonyGD

Still rockin the PS3 slim from 2010, been thinking about holding out just a little longer before getting PS4. Got NBA 2k15 like a week and a half ago (something like that), having fun with the myCareer mode. Says "Music curated by Pharrell Williams" on the cover, don't know what the entire soundtrack is but it's got some cool songs on there. Ex: "Drop It Like It's Hot" by Snoop Dogg.

Finally got to try Smash Bros on the 3DS and it seems as cool as I thought it would be. I found a good deal on the just the system, might have to swoop in on it.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Turned on my PS4 for the first time in probably a month and played some more Shadow of Mordor. The Fatal Secrets dagger mission glitched on my after killing the last worm so even though I had killed the messenger it wouldn't recognize that I'd completed the mission.


----------



## Konfyouzd

Broke my PS2 back out... 

I'm playing through the Onimusha series again. 

And Soul Reaver 2 just showed up today... All of my want.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Konfyouzd said:


> Broke my PS2 back out...
> 
> I'm playing through the Onimusha series again.
> 
> And Soul Reaver 2 just showed up today... All of my want.



Dude hell yes. I love the LoK stuff; pure awesome. 

Sony sent my PS4 back today...thank god. Loading up COD:AW and Batman as we speak. I hate not having ready access to games when I wanna play. Hoping nothing goes wrong with this stuff again.


----------



## Stealth7

CS:GO and I'm really sh!t at it!


----------



## RobbYoung

Stealth7 said:


> CS:GO and I'm really sh!t at it!



Repping about 800 Hours across the CS series... don't worry, we're all ....e!


----------



## maliciousteve

Just got The Witcher on Xbox One. Taking a bit of time to get into though 

Also been playing Arkham Knight. I love it, but .... me I'm getting annoyed with some of the fights


----------



## Khaerruhl

I'm playing Fallout 3 in the Fallout: New Vegas engine (thanks Tale of Two Wastelands <3)


----------



## Pav

Konfyouzd said:


> Broke my PS2 back out...
> 
> I'm playing through the Onimusha series again.
> 
> And Soul Reaver 2 just showed up today... All of my want.



Thanks for the wave of nostalgia. The old Onimusha games were totally badass.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm nearing the Platinum in Shadow of Mordor. I completely ....ed myself out of getting a level 25 rune earlier, though.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Finished up Hitman Absolution. It'll be a while before I try to 100% the accomplishments/missions. Just requires too much patience.

Started Game of Thrones from Telltale, so far 2 episodes in and I already hate every decision I make. Dunno what I expected from a Game of Thrones game. 

Also starting on CS:GO again. Gonna buy a couple keys for some cases I've had for a while, hopefully get some decent skins to pay for them.


----------



## bloc

Recently finished Serious Sam 3 (hard as hell) and a tiny but awesome indie game called Fez. Now I'm playing this RPG called Transistor and it is really unique.


----------



## Ralyks

Downloaded Journey for PS4 last night. Haven't felt this zen playing a video game since Flower. Love it.


----------



## MFB

Ralyks said:


> Downloaded Journey for PS4 last night. Haven't felt this zen playing a video game since Flower. Love it.



OH MY GOD IT FINALLY CAME OUT? YESSSS.


----------



## asher

Journey.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finally got the platinum in Shadow of Mordor for my first PS4 plat and seventh overall. Might finish up InFamous: Second Sun and then go for First Light as I've heard it's quite quick and easy to plat.


----------



## Pav

Mirror's Edge = PLATINUM'D! Holy hell, that is easily the most frustrating game I've played through in some years. Cool idea but between the obnoxiously over-saturated colors and the time trials that require more precision than a gamepad offers, it was much more of a chore to be beaten than an enjoyable experience. Good riddance; maybe Catalyst will be a little more refined. Now onto the MGS HD Collection to platinum MGS3 and Peace Walker in time for MGS5.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Still on Arkham Knight...about 75% done, but still have to go back for the Riddler trophies...


----------



## Xaios

My video card recently bought the farm, so I got a newer, better card and celebrated by picking up Dragon Age: Inquisition and playing it with all the settings maxed out. Very much enjoying it thus far.


----------



## Rosal76

BlackMastodon said:


> Finished up Hitman Absolution.





Have you seen the new gameplay for the new Hitman game that is going to be released on December 8? Looks awesome. According to a article in Gameinformer magazine, they stated, "... this time these sandboxes are 6-7 times larger than anything Hitman fans have seen before".  

In other stealth game news, I just finished up Splinter Cell: Blacklist on solo campaign and messing around with the "bonus/4E missions. Excellent game!!! Highly recommended for stealth game fans.


----------



## Rosal76

Pav said:


> Now onto the MGS HD Collection to platinum MGS3 and Peace Walker in time for MGS5.



Excellent game with a very detailed story line but good God!!! The length of those cutscenes!!! I think they have enough cutscenes in those games to make several full length movies.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Rosal76 said:


> Have you seen the new gameplay for the new Hitman game that is going to be released on December 8? Looks awesome. According to a article in Gameinformer magazine, they stated, "... this time these sandboxes are 6-7 times larger than anything Hitman fans have seen before".
> 
> In other stealth game news, I just finished up Splinter Cell: Blacklist on solo campaign and messing around with the "bonus/4E missions. Excellent game!!! Highly recommended for stealth game fans.


I haven't looked into the new game but I will most likely get it at some point. I kind of hope they take away/tone down the whole Instinct mode thing. Any game that has that (detective vision, wraith vision, etc.) takes away from the game. Definitely takes away from the immersion for me and just feels like the game is babying me.


----------



## MFB

Rosal76 said:


> In other stealth game news, I just finished up Splinter Cell: Blacklist on solo campaign and messing around with the "bonus/4E missions. Excellent game!!! Highly recommended for stealth game fans.



Blacklist was a fantastic entry in the series, my only gripe - and it's not even about the gameplay - is the loss of Michael Ironside's as Sam Fisher. I got to speak to the developers at PAX East the year it was released and they told me straight up they wanted to go a different route for this one. I was bummed but respected their decision.


----------



## Mprinsje

civ V. Still pretty awesome


----------



## Rosal76

MFB said:


> ... my only gripe - and it's not even about the gameplay - is the loss of Michael Ironside's as Sam Fisher.



I also miss Michael Ironside as the voice of Sam Fisher. His interrogations with enemies from the previous games are priceless. There is one quote that Sam said in Blacklist which I thought was, "classic Michael Ironside/Sam Fisher".

Sam says to Kobin, who is a prisoner on the Paladin plane: "You better be, or I'll take you skydiving". The look on Kobin's face.


----------



## Rosal76

BlackMastodon said:


> I kind of hope they take away/tone down the whole Instinct mode thing. Any game that has that (detective vision, wraith vision, etc.) takes away from the game. Definitely takes away from the immersion for me and just feels like the game is babying me.



I agree with you. As frustrating/stressful that it can be, I love the paranoia of stealth games. I love constantly looking behind my shoulder and waiting/watching enemies walk their route. IMHO, stealth gamers, the ones who don't kill/knockout anyone are the most patient/precise gamers out there.

The instinct (Hitman) and heat vision goggles (Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell) do help the casual gamers who otherwise wouldn't want to spent 2 days trying to finish a mission.


----------



## Pav

Rosal76 said:


> Excellent game with a very detailed story line but good God!!! The length of those cutscenes!!! I think they have enough cutscenes in those games to make several full length movies.



Oh yes, I think MGS4 had over 10 hours of solid cutscenes. MGS3 wasn't much better in that regard and that doesn't even include the long codec conversations.


----------



## Rosal76

Pav said:


> Oh yes, I think MGS4 had over 10 hours of solid cutscenes. MGS3 wasn't much better in that regard and that doesn't even include the long codec conversations.



That is the one and only thing that is stopping me from buying/playing Metal Gear Solid 5. I played the Ground zero game and liked it and therefore, got me interested in MGS5. Man, but those cutscenes. Maybe I'll spend 1 day watching the cutscenes while eating a bag of chips and then play the game afterwards.  Jokes aside, I do want to understand and appreciate the MGS storylines.


----------



## synrgy

For some reason, I keep buying Batman games, despite being disappointed every time.  Somewhere around 97% complete. Just have a few Riddler things left, and (I'm guessing) one or two more story scenes to go. Decided - this time - that I'm not finishing the story until I'm done with all the Riddler/Challenge stuff. When I'm done with it, I want to be done with it. 

Also working through Ori.

Thinking about picking up Elite Dangerous, but I can't decide if I should get the preview edition on XBO for $30, or spend twice as much to get the full edition on Steam, even though I prefer console gaming... First World Problems!


----------



## Ulvhedin

42% in Shadow of Mordor, right now. Quite a cool game, even if I'm not much of a lotr-fan.

Though I'm not in a gaming phase now, so might take me a while to get through it.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Finished Arkham Knight; there's a surprise at the end if you didn't know. Dug this one; combat was good, story was ok, even ended up liking using the Batmobile after getting decent good with it. Not bad at all.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Playing Skyrim again these days, because of course I am.


----------



## Ralyks

Apparently Limbo will be available for free on PS4 in August, so trying to get Journey and Hotline Miami 2 wrapped up by then. Also, delved back in GTA IV, and tempted to throw GTA V back in.

I also keep forgetting I have Ether One sitting there, which has proven to be interesting so far.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

After taking care of some yard work and fixing the ac in the living room I finally got chance to start my infamous playthough of Second Sun. Why can't I skip the cut scenes?


----------



## Jarmake

Just finished fc4 again (it was the 2nd time now) and started playing witcher 2. I did play it almost through a few years ago, but lost my saves with my broken hard drive. I was so frustrated with starting over again that I didn't even install it again. Now, years later, I have enjoyed it once again. I bought witcher 3 the wild hund and just have to finish w2 before I can even begin to play w3.

I might have to find a nice fps for balancing out the w2&3.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Man you're gonna love Witcher 3....


----------



## MFB

Started and subsequently finished Journey for the first time last night. I really enjoyed the experience of it, but as I gamer I was kind of lost since they just sort of set you off and you figure it out as you go.


----------



## Ralyks

Just downloaded Entwined fo' free, in the process discovering that, through the PSN app on my iPhone, I can get games on the Playstation Store through my phone, and they automatically download onto my PS4 while I'm at work so they're ready to go when I get home. Neat!

Also grabbed Rocket League while it was still free. Haven't played it yet, but I heard it's quite addicting.

Waiting for Limbo to be put up for free in the meantime.



MFB said:


> Started and subsequently finished Journey for the first time last night. I really enjoyed the experience of it, but as I gamer I was kind of lost since they just sort of set you off and you figure it out as you go.



Honestly, I think that's what has made the game so unique and enjoyable for me. Still have to beat it, as the part where it's all ice and snow.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Grabbed Styx a few days ago and just loaded it up. If you dig stealth games try this out, it's fun but there is absolutely NO run and gun. If you try to do this without using stealth you're just gonna get killed and frustrated. I think it's free until tomorrow on PS+.


----------



## bloc

Anyone playing/played Shovel Knight? It's a sweet throwback to the platformers of SNES.


----------



## asher

MFB said:


> Started and subsequently finished Journey for the first time last night. I really enjoyed the experience of it, but as I gamer I was kind of lost since they just sort of set you off and you figure it out as you go.



Journey is more of a meditation than a game.


----------



## MFB

asher said:


> Journey is more of a meditation than a game.



Absolutely. Like I said, I enjoyed it and the soundtrack alone is worth the purchase, I just don't purchase many indie games; and the game play I sparingly watched as to keep the game pure for my own interpretation made it seem like there was more to it


----------



## Ralyks

got my hands on Limbo, and grabbed Laura Croft and The Temple of Osiris while at it. I played Limbo on PS3 and liked it a lot, so can't wait to get back into that. I noticed my free/Indy games way outweighs my actually full PS4 titles.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Grabbed both of those too, and I also have way many more of the free games than ones I actually have hard copies for lol. 

Hyped to try Limbo, never played it before. Got Driveclub too...not much of a racing fan, but I've really enjoyed the last few PS+ games I've snagged so I figured it was worth a shot. Pretty cool that they just dump free games on us like this.


----------



## haieb

I bought Witcher 3 some days ago and I am impressed by the game so far. I never played Witcher 1&2 but after some hours into the game i am really thinking about playing both or at least the second part. What do you think guys?


----------



## Jarmake

haieb said:


> I bought Witcher 3 some days ago and I am impressed by the game so far. I never played Witcher 1&2 but after some hours into the game i am really thinking about playing both or at least the second part. What do you think guys?



I will recommend both. W1 is more of a patient players game, but enjoyable still. Great games.


----------



## Ralyks

steinmetzify said:


> Hyped to try Limbo, never played it before.



Play it in a darker setting. Not really a horror game, but definitely adds to the atmosphere.


----------



## asher

LIMBO is also pretty excellent, though a couple of the puzzles I found infuriating


----------



## Steinmetzify

Tried out Limbo; cool game, really stark and beautiful. Wasn't in the mood for a platformer this morning though....tried out Driveclub and TR too. Driveclub is gone but I'll get into TR. not bad at all.


----------



## habicore_5150

Even though my main computer is out of commission since August 7th (and I really wanted to awaken warlock in Eden Eternal. of course before then, I got arch elementalist/gravity manipulator - the most OP awakened in the game by far, and that's coming from a guy who mostly plays PDPS instead of MDPS), decided to play a bit more of Tales of the Abyss
Instead of trying to save the planet, I decided to try and kill this one monster that we were supposed to be running from at some earlier point in the game

Goddamn is he hard but I guess the rewards are worth it...sorta


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I started Dying Light a few days ago. Imagine Dead Island but 10x better and with parkour. Its loads of fun.


----------



## tacotiklah

I'm playing the recent Tomb Raider. Holy crap this game is a lot darker than I expected it to be. Blood and gore galore!


----------



## Pav

The damn girlfriend distracted me from my MGS mindset and has me hooked on Resident Evil again. We've now played through the HD Remake of the original, Nemesis, RE5, and we're midway through Code Veronica X.

Also, picked up RE6 over PSN last week for foolishly cheap. I'm two hours in and I can say with confidence this is the worst Resident Evil game I've ever played. Bad controls, bad camera angles (somehow worse than the older games with the fixed camera), bad HUD design, bad AI, and an endless supply of extra-bad QTEs.


----------



## naw38

I'm playing Terraria. Goodbye world, it's been real.


----------



## Rosal76

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I started Dying Light a few days ago. Imagine Dead Island but 10x better and with parkour. Its loads of fun.



Playing the missions that can only be played at night really, really suck!!!


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Rosal76 said:


> Playing the missions that can only be played at night really, really suck!!!



Its a little better once you get the grappling hook. Zip around and use those traps.


----------



## Rosal76

Pav said:


> Also, picked up RE6 over PSN last week for foolishly cheap. I'm two hours in and I can say with confidence this is the worst Resident Evil game I've ever played. Bad controls, bad camera angles (somehow worse than the older games with the fixed camera), bad HUD design, bad AI, and an endless supply of extra-bad QTEs.



+1.

I love the Resident evil games but 6 is very, very hard to get into. I'm was trying to beat all the difficulties (easy, normal, veteran, professional, no hope) but I stopped at normal and put the game away. IMHO, Resident evil 4 and 5 peaked it for me with the numbered Resident evil games.

The Ada Wong campaign in RE6 is kinda cool and as you get to sneak around and also stealth kill in some of the levels. Ada has been hanging out with Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell.


----------



## AndimalFresh

Super Hyped for Final Fantasy Type - O 
Installing it now. Been on a PC games w/ a Controller lately.
Cant wait for November when the Steam Controller finally is 
birthed unto the public.


----------



## drpepper

completely into Dragonball Xenoverse. Level 76 Saiyan so far. if anyone happens to play for PS3 . my gamer tag is TacoFliesFree. . 

i also play MLB 15 the show, and Gran Turismo 6 on there if anyone wants to play with me.


----------



## texshred777

Picked up Arkham Origins last night. So far pretty damn good. I loved the first two so no surprise-even if Rocksteady didn't develop it.


----------



## Pav

Only 7 days left until MGS5, at which point I disappear from life entirely for at least two months.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Pav said:


> Only 7 days left until MGS5, at which point I disappear from life entirely for at least two months.



I've never played these games. Are they good or something?


----------



## Señor Voorhees

Pav said:


> Only 7 days left until MGS5, at which point I disappear from life entirely for at least two months.



Damn... I had no idea MGS5 was coming out so soon. Looks like I have even more money to spend.


----------



## Pav

^ If you get it on release day, you'll get the Day 1 Edition that includes a physical map and some extra customization items.



leftyguitarjoe said:


> I've never played these games. Are they good or something?



Some of the best games out there.


----------



## Repner

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I've never played these games. Are they good or something?



Agreed with above. It's worth getting the Legacy Collection and playing through the series though first. The story is worth it.

One thing to note however, if you do buy that and want to play the first two Metal Gear games from the 80's, you'll have to go into MGS3's menu to find them. Good games, but optional.


----------



## Rosal76

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I've never played these games. Are they good or something?



Metal Gear Solid is the grand daddy of stealth games. Here are some of the things that make MGS stand out.

Very, and I mean very detailed, through and complete story lines that can easily be made into several movies. * MGS is actually in the Guinness World Records for having the longest cutscene in a game. Bring the popcorn.

When you get injured, the game tells you exactly what body part is injured and you must use the proper medical items/procedures to heal yourself. There is no "heal all health packs" in these games. 

Some of the smartest AI enemies and most unique bosses/sub-bosses I have ever encountered in any game. Excluding fantasy games, though. Some bosses require you to think wayyyy outside the box to beat them.

Very unique ways to kill/fool enemies. Example: One enemy who is really old, actually dies of old age when you turn off your game console. He (the enemy) challenges you to a sniper duel. If you decide to turn off your console and turn it back on (I don't know how long the console has to be off), he is too weak to fight and dies. * You do have the option to fight him or course. This enemy appears in MGS 3.

Amusing ways to distract enemies like putting girlie magazines on the floor for them to look at. They stop, look at the magazine and start giggling allowing you to sneak by them/on them.

I could go on and on and on about how awesome the games are but it would be like 3 pages. If you're a fan of stealth games, and long cutscenes, you should check them out.


----------



## Rosal76

Pav said:


> Only 7 days left until MGS5, at which point I disappear from life entirely for at least two months.



Would that be for just watching and trying to understand the cutscenes? 

Seriously though, tell us how the game is when ya get it.


----------



## Pav

Rosal76 said:


> Would that be for just watching and trying to understand the cutscenes?
> 
> Seriously though, tell us how the game is when ya get it.



I hope not!  Supposedly Kojima streamlined all of the long-winded plot elements for the Phantom Pain. Cutscenes are supposed to be much shorter and the lengthy codec conversations have been replaced with recordings that you listen to at your own pace, either in the game's menus or on your phone/tablet whenever you want.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Rosal76 said:


> Very unique ways to kill/fool enemies. Example: One enemy who is really old, actually dies of old age when you turn off your game console. He (the enemy) challenges you to a sniper duel. If you decide to turn off your console and turn it back on (I don't know how long the console has to be off), he is too weak to fight and dies. * You do have the option to fight him or course. This enemy appears in MGS 3.



Thats creative as sh!t.


----------



## IChuckFinleyI

I've been geeking out on the Witcher 3 over the past few weeks since it's been patched. Picked up where I left off on the normal difficulty got to level 22 and ended up failing a few quests because I progressed the main story. Being an OCD perfectionist, that bugged the .... out of me. So I restarted on Death March difficulty and love it even more. Pretty sure I'll be playing it until Fallout 4 comes out.


----------



## CrushingAnvil

*Need For Speed: Most Wanted*

I'm waiting for the new Need For Speed, so this, among other games, is tiding me over. 


*The Crew*

Cool game. Sometimes the huge distances to cover is annoying, sometimes it's cool. Roadtrips, you know?


----------



## naw38

Pav said:


> Only 7 days left until MGS5, at which point I disappear from life entirely for at least two months.



I didn't know it was coming out so soon, and when I found out that it was... it's made the last few days unbearably long.


----------



## habicore_5150

60 hours later, I've finally finished Tales of the Abyss

Only thing I can say, even with my party at around lv 73 - 75, f**k the final boss


----------



## ferret

90% complete with a full 100% explored and completed Fallout 3 save file, started fresh to cure Fallout 4 itchiness.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Diablo III....recommended here and I dig it. Interesting graphics, plays great, best dungeon crawl I've done in a while. This is good stuff.


----------



## MFB

steinmetzify said:


> Diablo III....recommended here and I dig it. Interesting graphics, plays great, best dungeon crawl I've done in a while. This is good stuff.



Did you end up getting the Ultimate Evil on PS4, or force your PC to play it?


----------



## Steinmetzify

Lmao...there was no forcing the 5 yr old laptop, bro. Grabbed UE for PS4....


----------



## MFB

steinmetzify said:


> Lmao...there was no forcing the 5 yr old laptop, bro. Grabbed UE for PS4....





It really is one of the best games I've played in a long time. Something about having it on the consoles and not clicking everywhere made it 1000x more enjoyable. Not to mention the ability of not having to deal with lost network connections, such a blessing.


----------



## tacotiklah

MFB said:


> It really is one of the best games I've played in a long time. Something about having it on the consoles and not clicking everywhere made it 1000x more enjoyable. *Not to mention the ability of not having to deal with lost network connections*, such a blessing.



This would be the one thing that would make me want to play it on a console. It drives me bat.... insane when I'm fighting against Diablo himself and the loading screen between the normal and shadow realm stutters and causes me to lose network connection on single player mode on PC. There's several parts to the fight and if that happens, you have to start all over again. Gahhhhhh!!! 




But I'm from the old Diablo series vanguard, so playing it on a controller would seem weird and foreign to me.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Can't do it; been a console player since Intellivision and Atari 2600...too late to switch now.


----------



## MFB

tacotiklah said:


> But I'm from the old Diablo series vanguard, so playing it on a controller would seem weird and foreign to me.



In theory, I should also be like this since I remember playing D1 back in the days of yesteryear on PC, but console gaming ruined me. 

I had that same thing happen the other night, I was having a good run with my Barbarian and then boom - Comcast proved to be themselves and I lost the connection and couldn't get it back.


----------



## J-Fender7

Playing the Resistance Series for PS3. I wanted some new shooters and got the whole series for like $15. I haven't heard anyone else who likes the series, but I think it's pretty fun. I'm currently about halfway through the 3rd, and I think the story is pretty great. Any other fans of Resistance?


----------



## Rosal76

J-Fender7 said:


> Any other fans of Resistance?



I've played the games and enjoyed them. I really enjoyed exploring the burnt out/destroyed locations and having the Chimera or whatever jump out and attack. I don't remember which game it was of the 3 but that one where you had to go through the subway tunnels.  I was like, "where's MacReady from The Thing (1982) when I need him".


----------



## Taylor

Finally picked up The Witcher 3. It's straining my laptop to its limits, but it's amazing so far! And yes you read that right, I'm playing The Witcher 3 on a laptop  I may only be getting 30 fps on medium settings, but it'll do for now.


----------



## J-Fender7

> I really enjoyed exploring the burnt out/destroyed locations and having the Chimera or whatever jump out and attack.


I totally agree! It reminds me of Dead Space a bit, but I really liked the creepy vibe from it. I just finished part of the story where you go through a burned up town and the chimera just kindof pop out, and it actually got pretty difficult, especially with the low amounts of ammo the game allows you to hold.


----------



## ghost_of_karelia

Still slugging through Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. Now closing in on rank 44 with some sweet skins from the workshop, maining a vanguard with a zweihander. Applied to join a competitive clan recently, though got to work on aiming the lookdown overheads. Getting to grips with double feints as well, though some of the drags on the heavier knight weapons are *still* unsettling me.


----------



## Dooky

I'm back to playing Battlefield 4. After a long break, I really enjoy coming back to this game


----------



## Vostre Roy

Spintires (on Steam).

Hauling logs through mud and wood using a soviet truck. Might sound boring, but that thing's addicting.

And its f...ing manly, pretty sure my beard is growing faster when I play taht game lol


----------



## myrtorp

jarvncaredoc said:


> Still slugging through Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. Now closing in on rank 44 with some sweet skins from the workshop, maining a vanguard with a zweihander. Applied to join a competitive clan recently, though got to work on aiming the lookdown overheads. Getting to grips with double feints as well, though some of the drags on the heavier knight weapons are *still* unsettling me.




Reached 48 yesterday, still enjoying the game! I play alot of knight, with messer mostly. I feel like I've reached the point where I can do some fancy moves. I still struggle with reverse overhead strikes, when i have the flow of battle (lol) i can pull them off, it just comes naturally, but when i try to just do them on purpose it dont work as well. I think its easier to do it with regular swings, standing almost 180 degree away from the enemy, so that your sword hits them as soon as the swing starts  



Im contemplating uninstalling after reaching 50, I already put 865 hours into it haha!


----------



## Rosal76

J-Fender7 said:


> I totally agree! It reminds me of Dead Space a bit, but I really liked the creepy vibe from it. I just finished part of the story where you go through a burned up town and the chimera just kindof pop out, and it actually got pretty difficult, especially with the low amounts of ammo the game allows you to hold.



If you haven't played the game yet, you should definately check out "The Last of Us". Creepy/desolate locations, creatures can be overwhelming in some levels, and you definately have to watch how much ammunition you use.


----------



## J-Fender7

Rosal76 said:


> If you haven't played the game yet, you should definately check out "The Last of Us". Creepy/desolate locations, creatures can be overwhelming in some levels, and you definately have to watch how much ammunition you use.



I've been wanting so badly to try it out, and the only reason I haven't is because I haven't had the few extra dollars to spare on it. I'll definitely check it out though


----------



## Steinmetzify

Rosal76 said:


> If you haven't played the game yet, you should definately check out "The Last of Us". Creepy/desolate locations, creatures can be overwhelming in some levels, and you definately have to watch how much ammunition you use.



So much this. Rarely does a game reward like that. The settings, the story, the combat; everything was just top notch and I was really glad I played it. Fantastic and well worth the $.


----------



## mikernaut

Metal Gear V Phantom Pain, prologue was kinda slow as I just wanted to get into the action and the open world, but it's getting pretty fun and addictive letting you approach the missions in your own style. Your home base has some upgrading/customization , dare I say mild rpg elements.

Also picked up Until Dawn before MGSV came out. pretty insane graphics/character models. I'm digging it so far, seems to be capturing that "slasher" movie vibe well. 
It has a "butterfly effect" system in place and your choices and actions affect your relationships with the others in the group and hopefully shape the storyline. 

I'll have to see if it "really" changes things in the game. It plays somewhat close to Beyond 2 Souls and Heavy Rain, being you have to be able to hit random buttons at times/ mini quick time events, but feels a bit more better implemented.

Before that finished "Everyone's Gone to the Rapture" I really enjoyed the story,vibe and atmosphere but was hoping their would be a bit more game play to it. I did miss some cool moments in my 1st playthrough and then saw them while starting a 2nd game. 
Absolutely love the soundtrack too, it really adds a ton to the emotion and eerie tone.


----------



## Rosal76

mikernaut said:


> Metal Gear V Phantom Pain,



+1.

I didn't buy the game yet but I went up to GameStop yesterday to pick up the MGS5 limited edition strategy guide and browsing through the pages, there is a ton, and I mean a freaking ton of of stuff to do in that game. Main missions, side ops, collectibles, upgrades, easter eggs, secrets, etc, etc, etc, my God, this will take me forever to play. 

Cannot freaking wait to start this game!!!


----------



## Pav

Goodbye world. 

Apparently the Blu Ray that comes with the collector's edition includes a video of an unfinished mission that actually fleshes out the plot of this game, tying Big Boss in with Ocelot and Liquid Snake in a way that actually makes sense for the games that come later, chronologically.

Now to clean up a few loose ends in Ground Zeroes before I pop this bad boy in and get going.


----------



## mongey

pay day today so gonna grab MGS5 on my lunch break 

not really a MGS fan but everything I've seen and read it looks like a great game even if I have no idea whats going on story wise


----------



## mikernaut

I'm the same way, always bought some of the previous MGS games cuz I loved the characters and art styles, but I'm not the most stealthy player so I've never finished any of them or played enough to follow the storylines.

But... this one is a blast so far, there's still a bit of learning curve with the controls and management, but it feels way more accessible and loving the open worldly maps.

Just got the Fulton device ( ballons) so I'm having way too much fun using the Tranquilizer pistol and launching sleeping soliders and sheep into the sky. Just came across the puppy too. 

I've turned the game to offline because I don't want to have to deal with people raiding my base and stealing things. Still gotta figure out the management of people on my base better, have the RnD skill up to 4 so I was able to create a few new guns and supplies to try out. 

Only annoying thing I've found so far is sometimes its tricky to get the options menu to come up so I can turn off the online mode or exit the game.

thing to note- you seem to only be able to do certain things from inside the Helicopter , like the side missions.


----------



## Pav

mikernaut said:


> Only annoying thing I've found so far is sometimes its tricky to get the options menu to come up so I can turn off the online mode or exit the game.



Tricky in what way? If you're playing on the PS4, I think I had the same problem when I started Ground Zeroes. The left side of the touch pad pauses the game and the right side brings up your iDroid. If you press it in the center you may get either one and end up tearing your hair out.


----------



## All_¥our_Bass

Just got MGSV yesterday.
Been having a blast!! But it's clear I have a long way to go until I'm good at it.


----------



## Repner

All_¥our_Bass;4435719 said:


> Just got MGSV yesterday.
> Been having a blast!! But it's clear I have a long way to go until I'm good at it.



Same here. It's far harder to avoid getting caught in this game compared to previous entries.

Aside from that, it seems like they took all the great things about Peace Walker and really improved upon them. Like actually getting to explore Mother Base instead of just a top down view and a development menu.


----------



## tacotiklah

Score ALL the awesome Tom Clancy games!
https://www.humblebundle.com/


Even for just the last measly $1 in my account, I still got awesome games.


----------



## Pav

Repner said:


> Same here. It's far harder to avoid getting caught in this game compared to previous entries.
> 
> Aside from that, it seems like they took all the great things about Peace Walker and really improved upon them. Like actually getting to explore Mother Base instead of just a top down view and a development menu.



I spent 40 hours or so trying to master Ground Zeroes but this .... is hard by comparison. The environments are so big that the companion app becomes more of a necessary aid than a luxury.


----------



## MFB

tacotiklah said:


> Score ALL the awesome Tom Clancy games!
> https://www.humblebundle.com/
> 
> 
> Even for just the last measly $1 in my account, I still got awesome games.



Yousonofabeach


----------



## tacotiklah

What are you talking about? I AM a bitch! 

But yeah, if you're willing to brave using Uplay, you can score games like Rainbow Six Vegas for $1.


----------



## MFB

Kind of bummed that Pandora Tomorrow isn't included with the other Splinter Cells, but I guess Black List, Conviction, Chaos Theory, and the original are enough. Not to mention Rainbow Six: Vegas is a friggin' blast.


----------



## tacotiklah

I had so much fun (and ragequit moments) playing the original Splinter Cell on the original xbox.


----------



## Rosal76

Pav said:


> I spent 40 hours or so trying to master Ground Zeroes but this .... is hard by comparison.



Hard as in, trying to be stealthy?

Talk to me, Pav.


----------



## Pav

Rosal76 said:


> Hard as in, trying to be stealthy?
> 
> Talk to me, Pav.



Yes. It's hard in that the enemy AI is far more realistic than any past MGS game. If you're running around in broad daylight, they can spot you from pretty significant distances, upwards of 80-90 meters away (almost 300 feet). Also, the ability to run through an enemy's field of view and have them go, "huh? Did I just see something?" is largely gone. If you so much as step into view, the entire camp (and possibly neighboring camps) will go on full alert immediately. You only have the cushion of MGS1-style stupidity if you run in the dead of night or during a sandstorm or something, but those scenarios don't last forever.


----------



## Repner

That and in the older games, you used to have the Alert, Evasion, and from MGS2 onward, Caution phases. In this when a camp or town gets alerted, even after they've stopped searching for you, they stay alerted for about an hour after that. If the camps CP can still contact HQ, all the other camps in the nearby area will also go on alert. That's why it's a good idea to sabotage their communications devices.

Also, the enemy will learn from your tactics over time. For example if you have a habit of using a lot of headshots, eventually the enemy will start being supplied with helmets.


----------



## Antiproduct

Beat mgs5 completely (the whole story) from monday evening to wednesday night. 
I will not comment on this game but do yourself a favor and don't google anything as this might spoil you HARD TIME
Also there are more story missions after credits you just have to unlock them, keep on playing.

I can also imagine that you don't understand a single thing in this game if you havent played all the games before xD It's like playing only AC revelations


----------



## Repner

This game has got me in the mood to replay the entire series again. It's one of those series that I love to come back to every few years. It seems like a good idea considering the story of MGSV segues perfectly into Metal Gear.


----------



## Alex6534

Fallout New Vegas in preparation for Fallout 4.  on PC with Project Nevada mod and LOVING it!


----------



## MoshJosh

Since I'm currently attending university I've done my best not to play video games as I've got studying to do, but I finally gave in. 

I grab the copy of Mad Max and so far its pretty freakin awesome.


----------



## Masoo2

Warmode

FTP game that was recently removed from steam.

Such an easy game, I've literally been called a hacker in it.


----------



## Force

On PS3 still giving Minecraft a flogging

On my new phone, Fallout Shelter


----------



## Alberto7

Just started playing Mirror's Edge. Faith could not be any hotter.


----------



## mongey

got about 6 hours into mgs5 over the weekend over a few early morning sessions which is good by my standards at the moment with baby and all 


digging it , have no idea what is going on with the story at all but it doesn't really matter to me . I suck at it but getting better . my usual process is to sneak around till someone sees me then start killing everyone in sight but last couple missions I actually manged to keep the fatalities to only a couple, and they were asking for it


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Almost got the Criminal Mastermind achievement on GTAVO. Only a few more missions to go. Its so stressful.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Just been playing some more GTA V. Alternating between story mode and online. I got the Kifflom and Mystery Solved trophies earlier today and have started on the stunt jumps and space ship parts. I have to say that since the school year started back up the online has somehow gotten more annoying.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished the stunt jumps in GTA V. Not nearly as had to do as everyone says but those ....ing Under the Bridge ones sure are. 

Cleaned up some more trophies in GRID 2 and finished Ghost of Sparta.


----------



## Alberto7

Finished Mirror's Edge. God, did I love that game. As much as people complain about the writing, I actually liked it. Sweet, short, and to the point. And I loved the art, which a lot of people didn't like. And the environments. The game mechanics. Sh!t, can't wait for Catalyst now. I hope I get to build a good desktop PC soon so I can play the game, as there's no way that thing is running properly on my current laptop. (Though the first one runs flawlessly on mid-high settings.)


----------



## BlackMastodon

Hopped back on CS:GO yesterday for the first time in a few weeks. Had 3 cases to open and figured I'd throw $10 on my steam wallet to do it. 2 of the 3 cases where f**king Negev skins and the last one was a MAG-7.  

Though, admittedly I like the MAG-7 skin (Heaven Guard), but they were all sh*tty skins for guns I don't use unless I'm just trolling.  Of the 6 or so cases I've opened so far in the game, no skins have been good, and 2 of them were Tec-9 Sandstorm ones.

I just want a really good skin that I can sell for a lot of money and then open future cases using that money, is that too much to ask?


----------



## RobbYoung

BlackMastodon said:


> I just want a really good skin that I can sell for a lot of money and then open future cases using that money, is that too much to ask?



Fear not sir, for I have a way to combat this affliction!

ConVars | CS:GO Case Opening Simulator


----------



## BlackMastodon

^It didn't work but I imagine it's just Negev skins and the Tec-9 Sandstorm. 

Edit: Just got that link to work and the first f**king skin that lands is better than any that I've gotten.  I can't even.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm finishing up Silent Assassin HD. I completely forgot how many levels there were in this game. I think I'm half way through right now.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Carrion Rocket said:


> Finished the stunt jumps in GTA V. Not nearly as had to do as everyone says but those ....ing Under the Bridge ones sure are.
> 
> Cleaned up some more trophies in GRID 2 and finished Ghost of Sparta.



I am trying to do enough stunt jumps to get the lime green rims, and holy crap they're bullsh!t. I still have 10 more to go but stopped for the sake of my sanity. I'm doing them all on my Akuma.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Still grinding on D3....since Tacotiklah schooled me I've gotten up to Paragon 70, about $40,000,000 and I'm running around doing greater rifts on T1....still looking for another puzzle ring so I can throw it into Kenai's Cube again; I wanna see how much I can snag out of the Vault on T2 while wearing the Hoarder gem.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I am trying to do enough stunt jumps to get the lime green rims, and holy crap they're bullsh!t. I still have 10 more to go but stopped for the sake of my sanity. I'm doing them all on my Akuma.



a motorcycle works great most of the time but one of the best vehicles I found to use is that ....ty little smart car. It weights almost nothing so it's easy to get distance with it. But some of those jumps are just luck based.


----------



## Rosal76

Carrion Rocket said:


> I'm finishing up Silent Assassin HD. I completely forgot how many levels there were in this game. I think I'm half way through right now.



+ 1,000,000. 

I just Platinumed the game a few weeks ago. My God, finishing that game in Professional difficulty was such a pain. Those missions that are set in Japan and in the Middle East!!! On top of that, trying to get Silent assassin ratings and collecting all the firearms.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Silent Assassin. I might attempt a professional playthough later but I have no desire right now. And I imagine the reason why they took out the cheats was because it'd then be piss easy to get the plat.

Browsed though my PS+ games I had downloaded on my PS3 and saw PlayStation All-Stars was on it. I remember playing a little bit of it but never finished the arcade mode. So I went through it with Kratos. Had no idea how the .... to play it but I beat arcade mode anyway.

Started playing Black Flag again on the PS4. Not far enough into it to say if I like it or not but so far it's not leaving an impression on me.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Currently swapping between Mad Max, MGS V and Forza 6 with some Witcher 3 new game plus thrown in for good measure to prep for the expansion next month.

With Halo 5, Fallout 4, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Star Wars Battlefront, Rainbow 6 Siege and Just Cause 3 on the horizon it's looking like 2015 will go down as a golden year for video games.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I've been binge playing on FO3, FO:NV, and Skyrim. Gotta keep the hype train at top speed till Fallout 4 comes out.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Started playing Minecraft again. Cleaned up some trophies and found some rails underground I'm gonna figure out how many more I need to find/build to get the on a rail trophy.

I have an extra payday next month so I'm gonna finally pick up The Phantom Pain.


----------



## Pav

Got an email yesterday saying I was selected to take part in the tech test for Rainbow Six Siege. Apparently that also means I get instant access to the closed beta. Pre-loading now since this "technical test" opens tomorrow. Oh, the advantages of having a beastly PC.


----------



## Cake Machine

Ive got the whole Nintendo rash all flared up (well... Its a forever thing, who am I kidding)... Got Gamecube and Wii going on right now, revisiting the best titles on the massive tv at my girlfriends place.

Wii obviously going to invite much derision, but some of my favourite games ever are on it. Mario Galaxy, Madworld and Zelda: Twighlight Princess. Im playing Mario Galaxy and it is fully mental, i love it. the final boss level is solid as holy hell. It is so hard.

Also got Viewtiful Joe going on in parallel, also a wicked hard and cool game. And Plague Inc. on Android which is some evil ...., and which im worryingly good at.

I'll be pulling Portal 2 on PS3 out soon while im on the gaming wave. It comes and goes.


----------



## Ralyks

Been trying to find time to game a lot when the baby is sleeping, so let's see... 
- Going through franchise in Madden 16
- Loaded up a new game for Chrono Trigger
- On the final boss in Transistor (god I would like a full scale version of this game instead of a indie download)
-Just beat Limbo and Journey, will probably go through both again at some point for achievements, plus Journey is meditation is gaming form
- Want to get back to Fez

And that's just what I have now. REALLY want to get Metal Gear Solid V but I never finished 2, never played 3, and 4 is sitting on my shelf, waiting to be played past the first 10 minutes.

Also, Super Meat Boy suppose to be coming out FO' FREE on PS4 next week  as well as rumored to be Assassins Creed Black Flag.

Edit: Apparently not Black Flag, but still, SUPER MEAT BOY!!


----------



## Steinmetzify

Still doing D3 but everything seems a pale wasteland until the expansion pack for Witcher III emerges 10/13. I seriously can't wait.


----------



## The Q

I've installed System Shock 2 again and went through the first 3 Thiefs again. They were as great as I remembered, with impeccable atmosphere, great story and irrelevant graphics.

I think I properly hate modern videogames now. Which is OK I guess, because I don't seem to like a modern (read, 2002ish and after) videogame for more than 10 minutes, with few exceptions.


----------



## Alberto7

Played and beat Portal (first one) for the first time yesterday, and I was crying with happy laughter by the time the end credits rolled in. And then that genius little tune. I can definitely appreciate now why this game is a big deal. Gotta buy me Portal 2 next; I've only played and finished the multiplayer of the second game... the levels are absolutely brilliant, and I hear the story mode itself is just as brilliant.


----------



## BlackMastodon

You won't be disappointed. I should replay both of those games some time. Some of the best and funniest writing as well as puzzles I've seen in video games. The more challenging versions of some of the puzzle are a great time, too, if you fancy that kind of thing.


----------



## Ralyks

Agreed on both Portal games. I've been thinking of going back and grabbing them on PS3 myself, since I played them originally on Xbox 360 (which was sold last year)


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I wanted to finish PlayStation All-Stars with all the character but those three minute rounds are a chore to playthough. 

Finished career mode in Nascar 2011. As bad as the EA games got they were far better than that piece of .....

Next week I get my extra paycheck with a bonus so I'm finally picking up Phantom Pain. I might even get both the PS3 and PS4 versions.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Rocket League.

This game has me by the balls. I dont like a single sports game, racing games, or many competitive games, but holy hell I love this game.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

I posted in the other thread that I beat Undertale... Also, legit spoilers below.

For the love of all ....ing goddamn ....ing god, *PLAY THIS GAME IF YOU LOVE OLD TURN-BASED JRPGS*. This game beat Chrono Trigger as my favorite turn-based game, and that's a ....ing impressive feat.



Spoiler



And for the love of all that is holy, if you want to play this game for all the endings, DON'T DO THE GENOCIDE ROUTE. Hell, even if you beat the neutral and pacifist routes, you'll never, never, never, never want to do the genocide route.



This is my GOTY. No question.


Spoiler



It would have been my game of the forever if there was a way to "revive" Asriel, though. I know he found peace in some way, but I feel so bad after what the first human did to him.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Back into Witcher III....expansion came out yesterday so I'm back on the horse, so to speak. Digging it.


----------



## Ralyks

Finally making some time for Metal Gear Solid 4, so I can get that done as soon as possible, and move on to Phantom Pain.

Also, SUPER MEAT BOY!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Forgot that I never played it despite having the HD Collection for a couple years.

EDIT: .... that ....ing tank battle.


----------



## mongey

been trying to play MGS5 but have realized in my babycentric world at the moment I have no where near the time to devote to this game , which is think is a great game

so local shop is doing 2 games trades on Battlefont 3 so think MGS5 and batman are going for it


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

mongey said:


> been trying to play MGS5 but have realized in my babycentric world at the moment I have no where near the time to devote to this game , which is think is a great game
> 
> so local shop is doing 2 games trades on Battlefont 3 so think MGS5 and batman are going for it



Nonono keep MGSV!! Its a masterpiece!! And isn't Battlefield 3 an older one now?


----------



## Don Vito

Battlefront 3 is the new Star Wars game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I thought that since Peace Walker was a psp game it'd be on the short side but after two days I'm only half way through it.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Halo 5 getting pre-ordered and downloaded this weekend.....freakin' on in a couple weeks!


----------



## Ralyks

mongey said:


> been trying to play MGS5 but have realized in my babycentric world at the moment I have no where near the time to devote to this game , which is think is a great game



I feel your pain. I pretty much try to sneak in game time whenever my 2 month old son is napping, and pretty much play a lot on weekend nights, since its a gamble on how long the little one will sleep at night and I don't have to work in the morning.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Don Vito said:


> Battlefront 3 is the new Star Wars game.


----------



## MrPepperoniNipples

Been learning Hearts of Iron III

Keyword learning, because this game has an insane learning curve if you haven't played a Paradox game before (which I haven't). But I love grand strategy games, especially WWII based ones. There's just so much to this, and the interface isn't very user friendly.

Played the Battlefront 3 Alpha on my brother's PC, too. Need to upgrade mine so I can start gaming again and actually play it at my place.


----------



## mongey

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Nonono keep MGSV!! Its a masterpiece!! And isn't Battlefield 3 an older one now?



yeah I agree it probably is a masterpiece. I get it again later when I can actually put time into it


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> I feel your pain. I pretty much try to sneak in game time whenever my 2 month old son is napping, and pretty much play a lot on weekend nights, since its a gamble on how long the little one will sleep at night and I don't have to work in the morning.



my daughter is 8 months now , most of my gaming is done early in the morning on the weekends. I'll get up and let my wife sleep in 

during the week I try to use my spare time for guitar


----------



## Seybsnilksz

I can't get enough of all the DOOM-Wads out there. Especially those with new music put into them.


----------



## Kimling

Just finished Mafia II for the 11148th time. Man, I love that game, and I get equally sad each time I see the end sequence...


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

Picked up the Witcher trilogy on Steam last night and got started on 1. So far the writing is hilaribad .


----------



## tacotiklah

^I have the first one and the combat and movement mechanics for it are so awful. Shame because I dig the dark vibes of the game too.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

They don't seem any more awkward than Dragon Age's were so far, and I managed to tolerate those long enough to finish the game. Hopefully the Witcher's don't get any worse.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Grand Moff Tim said:


> They don't seem any more awkward than Dragon Age's were so far, and I managed to tolerate those long enough to finish the game. Hopefully the Witcher's don't get any worse.



They get much better.


----------



## stevexc

Replaying New Vegas in anticipation for the 10th.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

stevexc said:


> Replaying New Vegas in anticipation for the 10th.



Same. I went with a glass cannon build using shotguns.

I have the WMX mod so I'm using the Pancor Jackhammer automatic 12g.


----------



## Captain Butterscotch

Star Wars: The Old Republic the last few days. I pre ordered it before it launched and was just so dissapointed. I tried it again in '13 and it still wasn't there yet but this last update seems like they changed a lot more. We'll see


----------



## texshred777

Far Cry 3. 

I can't believe it's taken me so long to pick this up. Amazing game so far, definitely a top runner for my favorite FPS.


----------



## Ralyks

Just beat Transistor for the first time. Also working through Telltales The Walking Dead Season 1, since Season 2 is going to be free for PS4 this month.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Ralyks said:


> Telltales The Walking Dead Season 1, since Season 2 is going to be free for PS4 this month.




Buckle in. Its one hell of a ride.


----------



## tacotiklah

Resident Evil: Revelations. I'm so surprised that this game hasn't been on my radar sooner. I friggin' love it. :3


----------



## BlackMastodon

Got Arkham Knight running on the PC since they put it back up on Steam. Seems to be running fine which is good, and this time I can do the side missions and get enough upgrade points to not get my ass handed to me towards the end (I'm playing on Hard).


----------



## Repner

Been looking at clips of the Super Famicom RPGs that never made it to the west. Really considering Seiken Densetsu 3 (have been for a while), Bahamut Lagoon, Live A Live, and Emerald Dragon when I'm done with Fallout 4.

For now though, Final Fantasy Tactics.


----------



## TedEH

tacotiklah said:


> Resident Evil: Revelations



I got a bunch of Resident Evil games in a bundle and tried to start up 5... just couldn't do it. The game plays so... clunky? And the first level or two feel incredibly unbalanced- I ran out of ammo immediately and spent most of the first few levels of the game running around helplessly until I killed enough people with knives, died, or ran into some sort of scripted triggers.

Maybe 4, or Revelations will be better.


----------



## MFB

4 is the absolute pinnacle of the series, and a game that I will buy any time they port it over for next-gen consoles. I want it to never leave me.


----------



## Mordacain

Halo 5, of course. And some minor story pacing niggles aside, it is billy badass.


----------



## Rosal76

TedEH said:


> I got a bunch of Resident Evil games in a bundle and tried to start up 5... just couldn't do it.



Resident Evil 5 is very, very heavy on firearms combat almost to the point of it being a military shooting game instead of how older Resident Evil games used to be They could have called it Battle Evil or Call of Evil. There are some cool things in the game like unlocking and fully upgrading the Smith and Wesson M200, not to be confused with the Smith and Wesson M29. When fully upgraded, the M200 is amusing to use because the unbelievable power is has over the enemies. To tell you the truth, using the fully upgraded M200 felt like cheating because many of the enemies, excluding sub bosses/bosses, die from one shot from that gun and your sense of desperation becomes non existent in the game. I only used it because I told all of the enemies that gave me problems on the first playthrough that, "I'll be back".  



TedEH said:


> Maybe 4, or Revelations will be better.



As what forum member MFB stated before me, 4 is the pinnacle in the series. Very, very adventurous game. Unfortunately, Capcom has not been able to release a RE game afterwards that could top or even equal 4. 

I love Revelations because it's old school RE. Good mix of creepy creatures and action. Be forewarned though, there are stages in that game that can be tough on Normal and just flat out annoying to beat on Hard.


----------



## soylentgreene

Captain Butterscotch said:


> Star Wars: The Old Republic the last few days. I pre ordered it before it launched and was just so dissapointed. I tried it again in '13 and it still wasn't there yet but this last update seems like they changed a lot more. We'll see



Glad Im not the only one trying this again lol. Im enjoying this new xpac so far. Curious to see where it goes. And its getting me more hyped for Episode VII


----------



## Ralyks

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Buckle in. Its one hell of a ride.



Powered through episode 2 of season 1 last night (that ended pretty disturbingly, but it IS Walking Dead...). Downloaded Season 2 (FO' FREE!) while I was at work yesterday (thank you PS app) and from what I'm seeing without spoiling it for myself, it gets even crazier. Something about Telltale games are just plain fun. I also have the first episode for Tales from the Borderlands, which is pretty damn amusing, and will probably play the Game of Thrones game if I can ever get around to watching the damn show.


----------



## wannabguitarist

Bought Titanfall about a week ago for $5. It's all I've done since  Kickass game.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just picked up a ps4. Been playing Warframe while waiting for Dark Souls 2 to come in from Amazon. Super fun time-killer/grinding game.


----------



## Audacis

Keep on going back to the indie darlings like FTL: Faster Than Light, Undertale and Binding of Isaac: Rebirth lately. Maybe it's down to not having a decent PC to run AAA titles on any more!

Soon though; I'll be back in the race. Picked up Fallout 4 and SOMA lately, and I'm really looking forward to getting a copy of Vermintide.


----------



## alinas

I love playing dinosaur games a loot


----------



## CircuitalPlacidity

I play chess.


----------



## Audacis

I just found out that my cheap-o mini-tower has a DVD drive. It's hidden behind a panel and has no eject button. (?)

So, I whipped out Command & Conquer: The First Decade and found that everything runs nice and smooth even without a graphics card! This will tide me over til the new rig finally arrives.

Also for the older titles in that series, OpenRA is a pretty good remake of the first two (and Westwood's Dune 2000) that works well online. There's a Tiberian Sun mod coming out for it; nearly done, but no release date yet. =/


----------



## Ralyks

On Episode 4 of Season 1 of the Walking Dead.
Also almost walked out of BestBuy the other day with used copies of Bloodbourne and Alien: Isolation. And probably will end up doing so this weekend anyway. I mean, Alien was only 15 bucks.


----------



## Thanatopsis

So many good games have come out in the last year that I'm having trouble keeping up with everything I want to play. Last few days I've been playing Mad Max. From what I've read the gameplay gets a little old and repetitive as the game goes on, but the graphics are definitely damn impressive.


----------



## asher

Working my way through the Legacy of the Void campaign. Co-op missions have been pretty fun, but they'll get stale soon enough without new maps...


----------



## Ralyks

Aaaaand got Bloodbourne. Also rented WWE 2k16 for a few days.


----------



## Rosal76

Ralyks said:


> Aaaaand got Bloodbourne.



You, my friend, have much patience. Props to ya. I don't have the game myself but my friend had it for his PS4 and I watched him play it. Man, did that game kick his ass and take his lunch money.


----------



## Ralyks

Rosal76 said:


> You, my friend, have much patience. Props to ya. I don't have the game myself but my friend had it for his PS4 and I watched him play it. Man, did that game kick his ass and take his lunch money.



Because it's Dark Souls III, if there wasn't already going to be a Dark Souls III 

Also, I feel like it wasn't a great idea, because I very well may end up with Fallout 4 by the end of the night. Also, I refuse to get Metal Gear Solid V until I beat 4, and, well, I should probably keep going at that....

EDIT: Yup, got Fallout 4.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

While everyone is playing Fallout 4, I still need my Tales fix.


----------



## asher

Most of the way through the Legacy of the Void campaign now.

Gameplay's been pretty fun, mass void ray wrecks everything (so do the teleporting fury DTs), but the writing still sucks.


----------



## Audacis

W40k: Space Marine. One of the most cathartic games I own, I think. That and some actual W40k with friends on Tabletop Simulator. I've also got DmC: Devil May Cry reinstalled now! Say what you want about how Dante looks, this game is a worthy addition to the series, and with better writing than the previous 4 games combined. (And considering the story is They Live retold for a modern audience, that's saying a lot about Capcom's own efforts (or lack thereof.))


----------



## asher

"Cathartic" is the best way to describe Space Marine  not like, stellar or anything, but damn did they get the feeling of being a Marine down. Animations and weight are amazingly well tuned.


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

Mad Max and Metal Gear V om PS4.

sometimes i have to take a break from one game and play another. so im balls deep in both for a while lol


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Fallout 4

Out for 9 days. 82 hours played. I'm ashamed but not really.


----------



## Audacis

asher said:


> "Cathartic" is the best way to describe Space Marine  not like, stellar or anything, but damn did they get the feeling of being a Marine down. Animations and weight are amazingly well tuned.




I actually got a little sad when I swapped my bolt pistol for the plasma pistol. I know it packs more of a punch, but all of the bolt weapons feel fantastic. And oh god, the assault sections. "No room for that jump-pack in here, Captain." is probably the saddest line in gaming history.


----------



## Ralyks

I just finished season one of The Walking Dead. Holy crap, I'm pretty sure how that ended effected me more than the AMC show ever has. Wish I knew spoiler font so I could talk about it. Anyway, on to season two. Oh yeah, and getting back to Fallout 4...


----------



## asher

Audacis said:


> I actually got a little sad when I swapped my bolt pistol for the plasma pistol. I know it packs more of a punch, but all of the bolt weapons feel fantastic. And oh god, the assault sections. "No room for that jump-pack in here, Captain." is probably the saddest line in gaming history.



Jump pack thunder hammer FTMFW. Tons of fun in MP skirmish, too.


----------



## Steinmetzify

New Game+ for Witcher 3....this .... got HARD. I was so OP at the end of the game and I've been wandering around doing little things here and there with no real worries...started NG+ and immediately got killed by a single wolf. This is going to be fun.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Mordheim has finally put out Warband progression and a campaign and it's so f*cking fun now. Stays pretty true to the tabletop game I'd say and it's a really good challenge. There's only auto saves so it doesn't let me use the crutch of save/load if things don't go my way. Just have to deal with it and use some strategy. Pretty pleased with this early release title, and I'm really glad it didn't just go by the wayside.

Highly recommend the game if you like turn based strategy or Warhammer titles, especially if it's on sale on Steam.


----------



## Audacis

Been playing a lot more Tabletop sim lately. I found a neat little tile-based strategy game from Ill Gotten Games on Steam Workshop called Pocket Tactics. They're trying to kickstart an official version, but for now, they're allowing people to 3D print the models, or play with them on Tabletop Simulator. It's apparently a companion game for the larger Wayfarer Tactics and the RPG Wayfarer: Things Beyond Wonder. I've not tried either of those yet, but Pocket Tactics is pretty fast and surprisingly deep, with roughly 20 factions with very varied play-styles. Your first few games, learning the rules, might take an hour or so, but they estimate that once you know how to play, you can go from setup to finished in 20-40 minutes.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished season two of The Walking Dead. Season 3 and the Michonne mini series need to get here. It was so good, I went ahead and got the Tales from the Borderlands season pass to tied me over my Telltale fix.

Also, while I normally dislike Black Friday, I managed to grab WWE 2K16 and Until Dawn, both brand new, for a total of 43 bucks. Been playing WWE a lot since yesterday, have to wait on Until Dawn to get shipped since it wasn't in store, but was only on sale until last night, so BestBuy ordered it for me at the sale price.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I got Transformers Devestation on black friday. It's a love letter to the G1 series to the point that I'm not sure if the errors are tongue in cheek or legit errors.


----------



## Repner

Focused more on Live A Live than Fallout 4. Seemed to be more in a JRPG mood. Just finished it today. Bloody fantastic and unique game.


----------



## beneharris

Audacis said:


> I actually got a little sad when I swapped my bolt pistol for the plasma pistol. I know it packs more of a punch, but all of the bolt weapons feel fantastic. And oh god, the assault sections. "No room for that jump-pack in here, Captain." is probably the saddest line in gaming history.



Yeah, why they don't let you always have that jetpack I'll never know. Its like the devs said "How can we make this game suck, really, really easily?"

Also that plasma pistol is so fun. Just span the cooldown button and shoot and its basically infinite ammo. Such a fun game.


----------



## Axel_Blaze

Fallout 4


----------



## BlackMastodon

BlackMastodon said:


> Mordheim has finally put out Warband progression and a campaign and it's so f*cking fun now. Stays pretty true to the tabletop game I'd say and it's a really good challenge. There's only auto saves so it doesn't let me use the crutch of save/load if things don't go my way. Just have to deal with it and use some strategy. Pretty pleased with this early release title, and I'm really glad it didn't just go by the wayside.
> 
> Highly recommend the game if you like turn based strategy or Warhammer titles, especially if it's on sale on Steam.


Can't get enough of this game. The other day after getting my ass handed to me on a mission, one of my Darksoul grunts lost an arm. A bit of a pain in the ass since I use my Darksouls as heavy damage dealers with 2H weapons, but I couldn't help but laugh since I named him "Wolfgang the Righty," and now he only has a right arm.


----------



## stevexc

Picked up Space and Medieval Engineers over the weekend, nifty building games. Will be interesting to watch them grow. ME feels a little barren but the physics are awesome. SE on the other hand is overwhelming.

Plus FO4. Obvs.


----------



## thedonal

Late to the party and not on next gen consoles yet, I got Fallout 3 downloaded from XBox live.

A few hours in and dying much more than doing meaningful things...


----------



## CircuitalPlacidity

Besides playing chess over the board I also have a ps3. Back in my younger days I remember enjoying the Oddworld games for PS1. So I recently downloaded Oddworld Abes Oddysee and Abes Exodus. I'm currently playing through those. Gonna grab Oddworld new and tasty assuming it isn't just a remake of the first game. Has anyone played New and Tasty?


----------



## Ralyks

CircuitalPlacidity said:


> Besides playing chess over the board I also have a ps3. Back in my younger days I remember enjoying the Oddworld games for PS1. So I recently downloaded Oddworld Abes Oddysee and Abes Exodus. I'm currently playing through those. Gonna grab Oddworld new and tasty assuming it isn't just a remake of the first game. Has anyone played New and Tasty?



Looooove New and Tasty. Grabbed it fo' free a few months back on PS4. Although, it's considered a "ground up" remake of Abe's Oddysey.


----------



## Ralyks

Beat Until Dawn last night. That was surprisingly good, enough to the point where I'm willing to go through and see what happens both when everyone lives and everyone dies. That, and get myself a platinum trophy that doesn't seem like it will take forever to get.

Also, downloaded Final Fantasy VII on PS4, so playing through that for the 20th or so time.


----------



## stevexc

Been playing through The Witcher 2 lately. So good. Combat is stupid fun.


----------



## coreysMonster

I have been swept up in the phenomenon that is Undertale. Man, for a little indie game that I expected so little from, it sure delivered an amazing, gripping experience.

I give Undertale a Spaghetti/10


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Mechwarrior Online came out on Steam.

Gameplay-wise its a great Mechwarrior game. The mechs feel really heavy and drive like tanks. The battles are slower and tactical, which I like.

Its free to play which can go either way. I've had fun with games like Warframe and Warthunder. We just gotta hope it doesnt become pay to win.


----------



## MoshJosh

So I rented Just Cause 3 for PS4, and I've got mixed feelings. . . 

I watched a few reviews before I picked it up, and so far they were right. . . theres a definite learning curve to the traversal, but its very fun when you get it right, and the load times suck. I can understand long load times for long cutscenes/story missions/set pieces but when I have to wait 1-2 minutes to retry what basically equates to a mini game. . . not exactly fun.

I don't have a lot of time into it, but I'll try to update when I get a bit further.


----------



## Ralyks

Suppose to be a patch coming out for Just Cause 3 that is suppose to help with load times. I almost rented it myself, but can't really get anymore games until I get a bigger hard drive for my PS4.

Anyway, just working through my way through FFVII on PS4.


----------



## Steinmetzify

NG+ for Witcher 3.....this is a LOT harder than the 1st time thru, and my super great armor counts for .... anymore so....


----------



## Repner

Replaying the whole Metal Gear series. Finished MG 1 and 2 and halfway through MGS


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

just recently finished Mad Max (PS4), and have been playing Black Ops III (XBONE). probably gonna download GTA San Andreas for PS4 tonight. since it recently released on another console, this time with trophies! i'll take any excuse i can find to play it again


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

but im also tempted to get Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy (XBOX) since a friend just gave me an OG XBOX for an early xmas gift!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Gamestop had a buy two get one free sales so I picked up COD: Ghosts and MLB 14: The Show on PS4 and Yakuza: Dead Souls on the PS3. Ghosts was adequate at best. Haven't played MLB yet (the last one I played was 08) and I really need to play Yakuza 3 since I've had it for nearly five years now.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Djimbo said:


> but im also tempted to get Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy (XBOX) since a friend just gave me an OG XBOX for an early xmas gift!



I got the last big Star Wars humble bundle and this was in it. It did not age well. KOTOR and KOTOR II are still wonderful though.


----------



## MFB

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I got the last big Star Wars humble bundle and this was in it. It did not age well. KOTOR and KOTOR II are still wonderful though.



Add Republic Commando to the list of SW games that is also horrendously dated.

I'm crushing through RE4 on Steam at the moment, and man, not having a controllable camera is absolutely terrifying for this style/game. Not to mention I forgot how badly headshots are needed to do any real damage.


----------



## Ralyks

On disc 3 ( or "part 3" since there's no discs) of Final Fantasy VII on PS4. Pretty much trying to get what I can to platinum the game before I go ahead and finish it (getting 99,999,999 gil seems to be the biggest challenge. Just grinding those All materia...)


----------



## stevexc

Witcher 3!

Also The Talos Principle's DLC, Road To Gehenna. Hands down, best (first person at least) puzzle game since Portal. Unforgiving and gorgeous. The DLC is even harder than the base game.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

I'm playing Rise of the Tomb Raider at the moment, great game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished DMC: Devil May Cry on the PS3. Nearly two years after stopping halfway through.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I bought CS:GO and then refunded it 15 minutes later. What a steaming pile of crap. The fact that it has such a huge following boggles my mind. You cant even fvcking aim.


----------



## JEngelking

Just started Wolfenstein: The New Order after getting it on sale, really fun so far! Also got Depth on sale to play with friends, which is also pretty fun, but can get a little repetitive.


----------



## blacai

Just updated the 'Star Wars - The Old Republic'. I don't want to pay subscripton, so f2p account... Get bored in two hours.

I will continue playing Civilization Series. Beyond Earth seems interesting.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I got GTA III on the PS4. Simply a port of the PS2 version, which is kinda disappointing. If they'd at least removed the loading between islands it'd be fine. But you get trophies.

And I completely forgot about that period in gaming where inverted vertical sights were either the default option or the only option.


----------



## Audacis

Inverted Y-axis is the only way forward... or back. 

Uh... Hey, I started playing Banjo Kazooie on my phone. On my phone. That's right ladies and gents, we live in the future.


----------



## MoshJosh

Been playing Until Dawn, and just borrowed a copy of Metal Gear Solid V. . .

Until Dawn is good, very linear as one might expect, but with some cool twists ie the butterfly effect and fortune totems. I have enjoyed it so far but haven't been able to force myself to finish it.

MGSV is awesome, but daunting. Kind of why I put it off for so long, you can sink a lot of time into missions trying to be as stealthy as possible. . . And when your trying to cut back on your video game time that's not always good haha. So far I am trying to be stealthy and passive, unfortunately I don't get to use a lot of the cool explodey type sh*t. . .


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

coreysMonster said:


> I have been swept up in the phenomenon that is Undertale. Man, for a little indie game that I expected so little from, it sure delivered an amazing, gripping experience.
> 
> I give Undertale a Spaghetti/10


----------



## Pweaks

I bought the Resident Evil 4 HD remake from the Steam Christmas sale. Even though I have always been a huge Silent Hill fan, for some reason I've never really gave RE a chance. Well, fvck me because this game sure is awesome! Now I have to buy the RE 0 HD remake that comes out in a week or so!


----------



## MFB

^ I actually snagged RE4 as well and it's such a classic. I forgot how good it truly is, and I'd pay for it on any platform.


----------



## Jaxcharvel

Pweaks said:


> I bought the Resident Evil 4 HD remake from the Steam Christmas sale. Even though I have always been a huge Silent Hill fan, for some reason I've never really gave RE a chance. Well, fvck me because this game sure is awesome! Now I have to buy the RE 0 HD remake that comes out in a week or so!



RE: 0 is more in line with the old style games with tank controls and such. RE 4 & 5 are the only ones in the new style (unless you count the abortions that are RE6 and the Revelations games). RE:0 is still an awesome game, but if you didn't dig the old style, I highly doubt you'll dig this.


----------



## Rosal76

Pweaks said:


> I bought the Resident Evil 4 HD remake from the Steam Christmas sale. Well, fvck me because this game sure is awesome!



+1.

For maximum enjoyment and amusement from the game.

1. Find Broken Butterfly revolver.
2 Upgrade to fullest level.
3. Laugh at sub bosses/bosses and their puny challenges. 

There are other more powerful weapons in the game like the Rocket Launcher, MIne thrower and P.R.L. but those are overkill weapons for me. Like using a sledghammer to kill a roach. The Exclusive upgrade for the Mine thrower is freaking awesome. When upgraded, the mines will track enemies. Enemies hiding behind walls are screwed because the mines will change directions and track them, even if they are not in plain sight. Awesome game with equally awesome weapons.


----------



## Rosal76

MoshJosh said:


> MGSV is awesome, but daunting. Kind of why I put it off for so long, you can sink a lot of time into missions trying to be as stealthy as possible. . . And when your trying to cut back on your video game time that's not always good haha. So far I am trying to be stealthy and passive, unfortunately I don't get to use a lot of the cool explodey type sh*t. . .



+ 1,000,000.

I'm actually thinking twice about getting MGSV. I understand it's a awesome game but I don't know if I can put in the required time to be stealthy. At the moment, I'm playing Sniper Elite 3 on Authentic difficulty and it's taking me 3-4 hours to complete one mission. The price for being stealthy. Being stealthy on Sniper Elite 3 isn't too bad but playing a long game like MGSV might break my camels back.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Rosal76 said:


> + 1,000,000.
> 
> I'm actually thinking twice about getting MGSV. I understand it's a awesome game but I don't know if I can put in the required time to be stealthy. At the moment, I'm playing Sniper Elite 3 on Authentic difficulty and it's taking me 3-4 hours to complete one mission. The price for being stealthy. Being stealthy on Sniper Elite 3 isn't too bad but playing a long game like MGSV might break my camels back.



You can go on a murderous rampage if you want. You can even ride in on a little mech or hijack a tank.


----------



## tacotiklah

Played Dead Space 1&2 and beat them both. Starting up on 3, but I'm not liking it nearly as much so far. The plot arc is wtf-worthy and it doesn't scare the hell out of me quite like the first two did. The first one was truly a terrifying experience, especially if you play at night with all the lights out and with a good set of headphones on. Two was more combat-based imo, but still had plenty of scares and whatnot.

In 3 afaik, there is no sense of urgency and the scare factor that made the first one great is just not there. I am disappoint.


----------



## TMatt142

tacotiklah said:


> Played Dead Space 1&2 and beat them both. Starting up on 3, but I'm not liking it nearly as much so far. The plot arc is wtf-worthy and it doesn't scare the hell out of me quite like the first two did. The first one was truly a terrifying experience, especially if you play at night with all the lights out and with a good set of headphones on. Two was more combat-based imo, but still had plenty of scares and whatnot.
> 
> In 3 afaik, there is no sense of urgency and the scare factor that made the first one great is just not there. I am disappoint.



yeah, 3 wasn't the "scare" that 1 and 2 were for sure. 3 Is a really fun one to play though since it's multi-player AND you can completely customize your weapons. My buddy and I came up with some pretty cool weapons. If you're new to playing it, try building an auto rifle type with electric nails, it will completely shred everything.

Really sad that that was the end of that franchise. DS 2 was the peak of it and it's still a game that I can throw in and fire up to have a good time.


----------



## TMatt142

Still grinding Destiny......


----------



## myrtorp

Audacis said:


> Uh... Hey, I started playing Banjo Kazooie on my phone. On my phone. That's right ladies and gents, we live in the future.



That is pretty awesome!!

I was just taking a walk thinking about re playing either Kazooie or Tooie!


----------



## MoshJosh

Just bought Transistor last night,so far it's pretty fun. Combat will take some getting used to as pretty much anytime I'm not in the "turn" mode(the pause time thing) I get powned haha

I really like the way the abilities work and how they can all be switched out or used to modify each other.


----------



## Alberto7

Finished Undertale a few days ago... I'm not even sure how to describe it. The concept of breaking the 4th wall has been completely redefined. It is honestly one of the best games I have EVER played, and a TOTAL emotional rollercoaster. It goes from deeply disturbing and unsettling, to absolutely heart-wrenching. I would have liked it to be a little bit longer, but then its mechanic of beating it several times in different ways would have become tiresome.

Oh, and the music... Jesus. One of my favorite videogame OSTs ever. The music itself is incredible, but there are SO many amazing and worthwhile re-arrangements and covers of the songs on YouTube, one could be listening for days.

I, for one, feel the hype is well deserved. Then again, as charming a game as it is, it's a pretty 'out there' kind of game, and I understand how someone might be a little weirded out by it.

PD: I am only partially ashamed to admit that I'm one of those people who did the genocide run... never again. I feel dirty and I must go repent for my sins, but I am still glad I did it, as there are plot details that don't appear in the other two runs. That, and the boss battles are so stupidly hard and fun.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

You gotta admit, the genocide run is worth it for these two things alone:


----------



## Sumsar

Just playing through the single player of Left 4 Dead 2. Brought it on the steam christmas sale for 3 or 4 $. Mighty fun killing hordes of zombies


----------



## Alberto7

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> You gotta admit, the genocide run is worth it for these two things alone:
> *Battle of a True Hero*
> *Megalovania*



It's funny because I had no idea what to expect when I first began playing it. And then those two things came along, and my pants dropped. That last battle... I shat myself. Megalovania is what I'll use from now on when I go to the gym.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished GTA III. Now just cleaning up some trophies and trying to 100% the game.


----------



## Asrial

Alberto7 said:


> It's funny because I had no idea what to expect when I first began playing it. And then those two things came along, and my pants dropped. That last battle... I shat myself. Megalovania is what I'll use from now on when I go to the gym.



Yeah, Megalovania is a beast of a tune. So is Spider dance and Bonetrousle. RichaadEB's renditions of them are kickass as well. 

But yeah, I played it right as Gamegrumps released their first episode of it. Holy cow, I was uneasy during the


Spoiler



omega flowey sequence. The battle with Sans is insanely hard and rewarding as well.


Though, I feel like the villains name could've been slightly different.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Dude.
Your name.


----------



## Asrial

Yeah...
I'm still O.G. in that regard! But for real, this is literally a portmaneau of my real name. The villains name is a portmaneau of the parents names... Which in turn is the angel of death. I refuse to think this is a coincidence.


----------



## Repner

Got myself a copy of Terranigma. I can definitely see where the hype comes from. Wow.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I finished The Witcher last month so I just started The Witcher 2. I love being late to a series and being able to play through them all one after the other.


----------



## Alberto7

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> Dude.
> Your name.



omfg  that's f*cking incredible! I really loved the name Fox gave him and his relatives. I actually loved the names in general.  I've also gone and seen more of Temmie Chang's work, and I find it lovely.

But yeah, RichaadEB's Undertale album kicks so much ass. I must have listened to it like a million times by now haha he's the reason I even know of Undertale's existence. I was subscribed to him since a long while back, and then I see him binge covering songs from this game called Undertale. Fast forward 2 months, and I'm binge listening his Undertale covers


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Repner said:


> Got myself a copy of Terranigma. I can definitely see where the hype comes from. Wow.



 It's my favorite of the Soul games trilogy (and one of my favorite SNES games period), and that says a lot considering Soul Blazer and Illusion Of Gaia are RPG heavyweights in their own right. Every couple of years, I revisit and replay the game to full completion, still fun to this day.


----------



## MoshJosh

Just beat Transistor, and really enjoyed it. I'm currently playing on NG+ and there is definitely more fun to be had just messing with all the power combinations!


----------



## Asrial

Alberto7 said:


> omfg  that's f*cking incredible! I really loved the name Fox gave him and his relatives. I actually loved the names in general.  I've also gone and seen more of Temmie Chang's work, and I find it lovely.



Yeah, my signature now references that piece of terrorweed. 
But Temmie is a neat artist, also did a GameGrumps animated back before undertale released.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I just got Battlefield 4 so we'll see how that goes. I've been looking for some way to shoot people online and this should do it.


----------



## ayaotd

Punch Club... So addictive.


----------



## MoshJosh

Alright, what should I play now? I love Transistor, and am thinking about going for another indie/PSN game but not sure. 

I'm looking for something thats cheap, fairly easy to pickup and play, and allows you to save often haha 

Anyway I'm considering Axiom Verge, Bastion, Volume, maybe Hotline Miami but I'm open to a bunch of stuff. . .

any suggestions?


----------



## Sofos

Randomly picked up The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Pt I for PS3 over Christmas, really really liking it.


----------



## Axel_Blaze

Revisiting Vanquish. I love that game


----------



## PunkBillCarson

MoshJosh said:


> Alright, what should I play now? I love Transistor, and am thinking about going for another indie/PSN game but not sure.
> 
> I'm looking for something thats cheap, fairly easy to pickup and play, and allows you to save often haha
> 
> Anyway I'm considering Axiom Verge, Bastion, Volume, maybe Hotline Miami but I'm open to a bunch of stuff. . .
> 
> any suggestions?



Axiom Verge was amazing. Yes, it's a bit of a Metroid clone, but this game does it VERY well. Worth it!!!


----------



## Ralyks

MoshJosh said:


> Alright, what should I play now? I love Transistor, and am thinking about going for another indie/PSN game but not sure.
> 
> I'm looking for something thats cheap, fairly easy to pickup and play, and allows you to save often haha
> 
> Anyway I'm considering Axiom Verge, Bastion, Volume, maybe Hotline Miami but I'm open to a bunch of stuff. . .
> 
> any suggestions?



Been meaning to check out Axiom Verge myself. But holy crap, do I love the Hotline Miami games.

Anyway, I finally did it. I platinumed Final Fantasy VII. I can now put it behind me for good (well, until Remake comes out). And just in time for GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas to be bundled together on PS4 for 17 bucks...


----------



## MoshJosh

I went with Hotline Miami. . . and so far I like it, BUT DAMN it can be hard! It's fun, especially when you're kicking ass, but at the same time can be very frustrating, especially when you a floor or 2 in and your stuck but don't want to quit and lose your progress.

I Just beat chapter 7, and yeah that boss wasn't to much fun haha

Anyway still a cool game.


----------



## Ralyks

MoshJosh said:


> I went with Hotline Miami. . . and so far I like it, BUT DAMN it can be hard! It's fun, especially when you're kicking ass, but at the same time can be very frustrating, especially when you a floor or 2 in and your stuck but don't want to quit and lose your progress.
> 
> I Just beat chapter 7, and yeah that boss wasn't to much fun haha
> 
> Anyway still a cool game.



Yeah, probably should have warned you that you're going to die. A lot. But there's something about that music building up to a climax, then the beat drops and you just start slaughtering mofos left and right.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Got Dragon Age: Origins off PS+ and figured I'd replay it to clean up some trophies.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Carrion Rocket said:


> Got Dragon Age: Origins off PS+ and figured I'd replay it to clean up some trophies.



Best game in the series. Dont wast your money and time on Inquisition.


----------



## Chokey Chicken

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Best game in the series. Dont wast your money and time on Inquisition.



I liked Inquisition. DA2 was the waste to me. Lame cookie cutter nonsense. Origins was the best though.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Best game in the series. Dont wast your money and time on Inquisition.





Chokey Chicken said:


> I liked Inquisition. DA2 was the waste to me. Lame cookie cutter nonsense. Origins was the best though.



DA2 was pathetic. You know a studio is embarrassed by a title when they flat out stop making planned DLC for it just to work on the next installment.

And I will pick up Inquisition because Morrigan is in it and it's so far the only RPG on the PS4 that I have any interest it.


----------



## MFB

Finished up RE4 tonight, claims it took 20 hours but it was probably more around the 15 mark since I would leave it running and do other stuff. Not sure if I'll do another run through for the other 4 achievements, but it's possible.

Now I'll probably finish up Castle Crashers or maybe KoTOR


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I still have to play Inquisition but I liked parts of DA2. It ironed out every complaint I had with Origins but then you had to play some of the main maps up to 5 times, sometimes more and that cave drove me insane by the third act. Origins had a much better story though. 

I'm playing the Witcher 2 now. So far so good. I loved the first one.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Carrion Rocket said:


> And I will pick up Inquisition because Morrigan is in it and it's so far the only RPG on the PS4 that I have any interest it.



Bloodbooooooorne


----------



## Carrion Rocket

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Bloodbooooooorne



Zero interest. Played Demon's Souls and that put me off those types of games. I have no desire to play a game simply for challenge.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Carrion Rocket said:


> Zero interest. Played Demon's Souls and that put me off those types of games. I have no desire to play a game simply for challenge.


I'm with you on this. I played about 5 or so hours of Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition on PC and just couldn't go on. It's just not enjoyable to me. I like a challenge, but I don't like when the game is specifically designed to be challenging like that. I can see why some people are huge fans of the series, but I just can't get along with it.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Carrion Rocket said:


> Zero interest. Played Demon's Souls and that put me off those types of games. I have no desire to play a game simply for challenge.





BlackMastodon said:


> I'm with you on this. I played about 5 or so hours of Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition on PC and just couldn't go on. It's just not enjoyable to me. I like a challenge, but I don't like when the game is specifically designed to be challenging like that. I can see why some people are huge fans of the series, but I just can't get along with it.




Different strokes I suppose. I love the huge sheets of stats, the massive amount of weapons and playstyles, and the sweet, sweet feeling of accomplishment you get every time you advance. I've never felt better about beating games than the Souls series.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Not to be that guy, but I've honestly never understood why people see those games as a challenge beyond getting used to the controls. If you're not taking the time to study your enemies, their movements, and paying attention to your surroundings, something is wrong, and it's nothing to do with the game, IMO.


----------



## TGOD

I've been playing Black Ops 3 way too much for my own good.

It's literally the first CoD game I've enjoyed since Call of Duty 4. If there were significantly less campers and teammates that had more than 3 brain cells, the game would be pretty perfect.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

TGOD said:


> I've been playing Black Ops 3 way too much for my own good.
> 
> It's literally the first CoD game I've enjoyed since Call of Duty 4. If there were significantly less campers and teammates that had more than 3 brain cells, the game would be pretty perfect.



The first Modern Warfare was arguably the last COD game that deserved the praise it got. I can't tell you how many hours I poured into mulitplayer on the PC. 

I did like how the story branched in BOII, but I've read that BOIII disregards everything in the previous games and is actually one of those "it was all a dream" type stories. So I can only guess the Call of Duty series is going back to anthology releases.


----------



## TGOD

Carrion Rocket said:


> I did like how the story branched in BOII, but I've read that BOIII disregards everything in the previous games and is actually one of those "it was all a dream" type stories. So I can only guess the Call of Duty series is going back to anthology releases.



Meh, I played a few story missions, but pretty much avoided it altogether. It feels really tacked-on.

I lost interest in CoD's campaigns after MW2, but I've always been focused on their multiplayer since I picked up the first CoD for PC on the day of it's release. It started getting crazy for me after MW2 to be honest.

The Specialist system and the sheer amount of content at release is what really got me with BO3, and the level design is also pretty on-point. 

My only gripe is that there are SO MANY campers. Most games aside from TDM boil down purely to players camping on or near the objective, and a few solitary players camping in the other two lanes of the map waiting for unsuspecting enemies.

The "3-lane" map design that CoD has followed since CoD 4 has always been a big downer for me. I really miss the more open, multi-lane maps from the original CoD days. The 3-lane crap makes for some really sterile, non-fluid games that usually result in multiple spawn-flips that focus almost entirely on pushing toward the middle of the map.


----------



## BlackMastodon

PunkBillCarson said:


> Not to be that guy, but I've honestly never understood why people see those games as a challenge beyond getting used to the controls. If you're not taking the time to study your enemies, their movements, and paying attention to your surroundings, something is wrong, and it's nothing to do with the game, IMO.


For me it's the process of trying to learn your enemy's movements/attacks that is tedious, not to mention how much you are punished for making one misstep and having to get back to that point to get your souls back without dying again. I fully admit that I don't want to take the time to be better at the game, but that's because I don't find it enjoyable. If I'm not having fun playing a game then what's the point?


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

BlackMastodon said:


> For me it's the process of trying to learn your enemy's movements/attacks that is tedious, not to mention how much you are punished for making one misstep and having to get back to that point to get your souls back without dying again. I fully admit that I don't want to take the time to be better at the game, but that's because I don't find it enjoyable. If I'm not having fun playing a game then what's the point?



I've quit souls games for weeks at a time haha. Its like being in an abusive relationship. They absolutely wreck you but every now and then you get that sweet, sweet victory thats just enough to keep you coming back.

I'm at the point now where I pretty much just pvp. I can steamroll almost every area in Ds1 and Ds2:SOTFS pretty quickly now. I really wish Bloodborne came out on pc


----------



## Don Vito

I hated Souls at first, but once you get past the initial hurdle and start taking down a few bosses it gets better


----------



## PunkBillCarson

BlackMastodon said:


> For me it's the process of trying to learn your enemy's movements/attacks that is tedious, not to mention how much you are punished for making one misstep and having to get back to that point to get your souls back without dying again. I fully admit that I don't want to take the time to be better at the game, but that's because I don't find it enjoyable. If I'm not having fun playing a game then what's the point?



1.) It's not like enemies have a thousand attacks to learn. It's not MMA. Most have 3 or 4 at best.

2.) That's why when you get enough souls, you don't walk around with them. You find a bonfire and level up or find a blacksmith who can improve your weapons, assuming you have the materals.


----------



## USMarine75

Terraria and Castle Crashers... because I have a 5 year old.


----------



## BIG ND SWEATY

Bought Bloodborne like a week ago after having an interest in it for a while but put off buying it because of how crazy hard everyone says it is and the fact that its been around 9 years since I've played a non FPS game. So needless to say its been rough. The first large mob encounter before you have to fight the Brick Ogre thats banging on the doors had me frustrated for the longest time but having trouble with it gave me time to get a pretty decent grasp on the controls and how enemies generally attack. 

I put in some more time today after I watched a video on the story and lore of Yharnam last night and managed to defeat the Cleric beast on the first try and I've made it to the Father Gascoigne fight. I haven't beat him yet but I've gotten close a couple times and I'll probably have it finished later tonight once I go back to it.

Overall I'm finding it to be pretty fun learning how to play it and I'm enjoying the challenge of it more than I thought I was going to. I don't think that its as immensely difficult as most people make it out to be and it definitely gets easier once you're able to level up your stats a couple times.

Along with the Bloodborne video I watched I also watched some on the story of Dark Souls I&II and it made me wanna play those and I'll definitely be picking up Dark Souls III when its out

Edit: Beat Gascoigne


----------



## Asrial

Is there anyone playing The Binding of Isaac here?
I'm deep into the Afterbirth expansion. Unlocking holy mantle for the lost made it so much easier to unlock godhead. But the Keeper is a pain in the arse to play. T_T


----------



## Pat_tct

a friend of mine lured me into trying Civ5. Played it for 50 hours in 2 weeks or so.
never thought that i would enjoy it that much. 
besides that i am playing splinter cell conviction as well as FF14:ARR


----------



## BlackMastodon

Pat_tct said:


> a friend of mine lured me into trying Civ5. Played it for 50 hours in 2 weeks or so.
> never thought that i would enjoy it that much.
> besides that i am playing splinter cell conviction as well as FF14:ARR


I picked up the Civ games as well as XCOM: Enemy Unknown last night in the Humble Bundle. A few of my friends play Civ 5 pretty regularly so I'll probably start playing with them.


----------



## gnoll

I dug up my old Heroes 3 cd's and managed to install it. Still an amazing game.


----------



## Pav

Resident Evil Zero HD came out yesterday and I bought it 30 minutes after it appeared on PSN. I never had a Gamecube or Wii so this is my first chance to ever play Zero. So excitebike!


----------



## MoshJosh

So I beat Hotline Miami. . . Went back and collected all the letters, yeah that was a pain haha, and got the secret ending. 

Cool game and I'm excited to pay the second one. . . Though I might hold of for a bit considering I binge played this one like crazy and I'm sort of burnt haha


----------



## asher

MoshJosh said:


> So I beat Hotline Miami. . . Went back and collected all the letters, yeah that was a pain haha, and got the secret ending.
> 
> Cool game and I'm excited to pay the second one. . . Though I might hold of for a bit considering I binge played this one like crazy and I'm sort of burnt haha



I need to do that.


----------



## tacotiklah

Season 5 of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls went live recently, so I've been playing a lot of that. Just got a nifty invite to beta test Tom Clancy's The Division, so I'll be trying that out soon. I'm a Tom Clancy fangirl (games/movies/books), so this was really cool to get a random closed beta invite for.


----------



## Sofos

Preordered Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth. Looks pretty good. Amazon now has a special "20% Off All Pre-ordered and New Games, for up to 2 weeks after release" deal. $48 for a new PS4 game. Awesome.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Now that I've finished the main story of Fallout 4 I really don't have any desire to keep playing until there's DLC or new really cool mods.

I started playing Arkham Knight and Evolve again, got ranked in matchmaking in the latter. Also playing a bit of Civ V with friends. So far I'm enjoying it but it makes me want to start playing Medieval 2 again.  Forgot how much I enjoyed Evolve, though. Really don't agree with all the hate that game gets, and as a result there aren't as many players online, so it takes away from it even more.


----------



## MoshJosh

Ok so just an update on my Hotline Miami escapades. I started Wrong Number, and I'm about 11 missions in, and. . . well I have mixed feelings. 

It seems to have a large emphasis on using guns rather than melee, and at times thats not a bad thing, but unless you have the reflexes of a spider monkey that just mainlined a bunch of PCP, you, like me, will probably die a f*ck ton. The most frustrating thing is definitely the off screen sniping/charging. The maps are much more open, meaning an enemy can shoot you from distances even outside your zoom range. . . pretty lame. Though, as I said before it can be a good thing, when you are charging around blasting dudes left and right with a shotgun you feel pretty cool.

I like the addition of new character/masks, but the game limits when and where you can use these new characters and abilities which is unfortunate. Love the chainsaw gun combo for sure, but I can only use it when the game says I can 

Oh and I've already experienced a few glitches. On the Ambush scene the controls broke, and during another mission a character clipped through the map. Neither of these made me lose any progress, but still kind of annoying.

Also, I'd say this one is a bit harder, more guns, more dogs, more thugs, more enemies total,and longer missions. . . its tough, and for me its taken away a bit of the pick-up-and-play-for-just-a-little-bit thing away. . . and it also seems to punish you for cautious gameplay, which I understand, but it makes it harder/tedious for those of us without lightning fast reflexes.

So far Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, is a fun game. It deviates from the first game in a number of ways, but these changes aren't always successful.

EDIT: Also thinking about grabbing Resogun next, looks pretty cool. I'm normally not into that type of thing (or good at that type of thing) but I'm willing to give it a try. . . any thoughts on it?


----------



## Pav

I received an invite for the Drawn to Death beta last night. I haven't even downloaded it yet but gameplay vids tell me this...will be interesting.


----------



## Don Vito

I'm trying to like Fallout 4, but I've been playing for about 3 weeks and all I've done is horde crappy pipe pistols and get killed by giant enemy crabs. I set the game to the highest difficulty because I thought it would be more fun, but now I can't get anywhere, and I don't want to set it back either.

I finally found some power armor though, which is giving me new incentive to play.


----------



## lelandbowman3

Playing RE: Origins, and it's just as scary as it was in 97.
We need more games like this.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

lelandbowman3 said:


> Playing RE: Origins, and it's just as scary as it was in 97.
> We need more games like this.



If you want a great horror game, pick up Amnesia.


----------



## asher

leftyguitarjoe said:


> If you want a great horror game, pick up Amnesia.







I watched Day9 play both Amnesia (one of the best playthroughs EVER RECORDED) and that expansion chapter (Justine?), but haven't really played them myself despite owning them. I do have Machine for Pigs, too...

Absolutely fantastic games though.


----------



## Pav

leftyguitarjoe said:


> If you want a great horror game, pick up Amnesia.



But which one? Dark Descent or Machine for Pigs?


----------



## asher

Pav said:


> But which one? Dark Descent or Machine for Pigs?



Yes


----------



## TheSeventhHead

Mass Effect 3... again.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I too got the humble bundle with all the Civ games. The games move at such a numbingly slow pace that I cant play them. Wanna build this building? That'll be 45 turns.

XCOM is the .... though. Its like alien-shooty chess.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Yeah my friends love Civ and I can't really understand it. Like it's fun I guess to play with them but it really just makes me want to play the Medieval 2 campaign because that is at least 20x more fun, and if I'm going to spend dozens of hours on a single campaign then it'll be that one.

Excited to give XCOM a shot, though.


----------



## BlackMastodon

XCOM is a ton of fun! Decently challenging, too, on a few missions. It's pretty fun naming squad members after your friends and seeing how they fair. So far myself and one I named after my best friend have both died, I came back as a zombie when I did, though, so my death was way cooler.


----------



## asher

BlackMastodon said:


> XCOM is a ton of fun! Decently challenging, too, on a few missions. It's pretty fun naming squad members after your friends and seeing how they fair. So far myself and one I named after my best friend have both died, I came back as a zombie when I did, though, so my death was way cooler.





That might be better than making Sims of all your friends and locking them in a house, or seeing who makes it furthest in Oregon Trail


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Replaying Ocarina of time. It only take a couple days but its still great fun. Majora's Mask is next! Thank the gaming gods for emulators.


----------



## Axel_Blaze

Blade and Soul


----------



## PunkBillCarson

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Replaying Ocarina of time. It only take a couple days but its still great fun. Majora's Mask is next! Thank the gaming gods for emulators.



Those games are actually pretty good on the 3DS which is what I play them on.


----------



## Repner

PunkBillCarson said:


> Those games are actually pretty good on the 3DS which is what I play them on.



Which is what I'm playing it on as soon as I'm done with Link To The Past. I didn't grow up with these games (had a Master System II then a PlayStation as a kid), so I'm making my way through the whole series.


----------



## MoshJosh

Downloaded RESOGUN, but just not feeling it. Gonna grab The Witness, or Firewatch when I get some cash. . .


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

PunkBillCarson said:


> Those games are actually pretty good on the 3DS which is what I play them on.



I havent bothered with handhelds since GBA  The screens are too small for my terrible eyes.


----------



## Ralyks

MoshJosh said:


> Downloaded RESOGUN, but just not feeling it. Gonna grab The Witness, or Firewatch when I get some cash. . .



Really? I kinda thought Resogun was good for a good quick pick up and play. Then again, it was free when I got it and can't remember going back to it recently...


----------



## TGOD

After grinding hardcore over the weekend (along with my brother playing on my account while I wasn't), along with Double XP, I finally got to prestige master on Black Ops 3.

This was from one of my first games on Friday:







Got 3 messages telling me to stop hacking, as well as to stop camping. On top of that, I got one report to my account saying I was hacking (presumably from one of the people that messaged me)

You all know the mantra of the current-generation of gamers:

"If you're better than I am at a video game, you're cheating"

(P.S. - Little bonus that makes that win feel so much better, it was me and a bunch of randoms against almost an entire group making up the enemy team. What happened to coordination?)


----------



## HurrDurr

Been playing a lot of The Witness lately along with Battlefield 4, SW Battlefront II, and recently started on Spec Ops: The Line.


----------



## Force

Been back to Ghosts for a bit of fun lately (don't understand the hate for this) but I'm still super obsessed with Minecraft. I've bought alot of the merch. They even just released a card game, yes i got that as well.


----------



## kootenay

I have been pretty addicted to Battlefront the past little while. Been working on getting my K/D over 1.0...haha Currently sitting at .95, almost there!


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Well, I beat Ocarina of Time and Majora's mask in a few days 

Luckily the steam sale happened. I just got To The Moon because I feel like being super sad and its really cheap.



kootenay said:


> I have been pretty addicted to Battlefront the past little while. Been working on getting my K/D over 1.0...haha Currently sitting at .95, almost there!



The only game I've ever had a positive win ratio is Rocket League. I have a 56% win rate. I've been playing online since Xbox Live launched in 2002 and have never had a positive k/d or win ratio in my life


----------



## stevexc

Playing Civ V a lot. Once I finish this turn I'll go back to Witcher 3...


----------



## tacotiklah

Kinda no life-ing it a bit for season 5 on Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. Already paragon 751 and my flash fire wiz just melts things in TX rifts. Feeling a bit burnt out on the game though, so I'm probably gonna play a lot less now and remember what a guitar is.


----------



## Nyx Erebos

I tried to pre order the "hot package" version of street fighter 5 in a few stores in Tokyo but they were all sold out  I guess I'll get the regular version.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Every game I play for the next couple months is basically just filler until Dark Souls 3 comes out.


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

I've decided to go through the Resident Evil series. Well, I skipped the 1st one. I never liked it as much. I'll do it eventually since i did buy the HD remake on PS4.

I'm on RE2 playing Claire B currently. Also, I'm playing the Dreamcast versions of 2-Veronica. I love having my health displayed on the VMU.


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

Force said:


> Been back to Ghosts for a bit of fun lately (don't understand the hate for this) but I'm still super obsessed with Minecraft. I've bought alot of the merch. They even just released a card game, yes i got that as well.



I've gone back to it as well. I preferred it to the ones after it. I love Advanced Warfare but the mech suits make it annoying after a while. And i honestly hated BO3 and sold it after a couple weeks. Now im back to Ghosts. and Battlefield 4 which never gets old


----------



## AndruwX

Xenogears right now, emulated on Mednafen.
It's pretty adictive for a JRPG.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

AndruwX said:


> Xenogears right now, emulated on Mednafen.
> It's pretty adictive for a JRPG.



Try out Dragon's Dogma. Its a fantastic JRPG with some epic combat.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Had gotten MoH: Warfighter from PS+ and decided to play it. I've already got a headache. Anyone else remember when developers were trying to make digital video stylization a thing (eg: pixilation, blur, screen tearing, etc)?


----------



## kootenay

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Well, I beat Ocarina of Time and Majora's mask in a few days
> 
> Luckily the steam sale happened. I just got To The Moon because I feel like being super sad and its really cheap.
> 
> 
> 
> The only game I've ever had a positive win ratio is Rocket League. I have a 56% win rate. I've been playing online since Xbox Live launched in 2002 and have never had a positive k/d or win ratio in my life



Nice, I play Rocket League from time to time on my PC.... I am fairly sure my ratio is garbage in it tho...haha!


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I got the Unravel demo. Its one of the prettiest games I've ever played.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished MOH: Warfighter. A bland, generic modern military FPS if it ever needed a face. I did like the mechanic of getting ammo from fellow soldiers but a single point in its favor does not a good game make.

I still have Tomb Raider to play. Might start that sometime this week.


----------



## MoshJosh

Finally cracked and got The Witness. So far it is pretty cool but quite frustrating at times. This game really trusts you to figure things out, and can up the difficulty on you very quickly, even within the same sequence of puzzles. 

Oh also, playing for long periods of time hurts my eyes. . .


----------



## alinas

After several months still playing happy wheels


----------



## Repner

Just about finishing up Phoenix Wright: Justice For All, and Link To The Past.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Unravel came out 47 minuets ago and its fantastic 

The biggest downside is that you have to buy it through Origin.

It is a seriously great looking game. Its absolutely gorgeous. The platforming and physics based puzzles are pretty fun and the emotional overtones of the story are both melancholy yet uplifting. I know that doesnt quite make sense haha. You are finding trinkets and helping an old lady remember her life. Its happy and sad.

Just watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVLzQMqWER8


----------



## Pav

Holy ...., those are some incredible visuals.


----------



## Ralyks

Wow, Unravel looks great. And something that my kid would get a kick out of watching. Although am I wrong in thinking the gameplay feels like the creators of Littlebigplanet made Limbo?


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Ralyks said:


> Wow, Unravel looks great. And something that my kid would get a kick out of watching. Although am I wrong in thinking the gameplay feels like the creators of Littlebigplanet made Limbo?



I've never played any of those games. The platforming isnt anything special. I mean, how special can platforming get? Its been the same since Mario  The game wins by being gorgeous and emotionally fulfilling.


----------



## bpprox22

Life.


----------



## asher

bpprox22 said:


> Life.



Man I hate that game. No powers, but no rerolls or respecs either!

(The actual board game is much worse.)


----------



## asher

Ralyks said:


> Wow, Unravel looks great. And something that my kid would get a kick out of watching. Although am I wrong in thinking the gameplay feels like the creators of Littlebigplanet made Limbo?



Yes  I'm curious what gives you that thought?



Repner said:


> Just about finishing up Phoenix Wright: Justice For All, and Link To The Past.



Gahhh I need to finish the PW series. Make sure to grab Apollo Justice and the Edgeworth games too.



leftyguitarjoe said:


> I've never played any of those games. The platforming isnt anything special. I mean, how special can platforming get? Its been the same since Mario  The game wins by being gorgeous and emotionally fulfilling.



LBP wins by being kittening adorable, super customizable, a great soundtrack and style. And a few good mechanics (good use of weight and balance, some good uses of grabbing).

LIMBO wins because some of its challenges are hard as balls, it's mega stylized, and it punches you in the feels.

On phone, excuse these quoting out of order!


----------



## stevexc

Started playing Undertale yesterday.

I think it's fair to say it's the most massively overhyped game of 2015, and yes I'm comparing it to Fallout 4.


----------



## Repner

Playing Dark Souls and Ocarina Of Time 3D.



asher said:


> Gahhh I need to finish the PW series. Make sure to grab Apollo Justice and the Edgeworth games too.



Yeah definitely. It's such a shame the second Edgeworth game and the newest spin off have no plans for a western release.


----------



## Axel_Blaze

Smash 4


----------



## Chokey Chicken

Just finished "Life is Strange." Pretty satisfying little story that had me invested. Not sure I'll play through again, but I felt pretty crummy with the ending I chose. Like, neither end is ideal, but I can't help but wonder if I made the right choice.


----------



## Axel_Blaze

Chokey Chicken said:


> Just finished "Life is Strange." Pretty satisfying little story that had me invested. Not sure I'll play through again, but I felt pretty crummy with the ending I chose. Like, neither end is ideal, but I can't help but wonder if I made the right choice.



The entire game is just one big feels trip. The majority of the choices are pretty ....ty, and I wonder if Squenix had all that planned from the start.

If so, well played...


----------



## NicePants

stevexc said:


> Started playing Undertale yesterday.
> 
> I think it's fair to say it's the most massively overhyped game of 2015, and yes I'm comparing it to Fallout 4.



I completely agree. That said, it was a great game, just nowhere near the Game of the Century that everyone said it was. 

Right now I'm playing Dragon's Dogma. It's awesome, runs much much better than the PS3 version.


----------



## Sumsar

Just started playing Dying Light again. I have to say, this is propably one of the best games of 2015.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Sumsar said:


> Just started playing Dying Light again.


Did the same thing 2 days ago after finishing red dead redemption


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Sumsar said:


> Just started playing Dying Light again. I have to say, this is propably one of the best games of 2015.



Its probably the best zombie survival game out thus far.


----------



## dr_game0ver

As long as you don't talk about the story and useless cliché bad guy...


----------



## Flemmigan

Been playing The Witness a bit each day until I get frustrated, and recently started Firewatch.

Before that, I finished SOMA. Fantastic game. Best ambient single player experience I've had since System Shock 2.


----------



## UnderTheSign

Been playing a lot of Terraria with friends lately and went back to Fallout 4. Plus, the occasional Hearthstone and WoW. Can't quit, never will


----------



## Ralyks

Flemmigan said:


> Been playing The Witness a bit each day until I get frustrated, and recently started Firewatch.
> 
> Before that, I finished SOMA. Fantastic game. Best ambient single player experience I've had since System Shock 2.




How is Firewatch? I'm puttin a 2 TB hard drive in my PS4 Tuesday, and every game you've mentioned above is on my list of games to grab with my new found storage compacity.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Ralyks said:


> How is Firewatch? I'm puttin a 2 TB hard drive in my PS4 Tuesday, and every game you've mentioned above is on my list of games to grab with my new found storage compacity.



Firewatch was great while it lasted. Its super short.


----------



## tacotiklah

Finally just ragequit Diablo III. It's been a long time coming, but with the rampant botting and bnet forums being more toxic than the water in Flint, Michigan, I just had about all I can take. Blizzard as a game company is now dead to me.

Firing up Path of Exile as I type this to get my dungeon crawler fix. :3


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Hitman: Contracts. Makes me wish Codename 47 ran worth a .... on my PC.


----------



## Rosal76

Carrion Rocket said:


> Hitman: Contracts.





My favorite game right there. Best Hitman game, IMHO. The amount of ways you can play the missions are amazing.


----------



## dhgrind

i'll be hitting up that division open beta. all the work friends are pretty hyped on it looks like destiny but hopefully not as poorly designed =D


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

dhgrind said:


> i'll be hitting up that division open beta. all the work friends are pretty hyped on it looks like destiny but hopefully not as poorly designed =D



I did the closed beta and will probably be playing the open beta. It can be a fun game. Just dont darkzone alone.


----------



## Ralyks

Just put in a 2TB hard drive last night into my PS4, reinstalled everything, redownloaded all the things I had to delete to make room on my old 500 GB drive... Still got 1.3 TB left 

Grabbed Firewatch and Axiom Verge last night, tempted to grab Soma and The Witness later...


----------



## asher

tacotiklah said:


> Finally just ragequit Diablo III. It's been a long time coming, but with the rampant botting and bnet forums being more toxic than the water in Flint, Michigan, I just had about all I can take. Blizzard as a game company is now dead to me.
> 
> Firing up Path of Exile as I type this to get my dungeon crawler fix. :3



Why were you on the Blizzard forums? What the hell is wrong with you 

Sucks to hear they're having massive bot problems, though.


----------



## NicePants

Just started Nuclear Throne too. I'm never going to reach that ....ing chair.


----------



## BlackMastodon

asher said:


> Why were you on the Blizzard forums? What the hell is wrong with you


Is it basically like the Barrens general chat of the internet?


----------



## asher

BlackMastodon said:


> Is it basically like the Barrens general chat of the internet?



Yup.


----------



## tstern66

Waiting for Dark Souls 3. Those games are so amazing once I learned how to play them. I played Bloodborne for months. Fallout 4 was great at first, but I got bored of it.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Been burning my way through the Uncharted collection for PS4. Good fun and paced well between action and story to the point where my wife's been enjoying them with me.


----------



## Tang

Rocket League on Xbox One. I'm absolutely terrible and loving every minuteof it.


----------



## ZeroS1gnol

Tang said:


> Rocket League on Xbox One. I'm absolutely terrible and loving every minuteof it.



I downloaded it yesterday...lots of fun! It's a lot more difficult than it looks.

I'm also playing Batman Arkham Knight and MGS V and have yet to finish Fallout 4...too many games...


----------



## Ralyks

Started Firewatch last night. Had to go to bed once I got to day 2, but really enjoying it so far. Beautiful game, too.


----------



## stevexc

Decided to give XCOM Enemy Within a shot. I am terrible at this game but I'm really enjoying it.


----------



## tacotiklah

asher said:


> Why were you on the Blizzard forums? What the hell is wrong with you
> 
> Sucks to hear they're having massive bot problems, though.



I went on there to get more info on the game and get build ideas and whatnot. Learned very quickly how broken the skills are and that general discussion is full of whiners, cheaters that gloat about never getting banned, and god knows what else.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Playing CS:GO again, started operation Wildfire with my buddy.


----------



## Pweaks

Finally got around finishing Resident Evil 4 HD Remake. For sure, it's one of the best games I have ever played and I'm definitely a fan of the series now. I have to say though, the game is not perfect. The QTEs were annoying as hell, especially the one after the mine cart ride. I actually put the game on hold for a few days because of it. Also some of the boss fights were a bit sketchy, the Salazar and Saddler fights were way too easy. I found the jet ski ride harder than the actual final boss.


----------



## synrgy

I obsessed over Elite Dangerous for a few months, but got tired of having to put in part-time-job hours just to keep a moderate level of progression happening, and just kinda stopped completely. Not sure I'll ever go back to it. Let alone the hours, I had to do so much out-of-game research and coordination and forum-ing, etc... It's just too much.

Got Star Wars Battlefront for X-Mas. Enjoyed it for a few weeks, but my interest is waning real fast, and I'm not sure I'm willing to cough up any money for any of the expansions, whenever they come out. This is pretty on-the-nose:



It's best mode (for me) was the dogfights, and they're tainted a bit by a bug/glitch related to the hero powerups. If you're in the Slave1 and get rammed by the Millenium Falcon, you die - it doesn't. Every. Time. Your damage level at the time is irrelevant to the equation. Blah.


----------



## Ralyks

Woke up early today and couldn't go back to sleep, so gave the first chapter of King's Quest a go. Amusing little game.
May grab The Witness, Soma, and two other major games with the little tax return amount I have strictly for spending, then not get another game until I beat everything I have.


----------



## Blytheryn

I got a new laptop on Saturday (ASUS GL552VW) and the first thing I did was buy the witcher III. I can run it on mediumish graphics and it looks fantastic, but the game blows my mind. It's so beautiful. The environment, the combat (I'm playing on hard mode, so you really have to think out and pick your fights). I think since Friday I'm about 10 hours deep, and I've barely scratched the surface of the game. There's 100's of hours of playtime in this game.


----------



## Pav

Pweaks said:


> Finally got around finishing Resident Evil 4 HD Remake. For sure, it's one of the best games I have ever played and I'm definitely a fan of the series now. I have to say though, the game is not perfect. The QTEs were annoying as hell, especially the one after the mine cart ride. I actually put the game on hold for a few days because of it. Also some of the boss fights were a bit sketchy, the Salazar and Saddler fights were way too easy. I found the jet ski ride harder than the actual final boss.


If you love 4, it would be worth it to play RE5. But do yourself a favor and don't play RE6; awful, awful game with endless QTEs.


----------



## Pweaks

Pav said:


> If you love 4, it would be worth it to play RE5. But do yourself a favor and don't play RE6; awful, awful game with endless QTEs.



I'm probably going to play the RE1 and RE0 first. I know they are not as action oriented as RE4. Have you played RE: Revelations? I heard they are more like the games before RE4.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Pav said:


> If you love 4, it would be worth it to play RE5. But do yourself a favor and don't play RE6



How funny, i was about to say the exact opposite...


----------



## Rosal76

Pweaks said:


> Have you played RE: Revelations? I heard they are more like the games before RE4.



I have played Revelations 1 and freaking love it. About it being like the games before RE4. Yes, I would have to agree with that statement. Revelations 1 does not have the "heavy gun fights with lots of enemies to deal with style" that RE4 started. Which I don't consider a bad thing, it just depends what RE style the player prefers. Some of the chapters on Revelations can be hectic when first played and can be down right frustrating on Infernal mode (Hard) but once you know the levels, enemy weaknesses, what weapons work best, etc, etc, etc, the game is awesome.


----------



## stevexc

Blytheryn said:


> I got a new laptop on Saturday (ASUS GL552VW) and the first thing I did was buy the witcher III. I can run it on mediumish graphics and it looks fantastic, but the game blows my mind. It's so beautiful. The environment, the combat (I'm playing on hard mode, so you really have to think out and pick your fights). I think since Friday I'm about 10 hours deep, and I've barely scratched the surface of the game. There's 100's of hours of playtime in this game.



I'm 64 hours in and maybe 2/3rds of the way through the main story, and I couldn't even begin to tell you how many more sidequests I have left, let alone the random other events. This game is a solid 10 out of 10.


----------



## Blytheryn

stevexc said:


> I'm 64 hours in and maybe 2/3rds of the way through the main story, and I couldn't even begin to tell you how many more sidequests I have left, let alone the random other events. This game is a solid 10 out of 10.



I agree. I was stuck pondering earlier if I did the right thing in setting the evil spirit from the tree free. Seemed like the thing to do given the circumstances. I love that if I get bored of the main quest I can just pull up into a small village and check out the notice board and see what the townfolk need done. Or just run off into the woods or sail the coast. I can't get enough! 

Also Geralt's finishers are so ....ing brutal.


----------



## stevexc

Blytheryn said:


> I agree. I was stuck pondering earlier if I did the right thing in setting the evil spirit from the tree free. Seemed like the thing to do given the circumstances. I love that if I get bored of the main quest I can just pull up into a small village and check out the notice board and see what the townfolk need done. Or just run off into the woods or sail the coast. I can't get enough!
> 
> Also Geralt's finishers are so ....ing brutal.



You'll learn that almost none of the game's choices are "the right thing", there's always a tradeoff, even if you only find out about it second-hand further down the road. For that quest I went so far as to pull up a few quest guides to see what the impact of freeing it or killing it would be and it was still tough.

Brilliantly done.


----------



## Blytheryn

stevexc said:


> You'll learn that almost none of the game's choices are "the right thing", there's always a tradeoff, even if you only find out about it second-hand further down the road. For that quest I went so far as to pull up a few quest guides to see what the impact of freeing it or killing it would be and it was still tough.
> 
> Brilliantly done.



That's what I hear. I really want to stay away from guides as much as possible this time around, and see where it leads me. I'm level 6ish at the moment, so still quite weak for the most of the area I'm in need to do some more side quests and find some better gear. I love how the game doesn't oversaturate you with gold. Every purchase be it for bomb material or some rare herb always feels like it's an investment and I love how his beard grows over time. It's the little things, and I love it. The alchemy, crafting and skill trees are so dense you need a separate guide. I'm sure there is one, but they don't sell those over steam


----------



## Ralyks

Had The Witness downloading this morning, gonna play it after work. Thats one down on my list of "buy these games, then buy nothing until everything is beaten". Soma is probably next, then decided between two or three between Final Fantasy Type 0, Shadows of Mor-dor, Witcher 3, MGSV (only reason I haven't is because I still have to beat, well, all the MGS's besides the first)... I think I thought about grabbing Sleeping Dogs and/or Far Cry 4 cheap....


----------



## canuck brian

I sadly went back to Dota2. My coworkers are all about Heroes of the Storm which feels like a MOBA without any of the things that actually made it fun.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Giving Smite a shot, feels much more substantial than League of Legends did and I'm enjoying it a bit more. The auto-skills and auto-item builders that you can assign are also super convenient. So far I'm liking it a lot more than I did Heroes of the Storm.


----------



## Ralyks

Started The Witness. I can see myself putting a good amount of time into this game. Although 8 - 9 puzzles in and I've already reached a stumper...


----------



## stevexc

Used my Best Buy gift card to get a Nintendo eShop gift card, and picked up Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies and the OG Pokemon TCG for GBC.


...guess which of the two I've been playing the most of...


----------



## tacotiklah

Oh yeah, loving Path of Exile. MUCH better build diversity and as long as you avoid global chat 1, the community is nice too.
Seriously, fear the global chat 1. Feels like a 4chan IM setup. 

But after trying a few builds out, I'm settling on a tornado shot/frenzy/magic find ranger. Things just melt almost instantly and leave currency and tasty items (but mostly currency) for my troubles. Feels good man. Can't wait for the new league to start on the 4th.


----------



## Pweaks

I started playing the RE HD remake. This game is so cruel. I spend an hour trying to figure out where the dog whistle is, then an hour trying to figure out where am I suppose to use it and then when I finally defeated the dogs and got the collar key, I got whacked by a zombie that I presumed was dead. But I definitely like it!


----------



## Ralyks

Sooo.... Best Buy had Shadow of Mor-dor GOTY edition on PS4 yesterday for 15 bucks brand new. So thats on store pick-up order....


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

American Truck Simulator has shattered my expectations. "How could this be fun?" I thought. Its so relaxing, almost to a therapeutic degree. You just pick up freight and obey traffic laws haha.


----------



## Ralyks

leftyguitarjoe said:


> American Truck Simulator has shattered my expectations. "How could this be fun?" I thought. Its so relaxing, almost to a therapeutic degree. You just pick up freight and obey traffic laws haha.



I was listening to the Giant Beastcast recently, and they had the exact same thoughts on the game. I almost thought they were joking at first, but, well, apparently not


----------



## MoshJosh

Been playing The Division beta, Firewatch, and Far Cry Primal.

Honestly I had fun playing the beta. Game is far from perfect but there was a lot to enjoy, and I'll probably buy it so I can play with my nephew.

Firewatch. . . man what a disappointment this has been. It has been glitchy as hell on my PS4. I know they released an update, but I haven't played since I downloaded the update because I was bummed out. The graphics are great if you are standing still, but there is terrible pop in(or whatever you call it when the environment doesn't load as fast as you are walking.) and on more than one occasion the environment just didn't load at all, and you are just standing in mid air. If the environment does load you might end up stuck in a rock to. . . so there is that. Anyway. . .

Far Cry Primal is pretty sick. It is definitely different not having guns or grenades, but it still plays like Far Cry. I'm having trouble getting the hang of the stealth, and there are a lot of things to manage i.e. your village, your weapon upgrades, your pouch upgrades, building weapons, building your village, taming new animals. . . Yeah a lot going on. I definitely recommend checking it out if you like Far Cry


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I got the new early access game Portal knights. I'm having a blast with it! I'm excited to see where they take it. Its a voxel based harvest-and-build game like Minecraft but much more fun IMO.


----------



## Ralyks

PSN has a really good sale up, so snatched up Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, SOMA, and Life is Strange for pretty cheap.


----------



## Sparkplug

just started GTA V again, going to do a different decision in the last mission.


----------



## Science_Penguin

Just got Fire Emblem: Birthright. I'm a big fan of this series, just for the fact that I'm one of those anime dorks, but apart from that, its a fun little turn-based strategy game with some real challenge to it, especially on higher difficulties.
So far, pretty interesting- with this game, they're deviating from the usual medieval fantasy setting and letting you take command of a feudal Japanese-type army.

Apart from that, I'm gonna try to finish Undertale at some point soon. It's a rare thing for a game to even come close to living up to the massive hype surrounding it, but... surprisingly, its a fun game with some rich story elements, pretty likable characters, and more than a few little hidden easter eggs. My kind of game, honestly.

Gotta say, though, between Undertale, Djent, Game Grumps, and... let's face it, Metal in general, it seems I can't ever avoid finding enjoyment in things that inevitably wind up being the subjects of stupid flamewars... But, I guess since I've been doing it so long, it doesn't affect me much anymore...


----------



## Ralyks

Science_Penguin said:


> Apart from that, I'm gonna try to finish Undertale at some point soon. It's a rare thing for a game to even come close to living up to the massive hype surrounding it, but... surprisingly, its a fun game with some rich story elements, pretty likable characters, and more than a few little hidden easter eggs. My kind of game, honestly.



I really don't play computer games anymore (I've always been a console, sit on the couch with a controller guy), but this game is making me close to making an exception

Anyway, finished episode 1 of Life is Strange yesterday. Its not bad, but I probably enjoy it because the misses is really into it.
Also started Shadows of Mordor. I can see myself putting a bunch of time into this one.


----------



## stevexc

Picked up Stardew Valley. This is the Harvest Moon I've been waiting for.


----------



## VBCheeseGrater

leftyguitarjoe said:


> American Truck Simulator has shattered my expectations. "How could this be fun?" I thought. Its so relaxing, almost to a therapeutic degree. You just pick up freight and obey traffic laws haha.



Amercian Truck Simulator is basically all i'm playing lately (I am a big ETS2 fan as well - same game basically). With a bit of raceroom racing experience thrown in when i have time. ATS with a g27 wheel and triple monitors, plus a cup of coffee and a podcast (or cheesy 80's radio built into the game) = bliss

Here's my setup, except these days i have the dash telemtry tablet right on the steering wheel so it feels like a real dash


----------



## thedonal

After weeks of my second play of Skyrim I needed a break.

Back to Minecraft 360 edition. New update. Nice. New biomes and lots of other stuff. Generated a new world and I got.....mostly snow! Oh well.

Im just installing Batman- Arkham Asylum GOTY. Borrowed it from a mate years ago And decided I really missed it....


----------



## coreysMonster

stevexc said:


> Picked up Stardew Valley. This is the Harvest Moon I've been waiting for.



I've been hearing a lot about it. Would it appeal to a fan of the SNES Harvest Moon?


----------



## BlackMastodon

Finished Arkham Knight for the second time last night, this time doing all of the side missions,
finishing it 100%. Those goddamn Riddler trophies and puzzles are a chore but I liked the Knightfall ending.


----------



## stevexc

coreysMonster said:


> I've been hearing a lot about it. Would it appeal to a fan of the SNES Harvest Moon?



I'd think so, but it's been a LONG time since I played the original. I'd say it's most similar to Friends of Mineral Town, the GBA game, but that seems to be considered one of the best in the series along with HM64. It was mostly after that point the games started getting really watered down and the characters started losing a lot of depth, which is fortunately something SDV has improved a lot on.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Scored WWE 2K16 for $40 after someone missed a sale price sticker. Now after the goddamn 5.5GB patch downloads I'll be making my CAW 'till 3 am.


----------



## Josh Delikan

The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD!

Before that, 100+ hours in Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Yes, total Nintendo guy here.


----------



## Fiction

Stardew Valley, jesus why have I been sitting here watering pixel plants for the past 3 hours.


----------



## Ralyks

Carrion Rocket said:


> Scored WWE 2K16 for $40 after someone missed a sale price sticker. Now after the goddamn 5.5GB patch downloads I'll be making my CAW 'till 3 am.



The only thing I don't like about this game is the AWFUL submission system (and I'm a big submission guy, so that sucked even more). Otherwise, possibly the best wrestling game since No Mercy.


----------



## Arkeion

OT, but has anyone in here sold their PS4 loaded with PT? If so, how much did you get? I just realized I still had PT on my console and I never play the thing lol

Currently playing: Rise of the Tomb Raider


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

I picked up Far Cry Primal the other day on an impulse buy...should have saved my money, it just feels like a Far Cry 4 mod. Every time I think about firing it up I just lose interest and go back to Fallout 4.

On a side note, I'm pretty keen for the Fallout 4 Automatron dlc sometime this month, and I've got half an eye on The Division. I hope it can solve a lot of the issues Destiny fell afoul of.


----------



## Ralyks

Arkeion said:


> OT, but has anyone in here sold their PS4 loaded with PT? If so, how much did you get? I just realized I still had PT on my console and I never play the thing lol



I put a bigger hard drive in my PS4, and now I can't get to PT  I saw those PS4s going for nearly $1000 when the game went off the store.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> I picked up Far Cry Primal the other day on an impulse buy...should have saved my money, it just feels like a Far Cry 4 mod. Every time I think about firing it up I just lose interest and go back to Fallout 4.
> 
> On a side note, I'm pretty keen for the Fallout 4 Automatron dlc sometime this month, and I've got half an eye on The Division. I hope it can solve a lot of the issues Destiny fell afoul of.



I cant wait for the Fallout DLC in Maine. That and the GECK is coming out soon so we'll get some super awesome mods.


----------



## Señor Voorhees

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> I picked up Far Cry Primal the other day on an impulse buy...should have saved my money, it just feels like a Far Cry 4 mod. Every time I think about firing it up I just lose interest and go back to Fallout 4.
> 
> On a side note, I'm pretty keen for the Fallout 4 Automatron dlc sometime this month, and I've got half an eye on The Division. I hope it can solve a lot of the issues Destiny fell afoul of.



Far Cry 4 felt like a Far Cry 3 story DLC or something. Primal was a bit refreshing in that it had a ton of new mechanics, unlike 4 from 3. (and even 3 wasn't much fun after Vaas' exit.) 

I feel you, though. Primal was great fun for a few hours, and then it just got tedious/boring and I haven't picked it up after I put it down my first long play session. Four was the same. I'd sunk so many hours into 3 that I was just sort of bored of the gameplay when I picked up 4, and there were no truly endearing characters to make up for it. 

Basically, three was fun, four was a snorefest, and Primal was nifty but burnt out real quick.


----------



## Arkeion

Ralyks said:


> I put a bigger hard drive in my PS4, and now I can't get to PT  I saw those PS4s going for nearly $1000 when the game went off the store.



I played on it some yesterday, so it's definitely accessible on my system. I'm a sissy when it comes to scary vidya though, so I just played a couple minutes lol

Fired up the ol' WoW machine this morning. Got a bum index finger so I thought I'd chill out in Azeroth for old time's sake. It's amazing to feel those warm fuzzies when you fire up WoW. It'll be short lived as I believe they've ruined the game, but I still love to level.


----------



## Alberto7

I just finished Gone Home in one sitting (very short game). That was an absolutely brutal assault on my emotions, and the stellar writing/dialogue and voice acting were the culprits. Great game, if predictable, but great game nonetheless. I have slightly mixed feelings about the horror element to it (kept asking myself "is it or isn't it horror?" throughout the whole game), but I can't fathom the game having had the impact it did on me without that element.

Up next is Life is Strange (thank you, Square-Enix Steam sale )


----------



## Chokey Chicken

Alberto7 said:


> I just finished Gone Home in one sitting (very short game). That was an absolutely brutal assault on my emotions, and the stellar writing/dialogue and voice acting were the culprits. Great game, if predictable, but great game nonetheless. I have slightly mixed feelings about the horror element to it (kept asking myself "is it or isn't it horror?" throughout the whole game), but I can't fathom the game having had the impact it did on me without that element.
> 
> Up next is Life is Strange (thank you, Square-Enix Steam sale )



I loved both games. The horror element was lame in gone home though. A lot of undue stress. 

Life is Strange is way more fantastic. I played through it all at once because I was just damn curious about what was going to happen next. I can't remember how well the ending was received in general, but I really liked it. I really want to do another playthrough and see how it plays out knowing what effects what. Do yourself a favor and don't read ANY into it. Tons of "oh ...." moments.


----------



## myrtorp

Me and two friends picked up Grim Dawn, old school-kinda action RGP. Made by the Titan Quest guys, its basically Titan Quest 2, but with a different name and setting. Highly recommended


----------



## Ralyks

Got a deal on Final Fantasy X/X-2 Remastered and Final Fantasy Type-0 HD for PS4. Starting FFX again.


----------



## Childofthecornsyrup

Admittedly, I got Pokemon Yellow the morning it was released on the Nintendo Market. Also Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, Hyrule Warriors (eagerly awaiting it's 3DS counterpart), and Wind Waker. And, whilst bored, I was browsing the 3DS digital market and came across a game I hadn't seen in over a decade+.
Earthworm Jim.


----------



## Berti_smb

Just finished Firewatch, 4-5 hours gameplay, great game and recommendation for all of you guys


----------



## Arkeion

Probably gonna play some of Rise of the Tomb Raider this weekend. I've had it for months and never opened it. I was extremely let down by the new NFS. I thought Rivals was fun as hell.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Arkeion said:


> Probably gonna play some of Rise of the Tomb Raider this weekend. I've had it for months and never opened it. I was extremely let down by the new NFS. I thought Rivals was fun as hell.



I need to do the same thing! Played through Tomb Raider and ready to do Rise now!


----------



## Ralyks

Anybody play Salt and Sanctuary yet? Thinking about trying it, been told its like a 2D Dark Souls.


----------



## MoshJosh

Really wanting to try Salt and Sanctuary, heard about it through Lobos jr. (a streamer on twitch known for dark souls runs) and it looks really cool. My only worry is the learning curve, I don't have a lot of time to put into gaming with school, the time I'm already putting into The Division, and Dark Souls 3 on the horizon. . . but if I can scrape together the cash I might buy it.

Hit me up if anyone has it and your thoughts!


----------



## MoshJosh

So I ended up buying Salt and Sanctuary. So far so good. Its definitely harder than I thought it would be. I'm generally not good at twitchy 2D stuff, but since shields seem viable I'm doing alright haha


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I got Farcry 4 in hoping to entertain myself while waiting for Dark Souls 3.

I just want Dark Souls so bad. Its ridiculous that the japanese get it 3 weeks early.


----------



## Ralyks

They had Manhunt on PS4. I... I couldn't help it...


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Ralyks said:


> They had Manhunt on PS4. I... I couldn't help it...



Oh man. That game was insane for its time.


----------



## xvultures

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Oh man. That game was insane for its time.



The pigman fights used to scare the living daylights out of me.


----------



## Maybrick

I was playing The Witcher 3 but my friend bought me Rocket League (which I never bought myself specifically because I didn't want to get addicted to it) and now thats all I've been playing. Well that and The Division!

I feel bad that I've neglected TW3 but I'm just so hooked on RL


----------



## Alberto7

Just finished chapter 4 (of 5) of Life is Strange. This game is a goddamn roller coaster. It's absolutely great so far, albeit very slow paced. So moody and atmospheric. I love how modern and relatable its setting is, and character development is faannnntasstic. Can't wait to play episode 5 some time this week!


----------



## myrtorp

I've been playing Thief 3 Deadly Shadows. What a nice old game!  When first starting up I couldnt climb ladders, and read that you have to set the screen at 60Hz for it to work normally haha!
Yesterday I entered Shalebrige Cradle, still as spooky as I remembered, the atmosphere is awesome.

On the other hand I've been playing Chivalry almost everyday, im at 1200 hours and I think it's time to take breaks, only play on weekends. I've realized why I like it so much, it's because it gives me kicks, my heart rate increase, and it really feels physically good to play it, especially the first 15 minutes or so, but doing this 3-4 times a day is too much, sometimes i get really tired after playing aswell. I think it's a minor addiction!


----------



## Ralyks

Alberto7 said:


> Just finished chapter 4 (of 5) of Life is Strange. This game is a goddamn roller coaster. It's absolutely great so far, albeit very slow paced. So moody and atmospheric. I love how modern and relatable its setting is, and character development is faannnntasstic. Can't wait to play episode 5 some time this week!



Started this not long ago when they had all 5 epsiodes on sale recently. Played through Episode 1, enjoyed it so far. Will hopefully get back to it soon, it was pretty cool, and its nice when I have games that the lady can get into.


----------



## asher

I need to sit down and play LiS, but it's not often I feel willing to be run over by an emotional freight train... so it hasn't happened yet.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

asher said:


> I need to sit down and play LiS, but it's not often I feel willing to be run over by an emotional freight train... so it hasn't happened yet.



I got a few hours into it and just kinda stopped. It didnt grab me as hard as I thought it would.


----------



## Alberto7

Ralyks said:


> Started this not long ago when they had all 5 epsiodes on sale recently. Played through Episode 1, enjoyed it so far. Will hopefully get back to it soon, it was pretty cool, and its nice when I have games that the lady can get into.



Yep, that's when I got the game as well. It was the only reason I got it, really, as I had never even heard it mentioned before. It's like Gone Home meets... Steins;Gate? 

I like it better and better with each chapter I go through. It's an extremely tragic story so far though. As asher said, you gotta be ready for it. Like, putting yourself in the shoes of any of those characters will break you inside.  Chapter 4 takes the hypothetical bat and keeps beating you with it and doesn't really know when to stop.

One of the major things that I feel hurts the game the most, is the lip syncing. It's practically non-existent, and can take away from the otherwise polished and super artsy feel of it, and can plunge the character models into somewhat of an uncanny valley. It's a shame, because the voice acting is great for the most part, and I really like the dialogue. I thought I'd get used to it, since it's just technical, (kinda like getting used to crappy graphics) but sometimes when a character is speaking I can't help but stare at their mouths... not moving, and it bothers me a bit.

It isn't perfect, and there are a few other little things that bother me, but it's a high quality game and a well told story through and through. I'd recommend it to anybody. Will report back with a final thought once I finish the last chapter.

With that out of the way: Chloe.  We love Chloe.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Played inFamous - First Light (read up and seems like it makes just as much sense to play before Second Son as after), having a blast going back and leveling all of my powers in the arenas.

Everything's really fluid, easy to get into. Definitely looking forward to Second Son now!


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

And if you guys like Life is Strange, the Telltale games are worth a shot. The Walking Dead was incredible and I'm a good ways through Tales From the Borderlands. They do some good work.


----------



## Ralyks

leftyguitarjoe said:


> And if you guys like Life is Strange, the Telltale games are worth a shot. The Walking Dead was incredible and I'm a good ways through Tales From the Borderlands. They do some good work.



I love and played through all of Walking Dead so far (except for the Michonne series) and eagerly awaiting season 3. I can kinda keep up with the show, but I zoomed through the Telltale games. Phenomenal games.

Also on episode 3 of Tales From The Borderlands, and it's just as fantastic. I started Kings Quest as well which is quite good. And I just Game of Thrones sitting there for when I finally catch up on the show.


----------



## MoshJosh

Just beat Salt and Sanctuary, think it took about 14 hours total. . . Pretty cool game for sure, definitely recommend to souls fans.


----------



## vansinn

I'm playing the ultimate game every day: Coping with life


----------



## Kimling

I just started playing this little game by a polish developer called The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt.
Do not know if anyone of you have heard about it, but it is pretty good...


----------



## Ralyks

vansinn said:


> I'm playing the ultimate game every day: Coping with life



This game would be so much better with mods....


----------



## Alberto7

vansinn said:


> I'm playing the ultimate game every day: Coping with life



Playing videogames is how I cope with the game of life. *Grows neck beard*


----------



## asher

Ralyks said:


> This game would be so much better with mods....



My kingdom for a re-roll!


----------



## Pav

MoshJosh said:


> Just beat Salt and Sanctuary, think it took about 14 hours total. . . Pretty cool game for sure, definitely recommend to souls fans.


That's good to know, I was looking at Salt and Sanctuary thinking it looked interesting.


Anyhoo, after playing the demo of Unravel, my girlfriend insisted on buying it. We pounded through the entire game in two days and the ending had her in tears. It's a simple platformer but the incredible visuals and sentimental theme made it memorable.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Pre-ordered my copy of Total War: Warhammer. And now we play the waiting game (the worst game there is)...


----------



## stevexc

Finally getting around to playing Dark Souls.

I am terrible at this game.


----------



## Blytheryn

stevexc said:


> Finally getting around to playing Dark Souls.
> 
> I am terrible at this game.



I bought the new DS, having never played it before... And I refunded it after about an hour. Not that it's a .... game, I just don't have a game pad, and I feel like I'm not used to that kind of gaming. Might buy it again later though!


----------



## Ralyks

Anyone play the new Ratchet and Clank yet? I feel like a new platformer would be refreshing at this point.


----------



## asher

stevexc said:


> Finally getting around to playing Dark Souls.
> 
> I am terrible at this game.



I needed to veg and started watching Day9 play Dark Souls III, and now I really kind of want to get the series.


----------



## stevexc

asher said:


> I needed to veg and started watching Day9 play Dark Souls III, and now I really kind of want to get the series.



It's fun, unforgiving, punishing, and awesome. It's like playing a tele through a single-knob tube amp... reveals all of your sloppiness.

I'm like 6 hours in and I just got past the first boss with the help of a few different videos/guides/friends' advice. 

Apparently DS1 and DS3 are the ones to get if you're on PC, but it's almost mandatory to use a controller.


----------



## asher

I have a decent idea what I'm getting into  I seem to be acquiring a taste for this kind of thing. I honestly think it might be related to getting diagnosed with ADHD in November and doing medication for it, because I also used to be really allergic to any kind of grinding or farming...

I do have a 360 controller to use yeah. No way would I try this with mouse and keyboard!

Part of it is maybe the early stages of III I was watching are gorgeous and sweeping.


----------



## awake69

I am having the time of my life playing the PS4 Ratchet and Clank!! As a fan of the original PS2 series and the PS3 "Future" series, the PS4 version (the game based on the movie based on the game) takes all the fun aspects of what came before and ups the game play and visuals exponentially! It's actually surpassing my expectations and I really hope this is just the beginning for R&C on the PS4 platform.


----------



## Ralyks

awake69 said:


> I am having the time of my life playing the PS4 Ratchet and Clank!! As a fan of the original PS2 series and the PS3 "Future" series, the PS4 version (the game based on the movie based on the game) takes all the fun aspects of what came before and ups the game play and visuals exponentially! It's actually surpassing my expectations and I really hope this is just the beginning for R&C on the PS4 platform.



Awesome, that answers my question


----------



## thedonal

I finally got around to Dead Space 3. Jeebus it has it's frustrating moments.

I tend to switch the HexBox off at the point I die after shouting C**t a lot. Christ knows what the neighbours think of me!!

Great continuation of the story with amazing visuals and voice acting. Does tend to get a bit bleak though...


----------



## BlackMastodon

I've had Dead Space 3 for almost year and still haven't touched it. Might give it a shot today.


----------



## thedonal

It is good. But all the reviews are right. It does like to hit you with frustrating sequences. 

Befor playing, I have to confess on having to play through dead space 2 on easy. Two attempts on normal and I had next to no ammo at the end- making it virtually impossible!! But DS 2 on normal is like DS1 on hard. But i had to have it done before starting no.3..


----------



## Maybrick

BlackMastodon said:


> I've had Dead Space 3 for almost year and still haven't touched it. Might give it a shot today.



Its not a bad game but its a definitely more of an action/shooter game with horror elements to it compared to DS1 and DS2.


----------



## thedonal

The icy setting is a bit of a break from the deathly dark corridors of the first two. I had to stop plying Dead Space 2 for a bit as it was giving me SAD!


----------



## Jarmake

Lately I've been playing GTA V and FarCry Primal. GTA V is actually the first one since original gta that I've enjoyed enough to play much. It somehow all just works in this case.

FarCry Primal is quite nice too. I have enjoyed the previous FC games to the max and ths doesn't seem to be different for me. This one feels just fresh, I've never played anything that made me be a caveman before. The difficulty level is also a bit steeper at first, since there's no firearms or high power scopes on the weapons. Got to give some credit to ubisoft montreal for seriously trying something different. What's next, muskets? Maybe farcry in the wild west?


----------



## stevexc

I'm playing the waiting game.


----------



## Fiction

Been back into Guild Wars 2.. Forgot how full on the WvW could be, I never really made it far, but i've probably casually played an hour or two for the past 2 weeks and have made it near endgame. I'm a very casual player so I like the quick progress as opposed to the challenge haha, world exploration is pretty cool too. Plenty of goals post level cap though, i just never seem to actually make it to level cap on mmos.


----------



## asher

Fiction said:


> Been back into Guild Wars 2.. Forgot how full on the WvW could be, I never really made it far, but i've probably casually played an hour or two for the past 2 weeks and have made it near endgame. I'm a very casual player so I like the quick progress as opposed to the challenge haha, world exploration is pretty cool too. Plenty of goals post level cap though, i just never seem to actually make it to level cap on mmos.



Been playing a crapton since last summer or so.

They *just* dropped a big patch on Tuesday, and have linked servers together for WvW population purposes - so you're seeing big queues like the old days now!


----------



## Maybrick

Fiction said:


> Been back into Guild Wars 2.. Forgot how full on the WvW could be, I never really made it far, but i've probably casually played an hour or two for the past 2 weeks and have made it near endgame. I'm a very casual player so I like the quick progress as opposed to the challenge haha, world exploration is pretty cool too. Plenty of goals post level cap though, i just never seem to actually make it to level cap on mmos.



I've done the same. I dont know if you bought the latest expansion but for anyone that has, you get a free level 80 character boost. 

The game is incredible and the soundtrack just blows my mind. 

Anything composed by Jeremy Soule is incredible, definitely my favorite composer for video game soundtracks.


----------



## Asrial

I bought Enter the Gungeon in a drunken stupor. Loving it so far!

.... the wall!


----------



## schwiz

Hello fellow gamers! Once upon a time I was a big gamer, but went on a decade long hiatus and am now looking to get back into it. I currently am playing CSGO and TF2. Can someone recommend me a newer RPG that people are playing these days? Would like a game with decent character progression and story line. Any thoughts?


----------



## Blytheryn

schwiz said:


> Hello fellow gamers! Once upon a time I was a big gamer, but went on a decade long hiatus and am now looking to get back into it. I currently am playing CSGO and TF2. Can someone recommend me a newer RPG that people are playing these days? Would like a game with decent character progression and story line. Any thoughts?



The Witcher III.


----------



## asher

Maybrick said:


> I've done the same. I dont know if you bought the latest expansion but for anyone that has, you get a free level 80 character boost.
> 
> The game is incredible and the soundtrack just blows my mind.
> 
> Anything composed by Jeremy Soule is incredible, definitely my favorite composer for video game soundtracks.



Though as a note, the expansion soundtrack wasn't Soule, but still has good stuff.


----------



## Maybrick

asher said:


> Though as a note, the expansion soundtrack wasn't Soule, but still has good stuff.



Yeah I noticed that and agree that it still awesome stuff.


----------



## MajorTom

I'm still slowly but surely working my way through Fallout 4, truth be told other than Fallout 4 and Rocksmith 2014 there have not been any games released or advertised on any platform that interest me, or have sparked my curiosity, and I do put effort into looking for games, as two games is a pretty pathetic collection of games.


----------



## Blytheryn

I feel really bad I've been neglecting TW3 for DS3 these days, but damn I can't get enough of getting one hit by skeletons wearing skirts.


----------



## myrtorp

I recently started playing more Age of Empires 2 with my friend. It's 11 PM and we agree on just one game. 3 AM we are done lol. Damn Age 2!


----------



## asher

I did some for lols AoE2 lan games a few years ago, right after it came out in on Steam with the hi-res mod.

God I forgot how much the UI sucked  RTS games have come a long, long way...


----------



## myrtorp

asher said:


> I did some for lols AoE2 lan games a few years ago, right after it came out in on Steam with the hi-res mod.
> 
> God I forgot how much the UI sucked  RTS games have come a long, long way...



I might be slightly blind to that because of my nostalgia love for it, but that map is pretty fugly 

I just bought the second DLC for it now. Sigh, time for some more!


----------



## asher

Oh I played the ever living .... out of it and Age of Kings as a kid. But coming back to it after StarCraft II is... rough


----------



## lelandbowman3

Playing Alien: Isolation at the moment. Pretty intense. I have a home theater system, so the atmosphere and use of sound and music is pretty unnerving and adds a sick dimension to the game. There's a genuine feeling of dread that hangs around as you try to navigate this broken down station in the middle of space where the inhabitants are violent scavengers that got left on board when it went dark. Not to mention the horrible sounds coming from inside the ventilation system


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Got Twisted Metal: Black on the PS4. Played it for about five minutes and then found out that cheats where still enabled so I blew through a few character stories.

Picked up Dragon Age: Inquisition. ....ing sick of fighting bears and hate that health no longer regenerates outside of combat. Other than that, I'm enjoying it so far.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Hyper Light Drifter. This game is awesome! Think Zelda mixed with Dark Souls.


----------



## Alberto7

Finally finished the last episode of Life is Strange. Never playing this again, ever. I have never seen a game with an ending so perfectly crafted to break the player and crush his heart into a million pieces. It's a great ending, from a storytelling point of view, but holy f*ck do you just feel like sh*t no matter which ending you choose. One made me feel less crap than the other one, but they're both crushing.

I wish they would have explained some things, but I feel like the main thing that I am thinking about


Spoiler



(where her powers come from)


 was left open ended on purpose and subtly hinted at so that the player can make their own conclusions.

Verdict: great game, but it is EVIL.


----------



## geekusa

Dynasty Warriors Gundam: Reborn.
Go ahead and judge.


----------



## schwiz

I'm late to the party, but I just started Skyrim on Sunday. So far this game is pretty awesome! ...however, it takes forever to get anywhere on the map.


----------



## Spicypickles

I just restarted a Magic only run of skyrim a few days ago.


I've got all the expansions on it and I really feel like I could play this game forever and never get tired of it.


----------



## beerandbeards

I just restarted Witcher 3 after like a year. Forgot how fun it is and the expansion is now available so should give me more to do!


----------



## mrspacecat

Dwarf Fortress and Dark Souls II. I really don't like the world building of Dark Souls II, so I periodically try and tackle it. I might be getting number 3 for PC soon, but the anti-cheat system still seems pretty bugged.


----------



## Sumsar

Restarted Metro 2033, which still rocks!
Will play through Metro Last Light afterwards


----------



## robski92

> Restarted Metro 2033, which still rocks!
> Will play through Metro Last Light afterwards



Such good games! They are easily some of my favorites. The book is very good as well!


----------



## Extreme Rhinoceros

Recently picked up a copy of Borderlands: The Pre Sequel ad I'm loving it so far. I played the sh!t out of BL 1 and 2 and tps isn't nearly as bad as they say - the new stuff is super fun and the old stuff is as awesome as ever


----------



## spn_phoenix_92

I've been spending most of my free time with the Overwatch beta for the past few days


----------



## UnderTheSign

Been playing a lot of Mad Max again after rewatching Fury Road and also playing a lot of Age Of Empires II with friends as well as Borderlands 2.


----------



## Maybrick

UnderTheSign said:


> Been playing a lot of Mad Max again after rewatching Fury Road and also playing a lot of Age Of Empires II with friends as well as Borderlands 2.



I did exactly the same with MM - I enjoyed the game alot (it helped that I found a key for the game on release day for £12.


----------



## mrspacecat

robski92 said:


> Such good games! They are easily some of my favorites. The book is very good as well!



Agreed. I always recommend them.


----------



## BlackMastodon

spn_phoenix_92 said:


> I've been spending most of my free time with the Overwatch beta for the past few days



Jealous. I got a code from my buddy but I haven't had a chance to play it at all this week, and probably won't get much time on the weekend. 
I want to give it a try before I do buy, though. Looks like a lot of fun.


----------



## Steinmetzify

beerandbeards said:


> I just restarted Witcher 3 after like a year. Forgot how fun it is and the expansion is now available so should give me more to do!



Dude that thing is one of the best games. Like ever. 

I seriously can't wait for the new expansion.


----------



## NicePants

Just got Enter the Gungeon. Probably the best roguelite I've played since Binding of Isaac.


----------



## 13la13la

New season for Diablo 3 started.. so that.. pretty much!


----------



## Ralyks

Some 50 hours into the Final Fantasy X remaster still. I find myself enjoying the game much more this time around than when I had it on PS2.
In between that, GTA Vice City.


----------



## Azyiu

No kidding, I pulled out my *GTA III* (downloaded from the PSN) and have been playing it for the past week or so. Just picked up 99 out of 100 hidden packages!


----------



## jacksonguitar1111

Just finished Fallout 4. I will get Uncharted 4 on Tuesday, in between Resident Evil Remaster 0/HD for PS4 ;-)


----------



## Ralyks

Azyiu said:


> No kidding, I pulled out my *GTA III* (downloaded from the PSN) and have been playing it for the past week or so. Just picked up 99 out of 100 hidden packages!



I started on III (all 3 of the original PS2 games are on PS4 for 15 bucks total), I decided to focus on Vice City, then I'll go back to III


----------



## Mathemagician

PS4, been playing the .... out of Smite. Took a break from that to try Blizzard's Overwatch (open beta) and damn that was fun. Basically a modern polished TF2 (which I still love playing, hats and all). I'll def be buying Overwatch. I'm half a playthrough left from Platinum'ing Dark Souls II, so yeah. Been busy nerding out.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished the story mode for Dragon Age: Inquisition. Surprisingly short, but still worth playing. Really wish I'd had taken Iron Bull with me to the masquerade though.

And I'm not sure if I just hate boss fights or if it's that developers can't be bothered anymore, because that finally boss fight was pathetically easy. But at least it wasn't one of those quick time event "fights".

Might replay it now that I un....ed my Dragon Age Keep.


----------



## Fiction

Just bought a 3ds so starting Pokemon Y, also plan to get Bravely Default.. any other recommendations guys?


----------



## MajorTom

I'm still playing Fallout 4, and still under 30% completion, I really should upload some photos of my mega hardcore character, in fact I'll load it up not and photograph my character build, I'm playing it on the Xbox One, so I can't just do a screen grab or capture.

And every time I load up this games to play there is an update to download, 2.4 GB today, no wonder I'm still under 30% completion.

And here is my hardcore Fallout 4 character, I didn't realise that I was halfway to level 73:







So I'm going to see if I can get to level 73 before I have to start work later this afternoon.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Grabbed Uncharted 4 this morning, this game is beautiful. Nice change of pace after grinding on COD for the last few months. Stoked to be back in this world; puzzles, stealth, some gunfights, etc. Dig this genre a lot.


----------



## Azyiu

Ralyks said:


> I started on III (all 3 of the original PS2 games are on PS4 for 15 bucks total), I decided to focus on Vice City, then I'll go back to III



That's what I am planning on doing next. I am going to leave III for now, and head over to VC for a bit. Game play-wise VC is a little more fun than III, and the V-Rock soundtracks rock!


----------



## myrtorp

My friend gifted me Battlefleet Gothic Armada which is great fun. Short matches, we play 2vs2. You bring different ships into combat, upgrade in between the games, talk the strategy and hope for the best. Winning in this game is really satisfying. I havent gotten far in singleplayer because the multiplayer is so fun hehe.


----------



## asher

Oh that's out now?

I never got to play the tabletop game, so I meant to keep an eye on that...


----------



## Masoo2

Not many games, just have gotten bored

If I ever do play anything it's probably Rising Storm.

I'm mainly just waiting until Battlefield 1, hoping it will rejuvenate my urge to game. I've gotten really bored of games over the past few years, probably because every time I get online on steam my friends are all just playing Dark Souls so I can't play with them haha.

DayZ mod was probably the last time I had "true fun" in a game, but it's basically died out.


----------



## MoshJosh

Just got DOOM. So far I'm actually really liking it. The game is super fast paced and encourages you to play aggressively. . . and you fight demons with a shotgun so. . .


----------



## myrtorp

asher said:


> Oh that's out now?
> 
> I never got to play the tabletop game, so I meant to keep an eye on that...




Yeah since 2 weeks or so. My friend and me was to attend to a mini reunion of school friends and when he couldnt make it he felt so bad he gifted me this game haha!

I never did play the table top either. Im actually a pretty new Warhammer fan ever since my friend convinced me to start to read the Horus Heresy series from Black Library. Now im hooked!


----------



## asher

I meant specifically BFG, haha. I have a bunch of the ship minis because they're awesome. 40k vanilla I've actually played.


----------



## Pav

MoshJosh said:


> Just got DOOM. So far I'm actually really liking it. The game is super fast paced and encourages you to play aggressively. . . and you fight demons with a shotgun so. . .



Me too, I'm hooked. I can't believe how much time I'm spending exploring the levels, looking for all of the secrets.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Uncharted 4 beaten like a redheaded stepchild, back to grinding on COD for double XP weekend. Prestige 4 here I come.


----------



## thedonal

Spent a mostly hung over weekend on Just Cause 2. 

There was at least 1 full hour's amusement playing with the traffic. 

The evil laughter that ensued when grappling a scooter rider to the back of a truck and watching them bounce down the road was most satisfying.

That and grappling passenger jets as they get a bit of speed going on the runway.

I can't get over how lovely the graphics are on this game so far- just the atmospheric stuff- weather, lighting and the landscape are gorgeous.


----------



## Azyiu

Uncharted 4


----------



## Berti_smb

Arma 3


----------



## downburst82

I haven't really played games in many years but a month ago we got my daughter a Wii U for her birthday and one of the games she wanted was Splatoon......and very quickly our whole family has become pretty addicted. We mostly have been playing online battles,I'm level 27 and B rank right now. I haven't played the single player campaign much but my daughter has finished it.. (she is 6..and the final boss is freakin hard!! It was pretty cool to watch her beat him!)


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Driveclub with the season pass was on sale for $20 on PSN (with a PS+ membership at least) so I figured that it's the perfect time to try it out considering Sony just shut the studio down (which also means we'll never get another MotorStorm to play).

It reminds me of the later Forza games in the sense that I seem to be leveling up really fast. So either there isn't much of an endgame or there's no real cap.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Tuesday is gonna be a big day. Overwatch and Total War: Warhammer both release. I already have TW:W pre-installed, gonna pre-order Overwatch over the weekend so I can install it Monday night, though I think installing from the open beta earlier this month should help.


----------



## Ralyks

Rented Doom. SO GOOD.


----------



## Alberto7

Haven't been playing it myself since I don't have a PS4/Xbone or a capable enough PC, but I've been watching a DOOM walkthrough... I think I need a new set of underwear. I WANT TO PLAY IT SO BAD it looks amazing. It's almost like they gave incredibly pretty graphics to Brutal Doom. It's so metal I can't even. And that soundtrack. 

PS: Planetary Duality would be such an incredible soundtrack for this game. D:


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm now in a section of Driveclub where the AI is overtaking for the sake of brake checking.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Is anyone playing Stellaris? I'm reading some reviews and I'm very intrigued about it.


----------



## ThePhilosopher

BlackMastodon said:


> Is anyone playing Stellaris? I'm reading some reviews and I'm very intrigued about it.



I've just started playing it. There's a bit of a learning curve, but it's fun.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Since I haven't played an FPS in over a decade (not my forte), thought now's a nice time since I got this from a 50% bargain bin sale.







Yeah, I'm really late to the party.


----------



## dhgrind

Ralyks said:


> Rented Doom. SO GOOD.




i forgot people still do this after blockbuster went under.


----------



## Ralyks

dhgrind said:


> i forgot people still do this after blockbuster went under.



Redbox. Don't do it often, but when money is tight and I have a weekend to play...


----------



## Quiet Coil

Ralyks said:


> Redbox. Don't do it often, but when money is tight and I have a weekend to play...



True dat, and GameFly FTW.


----------



## mongey

Grabbed over watch. I didn't play in the beta's and knew nothing about the game. 

It's freaking great.


----------



## Ralyks

Noisy Humbucker said:


> True dat, and GameFly FTW.



Use to have Gamefly, and honestly think with the amount of stuff I want to try, I may consider reactivating my account.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Picked up DOOM Friday after work. Finished the campaign a little while ago with only a few mission challenges left. 

If you still haven't played it, just imagine the setting of Doom 3 with the gameplay of Doom 1&2. Which might not be hard considering they recycled a significant amount of Doom 3 assets.


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

Assassins Creed Syndicate. 
Its very disappointing. Much more buggy and glitchy than Unity. Enemies get alarmed for no reason, simple movements in cramped areas are painfully glitchy, basic mechanics and functions fail frequently, erratic NPC movements and patterns. The list goes on. 

Ive been a long time fan and extremely patient and understanding with the whole franchise. But this one makes me violently angry. I can only play for 20 minutes or so before i cant take anymore. Im having to repeatedly attempt mission after mission. 

And Im not just bad at it. I usually go for %100 on these


----------



## Repner

Right now I'm playing Rudra no Hihou (Treasure Of The Rudras), a Super Famicom JRPG that never got an official release in the west. Damn shame since it's one of the best RPG's I've played.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Repner said:


> Right now I'm playing Rudra no Hihou (Treasure Of The Rudras), a Super Famicom JRPG that never got an official release in the west. Damn shame since it's one of the best RPG's I've played.



I loved it too. But it's understandable that it wasn't released outside Japan especially during its time. The entire letter matching mechanic would completely go over players heads if they couldn't read Japanese or without a walkthrough of some sort. Ted Woosley would've lost his mind even thinking of a western adaptation. 

Also Ryuji Sasai's music is awesome.


----------



## Repner

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I loved it too. But it's understandable that it wasn't released outside Japan especially during its time. The entire letter matching mechanic would completely go over players heads if they couldn't read Japanese or without a walkthrough of some sort. Ted Woosley would've lost his mind even thinking of a western adaptation.
> 
> Also Ryuji Sasai's music is awesome.



Exactly. That and considering the amount of time it took Square to localise games back in those days, we'd be well into the Playstation generation by the time they were ready anyway. Not that Europe or Australia would benefit if they did I suppose.


----------



## Don Vito

Alberto7 said:


> Haven't been playing it myself since I don't have a PS4/Xbone or a capable enough PC, but I've been watching a DOOM walkthrough... I think I need a new set of underwear. I WANT TO PLAY IT SO BAD it looks amazing. It's almost like they gave incredibly pretty graphics to Brutal Doom. It's so metal I can't even. And that soundtrack.
> 
> PS: Planetary Duality would be such an incredible soundtrack for this game. D:


Speaking of which.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Repner said:


> Exactly. That and considering the amount of time it took Square to localise games back in those days, we'd be well into the Playstation generation by the time they were ready anyway. Not that Europe or Australia would benefit if they did I suppose.



Yeah, those were the days. PAL regions always caught the short end back then. 

So many great games where Square was "arguably" in their prime. Even if we got Final Fantasy V many years later, we missed out on Secret Of Mana 2, Treasure Hunter G and a ton of other obscure games like Live A Live, Wonder Project J among others. I remember getting a bunch of Super Play magazines with columns solely dedicated to J-RPGs of it's era and upcoming new releases from Square, Enix and Namco. Got really excited for them, only to never see them come out.


----------



## Pav

I'm trying to finish off the platinum trophy for Resident Evil 0...but damn do I hate Leech Hunter.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Bout to kick off the last expansion for Witcher 3, stoked.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Man if you played W3 and don't have this expansion get it. It's HUGE.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I've been playing The Witcher 3 expansion all day and feel like I've barely put a dent in it. Its utterly massive.


----------



## Maybrick

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I've been playing The Witcher 3 expansion all day and feel like I've barely put a dent in it. Its utterly massive.



So glad to hear that. I'm still finishing the main game before I hit the first expansion let alone the second.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Maybrick said:


> So glad to hear that. I'm still finishing the main game before I hit the first expansion let alone the second.



The first expansion has a great story. The second is a whole other animal! This is really one of the best games ever made.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I've been itching hard for more time with Warhammer: Total War. Only got a few hours in last week but damnit is it awesome. Can't wait to get further in the campaign. I'm used to the Medieval 2 style campaign for Total War games and I'm glad this one actually feels like an improvement while still feeling a lot like a Warhammer game.


----------



## stevexc

steinmetzify said:


> Man if you played W3 and don't have this expansion get it. It's HUGE.





leftyguitarjoe said:


> I've been playing The Witcher 3 expansion all day and feel like I've barely put a dent in it. Its utterly massive.



I'm 74 hours in and still not quite done the base game... I'll get there eventually


----------



## Alberto7

Don Vito said:


> Speaking of which.




Omg, I need those. Brutal Doom is honestly one of the most fun games I've had the pleasure of playing the last couple of years, (I only discovered it last year) what with the crazy fast gameplay, the crazy mods, custom levels, and the music patches.


----------



## Steinmetzify

leftyguitarjoe said:


> The first expansion has a great story. The second is a whole other animal! This is really one of the best games ever made.



True story dude...I always thought TLoU had a lot more gravitas and was worth more as a gaming experience, but I think this last expansion surpassed it as a whole. You can buy the base game for $25 now, plus $35 for both expansions and have over 200 hours of never repeating the same thing. They created an entire world. Seriously, applause CDPR. 



stevexc said:


> I'm 74 hours in and still not quite done the base game... I'll get there eventually



I'm about 10 hours into the latest expansion and I feel like I've accomplished nothing...THIS is how you do an expansion. It's utterly enormous and filled with awesome.

Just grabbed Grandmaster Manticore gear, this stuff is EXPENSIVE. Also, I now own an awesome vineyard. My place rules. Weird as I never do this, but I totally upgraded that bitch....everything that can be done has been and I like it.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Just beat the main story to Blood and Wine. I wanted to hold off but it was super compelling and I couldnt help myself 

Even so, I still have lots of exploring to do!


----------



## Steinmetzify

Can't do it yet, there's too much to do. You on the base game or NG+?


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

steinmetzify said:


> Can't do it yet, there's too much to do. You on the base game or NG+?



NG+. I did all the sidequests in the DLC that I could find except for the stupid gwent thing. I still have some bulletin boards to clear out though.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Still working on em; I like doing the side stuff before finishing. Also, .... a buncha gwent. I hate that.


----------



## Ralyks

So I'm contemplating trading in some combination of Madden 16, Fallout 4, Trials Fusion, WWE 2K16, and Until Dawn, and getting one of Overwatch, Ratchet and Clank, or the Uncharted Collection (I want to play 4 so bad but need to get through the first 3), I was thinking Witcher 3 but I still have Shadows of Mordor to work on for my fantasy slasher. On top of that, the first two Batman Arkham games are getting rereleased and I'd like to play those before delving into Arkham Knight. 
So, Any suggestions?

(I thought Doom too because its awesome, but I feel like I can rent it again and be done with in within a day or two from where I am)


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Ralyks said:


> So I'm contemplating trading in some combination of Madden 16, Fallout 4, Trials Fusion, WWE 2K16, and Until Dawn, and getting one of Overwatch, Ratchet and Clank, or the Uncharted Collection (I want to play 4 so bad but need to get through the first 3), I was thinking Witcher 3 but I still have Shadows of Mordor to work on for my fantasy slasher. On top of that, the first two Batman Arkham games are getting rereleased and I'd like to play those before delving into Arkham Knight.
> So, Any suggestions?
> 
> (I thought Doom too because its awesome, but I feel like I can rent it again and be done with in within a day or two from where I am)



Shadows doesnt come close to The Witcher 3. Nothing does. Definitely get it.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Tried some Doom multiplayer and Jesus Tapdancing Christ is it abysmal. The only game I can think of that's had a more disconnected singleplayer and multiplayer experience is Spec Ops: The Line.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Whilst playing Bioshock, I'm also acknowledging the fact that I can never get away from JRPGs. 







This is the accumulation of every goofy anime and JRPG trope and cliche known to man, but I'll openly admit it's my kind of goof. And I'm having fun with this one.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Back to Final Fantasy X for the PS4. Announced today that 12 will be getting a remaster on the PS4.


----------



## crystallake

PunkBillCarson said:


> Back to Final Fantasy X for the PS4. Announced today that 12 will be getting a remaster on the PS4.



I just finished up the remastered X. Although I think it's been since high school that I played the original, it wasn't bad.

Glad to see 12 is being remastered. Such an underrated and in-depth game.

(crosses fingers for FF 9)


----------



## Pav

8 hours and 15 minutes until the release of Mirror's Edge Catalyst! Can't wait to get back into parkour.


----------



## Xaios

I might have to pick up Stellaris. I've never been a big on 4X games (or even strategy games for that matter, beyond SimCity), but dammit, Scott Manley can make anything seem interesting.


----------



## asher

I was really tempted to pick it up but I'm pretty sure I'll just play it once or twice and then never touch it again. Similarly concerned about that with getting Total War: Warhammer.

I did just grab The Witness, though.


----------



## MoshJosh

currently jumping between Overwatch and DOOM!

DOOM is such a great game I feel sort of guilty neglecting it for Overwatch. . . but its so addicting!


----------



## Repner

PunkBillCarson said:


> Back to Final Fantasy X for the PS4. Announced today that 12 will be getting a remaster on the PS4.



Interestingly I was just checking earlier this week to see if there was any more news about this, and then saw the trailer last night. Glad to see it'll be based on the Zodiac Job System International version we never got here in the west. People who've played the patched import it say it's the definitive version of the game.

I've been excited for this since i heard the rumours last year. I can't play the original anymore because I just can't wrap my head around inverted camera controls (You used to have to adapt to camera controls every other game back then. Something I haven't done in at least 10 years). That and I feel like FFXII was one game that really warranted an HD remaster. No more artificial screen blur option in order to disguise the jagged edges.



crystallake said:


> (crosses fingers for FF 9)



They've released IX's remaster for Steam, iOS and Android, so I hope they bring it to consoles at some point.


----------



## rifftrauma

I'm in my first year of Stardew Valley.... game is crack..


----------



## Ralyks

Glad to hear about the FFXII remaster, never really got much time with that game. And good lord, please do something with VIII And IX while they're at it for consoles.

In the meantime, I'm at the point of FFX where I'm pretty much grinding and finishing side quests and such before I go ahead and beat it. Then time to move on to X2 and Type-0.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

crystallake said:


> I just finished up the remastered X. Although I think it's been since high school that I played the original, it wasn't bad.
> 
> Glad to see 12 is being remastered. Such an underrated and in-depth game.
> 
> (crosses fingers for FF 9)




My God was 9 such an amazing game. One of the most underrated in the series, IMO. I have a PSTV, so I get to play PSONE classics such as 7,8, and 9. They also released Breath of Fire III in N. America not long ago.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Playing some more older games lately. Just finished Hitman: Contracts "HD" on the PS3. Had it for a while after getting the HD Collection off PS+. Still a fun game but I can't said it's aged well. Plus the porting process created a few more bugs (I had some bad artifacting at one point).

I thought I had Far Cry 3 but it's actually Crysis 3 (which I didn't hear good things about), but I do have Tomb Raider which I might start next. I've thought about starting BioShock Inifinite but I hated the original.


----------



## mikernaut

Picked up Doom, Uncharted 4 and today Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Doom was what I expected but wish it would of had a darker Art Direction. Creatures are slightly leaning more to the cartoony side for my tastes.

Uncharted 4 is soo gorgeous and finely crafted all around. The vistas are massive and the camera work really helps to enhance the gameplay. I found it a fitting game to be a possible ending point for the franchise. I'm more into story/campaign games these days and I would give this game of the year hands down. Halfway through a 2nd play through. So haven't touched Doom much since. Naughty Dog just keeps raising the quality bar high. I really want a Last of Us 2 now!

Mirror's Edge seems solid so far, I loved the 1st one and the vibe/art direction and music. This seems to be retaining that decently. Haven't played too much but the open world city angle seems to work for this type of game. Seems like a re-imagining of the story/and somewhat the universe also. Have to play it more to have a more concrete judgement. But the controls and running feel familiar and more fine tuned to me.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Just wrapped up a second "evil" playthrough of inFamous Second Son. Good fun, although as usual the story is stronger when playing as a "good guy". Now waiting for Uncharted 4.



mikernaut said:


> Uncharted 4 is soo gorgeous and finely crafted all around..... Naughty Dog just keeps raising the quality bar high. I really want a Last of Us 2 now!



Glad to hear that it holds up compared to previous titles in the franchise. And ditto 100% on The Last Of Us 2.... if they've got a story worth playing.


----------



## Rosal76

Carrion Rocket said:


> Playing some more older games lately. Just finished Hitman: Contracts "HD" on the PS3.





Favorite game right there!!! 

Did you see the ghost in the Traditions of the Trade mission? I first played the game when it was on the PS2 and one night, I was playing it really late because I loved the game so much and he, the ghost, appeared. At first, I thought I imagined it because it was late and I might have been really tired and I wouldn't think that a ghost would appear in a stealth game. Silent Hill and the Fatal Frame games maybe but not in Hitman. He does show up in the PS3 HD collection.

Ghost in the Hitman Contracts game.


----------



## USMarine75

So my 6 year old loves Castle Crashers, Minecraft (duh), Terraria, and Portal 2. Any recommendations for what I should get him next? (He was kind of meh on Machinarium.)


----------



## MFB

USMarine75 said:


> So my 6 year old loves Castle Crashers, Minecraft (duh), Terraria, and Portal 2. Any recommendations for what I should get him next? (He was kind of meh on Machinarium.)



Dumb question, but has he tried the LEGO series? The Batman and Avengers ones are fun.


----------



## Ralyks

USMarine75 said:


> So my 6 year old loves Castle Crashers



Oh man, I miss Castle Crashers. I wish that got ported to PS4, had many fun nights with that game.


----------



## asher

USMarine75 said:


> So my 6 year old loves Castle Crashers, Minecraft (duh), Terraria, and Portal 2. Any recommendations for what I should get him next? (He was kind of meh on Machinarium.)



FEZ.

fezfezfezfezfez.

Portal 1, World of Goo, Ori and the Blind Forest, Bastion, Transistor, and if you want to make his head explode Antichamber (it's like Portal, if Portal took some acid and went meta).


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Rosal76 said:


> Favorite game right there!!!
> 
> Did you see the ghost in the Traditions of the Trade mission? I first played the game when it was on the PS2 and one night, I was playing it really late because I loved the game so much and he, the ghost, appeared. At first, I thought I imagined it because it was late and I might have been really tired and I wouldn't think that a ghost would appear in a stealth game. Silent Hill and the Fatal Frame games maybe but not in Hitman. He does show up in the PS3 HD collection.
> 
> Ghost in the Hitman Contracts game.



Yeah, there's a trophy for killing him. It was a lot harder to than I remember it being but it might have just been because I was still getting accustomed to the controls after a decade away from the game.

Got landlocked with the flooding down here so I blazed through Blood Money a few days back also. That game still looks good in HD.


----------



## Ralyks

asher said:


> FEZ.
> 
> fezfezfezfezfez.



So much this.


----------



## Azyiu

I beat Uncharted 4 twice and got all the treasures and such, so I decided to go back and re-play Uncharted 1 - 3 all the way...

In Uncharted 1, relatively poorer graphic aside, I really don't recall the number of enemies in each stage... I was in Chapter 4 last night, and it seemingly like wave after wave of enemies kept coming in to try and kill me; and there must have been way over 50 of them in Chapter 4 alone!! Plus, it is my first re-play of U1 since 2010 or 2011 I think, I noticed the aiming and weapon reloading systems are just not as smooth as to my liking... I am sure it was ok and cool back in the day though... still trying to enjoy my re-play run, and hopefully I won't get too frustrated by it in latter chapters.


----------



## Ralyks

PSN had a pretty good sale, and Alien Isolation, Dragon Age Inquisition, and The Order 1886 for $20 seemed like a good deal.


----------



## synrgy

^I keep waiting for the price-drop on downloadable (not disc) XB1 version of Alien: Isolation.

I somehow managed to get sucked right back in to Elite: Dangerous. It's stupidly grindey, but I don't have anything else that's really scratching the itch, right now...

Soon, though. Just a matter of time before Mass Effect: Andromeda!!


----------



## MoshJosh

Recommend me something new!!! I was really hoping Umbrella Corps would be good, but it would seem that the internet has unanimously agreed that it sucks!!! I might break down and get it to try, but maybe you guys can recommend me something in the 30 dollars range on PS4???


----------



## MFB

Uncharted Collection?
D3: Ultimate Evil Edition?
FarCry 4?

Those would probably be your best dollarlaytime games


----------



## MoshJosh

I already beat uncharted 2 and 3 and used to have far cry 4, but might check out Diablo...


----------



## Ralyks

synrgy said:


> ^I keep waiting for the price-drop on downloadable (not disc) XB1 version of Alien: Isolation.



It's definitely worth the $11.99 I ended up paying. I don't like horror movies much, but have seem to have really gotten into horror games recently. A lot of this, Until Dawn, Outlast...


----------



## Pav

I'm still trying to finish the platinum trophy for Alien Isolation myself. It was a surprisingly good game but there are some game-breaking bugs near the end that really marred the experience, at least on PS4.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Finished Uncharted 4 with my wife (I played and she's been following the story since Drake's Fortune).

Wow. I gotta say, this might be the first game where I enjoyed the pacing, action and story so thoroughly that I don't know if I want to play again to try and complete everything. Almost feels like going back through would cheapen it somehow.

I don't want to go into detail for fear of spoilers or raising expectations too much for others, but the developers captured some magic with this one.


----------



## Leberbs

Lego Avengers. So good!


----------



## Ralyks

Rented Deadpool for PS4. Seems like it's good for that, a rental to play through on a weekend if you're a Deadpool fan.


----------



## Alberto7

Pokemon GO.

I hope my friends and family remember me for who I was before I started playing, and not as that kid who got run over by a bus while trying to catch a Zubat, or the idiot who got killed while telling his muggers to wait because he'd almost defeated one of Montreal's Team Mystic's gym leaders, or the moron who was driven to financial and legal ruin after collecting dozens upon dozens of loitering tickets.

Godspeed.


----------



## Pav

Omfg I bought Surgeon Simulator via PSN for less than $2 yesterday. This game is morbidly hilarious.


----------



## MoshJosh

Just picked up Furi (free in playstation plus) and it's pretty cool. Kind of like a bullet hell (think that's what you call them), mixed with a 3rd person action. Definitely challenging, just beat the second boss but it was a struggle, but then again I wouldn't say I'm good at the aforementioned bullet hell type games. 

Anyway cool game so far.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished Deadpool and Firewatch. The latter in particular was a pretty nice experience overall.

Back to grinding Final Fantasy X HD. Got 3 of 7 celestial weapons complete. If anyone knows where to get fortune speres and can recommend the quickest way to fill sphere grids, please chime in.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I've been flip-flopping between a bunch of games. I ran through The Witcher 2, mainly as an excuse to play The Witcher 3 again, Skyrim, Bioshock, Bioshock infinite, Doom, Fable, ad Dying Light. I've actually beaten every one of those games at least once before. Sometimes its fun to relive the experience.


----------



## Handbanana

That BF1 Closed Alpha tho.....So sick.


----------



## noUser01

I'm in the middle of replaying Borderlands, but this time with all the DLC. I'm on Playthrough 2 and just finished the main game, just starting the General Knoxx DLC now. I want to get every achievement on Steam before moving on to BL2, which I've owned for years but never played because I wanted to 100% the original first, haha. Such a fantastic game.

Also playing Star Wars: Galaxy Of Heroes on mobile, fantastic game with a ridiculous reputation for being a "pay-to-win" game. In 3 months I hit the max level cap (which of course is continually raised over time), so it's a well balanced game, to me.


----------



## Fiction

Another play through of FF8, and playing through Crash Bandicoot 1-3 as well. I'm just a fiend for nostalgia, it's the only way I can actually stay concentrated on a game


----------



## Ralyks

Fiction said:


> Another play through of FF8



I really wish this was ported to PS4 in some way. I'd love to play through it again. I do have it on PS3, but I'm contemplating selling it since I pretty much never play it....


----------



## Pav

Ralyks said:


> I really wish this was ported to PS4 in some way. I'd love to play through it again. I do have it on PS3, but I'm contemplating selling it since I pretty much never play it....



I'm really really really really hoping that when every PS4 owner in the world buys the FFVII Remake, Squeenix will finally get the ....ing message and give other FF games a serious remake. Remakes of 6 and 8 would be spectacular.


----------



## Ralyks

Pav said:


> I'm really really really really hoping that when every PS4 owner in the world buys the FFVII Remake, Squeenix will finally get the ....ing message and give other FF games a serious remake. Remakes of 6 and 8 would be spectacular.



Honestly I'll take Remasters even at this point. VII Remake is going to take long enough as it is, plus XV about to drop...

Although a new IX would be sweet...


----------



## Black_Sheep

Pav said:


> there are some game-breaking bugs near the end that really marred the experience, at least on PS4.



For example? 

I played through the game once and did not see any really bad ones. Now im thinking about playing it again and go for the platinum trophy.


----------



## Pav

Black_Sheep said:


> For example?
> 
> I played through the game once and did not see any really bad ones. Now im thinking about playing it again and go for the platinum trophy.



I had major glitches take place in missions 15 and 16. Apparently there is a known connection between saving your game while aboard the Anesidora and the remainder of the game not working correctly. Once I hit mission 16, my right analog stick wouldn't work at all, meaning I couldn't turn Ripley in any direction. I had to stumble through the entire mission facing in whatever direction the game spawned me initially. Somehow I managed to get through that only to hit mission 17 where the door to my end objective was permanently locked, preventing me from progressing any further. I had to reload into mission 14 and replay those levels to finish the game. I quickly replayed the entire game again after that and had no problems at all, so it isn't something you'll encounter every single time. But if it does happen in your game, you'll know.


----------



## mikernaut

Been playing Black Desert Online , grinding away and it's quite a time sink, but still enjoying it as they keep adding new challenges and expanding the map size.

On Ps4 - was playing the new Mirror's Edge, Got halfway thru my Uncharted 4 2nd playthrough then decided to go back and play Uncharted 1-3. Nearing the end of 3.

Back to PC to check out Telltale game's Walking Dead Season 1, Game of Thrones and Tales from the Borderlands. ( currently doing an art test for the studio so I had to do some research)

I really enjoy the quality of the writing and suspense. I'd say I'm into Walking Dead the most. I do feel their games have that false sense of choice that most story games fall victim to, But I still want to find out what happens like watching the TV shows they are based off of.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

mikernaut said:


> On Ps4 - was playing the new Mirror's Edge



Everyone was hyped for that prior to but now that's been out for a while (a fact I forgot about) nobody's talking about it. Is it any good? Did it actually warrant being a prequel? Did you have to unlock abilities given to you in the original like the internet was outraged about?


----------



## mikernaut

I like what I've played of it so far, but I've always been a fan of the Mirror's Edge franchise.

It feels like the original as far as movement and such and I think the open world works pretty well with this style of game. They kind of did Assassin's Creed/Farcry-ish collectibles/sidequests with even a touch of collecting things like the orbs in the Crackdown games. 

You do unlock abilities in skill trees, but it doesn't bug me. Not sure why people were so up in arms about that. 

And they still have some pretty and stylish graphics to the universe.


----------



## Pav

I platinum'd Catalyst on PS4. If you liked the original, you'll like Catalyst. You do have to unlock some of the standard abilities in the beginning but they come so quickly that it isn't a big deal at all.


----------



## Mathemagician

Omega Ruby. Got a Gyarados now, so everything is going to die.


----------



## Ralyks

Still slaving away at Final Fantasy X HD. Just completed the Celestial Weapons and Jecht Spheres today. Now basically grinding, figuring out how the hell to complete my sphere grids, finish the monster arena, beat the Dark Aeons, Nemesis, and Penance, and the. Just beat the damn game.

Oh, that and I grabbed Broforce on sale. Fun as hell with others.


----------



## Maybrick

Playing Firewatch atm and finally bought a copy of Dark Souls 2: SOTFS which I can't wait to get started on.


----------



## Blytheryn

World of Warcraft.


----------



## Azyiu

Uncharted 1 (The Uncharted Collection) on the PS4... the aiming system is GREATLY improved. I started on the Hard difficulty right off the bat, and with the improved aiming system, it did not feel too tough at all.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished the story for Final Fantasy X HD. Still have to finish the sphere grids, monster arena, and defeat Nemesis and Penance to platinum the game.

In the meantime, I started X2 HD. I forgot how much I liked that battle system.


----------



## MoshJosh

Just beat both story modes of Muramasa Rebirth on Chaos mode. . . Sh*t was hard haha and I kind of had to cheese the final boss with whetstones but hey gotta do what you gotta do.

Anyway fun game, but definitely a challenge.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Started a new game plus of Last of Us. Hopefully I'll pick up all the collectibles in this playthough. And then be depressed again after beating it.


----------



## jacksonguitar1111

Started Resident Evil Revelations 2 and Beyond two souls


----------



## Ralyks

Oddly enough, decided to go back to Final Fantasy XIII last night...


----------



## Origin

Dota2 on and off, new Doom, replaying Spec Ops: The Line because it's my favourite game ever and keeps the dickhead mentality in check. Poker too if that counts.


----------



## stevexc

Just picked up Monster Hunter Generations. Solid game so far!


----------



## Khaerruhl

It's been a long time since I last played a game at all. I have no idea why, since I have a save file waiting for me on Crysis 3... And I still haven't started Witcher 3.


----------



## Maybrick

Completed Firewatch which was quite good. Going to start Starbound and probably carry on with some more of The Witcher 3


----------



## Pav

Ralyks said:


> Oddly enough, decided to go back to Final Fantasy XIII last night...



You got me again you son of a bitch. I've played through that game at least three times yet I've never actually beaten it. I get to the free roaming around Gran Pulse and lose track of wtf is going on. Now I've reloaded an old save so I can perhaps beat this thing once and for all.


----------



## Ralyks

Pav said:


> You got me again you son of a bitch. I've played through that game at least three times yet I've never actually beaten it. I get to the free roaming around Gran Pulse and lose track of wtf is going on. Now I've reloaded an old save so I can perhaps beat this thing once and for all.



 My only fear is this will distract me from platinuming FFX. I had XIII on Xbox 360 when it was first released and got really far but didn't finish it. I got a used copy when I got my PS3. I remember actually liking this one a lot (Except Hope. He's annoying), though I never did play the sequels, which I heard weren't nearly as good.

Meanwhile, I want to clear these games before FFXV comes out. That probably won't end well...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> though I never did play the sequels, which I heard weren't nearly as good.



As someone who played the 3 games to the end, it does get better in the sequels. The story's still a convoluted mess, but better is better, and the gameplay is more refined especially in Lightning Returns.


----------



## mrspacecat

Just started playing Path of Exile again. Super fun, complex, and addicting action rpg. Really time consuming, though.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> As someone who played the 3 games to the end, it does get better in the sequels. The story's still a convoluted mess, but better is better, and the gameplay is more refined especially in Lightning Returns.



I'm fine with that. Again, its a matter of playing this all before XV comes out  I STILL have problems differentiating all the types of "Cie"s


----------



## mikernaut

Just beat Abzu, the successor to Journey, still beautiful visuals and music but doesn't quite live up to Journey. Also they re-use a bunch of the Mechanics, just under water. Still cool artistically, but I'm not quite sure what they were trying to say with the story in this one, I'll have to ponder it further. Journey is still their masterpiece but this is still worthwhile if you like their style, just not as strong IMO. Clocks in at 1.5-2 hrs if your curious. That being said I still love their style and vibe so I have no problem supporting the studio.


----------



## Pav

I am officially hooked on No Man's Sky. I decided to name the solar system I started off in the Opeth System. So far I've discovered three planets, which I've named Orchid I, Morningrise I and MA/YH I. Screw definitive goals, I could spend all night just exploring.


----------



## Alberto7

Downloaded AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) the same day it came out, before Nintendo blasted the developers with a DMCA notice to take it down. 8 years of development have not been for naught. It plays as well, and perhaps even better, than Super Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission. Samus feels extremely quick and agile in this game. Comparing it with the original Metroid II this is just phenomenal. Metroid II was great, but it was bleak and it was just way too easy to get lost, especially with the amount of backtracking needed. Navigation in AM2R is a breeze, but it still retains most of the exploration elements from the original... granted, finding stuff so far has been pretty easy, perhaps a little too much so, but that's okay. The music is also fantastically made. Haven't finished it yet, but so far it lives up to what one would expect out of an official Metroid title. Hard to believe it was all made by one person.



mikernaut said:


> Just beat Abzu, the successor to Journey, still beautiful visuals and music but doesn't quite live up to Journey. Also they re-use a bunch of the Mechanics, just under water. Still cool artistically, but I'm not quite sure what they were trying to say with the story in this one, I'll have to ponder it further. Journey is still their masterpiece but this is still worthwhile if you like their style, just not as strong IMO. Clocks in at 1.5-2 hrs if your curious. That being said I still love their style and vibe so I have no problem supporting the studio.



I saw a gameplay with the first few minutes of it and it looked beautiful, but I still think Journey looked better. I still want to play it though.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> I'm fine with that. Again, its a matter of playing this all before XV comes out  I STILL have problems differentiating all the types of "Cie"s



Fair enough. As for the 'Cie's", I wouldn't worry about that too much. The storyline straight up forgets somewhere in the first act of XIII-2.


----------



## Alberto7

Alberto7 said:


> Downloaded AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) the same day it came out, before Nintendo blasted the developers with a DMCA notice to take it down. 8 years of development have not been for naught. It plays as well, and perhaps even better, than Super Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission. Samus feels extremely quick and agile in this game. Comparing it with the original Metroid II this is just phenomenal. Metroid II was great, but it was bleak and it was just way too easy to get lost, especially with the amount of backtracking needed. Navigation in AM2R is a breeze, but it still retains most of the exploration elements from the original... granted, finding stuff so far has been pretty easy, perhaps a little too much so, but that's okay. The music is also fantastically made. Haven't finished it yet, but so far it lives up to what one would expect out of an official Metroid title. Hard to believe it was all made by one person.



Just finished this and... wow.  I almost cannot believe this is a fan-made remake and not official game. One of my favorite 2D Metroids, right up there with Zero Mission (though I'd argue that this is even better) and right behind Super Metroid. Just... wow.


----------



## elmundo

I'm playing minecraft and train games because of my little brother


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Warriors Orochi Ultimate, because it was free and there's nothing better out on Xbox One at the moment.


----------



## Beefmuffin

World of Warcraft sucked me back in after about a 5 year hiatus


----------



## myrtorp

Im still grinding through Chivalry. Rank 54 and 1400 hours.. Sigh. It's like i have stopped playing single player games in favour of online stuff. 
When Mordhau comes out im sure it will replace this game  
It's just something about the physical comedy of the game as well as a high skill ceiling that keeps me coming back.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Speaking of Chivalry, is anyone else interested in For Honour? I'm seeing some stuff about it coming out soon but u honestly don't know much about the game other than it looks really cool and pits knights, vikings, and samurai against each other.


----------



## Blytheryn

BlackMastodon said:


> pits knights, vikings, and samurai against each other.



How are you not already throwing 60 USD at the screen? Scratch that - Your rune engraved battle axe?


----------



## BlackMastodon

Blytheryn said:


> How are you not already throwing 60 USD at the screen? Scratch that - Your rune engraved battle axe?


I did this and now I need a new laptop


----------



## myrtorp

BlackMastodon said:


> Speaking of Chivalry, is anyone else interested in For Honour? I'm seeing some stuff about it coming out soon but u honestly don't know much about the game other than it looks really cool and pits knights, vikings, and samurai against each other.



I've seen a little gameplay. Im not sure if it's for me, (I think there's a lock-on system when fighting) but I like the idea anyways. Im gonna keep my eyes on it!


My friend and I have a long history of Neverwinter Nights. We've been playing it many times trying to complete it but always have had something interrupt it, a bug, (not being able to load our progress) or at the time, school. 
I own 2 copies of the game but we have struggled to get it working online.(Different versions) Finally we found a torrent of the game that worked with Gameranger. 

And man it felt so good to play it again with my mate. But problem was just around the corner. The game crashes ALOT, and we've had some problems like my friends quest log going empty so he cant turn in quests. Luckily my log is intact. My friend is hosting and im usually the one crashing. We learned not to save after I had a crash, because when I log in again my henchman doesnt want to have anything to do with me 
Haha I went trough all the companions you could hire and then didnt have any help at all. At the end of chapter 1 we were almost screwed. You couldnt go back and buy more potions and the boss was overpowered compared to how strong we were. And the game is punishing for dying. You lose tons of XP and money. We just suicided into the boss until finally he went down. We entered chapter 2 broke and weak. But the henchmen reset and I could get one again.

We decided to be a bit sneaky and give ourselves some gear and gold without any cheats. (well it's a bit cheaty)
We found a good loot chest containing 2 random enchanted items. Saved before opening it. After looting the chest we would both save our character files but not the game file. Then load the game file from before opening the chest with the character files that HAD looted the chest, and repeated the process. After that I took all the loot on my character and would sell it over and over, giving the gold my my friend while not saving my character so I could load the inventory again.
Then we went shopping! A good armor or weapon could cost something like 30,000 gold. And after completing half of chapter 2 we had made maybe 10,000 each. So buying things from the shops are basically out of the question. But we decided we had earned this after many years of trying to complete the first campaign for so long.


----------



## Maybrick

Started playing Ori and The Blind Forest and OHH MY GOD that soundtrack. Its such an immensely impressive game, visually, musically and story wise too.


----------



## stevexc

Been playing Obduction, great game in the style of (and from the makers of) Myst.


----------



## MoshJosh

NEED SOME SUGGESTIONS! Just got a PC, need to get better at mouse and keyboard shooters. . . make some recommendations for newer FPS games? Probably just gonna get Fallout 4, but not ready to shell out $60.

Anyway, been playing
Hard Reset Redux (pretty fun, the story/cut scenes are mehh to me.)
XCOM 2 (Like it so far, but definitely tough so I don't play it so often haha.)
Dishonored (played this back on PS3, but wanted to give it another shot to prepare for the release of the sequel.)


----------



## Pav

^ The open beta for Battlefield 1 starts within the next few hours. Download Origin and give that a whirl.


----------



## Ralyks

Doom was 20 bucks brand new off of Amazon. So, that.


----------



## Mathemagician

Making my way through Dark souls 3 for the first time, and seem to have managed to botch almost every side-quest, lol. That's why God invented NG+ I suppose. 

I feel bad since I'm like one trophy each from platinum-ing DS2, and Bloodborne...but I just don't wanna, lol. I have like 160 hrs in DS2, so that last pyromancy is just going to have to wait until I feel like doing it. And Irythll dungeons are boring. 

Loving the zones in DS3 though, amazing layout/vistas.


----------



## Black_Sheep

The Witcher 3, trying to platinum it... Great game. 

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided soon....


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

MoshJosh said:


> NEED SOME SUGGESTIONS! Just got a PC, need to get better at mouse and keyboard shooters. . . make some recommendations for newer FPS games? Probably just gonna get Fallout 4, but not ready to shell out $60.
> 
> Anyway, been playing
> Hard Reset Redux (pretty fun, the story/cut scenes are mehh to me.)
> XCOM 2 (Like it so far, but definitely tough so I don't play it so often haha.)
> Dishonored (played this back on PS3, but wanted to give it another shot to prepare for the release of the sequel.)



Overwatch!


----------



## MoshJosh

I want Doom, and is 35 on amazon, but I already beat it on PS4 plus stayed playing again on one of the hard difficulties. . . Feels kind of a waste to buy it a second time. And I also own overwatch on ps4 plus a number of the characters in play aren't super accuracy oriented. COD Black Ops 3 is 30 right now, might get that, but worried about the constant super wrecking that will happen if I try to play online


----------



## Steinmetzify

About to hit master prestige in Blops 3; don't know what I'm gonna do afterwards. Nothing out there really interesting to me at the moment. Guess I could always finish Witcher 3...


----------



## Alberto7

Been playing Resident Evil 4 again, after about 5 years of having played it last. This game is a lot better than I remembered!


----------



## Blytheryn

WoW. The new expansion is awesome.


----------



## Ralyks

Traded in a bunch of my games for The Witcher 3 Complete Edition, plus money down on a Final Fantasy XV preorder. Witcher is good so far but not very far yet, but between the hype and the game including all the DLC and expansions for 50 bucks, it seemed like a good time to finally check it out.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Alberto7 said:


> Been playing Resident Evil 4 again, after about 5 years of having played it last. This game is a lot better than I remembered!



Absolute Classic. I'm debating whether or not I want to get the re-release for the PS4 since I already played the GameCube, PS2 and Xbox 360 versions.


----------



## MFB

RE4 is a game that I'll continue to buy on whatever console they update it for; it's just that God damn good.


----------



## Don Vito

I was playing RE4 just a few days ago. Steam saved my file from 2 years ago, so I started a new game and REKT those pleb villagers with my fully upgraded weapon cache.


----------



## xvultures

Just finished a playthrough of The Technomancer. Saw it on the steam main page and it looked pretty fun. I think it was pretty good, overall a 5/7.


----------



## Alberto7

Damn, so much love for RE4! But yeah, so far it's a great game. Playing the PAL version for PC, which is the only one I've ever played. The lack of anti-aliasing compared to other versions has always been an eyesore upon first sight, but it quickly gets overshadowed by how good the game is.


----------



## stevexc

Still working on Obduction, also playing WoW: Legion. Damn good expansion so far.


----------



## coreysMonster

Played Firewatch over the weekend. I generally like walking-simulator games that rely heavily on the story, but man FW fell apart entirely in the third act. It's generally not a good idea to present a theme and then bait-and-switch it out at the last second.


----------



## MoshJosh

Yeah I played firewatch but lost interest towards what I assume was near the end, plus I experienced a number of graphical glitches. . . Environments not loading, walking on the air, getting stuck in rocks. On ps4 by the way.


----------



## Triple7

Working my way through Doom currently. Such a fun game.


----------



## TedEH

I played through Firewatch a while back and from what I remember, I enjoyed it as a whole. Is it strange that walking simulators have in some cases inspired me to actually go out and walk around? Sometimes it's nice to just wander and look at things- not just in a game. 

Just finished the story in Mankind Divided. I like the game as a whole... not super sold on the way it ended, though. I haven't tried the Jensens Stories or Breach modes yet.


----------



## Black_Sheep

...Still The Witcher 3. Great game. Also playing Prison Architect on PC again 


E: I thought Firewatch was really good, just way too short.


----------



## Ralyks

Overwatch free weekend. This game is awesome. I'd almost consider trading Witcher 3 back in for it... Not going to, but the thought occured.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

In the meantime twiddling my thumbs until November when Trails Of Cold Steel 2 comes out, I've gone flirting back to fighting games.







I'm so out of touch.


----------



## Jake

Got a new xbox one from microsoft after mine destroyed itself  

on that note I haven't played any games online competitively since BF3 probably, but Overwatch is awesome and I'm glad I picked it up. Really enjoying the play style of this game.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Jake said:


> Got a new xbox one from microsoft after mine destroyed itself :lol.



What happened??


----------



## MoshJosh

Downloaded homefront the revolution today. . . Originally I was very interested in this game but after reading reviews I gave it a pass. . . Until it went on sale haha

Played for about an hour and so far is kinda cool, but damn there is something screwy going on with the frame rate/graphics. With Vsync on I'm running 45 and lower, like unplayable lower, tried with both high and low settings??? But everything max at 1080 with Vsync OFF I'm getting like 75fps +??????????? Yeah not sure what the hell is going on or what I am doing.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

MoshJosh said:


> Downloaded homefront the revolution today. . . Originally I was very interested in this game but after reading reviews I gave it a pass. . . Until it went on sale haha
> 
> Played for about an hour and so far is kinda cool, but damn there is something screwy going on with the frame rate/graphics. With Vsync on I'm running 45 and lower, like unplayable lower, tried with both high and low settings??? But everything max at 1080 with Vsync OFF I'm getting like 75fps +??????????? Yeah not sure what the hell is going on or what I am doing.



You pretty much should always turn vsync off unless your system can blast the necessary 60fps+ with it on.


----------



## Mathemagician

Thinking of thing WoW again. Oh lawd. Any good PVE servers, mainly one with solid end-game PVP players? I just don't have the time to play on a full-on PVP server anymore. Alliance or horde idc. Currently alliance on Sargeras if I remember that right. #nerdhelp


----------



## Jake

TheShreddinHand said:


> What happened??



Just stopped turning on one day, thought it was the power supply but nope bought a new one for it to just not work as well. Less than a year old too 

Oh well though, new one seems fine for now 

For reference I had 3 Xbox 360's RROD over 10 years on me so I'm well versed in the Microsoft repair and service center by now


----------



## coreysMonster

Moved to a new place, bought a new TV (55" 4k) and I have been enjoying the crap out of playing Bloodborne. I moved last week and still haven't even hooked up my computer, and that's usually the FIRST thing I do when I move.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Jake said:


> Just stopped turning on one day, thought it was the power supply but nope bought a new one for it to just not work as well. Less than a year old too
> 
> Oh well though, new one seems fine for now
> 
> For reference I had 3 Xbox 360's RROD over 10 years on me so I'm well versed in the Microsoft repair and service center by now



Dang, that's crazy. Yeah, I had 2 RROD on 360 myself. Fun times.


----------



## Pav

I'm now playing Overwatch like all of the cool kids. I just want to git gud with Genji but man...I suck!


----------



## Señor Voorhees

Genji, in my experience, is mega fun to play but hard to do well with.

As for what games I'm playing, (overwatch aside, as that's a constant thing these days) I'm currently installing GTA 5 on PC. Gonna dive back into that because I got a free copy and I want to .... around with Online alongside my fiance. (only ever had it for Xbox before, and .... paying extra money to play my games online.)


----------



## coreysMonster

Pav said:


> I'm now playing Overwatch like all of the cool kids. I just want to git gud with Genji but man...I suck!


Genji's one of the heros with the highest skill ceiling, it's probably gonna take a couple hours to be able to use him effectively across all maps. Learning where all the little flanks are is vitally important, as is developing a good feel for when you should rush in and dash around everybody, and when to just bail and wait for the cavalry to arrive. People compare Tracer to the Scout from TF2, but IMO Genji is a lot more like the Scout in the sense that if you get up close you can just decimate people, but you're so weak that you have to be very careful to not get insta-killed. Another way Genji is like the Scout is that you don't have to kill people to be effective. You're fast, you're mobile, you can flank the enemy team and annoy them from one side while your team takes the other; even if you're not killing anybody you're annoying them and dividing their attention, which is extremely useful - as long as you stay alive.


----------



## Chokey Chicken

Tracer is sort of the same, just different mechanics. I can't count the times I've managed to sneak around back of the defense to poke at the bees nest with tracer. One time in particular it was close to over when I switched to her. All it took was a few empty clips/touching the point to rip 3 guys attention away from my five teammates who were able to push and take the point. GenjI and tracer are both insanely good at stealing attention. Both could go a full round without actually killing someone and still be MVP.

Edit: Genji is a bit more difficult though. His weapon is pinpoint accurate, but it's slow.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Anyone got the Bioshock Collection yet? Im thinking about getting it on PS4


----------



## Chokey Chicken

Just bought it and a ps4. Definitely bringing back memories. I haven't played infinite or its episodes yet. Currently finishing up the first one, actually, and I plan to play 2 before moving on to infinite which I'm looking forward to.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Trying to trudge through WWE 2K16. It's not nearly as fun as it seemed it'd be when I first started it. It's almost a chore to progress through the story mode.

But since I'm binge watching the entire South Park series I might go back and replay Stick of Truth soon.


----------



## Repner

Black_Sheep said:


> Anyone got the Bioshock Collection yet? Im thinking about getting it on PS4



Just received it in the mail right now. Only played the first one, so this should be interesting. Heard Infinite was great as well.


----------



## MFB

Infinite is my favorite Bioshock, it's just so beautiful looking


----------



## TedEH

I noticed the Bioshock remasters showed up in my steam for owning the originals - I'm tempted to install one of them to see what's changed. I vaguely remember the copy I had wasn't super controller friendly, so maybe that's been improved. I never finished #2, so that could be a good excuse to try that game again.

Also just start Arkham Origins, so maybe I'll switch to Bioshock 2 if I get bored of it.

I'm still a bit disappointed that the iOS port of Bioshock was never fixed. It worked fine for a while, then broke, then was pulled from the store... then nuthin.


----------



## crystallake

Black_Sheep said:


> Anyone got the Bioshock Collection yet? Im thinking about getting it on PS4



Finally finished up all the Fallout DLC so I'm starting Bioshock today. Such a great series and glad to see it got a proper remaster.


----------



## MoshJosh

^^^ I bought and returned the Bioshock remaster on PC, had a number of issues with the game including a crash that caused me to lose an hour and a half of progress. So if you are buying on pc be warned, or save often. Heard the PS4 or Xbone are good though.


----------



## Mathemagician

Having only finished Bioshock 2 in early 2014, I just gotta put out there: don't skip this game. It gets a bad rap because it was "only" 85-90% as "good" as the first one. It it's amazing. It's kind of hard to live up to a game that for many people (myself included) defined the beginning of next-gen gaming. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's a great follow-up story. Haven't played the DLC though. $0.02.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I downloaded my copies of Bioshock 1 and 2 Remastered last week when they came out, I already had the collection on PC. I'll wait for them to fix some of the issues before diving back in. I've had Infinite for years now and still haven't played more than an hour and a half of it, maybe. I'll just start it over when I get back into it.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Been playing the free games with gold Forza Horizon and man can't believe I missed this one when it originally came out. Been having a blast playing through it although I don't think I'll have it done by the time FH3 comes out and my that one is looking really good.


----------



## Ralyks

Bioshock Collection will be my next purchase. I already beat all 3, but the first one is among my favorite games of all time, and the second two are phenomenal as well.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Hit master prestige on Blops 3; was going to do No Man's Sky next but we all know how that worked out. 

Ideas?


----------



## MoshJosh

Been playing a bunch lately:

Recore, pretty fun but a number of technical issues/glitches 
Max Payne 3, played the crap out of this back on consoles, and is just as awesome on PC.
Oh and just beat Crysis 2

Just downloaded Hyper Light Drifter, and Crysis 1. . .


----------



## Pav

None of the other Crysis games even came close to Crysis 1 and Warhead. Those games blew me away when I first played them. Those graphics...


----------



## absolutorigin

Destiny: Rise of Iron, Fifa 17, NBA 2K17. I'm enjoying all of them very much. With a little Overwatch sprinkled in.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Dragon Age DLC was on sale so I picked up the three that matter and started to clean up some trophies I have left in Inquisition.


----------



## tacotiklah

Still a hopeless Path of Exile addict. My new build is a Mirror Arrow trapper with the Necromancer ascendancy. Imagine throwing out traps and every time one is triggered, 4 clones of yourself pop out and hit you with very painful arrows. Now add a ton of increased speed bonuses, and a bow (Null's Inclination) that casts other minions every time one of your clones kills something. I plan to run Summon Raging Spirits in the bow (getting the right socket colors is probably going to be a pain in the ass tbvh) so that I get tons of spirits of fire in a short period of time.

Behold my army, indeed. Probably the most troll build I've seen in this game by far.


----------



## stevexc

Picked up Shadow of Mordor on a whim. Fun stuff so far!


----------



## TedEH

^ I found that once you get far enough into Shadow of Mordor, the violence is strangely satisfying. Best part of that game IMO.


----------



## wannabguitarist

Anyone playing Forza Horizon 3?


----------



## mongey

stevexc said:


> Picked up Shadow of Mordor on a whim. Fun stuff so far!



I really enjoyed shadow of Mordor. Its one of those things, I went in the lowish expectations and it was way better than I expected . super fun stalking those rivals that have killed you before


----------



## Pav

wannabguitarist said:


> Anyone playing Forza Horizon 3?



Not yet but I've been looking at getting it for PC. I've had a hankering for a good driving game and the Forza series is one of the few things I miss about owning an Xbox. Reviews are all saying it's damn good.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

wannabguitarist said:


> Anyone playing Forza Horizon 3?



I have it but haven't been able to start it yet. I've got a couple other games to finish and wanted to wait till my new 4k TV and theater couch come in!!


----------



## Fiction

Just hit endgame of FF:XIV, tossing up wether or not to buy Heavensward though. Also playing through Stardew Valley again heh.


----------



## wannabguitarist

Pav said:


> Not yet but I've been looking at getting it for PC. I've had a hankering for a good driving game and the Forza series is one of the few things I miss about owning an Xbox. Reviews are all saying it's damn good.



It's gorgeous. Ultimate edition preorders got early access so I've been playing since the weekend. Great fun


----------



## BlackMastodon

Starting up Rise of the Tomb Raider tonight. It's been ages since I've sat down and played a single player game for myself and I'm a huge fan of the series so I'm pretty excited.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Picked up The Long Dark over the weekend since it was on sale. Pretty decent wilderness survival game. Reminds me a ton of Skyrim's Frostfire mod. It's a good challenge so far, only put a few hours into it which was 3.5 days in game. In those few days I think I almost froze to death 3 times before finding shelter at the last second, so the game is keeping me interested.


----------



## Don Vito

I've never made it past 2-3 days without getting eaten by a wolf. 

Sneaky bastards.


----------



## Ralyks

Lots of Borderlands 2. Also grabbed Resident Evil, Transformers Devastation, and the Outlast 2 demo. But yeah, a whole bunch of Borderlands 2.


----------



## Pav

REmake is free on PSN this month, easily one of the best free games I've seen so far. Any PS4 owners that haven't played it should claim and enjoy it. It's a great example of how to modernize a classic game.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Recently Platinumed (finally) The Witcher 3, now gonna move on to Alien Isolation probably. Next week is time for new game purchases and im looking to get Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Mafia 3


----------



## Repner

Pav said:


> REmake is free on PSN this month, easily one of the best free games I've seen so far. Any PS4 owners that haven't played it should claim and enjoy it. It's a great example of how to modernize a classic game.



Yeah. It's been ages since PS+ has done AAA games. I already bought the origins collection a few months ago, but it's a good sign they'll give us more in the future.


----------



## thedonal

First play of Borderlands. Got the GOTY used for £4.

It's good but right now finding it a little bit sparse. Still in chapter 1 though so early days.


----------



## Ralyks

Speaking of PSN finally having good games for free, Transformers Devastation is surprisingly fun.


----------



## Leberbs

thedonal said:


> First play of Borderlands. Got the GOTY used for £4.
> 
> It's good but right now finding it a little bit sparse. Still in chapter 1 though so early days.



I hated that game. EVERYTHING is sparse.


----------



## gujukal

Been playing Forza Horizon 3 past week, awesome and addictive game but a bit bad optimized on Windows 10. Gonna start playing Mafia 3 tonight, also looking forward to Gears of War 4 and BF4 later this month. Its too many awesome games that are getting realesed these months!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Don Vito said:


> I've never made it past 2-3 days without getting eaten by a wolf.
> 
> Sneaky bastards.



I was lucky enough to find a knife and some flares early on, so I can scare them off and if the flares don't work I can try to survive with the knife.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

thedonal said:


> First play of Borderlands. Got the GOTY used for £4.
> 
> It's good but right now finding it a little bit sparse. Still in chapter 1 though so early days.



I couldn't get into the first Borderlands. No real story to care about and there was too much fetch quest bull..... Basically, all the .... that's wrong with shooters and RPGs in one. But I did play the sequel and actually enjoy it quite a bit. Didn't hurt that I got it free from PS+, but it was still an enjoyable game.


----------



## Pav

Less then 6 hours until Gears of War 4 unlocks on my PC, I can't wait to throw down some much-needed ultraviolence!


----------



## Black_Sheep

gujukal said:


> Been playing Forza Horizon 3 past week, awesome and addictive game but a bit bad optimized on Windows 10



Didn't know it was available for PC, thought it was XBONE only, damn I have to get it now


----------



## Ralyks

Black_Sheep said:


> Didn't know it was available for PC, thought it was XBONE only, damn I have to get it now



I think Microsoft made Xbox One games playable on Windows 10 (and vice versa?)


----------



## Pav

Black_Sheep said:


> Didn't know it was available for PC, thought it was XBONE only, damn I have to get it now



It's one of the new cross-buy games for Xbox One and Windows 10 PC. Just like Gears of War 4, which more PC owners should totally buy! I do hope the Windows version of Forza is patched up to par though, it looks like a fantastic racer. If they could get it properly optimized on PC I would buy it for sure.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Picked up Mafia III and Gears Of War 4 the other day.

The Mafia story is really good, but the build up and side missions are all rinse and repeats. It also doesn't really feel like a Mafia game, it feels a lot more like a Godfather game. I wouldn't recommend it, it's already starting to feel like a grind and i'm probably less than halfway through the game.

Gears of War 4 campaign was fun, and the Horde mode is great, but the new micro transaction based unlock system needs ALOT of work. It takes AGES to earn enough in game "coins" to get any decent unlocks, and worst of all, it's rng based, so even then you could still get screwed. I'd recommend it for those that like the campaign, but I'd hold off if you are buying it for the multiplayer. Hopefully the devs listen to the fanbase and up the payoffs.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> Picked up Mafia III and Gears Of War 4 the other day.
> 
> The Mafia story is really good, but the build up and side missions are all rinse and repeats. It also doesn't really feel like a Mafia game, it feels a lot more like a Godfather game. I wouldn't recommend it, it's already starting to feel like a grind and i'm probably less than halfway through the game.
> 
> Gears of War 4 campaign was fun, and the Horde mode is great, but the new micro transaction based unlock system needs ALOT of work. It takes AGES to earn enough in game "coins" to get any decent unlocks, and worst of all, it's rng based, so even then you could still get screwed. I'd recommend it for those that like the campaign, but I'd hold off if you are buying it for the multiplayer. Hopefully the devs listen to the fanbase and up the payoffs.



What's the length of the gears campaign? How many hours did it take you?


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

TheShreddinHand said:


> What's the length of the gears campaign? How many hours did it take you?


 
Just had a look at the in game stats, it says it took me 8 hours 15 min. That was on "Normal" by myself. I'm expecting it to take ALOT longer on "Insane", which I want to play through in co-op.


----------



## thedonal

x-Box live are having a 360 sale at the mo. Got Metro 2033 ofr £2.99. Proper score. Been meaning to check this out for ages.

For its flaws, its a great game. Not quite what I expected at all. I may snag the sequel before the price goes up again..


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Randomly started playing Payday 2 again. Initially played it when it was free with PS+ and after an hour had enough. Same thing this time around. I don't have the patience to grind through it solo and multiplayer from what I can tell is mostly dead.

After that I decided to restart LittleBigPlanet Karting. I'm about halfway through it now. Fun game, but some levels are a cluster.... to play. Plus, I found out the online servers were shut down two months ago.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

thedonal said:


> x-Box live are having a 360 sale at the mo. Got Metro 2033 ofr £2.99. Proper score. Been meaning to check this out for ages.
> 
> For its flaws, its a great game. Not quite what I expected at all. I may snag the sequel before the price goes up again..



It and Last Light are fantastic.


----------



## gujukal

Black_Sheep said:


> Didn't know it was available for PC, thought it was XBONE only, damn I have to get it now



All microsoft games released from this summer will be available on both PC and Xbox One  Gears of War 4 are supposed to work great on Windows 10. I'm pretty stoked on next Halo, going to be amazing on PC!


----------



## TheShreddinHand

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> Just had a look at the in game stats, it says it took me 8 hours 15 min. That was on "Normal" by myself. I'm expecting it to take ALOT longer on "Insane", which I want to play through in co-op.



Cool, thanks!


----------



## Azyiu

So I was playing a speed run on U3 (PS4 remastered), and was going for that *Neediest for Speediest* trophy. I sucked in Chapters 6, 8 & 9... in the end I was off by 3 minutes and 1 second! Damn! Need to try again... but at least I scored the *The Fat and the Furious Yemen Drifter* and *My Horse is Faster* trophies along the way... I already earned both the *Outrun the Flames* and *Catch that Plane!* before my failed speed run trial though.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Infinite Warfare beta. 

This is basically Black Ops 3 in space. It's weird.


----------



## big_aug

CS:GO had sucked me back in once again. It has no equal as far as competitive FPS go.


----------



## Ralyks

Doing my True Vault Hunter run throughts of Borderlands 2 and Pre-Sequel. Otherwise... trying to decide what's next. Maybe finally finish Doom or give Witcher 3 another go....


----------



## oracles

steinmetzify said:


> Infinite Warfare beta.



I downloaded it and think I had it uninstalled after about two hours. Definitely not going to be buying it.


----------



## MoshJosh

Picked up Far Cry 4 again, super fun game, but I never get anything done cause I'm always off hunting the wild life or random side quest stuff. Also, still working on Crisis 3. 

Just got some stuff on sale but haven't played yet, just bought Zombi, and Skyrim Legendary Edition (mainly so I'll get the remaster upgrade)


----------



## Ralyks

oracles said:


> I downloaded it and think I had it uninstalled after about two hours. Definitely not going to be buying it.



I'm waiting for/hoping the CoD4 remaster becomes available as a stand alone. That was the only reason I was considering Infinite Warfare.


----------



## xvultures

oracles said:


> I downloaded it and think I had it uninstalled after about two hours. Definitely not going to be buying it.



My buddies are buying this game for the sole reason of the Call of Duty 4 remaster/remake. Apparently you can only buy the CoD4 remake if you buy Infinite Warfare?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

From what I've read, there is no standalone version (yet) and you have to either have the disc in the drive and/or be online to play it. So .... that.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Started Resident Evil 4 once again since I wanted to play something spooky for the Halloween season. Also, got back to Skyrim since they're releasing the remastered version tomorrow.


----------



## Mathemagician

On top of jumping back into Overwatch on PS4, I have Battlefield 1 coming in today and titanfall 2 tomorrow. Anyone else play these (casual) on PS4?


----------



## Steinmetzify

oracles said:


> I downloaded it and think I had it uninstalled after about two hours. Definitely not going to be buying it.



Heard that. Sucky thing for me though....I don't have a ton of time to game, and I can usually do at least a couple matches in between clients. I really don't like playing CoD after about a year, because all the fanboys jump ship to the new one and it's hard to get a match.

But yeah...wasn't a fan, really. Went back to Blops 3 after the beta was over and it's still a lot more satisfying to me.


----------



## myrtorp

Me and my mate have been playing alot of co-op Divinity Original Sin. It's a pretty good turn based rpg. It's the kind of game where you can kill anyone and steal anything basically. The combat is great, different surfaces interact, fire on oil will make fire aoe damage, and gas will make the fire explode, ice will make enemies trip and so on. We managed to beat some tough higher level enemies by using the environment the right way. Very satisfying!

Some of the puzzles are kinda tricky though, to the point where we just google it. For example, we were in a chamber where you had to find 4 small switches, by walking close enough, then press them in the right order, and the hint was the name of an author who's book you could find in the room (Which was full of stuff). ENS West or something like that (east north south west) 

And one where you had to walk through 6 portals in the right order without any hints at all. and you didnt even know when you walked through the right one. 

Besides that its a great game.


----------



## Taylor

Playing Star Citizen since it's the Fall "Free Fly". The game's still in alpha and has framerate issues and crashes a lot. However it's pretty damn fun, and I can definitely see myself buying it once all the kinks and bugs are worked out.


----------



## coreysMonster

Started Stardew Valley. I had started it once before but for some reason quit after like 10 minutes. I had an itch for Harvest Moon so decided to try it again, and omg it's all I did after work last night.

Stardew Valley is like Terraria mixed with Harvest Moon and I had no idea how badly I've wanted a game like that.


----------



## Ralyks

coreysMonster said:


> Started Stardew Valley. I had started it once before but for some reason quit after like 10 minutes. I had an itch for Harvest Moon so decided to try it again, and omg it's all I did after work last night.
> 
> Stardew Valley is like Terraria mixed with Harvest Moon and I had no idea how badly I've wanted a game like that.



I really wish they'd make a console port of this game. I've heard nothing but great things, and I feel like I could get the wife into it too.

Edit: Upon further Google research, apparently a console version IS coming soon. Huzzah!


----------



## Gravy Train

Currently playing Resident Evil REmake, Resident Evil 5 & Resident Evil 6. They all came out on PS4, so I it was a no brainer. I have very fond memories of these games and the Resident Evil 4 is coming out on PS4 next year, so I am very excited for that too.


----------



## Don Vito

Ralyks said:


> I really wish they'd make a console port of this game. I've heard nothing but great things, and I feel like I could get the wife into it too.
> 
> Edit: Upon further Google research, apparently a console version IS coming soon. Huzzah!


The PC version runs on a toaster.


----------



## Fat-Elf

Gravy Train said:


> I have very fond memories of these games and the Resident Evil 4 is coming out on PS4 next year, so I am very excited for that too.



Jesus, you know a game is godlike when it gets released for three different console generations.

I also started RE4 like I said earlier but lost interest in it as soon as I found Ashley.


----------



## Gravy Train

Fat-Elf said:


> Jesus, you know a game is godlike when it gets released for three different console generations.
> 
> I also started RE4 like I said earlier but lost interest in it as soon as I found Ashley.



Ain't that the truth? RE is such an awesome series (even though the later games get trash talked a lot).

I have actually never played RE4 (sacrilege I know), so when it comes out on PS4, I will finally see what all the hype and praise is all about!


----------



## coreysMonster

Ralyks said:


> I really wish they'd make a console port of this game. I've heard nothing but great things, and I feel like I could get the wife into it too.
> 
> Edit: Upon further Google research, apparently a console version IS coming soon. Huzzah!



What I really want is multiplayer. I want my girlfriend to be able to pop in and help me with my farm, and I help her with hers, or each have our own farm that we tend to on a dedicated server ala Minecraft. I'm well aware of how difficult it is to implement online multiplayer like that so I'm not holding my breath, but it's what I want.


----------



## Rosal76

Gravy Train said:


> ... and the Resident Evil 4 is coming out on PS4 next year, so I am very excited for that too.



Resident Evil 4 is already out on disc for the PS4. I believe it came out in August. Me and my friend went to Gamestop and picked it up for his PS4. If you meant the download, my mistake. According to Gamestop, that isn't available till next month.


----------



## Gravy Train

Rosal76 said:


> Resident Evil 4 is already out on disc for the PS4. I believe it came out in August. Me and my friend went to Gamestop and picked it up for his PS4. If you meant the download, my mistake. According to Gamestop, that isn't available till next month.



You're right, I must have looked at the download date. I must purchase this immediately! Thank you for the heads up.


----------



## Rosal76

Gravy Train said:


> You're right, I must have looked at the download date. I must purchase this immediately! Thank you for the heads up.





The game is freaking awesome. Very, very adventurous. Enemies, sub bosses, bosses, weapons, gameplay and locations are very well designed. After you're done playing, you won't even remember RE 5 and 6.


----------



## Ralyks

I actually think PSN has (had?) a bundle sale for 4, 5 and 6 for like 35 bucks. I know I'm going to grab 4 at some point because I've never played more than like 2 hours of it, maybe when I get my tax return and set aside a small portion to games...

Am I the only one who would like to see a Code: Veronica X port or maybe an updated 3: Nemesis?


----------



## Fat-Elf

Ralyks said:


> Am I the only one who would like to see a Code: Veronica X port or maybe an updated 3: Nemesis?



They already ported CVX to Xbox 360/PS3 but if you're meaning a PS4 port then that's fine. I'd really love to see it on PC. They're actually remaking RE2 at the moment so even if it's kinda unlikely it would be nice to get a full remake of Nemesis too.


----------



## Blytheryn

I just got Broforce off of Steam. My god is this cool...


----------



## Pav

Ralyks said:


> Am I the only one who would like to see a Code: Veronica X port or maybe an updated 3: Nemesis?


I would play the hell out of both of those. I think a Nemesis remake would be ultra pimping. I replayed Code Veronica X a few months ago but Nemesis is so outdated at this point that it can be hard to tell what the hell is happening on a modern HDTV.


----------



## Ralyks

I don't even need a full remake of Nemesis, just smooth out the edges and maybe improve some of the lighting. Sometimes I don't mind being nostalgic for PSone graphics.


----------



## SD83

Just finished Bioshock 2 for the second time, now it's Mass Effect (yes, I'm that late to the party  just slowly trying to catch up on 15 years of gaming that I kinda missed out on). And after half an hour... compared to Bioshock, it looks like ...., runs like ...., handles like .... and froze twice in the first half hour. And as far as I can figure out, you can't jump. Story seems intriguing so far, but right now I'm rather glad the triology was about 5&#8364; per game...


----------



## Black_Sheep

Titanfall 2


----------



## Quiet Coil

SD83 said:


> Just finished Bioshock 2 for the second time, now it's Mass Effect (yes, I'm that late to the party  just slowly trying to catch up on 15 years of gaming that I kinda missed out on). And after half an hour... compared to Bioshock, it looks like ...., runs like ...., handles like .... and froze twice in the first half hour. And as far as I can figure out, you can't jump. Story seems intriguing so far, but right now I'm rather glad the triology was about 5&#8364; per game...





I loved Bioshock and I loved the Mass Effect trilogy. If you like RPG's hang in there, gameplay and tech improved quite a bit with 2 & 3 but I still prefer the first one overall for the story and characters.


----------



## Ralyks

To give myself a Borderlands breaks, I spent a grand total of $25 on The Uncharted Collection (want to play the trilogy before getting into Uncharted 4, which I'm dying to play), Sleeping Dogs, and Psychonauts. Psychonauts in particular makes me feel like I'm playing through a 90's Nickelodeon cartoon mixed with a very good Nintendo/Rare platformer. I love it.


----------



## TedEH

Started a second playthrough of Firewatch yesterday when I realized there's an "audio tour"/dev commentary mode. As a game-dev kinda guy, the audio tour is a cool feature.


----------



## wannabguitarist

Black_Sheep said:


> Titanfall 2



Anyone else on this kick? I haven't had this much with a FPS in years


----------



## Ralyks

wannabguitarist said:


> Anyone else on this kick? I haven't had this much with a FPS in years



They have it at my local redbox, I'm contemplating trying it since I have friends at work who are into it. Plus I've heard nothing but great things.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Been playing Skyrim: Remastered since it came out. Level 23 and my sneak is at 82, archery is 50 something, one handed is 40. Just finished the Dark Brotherhood quest line and have Mehrunes Razor in right hand and Blade of Woe in the other, along with the base Dark Brotherhood gear. Need to get my pickpocketing up and I'll be more than ready for Thieves Guild.


----------



## Mathemagician

wannabguitarist said:


> Anyone else on this kick? I haven't had this much with a FPS in years



I am. It's so fun. Luckily Battlefield is a different experience so they don't fight for my attention.


----------



## wannabguitarist

Ralyks said:


> They have it at my local redbox, I'm contemplating trying it since I have friends at work who are into it. Plus I've heard nothing but great things.



Do it, it's all the good parts of COD (they essentially copied the wall running from Titanfall 1 anyways) plus giant fvcking robots


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Vice City and San Andreas were on sale on PSN. I'm on the Death Row mission and I have to say that the gameplay mechanics are worse than I remember.


----------



## Ralyks

Carrion Rocket said:


> Vice City and San Andreas were on sale on PSN. I'm on the Death Row mission and I have to say that the gameplay mechanics are worse than I remember.



Ive been playing through Vice City, and yeah, the mechanics aren't as good as the modern GTAs, but still incredibly fun.


----------



## stevexc

Trying to git gud at Starcraft. I'm currently at "really bad".


----------



## Mathemagician

wannabguitarist said:


> Anyone else on this kick? I haven't had this much with a FPS in years



I bought both it and Battlefield 1 and am going to sell B1, because it just isn't as fun. Such a fun game to pair up with over watch. I wish Lucio's wall run was as fluid.

Edit: oops double post. Leaving it.


----------



## Pav

Battlefield 1 is the perfect compliment to Overwatch for me. And today was a big day since both games had major updates that added all kinds of new content. I'm going to be quite busy when I get home from class later.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished the Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, moved on to Among Thieves. I definitely think I'm playing A Theifs End once I complete the trilogy, these games are fun as hell.

Also still going at it in Borderlands 2. My assassin is level 59, meanwhile, I managed to obtained a bunch of level 72 orange, pink, and pearlescent weapons and armor that awesome, but obviously can't use yet. Think I may start a Siren when I get back from my trip to Buffalo.


----------



## synrgy

Haven't had much time for gaming since becoming a Dad 12 weeks ago. 

That said, the situation did lead to my discovery of *Pocket Mortys* (Android\Apple)

Simple, fun, addictive.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

While waiting for Trails Of Cold Steel 2 to get to my doorstep (any day now), I'm revisiting some old chestnuts:












And since I've been living under a rock and have never fully played a sandbox game  I decided to de-virginise that with this:


----------



## mongey

synrgy said:


> Haven't had much time for gaming since becoming a Dad 12 weeks ago.
> 
> That said, the situation did lead to my discovery of *Pocket Mortys* (Android\Apple)
> 
> Simple, fun, addictive.





Congrats. And get used to it lol. My daughter is 21 months now and I still have no time for gaming apart from 15 minutes here and there.


----------



## Repner

Finishing up Valkyria Chronicles in time for Final Fantasy XV in 12 days.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Bloody_Inferno said:


> And since I've been living under a rock and have never fully played a sandbox game  I decided to de-virginise that with this:



I thought it was good, but personally I prefer Saints Row 3rd, and I'm in the minority of people that do. 

People say that SR3rd is too campy or too weird, but I ....ing love that. I have a feeling you'd like it, too.


----------



## Ralyks

I second Saints Row The 3rd being the best one. Wish they'd port that one over, I have the PS4 port for SR4 which is fun, but pretty much feels like Crackdown.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I thought it was good, but personally I prefer Saints Row 3rd, and I'm in the minority of people that do.
> 
> People say that SR3rd is too campy or too weird, but I ....ing love that. I have a feeling you'd like it, too.





Ralyks said:


> I second Saints Row The 3rd being the best one. Wish they'd port that one over, I have the PS4 port for SR4 which is fun, but pretty much feels like Crackdown.



Fret not lads. I specifically chose Saints Row 2 to ease into the genre and with full intention to play all the way to the sequels. I hear it goes completely off the rails to bonkers insanity in the latter games, which is exactly what I want, since I got put off by some of the realism of latter GTA. I don't want pedestrians to roll over the car and cry after running them over, I want them to fly into the air and concuss a flock of birds. 

I guess it's just a much needed change after playing so many games where a bunch of wet teens use the power of friendship and commit deicide or kill Satan, I just want to be the most evilest and dastardly prick for a change... and kill Satan later apparently.  So far SR2 scratches that itch nicely, as I'm really enjoying slicing pedestrians with a sword whilst speeding on a motorcycle... oh wait.


----------



## Blytheryn

Any of you guys play War Thunder? I play it quite often, and don't have any friends on there. Would be sweet to get on discord or something and get a flight of mustangs together and wreck stuff.


----------



## MoshJosh

been playing a few games off and on for the last couple of weeks, Wolfenstein The Old Blood, Shadow Warrior (the new one but not Shadow Warrior 2), and some Far Cry 2 to name a few. I also played the Agony demo and the Steep Beta. 

After seeing some of the previews I decided to support Agony on kickstarter (thats how I got the demo). If you haven't seen it I would recommend checking out some of the previews on youtube. It has this creepy grotesque atmosphere that I've never really seen before in a game. . . and yeah its pretty cool. I will say thought that that while cool, the art style can make environments hard to navigate at times. Everything can kind of blend in together and the games visual cues aren't always the easiest to follow. The demo was pretty short and the game definitely needs some polishing, but it is in alpha/beta state (believe steam description says beta, but in game it says alpha), and I am really interested to see how this game turns out.

And yeah I got in on the Steep Beta. I kind of have a soft spot for these types of games and am hopeful for Steep. It was certainly interesting, but the first couple of times I played was on mouse and keyboard which I don't recommend. When I plugged in a controller the game felt a bit more fluid but still had some issues. I am most curious what content Steep has in comparison to other extreme sport type games. . . and how much it will cost. For 40 and under I could see picking it up, but at 60 I would be worried about the content getting stale.


----------



## Fiction

Just bought a PS4 for when FFXV Hits, I'm excited.

I picked up one of the starter bundles with Lego Star Wars & Ratchet & Clank because outside of RPG/Adventures I'm pretty much a kid, when it comes to games


----------



## Pav

Fiction said:


> Just bought a PS4 for when FFXV Hits, I'm excited.



I finally put down a pre-order for the deluxe edition earlier tonight. I'm very excited for a new Final Fantasy.


----------



## Repner

Just watch out if you look at any comment sections. Apparently some store put out some copies without permission, and there are spoilers flying about.

I never thought I'd be excited for a FF game again after being disappointed with XIII, but I'm excited for this one. Hajime Tabata seems like he has his head on straight.


----------



## Ralyks

Jazzpunk. What a strange, wonderful game.


----------



## RUSH_Of_Excitement

I just got Titanfall 2 and I am so disappointed in myself for almost overlooking this game completely. I am a fan of Infinite Warfare admittedly, but after playing this game for a couple of hours, IW just feels like the same old same old. Titanfall 2 feels so inspired and like the main point of creating it was to have a genuinely good time whereas COD almost takes itself too seriously. The level design and subtle platforming elements in the campaign lead to one of the most fun I've ever had in a single player FPS. And multiplayer is also really satisfying. Hearing "Prepare for Titanfall" is an awesome little adrenaline shot every time. I just wish more people would give it a chance and that the player base continues to grow!


----------



## Kaura

Just bought CoD: World at War (and it's still installing). Used to play sh1t out of that game as a teenager and I loved the campaign. Hopefully it's still as good as it used to be.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Actually, I'm juggling between Trails Of Cold Steel 2, Sains Row 2 and Symphony Of The Night. But since I'm a long way from home, I'm just playing Hatfall instead.


----------



## TedEH

Giving the new Mirror's Edge a shot 'cause I was a fan of the first one. Not very far in yet, but so far.... feels like a game designed by committee. The writing in the cutscenes is pretty cringe-worthy, and I had to mess with settings for a while to get the textures to not look really ugly, but hopefully the gameplay itself will be a redeeming feature.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished and Platinumed Jazzpunk. Again, what a strange and wonderful game.

Still grinding away with Borderlands 2, and also playing Bateman: Arkham Knight. Although this may change with Final Fantasy XV coming out tomorrow. Going to go get my preorder before work.


----------



## Repner

Final Fantasy XV. Felt like I'd never be able to say that. Loving it so far.


----------



## synrgy

I know it was a typo, but I'm getting a huge laugh over here at the thought of Jason Bateman playing Batman.


----------



## Ralyks

Final Fantasy XV is waiting for me at home, already set it to install and patch before I left for work. Just 2 more minutes at work....


----------



## Alberto7

TedEH said:


> Giving the new Mirror's Edge a shot 'cause I was a fan of the first one. Not very far in yet, but so far.... feels like a game designed by committee. The writing in the cutscenes is pretty cringe-worthy, and I had to mess with settings for a while to get the textures to not look really ugly, but hopefully the gameplay itself will be a redeeming feature.



Let me know how it plays, as I was a huge fan of the first one as well, but I don't have a powerful enough PC to run it or a console system atm. Everything I've read so far about it is pretty neutral, saying it's really just more of the same.


----------



## RUSH_Of_Excitement

Everyone go out and buy Titanfall 2 please, this is an amazing game and it deserves a bigger share of the fps pie. Why EA decided to release this at the same time as COD and battlefield 1 is beyond me.


----------



## Ralyks

Did my first OP in Borderlands 2. Still addicted to it.

Otherwise, Final Fantasy XV. Game play is pretty fun, I like some of the new elements, the soundtrack is probably the best game soundtrack I've heard in a long time... Yet I'm still trying to make out what this game is. Its good, I'll say that, But still trying to make out what it is, if that makes any sense.


----------



## possumkiller

Il-2: Battle of Moscow along with some DCS MiG-21 bis and Witcher 3.


----------



## bostjan

I'm a pretty casual gamer. I haven't been able to play a serious game since I got married, aside from a the newer Wolfenstein games and the new Doom.

But I've gotten into a few tablet games since I acquired a Samsung Galaxy Tab whatever. Maybe you guys know a thing or two about these:

Grablox - pretty fun puzzle game. You tap on blocks, and they do different things, like grab onto other blocks, disappear, explode, etc.

Smashy Road - kind of a reduction of a GTA clone. Car chases. It's pretty damn difficult, IMO. I almost deleted this one, but then it awarded me an oil truck and, suddenly, the game got a lot more interesting.


----------



## Fiction

FFXV, I'm enjoying it but not as much as everybody else, I've been playing final fantasy since I was 5, I taught myself to read playing Final Fantasy 6 pretty much, so I've been extremely excited about this.

I can see the potential of this game, the combat is super fun but I just feel like it's kind of slow due to the travelling at this point, maybe once I build up all the auto travel points i'll enjoy it more, I'm also missing the usual final fantasy jungle areas (Like in ffx there's plenty), which I hope pop up later, desert is just not my kind of scenery 

I think it's just a little too realistic for me, which I know is what they were going for, but I would prefer more fantasy, I tell everyone it's pretty much Just Cause 3 featuring big ass monsters.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I finally got around to playing the last of us on ps4. I like it, ps now is a good deal for someone like me who just wants to play all the sony games I missed out on (since I'm primarily a pc player). Also just got bloodborne and I can't wait til I'm done with school so I can sit down and play the crap out of it.


----------



## Pweaks

I recently bought a PS4 and I snatched The Evil Within and The Last of Us Remastered from a "buy one, get one free" deal. I have played 4 chapters of The Evil Within and really liking it so far. It's like Alan Wake meets Resident Evil meets Deus Ex. Shinji Mikami has stated that he won't direct any more games, which is a bummer in my opinion, this guy knows his horror!


----------



## Ralyks

So not only did they announce Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, but apparently Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is on PS4 RIGHT. NOW.

I need to get out of work and binge this all night.


----------



## NickB11

Picked up Battlefield 1 for PS4 on black friday - really loving it! COD World at War was my favorite and this is in the same vein but with the Battlefield twist. The graphics and sound is amazing, having a good time so far!


----------



## Jake

Got Dark Souls 3 for $12 so I'll be digging into that. 

But a whole lot of Battlefield 1 as well.


----------



## mikernaut

sooo i gotta say it , I can't believe Overwatch won game of the year over Uncharted 4, yes, I'm salty! you can give Overwatch props for a MOBA category but... eeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhh Ok  ( sad panda)


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I finished the Mad Max game a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed it, car combat was a lot of fun, very detailed game world, a few tedious parts, a racing part which is definetly one of the worst game levels in existence but any negatives were made up by it being one of the only games I've ever played where the world actually felt lived in. 

I finally got around to buying DOOM last week in the sales. I finished it quite quick. It's an enjoyable game, didn't have the epic feel of the old ones, or that growing unease in a level where you need to get out. The soundtrack however was amazing. 

Onto the Witcher 3 next!


----------



## OmegaSlayer

Playing Warframe on PS4 and having a lot of fun.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Lorcan Ward said:


> Onto the Witcher 3 next!



That you won't regret. Easily one of the best RPG's i've played in a long time. Great story, great characters, great gameplay, and even the DLC missions were great. 

Currently im playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided on PS4. Great game so far.


----------



## Ralyks

Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3!!!!

Also, started back on The Last of Us last night with the announcement of Part 2 coming.


----------



## hairychris

Skyrim remaster.

I got it for free, and as I played the original I wanted to see it again on my more recent gaming laptop.

I'd also forgotten how funny it was to shout NPCs/animals/items off the tops of cliffs.


----------



## mongey

had a few beers in me and saw the pay to play beta for snow on ps4 . 

got curious and paid to play. its ok. needs allot of work IMHO . wish I didn't pay to play


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

I tried playing civ 6 and the AI in that game is horrendous. The only way to win is to kill everyone. All I want is to build farms and ...., but no, everyone just rushes in the ancient age for literally no reason.


----------



## mikernaut

Last Guardian is pretty solid in my book so far. Feels like Ico with a Griffin. Most of mechanics from their previous games are still in here and a few new interesting ones. Only gripe, they are heavy handed with the help tips/control popup window prompts.

Also some very nice animation and playful behavior with Trico you Griffin doggy.

I know its been a long time in development and some people complain it looks dated, but to me it still retains the vibe and art style of their previous games without looking that way really to me , so it's a non-issue in my book. There's too many games trying to look like Pixar or Overwatch these days anyways.


----------



## Ralyks

I have a problem. Way too many games. Literally the past week or two after the wife and kid go to bed, I've been uo late and alternating between... lets see.... Borderlands 2, Overwatch, Barkman: Arkham Knight, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, The Last of Us Remastered, Darksiders II, Mega Man Legacy Collection (more specifically Mega Man 3), Star Wars: Battlefront, The Swapper, Final Fantasy XV, GTA Vice City... It doesn't help that the PSN Store has had a bunch of good sales lately...


----------



## TedEH

^ I feel kinda like I'm in the same boat. Even if I ignore my ridiculous steam library, I've got a small pile of games I've been trying to find time to get to in between the day job and the stuff for the band I've been working on. I never had time to get back to Mirrors Edge 2 yet, and I've got Dragon Age Inquisition that I started and want to finish, aaaaaand I got Crysis 3 for cheap recently, aaaaaand I had started a playthrough of my ancient copy of Pokemon gold and never finished it, aaaaaaaaand... list goes on forever. I also really want to try the most recent Tomb Raider, and when the newest Mass Effect comes out eventually I'll need that. And The Last Guardian. I'll never have time for all of this .


----------



## Leberbs

Picked up Stardew Valley, Terraria, and Rocket League to play with my brother. Stardew Valley is AMAZING so far. Kind of waiting for finals to be over so we can jump on the other 2 together.
Also picked up battlefield 1. Although it's great, I love the modern feel of battlefield 4 just a bit more.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Ralyks said:


> I have a problem. Way too many games.



You are not alone. I have the exact same problem.


----------



## Ralyks

I actually grabbed Dragon Age Inquisition at one point when it was like 5 bucks on PS4 because I heard great reviews... Played a half hour and haven't gone back yet.

Also, Twisted Metal Black was only 3 bucks on PS4 last night... Pretty sure I 100%ed that game when it first came out on PS2, this was a great enough game to pay 3 bucks for a trip down memory lane. And Trophies...


----------



## Ralyks

Leberbs said:


> Picked up Stardew Valley...



Wait, is this on consoles yet?!


----------



## naw38

My wife and I picked up Fallout 4 really cheap a few weeks back, with the intention of playing through that for a while, waiting for a price drop for Final Fantasy XV; well, that didn't work. We got a copy a few days ago and it's the most fun I've had playing an FF game since 9.


----------



## TedEH

Alberto7 said:


> Let me know how it plays, as I was a huge fan of the first one as well, but I don't have a powerful enough PC to run it or a console system atm. Everything I've read so far about it is pretty neutral, saying it's really just more of the same.



About Mirrors Edge 2 - Got some time to play more of this- the writing is still pretty cringe-y but I can appreciate the effort/detail put into building the city. Visually, this would be a great backdrop for a better-written story. There's some good stuff in there gamepla-wise once you dig in a bit- like there's these sort of "hack these locations" missions that are basically platforming/movement puzzles contained in one place- I find those are pretty good. I'm not the biggest fan of how combat has become less avoidable than it was in the last game, and the skill tree is designed in a way that you don't really get to choose, so much as just receive things in a planned order- but I'm pretty forgiving of weak game design elements as long as the overall experience can be enjoyed.

My PC isn't super recent either but I've not had any trouble so far, on high-ish settings. Video is a 2gb gtx770, which is showing it's age at this point, and I forget what my cpu is, but it's nothing special. Runs this game without much problem though.


----------



## Ralyks

Stardew Valley on PS4 is so much fun, in a relaxing way.


----------



## JAMAL

Battlefield 1, Mafia III, Watch Dogs 2.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> I have a problem. Way too many games. Literally the past week or two after the wife and kid go to bed, I've been uo late and alternating between... lets see.... Borderlands 2, Overwatch, Barkman: Arkham Knight, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, The Last of Us Remastered, Darksiders II, Mega Man Legacy Collection (more specifically Mega Man 3), Star Wars: Battlefront, The Swapper, Final Fantasy XV, GTA Vice City... It doesn't help that the PSN Store has had a bunch of good sales lately...



I'm on the same boat. I still have to go through Symphony Of The Night (again), Saints Row 2, Trails Of Cold Steel 2 (had to set aside Shadow Of The Colossus), and planning on starting Just Cause 2, No More Heroes and subsequent Saints Row games. Not to mention holding off getting a PS4 for Final Fantasy XV and Dark Souls 3. I'm supposed to be writing new music but bloody games.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Symphony Of The Night (again)



Semi crossed off the list. Finished 200.1% with Alucard, then immediately started to smash through Richter mode. Already killed the giant Bat and Medusa on the inverted castle. At this rate, Richter mode will be done well before Christmas. 

One thing that I remembered after going through SOTN again is how cathartic it is to play Richter right after Alucard. As awesome as the Metroidvainia elements on Alucard mode are, in which is exactly why it made this game so great, it's fun to be Richter and just run around and ninja/Strider your way through the game without worrying about leveling up and hoarding. It's pretty much classic NES/SNES Castlevania fun. The bosses are still a joke though. It's bad enough that by the 3rd part of the game Alucard can just rub his Rod enhanced Shield on their leg for 5 seconds before they keel over (Dracula barely got to appreciate a morning coffee), Richter can just as easily piss on them with the Holy Water Crash before dying like the wicked witch of the west.


----------



## Anquished

I've been playing Warframe on PC quite a bit recently. I'm only able to get 1-2hrs maximum per day and the 12hr, 24hr and even 3 day build times of some of the gear is keeping the game fresh for me when I pick it up each day through the week. 

Anyone else play much?


----------



## Mwoit

Finished Tales of Zestiria on PC, a classic JRPG romp. It was alright, but lost a bit of traction near the end.

Playing Owl Boy and Hitman. Both are good, Owl Boy is difficult at times but it's got a very nice graphical and musical style to it.


----------



## Alberto7

Been playing The Talos Principle. As someone who really enjoys puzzle-solving videogames, this game is friggin' perfect... almost. While I find that the puzzles are super clever, the gameplay does become slightly repetitive. With that said, while I am still not 100% sure of what's going on (figuring out just what the hell is going on is part of the aim and the charm of the game), the writing and plot seem extremely solid, and it's a topic that I have always been interested in. Tons of hidden lore to be found around the world. With the Metroid series being one of my two favorite videogame franchises of all time, I HUGELY appreciate and enjoy this aspect of the game.

Also, I am surprised that I can run this game in med-high settings on my laptop! According to my roommate (computer engineer and former Microsoft game developer) this game is quite a clever piece of efficient programming, so it looks great while running smoothly even in not-so-great hardware.

Love it so far.

Also, easter eggs EVERYWHERE.



TedEH said:


> About Mirrors Edge 2 - Got some time to play more of this- the writing is still pretty cringe-y but I can appreciate the effort/detail put into building the city. Visually, this would be a great backdrop for a better-written story. There's some good stuff in there gamepla-wise once you dig in a bit- like there's these sort of "hack these locations" missions that are basically platforming/movement puzzles contained in one place- I find those are pretty good. I'm not the biggest fan of how combat has become less avoidable than it was in the last game, and the skill tree is designed in a way that you don't really get to choose, so much as just receive things in a planned order- but I'm pretty forgiving of weak game design elements as long as the overall experience can be enjoyed.
> 
> My PC isn't super recent either but I've not had any trouble so far, on high-ish settings. Video is a 2gb gtx770, which is showing it's age at this point, and I forget what my cpu is, but it's nothing special. Runs this game without much problem though.



Thanks for the input man! Much appreciated. I'm much like you, in that I'm very forgiving of mistakes as long as I enjoy and have fun with the game. I'm glad to hear the gameplay is as fun as ever, even with the unavoidable confrontations. I had higher hopes for the story writing before the game came out, but I guess that's kind of become a trope for this series so far.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mwoit said:


> Finished Tales of Zestiria on PC, a classic JRPG romp. It was alright, but lost a bit of traction near the end.



Classic pretty much nails it on the head. I did a long post on the old JRPG thread but it was mostly me complaining about the terrible camera.  Though I did like the music so much that I bought the OST.


----------



## Alex6534

I've been playing the witcher 3 the past few month since I hadn't had the time before. What a game, 100 hours in and near the end of the main story so I've started the DLC. The trolls have to be some of my favourite NPCs ever


----------



## Kanye

warframe and miscreated


----------



## ZeroS1gnol

Alex6534 said:


> I've been playing the witcher 3 the past few month since I hadn't had the time before. What a game, 100 hours in and near the end of the main story so I've started the DLC. The trolls have to be some of my favourite NPCs ever



Skipping sidequests and contracts? Im about 30 hours in and only just arrived in Novigrad for the first time.


----------



## TedEH

Alberto7 said:


> I had higher hopes for the story writing before the game came out



Continuing with the Mirrors Edge commentary, I find the story is getting less cringe-y as I go, but it hasn't yet reached the point of being "good". 

Lots of my criticism comes down to how everything is very cookie-cutter /surface level "companies = bad", fighting "the man", etc. Every name is a super on-the-nose stereotype. Bad guys are "the conglomerate", "the employs", etc., and good guys are all "off the grid", rebels "fighting the system", etc., but the conflict feels superficial, or sort of just manufactured. Like there's conflict because the game needs to have one, not because anyone has any convincing motivation. Security guards just straight-up murder people for no real reason other than "they're bad guys cause they work for the man". The runners aren't really doing anything that warrants the kind of retaliation they get, until you get to a certain point where all the "good guys" just start destroying stuff because reasons, and sort of feel more like terrorists than anything else. There's a couple of moments where you can tell the writers wanted to explore this angle of "wait, are we actually the bad guys here?" with some characters that clearly take things too far, and I think they should have pushed that angle farther. Maybe they do later in the game, but I'm about 70% through the story (according to the menu) and have no expectation of the story suddenly taking a turn for better.

And it bugs me that the story never acknowledges the irony of how this is a product created by a big company that spends most of it's story saying big companies are inherently evil.


----------



## Pav

Anyone else playing Final Fantasy XV? I'm 30 hours in and loving it so far.


----------



## Ralyks

Pav said:


> Anyone else playing Final Fantasy XV? I'm 30 hours in and loving it so far.



33 hours in, my characters are level 42, I already have Noctis's Ultima Blade... And only on Chapter 6. I even had the Ultima Blade while still on Chapter 3. It seems very easy to get overpowered very early in the game if you know what you're doing with banking experience points and staying at certain hotels and camping.

That said, I haven't enjoyed a Final Fantasy this much since IX, considering I'm 33 hours in and still in pretty much the first part of the story. Also definitely one of my favorite games of the current console generation.


----------



## Cloudy

Ive been playing a lot of asymmetrical horror games recently. Last couple weeks have been non-stop Dead by Daylight for me. Just started playing the new Friday the 13th Game beta as well.


----------



## Repner

Pav said:


> Anyone else playing Final Fantasy XV? I'm 30 hours in and loving it so far.



Yep. Finished the main quest. Without spoiling anything, I enjoyed it, but I do think things could be explained a lot better towards the end. Hopefully with this new patch.


----------



## Alex6534

ZeroS1gnol said:


> Skipping sidequests and contracts? Im about 30 hours in and only just arrived in Novigrad for the first time.




Did almost everything in Velen and Novigrad, Skipped a bit in Skellige and still have plenty of contracts to do. I reckon with the DLC I'll easily get another 50-60 hours out of the game before I start it over.


----------



## Ralyks

I pretty much never buy Season Passes, but I feel like I may do this with FFXV. And a Final Fantasy game was the last place I figured I'd end up buying a season pass. I mean, I already invested time into Kingsglave and Brotherhood...


----------



## Jake

24 gameplay hours into Dark Souls 3 and I'm still asking why I'm doing this to myself 

Super fun game, but incredibly frustrating at parts (I'm looking at you Dancer)

I'll probably finish up my first playthrough and head towards a NG+ cycle but start cracking into FF XV and some other games too shortly as well.


----------



## Repner

Now playing Baldurs Gate. Wanted to play a game of this style in anticipation of Torment: Tides Of Numenara coming out in February.


----------



## Ralyks

So I got Deus Ex: Mankind Divided as a gift, which is sweet because Deus Ex is an awesome IP. Started a bit last night to get a feel for it. However, I think I'm going to save it for when I'm through FFXV since I've become heavily invested in it.... That, and still Stardew Valley in little chunks at a time.

I also need to go back to Borderlands 2 at some point because I'm 6 trophies away from getting the Platinum... Then I have to decide if I want to go back and do it for Pre-Sequel


----------



## MoshJosh

mostly I've been playing Watch Dogs 2, The Division, and Rise of the Tomb Raider. All are pretty fun and I'd recommend. . . though I got then on sale. 

also going back to catch up on:
Wolfenstein The New Order
Max Payne 3
even played a little Half Life 2 the other day. 

oh I also grabbed the RE7 demo, but I'm a wuss and haven't played it yet.


----------



## Ralyks

MoshJosh said:


> oh I also grabbed the RE7 demo, but I'm a wuss and haven't played it yet.



Ok, am I hearing correct that RE7, which was only announced months ago, is apparently coming out in like a month?!


----------



## MoshJosh

as far as I know it was announced at e3 in June, but still a pretty small window. This has happen with a few other games recently. If I'm not mistaken both Watch Dogs 2 and Fallout 4 were launched pretty shortly after their announcements. Maybe to cut down on the runaway hype that has affected some recent games. Just speculating here though.


----------



## Ralyks

Yup, RE7 is coming out January 25th. Quick turnaround time. I was listening the the Giant Bombcast and one of them had a chance to play it, and said it really good, really scary, and "scratched that P.T. itch". Think I'll be adding this one to the list of "games to get with tax return".


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Red Faction got added to the PS2 on PS4 section of PSN (Red Faction II is TBA) so I'll be playing that along with Alien: Isolation this weekend.


----------



## Kaura

Counter-Strike Condition Zero. Bought it from Steam sale today. It's surprisingly fun for a 12 year old game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Red Faction last night. Alot shorter than I remember it being as a kid who owned a Gameshark (and later a Codebreaker).

Haven't started Alien: Isolation yet (though, I did find out my code for the Crew Expendable DLC was expired by about two months) but I picked up Mad Max on PSN for $10 so I'll have something to switch back and forth from this coming week.


----------



## Alberto7

Anyone here play Dragon Ball Xenoverse? I've been thinking about buying it for some time, and now that it's on sale I don't need much more to take the plunge. Worth it or no?


----------



## Alberto7

Alberto7 said:


> Been playing The Talos Principle. As someone who really enjoys puzzle-solving videogames, this game is friggin' perfect... almost. While I find that the puzzles are super clever, the gameplay does become slightly repetitive. With that said, while I am still not 100% sure of what's going on (figuring out just what the hell is going on is part of the aim and the charm of the game), the writing and plot seem extremely solid, and it's a topic that I have always been interested in. Tons of hidden lore to be found around the world. With the Metroid series being one of my two favorite videogame franchises of all time, I HUGELY appreciate and enjoy this aspect of the game.
> 
> Also, I am surprised that I can run this game in med-high settings on my laptop! According to my roommate (computer engineer and former Microsoft game developer) this game is quite a clever piece of efficient programming, so it looks great while running smoothly even in not-so-great hardware.
> 
> Love it so far.
> 
> Also, easter eggs EVERYWHERE.



Okay, so I just finished this game, and completely LOVED it. I don't remember being so impressed by a videogame in a very long time. It's a really dense game though, and it fried my brain more than once, so I can see why it could be off-putting for a certain crowd, but it is just so interesting and rewarding.


----------



## mikernaut

I got to the point where there were too many games to play on my PS4, I had to buy and install a 2 TB hard drive. So what did I do after remedying my storage problem? I re-installed all the games I hadn't finished LOL. I also relocated and now have been working at Telltale Games (4 months so far) so, I have been playing their titles as well to get the vibe of what they do. Soo many games, not enough time.


----------



## Danukenator

Kaura said:


> Counter-Strike Condition Zero. Bought it from Steam sale today. It's surprisingly fun for a 12 year old game.



Ahh, CSCZ the ultimate red-headed step child of the Counter Strike franchise .

Is that the one with a single player campaign? I've played a gazillion hours of GO at this point so I'm always curious about older CS titles.


----------



## ftr

Danukenator said:


> Ahh, CSCZ the ultimate red-headed step child of the Counter Strike franchise .
> 
> Is that the one with a single player campaign? I've played a gazillion hours of GO at this point so I'm always curious about older CS titles.



What rank are you?


----------



## Kaura

Danukenator said:


> Ahh, CSCZ the ultimate red-headed step child of the Counter Strike franchise .
> 
> Is that the one with a single player campaign? I've played a gazillion hours of GO at this point so I'm always curious about older CS titles.



Well, actually the one with the actual single player campaign is the Deleted Scenes edition. The regular game also has a mission mode but it's pretty boring since they're just regular cs-matches with some tasks like "kill 2 players in one round". I actually finished the Deleted Scenes already and enjoyed it. I wouldn't mind seeing a new campaign with CSGO engine.


----------



## Ralyks

I've put 41 hours in Final Fantasy XV, and I'm only starting Chapter 6. I didn't expect to have this good a time with this game, but here we are....

Oh, and I grabbed Inside on sale. Loved Limbo, can't wait to check this out.


----------



## Danukenator

ftr said:


> What rank are you?



I bounce around LEM and Supreme. You?


----------



## ftr

Danukenator said:


> I bounce around LEM and Supreme. You?



Nice. I am Gold Nova 1 right now. I deranked pretty hard because my pc kept turning off during game due to CPU overheating, but that is fixed now.


----------



## Tyler

Ive been addicted to Titanfall 2 multiplayer on the PS4. It just combines all of the elements of gameplay I like


----------



## BlackMastodon

Just bought Warhammer End Times: Vermintide from the Steam sale. Heard it's a very fun Left 4 Dead-esque team game so excited to give it a shot.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Stardew Valley and Titanfall 2 on PS4. 

Both games are way too addictive.


----------



## TedEH

Single dude + a week off + steam sales = Got lots of game time in over the holidays. 

Finished Mirrors Edge 2- the story never really got better. I remember watching the last couple of cutscenes thinking that I don't understand any characters motivation to do anything. Not a bad game from a mechanical standpoint, and some levels made for great visual set-pieces, but the story is nonsense.

Then played through Owlboy, which is a bajillion times better as a game story. Not a super "long" game, but it accomplishes what it needs to. I'm not a huge fan of pixel art in particular, but the game looks great. Was actually super surprised as how powerfully executed some of the music in the game is. The game as a whole is just a super well executed piece.

Started on Rise of the Tomb Raider - according to the menu, I'm about a third of the way through the story. I liked the last game and this is more of the same, but with more actual raiding of tombs. Some of the upgrades/tools/unlocks systems feel a bit like overkill, lots of mindless fetch quests that make the game kinda grindy at times, etc., but the visuals are good, story is good-enough, difficulty seems to scale well enough that it doesn't feel unfair with a controller. All the good points from the previous game are still there though- the cool bow mechanics, the platforming, etc.

I've been playing Rise with a Steam controller though- because using the motion controls IMO are more fun to aim with. The catch is that the default settings don't work super well with the game's camera, because it does a bunch of weird smoothing and stuff. It works much better if you switch it to simulate a mouse, but then you end up with all the button prompts in the game switching back and forth between 360 and PC prompts because it's trying to auto-detect what you're controlling with. Every time you move the camera it switches to PC prompts, and when you hit any button or move the left stick it switches back to 360 controls. I think there's an option to turn the prompts off entirely, but it would be nice to have an option to force it to stay on controller mode.


----------



## Leberbs

I didn't see any advertised games on the steam sale that looked appealing. I had $40 to blow and 20hrs left on the sale, I just bought Final Fantasy V-IX. Even though I still have them for PS1 up in the closet...

Does anyone know how to configure an external controller to any of these games? I could not get mine to work last night.


----------



## Ralyks

Leberbs said:


> I didn't see any advertised games on the steam sale that looked appealing. I had $40 to blow and 20hrs left on the sale, I just bought Final Fantasy V-IX. Even though I still have them for PS1 up in the closet



Nothing wrong with that. Every one of those games are worth paying again


----------



## Jacksonluvr636

H-Hour World's Elite and H1Z1.


----------



## MoshJosh

> Started on Rise of the Tomb Raider - according to the menu, I'm about a third of the way through the story. I liked the last game and this is more of the same, but with more actual raiding of tombs. Some of the upgrades/tools/unlocks systems feel a bit like overkill, lots of mindless fetch quests that make the game kinda grindy at times, etc., but the visuals are good, story is good-enough, difficulty seems to scale well enough that it doesn't feel unfair with a controller. All the good points from the previous game are still there though- the cool bow mechanics, the platforming, etc.



Been playing this recently as well and I totally agree, especially about the grindy part. It's a shame because the weapons are fun and you want to get the upgrades and variants. . . but you gotta grind. 

also I've been playing with keyboard and mouse with somewhat good results. the aiming/gunplay feels good but as expected the platforming suffers. overall cool game for sure.


----------



## Danukenator

ftr said:


> Nice. I am Gold Nova 1 right now. I deranked pretty hard because my pc kept turning off during game due to CPU overheating, but that is fixed now.



I'm just dying for the winter holiday season to be over. I'm up to my neck in ESEA wannabes and ragers . At least the Major is coming up to make it worth while.


----------



## ftr

Danukenator said:


> I'm just dying for the winter holiday season to be over. I'm up to my neck in ESEA wannabes and ragers . At least the Major is coming up to make it worth while.



Although I have been playing comp for a quite a while, I am just now wanting to get serious about ranking up. I am just now trying to find the right sensitivity and dpi setting, looking up best smokes, etc. It seems right when I start trying my best I get paired up with the most horrible players. How was your experience ranking up? Did you queue up with friends, or play solo?


----------



## coreysMonster

I got Spec Ops: The Line and South Park Stick of Truth during the holiday sale, and I ACTUALLY PLAYED THEM. I played a game right after buying it instead of letting it sit in my library for eons and just adding another dozen hours to my TF2 / Overwatch / Stardew Valley playtimes, and I even finished both of them, and both were amazing. 

I keep thinking about Spec Ops, because I find there's a lot more going on underneath the surface than the obvious questions about morality in war. A lot of questions aimed at the player, why we play games, why we play games the way we do, and why we make moral choices the way we make them, why we even care about moral choices at all.

It's pretty deep without being preachy, which is fantastic.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

coreysMonster said:


> I keep thinking about Spec Ops, because I find there's a lot more going on underneath the surface than the obvious questions about morality in war. A lot of questions aimed at the player, why we play games, why we play games the way we do, and why we make moral choices the way we make them, why we even care about moral choices at all.
> 
> It's pretty deep without being preachy, which is fantastic.



 I normally can't stand cover based shooters and was hesitant about Spec Ops, but reading the plot is the only reason why I'd ever want to play it. Speaking of which, I saw a copy for 10 bucks back in Melbourne. Need to grab that asap.


----------



## Ralyks

coreysMonster said:


> I got Spec Ops: The Line and South Park Stick of Truth during the holiday sale, and I ACTUALLY PLAYED THEM



I'm contemplating preordering The Fractured But Whole digitally just so I can play Stick of Truth again now instead of waiting for the physical copy to be released. Possibly the best licensed game ever, and probably the funniest game ever.

Checking out Oxenfree right now. Seems like a cool little story telling game, although its giving me a vibe almost exactly like that Stranger Things show.


----------



## ferret

Bought The Forest yesterday. It's earned its cost back already and I'm not bored yet.


----------



## Leberbs

Just renewed my FFXIV subscription. Highly recommend it if you like the Final Fantasy universe.


----------



## feilong29

Ori and the Blind Forest is intense and challenging. I love it (PC)


----------



## Ralyks

Finished the story for Final Fantasy XV last night. I thought the story was kind of lackluster for a little bit, but I personal felt it ended on a strong note. I'd go more in depth if I knew how to do spoiler font. Also, I'm two trophies away from the Platinum, and right now my PS4 is in a suspended state at home while I'm at work because one of the boss battles for a trophy is loooooooong.


----------



## gujukal

Got a PS4 Pro in the holidays, so I've been playing Uncharted Collection, Last of Us, Titanfall 2 and NHL 17 like crazy recently. Was surprised of how good Titanfall 2 is, especially the campaign was over my expectations. It reminds me kind of a mix of Doom and Destiny. Much better game than CoD imo.


----------



## Ralyks

Grabbed Skyrim on PS4 last night. Turned it on, and, well.... I was up until almost 3 am the previously night/morning beating Final Fantasy XV, so when I popped in Skyrim, well, next thing I knew I woke up from passing out in my seat and had been on the character creation screen for an hour 

So yeah, tonight will probably be getting ONE LAST TROPHY in FFXV to get my Platinum, and then delving into some combination of Skyrim, Titanfall 2, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Watch_Dogs 2 (The holidays were very kind in the gaming persuasion).


----------



## QuantumCybin

I've been playing a ton of The Long Dark. It's a survival game on PC and it's just fantastic. I highly recommend picking it up on Steam, it's 20 bucks, sometimes less on sale.


----------



## MFB

Picked up CS:GO last weekend, if it weren't for either the terrible hit-boxes or taking an entire clip to kill someone it'd be much more fun than it currently is.

Also, apparently everyone either wants to play Dust or Mirage for maps, which gets old real fast


----------



## Ralyks

Playing Inside as we speak, but also working through Rise of the Tomb Raider.


----------



## TedEH

Was thinking about stealth games this weekend for whatever reason so I fired up the ol' Thief Gold and played through the first level. I never finished the original, but I've beaten Thief 2 a bunch of times. I still think there's something about the stealth in those games that nothing modern has been able to beat yet. All kinds of little details like not giving you a map, having to rely on audio to figure out where to move next, the environments feel like real places to figure out rather than a collection of planned alternate routes, etc.


----------



## MoshJosh

been playing a sh!t ton of MGSV: The Phantom Pain. Such a good and addictive game, can't belive I didn't like it at first.


----------



## Kaura

Bought Fallout 3 during the holidays. Couldn't get it running properly so I bought New Vegas, finished in a week and fell in love with it. Now I'm playing Fallout 4. Most people say that it's not nearly as good as New Vegas. Now I'm 4 hours in and at least so far it has been pretty entertaining.


----------



## Pav

MoshJosh said:


> been playing a sh!t ton of MGSV: The Phantom Pain. Such a good and addictive game, can't belive I didn't like it at first.



Incredible game. I'm a biased, Kojima-worshipping longtime MGS fan, but I would've been willing to wait another full year for it if it meant getting that rumored third chapter set in Europe.

And speaking of incredible games, I'm now downloading the HD port of Final Fantasy VII on my PS4. Still one of the best games ever made.


----------



## thedonal

Having not finished Borderlands 2 yet, I got a copy of Deus Ex Human Revolution for the princely sum of £2.99 second hand.

It's tough but I do quite like it.


----------



## Raz

Right now:
Witcher 3
Destiny: Rise of Iron
Fate/Excella
Monster Hunter Generations
Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization

Awaiting
RE7
Digimon World: Next Order
Horizon
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (for Nintendo Switch).

Sorta all over the place.


----------



## Alberto7

Raz said:


> Right now:
> Witcher 3
> Destiny: Rise of Iron
> Fate/Excella
> Monster Hunter Generations
> Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization
> 
> Awaiting
> RE7
> Digimon World: Next Order
> Horizon
> Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (for Nintendo Switch).
> 
> Sorta all over the place.



How's Fate/Extella? Never played Extra, but the trailers for both look pretty cool. Only asking out of curiosity, as I'm a huge Fate/ fan, but I don't own any PlayStation consoles.


----------



## bpprox22

Just recently got an Xbox One S so I'm playing Gears of War 4 exclusively right now lol


----------



## mongey

I really need a new single player game for when I'm not feeling online play . still haven't played uncharted 4 but I found the 3rd one a bit of a slog by the end. 

a bit meh on it , but figure I should play it


----------



## Ralyks

mongey said:


> I really need a new single player game for when I'm not feeling online play . still haven't played uncharted 4 but I found the 3rd one a bit of a slog by the end.
> 
> a bit meh on it , but figure I should play it



I'm playing through the Nathan Drake collection myself. Only on Among Thieves right now. I hear Drakes Deception is pretty meh as well, but A Thiefs End is suppose to be one of PS4s best games.

But for games in the vein, have you checked out Rise of the Tomb Raider?


----------



## Black_Sheep

bought all Fallout 4 DLC's from the PSN january sale, so those. Also Titanfall 2, Rainbow Six: Siege, and too much Stardew Valley

..Also recently platinumed Day Of The Tentacle Remastered, it was a fun trip down memory lane.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished Inside and got all of the trophies. What a hell of a game.

Anyone here play Thumper? Really cool and really intense. I feel like a lot of people here would appreciate it since its rhythm based and goes into some fast hitting rhythms and time signatures. current only level 2 of that game.

Also, Hyper Light Drifter. Feels like Legend of Zelda meets Transistor. I dig it.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> Anyone here play Thumper?



I've been wanting to try that one. As you said, it sound like something that would appeal to my musician-y brain.


----------



## Castle45ACP

Mostly BF1 for now(on PS4).
Trying not to be a looser.

Completed "The Wolf Among Us" couple of days ago. The ending was astonishing, really a true masterpiece.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I've been wanting to try that one. As you said, it sound like something that would appeal to my musician-y brain.



I recommended it. Its very intense not so much on the aesthetic and music (which is pretty scary in its own right), but at how fast the action goes and how quickly you need to hit those rhythms. Again, I definitely recommend fellow musicians to check it out. I can only imagine what it's like in VR mode.


----------



## zjb7777

I've been playing Forza Horizon 3 pretty much exclusively since it came out in September. Man I love this game, such beautiful cars, such a gorgeous environment, such a good way to relieve stress. Unless I'm playing on the hardest difficulty with no assists  honestly my favorite game. I play some COD infinite warfare sometimes, cause the campaign is sick, but that's about it, nothing that really grabs me into it and makes me want to finish it.


----------



## Pav

I'm on a big horror game kick at the moment. Finished Slender: The Arrival last night and need to replay it for some trophies. Then I want to go back and finish the platinum trophy for Alien Isolation, all in anticipation of Resident Evil 7 this tuesday. I haven't been this excited for a Resident Evil game since RE4, me and my girlfriend played through the demo at least a dozen times.


----------



## Kaura

Pav said:


> I'm on a big horror game kick at the moment. Finished Slender: The Arrival last night and need to replay it for some trophies. Then I want to go back and finish the platinum trophy for Alien Isolation, all in anticipation of Resident Evil 7 this tuesday. I haven't been this excited for a Resident Evil game since RE4, me and my girlfriend played through the demo at least a dozen times.



I want to get excited for RE7 but the demo seemed very taxing on my pc and I think the game is too scary for me. Even playing through Amnesia was such a struggle back in the day and the RE7 demo was way scarier. 

Also, the $50 price doesn't excite me too much. The last game I probably spent more than $30 on was Battlefield 3 and that was like 5 years ago.


----------



## Ralyks

Grabbed a couple of games off of the flash sale the PSN is having. Playing The Wolf Among Us. Man, Telltale makes some damn good games.


----------



## Kaura

Well, I did end up buying Resident Evil 7 after all. Tested it for 30 minutes and I ended up dying during the first enemy. Sure feels like a classic Resident Evil game.


----------



## crystallake

Ended up with Resident Evil this morning. Couldn't pass it up for $37. Gives me time to put Skyrim down for a week or so.


----------



## Ralyks

Extremely tempted to grab RE7. May hold off until I get my tax refund in a week or two. Probably pick that up in a haul along with Steep, Odin Sphere and (finally) MGSV.

The Wolf Among Us is really great. Like, up there with Tales From The Borderlands (which is one of my favorite games ever). My lady thinks its like a gritty "Once Upon a Time", and enjoys it as such. Hey, whatever gets her to game with me 

Also, after Platinuming Final Fantasy XV (I do have to go check out that Carnival thing that started yesterday), I went back to Final Fantasy Type-0 (which I bought cheap a while back but never got, well, anywhere). Seems fun enough as an Action RPG. I can tell it was a PSP game, but they did a good enough job on the remaster.


----------



## Pav

I picked up my copy of RE7 a couple hours ago. Squeezed in a quick 45 minutes of practice, now I'm waiting for it to install and patch before I activate my season pass and get started. I should have about 6 hours to play before I jump into Overwatch for the Year of the Rooster. Too much gaming, too little time.


----------



## MoshJosh

I want RE7, probably going to be my next game purchase. . . in like a year. . . when I can afford it. . . and when my wife says it's OK.

Just playing MGSV for now.


----------



## crystallake

Ralyks said:


> The Wolf Among Us is really great. Like, up there with Tales From The Borderlands (which is one of my favorite games ever). My lady thinks its like a gritty "Once Upon a Time", and enjoys it as such. Hey, whatever gets her to game with me



TWAU was awesome. The only Telltale game that I felt had replay value.


----------



## TedEH

I do really like some Telltale stuff, but it would be cool to see something completely new from them. Something outside of the exact formula they've always used. There's lots of game making talent over there, but every game feels super same-y to me. I dig the stories and all, but after playing through several series of their games, the appeal is mostly gone unless you're really into a particular franchise or something.


----------



## m107a1

I am sinking WAY too much time into Dark Souls 3 at the moment, but it's hard to stop cos I'm just getting good!


----------



## sawtoothscream

Mostly just bf one, bought doom but havent played it much yet.


----------



## MrBouleDeBowling

Currently hooked on Pokémon Sun. It almost feels like a spinoff game but I'm really glad we got something that tries to be different from what we're used to have. Really enjoying it!


----------



## Keel

I'm playing pokemon moon. I'm super glad they got rid of field moves. You can have a more diverse party, as opposed to always having a flying and water type and sticking other pokemon with crap moves. Or even worse... Keeping an HM slave or two on you...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> And since I've been living under a rock and have never fully played a sandbox game  I decided to de-virginise that with this:





Bloody_Inferno said:


> Fret not lads. I specifically chose Saints Row 2 to ease into the genre and with full intention to play all the way to the sequels. I hear it goes completely off the rails to bonkers insanity in the latter games, which is exactly what I want, since I got put off by some of the realism of latter GTA. I don't want pedestrians to roll over the car and cry after running them over, I want them to fly into the air and concuss a flock of birds.
> 
> I guess it's just a much needed change after playing so many games where a bunch of wet teens use the power of friendship and commit deicide or kill Satan, I just want to be the most evilest and dastardly prick for a change... and kill Satan later apparently.  So far SR2 scratches that itch nicely, as I'm really enjoying slicing pedestrians with a sword whilst speeding on a motorcycle... oh wait.



Almost finished SR2, with only one mission getting in my way thanks to how helicopters control like shopping carts with 2 bad wheels, with a grown adult on the child seat constantly slapping you. But I'll get there eventually, and will immediately start this:






Looking forward to the campiness already. 

So the SR games, while still slogging through Trails Of Cold Steel 2. That particular game is sucking the life out of me. It's a bloody long game, spent 40 hours in and I'm still on the second chapter.


----------



## Blytheryn

m107a1 said:


> I am sinking WAY too much time into Dark Souls 3 at the moment, but it's hard to stop cos I'm just getting good!



Dark Souls 3 is amazing... I'm afraid to boot it up again because I'll just nolife it again!


----------



## Kaura

Still kinda playing Resident Evil 7. I'm just not feeling it at all. All you do is run away from enemies since bullets don't seem to do anything. It's really annoying when you can't even try a key on a door when there's a bunch of enemies right behind your back.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Looking forward to the campiness already.



When Saints Row 4 was re-released on PS4, I immediately thought "They rereleased the wrong Saints Row..." I'd absolutely love a remaster of SR3.


----------



## Chokey Chicken

Ralyks said:


> When Saints Row 4 was re-released on PS4, I immediately thought "They rereleased the wrong Saints Row..." I'd absolutely love a remaster of SR3.



Nah, 3 was lame. The gameplay was fun enough, but the environment was absolutely forgettable. SR2 would be great to remaster. SR2 in the 3 and 4 engine would be super delightful.


----------



## Ralyks

2 was fun. Maybe it's because I just have fond memories of all night benders with SR3. My only issue with SR4, while it's not bad, it just pretty much felt like Crackdown. Meanwhile, the actually new Crackdown is taking an eternity...


----------



## Tree

Blytheryn said:


> Dark Souls 3 is amazing... I'm afraid to boot it up again because I'll just nolife it again!



I still haven't gotten 3 yet, so I've been "nolife-ing" DS1 in the mean time. Two was really lackluster IMO when compared to the first. 
I have high hopes for three though!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Tree said:


> I still haven't gotten 3 yet, so I've been "nolife-ing" DS1 in the mean time. Two was really lackluster IMO when compared to the first.
> I have high hopes for three though!



The level design in DS1 is so good. I still geek out over it after playing it like 20 times. DS2 just felt tedious compared to DS1 for me.


----------



## Ralyks

Got Resident Evil 7. Ho-lee crap it's scary. Also grabbed Yakuza 0, which I'll be playing after work today.


----------



## jwade

Hit me up: ISAIDGODDAMN


----------



## Pav

Ralyks said:


> Got Resident Evil 7. Ho-lee crap it's scary. Also grabbed Yakuza 0, which I'll be playing after work today.



I finished RE7 a couple days ago and holy ...., it was good. My final time outside of deaths and retries was a hair over 10 hours but I think this is a good example of quality over quantity. It was intriguing and kept me hooked for the entire game with no sections that dragged on for too long. I'm already part way into my madhouse run, I'm definitely getting the platinum for this game.


----------



## Tree

KnightBrolaire said:


> The level design in DS1 is so good. I still geek out over it after playing it like 20 times. DS2 just felt tedious compared to DS1 for me.



That's exactly it! Plus, 2 just feels/looks too animated. I love how grim/solemn everything is in DS1

Just like everyone else I'm super stoked to pick up RE7 soon.


----------



## Ralyks

Got the steelbook edition of season one of the new Hitman. What an entertaining game. Like how they give you so many options to pull off a hit, and some are just downright fun and silly.


----------



## Rosal76

Ralyks said:


> Got the steelbook edition of season one of the new Hitman. What an entertaining game. Like how they give you so many options to pull off a hit, and some are just downright fun and silly.





Lucky!!!!! Man, you just don't know how bad I want to play that game. Can't play it because I don't have a next gen console. Thinking about getting the box set with the statue of Agent 47 sitting down with his gun because I freaking love the Hitman games!!!

In other stealth game news... Almost finished Splinter Cell HD trilogy for the PS3. Got the game last December and I have never had so much fun and frustration with these stealth games. Man, trying to finish these missions without killing/knocking out anyone is unbelievably hard.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Chokey Chicken said:


> Nah, 3 was lame. The gameplay was fun enough, but the environment was absolutely forgettable. SR2 would be great to remaster. SR2 in the 3 and 4 engine would be super delightful.





Ralyks said:


> 2 was fun. Maybe it's because I just have fond memories of all night benders with SR3. My only issue with SR4, while it's not bad, it just pretty much felt like Crackdown. Meanwhile, the actually new Crackdown is taking an eternity...



Granted that I'm only a few hours in, but I'm already feeling The 3rd not as fun as SR2 for me. First off is probably thanks to having less customization in the character creation department, especially when it comes to the clothing. I still made mine like my SR2 counterpart, but even the skinniest setting made him look like a DCEU role applicant with 12 protein shakes too many. 

As for the rest of the game, the engine is much nicer (though the new control layout threw me off a bit). Though it got a little wacky too quickly. I understand that the series took the Evil Dead approach where it descends into ridiculous parody and camp. It's the main reason I got on board, and will see it to the ends of superpower Hell. But I'm nitpicking when getting attacked by lasers and easy access to drones and melee dildos within the first few missions, felt a little too soon. I also wasn't too fond of not having intro sequences prior to doing side activities like the previous game. Some of the fun was also the character banter, and it feels like less of that here. 

These are just my own minor quibbles. I'm still enjoying it a lot. I'm certainly enjoying home run hitting the elderly Smash Bros style using a giant floppy cock that's for sure.


----------



## tstern66

m107a1 said:


> I am sinking WAY too much time into Dark Souls 3 at the moment, but it's hard to stop cos I'm just getting good!



Those games are fun once you get good. Try Bloodborne next.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished and got the Platinum for The Wolf Among Us last night. Great game, and hope they do a season 2 at some point.

Tried popping in GTAV for the first time in a while before work today, but had to delete stuff off of my PS4 HDD to make room for an update. Good thing the next PS4 update is going to allow external storage...


----------



## thedonal

So. Aside from being back on EVE, I need something to throw at my new PC.

It looks like Crysis 1 & 2 are a bit of a faff to get running on Win10. I'm considering Crysis 3, but as a cheapish consideration , suggestions are welcome.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

What else would a 26 year old single cis white male with no kids do on a Superbowl weekend but play an eight year old music rhythm game? Anything else? Well, not me. After finding my guitar hero controller in a box full of older peripherals, I decided to go ahead and play through one of the handful of music games that I for some reason still own. And Guitar Hero: Smash Hits was what I randomly picked from the shelf. Went ahead and completed the bassist career just in time to watch Brady get his ring for his thumb.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Played the Ghost Recon Beta over the weekend. It was kinda fun. Not fun enough to buy but maybe fun enough to rent. Also went back and played Rocksmith since I haven't touched it in a year. I'm a decent guitarist but rocksmith makes me feel incompetent for not being able to play without looking at the fretboard.


----------



## mongey

played the Nioh free trial for a bit. thought it was good even though I sucked at it 

gonna grab it next pay


----------



## Ralyks

Nioh looks really good and the wife thought it looked good. So that's probably coming next paycheck.

In the meantime, LittlBigPlanet 3 and Not a Hero are free on PS4 this month. Not a hero is fun, seeing how it's made from the guys that made Hotline Miami and feels like a side scroller version of that. On LBP 3 right now.


----------



## MFB

Spent some time this weekend playing the beta for Dirty Bomb - objective style game with tradition attack/defend and different troops. Did my whole time as a Medic, and this was the first game where support class was actually able to defend itself if no one was around. Shotgun/pistol/knife loadout, and the shotgun has a fairly good range so it does damage, and even more at close range (pretty sure it was 2 shots to kill, maybe 3).

Made it to level 5 or 6 by the end of my play cause I was healing like crazy and dropping heal points at objectives to keep teammates alive, plus killing people, so I'll probably keep playing and when it goes live, it'll be a nice change from CSGO.


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> Nioh looks really good and the wife thought it looked good. So that's probably coming next paycheck.
> 
> In the meantime, LittlBigPlanet 3 and Not a Hero are free on PS4 this month. Not a hero is fun, seeing how it's made from the guys that made Hotline Miami and feels like a side scroller version of that. On LBP 3 right now.



looking forward to LBP3. enjoyed the 1st 2 and never got the 3rd 

think it's the first fpsn+ full game since launch that I want 

damn Australian psn store doesn't update till thursday


----------



## Ralyks

LBP3 is plenty of fun. Haven't had much time to play the past few days because I'm transferring all of my data from a PS4 to a PS4 Pro and... it's taking some time, lets say that. But yeah, been playing a good amount of LBP3 while everything redownloads. Plus my son seems to really like it, given the child like aesthetic and Stephen Frys ability to want to be wrapped in a blanket made of his voice.


----------



## MoshJosh

Just beat metal gear solid 3 snake eater last night, only took me about 12 years. I remember renting this game when it came out on PS2, it looked so awesome and I wanted to like it so bad. . . but man was I horrible at this game. I had never played a metal gear game, and I was't particularly good at stealth games (I'm still pretty bad at them), ended up returning it to the rental store pretty quick (I think even before beating the first boss). Still always thought the atmosphere, characters, and story (at least what little I knew about them) were cool, and was always kinda bummed I couldn't get into the game. Long story short I bought the game on PS vita (probably would have been better on a real console with real thumb sticks) about a week ago and beat it last night. Nostalgia/reminiscing rant over.


----------



## m107a1

Friggin' Nioh! I'm a fan of anything Dark Souls-y. Had to upgrade to a PS4 Pro this morning after a first hit of Nioh last night. Haven't put an add up yet, but if anyone wants a clean, unmodded 15mo old PS4 in alpine white for $150+shipping, PM me. Pix when I get home tonight and an ad in the classifieds barring anyone reaching out via PM.


----------



## Tree

m107a1 said:


> Friggin' Nioh! I'm a fan of anything Dark Souls-y. Had to upgrade to a PS4 Pro this morning after a first hit of Nioh last night. Haven't put an add up yet, but if anyone wants a clean, unmodded 15mo old PS4 in alpine white for $150+shipping, PM me. Pix when I get home tonight and an ad in the classifieds barring anyone reaching out via PM.



I'm so mad that it's a PS4 exclusive. I'm totally going to nab one within the next year so I can finally play Bloodborne and Nioh.

I'm going to be playing the For Honor beta this weekend. It looks so sick.


----------



## Ralyks

Very good chance I'm going to grab Nioh later, since we're getting another foot of snow here tomorrow on top of the foot of snow we just got 

Speaking of snow, grabbed Steep for half off on the PSN store. It's like 1080 Snowboarding meet Pilotwings. Dig it so far. Intense, yet relaxing.


----------



## m107a1

Tree said:


> I'm so mad that it's a PS4 exclusive. I'm totally going to nab one within the next year so I can finally play Bloodborne and Nioh.
> 
> I'm going to be playing the For Honor beta this weekend. It looks so sick.



Selling my near-new PS4 CHEAP here: 
http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/showthread.php?p=4705169#post4705169

I bought it for Bloodborne! You won't be sorry.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Went back to Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. I'm stuck on the Cocoon battle right now. There are too many fights against vehicles in this game for my liking.


----------



## Pav

Carrion Rocket said:


> Went back to Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. I'm stuck on the Cocoon battle right now. There are too many fights against vehicles in this game for my liking.



About a year and a half ago I picked up the MGS HD Collection for PS3 just so I could play Peace Walker. I got stuck trying to platinum MGS3 and haven't touched it since.  I still need to go back for Peace Walker, I do have a soft spot for the mission-based layout compared to the continuous campaign of the older games.

And like most PS4 owners, I think I'm going to pick up a copy of Nioh later. I had written it off after playing the alpha because I really hated the feel of combat but apparently most of those mechanics have been thoroughly adjusted since then. And all of the reviews I'm reading are way too positive to blow off.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Rainbow Six Siege on PS4, it's a lot of fun with friends. 

About the PS+ games: haven't played LBP3 yet, but Not a Hero was fun. Far from being as awesome as Hotline Miami though. 

Anyone here picked up RE7 yet? I've been thinking about it a lot. Looks great and i've heard mostly praises. The demo was nice and creepy too.


----------



## thedonal

Currently armed with pitons, a rope , a HOTAS joystick (Thrustmaster- chuckle!!) and am scaling the Elite Dangerous learning curve.

Nice to be playing an Elite game again though.


----------



## Rosal76

MoshJosh said:


> Just beat metal gear solid 3 snake eater last night, only took me about 12 years. Nostalgia/reminiscing rant over.



I have Snake Eater with Sons of Liberty and Peacewalker on the PS3 remastered version and I too, want to replay it for the nostalgia and maybe, appreciate the game more. I beat it a few years ago but never went back to it. Being primarily a stealth game player, especially Hitman and Splinter Cell, I have a very, very hard time getting into the Metal Gear Solid games. I have played and completed 4 different MGS games and still cannot get into it like I would like to. I would think that completing 4 MGS games would make me a dedicated fan but there's just something about them.


----------



## Tree

Rosal76 said:


> I have Snake Eater with Sons of Liberty and Peacewalker on the PS3 remastered version and I too, want to replay it for the nostalgia and maybe, appreciate the game more. I beat it a few years ago but never went back to it. Being primarily a stealth game player, especially Hitman and Splinter Cell, I have a very, very hard time getting into the Metal Gear Solid games. I have played and completed 4 different MGS games and still cannot get into it like I would like to. I would think that completing 4 MGS games would make me a dedicated fan but there's just something about them.



As a diehard Splinter Cell fan I understand what you mean. I think that I really need to go back and play MGS 1-3 again. I beat them all when I was in my early teens, so it's possible that the story elements just didn't do much for me at that age. I loved playing the games but they were never 100% "there" for me.


----------



## Pav

Black_Sheep said:


> Anyone here picked up RE7 yet? I've been thinking about it a lot. Looks great and i've heard mostly praises. The demo was nice and creepy too.



Hell yes, I've beaten it four times and still not tired of it. Then again I have it for PS4 and the DLC has been flowing steadily since the game launched.


----------



## bpprox22

If anyone is playing Gears of War 4 and ever wants someone to play with, I'm always down!

Xbox Live gamertag:
VAL0 22

(That's a zero in Val0)


----------



## Rosal76

Tree said:


> As a diehard Splinter Cell fan I understand what you mean.



As a diehard Splinter Cell fan to another, would you recommend Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain? Likes and dislikes? Pros and cons? 

I've been contemplating about getting the game for over a year now and I want to hear an honest opinion about the game from a dedicated Splinter Cell fan.


----------



## Tree

Rosal76 said:


> As a diehard Splinter Cell fan to another, would you recommend Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain? Likes and dislikes? Pros and cons?
> 
> I've been contemplating about getting the game for over a year now and I want to hear an honest opinion about the game from a dedicated Splinter Cell fan.



I really wanted to like it. It got amazing reviews, everyone was raving about it, etc. etc. 
Ultimately I ended up putting maybe 5-6 hours into the game before returning it  
Everything that I enjoyed from the first three major MGS games seemed to be missing, the open world mechanic just kinda irked me given that this is supposed to be a stealth game as well. I was also not very fond of needing to run around recruiting people for my home base thing. A lot of the game just came off kinda gimmicky to me. 

It would appear that I'm in the minority in disliking the game though. So, if you're legitimately curious about the game I'd say give it a try! Just make sure you get it from somewhere with a good return policy!



On a completely unrelated note, I finally got Dark Souls 3 and I am in heaven! 
The whole ember system confused me at first since you don't look hollowed while unembered hahaha.


----------



## Rosal76

Tree said:


> the open world mechanic just kinda irked me given that this is supposed to be a stealth game as well.



We definitely have the same opinion when it comes to stealth games. Open sandbox games are fine for me if it were a Grand Theft Auto and/or Sniper Elite game where large amounts of space is required. The 13th mission in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, called, "the Jacuzzi Job". The mission takes place in a small one floor penthouse. Fun mission. Proof that you don't need large amounts of space to have a good solid stealth mission. 



Tree said:


> I was also not very fond of needing to run around recruiting people for my home base thing. A lot of the game just came off kinda gimmicky to me.



That is the main reason I didn't want to get the game. I'm a "ghost stealth player". I go in stealthy, don't kill/knockout/kidnap/fulton anyone/anything, get out stealthy. A lot of Youtube videos I've seen of people playing MGS 5 is that they're playing "panther stealth". Sneaking up on enemies, knocking them out and Fultoning them to home base. Cool, but not really my thing. I like to have my "enemy knockouts" at 0 at all times.  



Tree said:


> So, if you're legitimately curious about the game I'd say give it a try! Just make sure you get it from somewhere with a good return policy!



I have been curious for more than a year now. LOL! I may have to bite the bullet and just buy a new gen console and get the new Hitman game that just came out.


----------



## Tree

I might need to pickup the new Hitman as well now that you mention it! I've been itching for a good, newer stealth game and forgot that existed! 

"Ghost" is definitely where it's at! Whenever my girlfriend and I do the co-op in Blacklist her "panther" style always messes me up! 
I'm still sitting here quietly hoping for a new Splinter cell though


----------



## KnightBrolaire

picked up infamous second son earlier today, love the detail that went into the city. That's one of my favorite things in open world games. I remember spending hours just wandering Assassin's Creed II climbing all over the buildings/landmarks. I plan to do the same in this game.


----------



## MoshJosh

My wife is super awesome and got me Resident Evil 7 on PC. Awesome game so far. Its intense, the enemies are tough, the resources are scares. . . and yeah cool game. If I had to state some negatives it would be the graphics are kind of hit or miss, and the molded seem to be kind of exploitable i.e. if you close a door behind you when running they just give up and disappear. Those seem like very minor issues in the face of the fun I've had with the game. Highly recommend to horror fans. Also, as a little side note because a friend asked me, the game controls well and the shooting seems tight on PC, the sprinting is a bit sluggish but maybe there are upgrades later I don't know.


----------



## MFB

> I'm still sitting here quietly hoping for a new Splinter cell though



What I wouldn't give for a new Splinter Cell!

One of my favorite franchises with the exception of Double Agent


----------



## hairychris

Dishonored 2 at the moment for me.

Doing it initially as a no-kill stealth Corvo run. It's fairly tough to ghost it even on the normal/medium difficulty, and hiding unconscious people where they don't accidentally fall to their deaths/get squashed/etc is a right pain.

Murder death kill run once that's done!


----------



## Danukenator

Despite a dislike for RTS games, I've been loving Total War: Atilla. I'm playing with a friend that moved to another country. The COOP campaign is a great way to keep in touch and set the game's pace at your whim.


----------



## mongey

just hit the download button on Nioh . enjoyed the free trial and while I haven't gotten into any of Dark Souls games I loved bloodborne ,allot 

very nearly bought for honor instead cause the beta was fun. but it's really gonna hinge on it's online community. I'll give it a month and see what happens


----------



## Ralyks

Reeaaalllly want to play Nioh, and coming close to downloading it because its sold out EVERYWHERE.

As it is, focusing on getting the Platinum for South Park: The Stick of Truth on PS4.

EDIT: Yeah, I just went to BestBuy and ordered Nioh for store deliver. Should be ready be the end of next week the latest.

Edit edit: Walk into said BestBuy, and there's three copies of Nioh sitting there. So I'll Ben working on that tonight.


----------



## Black_Sheep

RE7

Holy .... it's awesome.


----------



## mongey

Got some time on nioh yesterday. Great game. Feels allot like bloodborne 

Took me longer than I'd like to admit to pass the opening London tower level.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Still been bouncing around the Metal Gear games. Played a few extra ops in Peace Walker to level up my weapons, then did a few runthroughs of the Tanker Chapter of SOL, and completed the rest of the extra ops in Ground Zeros. I really need to do another playthrough of 4 but I'm not sure I'll have nearly enough time this week to even start one.


----------



## Kaura

Started playing GTA IV. I still like it more than V. Sucks that I can't get it working on my new way more powerful pc since the game doesn't support the processor.


----------



## Pav

I'm glad season 3 in Overwatch is ending because I am officially hooked on Nioh. I can't believe how deep this game is, there has to be a billion different ways to build your character.


----------



## hairychris

Dishonored 2.

Enjoying it so far, but is taking me bloody ages to do a non-fatal Corvo run without being spotted as I keep needing to reload!


----------



## Kaura

Well, GTA didn't keep me entertained for long.  So I finally gave up and restarted RE7 on easy mode. So much more enjoyable now and it has just enough challenge for me.


----------



## Mathemagician

Playing Tomb Raider for the first time. Why didn't any of the "game of the year" reviews that this game got mention that it's just fun? Lol. After this I have to check out what this "God of War 3" hubbub is all about. These games have been on my PS4 forever.


----------



## Mordacain

I'm having some serious gaming ADD at the moment. I'm bouncing between the new Doom, Final Fantasy IV, Kingdoms of Amular (PC) and Read Dead Redemption on Xbox.

Wish I was enjoying Read Dead more than I am, given the reverence it's given.


----------



## MFB

Mathemagician said:


> Playing Tomb Raider for the first time. Why didn't any of the "game of the year" reviews that this game got mention that it's just fun? Lol. After this I have to check out what this "God of War 3" hubby is all about. These games have been on my PS4 forever.



Every God of War game is an absolute fvcking hoot of a good time until you play it on the hardest difficulty; then it's an absolute hoot of a time destroying controllers.

A lot of people tend to .... on 3 because they feel the series went on to jump the shark, but I love all of it and it's like if Star Wars just continued getting darker after Empire.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

MFB said:


> Every God of War game is an absolute fvcking hoot of a good time until you play it on the hardest difficulty; then it's an absolute hoot of a time destroying controllers.
> 
> A lot of people tend to .... on 3 because they feel the series went on to jump the shark, but I love all of it and it's like if Star Wars just continued getting darker after Empire.



I thought God of War 3 was a great conclusion to the series until [*SPOiLER ALERT for a Six Year Old Game*] the sequel bait after credit scene. Absolutely ruined what could have been the best ending to a trilogy ever.


Went ahead and did a playthough of MGS4. Totally forgot you have to do non-lethal boss fights in a single run to get the Solar Gun, but at least it gives me another chance at some emblems and face camos for those trophies also.


----------



## Mathemagician

Carrion Rocket said:


> I thought God of War 3 was a great conclusion to the series until [*SPOiLER ALERT for a Six Year Old Game*] the sequel bait after credit scene. Absolutely ruined what could have been the best ending to a trilogy ever.
> 
> 
> Went ahead and did a playthough of MGS4. Totally forgot you have to do non-lethal boss fights in a single run to get the Solar Gun, but at least it gives me another chance at some emblems and face camos for those trophies also.



I appreciate the spoiler alert as it allowed me to skip it. Even skipping it again while quoting this.


----------



## Pav

Carrion Rocket said:


> Went ahead and did a playthough of MGS4. Totally forgot you have to do non-lethal boss fights in a single run to get the Solar Gun, but at least it gives me another chance at some emblems and face camos for those trophies also.



I've been meaning to break out MGS4 and replay it for some trophies, but don't you have to play through the game like 8 times or something ridiculous to get the platinum? That's why I haven't gone back to replay MGS2 from the HD Collection, half the trophies require you to replay the game so many times I'm afraid I'll actually get sick of one of the best games ever.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Pav said:


> I've been meaning to break out MGS4 and replay it for some trophies, but don't you have to play through the game like 8 times or something ridiculous to get the platinum? That's why I haven't gone back to replay MGS2 from the HD Collection, half the trophies require you to replay the game so many times I'm afraid I'll actually get sick of one of the best games ever.



Yeah, trying to get all the emblems for the final iPod track is where it gets real tedious with playthroughs.

Plus, watching the cutscenes all the way through for the flashback prompts. That'll be at least two days worth of sessions on its own.


----------



## Jarmake

I've been playing some 2016 Doom lately, but it has proven to be a slightly difficult task for it crashes my computer randomly.

I'm running it on ultra (or was it nightmare in this case?) and getting a constant ~120fps, but every once in a while it just crashes my gpu out of the blue. Sounds still work perfectly well, but my screen goes black and monitor turns of after a while because there isn't any signal from my gpu. I've tried to find solution for this problem, but can't find any. Any suggestions or ideas? I have updated my drivers, slightly lowered the clocks on my gpu and changed opengl to vulcan and back without any help.

Other than doom I've played some rise of the tomb raider and started xcom2. I love them both.


----------



## TedEH

^ Maybe if you're running on ultra, one of the high settings isn't playing nice. Maybe take things like shadows or texture quality down if you don't have a lot of vram on your card.

I find lately, lack of vram has been the thing slowing me down the most despite having an older card (gtx770). Stuff runs fine as long as I don't enable any options that gobble up ALL THE MEMORY.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

With Trails Of Cold Steel 2 on the verge of the end, and Saints Row The Third not too far off either, I've lined up for these as my next games to play:







Really just scratching the newfound sandbox itch. And there's an extremely landscape so there's plenty of things to do. And by do, I mean obliterate. 






Obviously.






I missed out on this during it's release so I guess now or soon is as good a time as any. 






Since recently going through Symphony Of The Night, I wanted to revisit the old 2D fast paced platform action games of yore. 



Hmmm... no JRPGs this time around. I'll get to FFXV and Tales of Berseria eventually, either that or wait until Trails Of Cold Steel 3 comes out.


----------



## MoshJosh

Beat Resident Evil 7. Great game, thinking about going for the speed run/Mr. Everywhere and then trying madhouse difficulty. I kind of started a speed run, but went on normal and I'm just not having as much fun as when playing it methodically i.e. my first play through. . . anyway might drop down to easy, suffer through it, then try my hand at mad house with the unlocks. IDK

Getting close to finishing Metal Gear Solid V. I'm on mission 46 but I'm not really enjoying that the last missions are just earlier missions on extreme or complete stealth mode. . .

Also "tried" the Ghost Recon Wildlands beta (only played 20 minutes so far), and meh. I know 20 minutes is not nearly enough time for a true impression, and I will be playing more, but so far its not totally my thing. Also having some odd frame rate/stuttering issues. Regardless of my graphics settings (only really tried high, very high, and ultra) The game says I'm running 55-62 FPS with uncapped frame rate (144hz monitor) but the game looks fairly choppy even when the in game FPS counter and NVIDIA counter both say 60. . . I know its a beta, just saying.


----------



## Ralyks

Amazon had I Am Setsuna on sale, so far its hitting that nice old school Chrono Trigger itch.
Also tried the demo for Nier: Automata. Dammit, I may need to get this.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Nier Automata is one I'm really looking forward to. The original Nier was a bland game with a decent story and an amazing soundtrack, then again the Drakengard games were all bland in a sense. This new one is developed by Platinum Games, which is is proof that the gameplay will be a big improvement.


----------



## Ralyks

I ended up preordering Nier:Automata after playing the demo. This seems like it will be really good, and the reviews out of Japan have been pretty glowing. How am I going to have time for this and Horizon?

Also, went back to The Witness for the first time in at least 6 months last night. Man, I don't think I've ever had to bust out pen and paper and take photos with my phone to try and solve puzzles, but the sense of accomplishment was one that I've only felt with very few games. It was less "Man, I solved this awesome puzzle in a video game!" and more "Man, I solved this puzzle and felt my brain get a work out!"


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. That game is really on the short side. I can see why everyone compared it to Ninja Gaiden but the enemies are nowhere near as smart. It's more similar to Devil May Cry in that respect.


----------



## mongey

finally got a few more hours into Nioh . Beat the first proper level with the boss on the ship at the end 

I really sucked for the first few hours but getting my groove on a bit now . the swordplay is really fun . gets out of hand quick once it gets 2 on 1


----------



## Black_Sheep

Dark Souls 3... Im gonna platinum that! or die trying.


----------



## Ralyks

Just got the Platinum trophy for South Park: The Stick of Truth earlier.

Now back to the gloriousness that is Horizon: Zero Dawn


----------



## coreysMonster

Played Night in the Woods. I think I'm a little older than the target audience, which is probably the late teens / early 20s crowd that are still trying to figure out what to do in life and where to go after high school, but I can still clearly remember the feelings and situations the game talks about. Starts slowly and it's far from perfect, but that kinda fits perfectly to the idea of figuring out that there's no perfect way to lead your life.

That time is a really weird transitional period that's different for everybody, and yet it feels like there's not a lot of media targeting it. High School, college and The Business World are all popular settings for stories, but "not in college but out of high school and trying to figure this amorphous blob people call adulthood out" doesn't seem to often be taken seriously in stories.


----------



## crystallake

Ralyks said:


> Amazon had I Am Setsuna on sale, so far its hitting that nice old school Chrono Trigger itch.
> Also tried the demo for Nier: Automata. Dammit, I may need to get this.



If I can't get the Switch in the next month or so, I'm grabbing I Am Setsuna from the PS Store. I was really excited about this title.


----------



## TedEH

Every once in a while, I'll go back into my steam library and find stuff that "oh yeah, I totally meant to play this".

This time was Child of Light. Digging the way the fights work in this game. Also everything rhymes for some reason.


----------



## MoshJosh

Just beat Resident Evil 7 on madhouse mode. Admittedly I took the easy way out and used the unlock-able items (essence of defense, secrets of defense, x-ray glasses, and the all powerful circular saw) I just wasn't a glutton for punishment I guess. . . 

Very cool game overall, not sure I will be pickup the DLC, at least until the "Not a Hero" DLC is out.

Also trying to force myself to finish The Phantom Pain, but I have little desire to play the last "missions" i.e. missions I've already played with different difficulties/parameters. Think I only have 47, 48, and 49, but I'm just finding them to be tedious and not sure I'm willing to suffer through haha.

Also think I am going to pick up Nier: Automata or the new Mass Effect. . . I can only buy one game this month and they both look awesome. I love mass effect 2 and 3 (missed 1 when it came out) and easily spent 40+ hours between them, but I could really go for some hack and slash fun right about now. . .


----------



## Ralyks

crystallake said:


> If I can't get the Switch in the next month or so, I'm grabbing I Am Setsuna from the PS Store. I was really excited about this title.



I love this game so far. Something about the atmosphere, somber tone, soundtrack, and old school RPG gameplay is just a perfect for me.

I picked up Nier: Automata, but pretty much only had the time to install it last night. Maybe get into it tonight. The demo was really sweet. I'm also offloading a bunch of PS4 games I haven't had any time for (Skyrim, Madden, DmC, probably others) and probably put it all towards Kingdom Heats 1.5 + 2.5 when they come out on PS4 next month.

Also, since I find myself in bed earlier and earlier, and thats where the PS3 is, I've been playing Red Dead Redemption (gotta finally finish it before 2 comes out later this year), Metal Gear Rising: Revengence, and Catherine in the late hours before sleep.


----------



## stevexc

I've been hopping between Oxygen Not Included, Torment: Tides of Numenera, and Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns lately.

All thumbs up from me!


----------



## Ralyks

Tormet looks pretty good.

Finally got into NieR last night, put it in suspended state (since WHY ARE THERE NO AUTO SAVES?!), woke up.... the PS4 4.50 firmware patch restarted my system and started me from scratch. Good thing I didn't get THAT far in.

Has anyone tried Night in the Woods? Seems like a neat little story-based game to give a whirl.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

man i want to play the new zelda game so bad. Gotta finish all the Uncharted games on my PS4 first though


----------



## BlackMastodon

Got For Honor when I got my Asus GTX 1080 last week. Started playing a couple days ago and it's pretty fun. The combat is really satisfying, hopefully they'll iron out some of the kinks/balance issues. The story mode is hilariously bad and 3dgy, though.


----------



## Jarmake

TedEH said:


> ^ Maybe if you're running on ultra, one of the high settings isn't playing nice. Maybe take things like shadows or texture quality down if you don't have a lot of vram on your card.
> 
> I find lately, lack of vram has been the thing slowing me down the most despite having an older card (gtx770). Stuff runs fine as long as I don't enable any options that gobble up ALL THE MEMORY.



Nah, it runs just fine all maxed. My psu was just dying and couldn't provide all the needed juice to my gpu and then it always crashed.

Today I bought a new psu and all is fine in the gameland again. Got to love modular psu's. My old one was nonmodular and holy hell all those not needed cables were pita to organize as not to block airflow etc. Oh well, it served me well for 8 years, so can't really complain.

And now doomslayer got to hack slash and destroy some demons again!


----------



## Ralyks

Night in the Woods. Pretty fun story with some witty dialogue, and really cool art style.

I've also been hunting down some PS3 games to go back and play. So far I've spent 30 dollars and have gotten LA Noire, GTA Episodes from Liberty City, Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Red Dead Redemption. Still looking to find Zone of the Enders HD collection, Heavenly Sword, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished Saints Row IV and starting the conclusion:







Understanding the game's setting in mind, I already miss the silly radio stations. And I also miss my custom protagonist now I'm controlling Johnny Gat and Kinzie Kensington. They're alright but my favorite thing about the Saints Row series is the character I've grown attached to. Still I guess that's enough incentive for me to rescue my British psychopath (who admittedly tones down as the series progressed). 

Still not much to complain about for a small expansion/standalone add-on, and a nice way to end my time in the SR universe... that is until Agents Of Mayhem comes out.


----------



## Tree

Battletoads and Double Dragon, and TMNT Turtles in Time. Because, what's better than wailing on people?


----------



## Kaura

Started Fallout New Vegas again after learning how many celebrities voice act in that game. Joined NCR on the first playthrough but I think I'm going to go with the ancient Rome cosplayers this time.


----------



## Ralyks

Tree said:


> Battletoads



You must be a glutton for punishment


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> You must be a glutton for punishment



I think he means Battletoads & Double Dragon, the crossover game which IIRC was more easier than their respective series.


----------



## Alberto7

So, I've had my sister's girlfriend's PS3 at home for a while now, but because I'm a university student and therefore poor, I didn't have a monitor to plug it into. I've saved up some money now, so I got myself a nice 24" monitor and can finally use that PS3. I've never owned a PS console, and I wanted a PS3 really badly for a while some years ago, so I'm really excited. She left me some nifty games as well.

Started playing through Red Dead Redemption today, and I'm liking it so far. Got Ni No Kuni, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Remix, Prototype, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Metal Gear Rising, and a bunch others, and am thinking of getting Gran Turismo 6 at some point. Enough to keep me busy for a while, except I just won't have the time for the next couple of months. 

All this, of course, while I wait for the Nintendo Switch to re-stock so I can get it and finally play that shiny new Zelda game.


----------



## StevenC

Alberto7 said:


> All this, of course, while I wait for the Nintendo Switch to re-stock so I can get it and finally play that shiny new Zelda game.



Nintendo have doubled their Switch production for this year. When you get one, Zelda will be worth it.


----------



## Pav

The first Battlefield 1 expansion came out this past week and it is woooooonderful. I'm loving the hour-long frontlines matches, they're like an intense tug of war that results in the entire map being obliterated.


----------



## Ralyks

Was under the weather yesterday so spent a bunch of time in the bedroom. That's where the PS3 is. So yesterday was a mix of Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, Catherine, and LA Noire.

Have Mass Effect Andromeda preordered but reviews are making me kind of nervous about it. Especially since my original goal walking into the store was preordering Persona 5 and Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5....


----------



## synrgy

I've also got ME:Andromeda on pre-order, and am also worried based on some of the early reviews/complaints, but it's the first game I've pre-ordered since ME3. I've avoided most spoilery/preview content, purposely, so I don't know much about what to expect, story wise. Guess we'll start finding out tomorrow night!

The price on Alien: Isolation finally dropped enough to where I was willing to snag it last week. Super creepy, so far. Definitely digging it. It kinda sits somewhere between Dead Space and Splinter Cell. Sega did a great job capturing the tone and atmosphere/design of the original Alien movie. I'm only a few missions into it, but it's been scratching the itch.

Otherwise, what little time I've got, was going to either Star Wars: Battlefront, or Starcraft II.


----------



## Ralyks

synrgy said:


> The price on Alien: Isolation finally dropped enough to where I was willing to snag it last week. Super creepy, so far. Definitely digging it. It kinda sits somewhere between Dead Space and Splinter Cell. Sega did a great job capturing the tone and atmosphere/design of the original Alien movie. I'm only a few missions into it, but it's been scratching the itch.



Such a good and legitimately scary game. And about time there was a good Alien game.


----------



## Cloudy

I tried the 10 hour Andromeda trial with EA access, Im still going to buy the game. I can see where some of the criticism is coming from, especially in regards to animations and facial movement. Some of the expression ryder makes are just straight up cringey, like garrys mod/half life level youtube meme faces. 






Short of that though a lot of the side characters were likable and the first bit of the game was good, story wise.


----------



## Ralyks

So far Andromeda is pretty good. I'll say the voice acting made a big improvement, the facial expressions aren't the worst thing I've seen, the combats pretty good, and it's definitely a pretty game.


----------



## synrgy

Yeah, I'm pleased with my first few hours of ME: Andromeda. I can't say I don't get where the complaints are coming from, but the technical drags aren't impeding my enjoyment of how the story is unfolding.

I guess I'm just a little surprised at the technical 'shortcomings', because even though the original ME wasn't perfect, it was pretty far ahead of the curve for its time. Had it not been for the early reviews, I would have otherwise expected Andromeda to be a relative pinnacle of what current-gen consoles are capable of, and instead it's more or less on-par, technically speaking.

Anyway, I'm enjoying that Ryder is (so far) a pinch more bumbling/everyman than Shepard was.


----------



## Ralyks

synrgy said:


> Anyway, I'm enjoying that Ryder is (so far) a pinch more bumbling/everyman than Shepard was.



Agreed. I'm playing through the original trilogy as well (PS3 is in the bedroom so it's been the wind down game) and Ryder is sooooo much better than Sheppard so far (I'm also playing through the original trilogy for the first time so I don't know is Sheppard becomes any less robotic as the game goes on). But as I said, the dialogue in Andromeda is way more believable so far.


----------



## Señor Voorhees

Nope, Sheppard really is just a robot. To be perfectly honest, I was never attached to him/her so much as I was attached to everyone around them. I'm liking Ryder more, and I'm liking your companions just as much as I did in the previous games. Hopefully it stays strong, as I am just in the beginning right now.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I really need to get a PS4, now I have incentive with Nier Automata and FFXV. Dammit Square Enix, I can't seem to ever stay mad at you.  

Now focusing only on Strider and Just Cause 2 (again dammit Square Enix) since I've cleared the Saints Row series out of my system. One thing that I really appreciate is that I prefer games with the lack of regenerating health, there's much more urgency and it keeps the gameplay pace up. I enjoyed Saints Row 4 (Crackdown edition) a lot more than I should, largely for that reason. Except for the climactic the final boss it came back so I had to run to a ditch for a thumb suck and a little cry. 

Sure I'm dying more in Strider than Just Cause, but I like that kind of fast paced gameplay. Having said that, the latter's gigantic land is certainly fun to play, and by play I mean eradicate.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

I broke down and bought a Switch so I could play Zelda Breath of the Wild. It's hands down one of the best games I've ever played.


----------



## Mathemagician

Not sure if "exactly" counts as a game. But Magic: The Gathering. I got back into it with a buddy's help and now I'm like "buy all the cards". So many rules, but it's fun.


----------



## Alberto7

Can we mention mobile games? I don't really play any except one. Anyone else play The Battle Cats? I've been playing for the last 2 years or so. I play very casually, but consistently, so I've advanced a bit in the game. Still a long way to go. It's kind of insane how such a simple game can have so much depth to its gameplay.


----------



## StevenC

Splatoon 2 Global Testfire is this weekend, so that's what I'm playing. Such a great game.


----------



## Alberto7

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> I broke down and bought a Switch so I could play Zelda Breath of the Wild. It's hands down one of the best games I've ever played.



And where on Earth did you get one? 



StevenC said:


> Splatoon 2 Global Testfire is this weekend, so that's what I'm playing. Such a great game.



... and here I am, waiting for a Switch to pop up somewhere so I can buy it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

just got Nioh, but I've got a lot of stuff to do this weekend so I probably won't be able to play much. :/


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Alberto7 said:


> And where on Earth did you get one?
> 
> 
> 
> ... and here I am, waiting for a Switch to pop up somewhere so I can buy it.



The store I bought it at (Big W Mount Hutton, in Newcastle Australia) had several when i called, but that was 2 weeks ago.

Hope you get one soon, Zelda is amazing...good luck!


----------



## Mwoit

Finished Zelda Breath of the Wild and Nier Automata. Too much games in one month!


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

I've been playing _Shadow of the Colossus_ on an emulator on my new PC build over the past few nights. I finally beat it last night. Boss rush + emotional journey + incredibly awesome art and music = fantastic game. That ending got to me hard though. 

I'm not much of a gamer, but that was one of the most enjoyable titles that I've ever played, despite it having the typical pitfalls expected from a game that is about 12 years old.


----------



## StevenC

Mwoit said:


> Finished Zelda Breath of the Wild and Nier Automata. Too much games in one month!



How many hours did you put into Zelda? I'm at about 90 and still have a lot more I want to do before doing... you know... that bit.


----------



## StevenC

Double post


----------



## TedEH

Emperor Guillotine said:


> Shadow of the Colossus



I gatta dig up my old PS2 and replay that one some day. Definitely one of my favorite old games.


----------



## Ralyks

Waiting to get out of work to get my copy of Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5....


----------



## Mwoit

StevenC said:


> How many hours did you put into Zelda? I'm at about 90 and still have a lot more I want to do before doing... you know... that bit.



Can't remember. Maybe not 90 odd as I mainly played it on weekends and commuting to work and back. I got a bit tired of doing odd jobs, and once you get to a certain point in the game, you're essentially OP and you've at least climbed all the towers. I've gone back to it in drips and drabs to check for any missing things, but the drive is mainly gone.


----------



## Tree

Ralyks said:


> You must be a glutton for punishment





Bloody_Inferno said:


> I think he means Battletoads & Double Dragon, the crossover game which IIRC was more easier than their respective series.



You're both right!  
I have been playing all of the Battletoads games recently. Those speed levels drive me nuts! 

The new Dark Souls 3 DLC was released today so that's definitely all I'm doing after I finish working on a client mix tonight. \[T]/


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mwoit said:


> Can't remember. Maybe not 90 odd as I mainly played it on weekends and commuting to work and back. I got a bit tired of doing odd jobs, and once you get to a certain point in the game, you're essentially OP and you've at least climbed all the towers. I've gone back to it in drips and drabs to check for any missing things, but the drive is mainly gone.



You're making it sound like a Ubisoft sandbox game.  And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing... 



Tree said:


> You're both right!
> I have been playing all of the Battletoads games recently. Those speed levels drive me nuts! [T]/



Yeah, it's where most people give up, usually at the 3rd or 4th course in Turbo Tunnel. 

I remember completing the game without warps, I was only capable of doing it once and it was years long after I purchased it back in 92. It was excruciating but doable. The 5 Lives cheat is mandatory, and you can't afford to make silly mistakes in the early levels (namely Level 2) and certainly not the latter maze levels like Level 4, 6 and 9. Level 11 requires a cast iron left thumb. All tough but fair... But I have no desire in trying to complete Battletoads ever again.  The SNES version Battletoads in Battlemaniacs was far more forgiving, but sadly shorter, as I finished that multiple times.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> You're making it sound like a Ubisoft sandbox game.  And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing...



It's not. There aren't even trailing missions.


----------



## Ralyks

It's kind of trippy playing the first Kingdom Hearts at 60fps.

Also started FFXV Episode Gladiolus. Interesting controlling Gladio. I just really hope this thing isn't only like an hour or two...


----------



## TedEH

Hyper Light Drifter is on sale on Steam. Looks kinda cool. Trying not to just spend all my money on games I might never play though.


----------



## Jarmake

Just bought a ps4... I have metal gear solid V, cod infinite warfare, the last of us remastered and cod modern warfare remastered. Started infinite warfare yesterday.

Any ideas on split screen games? We like to play those with my so. We've played many lego games over the years, but they aren't as exciting as they used to be in the beginning, so new ones are needed badly. Also resident evil 5 was great split screen. (Re6 not so much! Bleugh...)


----------



## Mwoit

Bloody_Inferno said:


> You're making it sound like a Ubisoft sandbox game.  And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing...



It's a good game, but I think I played too much of it in a short space of time. I got burnt out pretty quick. I'll come back to it as I said, but I don't have as much of a passion to get in and fiddle around. Great game nonetheless.


----------



## Tree

Bloody_Inferno said:


> You're making it sound like a Ubisoft sandbox game.  And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing...
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, it's where most people give up, usually at the 3rd or 4th course in Turbo Tunnel.
> 
> I remember completing the game without warps, I was only capable of doing it once and it was years long after I purchased it back in 92. It was excruciating but doable. The 5 Lives cheat is mandatory, and you can't afford to make silly mistakes in the early levels (namely Level 2) and certainly not the latter maze levels like Level 4, 6 and 9. Level 11 requires a cast iron left thumb. All tough but fair... But I have no desire in trying to complete Battletoads ever again.  The SNES version Battletoads in Battlemaniacs was far more forgiving, but sadly shorter, as I finished that multiple times.



Playing with someone else makes all the difference. Share the insufferable pain! 

Battlemaniacs is definitely way stripped down though as you said. I haven't been able to make it all the way through the Battletoads arcade game. Something about the added blood just makes it less appealing than its predecessors. 



Jarmake said:


> Just bought a ps4... I have metal gear solid V, cod infinite warfare, the last of us remastered and cod modern warfare remastered. Started infinite warfare yesterday.
> 
> Any ideas on split screen games? We like to play those with my so. We've played many lego games over the years, but they aren't as exciting as they used to be in the beginning, so new ones are needed badly. Also resident evil 5 was great split screen. (Re6 not so much! Bleugh...)



Both Left 4 Dead games are great fun still! Splinter Cell Blacklist is another great one.


----------



## Jarmake

Sc blacklist and l4d haven't been ported for ps4, have they? I actually have both on ps3, xbox360 or pc.


----------



## Tree

Not that I'm aware of. Just dust off the old consoles!


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> Hyper Light Drifter is on sale on Steam. Looks kinda cool. Trying not to just spend all my money on games I might never play though.



I dig Hyper Light Difter. Very A Link to the Past-like.


----------



## Ralyks

I was allowed to pick up my Persona 5 pre order last night at 9 pm last night. One hour in and I think I'm going to absolutely love this game.

Also, Mafia 3 was on sale. I had played the demo recently with my fiancee and she was absolutely into it, and at this point anything she shows interest in I try to pick up so I can get her to play with me  So I traded in Mass Effect Andromeda and used some GameSpot points and paid a grand total of $1.47 both both Mafia III and Persona 5.


----------



## mongey

picked up stardew valley to play on my macbook for my daily train commute

its not a genre that i have ever been super into but its getting its claws into me. got to my destination station this morning and wished I had another half hour


----------



## Pav

Two months later and I'm finally closing in on the platinum trophy for Nioh. I decided to take a little break from Nioh to actually start Horizon Zero Dawn and man...it is a beautiful game. I also picked up a copy of Nier Automata while I was out today and pre-ordered Full Throttle Remastered so my backlog of games that must be played is reaching critical mass.


----------



## Gravy Train

Just got Persona 5 last night. At just a hair under 3 hours, I'm loving it so far. The art style is amazing. Can't wait to dive deeper!


----------



## Mwoit

Gravy Train said:


> Just got Persona 5 last night. At just a hair under 3 hours, I'm loving it so far. The art style is amazing. Can't wait to dive deeper!



I'm about the same but tonight, I will sink the hours in.


----------



## TedEH

The talk of Persona 5 reminds me that I never finished playing through Persona 3, even though I've tried more than once. Such a looooooong game.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm about 8 hours into Persona 5, and it still feels tutorialish. But holy crap, I am really digging this game.


----------



## TedEH

I've been playing Dishonored 2, and since they're now using the same voice actor as for Garrett, I feel like I'm playing a Thief game. I'm ok with that.


----------



## StevenC

Been playing Graceful Explosion Machine all day, it's loads of fun and really addictive. Hard too, so I've been playing the same levels over and over again trying to get through them with a respectable score. Really suits the Switch.


----------



## MoshJosh

Mostly been playing Resident Evil 7, though probably done with it for a while as I beat my Madhouse new game (no unlockable items) run, and don't have much else to do haha.

Also beat Nier: Automata. Cool game, but not sure I will play much more past the first ending as SPOILERS, I don't really enjoy playing as 9S. I'm not much for the hacking/bullet hell thing, and I feel that removing the ability to wield 2 weapons at once kind of takes away from the experience at least IMO. Also tried it on hard mode, and. . . yeah not my thing as I got wrecked way to fast haha.

Also paying a few random games I bought on sale.

Mafia III, some fun to be had, but super glitchy/broken at time.

Ghost Recon Future soldier, actually really cool and making me consider buying the new GR game.

and also just started up Deus Ex human revolution.

Anyone playing the new mass effect? I loved 2 and 3, but heard super mixed things about the new one, any thoughts?


----------



## fps

Resident Evil. Terrifying!


----------



## Steinmetzify

Doom reboot. Fun stuff so far, about half hour in.


----------



## MattThePenguin

MoshJosh said:


> Anyone playing the new mass effect? I loved 2 and 3, but heard super mixed things about the new one, any thoughts?



I'm on PC and I've put about 40 hours into the game. I like the combat a lot, but the game has some pacing issues and can feel like a chore sometimes. I don't really care about the wonky animations, nothings that out of the ordinary for a bioware game imo. Story and dialogue is also a step down, but it's not terrible by any means.

Seriously though, the combat is sick. I feel like if they are able to make a sequel they'll create something really special.

Multiplayer is fun too, but I don't mess with it often.


----------



## BlackMastodon

MattThePenguin said:


> I'm on PC and I've put about 40 hours into the game. I like the combat a lot, but the game has some pacing issues and can feel like a chore sometimes. I don't really care about the wonky animations, nothings that out of the ordinary for a bioware game imo. Story and dialogue is also a step down, but it's not terrible by any means.
> 
> Seriously though, the combat is sick. I feel like if they are able to make a sequel they'll create something really special.
> 
> Multiplayer is fun too, but I don't mess with it often.



Ditto, only I'm only about 10 hours in. I did some multiplayer and love the fact that's its virtually the same as in ME3, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Seems tougher, though I also only have level 1 classes for multiplayer and am not used to fighting the big baddies whatsoever. They also shortened the matches to 7 waves instead of 10, I think, which is pretty great too. Agreed with previous comments, too, I like Ryder more than Sheppard. Much more human dialogue that I like, though some of the voice acting does suffer at times.

One of my buddy's said he gave up on it towards the mid-game when too many side missions were in his queue but I don't think that will bug me. I am a huge Mass Effect fan, though, and am determined as hell to like this game.


----------



## synrgy

I finished the main story of ME:A with 98% completion. Had a bug prevent me from completing a mission, and a couple other missions I just hadn't gotten around to completing.

I'm satisfied, but also can't help but feel that ME:A is to the original ME the same way Star Wars Episode VII is to the original Episode IV. Now that I have the full picture in view, I can see that's it's a near note-for-note recreation.

And - somewhat depressingly - I'm pretty much fine with that.


----------



## Ralyks

MoshJosh said:


> Anyone playing the new mass effect? I loved 2 and 3, but heard super mixed things about the new one, any thoughts?



I had it on release date, then traded it in towards Persona 5. Then I almost traded in a game or two and used my 20% off a used game for GameStop to buy it again last night. It wasn't bad necessarily. The combats pretty fun, and voice acting is worlds beyond the original trilogy. The story couldn't really give too much of an opinion yet. I think its more that I have pretty much every AAA game to out on PS4 this yeah (Persona 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, Niet Automata, Nioh, Hitman, Yakuza 0.... more than those....) and Andromeda fell towards the bottom of the list. But I definitely think I'll get it again if I can get it cheaper. Although I'm wondering if its because there aren't exactly any other space drama games in the vein of Mass Effect on PS4 right now...

Also, this may be just me, but I didn't really run into any of these glitches or messed up facial animations I've heard so much about, but that could just be me. I never seem to have technically issues with games that a lot of people seem to report on other games.


----------



## MoshJosh

EDIT: Figured it out.


----------



## Repner

Wait wait wait. When the hell did Planescape Torment Enhanced Edition get released? I just opened up the GOG.com store page and it's the first thing that showed up. I think I know what I'm playing next!


----------



## Azyiu

fps said:


> Resident Evil. Terrifying!



You mean RE7? I used to be a HUGE fan, but lost faith in it after RE5, and felt like I was let down by RE6... so I don't think I would try RE7 at all, despite the positive comments I've read / heard thus far...


----------



## Ralyks

Azyiu said:


> You mean RE7? I used to be a HUGE fan, but lost faith in it after RE5, and felt like I was let down by RE6... so I don't think I would try RE7 at all, despite the positive comments I've read / heard thus far...



RE7 is definitely the anti-RE6, probably even 5.

Anyway, can't put Persona 5 down. 28 hours in and still absolutely loving it. I'd call it my game of 2017 at present.


----------



## MoshJosh

been playing The Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena. Always had a softy spot for this game and EFBB, even though I was never very good at either. Cool game, having fun with it. 

thinking about picking up STALKER SOC, would anyone recommend it if I never played it before i.e. no nostalgia factor. . . how does it hold up


----------



## NotDonVito

MoshJosh said:


> been playing The Chronicles of Riddick Assault on Dark Athena. Always had a softy spot for this game and EFBB, even though I was never very good at either. Cool game, having fun with it.
> 
> thinking about picking up STALKER SOC, would anyone recommend it if I never played it before i.e. no nostalgia factor. . . how does it hold up


GET OUT OF HERE STALKER


----------



## MoshJosh

too late I already bought it haha


----------



## Randy

A lot of CPS2 MAME games lately. So far my favorite seems to be X-Men Vs. Street Fighter. I like the 2 character vs 2 character format, the balance between characters seems to be good, the strength/weaknesses/mechanics seem to be consistent with their respective franchises, the sprites are well drawn and scaled, and the super moves are good but not 'overkill' like Marvel Vs. Capcom.


----------



## synrgy

Randy said:


> A lot of CPS2 MAME games lately. So far my favorite seems to be X-Men Vs. Street Fighter. I like the 2 character vs 2 character format, the balance between characters seems to be good, the strength/weaknesses/mechanics seem to be consistent with their respective franchises, the sprites are well drawn and scaled, and the super moves are good but not 'overkill' like Marvel Vs. Capcom.



A buddy of mine used to have an import copy of that for his (modified) Sega Saturn. It remains my favorite in the series, for all the reasons you just outlined.


----------



## mongey

still star dew valley on the train . up to 2nd year summer. 33 hours played or something 

I just have no idea why I'm spending my time picking and watering the crops, feeding animals, collecting my eggs to fill my 8 mayonnaise machines, milking cows and goats to fill my 3 cheese machines 

then doing other odds and ends around the place and the repeating the whole cycle time and time again . its almost meditation at this point


----------



## Ralyks

mongey said:


> still star dew valley on the train . up to 2nd year summer. 33 hours played or something
> 
> I just have no idea why I'm spending my time picking and watering the crops, feeding animals, collecting my eggs to fill my 8 mayonnaise machines, milking cows and goats to fill my 3 cheese machines
> 
> then doing other odds and ends around the place and the repeating the whole cycle time and time again . its almost meditation at this point



This really is a fun game and I feel bad for haven't played it in a few months. Then Horizon came out, then I got sucked into Night in the Woods for a bit, and now I've literally only been playing Persona....


----------



## oracles

Been binge playing Destiny a lot recently, but I'm more so impatiently waiting for Outlast II to finally hit release


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Took a break from gaming. And it seemed like the universe knew and tried to pry my wallet out of my pocket. New Mass Effect? Nah, I'll wait. A new Persona? We'll see. Clearance Xbones for $225? Still too much. A girl asked me if I liked her. Didn't answer.

But after a while I did what any sensible adult would do and pulled one of the many dust covered games of my shelf to play. Yakuza 4. Played it a few years back but never did alot, if any, of the side missions. And finding guides for it (locker keys, revelations, etc.) is like going back in time 15 years because any relevant/useful guide is a wall of text.


----------



## leftyguitarjoe

Nier Automata. Its the funnest, most refreshing game I've played in a long time. The way it blends smooth hack-and-slash with old school bullet hell stuff is really neat. The story is super intriguing with only just enough of that Japanese wtf-ness. This one is definitely worth a buy because a playthrough is actually 4 playthroughs to get the whole story from all perspectives.


----------



## domsch1988

Every minute of my play time goes into Rocksmith currently. You can't beet practicing and playing at once!


----------



## MoshJosh

Outlast 2.


----------



## Ralyks

domsch1988 said:


> Every minute of my play time goes into Rocksmith currently. You can't beet practicing and playing at once!



One day there will be 7 string songs... One day.... I would say they need to make a whole new iteration of the game, but it looks like they did that "Remastered" update, plus there's plenty to do as it is.

But still... 7 string songs...


----------



## TedEH

Just finished a playthrough of Dishonored 2 - low chaos with Corvo. Debating moving on to a new game, or starting a new one to play the opposite way, high chaos, super violent, using Emily instead, not bothering with the stealth.


----------



## Repner

TedEH said:


> Just finished a playthrough of Dishonored 2 - low chaos with Corvo. Debating moving on to a new game, or starting a new one to play the opposite way, high chaos, super violent, using Emily instead, not bothering with the stealth.



Super violent is always so satisfying after the constant sneaking, saving, reloading of an all stealth game.


----------



## domsch1988

Ralyks said:


> One day there will be 7 string songs... One day.... I would say they need to make a whole new iteration of the game, but it looks like they did that "Remastered" update, plus there's plenty to do as it is.
> 
> But still... 7 string songs...



Agreed  Though some custom DLC's managed to get away with a 6 string B tuning. But it depends heavily on the song whether it works good or not... But since i'm into j-metal currently, thats not a big problem


----------



## Ralyks

domsch1988 said:


> Agreed  Though some custom DLC's managed to get away with a 6 string B tuning. But it depends heavily on the song whether it works good or not... But since i'm into j-metal currently, thats not a big problem



I'll play it using my PRS 7 no problem and just ignore the low B (or hit the note on the low b if I'm quick enough), but it'd be cool to actually have some full 7 string songs, like a Dream Theater or Korn or Deftones song (thinking more mainstream that casual players playing the game would know. I'm sure we'd all love Fallujah or Jeff Loomis or something ).


----------



## domsch1988

Ralyks said:


> I'll play it using my PRS 7 no problem and just ignore the low B (or hit the note on the low b if I'm quick enough), but it'd be cool to actually have some full 7 string songs, like a Dream Theater or Korn or Deftones song (thinking more mainstream that casual players playing the game would know. I'm sure we'd all love Fallujah or Jeff Loomis or something ).



Actually, on customsforge there are plenty of Korn and Dream Theatre Songs. Two of Jeff Loomis songs are on there too. Plus a selection of 72 Deftones Songs...
None the less, having proper 7 string support with the proper display and such would be bonkers


----------



## KnightBrolaire

finally getting around to playing Nioh.


----------



## Alberto7

Nintendo Switch is back in stock on Amazon. Just snagged me one with Breath of the Wild. Perfect timing, too, as I finished my last final exam of this school year last night. It's gonna be a good summer.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Repner said:


> Wait wait wait. When the hell did Planescape Torment Enhanced Edition get released? I just opened up the GOG.com store page and it's the first thing that showed up. I think I know what I'm playing next!



A few weeks ago. I still need to play Siege of Dragonspear and then Icewind Dale EE before Torment EE.


----------



## Beefmuffin

MoshJosh said:


> Outlast 2.



Ditto....the heart isn't thrilled about it haha. The wife seems to enjoy my pain though.


----------



## NotDonVito

Alberto7 said:


> Nintendo Switch is back in stock on Amazon. Just snagged me one with Breath of the Wild. Perfect timing, too, as I finished my last final exam of this school year last night. It's gonna be a good summer.


Glad you finally got one man.


----------



## StevenC

Alberto7 said:


> Nintendo Switch is back in stock on Amazon. Just snagged me one with Breath of the Wild. Perfect timing, too, as I finished my last final exam of this school year last night. It's gonna be a good summer.



Awesome! I just finished the story in Zelda last night after 115 hours.

Time for a lot of Mario Kart, I think. My brother plays Smash Bros competitively, so I got very little time to play any of the online games on the Wii U. I see a lot of MK8D and Splatoon 2 in my future.


----------



## Alberto7

NotDonVito said:


> Glad you finally got one man.





StevenC said:


> Awesome! I just finished the story in Zelda last night after 115 hours.
> 
> Time for a lot of Mario Kart, I think. My brother plays Smash Bros competitively, so I got very little time to play any of the online games on the Wii U. I see a lot of MK8D and Splatoon 2 in my future.



Thanks! And congrats on finishing the game, finally! That took a while.  I've been avoiding reading ANYTHING Zelda-related for the last two months, so I really feel like a child in a toy store looking at all the pretty things I've never seen before.
I've been enjoying the sh*t out of it. It's gorgeous. I'm glad I didn't get it before, because my studies definitely would have suffered... I've put in ~5 hours of gameplay that have felt like 15 minutes. So much stuff to do.

Also, I do happen to like the Switch a lot as far as aesthetics and ergonomics go. Seems to be very well built, too, and has performed flawlessly in the little time I've had it; not a single skipped frame that I've noticed. Looking forward to future titles!


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Been playing a lot of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Looking forward to the Forza Horizon 3 Hot Wheels dlc next week. Also liked the Prey demo, reminded me of the original Deus Ex and System Shock.


----------



## StevenC

Alberto7 said:


> Thanks! And congrats on finishing the game, finally! That took a while.  I've been avoiding reading ANYTHING Zelda-related for the last two months, so I really feel like a child in a toy store looking at all the pretty things I've never seen before.
> I've been enjoying the sh*t out of it. It's gorgeous. I'm glad I didn't get it before, because my studies definitely would have suffered... I've put in ~5 hours of gameplay that have felt like 15 minutes. So much stuff to do.
> 
> Also, I do happen to like the Switch a lot as far as aesthetics and ergonomics go. Seems to be very well built, too, and has performed flawlessly in the little time I've had it; not a single skipped frame that I've noticed. Looking forward to future titles!



They patched Zelda a few weeks ago and it really helped significantly with the frame skips. I'm not finished with it yet, either. Just taking a little break while I casually sink the rest of my life into Mario Kart.

Also, get Graceful Explosion Machine and Snipper Clips for when you're done. Both excellent little games and very much worth it.


----------



## Pav

I'm midway through my second run of Nier Automata so far. As good as it is (and it is good) I have to say I'm still slightly disappointed.


----------



## MoshJosh

Schools been kind of slow lately, so I've had a bit more time to play. . . picked up some stuff on sale recently too.

Just beat Outlast 2. I'd say it was worth the 30 bucks, thought I get some of the criticism the game has gotten. . . I definitely spent more time running than I did sneaking, and the gore/gross out stuff was, in my opinion, a bit heavy handed. 

Star Wars Republic commando. I rented this way back in the day when it came out, and I remember being horrible at it and returning it. . . I'm still pretty horrible at it, but I've had quite a bit of fun, though, that could be the nostalgia talking. 

F.E.A.R. Never had a chance to play it when it came out, and when I initially bought it I couldn't really get into it, but picked it back up to give it another chance.

Rise and Shine. Cool side scroller/shooter, but damn it can be hard at time.

Just pre-ordered Prey. I was going to hold off but I saw a good price online and couldn't resist, fingers crossed its good, and runs well. . .

Also looking forward to Get Even, and STRAFE, both look pretty sweet.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Grabbed Abzu as a freebie on PS Plus this month. I remember wanting to try this when it came out but forgot about it. 

Different, but cool.

It's more relaxing than anything, as far as games go. Simple controls, no real need to be anywhere, no time limits.

Beautiful, too:



Untitled by Lord Funktfied, on Flickr


----------



## meteor685

....


----------



## meteor685

I'm gonna be on here more.

I want to play BOTW so I plan on buying a switch soon.

Been slow on gaming for months, but here goes.

Star Ocean Til the end of time - Kinda an old game now(damn), but I really like it for what it is...

Overwatch - I play every now and then.

Played a few of the games on here others have already mentioned.


----------



## lewis

i purchased the farcry Primal game weeks ago now and its still not been opened from the cellophane. 

It looked great but, could anyone encourage me to actually play the thing?. Whenever I do a quick gaming sesh it tends to be either Skyrim, Fallout 4 or Fifa


----------



## KnightBrolaire

lewis said:


> i purchased the farcry Primal game weeks ago now and its still not been opened from the cellophane.
> 
> It looked great but, could anyone encourage me to actually play the thing?. Whenever I do a quick gaming sesh it tends to be either Skyrim, Fallout 4 or Fifa



don't you want to watch people get mauled by a smilodon or bash their head in with a rock? DON'T YOU WANT TO BE THE PREHISTORIC RAMBO, A ONE MAN KILLING MACHINE


----------



## Ralyks

steinmetzify said:


> Grabbed Abzu as a freebie on PS Plus this month. I remember wanting to try this when it came out but forgot about it.
> 
> Different, but cool.
> 
> It's more relaxing than anything, as far as games go. Simple controls, no real need to be anywhere, no time limits.



Grabbed this around the time it came out (of course, the month were the two main PS4 PS Plus free games are good/great, I have already owned them for months/years ). It's a really Zen game in the vein of Journey (one of the best games ever), but yeah, a little more freedom. Not that Journey didn't have freedom, but it definitely had a more clear direction forward.


----------



## MoshJosh

lewis said:


> i purchased the farcry Primal game weeks ago now and its still not been opened from the cellophane.
> 
> It looked great but, could anyone encourage me to actually play the thing?. Whenever I do a quick gaming sesh it tends to be either Skyrim, Fallout 4 or Fifa



I really enjoyed Primal for the most part. It does suffer from some repetitive missions, the usual Farcry stuff i.e. capture a bunch of bases and hunt some animals over and over, but the weapons/upgrades and animal taming help add variety. I felt like it was money well spent.


----------



## lewis

KnightBrolaire said:


> don't you want to watch people get mauled by a smilodon or bash their head in with a rock? DON'T YOU WANT TO BE THE PREHISTORIC RAMBO, A ONE MAN KILLING MACHINE



YES,,,yes I do!
I will give it a go today!



MoshJosh said:


> I really enjoyed Primal for the most part. It does suffer from some repetitive missions, the usual Farcry stuff i.e. capture a bunch of bases and hunt some animals over and over, but the weapons/upgrades and animal taming help add variety. I felt like it was money well spent.



Thanks guys.
I will make sure I give it some attention


----------



## Ralyks

Whilst taking a break from Persona 5 to not burn myself out on it (it was literally the only game I played in April once it was released, and this game is too amazing to burn myself out on), I resumed a bit of Kingdom Hearts Final Mix on PS4, continued on in Walking Dead: New Frontier, pulled up Okage: Shadow King (for the uninitiated, imagine if Tim Burton made a turn based RPG on PS2), and last night finally grabbed Gravity Rush Remastered (it was half off on the PS4 store with the Golden Week sale going on) to see what the hype was about and if the sequel is worth investing in later.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

had ryse son of rome on my computer forever and never played it until now. I'm really enjoying it since I'm a huge fan of brawlers/hack and slash games. The pilum throwing is kind of janky with a controller but otherwise it runs well, looks really good and is fun for me. The combat system is clearly modeled after batman arkham asylum (though it tells you from the beginning that you can't just spam the attack button, you have to mix in guard breaks and parries to do really well).


----------



## MoshJosh

Anyone else playing Prey? Hoping to get a little advice?


----------



## Grindspine

I often still play StarCraft II when I have a bit of time. A friend of mine has me starting a character in The Old Republic (since Star Wars Day, May 4th, just passed).

I really need to get back on Steam to play some Counter-Strike: Source, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, and Team Fortress 2.


----------



## Pav

MoshJosh said:


> Anyone else playing Prey? Hoping to get a little advice?



I was planning on picking up a copy tomorrow, is it any good so far?


----------



## TedEH

MoshJosh said:


> Anyone else playing Prey? Hoping to get a little advice?



I've started on this one- According to steam I'm 13 hours in already.  I find it's a pretty tough game, especially at the beginning. I'm the type who likes to explore everything I can find before continuing on with the story, so it means I keep stumbling into stuff I'm not prepared for yet. The game seems to hand you a pretty steady flow of new upgrades and powers and stuff to play with, but even as far into the game as I am, I never find myself going into new areas with much confidence- there's definitely no feeling of being over-powered like in a lot of games. You have to actually think about your approach before taking on certain challenges. It's a legit challenge, but hasn't been frustratingly so if you stay close to the story path, and the constant flow of new powers keep it fun.

Edit: Also, I was super relieved that it runs really well on my kinda-starting-to-get-old PC. Running on an i5-4670k/gtx770/16gb and it's handling 1080p on the high preset without any problems. I dunno what fps cause I haven't measured but it looks good enough for me. I'm actually starting to wonder if my HDD is starting to be a bottleneck - the only issue I see occasionally is that some textures sometimes get fuzzy for a second then come back (swapping between different mips or something weird like that?), and I don't know if that's because I have a low amount of vram (2gb) or if it's maybe because the disk isn't quite fast enough to stream the textures in.


----------



## MoshJosh

Well I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has found it challenging. I die. . . a lot, even on normal mode, but as you mentioned I haven't found in frustrating. 

SPOILERS!


Spoiler



I was wondering if you have been using/liking the typhon powers? I have invested into the engineer tree, and when I heard using typhon abilities would turn the turrets and robots against me (kind of why I went with the engineer tree), I decided to go all human abilities. 

Also side note, I wrecked the first nightmare, gloo'd him in between 2 turrets and it died like instantly. . . I was pretty proud.



EDIT: Runs great on my PC as well, though it is pretty new. Running GTX1060, i5 6500. . . Load times/start up is a little slower than I'd like, but I am curious to see what the load times are like on consoles.


----------



## TedEH

^ There is a spoilers tag you can use for stuff like


Spoiler



the turrets turning against you. Not 100% sure, but I think that's what hacking a turret is for? To prevent them turning on you? It's not spelled out anywhere and I'm still under the threshold where they turn.



Not sure what you mean by


Spoiler



the first nightmare. Maybe I haven't reached that part yet. I'm not too far past the point of getting the typhon abilities- just exited the GUTS. I've been finding mimic useful to get into those little security windows, or underneath boarded up doors.


----------



## Ralyks

Got Prey. Maybe an hour and a half in. I definitely get why they say its like Bioshock in Space... or, pretty much System Shock 3 (well, until the actually System Shock 3 comes out...)


----------



## StevenC

My greatest achievement


----------



## Repner

Playing The Witcher 1 and Morrowind w/ MGSO. Two big RPG's that should probably get more focus, but I'm playing both at the same time. I'm smart.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

currently playing Aragami. It's like Tenchu and Mark of the Ninja had a stealth baby. love it.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Think I'm going to move my 360 into the living room so I can play Dark Souls and Mass Effect Trilogy on my big TV.


----------



## Blytheryn

I just reinstalled The Witcher III again. I'll try and play it through this time. I remember loving just being immersed in the beautiful world.


----------



## NotDonVito

KnightBrolaire said:


> currently playing Aragami. It's like Tenchu and Mark of the Ninja had a stealth baby. love it.


I wanted to try this game because I love Tenchu(and it's got a native Linux port ) but I thought the shadow teleportation would take too much of the challenge out. Tell us how you like it once you're done.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

NotDonVito said:


> I wanted to try this game because I love Tenchu(and it's got a native Linux port ) but I thought the shadow teleportation would take too much of the challenge out. Tell us how you like it once you're done.



The teleportation is actually on a cooldown, you have limited range and can only use it a few time before it has to recharge (which it only does in the dark).The devs built the levels around using the teleportation so it doesn't make it too easy. Bright lights drain your energy, and later levels have wayy less dark places to hide.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas [PS4]

It's been years (if not a decade) since I've played it but it's alot more twitchy than I remember. Granted it might be because I'm playing off of a HDD and not an optical disc, but pedestrian traffic is just flat out madness.


----------



## Pav

I am now hooked on Prey. I was not expecting the game to be this good. I've crammed about 11 hours into the last three days and my girlfriend is starting to become concerned.  It takes the best traits of both Bioshock and Alien Isolation and jams them into one satisfying spaceship.


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

Wanted to replay the Witcher 3 with my girlfriend and remembered I never took Iorveth's path in W2 so I'm replaying that first. Forgot what a well-crafted game/story it was (and how frustratingly useless the map/minimap is)



lewis said:


> i purchased the farcry Primal game weeks ago now and its still not been opened from the cellophane.
> 
> It looked great but, could anyone encourage me to actually play the thing?. Whenever I do a quick gaming sesh it tends to be either Skyrim, Fallout 4 or Fifa





MoshJosh said:


> I really enjoyed Primal for the most part. It does suffer from some repetitive missions, the usual Farcry stuff i.e. capture a bunch of bases and hunt some animals over and over, but the weapons/upgrades and animal taming help add variety. I felt like it was money well spent.



That's interesting, I bought it at launch and I definitely feel I overpaid. I'd always wanted a videogame set in the last ice age but the game was insanely repetitive. I'd always enjoy a quick romp for an hour or so at a time, but could never play more than that. Topping it off, my Xbox lost the save file a little while ago and I can't be bothered to restart it from scratch, so now it's just sitting there


----------



## synrgy

Captain Shoggoth said:


> Topping it off, my Xbox lost the save file a little while ago and I can't be bothered to restart it from scratch, so now it's just sitting there



That's what happened to me with Ori and The Blind Forest. 

I mean, I got to watch my wife play through it, so I'm at least familiar with what happens, but, still. Ugh.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Been having an issues with Prey on Xbox One. Random items are disappearing from my inventory when I travel from the Arboretum. Loading older saves fixes this but I don't want to progress until this is patched.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Now that I've got my 360 plugged back in, playing Dark Souls once again and after having played Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, 1 feels clunky. Also, found some games on my Xbox that I forgot I'd bought and downloaded like Doom and Final Doom, so I'll be quite busy assuming I'm not working this weekend.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm about half way through San Andreas right now and I'm getting into the part of the game that made this a chore to play as a kid.


----------



## MoshJosh

mainly playing STRAFE, Alan Wake, and just got Devil Daggers. 

STRAFE is cool though it can be a real challenge.

I beat Alan Wake back on 360, and had to pick it up before it was gone. 

Devil Daggers is cool, but like STRAFE, is a tough game, think my best run so far only lasted 128 seconds. . . though in my defense the longest I've ever seen anyone last was like 12 minutes, the world record I think.


----------



## mongey

still playing star dew valley on my commute. just finished the 2nd year .

just got to finish these damn community center bundles and I'm gonna call it enough 

then think I'm gonna get xcom2 as I never played it


----------



## Kaff

Trying to play ME:andromeda as I loved the originaltrilogy, but can't seem to find time for it.. maybe I'm just getting old..


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Picked up The Surge on Xbox One last night. It's a sci fi Dark Souls alike and it seems pretty good so far.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Kaff said:


> Trying to play ME:andromeda as I loved the originaltrilogy, but can't seem to find time for it.. maybe I'm just getting old..



The struggle is real, I know.

I also picked up Alan Wake before it was gone. Heard nothing but good things so I'll have to give it a go one of these days. For $5, how can you go wrong?


----------



## DC23

Playing Borderlands right now (The Original) on PS4. Picked up the Handsome Collection for $15. I'm not really a gamer, but it's pretty fun, and I enjoy the comic-like graphics. Fun to kill-time haha.


----------



## elkoki

Uncharted 4


----------



## Ralyks

DC23 said:


> Playing Borderlands right now (The Original) on PS4. Picked up the Handsome Collection for $15. I'm not really a gamer, but it's pretty fun, and I enjoy the comic-like graphics. Fun to kill-time haha.



I really need to get back to BL2. One of my favorite games of all time, and my Zer0 is OP8 and has more Legendary, Pearescent, and Seraph loot than I know what do it with. At the very least, I want to finish getting that Platinum trophy, then maybe go back and do the same with Pre-Sequel.

Anyway, traded in Mass Effect Andromeda and Farcry 4 and got Injustice 2. REALLY good, and I haven't really been into fighting games much in past years. The story is kind of all over the place, but still better than any of the recent DC Universe movies...
Also, I've already put more time into Injustice 2 than both games I traded in combined, so that seems like a wise move in retrospect.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Something different. I was in the mood for something that allowed turning brick shaped faces into shoe ornaments so to speak. 






I needed a simple but fun game, and I get them from pad face wiping hacky slashies like the Musou series. I haven't played SW4 yet so...


----------



## Anquished

I reinstalled Splinter Cell Blacklist, thought I'd give it another try. I really enjoy the little survival side missions.


----------



## Dredg

Bloody_Inferno said:


>




Wait wait wait wait.... Samurai Warriors 4... II??? 

That's such awkward titling!!

btw how is it?


----------



## stevexc

Been playing some Diablo 3 again. Really gotta grab RoS...


----------



## Tree

PunkBillCarson said:


> Now that I've got my 360 plugged back in, playing Dark Souls once again and after having played Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, 1 feels clunky. Also, found some games on my Xbox that I forgot I'd bought and downloaded like Doom and Final Doom, so I'll be quite busy assuming I'm not working this weekend.



Haven't played BB yet, but DS1 is still my favorite. I wouldn't say it's clunky so much as it is slower paced and more methodical. 



Anquished said:


> I reinstalled Splinter Cell Blacklist, thought I'd give it another try. I really enjoy the little survival side missions.



Such a good game. It's worth playing through to the end. 

Been playing through Earthbound for the first time ever. Loving it so far.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

I don't mean that the combat is clunky but the rolling and dodging definitely feels that way. Speaking of, went ahead and did a couple of runs to get Havel's Ring, Grass Crest Shield, and Gravelord Sword. Thinking about doing a run to Blighttown and farming some green titanite just for the fun of it. Gravelord Sword does hilarious damage when you plunge attack the Taurus Demon. Going to do a run on another character with a +5 Zweihander, imbue it with the gold pine resin you find in Undead Burg, and see what that does. Probably a one hit kill from a jump from the tower.


----------



## Tree

PunkBillCarson said:


> I don't mean that the combat is clunky but the rolling and dodging definitely feels that way. Speaking of, went ahead and did a couple of runs to get Havel's Ring, Grass Crest Shield, and Gravelord Sword. Thinking about doing a run to Blighttown and farming some green titanite just for the fun of it. Gravelord Sword does hilarious damage when you plunge attack the Taurus Demon. Going to do a run on another character with a +5 Zweihander, imbue it with the gold pine resin you find in Undead Burg, and see what that does. Probably a one hit kill from a jump from the tower.



Ahhhh I gotcha. Yeah by comparison the lack of omnidirectional rolling is a little odd. Dude the zwei is pretty overpowered in DS1. You should have fun


----------



## PunkBillCarson

It is, but holy .... do you have to time attacks. After having not played for a couple years, I forgot how slow it is. Still getting the timing down. First time I beat the game, I beat Artorias with a Fire Zwei +10 and if you remember how proficient Artorias was with a greatsword, well... It was "fun" to say the least. Same with Gwyn, but I did it by God. Actually got back into Dark Souls 1 to form a loose origin story for a character I'm writing about, though I'm taking it all purely out of contest and making him just seem like a character who has seen some .....


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Dredg said:


> Wait wait wait wait.... Samurai Warriors 4... II???
> 
> That's such awkward titling!!
> 
> btw how is it?



Yeah, the title is stupid. I guess it's Koei dropping the coy act that despite the pallet swaps and crossovers, they're really just remaking the same game for 17 years.  But it's the refinement that makes me keep coming back for more. 

As for the game itself...

Short answer: it's another Musou game, with more refined tweaks than the last one. 

Long answer: Samurai 5/7 takes the queue from Dynasty Warriors 8 of streamlining the Story Mode to certain factions, each with a character roster rather than play an individual character's story. And I really like that since both franchises now have a list of playable characters that can overbook 5 hotels in your local CBD, a streamlined story mode is easier to manage without padded repetition (Dynasty Warriors 5 being the biggest offender). I also like having a secondary character you can change into mid game, which is good for certain objectives when you're in one side of the map and the secondary in another.


----------



## Tree

PunkBillCarson said:


> It is, but holy .... do you have to time attacks. After having not played for a couple years, I forgot how slow it is. Still getting the timing down. First time I beat the game, I beat Artorias with a Fire Zwei +10 and if you remember how proficient Artorias was with a greatsword, well... It was "fun" to say the least. Same with Gwyn, but I did it by God. Actually got back into Dark Souls 1 to form a loose origin story for a character I'm writing about, though I'm taking it all purely out of contest and making him just seem like a character who has seen some .....



Oh totally. I think I lost to Artorias and Manus about 15-20 each my first play through


----------



## TedEH

I went into one of those retro game stores a while ago, and while I don't really like the business model of vacuuming up all the old games and jacking the price up, I'm also a sucker, and these places sometimes have some hard-to-find-elsewhere stuff. So I ended up grabbing some PS2 games that I've wanted for a while- One was Ico, which was thankfully priced similarly to the other games. I've seen some really ridiculous prices for that one. I've played through it but never owned my own copy. Something about that game is just satisfying, I dunno what it is. Sunk some hours into it. Good stuff.

I didn't find time to try the other game until this week - I had also grabbed a copy of Okami, since I had heard good things but never played it. I've been sitting on this copy for about a month and finally went to load it up....... and it doesn't work. The disk spins, then makes some weird noises, then nothing. Sometimes a "now loading" screen, then nothing. I managed to get to the intro scene once, by ejecting the cd and putting it back, but it only worked once. 

I figured maybe the PS2 I have is just getting old. It's one of the older bigger models. From what I understand some disks are harder to read than others, so I tried a bunch. Everything else works. CDs, DVDs, single layer, dual layer, doesn't matter- only the one game doesn't work. Then I tried it in my PC, figured maybe I could get an emulator to run the disk. But it reacted the same way. So disappointing.


----------



## Ralyks

tl;dr Traded in a whole bunch of physical PS4 games and got a Switch with Zelda and Mario Kart. So a lot of those.

That said, I think I'm going to use the holiday weekend to attempt to finish Persona 5. From the sound of things from where I am, this may involve more than one late-late-night session.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

just started uncharted 3.


----------



## mongey

finally finished the community center on stardew valley after 63 hours or something 

def need a break from that game on my train commute 

bought xcom enemy unknown to play instead as I never got around to playing it on 360 when it came out


----------



## Ralyks

Batman Telltale series and Minecraft Story Mode (... also a Telltale series...)

I really want to finish Persona 5, but man, its beginning to weigh on me having hit the 80 hour mark. And I still have Persona 4 Golden waiting in the wings...


----------



## TedEH

I jumped back into Persona 3 the other day 'cause I never finished it. Forgot how much I like the combat in that game. BUT I died in a fight and lost some progress 'cause I hadn't saved in a while. Made me slightly sad. Also it's suuuuuuuuuch a long game. I'd be all for a game that's similar to this, but without the day-to-day high-school drama bits that take up so much time.


----------



## Chiba666

Skyrim still


----------



## mongey

xcom enemy unknown 

never played it when it came out on 360 , so got it form steam for my macbook

great game . very unforgiving for a beginner , but am starting to get the flow now after 6 or so hours in . my list of dead soldiers is pretty epic .thinking of starting from scratch again as I have allot more of a clue what I'm doing now


----------



## synrgy

mongey said:


> xcom enemy unknown



Oh, yeah, the whole xcom franchise is gold, and Enemy Unknown is arguably the best of the bunch. It should keep you busy for a fair bit.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

I plan on playing The Witcher 3 after work. I just downloaded the free quests before I left for work so I'm looking forward to getting back into the game after over a year. That and I might also play Killing Floor 2 or Nioh.


----------



## HUGH JAYNUS

%5BURL=http://s247.photobucket.com/user/ij...1-1C4C-49FA-A6CD-C4F0B04A7008.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

Im getting back into collecting since im not in a band anymore. Got a Sega Saturn. Playing Tomb Raider since it was the cheapest game i could get for it first


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I jumped back into Persona 3 the other day 'cause I never finished it. Forgot how much I like the combat in that game. BUT I died in a fight and lost some progress 'cause I hadn't saved in a while. Made me slightly sad. Also it's suuuuuuuuuch a long game. I'd be all for a game that's similar to this, but without the day-to-day high-school drama bits that take up so much time.



I definitely want to get into Persona 3, but most likely going to be after I finish up P5 and P4G (so, a little down the road, unless I buy a Vita and play on the go). I think whats kept me in these games so far is that day to day mechanic. While it can feel a bit overwhelming with deciding how to spend free time with activities and social links, or manage yourself in palaces (man, maintaining SP can be a pain at times), the day to day mechanic helped me keep interest in that the game was still moving forward while still having a plethora of activities to do, instead of being overwhelmingly open-world (which has caused me problems with games like Witcher 3, Fallout 4, or Skyrim)


----------



## KnightBrolaire

ZombieLloyd said:


> I plan on playing The Witcher 3 after work. I just downloaded the free quests before I left for work so I'm looking forward to getting back into the game after over a year. That and I might also play Killing Floor 2 or Nioh.


all of those are good choices  Killing Floor 2 is a lot of fun with some buddies, plus the gore system is excellent.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

KnightBrolaire said:


> all of those are good choices  Killing Floor 2 is a lot of fun with some buddies, plus the gore system is excellent.



I'm glad you think so haha. I really like both Killing Floor games. I actually still play the first one a lot but the second one is pretty fun to play online when you want to listen to music and just want things to kill haha.


----------



## Ralyks

KnightBrolaire said:


> all of those are good choices  Killing Floor 2 is a lot of fun with some buddies, plus the gore system is excellent.



I was going to ask people how Killing Floor 2 is. A few friends and my cousin-in-law seem to love this game, and its one of the free PS Plus games for the month of June.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> I was going to ask people how Killing Floor 2 is. A few friends and my cousin-in-law seem to love this game, and its one of the free PS Plus games for the month of June.


It's a gory horde mode game. The real depth to it comes from weapon choice/perks. Personally I like playing as the support because then you get a huge buff to shotguns when you hit level 10. Berserker is another fun class if you just want to smash stuff with a sword/hammer/mace and shield, plus you can be tanky as hell if you level up. I think it's a lot of fun.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Killing Floor 2 (great game indeed), Dark Souls 3 (trying to platinum it, farming the covenant items is so much fun! ... or not), and RS6: Siege with friends. 

Eagerly waiting Elite Dangerous for the PS4, also thinking about getting Everspace on PC, anyone here played it? Looks amazing


----------



## Kaura

Started playing CSGO again after a 7-8 month break. I used to be SMFC but now I'm MG2. Not really complaining because I love the progress of climbing up the ranks.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> the day to day mechanic helped me keep interest in that the game was still moving forward while still having a plethora of activities to do, instead of being overwhelmingly open-world (which has caused me problems with games like Witcher 3, Fallout 4, or Skyrim)



I haven't played any of the other games in the series, but my understanding is that P4 and forward ended up dialing back how much time is spent on the social aspects of the game compared to the standard rpg/battle stuff. I *like* the system overall, I just find that the amount of time spent in the social parts of the game drags on a bit too long given how long the game is already. If I make it through this game, maybe I'll give p4 a shot and see how it compares.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Sleeping Dogs was 7 bucks the other day, so I bought it, now playing the hell out of it. Love it so far. Forgot I had bought Metro Redux awhile back, so will probably play that afterwards.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

trying to plow my way through the walking dead telltale games again so I can get ready to play the newest season. Also need to finish up the game of thrones one.


----------



## Black_Sheep

KnightBrolaire said:


> trying to plow my way through the walking dead telltale games again so I can get ready to play the newest season. Also need to finish up the game of thrones one.



Am i the only person who finds the Telltale games boring? I mean, I like all the themes they've had and they always start up very promising, but by 3 or 4th episode it gets insanely boring. This happened with TWD, TWD season 2, Tales from the Borderlands, Batman, GoT, etc. I want to say they are good games but...


----------



## Ralyks

Black_Sheep said:


> Am i the only person who finds the Telltale games boring? I mean, I like all the themes they've had and they always start up very promising, but by 3 or 4th episode it gets insanely boring. This happened with TWD, TWD season 2, Tales from the Borderlands, Batman, GoT, etc. I want to say they are good games but...



They're definitely an acquired taste. Some of great (Tales of the Borderlands is one of my favorite games ever, and I nearly cried at the end of the first season of Walking Dead), some not so great (Game of Thrones). I recently got Batman and Minecraft Story Mode, so far the former seems really cool and the latter seems OK. Walking Dead: New Frontier is good so far, but I'm also pretty heavily invested in the story at this point. The Wolf Among Us was really good.

Personally, I like Telltale games for when I want to play a game that isn't too action packed, or that weird instance where I feel like watching a TV show or movie, yet want to play a game, but can't make up my damn mind. Plus the wife enjoys playing them with me. But I know plenty of people who hate Telltale games because, lets face it, there's very effort needed on your part, you're pretty much playing for the story.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Black_Sheep said:


> Am i the only person who finds the Telltale games boring? I mean, I like all the themes they've had and they always start up very promising, but by 3 or 4th episode it gets insanely boring. This happened with TWD, TWD season 2, Tales from the Borderlands, Batman, GoT, etc. I want to say they are good games but...


Yeah I'm pretty burned out on them, which is why it's taken me so long to finish the GoT one. After the new TWD, I'm not playing any til Wolf Among Us pt. 2 comes out. My biggest complaint is how they give you the illusion of choice, making it seem like your decisions matter, and then you find out that they mean nothing.


----------



## MFB

Anyone here played Paragon? I downloaded it the other day and finally booted it up last night, wasn't bad, but the heroes feel really slow and there's no variation to the mechanics/animations so you don't really get immmersed in the game unfortunately; but you do get competitive once you start making enemies, especially in my case since I went for melee vs. ranged, and everyone of my enemies was ranged  There was a lot of rushing and hoping I'd have a backup.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Anyone here played Paragon? I downloaded it the other day and finally booted it up last night, wasn't bad, but the heroes feel really slow and there's no variation to the mechanics/animations so you don't really get immmersed in the game unfortunately; but you do get competitive once you start making enemies, especially in my case since I went for melee vs. ranged, and everyone of my enemies was ranged  There was a lot of rushing and hoping I'd have a backup.


I don't know, I couldn't get into it. I like the idea of verticality being introduced to a moba though. It just doesn't feel as fun to me as Smite, which I've been playing since beta.


----------



## Ralyks

KnightBrolaire said:


> I'm not playing any til Wolf Among Us pt. 2 comes out.



Please tell me this is a thing.


Spoiler



That ending with Nerissa totally threw me off and I want to know if she's actually Faith or something



I do want to try out the Guardians of the Galaxy Telltale. At the very least, Nolan North voicing Rocket Raccoon has to be amusing (Nolan North and Troy Baker for life)


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> Please tell me this is a thing.
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> That ending with Nerissa totally threw me off and I want to know if she's actually Faith or something
> 
> 
> 
> I do want to try out the Guardians of the Galaxy Telltale. At the very least, Nolan North voicing Rocket Raccoon has to be amusing (Nolan North and Troy Baker for life)


I'm betting we'll hear about it at E3. Fables is one of my favorite comics of all time so I can't wait to explore the world more. I think this is the longest between seasons any telltale game has gone afaik.


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> I don't know, I couldn't get into it. I like the idea of verticality being introduced to a moba though. It just doesn't feel as fun to me as Smite, which I've been playing since beta.



I'll have to check Smite out then, since I'm looking for more games that I can just jump in and play a few rounds and be done; no real commitment.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> I'll have to check Smite out then, since I'm looking for more games that I can just jump in and play a few rounds and be done; no real commitment.


yeah there's an arena mode which is mostly pvp with some pve and the matches are only 10-15 minutes. There's also a 1 lane mode that's super fast but I don't recommend it for new players. regular 3 lane games usually take 30min-1hr ime.


----------



## Repner

I'm still making my way through The Witcher 1. Loaded up a save, and I was encountered with this. Good luck sleeping tonight.


----------



## TedEH

Black_Sheep said:


> Am i the only person who finds the Telltale games boring?



I really liked the first few games Telltale did in this same story-driven kind of formula - I was a big fan of the Monkey Island games, so when they did their Tales of- version, I thought it was a great fit for that series. I also really liked the Back to the Future series, and the first Walking Dead ones.... but after that the format kinda got tired. I haven't played any of those games in a while just cause it doesn't feel like anything new. There's no real draw anymore unless you're super into whatever license/franchise they've shoehorned into what's basically been the exact same game for years.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I really liked the first few games Telltale did in this same story-driven kind of formula - I was a big fan of the Monkey Island games, so when they did their Tales of- version, I thought it was a great fit for that series. I also really liked the Back to the Future series, and the first Walking Dead ones.... but after that the format kinda got tired. I haven't played any of those games in a while just cause it doesn't feel like anything new. There's no real draw anymore unless you're super into whatever license/franchise they've shoehorned into what's basically been the exact same game for years.



Which, at this point, I'm sure they'll make one for every possible IP they can get their hands on.

Anyway, spent a bunch of time with Persona 4 Golden last night (Meanwhile, I haven't played Persona 5 in what feels like almost 2 weeks now. I really need to finish that game), starting to get into it. Some things I actually feel like are done a little better than P5, but too early to say which one I prefer, as I'm still just in the first palace. 

This also has me thinking of going back through the Shin Megami Tensai/Persona games, and will probably work backwards and do Persona 3 next. My question: Which version of Persona 3 should I go for, as I believe there's like 3 versions? I do have a PS3 and a PSTV, so I'm pertty sure I have access to any version, and I know theres difference between the original, FES, and Portable versions.


----------



## mongey

ok, know what I'm doing in xcom now . restarted my game and and actually keeping people alive 

its a good game. still a little hazy on some of the satellite stuff and base management. but the game play is fun


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> ok, know what I'm doing in xcom now . restarted my game and and actually keeping people alive
> 
> its a good game. still a little hazy on some of the satellite stuff and base management. but the game play is fun


satellites are super important, same with tech research. The more satellites you have, the easier it is to detect threats. The better the tech/interceptors you have, the faster you can get to places and kill aliens. I usually run 2 snipers and 2 assault or swap one of the assault for a medic, then you have good coverage at all distances. get the perk for pistol usage with the sniper and they become one of the deadliest classes around, especially since upgrading pistols is the fastest weapon tree. Armor upgrades are key and significantly enhance your ability to keep soldiers alive. Another option is run one sniper as a long range specialist who hunkers down and does heavy damage while the other uses their pistol mostly. I find that the assault class works best when you take damage perks, like the flanking critical hit one. Always overwatch too, it helps when you have intersecting fields of fire, especially later in the game. Most of my deaths have been from pushing too far forward and getting flanked. A good way to mitigate that is bounding overwatches, pairing a sniper and an assault or the medic and an assault. The longer range characters help keep the assault covered. You could also swap in a heavy gunner but they're more situational imo.


----------



## mongey

KnightBrolaire said:


> satellites are super important, same with tech research. The more satellites you have, the easier it is to detect threats. The better the tech/interceptors you have, the faster you can get to places and kill aliens. I usually run 2 snipers and 2 assault or swap one of the assault for a medic, then you have good coverage at all distances. get the perk for pistol usage with the sniper and they become one of the deadliest classes around, especially since upgrading pistols is the fastest weapon tree. Armor upgrades are key and significantly enhance your ability to keep soldiers alive. Another option is run one sniper as a long range specialist who hunkers down and does heavy damage while the other uses their pistol mostly. I find that the assault class works best when you take damage perks, like the flanking critical hit one. Always overwatch too, it helps when you have intersecting fields of fire, especially later in the game. Most of my deaths have been from pushing too far forward and getting flanked. A good way to mitigate that is bounding overwatches, pairing a sniper and an assault or the medic and an assault. The longer range characters help keep the assault covered. You could also swap in a heavy gunner but they're more situational imo.



thanks for the tips

yeah overwatch is def keeping me alive . moving at a snails pace and having at least 2 on overwatch at the end of the round def help thin out the crowd . sometimes I aim for 3 

manged to clear a difficult mission with no loss of life this morning so am improving . that said I am currently favoring taking (5 man squad currently) 

2 support with and the 3 x healing perk 

usually also give a medi kit to 1 assualt just for safety . so I take allot of healing with me 
other 2 are sniper and heavy . my main sniper is levelled up a few levels but I didn't take the pistol perk. took whatever the other one was at the time . the vision one I think . 

begin a newb, I like to have that heavy so I can nuke em with a missile if it goes pear shaped


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> thanks for the tips
> 
> yeah overwatch is def keeping me alive . moving at a snails pace and having at least 2 on overwatch at the end of the round def help thin out the crowd . sometimes I aim for 3
> 
> manged to clear a difficult mission with no loss of life this morning so am improving . that said I am currently favoring taking (5 man squad currently)
> 
> 2 support with and the 3 x healing perk
> 
> usually also give a medi kit to 1 assualt just for safety . so I take allot of healing with me
> other 2 are sniper and heavy . my main sniper is levelled up a few levels but I didn't take the pistol perk. took whatever the other one was at the time . the vision one I think .
> 
> begin a newb, I like to have that heavy so I can nuke em with a missile if it goes pear shaped


the missile is best saved for the nastier enemies like mutons or cephapods. I find that most of the classes work best when you specialize them quite a bit. Medics are super useful and i rarely ever ran non-medic supports. Having the healing capability combined with the damage capability of a good sniper/assault gives you a lot more survivability, especially with upgraded armor. Some people think using overwatch all the time ruins the game, but it doesn't always work, I've had 3 overwatches all fail on the same enemy before (and that was a bloody muton too ;_; ) Another good thing to do is don't fixate on one squad and make them way more powerful than the rest, cycle some noobs in with your veterans so that way if someone dies you have backup soldiers in whatever field of expertise you need.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Dark Souls 3, RS6: Siege, and Everspace. 

Also bought Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines from Steam, such a trip down memory lane. Still a great game after all these years.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I got Player Unknown Battlegrounds a week or 2 ago and am really excited to give it a try with my buddy. Hoping I can finally get some time for games soon.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

I finally finished A Night In The Woods







I have so many emotions and feelings going through my head right now. So much mindfuckery and so many feels.


----------



## Ralyks

HeHasTheJazzHands said:


> I finally finished A Night In The Woods
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have so many emotions and feelings going through my head right now. So much mindfuckery and so many feels.



I loved this game so much. Loved the characters, LOVED the art style, loved the story (even if it got a bit weird at times) and loved just how realistic the dialogue and interaction with/between the characters were presented. Definitely a game I'm going to give another play through in the near future. But yeah, I'd say this is a top 3 of 2017 for me thus far.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Killing Floor 2. 

I've got a couple friends who have it but they're all responsible people with loved ones and kids so I've been playing some offline matches to try and get the hang of things.


----------



## HeHasTheJazzHands

Ralyks said:


> I loved this game so much. Loved the characters, LOVED the art style, loved the story (even if it got a bit weird at times) and loved just how realistic the dialogue and interaction with/between the characters were presented. Definitely a game I'm going to give another play through in the near future. But yeah, I'd say this is a top 3 of 2017 for me thus far.



I really loved it. I love narrative-based games like that. And the interactions, as you said, seemed very human. 

It's just the 4th chapter came out of nowhere. 


Spoiler



From mental issues to a death cult, Mae getting shot and going into a coma, etc etc... jesus.


----------



## mongey

So after thinking I was the king shit of xcom, wondering if normal was too easy. Was clearing very difficult missions without getting shot. The flying disc robot things turned up and are kicking the crap out of me.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Killing Floor 2 is free on PS+ this month. Grabbed it and started last night. Fun.


----------



## takotakumi

Just started Bloodborne this weekend after getting till halfway NG+ on DS3
I have had to adjust my fighting style at first. On DS I'm more defensive but I'm finding being offensive
here is better plus your're kind of motivated to do so with the HP regeneration mechanic (forgot the name).
Had some trouble getting the first bosses at first due my style but eventually got the hang of it. Currently
just finished Vicar and the Big Electro Skeleton guy.

I started Nier Automata right after DS3 and while it's a fun game, I went back to doing NG+ hahah
Even though I'm repeating the same I was having so much more fun. I guess I got addicted to the Souls games :v


----------



## MrYakob

Many many years late to the party but I'm FINALLY making my way through Mass Effect 2. What a game!


----------



## mongey

steinmetzify said:


> Killing Floor 2 is free on PS+ this month. Grabbed it and started last night. Fun.


yeah

I wasnt expecting much when I downloaded it but it is super fun and intense


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Playing Jotun again. I love this game, especially how they actually speak icelandic (which is the closest language to old norse) and the art design is excellent. Think Shadow of the Colossus with Norse mythology.


----------



## Steinmetzify

mongey said:


> yeah
> 
> I wasnt expecting much when I downloaded it but it is super fun and intense



Right? I had higher hopes for the new DOOM but this kicks its ass all day.


----------



## synrgy

Black_Sheep said:


> Eagerly waiting Elite Dangerous for the PS4, also thinking about getting Everspace on PC, anyone here played it? Looks amazing



Been playing ED (off and on) since preview release. All I can say is be prepared for the grind. It's an amazing game, but progression is extremely time consuming. I tried to play Everspace preview on Xbone, but it always crashed at the loading screen.


----------



## Alberto7

Steam Summer sale is on. Downloaded:

- Portal + Portal 2 bundle (for $2.46! ) I've played both, but I couldn't help but own them for that price.
- Transistor. Love the art style and the music, and I hear the game in general is great. We'll see in due time.
- Civilization V. Leaving this one for a time when I'm not too busy. I feel like I'm about to step into a rabbit hole.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

MrYakob said:


> Many many years late to the party but I'm FINALLY making my way through Mass Effect 2. What a game!



What a game! Make sure you get all the DLC. It really makes the game IMO.


----------



## Mathemagician

Final fantasy 14 with a buddy of mine. Finally good to be playing a game I can take my time on with friends. Loooove FF games, even the MMOs.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Started playing online matches for KF2...get a good team, it's a blast.


----------



## mongey

still xcom emeny unknown on my macbook

a little burnt out on it . have realized i need to start a 3rd play through , just did the first alien base invasion . have lost 7 nations, so 1 more I'm gone . have finally got my head around what to do with my base and satellites . so time to do it all again


so gonna have a xcom break for a week then restart. in the meantime bought portal for $1 in the steam sale.l been wanting to replay it for a while .only played through it once when the orange box first came out


----------



## TedEH

The last few steam sales didn't have much of interest that I didn't have already but this one's got some half decent stuff.
Picked up Thimbleweed Park cause I'm a fan of old adventure games.
Grabbed Full Throttle for the same reason.
Also Hyper Light Drifter cause it looks good.

Stiiiiiiiiiiiiiill haven't finished Persona 3 though. It's so loooooooooooong.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

picked up dishonored 2 for 20$, gotta find the time to play that since I'm restarting my Darkest Dungeon run for the crimson curse dlc


----------



## mongey

man. portal is such a great game . the ideas and the presentation are just perfect


----------



## TedEH

^ I don't re-play very many games, but Portal 2 is one that I keep coming back to. Whenever I just want to play something I know will be good, Portal games are just reliably good.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> ^ I don't re-play very many games, but Portal 2 is one that I keep coming back to. Whenever I just want to play something I know will be good, Portal games are just reliably good.


god I love portal 1 and 2. They're some of the few games I've played through multiple times and still enjoy


----------



## Black_Sheep

TedEH said:


> ^ I don't re-play very many games, but Portal 2 is one that I keep coming back to. Whenever I just want to play something I know will be good, Portal games are just reliably good.



As much as I love Portal 2, I hate to admit that it doesn't have much replay value. imho. I've played it 3 times and pretty much remember all the puzzles. I wish they'd make a third one, but I guess that's never gonna happen. HF3 would probably have to happen before and that's never ever gonna happen.


----------



## thedonal

I'm on a second play through of Doom- it's ace but does feel like a large series of arena fights chained together as it progresses. The platforming is fun though.

I just got Shadows of Mordor GOTY for about £4 which wasn't bad. Half hour's play so far and it's looking good.

What I'd really like to do is actually play Alien Isolation without it crashing after 10 mins- but I really haven't got the bother to work out the fix for it yet. PC is more than up to the task but it just hits the "AI Stopped Running" error after a bit of play. Hardly good for the exercise in tension that it should be!


----------



## TedEH

thedonal said:


> Shadows of Mordor GOTY


Despite the criticism it gets, I thought that was a really solid game. It's got some very satisfying violence. The Nemesis thing is also a cool feature.


----------



## thedonal

Yeah- it looks great. As for criticism- I've only seen good things about the game. For that price, it was a no brainer. Though I should really be ditching games for other endeavours at the mo... 

Still- Doom done for a second time. Only on Hurt Me Plenty, but just fun to blast through. I missed some of the rune challenges, but ran with the most useful ones.. I'll consider the DLC at some point- though not PVP- I'll get fragged into the next universe on that one!!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> Despite the criticism it gets, I thought that was a really solid game. It's got some very satisfying violence. The Nemesis thing is also a cool feature.


loved that game. I should do another playthrough to get in the mood for shadow of war. Shadow of war looks like it'll be the assassin's creed II of that series, taking everything great about the first game and just doubling down on the best parts *cough* nemesis system *cough*.


----------



## mongey

TedEH said:


> ^ I don't re-play very many games, but Portal 2 is one that I keep coming back to. Whenever I just want to play something I know will be good, Portal games are just reliably good.



I will grab 2 and replay it as well. I think it's $2 in the sale lol

I only played it once as well and I remember liking it but thought some of the puzzles were a little cheap. searching for a far away sprite in the distance that you can portal to,where the puzzles int he first one are just about using the mechanics


----------



## mongey

finished it this morning on the train . gonna download 2 tonight 

I'm not really a fan of boss battles at the end of games , and I don't think the boss battle in portal is a great one , but the dialogue in it just kills me. so well written


----------



## Black_Sheep

Elite Dangerous, Stellaris and XCOM 2. All great games. 

Also trying to finish my 3rd run of Dark Souls 3 (platinum awaits!)


----------



## Alberto7

Still playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild whenever I get a chance (I'm im the process of moving apartments, so it hasn't beem exactly easy to find much free time), and I just don't get tired of it. So much to do. First part of the DLC is out now, and it seems like it will keep me entertained for quite a bit longer!


----------



## Ralyks

Pretty much don't have access to my TV for a while (temporarily living at home, where no one watches TV and I don't have a place to hook one up) so basically playing Zelda and Mario Kart on my Switch whenever I can be motivated.
At this point, once I can get the rest of my stuff out of my old place, I'm probably just gonna say eff it and get a Vita so I can continue Persona 4 Golden and play some PSone classics in the mean time.


----------



## Triple-J

Finished Arkham Origins recently and it's odd because a lot of fans turn their nose up at it due to it being the only game not made by Rocksteady but I actually think it does a few things better namely the bosses because they're actually interesting to play unlike the rinse and repeat style encounters of the other games.
Biggest surprise for me was the Cold Cold Heart DLC which is all about Mr Freeze/Penguin it's a joy to play but the story is brilliant and I prefer it's focus on the story of Freeze to the overstuffed with villains & cameos approach the rest of the series takes.


----------



## Ralyks

Triple-J said:


> Finished Arkham Origins recently and it's odd because a lot of fans turn their nose up at it due to it being the only game not made by Rocksteady but I actually think it does a few things better namely the bosses because they're actually interesting to play unlike the rinse and repeat style encounters of the other games.



I honestly want to check this one out, not just because I have all of the other Arkham games on PS4, but Troy Baker plays the Joker. That's combinding two of my favorite things ever (with all due respect to Mark Hamil)


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> I honestly want to check this one out, not just because I have all of the other Arkham games on PS4, but Troy Baker plays the Joker. That's combinding two of my favorite things ever (with all due respect to Mark Hamil)


troy baker is a great joker. He mimics Hamill's joker quite well.


----------



## mongey

so was layed up all weekend with the flu so started replaying portal 2 on the 360 as I still had a copy .thought I traded it but no 

great game, but not as great as the original to me. feels a little forced in places . even glados dialogue is a bit flat in parts . still some great lines in there though . got thorough most of it in 2 sittings . will finish it off this week 

went back to xcom EU and started the last mission on the train this morning . didn't realize I was so close to finishing the story . looked at the mission list and the defend the base from invasion mission never happened for me ? weird


----------



## Carrion Rocket

The Order: 1886. Tech Demo the Game #3026. I paid $10 for it which seems like too much. I'm only an hour into it but so far it's practically on rails. And while it's a visual marvel I find it really annoying that I can't adjust the screen size in game since my TV doesn't have such an option.


----------



## Ralyks

KnightBrolaire said:


> troy baker is a great joker. He mimics Hamill's joker quite well.



Troy Baker and Nolan North are like the Billy West of video games.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> Troy Baker and Nolan North are like the Billy West of video games.


yeah they're all quite prolific, same with tara strong.


----------



## cwhitey2

I have been getting into Trove lately. It's a great time killer!


----------



## mongey

Carrion Rocket said:


> The Order: 1886. Tech Demo the Game #3026. I paid $10 for it which seems like too much. I'm only an hour into it but so far it's practically on rails. And while it's a visual marvel I find it really annoying that I can't adjust the screen size in game since my TV doesn't have such an option.


Yeah. The game blows imho. I didn't even bother finishing it. Traded day after I bought it


----------



## Anquished

I got Dying Light in the steam sales. Barely scratched the surface with it and it is kicking my backside.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

trying to jump back into warframe. still just a giant grindfest from what I can see.


----------



## mongey

finished xcom enemy unknown mission this morning on the train. I'd like to play it again on classic but will give it a while 

need to hit up steam before sale ends


----------



## Pav

I finally gave into peer pressure and picked up Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. Holy shit, is this addictive. Once they work out the little bugs and get the game to run smoother, this will be a serious time sink.


----------



## TedEH

I tried to start Hyper Light Drifter and the intro has been.... disappointing? There's a ton of polish to the visuals, but the combat feels like it doesn't so much ramp up in difficulty as it just decides to relentlessly throw everything at you at once. Dying constantly, and not in a "this feels fair, I made a mistake, I'll learn next time" kind of way, like in the new Doom or something. It's just brutally hard to a newcomer with no warning. And no tutorials or explanations for anything, which is good in a way, but also bad, because the visual language they try to use in some places to show you how the game works hasn't been super intuitive. I have no idea if I'm going the right way. When I pick stuff up, I have no idea what it does.

I picked up Thimbleweed Park, which seems more up my alley. Going to retry Hyper again some day probably, but I was really surprised how little fun I had with it for the couple hours I played it.


----------



## MrYakob

Anquished said:


> I got Dying Light in the steam sales. Barely scratched the surface with it and it is kicking my backside.



Dying Light was a great game that I think a lot of people overlooked because of how meh Dead Island was received, it's a great game!

In anticipation of the next one, I'm finally making my way through Wolfenstein The New Order. It's batshit in all the right ways, I'm having a blast with it.


----------



## auntyethel

MrYakob said:


> Dying Light was a great game that I think a lot of people overlooked because of how meh Dead Island was received, it's a great game!



I seem to be the only person who actually likes Dead Island, despite its problems  I just had a lot of fun tooling around, though it did get pretty lame once I hit the city and especially the jungle.

On topic, picked up Ori & the Blind Forest on the Steam sale. I've never really played one of these 'Metroidvania' games and am really enjoying it. Some of the best art I've seen in a game. Also the feels in the prologue


----------



## Jake

Back to Diablo 3 after a year hiatus for the Necromancer. Grinding my way up to lvl 70 per usual before things will actually get interesting but I'm enjoying it so far.


----------



## jerm

Battlefield 1 and Dark Soul 3 are what I play when i'm gaming.


----------



## mongey

grabbed gunpoint as a cheap indie to check out and its pretty cool 

its like a thinking elevator action


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Playing more darkest dungeon while listening to morbid angel/behemoth. They pair perfectly.


----------



## MoshJosh

Dying Light enhanced edition, really awesome game, great combo of combat, parkour, zombies, and RPG elements. . . whats not to love!

Mad Max, another great game, the open worldiness can get tedious at times, but overall great! Enjoyable combat (both on foot and in car), rewarding upgrade system, and awesome atmosphere!

The Surge, cool take on the souls type game, a little lacking in environment and enemy variety (at least so far), but interesting combat/upgrade/dismemberment system.

Also bought the Witcher 3, haven't started it on PC yet, but had it back on PS4, couldn't really get into it then but I'm giving it another go.


----------



## auntyethel

KnightBrolaire said:


> trying to jump back into warframe. still just a giant grindfest from what I can see.



Warframe has the potential to be an amazing online game... the engine, optimization, movements, combat etc are all fantastic. It's such a pity that, out of all the grindy games I've played, it has the least point, endgame-wise.

Haven't played in a year or more though, but from what I've heard little has changed in that regard


----------



## ZombieLloyd

cwhitey2 said:


> I have been getting into Trove lately. It's a great time killer!



I played it for a little while when it came out on PS4. It was fun, I like the open quest thing it has where you can follow a random player to a quest and help them out. Someone did that with me the last day I played it and we ended up doing quests together for half an hour.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

auntyethel said:


> Warframe has the potential to be an amazing online game... the engine, optimization, movements, combat etc are all fantastic. It's such a pity that, out of all the grindy games I've played, it has the least point, endgame-wise.
> 
> Haven't played in a year or more though, but from what I've heard little has changed in that regard


The movement and combat were part of the reason I played it from closed beta til right before they released the jetpack crap. It's a gorgeous game. The drop rates on some gear makes the game stupidly grindy and basically forces you to put inordinate amounts of time into missions or spend real money on gear.


----------



## cwhitey2

That is one of the great aspects of the game.

I can figure out how to get certain items for 'quests'. Like the whole mining thing...I'm lost when it come to that.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

cwhitey2 said:


> That is one of the great aspects of the game.
> 
> I can figure out how to get certain items for 'quests'. Like the whole mining thing...I'm lost when it come to that.


yeah the mining drones are only useful if you've completed every level for that planet. They generally only bring back common materials unless you've beat all the higher level missions for that planet.


----------



## stevexc

Still working through Witcher 3. Finished Hearts of Stone, that was a solid expansion. Currently going through Blood and Wine or whatever it's called. Such a good game.


----------



## Blytheryn

stevexc said:


> Still working through Witcher 3. Finished Hearts of Stone, that was a solid expansion. Currently going through Blood and Wine or whatever it's called. Such a good game.



I seriously need to finish this game. It's so vast I never feel like I do it justice by playing it.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Plat'd The Order: 1886. What a pathetic excuse for a game. There was an interesting, worthwhile experience there, but it's clear what the priority was.


----------



## NotDonVito

Finished Titanfall 2 last night since I haven't paid my Sony tax(aka PSN). Pretty good game, a little short, makes you sad about robots. I wanna get back into MP though because of the new update. 

In my backlog is Dogimon Story Cubersleuth and Puyo Puyo Tetris. I'm stuck on the latter because puzzle game, and don't have time for the former because RPG game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Rather than throwing my PS3 out the window and finally going next get, I decided to put off a PS4 a little longer to get this on PSN. Only one day and I realised I blew 5 hours in... 






Continuing the trend of 5th sequels and recently having finished Yakuza 4, I've been enamoured with the series. So this was the natural choice.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Went back to San Andreas. Completed the story, now I'm trying to take over the gang territories but getting any gang members to spawn is a pain in the ass sometimes.


----------



## mongey

finished gunpoint. its a good little game. good value at $2 in the sale but $10 maybe questionable 

now I need a new travel game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Plat'd San Andreas a few hours ago. I never finished the remake of Shadow Warrior so I might start that again tomorrow.


----------



## Repner

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age arrived today. 

I have to say I'm confused though. The Limited edition comes with a DLC code for the original soundtrack option if you prefer that over the remade soundtrack that comes with the game, but when I started playing, that option seems to already be part of the base game. So what's the code for?


----------



## Repner

Can't edit the last post.

Turns out it adds a third soundtrack in the menu. So it's "Original" "Reorchestrated", and "OST". Apparently "OST" is a remaster of the original, even though it doesn't say this in the leaflet, or the advertising. Not good for people buying specifically for the original soundtrack since it comes with the game anyway.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Playing through Shadow Warrior (2013) right now. Have no idea why the load times are so long to then also have loading when opening doors. I looked at a walkthrough and found out there's 17 chapters. Fuck me, I'm five chapters in and am ready for this to be wrapped up already. 

This remake really reminds me of Bulletstorm and not in a good way, 'cause after a short time I was over the gimmicks and was just ready to beat the damn thing.


----------



## Ralyks

I picked up my preorder of Final Fantasy XII Zodiac Age, but between homes and don't have anywhere to hook up my PS4 and TV. But yeah, once I get a new place, that will be the first game I play, as well as finishing Persona 5.

Sooooo its basically been my Switch when I have time and motivation, which I have Mario Kart and Breath of the Wild. If anyone could recommend me some good Switch exclusive games, that'd be helpful (if a game is multi platform, I'm more likely to pick it up on PS4)


----------



## StevenC

Ralyks said:


> I picked up my preorder of Final Fantasy XII Zodiac Age, but between homes and don't have anywhere to hook up my PS4 and TV. But yeah, once I get a new place, that will be the first game I play, as well as finishing Persona 5.
> 
> Sooooo its basically been my Switch when I have time and motivation, which I have Mario Kart and Breath of the Wild. If anyone could recommend me some good Switch exclusive games, that'd be helpful (if a game is multi platform, I'm more likely to pick it up on PS4)



Graceful Explosion Machine is a great shooter that I'd recommend to literally anyone, Fast RMX is an awesome Wipeout/F Zero racer, if you haven't got Shovel Knight it's worth picking up. Arms and Snipperclips are loads of fun if you're playing with other people. But mainly, Splatoon 2 is coming out next week and there's a free online demo this weekend.


----------



## NotDonVito

Modern Warfare Remastered. It's so laggy conpared to the original, and I think the new graphical effects are ugly and greatly reduce visibility. Still a fun game if you want to go back to 2007 times.


----------



## TedEH

Finally getting around to Thimbleweed Park. I find it doesn't quite have the sense of humour of the games it's based on, but it's still enjoyable.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

finally getting around to playing life is strange. the dialogue is so weird, I can definitely tell it wasn't written by an american or someone who's talked to highschoolers in the last couple of years. Nobody talks like that.


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> the dialogue is so weird


To be fair, it improves as you go on. I think they recognized the feedback after ep 1 and changed the writing style a bit going forward.



KnightBrolaire said:


> I can definitely tell it wasn't written by an american


I don't know that I'd go thaaaaat far. I get the adult-trying-to-sound-like-a-cool-teen thing, but nothing about the writing strikes me as "Un-American".


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> To be fair, it improves as you go on. I think they recognized the feedback after ep 1 and changed the writing style a bit going forward.
> 
> 
> I don't know that I'd go thaaaaat far. I get the adult-trying-to-sound-like-a-cool-teen thing, but nothing about the writing strikes me as "Un-American".


speaking as an american, there's definitely some dialogue that does not sound like the way high school/college age americans speak. It reminds me at times of that skit from family guy where the foreign guy tries to sound hip/use american slang, though not that bad obviously.


----------



## StevenC

Splatoon 2! Salmon Run is fantastic and addictive.


----------



## Cloudy

I just got the game Fortnite, loving it so far!


----------



## allureoftheearth

Playing Mass Effect for the first time. 
So far, great game. It took a little to take off but now I am hooked.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

Cloudy said:


> I just got the game Fortnite, loving it so far!



I've just started downloading this on PS4, it's free on there. That's kind of shitty for PC players since I haven't seen a way to download a free (legal) version on PC. But then, I've only looked at the Epic Games website.


----------



## Cloudy

ZombieLloyd said:


> I've just started downloading this on PS4, it's free on there. That's kind of shitty for PC players since I haven't seen a way to download a free (legal) version on PC. But then, I've only looked at the Epic Games website.



I think you have to download it from the Epic Games overlay/launcher not just their website. I backed it awhile ago and paid for the game so Im not sure about how it works for free players, it has been a blast on PC thus far though.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

Cloudy said:


> I think you have to download it from the Epic Games overlay/launcher not just their website. I backed it awhile ago and paid for the game so Im not sure about how it works for free players, it has been a blast on PC thus far though.



Never mind, you have to pay to actually start playing.


----------



## Cloudy

ZombieLloyd said:


> Never mind, you have to pay to actually start playing.



Im pretty sure the game is going free to play after the early access period, not sure how long it'll be though.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Cloudy said:


> Im pretty sure the game is going free to play after the early access period, not sure how long it'll be though.


they said it'll be paid early access for couple of months at least iirc


----------



## ZombieLloyd

Cloudy said:


> Im pretty sure the game is going free to play after the early access period, not sure how long it'll be though.



Yeah, I knew it was going to be free to play when it fully releases. The FAQ section says it's not until 2018 though


----------



## TedEH

I finished Thimbleweed Park yesterday and it's.... weird. I won't spoil it if anyone is going to play it, but the ending was kinda good but also kinda bad. The game as a whole was alright, maybe a bit slow. I like the characters mostly, the writing and voice acting is alright. The game is just.... alright. Not mind blowing. Not bad.


----------



## synrgy

WWE 2K17. 

I'd like to be doing multiplayer for ME:A, and/or digging back into ED now that they've opened up the whole Thargoid element, but I just haven't had the time. Moving and having a now-11-month-old baby has pretty much tanked my ability to play anything that I can't A) pause, and/or B) pick up and put back down in 10-15 minutes, if I'm lucky.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Be wary of the ME:A multiplayer. It uses a peer to peer hosting system and groups players from all over the world without a care for ping. The resulting lag can provide a very poor experience.


----------



## TedEH

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> Be wary of the ME:A multiplayer.


That doesn't strike me as the kind of game you'd get for the multiplayer. I still want to try that one at some point, despite it's poor reception so far.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

TedEH said:


> That doesn't strike me as the kind of game you'd get for the multiplayer. I still want to try that one at some point, despite it's poor reception so far.



My post was directed at synrgy. I should have quoted their post to be clearer, my bad.

I'm still playing through the single player and it's been pretty good so far imho. Cards on the table, I picked it up recently and didn't experience the game at release.


----------



## synrgy

I mean, I've already played it a lot, prior to starting the moving process in June. I occasionally get dropped from a game, but it's been more exception than rule. For the most part, it's been smooth sailing; I just haven't had the time for it lately. I mostly enjoy being able to play the Krogan character types. I've got the Vanguard, Engineer, and Gladiator all ranked to 20. Not as interested in the Mercenary, though.

I definitely didn't _get_ the game for the multiplayer, but unlike the first couple of ME games, I found the single player campaign only compelling enough for the one playthrough. I started to do a 'new game plus' thing (or whatever it's called) but got discouraged during the tedious introductory levels. Anyway, I find the ME:A multiplayer less frustrating than SW:Battlefront, which is the only other (current-ish) shooter I'm interested in at the moment.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Shadow Warrior. Sucked. It's a game that keep impeding my enjoyment of it.

Took care of some misc trophies in a few games I'd already beaten story-wise. Finished out the Cells in Wipeout HD. Now I'm playing the PS3 HD remaster of Ico.


----------



## Ralyks

I've had Breath of the Wild for months. I JUST got the paraglider last night. Go figure.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Finally got a Switch last week! So been playing Mario Kart 8 a ton with my daughter. So cool to be able to play this game anywhere on the Switch and with my kids! Trying to finish up Ryse Son of Rome and the DLC from Rise of the Tomb Raider before buying Breath of the Wild.


----------



## Ralyks

Finally getting deeper in Breath on the Wild, and finally appreciating what a quality game it is. But I just got a new apartment (which I can't fully sleep in yet for reasons I can't get into to) but I'll be there tomorrow with Internet being installed. Off from work, my son will be in day care, and my PS4 and TV are already at the new place, so daddy's going to catch up on some PS4 time since I haven't been able to play in about 2 months (still have Final Fantasy XII Zodiac Age wrapped in the plastic, and I'm dying to finally beat Persona 5).


----------



## NotDonVito

Digimon Story Cyberslueth

Really good stylish rpg with cyberpunk teenagers and persona-ish side stuff to do. Haven't gotten very, but now I want to check out the other Digimon games I've missed out on.

I really want the new Utaware games, but monies.


----------



## Cloudy

Ive been playing more Friday the 13th, the game is a buggy mess with a terrible team of developers behind it but I cant get enough of the asymmetrical horror gameplay.


----------



## Rosal76

Cloudy said:


> Ive been playing more Friday the 13th, the game is a buggy mess with a terrible team of developers behind it but I cant get enough of the asymmetrical horror gameplay.



I had a very high interest in this game because I "thought" that if the player is highly skilled at being stealthy, the game would be easy. Being that Hitman and Splinter Cell are my 2 favorite games, I was planning on getting it. But then I heard things like, "Jason knows where you are at, at all times and he just needs time to get you" and "he can transport himself anywhere on the map" which I thought, kinda defeated the purpose of being stealthy, so. And plus, if the game is buggy, then I'm gonna lose interest in it even more.


----------



## Ralyks

Finally got to play my PS4 some, and ended up downloading Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Pretty cool so far. Wish I had some gaming headphones to get the full experience.


----------



## TedEH

^ Only just heard about that one, but definitely want to play it at some point.

Spent a good part of yesterday playing some super old nonsense- Jedi Knight II.


----------



## Jobam-Martins

I'm currently playing Path of exile and Diablo 2 on PC. 
On consoles I'm thinking about playing again metal gear series, beginning from MGS1.


----------



## Rosal76

Jobam-Martins said:


> On consoles I'm thinking about playing again metal gear series, beginning from MGS1.



Nice.

I'm still thinking about starting MGS5. Games been out since 2015, got the official strategy guide book, don't have any new games, I'm a huge fan of stealth games. Something about the game that's holding me back from playing it.


----------



## coreysMonster

I had to get my girlfriend a Switch because she kept wanting to play Splatoon 2 all day, which is absolutely unacceptable because _I_ want to play Splatoon 2 all day. 

Seriously though, it's amazing how much the Switch appeals to people who otherwise don't really play a lot of games. It's also funny how I am now disappointed in the PS4 that it _doesn't _have the option to just undock and be carried into the living room.


----------



## takotakumi

Rosal76 said:


> Nice.
> 
> I'm still thinking about starting MGS5. Games been out since 2015, got the official strategy guide book, don't have any new games, I'm a huge fan of stealth games. Something about the game that's holding me back from playing it.


I loved the game but there are *mild spoiler* a lot missions that feel repeated, and very few unique bosses compared to the masterpiece that was MGS4. It is still very fun as you get to customize a loooot of stuff like your own base, staff, wierd addons to weapons, YOUR OWN DOGGO <3, horse, etc. 

I don't know if my play style changed or if I had to adapt to this new one, but I felt like stealth were almost mandatory in this game. On MGS4 I remember just going full rambo most of the game haha


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Been spending some time with Lego City Undercover on Switch. Probably the best Lego game I've played imho.


----------



## Jobam-Martins

Rosal76 said:


> Nice.
> 
> I'm still thinking about starting MGS5. Games been out since 2015, got the official strategy guide book, don't have any new games, I'm a huge fan of stealth games. Something about the game that's holding me back from playing it.



What I like most in the series is the message Kojima sent. The real way We need to play the games are by not killing but completing the missions by using the techniques such as CQC or not being seen by any enemy. He teaches us that even the enemy soldiers are being victims of a system that they can't control so You don't have the right to kill them(That's why some weapons are red,these ones kill people). Even the bosses have their second "life bar"(a resistance bar) so You can fight them without hurting them.You can listen to their history and see the victims they were(MGS1 You don't have these options but this is explained later on). The only game I remember seeing this kind of "immersion" was in Final fantasy tactics. We really saw the victims of wars in the same way We see in MGS series.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

coreysMonster said:


> I had to get my girlfriend a Switch because she kept wanting to play Splatoon 2 all day, which is absolutely unacceptable because _I_ want to play Splatoon 2 all day.
> 
> Seriously though, it's amazing how much the Switch appeals to people who otherwise don't really play a lot of games. It's also funny how I am now disappointed in the PS4 that it _doesn't _have the option to just undock and be carried into the living room.



Haha, I'm with you! My kids had been playing saturday morning and they left it on my nightstand. I was heading to bed that night, saw it, and needless to say, spent an hour and a half playing mario kart instead of going to bed! Hahaha, love the portability of this thing.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just picked up a new 2ds and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. It's slow to pick up but I'm loving farming monsters to make new weapons/gear. I had 3 Ultimate on the WiiU and enjoyed it a lot as well online.


----------



## Rosal76

takotakumi said:


> , but I felt like stealth were almost mandatory in this game.





Jobam-Martins said:


> What I like most in the series is the message Kojima sent. The real way We need to play the games are by not killing but completing the missions by using the techniques such as CQC or not being seen by any enemy.



That's how I like to play. I'm what they call a "ghost player". Go into a mission and leave no trace behind. Exceptions would be individuals who have to be killed and/or if you have to destroy something. I do like the fact that the MGS games gives players the option to go stealthy and/or full run-and-gun. I normally don't like to run-and-gun in video games. That's fine if I'm playing Battlefield and/or Call of Duty, which I don't. My top 3 favorite games are Hitman, Sniper Elite, and Splinter Cell and it is very, very, rare for me to shoot a gun in Hitman and Splinter Cell. Concerning the MGS series, although I can appreciate what they're offering in the games, there's just something about them that I can't connect with.

I plan to purchase Hitman 2016 in the future and if there aren't any new stealth games that I like by the time I finish that game, I may think about getting MGS5. Good God I only had 2 years to think about getting it.


----------



## synrgy

I'm a big fan of the Splinter Cell series, and have also always played it going as much 'ghost' as possible. All knockouts, no detections; only killing when it's one of the mission requirements.

I wish they'd make one for this generation, already, or even bring the previous titles up into backwards-compatibility.


----------



## Rosal76

synrgy said:


> I'm a big fan of the Splinter Cell series, and have also always played it going as much 'ghost' as possible. All knockouts, no detections; only killing when it's one of the mission requirements.



I absolutely love playing ghost style. I spend a lot, and I mean a lot of hours on missions and absolutely won't stop until I get a 100% stealth (Splinter Cell) and/or Silent assassin (Hitman) rating. You remember that one mission, "Bathhouse" from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. If you read the viewer comments on Youtube videos of playthroughs of that mission, gamers are just losing their sanity trying to get 100% on their ratings. I was, too. It was ridiculously hard. 



synrgy said:


> I wish they'd make one for this generation, already, or even bring the previous titles up into backwards-compatibility.



Ubisoft did say that they are going to make a new Splinter Cell game for the next gen consoles. I'm always checking up to see if there's any new news on it.


----------



## synrgy

Rosal76 said:


> You remember that one mission, "Bathhouse" from Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.



I apparently blocked those memories, but now that you mention it, I recall much cursing and maybe even a controller throw or two. 



Rosal76 said:


> Ubisoft did say that they are going to make a new Splinter Cell game for the next gen consoles. I'm always checking up to see if there's any new news on it.



Yeah, I looked it up again just before I posted the last message. Nothing official, yet; just some platitudes about how 'all the Clancy stuff' is on their radar.


----------



## Airhead

Clash of clans rules !!!


----------



## Ralyks

Got Sonic Mania and Undertale waiting on my PS4 for me.
Otherwise, whole lot more of Zelda. Further I get, the more I'm liking it after a slow start.


----------



## Ralyks

Got Sonic Mania and Undertale waiting on my PS4 for me.
Otherwise, whole lot more of Zelda. Further I get, the more I'm liking it after a slow start.


----------



## Jarmake

I'm currently playing horizon zero dawn. Seems good so far, got about 12 hours in.

Got resident evil 0&1 hd, dying light enchanced edition, tomb raider definitive edition and the witcher 3 waiting for me on ps4.


----------



## mikernaut

Just started Gravity Rush 2 and Hellblade. Gravity Rush is fun and cool and has a cool style. But wow Hellblade might be the best game I have played since Uncharted 4. Its soo pretty , interesting and has a Viking girl who is dealing with Psychosis. The atmosphere is spot on!. Highly recommend this game so far. It's very cinematic soo if your looking for just a quick fix of action this isn't going to do it for ya. I've been following this game for a while because I'm been interested in the viking/norse mythology aspect and love how it has turned out. The story and gameplay seemed like it was different earlier on.

Other games I've been messing around with are Ghost Recon Wildlands, Killing Floor 2 and Batman season 2 Telltale series ( since I worked on it, I wanna see how the finished product plays)


----------



## Steinmetzify

Jarmake said:


> I'm currently playing horizon zero dawn. Seems good so far, got about 12 hours in.
> 
> Got resident evil 0&1 hd, dying light enchanced edition, tomb raider definitive edition and the witcher 3 waiting for me on ps4.



You probably already know this, but you're in for a serious treat when Witcher 3 comes up on your playlist. I'm 43, wouldn't call myself a hardcore gamer but I've been playing since Atari 2600...that game is probably the best I've ever played as far as story, content, graphics and music.

Even if you don't like it right off the bat, stick with it and you'll end up amazed. Make sure you do the fight training in the beginning too. It helps.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

I've been playing Bulb Boy on my Switch, it's a very cool horror game.


----------



## mongey

grabbed don't starve a couple weeks ago for my commute
Its a good game but end of the day its a genre that I get over pretty quick .I spend my real life trying not to starve, dont need a game of it

I was feeling it , got to day 30 something and got distracted and died. And cant bring myself to start again

grabbed undertale this morning to play as I have only read great things about it but haven't tried it yet


----------



## mikernaut

Damn, some of these Environment puzzles in Hellblade are rather vague. This game doesn't hold you hand and doesn't have any hud or tips really. kinda adds to the vibe I suppose.


----------



## mikernaut

Also picked this up which is sooo Blade Runner-ish and has Rutger Hauer. Some very cool looking environments. 


Damn I still haven't finished Rime, Last Guardian, and now I have Hellblade, Gravity Rush2, and Observer. 

Got stuck on this awhile back and have to give it another go.


----------



## lewis

Until we get Assassins creed origins, Ace Combat 7, The Sims 4 on consoles, Red Dead Redemption 2, Fifa 18 and Anthem (probably others Im hyped for too), Im still just playing the hell out of Fifa 17 and Skyrim. I recently bought the older Batman titles and Far Cry Primal and just didnt bond with any of those.

Im not an online gamer so Battlefront/cod etc no longer appeals to me unless they include a great campaign/story mode.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Endless Space 2 on PC, fantastic game. 

Destiny 2, soon.


----------



## Ralyks

Sonic Mania left with with one burning question:

What took them so long?!?
Love it.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Bought Lawbreakers on PS4, it's fun. Not nearly as fun as Titanfall 2 though, and I kinda regret getting it. Should have gotten Undertale and Night In The Woods instead. Oh well


----------



## Ralyks

Black_Sheep said:


> Should have gotten Undertale and Night In The Woods instead. Oh well



Everyone should get Night in the Woods. Soooooo good.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

been playing a metric ton of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. I'm thinking about starting up Metal Gear 5 since I still haven't played it yet.


----------



## MoshJosh

Been playing a little of everything in the last month or so. 

Agents of Mayhem: . . . its okay, but honestly if I could I would return it on steam (over the two hour mark). I can see why people like it, but the world feels a little lifeless to me and the side mission stuff is so far really uninteresting. Again I see why some people are into it, it has some cool stuff going on. 

The Signal From Tolva: kind of like Far Cry lite but with robots and a No Mans Skyish graphic style haha, simple but fun FPS/exploration game.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice: I really liked this one, its not perfect but the atmosphere/story/graphics are awesome, I also liked the combat (though frustrating at times) and the aspects involving mental health were interesting. 

Sniper Ghost Warrior: returned this almost immediately, was buggy and I just couldn't get into it at all.

The Technomancer: . . . really disliked this game. Well I really disliked the combat, found it frustrating and just not enjoyable, kind of ruined the whole thing for me.

Get Even: just getting started on this one and so far its really cool. The combat and stealth are basic and can be. . . well not good in parts. . . but the story and detective stuff are pretty cool.

Redeemer: So far I like it, the controls have taken a bit getting used to, and the game can be punishing in parts. Combat has a good flow and you feel like a badass when you are running through mobs of enemies with ease.

Yeah I have been playing a lot.


----------



## Mathemagician

I'm about to preorder Destiny 2 on PS4. Any insight guys? I've never played destiny, but halo is pretty fun and I usually like MMOS.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> Everyone should get Night in the Woods.


Just started this one. Not very far in, but so far I like the way it's written.

I fired up some oldschool FEAR the other day. Still stands up. The slomo is fun, and the enemies still feel smarter than most game AI.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> Just started this one. Not very far in, but so far I like the way it's written.



The writing is some of the best I've ever seen in a game. It actually feels like realistic conversation. And they way they handle mental illness, depression, etc. is so well done.

Finally got all of my stuff out of my old apartment, so have my new entertainment stand set up with my PS4 Pro, PS3, PSTV, and Switch with all my games nicely set up.... Then proceeded to go through my PS4 games and figure out which ones are getting traded in to go towards my Xbox One X preorder. That, and putting some more time into Hellblade. That and Resident Evil 7 are part of the reason I want to invest in good game headphones.


----------



## Pav

Mathemagician said:


> I'm about to preorder Destiny 2 on PS4. Any insight guys? I've never played destiny, but halo is pretty fun and I usually like MMOS.


If you like Halo and MMOs then you'll like Destiny 2. I started playing the PC beta yesterday and I'm super impressed. It alleviated a lot of my apprehension after Destiny 1, which was pretty barebones at launch.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> The writing is some of the best I've ever seen in a game. It actually feels like realistic conversation. And they way they handle mental illness, depression, etc. is so well done.


It's well done, but it's kind of depressing in itself. I don't know how far through the story I really am, but the viewpoint taken by the game is super pessimistic all of the time. Pretty much every subtle hint that something could go wrong... eventually goes wrong in a pretty predictably sad way.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> It's well done, but it's kind of depressing in itself. I don't know how far through the story I really am, but the viewpoint taken by the game is super pessimistic all of the time. Pretty much every subtle hint that something could go wrong... eventually goes wrong in a pretty predictably sad way.



Its definitely a game that deals with issues like mental illness, depression, the struggles of going from teenage to adulthood, the struggles of living in a rust belt town. Yes, it does take a depressing tone (heck, I'm not ashamed to admit it nearly got me teary eyes at one or two scenes later on), but it is VERY well done. And there's definitely some good humor to break up the depressing tone. Try sticking with it, its well worth it.


----------



## Mathemagician

Even without playing the game. Having lived with someone with depression. That's sounds about right. That's what someone with depression has their brain show them - all the time, no matter what positive thing is going on around them.


----------



## StrmRidr

Randomly bought Doom when it was on sale on the PS Store the other week. One of the funnest games I played in a while. I'll be moving on to Everybody's Golf once I finish it.


----------



## Señor Voorhees

I've picked up metal gear solid 5 again. I also started playing quake champions which is pretty neat. Other than that its the same old overwatch.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

I've been having a lot of fun with Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle on the Switch. It's a pretty good take on the turn based squad combat genre. So far, i'd give it 8/10.


----------



## Siggevaio

I've been playing Dark Souls 3 again for the last couple of weeks. I played it for the first time around release last year but sold it for some reason after I finished it. Got cravings for more though so I had to buy it again.  Such a great game and I wish I played Demon Souls and Dark Souls when they first released on the PS3. Don't know if they still hold up today... Anyway, gotta get all the trophies in DS3 first. I'm on my NG+3 run and almost done.


----------



## Triple-J

Picked up Dead Island recently and it's been one of those "where have you been all my life" moments as it's such a good play and unlike a lot of sandbox games it doesn't feel like a chore plus it's nice to play a Zombie game that isn't Res Evil or a Res Evil knockoff I'm genuinely shocked that the devs haven't been handed the Walking Dead licence though cause this is pretty much everything I'd want in a TWD game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Siggevaio said:


> I've been playing Dark Souls 3 again for the last couple of weeks. I played it for the first time around release last year but sold it for some reason after I finished it. Got cravings for more though so I had to buy it again.  Such a great game and I wish I played Demon Souls and Dark Souls when they first released on the PS3. Don't know if they still hold up today... Anyway, gotta get all the trophies in DS3 first. I'm on my NG+3 run and almost done.


Dark Souls absolutely holds up. Demon Souls less so imo. It's even more obtuse than DS at times.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Grabbed AC Freedom Cry and Just Cause 3 cause they were free and I'm bored with Blops 3 tonight. 

See what I dig.


----------



## Ralyks

So I finished Walking Dead: New Frontier (I love this series) this morning, then traded in that, Prey, Injustice 2, and inFamous: Second Son (and somehow got $100 bucks from GameStop in trade in value. That's unheard of, plus inFamous will be free on PS4 this week) and put the credit towards my Xbox One X preorder.

Then somehow on an impulse buy, got the collectors edition of No Mans Sky for 30 bucks. Haven't played it yet, but I heard it's actually good now.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Just Cause 3 is a blast to play. I don't see much replay value but blowing up everything in sight is just fun.


----------



## TedEH

Long weekend meant lots of time to play games- and remind myself that Doom is still awesome.


----------



## NotDonVito

Made an impulse purchase and got a Switch system with Zelda. Also playing The Last of Us, Dragon Quest Builders, and Call of Duty 4.


----------



## mikernaut

Finished Hellblade over the weekend and now Uncharted - Lost Legacy. both I extremely enjoyed. Also spent a few days doing multiple playthroughs of Telltale Batman season 2 epi1 and a bunch of the Guardians of the Galaxy episodes taking various paths and grabbing screenshots of the Characters I worked on. Randomly I would throw in Killingfloor 2 or Ghost Recon Wildlands for some mindless shooting with sum beers. Now what do I want to get back to on my list next? hmmm


----------



## Steinmetzify

Grabbed Infamous: 2nd Son cause it's free. Got the morning off, gonna give it a go. 

Got quite bored with Just Cause 3 after a minute. Was much fun blowing everything up but it got repetitive, and the missions were pretty lame.


----------



## mongey

steinmetzify said:


> .
> 
> Got quite bored with Just Cause 3 after a minute. Was much fun blowing everything up but it got repetitive, and the missions were pretty lame.



I'm with you there. I grabbed it and an hour in I was pretty over it 

don't think I'll bother playing it again


----------



## Steinmetzify

mongey said:


> I'm with you there. I grabbed it and an hour in I was pretty over it
> 
> don't think I'll bother playing it again



Already deleted...started Infamous SS this morning...so far ok but I don't know how long I'll keep going with it. Still better than JC3 tho...


----------



## KnightBrolaire

finally starting the singleplayer of GTAV. I put it off for years but dammit this time I'm going to finish it. Prob going to play LA Noire after it, I love that game.


----------



## mikernaut

Yeah, its kinda weird cuz I tend to think of Just Cause and the Infamous games as kinda similar , but Infamous to me has more substance, may not be as huge but I want more story and character development over just blow sh!t up mentality. I never finished the core Infamous game but I did finish Infamous First Light and I enjoyed that much more then the main game and I think that was one game that kinda went under the radar, the female character "Fetch" was rather adorable IMO.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Man I know it's never gonna happen but Infamous totally reminds me of Prototype for some reason and I want a new one. 

They said they're never gonna do another one.


----------



## TedEH

I tried one of the Just Cause games a while back and it was.... I dunno, not my kind of game I think. Fun it it's own way maybe, but didn't feel like there was much substance to it.


----------



## beerandbeards

I'm surprised no one mentioned Destiny 2. I'm enjoying it. I after played destiny in over a year but this one is refreshing


----------



## beerandbeards

I'm surprised no one mentioned Destiny 2. I'm enjoying it. I after played destiny in over a year but this one is refreshing


----------



## Ralyks

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. I'm wondering why Mario has a Mega Buster and why I am enjoying it so much.

Also grabbed a steel book edition of Yakuza Kiwami. And since I have an Xbox One X on preorder, and GameStop is running a sale of a list of used games that are 4 for $30, I grabbed the Gears of War Ultimate Edition/Rare Replay combo pack, Sunset Overdrive, Killer Instinct Combo Pack, and Battleborn. So I'm ready for launch day... that said, I'm probably going to return Battleborn along with my bunch of $5 GameStop coupons and put it all towards my Xbox One X preorder.

By the way, it's been years since I had my Xbox 360, but I'm pretty sure my gamer tag still exists. If I reactivate it on my One X, will I get all the games I bought digitally back then if they are backwards compatible?


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Ralyks said:


> Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. I'm wondering why Mario has a Mega Buster and why I am enjoying it so much.
> 
> Also grabbed a steel book edition of Yakuza Kiwami. And since I have an Xbox One X on preorder, and GameStop is running a sale of a list of used games that are 4 for $30, I grabbed the Gears of War Ultimate Edition/Rare Replay combo pack, Sunset Overdrive, Killer Instinct Combo Pack, and Battleborn. So I'm ready for launch day... that said, I'm probably going to return Battleborn along with my bunch of $5 GameStop coupons and put it all towards my Xbox One X preorder.
> 
> By the way, it's been years since I had my Xbox 360, but I'm pretty sure my gamer tag still exists. If I reactivate it on my One X, will I get all the games I bought digitally back then if they are backwards compatible?



Yes you will. In the games and apps application you'll see them listed as ready to install I believe.


----------



## Pav

beerandbeards said:


> I'm surprised no one mentioned Destiny 2. I'm enjoying it. I after played destiny in over a year but this one is refreshing


I am trying in vain to wait patiently for the PC release. Me and six others in our Discord server are all ready to go on 10/24. I played the beta and loved it, it felt like they made the necessary tweaks from vanilla Destiny to give D2 more long-term appeal. So even thought I'm not playing yet, I'm counting down the days until the PC version opens. Fortunately I have the new Battlefield 1 expansion to keep me busy until then.


----------



## Ralyks

TheShreddinHand said:


> Yes you will. In the games and apps application you'll see them listed as ready to install I believe.



Uh oh. Shits gonna get real when I can play Castle Crashers again.

Also, downloaded Little Nightmares. Charming yet creepy little game. And kind of scratches that Limbo/Inside itch.


----------



## narad

So I traded in my Wii U and now have $179 of steam credit -- anyone have any suggestions? I just bought Skyrim special edition since it went on 51% off sale that same day, but doubt I'll find the time to play it :-/ Only thing I've played recently was Banner Saga I and Shovel Knight.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I tried one of the Just Cause games a while back and it was.... I dunno, not my kind of game I think. Fun it it's own way maybe, but didn't feel like there was much substance to it.



Yeah, the Just Cause games aren't really about substance at all. It's all about mucking around and wreaking havoc, that's it. 

The plot is forgettable B-movie fodder at best: here's an insane sized sandbox with plenty of things in it, and your objective is to make sure there's no things in the sandbox, and the game couldn't care how you do it. Go out there and obliterate everything. 

Having said that, Just Cause (in my case 2) was one of the most fun games I've played, because of exactly the above. 

The ridiculously large island of Panau was so fun to navigate through, like commuting all across the countryside via hijacked vehicle of your choice. Also as fun was all the creative possibilities of the ridiculous hookshot/parachute mechanic that adds even more depth to the gameplay. I felt so cool to just hookshot around a stronghold planting explosives and triggering them without enemy detection. Or tethering 2 cars in hot pursuit together and watching them crash on their own. Or dragging a sniper from a tower and through the road. Or that mission when you blow up a compound, steal a jet to shoot down a rocket mid flight... 

...yeah I really found the mucking around and constant obliteration really fun.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Ralyks said:


> Uh oh. Shits gonna get real when I can play Castle Crashers again.
> 
> Also, downloaded Little Nightmares. Charming yet creepy little game. And kind of scratches that Limbo/Inside itch.



I've got 99 games in my "ready to install" list on Xbox One through backwards compatibility and Games With Gold titles. It's great for replaying some classics when there's nothing out that grabs your interest, and the monthly Games With Gold has given me some good titles I wouldn't have even looked at otherwise. There is a lot of crap in there too though...but hey, it's hard to be disappointed with free stuff.

On a side note, I broke down and picked up Destiny 2 in a moment of weakness, even though I swore I would wait for reviews...so far i'd say it's the game Destiny 1 should have been, but i'm not fully into the end game content yet. Hopefully Bungie won't drop the ball this time and lock stuff from the base game behind dlc purchases in the future like they did with the original.


----------



## TedEH

narad said:


> $179 of steam credit -- anyone have any suggestions?


Best stuff I've played in recent memory that you can get on steam: Prey, Doom, Deus Ex, the Tomb Raider reboots, Owlboy, Firewatch, the new-ish Wolfenstein games, etc.
OR
You could load up on the bajillions of really old games that are on there for cheap- Quake, unreal tournament, Half-life, System Shock, a bunch of old star wars games (Jedi Knight etc), LucasArts adventure games, Thief 1 and 2, the Apogee Throwback Pack, the Sega collections, etc.


----------



## Drew

Been picking up Diablo III after a bit of a haitus, now that the Necromancer expansion is out and most of the major rides I've been training for are out of the way. I really think the game has, without really sacrificing anything intrinsic to it, become more "fun" since the initial release came out. The new challenge rifts are a pretty cool feature - the one over the weekend with the slow time wizard was an absolute blast to play.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

narad said:


> So I traded in my Wii U and now have $179 of steam credit -- anyone have any suggestions?



The Witcher 3, Xcom 2 and Dishonored 2 are all fantastic games imho.


----------



## auntyethel

narad said:


> So I traded in my Wii U and now have $179 of steam credit -- anyone have any suggestions? I just bought Skyrim special edition since it went on 51% off sale that same day, but doubt I'll find the time to play it :-/ Only thing I've played recently was Banner Saga I and Shovel Knight.



Doom. Doom is awesome


----------



## mongey

ok. I have really tried. but i hate under tale . yeah its kind of quirky and indie and all that, which I usually love

but the game just isn't fun or interesting to play


----------



## KnightBrolaire

narad said:


> So I traded in my Wii U and now have $179 of steam credit -- anyone have any suggestions? I just bought Skyrim special edition since it went on 51% off sale that same day, but doubt I'll find the time to play it :-/ Only thing I've played recently was Banner Saga I and Shovel Knight.


Metal Gear V, Metal Gear Rising, Darkest Dungeon, Hyper Light Drifter, Dragon's Dogma, Jotun, Vampire The Masquerade, All the Witcher games, Dishonored 1 and 2, Wolfenstein the New Order, SOMA, XCOM 2, Far Cry 3/4. All of those are awesome games. Jotun, Wolfenstein and Soma are the shortest so I'd start with those if you're short on time.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

KnightBrolaire said:


> Vampire The Masquerade



There's supposed to be a Werewolf spin off/sequel to this at some point. I wonder if it'll be any good. As for what I've been playing, I started playing Mordheim: City of the Damned on PS4 since Sunday, it's hard but it's a lot of fun once you know what you're doing. It was recently on sale on Steam too for like £8.


----------



## Axiom451

Bought Destiny 2 Yesterday for XB1 and I Love it!
There was Server maintenance Yesterday though so I couldnt play long but im hyped.

Anyone on Xbox one can add me: GT: Axiom XIII


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> Hyper Light Drifter


I find I've given this one a bunch of tries but I find it's too difficult at times to be fun. Like, I can fight my way through the game, but without much in the way of narrative, and with the game being very unrelenting, sometimes the combat feels cheap/unfair- it's not for everyone. I can appreciate a lot about it... but I can't wholeheartedly recommend it as a generally good game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

ZombieLloyd said:


> There's supposed to be a Werewolf spin off/sequel to this at some point. I wonder if it'll be any good. As for what I've been playing, I started playing Mordheim: City of the Damned on PS4 since Sunday, it's hard but it's a lot of fun once you know what you're doing. It was recently on sale on Steam too for like £8.


I'll believe it when I see gameplay. The only vampire game that looks like it might give masquerade a run for its money storywise is Vampyr, which actually looks pretty cool.


TedEH said:


> I find I've given this one a bunch of tries but I find it's too difficult at times to be fun. Like, I can fight my way through the game, but without much in the way of narrative, and with the game being very unrelenting, sometimes the combat feels cheap/unfair- it's not for everyone. I can appreciate a lot about it... but I can't wholeheartedly recommend it as a generally good game.


It's definitely an old school kind of game with the difficulty being the way it is, but for me it's one of the few games to nail that zelda/dark souls in 2d vibe plus I love the art style. If Narad was into shovel knight then he'd probably like hyper light drifter.


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> plus I love the art style


Yeh, full points to that game for the art style. I'll give it that.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

KnightBrolaire said:


> I'll believe it when I see gameplay. The only vampire game that looks like it might give masquerade a run for its money storywise is Vampyr, which actually looks pretty cool.



Not even the website is fully set up yet so I don't expect any gameplay for a while. I've never actually played Vampire: The Masquerade, is it worth picking up still?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

ZombieLloyd said:


> Not even the website is fully set up yet so I don't expect any gameplay for a while. I've never actually played Vampire: The Masquerade, is it worth picking up still?


it's dated visually and it's a little difficult to get running but the storylines are excellent. One of my favorite RPGs next to the witcher series.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

KnightBrolaire said:


> it's dated visually and it's a little difficult to get running but the storylines are excellent. One of my favorite RPGs next to the witcher series.



Well, I don't care for graphics all that much, as long as the gameplay is good. I'll play it as soon as I can.


----------



## MoshJosh

Got back into playing The Surge again, and having a pretty good time.


----------



## Jarmake

Got sniper elite 3 for cheap and played it through in about 3 days. The xray slowdowns got boring after a while and there was some annoying things in it as well... Like you absolutely can't walk or crawl through some certain 1,5m*1,5m sized holes and as a very good example there was a 5cm high stack of sheet metal on the last mission that you couldn't walk on, no matter how I tried. You couldn' even climb it, unlike the 1m high stack of sheet metal in front of it. Bizarre.

Also the title implicates that the guy is good at shooting, but hell... His equipment sucked, there wasn't any real long distances (when I was in the army we didn't even shoot distances shorter than 150m with our freaking assault rifles and this guy takes a lee enfield with a scope and has to aim quite high when targetting a guy at 150 meters...), I mean what is this guy shooting, an airsoft rifle or what?

Is the SE4 any better?


----------



## Ralyks

Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. Also got a used Vita so more Persona 4 Golden. Really need to go finish Persona 5. 70 hours in, I need to see that game through...


----------



## Rosal76

Jarmake said:


> Is the SE4 any better?



Hey Jarmake. My opinion on the Sniper Elite 4 will be very biased because I'm a huge fan of the game already and having played/love all of the SE games. If you are a fan of long range shooting and stealth, Sniper Elite 4 will provide you with both. It just depends on how you play and what you want. Concerning long range kill shots, there are plenty of those in SE4. According to Rebellion, the smallest map in SE4 is bigger than the biggest map in SE3. Last night, I made a 533 meters/582 yard long kill shot and it was f__king hard!!! I played it on Authentic Plus which has no aiming assistance at all and you must compensate for gravity and wind. The developers made it a little easier as you can adjust the scope for gravity up to 500 meters. Since the enemy was at 533 meters, obviously I had to aim a little higher. Believe me, it's easier said than done. When the enemy is smaller than the crosshairs, it can be very difficult to hit him. And the slightest wind does not help at all at extreme distances.

Also, some gamers will claim that the game is too easy and they beat it in 2-3 days. I guarantee you that they did not beat the game on Authentic Plus without manual saves by themselves, in 2-3 days. The game is easier to beat if you manual save because you can die 50 times and be back where you saved. There is a trophy called, "Better than the Best" which requires you to beat the game without manual saves and trust me, it is freaking hard. If you don't care about trophies, then it shouldn't be a problem. I got the trophy a month ago short of me smashing my controller. Anyways, if you have any other questions about the game, I'll be more than happy to answer them as best that I can.


----------



## Jarmake

Nice to know that the maps are bigger. The map sizes and distances were the worst thing about se3.

Have they done anything about those stupid collision issues, where you can't crawl through holes you should be able to crawl through and so on?


----------



## Rosal76

Jarmake said:


> Have they done anything about those stupid collision issues, where you can't crawl through holes you should be able to crawl through and so on?



Unfortunately, there are a couple of areas in the maps that still have those problems. The areas that I found are:

Not being able to walk between 2 trees and 2 chairs which clearly, there is enough room for the character to fit through.

Being able to jump over walls, climb up on crates and tables but can't jump over/climb certain ammo boxes and wine barrels which visually, should not be a problem. Really weird.

There are probably more areas in the game that I just haven't found yet.


----------



## Siggevaio

I've been playing Final Fantasy IX since it was released again on the PS4. I haven't played it for a long time so I've been having a lot of fun.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Fortnite Battle Royale. 

Don’t have PUBG for PS4 yet, this will have to do. Rough going in the beginning tho. Get a bunch of weapons and start with the building and blam you’re dead.


----------



## synrgy

Cuphead!

I wish they'd been able to do stuff like this about 30 years ago. So much fun.


----------



## Repner

ZombieLloyd said:


> Well, I don't care for graphics all that much, as long as the gameplay is good. I'll play it as soon as I can.


Depends on which one. Redemption is more of a point and click RPG. Bloodlines is more first person, that I've been dying to get back into.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Little Nightmares. Kind of frustrating at times since you have to figure out the best way to do some stuff through trial and error. The fucking janitor chase was so annoying.


----------



## oppgulp

Heroes of Might and Magic 2 - probably one of my favorite games of all time.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

Repner said:


> Depends on which one. Redemption is more of a point and click RPG. Bloodlines is more first person, that I've been dying to get back into.



Bloodlines is the one I was talking about. I couldn't get it to work after trying it for a week, it kept crashing my PC once I'd pressed the play button on Steam. I got refunded today and I'll just use the money to buy a game for my girlfriend instead.


----------



## Ralyks

Siggevaio said:


> I've been playing Final Fantasy IX since it was released again on the PS4. I haven't played it for a long time so I've been having a lot of fun.



I’ve been playing this as well and it’s great going back (and the HD facelift makes me notice things I didn’t notice playing back on PSone), but am I the only one that feels the PS4 version gets, I don’t know, laggy at times?


----------



## Siggevaio

Ralyks said:


> am I the only one that feels the PS4 version gets, I don’t know, laggy at times?


During normal scenes and gameplay it flows just fine, but during battles and the world map the lag is TERRIBLE (at least the map, battles are just slow). I usually turn on x3 the speed (pause and press L1 or R1) during those moments, then it flows nicely again.


----------



## Ralyks

Siggevaio said:


> During normal scenes and gameplay it flows just fine, but during battles and the world map the lag is TERRIBLE (at least the map, battles are just slow). I usually turn on x3 the speed (pause and press L1 or R1) during those moments, then it flows nicely again.



I’m noticing the lag a lot after battles and loading between screens. It’s weird, especially considering how smooth the FFVII port was.

But hey, the HD facelift was well done. The game looks gorgeous, and it was a fine looking game for its time as it was.


----------



## Ralyks

Siggevaio said:


> During normal scenes and gameplay it flows just fine, but during battles and the world map the lag is TERRIBLE (at least the map, battles are just slow). I usually turn on x3 the speed (pause and press L1 or R1) during those moments, then it flows nicely again.



I’m noticing the lag a lot after battles and loading between screens. It’s weird, especially considering how smooth the FFVII port was.

But hey, the HD facelift was well done. The game looks gorgeous, and it was a fine looking game for its time as it was.


----------



## mikernaut

Been hooked on Uncharted survival mode for the last couple weeks, but picked up Cuphead today. Reminds me of Contra, Rush N Attack, Super Mario Bros and other classics. Plus the art style and music are on point and it's pretty challenging. I'm gonna have to practice these levels and bosses for a bit


----------



## Black_Sheep

Endless Space 2, Destiny 2, RS: Siege

Also Divinity Original Sin, trying to finish the story before buying the 2nd one. Great game.

...And let's not forget GT Sport coming out very soon, im gonna be all over that. Damn... too many games


----------



## synrgy

WWE2K18 (Almost _instantly_ regretted, but c'est la vie.. Hopefully it'll get some updates and be a little less wonky.. The controls are just baffling: One on one match; looking right at the opponent; hit 'strike' button, my character turns around and strikes at the invisible person he apparently saw behind him..)

Pre-ordered South Park. So excited.


----------



## Ralyks

Got back on the grind for Persona 5 (on 12/3, to give you an idea of where I am story-wise. 93 hours in, haven't put that much time into a game in a looooong time), while also playing Persona 4 Golden before bed/whenever its convenient to use a PS Vita. 

Have South Park preordered, hoping GameStop is doing an evening release tonight so I can play after my son goes to bed (and conveniently, I'm off from work tomorrow. Huzzah!) Also, I found out I apparently have enough BestBuy coupons to get a new game for pretty damn cheap. So yeah, before/after I grab South Park, I'm going to wander over to BestBuy and take the plunge on Destiny 2. Any PS4 players, my gamer tag is Ralyk03. Probably be playing tonight/tomorrow a whole bunch.


----------



## StevenC

Universal Paperclips took over my last two days. Mostly I'm just shaking with excitement for Mario in a week and a half.


----------



## bpprox22

I finally got around to playing Fortnite Battle Royale and I love it so far. There are small gripes but the game is free so I can't complain.


----------



## metalstrike

Nier Automata having good fun and looking forward to Super Mario Odyssey later this month.


----------



## Handbanana

That Fortnite tho!


----------



## Tech Wrath

bpprox22 said:


> I finally got around to playing Fortnite Battle Royale and I love it so far. There are small gripes but the game is free so I can't complain.


Oh Fortnite is free?! I heard about it but never bothered to see what's up with it. If it's free I might as well go try it out.


----------



## bpprox22

Tech Wrath said:


> Oh Fortnite is free?! I heard about it but never bothered to see what's up with it. If it's free I might as well go try it out.


YES! The Battle Royale Mode is free for all platforms and is the PUBG style of gameplay. There is another game mode that isn't free but everyone (including myself) plays Battle Royale pretty much exclusively.

Here is a link for reference https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/fortnite-battle-royale-goes-free


----------



## Steinmetzify

bpprox22 said:


> I finally got around to playing Fortnite Battle Royale and I love it so far. There are small gripes but the game is free so I can't complain.



Right? Will hold me over until PUBG hits PS4. Haven’t won yet but I’ve consistently placed top 3.


----------



## bpprox22

steinmetzify said:


> Right? Will hold me over until PUBG hits PS4. Haven’t won yet but I’ve consistently placed top 3.



I've never played PUBG but have watched many clips of it. I plan on trying it out when I finally get a decent GPU in my PC or when it comes to Xbox One. I can't get enough of Fortnite though! The guns need some fixing but everything else sits well with me. 

I've won once in a squad game before but that's about it. Some very close 2nd and 3rd places too.

The only thing that aggravates the hell out of me is when I'm playing squads (filled) and one or two of the players don't realize they aren't playing solo and kill the whole team. It's happened 5 times so far where I'm coming to give a teammate a armor potion or weapon and they just blast me. So frustrating.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Yeah I don’t play squads for that very reason lol. 

It’s sort of cartoony compared to PUBG but still fun. 

Cracks me up to hide in the one bush that gives you cover and watch somebody run right past me and I blast them. Kills me every time.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

probably going to pick up shadow of war tomorrow.


----------



## Mathemagician

I want to get all the trophies on FF9. So I absolutely intend on cheating the stupid jump rope. Gtfo 100 I could understand - even though I’d hate it. But 1000? Nah fam. Not even a little bit. 

Otherwise it’s just as fun as I remember it. And I LOVE how the pre-rendered backgrounds all look like storybook pages.


----------



## cwhitey2

KnightBrolaire said:


> probably going to pick up shadow of war tomorrow.


I have been waiting for this for a while! I thought the previous game although good was a bit repetitive.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

cwhitey2 said:


> I have been waiting for this for a while! I thought the previous game although good was a bit repetitive.


yeah the first game got pretty tedious at the end for me but I know I'm going to have a ton of fun with the new expanded nemesis system. That was my favorite part of the last game.


----------



## synrgy

Fractured But Whole!

I'm about 3 hours in. So far, it's mostly been an improvement over Stick of Truth, and I hadn't really expected that. Recommended for fans of the series. Ties into the previous game and current episodes, and has already highlighted the thing the show does better than anything else: Amplifying 'kids being kids'.



Spoiler



And  @ the difficulty selection screen.. *Damn*..


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> I want to get all the trophies on FF9. So I absolutely intend on cheating the stupid jump rope. Gtfo 100 I could understand - even though I’d hate it. But 1000? Nah fam. Not even a little bit.
> 
> Otherwise it’s just as fun as I remember it. And I LOVE how the pre-rendered backgrounds all look like storybook pages.



Yeah, I would like to Platinum this game too (second favorite FF behind VII, definitely high up on the list of all time favorites), but getting Excalibur II, let alone the jump roping? Even with all of the cheats turn on, I feel like getting to the end of the game within 12 hours is pretty damn hard. Plus I would probably commit a separate play through to that, right now I'm enjoying a HD trip through memory lane.

So other than that and Persona 5 (and yeah, 4 Golden...), I did download Fortnite Battle Royal, but haven't tried it yet. I have played, however, The Fractured But Whole and Destiny 2. South Park is great, the humor is on par with The Stick of Truth so far (which is still really funny) but the gameplay and mechanics are light years ahead of Stick of Truth. Destiny 2... Well, they managed to get the foul taste of Vanilla Destiny out of my mouth. Really enjoying it so far... That said, is the raid really sometime I should basically set a whole (really, really, really late) night for? Not that I'm opposed to it, but that's definitely something I need to set time aside for.


----------



## Mathemagician

If destiny’s raiding is anything like other MMO raiding my opinion is this:

Doing that shit and spending hours to get gear that will be replaced with the next patch is a waste of time UNLESS you’re doing it with friends and shooting the shit the whole time. Doing it alone is a waste IMO - YMMV. 

Yeah Excalibur 2 is definitely a second playthrough. And jumping rope will involve me downloading even better “hacks” or something. Because I am NOT doing that one legit, lol.


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

With Shadow of War being a big deal right now I picked up Shadow of Mordor as I never got round to playing it and I (correctly) figured it'd be cheap.

A planned trip to Amsterdam has fallen through so I have less time pressure for uni work and I've been blasting through it; holy balls this game is fun. Like, 22 hours playtime in 3 days fun. Love it


----------



## Ralyks

Captain Shoggoth said:


> With Shadow of War being a big deal right now I picked up Shadow of Mordor as I never got round to playing it and I (correctly) figured it'd be cheap.



I'm pretty sure I got Mordor GOTY edition on PS4 for $15 brand new like, at least a year and a half ago  I did not get far, but I too have picked it back up recently in anticipation of Shadow of War. Definitely fun and great use of the Arkham gameplay, and I'm really surprised other games didn't pick up on the Nemesis system. I'd be willing to call the system 'ground breaking'.


----------



## Steinmetzify

MGS:TPP

I’m not a stealth guy. I play COD and I’m a run and gun guy. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play this. Grabbed it because free on PS+, but I’ve already skipped most of the cut scenes and died in the first hallway about 8 times...


----------



## synrgy

steinmetzify said:


> I’m not a stealth guy.



I dunno if it's about stealth-vs-not, so much as it is about compelling-vs-not. I mean, I _love_ Splinter Cell, but I _can't stand _MGS or Tenchu.


----------



## Steinmetzify

synrgy said:


> I dunno if it's about stealth-vs-not, so much as it is about compelling-vs-not. I mean, I _love_ Splinter Cell, but I _can't stand _MGS or Tenchu.



Yeah I've put a couple hours in...got the day off so figured why not. It's gotten better now that ALL THE HOURS OF CUTSCENES are over, and I'm kind of enjoying sneaking around. I don't really see much of playing this after today tho...


----------



## Captain Shoggoth

Ralyks said:


> I'm pretty sure I got Mordor GOTY edition on PS4 for $15 brand new like, at least a year and a half ago  I did not get far, but I too have picked it back up recently in anticipation of Shadow of War. Definitely fun and great use of the Arkham gameplay, and I'm really surprised other games didn't pick up on the Nemesis system. I'd be willing to call the system 'ground breaking'.



Yeah, I got the GOTY for £16 on xbox. Yeah, exactly! What a wonderful mechanic, and the fact it's not been pilfered by other devs makes it stand out all the more


----------



## Rosal76

steinmetzify said:


> MGS:TPP
> 
> I’m not a stealth guy. I play COD and I’m a run and gun guy. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play this. Grabbed it because free on PS+, but I’ve already skipped most of the cut scenes and died in the first hallway about 8 times...



I have not played the game but from what I've read in the official strategy guide book and what I've read/heard from the developers, you should have the full option to run-and-gun and/or stealth/ghost missions. Although, run-and-gun style counts negative towards your stealth score at the end, you can still finish missons. I also heard that the developers didn't want to release a game that only appeases hard core stealth players because they know that not every gamer has high stealth skills.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Rosal76 said:


> I have not played the game but from what I've read in the official strategy guide book and what I've read/heard from the developers, you should have the full option to run-and-gun and/or stealth/ghost missions. Although, run-and-gun style counts negative towards your stealth score at the end, you can still finish missons. I also heard that the developers didn't want to release a game that only appeases hard core stealth players because they know that not every gamer has high stealth skills.



Yeah I’ve played it for a few hours since that post; you CAN run and gun if you want to and it’s actually pretty easy to do early in the game.

I myself have almost zero choice because no matter how careful I am I seem to always miss at least one guy when I’m doing recon/marking targets, so I’ll be watching everyone, sneaking like crazy and the one guy I didn’t see always spots me and hits the alarm.

After that, everyone gets murdered because fuck em.


----------



## Leviathus

I got MGSV free on PS Plus too, i've been really enjoying it. Been wanting a new game for forever but didn't wanna spend money on something i'd get tired of in 2 days, killed 2 birds with one stone with this being free and holding my attention.


----------



## Anquished

steinmetzify said:


> MGS:TPP
> 
> I’m not a stealth guy. I play COD and I’m a run and gun guy. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to play this. Grabbed it because free on PS+, but I’ve already skipped most of the cut scenes and died in the first hallway about 8 times...



One of my friends came round my house whilst I was playing it and I gave him the controller for the next mission. He played the entire mission in a tank. You can do basically whatever you want unless the mission states not too, although those missions are quite late in the game.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

I've been sucked back into Dark Souls III once again. Think that this, Final Fantasy 9, and Breath of Fire III will be in rotation.


----------



## synrgy

South Park TFBW has been refreshingly good. So far I've had at least three boss fights that I thought might have been the end of the game*, only to be proven wrong; that the game still has more story to tell. Way deeper than I was anticipating.

*


Spoiler: Spoiler-ish



Shub Niggurath, Mutated Kyle 2, and saving parents from Mitch Conner.


----------



## StevenC

Finished up Mario + Rabbids. Fantastic game that feels so close to actually being a Nintendo game, so major props to Ubisoft Milan. This has been one of my most enjoyable years for video games, and it's all been on the Switch more or less.


----------



## StevenC

Got a quick few hours of Mario Odyssey this morning. I'm definitely putting this above Galaxy so far and having some of the most fun ever in a platformer.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Pubg with a PS4 controller. Console master race!


----------



## TedEH

Grabbed Thumper as part of the Halloween Steam sale. Probably my favorite rhythm game now.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Hellblade is excellent. Pretty short (I think I beat it in under 7 hours) but the fighting is good and the story is excellent, plus I'm a sucker for anything with Norse/Celtic mythology in it.


----------



## Ralyks

Super Mario Odyssey is everything I could have wanted in a new Mario game. And its also a GREAT example of fan service without overindulging in it. If there's one thing Nintendo can not screw up, its a main line Mario title. Even their weak ones are still really good by normal game standards (looking at you, Super Mario Sunshine). If there's a reason to get a Switch (y'know, other than Zelda and the fact this is Nintendos strongest console in forever), Odyssey is a strong case to be the reason why.

Also, still working on finishing up Persona 5, getting deep into South Park, The Fractured But Whole, and LOTS of Destiny 2.


----------



## Nyx Erebos

Ralyks said:


> Super Mario Odyssey is everything I could have wanted in a new Mario game. And its also a GREAT example of fan service without overindulging in it. If there's one thing Nintendo can not screw up, its a main line Mario title. Even their weak ones are still really good by normal game standards (looking at you, Super Mario Sunshine).



I actually enjoyed the world of sunshine a lot more than the one of odyssey. I've only played ~3h of odyssey right now and I must say that I'm quite disappointed considering the hype around the game. And fuk mandatory motion controls.


----------



## StevenC

3 hours doesn't even get you to the best Kingdoms.


----------



## StevenC

Finished the story. This is the best Mario game.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

I've been really enjoying Assassins Creed Origins. It's like a mash up of classic Assassins Creed with The Witcher 3.


----------



## MFB

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> I've been really enjoying Assassins Creed Origins. It's like a mash up of classic Assassins Creed with The Witcher 3.



Holy shit, really?

Any big patches or game glitches that have come up with it? I know Syndicate and Unity got hit pretty hard, and most Ubi titles get rushed unfortunately, so I've looked at it hesitantly but I'd like to see a good AC game again since I haven't given a crap since Ezio disappeared


----------



## Ralyks

I rented AC Origins. No real bugs or anything yet, maybe occasional slowdown here or there. The beginning is slow but I’ve heard it really picks up after an hour or two.


----------



## mongey

maybe i'm weird but I'm kind of hyped on getting worms with ps+ this month 

had so many great hours playing it back on the ps1


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

MFB said:


> Holy shit, really?
> 
> Any big patches or game glitches that have come up with it? I know Syndicate and Unity got hit pretty hard, and most Ubi titles get rushed unfortunately, so I've looked at it hesitantly but I'd like to see a good AC game again since I haven't given a crap since Ezio disappeared



There was a day 1 patch, around 1.4GB, nothing more since release. It's been pretty bug free for me so far, but a friend has had a few hard crashes. This is on xbox one.

This is made by the team behind what I though was the previous best Assassins Creed game, Black Flag, and it really does feel like they've had time to polish this one compared to previous releases. The world is huge and full of locations to explore, the quests are varied and interesting, the movement mechanics are great and the combat is pretty good too.

I'm really enjoying Origins. So far it's a 9/10 from me.


----------



## Ralyks

So Destiny 2, I’m light level 258. I’m in a clan, but if anyone wants to do a Nightfall, let me know. Also I want to hit the raid as soon as I hit 280 (which I may try to accomplish tonight)

Now, Persona 5...



Spoiler



Hit 103 hours and finished Shidos palace. And the shits hitting the fan with the story. Right now in the depths of Momentos. It feels like this is approaching end game, but I’m at the end of December. Doesn’t this game run a full year? Also, I feel like at this rate with the Compendium and Social Links, a New Game+ is inevitable if I truly want to go for the Platinum trophy


----------



## TedEH

I don't think my PC can handle the newest Wolfenstein game, so I fired up The New Order instead and have been playing through that one again - last time I used a controller, but this time I'm going mouse and keyboard, and it's giving me some Half-Life 2 vibes. It's maybe a weird comparison to make, but I find the two games have a fair bit in common.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Now, Persona 5...
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Hit 103 hours and finished Shidos palace. And the shits hitting the fan with the story. Right now in the depths of Momentos. It feels like this is approaching end game, but I’m at the end of December. Doesn’t this game run a full year? Also, I feel like at this rate with the Compendium and Social Links, a New Game+ is inevitable if I truly want to go for the Platinum trophy



The game is quite the time consuming completionist nightmare isn't it? 



Spoiler



Without completely wishing to spoil, yes it does go for a full year, but not as draggy what you'd expect. December 24 marks the point of no return for the life sim aspect, so any confidant social links you haven't maxed, books read, games played, dvds rented, stats maxed, will all have to wait for NG+. I ended up jettisoning some of the books and games and such as I was so obsessive in getting the confidants maxed out. I was extremely lucky getting Haru up to speed right on those last December dates. You do however get to grind indefinitely from this point on, especially if you want all the powerful upper tier Personas.

Yeah, the NG+ is certainly mandatory for the Platinum trophy. 

I'm planning to start NG+ soon myself, and not just because I want to play with the original Japanese audio, nor try to get all Personas (I did a fair bit and still only got 60% or so of the compendium), but also all the other sub options it offers. I hear that sleeping early gets some hilarious dreams. And I wanna go for that "romance all women" path too...


----------



## rifftrauma

Factorio... Or I have dubbed it, Cracktorio. Worth a look, check out the demo on Steam.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The game is quite the time consuming completionist nightmare isn't it?
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Without completely wishing to spoil, yes it does go for a full year, but not as draggy what you'd expect. December 24 marks the point of no return for the life sim aspect, so any confidant social links you haven't maxed, books read, games played, dvds rented, stats maxed, will all have to wait for NG+. I ended up jettisoning some of the books and games and such as I was so obsessive in getting the confidants maxed out. I was extremely lucky getting Haru up to speed right on those last December dates. You do however get to grind indefinitely from this point on, especially if you want all the powerful upper tier Personas.
> 
> Yeah, the NG+ is certainly mandatory for the Platinum trophy.
> 
> I'm planning to start NG+ soon myself, and not just because I want to play with the original Japanese audio, nor try to get all Personas (I did a fair bit and still only got 60% or so of the compendium), but also all the other sub options it offers. I hear that sleeping early gets some hilarious dreams. And I wanna go for that "romance all women" path too...



Honestly, I love the game enough (likely my game of 2017) that NG+ is worth it. I definitely didn’t max all of the social links or max stats or games played or, I guess all of those. And I’m attempting to learn Japanese so I will likely do NG+ with the Japanese audio as well. What carries over into NG+ anyway?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Honestly, I love the game enough (likely my game of 2017) that NG+ is worth it. I definitely didn’t max all of the social links or max stats or games played or, I guess all of those. And I’m attempting to learn Japanese so I will likely do NG+ with the Japanese audio as well. What carries over into NG+ anyway?



I'm sure everything gets carried over on NG+, ie: character and social link levels, compendium, items and cash etc. With all the of the things to do during the life sim sections, it makes sense.


----------



## Ralyks

Update on Assassins Creed Origins after putting a little more time in: one, definitely picks up after the first hour and a half and two, looks like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X patches came out a few days after the game release. Playing on a PS4 Pro and after the patch install, I definitely notice a graphical and slight performance increase.

Destiny 2, I tried the Trials of the Nine with some guys I’m in a clan with, and, well, got wrecked every time. Probably didn’t help that everyone we went against was at least light level 300, and I’m still 268...


----------



## Pav

Ralyks said:


> So Destiny 2, I’m light level 258. I’m in a clan, but if anyone wants to do a Nightfall, let me know. Also I want to hit the raid as soon as I hit 280 (which I may try to accomplish tonight)


If you play on PC, you're more than welcome to join me and my clan for all the endgame activities. We're raiding for the first time tomorrow morning.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Super Mario Odyssey, loving it so far!


----------



## TedEH

A weird thought -> I generally don't enjoy boss fights in a lot of games. In particular, I got to the end of Wolf The New Order yesterday and the end boss is so unpleasant to play that I'm debating not bothering. BUT - I really like Shadow of the Colossus, which is 99% boss fights.

I guess it's a matter of good vs bad boss battle design vs. just whether or not there are bosses at all.

Anyway.

Just thinking out loud.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> A weird thought -> I generally don't enjoy boss fights in a lot of games. In particular, I got to the end of Wolf The New Order yesterday and the end boss is so unpleasant to play that I'm debating not bothering. BUT - I really like Shadow of the Colossus, which is 99% boss fights.
> 
> I guess it's a matter of good vs bad boss battle design vs. just whether or not there are bosses at all.
> 
> Anyway.
> 
> Just thinking out loud.


Yeah there's a lot of games that do boss fights poorly *cough* Deus Ex Human Revolution *cough*
One of my favorite boss fights of all time is fighting The End in MGS3. Actually all of the boss fights in MGS3 other than the fury are really fun. Oh also fighting sif in Dark souls. watching him limp around damn near made me cry the first time I played. The boss fights in the kingdom hearts series are pretty legit too (still can't fucking beat sephiroth in the first game ffs).


----------



## TedEH

I think it's something to do with the idea of having the bosses be such a departure from the rest of the game. Bosses in Deux Ex I think just don't work because they break from the immersive-sim/"play the way you want" thing and force you to deal with the boss in a particular way. The Wolf boss isn't quite as much of a departure from normal play, but is just frustratingly overpowered. I know I beat it once, but it basically just forces you to play cheaply until it dies.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Injustice 2 on Steam. Been a minute since I just played a 2D fighter. Good times.


----------



## Xaios

Finally picked up a Switch today, along with Breath of the Wild. I found a Shopper's Drug Mart that had them in stock and, using pretty much all my points with that store, basically got the whole kit and caboodle for half price.


----------



## NotDonVito

I hated Breath of the Wild when I first started playing it because I didn’t know how to get out of the starting area(I think I skipped the cutscene that shows you to go to the roof of the temple, not really a spoiler it happens so early in the game). But now I think it might be one of the best games I’ve ever played! The first hour doesn’t do it justice. Just for keks, I decided to go fight Ganon with my shit gear. I actually managed to get wind Ganon down to half health charge swinging the double axe.

I love games that give you the option to do things like that. Like you know you shouldn’t be in this place yet, but you have the option. Dark Souls has that too.

I’ve also been playing Blazing Star, a 90’s Neo Geo shoot em’ up on the Switch eshop. Probably gonna get one of their fightan games too, maybe Garou Mark of the Wolves. Now we just need a Capcom vs SNK rerelease on there and I’ll be happy.


----------



## auntyethel

NotDonVito said:


> I’ve also been playing Blazing Star, a 90’s Neo Geo shoot em’ up on the Switch eshop. Probably gonna get one of their fightan games too, maybe Garou Mark of the Wolves.



Garou is so underrated as a Neo Geo fighter. I assume the Switch is emulating it? Is the emulation quality good?


----------



## TedEH

I hear so many good things about the Switch - it's super tempting to go out and get one. Hard to justify spending more money on more games though.


----------



## ZombieLloyd

TedEH said:


> I hear so many good things about the Switch - it's super tempting to go out and get one. Hard to justify spending more money on more games though.



The Switch is great (sorry) there are so many good games to choose from that if you're on a budget, it's hard to decide what to play first. I just bought Kingdoms: New Lands recently and I've been loving that on the Switch, such a good fit for it.


----------



## NotDonVito

auntyethel said:


> Garou is so underrated as a Neo Geo fighter. I assume the Switch is emulating it? Is the emulation quality good?


Blazing Star runs really well. It comes with all releases of the game(I always pick Japanese arcade mode), and there’s video options to make it fit 16:9 screens and some decent scanline filters. I think you can remap controls too.

My Switch was definitely an impulse purchase. I got called in to work on a 3 day weekend, so I felt like I needed to treat myself that night or something lol. 

It’s a comfy system though. You just throw in the card and start playing. I was playing the tablet on its kickstand on my balcony the other night. It’s good at not getting between you and the games.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I hear so many good things about the Switch - it's super tempting to go out and get one. Hard to justify spending more money on more games though.



Yup, it’s worth it. You’ll get tons of time out of just Zelda and Mario alone, and considering the system hasn’t even been out a year, it’s probably the strongest game line up Nintendo has had in a very long time. And it really is neat going from TV to portable seamlessly. If I didn’t prefer to buy multi platform games/didn’t already own them on PS4, I’d probably amass a much larger library for my Switch by this point.


----------



## Ralyks

As mentioned in the Persona 5 thread, finally beat that game, mentioned how much I loved it, and started a NG+ to go for the Platinum.

Aside from that, ReCore. This is actually a pretty fun game. I’m still early on so I guess I haven’t gotten to the point where everyone gives it flack? Also I hear it’s improved when the Divinite Edition patch came out?

Oh, and Cuphead. Such a delightful (and yes, brutal) game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

been playing some superhot and Wolfenstein: New Order


----------



## Black_Sheep

Divinity: Original Sin 2. After the first 10 hours I forgot all other games. It's just ridiculous how good this is, and it keeps growing as you progress. It's like Withcer 3 meets XCOM + some classic RPG stuff. 10/10. Not just the game of the year for me, but the best game in a loooong time.


----------



## wankerness

Played through the DLC on Horizon Zero Dawn, and it's awesome and way more difficult than the regular game. Also started New Game + on it, we'll see how that goes.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Got back into Mass Effect Andromeda and am interested in the story once again now that I've stuck to the main quests. I have the whole week off so hopefully I'll be able to finish it soon.

Noticing quite a lot of the bugs/wonky character animations that people complained about and yeah, it kind of does take me out of it. Still enjoying it, though, since I'm a huge ME fanboy. Just wish that it would've been better so the next game wasn't shelved.


----------



## Mathemagician

Playing Diablo 3 again for season 12 and the new neceomancer class. Just finished the baseline of my build. 

It’s hard to explain but the time just passes when playing Diablo. It’s a very chill gameplay loop. Love it.


----------



## bostjan

It's a little late, maybe, but I just snagged the Stranger Things mobile game. It's actually really good - it's like I'm playing _A Link to the Past_, but with Stranger Things characters and Stranger Things storylines. The best part is that it's free and there are no ads.


----------



## TedEH

^ I aaaaaalmost started playing that game. But then my phone broke and I'm waiting for the replacement to arrive. But it's on the list.

I grabbed Killer is Dead when it was free on Humble. Such a weird game. And annoyingly Japanese. But mechanically pretty fun.

I've also been diving into Hitman Absolution. Makes me want to play the updated Hitman game, which I've heard good things about.


----------



## Ralyks

Just beat South Park: The Fractured But Whole. Now trying to Platinum it... Didn't realize you could change your race though, so I have to play through again as a black kid on Mastermind difficulty. It was a fun time. I'll hold onto it for the DLC (got the version with the season pass) before I decide if I'm going to trade it in.

I've been diving into I Am Setsuna more and more. What a beautiful game, sort of peaceful in a way, with the wintry aesthetic and beautiful piano score. Plus, Chrono Trigger-style gameplay goodness.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Just got Shadow of War for 25 bucks at Gamestop (Black Friday) and holy hell, I am loving the shit out of it.


----------



## Kaura

Restarted playing Call of Duty: World at War and Black Ops 1 on veteran difficulty. I've beaten WaW before when I was like 13. Boy, was it frustrating since I didn't know the enemies spawn infinitely unless you progress forward.


----------



## Ralyks

I picked back up on Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age. Shame I overlooked XII back on PS2, so far this is a quality FF once you get use to the combat system.

Also, rented Star Wars Battlefront 2. So far, it’s not as offensive as all the reviews has made it out to be. Then again, I’ve mostly played the campaign. Even that hasn’t been terrible so far.

Edit:


Spoiler



Ok, I’m playing Hans mission in the campaign, and I reeeaalllyy don’t like Paldora.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Been playing a lot of Shadow of War and it's really fun. The mission choices are repetitive but the combat/nemesis system is so good that it makes it worth playing imo.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> ^ I aaaaaalmost started playing that game. But then my phone broke and I'm waiting for the replacement to arrive. But it's on the list.
> 
> I grabbed Killer is Dead when it was free on Humble. Such a weird game. And annoyingly Japanese. But mechanically pretty fun.
> 
> I've also been diving into Hitman Absolution. Makes me want to play the updated Hitman game, which I've heard good things about.


The newer hitman is closer to blood money/hitman 2 than absolution's gameplay. It's a lot better than absolution imo.


----------



## TedEH

I got my replacement phone so the Stranger Things game is back on the list of stuff to play at some point. Also been playing Gemini Rue, since I realized that one of the humble bundles I paid for came with an APK for it. 

Anyone have any other recommendations for games that are worth the time on Android?


----------



## Metropolis

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, what a game... it does almost everything better than Skyrim, quite apples and oranges type of comparison, and Elder Scrolls V was released six years ago, but still. It's got it pros and cons like every other game, but it just grabs you playing it in very enjoyable way.


----------



## Ralyks

I actually jumped back into Witcher 3 too. Forgot where I was and I was still early on, so I started from scratch. Now it’s finally clicking.

Spent tonight with a shit ton of Destiny 2 with the expansion coming out. Finished the entirety of the new campaign with two of my clan mates. They definitely made it easier and more balanced to increase you’re light level, as I didn’t have a problem hitting level 25, and I started the night at light level 289 and ended it at 308 without much of a problem, after struggling for weeks to get my light level up. Definitely got plenty of cool new loot too, they definitely toned down the repeats. Still haven’t been able to do the raid yet though...


----------



## Jarmake

Started playing bloodborne. Got punished. Gonna git gud tho...


----------



## synrgy

Phone Destroyer!

I generally avoid 'free' games with microtransactions, but this is a fun little not-exactly-companion to The Fractured But Whole. I'm not going to purchase anything in it, so I'm not sure how far I'll get before I hit the proverbial wall, but, it's amusing, for now, anyway.


----------



## TedEH

Someone at work sent around a link to that paperclips clicker game. There's a part of my brain that thinks these games are kinda dumb. But then again, that tab has been going for two days. Probably way too distracting.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Metropolis said:


> The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, what a game... it does almost everything better than Skyrim, quite apples and oranges type of comparison, and Elder Scrolls V was released six years ago, but still. It's got it pros and cons like every other game, but it just grabs you playing it in very enjoyable way.



One of the best games I ever played...did it last summer with some friends, we had a fuckin blast. I wish I could go back and start new never having played it before....


----------



## wankerness

Metropolis said:


> The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, what a game... it does almost everything better than Skyrim, quite apples and oranges type of comparison, and Elder Scrolls V was released six years ago, but still. It's got it pros and cons like every other game, but it just grabs you playing it in very enjoyable way.



I have played maybe two hours of it, and I have this bizarre problem where I can't tell where the hell I'm going whenever there's a section on horseback and almost feel dizzy. I think the camera's zoomed in too closely and the motion blur is too great, or something. It's really disorienting! I need to figure out how to zoom the camera out (if you even can on PS4). That alone has kept me from playing it much. Well, that and getting a pile of other games at the same time that I jumped to as soon as I encountered this problem.


----------



## Metropolis

wankerness said:


> I have played maybe two hours of it, and I have this bizarre problem where I can't tell where the hell I'm going whenever there's a section on horseback and almost feel dizzy. I think the camera's zoomed in too closely and the motion blur is too great, or something. It's really disorienting! I need to figure out how to zoom the camera out (if you even can on PS4). That alone has kept me from playing it much. Well, that and getting a pile of other games at the same time that I jumped to as soon as I encountered this problem.



That seems weird... I have PS4 too, so I'll look it tomorrow when I have more time. At quick look for problems like this, reasons have been overloaded carrying capacity or some sort of glitch or bug. Try to meditate, then save, and close the app, and at last restart the PS4. I think you can't zoom the camera out even with pc.


----------



## MrBouleDeBowling

Playing the hell out of Planet Coaster. Love it. It soothes the frustration of not getting my new guitar yesterday like I was supposed to.


----------



## Tech Wrath

This is one of the hardest and most rage inducing games I've ever played.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/240720/Getting_Over_It_with_Bennett_Foddy/

Still determined to beat it. This game has blown up the past month or so and was at #1 on steam for a little bit. Tons of videos of people raging and throwing keyboards  Yet to do that myself


----------



## Mathemagician

Breath of the Wild. Finally got a switch. This game is so fun. “Just one more thing”. “One more thing”. It’s 1 am. Shit.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Tech Wrath said:


> This is one of the hardest and most rage inducing games I've ever played.
> http://store.steampowered.com/app/240720/Getting_Over_It_with_Bennett_Foddy/
> 
> Still determined to beat it. This game has blown up the past month or so and was at #1 on steam for a little bit. Tons of videos of people raging and throwing keyboards  Yet to do that myself



Watched the video.

NOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPENOPE

More power to you mang. Good luck.


----------



## mongey

got a switch waiting for me under the tree .

yes I'm 43 and my wife controls the presents. grabbed zelda for it to start


----------



## alinas

Dragon ball z games


----------



## bpprox22

PUBG on Xbox One is garbage so I'm sticking with Fortnite BR.

A buddy told me: "It runs like garbage on PC, what were you expecting on console?"

I'll give the benefit of the doubt since updates will come to improve the graphics and lag but right now the game is completely unplayable.


----------



## Ralyks

Please tell me there are other people playing Gang Beasts on PS4. Such stupid great fun.

Also trying to at least do the first real ending to Nier Automata before the year is up.


----------



## myrtorp

Playing through Divinity 2 with a friend. Great rpg. I didnt think they made those anymore hehe


----------



## Blytheryn

Fortnite BR is awesome. Frustrating, but awesome. I suck.


----------



## Blytheryn

Fortnite BR is awesome. Frustrating, but awesome. I suck.


----------



## r33per

Got my first Xbox - first console ever and I'm on the cusp of 36...

Playing Hitman, Forza and will be playing many more...


----------



## Curt

PUBG more or less. Also going back through the Batman Arkham series. So good.


----------



## Kaura

I've been wanting to play Oblivion for years now and today I finally bought it. It feels like some free to play rip off of Skyrim (especially since I play on my cheap laptop that can only run it on low graphics and it still looks like a slideshow) but it's still surprisingly addicting. At least now I have something to do during the holidays.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Blytheryn said:


> Fortnite BR is awesome. Frustrating, but awesome. I suck.



You think you suck? Try PUBG and learn what sucking really is...


----------



## Blytheryn

steinmetzify said:


> You think you suck? Try PUBG and learn what sucking really is...



So I’ve heard, dude. Looking to pick it up on PC real soon.


----------



## Seybsnilksz

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. Without spoiling I can say that the story is obsurd, and well, that's good.


----------



## Kaura

Damn you Steam Christmas sale. Got myself all the Penumbra games and Resident Evil 5. So much to play, so little time.


----------



## Rosal76

r33per said:


> Playing Hitman, Forza and will be playing many more...



+1.

How are you liking the new Hitman? I plan on getting it here soon. Hopefully next month.


----------



## Ralyks

Traded in Mario + Rabbids And Halo Master Chief Collection, then payed only $2.24 for Assassins Creed Origins on PS4. I rented it a while back and it was much better than I expected it to be, so why not.


----------



## Metropolis

wankerness said:


> I have played maybe two hours of it, and I have this bizarre problem where I can't tell where the hell I'm going whenever there's a section on horseback and almost feel dizzy. I think the camera's zoomed in too closely and the motion blur is too great, or something. It's really disorienting! I need to figure out how to zoom the camera out (if you even can on PS4). That alone has kept me from playing it much. Well, that and getting a pile of other games at the same time that I jumped to as soon as I encountered this problem.



I tried to solve this assumably simple issue, but found nothing. There is no way to change camera angles in Witcher III, other than mods. First I played it, riding horseback felt like that, but you'll get used to it.

Finished the main story yesterday, and I'm now in expansion packs. Blood And Wine has got quite challenging enemies to beat, and city of Toussaint looks really beatiful.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Enjoying Dead Rising 4 (PS4) a good bit. Lacks some of the charm of the originals but keeps enough of the overall vibe to make it a true DR game. Good, crazy fun.


----------



## chopeth

Metropolis said:


> I tried to solve this assumably simple issue, but found nothing. There is no way to change camera angles in Witcher III, other than mods. First I played it, riding horseback felt like that, but you'll get used to it.
> 
> Finished the main story yesterday, and I'm now in expansion packs. Blood And Wine has got quite challenging enemies to beat, and city of Toussaint looks really beatiful.



I did the opposite, as long as I realized I was about to end the main story and wanted to finish the books first. I left Geralt looking for help to his friends all along the game (some of them dead, damn) and decided to go for the expansion packs until then. 

Meanwhile I got Bloodbourne, man, hardest game I've ever played in 20+ years as a gamer. The developers really hate their customers. I've never died so many times in a spot. But still, the game is dope.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I saw Mass Effect : Andromeda was on sale so figured I'd buy it since I'm a huge fan of the series and there has been a ton of patches and updates. 

After playing about 6-8 hours its obvious this game is unfinished and needed another year +in development. The massive backlash makes sense now even if it killed the franchise. Hopefully with this and Star Wars it gives the games industry the shake up it needs.


----------



## budda

Found Gran Turismo Sport at walmart for $30 less than everywhere else but not marked as a sale. I figure if I cant get a new car I'll have virtual ones instead. Also its the only game I own that is pro enhanced (ps4). Unfortunately I cant play it til Friday as we are busy.


----------



## Steinmetzify

chopeth said:


> Meanwhile I got Bloodbourne, man, hardest game I've ever played in 20+ years as a gamer. The developers really hate their customers. I've never died so many times in a spot. But still, the game is dope.



Dude I've been playing games since I was about 6, I'm 43 now. That game was the only one I've ever returned. I sit down to play to have fun, not get more stressed out than I was before I fired it up.


----------



## cwhitey2

budda said:


> Found Gran Turismo Sport at walmart for $30 less than everywhere else but not marked as a sale. I figure if I cant get a new car I'll have virtual ones instead. Also its the only game I own that is pro enhanced (ps4). Unfortunately I cant play it til Friday as we are busy.


I want to get the VR bundle with Gran Turismo...they are 299$ right now but I heard they are going to be 199$ this week...we shall see


----------



## budda

We just got our ps4 pro about a month ago, no rush to get VR at all haha.


----------



## StevenC

Lorcan Ward said:


> I saw Mass Effect : Andromeda was on sale so figured I'd buy it since I'm a huge fan of the series and there has been a ton of patches and updates.
> 
> After playing about 6-8 hours its obvious this game is unfinished and needed another year +in development. The massive backlash makes sense now even if it killed the franchise. Hopefully with this and Star Wars it gives the games industry the shake up it needs.


Just get a Switch. Zelda and Mario are massive and perfect.


----------



## budda

So the 14GB across 3 patches for GTS is a bit of a bummer. I dont want to have to upgrade my internet package just to play games. Yeesh. Last time I played a game without updating it glitched out early on. As such I havent even actually played my new game yet.

Sigh.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Lorcan Ward said:


> I saw Mass Effect : Andromeda was on sale so figured I'd buy it since I'm a huge fan of the series and there has been a ton of patches and updates.
> 
> After playing about 6-8 hours its obvious this game is unfinished and needed another year +in development. The massive backlash makes sense now even if it killed the franchise. Hopefully with this and Star Wars it gives the games industry the shake up it needs.


Sure hope it didn't kill the franchise 

I agree with what you said, though I feel that the combat and leveling/class system in the campaign is the best it's ever been. Really did need some more polish and another year of development, though. EA needs to get their hands out of the process and let Bioware have more pull on it in my opinion.


----------



## cwhitey2

budda said:


> We just got our ps4 pro about a month ago, no rush to get VR at all haha.


Is this your first ps4?

I have had mine for years...i need vr at this point 


And to your other content, games update all the time... You will need extra an extra HD


----------



## budda

Yup, first new console for this generation of systems. We have an Xbox 360 but never had Live (and didn't game with it) so updates weren't a thing.

Really glad it's the 1TB model right now


----------



## cwhitey2

budda said:


> We just got our ps4 pro about a month ago, no rush to get VR at all haha.


Is this your first ps4?

I have had mine for years...i need vr at this point 


And to your other content, games update all the time... You will need extra an extra HD


budda said:


> Yup, first new console for this generation of systems. We have an Xbox 360 but never had Live (and didn't game with it) so updates weren't a thing.
> 
> Really glad it's the 1TB model right now



You will still blast through it in time 



Side note, I have a $50 Gamestop card so I think I will buy a PS4 card and grab Horizon Zero Dawn!


----------



## budda

I tour 3-4 months of the year, and cant afford new games unless its a birthday or christmas. It'll be a while


----------



## mongey

Got my switch and managed a little time into Zelda. It’s a great game for sure.


----------



## Mathemagician

Wife got me Mario Odyssey for my birthday, I played from 6pm to 2am last night. “Just one more moon”. I need self control. Lmao.


----------



## cwhitey2

cwhitey2 said:


> Is this your first ps4?
> 
> I have had mine for years...i need vr at this point
> 
> 
> And to your other content, games update all the time... You will need extra an extra HD
> 
> 
> You will still blast through it in time
> 
> 
> 
> Side note, I have a $50 Gamestop card so I think I will buy a PS4 card and grab Horizon Zero Dawn!




I ended up getting the game... Totally blown away and I'm only an hour 1/2 in. I teared up at some of the cut scenes that's how good it is


----------



## Ralyks

I trying to push through on NieR: Automata.... then I saw Pyre on sale. Damn you Supermassive Games!!!


----------



## HerbalDude420

Been grinding here and there on Dead by daylight. Main game is Battlefield 1. Just bought a game called Escape from Tarkov still in beta.


----------



## mongey

5 or so hours into zelda now and really liking it . best game I've played in a long time .looking forward to getting so more durable weapons . def have to pick your fights early on depending on what your carrying


----------



## CapinCripes

Im replaying through KOTOR 1 and 2, with some quality of life mods. I forgot how janky they are, last time I played it was 2005  the crashes are constant and corrupted saves are rampant. my widescreen/resolution workaround only works around 40% of the time and requires me to restart like 3 times before it kicks in. And yet I still have a soft spot for it.


----------



## r33per

Titanfall 2


----------



## r33per

CapinCripes said:


> Im replaying through KOTOR 1 and 2, with some quality of life mods. I forgot how janky they are, last time I played it was 2005  the crashes are constant and corrupted saves are rampant. my widescreen/resolution workaround only works around 40% of the time and requires me to restart like 3 times before it kicks in. And yet I still have a soft spot for it.



Great games. Last played them about 3 years ago on PC (Steam). Jawless Malak was pretty freaky for a Star Wars game at the time - released before the roasted Hayden Christensen!


----------



## Triple-J

Currently working my way through the Dead Space series I briefly played the first years ago but now I've had more time to play through all three (I'm currently playing 2) I feel it's pretty innovative in places and plays like a blend of RE4 and the Metroid Prime series(two of my all time favourites) with a story that's heavily inspired by Event Horizon.


----------



## MFB

I was just thinking the other day that I need to rebuy both DS1/2 as well as RE4 

I got the Master Chief collection for Christmas, so I've been going through Halo and Halo 2 for nostaliga, and I've got to say, it's disappointingly easy on your average playthrough. I'm ripping through dudes like nothing and I think I have a harder time finding my way around such old maps than I do actually surviving, it's kind of sad. Like, when you finally beat your dad at basketball kind of sad. Maybe DOOM spoiled me on older FPS's that are fun for the nostalgia, but I'm sure if I replay them for fun it'll have to be on like, the hardest setting.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Still playing PubG on Steam; got a GameStop card for Xmas and went looking for a new headset, they had nothing I wanted and I hit Best Buy for a G433....anyone got any recommendations for something new for PS4? 

Was thinking new COD but I’m kind of burned...been playing since Ghosts and it’s getting old. Really loved Witcher 3 and TLOU, maybe something along those lines....


----------



## Repner

First proper play through of Bloodborne. So addictive.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Going between Borderlands 2, Dragon's Dogma, Dark Souls III, Diablo 3, and Witcher 3 at the moment, so I've got quite the selection to keep me busy.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finally got around to playing Metal Gear Solid V after telling myself I would since it's came out. I'm at the point where I'm just playing it because I spent the money on it rather than because I actually like the game enough to keep going. I knew the shortcomings of it before playing, but Jesus H Christ does the game nosedive hard in Act 2. As a Metal Gear fan I don't know it I should pity it as an unfinished game rushed out the door by the publisher to recoup the cost of development or mock it as an unfinished game rushed out the door by the publisher to recoup the cost of development.


----------



## TedEH

Holidays mean time off and steam sales, which means lots of games for meeeeee. 
Played through I am Setsuna - which was.... not bad. I haven't played an RPG like that in a while, so I dunno what the current state of that genre is, but the game felt very.... safe? It's a good game, but feels like it didn't have much ambition, or didn't take a lot of risk. It does what it does well, but didn't blow my mind. So.... B+ I guess?

I also went through Quantum Break, but on the PC because I don't have an XBox. Kinda felt like watching a tv show with a shooter game instead of commercials. The powers are fun to use though. And I'm a sucker for time travel stories. The sad bit about this one is that it stutters pretty bad on my pc unless the texture quality is aaaaaaaall the way on low even though every other setting can be on high. Something to do with texture streaming apparently, since people said the game runs best from an ssd just cause of how many textures it tries to steam in at once.

I also started digging into.... Oracle of Seasons. Just because I've never finished any of the non-3D Zelda games.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> Played through I am Setsuna - which was.... not bad. I haven't played an RPG like that in a while, so I dunno what the current state of that genre is, but the game felt very.... safe? It's a good game, but feels like it didn't have much ambition, or didn't take a lot of risk. It does what it does well, but didn't blow my mind. So.... B+ I guess?



I’ve been playing through this as well, and I think the “safe”ness of it might be why I really like it. Nothing too crazy, a bit of Chrono Trigger influence, and a beautiful, haunting-yet-relaxing score. It’s like a comfort food game.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Divinity Original Sin II. Not just the best game of 2017, it's the best game in a looong time imho. Strongly recommended for anyone who enjoys RPG's (especially old school RPG's) and turn based combat. I cannot find a single flaw with this game. It's ridiculous.


----------



## HerbalDude420

Does any one else have a gaming mouse? I just bought a Corsair Glaive I love the thumb rest on it.


----------



## CapinCripes

HerbalDude420 said:


> Does any one else have a gaming mouse? I just bought a Corsair Glaive I love the thumb rest on it.


I use a corsair scimitar. And yes, I do use the macro buttons.


----------



## mongey

ok. so 10 or so hours into Breath of the wild I'm realizing how big the game is 

I've only unlocked 4 of the 15 towers !


----------



## TedEH

Started playing Alien Isolation this weekend - and I'm finding it a bit more unforgiving than I expected. I had to re-play the first non-tutorial encounter with other character's cause I kept just getting shot dead. Gives me this sense so far that the devs had a "right way" to get past most challenges in mind, as opposed to the immersive sim style (deus ex, prey, etc) of encouraging you to approach things in whatever way you want. Could just be that I've not gotten into the game yet. Time will tell.


----------



## Black_Sheep

Anyone played the DLC's to RE7? Im kinda curious about them, also thinking about replaying the game, maybe even go for platinum.


----------



## Metropolis

So, what games are you looking to play in 2018? My list is:

God Of War
The Last Of Us 2
The Red Dead Redemption 2
Death Stranding
Ghost Of Tsushima
Far Cry 5

Guess my wallet is gonna say no to some of these... and amount of time


----------



## Steinmetzify

I’m gonna have to grab TLOU2 for sure; first one is right up there in my top 5.


----------



## Mathemagician

Monster Hunter World, and Dragon Ball Fighter Z. Pretty much it aside from whatever Nintendo releases I guess.


----------



## Rosal76

Carrion Rocket said:


> I knew the shortcomings of it before playing, but Jesus H Christ does the game nosedive hard in Act 2.



What was it about the game that you didn't like?


----------



## MFB

I honestly have no clue what's slated for 2018, but looking at the upcoming lists:

God of War always delivers, Agony should be a good horror game, and hopefully the new Spidey title is along the old, cel-shaded PS2 game where Venom, Doc Ock, Rhino, et al made appearances

Aside from that, the rest don't really get the juices flowin'


----------



## Steinmetzify

Fuck I forgot about Spider-Man. I’m a huge comic fan and I’ve played every one of em. This one looks like a blast. TLOU2 will have to wait.


----------



## mongey

2018 

def gonna grab street fighter anthology on switch when it comes out .Love me some alpha 2 

other than that not sure. given the choice will be going with switch titles over ps4 for the portability factor.just gives a old guy much more choice as to when I can game


----------



## Ralyks

I’m watching the credits after the first play through of NieR:Automata. I think I need to go for a walk and contemplate life. Then go start play through number 2.


----------



## TedEH

I dunno what it is but I find for the past couple of weeks it's difficult to really get into any games. Tried to get into Alien Isolation, and I think it's a good game, but just haven't been in the mood for that kind of challenge. Then I figured I would see if Mass Effect Andromeda is as bad as people say - 'cause I'm pretty easy going when it comes to being critical about games, and I really liked the other games in the franchise... it's not looking good so far though. Janky animations, soul-less script and voice acting, the combat feels weirdly heavy, I die pretty constantly without it feeling fair- I only got about an hour in, so maybe it will improve, but it strikes me so far as a game that lacks a unified/passionate vision, as opposed to being a big game by a big team designed via big meetings and bullet points. Because I work in games, I can see through some of the cracks and see some individual points of value and polish where you can tell the individuals who were working on it cared about their work, but the pieces and the whole don't tell the same story. I'm not giving up on either game yet though.


----------



## mongey

grabbed overcooked on switch for some co op fun with the wife, who loves cooking games on the iphone

damn . this game will test your marriage out .

me - don't worry I'll wash the plates , again !
her- don't worry I'll put them away AGAIN


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Still playing Shadow of War. I really like it. A bit repetitive but the hugely increased enemy variety over the last game, and the extra layers added to the combat and overall game are more than enough to keep me entertained. I shamed an orc captain who tried to ambush me while I was fighting another captain, and then he came back as a deranged captain and proceeded to become obsessed with me (yes it's a thing in the game). He chased me into another region of the game and I cut off his arm. He fucking came back and tried to ambush me again later.


----------



## TedEH

TedEH said:


> I only got about an hour in, so maybe it will improve


I've continued with Mass Effect Andromeda and it does get better after the first hour. I can't help but wonder if everyone who was very critical of it didn't really dive very deep into the game. It certainly lacks some polish in some areas, but most games do. It has the DNA of a Mass Effect game, without any doubt. I tried to start playing a whole number of games over the last month or so, and this is the only one I've continued to pick up. I do want to get back to Alien Isolation though. Too many games, so little time.


----------



## Ralyks

I didn’t HATE what I played of Mass Effect Andromeda so far, but I’m only like 2 hours in and I was able to get the deluxe edition for 12 bucks brand new. May see what it’s like once I’m done with NieR:Automata (around 1/3 of the way through playthrough 2, although it feels quicker this time around)


----------



## feilong29

I'm having a blast playing Horizon Zero Dawn! I beat Final Fantasy XV Not too long ago and have been putting in hours of post-world exploration.


----------



## TedEH

Continuing on the entirely unsolicited commentary as I make my way through Mass Effect: Andromeda - 
I'm up to 20 hours into the game now and my opinion of the game keeps swinging back and forth. Sometimes I think to myself "this is definitely a Mass Effect game, and has everything I expected from it". Then other times I think "this game is a mess, it won't run for anymore than an hour without crashing". Then I think "the last few hours have been cool, lets keep this going", then I think "is this a Ubisoft title? So much open-world fetch-quest-y nonsense". Then some cool stuff happens. Then a lot of talking that I have trouble caring about. 

The world of the game feels a lot smaller than previous games. I've covered more than half of the world map area with discovered areas (there's a mission progress marker thingie that claims I've scanned all but three planets?) and there's been only three or four real locations to explore. I get the sense that they went for a few large areas to explore in favor of a whole bunch of smaller areas. But it makes the universe feel small and not as varied. There's a vehicle, but so far it's really usable in only one area.

I feel like the biggest challenge this game faces is it's comparison to previous games in the franchise. If it was a brand new game, and other Mass Effect titles didn't exist, I imagine this would have been received as a brilliant idea (even if delivered on a shaky technical frame). Taken on it's own, I can't call it a "bad" game, because for the most part I'm enjoying it. But it's far from being the best take on what makes a Mass Effect game.

But I still like it in the sense that I'd prefer to play the worst version of a series I like, rather than play the best game in a series or genre I wouldn't like.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I finished ME:A the other day but left a lot of content unfinished. Overall I disliked it. Just felt no connection to the world, characters and story for most of it. near the end I turned down the combat difficulty since I didn't like the mechanics or enemies and started skipping dialogue. It had a lot to live up to with the original trilogy and a character as immersive as Shepard so a lot can be excused but they really dropped the ball on it. Oh well, it will be at least 5+ years before the series is touched again now. 

Not sure what to play now, maybe Wasteland II or Tides of Numenera.


----------



## Kaura

Black_Sheep said:


> Anyone played the DLC's to RE7? Im kinda curious about them, also thinking about replaying the game, maybe even go for platinum.



I played one of them last month. Not a Hero, I think it was called. It was pretty fun but short.


----------



## Ralyks

Picked up Monster Hunter: World last night (early release for preorders). This is my first Monster Hunter, And so far, quite enjoying it. Also, I GET A KITTEH SIDEKICK AND THERES A ONE EYED KITTEH CHEF WITH HELPER KITTEHS MAKING DELICIOUS FEAST!!


----------



## mongey

grabbed mario kart 8 on switch for some family fun .I haven't played a mario kart since 3 or something. not sure whats more fun , playing the game or listening to my wife swear when she drives off the track


----------



## TheShreddinHand

mongey said:


> grabbed mario kart 8 on switch for some family fun .I haven't played a mario kart since 3 or something. not sure whats more fun , playing the game or listening to my wife swear when she drives off the track



It's the first time I've gotten my wife to ever play a video game. So we've got the 2 kids playing too and it's too much fun listening to them all. None of them know how to powerslide though, so I always get to win. Haha!


----------



## wat

Very disappointed in Mass Effect: Andromeda 

The facial animations are just... Shockingly bad and the writing in general is a big step down from the original Trilogy. And the multiplayer just doesn't have the replayability of ME3. I feel like they really could have had something special with the concept of MEA if bioware had used their A-team and EA hadn't interfered so much. All the forced SJW pandering didn't help this game's writing either. 


Not sure if I'll ever get around to playing Fallout 4, seems the more i know, the less I wanna play. 

Was pleasantly surprised with the Titanfall 2 campaign. Total blast with absolutely awesome level design.

Aside from playing Halo 5's multiplayer, I still keep going back to DOOM 2016's campaign. Goddamn that is a great game. I could just go on and on about how good it is. Its amazing to me that they were pretty far into development of a Call of Doom style game and just scrapped it and came up with this.


----------



## TedEH

wat said:


> All the forced SJW pandering


I'd guess I'm about half way through the game at this point, and I'm not seeing any pandering. There's definitely a lot of "safe" writing compared to previous installations, but I'm not seeing whatever you're seeing as pandering. Criticism of the janky animation is fair though. I just went through an area where most of the characters more or less stood still when you spoke to them, except for one guy in the corner of this particular little town who flailed all over the place for no reason.


----------



## MFB

TedEH said:


> I'd guess I'm about half way through the game at this point, and I'm not seeing any pandering. There's definitely a lot of "safe" writing compared to previous installations, but I'm not seeing whatever you're seeing as pandering. Criticism of the janky animation is fair though. I just went through an area where most of the characters more or less stood still when you spoke to them, except for one guy in the corner of this particular little town who flailed all over the place for no reason.



Pretty sure any character that's not a ripped, straight, white dude in video games and movies is considered 'SJW pandering'


----------



## wat

TedEH said:


> I'd guess I'm about half way through the game at this point, and I'm not seeing any pandering. There's definitely a lot of "safe" writing compared to previous installations, but I'm not seeing whatever you're seeing as pandering. Criticism of the janky animation is fair though. I just went through an area where most of the characters more or less stood still when you spoke to them, except for one guy in the corner of this particular little town who flailed all over the place for no reason.



There is a lot of dialogue, especially between Jaal and Liam that deals with racism and cultural diversity/acceptance of other customs etc, etc, in a very overt and forced way to the point where it took me out of the experience at times and had me rolling my eyes. The original trilogy included these themes much more organically. 

Also in a day-one patch, they changed Sarah Ryder's facial structure to be less feminine which is pretty obvious reaction to the recent, ah, "dialogue" regarding hyper-feminized video game characters that had been taking place in the gaming world of late. Weird to do something like that in a day-one patch. 

Many things in this game are just very obviously done with the current political climate in mind which took me out of the experience at times.


----------



## mongey

making an effort to actually get some stuff done in zelda now

did my first beast yesterday the rito village one

damn I went through it all not realizing I'd have a boss fight at the end . Had only a few meals , 4 bolt and 3 ice arrows . luckily had a couple decent swords and basically just went nuts on my 3rd try and ran around hacked the dude to death


I have done the Yiga hideout already so Im good to go on the Gerudo one next play session . I tired it once but didint have enough cold protection . have the snowquill set now so Im good to go


----------



## TedEH

wat said:


> Many things in this game are just very obviously done with the current political climate in mind


Maybe this is obvious, but what DOESN'T get done with the current political climate in mind? The alternative would have been to try to purposefully stick it to left-leaning views, which would not have gone down well for anyone. Bajillions of games talk about racism or climate, it doesn't make it pandering. The writing isn't quite stellar, but these have been themes throughout the whole series- it's no more pandering now than it was then, even if the quality of the delivery isn't up to par.

I understand what it can look like from the outside, but realistically the game industry is under a lot of pressure from a lot of differing viewpoints to try to "get things right" socially, and it's - in practical terms - impossible to please everyone. If they had gone a different direction thematically, someone else would accuse them of pandering to a different group, or of being racist and sexist, or of not being socially responsible enough to tackle important issues, or whatever other complained people would inevitably level on it- because people are unable to just enjoy things at face value without digging for hidden agendas. Some people think it's the industry's responsibility to make statements, other people think games should be as un-political as possible, and lots of people search for outrage where there isn't any. And all of those people are VERY vocal. Don't get me wrong, I don't like forced political messages any more than anyone else, and I'm not a super-left-leaning kind of person, but I didn't sense any particularly awkward or pushy political messages in the game. But I'm also not looking for them.

Source: I'm in the industry, I work on some of these things and have been on the receiving end of this kind of criticism. No, I did not work on Mass Effect (that would have been cool though).


----------



## wat

TedEH said:


> Maybe this is obvious, but what DOESN'T get done with the current political climate in mind? The alternative would have been to try to purposefully stick it to left-leaning views, which would not have gone down well for anyone. Bajillions of games talk about racism or climate, it doesn't make it pandering. The writing isn't quite stellar, but these have been themes throughout the whole series- it's no more pandering now than it was then, even if the quality of the delivery isn't up to par.
> 
> I understand what it can look like from the outside, but realistically the game industry is under a lot of pressure from a lot of differing viewpoints to try to "get things right" socially, and it's - in practical terms - impossible to please everyone. If they had gone a different direction thematically, someone else would accuse them of pandering to a different group, or of being racist and sexist, or of not being socially responsible enough to tackle important issues, or whatever other complained people would inevitably level on it- because people are unable to just enjoy things at face value without digging for hidden agendas. Some people think it's the industry's responsibility to make statements, other people think games should be as un-political as possible, and lots of people search for outrage where there isn't any. And all of those people are VERY vocal. Don't get me wrong, I don't like forced political messages any more than anyone else, and I'm not a super-left-leaning kind of person, but I didn't sense any particularly awkward or pushy political messages in the game. But I'm also not looking for them.
> 
> Source: I'm in the industry, I work on some of these things and have been on the receiving end of this kind of criticism. No, I did not work on Mass Effect (that would have been cool though).





Well like I said, Andromeda delves into the same issues that the trilogy did which is fine- mass effect is a story about different races coming together and working towards something after all. 

The difference is that the trilogy let these themes play out organically while andromeda has lots of pointed dialogue that to me, stuck out like a sore thumb, especially with Liam and Jaal. 

YMMV


----------



## mongey

mongey said:


> I have done the Yiga hideout already so Im good to go on the Gerudo one next play session . I tired it once but didint have enough cold protection . have the snowquill set now so Im good to go



lol. got all rugged up and it was too hot. didn't need cold protection after all . just got 1 more switch in the camel to hit then the boss battle ,which I have read is the hardest in the game . going in with 20 or so bomb arrows and 12 ancient arrows .so hopefully can just nuke him


----------



## TedEH

I'm waaaaaaay too lenient about flaky games I think. The biggest thing killing me about ME:A is how unstable it's being. Some days it'll run for hours with no problem. Other days... it can only run for maybe 15-20 minutes without locking up or crashing. I get why it happens but maaaaaaaaaaan does it ever kill the fun in anything.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just got back into Street Fighter with Arcade Edition. So now I’m back to basically just playing fighting games. Lol. 

I need to get an arcade stick for my PS4. The new season is so hype. Sagat and Cody both coming this year. I wanted C. Viper but maybe next year.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I'm waaaaaaay too lenient about flaky games I think. The biggest thing killing me about ME:A is how unstable it's being. Some days it'll run for hours with no problem. Other days... it can only run for maybe 15-20 minutes without locking up or crashing. I get why it happens but maaaaaaaaaaan does it ever kill the fun in anything.


What system are you playing on? I'm on PC and I have had very few stability issues.

As for the forced SJW pandering conversation: it's a fucking Mass Effect game, dude.  The original trilogy was ripe with political themes, though I will agree, that they handled those themes a lot better in the other games. I really like Jaal and Liam's relationship, though. I like walking through the Tempest crew quarters and listening to them discuss their cultural differences in a way that's pretty believable *for a group that has crossed dark space to get to another galaxy and find new, never before seen life there and now has to navigate new sociopolitical waters in order to survive as a species and make sure a 600 year journey wasn't for nothing.
*
I dunno if it's just me but I find a lot of the themes and story of ME:A pretty believable when you put it in that perspective.

Edit: Second part directed more to wat, not TedEH.


----------



## TedEH

BlackMastodon said:


> What system are you playing on?


It's a PC I put together in 2013. i5-4670K, gtx770-2gb, 16gb.

The 770 in this thing still handles most games better than you'd expect. The bottleneck usually is the low vram and the fact that I'm still using a mechanical hard drive (7200rpm 1tb WD Blue). Games have been ramping up on the number and quality of textures which has been taking it's toll on the machine- between plain ol' running out of vram, and hits to the disk for texture (and other) streaming, I can uuuuuusually get a game to run really well if I turn down texture and shadow quality. Quantum Break runs on otherwise-max settings if I put the textures at low. I suspect I could extend the life of this machine a fair bit longer, and improve stability in some games, by just throwing an SSD in there.


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> Just got back into Street Fighter with Arcade Edition. So now I’m back to basically just playing fighting games. Lol.
> 
> I need to get an arcade stick for my PS4. The new season is so hype. Sagat and Cody both coming this year. I wanted C. Viper but maybe next year.


I haven't had nearly enough time to really explore it but arcade edition def feels like the game we should've got first time around. I'm looking forward to Blanka . played allot of him in the SF4 games 

I couldn't justify getting another stick for ps4 so I got one of those brook converters for my xbox 360 TE stick and it works pretty amazingly


----------



## Mathemagician

So, it was your village. You are part of the 3 people who wanted Blanka. lol. 

Nah he’s classic, I do hope he gets a costume of that ridiculous Blanka toy that Ono had.


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> So, it was your village. You are part of the 3 people who wanted Blanka. lol.
> 
> Nah he’s classic, I do hope he gets a costume of that ridiculous Blanka toy that Ono had.


yeah.lol

thing is I always hated him . I started playing sf2 in the arcades when it came out ,and played every version allot up to 3 , and never touched him until sf4

I was bored of playing ryu ,ken ,guile and akuma for 20 years so just decided to only play Blanka and Sim for a while . got ok with Sim but started really enjoying Blanka's hop around to mind fuck gameplay . I got so much hate mail .good times


----------



## Mathemagician

Yeah and he was quite good in the super update too. 

But then they added Yun and everyone flicked to him. Pity because Yang was awesome and just as fun but not as broken, but got hate all the same.


----------



## Ralyks

Just booted up the Shadows of the Colossus remake, and my god it’s epic. One of the most visually impressive things I’ve seen in 4K and HDR, and this definitely feels easier to control than I remember.


----------



## Mwoit

Been quite busy in my personal life, so just been playing the Switch exclusively.

- Super Mario Odyssey (dipping in to get a Power Moon here and there)
- LA Noire (for the odd case)
- The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (DLC 2)
- Seiken Densetsu Collection (practising Japanese and also playing 聖剣伝説３which I have never played)


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mwoit said:


> Been quite busy in my personal life, so just been playing the Switch exclusively.
> 
> - Super Mario Odyssey (dipping in to get a Power Moon here and there)
> - LA Noire (for the odd case)
> - The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (DLC 2)
> - Seiken Densetsu Collection (practising Japanese and also playing 聖剣伝説３which I have never played)



Seiken Densetsu 3 is awesome. I prefer it over Mana actually largely for the more deeper gameplay. And I LOVE Mana.


----------



## Rosal76

Ralyks said:


> Just booted up the Shadows of the Colossus remake, and my god it’s epic.



How difficult is it to defeat the Colossis'? Seems like a, no pun intended, David and Goliath job to do.


----------



## Ralyks

Rosal76 said:


> How difficult is it to defeat the Colossis'? Seems like a, no pun intended, David and Goliath job to do.



The Colossi themselves are basically puzzles, each one is pretty unique in how you approach it and get to their weak points. The difficulty progression is pretty fair.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Ralyks said:


> The Colossi themselves are basically puzzles, each one is pretty unique in how you approach it and get to their weak points. The difficulty progression is pretty fair.



When you're traveling between Colossi, is there any enemies or things to do? Or are you just riding horseback watching the countryside kind of thing? How long does it take to go between each one?


----------



## TedEH

^ There's some not-really-documented things you can do to improve your health/stamina, but generally speaking it's as you say-> just exploring the environment while searching for the next boss. Doesn't take that long though, and the 'feel' of exploration doesn't make it feel like a drag.


----------



## Ralyks

Basically was Ted said. There’s little things like finding lizards to boost health/stamina, otherwise, it’s a grandiose boss rush. But yeah, the distance between each Colossi and the excellent atmosphere keeps it from dragging. It’s really not a long game, but the $40 price point is quite appropriate.


----------



## mongey

ok so have done all 4 divine beasts in zelda. deciding weather to go kill gannon or mess around for a while longer. Still got half the shrines to find and I have only found about 12 korok seeds. I really suck at finding them but I have only really been looking for the last few hours .


----------



## TheShreddinHand

TedEH said:


> ^ There's some not-really-documented things you can do to improve your health/stamina, but generally speaking it's as you say-> just exploring the environment while searching for the next boss. Doesn't take that long though, and the 'feel' of exploration doesn't make it feel like a drag.





Ralyks said:


> Basically was Ted said. There’s little things like finding lizards to boost health/stamina, otherwise, it’s a grandiose boss rush. But yeah, the distance between each Colossi and the excellent atmosphere keeps it from dragging. It’s really not a long game, but the $40 price point is quite appropriate.



Cool, thanks!


----------



## Rosal76

TedEH said:


> Doesn't take that long though, and the 'feel' of exploration doesn't make it feel like a drag.





Ralyks said:


> But yeah, the distance between each Colossi and the excellent atmosphere keeps it from dragging. It’s really not a long game, but the $40 price point is quite appropriate.



Thanks, guys. I have a question and I know it will seem dumb but I just need to confirm it for myself. I researched the game a little more and I learned that the game has 24 Save Shrines scattered throughout the map. My question is: if you die during a battle with a Colossi, will the game bring you back to the Save Shrine location that you last saved your game? I know some games will make a automatic save (which I like) right before you go into a boss fight so if/when you die, you can jump into the fight right away. Thanks.


----------



## TedEH

I honestly don't remember what happens when you die. My 2c though -> This isn't a game to nitpick every mechanic. It's an "experience" type of game. Just go play and enjoy. It has it's flaws, but nothing that ruins the experience as long as you don't go in with an over-analytical mindset.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> My 2c though -> This isn't a game to nitpick every mechanic. It's an "experience" type of game. Just go play and enjoy. It has it's flaws, but nothing that ruins the experience as long as you don't go in with an over-analytical mindset.





It's a show don't tell sort of game that gets deeper the more you play without saying much if anything at all. A boss rush game that goes from lonely exploration in the wilderness to chaotic intensity. And there's nothing quite like it (well maybe the other 2 Team Ico games), fantastic game all round.

Also I think you respawn about a stone's throw away from the boss if you die.


----------



## Choop

Lately when I have the time, I've been playing Dragonball Fighterz! It's just the most charming fighting game I've played in a long time, and it's legit got some good depth despite individual character move sets being relatively simple.


----------



## TedEH

I kind of miss the feeling of games as experiences, which doesn't seem to happen much anymore. It's why I like SotC and Ico, and the N64 Zelda games, the Thief series, and those kinds of games. Seems like the current pattern/trend is games that are over-engineered, over-analysed, crammed full of every detail and system, etc. It's all about the minuscule details and stats and data, and lootboxes and combinations of genres and mechanics akin to playing recycled riff-salad songs assembled via community vote.

Does that make any sense? Not really.
But I wish we had more games that chilled out on the lootboxes and "deep" systems that we've iterated on for decades, and just let you experience cool things. Games where it's just a matter of "here you go- go experience something cool for a while" without digging through menus and slogging through in-universe backstories. Games that drop you in a scenario and just say "here's the situation, go have fun". Games that tell you a story, whether it's directly or indirectly, instead of trying to put "you" in the game through skill trees and "meaningful" choices. Games that don't need several-hour-long tutorial sections, and reminder prompts of how all the mechanics fit together, and reminders to try every feature bullet pointed on the box.


----------



## Siggevaio

Just bought the Shadow of the Colossus remaster and it's incredible. Haven't played it since it was released on PS2 so I barely remember anything.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Not really playing anything new, instead I'm juggling between Persona 5's NG+ and Secret Of Mana. The latter of the 2 was the game that taught me how to grind: overpowering all magic and weapons to optimum levels for each character. Currently just got the first 3 Lv5 Weapon orbs at Northtown. 

Which somewhat pains me that I'm going to ditch the nostalgia goggles and just dump all over it right now. Time hasn't been kind to this game. Back in the day, I didn't realise that this was initially an ambitious project that spanned even since the NES but ended up being hacked to the bone. I didn't know about this prior to having internet access, so now I have what could have been at the back of my mind. There's a serious narrative dead zone from once you get the Flammie Drum up until the Tree Palace, there's almost zero character development for the trio, and even when you think there will be, it never comes. Also doesn't help that Ted Woosley (aka the guy who translated my childhood) only had a month to work on this game. The result is broken dialogue all over the place. 

And now the meat of the problems: the gameplay. The palaces/dungeons aren't all too imaginative nor all too immersive. Zelda 3 had the edge on that back then. It's just go through a bunch of rooms, step on a switch, cast spell on orb, kill stuff, cross chasms, polish knobs, tickle balls and exploit weakness of pallet swap boss dujour. The palaces themselves while looked impressive back in 1993, are all samey. The Moon Palace is the most criminal of them all, go in, random puzzle and abruptly ends, I actually completely forgot about it after so many years. The Tree Palace on the other hand, is awesome. 

And of course the combat system, one that time has been cruelest of all to: it's janky as hell. A lot of your character weapon swings hit arbitrarily at best, and at times so does the enemy. Certain range weapons can pass obstacles to hit enemies horizontally, but sometimes doesn't on a vertical angle. I appreciate the use of the active time system, though there's no reason to do rapid mash attacks, and charging for those sweet power attacks slow down the combat pacing immensely. Magic spells can vary from overtly useless (short lasting stat up spells, that dumb Evil Gate) to massively OP where all bosses become chumps when you chain cast them to death. 

The AI doesn't help your support party either when they tend to explore certain dead ends, which hinders your progress, forcing you to take control of them only to have your previous member run into another dead end. All this is remedied with a multiplayer option (and it was awesome with a multi tap back in the day). 

Yet in spite of all that I still love Secret Of Mana. Problems and all. The story is simple yet engaging enough, the music STILL RULES TO THIS DAY, and the game is still fun to play. It still puts a smile to my face every time you pull off a pile driver and other Street Fighter esque moves with fully powered Gloves, or smacking an enemy with an 8:99 Fire Dragon spell. It's the second best of the Mana series (yes I like it more than Secret Of Evermore). As I said in my previous post, Seiken Densetsu 3 is my favorite of the Mana series, though it's buggy as all hell, it addresses a lot of this game's issues and improves on them in spades.


----------



## Rosal76

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's a show don't tell sort of game that gets deeper the more you play without saying much if anything at all. A boss rush game that goes from lonely exploration in the wilderness to chaotic intensity. And there's nothing quite like it (well maybe the other 2 Team Ico games), fantastic game all round.
> 
> Also I think you respawn about a stone's throw away from the boss if you die.



That's good to know. The game is pretty high on my list right now.


----------



## Rosal76

TedEH said:


> I kind of miss the feeling of games as experiences, which doesn't seem to happen much anymore.



I totally agree with you on your post and that games should be fun and not be overanalyzed. However, I have to analyze as much detail about a game when I beat it on it's hardest difficulty. On easy and/or normal, not so much. On hard, very hard and very, very hard modes, yes. Depending on the game, it can be a whole different perspective than playing it on easy and normal.

I completely understand not everyone in the world cares about beating games on their hardest difficulties and they just want to have fun but it's just something I like to do.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Not really playing anything new, instead I'm juggling between Persona 5's NG+



I absolutely plan on starting my Person 5 NG+ soon. I just want to grab the DLC Personas and finish my current slate first (Monster Hunter: World, Yakuza 0, NeiR:Automata, and Shadows of the Colossus make up that list, but I'm a good amount through at least 3/4, the the 4th is MH:W, which is neverending anyway). I seriously love this game and want to get the Platinum. And it may take over Final Fantasy VII as my new "playthrough every year or two" game (because I'm pretty sure I've exhausted that enough with FFVII for one lifetime ).


----------



## mongey

Grabbed Celeste on switch as I have been thrashing Zelda on the train and wasted something to break it up. 

Fuck. It’s gonna get hard I’m sensing.


----------



## Mwoit

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Not really playing anything new, instead I'm juggling between Persona 5's NG+ and Secret Of Mana. The latter of the 2 was the game that taught me how to grind: overpowering all magic and weapons to optimum levels for each character. Currently just got the first 3 Lv5 Weapon orbs at Northtown.
> 
> Which somewhat pains me that I'm going to ditch the nostalgia goggles and just dump all over it right now. Time hasn't been kind to this game. Back in the day, I didn't realise that this was initially an ambitious project that spanned even since the NES but ended up being hacked to the bone. I didn't know about this prior to having internet access, so now I have what could have been at the back of my mind. There's a serious narrative dead zone from once you get the Flammie Drum up until the Tree Palace, there's almost zero character development for the trio, and even when you think there will be, it never comes. Also doesn't help that Ted Woosley (aka the guy who translated my childhood) only had a month to work on this game. The result is broken dialogue all over the place.
> 
> And now the meat of the problems: the gameplay. The palaces/dungeons aren't all too imaginative nor all too immersive. Zelda 3 had the edge on that back then. It's just go through a bunch of rooms, step on a switch, cast spell on orb, kill stuff, cross chasms, polish knobs, tickle balls and exploit weakness of pallet swap boss dujour. The palaces themselves while looked impressive back in 1993, are all samey. The Moon Palace is the most criminal of them all, go in, random puzzle and abruptly ends, I actually completely forgot about it after so many years. The Tree Palace on the other hand, is awesome.
> 
> And of course the combat system, one that time has been cruelest of all to: it's janky as hell. A lot of your character weapon swings hit arbitrarily at best, and at times so does the enemy. Certain range weapons can pass obstacles to hit enemies horizontally, but sometimes doesn't on a vertical angle. I appreciate the use of the active time system, though there's no reason to do rapid mash attacks, and charging for those sweet power attacks slow down the combat pacing immensely. Magic spells can vary from overtly useless (short lasting stat up spells, that dumb Evil Gate) to massively OP where all bosses become chumps when you chain cast them to death.
> 
> The AI doesn't help your support party either when they tend to explore certain dead ends, which hinders your progress, forcing you to take control of them only to have your previous member run into another dead end. All this is remedied with a multiplayer option (and it was awesome with a multi tap back in the day).
> 
> Yet in spite of all that I still love Secret Of Mana. Problems and all. The story is simple yet engaging enough, the music STILL RULES TO THIS DAY, and the game is still fun to play. It still puts a smile to my face every time you pull off a pile driver and other Street Fighter esque moves with fully powered Gloves, or smacking an enemy with an 8:99 Fire Dragon spell. It's the second best of the Mana series (yes I like it more than Secret Of Evermore). As I said in my previous post, Seiken Densetsu 3 is my favorite of the Mana series, though it's buggy as all hell, it addresses a lot of this game's issues and improves on them in spades.



my nostalgia goggles are glued to my eyes and i refuse to see reason

I do agree with your points, although I can't say I can go into specific detail. I remember the dungeons are just palette swaps at best but with some silly tedious designs, and enemies that stun lock you into a corner are the worst. There's not much in side quests if I recall, which is a bit annoying. That said, the game has some charm and the music is great.

I kind of chose randomly for Seiken Densetsu 3, so I have Duran, Kevin and Hawkeye in my team. Trying to cut through the Japanese in this game so it's been a learning experience, then some arbitrary fighting then more translation. Just got Gnome though!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mwoit said:


> my nostalgia goggles are glued to my eyes and i refuse to see reason
> 
> I do agree with your points, although I can't say I can go into specific detail. I remember the dungeons are just palette swaps at best but with some silly tedious designs, and enemies that stun lock you into a corner are the worst. There's not much in side quests if I recall, which is a bit annoying. That said, the game has some charm and the music is great.



 Fair enough. I guess after revisiting again and getting old really has tainted me. But yeah, the stun locking sucks, especially fire based enemies, and I hate going to many dead ends that could potentially brighten up dungeons but don't (I'm looking at both haunted ruins here). 



Mwoit said:


> I kind of chose randomly for Seiken Densetsu 3, so I have Duran, Kevin and Hawkeye in my team. Trying to cut through the Japanese in this game so it's been a learning experience, then some arbitrary fighting then more translation. Just got Gnome though!



I can't remember which part of the game you get Gnome, was that after the echidna looking boss, Jewel Eater was it? I was going to ask how you're finding the system mechanics, but it may be too early in the game...

Duran, Kevin and Hawkeye, ah nice, that's practically a bulldozer team. Which character is your main?


----------



## mongey

couple hours into celeste now and fuck it does get hard . but it does feel fair.

haven't played a hardcore platformer in a long time


----------



## Guitarmiester

Been playing EDF 2025 on the 360 since EDF heavily favors PlayStation. Give me one new EDF for Xbox One. That's all I ask. PS4 owners can spare one game, right?


----------



## Repner

Siggevaio said:


> Just bought the Shadow of the Colossus remaster and it's incredible. Haven't played it since it was released on PS2 so I barely remember anything.


Best way to play it. I just started as well and didn't realise how much I forgot since then.


----------



## pabloz

still heavily hooked on clash of clans


----------



## Albake21

For any fans of JRPGs out there. I'm about 10 hours into Tokyo Xanadu. Pretty solid so far, nothing amazing, but overall a very entertaining story with solid combat. A little rough on the edges but I'm not complaining.


----------



## Repner

Jumping between Shadow Of The Colossus (on PS4) and Elite Dangerous (on PC).


----------



## Demiurge

Nearing the end of Hollow Knight. I know that metroidvanias:indie games:: overtly hoppy IPAs:craft beers, but this is an amazing game that I can't recommend enough.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Trying to finish up the Uncharted collection but I get bored of all the setpieces/forced gunfights pretty quickly. They're all great games but I just find QTEs extremely tedious and unnecessary


----------



## takotakumi

Lately was finally able to get into Dark Souls 2 and finished it. Currently trying to do all the optional bosses.
This triggered me into doing a new build for Dark Souls 3, which currently has me in right before the Dragon Armour.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Demiurge said:


> Nearing the end of Hollow Knight. I know that metroidvanias:indie games:: overtly hoppy IPAs:craft beers, but this is an amazing game that I can't recommend enough.


Picked that one up on sale a little while back but haven't fired it up yet. It's been a long while since I've played a metroidvania style game like this so I wanna give it the proper attention once I finish a few others.


----------



## Demiurge

^Yeah, you'll want to give it proper attention- it's a huge game for a side-scroller. Granted, I take my time on games like these exploring & poking-around, but I'm currently approaching 60 hours with quite a bit left to do before the next DLC.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Picked up Squad on a Steam sale....just getting my feet wet, but damn, this thing is GNARLY.


----------



## Alberto7

Forgot to mention that I finished Super Mario Odyssey a couple of weeks ago. It lived up to every bit of the hype surrounding it!


----------



## mongey

still just poking aorund in Zelda .Still have the last battle ready to go but am enjoying just kicking around the country side looking for stuff. once you get used to recognizing Korok seeds it gets really addictive looking for them ."that rock over there alone must be one "

The map is really fun to just explore for some reason .usually in open world games i am the fast travel king


I know once I finish the story I will lose interest so just gonna keep cruising until I'm ready


----------



## CrazyDean

Bought a Wii U off Craigslist for $125 with Splatoon, Super Mario 3D World, and Smash U. I have no more interested in playing Smash and Splatoon doesn't interest me. 3D world is ok, but I'd rather play Super Mario Galaxy 1/2 or Odyssey. 3D World feels a bit tedious.


----------



## Ralyks

So after years and years of stops and starts.... I think Skyrim is finally clicking with me. Finally got past that daunting “THERES TOO MUCH SHIT TO DO!!!” Feeling and finally just enjoying it.

Also, still Monster Hunter: World. It’s filling that multiplayer void Destiny 2 left me all too soon nicely.


----------



## blacai

Civilization VI - Rise and Fall. The new expansion seems really nice.


----------



## Anquished

Picked up my 2DS for the first time in almost a year and remembered I had Pokemon Yellow installed on it.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Alberto7 said:


> Forgot to mention that I finished Super Mario Odyssey a couple of weeks ago. It lived up to every bit of the hype surrounding it!



Just finished it yesterday too! All I want to do is go back and get more moons though, so not done with this game yet. I have enough to go to the Dark Side of the moon but not the Darker side yet. And I agree, the game was fantastic.


----------



## Alberto7

After the latest episode of Dragon Ball Super, I finally caved last night and bought Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 for the Switch. I sense a dip in productivity coming very soon.



mongey said:


> still just poking aorund in Zelda .Still have the last battle ready to go but am enjoying just kicking around the country side looking for stuff. once you get used to recognizing Korok seeds it gets really addictive looking for them ."that rock over there alone must be one "
> 
> The map is really fun to just explore for some reason .usually in open world games i am the fast travel king
> 
> I know once I finish the story I will lose interest so just gonna keep cruising until I'm ready



Yeah, after I finished the story I really slowed down. Another reason I slowed down is because I can't sit down to play that game for a half hour, or even 1 hour. I have to play for like 4 hours at a time  there's so much to do and everything is so far lol. I finished Ballad of the Champions and thought it was a fantastic DLC pack. The added back stories were cool, and the new challenges were fantastic. The Master Cycle Zero is hilariously tacky and not as great as I was expecting, but still fun!



TheShreddinHand said:


> Just finished it yesterday too! All I want to do is go back and get more moons though, so not done with this game yet. I have enough to go to the Dark Side of the moon but not the Darker side yet. And I agree, the game was fantastic.



See, I did not even know there was a DarkER side of the moon! Yet another reason to keep playing it haha. I'm only at around 300 power moons.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Picked up the PS4 version of Stick of Truth. I'm on Day 2 right now which is when I felt the game to really tedious last playthrough, and it still is. Granted I atleast know what to and where to go now, but it's never a good thing for a game to get in the way of your enjoyment of it.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Alberto7 said:


> See, I did not even know there was a DarkER side of the moon! Yet another reason to keep playing it haha. I'm only at around 300 power moons.



Yup, 500 moons to get to darker side. I'm trying to finish off these Broodals on Dark side currently. PITA


----------



## chopeth

The Evil Within 2


----------



## CrazyDean

Carrion Rocket said:


> Picked up the PS4 version of Stick of Truth. I'm on Day 2 right now which is when I felt the game to really tedious last playthrough, and it still is. Granted I atleast know what to and where to go now, but it's never a good thing for a game to get in the way of your enjoyment of it.



I only played through it once, but I got enjoyment out of how it was written more than the gameplay itself. The dialog is great, and so are all the weapon names. It's a good spoof on the tradition RPG which typically tries too hard to be over-the-top epic.

The game wouldn't have been enjoyable at all just the way it stands. You have to be a fan of the show.


----------



## beerandbeards

Playing Monster Hunter World. This game is massive and in depth.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Started Elder Scrolls Online, Tamriel last night on a buddy’s rec. Pretty decent, looks really good, enjoyable combat etc. Don’t know that I’ll stick with it forever but it should work for a couple months or so. It’s a nice break from PubG.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Daaaaaamn ESO is just a giant nerd fest; haven’t played anything like this for a loooooong time. Having a blast.


----------



## Ralyks

Decided to get Star Ocean: The Last Hope PS4 remaster and 2064: Read Only Memories. The first one seems like a good Futuristic Anime style game I've been looking for, and 2064 seems very Snatcher-like with a pretty legit voice cast.

Also downloaded the Persona DLC pack for Persona 5. NG+ play through is imminent.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Decided to get Star Ocean: The Last Hope PS4 remaster



Try not to go completely insane when you meet me mmkay?







Sincerely, little girl. 



In all seriousness, despite Lymle, I thought the Last Hope was a fine serviceable JRPG. No idea why I ended up abandoning the game mid way, but I really should revisit it, now all I'm currently playing are games I've already completed. 

Speaking of which, I'm up to the third palace in Persona 5's NG+ and I'm only realizing now that playing this together with Yakuza 5 got weird on me. Specifically the mini games becoming a little similar, like the batting range. Hell, even the Rocinante store drew the two together.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> In all seriousness, despite Lymle, I thought the Last Hope was a fine serviceable JRPG. No idea why I ended up abandoning the game mid way, but I really should revisit it, now all I'm currently playing are games I've already completed.
> 
> Speaking of which, I'm up to the third palace in Persona 5's NG+ and I'm only realizing now that playing this together with Yakuza 5 got weird on me. Specifically the mini games becoming a little similar, like the batting range. Hell, even the Rocinante store drew the two together.



Last Hope kinda feels like what I was hoping for with Xenosaga, if that makes sense. For some reason I’ve been thinking about Xenosaga a lot...

Persona 5 may take over Final Fantasy VII as my new yearly/bi-year playthrough. I love that game more than words can describe. Also, trying to figure out Jaldabaoth on guitar. One of the most epic boss fight music pieces EVER.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Last Hope kinda feels like what I was hoping for with Xenosaga, if that makes sense. For some reason I’ve been thinking about Xenosaga a lot...



Not sure if you're familiar with the Star Ocean series, but starting with The Last Hope works well as it's the prequel to the entire series. A lot of die hard fans may complain about everything after The Second Story, but they're still worth playing for all JRPG enthusiasts. I heard the newest one Integrity and Faithless was rather cactus, which is a shame. 

As for Xenosaga, aside from the music (which I adore, the OST to Ep1 is my favorite album of all time ), I'm not a fan no matter how hard I tried (I did finish 1 but didn't get far on 2 nor 3). It was the first JRPG I played when there's too many cut scenes and not enough actual gameplay made me break. 



Ralyks said:


> Persona 5 may take over Final Fantasy VII as my new yearly/bi-year playthrough. I love that game more than words can describe. Also, trying to figure out Jaldabaoth on guitar. One of the most epic boss fight music pieces EVER.



You declared this twice in this thread. And I don't blame you.  It's rare for me these days to replay any game after completion let along a JRPG, but Persona 5 changed that. And the OST is tied with Nier Automata as my favorite albums of last year. Hell, they're permanent rotation in my car, and I'm constantly learning parts of the Persona music too. 

I do plan on replaying Final Fantasy VI after finishing off Mana though.


----------



## mongey

finally decided to finish zelda after about 100 hours .

was pretty easy boss battles in the end .my ending was pretty lame but I only did 2 or 3 of the memory things.In a while will go back and get them all and re do it to see

Played some more celeste . god damn , that shit is fucked at times


----------



## TedEH

I finally finished Mass Effect Andromeda. It's much longer than I expected. And the ending..... I liked it. I really don't think it's a bad game in the way people tore it apart at launch. Definitely going to move on to some smaller games now- stuff that doesn't take as much of an investment. Maybe read some books instead or something haha.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> You declared this twice in this thread. And I don't blame you.



And no shame here  Few games stick with me after they’re over like Persona 5 has, and, except maybe FFVII, I can’t think of many other games that I’ve sunk 100+ hours into a story and wanted to jump back in.

This, and I’m still fairly early on in Persona 4 Golden


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> No idea why I ended up abandoning the game mid way, but I really should revisit it, now all I'm currently playing are games I've already completed.



And just like that, I restarted Star Ocean The Last Hope.  

It's been a while since I've touched this game and I forgot that the SO combat engines require a helicopter license to get the hang of. So I sat through the freaking tutorial and went grindilicious the second I started exploring.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> And just like that, I restarted Star Ocean The Last Hope.
> 
> It's been a while since I've touched this game and I forgot that the SO combat engines require a helicopter license to get the hang of. So I sat through the freaking tutorial and went grindilicious the second I started exploring.



I’m pretty sure I spent an hour on that tutorial and STILL trying to get it...


----------



## Mwoit

Been blasting through Bravely Second on the 3DS. I played the first one, enjoyed it but disliked the repetition in the story. I forgot how streamlined this game is. It's optimised for fast grinding and leveling up, which is nice if you hate the slog of JRPG. The story and characters are pretty bad unfortunately.


----------



## mongey

ok done with zelda now.

have done all the memories and re finished it to see the ending

got to admit I looked online for the last few memories as i was getting over it .did most of them myself though

will grab Mario odyssey this week . still going on Celeste but my play time on that is often short bursts , cause I end up swearing out loud on the train to myself


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

I'm a perennial single-player gamer. Always have been, thought I always would be. Recently, however, I've been forced to realize how super duper lonely I am, so I though I'd give an MMO a try and maybe get some "socialization" that way. When it came down to choosing which one to try first, I figured I'd go with an IP I'm already interested in and would thus be better at holding my attention. Considering the only other thread in this subforum anyone has likely ever seen me post in was the Skyrim megathread, it should come as no surprise that I've started playing ESO.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

A newly discovered downside to living in Korea: All those 4AM Eastern Standard Time server maintenance downtimes. Fine for people in the US who would probably be in bed anyway, but that's 6PM for me. Shutting things down for two to four hours at least once a week at 6PM is... annoying, to put it mildly. Not a great introduction to the MMO experience.


----------



## wankerness

Played through Witcher 3 with the two expansions. I started it a while back and lost interest after about 2 hours, but when I went back to it, I got into it after a couple more hours, and REALLY, REALLY into it for another 50 or so hours. The main plot of that game is kind of haphazard for a while, but the last act is incredible and is right up there with The Last of Us for impact. I loved it utterly. The first expansion is fun and the second expansion is even better. It felt like the spiritual successor to Mass Effect 2/3 just with how damn good the characters were. I almost want to replay the whole damn thing just to go with Yennifer and see what happens! If only I enjoyed the combat more.

Also, I just finished FFXV. What a complete and utter disaster of a game. The first whole chunk was fun enough, even though it's mostly talking to some idiot, having them tell you to get them a potato, driving on the road for five minutes, picking up said potato, giving it back to them, and IMMEDIATELY being told NOW I NEED SOME CARROTS. It's almost a parody of fetch quests they're so bad. Witcher 3 has some fetch quest mechanics at its core sometimes, but it always covers them up and has incredible writing/voice acting that makes you not care.

BUT, despite the open world having horrible quests and the characters being thinly drawn morons and the voice acting and writing being sketchy at best, I had fun for a while. But then, I started playing farther into the main quest. And holy shit, the point from where you meet with the horribly voiced president of Venice to the end is one of the biggest disasters of a game I've ever experienced. It just keeps getting worse and more incoherent as it goes, and that's REALLY saying something. Characters are barely introduced and their motivations are never clear, the events are haphazard, and the crowning achievement is when the game then dumps you down a hole without your party or any of your gear and it turns into the most tedious survival-horror RPG imaginable for what feels like an eternity (only a couple hours). The production values are high, but it seems like they took some decent open world RPG and then grafted on a bunch of stereotypical Final Fantasy crap that was still in the process of being written and called it one game, even though it seems like two.

I just kept thinking I HATE THIS GAME for hours at the end. But after investing 30+ hours in the first chunk, I had to finish it!! The battle system is entertaining if really faceroll, at least. BUT, I would easily rate the heavily maligned FFXIII higher than it. At least there I liked most of the characters and it seemed like the (semi-incoherent) plot had all been written out beforehand and the game isn't schizophrenic. And the battle system was a lot more complex than "hold down square to dodge, press triangle to teleport stab, and press O to stab." Ah well. Here's hoping the next one isn't some blatant attempt to market itself to weird nerds with its rock-band looking quartet of dudes and no female characters other than hooty mcboob who leans over your windshield, Lunafreya whose function is to squint longingly into the camera for the fifteen minutes she's in the game, and the one entertaining one basically working like Gilgamesh in FFVIII (showing up randomly during battles, usually whenever you don't need her to).

I got the gold version or whatever, so I have the DLC. From what I'm reading, only the Ignis one is worth playing, but I might need a breather first!


----------



## Leviathus

DOOM. The 2016 one on ps4, finally beat the campaign... on easy mode cos i'm bad now. I swear i beat Halo on legendary back in the day! 

But yeah Mayo 9 strings came through for the soundtrack no doubt!


----------



## MFB

Leviathus said:


> DOOM. The 2016 one on ps4, finally beat the campaign... on easy mode cos i'm bad now. I swear i beat Halo on legendary back in the day!
> 
> But yeah Mayo 9 strings came through for the soundtrack no doubt!



I replayed the Master Chief collection after Christmas, Halo 1 on Legendary is criminally easy, like, it's today's Normal mode. I get why, since it's one of the earliest FPS for the modern era (it was 2001) but the fact that they didn't update it at all to be harder is disappointing; only thing that's really difficult is when you get paired against Hunters, those have been the only thing that kills me.


----------



## TedEH

I've been playing World to the West lately. It's a nice simple light indie-ish adventure-type dealie that doesn't require the kind of deep investment you get with a bigger game, or a bigger world, or games with ALL THE FEATURES and CRAFTING SYSTEMS and LORE FOR DECADES. It's a nice break after a Mass Effect game. I've got a pile of smaller/indie games I want to try before diving into anything big again.


----------



## takotakumi

Leviathus said:


> But yeah Mayo 9 strings came through for the soundtrack no doubt!


For the 9 Strings he was using a schecter, the rest was his Mayo Regius 8 in Drop EA and some Drop A on his EBMM IIRC


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> DOOM. The 2016 one on ps4, finally beat the campaign... on easy mode cos i'm bad now. I swear i beat Halo on legendary back in the day!
> 
> But yeah Mayo 9 strings came through for the soundtrack no doubt!



That was a fun game for a while, eventually I got sick of it and kind of forced myself to the end. I really hated all the jump sections. Maybe just cause they stressed me out. I had enough of that with Turok 1 back in the day


----------



## mongey

grabbed Mario odyssey .its pretty out there thats for sure 

its good for sure . not sure I love it yet. need to get a bit deeper into it


----------



## wankerness

Nier Automata. It's on sale for 30 bucks on the PS4 store, so anyone that doesn't have it needs it NOW. It's primarily an action RPG, but also has ship shooter sections (both sidescrolling and top-down) and incorporates that into the action RPG sections sometimes with enemies spitting tons of bullets at you that you have to weave around. It's also got one of the weirdest stories I've ever seen that is actually GOOD, even though for some reason they chose to bury the back 2/3 of it by having them magically happen when you do second and third "playthroughs." The "third playthrough" was one of the most satisfying and exciting videogame experiences I've ever had. It's too bad that probably many who play it just hit the first credits and think it's over. 

It's a really damn good game and has easily one of the best videogame soundtracks ever. It's primarily vocal-driven but is all over the map with mournful vocals over pounding Hans Zimmer-style stuff, other tracks that are more like something Phillip Glass would have written, and some big scary choir stuff, along with frenzied electronic music like you'd expect in this kind of thing. Oh, and 8-bit renditions of most of the music for reasons that become clear in the second playthrough. 

WHAT A GREAT GAME!! I think it missed out on a lot of hype cause the reviewers assigned to it stopped at the first credits and reviewed it thinking that was the whole game!!


----------



## Anquished

Now that I've moved house I've started playing Skyrim again on my PC. My new study has enough space for a massive TV and a console, although I'm debating on what console(s) to buy. Leaning towards PS4 or Switch.


----------



## StevenC

Flying transatlantic today, let's see how far I can get through Bayonetta.


----------



## TedEH

I started playing World to the West a while back and tried to finish it, but I find it's just lacking a hook. Like whenever I'm playing it, I'm thinking "I could be doing something else right now". It's not a bad game, but it lacked something to make me want to come back to it. I recently picked up FF VIII in a steam sale for stupid cheap, so I'm thinking of starting a playthrough of that. I've also got Skyrim I've been meaning to give a shot again, despite it not really being my kind of game.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Flying transatlantic today, let's see how far I can get through Bayonetta.



On what system? If you have a switch, you should get 2. 1's good, but 2's a big jump up.


----------



## Mathemagician

After spending the fall burning though both Zelda and Mario on the switch, I’ve started playing Warframe on PC. 

This game is everything I wanted from Destiny 2. It’s a grindy loot-based MMO, except with no need for classes because you can farm and get every one in the game and your movement lets you fly and double jump through the air effortlessly no matter what. 

I bought some in-game currency when I realized I’d put 35 hours into it over 2 weeks, lol. Meanwhile I regret Destiny 2 because I played it 3 days at launch then uninstalled. 

Looking forward to having a PC that can run Monster Hunter World. May cave and get it on PS4 though.


----------



## wankerness

With my house setup, I always get console versions cause my computer's in a dank hole with an office chair in front of it, and its connection to my TV in the other room has random lag (50 foot HDMI cords through an extender apparently aren't the most reliable). I guess it makes me a filthy scrub casual. After reading about improvements with PS4 pro, especially in terms of framerate, I am thinking hard about selling my console and getting a pro.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> On what system? If you have a switch, you should get 2. 1's good, but 2's a big jump up.


Switch! First time playing through them despite having Bayonetta 1 and 2 on Wii U. My brother's pretty serious about Smash, so our Wii U is always occupied.

So far loving this game.


----------



## mongey

Ok Mario oddesy has grabbed me now 

So much clever shit in there.


----------



## Ralyks

mongey said:


> Ok Mario oddesy has grabbed me now
> 
> So much clever shit in there.



One of the finest examples of new and fresh while being total fan service.


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> One of the finest examples of new and fresh while being total fan service.



yeah. by the time I got to new donk city or whatever it is called ,it had won me over 

its pretty easy so far but i'm guessing the challenge is going to be finding all the hidden stuff once i'm done with the main story 

is actually nice to get to boss battles and its not a stress


----------



## Mathemagician

I’ve gone back to planets I thought I did a good job on and found another 30 odd stars on each one. That game is so packed with hidden goodies.


----------



## thedonal

Mathemagician said:


> After spending the fall burning though both Zelda and Mario on the switch, I’ve started playing Warframe on PC.
> 
> This game is everything I wanted from Destiny 2. It’s a grindy loot-based MMO, except with no need for classes because you can farm and get every one in the game and your movement lets you fly and double jump through the air effortlessly no matter what.
> 
> I bought some in-game currency when I realized I’d put 35 hours into it over 2 weeks, lol. Meanwhile I regret Destiny 2 because I played it 3 days at launch then uninstalled.
> 
> Looking forward to having a PC that can run Monster Hunter World. May cave and get it on PS4 though.



Yep- I've been PROPERLY sucked into Warframe over the last few months. It destroys Destiny on many levels.


----------



## Leviathus

Been rotating between HZD, MGSV, BF1, and Overwatch on ps4. Maintaining the multiplayer/singleplayer equilibrium. 

Also, rage deleted Bloodborne but i guess i can always reinstall if i wanna try again lol.....


----------



## Mathemagician

For Bloodborne. Pick the Axe weapon up. Set it to “big ass Axe mode” and go from there. 

Pick the shotgun type weapon for easier parries. THIS is the key skill for many bosses. Shoot them as they are attacking and you can walk up and do a big-damage visceral attack. 

Running away is a legitimate tactic for almost anything. 

Always assume Satan is hiding around the corner trying to snatch your butthole. 

Level up health, and stamina early. Strength can wait. Don’t level up blood/dex beyond a weapons need early on. 

Run away a lot if necessary. 

The DLC is harder than the base game. Don’t go there early.


----------



## Leviathus

word up


----------



## mongey

Thing with blood borne is you need to treat every single fight like it’s serious. Otherwise some weak piece of shit catches you off guard and it kills
You. I really got into it. But I found I really needed to be In the mood for it. If I wasn’t focused then rage was guaranteed. 

Grind the early levels and stock up on vials.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> Been rotating between HZD, MGSV, BF1, and Overwatch on ps4. Maintaining the multiplayer/singleplayer equilibrium.
> 
> Also, rage deleted Bloodborne but i guess i can always reinstall if i wanna try again lol.....


bloodborne demands that you pay attention. It's not really a game you can crack open a beer and button mash your way through like god of war. The souls series aren't very hard games, you just have to be patient and ever vigilant. As long as you're paying attention they're pretty fair and rewarding games. Well, that applies for all of them except DS2 where they throw bullshit enemy spawns and traps into places to deliberately fuck you over. God I hate DS2 compared to the other games.


----------



## Ralyks

Really trying to finish Yakuza 0. I have Kiwami waiting, I preordered 6, and, awesomely enough, they just announced a western release of Kiwami 2 for August  I already have 4 and 5 from when they were on PS3 for free, so just have to buy a copy of 3 and I’ll be all set.


----------



## wankerness

I finished out Gravity Rush 2 and its DLC. I can't really decide how I feel about it. It's less repetitive than the first and it's wildly ambitious, but it's also a huge mess and has lots of infuriating sections of gameplay, usually based on some bizarre requirement that has nothing to do with the core gameplay. I think the challenge missions that most made me want to throw my controller were when you dressed up as a pop star's double, had to run through huge crowds to siphon off her crazy fans, and lead them to a safe spot away from said pop star. You weren't allowed to use any of your powers, and people would constantly leap out of nowhere at you, and if any of them touched you it was instant fail. Like, why is that in this game at all?! Another thing that I failed a bunch of times in a row was when I was snagged by a film company to be a stunt woman for a movie called "Battle Nurse," and I had to jump between a bunch of floating airboats and nail a jump onto a tiny platform. But, the presence of these kinds of idiotic sidequests is also the kind of thing that makes the game so amusing characterwise and aesthetically. The game is just too fascinated with taking away your powers to force you to do other things.

I shouldn't complain, though, cause then a couple late battles where you DO have all your powers are insanely chaotic and difficult. Like, one boss fight has an entire sky full of identical lightning spewing monsters, with ONE a different shade, and you have to be constantly flying around and spinning the camera looking for that one, while also contending with the fact that your attacks have very little range and further disorient you when used, plus every single monster can hit you and it will interrupt your attack and do a ton of damage! Or another one, where you're on a tight time limit and have to pick out a couple specific guys flying around all over the place while not accidentally attacking a couple more guys that are also trying to attack you, etc. The game itself seems all frivolous for a while, but the third act gets REALLY weird and the story goes nuts and it gets very dark and it actually kind of worked for me. The atmosphere on the big boss in the flaming city towards the very end was awesome.

I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THIS GAME! I love the characters and the score is the greatest. I am glad I played it. But, I'm glad I'm done, apart from now having to continue farming online tokens before the server goes down.

Just started Nier for Xbox 360 based on loving Nier Automata to death. The characters that I recognize from N:A so far make me think I know where the story's going, but who knows. The graphics are pretty rough, but they have that great classic Final Fantasy intricacy on the huge bosses. The level design is very primitive, and reminds me of FFX. The book that accompanies you everywhere is an asshole that sounds like Benedict Cumberbatch and yells at you all the time, which I guess I remembered from watching a friend play this several years ago but was pleasantly surprised by when it started. And, the main character looks like some kind of crazed stereotypical shogun man, but his main catchphrase is "AW, CRAP" which I can really get behind. Weird game.

Red Dead Redemption is now on my docket after having a copy since probably 2010 and never touching it. I noticed the sequel was coming out this year, so I guess I should find out if I'd want to play it. I kinda liked GTAV but got distracted by something else at some point far into the campaign and never picked it up again.


----------



## TedEH

I decided to be anti-social on St. Patrick's day and it turned into drinking alone at home and playing Borderlands 2 all night. Maaaaan that game is great.


----------



## wankerness

I don't have any friends that like that game, and it gets SO frustrating on higher difficulties since everything 1-shots you and the only way to rez is fight for your life. Argh. I 100%'d the darn thing solo on Xbox anyway, along with the first 3 DLCs (Pirate/Torgue/D&D). I have issues. 

Worst thing about that game is how it forces you to listen to the dialogue every single playthrough, when it's designed to be played through repeatedly. SHUT UP AND OPEN THE DOOR, HANDSOME JACK AND TINY TINA!!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I'm still having fun hunting down filthy uruks in Shadow of War. I had one uruk, who I enslaved (ar-hissu the skin chewer, who also happens to be a war troll) that tried to betray me in the middle of a fight. I essentially drove him crazy, he became obssessed with me, kept trying to hunt me down across different regions, until I finally beheaded him. The motherfucker CAME BACK FROM BEING BEHEADED- seriously his name changed to Ar-Hissu the Stitched one and he had visible scarring/stitching on his neck. The nemesis system alone makes this game so entertaining for me. There's no other games I can think of besides Dishonored or Dwarves where people have so many unique experiences because of the systems in a game.


----------



## TedEH

^ Do you have any thoughts on how that game compares to Shadow of Mordor? I spent a lot of time on the Mordor one, but I'd bet my PC can't handle War.


----------



## mongey

finished main story of mario

was good. that last Bowser running section was annoying as hell . died stupidly right at the end about 8 times and had to restart

going back now and unlocking the extra moons .spent about 2 hours just in the first hat land level and still haven't found them all .there's allot more game to go


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> ^ Do you have any thoughts on how that game compares to Shadow of Mordor? I spent a lot of time on the Mordor one, but I'd bet my PC can't handle War.


If your PC can run it and you're a fan of the first one, then I'd say definitely pick it up. It's a lot of fun.
It improves upon every aspect of Shadow of Mordor , other than the main story, which is kind of meh. The nemesis system is a lot deeper and more robust with wayyyyy more possibilities as far as what kind of horrifying enemies you'll get. I once fought a warchief that was immune to frost/arrows, enraged by fire and acrobatics, and he had a cursed weapon. He was such a pain to kill, but man was it satisfying when I finally did. The side quests are pretty repetitive but it isn't a game you buy for rich story and side quests, you buy it because it has super slick combat with a ton of options, unique enemies and systems driven stories. Sieges add some interesting layers that weren't in the previous game, though they don't get really interesting til about halfway through.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

mongey said:


> finished main story of mario
> 
> was good. that last Bowser running section was annoying as hell . died stupidly right at the end about 8 times and had to restart
> 
> going back now and unlocking the extra moons .spent about 2 hours just in the first hat land level and still haven't found them all .there's allot more game to go



Yeah, i've been working my way back through all the kingdoms collecting all the moons and coins. I'm in the wooded kingdom now. Takes a while but it's tons of fun.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Still hooked on PUBG; haven’t turned my PS4 on in months. Got my brother into it and he’s doing the same lol


----------



## wankerness

Finished Nier's first playthrough and started on the second, so far it's a huge letdown compared to N:A's second playthrough, but hey, it was older. It seems to consist of new cutscenes and dialogue added and nothing else!

Trying to decide on what to play next. I started FFIX yesterday, and I love that it seems to have the same combat as FFVI cause that's my nostalgic favorite, but I'm thinking it's probably going to suck up 40+ hours for less entertainment than many of the others sitting in my backlog so I'm waffling on it! Zidane's stupid tail bugs me.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I don't have any friends that like that game



I’d play this with you if you had it on PS4. I have to get the Platinum or I’ll never forgive myself. Borderlands 2 is easily in my top 10, if not top 5. 

Also, has anyone played Ni no Kuni 2? It’s getting hyped like it’s this years Persona 5-type surprise hit, and I’m always looking for a new JRPG. And do you need to play the first to get what’s going on?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Also, has anyone played Ni no Kuni 2? It’s getting hyped like it’s this years Persona 5-type surprise hit, and I’m always looking for a new JRPG. And do you need to play the first to get what’s going on?



I haven't played it yet but from what I read about it, you don't have to play the first plot wise. 

And I really hope they have a battle system that's more intuitive and less kitchen sink than the first game.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I’d play this with you if you had it on PS4. I have to get the Platinum or I’ll never forgive myself. Borderlands 2 is easily in my top 10, if not top 5.
> 
> Also, has anyone played Ni no Kuni 2? It’s getting hyped like it’s this years Persona 5-type surprise hit, and I’m always looking for a new JRPG. And do you need to play the first to get what’s going on?


I'm guessing that the achievements on pS4 are the same as they were on Xbox360. The various raid boss achievements were hard as a single-player guy, but I got them all. I can't remember for all of them, but I know at least a couple involved having to do that quest in the Pirate DLC that rewards you with the SMG that shoots in a pattern a bunch of times until you had a good one of multiple elements, since that was the single most powerful gun in the game!

The sidequest ones were fairly tedious, too. Possibly the worst thing, depending on how you play the game, is having to level a gunzerker and a ninja up to 30 or so to get their ability achievements. But, if you're fine with playing it for a million hours it's no big deal!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I'm guessing that the achievements on pS4 are the same as they were on Xbox360. The various raid boss achievements were hard as a single-player guy, but I got them all. I can't remember for all of them, but I know at least a couple involved having to do that quest in the Pirate DLC that rewards you with the SMG that shoots in a pattern a bunch of times until you had a good one of multiple elements, since that was the single most powerful gun in the game!
> 
> The sidequest ones were fairly tedious, too. Possibly the worst thing, depending on how you play the game, is having to level a gunzerker and a ninja up to 30 or so to get their ability achievements. But, if you're fine with playing it for a million hours it's no big deal!



Some of it is main game side quests, and apparently for everything I HAVE done, I still haven’t found every area.
Probably be easier if I did play it on OP8, but all of my weapons are OP8...


----------



## wankerness

Played through Bayonetta again for the first time since it came out. It is NOT like riding a bicycle. I got murdered repeatedly by the first real boss on normal before I finally killed him, so I took it down to easy after that, at which point it was WAYYYY too easy and everything died near instantly and it seemed like the game was doing combos for me and I didn't have full control over it. It made me want to play it a bunch more until I'm decent at it again, but my backlog's too big!

The graphics on this game REALLY hold up. I think it's cause all the monster designs were so insane, the cutscenes are weirdly stylized to avoid the characters' mouths moving while talking, and they put so much work into the art direction. And man, the audio is some of the most aggressive I've ever heard in a video game. The speakers were exploding everywhere and the sub was going off all the time. What a great game! I ordered 2 the other day and wanted a refresher. The plot is absolutely horrible, though. As usual for videogames.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Played through Bayonetta again for the first time since it came out. It is NOT like riding a bicycle. I got murdered repeatedly by the first real boss on normal before I finally killed him, so I took it down to easy after that, at which point it was WAYYYY too easy and everything died near instantly and it seemed like the game was doing combos for me and I didn't have full control over it. It made me want to play it a bunch more until I'm decent at it again, but my backlog's too big!
> 
> The graphics on this game REALLY hold up. I think it's cause all the monster designs were so insane, the cutscenes are weirdly stylized to avoid the characters' mouths moving while talking, and they put so much work into the art direction. And man, the audio is some of the most aggressive I've ever heard in a video game. The speakers were exploding everywhere and the sub was going off all the time. What a great game! I ordered 2 the other day and wanted a refresher. The plot is absolutely horrible, though. As usual for videogames.


Currently half way through 2! These games are amazing!


----------



## wankerness

Been playing FFIX for quite a while. It's getting its hooks into me. Unfortunately I think there are another 40 hours left, or something. The last milestone was getting the little girl character and going to her village. The story is vastly more coherent so far than the likes of 15, but the clunky combat kind of bugs me. It feels like the slow version of 6. And the fact the healing characters might as well not even have an attack is annoying. Dagger sure isn't a Celes with a genji glove!! They can't even learn offensive spells so far apart from weak-ass summons that do less damage than regular attacks from other characters, just debuffs! There better be a point at which this changes, considering a healer seems required most of the time (and currently I'm forced to use two of them).


----------



## Ralyks

I still love FFIX to death, yet I really didn’t get far in the PS4 rerelease. Something about it feels laggy to me (although the up res’ed visuals make me notice little details I didn’t before)


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> It feels like the slow version of 6. And the fact the healing characters might as well not even have an attack is annoying. Dagger sure isn't a Celes with a genji glove!! They can't even learn offensive spells so far apart from weak-ass summons that do less damage than regular attacks from other characters, just debuffs!



IX is more comparable to IV (and even X) where the characters are fixed into their designated classes. VI is odd as while each character is still given their unique class (Locke-Thief, Sabin-Monk, Shadow-Ninja etc), equipment is interchangeable for the most part, and all Esper spells can be taught to most characters to make them self sufficient powerhouses. It certainly made the Cult Tower boss section easier when everybody had Life 3. Umaro being the exception as he's the permanent berserker class. 

It's been some time since I've played VI though, and all this talk is making me want to play it again. But I have to finish Secret of Mana first, and being in the Pure Land section where the weapon grinding takes longer and more tedious, it's trying my patience that I don't have like I did back in the day.


----------



## wankerness

I have never played anything older than VI, I assume they are clunkier and with bad production values and inferior character writing (which I'm sure is unfair and maybe inaccurate!!).

You're right about the forced class thing not being like VI. I guess the way you teach abilities to everyone by juggling around the same pieces of equipment that teach the good things reminded me of Espers, along with the actual combat mechanics. But yeah, I did always give everyone the big healing spells, and then only ended up using drill with Edgar, attack with Celes with the dual wield/spam attack items, whatever the complex Sabin move was, and ultima spam with Terra with the dual cast/economizer items. That game was way too easy as soon as you outlevelled anything.

I finally hit some hard stuff in 9 - the book demon was kicking my ass with RNG, I had to actually win that trash card game for plot progression, and most difficult of all, I just had to do that footrace achievement against the fat kid. Argh!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I have never played anything older than VI, I assume they are clunkier and with bad production values and inferior character writing (which I'm sure is unfair and maybe inaccurate!!).



While time hasn't been kind to most of the pre VI Final Fantasy games, at least III and IV got fantastic DS remakes. I believe they're both available on Steam. II has not aged well at all, and even with the enhanced remake, I still rate it with VIII and XIII (1) to be the clunkiest games of the franchise. V, once again, gets under-appreciated. 



wankerness said:


> You're right about the forced class thing not being like VI. I guess the way you teach abilities to everyone by juggling around the same pieces of equipment that teach the good things reminded me of Espers, along with the actual combat mechanics. But yeah, I did always give everyone the big healing spells, and then only ended up using drill with Edgar, attack with Celes with the dual wield/spam attack items, whatever the complex Sabin move was, and ultima spam with Terra with the dual cast/economizer items. That game was way too easy as soon as you outlevelled anything.



Yeah, the moment you buff up each character with each spell, the game becomes a walk in the park. Thanks to the versatility of the characters, you always had a formidable party throughout the game, and all the bosses become chumps towards the end. VII and VIII followed suit similarly but at least their unique mechanics restrained the characters much more, but still didn't make the games any less difficult. VIII in particular becomes a joke the second you learn Card Mod...



wankerness said:


> I finally hit some hard stuff in 9 - the book demon was kicking my ass with RNG, I had to actually win that trash card game for plot progression, and most difficult of all, I just had to do that footrace achievement against the fat kid. Argh!



You have no idea how loudly I groaned when I came across the obligatory card game.  I did everything I can to avoid it in VIII on my first playthough (and begrudgingly played only for the Card Mod abuse), but IX really got to me.  Thankfully it was only that one time I stumbled through it before never going through it again.


----------



## Ralyks

FFV is definitely under appreciated. It was my third favorite behind VII and IX, now I’d take that sit has it tied with VI (which, even though I always liked it, took a little more time for me to appreciate its impact than others).
I also might be one of the few that liked VIII when it came out, and only it appreciate it more now the older I get.


----------



## TedEH

I started a file in FF8 not too long ago and I think clunky is maybe is a good word for it. I really want to like the game, but it hasn't aged well. Haven't given up yet though.


----------



## wankerness

I played the living shit out of VIII when it came out - I got it almost right on release, cause I'd just gotten a PS1. It was the second FF game I played after VI for SNES. I was one of those idiots that wasted entire afternoons drawing ultimas, curagas, etc from monsters OVER AND OVER until I had 99 of all the powerful spells and ended up a beast. Of course, with the game's moronic system, I never could actually CAST any spells, cause that would make my stats go down!! I beat the Ultima weapon or whatever the monster was at the bottom of the huge prison, and I got everyone's final weapon, and....I got stuck on the plot in disc 3 cause I couldn't figure out where to go. The place where I thought I was supposed to be was locked off, and as with many FF games, good luck figuring out where in the world you're supposed to be without a guide if no character just told you. The crummy walkthroughs on Gamefaqs at the time were no help. I can't find my memory card to finally figure out where I was with a better guide, and there's no way in hell I could ever do all that drawing and weapon farming over again, so I guess that was my FF8 experience. I remember liking it, but also remember doing such incredibly tedious stuff in it that I don't know if I could do it again.

All my FF fan friends in high school used to tell me to play V on an emulator cause the "job system" was really great. But, I've read other places that the characters are awful. I kind of require at least likable characters to get into these things. Maybe someday. After I finish IX here, I'm going to have to go back and suffer through the XV dlc, and then maybe get through XIII-2 and X-2. I'm probably about a third through each, but with X-2, I was playing on the PS2, so now that I have the remaster I probably have to start over!!!

I'm in a tiny minority where I liked XIII. I liked all the characters besides that little asshole Hope, the music is probably my favorite of the series, and the battle system was interesting once you got a ways into it. Stuff like debuffing monsters and then switching comps to stagger them and nuke them while managing the defensive setups was interesting and rewarding compared to most of the other systems. It's certainly far more complex and strategic than the likes of XV (MASH TELEPORT SWORD UNTIL OOM, RUN AWAY, MASH TELEPORT SWORD, MAYBE MASH SWORD FOR GOOD MEASURE, OH AND DODGE). XIII-2 seems like about the same thing as XIII, only with more variety thanks to the whole monster-catching thing. But, the lack of characters makes it less engaging.

I think I have the Steam remakes of all the old games, but I don't play games on computers until my house gets hot and I have to hide in the computer room since it's the only one with AC.


----------



## MFB

Screw the haters, FFVIII is awesome.

Now I'm gonna go hang out with brunette Cloud, white Mike Tyson, and what I can only assume is the inspiration for any gamers fascination with Naughty America's MFST series!


----------



## TedEH

To be fair, I don't dislike FFIII, it's just clunky in presentation. I'm super tolerant of aging/clunky games, but I'm also not a big jrpg player. This is a game I think I'd play a ton of if I only had 5 games to pick from instead of 500 (not kidding, my steam library is pretty close to that). Part of me wants to sit down and invest a whole bunch of time in it, but every other part of me has my attention being pulled in too many directions to make the time commitment. I want to play every game, but don't have to time to focus on any of them.

The steam backlog of shame is real.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Finally bought a nintendo switch. super excited to try out breath of the wild.


----------



## StevenC

Finished Bayonetta 2. Man those games are both 10/10 for me. Looking forward to the new one!


----------



## wankerness

I'm sticking it out with FF9 for what's likely another 20 hours before I play Bayonetta 2, which is sitting by my couch staring me in the face. I heard it removed some of the "annoyances" of 1. Does that mean that it takes out things like the insta-death QTEs that would suddenly appear when you weren't expecting them? I think half my deaths in that game, at least, were due to those!! I'd have full health, be going through the level like a badass, and then suddenly die more than once to QTEs and totally own my score. Argh! I can't think of any other annoyances I had with that game apart from the one platforming section towards the end where you had to sit there for a minute waiting for the platforms to spawn between you and the target.


----------



## TedEH

I played through SUPERHOT last night. Really enjoyed it, only complaint is that it's a bit on the short side. Wasn't expecting to be able to start and finish it in one evening. At the same time I don't know how you'd extend it to be much longer without a much more in-depth story.


----------



## Ralyks

So I kinda went on a binge on the PS store sale last night and ended up with Observer, Batman: The Enemy Within, The Sexy Brutale, Outlast 2, and The Mummy: Demastered for a little over 50 bucks... yeah... Observer seems to be feeding my need for Cyberpunk, and Mummy is a pretty fun Metroidvania (man, can’t believe I just used that term...) with a GREAT 8-bit/16-bit Style soundtrack that I recommend anyone give a little to.


----------



## TedEH

Spec Ops The Line is free on Humble right now. Don't look up reviews though, it can't be unspoiled.


----------



## wankerness

Far Cry Primal. I get addicted to it whenever I open it, but I'm not sure how much I really enjoy it! Those kinds of "open world" games where you fill in chunks of the map and take over outposts and get skill points tap into my lizard brain. I'm not a big fan of the plot apart from collecting new dudes that unlock abilities. I really don't like the trippy sequences where you turn into a bird or start shooting fire arrows to blow up the moon and that kind of thing, just let me play the damn game!

I'm glad there aren't any towers you have to climb. The weapons are quite limited compared to FC3 (the last one I played), for obvious reasons. It is satisfying tossing spears through sabre-toothed tigers, though, and you can take out many humans at once simply by running at them with a spear and poking them in the face. You're also way less invincible than in the series entries where you get to carry machine guns around, which I guess kind of helps with the feeling of survival, but gets really annoying when you get too close to a rhino and it hulks out and kills you since it moves way faster than you. 

I thought I'd hate the pet system when it was introduced, but I quite like it now that I have a hardcore kitty that can wreck a whole room of dudes faster than I can. I guess they just slapped a simplified version of it into FC5 and everyone loves it and talks about it like it's new since no one played this game? I will say that re-skinning the spears into shovels sounds hilarious. I'll get that game when it's down in the $10-20 range like I did with this one!


----------



## MFB

Picked up Titanfal 2: Deluxe Edition this weekend for $6 on the XBL store.

Holy hell, it's fast paced and super fun. I'm still breaking even with my K/D, which really doesn't mean anything, but I'd like to get better with some of the other titans (I'm maining Northstar, which is more range based); but they can be tough, and since you don't get them that often - few times a match - you want to make the time you use them worth it.


----------



## mongey

still finding moons in mario . fuck me, the sand kingdom has allot of fucking moons in it


----------



## Ralyks

I got Actual Sunlight on my Vita. Interesting way of talking about depression and suicide.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> I got Actual Sunlight on my Vita.


I misread this as "I went outside and some sunlight got on to my Vita."


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I misread this as "I went outside and some sunlight got on to my Vita."




It’s a short indie game that came out a while ago. I could describe it, but I just quote the Vice article that sums it up:



> _Actual Sunlight_ is the story of Evan Winter, a 30-something man, living in Toronto. He hates his job. He hates his apartment. He hates himself. But never have his energies or introspections manifested; an angry, iconoclastic prophet Evan is not. Rather, he's trapped and inert, determined to do _something_, but equally driven to nothingness and stasis.
> 
> Contrary to almost every video game, _Actual Sunlight_ tells of a protagonist who doesn't achieve, who never improves, whose lack of agency, inexplicable to both himself and others around him, has become the defining part of his character. Anyone who's laid awake at night wondering what they're doing with their lives, who's noticed their ambitions receding in slow motion, and managed only a shrug in response—they are Evan Winter. This is not a game about success, or the karmic rewards of personal struggle. Created by Will O'Neill, an independent developer also from Toronto, _Actual Sunlight_ is the story of a career you never wanted, a gym you never joined, the novel you didn't even start


----------



## wankerness

Sounds awful! I have real life for that!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

While I barely touched any games this week, I'm still set on playing FFVI right after I plough through the last parts of Secret of Mana (full powered weapons and all). 



MFB said:


> Screw the haters, FFVIII is awesome.
> 
> Now I'm gonna go hang out with brunette Cloud, white Mike Tyson, and what I can only assume is the inspiration for any gamers fascination with Naughty America's MFST series!



Now we now throughout our history in this subforum, all my posts about FFVIII has been kicking it in the bollocks before you retort and defend with it's awesomeness, and then I respond using it's own traits with kicking it in the bollocks some more.

But I'll do something different today: I'll post about what I like about FFVIII. 

The Garden concept is great. I love being a student in a large military school academy, which was fresh for a Final Fantasy game. And you can bet that I love the Garden battle scenes with The Landing blaring at full volume. Speaking of which...

The music is great. No brainer. All the Final Fantasy games have great music (even XIII and all the others without Nobuo Uematsu). Hearing Liberi Fatali should be enough. The sound quality trumps VIII easily as Uematsu still had some sound constraints at the time. 

It's certainly not the worst FF game. Aesthetics aside, there's a few foreign elements that distance it from a typical FF game (like the enemies equal to Squall's level, borrowed from the SaGa series, or the broken Junction system), it's still a FF game at heart. Hell, it's more FF than FFX (and I loved FFX too). The characters are pretty decent (Laguna is great, with an awesome battle theme to boot) and you actually care for the cast, unlike everyone in XIII for example. And while I compared it to II and XIII as bottom feeder FF, it's the best of that bunch. 

It hasn't been savagely milked for dear life unlike VII. That's definitely a plus in my book. 

I quite enjoyed the Junction System.... when it's utterly utterly broken.  Ok that one's unfair but I enjoyed breaking the game by learning Card, Card Mod and Refine, then drawing spells to stupid amounts and overgrinding long before you fight Ifrit. Sure the game becomes Pokemon with constant enemy Card hoarding. Sure I miss out on the FMV because Robot Spider becomes killable. Sure you don't need summoning GFs other than Eden and maybe Doomtrain and Cerberus (they all get boring after 1 summon anyway), sure every boss become a complete low level chumps because you didn't level up. I still un-ironically enjoyed it all through the end. Sure I laughed at it a lot but enjoyed it all the same. 

But for old time sake, just one swift kick in the bollocks.  It's the worst of the PS1 FF games, but thankfully not by much, just only slightly worse than VII or IX. Hell, even FFVII with all it's praise, isn't the best PS1 FF (ditch the nostalgia goggles FFVII fanboys). That award goes to FF Tactics.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Got a PS4 Pro and playing through Uncharted 4. Great game so far! Not sure if i'll platinum it like i did with the 3 on the PS3 but enjoying it.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Sounds awful! I have real life for that!



Oh it was. I just finished it (only takes like 45 minutes). Not really a game in the traditional sense. But man, I just got a dark place by the end of it, and felt I needed a hug and to go play Mario Odyssey or something totally happy.

Oh, and FFVIII? Highly underrated.


----------



## MFB

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Now we now throughout our history in this subforum, all my posts about FFVIII has been kicking it in the bollocks before you retort and defend with it's awesomeness, and then I respond using it's own traits with kicking it in the bollocks some more.
> 
> But I'll do something different today: I'll post about what I like about FFVIII.
> 
> The Garden concept is great. I love being a student in a large military school academy, which was fresh for a Final Fantasy game. And you can bet that I love the Garden battle scenes with The Landing blaring at full volume. Speaking of which...
> 
> The music is great. No brainer. All the Final Fantasy games have great music (even XIII and all the others without Nobuo Uematsu). Hearing Liberi Fatali should be enough. The sound quality trumps VIII easily as Uematsu still had some sound constraints at the time.
> 
> It's certainly not the worst FF game. Aesthetics aside, there's a few foreign elements that distance it from a typical FF game (like the enemies equal to Squall's level, borrowed from the SaGa series, or the broken Junction system), it's still a FF game at heart. Hell, it's more FF than FFX (and I loved FFX too). The characters are pretty decent (Laguna is great, with an awesome battle theme to boot) and you actually care for the cast, unlike everyone in XIII for example. And while I compared it to II and XIII as bottom feeder FF, it's the best of that bunch.
> 
> It hasn't been savagely milked for dear life unlike VII. That's definitely a plus in my book.
> 
> I quite enjoyed the Junction System.... when it's utterly utterly broken.  Ok that one's unfair but I enjoyed breaking the game by learning Card, Card Mod and Refine, then drawing spells to stupid amounts and overgrinding long before you fight Ifrit. Sure the game becomes Pokemon with constant enemy Card hoarding. Sure I miss out on the FMV because Robot Spider becomes killable. Sure you don't need summoning GFs other than Eden and maybe Doomtrain and Cerberus (they all get boring after 1 summon anyway), sure every boss become a complete low level chumps because you didn't level up. I still un-ironically enjoyed it all through the end. Sure I laughed at it a lot but enjoyed it all the same.
> 
> But for old time sake, just one swift kick in the bollocks.  It's the worst of the PS1 FF games, but thankfully not by much, just only slightly worse than VII or IX. Hell, even FFVII with all it's praise, isn't the best PS1 FF (ditch the nostalgia goggles FFVII fanboys). That award goes to FF Tactics.



I have to be the lone flag bearer for FFVIII because no one else will be  It's broken in aspects, absolutely, and most of the games from back then have parts that are, but as a whole, I feel like it's under-loved and over-looked like the red-headed step-child of the FF series. 

If we want to talk REAL JRPGs, give me some ol' Legend of Dragoon


----------



## wankerness

Viii's music kinda blows. Listening through its soundtrack compilation in XV and then playing IX accentuated this!! IX is night and day better. Barely anything is interesting or memorable. Just listen to that trash over world music for a good summation. Even the "romantic" music and battle themes fall on their face compared to the games around it.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Yeah I loved VIII. Hang me if you want. I love IV, VIII, and IX the absolute most out of the series. 

Tax time came and I bought quite a few new games including Wolfenstein: The New Colossus, Pillars of Eternity, and Torment: Tides of Numenera. Also got South Park: Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole for 5 dollars brand new total.


----------



## TedEH

I tried out Snake Pass the other day. It's weirdly relaxing, and visually a lot more impressive than I was expecting.


----------



## wankerness

Back to Nier: Automata. I was burning through the achievements (yes, I know you can buy them), killed the FINAL boss, and then looked at the list of endings to do that achievement, only to find that one involves DYING to the final boss. And, you can't fight it a second time without the ~55-60 hours of gameplay required to unlock it again. F YOU, NIER!!!! I just bought the damn achievement at that point. I was then glad it has that bizarre function. I don't know why I care about achievements sometimes. I ignore them except with games I really get into that don't have anything too insane (like, get 1000 headshots with the iron bar while on xtreme difficulty), which so many games have. I beat "The Last of Us" on regular difficulty and got ONE achievement for the whole run!

Anyway, I'm playing all the way through Nier: Automata again cause I love it and don't have a strong urge to play any of the other ~20 games I haven't played yet.  MGSV, Bayonetta 2, and especially Red Dead Redemption and the last Zelda are some of the bigger ones that I just can't make myself play. I got out of the "tutorial" area of Zelda and was too annoyed by the gameplay which seems to primarily be about slowly walking up hills and having your weapons break that I just lost all interest.


----------



## mongey

Mario darker side. Fuck me. It pretty brutal for a Mario game. No checkpoints ? Really ?


----------



## Ralyks

Was trying to rush finishing Yakuza 0 in preparation for Yakuza 6 tomorrow... mission not successful. Oh well, already preordered...


----------



## beerandbeards

Just finished Far Cry 5. I really enjoyed the story for the most part.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

mongey said:


> Mario darker side. Fuck me. It pretty brutal for a Mario game. No checkpoints ? Really ?



Yeah, I need to go back and finish that. I got about half way through and have died a dozen times or so. Just been getting moons elsewhere.

For anyone that's played Uncharted 4, I'm in Ch. 10 or so and I'm really hoping that there will be a lot more gun fights and less reliance on stealth. I'm playing on Hard right now (as I platinumed the previous 3 games and this was the highest I could start for my first playthough), but so far it seems like any major encounter I can easily dispatch of all enemies in stealth, but gun fights are a no go as there are too many enemies. I'm just getting very bored of the wait and choke out enemies and hoping the game mixes it up a little more.


----------



## wankerness

I have no clue what chapter 10 means. I was only paying attention to what was happening. Overall I liked that game a LOT less than 2 and 3 until the ending, which I loved. But the brother character? Gimme a break. He was introduced so badly, too.

I just played through Bioshock Infinite and the two Burial at Sea DLCs. The game was really short, I was surprised. I didn't remember it very well. I think I hated the soundtrack and the way whenever you kill someone there's a loud piano dropping noise. It's kind of fun otherwise. I think the first two are better-polished, and the end of this one was trying way too hard. I like Elizabeth, though. The first DLC sucks hard, but the second is pretty good even though I usually dislike stealth. It was good to have Elizabeth back as a character instead of...the end of Infinite. 

Is Far Cry 4 worth playing? I've only really heard bad things. I enjoyed 3 and Primal in a mindless way. I guess it's a pointless question right now, as I am halfway through Nier Automata and I have God of War preordered. I've never played any of the older games, and I don't really feel like buying 1/2 for my PS2 (and the HD collection is only on PS3 cause PS4 is awful with backwards compatibility), but this one sounds good. I read a one paragraph summary of the first three and it sounded like enough!


----------



## TedEH

I realized the other day that I have a copy of Far Cry 3 in UPlay that I don't remember buying. I'll throw that on the list of games to play when I get the time. Blood Dragon was pretty entertaining, although I never really finished it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I have no clue what chapter 10 means. I was only paying attention to what was happening. Overall I liked that game a LOT less than 2 and 3 until the ending, which I loved. But the brother character? Gimme a break. He was introduced so badly, too.
> 
> I just played through Bioshock Infinite and the two Burial at Sea DLCs. The game was really short, I was surprised. I didn't remember it very well. I think I hated the soundtrack and the way whenever you kill someone there's a loud piano dropping noise. It's kind of fun otherwise. I think the first two are better-polished, and the end of this one was trying way too hard. I like Elizabeth, though. The first DLC sucks hard, but the second is pretty good even though I usually dislike stealth. It was good to have Elizabeth back as a character instead of...the end of Infinite.
> 
> Is Far Cry 4 worth playing? I've only really heard bad things. I enjoyed 3 and Primal in a mindless way. I guess it's a pointless question right now, as I am halfway through Nier Automata and I have God of War preordered. I've never played any of the older games, and I don't really feel like buying 1/2 for my PS2 (and the HD collection is only on PS3 cause PS4 is awful with backwards compatibility), but this one sounds good. I read a one paragraph summary of the first three and it sounded like enough!


5 is fun if you can set aside any kind of political mindset and enjoy it as a caricature of the western united states. Plus it's really fun to set people on fire or beat them with a shovel/kill them with slingshots  I prefer far cry 4 purely for the locale it's set in.


----------



## mongey

TheShreddinHand said:


> Yeah, I need to go back and finish that. I got about half way through and have died a dozen times or so. Just been getting moons elsewhere.



I'm about 50 tries in and 3/4 of the way through it looks like .its kicking my ass


----------



## TheShreddinHand

wankerness said:


> I have no clue what chapter 10 means. I was only paying attention to what was happening. Overall I liked that game a LOT less than 2 and 3 until the ending, which I loved. But the brother character? Gimme a break. He was introduced so badly, too.



It's the beginning of Madagascar and driving around the Jeep Wrangler. I'm less enthused with 4 now after hearing you say 2 and 3 were better. 2 was my all time favorite and I felt 3 was even a step down. Oh well, still gonna finish it up, but I definitely feel at times like I'm watching a movie vs. playing a game.


----------



## takotakumi

...............aaaaaand I'm black on Bloodborne ))
Finally finishing the chalice dungeons which I skipped last time.
Currently done with the Defiled Chalice, fire borko was challenging


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Was trying to rush finishing Yakuza 0 in preparation for Yakuza 6 tomorrow... mission not successful. Oh well, already preordered...



Still, try to finish Yakuza 0 anyway. As with all their games, it's worth while to see through the end of the plot. Or at least get a high score on their karaoke minigames.


----------



## wankerness

Yakuza 0 and Persona 5 are the two games I have on pricewatch. If either hits 25 bucks, I'll buy them and play them in an instant. I have never played any previous entries, though, so I am hesitant to throw 50 bucks at them.

I'm still going through my second full playthrough of Nier:A. I was playing on Hard, and I'm overlevelled, and I have the chain-damage defense chips, but I still got hit with a couple ridiculously cheap 1-shots upon entrance to rooms that I couldn't possibly react to. Then I set it back to normal, and I basically 2-shot every single enemy I encounter. The difficulty settings on this game are completely f'd and it's the one part of the game that is a serious problem. I think the only way to play it at a "regular" difficulty is to play through on normal and not do any sidequests or exploration so you're always about 5 levels under the main plot mobs/bosses.

I started playing Guacamelee and it's AWESOME


----------



## TedEH

I tried to get back into Alien Isolation, and maybe I've just been in the wrong mood for that kind of game but I've not been finding it very fun. Just... frustrating. Go to the next room-dead. Hiding- dead. Reach an objective and there's no save point anywhere in sight- dead. Within I think two play sessions I've managed to make it through a handful of hallways and maybe an objective or two. I really want to like the game 'cause it's got a lot going for it, but it seems like one of those cases where it feels like I keep failing for unfair reasons. Repeating the same section over and over again because the game refuses to give you a break just isn't fun.

Take a game like Doom - you die a lot in that game too, but it feels fair. When you die, it's your own fault, you made a mistake, you learn from it, you die less next time. But not in this game. Even when it feels like you're doing everything right, you die anyway.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Yakuza 0 and Persona 5 are the two games I have on pricewatch. If either hits 25 bucks, I'll buy them and play them in an instant. I have never played any previous entries, though, so I am hesitant to throw 50 bucks at them.



You know I’ve made my feelings known on Persona 5  and that was my first Persona/Shin Megami Tensai game, so I wouldn’t worry about that. I did make me go back and buy Persona 4 Golden and the first Persona on Vita, and I plan on getting Persona 3 FES on PS3 one of these days.

Right now I’m contemplating just focusing in Yakuza 6, then going back to 0 and working through the series. I have 0 and Kiwami, I have Kiwami 2 on preorder, and I have 4 and 5 from when they were free on PS+ at whatever point, so I’ll just grab 3 at some point and work my way through the series.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Yakuza 0 and Persona 5 are the two games I have on pricewatch. If either hits 25 bucks, I'll buy them and play them in an instant. I have never played any previous entries, though, so I am hesitant to throw 50 bucks at them.



Yakuza 0 is actually a great gateway to the series. It's the prequel to the entire story that shows 2 of the main characters develop into what they're known for. The other good gateway game is Yakuza 4 (if it's cheaper to buy) as it's kind enough to have a reminiscence mode that allows you to catch up on the story.

As for Persona 5, that's proven to be a great gateway too. It's the same effect to the series as what FFVII did before it. Like with most JRPG series that not made by Nihon Falcom, Persona is more a bunch of anthologies with only certain gameplay and aesthetic elements that tie them together. You don't have to play the Shin Megami Tensei games that it spun off from either. The beauty of Persona 5 is that it combines the best elements of the first 4 games (5 if you want to add both Persona 2 games).


----------



## mongey

after probably 100 attempts I finally finished the fucking darker side 

It has scarred me .

I don't want to see Mario for a long time.

I think I hate Italian people now .


----------



## TheShreddinHand

mongey said:


> after probably 100 attempts I finally finished the fucking darker side
> 
> It has scarred me .
> 
> I don't want to see Mario for a long time.
> 
> I think I hate Italian people now .



Congrats!


----------



## PunkBillCarson

takotakumi said:


> ...............aaaaaand I'm black on Bloodborne ))
> Finally finishing the chalice dungeons which I skipped last time.
> Currently done with the Defiled Chalice, fire borko was challenging



I don't know exactly what you're doing in the chalice dungeons, but it should be mentioned that they're good places to farm for gems to supplement your weapon damage.


----------



## StevenC

mongey said:


> after probably 100 attempts I finally finished the fucking darker side
> 
> It has scarred me .
> 
> I don't want to see Mario for a long time.
> 
> I think I hate Italian people now .


The trick is to use the dragon guy to skip that whole bit before the painting.


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> The trick is to use the dragon guy to skip that whole bit before the painting.


I did read about that. 

But that shit got personal. I needed to do it.


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> The trick is to use the dragon guy to skip that whole bit before the painting.


I did read about that. 

But that shit got personal. I needed to do it.


----------



## StevenC

mongey said:


> I did read about that.
> 
> But that shit got personal. I needed to do it.


Screw those Burrbos to hell, for real.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I'm loving breath of the wild. I beat Vah Ruta but got super distracted before I got to goron city to fight their divine beast. I'm currently just wandering around the wilderness hunting animals and murdering moblins/lizalfos. I haven't had this much fun in an open world game since skyrim.


----------



## wankerness

God of War is really well-made, but I don't like the wallowy axe combat. It fits with you being an old man, but I don't find it too enjoyable. The kid is pretty op once you get lightning arrows, so I've been cheesing things by just running around and nuking them before I have to engage.

I might just be terrible, but the difficulty has caught me off-guard. A lot of regular encounters actually are threatening, and I've died a lot. The flip side is that I don't think I've died to any bosses yet!! That side temple with the series of battles before getting to the spirit whose kid killed him was the worst. The pack of one-shotting wolves killed me repeatedly!! The game's really forgiving with check points, though.

I got completely wrecked by a Valkyrie, and then decided to continue the plot a bit more, upon which I was very pleasantly surprised


Spoiler



to get the chaos blades, which have just massively improved the feel of melee combat.



The plot is a mess with mythology, but kind of a fun one. I really like the portrayal of


Spoiler



Freya.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I decided to give Tekken 6 another shot, mainly for trophy clean up. That a mistake, I completely forgot how atrocious the scenario campaign is.


----------



## wankerness

Finished God of War, and I'd actually been doing exploration/sidequests, so it's kind of short! It's pretty solid, though I liked exploration more than quests. It seemed kind of small scale (very few Gods seen), but maybe that's normal, I've never played the first three.

The worst enemy type in this game is the boss version of the flying bug guys with the spears. I am SO bad at dealing with them without getting hit repeatedly, and every time you get hit, the screen blacks out for ~10 seconds, meaning you get hit more!! Then you have to fight TWO of them later in the game, plus another one that's invincible except for a couple seconds between other mobs spawning, and ugh. I suck.

Some of the boss fights are lazy. There are several pallet swaps of the big stupid mob that carries a pillar around, and he pretty much behaves the same way every time, and they're placed as if they're boss fights every time (ex, they drop weapon upgrades). The last boss is fun and varied, but unfortunately there are only a couple other bosses like that.

I hope there's DLC that progresses the


Spoiler



Freya wanting to kill you


 stuff. The plot felt a bit unfinished.


----------



## takotakumi

PunkBillCarson said:


> I don't know exactly what you're doing in the chalice dungeons, but it should be mentioned that they're good places to farm for gems to supplement your weapon damage.


Doing the extra bosses, currently stuck with Abhorrent Beast, idk why I find him harder than the defiled doggo, Ebrietas or Orphan haha
Still missing the Yharnam Queen and Blood letting beast and some others
I like how these dungeons scale with either my level or as a NG+?
Like in the NG+ Im OP but here I am doing normal damage.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Daughter’s BF snagged God of War and Far Cry 5; waiting on his slow ass to beat one of them so he can kick me one lol


----------



## mongey

officially done with Mario for a good while . Hadn't done the dark side . wasn't that keen to refight all the bosses but was actaully pretty easy . did it on my 3rd go 

have 560-ish moons so still allot out there to collect but gonna shelf it for a while 

need a new game for my commute . thinking i might grab skyrim . I played it on 360 when it came out but I was playing allot of sf4 at the time and kind of rushed through it 

that said , the street fighter anthology is def gonna be a day 1 purchase for me in may . so could be history repeating


----------



## StevenC

mongey said:


> officially done with Mario for a good while . Hadn't done the dark side . wasn't that keen to refight all the bosses but was actaully pretty easy . did it on my 3rd go
> 
> have 560-ish moons so still allot out there to collect but gonna shelf it for a while
> 
> need a new game for my commute . thinking i might grab skyrim . I played it on 360 when it came out but I was playing allot of sf4 at the time and kind of rushed through it
> 
> that said , the street fighter anthology is def gonna be a day 1 purchase for me in may . so could be history repeating


Bayonetta or Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze is about to come out.

Both are amazing.


----------



## wankerness

Did some more side stuff in GoW, the "end-game" is kind of dumb. There's a fire realm where you just do "challenge mode" with various challenges randomly matched to different enemy types/increasing power levels, and then there's another realm that's just a terrible maze that drains your life steadily and if you die you lose everything you collect. Both are required for collecting items to upgrade armor, which is really only good for doing said activities! What is this, an MMO!? I got the last upgrades for the blades and axe and called it a day.

This all said, I did one of the last quests in the game yesterday, which is to kill all the valkyries. I got my ass kicked so hard by the first one I fought (in the fire realm, so I think it's actually one of the hardest ones) that I had to set down to easy for blood pressure's sake. I got to the queen at the end of my play session, and she kicked my ass even harder than the fire one did on normal difficulty. I think this is going to be the last thing I do in this game!


----------



## Spinedriver

I just got the new version of Battletech and can't wait to really dig into this one. I played a quick "skirmish" and it looks like there are a lot of really cool tools. I especially like the "turn based format" so you don't have have to try and manage a ton of different things all going at once.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

thinking about picking up xenoblade 2 or something. I need my rpg itch scratched on the switch, especially since I have to travel and can't play on my pc.


----------



## wankerness

Persona 5 is on sale for 27 bucks, so that was close enough to the 25 I just mentioned. I look forward to doing nothing else for the next few weeks! (Unless I don't like it)


----------



## mongey

grabbed skyrim for the switch. its a good commuting game, where you can just entertain yourself doing whatever 

Have to say after playing zelda really need to adjust my thinking. keep trying to climb up mountains then thinking "damn I need to find the path "


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaning up trophies in Max Payne 3. Man, trying to control Max in that game is like trying to control a bowling ball. And since I'm just replaying for trophies the load times are infuriating, especially when there's noticeable pop-in and environmental glitching regardless.


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> grabbed skyrim for the switch. its a good commuting game, where you can just entertain yourself doing whatever
> 
> Have to say after playing zelda really need to adjust my thinking. keep trying to climb up mountains then thinking "damn I need to find the path "



I dunno, I got pretty good at jumping all over the place finding the geometry seams necessary to get all the way up some mountains that you weren't supposed to! Maybe they've cleaned up the bugs in the last 7 years, though. (I doubt it cause Bethesda)

I played the first 12 or so hours of Persona 5. And like...I'm actively getting angry at the game for forcing me to do RPG and battle stuff!!! I constantly want to go read at the library or level up my GUTS or increase reputations with people, and the game consistently sends me through some scripted crap and then teleports me back to my bedroom and makes me go to sleep, wasting another day! And this will happen for a week on end! And worst of all, it seems like the number of days in the game are limited, so this is actively working against me in the long run! ARGH!

I'm in the second dungeon and it's actively stressing me out with all the laser traps and time limits and inability to regenerate mana without leaving and going to bed. I just want to live my life and swing in the batting cage and eat hamburgers and go to the bathhouse, dudes! I don't want to steal peoples' hearts!!!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I played the first 12 or so hours of Persona 5. And like...I'm actively getting angry at the game for forcing me to do RPG and battle stuff!!! I constantly want to go read at the library or level up my GUTS or increase reputations with people, and the game consistently sends me through some scripted crap and then teleports me back to my bedroom and makes me go to sleep, wasting another day! And this will happen for a week on end! And worst of all, it seems like the number of days in the game are limited, so this is actively working against me in the long run! ARGH!
> 
> I'm in the second dungeon and it's actively stressing me out with all the laser traps and time limits and inability to regenerate mana without leaving and going to bed. I just want to live my life and swing in the batting cage and eat hamburgers and go to the bathhouse, dudes! I don't want to steal peoples' hearts!!!



That's Persona 5 in a nutshell.  And to an extent, all the Persona games.

It's trying to juggle the JRPG and Life Sim aspects is what I enjoyed about the games. In this case, it's the whole point that you time manage the dungeon heists with all the daily activities. It's ok not to try to raid the dungeon in one day, but it also comes at a sacrifice, forcing you to rethink the strategy, manage your compendium and raid the vending machines for MP restoring drinks and keeping an eye on the restock schedule. Though some of the life sim aspects does feel unintuitive at times, but you get used to it quickly. 

Unless you're a psychotic JRPG completionist (like me), I wouldn't stress too heavily. The momentum will speed up and you'll get some high stats before you know it.


----------



## TedEH

Been playing a lot of Massive Chalice recently. Currently a bit more than half way through the game, I think. I think it's something that would disappoint more hardcore strategy game players, or people who want it to be XCOM, but that makes it about as good a strategy game for me as it could be. There's enough depth to keep the game interesting, but without so much mechanical depth that you lose track of whatever is going on. It's almost got a Oregon Trail kind of vibe to it, where it seems like you're just making the best choices you can with what gets thrown at you. There was a lot of criticism about how your characters all inevitably die, but I think that part of it is brilliant.


----------



## auxioluck

I've been playing the shit out of Battlefront 2 the last couple days. I'm really enjoying it now that they took crates out and changed the progression system.


----------



## StevenC

I'm 6+


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> That's Persona 5 in a nutshell.  And to an extent, all the Persona games.
> 
> It's trying to juggle the JRPG and Life Sim aspects is what I enjoyed about the games. In this case, it's the whole point that you time manage the dungeon heists with all the daily activities. It's ok not to try to raid the dungeon in one day, but it also comes at a sacrifice, forcing you to rethink the strategy, manage your compendium and raid the vending machines for MP restoring drinks and keeping an eye on the restock schedule. Though some of the life sim aspects does feel unintuitive at times, but you get used to it quickly.
> 
> Unless you're a psychotic JRPG completionist (like me), I wouldn't stress too heavily. The momentum will speed up and you'll get some high stats before you know it.


I'm starting to figure it out - you apparently REALLY screw yourself if you beat the dungeon right away, as then no one will talk to you about anything other than LET'S SEND THE CARD LOL, so I guess the name of the game is just not touching the dungeons until the last couple days possible. I am frequently frustrated by characters wanting to hang out one day and if you miss it, they won't talk to you again for two weeks. I wish the time was unlimited, I guess. I'm the sort of person that does all sidequests and leveling in games that I possibly can, and this game runs directly counter to that. Ah well. I still enjoy it. I'm currently investigating kids being forced to do drug running!!!

Besides Ryuji. This guy is on a short list of most obnoxious characters I've had to suffer through in a game. He's got a terrible voice, he's constantly f'ing everything up in game, and his dialogue mostly consists of saying things like "OOOO I HATE THOSE ROTTEN ADULTS!!"


----------



## Humanoid

Been playing Nintendo since '89 but I just remember I never finished Super Mario 64. So now I'm maybe a half way through it. It's a pain in the ass. I have grandpa reflexes.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Picked up Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze on Switch today for the old school platform feels. So far it delivers big time.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> Picked up Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze on Switch today for the old school platform feels. So far it delivers big time.



Nice! Does it let you go from normal play with DK and switch to funky mode if a particular section is just too darn frustrating? And then back again?


----------



## StevenC

Got Super Meat Boy, Owlboy and Celeste for a few flights and long bus journeys this weekend. Loving Super Meat Boy so far.

Also, have DKCTF arriving tomorrow, but I won't get to play until Tuesday or Wednesday.


----------



## wankerness

Humanoid said:


> Been playing Nintendo since '89 but I just remember I never finished Super Mario 64. So now I'm maybe a half way through it. It's a pain in the ass. I have grandpa reflexes.



Even thinking about Tick Tock Clock and Rainbow Road (or whatever the last level is called) still makes my palms sweat, even though I haven't touched that game since probably 1999.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Since my current routine with Secret of Mana has been living in the Mana Fortress farming for Lv9 Weapon orbs, I thought now is a great time to replay the greatest Final Fantasy of all time:






(Anyone who tries to dispute that is wrong and will be proven accordingly. )

I've forgotten how hilarious it was when Terra first casts magic in front of Locke and Edgar during a boss fight, I'm showing my age . I also forgot, holy crap, Locke is utterly useless outside stealing early in the game. Great story and arc, but fell short on gameplay. Hell he got completely overshadowed by Mog in his first few fights, then degraded to back row stealing the moment Edgar steps in.


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> Got Super Meat Boy, Owlboy and Celeste for a few flights and long bus journeys this weekend. Loving Super Meat Boy so far.
> 
> Also, have DKCTF arriving tomorrow, but I won't get to play until Tuesday or Wednesday.



fucking Celeste. I need to go back to that. am about half way through


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Since my current routine with Secret of Mana has been living in the Mana Fortress farming for Lv9 Weapon orbs, I thought now is a great time to replay the greatest Final Fantasy of all time:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (Anyone who tries to dispute that is wrong and will be proven accordingly. )
> 
> I've forgotten how hilarious it was when Terra first casts magic in front of Locke and Edgar during a boss fight, I'm showing my age . I also forgot, holy crap, Locke is utterly useless outside stealing early in the game. Great story and arc, but fell short on gameplay. Hell he got completely overshadowed by Mog in his first few fights, then degraded to back row stealing the moment Edgar steps in.



I viewed half of the characters as useless in that game. I almost never used anything outside the core of Terra/Celes/Edgar/Gogo and either Sabin or Cyan before that depending on whether I was playing it on a device I could do the button combo for Phantom Rush on. Locke was occasionally used if I needed to steal something, NEVER otherwise. So many of them have a stupid gimmick that makes them crappy unless you're trying to make the game more difficult for yourself. Particularly Gao and Umaro. Setzer and Realm were crap, Mog was useable in a pinch, and Shadow did great damage if you liked throwing away expensive items (I HATED it). The other problem with that game is that the first half is incredible and entirely narrative-driven and just fun the whole way through, while the world of ruin is just kind of meandering until you feel like doing the boss fight. There's still good stuff there, but it's a really front-loaded game.

Playing FF9 just recently kind of highlighted this for me. I still love 6 and would say it's my favorite, but 9 addresses some of its flaws really well. I just wish it let you get all your characters as ridiculously overpowered.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I viewed half of the characters as useless in that game. I almost never used anything outside the core of Terra/Celes/Edgar/Gogo and either Sabin or Cyan before that depending on whether I was playing it on a device I could do the button combo for Phantom Rush on. Locke was occasionally used if I needed to steal something, NEVER otherwise. So many of them have a stupid gimmick that makes them crappy unless you're trying to make the game more difficult for yourself. Particularly Gao and Umaro. Setzer and Realm were crap, Mog was useable in a pinch, and Shadow did great damage if you liked throwing away expensive items (I HATED it). The other problem with that game is that the first half is incredible and entirely narrative-driven and just fun the whole way through, while the world of ruin is just kind of meandering until you feel like doing the boss fight. There's still good stuff there, but it's a really front-loaded game.



My memory's slightly hazy and I'm trying to remember everything I learned about FF6 from the 90s as I post this, but...

There's no doubt that Terra and Celes are the best characters in the game, with Edgar being on second place. Then the rest really. I actually find Sabin overrated and Cyan terrible (his sword charges and bad magic stats make him worse than Locke for instance).

Shadow is a refined Sabin (better overall stats), and throw is awesome. Shurikens are dirt cheap to the point where his standard attack is 99% redundant and allocated to his dog. Honestly, there's no point in Shadow using attack at all when 99 Shurikens are under 3K GP (unless you're plagued with the RPG paradox of trying to save your best items and equipment for an occasion that never comes). Of course the nature of his story makes him highly unreliable early in the game.

I thought Setzer was crap on my first playthrough as well, but found out the joys of 7 Flush and Chocobop. He takes work but he's a fun character. Strago is a bit frustrating at times, but I find that with all FF Blue Mages. Relm sucks without work and proper equipping, then she becomes highly underrated... well maybe just below Locke but definitely better than Cyan and especially Umaro. Locke gets a little better towards the second half of the game, but not by much. He's a fan favorite (hell, I like him), but he's highly overrated because of it. 

Gau is perhaps the most mechanically complex character in any FF game. Which is probably why I both love playing him and also find him extremely frustrating at times, much of it trying to get most of his ridiculous range of moves you'd barely use while rummaging through his few awesome ones. He's the penultimate Blue Mage, and what the FFV Beastmasters should have been.

As for the plot, the way the game is structured makes the World of Ruin stuff feel like meandering. But having said that, with a large cast and the apocalypse happening at the game's mid point, it focuses on each individual main character and tying up the loose ends of their arcs before going all JRPG trope and using the power of friendship to kill a malevolent god. It had to, where do you go after the end of the world? And I thought that each of the payoffs were great and truly earned.


----------



## wankerness

I forgot about Strago entirely! Shows how memorable he was, I guess.

EDIT: I reread your post again to respond to it in more depth. YES, I am absolutely plagued with that paradox - I HATE consumable items, flat-out. I hate the new Zelda for that reason. There's nothing I hate more than strictly limited items, especially if it's functionally your swords. I couldn't deal with Fallout 3 for that reason, and I can't deal with Zelda for that reason, and it all dates back to that RPG paradox you describe, haha. 

Everything you say is probably true, and it also shows how you probably will never use those characters unless you are intentionally going out of your way to have variety. Maybe I'll try it someday, but I have plenty of other games to play right now.  I'm 60 hours into Persona 5 right now, so probably 2/3 of the way through or something?

What you say about the plot being structured to be meandering is what I said! I think it's a fault. I like the character moments and everything, but they never get back together and have what feels like a strong narrative in the second half. They just meander and then bam the end. It feels like it's missing a big chunk. As I said, it's my favorite FF, but IMO it's undeniable that the first half feels like it had far more effort put into it.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

TheShreddinHand said:


> Nice! Does it let you go from normal play with DK and switch to funky mode if a particular section is just too darn frustrating? And then back again?



Yeah, i'm pretty sure you can change between original and funky mode in the options.


----------



## wankerness

I heard it also offers it automatically if you die too much in the Switch version. I have the Wii-U version and haven't touched it yet. I'm kind of scared. I was good at the old ones, but I don't know if they were considered "difficult."


----------



## bostjan

I don't mind the idea of consumable weapons, but I prefer it to be handled more like Diablo than like Breath of the Wild. The wear and tear ought to be a lot less rapid than it was in Zelda, especially with the relic items, and there should also have been a mechanic to repair worn items. Other than that, the new Zelda game was pretty good. I liked how pretty much everything in the entire story was basically optional.

Harkening back to the old Privateer PC game, I think it really says something how these mechanics were, in some way, incorporated in a game that's maybe as old as the average forum user here nowadays.


----------



## mongey

I'm struggling to get into skyrim on switch a little. after 120 + hours of zelda its feeling a little dated

thinking of re starting and doing a pure magic character just to mix it up a little as the sword play and archery feel terrible compared to BoTW


----------



## wankerness

bostjan said:


> I don't mind the idea of consumable weapons, but I prefer it to be handled more like Diablo than like Breath of the Wild. The wear and tear ought to be a lot less rapid than it was in Zelda, especially with the relic items, and there should also have been a mechanic to repair worn items. Other than that, the new Zelda game was pretty good. I liked how pretty much everything in the entire story was basically optional.
> 
> Harkening back to the old Privateer PC game, I think it really says something how these mechanics were, in some way, incorporated in a game that's maybe as old as the average forum user here nowadays.



Yeah, I have no problem if there's a repair mechanic that's usable (ie diablo). With what I played of Zelda, which was through the whole first plateau and maybe a couple hours past that, most junk busted in just a few swings. I already forgot if there was a repair mechanic - my memory is that there was, but it was expensive enough to might as well not exist. With expensive weapons I found myself doing EXACTLY what Bloody_Inferno described - saving them for something that never came, meaning my inventory was always full!! Just, ugh. It's like that game was tailor-made for me to hate it. The only things that could have made it worse for my personal dislikes would be a timer you were working against, wonky stealth sections, and some difficult first-person platforming. Maybe they'll make a sequel with all the same mechanics but including the Majora's Mask timer, and they can market it directly to me and call it "ZELDA: HAHA, F YOU!!"

My friends tell me I'm an idiot and that I didn't play enough of it, etc, but what I DID play absolutely failed to get me into it and actively made me miserable and angry. There were other mechanics I disliked as well, but nothing I couldn't have gotten over if not for the weapon breaking thing. Maybe I'll try again someday.


----------



## bostjan

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I have no problem if there's a repair mechanic that's usable (ie diablo). With what I played of Zelda, which was through the whole first plateau and maybe a couple hours past that, most junk busted in just a few swings. I already forgot if there was a repair mechanic - my memory is that there was, but it was expensive enough to might as well not exist. With expensive weapons I found myself doing EXACTLY what Bloody_Inferno described - saving them for something that never came, meaning my inventory was always full!! Just, ugh. It's like that game was tailor-made for me to hate it. The only things that could have made it worse for my personal dislikes would be a timer you were working against, wonky stealth sections, and some difficult first-person platforming. Maybe they'll make a sequel with all the same mechanics but including the Majora's Mask timer, and they can market it directly to me and call it "ZELDA: HAHA, F YOU!!"
> 
> My friends tell me I'm an idiot and that I didn't play enough of it, etc, but what I DID play absolutely failed to get me into it and actively made me miserable and angry. There were other mechanics I disliked as well, but nothing I couldn't have gotten over if not for the weapon breaking thing. Maybe I'll try again someday.



Wow, my feelings exactly.

A lot of folks loved Majora's Mask. I felt too stressed out playing it. I don't mind a timer for a specific section of the game, like in Ocarina of Time, how you had to sometimes race someone or deliver a package to an NPC in a short time, for a side-quest. Those were fun, but I like to generally take my time playing a Zelda game, looking for secrets and generally screwing around in the open world.

I hated the weapon-breaking mechanic early in the game. It did get a lot better later on, merely because weapons were less scarce, but my biggest disappointment was finishing a shrine, getting a totally badass weapon, and then using it on one enemy, that's right, killing only one enemy, then having the damned thing break.


----------



## Ralyks

This thread just made me want to go back and play FFVI now... Probably should, I had it one PSone and got to the point where I found everyonenagain after the apocalypse... then never finished. I had that problem with a lot of Final Fantasy games for a while. I’d literally get the point where I could go finish the game, would stop and get ever last side quest and item and weapon to try and 100% everything, then get so burnt out on the game I’d need a break, then end up forgetting about it...


----------



## TheShreddinHand

You guys are scaring me off of playing BOTW! Ha!


----------



## wankerness

TheShreddinHand said:


> You guys are scaring me off of playing BOTW! Ha!



I'm in an extreme minority, so don't worry about it too much unless you also hate that mechanic deeply like myself.

I also found the open world uninteresting and bland compared to the likes of Horizon Zero Dawn, maybe cause I'm an idiot. I was mainly out of videogames for about 10 years so I'm not worn out on that kind of stuff (I think it's called "Ubisoft style?" I"ve never played anything but Far Cry 3 and Far Cry Primal from them). HZD is one of my favorite games ever and in some respects Zelda is the anti-HZD with what seems like a total lack of collectibles. I mean, some of that stuff in HZD was total crap like Far Cry, but there was also stuff like the audio logs that went a HUGE way towards world building and even a bit towards fleshing out the story. Zelda seemed to be kind of...a game where you turn it on, screw around for a bit, and log off with no particular goals in mind or any progression towards anything. Which is fine, just not for me. Again, maybe it's not like that and I'd have gotten more into it if I played more.


----------



## bostjan

TheShreddinHand said:


> You guys are scaring me off of playing BOTW! Ha!


I still enjoyed playing it - for a while.
Honestly, the weapons breaking during a fight was super annoying at first, and then got less annoying later on. Once you have the Master Sword, it's a lot less annoying, actually, since that weapon heals itself, but when it "powers down" or whatever, it always did seem like it was at a bad time for it to do so. I just think that particular aspect of the game was far more frustrating than entertaining.

The world in the game was HUGE, but it seemed sometimes like just a lot of meaningless space between where you were and where you wanted to go, to force you to teleport a lot.

Other than that, the game had a lot of really nifty mechanics. I liked how you had to figure out which weapons worked best on which enemies, and I really loved all of the puzzle elements of the game, which were classic Zelda style. Changing outfits and dealing with different environments (i.e. temperature) was also classic Zelda taken up a notch.

The game had a lot of potential with what it was doing, I just had a few complaints particular to my own biases. I'd still recommend trying it out.


----------



## mongey

TheShreddinHand said:


> You guys are scaring me off of playing BOTW! Ha!


I loved it. the weapon mechanic is annoying at first but when you just accept it and accept that there are weapons everywhere then I got over it . collecting korok seeds ealry to open more inventory spots helps allot


----------



## mongey

bostjan said:


> I still enjoyed playing it - for a while.
> Honestly, the weapons breaking during a fight was super annoying at first, and then got less annoying later on. Once you have the Master Sword, it's a lot less annoying, actually, since that weapon heals itself, but when it "powers down" or whatever, it always did seem like it was at a bad time for it to do so. I just think that particular aspect of the game was far more frustrating than entertaining.
> 
> The world in the game was HUGE, but it seemed sometimes like just a lot of meaningless space between where you were and where you wanted to go, to force you to teleport a lot.
> 
> Other than that, the game had a lot of really nifty mechanics. I liked how you had to figure out which weapons worked best on which enemies, and I really loved all of the puzzle elements of the game, which were classic Zelda style. Changing outfits and dealing with different environments (i.e. temperature) was also classic Zelda taken up a notch.
> 
> The game had a lot of potential with what it was doing, I just had a few complaints particular to my own biases. I'd still recommend trying it out.


its funny

I tele ported way less in zelda than I do in other open world games.Im usually pretty lazy .

I always had shires and korok seeds to find on my journey . once you level up your stamina and get the revali's gale perk you can basically climb any mountain that's in your way . I ofund just roaming aorund very entertaining


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Yeah, pretty sure I'm going to still get it. I'm still being a big nerd and collecting every moon in Mario first and then either getting BOTW or Donkey Kong.


----------



## mongey

ok having fun in skyrim now just being a magic character . running round in my robes burning fools


----------



## wankerness

Magic frustrated me in that game for a while due to having to switch out spells to do things like casting illusion spells, healing, or applying armor. It felt way too console-designed. Eventually I got frustrated and put on heavy armor and healed myself while getting smacked for a while until I maxed it out, at which point I just ran around in daedric armor dualcasting lightning bolts and fireballs at people since you lose the magic penalty at max armor rank!


----------



## mongey

I do agree its not ideal . I almost treat it like a turn based thing 

the melee combat is really loose playing on the switch handheld screen .it moves so fast .oneof the areas it hasn't aged well


----------



## Ralyks

GameStop had a used copy of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze, and I had a 20% off a used game coupon. So that happened. Been trying to play my Switch again, and made it a goal to finish Breath of the Wild by the fall.

Also, jumped back into Destiny 2 with the new expansion. Already have plans to run the new raid lair on Saturday with some clan mates.


----------



## TedEH

I finally started on a serious run through Okami HD. I have the PS2 disc, but it doesn't work, and I've been sitting on the HD copy on steam for a while, so it's been waiting in the backlog for a while. This game's got so much cool stuff going on visually, and the gameplay feels just like the PS2-era adventure-y goodness mixed with some almost Zelda-vibes, like I was expecting.


----------



## wankerness

I have Okami for Wii but didn't play more than about 20 minutes of it before losing interest. On the very recent PS4 rerelease, i saw a bunch of negative reappraisals as being repetitive and about 40 hours too long, with many saying "don't bother unless you are nostalgic." It kind of put me off! Oh well, it wasn't going to happen anytime soon considering my other Nintendo backlog (new Zelda, Mario Galaxy, Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, Metroid Prime 3). To say nothing of the PS4 backlog  And Red Dead Redemption!!


----------



## TedEH

I think it's fair that I have a lot of that nostalgia value going. I really enjoyed stuff like Ico, which realistically is a shallow game, mechanically speaking, but I enjoyed it from the "I just like the experience of playing this" side of things. I'm also not necessarily turned off by repetition as long as the "grind" of the game is enjoyable (see: Borderlands 2). I find that I tend to evaluate games very differently than others do, so it's hard to say. Honestly, the small amount I've played so far has been pretty high quality stuff for that era - no shortage of naritive beats, small additions to the play mechanics being introduced pretty regularly, the difficulty isn't too much for no reason, the pacing between fights and doing other stuff is decent, the visuals are constantly impressive, performance has no hiccups, etc. There are elements that feel dated for sure, like the camera logic isn't very "smart", and they use that annoying Banjo-esque voiceover thing, but these are all pretty standard for the time the game came from and don't take anything away for me.


----------



## wankerness

Ico is something I've always been meaning to play. It still hasn't been ported to PS4, unfortunately. I was hoping it would when they got around to Shadow of the COlossus, but no dice. I'm thinking of subscribing to PSNOW for one month and burning through it and the first couple God of War games before I cancel.


----------



## TedEH

I think, for me, Ico is the kind of game that benefits heavily from the context it's played in. It's the kind of game that needs to be played on a PS2, plugged into a terrible grainy TV, where you stay up until 2am and forget that you're an adult and have responsibilities. It's not mechanically deep, and the visuals probably wouldn't hold up on in "HD" without a lot of work. Even the sharpness of a new TV would probably ruin some of the vibe of the PS2 version. But, in the right frame of mind, it's a great game for letting your imagination fill in the extra depth, and while the game doesn't do a lot, it does things well.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I've been playing South Park: Fractured but whole and it's pretty damn funny, especially when you start unlocking timefarts and microaggression counters (yes those are actual game mechanics). The microaggression one really cracks me up, as you have to fight PC principal to learn how to counter microaggressions/become a social justice warrior.


----------



## StevenC

You guys have lost me... Majora's Mask and Breath of the Wild are my two favourite games ever.


----------



## wankerness

Haha. I have never actually played Majora's Mask beyond playing it for about 30 minutes at a friend's house, dying to the time limit, and going NOPE, NOT FOR ME!!!! I have it on virtual console now since I've heard SO many reappraisals of it over the years saying it's one of the best of the whole series. But, time limits still upset me greatly when it comes to games with exploration involved. I might get around to it someday.

I'm now almost 80 hours into Persona 5. Jeez.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

The weapon durability in BOTW is annoying, but I kind of like it since it forces me to use different weapons. I just wish the durability was better for guardian weapons or other uncommon weapons, I think I broke like 4 guardian swords fighting a lynel last time.


----------



## TedEH

I've been hearing comments about the weapon durability now that the sort of OMG NEW ZELDA GAME period had died off a bit. I think that seems to be the pattern -> They're great games as long as you can get along with some of the new / core mechanics (time resets, weapon durability, etc).


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, it seems like the honeymoon period wears off after a while and then we get the actual opinions of the game. I remember Skyward Sword had similar OMG BEST GAME EVER reactions at first, and it seemed like no one cared about it anymore after a few months.


----------



## TedEH

I do absolutely still want to play it at some point though.  The backlog of games is too long to justify it right now, but some day I'll come across a great deal for a switch and dive into it, I'm sure.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Skyward Sword had promise but became one of the weaker of the Zelda entries. Nintendo are usually creative with motion controls with their in house games, but in this case it felt rather forced at times, and incredibly clunky at worst. It didn't feel as big as the previous entries either.

Regarding Okami, I LOVED the hell out of that game. It scratched the Zelda itch when I chose to get a PS2 instead of a Gamecube. It takes Ocarina of Time mixed with Soul Blazer and Actraiser games (who remembers them? ) and sets them deep in Japanese Shinto folklore and jacks it up to the extreme. It just felt aesthetically different to so many action adventure games at the time. There's a bit of repetition when it feels like a cluster of small lands where you kill the big demon to stop the plague and open up a Kentucky Fried Deliverance, then do it all again next door, yes. It's no more repetitive than a lot of forgettable triple A games nowadays. And the celestial brush mechanic can slow down or kill the pace but it's still awesome and imaginative nonetheless. And Link can't piss on enemies like Amaterasu could, so there's that.  Still holds up IMO, but then again, for me, this game doesn't feel old unless I look at a calendar.

Also on the subject of Zelda, I also loved Majora's Mask, because it's one of the few games that breaks away from the usual Zelda template that most if not all the games have been following since the NES original (BOTW included to a small extent). Majora's Mask turns the Zelda norm over it's head both story and gameplay. The main time loop gimmick is what makes it more challenging from the usual, where at the time I felt Ocarina Of Time (including Water Temple) was way too easy because once you play a Zelda game, you've played them all. Though it does get it's little annoyances especially when you're reintroduced to character dialogue or doing or undoing certain land areas to get everything or even get by (I really loved playing you Stone Temple, but you did eat up a lot of my time). But I guess that's me.


----------



## wankerness

I think the repetitive complaint with Okami was tied to how long it was. Modern AAA games tend to be like 10 hours long so you don't notice.


----------



## Westdog666

Ive been playing Zelda : Breath of the wild...and it’s amazing!! Can get lost in it for hours just exploring the map and side quests let alone the main story! Visual masterpiece too, definitely worth checking out!


----------



## wankerness

I hit the end of hangout time in Persona 5 and had all confidents maxed except one at Rank 9, which WOULD have been maxed if I'd alternated two days in my hangout schedule (it was totally dumb guesses). I didn't save a game before that one puny mistake. Thus, this is now the worst game ever.


----------



## TedEH

I was thinking about it the other day, and realized that Majoras Mask is the game I have re-played and completed the most. I've played a lot of games, but only re-played a handful of games. That one game in particular seems to be one exception where, as a kid in particular, I'd frequently fire that game up and power through the whole thing in a day, or a weekend, because why not, it's great. There's a whole bunch of games that I'd like to revisit, but probably won't just because the backlog of stuff I haven't played yet is too long already.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I hit the end of hangout time in Persona 5 and had all confidents maxed except one at Rank 9, which WOULD have been maxed if I'd alternated two days in my hangout schedule (it was totally dumb guesses). I didn't save a game before that one puny mistake. Thus, this is now the worst game ever.



Stuff like this makes me nervous about try to platinum the game, and wondering if it’s going to take a third run...


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Stuff like this makes me nervous about try to platinum the game, and wondering if it’s going to take a third run...



Yeah, it's like a really, REALLY slow motion car accident. 100 hours to find out you made one mistake with optimization 2 hours in. Most games have a trophy page with notes for "missable" trophies and it's like 10% of them. This game it's like 100%!!

Fortunately I had created a second save file so I only had to go back a couple hours to the ship boss and redo it and just skip all the cutscenes! I'll retry the confidant leveling tonight. But yeah, DEFINITELY not platinuming it. Like, you can completely f yourself over with library books, since it gives you no hint whether you read them before, and when you suddenly are barred from the school you can't go back and fix that mistake! I didn't even try with the fishing crap. 

There's a really good walkthrough I used for maneuvering some of the dungeon sections (particularly that airlock stuff) that seemed like it covered all the min-max stuff since it had complete schedules for every single day! It was actually written with really good english and appropriate pictures, etc as well, and wasn't one of those trash sites like IGN or gamerevolution where they just copy-paste something else and are missing tons of info cause they hadn't actually played the game themselves. The fact it's free on the net is kind of sad. I infinitely prefer text to having to fast forward through a 20 minute youtube video to find the answer I was looking for when it comes to a game like this.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Stuff like this makes me nervous about try to platinum the game, and wondering if it’s going to take a third run...



For a game as big as Persona 5, it'll probably take more than 2 runs. I'm just wrapping up the 3rd palace on my first NG+ run and I already somewhat missed out on the rare Gem monsters and what to really do with them. I suppose they show up in Mementos later but depends on if I can be assed. 

The fact that filling the Persona compendium is also extremely money dependent certainly doesn't help either, especially if you want _that_ Persona...

Having said that, I'm still having fun at NG+ mode, and haven't had that kind of NG+ fun in a JRPG since Chrono Trigger (previous Persona games not counting). Confidants levels are much easier to raise, and it felt great to completely waltz through the first palace after struggling in my first run. I guess it helps with the game encouraging you to do so with so many time spending options. I was extremely militant with boosting confidants (more personas) so I skipped all the DVD rentals, 1 movie date, all of Mishima's late invites, maybe 1 retro game/book or 2 and didn't go on a single romance date. But I was having fun rediscovering all the things I missed out on now I can easily get my Confidant ranks sooner. 

That and the romance options are always good fun in Persona games. I was initially thinking of going through all of them, but accidentally declined Ann. Oh well, I'll just go through Hifumi's romance instead.


----------



## wankerness

I got loaded by doing confuse on a couple of mementos bosses for about 15 minutes each, since they toss out about 50k yen every few turns. I think my money held steady at ~1.7 million through the back half of the game. I didn't go nuts and start fusing personas that were way over my level, though. If I had, I might have gone broke in five seconds.

I liked that the game's romances are completely pointless, you don't get any benefit from anything related to them except when Ann gives you some ANN PUFFS at the stage show towards the end, and you don't get punished for just ignoring them the rest of the game, either. I got into the first one that you can, and that was that, I didn't realize that literally every woman besides Sae throws herself at you, even the much older women. I should look up a woman's perspective on this game. Obviously Kawakami's the most eye-rollingly sexist. "MASTER!!!" Also, being Japanese, of course it has no gay options, but whatever, I just thought it was striking in comparison to say, Bioware games.

I said Ryuji's the worst character personality-wise, but that was before I got Haru. Man alive, that voice actor is AGGRAVATING in her attempt to sound like a shy wimp. Both of those character are great gameplaywise, though! I finished the last boss and am now on what I guess is the final Mementos run? Only FOOL is still Rank 9.

I'm not sure if I want to touch NG+ anytime soon, this game is SO damn long. I did enjoy it, but I found the palaces stressful since I felt a need to clear them in one go since the time is so hard-limited for the entire game. You can NEVER take it easy. If there wasn't a time limit on literally everything I think I'd enjoy the actual battles/dungeons a LOT more. If there are more SP-restoring abilities in the game other than consumables and the now-too-wimpy SP 3 accessories, then maybe it won't matter so much. But yeah, now characters like Ann can go OOM in about 10 rounds. I should look into this.


----------



## Ralyks

Man, now I’m getting stressed about my NG+  I’m only still in the first palace, haven’t even gotten Ann yet. Probably doesn’t help that I’ve been watching the Anime as it’s airing so I’ve just been seeing the story again that way (albeit abridged).
Also, I romanced Tae the first time. Something about an older goth chick doctor just worked for me. This time I’m debating between Fatuba and Makoto.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Man, now I’m getting stressed about my NG+  I’m only still in the first palace, haven’t even gotten Ann yet.



That's still just the tutorial.  You'll be fine.

Between this and FF6 (back to my JRPG regression), I really having fun with Persona 5's NG+. It's far more streamlined, less worry about the palaces or confidant building (so I don't have to blow so much money on Fortune Telling anymore) or even stat building (no need to buy that overpriced juice or eat that ridiculously sized burger). It's sort of the game's way to encourage you to go platinum and try the other things I missed out on, like the batting range that was more fun and in depth in Yakuza 5. Replaying it made me want to romance Makoto again, but I already have her (admittedly useful) gifts as reminders to try someone else.



wankerness said:


> If there are more SP-restoring abilities in the game other than consumables and the now-too-wimpy SP 3 accessories, then maybe it won't matter so much.



Buy SP 7s from Takemi and get Kawakami to make coffee and cook curry for you at every given chance and never worry about SP ever again.


----------



## wankerness

Ah, if you don't have to waste time on anything like working jobs or studying then that would free up a gigantic amount of time. Stats also are what blocked me from being able to level up the gated confidants for a long, long time since leveling proficiency was such a pain - only making infiltration tools gave you three points, iirc. I don't think I got Yusuke up until almost the end of the game, let alone Haru (required 4 and 5 proficiency respectively).

The main benefit of NG+ would be to finally dodge when that teacher throws chalk at me.


----------



## mongey

fuck. this persona game sounds horrible


----------



## wankerness

Maybe! It was fun enough to play for more than 3 hours, though, unlike the last Zelda.  Still, I'm looking forward to finishing the damn thing and moving on. I'm intimidated by the last stretch too much to try.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> fuck. this persona game sounds horrible



For most modern gamers, perhaps so. This is coming from the same flock where life/dating sims, text based adventure are considered games after all, so don't expect everyone to get into it. Frankly I'm surprised the franchise graduated to AAA level popularity last year.

But for JRPG junkies such as myself, it's one the best to come out of the stagnating genre in years.


----------



## mongey

lol

yeah its all horses for courses. 

If there is one game mechanic that will personally put me off any game . its maintaining relationships and all that .


----------



## mongey

Bloody_Inferno said:


> For most modern gamers, perhaps so. But for JRPG junkies such as myself, it's one the best to come out of the stagnating genre in years.



yeah I get it. I was being a smart ass

I actually like rpg's but the whole relationships things puts me off any game.If I could've killed everyone in stardew valley I would've


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> yeah I get it. I was being a smart ass
> 
> I actually like rpg's but the whole relationships things puts me off any game.If I could've killed everyone in stardew valley I would've



Fair enough. I don't like them outside JRPGs either for whatever reason sans Witcher 3. JRPGS really only treat them as a shallow diversion more than anything else.


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> lol
> 
> yeah its all horses for courses.
> 
> If there is one game mechanic that will personally put me off any game . its maintaining relationships and all that .



Haha. I heard this game referred to as a "dating sim" repeatedly before playing it, which had me apprehensive, but as I said that aspect is so irrelevant to the game that it might as well not exist. Mass Effect 1/2/3 have way more in the way of romantic garbage in them. This is just like...two scenes per character where you can make someone go "omg, you like me?!" and there's basically no "payoff" unless you go out of your way to go on dates with them afterwards, which gives you NO benefit. And the relationships don't have to be MAINTAINED, just leveled up. But yeah, it very well might still annoy you to death.

The battle system in this game can be harsh as hell. You can knock down enemies with their weaknesses and sometimes take them out in one turn, but if you fail at doing that, the enemies often can retaliate and knock half your guys down to zero health in THEIR one turn. It's maybe too much of a seesaw for me. I do like turn-based more than the ones that have action bar timers for picking your abilities or whatever, though, where it essentially measures your ability to navigate whatever clunky menu system the game has. Oh, and the battle system is also big on you "stealthing" up to them and getting a sneak pre-emptive attack on them. It's pretty fun, if stressful based on the difficulty level in early/late stages (I played on normal).


----------



## Ralyks

mongey said:


> fuck. this persona game sounds horrible



If RPGs aren’t your bag, probably. Personally, A game hasn’t impacted me like Persona 5 has since Final Fantasy VII, which I fall under the “Best game ever” camp there.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Got the itch to replay GTA IV since it's the 10 year anniversary. 

The controls are just as tedious as I remember them being.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I heard this game referred to as a "dating sim" repeatedly before playing it, which had me apprehensive, but as I said that aspect is so irrelevant to the game that it might as well not exist.



Pretty much. Though I do find it odd that this (or any Persona game) is considered a dating sim, being such a small aspect in the game, and usually miniscule in most mainstream JRPGs anyway. Certainly smaller than any Bioware game and any of the Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon type farming sims. Life sim, perhaps is the more appropriate in this case. 

I get that it's Japan and there's no same sex options (probably Atlus keeping tradition), but I sort of wished they did, just to see what controversy they could brew up. They've already shown balls with dating your teacher, but I'm curious what kind of dialogue the developers would have to write up if I chose to romance Sojiro, the weapons dealer or the politician. 

Dating sims.... yeah, those are games I won't be touching anytime soon. I dabbled with one flash game during my Uni years, but that was it.


----------



## wankerness

I played Catherine, which was some combination of horror/puzzle/dating game, I think. That is as close as I've gotten!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Oh yeah, forgot about Catherine. That's been rotting in my pile of shame with the Infamous games and Red Dead Redemption. It's even made by the Persona guys. 

I was recommended Huniepop and Doki Doki Literature Club due to them being above average. I've actually seen Huniepop in action and DDLC has been getting a lot of high regard, but I don't think either game is enough incentive for me to play.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I get that it's Japan and there's no same sex options (probably Atlus keeping tradition), but I sort of wished they did, just to see what controversy they could brew up. They've already shown balls with dating your teacher, but I'm curious what kind of dialogue the developers would have to write up if I chose to romance Sojiro, the weapons dealer or the politician.


Atlus needs to play some Fire Emblem games and get with the times.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Atlus needs to play some Fire Emblem games and get with the times.



More like how Nintendo coped from the backlash for not having same sex marriage in Tomodachi Life.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> More like how Nintendo coped from the backlash for not having same sex marriage in Tomodachi Life.



Come to think of it, Atlus has a polarising relationship with handling LGBT characters. On one hand Persona 2 can trigger one gay romance with the protagonist, and Persona 4 has Kanji Tatsumi, which is as progressive as it gets by Japan's standards. But on the other hand, Persona 3 has 'that' beach scene and Persona 4 has Naoto Shirogane, who's arc completely undermines any form of progress.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Oh yeah, forgot about Catherine. That's been rotting in my pile of shame with the Infamous games and Red Dead Redemption. It's even made by the Persona guys.



Catherine is something I'm glad I played, but I'm not sure how much I ENJOYED it. I'm not huge on puzzle games. I loved the aesthetics and the bizarre plot and especially bizarre bosses, but I didn't like the core puzzle mechanics. The controls being kind of wonky didn't help.


----------



## Ralyks

Man, I’ve had Catherine sitting on my shelf for a while. Picked up a used copy a while back when my ex say it on the shelf (plus it got great reviews and, ok, maybe I was interested too...) played a few times, it was fun, then it fell into the backlog. At this point, I’m just going to wait for the expanded version that’s coming out on PS4 to revisit that one.


----------



## wankerness

The first palace in Persona 5 with the statues of severed cleavage and butts brought back memories of Catherine. I instantly assumed they had the same makers, which I didn't know beforehand. The bosses in Catherine are ridiculous visualizations of sexual hang-ups. That game's a lot more "M-rated" than Persona.


----------



## wankerness

I finally finished Persona 5. The length of cutscenes in this game are astounding at times. The ending makes the endings of Return of the King seem concise!! But, yeah, good game. I didn't LOVE it, it can't touch Nier Automata or Horizon Zero Dawn on the system, but it's a damn good game for what it is. Just, what it is clashes with a few of my preferences, particularly the fact it has a time limit hanging over it. I'm tempted to do a New Game Plus on it at some point, though. I'm guessing it will be more enjoyable knowing what the hell I'm doing from the start.

I made the last section of the game too easy, probably, by fusing Yoshitsune and getting it up to the level where it got an attack that hit all enemies for something like 1500 damage, meaning the last boss was a total joke. But, oh well. The plot/confidant stuff seems to be more the point of this game than the combat, even though the combat is really slick and some of the best I've experienced in a standard RPG.


----------



## mongey

fired up Overwatch for the first time in a about a year over the weekend. I was playing it quite a bit before that but i never get a chance to game on my ps4 anymore . was couch bound sick for the weekend so had some spare time to burn 

there were 2 new characters I haven't even seen before 


I like the game allot .wish I had more time to play it .really took to playing Orisa . messing people up with those shields and teh magnet thing is fun


----------



## wankerness

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice - 

If you want to feel really stressed out, depressed, and awful, play this psychosis simulator! Ugh. The controls being wallowy and making you feel like you have to smash the buttons down with all your might during combat doesn't help. And the limited-death thing combined with sections where you suddenly get dropped in front of something that instantly kills you if you aren't expecting it can be infuriating! Argh. I am halfway through so I feel like I have to finish it given how short I've heard it is. But it sure is an altogether miserable experience. Partly by design!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I made the last section of the game too easy, probably, by fusing Yoshitsune and getting it up to the level where it got an attack that hit all enemies for something like 1500 damage, meaning the last boss was a total joke.



I ended up grinding a bunch to make the last boss easier as well, but you gotta admit, the final boss theme music is Bad. Ass.

As for Hellblade, really cool game, but I feel like it's something I want to get headphones for before really delving in.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I ended up grinding a bunch to make the last boss easier as well, but you gotta admit, the final boss theme music is Bad. Ass.
> 
> As for Hellblade, really cool game, but I feel like it's something I want to get headphones for before really delving in.



I have a surround system so it was fine with the horrific "blindness" section where you have to trace your path via what direction sounds are coming from, and I don't know if I could take it with headphones. I can't stand the constant voiceovers, particularly the adult woman giving you encouragement, which I know is another huge aspect of the psychosis simulation, but ugh. Having that forced against my ears so I'd be unable to escape it might actually make me as loony as the character.

I just bought Persona 4 Gold cause it was in the flash sale, and then bought a Playstation TV (something I never knew existed) to play it on! Boy, am I going to regret this. At least the PSTV was about 1/3 as expensive as a Vita.


----------



## Ralyks

I actually got the PSTV before the Vita, also for the purpose of Persona 4 Golden. Ended up getting the Vita, but the PSTV is still cool for when I want to play P4G or other Vita games on a TV, as well as remote playing my PS4 from my bedroom.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I actually got the PSTV before the Vita, also for the purpose of Persona 4 Golden. Ended up getting the Vita, but the PSTV is still cool for when I want to play P4G or other Vita games on a TV, as well as *remote playing my PS4* from my bedroom.



I had no idea it could do that! Weird. I'll have to try that out. 

I finished Senua's Sacrifice. This may be my least favorite game of all time. I can't remember ever cursing a game to the end and openly involuntarily swearing and going I HATE THIS. I was incredibly relieved when I finished it. If I hadn't heard the game was beatable in one sitting, I would have just abandoned it (it took me 4, I think, cause I could only take it in small bursts). 

The combat is SO terrible. It's wallowy and unresponsive and you're constantly locking on to the wrong enemy all of a sudden or getting stuck on either room edges or other enemies while very slowly backpedalling/sidestepping. Almost every bit of combat in the game is just the game throwing enemies at you repeatedly - you kill one, another spawns, etc. As the game progresses, it's exactly the same thing, except TWO or THREE at a time!! And some might be slightly faster or you might not be able to parry them and instead have to use the crummy dodge function! 

Making it through the levels is also a nightmare just cause they're so dull and you move SO slowly, even while running, that everything feels like a chore. It doesn't help that some of the levels are intentionally mazes, and others might as well be since everything looks the same and combat gets you turned around so you end up going back the same way for a while but not being able to tell. This is especially a problem in the "hell" level. Ugh. Playing the game at 2x speed would have improved it.

The three boss battles aren't bad, I'll concede it that. They're very mechanical and repetitive, but they're stressful in the right way, I think.

The PRODUCTION VALUES of this thing can't be faulted. It looks great, especially the character models, and really especially considering the budget. It's just the story is so uninteresting and everything about it is so unpleasant.


----------



## TedEH

^ I think that's the first negative review I've heard of that one. I definitely plan on trying it at some point, though I'm waiting for something like a holiday sale, because unplayed steam game piles of shame.

I tried that steam link app the other day and was surprised at how well it worked. I've tried to use screen mirroring apps and things like that at home before and got terrible results, but the steam link app worked really nicely, if you can get past the slight lag. You'd never be able to get by in a twitchy shooter or fighting game, but it's enough for adventury-games. or something that isn't super real-time focused. Anyone else given the app a shot?


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> ^ I think that's the first negative review I've heard of that one. I definitely plan on trying it at some point, though I'm waiting for something like a holiday sale, because unplayed steam game piles of shame.
> 
> I tried that steam link app the other day and was surprised at how well it worked. I've tried to use screen mirroring apps and things like that at home before and got terrible results, but the steam link app worked really nicely, if you can get past the slight lag. You'd never be able to get by in a twitchy shooter or fighting game, but it's enough for adventury-games. or something that isn't super real-time focused. Anyone else given the app a shot?



I think that the reviews may have given it slack since it's practically an indie game, which I agree it deserves. I mean, I'd rather they pad the score of something like this than some AAA thing that they positively review just to keep the review copies coming. But, I just found the mechanics absolutely horrible and clunky and hated every single combat interlude and was bored during the rest of it due to the wallowy controls, boring puzzles, repetitive environments, and especially the snail-like movement, even while running, which the game doesn't always even let you do. The couple of reviews I eyeballed before buying it on sale didn't mention any of this. The LOOK of it is fantastic and the aesthetics of the "psychosis simulation" is unlike anything else I've played, even though I kind of hated that too due to disinterest in the story/character and annoyance from the sound of some of the voice actors and their line deliveries. "SHE CAN DO IT! SHE CAN'T DO IT! BEHIND YOU!" Ugh. 

Maybe the problem was first starting it after Horizon Zero Dawn, which is the polar opposite of it in terms of environment and movement speed, and then coming back to it after Persona 5, which is the polar opposite of it in aesthetics!

I have to cleanse my palette now. I think I might play Dragon Age Inquisition again. I fired it up yesterday and was shocked by how dated it already looks and how bad the framerate is during cutscenes on PS4. But, I think I'll probably still find it fun once it gets going. Or, I'll just wish I was playing Witcher 3 again!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I have to cleanse my palette now.


I do find it interesting that this is a thing. I've realized more and more lately that after finishing a game that took a decent investment to get through, I want the next thing that I do to be completely different - a completely different style or genre of game, or maybe not play games at all for a while.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I think that the reviews may have given it slack since it's practically an indie game, which I agree it deserves. I mean, I'd rather they pad the score of something like this than some AAA thing that they positively review just to keep the review copies coming. But, I just found the mechanics absolutely horrible and clunky and hated every single combat interlude and was bored during the rest of it due to the wallowy controls, boring puzzles, repetitive environments, and especially the snail-like movement, even while running, which the game doesn't always even let you do. The couple of reviews I eyeballed before buying it on sale didn't mention any of this. The LOOK of it is fantastic and the aesthetics of the "psychosis simulation" is unlike anything else I've played, even though I kind of hated that too due to disinterest in the story/character and annoyance from the sound of some of the voice actors and their line deliveries. "SHE CAN DO IT! SHE CAN'T DO IT! BEHIND YOU!" Ugh.
> 
> Maybe the problem was first starting it after Horizon Zero Dawn, which is the polar opposite of it in terms of environment and movement speed, and then coming back to it after Persona 5, which is the polar opposite of it in aesthetics!
> 
> I have to cleanse my palette now. I think I might play Dragon Age Inquisition again. I fired it up yesterday and was shocked by how dated it already looks and how bad the framerate is during cutscenes on PS4. But, I think I'll probably still find it fun once it gets going. Or, I'll just wish I was playing Witcher 3 again!


I'm surprised that you'd say the combat is slow and clunky considering the pedigree Ninja Theory has with action/fighting games. I vaguely remember them saying they wanted the combat to have "weight" to it, which would slow it down a lot.. Not many games besides Dark Souls/Bloodborne/For Honor/Chivalry are good at making larger weapons have some heft to them in terms of controls.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> I'm surprised that you'd say the combat is slow and clunky considering the pedigree Ninja Theory has with action/fighting games. *I vaguely remember them saying they wanted the combat to have "weight" to it,* which would slow it down a lot.. Not many games besides Dark Souls/Bloodborne/For Honor/Chivalry are good at making larger weapons have some heft to them in terms of controls.



They certainly succeeded, and it makes sense for the character, they just went overboard to the point that it felt awful to me when combined with how incredibly mundane and repetitive it is. Strategy for every regular enemy is standing in one spot till they swing at you, hitting block at the right time to parry it and then hitting them with a strong attack. Every large enemy is mashing dodge non-stop to slowly move around them and not get hit with their attacks while mashing attack. Variance in strategy comes when there's more than one and then you have to fight the camera to keep them both in front of you, but keep doing the same thing. I dunno. It was bad. I actually heard one critic compare the new God of War unfavorably to it, so either he's insane (my vote) or it's amazing and I am just in a tiny minority (quite possible). I love the new GoW, for the record, but I did think it felt slightly wallowy until the big plot spoiler halfway through. But it wasn't dull or repetitive!

I've never played any of those games you mentioned, besides about an hour of Dark Souls that I don't really remember but don't at all remember being clunky or bothering me. But, I don't remember if I was using heavy weapons. Looking at Ninja Theory's list, I've never played any of those, either. Nor even HEARD of them besides that DMC reboot thing.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> They certainly succeeded, and it makes sense for the character, they just went overboard to the point that it felt awful to me when combined with how incredibly mundane and repetitive it is. Strategy for every regular enemy is standing in one spot till they swing at you, hitting block at the right time to parry it and then hitting them with a strong attack. Every large enemy is mashing dodge non-stop to slowly move around them and not get hit with their attacks while mashing attack. Variance in strategy comes when there's more than one and then you have to fight the camera to keep them both in front of you, but keep doing the same thing. I dunno. It was bad. I actually heard one critic compare the new God of War unfavorably to it, so either he's insane (my vote) or it's amazing and I am just in a tiny minority (quite possible). I love the new GoW, for the record, but I did think it felt slightly wallowy until the big plot spoiler halfway through. But it wasn't dull or repetitive!
> 
> I've never played any of those games you mentioned, besides about an hour of Dark Souls that I don't really remember but don't at all remember being clunky or bothering me. But, I don't remember if I was using heavy weapons. Looking at Ninja Theory's list, I've never played any of those, either. Nor even HEARD of them besides that DMC reboot thing.


Heavy weapons in the souls series aren't really clunky, they just require figuring out the timing and having the requisite strength/dex attributes to actually use them effectively. The DMC reboot had heavy weapons in them too, and they had momentum/heft when you'd swing them, which would allow you to chain their attacks into lighter faster weapon's atttacks if you connected. The shift between weapons was basically seamless. Enslaved was also a pretty great game from them imo. Heavenly sword was solid as well, with andy serkis doing an awesome job as the evil king.


----------



## wankerness

I got a Diablo 3 urge, and the game happened to go on sale the very next day. The controls on PS4 are weird. I don't even remember a dodge button on PC?! It's been long enough since I played it that I don't remember. Maybe it was just that you could move while aiming with a mouse and this is the compromise? Regardless, it's actually pretty smooth so far, though I'm at the beginning where nothing can really do any serious damage to me.

Has anyone played as the necromancer yet? I didn't jump in as one immediately cause I don't know if it's fun or not. I played as all the base classes for a while - is it comparable to any of them? I liked Monk, Demon Hunter and Wizard quite a bit, but wasn't particularly excited about Witch Doctor or Barbarian. I don't think I really played as a Crusader for more than 2 minutes since I was playing through that expansion with my pre-existing characters.


----------



## The Silent Man

Currently playing _Murdered: Soul Suspect_ after completing _Life Is Strange_.
I wish I had a PS4 to play _Detroit: Become Human_!


----------



## wankerness

This review of Detroit made me laugh my ass off, partly cause I had seen the referenced Crazy Fat Ethel II video.



I got to level 70 in Diablo and started a Necromancer and then I'd had my fix as soon as I saw the Necromancer only had a few skills and the ones I unlocked in the first several levels were boring. Maybe I'll touch it again someday!

Played some more of Dragon Age: Inquisition. The facial expressions are so terrifying. We really have come a long way in just the last few years. Even Witcher 3 compared to it is absolutely night and day.

(though I think the original FFX might even have outdone it so maybe it's just a bioware problem)


----------



## bostjan

^ I think that's why I mostly prefer older games. When you booted up Privateer, there was a ~1 minute long set up cutscene, and then you were able to do whatever the hell you wanted for the rest of the game. No having to wash dishes and certainly no tutorials. If you didn't know what the controls were, you'd have to read the game manual or just mash buttons until something did what you wanted.

I used to play a lot of Red Baron. The graphics, by today's standards, would be laughably horrible, but for it's time, it was forgivable, especially given how realistic the controls were. But again, you boot up the game and you're off flying missions in seconds. No NES game I ever remember had a tutorial that you had to play through. But if I pick up a game for PS4 at random, I'd say there's a 90% chance that there will be a tutorial about how to control the character or whatever. That's part of the reason Doom stuck out so much - you boot up the game and you are immediately fighting monsters - people loved that about it so damned much, yet game developers didn't get the hint at all, because it's years later and if I buy a new game, I still have to do a bunch of BS before I can actually play the game.


----------



## mongey

grabbed the SF 30th anniversary collection for my switch .haven't played it yet but at the least will give me a chance to actuality learn how to play III . Played all the others allot, well not SF 1 , but all versions of III I skipped at the time


----------



## Ralyks

I totally forgot the SF 30th anniversary collection was coming. I need to pay through the Alpha series again ASAP.


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> I totally forgot the SF 30th anniversary collection was coming. I need to pay through the Alpha series again ASAP.


yeah

I was big on alpha 2 at the time . always liked it more than alpha 3 and the III series


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> grabbed the SF 30th anniversary collection for my switch .haven't played it yet but at the least will give me a chance to actuality learn how to play III . Played all the others allot, well not SF 1 , but all versions of III I skipped at the time



Spend some time with Third Strike. Go through the first 2 for the story and general feel but Third Strike is where it's at. Great fighting engine that still holds up today arguably better than V (pre arcade edition anyway).

I was big on the Alpha series too. Loved Alpha 2 a lot but then got intimidated by Alpha 3's Vism only to love it more years later.


----------



## mongey

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Spend some time with Third Strike. Go through the first 2 for the story and general feel but Third Strike is where it's at. Great fighting engine that still holds up today arguably better than V (pre arcade edition anyway).
> 
> I was big on the Alpha series too. Loved Alpha 2 a lot but then got intimidated by Alpha 3's Vism only to love it more years later.



cool.

I did try to get into 3rd strike when the online edition came out on 360 but I was playing allot of sf4 at the time and wasn't really motivated to learn a new game when I was enjoying the other one so much .

played allot of alpha 1, then alpha 2 came out and I played that a tonne.and yeah alpha 3 hit with the ism's and it all put me off a little too. I just stuck to playing alpha 2 

I need to give 5 another whirl after arcade edition. I didn't really take to the early versions of it and have just let it sit


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> cool.
> 
> I did try to get into 3rd strike when the online edition came out on 360 but I was playing allot of sf4 at the time and wasn't really motivated to learn a new game when I was enjoying the other one so much .
> 
> played allot of alpha 1, then alpha 2 came out and I played that a tonne.and yeah alpha 3 hit with the ism's and it all put me off a little too. I just stuck to playing alpha 2
> 
> I need to give 5 another whirl after arcade edition. I didn't really take to the early versions of it and have just let it sit



I'm on the same boat as well. The isms in Alpha 3 put me off for a bit, but once I discovered the game breaking joys of Visms (admittedly by going backwards from Capcom Vs SNK 2), I loved it all over again. 

I guess the brand new character themes somewhat put me off from Alpha 3, since the new remixes of the classic themes in Alpha 2 kept the Street Fighter spirit going, I felt it some of it was lost in Alpha 3 despite most of the full cast showing up. 

It took me a while to warm up to Third Strike as well. By the time Capcom doing the seasonal refinement was getting old for me. Aesthetically it was also around the time where they stopped caring about story and music. The plot is essentially a bunch of fighters yelling "OH YEAH?!?!" at each other, and every fighting game soundtrack was reduced to smooth jazz, which sounds fine on it's own, but doesn't really suit a fighting game (I'm looking at you Marvel Vs Capcom 2), so the classic SF spirit was somewhat lost for me there too. I didn't realise how deep the game was until later on, like a refined Super Turbo. 

SFV was the first time in the series where I skipped vanilla entirely. I was already put off by Capcom's Street Fighter Vs Tekken debacle, then Capcom pulled that disastrous launch, which was just "early-early access only, casual players piss off", so bullet dodged. But now with Arcade edition, more characters, more modes, it finally feels like a complete game. I probably should pick that up.


----------



## Demiurge

Playing Boodstained: Curse of the Moon. So apparently it was a Kickstarter stretch goal for the upcoming game Bloodstained, a "spiritual successor" to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and this companion game was intended as a "prequel" to it and in the style of Castlevania 3. Is "prequel" the right word when the game actually comes out chronologically first?

Anyway, it definitely does not shy-away from its inspiration, though there are some interesting twists. Your main character will encounter all of the side characters and you can take them all with you... or you can kill them and gain new abilities... or you can ignore them- all options can have a bearing on which endings and kind of set an extra difficulty level. It's got some nice pixel art and cool music, but the overall difficulty isn't close to CV3. I think I last longer in QWOP than in CV3, and I smoked the normal campaign in Veteran mode, though there's a ton of replay-ability with the different options. $10 on Steam.


----------



## wankerness

Huh. I funded that thing YEARS ago and have just been ignoring the periodic emails about it, although I did notice a recent one where I got to switch my choice of system to get it on from last generation to this generation, good considering it's taken a few years longer than initially projected!

I'm guessing I didn't pay enough to get that precursor thing for free. So you're saying it's good, huh? I am more than fine with it not really being anything new. I paid for this with the hopes it would be something like SOTN! The only "Metroidvania" games I've enjoyed in the decades since have been those GBA and DS castlevania games, the console Castlevania games have been junk and most of the other console titles advertised as such I just haven't liked (ex, Axiom Verge). But man, I love some of those handheld games. The third GBA and the first DS one (the two with Soma) are my favorites. Order of Ecclesia is also really good.


----------



## Demiurge

I really don't like the look of side-scrolling 2.5D games, so that's really clouding my expectations with the proper Bloodstained. Well, maybe they're be some extra motivation to not get upstaged by the opening act!


----------



## mongey

playing some of the SF collection. fuck in handheld mode on switch I cant dragon punch at all facing right. 

gonna take some getting used to the thumb stick


----------



## StevenC

Mario Tennis Aces demo all weekend! Awesome game.


----------



## mongey

more time on SF collection and my execution has improved, gone from completely horrible to somewhat less shit .its pretty weird on the thumb stick.

been mostly on third strike. just arcade mode leaning characters . fucking Gill man . cheap fuck . still haven't beaten him


----------



## TheShreddinHand

This past weekend, finally got to 999 moons on Mario Odyssey, Darker side beat and 100% everything except stupid costumes. But I'm done. I'm not farming 41,000 in coins to get the rest of the costumes I need. Time for a break!


----------



## TedEH

I reached a weird point in Okami the other day - there was this big build up and then a boss, at about 20hrs into the game. You beat the boss and then everyone goes into celebration mode, but no credits happened. I was completely unsure if this was the end of the game or not. But it was convincingly ending-like that I saved and stopped playing for the day. Later googled it and discovered I'm only like a third of the way through. Such a weird narrative issue. Still enjoying the game though.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I reached a weird point in Okami the other day - there was this big build up and then a boss, at about 20hrs into the game. You beat the boss and then everyone goes into celebration mode, but no credits happened. I was completely unsure if this was the end of the game or not. But it was convincingly ending-like that I saved and stopped playing for the day. Later googled it and discovered I'm only like a third of the way through. Such a weird narrative issue. Still enjoying the game though.



Yeah, it's one of the more glaring flaws of the game. Kill the ultimate evil boss and save the day, the go off and kill the ultimate evil boss boss next door and do that again another 3 more times.

Its the sort of constantly bolting on new stuff onto itself method of expanding gameplay common in retro games. In smaller older games like Soul Blazer it sort of worked in a stage structured way but in a large not quite open world of Okami, it is a long slow spiral road with some widdle breaks.


----------



## Ralyks

Yeah, you said you were 20 hours in and I immediately thought "wait, I heard Okami was like 40 hours minimum"  I definitely need to go back to Okami, buuutt...

.... Yakuza 6 is so good....


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> said you were 20 hours in and I immediately thought "wait,


I definitely had the same thought.... "can't possibly be done here". Oh well.


----------



## 7 Dying Trees

Started playing Witcher 3 for the 4th or 5th time again... Love this game far too much.


----------



## Leviathus

MGS4:Guns of the Patriots

Really got into TPP after getting it free one month on PSN so i scooped the MGS legacy collection and fired up the ol' PS3. Really been enjoying 4 so far, i guess ima work my way backwards.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

started playing Dead Cells, it's a pretty fast paced metroidvania/roguelike


----------



## Ralyks

Leviathus said:


> MGS4:Guns of the Patriots
> 
> Really got into TPP after getting it free one month on PSN so i scooped the MGS legacy collection and fired up the ol' PS3. Really been enjoying 4 so far, i guess ima work my way backwards.



Guess that depends on your definition of working backwards. MGS4 is pretty much the end of the story chronologically.


----------



## Mathemagician

Playing rogue legacy. Or “how to stop worrying and love the farm”.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

7 Dying Trees said:


> Started playing Witcher 3 for the 4th or 5th time again... Love this game far too much.



It's for sure an all time hall of famer. I am really hoping to hear more about Cyberpunk 2077 at E3. CD Project Red are the best devs in the business at the moment imho.


----------



## Leviathus

Ralyks said:


> Guess that depends on your definition of working backwards. MGS4 is pretty much the end of the story chronologically.



Lol, good point.


----------



## StevenC

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> It's for sure an all time hall of famer. I am really hoping to hear more about Cyberpunk 2077 at E3. CD Project Red are the best devs in the business at the moment imho.


That's a pretty bold claim when they haven't released a game in over 3 years and, you know, Nintendo still exists.


----------



## wankerness

He said "one of the best," considering their track record and lack of being absorbed and destroyed by the likes of EA or Activision (yet) it's absolutely a fair statement. Who else would you rate above them? Naughty Dog and Nintendo are the only two "gimmes" I can think of who'd be "one of the best," but I'm no expert on all of this.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> That's a pretty bold claim when they haven't released a game in over 3 years and, you know, Nintendo still exists.



I love how you feel the need to white knight Nintendo at any given moment by comparing everything else beneath them. You did it a few posts ago too. Nintendo are big boys. They can look after themselves. They're also like a hot bartender or stripper where they're meant to attract you to giving them money.

Maybe I'm just bitter. I watched my 2 favorite companies Squaresoft and Enix combine into what I hope was a Voltron of corporations. Boy was I naive. Instead, it's become like the pus bleeding Tetsuo at the end of Akira... sigh.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> He said "one of the best," considering their track record and lack of being absorbed and destroyed by the likes of EA or Activision (yet) it's absolutely a fair statement. Who else would you rate above them? Naughty Dog and Nintendo are the only two "gimmes" I can think of who'd be "one of the best," but I'm no expert on all of this.



He said "CD Project Red are the best devs in the business at the moment imho". As far as others to throw in along with them if we wanted to talk about some of the best, Platinum is a very easy one for me. Maybe Team Ico, but I haven't heard great reports on The Last Guardian and haven't had the chance to play it yet.



Bloody_Inferno said:


> I love how you feel the need to white knight Nintendo at any given moment by comparing everything else beneath them. You did it a few posts ago too. Nintendo are big boys. They can look after themselves. They're also like a hot bartender or stripper where they're meant to attract you to giving them money.
> 
> Maybe I'm just bitter. I watched my 2 favorite companies Squaresoft and Enix combine into what I hope was a Voltron of corporations. Boy was I naive. Instead, it's become like the pus bleeding Tetsuo at the end of Akira... sigh.



You mean a joke about Fire Emblem?

By the same token, CD Projekt Red is meant to attract you to give them money. I don't think it's unreasonable to challenge a claim and give a counter example, but in future should I type "CAN YOU PLEASE JUSTIFY YOUR ANSWER?" instead so it's clearer the point I'm pursuing? I think it's bold to base CD Projekt Red's status as "the best devs in the business at the moment" on one 3 year old game and another 6 years in the making with literally no information. I find it hard to justify giving that title to a company that has put out fewer games in the last decade+ than, say, Nintendo has in the last year. Even just the notion of "best at the moment" because, again, no games in 3 years compared with, say, Mario Odyssey. Retro's last game is amazing, and basically all of their games are amazing. Apparently they're working on another one, but I don't have audacity to say they're the best developer at the moment.

All that is to say "I disagree, prove it", but I prefer the way I worded it the first time because it seemed more useful as a post on a discussion board.

Maybe it doesn't need to be said that Nintendo make great games, but at the same time do you remember 3 years ago when everyone was obsessed with Witcher 3 and talking about how great CD Projekt Red were? Do they really need complimenting at this point? Surely with all 3 of their amazing games that defined videogames forever and have been copied infinitely it just goes without saying? Or maybe it's bold to suggest, I dunno.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

StevenC said:


> That's a pretty bold claim when they haven't released a game in over 3 years and, you know, Nintendo still exists.



I love me some Nintendo. That being said, I stand by my "bold" statement. Of my personal opinion.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

I thought about why I think CDPR are the best devs in the business at the moment and came to the conclusion that it's because I believe they tell the best stories. It certainly helps that I like the source material, but for me, it comes back to the stories.

Nothing else I've played in the last several years has had the lasting impact on me that The Witcher 3 had. I found myself contemplating many of the missions and events in TW3 long after I had completed them.

They created characters and stories that hit me in the feels like no other devs ever have. Honorable mention to Black Isle/old school Bioware for the Baldur's Gate games for the same reason.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> You mean a joke about Fire Emblem?
> 
> By the same token, CD Projekt Red is meant to attract you to give them money. I don't think it's unreasonable to challenge a claim and give a counter example, but in future should I type "CAN YOU PLEASE JUSTIFY YOUR ANSWER?" instead so it's clearer the point I'm pursuing? I think it's bold to base CD Projekt Red's status as "the best devs in the business at the moment" on one 3 year old game and another 6 years in the making with literally no information. I find it hard to justify giving that title to a company that has put out fewer games in the last decade+ than, say, Nintendo has in the last year. Even just the notion of "best at the moment" because, again, no games in 3 years compared with, say, Mario Odyssey. Retro's last game is amazing, and basically all of their games are amazing. Apparently they're working on another one, but I don't have audacity to say they're the best developer at the moment.
> 
> All that is to say "I disagree, prove it", but I prefer the way I worded it the first time because it seemed more useful as a post on a discussion board.
> 
> Maybe it doesn't need to be said that Nintendo make great games, but at the same time do you remember 3 years ago when everyone was obsessed with Witcher 3 and talking about how great CD Projekt Red were? Do they really need complimenting at this point? Surely with all 3 of their amazing games that defined videogames forever and have been copied infinitely it just goes without saying? Or maybe it's bold to suggest, I dunno.



 Joke or whatnot there's no doubt Nintendo are a terrible example of being "up with the times".

Look, I love Nintendo as much as the next guy. It's not nostalgia talking (I wouldn't be passionate about gaming otherwise), but they're the one company that still champions the actual gaming aspect of gaming, as opposed to PCs with extra features labelled as 'consoles' in a mad rush to obsolescence, or games trying too hard to be like movies, or whatever the hell David Cage is trying to make. It was about games and fun first and foremost and for that I will always have tremendous respect for them. That said, that doesn't give them immunity from criticism.

Nintendo have always been about first party property first and foremost. It's where their target audience lies. Sure they've had a great year with Mario Oddessy and Breath Of The Wild. But prior to them, this decade was a rocky one for Nintendo. Put sales aside because it's irrelevant when they can easily use their first party property on anything and their nostalgia fans and their kids will buy it without fail. Mario and Zelda were both meandering prior to their Switch games. Galaxy 2 was their last flagship Mario game, and that was just a retread of Galaxy 1. Everything in between were just a bunch of 2D games that did nothing new. They were fun yes, because they were fun over 30 years ago.

Zelda? Even worse: Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks were among the worst non CDi games in the canon. I appreciate the need to use the gimmicky peripherals and motion controls for their sake but as the games show, they don't always work. Between them and Breath... crossovers aside, a bunch ports and HD remakes of older titles (A Link Between Worlds will count regardless of being a sequel) that show that each new game was using the previous game as a template and have been doing so since the NES original. Arguable that there's nothing wrong with that, but that's how Zelda games become samey in the grand scheme. Pokemon... that'll make money by it's name alone.

If not the above, Nintendo will dig up their lesser known property and put them in terrible games by giving them to Team Ninja (Other M), release a game that requires you to defeat the purpose of a handheld DS (Kid Icarus Uprising) or use the Wii's motion controls in the worst possible way and shove them down the player's throat (Star Fox Zero). We can all hope that Metroid Prime 4 to be good...

I've lived through a lot of years of Nintendo's miss steps and falls, so I've yelled Nintendo Sucks as much as Nintendo Rules in my lifetime. I've played the Power Glove and R.O.B. back in the day and while R.O.B looked cool, they were both so stupid. I remembered being sad at the less than amicable split between them and Squaresoft because they insisted on cartridges for the N64. I even played the Virtua Boy and within 45 seconds I ended up seeing my lunch again inside a toilet bowl. Nintendo have forever been the patron saint of hardware gimmicks. The Wii was fantastic for them, but releasing the Wii U? When was the last time anybody used that gun add on for the Wii motes? Did anybody here even played Link's Crossbow Training? 

But enough about Nintendo: I love Monolith Soft, but the Xenosaga games were terrible and the Xenoblade games I love are being held as console exclusive hostages (I can be petty too). I love Capcom but they're like an old friend that needs serious help: during a time of exclusivity, they were throwing ports in every format (even before the Capcom 5 debacle of 2002, Street Fighter 2 ported to Sega was controversial back in the day). Speaking of which, no matter how I justify the intricate upgrades, Street Fighter fans have been sucked to buying the same game at retail price over and over again FOR DECADES. I love Konami... well, let's just say I once loved Konami. Some of their old games are still nice but we all know how they are as a company. I won't bother repeating my feelings towards Square Enix...

I haven't even bothered to mention CD Projekt namely because it's pointless. They're banking on just one game. A great game that deserves the accolade yes (hence opinion stated), but it's also because The Witcher 3 being so good that it completely eradicates the first 2 games from general interest. All their future releases will now have extremely high expectations, a lot of pressure from one game for CD to release something that doesn't suck.

TL/DR: All game developers deserve both praise and criticism based on their games. Also games aren't safe either. I still love Secret Of Mana but that didn't stop me from tearing it a new one a few pages ago.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Joke or whatnot there's no doubt Nintendo are a terrible example of being "up with the times".
> 
> Look, I love Nintendo as much as the next guy. It's not nostalgia talking (I wouldn't be passionate about gaming otherwise), but they're the one company that still champions the actual gaming aspect of gaming, as opposed to PCs with extra features labelled as 'consoles' in a mad rush to obsolescence, or games trying too hard to be like movies, or whatever the hell David Cage is trying to make. It was about games and fun first and foremost and for that I will always have tremendous respect for them. That said, that doesn't give them immunity from criticism.
> 
> Nintendo have always been about first party property first and foremost. It's where their target audience lies. Sure they've had a great year with Mario Oddessy and Breath Of The Wild. But prior to them, this decade was a rocky one for Nintendo. Put sales aside because it's irrelevant when they can easily use their first party property on anything and their nostalgia fans and their kids will buy it without fail. Mario and Zelda were both meandering prior to their Switch games. Galaxy 2 was their last flagship Mario game, and that was just a retread of Galaxy 1. Everything in between were just a bunch of 2D games that did nothing new. They were fun yes, because they were fun over 30 years ago.
> 
> Zelda? Even worse: Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks were among the worst non CDi games in the canon. I appreciate the need to use the gimmicky peripherals and motion controls for their sake but as the games show, they don't always work. Between them and Breath... crossovers aside, a bunch ports and HD remakes of older titles (A Link Between Worlds will count regardless of being a sequel) that show that each new game was using the previous game as a template and have been doing so since the NES original. Arguable that there's nothing wrong with that, but that's how Zelda games become samey in the grand scheme. Pokemon... that'll make money by it's name alone.
> 
> If not the above, Nintendo will dig up their lesser known property and put them in terrible games by giving them to Team Ninja (Other M), release a game that requires you to defeat the purpose of a handheld DS (Kid Icarus Uprising) or use the Wii's motion controls in the worst possible way and shove them down the player's throat (Star Fox Zero). We can all hope that Metroid Prime 4 to be good...
> 
> I've lived through a lot of years of Nintendo's miss steps and falls, so I've yelled Nintendo Sucks as much as Nintendo Rules in my lifetime. I've played the Power Glove and R.O.B. back in the day and while R.O.B looked cool, they were both so stupid. I remembered being sad at the less than amicable split between them and Squaresoft because they insisted on cartridges for the N64. I even played the Virtua Boy and within 45 seconds I ended up seeing my lunch again inside a toilet bowl. Nintendo have forever been the patron saint of hardware gimmicks. The Wii was fantastic for them, but releasing the Wii U? When was the last time anybody used that gun add on for the Wii motes? Did anybody here even played Link's Crossbow Training?
> 
> But enough about Nintendo: I love Monolith Soft, but the Xenosaga games were terrible and the Xenoblade games I love are being held as console exclusive hostages (I can be petty too). I love Capcom but they're like an old friend that needs serious help: during a time of exclusivity, they were throwing ports in every format (even before the Capcom 5 debacle of 2002, Street Fighter 2 ported to Sega was controversial back in the day). Speaking of which, no matter how I justify the intricate upgrades, Street Fighter fans have been sucked to buying the same game at retail price over and over again FOR DECADES. I love Konami... well, let's just say I once loved Konami. Some of their old games are still nice but we all know how they are as a company. I won't bother repeating my feelings towards Square Enix...
> 
> I haven't even bothered to mention CD Projekt namely because it's pointless. They're banking on just one game. A great game that deserves the accolade yes (hence opinion stated), but it's also because The Witcher 3 being so good that it completely eradicates the first 2 games from general interest. All their future releases will now have extremely high expectations, a lot of pressure from one game for CD to release something that doesn't suck.
> 
> TL/DR: All game developers deserve both praise and criticism based on their games. Also games aren't safe either. I still love Secret Of Mana but that didn't stop me from tearing it a new one a few pages ago.


So to the point of answering the question, the best game developer *at the moment* is?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> So to the point of answering the question, the best game developer *at the moment* is?


 
Who cares. Pointless exercise. It's about the games themselves at the end of the day. Let that speak for the developers behalf.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Who cares. Pointless exercise. It's about the games themselves at the end of the day. Let that speak for the developers behalf.


So your post was just to say I like Nintendo too much?


----------



## wankerness

I liked his long post about Nintendo, it was much more interesting than the last 3!!! And yes, they've been very hit and miss at times. If he's going with the average game quality I get it.

I misread that first post and inserted "one of," cause yeah, a company that to my knowledge has only released 3 games of increasing quality would be an odd statement for "the best." But, I get that too! However, I started playing the first Witcher game a few months ago and just couldn't take its clunkiness.

I should look into platinum games. I liked Bayonetta and especially Nier Automata. I have heard nothing but hatred for Star Fox Zero, though! I have Metal Gear Revengeance on Steam, I should try that sometime.

I still don't have/haven't played Ico or Shadow of the Colossus. I got TLG on some clearance sale, but I've heard so much relentless hatred about its bugginess and control frustrations that I'm apprehensive to start it. SOTC HD is on sale for 20 bucks this week so I might go for it.


----------



## chopeth

I started enhanced Dying Light last Friday. Hell, what an addictive game, best survival and most entertaining zombie thing I've played in a looong time. Like it much more than Dead Island.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> So your post was just to say I like Nintendo too much?



Not to be churlish about it, but your posts do sound like you're denigrating other companies and games compared to Nintendo.

It's unfair to compare CD Projekt to Nintendo given their current situation when the former is only on their fledgeling stage on the strength of their 3rd attempt of 1 series, while latter has a 40 year long history.

You can like Nintendo as much as you like, I probably like them as much as you do (I'm playing the SNES mini more than any console the past 2 months so you can judge me and say whatever you want about that) even if I dedicated a long post on verbally kicking them in the bollocks. And it's ok to do that, I certainly prefer to be honest than thinking that my favorite company(ies) can do no form of wrong whatsoever. Consider it tough love. 


Continuing the spirit of things, 2 of my other favorite game developers were mentioned and I'll be giving them a good jabbing. 

PlatinumGames: I loved Okami so Clover Studios were on my radar so PlatinumGames got my attention for basically being Clover Redux. I liked a lot of their games, hell, they gave Metal Gear Solid and Nier the jumpstart I didn't know they needed. The Bayonetta games are fun (even if they are just Devil May Cry with a new pastiche, certainly better than DMC4 anyway). But on the other end of the spectrum, they have Madworld and Anarchy Reigns, good concept but rather boring, which sticks out from a company all about being interesting. And yeah, Star Fox Zero is terrible, Star Fox 2 on the SNES was more refined than that.

Team ICO: Fumito Umeda and co have only 3 games. 1 good game, 1 great work of art of a game, and a 9 year muckabout before releasing Ico again but replace the escort girl with a giant duck footed dog Colossus.

Favorites not mentioned (since I'm on a groove now)

Suda 51: Killer 7 and the first No More Heroes were arthouse masterpieces, but every subsequent game has lost it's edge. I appreciate Shadows Of The Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw due to the talent involved (Shinji Mikami and James Gunn respectively) but they're not as fun for me; the both showing talent coming together but not bringing the full potential from them. Killer Is Dead is great conceptually but I stopped playing because I was shocked how bored I was.

From Software: Thanks to the Souls games, people often forget From Software did a few other games like the Armoured Core series. Those were fun especially when Mecha based games were becoming a scarcity and Square Enix killed their Front Mission series with FM Evolved. Having said that, from a variety perspective, that's really all they have. A 2 trick pony but what fun tricks. People also often forget that From Software were also responsible for the abortion that is Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour.

And I guess bagging Nintendo again at this point would be immature vindictive and stubborn, so I'm just going to do it one more time.  Metroid Prime Federation Force... anybody here played that? It's Nintendo's attempt to out Aliens: Colonial Marines Aliens: Colonial Marines. Another taint in the Metroid name. Metroid Prime 4 really needs to be good...


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Not to be churlish about it, but your posts do sound like you're denigrating other companies and games compared to Nintendo.
> 
> It's unfair to compare CD Projekt to Nintendo given their current situation when the former is only on their fledgeling stage on the strength of their 3rd attempt of 1 series, while latter has a 40 year long history.
> 
> You can like Nintendo as much as you like, I probably like them as much as you do (I'm playing the SNES mini more than any console the past 2 months so you can judge me and say whatever you want about that) even if I dedicated a long post on verbally kicking them in the bollocks. And it's ok to do that, I certainly prefer to be honest than thinking that my favorite company(ies) can do no form of wrong whatsoever. Consider it tough love.
> 
> 
> Continuing the spirit of things, 2 of my other favorite game developers were mentioned and I'll be giving them a good jabbing.
> 
> PlatinumGames: I loved Okami so Clover Studios were on my radar so PlatinumGames got my attention for basically being Clover Redux. I liked a lot of their games, hell, they gave Metal Gear Solid and Nier the jumpstart I didn't know they needed. The Bayonetta games are fun (even if they are just Devil May Cry with a new pastiche, certainly better than DMC4 anyway). But on the other end of the spectrum, they have Madworld and Anarchy Reigns, good concept but rather boring, which sticks out from a company all about being interesting. And yeah, Star Fox Zero is terrible, Star Fox 2 on the SNES was more refined than that.
> 
> Team ICO: Fumito Umeda and co have only 3 games. 1 good game, 1 great work of art of a game, and a 9 year muckabout before releasing Ico again but replace the escort girl with a giant duck footed dog Colossus.
> 
> Suda 51 (not mentioned but whatever): Killer 7 and the first No More Heroes were arthouse masterpieces, but every subsequent game has lost it's edge. I appreciate Shadows Of The Damned and Lollipop Chainsaw due to the talent involved (Shinji Mikami and James Gunn respectively) but they're not as fun for me; the both showing talent coming together but not bringing the full potential from them. Killer Is Dead is great conceptually but I stopped playing because I was shocked how bored I was.
> 
> And I guess bagging Nintendo again at this point would be immature vindictive and stubborn, so I'm just going to do it one more time.  Metroid Prime Federation Force... anybody here played that? It's Nintendo's attempt to out Aliens: Colonial Marines Aliens: Colonial Marines. Another taint in the Metroid name. Metroid Prime 4 really needs to be good...



Basically, my point was that it's unfair to compare CD Projekt to Nintendo given that one has released 3 games (2 no one cared about and a third people did) with the last one being 3 years ago, and the other released two of the best games ever last year. In fact it's pretty hard to pick out years when Nintendo Japan didn't release a very good new game they developed, and when they didn't there was probably a Pokemon game or something that year anyway.

So I'm not denigrating other companies, and how you got that from a joke about Fire Emblem and an encouragement for a justification I don't know.

Or to go back to the core of it, the best developer at the minute is probably one that has recently released the best games and no one's given me a reason that isn't Nintendo. Maybe that's a pointless exercise, but I didn't bring it up and I didn't start arguing with you.


----------



## Ralyks

Ended up raiding in Destiny 2 last night. Literally everything up to Calus? Took maybe a half hour? Calus? Almost 2 hours. Also, never starting a raid at 10 pm when I have work the next morning again...
That said, I’m intrigued by Forsaken enough to hold on to D2 for now.

In the meantime, back to some Yakuza 6 goodness...


----------



## KnightBrolaire

playing Jade Empire for the 50th time 
I always wished they'd made a sequel to it, the writing was phenomenal and the setting isn't generally explored in western rpgs. It says something when som of the side quests still haunt me and stay with me after all these years. I can count on one hand the number of big budget rpgs that do that to me (jade empire, witcher 3, oblivion and fallout new vegas)


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Basically, my point was that it's unfair to compare CD Projekt to Nintendo given that one has released 3 games (2 no one cared about and a third people did) with the last one being 3 years ago, and the other released two of the best games ever last year. In fact it's pretty hard to pick out years when Nintendo Japan didn't release a very good new game they developed, and when they didn't there was probably a Pokemon game or something that year anyway.
> 
> So I'm not denigrating other companies, and how you got that from a joke about Fire Emblem and an encouragement for a justification I don't know.
> 
> Or to go back to the core of it, the best developer at the minute is probably one that has recently released the best games and no one's given me a reason that isn't Nintendo. Maybe that's a pointless exercise, but I didn't bring it up and I didn't start arguing with you.



But you did exactly that. Because an opinion on CD Projekt being the 'best' was stated, you jumped on it comparing it to Nintendo who just happens to have a great track record of late. It's unfair on both ends and it was unnecessary to have Nintendo white knighted like that.

Regarding Nintendo Japan not releasing good games they developed... I just pointed a bunch of offenders in my last few posts.  Here's some more: The Paper Mario series, hasn't been good since Thousand Year Door. Yoshi's Woolly World is arguable but it's just Yoshi's Island rehashed. And the more I think of it, I though Mario World was better despite Island was stylistically superior.

Of course these are my opinions after all.

Using the term "Best games ever" is the same kind of bold statement opinion you've accused the post about CD Project. I'll give you that Oddessy and Breath were fantastic games, but "best ever" in a year where there were plenty of great games from every developer in every format is still an opinion. Hell a lot of games considered "best ever" I don't care for personally. Hell, I criticised Breath Of The Wild (albeit tongue in cheek) for being the most Ubisoft sandbox feeling Zelda game and I think you jumped on me about that saying "no it isn't" and that's it.  It's a great game regardless but the comparison of an open world and climbing towers to scout terrain and the 'play how you want to play' mentality is certainly apparent. Superficial but also a problem when Ubisoft sandboxes are all becoming samey to singularity level.

As for Fire Emblem: Since you stated it as a joke, I trust you knew that all the Fire Emblems before Fates did not have the same sex marriage option. And that you knew about the Tomodachi Life backlash (which I guess may have been the reason Fire Emblem even has a same sex option). But the joke is somewhat undermined when Atlus had already included a same sex romance option to Persona 2 nearly 2 decades ago (despite never putting it back again). Atlus have been known for dumb and tone deaf decisions so no point trying to kick them and compare them to Nintendo. My favorite game of last year Persona 5 (far from best ever despite universal acclaim mind you) was the cause of controversy when Atlus put stupid streaming restrictions, then lifting them and publicly apologising (like Nintendo apologised with Tomodachi Life). See, Atlus can screw themselves over just fine.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> But you did exactly that. Because an opinion on CD Projekt being the 'best' was stated, you jumped on it comparing it to Nintendo who just happens to have a great track record of late. It's unfair on both ends and it was unnecessary to have Nintendo white knighted like that.
> 
> Regarding Nintendo Japan not releasing good games they developed... I just pointed a bunch of offenders in my last few posts.  Here's some more: The Paper Mario series, hasn't been good since Thousand Year Door. Yoshi's Woolly World is arguable but it's just Yoshi's Island rehashed. And the more I think of it, I though Mario World was better despite Island was stylistically superior.
> 
> Of course these are my opinions after all.
> 
> Using the term "Best games ever" is the same kind of bold statement opinion you've accused the post about CD Project. I'll give you that Oddessy and Breath were fantastic games, but "best ever" in a year where there were plenty of great games from every developer in every format is still an opinion. Hell a lot of games considered "best ever" I don't care for personally. Hell, I criticised Breath Of The Wild (albeit tongue in cheek) for being the most Ubisoft sandbox feeling Zelda game and I think you jumped on me about that saying "no it isn't" and that's it.  It's a great game regardless but the comparison of an open world and climbing towers to scout terrain and the 'play how you want to play' mentality is certainly apparent. Superficial but also a problem when Ubisoft sandboxes are all becoming samey to singularity level.
> 
> As for Fire Emblem: Since you stated it as a joke, I trust you knew that all the Fire Emblems before Fates did not have the same sex marriage option. And that you knew about the Tomodachi Life backlash (which I guess may have been the reason Fire Emblem even has a same sex option). But the joke is somewhat undermined when Atlus had already included a same sex romance option to Persona 2 nearly 2 decades ago (despite never putting it back again). Atlus have been known for dumb and tone deaf decisions so no point trying to kick them and compare them to Nintendo. My favorite game of last year Persona 5 (far from best ever despite universal acclaim mind you) was the cause of controversy when Atlus put stupid streaming restrictions, then lifting them and publicly apologising (like Nintendo apologised with Tomodachi Life). See, Atlus can screw themselves over just fine.


For what it's worth I said "It's not. It doesn't even have trailing missions." At this point do you want to flag all my posts with JOKE when I make one?


----------



## Quiet Coil

KnightBrolaire said:


> playing Jade Empire for the 50th time
> I always wished they'd made a sequel to it, the writing was phenomenal and the setting isn't generally explored in western rpgs. It says something when som of the side quests still haunt me and stay with me after all these years. I can count on one hand the number of big budget rpgs that do that to me (jade empire, witcher 3, oblivion and fallout new vegas)



I had lots of fun playing it on the xbox. I’ve had it on my phone for at least a year, haven’t committed to a playthrough yet.

What I really miss is Onimusha. Okay so it wasn’t an RPG, and is basically just “samurai Resident Evil”, but I still loved the settings and overall vibe.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Noisy Humbucker said:


> I had lots of fun playing it on the xbox. I’ve had it on my phone for at least a year, haven’t committed to a playthrough yet.
> 
> What I really miss is Onimusha. Okay so it wasn’t an RPG, and is basically just “samurai Resident Evil”, but I still loved the settings and overall vibe.


That's a series that really needs a reboot or remaster imo. It's been long enough and the concept is still solid. The boss designs were some of my favorite next to Devil May Cry or Dark Souls


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> CD Projekt has released 3 games (2 no one cared about and a third people did) with the last one being 3 years ago, and the other released two of the best games ever last year.



I heard a ton about The Witcher 2, it was considered the high point of graphics at the time of its release and I couldn't escape discussion about it. I didn't play it until it got a console port over a year later, and I didn't really have strong feelings on it (and obviously the graphics were much worse), but to say it wasn't cared about is wrong! It sold two million copies. The country gave a copy to Obama, for crying out loud!

https://kotaku.com/obama-isnt-really-into-his-copy-of-the-witcher-2-1585337392

This said, Witcher 3 was a big step up and got far more attention.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

I explained the reasoning behind my opinion and I stand by it. That being said, it's just an opinion, not a factual claim, and it certainly wasn't intended to be inflammatory.


----------



## wankerness

I played a bunch of Yakuza 0, and while I find all the sidequests hilarious and the main quest is somewhat involving, I pretty much hate the combat and I am not having fun as a result!

I just played through a weird little game called Last Day of June. I saw a rec for it since it is on sale for really cheap. I was VERY surprised when I started it up and some familiar-sounding music came on, and then I saw Steven Wilson as the composer in the opening credits! So, it's kind of a charming little game about fate and death in the form of a time-traveling light-puzzle game where you try to arrange the events on a day to avoid a certain outcome. The music is pretty great if you're a Porcupine Tree/Steven Wilson fan. I had no idea he'd ever done any soundtracks.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I played a bunch of Yakuza 0, and while I find all the sidequests hilarious and the main quest is somewhat involving, I pretty much hate the combat and I am not having fun as a result!



The combat engine is the weakest part of the Yakuza games, but that's also the nature of the brawler genre. They haven't really evolved after the 2D to 3D transition, and most of it's kind has either gone retro 2D like Mother Russia Bleeds, gone dodo, or become hack slash mashes like the Dynasty Warrior games. Doesn't help where in Yakuza's case they're arranged as JRPG random encounters meets The Bouncer (who remembers that?) meets more JRPG stats micromanagement. The random fights become trivial chores once you're levelled up too.

That said, there's some cathartic dumb fun when you get to near murder a thug with a nearby bicycle then finishing off his friend with the wheel. It's also one of the few games where it harkens to Jackie Chan levels of creativity when it comes to using mundane items as bludgeoning weapons.

There's always the other billion different side games that make up the fun factor, like the arcade games in Club Sega.


----------



## wankerness

I played some more of it and unlocked the breakdance style for Majima, which I legitimately enjoy. Then, of course, I promptly got switched back to Kiryu, who I hate playing as. There's the brawler style where you move like a slug and have to block things but can throw stuff around, or there's the rush style where you can dodge but have about 3 attacks you can do (it's basically a neutered version of Majima's regular style). And there's beast style, which is kind of funny, but seems incredibly situational so I've barely used it. Majima's actually fun in comparison!

I like the wealth of minigames, but haven't found any FUN ones yet IMO, apart from the Karaoke, which is pretty funny. The only one I'm good at is hooking toys with the crane arm  I got a few levels into Space Harrier or w/e, but my old man reflexes couldn't handle it after a while. I completely don't understand Shogi - the computer seems to be able to move some pieces in a totally different fashion from what the piece explanation screen says so I get owned every time I try. I just unlocked the real estate system, so we'll see how that goes. 

Again, the story is actually involving, which will probably keep me at least finishing the game, but the combat is really dull and repetitive (at least as Kiryu).

I went nuts on the best of E3 sale, so I have a few games I'm itching to play. I started Nioh, and was amused by how if I approached an enemy carelessly, I could get essentially 1-shot. I've never really played any Souls-Bourne game, so this is a new experience!! I should probably keep playing it instead of going back to Yakuza, as the combat here seems far more important to remember the intricacies of. I also have AC: Origins and RE7 in the queue now. I've never played an AC game, except maybe 20 minutes of II on PC many years ago. I don't like stealth, but I heard this one supports you being a blundering idiot that just runs in and kills people.


----------



## Gravy Train

Just got Star Wars Battlefront 2 yesterday! Having a blast so far.


----------



## wankerness

Alright, Yakuza 0 got its hooks into me in a huge way. That damn club management "minigame" is way more fun than the rest of the game! I've already put about 15-20 hours into it. I'm satisfied with the game based on that alone.

It did take me ~35 tries to beat Ms Isobe at disco. That was a good time.


----------



## TedEH

I started up the old-school Deus Ex. I can feel the game's age, but still enjoying it. I had this as a demo when I was younger (back when finishing the demo meant "yeah, I totally played that game!"), but since I never got farther than that, and I've invested so much time in the series, so some level I feel I should complete this one properly.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just started MH World. So far my plan of “GS everything in the face” is going great.

Loved these in handheld and much better on PS4.

Somewhat related - However I may need to buy a different style of PS4 controller as the L1 has started seriously hurting my index finger in my old age.

Any good Xbox-like controller or adapters for this?


----------



## Albake21

TedEH said:


> I started up the old-school Deus Ex. I can feel the game's age, but still enjoying it. I had this as a demo when I was younger (back when finishing the demo meant "yeah, I totally played that game!"), but since I never got farther than that, and I've invested so much time in the series, so some level I feel I should complete this one properly.


I've always wanted to play the original Deus Ex, what system are you playing it on and is it still playable in 2018?


----------



## TedEH

I've got a copy on Steam, so just playing on a PC. Windows 10, everything works out of the box, and the UI scales pretty well. Only catch was that you need to enable VSync otherwise the game runs too fast.

You can definitely feel the game's age as you play it, janky animations, bad voice acting, etc., stuff that was good for it's time but don't hold up now - and if you've played a modern Deus Ex recently you'll miss some of the newer features, since the predecessors to those ideas are here (hacking is much simpler, the augs are simpler, etc), but I'm pretty tolerant of that kind of stuff, so to me it's still very playable.


----------



## synrgy

I picked up SW:BF2 on sale. Kinda wishing I hadn't. Hopefully someday I'll learn to stop giving money to EA.


----------



## Albake21

TedEH said:


> I've got a copy on Steam, so just playing on a PC. Windows 10, everything works out of the box, and the UI scales pretty well. Only catch was that you need to enable VSync otherwise the game runs too fast.
> 
> You can definitely feel the game's age as you play it, janky animations, bad voice acting, etc., stuff that was good for it's time but don't hold up now - and if you've played a modern Deus Ex recently you'll miss some of the newer features, since the predecessors to those ideas are here (hacking is much simpler, the augs are simpler, etc), but I'm pretty tolerant of that kind of stuff, so to me it's still very playable.


Damn that's a bummer about having vsync on, I can't stand vsync. I might just add it to my library anyways since it's only 97 cents right now on steam. 

I just picked up the original two Max Paynes. Besides a couple easy fixes, the game runs incredibly well considering it was released in 2000. Definitely still holds up today.


----------



## TedEH

Albake21 said:


> I can't stand vsync


What's wrong with vsync? It's not a game that neeeeeds ultra fast response, and because it's so old, it's very unlikely that it can't keep up and stay at 60fps the whole time (or more if you have a higher refresh screen.) I'll take that over screen tearing any day.


----------



## Albake21

TedEH said:


> What's wrong with vsync? It's not a game that neeeeeds ultra fast response, and because it's so old, it's very unlikely that it can't keep up and stay at 60fps the whole time (or more if you have a higher refresh screen.) I'll take that over screen tearing any day.


It's the response time. Vsync creates a slight delay that's very noticeable to me. Especially when you get used to 144hz, the slightest delay is extremely noticeable.


----------



## TedEH

It's not a game that needs a fast response though. It's not a twitchy shooter or something like that.
I'd imagine that an old game and a high refresh monitor wouldn't introduce very much lag time via vsync - a 144hz screen with vsync on only leaves something like 6ms per frame, most of which is taken up by the game running itself anyway. To each their own I guess.

I feel like input lag discussions always miss the part where the software itself is a big contributor. Even if you manage to run the game very fast, and the game isn't doing any kind of weird input smoothing or processing like a lot of modern games like to do now, there's still the time it takes for the game to register and respond to what you're doing, before it even starts to draw another frame. So having an 1ms monitor doesn't really mean 1ms between input and visual - it just means the monitor isn't going to add to the existing lag, which is probably already going to be pretty close to the full frame time of the game, I would think, just as an intuitive guess. So you're talking the difference between maybe 14-15ms and the full 16ms.


----------



## wankerness

Who here has experienced noticeable input lag on anything that affected playability on anything other than one of those LCD TVs from several years ago? I never have noticed ANYTHING on PC.

I have a plasma TV and my friend that complained about SNES games that involve precise timing (ex, DKC) being unplayable on Wii, etc had me convinced it was going to be like playing Rock Band with the delay cranked way up, but I didn't notice at all. 

I'm going to upgrade my TV soon, since this thing is 7 years old and starting to make buzzing noises as the pieces seem to be getting looser. It seems I'm limited to LED only, so I'm a bit scared. Then again, I'm over 30, so my advanced age means I'm going to lag with anything anyway


----------



## narad

Really digging Axiom Verge on Steam. 50% off currently, so $9.99, so the most Metroid experience I've had since 1995.


----------



## wankerness

I finally completed Yakuza 0. Since I'm an idiot, I finished both the nightclub and real estate side stories before going into the last several chapters, so I ended up being overpowered and taking the bosses out without much trouble. Well, maybe, I don't really know how hard they're supposed to be, I just know I got wrecked repeatedly by the first boss and pretty much button-mashed my way to success with the last few.

The plot gets WAY too talky with the politics in the last hour or two of cutscenes, but the Makoto/Majima stuff was really involving and it was frustrating hearing all the machinations of crap I didn't care about for so long. Like, I really think there might have been an hour straight of cutscenes at the end. Also, Kiryu has all the personality of a character in a fighting game from the early 90s, which I suppose he practically is. Oh well. That last scene (well, 2 scenes) with Makoto was slightly upsetting (and a tough-guy movie cliche). I'm kind of interested to play more of these. I guess they've remade the first one and will be progressing through them, so that's convenient.

People who have tried to get all the trophies on this game are insane. Like, the Mahjongg game alone! I looked at the rules since I'd never played it before, and it was just dizzying. And you have to be good enough at it to beat tons of computer opponents on high difficulty! And then there are several other Japanese games stuck in there with full simulation. Nuts.


----------



## Ralyks

I should finish Yakuza 0, but, well, Yakuza 6. Yes, going totally out of order  plus I have Kawami on my shelf and Kawami 2 on preorder.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

ghost recon wildlands. Easily the worst ghost recon game (besides that piece of shit pay2win game). The writing is atrocious, the dialogue is atrocious and yet I like just exploring the world while casually murdering cartel members. All this game does is remind me that Mercenaries was wayyyy ahead of its time.  Now that's a series that needs a reboot.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I finally completed Yakuza 0. Since I'm an idiot, I finished both the nightclub and real estate side stories before going into the last several chapters, so I ended up being overpowered and taking the bosses out without much trouble. Well, maybe, I don't really know how hard they're supposed to be, I just know I got wrecked repeatedly by the first boss and pretty much button-mashed my way to success with the last few.
> 
> The plot gets WAY too talky with the politics in the last hour or two of cutscenes, but the Makoto/Majima stuff was really involving and it was frustrating hearing all the machinations of crap I didn't care about for so long. Like, I really think there might have been an hour straight of cutscenes at the end. Also, Kiryu has all the personality of a character in a fighting game from the early 90s, which I suppose he practically is. Oh well. That last scene (well, 2 scenes) with Makoto was slightly upsetting (and a tough-guy movie cliche). I'm kind of interested to play more of these. I guess they've remade the first one and will be progressing through them, so that's convenient.
> 
> People who have tried to get all the trophies on this game are insane. Like, the Mahjongg game alone! I looked at the rules since I'd never played it before, and it was just dizzying. And you have to be good enough at it to beat tons of computer opponents on high difficulty! And then there are several other Japanese games stuck in there with full simulation. Nuts.



I had a similar experience when I played Yakuza 4 for the first time (my first game getting into the series). I did a ton of side stuff with each character that it got too easy by the end because they were so overlevelled. 

The plots for most of these series are usually the same, all dumb fun played with a convincingly straight face. But they do get samey per game. It's usually a variation of Crime is committed, a scene with growly men and one of them becoming the main villain, a bunch of scenes with red herrings galore, and a massive shirtless punch-on jamboree for the finale. Which is why the side stuff makes the games so fun even at the cost of the plot's urgency or even tone. Agreed about Kiryu, he's basically Ryu from Street Fighter but with an angry scowl and a criminal record (and better interaction with women). Which is why he needs everything around him to be more interesting. I've come to realise that I prefer the multi character Yakuza games than the solo Kiryu ones because the other characters are far more interesting, in 0's case, Majima, who is clearly the best character in the series. 

Even with all the glaring flaws, despite being new to the series, I've grown fond of it and will still happily recommend the rest (maybe not Dead Souls though despite having the best karaoke moment in the entire series). The Kiwami remakes would be the next best logical choices but if you can grab 4 then 5, do so. 

As for the 100% completion nutters...  Even with all the side stuff I polished like hostess dates, club/dojo management and even the dance/singing battles in 5 (hopelessly addicted thanks to the music), eating/drinking all the food and booze, I'm pretty sure I barely scratched the 40% mark.


----------



## Albake21

Ralyks said:


> I should finish Yakuza 0, but, well, Yakuza 6. Yes, going totally out of order  plus I have Kawami on my shelf and Kawami 2 on preorder.


Don't do it! Yakuza games are meant to be played in order. You can start with 0 only because it's a prequel. 

I was literally thinking about posting the Yakuza series on here a couple days ago but I figured no one would have played any of them lol. So far I've played Yakuza 0,1, and 2. I'm just about to start 3. I truly love this series so damn much and I plan to play them all up to 6.


----------



## wankerness

Yakuza 3/4/5 are are being remastered and released this august in Japan for PS4, so I will wait in the hopes they all get ported over here. I quickly started liking that 0 was not dubbed into English, so I'm hoping these aren't, either. Largely because that should speed up the translation process! Though, it seems that there's been nearly a year's delay between the Japanese and American versions of Kiwami 1/2, and I would think the majority of those were just carried over from the original 1/2 instead of having to be retranslated. 

The subtitles on 0 were some of the best videogame writing I've ever seen, though, so maybe that's why it took so long - I doubt that they had the same standard of quality in 2005.

I started playing Resident Evil 7, and Jesus Christ, my nerves can't take it for very long at a time. I can watch any horror movie in the world without flinching, except certain jack-in-the-box style found footage movies, but I can't take this at all!! I'm terrified every time I slowly push open a door or walk through a room with a bunch of pipes and hear knocking sounds. I feel a sense of relief every time I quit. Haha. I paid money for it, though, so I have to finish it!!! I like that it has a sense of humor about itself again, like, the family is ported straight from the TCM movies with all the menacing wackiness. But, man, both dealing with Mia repeatedly popping out at you at the beginning and then having to contend with a (basically) invincible guy chasing you around the house at all times with a shovel while you frantically try to figure out door puzzles had me terrified. Especially with how they use the extreme tightness of spaces to make it really difficult to get away from/dodge the attacks of the invincible guy.

I just got outdoors, and I HOPE I've seen the end of Jack the invincible dude after the big chainsaw battle (woo Motel Hell), but I bet I'll get even higher levels of invincible dudes following me around!

Oh, I also played an hour of Assassin's Creed Origins. This is the first of these games I've played. The controls are SO floaty - my character feels like he's pasted over the screen instead of something with actual weight interacting with the environment! It reminds me of Shadows of the Empire for N64 more than the modern games it is nominally similar to (Uncharted, HZD, Tomb Raider, etc). With this much money, you'd think Ubisoft would have been able to properly program in the characters. Unless it's some intentional meta thing with whatever the hell is going on with session syncing or Animus or whatever. I have no clue what any of that means, since there's been 0 explanation in this game!


----------



## Albake21

wankerness said:


> Yakuza 3/4/5 are are being remastered and released this august in Japan for PS4, so I will wait in the hopes they all get ported over here. I quickly started liking that 0 was not dubbed into English, so I'm hoping these aren't, either. Largely because that should speed up the translation process! Though, it seems that there's been nearly a year's delay between the Japanese and American versions of Kiwami 1/2, and I would think the majority of those were just carried over from the original 1/2 instead of having to be retranslated.
> 
> The subtitles on 0 were some of the best videogame writing I've ever seen, though, so maybe that's why it took so long - I doubt that they had the same standard of quality in 2005.



Waiting for Kiwami 2 is worth it (even though I didn't, I played 2 on a PS2 emulator), but 3-5 aren't getting any special treatment like Kiwami. They are only getting upscaled to HD and ported to PS4. The are truly not worth the 2 year wait it will most likely take. As for dub, it definitely won't have it. The company that does localization has stood by not doing anymore dub since the first game. Which Yakuza 1 dub was absolutely awful. The Yakuza series is one of those exceptions where sub is 10x better. English dub would not fit into a series like this. It would be like if there was a game about the Chicago Mafia, but was dubbed over in Russian. It would lose what made the Mafia, the Mafia.


----------



## Ralyks

Albake21 said:


> Don't do it! Yakuza games are meant to be played in order. You can start with 0 only because it's a prequel



Too late, already on chapter 8 of Yakuza 6  but after 6, yeah, I'll resume.my.place in 0 and work my way up. I'm hoping the 3/4/5 rereleases come by the time I wrap up Kiwami 2, other may get a used copy.of 3. I already have 4 and 5 from when they were free on PSN at various points.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I avoided the Yakuza series thanks to the original's English Dub. Sure Mark Hamill sounds ideal as Majima on paper, but nope. I was glad that 4 had the reminiscence mode that caught me up to speed on the story of 1-3, so I didn't have to play them, only to my surprise to begin playing as not-Kiryu. 

I'm assuming 6 has a story recap of 5 because that game was only released digitally and sort of flew under the radar outside Japan.


----------



## Albake21

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I avoided the Yakuza series thanks to the original's English Dub. Sure Mark Hamill sounds ideal as Majima on paper, but nope. I was glad that 4 had the reminiscence mode that caught me up to speed on the story of 1-3, so I didn't have to play them, only to my surprise to begin playing as not-Kiryu.
> 
> I'm assuming 6 has a story recap of 5 because that game was only released digitally and sort of flew under the radar outside Japan.


To my knowledge, every game after 1 has an optional recap.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Albake21 said:


> To my knowledge, every game after 1 has an optional recap.



Yakuza 5 didn't have one oddly enough.


----------



## wankerness

I'm curious as to what Majima is like in the other games. I read in reviews of 0 that he was mostly a "shrill annoyance," which is kind of the OPPOSITE of how he sounds in 0. But man, his look at the end of the game with the douchey 6th grader haircut and the snakeskin jacket sure is terrible, and I assume that's what he looks like in all the other games!!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Yakuza 3/4/5 are are being remastered and released this august in Japan for PS4, so I will wait in the hopes they all get ported over here. I quickly started liking that 0 was not dubbed into English, so I'm hoping these aren't, either. Largely because that should speed up the translation process! Though, it seems that there's been nearly a year's delay between the Japanese and American versions of Kiwami 1/2, and I would think the majority of those were just carried over from the original 1/2 instead of having to be retranslated.
> 
> The subtitles on 0 were some of the best videogame writing I've ever seen, though, so maybe that's why it took so long - I doubt that they had the same standard of quality in 2005.
> 
> I started playing Resident Evil 7, and Jesus Christ, my nerves can't take it for very long at a time. I can watch any horror movie in the world without flinching, except certain jack-in-the-box style found footage movies, but I can't take this at all!! I'm terrified every time I slowly push open a door or walk through a room with a bunch of pipes and hear knocking sounds. I feel a sense of relief every time I quit. Haha. I paid money for it, though, so I have to finish it!!! I like that it has a sense of humor about itself again, like, the family is ported straight from the TCM movies with all the menacing wackiness. But, man, both dealing with Mia repeatedly popping out at you at the beginning and then having to contend with a (basically) invincible guy chasing you around the house at all times with a shovel while you frantically try to figure out door puzzles had me terrified. Especially with how they use the extreme tightness of spaces to make it really difficult to get away from/dodge the attacks of the invincible guy.
> 
> I just got outdoors, and I HOPE I've seen the end of Jack the invincible dude after the big chainsaw battle (woo Motel Hell), but I bet I'll get even higher levels of invincible dudes following me around!
> 
> Oh, I also played an hour of Assassin's Creed Origins. This is the first of these games I've played. The controls are SO floaty - my character feels like he's pasted over the screen instead of something with actual weight interacting with the environment! It reminds me of Shadows of the Empire for N64 more than the modern games it is nominally similar to (Uncharted, HZD, Tomb Raider, etc). With this much money, you'd think Ubisoft would have been able to properly program in the characters. Unless it's some intentional meta thing with whatever the hell is going on with session syncing or Animus or whatever. I have no clue what any of that means, since there's been 0 explanation in this game!


The AC games have always had kind of floaty controls, just like the prince of persia games. I can't count how many times I was running around in AC2 and jumped off the wrong thing because of the controls. I haven't touched one of them since AC3 (which I still haven't finished) but AC1, AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations are all solid storywise.


----------



## Albake21

wankerness said:


> I'm curious as to what Majima is like in the other games. I read in reviews of 0 that he was mostly a "shrill annoyance," which is kind of the OPPOSITE of how he sounds in 0. But man, his look at the end of the game with the douchey 6th grader haircut and the snakeskin jacket sure is terrible, and I assume that's what he looks like in all the other games!!


Are you sure you aren't mixing up 0 and Kiwami 1? Majima is the complete opposite of "shrill annoyance" in 0. The point of the Majima story in 0 was to show how normal Majima was before he basically wen't crazy in the rest of the series.

Also yes, it is how he looks. I thought the same thing too. Since 0 was my first game, I completely miss the Majima from 0. Sadly we will never see that one again.


----------



## wankerness

Albake21 said:


> Are you sure you aren't mixing up 0 and Kiwami 1? Majima is the complete opposite of "shrill annoyance" in 0. The point of the Majima story in 0 was to show how normal Majima was before he basically wen't crazy in the rest of the series.
> 
> Also yes, it is how he looks. I thought the same thing too. Since 0 was my first game, I completely miss the Majima from 0. Sadly we will never see that one again.



No, I just worded that without making what I was saying clear. I read in reviews of 0 that he was mostly a "shrill annoyance" in all the other games.

I'm hyped to see the added storyline for him in Kiwami 2, i heard they added a bunch of stuff to follow up 0 with a continuation of the Makoto stuff, etc. It comes out in a couple months, I might actually pay full price for it!!


----------



## Albake21

wankerness said:


> No, I just worded that without making what I was saying clear. I read in reviews of 0 that he was mostly a "shrill annoyance" in all the other games.
> 
> I'm hyped to see the added storyline for him in Kiwami 2, i heard they added a bunch of stuff to follow up 0 with a continuation of the Makoto stuff, etc. It comes out in a couple months, I might actually pay full price for it!!


Ohhh yeah, it's 100% true. I didn't want to wait so I just played the PS2 version a few weeks ago. I definitely plan on playing the Kiwami version though just for Majima's story when it comes out. Majima from 0 is by far my favorite character in the series.


----------



## alinas

Have been playing rooftop snipers: http://rooftopsnipersgame.com


----------



## wankerness

Resident Evil 7 is such a claustrophobic nightmare. I can watch any horror movie out there without flinching, but this still just turns me into a wreck every time I open a door. Damn. I can't wait to be finished with it. It sure is good, though! I just finished the bug boss.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I was recommended Huniepop and Doki Doki Literature Club due to them being above average. I've actually seen Huniepop in action and DDLC has been getting a lot of high regard, but I don't think either game is enough incentive for me to play.


I'm giving Doki Doki Literature Club a playthrough right now. Thought of you, Bloody_Inferno. Then I found your comment here. 

I'm quickly seeing why the game has the warning before the menu that if you suffer from anxiety or depression, you may not have a safe experience playing the game.

The premise of the visual novel is simple, but executing it gets gradually more complicated as you progress through the story because you have to balance everything and carefully weigh every choice before you make it (based on what you can infer about human emotions).


----------



## TedEH

Emperor Guillotine said:


> I'm giving Doki Doki Literature Club a playthrough right now.


I don't dislike that game, per se, it does a lot of things pretty well, but I think it's super overrated for what it is. It has a twist! Lots of games have twists. But most games don't make you sit through cring-y anime "visual novels" to get to them.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

TedEH said:


> I don't dislike that game, per se, it does a lot of things pretty well, but I think it's super overrated for what it is. It has a twist! Lots of games have twists. But most games don't make you sit through cring-y anime "visual novels" to get to them.


Well, I mean, DDLC is a visual novel...not so much a "game". You aren't really playing anything. Just making an occasional choice that shapes which ending you progress towards. (Side note: your choices also affect what random glitches occur and what secret poems you unlock.)

What makes DDLC so interesting is when it breaks the fourth wall to such an great extent by addressing not your protagonist character but YOU (the player behind the screen). It starts very subtlety.


Spoiler



Specifically when files are left on your computer in the game's directory or removed completely, which was a smart touch of realism by getting the player out of the game client window.


 But then you realize that YOU (the player behind the screen) are gradually losing control.

If you play through multiple times and achieve all of the endings, it really fills things out; and you realize that there are so many little details that you initially overlook in DDCL along with so many little Easter eggs.

I think DDLC would've been better if you had multiple outcomes of Act 1, instead of just that one inevitable outcome that shocks the player and acts as a turning point, signaling the start of Act 2.


----------



## TedEH

Emperor Guillotine said:


> DDLC is a visual novel...not so much a "game"


Without getting into a debate about "what is a game", I easily count this as a game.

But yeh... to me, it's still pretty "meh" of a game. Other titles have done similar fourth-wall breaks, and IMO did it better. Undertale I think does it in a less heavy-handed way.



Emperor Guillotine said:


> It starts very subtlety.


I think I didn't get this from my playthrough - nothing about the game struck me as subtle. As soon as the first hint was dropped, I immediately thought


Spoiler



ok, the game is clearly telling me to go delete some files in the game folder.


There was no aha moment, or a point at which a bunch of previously unclear hints suddenly became clear in light of putting the pieces together, it was just - "oh, there's the hint, I guess I'll go do that now".

I'm very clearly not the target audience though, I'm not a fan of most anime, and I'm not the kind of person who would otherwise play "visual novels" (mostly because of the anime, to be honest). I like interactive story type games, I like the telltale style games, I even like walking simulator kind of games. But this was just... ok. Just my


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

TedEH said:


> Undertale I think does it in a less heavy-handed way.


I've heard Undertale mentioned somewhere else before. Not sure if it was by the creator of DDLC or what.

Edit: it was mentioned on a YouTube video about spooky music in video games, and both Undertale and DDLC were discussed in the video. The YouTube content creator then followed the video up with a podcast-style interview with the creator of DDLC.



TedEH said:


> I think I didn't get this from my playthrough - nothing about the game struck me as subtle. As soon as the first hint was dropped [...]
> There was no aha moment, or a point at which a bunch of previously unclear hints suddenly became clear in light of putting the pieces together, it was just - "oh, there's the hint, I guess I'll go do that now".


I'm not talking about hints at doing any action or anything. I'm talking about how the breaking the fourth wall started subtly, gradually revealing the nature of the true antagonist.
[spoler]Files are dropped after events and then quickly deleted. Example: the hxppy thxughts.png. And little lines of thoughts are left in the traceback.txt file. Those gave hints to the true nature of the antagonist. I'm not talking about towards the end of Act 3 where you HAVE TO go into the directory and delete a particular file in order to progress to the final stage of Act 3. It explicitly says to do that plain as day.[/spoiler]



TedEH said:


> I like interactive story type games, I like the telltale style games, I even like walking simulator kind of games. But this was just... ok. Just my


I feel ya.


----------



## TedEH

Maybe that's the bit that I missed. I only played through once, and never was it suggested to go monitor those files or anything like that until you made it to the very obvious suggestion to do so. Maybe it can't be appreciated fully without the multiple playthroughs.

But again, not being the target audience for this kind of fiction, it's hard for me to feel compelled to back and do another play. Even if the "trying to subvert" element is meant to open the target demo a bit, I think I'm also of the opinion that a subversion of something is also only really going to appeal to those who would have already been interested in the thing being subverted... if that makes any sense.

Given that I don't generally play "visual novels" (in particular, I always see this name pop up in reference to "dating sim" games), is this gameplay style ever used for anything else? I'd be interested maybe in seeing an example of a visual novel that is neither anime nor a dating sim. I suppose Ace Attorney fits into that genre too? (And by extension, the Aviary Attorney version.) I suppose the Telltale formula is sort of like visual novels with walking around added to it.


----------



## Anquished

DS Remastered. 

I never actually completed the first DS, only got as far as Anor Londo.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

TedEH said:


> Maybe that's the bit that I missed. I only played through once, and never was it suggested to go monitor those files or anything like that until you made it to the very obvious suggestion to do so. Maybe it can't be appreciated fully without the multiple playthroughs.


Yeah. You're never told explicitly to monitor the game's file directory. It's not even inferred. It's just something you happen to stumble across if you close out the game client window, then go to restart it (by clicking on the app file in the directory). You can't miss the newly introduced files since they pop up in the main folder as a little something to creep you out. (They are especially creepy on your first playthrough since they signal the start of the loss of control that I mentioned above.)



TedEH said:


> But again, not being the target audience for this kind of fiction, it's hard for me to feel compelled to back and do another play. Even if the "trying to subvert" element is meant to open the target demo a bit, I think I'm also of the opinion that a subversion of something is also only really going to appeal to those who would have already been interested in the thing being subverted... if that makes any sense.


Makes total sense. I don't think I'm part of the target audience for this because I don't play "visual novels" either. I only did multiple playthroughs of DDLC because I wanted to see how many paths you could take within the game and what endings could be achieve. Now, I'm checking out various mods from the mod community for it.

I dig the subversion as a plot twist. It can make an definite impact if done correctly.



TedEH said:


> Given that I don't generally play "visual novels" (in particular, I always see this name pop up in reference to "dating sim" games), is this gameplay style ever used for anything else? I'd be interested maybe in seeing an example of a visual novel that is neither anime nor a dating sim.


I'm absolutely certain that there are visual novels that aren't dating sims. (Not every visual novel is a dating sim, but it seems like most dating sims are presented in visual novel format.) As far as visual novels that aren't anime, I can't really say anything there. I figured that all visual novels used the anime style artwork because it seems like anime artwork has been the key feature/trait of visual novels ever since they became a thing for game developers.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

finally finished wolfenstein, now to start wolfenstein 2:new colossus


----------



## TedEH

Emperor Guillotine said:


> it seems like anime artwork has been the key feature/trait of visual novels ever since they became a thing for game developers


There's definitely this weird kind of overlap between games and anime that presents as a barrier to entry to a lot of things for me. I like some JRPGs from a mechanical standpoint, and visual novels have some appeal as well, but as soon as you drench those things in a healthy dose of anime, I lose most of my interest. It also makes it hard to participate in "gaming community" kinds of things, since the anime thing spills over so much into that.

I think it's an interesting thing, just as an observation, that gaming has tried (and in a lot of ways succeeded) to expand into being basically for everyone - it's young and old and men a women and phones and consoles and pcs and gamifying things, etc., to the point where you get in trouble if you claim that any game targets a particular demographic., but yet, we're still tied to the whole "otaku"/anime fan/etc. thing in certain circles. As if in some corners of the internet, we've just decided to remain ignorant of the fact that being enthusiastic about video games doesn't necessarily mean that you like all of those other things that "go with it".


----------



## Gravy Train

Monster Hunter World. Used to be addicted to Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on PSP, and this just expands on every aspect of that beautifully.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> There's definitely this weird kind of overlap between games and anime that presents as a barrier to entry to a lot of things for me. I like some JRPGs from a mechanical standpoint, and visual novels have some appeal as well, but as soon as you drench those things in a healthy dose of anime, I lose most of my interest. It also makes it hard to participate in "gaming community" kinds of things, since the anime thing spills over so much into that.
> 
> I think it's an interesting thing, just as an observation, that gaming has tried (and in a lot of ways succeeded) to expand into being basically for everyone - it's young and old and men a women and phones and consoles and pcs and gamifying things, etc., to the point where you get in trouble if you claim that any game targets a particular demographic., but yet, we're still tied to the whole "otaku"/anime fan/etc. thing in certain circles. As if in some corners of the internet, we've just decided to remain ignorant of the fact that being enthusiastic about video games doesn't necessarily mean that you like all of those other things that "go with it".



It's funny how there's still that view of anime as a genre when it's more a medium with more genres and subgenres aimed for every demographic, that's always had a foot deep in games (perhaps as another submedium for it). So I can't help but feel we've gone backwards making anime as a small subculture for people that we see negatively. The association with the otaku/4chan/weeaboo stigma only got loud and more annoying with the internet, and certainly doesn't help with bad eggs from both sides fanning the flames. I, as some who's been exposed to (and loved) anime from when it was the alternative, and has gone so far to defend the medium with wall of texts in the anime thread, cannot stand most of the fanbase they breed.

I wish it was like what you said (I guess like back in the 90s, so I'm sounding like the old man here). But the volume of the internet makes it hard to ignore.


----------



## TedEH

Not to turn this into an anime-bashing thread, I kinda get what you mean. I don't hate anime as a whole, but it's (as you said) not a "genre" so much as it's a subculture, and one that I don't quite jive with so to speak. It's like anything else, any medium or genre is going to have tons of garbage in it, but something about anime and the culture around it just seems to bring all that garbage to the surface - as opposed to something like metal, where the fans/culture does a good job of navigating through the heaps of nonsense to find the good stuff. Games are the same thing. There are so many terrible games, or games that don't appeal to everyone, etc., but there are ways to navigate it.

I don't hate anime in itself. I watched tons of Dragonball when I was younger. I appreciate Ghibli films, etc. But soooooo much of what the subculture brings forward is just garbage. 90% of the instances where anime makes it's way in front of my eyeballs ends up being cringe-worthy skimpy school girls with ridiculous proportions, characters whose entire personality is yelling and overreacting to everything, in-jokes and cultural references that only make sense to people who obsess over Japan, etc.

And I hate to say it, but so much of the drawing style just looks same-y to me. The same hair-made-of-spikes and tight school girl outfits and gigantic eyes etc.etc. is such a tired image.

Edit: And to add to that - so much of it is just suuuuuuuuuuuuper sexualized for no good reason, and nobody ever addresses that. "Sexy" isn't a bad word, but there's got to be a line where we recognize that a whole ton of the medium ends up being "fan service" for lack of a better word. That's what I mean when I say anime is cringe-y to me.

To go a step farther and maybe step away from the anime-bashing and bring it back around to games, I imagine it's a problem of volume - there's just sooooo much content out there that it's hard not to fall into those problems, and I think games as a whole have the same issue. There are heaps upon heaps of samey garbage games out there too. We don't need more pixel art metroidvania games. We don't need more parallax side scrolling shooter clones. We don't need 600 call of duty games. We don't need every game to have a battle royale mode. But that's where we are with media in general right now - bajillions of poeple pumping out less-than-unique iterative clones of the same stuff over and over again. I get that it's all part of the creative process, and doesn't mean there's no good games being made, but who wants to dig through all that to find the good ones? I don't.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I, as some who's been exposed to (and loved) anime from when it was the alternative, and has gone so far to defend the medium with wall of texts in the anime thread, cannot stand most of the fanbase they breed.


Thank you for saying this. I also became a fan of anime while it was the alternative (and heavily looked down upon) here in the West somewhere in the late 90s or early-00s before it really got a foothold. Crazy how much it has grown and changed outside of its native Japan. (Same statement goes for the fanbase.)



TedEH said:


> It's like anything else, any medium or genre is going to have tons of garbage in it, but something about anime and the culture around it just seems to bring all that garbage to the surface - as opposed to something like metal, where the fans/culture does a good job of navigating through the heaps of nonsense to find the good stuff.


You're joking here, right? I had to outright vacate the metal community (online and in-person) because of all the spiteful, cutthroat behavior that I was seeing from the shit fanbases. It discouraged me from further writing music that fell within the boundaries of the metal music genre. Like you said, all mediums or genres have garbage (bad fans coupled in with the good fans of the respective genre's community). But metal had enough bad ones that I had to quit and shift my focus into a different musical genre/community.



TedEH said:


> I don't hate anime in itself. I watched tons of Dragonball when I was younger. I appreciate Ghibli films, etc. But soooooo much of what the subculture brings forward is just garbage. 90% of the instances where anime makes it's way in front of my eyeballs ends up being cringe-worthy skimpy school girls with ridiculous proportions, characters whose entire personality is yelling and overreacting to everything, in-jokes and cultural references that only make sense to people who obsess over Japan, etc.


So, you have viewed the most popular stuff that was highly Westernized and accepted/praised as global phenomenons outside of Japan. Stuff like _Dragonball_. But majority of anime doesn't actually contain the stuff you mentioned (the "skimpy school girls", the "in-jokes", etc.) It's actually been quite a while since I've watched an anime that contained the stuff that you're referring to. Also, you have to remember that anime and manga are made in Japan for Japanese audiences, which explains why an anime series might be loaded with Japanese cultural references. The Japanese get it, but a Westerner might not (obviously). Does that make it a bad thing? No, because (again) most anime are created for the Japanese audiences. (It's no wonder why some jokes don't translate well in an English dub and leave Western viewers scratching their heads.) You can't blame non-Japanese fans for some of the tropes and traits that you find as negative.



TedEH said:


> And I hate to say it, but so much of the drawing style just looks same-y to me. The same hair-made-of-spikes and tight school girl outfits and gigantic eyes etc.etc. is such a tired image.


But that is the established art style. You can't change that. You can improve it, yes, which has gradually been happening over time in anime and manga. But you cannot outright drastically change it.

If a whole slew of Picasso imitators popped up, would you tell them to drastically change their style despite them wanting to make that particular kind of art and establish their own subgenre of cubism? No, you wouldn't.

What does it all trace back to? Tradition. Refining something until it is perfect while also being "safe" and recognizable. I've been dissecting a lot of J-Pop and J-Rock lately to learn the musical composition techniques of J-Pop and J-Rock artists as well as the production techniques behind the music, and I've noticed that the Japanese prefer music with busy soundscapes but less innovation, strong melodies that may sound clichéd but are perfected, and traditional rhythms (probably tracing back to their cultural folk music) that are recognizable and easy to embellish for groove.



TedEH said:


> Edit: And to add to that - so much of it is just suuuuuuuuuuuuper sexualized for no good reason, and nobody ever addresses that. "Sexy" isn't a bad word, but there's got to be a line where we recognize that a whole ton of the medium ends up being "fan service" for lack of a better word. That's what I mean when I say anime is cringe-y to me.


I know exactly what you mean; however, that is a niche faction that is smaller than you initially perceive, and that faction is really brought to the surface by the negative side of the anime fanbase comprised of individuals who fall into that stereotype of being a _hikikomori_ who has no in-person social interaction, rarely ventures outside of his/her room (or home) when not working, becomes sexually frustrated due to being reclusive and not getting laid, etc.

Again though, it's been a while since I've watched an anime that was so on-the-nose overtly sexualized.



TedEH said:


> We don't need more pixel art metroidvania games. We don't need more parallax side scrolling shooter clones. We don't need 600 call of duty games. We don't need every game to have a battle royale mode. But that's where we are with media in general right now - bajillions of poeple pumping out less-than-unique iterative clones of the same stuff over and over again.


I'm not a gamer. I don't game or own a console or anything. But I was thinking this exact idea yesterday while I was doing a little learning about game music composition.

I guess it's just due either a lack of creativity or developers wanting to crank something out that is simple, fast, and that they know will sell (easy cash-in). Either way you look at it, it revolves back around to laziness.


----------



## synrgy

Emperor Guillotine said:


> But majority of anime doesn't actually contain the stuff you mentioned (the "skimpy school girls", the "in-jokes", etc.)



I dunno. Let's not split hairs by saying "but those aren't all 'skimpy school girls'" and agree that what he's generally describing represents approximately 90% of any 'Anime' section in [Netflix/Hulu/Bookstores/Etc].


----------



## wankerness

I finished RE7, the last boss battle was really stupid, pretty good game overall.

I started Mass Effect Andromeda, which I'd put off getting and then playing for a long time cause of the gigantic negative hype. It's...fine. I put the first 3, especially 2 and 3, really high on my list of favorite games ever, but this really isn't bad. The characters are boring, the graphics are REALLY dated (it looks just like 2/3 from a character model/animation point of view), I hate looking for things to scan to open temples, and I REALLY, REALLY hate how they dumbed down the combat. But, somehow, I'm still having a pretty good time! It feels like part of the same universe, and the way you increase the habitability of the planets you visit is addictive. The jumping/dodging was implemented pretty well.

Just why, why, why did they lock you to only having three powers available without changing "loadouts," and even more ridiculously, why did they completely remove any ability to control your teammates beyond "attack this, move there?" On high difficulties in past games, it was all about leaving your teammates powers deactivated and using the wheel to cast all their stuff manually based on what needed to be debuffed (i mean, hit the dangerous enemy with shields with electric powers, the armored one with fire, etc). Not an option here! You have to get all the debuff powers on your own character if you want anything to happen, but then you can't have stealth or any other "fun" power, so ugh. It makes it so all of your teammates are equally crap from an offensive point of view - their quality is mainly dependent on how well they stay alive!

I'm glad I'm playing on normal difficulty.


----------



## TedEH

Don't take anything I said as "anime is bad". It's not for me. I stand by everything I said though.



Emperor Guillotine said:


> You're joking here, right?


Nope. Most metal fans I've dealt with have done a great job of exposing me to new stuff that I enjoy and wouldn't have encountered otherwise.



Emperor Guillotine said:


> So, you have viewed the most popular stuff that was highly Westernized and accepted/praised as global phenomenons outside of Japan.


Yup. That about sums it up. Those aren't the only ones I've seen. I've played a good number of a JRPGs, recently watched One-Punch Man, etc. Like I said, I don't hate it, but so much of it is not for me.



Emperor Guillotine said:


> But that is the established art style.


Yeah, I'm not arguing that. It just strikes me as very tired. Like you said - it's a medium, not a genre. There's so much more that could be explored in that style instead of aaaaaaalways coming back to the same tired high school imagery. It's not like Japan is short on things to take inspiration from.



Emperor Guillotine said:


> But you cannot outright drastically change it.


I'm not asking anyone to change it. I'm just acknowledging that it's not for me. Just cause I don't like something doesn't mean someone else can't or shouldn't.



Emperor Guillotine said:


> I know exactly what you mean; however, that is a niche faction that is smaller than you initially perceive


Maybe within the community it's the minority, but from the outside of the community, it's one of the largest visible groups. Could just be a vocal minority, but I have no interest in diving in far enough to find out. Like it or not, that's the image that gets put across, same as how the image of "gamers" is 12 year olds talking about your mom on CoD. And the image of metal heads is leather jackets and church burning, despite the fact that most metal heads I know are otherwise boring office worker type looking people who wouldn't hurt a fly.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

synrgy said:


> I dunno. Let's not split hairs by saying "but those aren't all 'skimpy school girls'" and agree that what he's generally describing represents approximately 90% of any 'Anime' section in [Netflix/Hulu/Bookstores/Etc].
> 
> View attachment 62441
> 
> 
> View attachment 62442


But I *have not* watched any of those. (You're missing the point in my response above.) And honestly, I don't see anything skimpy at all based on those images alone. Perhaps your imagination is running wild and assuming the worst?


----------



## wankerness

synrgy said:


> I dunno. Let's not split hairs by saying "but those aren't all 'skimpy school girls'" and agree that what he's generally describing represents approximately 90% of any 'Anime' section in [Netflix/Hulu/Bookstores/Etc].
> 
> View attachment 62441
> 
> 
> View attachment 62442



Uhh...only one of those thumbnails appears to have a character in skimpy clothes?

The stereotypical anime fans are the worst and are paradoxically stereotyped as the most racist, xenophobic Trump supporters (aka, the alt-right). Anime with sexualized school girls, and worse, the recent trend of having sexualized outright CHILDREN with insane plot explanations like "it's ok, because the character is actually a 2000 year old dragon" are definitely not for me. This is a change from when I was in high school, when all anime was stereotyped as being "tentacle rape." Speaking of which, I remember a friend of mine in high school that was into anime actually having a tentacle rape movie he made us watch, I think just to horrify us, so that sure didn't help with my genre appreciation!

But, it's insane to write off the genre as just that. Anime has as much variety as western animation. It's not like Watership Down and The Cinnamon Bear and The Little Mermaid and Samurai Pizza Cats are in any way similar. There's plenty of really good, really mature stuff out there. I have barely scraped the surface since I don't have time to get into series, but I have watched quite a few anime films, and they're all over the map and many of them are vastly more intelligent and mature than any animated Western film I've ever seen. Probably cause animation as an art form isn't stereotyped as being something for little kids like it is over here.


----------



## synrgy

OMG, you both just did _exactly_ the thing I said _not_ to do. 

IMHO, he was speaking to an overarching point that it all looks the same, which wasn't always the case.


----------



## TedEH

synrgy said:


> that what he's generally describing represents approximately 90% of any 'Anime' section in [Netflix/Hulu/Bookstores/Etc].


Yup. I see nothing distinct about any of those characters. Big eyes, colourful hair, the exact same shapes and patterns everywhere, etc. I couldn't tell those characters apart from if presented outside of the context of their own show/game/etc.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

TedEH said:


> Yup. That about sums it up. Those aren't the only ones I've seen. I've played a good number of a JRPGs, recently watched One-Punch Man, etc. Like I said, I don't hate it, but so much of it is not for me.


JRPGs and _One-Punch Man_ are both also highly Westernized and regarded as global phenomenons. (Hell, you can tell even in the earliest _OPM_ manga from years ago.  Damn good satire of manga and anime "invincible good guy" trope though.) So, you haven't watched or played anything niche. But I know where you're going with this train of though.



TedEH said:


> Maybe within the community it's the minority, but from the outside of the community, it's one of the largest visible groups. Could just be a vocal minority, but I have no interest in diving in far enough to find out. Like it or not, that's the image that gets put across, same as how the image of "gamers" is 12 year olds talking about your mom on CoD. And the image of metal heads is leather jackets and church burning, despite the fact that most metal heads I know are otherwise boring office worker type looking people who wouldn't hurt a fly.


This comment right here deserves some kind of award or recognition.


----------



## TedEH

Emperor Guillotine said:


> So, you haven't watched or played anything niche.


Why would I? You're sort of illustrating the point, and pulling the same kind of thing that I don't like about these kinds of communities.
"Oh you don't like metal? You're not listening to the GOOD, underground, kvlt metal that REAL metal fans like".
Nope. I'm not sold.

Edit: If anything, I suspect that more niche examples of anime probably contain MORE of what I don't want to see than less of it.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Why would I? You're sort of illustrating the point, and pulling the same kind of thing that I don't like about these kinds of communities.
> "Oh you don't like metal? You're not listening to the GOOD, underground, kvlt metal that REAL metal fans like".
> Nope. I'm not sold.



I don't get it. That's true of anything. Are you saying that something isn't worth liking if you don't like the most public face of it? Like, if you don't like Metallica you should never listen to another metal band? If you don't like say, the Marvel movies, you should never watch another action movie? Etc. Almost ALL art forms have a lowest-common-denominator face that's what is most well-known. It might be a pretty good representation, and maybe you WON'T like anything else in the genre, but are you REALLY saying that if you don't like that, the rest of it isn't worth exploring, and anyone that tries to recommend you anything else is a super-annoying fanboy that shouldn't bother?


----------



## wankerness

synrgy said:


> OMG, you both just did _exactly_ the thing I said _not_ to do.
> 
> IMHO, he was speaking to an overarching point that it all looks the same, which wasn't always the case.



Your post implied the thing about "everything being sexualized" was 90% true, THAT'S what we responded to. Yes, the character art style is the same in 90% of those. That wasn't what we were like "what the hell?!" with.


----------



## synrgy

^No, that's a mis-interpretation of my post. Moving on. 

It happens with pretty much everything. Like, there was this super-brief window when Korn first hit where it was like _holy shit this is totally different_ but then in basically no time, we ended up with Disturbed, Drowning Pool, etc, and the majority (if not all?) of the genre has basically been un-listenable ever since, because over-saturation.

When we were solidly in the era of Otomo/Oshii/Kawajiri/Miyazaki/Koike/Ishiguro/Toriyama, etc, it at least _seemed _as though there were more diamonds than rough, even if there weren't, and it didn't seem like those directors were paying any attention to each other; each had their own unique style. I remember when The Animatrix came out, it was kind of a big deal because it was showcasing (in a Western context) some of the genres greatest contributors, all in one place, and highlighted how different their visual styles were. Now, in the wake of streaming services and 'the West's' complete acceptance of the genre, it's just completely over-saturated, and the majority of what's 'visible' on the surface _appears_ to be a lot of imitation with very little (if any) substance.

And that's _also_ exacerbated by the darker corners of the genre: If one is trying to avoid anime intended for 'children' or 'teens', that's extremely difficult, because if you try and look for 'adult' anime, you basically get tentacle porn.


----------



## synrgy

wankerness said:


> I started Mass Effect Andromeda



Pretty much summed up my experience. I enjoyed it, but it was pretty clearly nowhere near the par set by its predecessors.

Which makes me sad, because the series was the last in pretty much all of gaming that I was genuinely, like, "kid-on-Christmas" excited about.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

TedEH said:


> Why would I? You're sort of illustrating the point, and pulling the same kind of thing that I don't like about these kinds of communities.
> "Oh you don't like metal? You're not listening to the GOOD, underground, kvlt metal that REAL metal fans like".
> Nope. I'm not sold.
> 
> Edit: If anything, I suspect that more niche examples of anime probably contain MORE of what I don't want to see than less of it.


No, no, no. You're misunderstanding me here, mate.

"Niche" and "good" are *not* synonymous terms. I just mean that, your exposure/experience with anime has been vastly limited to one type (the _DBZ, OPM, _"invincible good guy" type), but you're writing off everything else without even taking a second look. That is what I'm vying against here because I know you're not that feebly close-minded, Ted.



wankerness said:


> Almost ALL art forms have a lowest-common-denominator face that's what is most well-known. It might be a pretty good representation, and maybe you WON'T like anything else in the genre, but are you REALLY saying that if you don't like that, the rest of it isn't worth exploring, and anyone that tries to recommend you anything else is a super-annoying fanboy that shouldn't bother?


This is a very good point, wankerness.

With that said, _One-Punch Man_ (since Ted is specifically familiar with that anime and manga) fell into that "super-annoying fanboy" type of shit. And yet, when people finally began accepting it and checking it out, look at how massively acclaimed it became globally. It went from "niche" to "mainstream" so quickly and permeated society.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I don't get it.


I think you're searching for an argument that I'm not making. Again* I'm not saying anime is bad in general *or that anyone shouldn't watch it or something like that. It's just not for me.



wankerness said:


> Are you saying that something isn't worth liking if you don't like the most public face of it? Like, if you don't like Metallica you should never listen to another metal band?


I think you missed the part where I said I *DO* like the common denominator examples in a lot of cases. But on another level, yes. If someone doesn't like Metallica, because they listen to country, and Metallica is too heavy for them, they aren't going to like anything I recommend to them either.



wankerness said:


> are you REALLY saying that if you don't like that, the rest of it isn't worth exploring, and anyone that tries to recommend you anything else is a super-annoying fanboy that shouldn't bother?


You're putting words in my mouth. I do ask anime fans for recommendations sometimes, and I do watch them, and sometimes I like them. But in general, anime doesn't normally appeal to me for the reasons I outlined. That's it. End of statement. Nothing more to extrapolate from this.


----------



## TedEH

Do I really have to state that it's ok for people to have different tastes? There's no reason I have to be an anime fan. And my not liking it doesn't take anything away from those that do. It's not a thing that needs to be defended, because I'm not attacking it.


----------



## wankerness

synrgy said:


> Pretty much summed up my experience. I enjoyed it, but it was pretty clearly nowhere near the par set by its predecessors.
> 
> Which makes me sad, because the series was the last in pretty much all of gaming that I was genuinely, like, "kid-on-Christmas" excited about.



I was really, really into the ME games. I played through all of them, even the first one, probably 5 times, despite how wallowing and clunky and ugly it was. I was just so into it that I wanted to import characters of all classes into 2 and play through the whole trilogy as the same character! I also did all the achievements on all the games, apart from insanity on 2, which I started but never finished.

I have been disappointed that nothing's really clicked in the same way as the ME games for me. There are some games I've played recently that occasionally give me the ME vibes, but it's just sort of a warm feeling instead of a HELL YEAH THIS IS JUST AS GOOD!! Like, Dragon Age Inquisition did a good job with the other characters and the party system. The game was just too dreary and boring gameplaywise and especially campaign-wise. The Witcher 3, by the end, had me craving the character interactions just as much as I did in ME 2/3. It wasn't a party-based game, though!



synrgy said:


> Now, in the wake of streaming services and 'the West's' complete acceptance of the genre, it's just completely over-saturated, and the majority of what's 'visible' on the surface _appears_ to be a lot of imitation with very little (if any) substance.
> 
> And that's _also_ exacerbated by the darker corners of the genre: If one is trying to avoid anime intended for 'children' or 'teens', that's extremely difficult, because if you try and look for 'adult' anime, you basically get tentacle porn.



How much of this is Netflix's fault? Cause with any genre I know anything about, their streaming selection is absolute garbage. Is it as samey as Netflix makes it look, or did they just buy a grab-bag of the most boring, repetive junk, and since there's a bunch of it and a lot of morons depend entirely on Netflix for movies/tv, people think it's somehow comprehensive?


----------



## TedEH

Emperor Guillotine said:


> "Niche" and "good" are *not* synonymous terms. I just mean that, your exposure/experience with anime has been vastly limited to one type (the _DBZ, OPM, _"invincible good guy" type), but you're writing off everything else without even taking a second look. That is what I'm vying against here because I know you're not that feebly close-minded, Ted.


I get what you're saying, but it's hard to not take the examples I have seen as representative, since I can't even picture what I'd be taking a second look at. I have no point of reference other than the stuff I find cringy and the stuff I've been recommended that turned out to be ok. Part of what I like about the stuff I have seen is exactly the stuff that makes people write it off as "not a good example of anime". It's the accessible stuff and I know that. And honestly, I like them *despite* the anime style, not because of it.

I literally don't know what I could watch as an example of "good anime that would convince a non-anime fan to get into it". Finding it would mean recommendations (which will inevitably lead to more "accessible" examples despite the intent), or wading through the mountains of stuff I really don't have any interest in.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> How much of this is Netflix's fault?


I think games have this problem too in that there's a ton of garbage right on the surface but at the same time..... there's an audience for this. The games I think are garbage, someone else is going to see as being novel art pieces or something like that. Lots of indie games get showered with praise that, to me, look like horrible derivative janky unpolished experiences put together by people who only half know what they're doing.

There's very clearly an audience out there for all the things I don't like about anime. People who really dig the over-sexualized bits, the samey big eyed school girls, the Japanese culture elements that don't make as much sense to Western viewers, the super over-exaggerated expressions, things being cutesy for no reason, everyone yelling for no reason sometimes, etc etc etc. All the power to them. In terms of "why is this the state of [whatever]", my gut reaction is that it's because there's an audience for it.


----------



## synrgy

TedEH said:


> everyone yelling for no reason



That's probably my least favorite element. I just _can't,_ with that. It single-handedly takes Spirited Away down several notches, for me. I mean, I get that Chihiro is roughly an age during which kids don't much bother to control their volume, but, still.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm. I never had that reaction to Spirited Away, but I think I was always watching the English dub?? I know that I felt like the little kid in My Neighbor Totoro was like fingernails on a chalkboard when I first watched the Japanese version for that reason, and loved it the next two times, so maybe the dubs just tone it down. I've watched at least half of those in the English dub and I really don't have a problem with the cutesy kid voices, just when they scream! Speaking of cutesy kid voices, I remember now that I used to watch this thing called Dogtato-Kun in college sometimes as a life cooldown, cause it was probably the sweetest, most reassuring thing I'd ever seen, right up there with Mr Rogers and Bob Ross, but unlike them, available on my college network!

ANYWAY, I don't recall distracting yelling in much of anything else. There's like the tough masculine guy yelling as an intimidation tactic, but I guess I've seen so many live-action Japanese genre movies that it never stood out to me.

I like how this discussion all started based on a frickin visual novel. I haven't played any of those. I saw that one (Danganronpa) was on sale on PSN recently that everyone was saying was really great and had to be played, but it was #3 in a series and it sounded like you were expected to go through 1-2 first for it to make any sense!

I dunno if I'd like them or not. I LOVED the "boring" stuff in Persona 5 (going around leveling professions/friendships/stats), because I have something wrong with me, so maybe I'd like it too. But, I also have a short attention span when it comes to dialogue in games and want to just mash past all the dialogue after a little while to get to the next thing I can do.


----------



## synrgy

I was referencing the English dub. It might just be the way my brain interprets Daveigh Chase's natural voice, but to me, it sounded like she was yelling her way through most of the movie, save a few small moments.



Then again, I don't feel like she sounded like that in Lilo & Stitch:



So, that suggests to me that Disney/Ghibli wanted Chihiro to be a yeller.

And don't get me wrong: I _love_ the movie. Just saying, I would love it _that much more_ if the dubs had been delivered with more nuance. "Lost in translation", I guess.

Anyway, sorry for all the derailing; I guess some of this belongs in the movie thread, but I just kinda roll with wherever the posts go.


----------



## mongey

back into my switch skyrim game. actually started doing some of the main quest after 35 hours and I'm remembering that the main quest is pretty much the worst thing in the game 

also loaded up celeste for 1st time in a bit. was stuck on a screen for ages. got past it then got stuck again 3 screens later


----------



## Kaura

Bought Wreckfest today. In case you haven't heard of it. It's made by the same company who made the first two FlatOut games and it's pretty similar to them. I mainly just bought it because my friend's band got included on the soundtrack.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> back into my switch skyrim game. actually started doing some of the main quest after 35 hours and I'm remembering that the main quest is pretty much the worst thing in the game
> 
> also loaded up celeste for 1st time in a bit. was stuck on a screen for ages. got past it then got stuck again 3 screens later


bethesda hasn't made a good main quest since oblivion or fallout 3/NV imo. The side quests in the ES games (and the fallout games) are always the best parts.


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> back into my switch skyrim game. actually started doing some of the main quest after 35 hours and I'm remembering that the main quest is pretty much the worst thing in the game



No way, BY FAR the worst non-trivial section of the game is that part in the middle of the thieves guild questline where you have to do every type of job in 4 cities or whatever, but it's completely random what city you'll get, so either you have to make a checklist of the 16 (20? I can't remember) quests you need to do and sit there spamming the new quest and cancel quest while the guy with the ridiculous accent threatens not to give you anymore jawbs, or just do random thief quests for hours and hours until you luck out and complete them all.

I feel like no one remembers that when they talk about how good the thieves guild quest was.

I didn't like Oblivion at all, but I have to admit that the thieves guild questline in that was actually awesome with the big heist climax.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Slightly diverting a bit back to the anime subtopic (because I missed most of it and frankly, I'm rather weary of all the cultural stuff about the medium/not-genre), one thing I realized is that I'm disliking anime fighting games more and more.

I was big on Guilty Gear years ago. I played a mean Sol Badguy and Dust Looped everyone who begged to differ, hell I have a 2nd place medal from an anime convention tournament to prove it.  Anyway, I loved it and most of the subsequent updates, but I didn't realise there were some things that will put me off. The story mode was thrilling for me at the time but they were all presented in a visual novel format that killed the gameplay flow in the same pace as the Tooth Chipper rollercoaster from The Simpsons. I need to go through it to unlock some knickknacks so whatever.

Then Blazblue came along and that broke me. This series holds the undisputed title of the single most convoluted to the point of incredibly stupid storyline in gaming history, that it completely lost me. It wasn't fun at all.

Yeah sure hardcore fighters always played these games as practice for human competition, but eventually the super intricate mechanics broke me too. Funny enough it's Capcom's fault. 

Prior to that X-Men Vs Street Fighter stopped being a fighting game and became a race to see who gets the first hit into a juggle infinite. And all the anime fighters basically turned to variations of that. Each move-cancel variant more intricate from the last, yeah yeah damage scaling, but whatever. You can tell an anime game when it has Air Dashing and some kind of Roman Cancel. And after a while, it was just too much. It felt more like rhythm games than actually beating the opposition to a pulp. I slogged through the Persona 4 Fighting Games, but all the time was grumbling that it wasn't a JRPG anymore. The newest Guilty Gear made me abandon the genre.

I get that these sort of games are the equivalent to a shred off contest, but I guess my views on shred reflects here too. Anime fighting games are the modern shred equivalent where it's mostly spectacle on technique. And it's fun for a bit, but I just got tired of it.


And just to add, you can tell anime fighters are always overpowered, especially in Mugen and Salty Bet when their mechanics crush everybody else (Omega Tom Hanks aside.... why is that even a thing? )


----------



## synrgy

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Prior to that X-Men Vs Street Fighter stopped being a fighting game and became a race to see who gets the first hit into a juggle infinite.



Nicely summed up my exit from fighting games. For me it goes back _way_ further, probably to MK3: I _loved_ MK2 way back when, but when they introduced the combo system in MK3, I was _done_. I used to have a lot of fun with the XMvSF series, but when they increasingly favored their combo system with each title, I increasingly lost interest. I was briefly excited about SF4, until I got it and found out it was more of the same.

The relative peak for me was probably DoA3 and/or SC2, both on the original Xbox. Everything since then has been a combo fest, which I can't pretend to have even a _little bit_ of interest in.


----------



## TedEH

I could be remembering this wrong, but I think I had read some comments/reviews that the Dragonball FighterZ game was pretty accessible - I remember playing some of the old snes Dragonball fighting games, and while I'm not a "fighting game kind of guy", I enjoyed those quite a bit, so I wonder if maybe this newer title has something in common with those. That would be a selling point, in my book.


----------



## synrgy

The last couple DBZ games I tried to play were also combo-fests. This one kinda looks to be, too, but you're right that it's (apparently) programmed to be more accessible:



Looks pretty. I might have to try it when the price hits the < $20 mark.

I get that people play fighting games competitively, but I'm in my late 30's: It's been over a decade since I've had friends over to game (or vice-versa), and I don't have time to devote to learning/mastering new controller skills; I just want stuff I can pick up and play for the approximately 2 nanoseconds before my wife or kid need something again.


----------



## TedEH

synrgy said:


> I get that people play fighting games competitively, but I'm in my late 30's: It's been over a decade since I've had friends over to game (or vice-versa), and I don't have time to devote to learning/mastering new controller skills


I hear that. I have a copy of one of the Street Fighter games, but I basically launched it once, died a bunch, and decided it wasn't worth the time investment to get good enough at it to enjoy.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

synrgy said:


> Nicely summed up my exit from fighting games. For me it goes back _way_ further, probably to MK3: I _loved_ MK2 way back when, but when they introduced the combo system in MK3, I was _done_. I used to have a lot of fun with the XMvSF series, but when they increasingly favored their combo system with each title, I increasingly lost interest. I was briefly excited about SF4, until I got it and found out it was more of the same.
> 
> The relative peak for me was probably DoA3 and/or SC2, both on the original Xbox. Everything since then has been a combo fest, which I can't pretend to have even a _little bit_ of interest in.



I was more forgiving with MK3/UMK3 namely because the combos didn't instakill you (well at least before they introduced Classic Smoke) and the fast rounds kept the pace up. And trust me when I say this, that's the first time I've defended MK3 in a very long time. I'm not as kind to XvSF as to say, Marvel Vs Capcom 2 despite being ostensibly the same chaotic mess of a game funny enough. Maybe that's my smug fighting game enthusiasm talking but that's me. 

Dragon Ball FighterZ is developed by Arc System Works, who are ground zero in anime fighters. It's supposed to be more accessible to the genre (like Street Fighter V "supposedly" was) in terms of mechanics, but it's still the same air dashy, Roman cancelly, super comboey punchy kicky firebally. You can give it a shot when cheap, but don't expect it to change your mind. 

I really want to get back to playing fighters though, namely the current incarnation of SFV. Unlike it's vanilla launch that charged full game price but yelled "early early access to hardcore players only, everyone else can piss off" as loud as possible, it feels like a complete game.


----------



## synrgy

If I'm looking for something that's basically DoA3 with current-gen graphics, does such a thing exist? It had _exactly_ the mechanics I enjoy, but then they spent the rest of the series eschewing mechanics for "BEWBS!!1!" and I had to check out. The recent Tekkens, maybe?


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

wankerness said:


> Cause with any genre I know anything about, their streaming selection is absolute garbage. Is it as samey as Netflix makes it look, or did they just buy a grab-bag of the most boring, repetive junk, and since there's a bunch of it and a lot of morons depend entirely on Netflix for movies/tv, people think it's somehow comprehensive?


The truth behind this statement.  (Same goes for Hulu, even though Hulu offers way more in their selection.)



TedEH said:


> the super over-exaggerated expressions, things being cutesy for no reason, everyone yelling for no reason sometimes, etc etc etc. All the power to them. In terms of "why is this the state of [whatever]", my gut reaction is that it's because there's an audience for it.


Keep in mind, a lot of it is for comedic effect as well. Sometimes being "loud" is part of the "small, cute girl" stereotype as the character tries to assert herself by making up for diminutive physical stature by being overtly loud.

Regarding _Spirited Away_, I can't recall if I've seen both the English dub and Japanese dub, but I know what you guys are talking about in regards to the English dub with the Chihiro character being a loud-mouth (to display the demeanor of an obnoxious child) before she matures at the end of the film after her long journey.




Bloody_Inferno said:


> Dragon Ball FighterZ is developed by Arc System Works, who are ground zero in anime fighters. It's supposed to be more accessible to the genre (like Street Fighter V "supposedly" was) in terms of mechanics, but it's still the same air dashy, Roman cancelly, super comboey punchy kicky firebally. You can give it a shot when cheap, but don't expect it to change your mind.


Years ago (at least over ten years ago), I would occasionally play the _Dragon Ball Z: Budokai_ game series with friends in the summer, and that was where I just immediately lost all interest in fighter games such as _DBZ, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Tekken, _etc. They are all the same ever since the mid-00s (maybe even earlier than that). They are all blandly about just nailing combos as fast as you can to charge up your character, then unleashing some finishing move combo as fast as you can. Game over for the opponent. No strategy or skill or mechanics. Just combo-fest over and over, which really destroys any motive to do anything else and destroys any room to really play and learn the game because you're just focus on "COMBO! COMBO! COMBO!"


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

synrgy said:


> If I'm looking for something that's basically DoA3 with current-gen graphics, does such a thing exist? It had _exactly_ the mechanics I enjoy, but then they spent the rest of the series eschewing mechanics for "BEWBS!!1!" and I had to check out. The recent Tekkens, maybe?



The Tekken series are generally sold fighters, at times odd choices in the mechanics (mid hits are overhead) and it can get reduced to juggle fests. But still solid. You can pick up the new and last game and you're off to the races.

Personally, the closest you'll get for a no nonsense fighter is the Virtua Fighter series. 4 to 5 being the best of the bunch and my favorite 3D fighter series. But the updates to 5 vanilla were never released outside Japan... unless you play Yakuza 6 and venture into Club Sega. It's an arcade perfect port within the game.

As for 2D, Street Fighter 3 Third Strike is still as beautiful and solid as ever. Super SF2 Turbo amazingly still holds up to this day, and if you have a Switch, the Ultra version transition is also a great Super Turbo of choice.


----------



## synrgy

I was _super_ into VF2 way back when. Was one of my all-time favorites. Liked 3, but not as much as 2. Eventually picked up a copy of 5 for 360, but something just didn't feel right. Can't put my finger on it..

And yeah, I definitely go back and play some of the old stuff on emulators once in a while. Been thinking about slapping together a Raspberry Pi console for that purpose.


----------



## mongey

playing the sf collection def reminds me how the old school games are fundamentally different

all the new fighting games all feel the same. hit confirm into whatever extend combo is easy to confirm and rinse and repeat . 

mind games and actually reading your opponent just isn't getting you far these days 

I have tinkered in most of the vf games but played a fair bit of 5 on the 360 when it came out . I def enjoy it more than tekken


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I hear that. I have a copy of one of the Street Fighter games, but I basically launched it once, died a bunch, and decided it wasn't worth the time investment to get good enough at it to enjoy.



Yup, this happened to me with Street Fighter V. Got it on sale with the first two season packs, played about 2 hours, and that was that. I don't really have anyone to couch game with, and it's t0he only real way I enjoy fighting games. Pretty much why I haven't gotten the SF Collection (and I'd really like to play the Alpha series again) or Mortal Kombat XL despite the fact that it's on sale digitally for 10 bucks basically every other week. And it REALLY sucks to have no one to laugh like an idiot to Gang Beasts with.

Anyway, went on a family trip for a long weekend, and brought my Vita with me for the drive since I don't have to drive for once, and jumping back into Persona 4 Golden. I really like it, but it hasn't sunk it's claws into me yet like Persona 5 managed to do quickly and never let go. I'm sure it will eventually, I can at least understand why so many people adore this game. And hey, I have the first Persona downloaded on my Vita too, so maybe I'll play a little of that... Maybe...


----------



## Ralyks

Edit: Stupid double post


----------



## blacai

Tried Fornite finally...yes, I know, I am late. Shooter games and me are not the best friends but I find it quite interesting. I like the surviving idea. I usually manage to stay alive and be in top 15 just by hiding and killing 1-2 per game.

There is a 50vs50 mode where I started without the pressure of being killed after landing and I am trying to learn how to build structures faster.

What I hate, the kids in the voice chat. I can't stand them


----------



## TedEH

mongey said:


> old school games are fundamentally different


There are absolutely some very huge differences in the designs and goals of older games vs. now, not just in fighting games. I'm seeing it in my Deus Ex playthrough where a lot of the intentions are the same, but the execution is very different. Old game: hack a guys PC right in front of him, he doesn't care. People walk by corpses without being startled. Random overpowered weapons given to you sometimes because why not, it's fun. New game: your actions are analyzed, if a friendly sees you do something you shouldn't, you lose some morality points or something, they turn on you, npcs notice that things have moved in the scene, etc. Lots of stuff used to fly just because "meh, it's a video game", but now a lot more little details are important and "balanced" and made intentional. It's almost too balanced sometimes. Lots of games try really hard to hit that "flow curve" but don't quite hit it.


----------



## Gravy Train

Started Resident Evil 7 last night (late, I know). Very tense and nerve wracking. Loving the Louisiana/swamp setting.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Gravy Train said:


> Started Resident Evil 7 last night (late, I know). Very tense and nerve wracking. Loving the Louisiana/swamp setting.



Yeah that game did nothing to help my anxiety. First time in a long time that a game really utilized that atmosphere and mood and made it effective in survival horror.


----------



## Gravy Train

PunkBillCarson said:


> Yeah that game did nothing to help my anxiety. First time in a long time that a game really utilized that atmosphere and mood and made it effective in survival horror.



I feel the game is losing it's atmosphere/spookines as I have progressed. It's a great game, but now towards the end it's connecting more to the previous games/plot (5 and 6), and has become a little more action oriented.


----------



## synrgy

^Is it just me, or do _most_ games offering any variant of a 'cinematic' experience, tend to offer their best content during the first level (since it's what will be most-showcased at all the trade shows and review copies, etc) and then go rapidly downhill (or at least fail to 'progress' in any meaningful way) from there?

I'm not suggesting that there aren't exceptions to this theoretical rule, but I'm saying I've observed it enough times to suggest it's a rule..


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

synrgy said:


> ^Is it just me, or do _most_ games offering any variant of a 'cinematic' experience, tend to offer their best content during the first level (since it's what will be most-showcased at all the trade shows and review copies, etc) and then go rapidly downhill (or at least fail to 'progress' in any meaningful way) from there?
> 
> I'm not suggesting that there aren't exceptions to this theoretical rule, but I'm saying I've observed it enough times to suggest it's a rule..



In Resident Evil 7s case, Capcom did the logical step after RE6: they got someone else to write the story. But somewhere down the line it slowly becomes a Resident Evil game.

EDIT: I was going to ramble on the differences between old and new games funny enough. Was going to go on about fighting games, but a major difference is that modern games are now heavily narrative driven, so the story seems more focused, at times over gameplay. Hence probably why a lot of games blow their cinematic load in the first half of the game, then neglect the actual gaming aspect. Either that or do a David Cage and just make a long movie with QTEs. 

Older games, were limited with that aspect, and to compensate for it, the games were made challenging/difficult.


----------



## TedEH

synrgy said:


> tend to offer their best content during the first level


If I can offer the dev point of view, some projects have you playing the first section of a game over and over again because you have to in order to get to what you're working on. Every project is different of course, but some workflows put certain parts of a game/project in front of your eyes much more frequently than other parts. Absolutely leads to sometimes loading all the best stuff into that one place and neglecting the areas that didn't spend as much time in front of anyones eyes.

It sounds like something that should be easily avoidable, but it's not always.


----------



## ElRay

Arrrgg!!!!! The kids have gotten me into PUBG on mobile—the fact we can’t just kick-off a quick team game is a huge part of the fun. 

But, I got revenge. I told them I fell asleep playing and it was the best sleep I’ve had in a Fortnight. Dad-joke FTW.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

I've been having too much fun in Cuisine Royale

https://store.steampowered.com/app/884660/Cuisine_Royale/


----------



## Mathemagician

I’ve tried to play street fighter 5 for a few hours. But I just cannot enjoy fighting games with a regular controller. And I don’t want to drop $150+ for another arcade stick. Sold my old stuff and I just don’t play enough for that to be worth it. Sucks because I actually really like the game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

all i want is another virtua fighter or good soul calibur game. Neither of those have been good in ages ;_;


----------



## wankerness

synrgy said:


> ^Is it just me, or do _most_ games offering any variant of a 'cinematic' experience, tend to offer their best content during the first level (since it's what will be most-showcased at all the trade shows and review copies, etc) and then go rapidly downhill (or at least fail to 'progress' in any meaningful way) from there?
> 
> I'm not suggesting that there aren't exceptions to this theoretical rule, but I'm saying I've observed it enough times to suggest it's a rule..



What other games would you say that about?? I can't say I've ever observed that. I don't buy it with RE7, I'm guessing it's more that he got acclimated to the environment so he wasn't terrified as it went on. Best part of that game is the birthday video, IMO!

The only thing I think gets worse over time is that at some point you realize that all you're ever going to fight are those stupid soot men, and not the Ghibli kind.


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> I’ve tried to play street fighter 5 for a few hours. But I just cannot enjoy fighting games with a regular controller. And I don’t want to drop $150+ for another arcade stick. Sold my old stuff and I just don’t play enough for that to be worth it. Sucks because I actually really like the game.


I was in the same boat and got a 360 to ps4 brook converter for my TE stick .works really well


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

KnightBrolaire said:


> all i want is another virtua fighter or good soul calibur game. Neither of those have been good in ages ;_;



False. Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is great. Sure nobody outside Japan got to play it until Yakuza 6 came out, but it's still great. The series was consistently good from 4 Evolution onwards.

Soul Calibur... I'll give you that one.


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

wankerness said:


> The only thing I think gets worse over time is that at some point you realize that all you're ever going to fight are those stupid soot men, and not the Ghibli kind.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Going back to the fighting games, I think part of why the Virtua Fighter series fell by the wayside is that, despite a solid comprehensive fighting engine, the characters all had the personality of a tree stump. And when they do, you can't wait to beat them to a pulp, namely Lion and Jacky... I mained Lion for a while too and even I wanted to see him decked. 

These sort of games (namely fighting games, but also games like Overwatch), are character explorations in their purest form. You need characters with, um, character. The main story plays second or third fiddle anyway (and usually a contrived mess that leads to a retelling of Bloodsport), and the characters take center stage. In contrast to most modern fighters, VF haven't really evolved outside their (mostly stereotypical) personas. By comparison, Ryu and Liu Kang began as uninspiring blank slates (the latter was just Bruce Lee) but have since evolved with rich backstories on subsequent games, while conversely, Akira Yuki hasn't gone past over being just a boring karate dude. Even the cast of anime fighters have the edge on him.


----------



## wankerness

Mass Effect's flaws are showing more and more as I rack up the time. Possibly the biggest pet peeve is just the goddam animations plus huge bass drop that happen whenever you fly anywhere - it takes what feels like FOREVER to go between planets compared to the previous games, especially if you're trying to fill in the map by scanning everything, even if you're mashing the button to skip as much of the animations as possible. And SO many of the side missions will send you back and forth to the same damn planets over and over, and then as soon as you think you're done with one planet another mission suddenly decides it's time to go to the planet you thought you just finished, and argh.

It's the same repetitive garbage sidequests as in Dragon Age: Inquisition, but if they also forced you to watch a minute's worth of takeoff/space footage/landing in between every step!!

So yeah, this game is an argument for LESS content, not more. If I was smart, I would just not do any side missions. But I hate not knowing if I'm missing important.


----------



## mongey

Bloody_Inferno said:


> .
> 
> These sort of games (namely fighting games, but also games like Overwatch), are character explorations in their purest form. You need characters with, um, character. The main story plays second or third fiddle anyway (and usually a contrived mess that leads to a retelling of Bloodsport), and the characters take center stage. In contrast to most modern fighters, VF haven't really evolved outside their (mostly stereotypical) personas. By comparison, Ryu and Liu Kang began as uninspiring blank slates (the latter was just Bruce Lee) but have since evolved with rich backstories on subsequent games, while conversely, Akira Yuki hasn't gone past over being just a boring karate dude. Even the cast of anime fighters have the edge on him.



yeah I agree with that. also I'd say VF biggest competitor is tekken . and tekken its easy to grab and do a flashy move even if you dont knwo any combos ,where VF specials and combos arn't that flashy and pretty much most look like normals . The casuals like the flash


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> yeah I agree with that. also I'd say VF biggest competitor is tekken . and tekken its easy to grab and do a flashy move even if you dont knwo any combos ,where VF specials and combos arn't that flashy and pretty much most look like normals . The casuals like the flash



Yeah, between the 3D fighters, Tekken is the most popular with good reason. It's certainly easier to pickup than VF, and with all the style, flash and overall content, it's clearly the winner to casuals and hardcore fighters alike. Especially considering that the fighting game genre is already gatekeeper by nature, stuff like style, flash and especially content, is what these games need to keep interest. Most Virtua Fighter games had none of that. But it did keep it's Japanese niche market happy I suppose.

Using the Soul Calibur games as reference (because it was mentioned), 2 is to this day the best of the lot in terms of sheer mechanics and balance. 3 was a broken mess (pre arcade edition), but I'll be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the absolute crap out of it over 2, with the ridiculous amount of content the home console had. The standard story move was excellent with it's 'Choose your own adventure' style (that should have been the basis of the story mode in anime fighters should be). The create your own character was a blast (thanks to the bonus fighting styles), as was the Chronicles Of The Sword quest mode. The game was so rich in gamelife, I sure put a ton of hours or days into it.

Then Soul Calibur 4 happened and pissed all of that away. Story mode has been reduced to a text crawl then back to boring line of fights and the bonus fight styles are gone so character creation is merely an exercise in creative palette swapping. Surely the Darth Vader and Yoda licenses didn't cost that much for the budget to stinge on content?

Soul Calibur V...  I'm going to spend as little time talking about that as Namco/Bandai spent on the thought of the actual game.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> huge bass drop that happen whenever you fly anywhere


Gah that drove me nuts. The sub on my home theater basically went unnoticed for the whole game, except during that one sound effect that made the house shake for no reason.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Bloody_Inferno said:


> False. Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown is great. Sure nobody outside Japan got to play it until Yakuza 6 came out, but it's still great. The series was consistently good from 4 Evolution onwards.
> 
> Soul Calibur... I'll give you that one.


I haven't touched a VF since 4, and while it was good, VF3 was pretty much the pinnacle for me. 
Soul Calibur hasn't been truly great since 2. 3 was alright. 4 was a fucking mess and 5 was easily the worst game in the series. 5 took everything done well in 2 and 3 in terms of input response/character speed and just shit all over it. When guys like Maxi control more like Nightmare, you know they've fucked up the game.


----------



## Metropolis

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim after a long time not playing it, maybe 2-3 years and this time it's Special Edition version for PS4. In today's standards it has so many countless flaws, but it's still a great game.


----------



## synrgy

wankerness said:


> What other games would you say that about??



In terms of stuff I've played recently, Ryse comes to mind. The first level or two are like 'holy crap, this is amazing!' and then by the fourth level it's like 'holy crap, nothing else is going to happen, is it?'. I could level the same against the Gears of War series: While the whole series is basically 'on-rails', the opening levels don't _feel_ like they are, but it becomes _super_ noticeable by the later levels.

To some extent, I'd say the same about the SW:BF games, but it's a slightly different issue: The environments don't get old, necessarily, but the gameplay sure does.

I can't rifle off tons of recent examples off the top of my head because I haven't played so much over the last couple of years (particularly since my kid was born), but it goes all the way back to the 16-bit generation, for me: I remember when I got the SNES for Christmas in '92, along with Zelda: LTTP, and Castlevania IV. *Both* of those games did The Thing where they started off super strong with lots of atmospherics ("Holy crap! It's *raining*!") but then just kinda rested on their laurels afterwards. IIRC, FF2 had a similar thing where it started off like 'holy crap, look at this flying boat' but a few minutes later (and for the rest of the game) it's just the same-old, same-old.

But, to be clear, I'm not suggesting any of this is absolute. I understand it's subjective, and even at that, that my perception could be distorted. That's why I leaned on 'theoretical' in my OP. I just feel like plenty of games are like those albums where the first track is your favorite and while you might _like_ the rest, it never quite lives up to that first track.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Gah that drove me nuts. The sub on my home theater basically went unnoticed for the whole game, except during that one sound effect that made the house shake for no reason.



Exactly! I felt so bad for my downstairs neighbor when I'd scan a whole system. I'd have to mute the game if it got late at night. I dunno what the sound designers were thinking. I was tempted to switch the game back to stereo instead of surround.



synrgy said:


> In terms of stuff I've played recently, Ryse comes to mind. The first level or two are like 'holy crap, this is amazing!' and then by the fourth level it's like 'holy crap, nothing else is going to happen, is it?'. I could level the same against the Gears of War series: While the whole series is basically 'on-rails', the opening levels don't _feel_ like they are, but it becomes _super_ noticeable by the later levels.
> 
> To some extent, I'd say the same about the SW:BF games, but it's a slightly different issue: The environments don't get old, necessarily, but the gameplay sure does.
> 
> I can't rifle off tons of recent examples off the top of my head because I haven't played so much over the last couple of years (particularly since my kid was born), but it goes all the way back to the 16-bit generation, for me: I remember when I got the SNES for Christmas in '92, along with Zelda: LTTP, and Castlevania IV. *Both* of those games did The Thing where they started off super strong with lots of atmospherics ("Holy crap! It's *raining*!") but then just kinda rested on their laurels afterwards. IIRC, FF2 had a similar thing where it started off like 'holy crap, look at this flying boat' but a few minutes later (and for the rest of the game) it's just the same-old, same-old.
> 
> But, to be clear, I'm not suggesting any of this is absolute. I understand it's subjective, and even at that, that my perception could be distorted. That's why I leaned on 'theoretical' in my OP. I just feel like plenty of games are like those albums where the first track is your favorite and while you might _like_ the rest, it never quite lives up to that first track.



This is a very strange list. I really don't recall ever feeling this way about a modern game. Much more frequently, the opening is some stupid on-rails segment that tries to get your attention with a ton of flash, and you don't get to the meat of the gameplay for an hour at least (ex Skyrim, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, etc). Or, it's one of those "power teasers" where your character starts out completely overpowered as a preview for what you'll be totally levelled up by the end of the game (a couple examples being Nier and Castlevania SOTN). I can't really think of anything that matches what you're saying! So, maybe you're right and we just play opposite games.

I can't even remember the beginnings of Zelda or Castlevania IV or Gears 2/3, even though I played all of them. I guess I have bad memory. Most other games in the Zelda/Castlevania series, though, sure stuck the boring stuff at the beginning.

Also, never heard of Ryse. 

ANYWAY, I'm really, really jonesing for another Yakuza game. I think I'm going to have to buy Kiwami now that it dropped to 20 bucks. How important is it to play these things in order? Cause I really doubt 2 is going to be out by the time that I want to play another, plus the impending HD remasters of 3/4/5 make it likely that 6 is going to be my only option if I want to hold off until the "best" versions are available. We don't even have a damn announcement for 3/4/5 in the US, it's August in Japan.


----------



## wankerness

Metropolis said:


> The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim after a long time not playing it, maybe 2-3 years and this time it's Special Edition version for PS4. In today's standards it has so many countless flaws, but it's still a great game.



By THEN'S standards it had a ton of flaws, too. Bethesda games by that point had become a running joke for how loaded with game-breaking bugs they were. The prior entries in the series on PC all had these absolutely massive community-created patches that attempted to fix all of them that were basically required for a good experience. Obviously, on console, you were SOL.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Exactly! I felt so bad for my downstairs neighbor when I'd scan a whole system. I'd have to mute the game if it got late at night. I dunno what the sound designers were thinking. I was tempted to switch the game back to stereo instead of surround.
> 
> 
> 
> This is a very strange list. I really don't recall ever feeling this way about a modern game. Much more frequently, the opening is some stupid on-rails segment that tries to get your attention with a ton of flash, and you don't get to the meat of the gameplay for an hour at least (ex Skyrim, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, etc). Or, it's one of those "power teasers" where your character starts out completely overpowered as a preview for what you'll be totally levelled up by the end of the game (a couple examples being Nier and Castlevania SOTN). I can't really think of anything that matches what you're saying! So, maybe you're right and we just play opposite games.
> 
> I can't even remember the beginnings of Zelda or Castlevania IV or Gears 2/3, even though I played all of them. I guess I have bad memory. Most other games in the Zelda/Castlevania series, though, sure stuck the boring stuff at the beginning.
> 
> Also, never heard of Ryse.
> 
> ANYWAY, I'm really, really jonesing for another Yakuza game. I think I'm going to have to buy Kiwami now that it dropped to 20 bucks. How important is it to play these things in order? Cause I really doubt 2 is going to be out by the time that I want to play another, plus the impending HD remasters of 3/4/5 make it likely that 6 is going to be my only option if I want to hold off until the "best" versions are available. We don't even have a damn announcement for 3/4/5 in the US, it's August in Japan.


Ryse is a super solid beat em up set in ancient rome. Well worth picking up and playing imo.
Makes me wish someone would remake Shadow of Rome more than anything though :/


----------



## synrgy

I get where you're coming from, and this is my fault for 'thinking out loud' and subsequently lacking coherency, but we're not exactly talking about the same thing: I mean, I agree with you about the lameness of "here's the first part where you're basically God, so you know what the end of the game will be like..", but I'm thinking less about the gameplay more about the level-design/atmospherics/etc; the 'immersion', in industry-marketing terms. 

Like, take the first Mass Effect. One of my all-time favorites, so please don't get me wrong; I _love _it. (And 2, and 3.) You start on the Normandy, which is intricately designed from top to bottom, then do the first level of gameplay which - though one of the smaller levels in the game - is still full of detail; plant life, atmosphere, yadda yadda. Then you go on to the Citadel which - at least the first time - is pretty much "_woah_!". The couple other levels related to major/primary story threads have great design, too.

But then, virtually _all_ the 'side mission' planets (which represent the majority of the games 'hours') are carbon-cutter: Mostly-empty planet, mostly-empty rooms, and a few 'boxes' strewn about (the exact same 'boxes' from the last 50 mostly-empty rooms on the last 50 mostly-empty planets). The only thing that changes is the color scheme. "Oh, this planet's blue. The last planet was red. I guess that's fun?"

Which, I recognize isn't exactly in-line with my OP. Like I said: Thinking out loud.


----------



## Metropolis

wankerness said:


> By THEN'S standards it had a ton of flaws, too. Bethesda games by that point had become a running joke for how loaded with game-breaking bugs they were. The prior entries in the series on PC all had these absolutely massive community-created patches that attempted to fix all of them that were basically required for a good experience. Obviously, on console, you were SOL.



I mean it was always buggy as hell, but today some features like it's dialog system and combat mechanics just feel super tacky and not well thought. Through the years it became overly modded mess just like any other open world online game. Of course you can mod almost every possible feature to your liking in PC version, but is it even the same game anymore? But maybe having pure vanilla game hasn't been the point of playing Skyrim in many years.


----------



## TedEH

synrgy said:


> Thinking out loud.


You've basically pointed out what makes up the meat of a game vs. its set pieces. The intro of a game a lot of time ends up being a big set piece, but the meat of a game is often too expensive to pour that amount of detail into. Even games that are fuuuuuuuuuull of detail everywhere are usually made of of modular pieces that are strategically/creatively reassembled to work around the fact that your palette (and time to work on something) is limited. I see it in lots of games.


----------



## synrgy

^I guess I've just become more aware of it as I've gotten older, but it's definitely more prominent in some games than others. One of the (many) reasons I so-love the Splinter Cell series is that it mostly avoids this issue; each level is unique, and detailed.

When I'm playing an 'immersive' game, I don't want to be reminded of Wolfenstein-3D's level design.


----------



## TedEH

Levels can still be unique and detailed while being built off of prefab parts. It comes down to the process, the tools, the creativity of the level design, decoration artists, and (probably the biggest one) budget.

The type of game makes a huge difference too though. Look at something like portal - visually, there's a lot of the same materials and pieces reused everywhere, but that's not where your focus is. It doesn't matter that most rooms look 90% the same in terms of assets the room is made of, because the focus is on how those bits are assembled into creative challenges. Take another game where "rooms" are meant to serve a narrative or world-building purpose and there's a lot more focus on the visual impact and variety of a space. All of the sudden the lack of variety is a very different challenge to overcome.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

synrgy said:


> ^I guess I've just become more aware of it as I've gotten older, but it's definitely more prominent in some games than others. One of the (many) reasons I so-love the Splinter Cell series is that it mostly avoids this issue; each level is unique, and detailed.
> 
> When I'm playing an 'immersive' game, I don't want to be reminded of Wolfenstein-3D's level design.


I don't know... all those levels had conspicuous pipes to climb and lights to shoot out 
Am I the only one that really liked Blacklist? That game was a lot of fun imo, and a slightly slicker faster paced splinter cell.


----------



## synrgy

^I liked _all_ of them - except maybe the first, but only because I've never actually played it. 

Blacklist maybe wasn't my _favorite_ of the bunch, but I still really enjoyed it.


----------



## MFB

synrgy said:


> ^I liked _all_ of them - except maybe the first, but only because I've never actually played it.
> 
> Blacklist maybe wasn't my _favorite_ of the bunch, but I still really enjoyed it.



Only one I really didn't like - and still don't to this day - is Double Agent. MS needs to get their shit together and make those games backwards compatible, because I'd own the first 3 in a heartbeat.


----------



## synrgy

Same. I'd definitely throw money at HD updates of Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory, too.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Only one I really didn't like - and still don't to this day - is Double Agent. MS needs to get their shit together and make those games backwards compatible, because I'd own the first 3 in a heartbeat.


Double Agent is probably my least favorite as well. Mostly because of the bullshit hacking missions.


----------



## Quiet Coil

I didn’t want to like Blacklist since Ironside was out, but it completely reinvigorated my appreciation for the franchise (if not genre as a whole).

Here’s to hoping they make another (and that it doesn’t suck).


----------



## MFB

Noisy Humbucker said:


> I didn’t want to like Blacklist since Ironside was out, but it completely reinvigorated my appreciation for the franchise (if not genre as a whole).
> 
> Here’s to hoping they make another (and that it doesn’t suck).



I remember going to PAX East the year they showed off the trailer for it, and I loved what they were doing and was totally onboard - and that same thing struck me when the trailer wrapped; and I even asked the lead Dev if he was totally out, and he seemed kind of like, "Yeah, it's a bummer, but it's _____ doing Sam's voice for this one" so you're not alone


----------



## synrgy

I remember feeling really sad hearing the news that Ironside was out, but, in-practice, it ended up being a total non-factor for me. I'm not a big cutscene guy in the first place, and you hear so little of Sam's voice during the levels, apart from grunts and the same two or three briefly whispered threats to the person(s) you've grabbed. Sure, there's some chatter between Sam and HQ or Sam and [Target] occasionally, but Sam's dialogue is mostly reactionary; it's the dialogue from the 'supporting cast' that drives everything. By necessity, really; minimizing Sam's voice maximizes the player's ability to feel like _they_ are playing the role of Sam.

Anyway, I thought Johnson was fine, but there are rumors that Ubisoft have recently had Ironside back at the studio to work on a still-not-announced (SC?) title; presumably separate from his brief return-appearance as Sam in a cutscene from 2017's GR:Wildlands.

Damn. I'm _so_ ready for a new SC game.. _That's_ something I could get excited about.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Took a slight diversion from the FF6 grinding to have a quick game of Third Strike. All the fighting game talk made me wanna scratch that itch.  That and I'm waiting for inFamous and inFamous 2 to install. 

Man I've completely rusted out on 3S. I need to brush up on parrying again because I'm pathetic right now.  Doesn't help that I decided to ditch my Ken/Chun-Li main choices and go Ryu and his Denjin shenanigans. It's so embarrassingly horrible.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Monster Hunter World PC announce for early next month. I'm ready for my armoured cat companion.


----------



## TedEH

I've had those nostalgic urges to go out and buy a bunch of the consoles and games I used to have when I was younger, and the value of some of this stuff blows my mind a bit. I saw a local ad asking for $800 for two N64 games (the 3d Zelda games) because they were unopened. NES consoles can't easily be found for under $100. Clearly, the value of these things is 100% nostalgia and other market forces because they aren't reaaaaaaaaaaaaally worth anything outside of that anymore (in my opinion at least).

The amount that people are willing to gouge/milk the market via random old games that have been sitting around collecting dust in peoples attics kind of turns me off to the whole retro game thing. There were local shops that sent people around to scoop up all the used games a while back so that they can supply their "retro game stores" and jack all the prices up. Used games ads locally are now mostly populated by "traders" and "collectors" and retro game shops, and things like that. Lots of people trying to bank on the retro thing. It makes me feel less bad about emulation and stuff like that.


----------



## wankerness

I have a ton of N64 games with box/manual in near mint condition and only a couple of them are even worth 100 bucks. That local seller is a complete moron unless they're the gold versions, in which case he's probably just hoping for a sucker. I think those two are more in the 200 range for sealed.


----------



## synrgy

Yeah. That stuff is always frustrating.

Not unlike somebody saying their plain-Jane Les Paul is worth gazillions because it was made in the 70's or whatever. (I'm not a Gibson collector so my example is probably ill-informed, but hopefully y'all get where I'm coming from.)

The collectors market aside, at least there was a good couple decades where the price for _new_ games was down. I _vivivdly_ remember paying $45 for the original Metroid when I bought it from Toys R Us in 1989, and $75 for Street Fighter 2 from that same Toys R Us in early 1993. Those were 25-30 years ago, yet the prices were on-par with today's averages, despite runaway inflation during the interim.

Win some, lose some, I guess. Yay, supply and demand.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> even worth 100 bucks


That blows my mind. I understand the whole "value is what the market says it is" kind of thing, but to me..... an N64 game is worth maybe $10-15. Tops. I don't care how "quote-unquote-rare" it is. I mean.... get get it.... but.... I don't like it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

synrgy said:


> I remember feeling really sad hearing the news that Ironside was out, but, in-practice, it ended up being a total non-factor for me. I'm not a big cutscene guy in the first place, and you hear so little of Sam's voice during the levels, apart from grunts and the same two or three briefly whispered threats to the person(s) you've grabbed. Sure, there's some chatter between Sam and HQ or Sam and [Target] occasionally, but Sam's dialogue is mostly reactionary; it's the dialogue from the 'supporting cast' that drives everything. By necessity, really; minimizing Sam's voice maximizes the player's ability to feel like _they_ are playing the role of Sam.
> 
> Anyway, I thought Johnson was fine, but there are rumors that Ubisoft have recently had Ironside back at the studio to work on a still-not-announced (SC?) title; presumably separate from his brief return-appearance as Sam in a cutscene from 2017's GR:Wildlands.
> 
> Damn. I'm _so_ ready for a new SC game.. _That's_ something I could get excited about.


I'm super excited for another SC game too, I just hope they don't dumb it down as much as they did wildlands. Wildlands was worse than future soldier in terms of tactical depth imo (which was already dumbed down from the original ghost recons/rainbow sixes)


----------



## BenjaminW

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(mind_game)

My personal favorite.


----------



## Gravy Train

Finished Resident Evil 7. Such an awesome experience! Time to really start putting time into Monster Hunter World.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> That blows my mind. I understand the whole "value is what the market says it is" kind of thing, but to me..... an N64 game is worth maybe $10-15. Tops. I don't care how "quote-unquote-rare" it is. I mean.... get get it.... but.... I don't like it.



Collectors gon' collect. I have plenty that are "only" worth 20-50 with the box/manual. So, you could look at it as the majority of them still being cheaper than they were new, 20 years ago, which with inflation is quite a bit cheaper.

I bought many of my games ~2002-2005, well after N64 was a dead system, and was paying sub-10 bucks for most of them. I guess everyone was having a clearance sale on their old systems at that point.


----------



## TedEH

On some level I think the official NES/SNES mini consoles have boosted the visibility (and therefor the price) of retro stuff as well. I mean that in the sense that a lot of people who had those consoles, but aren't otherwise "gamers" suddenly had retro games on their mind. Those mini consoles did a great job of selling to people outside of the typical "gamer" demographic - my sister, who I don't think has played a video game in a decade, was excited to get her hands on one, and my parents know that it's a thing that exists. Don't ask any of them what an XBox One is though. Go back 10 years and I don't think anyone thought an NES was worth anything at all -> I could have probably grabbed one from a thrift store for pennies. The one we used to have, that lived in my parents basement for the longest time, I think it was just given away, because nobody cared at that point.


----------



## mongey

grabbed inside on the switch .didn't play it when it originally came out even though I was a fan of Limbo back when it came out 

its a cool game/piece of art. about half way through I think . puzzles have all been pretty easy so far but its all really well done. I dig its vibe


----------



## BlackMastodon

Started playing Pokemon Go again because of my coworkers. Decent surrogate since I don't have any other way to game at the moment. Plus there have been many positive changes since I stopped playing a year and a half ago, and trading was just brought in.


----------



## mongey

reading some reviews of octopath traveller . I may have to pick this up. sounds like a good on the train game .haven't played a JRPG for a long time .maybe not since FF7 on the ps1 came out


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> On some level I think the official NES/SNES mini consoles have boosted the visibility (and therefor the price) of retro stuff as well. I mean that in the sense that a lot of people who had those consoles, but aren't otherwise "gamers" suddenly had retro games on their mind. Those mini consoles did a great job of selling to people outside of the typical "gamer" demographic - my sister, who I don't think has played a video game in a decade, was excited to get her hands on one, and my parents know that it's a thing that exists. Don't ask any of them what an XBox One is though. Go back 10 years and I don't think anyone thought an NES was worth anything at all -> I could have probably grabbed one from a thrift store for pennies. The one we used to have, that lived in my parents basement for the longest time, I think it was just given away, because nobody cared at that point.



Nah, the collectors were out in droves for the NES and SNES over ten years ago, I remembered being annoyed that SNES games cost SO much more than N64 when I was trying to get a hold of the games I wanted to own. Maybe you're just older than you realize and you're thinking back more like 20 years though  But yeah, the regular NES console was a pile of garbage so it was hard to find working ones and the toploading ones were what everyone wanted and thus what cost a gigantic amount, so maybe it was worth tossing original consoles.

Some NES games were (and probably still are) worthless just by virtue of having had gigantic amounts printed and the game also being totally uninteresting. But, plenty of decent ones were kind of expensive. I have a good friend that just sold off a few hundred NES games in chunks and a bunch of them were definitely worth some money. SNES games are on average far more valuable. (Because NES sux lol)


----------



## synrgy

Yeah. I remember for a very brief moment considering re-building my SNES collection, around 2001-ish. Then I saw the price-tag on a store's not-so-gently-used copy of Link To The Past, and gave the idea up immediately.


----------



## wankerness

Really? I thought that was one of the few SNES classics that is cheap, like Super Mario World, just due to ubiquity.

The one game I was always sort of interested in that I never even considered buying was Earthbound. I think that was already like 70 bucks way back in 2005, and it's even worse now. I think the most expensive game I bought then was FF3, and that was "only" ~35 bucks with no box/manual. I was slightly interested in Chrono Trigger as well, but never got it. At this point there are so many versions of it that there's no reason to go for the SNES one. I'll get the DS one if I ever feel a need to play it.

As far as I can tell, ebay is a complete crapshoot these days, since it seems like MOST cartridges out there are copies. Any copy advertised without being specified as "ORIGINAL CARTRIDGE" seems to be best assumed to be a bootleg. It's ridiculous. The ones advertised as original are thus more expensive than they should be, just cause people are willing to pay quite a bit extra to be sure. I wonder when this trend started? I would think ebay should be banning anyone who sells these things, but it's clearly lawless now. I have no idea when this trend started, since I went over ten years between looking at SNES games on there. 

ANYWAY, I'm now playing Yakuza Kiwami. It's disappointing how much smaller in scale it is than 0, but hey, it wasn't pretending to be. One huge improvement, though, is that I like the Kiryu character vastly more than I did in 0. Maybe it's just the context and the fact that I'm not switching back and forth with a more interesting hero, but I really like the "dad" Kiryu compared to "boring tough guy" Kiryu. The story is a disjointed mess sometimes (especially that bizarre first act jumping back and forth between about 10 times in an hour), but I am quite invested in it, especially after playing 0. Reina is the best. Nishikiyama's arc so far seems like it would have had no impact without playing 0, so I wonder what people who played this game originally thought!


----------



## synrgy

I mean, it was 2001, and I've done a lot of living since then, so I can't recall a specific price-point or anything; only having the impression that they wanted a lot more than I was willing to pay for *any* very-used 16-bit cartridge. Granted, we're generally on a scale of tens rather than hundreds of dollars, but I was young and newly on my own, so money was perpetually tight. I guess I just felt - at the time - that the things ought not be worth more than $5-10 _tops, _especially since it had only been a few years prior that I had sold off most of my original collection for a little less than that on the average.

I think that's the part that stings me: Making a calculated guess that something I own won't retain enough value to bother keeping, and then finding out - only a few years later - that I was so, so wrong. My threshold is never long enough. Around year two or three of not using something, I can't stand to look at it any more; it has to GO.


----------



## wankerness

synrgy said:


> I mean, it was 2001, and I've done a lot of living since then, so I can't recall a specific price-point or anything; only having the impression that they wanted a lot more than I was willing to pay for *any* very-used 16-bit cartridge. Granted, we're generally on a scale of tens rather than hundreds of dollars, but I was young and newly on my own, so money was perpetually tight. I guess I just felt - at the time - that the things ought not be worth more than $5-10 _tops, _especially since it had only been a few years prior that I had sold off most of my original collection for a little less than that on the average.
> 
> I think that's the part that stings me: Making a calculated guess that something I own won't retain enough value to bother keeping, and then finding out - only a few years later - that I was so, so wrong. My threshold is never long enough. *Around year two or three of not using something, I can't stand to look at it any more; it has to GO.*



You and I are opposites, then. I tend to keep anything that I think might be valuable someday. I don't have piles of newspapers in my house or anything, but I'm definitely a minor hoarder. I think your lifestyle is infinitely preferable for most purposes. Just don't ever look at prices on things you previously owned.


----------



## synrgy

Yeah. I never knew anyone bad enough to qualify for the TV show, but both of my parents, and my sister, are hoarders in varying degrees. Seeing how they're all weighed down by their stuff is a huge motivator for me.

I'm not militant about it at all. I definitely have a lot of crap ('Merica!), but yeah, I _try_ to not hold onto things that aren't serving any purpose. I'm in a bit of a hurry so this might not be the best link/representation, and I don't follow this to the letter or anything, but there's a Japanese author who has a rather inspired take on decluttering.

It _really_ helps that I've never lived anywhere longer than 6 years my entire life. Just in the last 10 years, I've lived in 5 (soon to be 6) different places. For better or worse, moving regularly basically means purging regularly. 

ANYWAY, I've been very, very slowly making my way through the Protoss campaign in SC2. I guess I enjoy it when I'm in the mood, but I'm not often in the mood. It's kinda funny, though: I was super into the C&C series for a while, but spent a lot of that time missing SC. Now that I'm playing SC again, it's making me miss C&C.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Maybe you're just older than you realize and you're thinking back more like 20 years though


Hah, that's very possible. I know that when we got an N64 would have to be ~20 years ago (had to look it up, the N64 is about 22 years old now, ish?). I'm basically 30 now, and I know we had it before I turned 10. Same with the NES I think.


----------



## Mathemagician

For any MHW fans, all the event quests are back at once for the summer festival. Can’t wait to get some unique weapons and armor sets!


----------



## Leviathus

Finally plat'd God of War last night, thank god for the internet so you can look up where all those fuggin' green birds are lol (among other things).


----------



## synrgy

"GREAT ODIN'S RAVEN!" 

Seriously, though, that's a mechanic I'm SO over. I wish the industry would stop it. "Go find the pellets, little rat!"


----------



## wankerness

I got a platinum on GoW like, RIGHT after release (less than a week), and even then there were already tons of videos of exactly where they all were! I guess reviewers with advance copies must have youtube videogame answers as their primary source of income.

I needed to use videos for the stupid ravens, which I missed at least half of. IIRC I found everything else naturally during the game besides one of those wooden artwork opening up things, and every single other one of the achievements I got just by playing the game and doing the handful of sidequests. The ravens are just stupid BS that's a concession to most games' achievements. Though at least in those ubisoft-style games they stick icons on the map at some point in the game so you don't have to go look it up.

Whatever, at least the achievements didn't include BEAT GAME ON SUPER DUPER HARD MODE THAT YOU HAVE TO BEAT THE GAME ONCE TO EVEN UNLOCK like practically everything. Usually I look at the achievements and immediately shrug them off.  I love the ways Jazz Punk (basically everything you do in the game gives you a platinum trophy) and Nier Automata (at some point you unlock a vendor that will sell you every one of them) screwed with the system.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> at least the achievements didn't include BEAT GAME ON SUPER DUPER HARD MODE THAT YOU HAVE TO BEAT THE GAME ONCE TO EVEN UNLOCK like practically everything.



haha word, who has the time/skill/ability not to destroy your living room with that type of shit.


----------



## wankerness

Speaking of destroying living rooms, that second to last boss fight in Yakuza Kiwami is one of the cheapest, shittiest bosses I can remember fighting. The fight system is the same junky, clunky one from Yakuza 0, which works fine when you're fighting one enemy at a time, but this boss has two buddies and all three of them shoot you, and every time you get hit you get knocked down. Considering the camera in the game is 100% manual and you can't attack or dodge while adjusting it, and the enemies are constantly rotating around you, and you can't choose what enemy you're locking onto, it's a TON of fun. I basically just had to spam health drinks. F this game. Haha.

The last boss at least was fair.

The plot to this game was clunkier than 0, but also sort of felt more focused in the main character arc. HOWEVER, I was infuriated by the fridgings, even though you could see them coming from a mile away cause this a series about MEN. 

I'm wondering if the huge volume of "zoom out camera from overhead while character yells in anger/despair" is a running joke or if they were serious every time. Also, the fact that maybe 20% of the time does anyone go to call the paramedics when someone gets shot instead of letting them very slowly die while talking.

Yeah, I'm still mad about that second to last boss fight. I never died, but I sure was swearing a LOT. I guess now I'm OK with waiting a month and a half for the next game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Somewhere in the midst of Persona 5 and FF6 replaying, I started a new game afresh. 










Obviously playing 2 after 1. Knowing very little about the series, I wanted to scratch the superpower sandbox itch left by Saints Row 4 and Just Cause 2 (latter counts because Rico Rodriguez is a cross between Latino Rambo and Spiderman). 

So far so fun but the moral choice system is already irking me because like all games with moral choice, I'm forced to play the game twice. Play the good ending for the sake of a more complete and thought out (a la canon) ending, and replay the game again but this time much more cartoonishly nastier to everything. Of all the games that got in game choices right (moral or otherwise), Saints Row The Third did it really well. Weaponised Zombies? Or Burt Reynolds as a homie?


----------



## mongey

finished Inside. 

wow. I was really impressed with it. puzzle wise a few did take a while,but I wouldn't say its a difficult puzzle game . but in terms of its design and impact it was a great piece of art . if you haven't played it I would highly recommend it 

started the prologue demo of Octopath traveler and enjoying it. think i will buy


----------



## groverj3

Just finished Wolfenstein 2 The New Colossus. That game was a ridiculous good time. Now I need to find out what my next AAA game to play should be (I tend to do them one at a time). Maybe I'll finally finish Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Also playing Into the Breach. I was (and still am) a huge fan of FTL even though I'm terrible at it. This kind of scratches the same itch.

Not a game, but I scored an Xbox One X for $200 two days ago. Target's website had a bug that let you stack like 8 coupon codes for 15% off, and $50 off a purchase of $200, plus 5% off for using my target card. After selling my old one I'll have gotten it for ~$100. They fixed the glitch pretty quickly, but not before I bought that and several movies, and a couple games (pre-ordered Doom Eternal, and picked up X-Com 2).


----------



## groverj3

Also, watched a video on Facebook for $10 off a purchase that's $10.01 or more on eBay. Bought a $10 steam giftcard for $11, so ended up getting it for $1.

Deals deals deals!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Fallout 3. A game I admittedly gave up on. Judging by the trophies I had unlocked I got to (or past) level 14 and then stopped. And replaying it I can see why, I haven't had a session end without the game hardlocking the console.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Borderlands 2. Still holds up well, so much fun farming different legendaries, and the humor that goes with it makes it a joy to play.


----------



## StevenC

14 hours into Octopath Traveler and really loving it so far!


----------



## stevexc

Wellp 8.0.1 dropped, so I'm sucked back into the WoW-vortex.


----------



## Yash94

Wolfenstein: The New Order.


----------



## LiveOVErdrive

Overwatch and Pubg. 


God I need to find another single player game to get sucked into...


----------



## KnightBrolaire

tried realm royale for a couple hours, absolutely hated it. Maybe it's just me since I couldn't get into fortnite either, but I like games where proper planning and tactics win moreso than whoever has legendary gear and can bunny hop better.


----------



## LiveOVErdrive

My buddies are REALLY into Dead by Daylight these days, which is an asymmetrical horror game where four survivors try to escape a horror movie killer. It's kinda fun I guess but I'm not quite as into it as my buds.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

LiveOVErdrive said:


> My buddies are REALLY into Dead by Daylight these days, which is an asymmetrical horror game where four survivors try to escape a horror movie killer. It's kinda fun I guess but I'm not quite as into it as my buds.


god that game is tedious as a survivor. It's only interesting as the killers. Friday the 13th is fun since you can actually put up a bit of a fight as a survivor and there's multiple ways to escape. I'm hoping Last Year comes out soon. It's the same kind of idea of asymmetrical horror, but there's some depth as far as the archetypes/classes mattering, and the emphasis on teamwork.


----------



## LiveOVErdrive

KnightBrolaire said:


> god that game is tedious as a survivor. It's only interesting as the killers. Friday the 13th is fun since you can actually put up a bit of a fight as a survivor and there's multiple ways to escape. I'm hoping Last Year comes out soon. It's the same kind of idea of asymmetrical horror, but there's some depth as far as the archetypes/classes mattering, and the emphasis on teamwork.


Yeah I kinda felt the same way. There isn't a lot of variation from game to game. Must be SOMETHING there though it my regular multi-player crew wouldn't be so obsessed with it. I've played Mayne two hours myself. They've gotta be over fifty.


----------



## TedEH

Everyone's playing all the cool new battle modes and online class based shooters and massively-multiplayer everything and asymmetrical fancy stuff and procedural generation etc, and I'm over here in nostalgia mode playing early 2000s PC shooters and looking for used N64s and considering getting back up to date with the core Pokemon games because apparently I'm still the same nerd I was when I was 10. 

Anyone played Anachronox? Been debating giving that one a shot when I have some time.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

LiveOVErdrive said:


> Yeah I kinda felt the same way. There isn't a lot of variation from game to game. Must be SOMETHING there though it my regular multi-player crew wouldn't be so obsessed with it. I've played Mayne two hours myself. They've gotta be over fifty.


there's depth with the killers and some with the survivors, but honestly it's only fun if you play it with good friends. Playing with randoms makes it far less interesting.
Deceit is a fun game kind of like that (think The Thing but with random bouts of darkness and time limits to enforce teamwork/paranoia). It's pretty intense to play.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Everyone's playing all the cool new battle modes and online class based shooters and massively-multiplayer everything and asymmetrical fancy stuff and procedural generation etc, and I'm over here in nostalgia mode playing early 2000s PC shooters and looking for used N64s and considering getting back up to date with the core Pokemon games because apparently I'm still the same nerd I was when I was 10.



Early 2000s PC shooters tend to be* far* more complex than modern ones, strangely enough. I'm COMPLETELY anti-social when it comes to videogames. Like, anything multiplayer based holds zero interest for me unless it's same-room multiplayer. I had tons of fun with Goldeneye, etc back in the day, but I don't like the headset scene at all and loathe the games my friends picked up last generation (ex, Halo). They seemed about half as fun as the good ol' UT2004 days of insane physics and insane weapons and the ability to carry more than two weapons. I haven't even tried Fortnite/PUBG or Overwatch, but the concept of the first doesn't sound interesting and the latter's vast amount of gameplay knowledge required puts me off. The games I've played multiplayer a lot this generation and had a ton of fun with are Smash Bros and...some game my friend has for XBox1 that I don't know the name of where everyone plays as a tiny archer and tries to shoot each other. It's fantastic.

I finished all the side stuff that I was interested in with Yakuza Kiwami (ex, Majima final showdown) and now I need to figure out something else to play. I have too many in the backlog, though half of them are the free ps plus games. Two months in a row they shoveled those games by whatshisname the failed screenwriter on us (Heavy Rain and...whatever the one before Detroit was). I'm slightly tempted to play one just to say I did, but after watching a roommate play Heavy Rain for several hours when it was brand new and also seeing footage of the first hour or so of Detroit: Become Human, I feel like it might be as fun as slamming my head into a wall. I'm thinking I might go back and try Red Dead Redemption!


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> 14 hours into Octopath Traveler and really loving it so far!


Yeah. The demo got me in. I just bought the full game.


----------



## StevenC

mongey said:


> Yeah. The demo got me in. I just bought the full game.


I played the first demo from maybe last year with Olberic and Primrose. Possibly the best feature in the full game is the ability to skip the story intro when you're getting a new character, which I did for both Olberic and Primrose.


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> I played the first demo from maybe last year with Olberic and Primrose. Possibly the best feature in the full game is the ability to skip the story intro when you're getting a new character, which I did for both Olberic and Primrose.



the last demo your save gets imported . which is def a good feature


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## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Early 2000s PC shooters tend to be* far* more complex than modern ones, strangely enough. I'm COMPLETELY anti-social when it comes to videogames. Like, anything multiplayer based holds zero interest for me unless it's same-room multiplayer.


100% this. I just can't get into online gaming. I've tried. It's not for me. Give me the old Deus Ex (I'm 90% done the current playthrough, will probably finish that one tonight), some Unreal Tournament (the original), Half-Life, etc. Or old Lucasarts adventure games. Or stuff like Mass Effect. I used to be into JRPG style gameplay, but lost interest at some point, and part of me wants to get back into it.


----------



## Jacksonluvr636

TedEH said:


> 100% this. I just can't get into online gaming. I've tried. It's not for me. Give me the old Deus Ex (I'm 90% done the current playthrough, will probably finish that one tonight), some Unreal Tournament (the original), Half-Life, etc. Or old Lucasarts adventure games. Or stuff like Mass Effect. I used to be into JRPG style gameplay, but lost interest at some point, and part of me wants to get back into it.


Complete opposite here. I wouldn't play video games at all without online gaming.

Socom is what got me into videogames. After that series went under I stopped playing games completely until I heard of an Indie studio remaking the old Socom classic. Built a PC just for that. After that game panned out to not be so great I switched to Pub G. It can be a bit clunky and broken but it is pretty much the only game I play. Multiplayer third person shooters is where it's at for me.


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## TedEH

Yeh, it took me a while to wrap my head around the idea that gaming isn't just one big thing, or one community, or whatever else have you. There are people who are content to play the same one game endlessly forever, and some like myself who consume one game after another and pretty rarely go back and re-play something unless it was excellent, or it's for nostalgia or what have you. That mindset of "I must play all the games" makes it hard to commit to something online because you don't "complete" those. I want to complete something then move on to the next thing. Then there's the people who play all the social pass-time games on their phone, and dive right into the whole skinner box thing. Then there's the people who latch onto the online play as an excuse to do something with friends or fill some other kind of social drive. Then there's people who are into single player experiences. People who want gaming to be a cerebral experience. People who want gaming to be a narrative experience. People who want to speed run, get high scores, get some kind of buzz from arcade-style points and reward systems.

There was a big stink about it a while back when someone described this as the "death of the gamer" in that the field has become so vast and varied and widespread that there's not a distinct "gamer" anymore (despite a lot of people's drive to hold on to that term for self-identity purposes). Basically everyone who has a phone or a PC somewhere has access to and is likely to have played a game at some point - and the number of people who do so regularly is huge. To distinguish between those people and those who don't would be like making a distinction between people who have smart phones vs. older 'dumb' phones, or I guess would be similar to referring to anyone who has played outside at some point as "an athlete". Games have the same sort of ubiquity as sports at this point, which both creates a form of community in itself, but also destroys some of the smaller forms or senses of community around the "this is niche! this is ours! this makes us distinct!" kind of mindset.

While the thread is called "what game are you playing", I'm as much interested in "why are you playing that game?" I know that I play the games I get into for a lot of different reasons - sometimes I treat it like a movie, or an album or something to be consumed or completed. A lot of games for me end up being a sort of "experience" or I tried it like a dialog in the sense that the dev was trying to communicate something, and I'm on the receiving end, but also able to sort of respond via the interactive nature of the game. Also, sometimes just mindlessly shooting things for a while is entertaining, which is why Doom is great.

/end rant that nobody probably cares about


----------



## MFB

I can binge a game online for a while provided it has a good/reliable user base (which back in the day was COD:BO, or Halo: Reach), and even recently I was playing Titanfall 2 almost nightly and I think I put probably around 80 hrs into it despite a rather small online community that still play it - because it honestly IS a blast, and if/when TF3 drops I'll be onboard.

But, there comes a point - usually when I'm stuck working over-time for multiple days in a row - that break my mold and from that point on my online interest tends to wane and come to a halt just cause I don't have the effort to invest time back into it when I was so invested before; like, climbing up a mountain you've already scaled before. If nothing interferes, I could play the same game for weeks on end, but alas, life and all that jazz.


----------



## TedEH

There's also points in time where I need to take breaks from games. Because of work, I'm sort of immersed in video games in some form or another all the time, and it gets exhausting. Sometimes it's nice to just not think about video games for a while.


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## mongey

I def enjoy online. Its very rare that I actually get a chance to do it at the moment though.

the thing I don't enjoy is the trash talking and carrying on .it can be a pretty toxic scene. so I don't bother using a mic. I just play and keep to myself


----------



## TedEH

Finished Deus Ex yesterday. The ending was a lot more abrupt than I was expecting, but this is an old game, back when nobody had mastered the art of good game endings.

Does it hold up to modern standards.....? Maybe not. Depends on what you can or can't tolerate. But I absolutely understand why people would build up the image of this being the "best game ever made", because I could justify that within the context of the time that it came out. It's a great game, despite it's flaws. Now onto the next thing.


----------



## wankerness

Playing the PS4 rerelease of Tomb Raider. I remembered loving this game. I'd forgotten entirely about the garbage QTEs inserted everywhere. Moving the stick L/R really fast is the worst thing in the world! At least when you fail it tends to start you 5 seconds before said QTE, but it's still awful. QTEs are the worst.


----------



## Ralyks

Just got to Chapter 9 in Yakuza 6. Probably going to regret dropping 0 for 6 and then going back to 0 and working up from there, but oh well, gone too far now  

Suppose to do the Prestige Raid in Destiny 2 tonight with clanmates so I can finally get the Platinum trophy..... I doubt it happens.


----------



## wankerness

Which of them have you played? I just got 6 since the physical version was on clearance, and now it's sitting here taunting me. I'm not sure if I should play all the games in order, or if it doesn't really matter. 1 was considerably improved by playing 0 first.

But, if I want to play them in order, then I have to wait a month for 2, and then suffer through 3-5 on PS Now, unless I want to buy a PS3 or wait and see if they port the HD remakes of 3-5 to the US anytime soon.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

The Yakuza games are all intertwined together, but since 4 was kind enough to have a reminiscence mode (played all the key cutscenes of the first 3 Yakuza games) I was fine starting with 4. Having said that, playing 6 will make little sense without the backstory from 4 and 5. 

4 is still recommended despite the system downgrade. In addition to introducing a ton of new and focal characters, iIt also somewhat explains a bit of Majima's story in Yakuza 0.

Speaking of Yakuza 0, I finally caved and got a PS4.  So Yakuza 0 was first on my list of playing, soon to be followed by Nier Automata and God Of War. I was amused at how well I scored on Bakamitai karaoke right off the bat.


----------



## Ralyks

I started with 0, maybe got to chapter 5 or 6. I have Kiwami sitting on my shelf. Then 6 game out and sucked me in. Us I have Kiwami 2 on preorder. And finally, before even all of that, I have 4 and 5 on PS3 from when they were free at various times on PS Plus. Somehow I feel those ports of 3 - 5 come out outside of Japan, since they're just remasters and not remakes like the Kiwami games.


----------



## Ralyks

I started with 0, maybe got to chapter 5 or 6. I have Kiwami sitting on my shelf. Then 6 came out and sucked me in (and I splurged on the fancy edition with the whisky stones and glasses and such). I have Kiwami 2 on preorder. And finally, before even all of that, I have 4 and 5 on PS3 from when they were free at various times on PS Plus. Somehow I feel those ports of 3 - 5 come out outside of Japan, since they're just remasters and not remakes like the Kiwami games.


----------



## mongey

about 8 hours into octopath traveler now. just unlocking the characters and doing their story intros. got 6 of 8 done. its good. pretty easy so far but guessing its gonna ramp up pretty quick once i start all the 2nd chapters


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The Yakuza games are all intertwined together, but since 4 was kind enough to have a reminiscence mode (played all the key cutscenes of the first 3 Yakuza games) I was fine starting with 4. Having said that, playing 6 will make little sense without the backstory from 4 and 5.
> 
> 4 is still recommended despite the system downgrade. In addition to introducing a ton of new and focal characters, iIt also somewhat explains a bit of Majima's story in Yakuza 0.
> 
> Speaking of Yakuza 0, I finally caved and got a PS4.  So Yakuza 0 was first on my list of playing, soon to be followed by Nier Automata and God Of War. I was amused at how well I scored on Bakamitai karaoke right off the bat.



I just jumped into 6 because I saw enough material around online saying you'll still get plenty out of it if you've played through 0/1, and there's no way I was waiting a month for 2 and another year (they haven't even announced them for the US yet) for 3/4/5 before touching it. It mostly focuses on Kiryu's relationship to Haruka, so whatever, I get who she is from 1, and I know Date (one of the other main characters), and I think the villain plots in these things tend to reset every game besides.

I got reallllly annoyed by the quest to find the baby milk where you have to pause and lift/shake him every minute. Here's hoping that doesn't continue all game! The framerate downgrade from 0/1 is jarring as well. I kind of prefer the graphics in those - you had the featureless character models most of the time, but whenever anything with facial expressions was important, it would switch to much nicer ones. This one kind of splits the difference and stays consistent.

The score sure is a radical change from 0/1, it's all lush and Ghibli-esque. I like it, but I am going to miss the awesome metal guitar from 0 that would kick in during subquests to signify something going wrong. That made me laugh every time.


----------



## groverj3

Got back into Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I got it for free through Xbox Live several years ago. It's a fun time, despite the Xbox 360 version looking like ass, the roleplaying mechanics being half baked at best, the voice acting being mediocre, and the boss fights being terrible. The atmosphere in that game is top notch though, and I'm a sucker for anything cyberpunk.


----------



## TedEH

groverj3 said:


> the boss fights being terrible


Is this the "directors cut" version? There are some improvements to the boss fights in that version. I don't think I've played much of the non-directors version, so I don't have a reference point for how much is changed though.


----------



## mongey

unlocked all the characters in octopath now . a bit torn who to persist with in my 4 for the next chunk .I started with Olberic so that's a given . I put allot of time in Alfyn as i got him early but Ophelia has a pretty good healing game so that makes him less valuable 

I don't like Cyrus the character much but having the 3 elemental spells covers allot of ground


----------



## groverj3

TedEH said:


> Is this the "directors cut" version? There are some improvements to the boss fights in that version. I don't think I've played much of the non-directors version, so I don't have a reference point for how much is changed though.


Nope, vanilla. Ironically, I have the Director's Cut version on my computer but I was already ~10 hours into the 360 version when I got it (came with Mankind Divided, on sale).


----------



## StevenC

mongey said:


> unlocked all the characters in octopath now . a bit torn who to persist with in my 4 for the next chunk .I started with Olberic so that's a given . I put allot of time in Alfyn as i got him early but Ophelia has a pretty good healing game so that makes him less valuable
> 
> I don't like Cyrus the character much but having the 3 elemental spells covers allot of ground


Skip Cyrus and instead give Tessa the scholar secondary job. Gives you Cyrus's spells plus Wind, plus bow and spear with a P.Atk worth using. Only miss out on the weakness thing Cyrus has.

I started with Tessa and most of the time use Ophilia, Olberic and whoever the chapter calls for. Then do a run through the dungeon with Therion and a lower encounter rate to grab the purple chests.

Between chapters I'm taking the three lowest levels, and in towns Olberic, Alfyn and Therion for their path actions.


----------



## TedEH

groverj3 said:


> I have the Director's Cut version on my computer


Fun fact - I was mostly curious 'cause my name is in the credits for the directors cut version.


----------



## groverj3

TedEH said:


> Fun fact - I was mostly curious 'cause my name is in the credits for the directors cut version.


Nice!


----------



## groverj3

I actually think I'm going to check out No Man's Sky's new update tonight. I haven't fired it up in about a year and a half. I enjoyed it well enough for a little while after release, but it didn't hold my attention. Though I didn't hate it like so many did.


----------



## TedEH

Every time I hear about No Mans Sky, the conversation is more positive than before. It *sounds* like the game has improved considerably, but I never played it at all so..... would be interesting to come across a proper "now that some time has passed" review.


----------



## groverj3

TedEH said:


> Every time I hear about No Mans Sky, the conversation is more positive than before. It *sounds* like the game has improved considerably, but I never played it at all so..... would be interesting to come across a proper "now that some time has passed" review.


I could share my thoughts after I spend a couple hours with it.

The thing about this game is that with as much stuff as they've added it's hard to review. It depends a lot on what you want to do with the game. I probably wouldn't bother with base building or managing the frigates because that sounds like a huge time suck and I don't have the time for games I used to. However, if the space combat is improved, there's some narrative direction, the chance to interact with friends online, and more interesting planets, then it'll be a good time. When I played a good 20 hours on it during the 6 months or so after it came out I mostly just flew around checking out new planets and that was entertaining enough, for a while anyway.


----------



## Seabeast2000

That does look like its been improving.


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> Skip Cyrus and instead give Tessa the scholar secondary job. Gives you Cyrus's spells plus Wind, plus bow and spear with a P.Atk worth using. Only miss out on the weakness thing Cyrus has.
> 
> I started with Tessa and most of the time use Ophilia, Olberic and whoever the chapter calls for. Then do a run through the dungeon with Therion and a lower encounter rate to grab the purple chests.
> 
> Between chapters I'm taking the three lowest levels, and in towns Olberic, Alfyn and Therion for their path actions.


.

cool . I haven't opened any of the secondary jobs yet . seem like it changes allot . realized i have neglected too many characters . have a strong olbeirc , alfyn and hannit .cryus is kinda mid level , the rest are way under powered for anything serious . my one annoyance is I cant lose my starting character , olberic, for a while to just level up the others


----------



## StevenC

mongey said:


> .
> 
> cool . I haven't opened any of the secondary jobs yet . seem like it changes allot . realized i have neglected too many characters . have a strong olbeirc , alfyn and hannit .cryus is kinda mid level , the rest are way under powered for anything serious . my one annoyance is I cant lose my starting character , olberic, for a while to just level up the others


Yeah, I started with Tressa and she's level 37 now, whereas everyone else is under 30. Olberic's a useful character, but I don't think he's the one I'd wanna be stuck with.


----------



## groverj3

The906 said:


> View attachment 62874
> 
> 
> That does look like its been improving.


I played it a good bit last night. Started a new game. The crafting system is definitely more complex than at launch, and you're required to build a base to progress. Which was annoying because none of the planets in the system I started in were very good, but that's the luck of the draw I suspect. I founded a base on a "hot moon." Also, visitable moons, that's neat. Inventory management is infinitely better now, much more space. I still doubt I'll bother with base building except when I need to. The system I started in definitely has more varied terrain and more critters than at launch. There's a good amount of interesting fauna on each planet and moon. I'd explore there more if I could stand outside without dying after 10 minutes.

It seems like a good update so far, but I can't even leave the system yet so it'll be a bit before I can really tell.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

For now, Assassin's Creed: Origins, but next Tuesday, I'll be playing Chasm and probably streaming it as well. Been waiting a long ass time for it.


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> Yeah, I started with Tressa and she's level 37 now, whereas everyone else is under 30. Olberic's a useful character, but I don't think he's the one I'd wanna be stuck with.


yeah . If I could choose again I would choose olberic to start . but 14 hours in I just got to live with it now .Unlocked a few of the secondary jobs yesterday .Tessa with the scholar is a good combo for sure . I also like opehila with dancer


----------



## Ralyks

I think I'm going to check out No Mans Ky again over the weekend. I got the collectors edition for like 30 bucks shortly after the first big update, and this NEXT deal sounds intriguing. This always seems like the type of game that would be good to wind down with in the evening.

Also, I'm reeeaaallllyyyy trying to resist the urge to get the Mega Man X Legacy Collection, but goddamn, 1 2 and 4 are some of my favorite games ever...


----------



## Ralyks

Double post. For some reason that's been happening to me A LOT on SSO recently...


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaning up some Fallout 3 trophies. I can only play it for about two hours before the session just grinds to a halt and either the game hardlocks the PS3 or the frame rate drops so much that you can't even pause. Point Lookout and Mothership Zeta are the only two DLCs I have left to do. The Pitt was bugged on my play through and at least two of the ingots either didn't spawn or spawned inside a solid object.


----------



## chopeth

God of War


----------



## TedEH

Finally found an N64 on the used market here that was a decent price considering the games included with it. Pretty sure it was a lady who didn't know what she had, selling off her kids old stuff. I could probably resell just the game carts that came with it (Zelda, Star Fox, Perfect Dark, etc) and make back more than I spent on it. Of course, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to play the games, cause that's what games are for.

I also suspect she maybe thought it was "broken" because the console would reset itself randomly after being on for about 5 minutes. Cleaning out the whole thing, all the connections and pins, etc., the power supply, the little expansion pack thingie, all the game paks.... for all of 10 minutes worth of maintenance, it runs like it's new.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

playing through fallout 4 with mods again. the vanilla version is lame.
Part of me is intrigued by Fallout 76, but then again I thought elder scrolls online would be cool too, and that game sucked.


----------



## TedEH

For some reason I thought I had posted it, but apparently I forgot to: after finishing Deus Ex (the original one, no mods other than the launcher to get it to play nice with a modern PC), I also realized I had never played the direct sequel - Invisible War, so I started playing that one. It's lacking some of what I like about the other DX games, it feels a bit like a stripped-down / simplified / almost cartoonish take on the formula, but there's still stuff to enjoy here. Like it would have been praised as a good game if it didn't have the Deus Ex name attached to it, but because it does it instead inherits the "worst version of a good thing" label.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Finally found an N64 on the used market here that was a decent price considering the games included with it. Pretty sure it was a lady who didn't know what she had, selling off her kids old stuff. I could probably resell just the game carts that came with it (Zelda, Star Fox, Perfect Dark, etc) and make back more than I spent on it. Of course, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to play the games, cause that's what games are for.
> 
> I also suspect she maybe thought it was "broken" because the console would reset itself randomly after being on for about 5 minutes. Cleaning out the whole thing, all the connections and pins, etc., the power supply, the little expansion pack thingie, all the game paks.... for all of 10 minutes worth of maintenance, it runs like it's new.



N64s are ridiculous, I think they'll still be running long after every PS1/2/3/4 and Xbox in existence has failed.


----------



## Ralyks

Ended up getting the first part of the Mega Man X Legacy Collection. Decided to play a few levels of the first game while I did laundry. Ended up finishing it with every trophy associated with it in one sitting. Yes, even the Hadoken.


----------



## Isidore

Back on WoW lol


----------



## wankerness

Why, did you want to experience this game-breaking patch yourself? It has me curious, I must admit. I have no friends on there and was basically playing it as a single-player game and thus lost interest after a while since raid finder is such a joke and I didn't have the gear to get into most of the +## mythics, but oh well. The new expansion sounds like trash since I don't like PVP, but I think I might have paid for it in advance a long time ago so I might have to play it anyway!

Yakuza 6 - I was loving this for the first half, the second half turns into a gigantic exposition-fest that's so boring and convoluted and completely disregards any characters from previous games, and the last act (particularly almost everything after the first credits) is infuriating. Yuta is the worst and I hate how the game tries to get you to invest in him; he basically is a huge turd dropped right on the top of Haruka/Kiryu's relationship . Ugh. The combat is enjoyable at least.

It does have me interested to find out who Akiyama is, since I really liked the guy despite having no clue about the backstory with him. Same deal with Daigo. I'm really contemplating wasting a couple hundred bucks to play 3-5. There's some fantastic music, too, with actual good rhythm metal guitar tones this go-around! I particularly liked the Amon boss music.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> It does have me interested to find out who Akiyama is, since I really liked the guy despite having no clue about the backstory with him. Same deal with Daigo. I'm really contemplating wasting a couple hundred bucks to play 3-5.



Akiyama is definitely one of the better, more interesting characters in the canon. Definitely one of the most fun characters to play in 4/5. I spent way too much time in his hostess management game in 4, and I had a lot of fun double duty playing him and Haruka during the Osaka arc in 5. Daigo actually has a huge developed arc throughout the series too. 

The more I'm hearing about Yakuza 6, the less optimistic I get. I'm still going to play it after I'm done with 0 (just started Majima's first chapter) but I'm already reserving that it's a few steps back from 4/5 and 0, and no longer just because Kiryu is the sole playable character. That and I hear Kamurocho is a little stingy on the side stuff/mini games this time around...


----------



## blacai

2 weeks and tired of fornite... people there are too lame for me, or maybe I am too old for this s****
So reinstalled wow and playing it to see if the new expansion is worthy.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The more I'm hearing about Yakuza 6, the less optimistic I get. I'm still going to play it after I'm done with 0 (just started Majima's first chapter) but I'm already reserving that it's a few steps back from 4/5 and 0, and no longer just because Kiryu is the sole playable character. That and I hear Kamurocho is a little stingy on the side stuff/mini games this time around...



It IS a bit stingy on the substories, but I think that's largely because the graphics are massively improved (thus, far more detailed character/environment models) and everything is completely voice-acted and thus they just couldn't fit the scads of substories they had in the last couple games. It was standard operating procedure for 0/Kiwami to have most of the dialogue in substories only have an "OH?" for voice samples on each line. Which I had no problem with! But, I can't imagine this change didn't have something to do with the greatly smaller number. The bigger problem for me is that almost all of them are at least mostly serious/sappy and only a couple are as funny as 0's better ones. There's a great one with an AI on a phone.

Minigames, eh, I don't think it's that different, but then again I always avoided Mahjongg and the chess one like the plague. This one's major one is an RTS sort of thing that has a very long plot attached to it and then tons of "post-game" with it, and I thought it was pretty great once I figured out what I was doing and had strategies instead of just blindly throwing units at the screen. It has some other new things like making friends at the bar that are kind of weird. The arcade games it has emulated are a LOT bigger than that godawful racing game Out Run or w/e from 0 (it has full Virtua Fighter 5 and Puyo Puyo - and I didn't even go in the other arcade so I'm sure it has more). I really did not like baseball at all and stopped that as soon as I won a single game.  I also think I prefer the dart mechanics from the last couple games. Oh, there's also a new rail-shooter minigame with a spear gun that I found greatly amusing, the last boss is called BLOODY SHARK.

I think the big thing I initially thought was a big downgrade was that there are no combat stances at all, you're locked to what plays like the brawler stance from the last couple games. I got used to that pretty quick, as it really is a lot better balanced.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

finally playing through Prey. it's cool. I really like systems based games that basically just give you a bunch of tools and let you figure out how you want to solve the problem (ie dishonored/system shock/etc). Only thing that pisses me off is that guns suck against robots.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> finally playing through Prey. it's cool. I really like systems based games that basically just give you a bunch of tools and let you figure out how you want to solve the problem (ie dishonored/system shock/etc). Only thing that pisses me off is that guns suck against robots.



I've been eyeing that every time it's on sale (which is a LOT). There was some cheapass 2-pack of it and Wolfenstein recently and I only didn't buy it cause I heard Wolfenstein was largely stealth-based  Is Prey more gonzo a la Doom, or is it all strategic and stealthy?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I've been eyeing that every time it's on sale (which is a LOT). There was some cheapass 2-pack of it and Wolfenstein recently and I only didn't buy it cause I heard Wolfenstein was largely stealth-based  Is Prey more gonzo a la Doom, or is it all strategic and stealthy?


Wolfenstein is def not stealth biased, you can play it that way, but there are a fair number of action set pieces in it. I think it's fun to play it partially stealthy and partially balls to the wall crazy with dual wielded shotguns.
Prey is not anywhere near as fast paced as Doom, it's more like bioshock or system shock (ie lots of ambiance/lore building punctuated by quite a few moments of intense action)


----------



## MFB

I bought Wolfenstein recently, and the only good thing about it is that you get to kill Nazis; the actual game itself is bland as shit


----------



## Isidore

wankerness said:


> Why, did you want to experience this game-breaking patch yourself? It has me curious, I must admit. I have no friends on there and was basically playing it as a single-player game and thus lost interest after a while since raid finder is such a joke and I didn't have the gear to get into most of the +## mythics, but oh well. The new expansion sounds like trash since I don't like PVP, but I think I might have paid for it in advance a long time ago so I might have to play it anyway!


I've hated every expansion since Cataclysm and the mechanic changes with them. Only reason I'm back on now is b/c was gifted the expac and found an active casual guild with a lot of military vets or vet supporters, some I'm real life friends with. It feels like my old BC/WotLK guild... which was actually fun. Until this, I was in same boat.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

1.) Wolfenstein is awesome. There is no other valid opinion. Doom and Wolfenstein both are above reproach.

2.) Prey is amazing. I was in a mood last year where all I wanted to play was Prey, Bioshock, and Dishonored.

3.) When I get home from work tonight, I'm going to play the shit out of Chasm. Finally, it's been released and I've been wanting to play a good retro Metroidvania style for awhile now.


----------



## MFB

PunkBillCarson said:


> 1.) Wolfenstein is awesome. There is no other valid opinion. Doom and Wolfenstein both are above reproach.



Doom is the fucking tits, I'm replaying it now on Ultra Violence and even when I get my shit rocked (a la CyberDemon), it's still great. Wolfenstein on the other hand, has me pressing a button to pick up ammo and armor in 2018 - when it's one of the original 3D FPS games and didn't even do that. Like, what a major step backwards.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

MFB said:


> Doom is the fucking tits, I'm replaying it now on Ultra Violence and even when I get my shit rocked (a la CyberDemon), it's still great. Wolfenstein on the other hand, has me pressing a button to pick up ammo and armor in 2018 - when it's one of the original 3D FPS games and didn't even do that. Like, what a major step backwards.




Eh, for me that's not really enough to make me complain about it. A shortcoming, yeah, but Doom and Wolfenstein has everything I want. Guns, metal, gore and if you so choose to go into their backstories, some damn good lore as well. Of course, I'm biased as hell, because I've been playing the series' for years. Did you know that it's heavily implied that Doom and Wolfenstein share a certain boss in their lore?


----------



## wankerness

Isidore said:


> I've hated every expansion since Cataclysm and the mechanic changes with them. Only reason I'm back on now is b/c was gifted the expac and found an active casual guild with a lot of military vets or vet supporters, some I'm real life friends with. It feels like my old BC/WotLK guild... which was actually fun. Until this, I was in same boat.



I played religiously from BC through maybe half of Cataclysm (guild killed Ragnaros 2.0 right before I quit), I had a ton of friends on there and knew everyone on the server basically, then I took a five year break (I moved two timezones to the east and the guild had been late night so it was incompatible with being awake at work), came back maybe six months into Legion, and discovered my server was a frickin ghost town. I recognized like 5 people, talked to a few of them, but it just didn't work since they'd been playing the whole time, had a six-month gear headstart, and I was rusty as hell on mechanics besides (I mainly played healers, so it actually mattered if I sucked).

I HATED the mechanics changes in Cataclysm as a healer - it was so bad that I switched my priest to damage as soon as I hit heroics and started healing and was having no fun at all. It seemed like the mechanics were still the same in Legion. In BC, the game was all about maximizing mana regen and cancelling heals if the boss missed the tank to get even more regen, and there was a cooldown on potions so you could essentially keep your mana most of the way full if you were good enough. In WOTLK, they cut out some of the complex regen mechanics, but there was so much gear inflation that you could pretty much spam heals all day by the end of the expansion. In Cataclysm, it was like hitting a brick wall, you went out of mana ALL the time, you could only use one potion a fight, in-combat regen was essentially removed, etc. I hated it. Legion seemed to be the same way and it was all about just not wasting mana and trying to keep a lot of it left for the end of the fight when things would get nuts. My #1 annoyance was that better gear did not increase your mana regen nor your mana pool, so gear had no effect other than heals hitting slightly harder meaning you maybe only had to cast 90% as often. >:O

I should read up on what they did this expansion!


----------



## wankerness

PunkBillCarson said:


> 1.) Wolfenstein is awesome. There is no other valid opinion. Doom and Wolfenstein both are above reproach.
> 
> 2.) Prey is amazing. I was in a mood last year where all I wanted to play was Prey, Bioshock, and Dishonored.
> 
> 3.) When I get home from work tonight, I'm going to play the shit out of Chasm. Finally, it's been released and I've been wanting to play a good retro Metroidvania style for awhile now.



I've heard mainly good things about Wolfenstein, just I also heard the stealth shit. I HATE stealth in anything, especially FPS games where you can't see what the hell is going on around you. Though I did enjoy most of what I played of Dishonored, so I'm a hypocrite.



MFB said:


> Doom is the fucking tits, I'm replaying it now on Ultra Violence and even when I get my shit rocked (a la CyberDemon), it's still great. Wolfenstein on the other hand, has me pressing a button to pick up ammo and armor in 2018 - when it's one of the original 3D FPS games and didn't even do that. Like, what a major step backwards.



Man, that picking up stuff with a button annoys me too. But, I don't think it's enough to ruin something for me, unlike WEAPON DURABILITY.

I liked Doom, but I didn't love it. The reason why was all the platforming. Platforming over bottomless pits or insta-kill lava or whatever is miserable in FPS games. I thought I'd seen the last of it with Turok 1. This was BY FAR the most I'd seen in an FPS since that game. The combat itself was probably the most fun I'd had with an FPS since...Unreal Tournament 2004? I'd still regularly been booting up games like Quake II on Steam since nothing else really scratched that itch. Junk like Halo with their 2 weapon limits and dull-as-dishwater enemies and weapons just never appealed to me at all.


----------



## mongey

Leveled up enough to knock off a few chapter 2 boss fights in octopath. God damn they are a marathon. Last one took like 45 minutes.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

There's honestly not a whole lot of stealth in Wolfenstein. There's one main area I can think of but you can feel free to blast your way through most of the game.


----------



## wankerness

Good to hear. What about 2? I'm wondering if I have the games confused, or if the review I read was by someone that was wrong!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Good to hear. What about 2? I'm wondering if I have the games confused, or if the review I read was by someone that was wrong!


it's the same as the 1st imo. you don't need to stealth if you don't want to (at least on easier difficulties).


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Playing Chasm and I. AM. LOVING. IT! A throwback to retro days when games didn't exactly hold your hand the whole time. Chasm is a Metroidvania RPG that's procedurally generated each playthrough. Going to be playing more when I get off work tonight. Been waiting for this game for five years now and it was worth the wait!


----------



## MFB

PunkBillCarson said:


> Did you know that it's heavily implied that Doom and Wolfenstein share a certain boss in their lore?



I can safely say no, as I was never much of a Wolfenstein player as a kid (the reboot was my first dive into it), so all I know comes from whatever background they give from that; doing a quick read up on it, I think that's now out the window with the 2016 _DOOM_ having the Doomslayer be a former Night Sentinel, fueled by hate, to stop the demons from over-running the Earth.


----------



## wankerness

Child of Light - this is an odd little RPG with a cool hand-drawn graphic style (it looks somewhere between Tale of Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea). It superficially looks like a metroidvania game or something with sidescrolling, but the combat switches over to one of those turn-based haste-effected RPG systems. You have a party of several, but can only have two of them out at a time, yet the game is based around switching characters constantly and there's no waste of a turn to swap out a character for another. It also is VERY based around avoiding getting interrupted and strategically trying to slow enemies with your little firefly friend so they either hit you before or after your cast animation. It isn't like anything else I've played. If you're into non-action RPGs it's definitely worth checking out. I think I only paid 5 bucks for it on PSN on sale. Ubisoft published it, which is odd - it isn't an open world game where you collect bullshit and clear out enemy bases and hunt animals and have a map with 239847892374982374 icons on it.


----------



## TedEH

I finished a playthrough of Deus Ex Invisible War this week, as a follow up to playing the first one and.... I think I can safely say that I like it. I went into it with the mindset of "this is probably the worst Deus Ex game", and it certainly is the one that feels the least like one at first, but it sort of sticks the landing if you make it to the end. I mean that in the sense that the ending is 100% fitting of the series. It takes what the first game tries to do at the end and executes it a bit better.



wankerness said:


> Child of Light


+1, I played that one a while ago and was impressed. It looks cool, and mechanics are fun, etc.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Child of Light - this is an odd little RPG with a cool hand-drawn graphic style (it looks somewhere between Tale of Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea). It superficially looks like a metroidvania game or something with sidescrolling, but the combat switches over to one of those turn-based haste-effected RPG systems. You have a party of several, but can only have two of them out at a time, yet the game is based around switching characters constantly and there's no waste of a turn to swap out a character for another. It also is VERY based around avoiding getting interrupted and strategically trying to slow enemies with your little firefly friend so they either hit you before or after your cast animation. It isn't like anything else I've played. If you're into non-action RPGs it's definitely worth checking out. I think I only paid 5 bucks for it on PSN on sale. Ubisoft published it, which is odd - it isn't an open world game where you collect bullshit and clear out enemy bases and hunt animals and have a map with 239847892374982374 icons on it.


that game was great. Check out Valiant Hearts: The Great War, it's another little indie game published by Ubisoft, and is one of the very very few games to make me tear up (the others being This War of Mine and when I shot mordin in Mass Effect ;_; )


----------



## Ralyks

I got Child of Light a long time ago on some PSN sale, really enjoyed, then stopped playing. I have too many games and less time than normal to play them. Maybe I'll start it back up after my Yakuza and Mega Man X runs are finished.
Speaking of which, moved on the Mega Man X2. These games are still fantastic so far. Even if dash jumped feels slightly awkward controller-wise.


----------



## mongey

chipping away at ocotpath . 25 or so hours in and have everyone's 2nd chapter done expect for finishing olberic's and starting haanit's . so guessing about 27 hours for all 2nd chapters done 

4 chapters each is right on money for the 60 hours I read about . the game really makes you explore load outs and skill/jobs . everytime you change a team member you need to re balance everything .

the thief role /2nd job is def a valuable asset for steal and share SP alone .wish I stared with therion cause it would free up that role as he'd always be there


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> that game was great. Check out Valiant Hearts: The Great War, it's another little indie game published by Ubisoft, and is one of the very very few games to make me tear up (the others being This War of Mine and when I shot mordin in Mass Effect ;_; )



I bought Valiant Hearts at the same time since they were both on sale, I am less interested in that cause of the subject matter, but I heard similar things from other people!


----------



## wankerness

I renewed WoW like an idiot, just to see the expansion transition stuff. I've played a few classes, and the trend on all of them is that the expansion cut out abilities and simplified stuff! It's OK with a few of them (Most Warlock and Shaman specs are improvements, Mage and Pally and Warrior are about the same), but man, resto and balance druids got screwed. Balance druid was already the simplest class and then they took out one of the spells from the rotation, making it the first class I've thought of as "too boring" since shadowbolt-spam destruction warlock in BC!

I unlocked the four new races, I'm amused by the blue blood elves, even if they don't spin when you jump and are therefore inferior. I guess I'm going to level one of those up for the expansion on a server that actually has a population.


----------



## mongey

feeling a bit of a level cap with octopath now . finished everyone's chapters 2's and have a bunch of grinding to do to get sufficiency high enough to start any level 3's . might need a few days break to regain the grinding intensity


----------



## TedEH

I had a bunch of time off so I played through.... Perfect Dark! I still really enjoy that game. All the nostalgia feels. Played up to the last story level, and didn't finish it, but maybe tonight or something. I also picked up a copy of Jet Force Gemini cause I remember that one being good too, but haven't started it.

I also, slightly more seriously, started a run in Thief Gold. Thief 2 was one of my favorite games for a long time, but I never played the original. Since I'm in that mode of "go play the old games in the series that you like", this seems like a good fit now that I'm done with Deus Ex games.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

got bored of prey so I started playing dishonored 2 again. I have more fun sneaking around and stealing stuff than I do fighting people in this series


----------



## wankerness

Perfect Dark is the last multiplayer shooter that I really loved. The 360 version, I mean. It had a TON of variety and was so much fun compared to the ever boring and dreary trash with bland weapons that came after (ex, every Halo and COD game). I played hours and hours of it with friends both in-room and online. 

It was kind of weird since I didn't like the N64 version at all. Funny how a stable framerate and increasing the resolution can change a game.


----------



## TedEH

I never played the 360 version, so I can't compare. If I ever get my 360 back (I lent it out to someone who still has it), maybe I'll give that version a shot.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Got sick of FO3 so I finished up BioShock after almost a decade (still not a fan) and cleaned up some other trophies. 

I'm playing Metro: Last Light again right now. As someone who couldn't give a shit less about graphics, I'm impressed at how good this game still looks years later.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Perfect Dark is the last multiplayer shooter that I really loved. The 360 version, I mean. It had a TON of variety and was so much fun compared to the ever boring and dreary trash with bland weapons that came after (ex, every Halo and COD game). I played hours and hours of it with friends both in-room and online.
> 
> It was kind of weird since I didn't like the N64 version at all. Funny how a stable framerate and increasing the resolution can change a game.


I'm the complete opposite. Absolutely hated perfect dark zero's multiplayer (especially the clunky and slow controls) but liked the original.
That being said, goldeneye/goldeneye source>>> either perfect dark.
The only games I've had as much fun playing multiplayer in is Gears of War 1/2/3 or maybe 007 nightfire/agent under fire.


----------



## wankerness

I'm not talking about Perfect Dark Zero. I'm talking about the HD remaster of Perfect Dark. It's the same as the N64 game, just in HD, with Xbox live multiplayer options, and without the horrible performance issues.

Nostalgia goggles would suggest to me that Goldeneye had best multiplayer ever (I definitely have the most fond memories attached to it), but PD had far more modes and much more entertaining weapons on top of the Goldeneye ones. When we tried to go back to Goldeneye one night in the midst of another 360 PD binge, I missed the briefcase turret, the idiotic N-Bombs and Tranq darts, and the piloted seeker missiles. We had so much fun with those four gimmick weapons. The alternate fire modes on practically everything were really, really different, too. As I said in the last post, I think the reason I rejected the N64 game was mainly performance issues and with some over-ambition to boot. Trying to see the precision details and use some of the complex weapons in 4-player splitscreen in 640x480 resolution (or whatever N64s were) was impossible. The goldeneye multiplayer maps were appropriately bland and the weapons were all so basic that things were fine. Trying to pilot seeker missiles or see heat patterns through walls or whatever else was impressive in 1 player, but when you're looking at a little 320x240 box at 10 frames per second...ew.


----------



## TedEH

I, however, fully embrace the nostalgia goggles.


----------



## mongey

KnightBrolaire said:


> I'm the complete opposite. Absolutely hated perfect dark zero's multiplayer (especially the clunky and slow controls) but liked the original.
> That being said, goldeneye/goldeneye source>>> either perfect dark.
> The only games I've had as much fun playing multiplayer in is Gears of War 1/2/3 or maybe 007 nightfire/agent under fire.



man, gears of war 1 was so good online. . it really lost something in 2 when they started adding extra modes. it was best when it was just simple war zone or execution


----------



## Seabeast2000

Anyone play Day of Defeat (Source) these days?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> man, gears of war 1 was so good online. . it really lost something in 2 when they started adding extra modes. it was best when it was just simple war zone or execution


yeah I loved execution in Gears 1. I played that game way too much lol


----------



## mongey

KnightBrolaire said:


> yeah I loved execution in Gears 1. I played that game way too much lol


they were both fun but I was always partial to warzone . felt a bit more high stakes .if a team member went down you had to hustle if you wanted to save them 

I liked using the shotty but execution always turned into a diving shotgun fest


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> they were both fun but I was always partial to warzone . felt a bit more high stakes .if a team member went down you had to hustle if you wanted to save them
> 
> I liked using the shotty but execution always turned into a diving shotgun fest


see I always felt like warzone ended up being whoever got lancered/double teamed first was completely fucked. at least in execution you had a chance unless they headshotted you.


----------



## mongey

god damn ocotpath has its hooks into me. was going to have a break for a few days but was playing the next day on the train 

did olberic and tressa chapter 3's as they were the first 2 closest to my level . Obleric's was pretty easy fight but Tressa's was a prick. ended up just nuking him with all the (L) stones I had to weaken him ,had been saving them for ages , and starting the fight form there. got there on the 3rd attempt but it cost allot of resources


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

With all the talk on Octopath Traveller, I may just have to buy a Switch.  All I hear is great things about it, and being described as FFVI's spiritual successor with some Treasure Of The Rudras and SaGa Frontier thrown in (JRPG fans will know), I'll have to grab this.

At the very least I'll pick up the OST this Saturday.


----------



## TedEH

I decided I'm gonna do the same thing with Thief that I did with Deux Ex and go back to play the originals. I really loved Thief 2, but never played The Dark Project. All the Looking Glass / 0451 type games for meeeeeeee. Maybe System Shock when I'm done with Thief?


----------



## Ralyks

It's officially Madden season y'all.


----------



## StevenC

mongey said:


> god damn ocotpath has its hooks into me. was going to have a break for a few days but was playing the next day on the train
> 
> did olberic and tressa chapter 3's as they were the first 2 closest to my level . Obleric's was pretty easy fight but Tressa's was a prick. ended up just nuking him with all the (L) stones I had to weaken him ,had been saving them for ages , and starting the fight form there. got there on the 3rd attempt but it cost allot of resources


I let my brother take it with him on Holidays, so I'm itching to get back to it next week.


----------



## TedEH

Soooo I was talking with some coworkers about my recent interest in old games, and he suddenly remember that he has a box full of classic games and systems that is just sitting there but he mostly forgot about. 64s, (S)NES, Genesis, a bunch of handhelds, and a pretty good selection of games for each of them- some of them pretty valuable. He took some pictures of it aaaaaand there's a small goldmine of cool stuff in there. Gonna see if I can convince him to sell me some of it.


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> I let my brother take it with him on Holidays, so I'm itching to get back to it next week.



how far along are you ?

I have done the 3rd chapter for all my main 4 characters. I got a bunch of levels to grind for my back up characters to do their chapter 3 . thinking of just sticking with the A team and finishing the stories for the main 4 and then go back with a couple over leveled characters for the rest


----------



## StevenC

mongey said:


> how far along are you ?
> 
> I have done the 3rd chapter for all my main 4 characters. I got a bunch of levels to grind for my back up characters to do their chapter 3 . thinking of just sticking with the A team and finishing the stories for the main 4 and then go back with a couple over leveled characters for the rest


I've got 2 or 3 chapter 2s left and then on to the chapter 3s. Doing it that way, basically walking to the lowest recommended level for each next chapter.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Child of Light, just started Between Two Souls. This often feels like a big QTE and I don't think I like it, yet I keep playing it!! I think the way they're integrated into the cutscenes instead of always just an empty action scene in between cutscenes makes it better, I guess.

The gameplay is really empty and stupid. I don't even know what to think. It's unique, I guess.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Looks like Yakuza 0 is taking most of my time (trying to cut the unnecessary grinding on FF6). Only just started Kiryu's real estate minigame and I've already spent way too much time on the small subquests tallying about 30-40 completed between him and Majima so far.

This is also the first time I've struggled with a Yakuza minigame: the disco dancing. Even worse is that it's still addictive. No problems dancing solo even on the hard settings, but put me against an opponent like Ogita and I want to throw the controller across the room (after 70 close but still no win attempts). 

The pocket racer game also gave me some trouble, but if it's anything like Yakuza 5, I'll just wait for buying better parts to build a monster car. To some extent I even struggled with Outrun just to get "the ride of your life", but that just shows that I'm garbage at driving games like Mario Kart. I watched her Gandhara video twice out of spite.  Space Harrier was no problem though.

Thankfully the fishing is much easier. 

Also for the Persona 5 players, who caught the Yakuza reference?


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> This often feels like a big QTE and I don't think I like it


I find that games like that don't bother me - as long as that's what you're expecting going in to it. I get why some people aren't into that kind of thing though. QTEs and walking simulators don't bother me as much as it bugs others, I think.

On some level I guess these feel less like games and more like... mildly interactive animations?


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Looks like Yakuza 0 is taking most of my time (trying to cut the unnecessary grinding on FF6). Only just started Kiryu's real estate minigame and I've already spent way too much time on the small subquests tallying about 30-40 completed between him and Majima so far.
> 
> This is also the first time I've struggled with a Yakuza minigame: the disco dancing. Even worse is that it's still addictive. No problems dancing solo even on the hard settings, but put me against an opponent like Ogita and I want to throw the controller across the room (after 70 close but still no win attempts).
> 
> The pocket racer game also gave me some trouble, but if it's anything like Yakuza 5, I'll just wait for buying better parts to build a monster car. To some extent I even struggled with Outrun just to get "the ride of your life", but that just shows that I'm garbage at driving games like Mario Kart. I watched her Gandhara video twice out of spite.  Space Harrier was no problem though.
> 
> Thankfully the fishing is much easier.
> 
> Also for the Persona 5 players, who caught the Yakuza reference?



Yakuza 0 is nuts with how much content it has. Going to 6 and Kiwami afterwards, I was very surprised by how "small" they were, even though they were still gigantic by action game standards.

The disco dancing is a pain, I'd always think I was getting into a flow with the extra steps between the necessary ones, and then I'd realize I was too far from the next mandatory step and arghhhhh. It took me probably 25+ tries to beat Ms Isobe. She's the best hostess besides the scary old lady, though, so you need to!! I regret nothing. Ogita, though, I gave two or three tries and said F THAT and just took the 20% hit and rebuilt afterwards. He's hard to the point of being unfair. The computer adjusts to how well you do and does better. You basically have to be stepping the entire time and never break a combo. Especially if you're not doing the song on hard. 

I like Majima's hostess sub-game WAY more than Kiryu's real estate one - the actual minigame for Kiryu is not fun at all in any way. The questline is entertaining, though, and you become absolutely loaded by the time you move into the last neighborhood, unlike Majima's, which is a trickle in comparison.

I HATED Outrun, I only played it long enough to beat the opponent and will never touch it again. That took way too many tries too. 

Pocket Racer sort of sucks IMO, it seems to just be about trial and error with swapping parts for each track. With Kiwami I just said screw it and got a chart of what parts to use on every track. The only skill involved at all is not wasting the recovery meter.



> Who caught Persona 5 reference?



What was the Persona 5 Yakuza reference? I played it before I played any Yakuza games.

My favorite Persona 5 reference was that movie you could go to called "The Cake Knight Rises." I lol'd through that whole thing.


----------



## wankerness

Are you kidding me? You can't delete posts? server was timing out so I double posted


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Yakuza 0 is nuts with how much content it has. Going to 6 and Kiwami afterwards, I was very surprised by how "small" they were, even though they were still gigantic by action game standards.
> 
> The disco dancing is a pain, I'd always think I was getting into a flow with the extra steps between the necessary ones, and then I'd realize I was too far from the next mandatory step and arghhhhh. It took me probably 25+ tries to beat Ms Isobe. She's the best hostess besides the scary old lady, though, so you need to!! I regret nothing. Ogita, though, I gave two or three tries and said F THAT and just took the 20% hit and rebuilt afterwards. He's hard to the point of being unfair. The computer adjusts to how well you do and does better. You basically have to be stepping the entire time and never break a combo. Especially if you're not doing the song on hard.
> 
> I like Majima's hostess sub-game WAY more than Kiryu's real estate one - the actual minigame for Kiryu is not fun at all in any way. The questline is entertaining, though, and you become absolutely loaded by the time you move into the last neighborhood, unlike Majima's, which is a trickle in comparison.
> 
> I HATED Outrun, I only played it long enough to beat the opponent and will never touch it again. That took way too many tries too.
> 
> Pocket Racer sort of sucks IMO, it seems to just be about trial and error with swapping parts for each track. With Kiwami I just said screw it and got a chart of what parts to use on every track. The only skill involved at all is not wasting the recovery meter.



Yeah Ogita is the dance guy that's really giving me trouble. It's so unforgivingly difficult. That and the song choice seems harder for me than the others for some reason. 

I think I've conditioned myself enough with 2 huge Yakuza games that I can tolerate even the most mundane subgame the series throws at me. So the Real Estate section weren't a bother. Hell, I've already bought the entire Leisure District and S Ranked every property before moving on with the plot.  I needed the money as Kiryu can't seem to get as much cash as Majima in the early stages of the game. 

I'm looking forward to Majima's club management section. I'm getting similar vibes to Yakuza 4's Hostess management, where you had to recruit women and dress them up (full stats and detail) and watch them perform with clients. It's actually pretty boring in retrospect but so perplexing and intriguing that I just had to see it through the end. I'm currently infatuated with the phone dating hotline club, all complete with needlessly deep and overdone mechanics. Then again, I love all the hilarious and silly dating sim aspects, I guess that shows a lot about me... 

The Pocket Racer does suck. They took Yakuza 5's Initial D street racing and watered it right down to just a stat based game. It does a good job a capturing the vibe of model car racing though, so I'll give it that. That's always been the series' strength. 4's dojo management really gave the 80s martial arts montage vibe and the hunting game in 5 is really engaging. The overall aesthetic of these games in general do that and it's great. 

I ditched Outrun the second I won that subgame.  It was cool once upon a time, but time has not been kind to that game. 

Once again that's the minor issue I have with Yakuza in general. There's way too much to do that you'll get lost in them to the point of forgetting the main plot. It's a pure completionist nightmare at times. I suppose you can just play the main plot and leave the side stuff for post game, but I've never did that as I'd like the ending to be well, the end of the game. So looks like Nier Automata and FFXV will be gathering dust for a while... 



wankerness said:


> What was the Persona 5 Yakuza reference? I played it before I played any Yakuza games.
> 
> My favorite Persona 5 reference was that movie you could go to called "The Cake Knight Rises." I lol'd through that whole thing.



Aside from the obvious Rocinante store (while clever, it doesn't count, it was the movie date with Makoto. The movie was Ryu Ga Gotoku (Like A Dragon), which is the Japanese title for the Yakuza games. The movie also actually exists directed by Takeshi Miike to boot. I haven't seen it in yonks, I may have to give it a revisit. 

It all makes sense when Atlus is part of the Sega umbrella. Which explains why this is happening in the Persona 5 dancing game:


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> I've got 2 or 3 chapter 2s left and then on to the chapter 3s. Doing it that way, basically walking to the lowest recommended level for each next chapter.



yeah. I am just halfway through Cyrus chapter 3 and I will have all chapters 3's done 

Primrose , Hannit and Cyrus I did ch3 seriously under leveled . like 8 levels . but got some gear to pump up their health and the fights have been fine .In north reach bought a +1000 HP necklace that I chuck on the under leveled character and that made a big difference .I have been swapping them out and keeping olberic, tressa and Ophelia as my core.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaned up some trophies in Metro: Last Light. I was attempting a no kill playthrough, but I blew that during the Facility level.

Cleaned up some trophies in God of War III. Fuck that labyrinth.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Got to play through about 7 hours of Monster Hunter World over the weekend and yesterday. Really enjoying it, the game focuses way more on the combat and gear instead of typical RPG elements like leveling and skill trees and its pretty refreshing, even though I enjoy those parts of RPGs. I'm finding the combat really satisfying and learning the quirks of each weapon class is fun to experiment with. Looking forward to the mid- to late-game gear.


----------



## Kaura

Just "speed runned" through Pokemon Crystal with basicly just the starter with the help of Suicune against elite four since I managed to catch it. Might play the gen 1 remakes or gen 3 next. Shame that I didn't bring my DS with me this week since I have physical copies of LeafGreen and Sapphire.


----------



## NotDonVito

Kaura said:


> Just "speed runned" through Pokemon Crystal with basicly just the starter with the help of Suicune against elite four since I managed to catch it. Might play the gen 1 remakes or gen 3 next. Shame that I didn't bring my DS with me this week since I have physical copies of LeafGreen and Sapphire.


SGDQ 2019?


----------



## Ralyks

Man, Madden 19 feels week. I seriously feel like I may return it, but I'm going to at least give it until the actual season starts. Man for some reason, it just doesn't feel right, control wise. Plus some questionable camera work.

Been playing some Gran Turismo Sport, because my son loves cars and that, Rocket League, Trackmania Turbo, and Burnout Paradise seem to particularly entertain him.

Might get Dead Cells when I get paid.


----------



## Kaura

NotDonVito said:


> SGDQ 2019?



I don't think they allow emulators.


----------



## LiveOVErdrive

Just picked up monster hunter after the rest of my game group jumped on board. Haven't made it past the character creation yet. It's always my curse.


----------



## wankerness

New Warcraft expansion is a lot more relaxed than the last few, maybe due to my server being a ghost town. Leveling seems faster. My character plays EXACTLY the same as it did all of the last expansion. zzzzz


----------



## Kaura

Man. Pokemon LeafGreen is kicking my ass. I literally couldn't even beat the first elite four trainer with my lvl69 Charizard. I captured all the legendary birds but their move sets are terrible so they're not helping much especially being lvl50.

I never understood how there is such huge difficulty gap between the first two gen games especially when it comes to the elite four. I have always been able to beat the second gen EF with no effort but the first gen always gives me trouble.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

still pluggin along in dishonored 2. might pick up dark souls remastered for the switch just so I can invade noobs and give them the authentic dark souls experience


----------



## TedEH

I really enjoyed Dishonored 2 - still need to try the newest one though. Death of the Outsider, or whatever that was called.


----------



## KanoraK

Digging Pokémon Yellow one more time, except this time I'll try and get the full Pokédex using the Ditto glitch


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I really enjoyed Dishonored 2 - still need to try the newest one though. Death of the Outsider, or whatever that was called.


I really need to play through it. I absolutely loved Dishonored and preordered 2 but never touched it due to having basically no time and then other games coming up. One week I'll sit down and just run through it like I did the first one.

Also I think Death of the Outsider is a standalone extension of the second one? I thought it was DLC at first but I think it's more like Wolfenstein Old Blood to Wolfenstein.


----------



## TedEH

I don't really know. IMO having those sort of standalone-extra-games sort of causes market confusion. Is it DLC? Is it it's own game? Do I need to play the other ones to understand? Is it going to be shorter than a standard release? If it's an "extra" or one-off/standout/etc then why is it priced like a full game? Etc etc.

Borderlands the pre-sequel I think had this same problem. I normally don't buy or play DLC at all, so I had completely passed that one over thinking is was just extra content of some kind before I realized it was it's own full game with it's own mechanics and story etc.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I don't really know. IMO having those sort of standalone-extra-games sort of causes market confusion. Is it DLC? Is it it's own game? Do I need to play the other ones to understand? Is it going to be shorter than a standard release? If it's an "extra" or one-off/standout/etc then why is it priced like a full game? Etc etc.
> 
> Borderlands the pre-sequel I think had this same problem. I normally don't buy or play DLC at all, so I had completely passed that one over thinking is was just extra content of some kind before I realized it was it's own full game with it's own mechanics and story etc.


It's a standalone expansion, like they did with the DLC for the first dishonored where Daud's missions/moveset are different and adds a different flavor to the gameplay.


----------



## synrgy

I liked the first Dishonored alright. The way I played it, it felt like a steampunk-ish Splinter Cell. I just couldn't get into the gameplay of the new character in the second game; was an immediate turn-off.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I don't really know. IMO having those sort of standalone-extra-games sort of causes market confusion. Is it DLC? Is it it's own game? Do I need to play the other ones to understand? Is it going to be shorter than a standard release? If it's an "extra" or one-off/standout/etc then why is it priced like a full game? Etc etc.
> 
> Borderlands the pre-sequel I think had this same problem. I normally don't buy or play DLC at all, so I had completely passed that one over thinking is was just extra content of some kind before I realized it was it's own full game with it's own mechanics and story etc.



I think it's good that they have a middle category where it's standalone but is not full-priced. IE, Uncharted Lost Legacy or Farcry Blood Dragon. It might be confusing, but I'd rather pay 30-40 bucks for an 8-10 hour game than have them try and get 60 bucks from you. The clowns that made The Order could have learned a thing or two.

These things tend to be a real full experience that's not attached to the plot of the game, so it makes sense that it's not just expensive connected DLC. Some games do have standalone DLC that requires the full game, like The Last of Us, but it tends to be MUCH shorter than these. I dunno. I get the confusion, but I sort of like their existence. Better them than trash DLC with ENDURANCE MODE or CHALLENGE MODE being added to a story-driven 1-player game for 20 bucks.

PS: As a gigantic fan of Borderlands 1/2, I hated the Pre-Sequel.


----------



## TedEH

It can make sense if it's priced accordingly, but a lot of times it ends up being full priced, which to me is a turn off. Add a hint of Canadian pricing to the mix, a I don't feel like paying $70 for something being called an expansion.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> It can make sense if it's priced accordingly, but *a lot of times it ends up being full priced*, which to me is a turn off. Add a hint of Canadian pricing to the mix, a I don't feel like paying $70 for something being called an expansion.



What are you referring to?


----------



## TedEH

I could be remembering wrong, but I recall Death of the Outside and Borderlands Pre-Sequal both being initially released at full-game prices in Canada. The pre-sequel currently sits at a higher price than Borderlands 2. Those are full-game prices, not "add on" or "expansion content" prices.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I could be remembering wrong, but I recall Death of the Outside and Borderlands Pre-Sequal both being initially released at full-game prices in Canada. The pre-sequel currently sits at a higher price than Borderlands 2. Those are full-game prices, not "add on" or "expansion content" prices.


death of the outsider is 30 usd on steam, which is 10$ cheaper than the base game currently. Honestly I'm having enough fun with this first playthrough as emily that I'm prob going to back and do a 2nd as corvo, since I want to try and do a pure stealth no-kill run like I did in the original.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I could be remembering wrong, but I recall Death of the Outside and Borderlands Pre-Sequal both being initially released at full-game prices in Canada. The pre-sequel currently sits at a higher price than Borderlands 2. Those are full-game prices, not "add on" or "expansion content" prices.



Pre-Sequel IS a full game. It's way longer than the first, anyway. I just hate it.  Oxygen sucks.

It's entirely new playable characters, it has new gameplay mechanics, it has an entirely new story, it's much much longer than your average AAA title, etc. The confusion came in that it wasn't called Borderlands 3 and a lot of reviewers trashed it for not being different enough from 2 by saying things like "FEELS LIKE AN EXPANSION." I'd compare its relation to 2 to like, Bioshock 2's to 1.


----------



## TedEH

Oh, I know. I suppose what I mean to say is that those games have a similar identity problem, where it's just hard to figure out how I should evaluate them as a consumer.


----------



## TedEH

I saw a comment somewhere recently, I don't remember the context exactly, but it summed up a lot of my feelings about games right now (and in some ways software in general). Something along the lines of how at one point a game was just a thing, players just consumed, whereas now they are not just consumers but participants. I'm really not a fan of games and software as services and economies in themselves. Games that aren't the same game months after you bought it. Games that exist just as part of skinner box marketing models. Operating systems that change and update without your permission. IMO a computer should do what _you_ tell _it_ to do, not the other way around.

I think on some level that's why I keep going back to old games and systems lately. You know what the product is, what it's doing, and it's not going to suddenly change on you. If you don't like something about it, too bad - that's how it was intended. I'd be very happy if games (and computing in general) went back to that.


----------



## mongey

Finished chaper 4 in octopath for my 4 main characters.olberic, Tressa, Ophilia and Therion. Apart from ophillia’s they were easier fights than I was expecting. Ophillias took a few tries.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I saw a comment somewhere recently, I don't remember the context exactly, but it summed up a lot of my feelings about games right now (and in some ways software in general). Something along the lines of how at one point a game was just a thing, players just consumed, whereas now they are not just consumers but participants. I'm really not a fan of games and software as services and economies in themselves. Games that aren't the same game months after you bought it. Games that exist just as part of skinner box marketing models. Operating systems that change and update without your permission. IMO a computer should do what _you_ tell _it_ to do, not the other way around.
> 
> I think on some level that's why I keep going back to old games and systems lately. You know what the product is, what it's doing, and it's not going to suddenly change on you. If you don't like something about it, too bad - that's how it was intended. I'd be very happy if games (and computing in general) went back to that.



What games are you talking about? This complaint only seems applicable to MMOs and shitty EA or Squaresoft games where they patch them constantly cause they weren't released in full form. I assume that's what you mean by "participant," like, "participant in the beta since it wasn't finished on release."

I can't think of a single game I've played on PS4 that changed over time. Unless you count fully optional DLC. Just avoid anything published by EA, anything primarily multiplayer/seasonal (COD, sports games, MMS) or with Final Fantasy in the title and the game industry isn't worse than it ever was! Most old games were terrible. It's easy to pick out the classics with years of hindsight.


----------



## TedEH

So just avoid huge segments of the market? Or anything with lootboxes? Everything on mobile? Everything online? Everything Square or EA touches? Single player games with always-online components? Games where people complain about the ending, so they change it? Everything that comes out as "early access"?

I mean, you demonstrated part of my point yourself:


wankerness said:


> I assume that's what you mean by "participant," like, "participant in the beta since it wasn't finished on release."


You've decided that it's your role, as part of the audience, to decide when something is done. The creator doesn't decide - you do, for who knows what reason. I can't think of any game or game-related product I've worked on where, after the product was deemed "done", the game's audience continued to insist that it was not, in fact done, until their feedback had been incorporated. "I don't like how this game does x - but that's because _they never finished the game in my eyes, and I'm going to keep pressuring them to update it to my liking_. Modern gamers are some of the most entitled people I've ever encountered.



wankerness said:


> Most old games were terrible.


I very strongly disagree! I feel like such a broad statement would be more applicable to certain segments of current games than old games. But opinions are just that, opinions.


----------



## TedEH

Consider that even Windows at this point isn't considered a product, it's considered a "service" now. They can change it or take it away from you at any time. The same with Steam or Origin or Humble, GoG, every other platform, etc. All they need to do is decide that you no longer have access to your software and you're done. You have no choice in the matter.

Consider that once a game got turned into a cartridge for something like an N64 - that's what you got. If you didn't like the ending, too bad. It is what it is, and probably for a reason. You can't complain to the creator and make them change it. Games at that time didn't go through years of being actively played by a paying audience before being deemed "complete", but that happens all the time now.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> So just avoid huge segments of the market? Or anything with lootboxes? Everything on mobile? Everything online? Everything Square or EA touches? Single player games with always-online components? Games where people complain about the ending, so they change it? Everything that comes out as "early access"?
> 
> I mean, you demonstrated part of my point yourself:
> 
> You've decided that it's your role, as part of the audience, to decide when something is done. The creator doesn't decide - you do, for who knows what reason. I can't think of any game or game-related product I've worked on where, after the product was deemed "done", the game's audience continued to insist that it was not, in fact done, until their feedback had been incorporated. "I don't like how this game does x - but that's because _they never finished the game in my eyes, and I'm going to keep pressuring them to update it to my liking_. Modern gamers are some of the most entitled people I've ever encountered.
> 
> 
> I very strongly disagree! I feel like such a broad statement would be more applicable to certain segments of current games than old games. But opinions are just that, opinions.



If you avoid everything you listed, you're only avoiding like 10% of games, most of them made by EA! 

Look at a list of games released on NES in a single year sometime. A gigantic amount of them are buggy, half-assed, and/or cynical cash-ins. N64, the system I grew up with, probably had one of the weakest catalogs of any system, and the damn things cost 60 bucks even in late 90s money! Much of the system's life was dire, I was buying stuff like Forsaken or Dark Rift or Turok Rage Wars cause they were the best things to come out for months :X there's an embarrassment of riches these days with the more independent scene, along with the plenty of huge games that are wonderful (ex, Yakuza series, Persona, Horizon zero dawn, nier automata, god of war all contain none of what you listed and some would rank above many of my sentimental favorites)


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> If you avoid everything you listed, you're only avoiding like 10% of games, most of them made by EA!


I don't know where you're getting that 10% from -> mobile games are a huuuuuuuuge chunk of the market. As are casual games, online games, stuff with lootboxes, etc.
If you're going to look at volume of games released, that's a number that keeps getting more and more huge, not the other way around. There's something like 700-800 official NES games TOTAL (according to wikipedia). Compared to the 7000+ games released on Steam _just last year _(according to a google search just now). Are you going to suggest that those are mostly high-quality games? Few of them being asset flips, cheap cash-ins, bad attempts at indie games, titles with game loops centered on generating income rather than on gameplay? I can find articles that state that iOS app store submissions are (or have been at times) in the hundreds _per day_. Android is probably similar. If you judge the industry just by current PS4 titles on the shelf in box stores, you're looking at a tiny fraction of what gaming is right now. And even then - how many PS4 releases don't have day-one patches? DLC content thats actually on the disk? Microtransactions? Always online components?

A reminder -> I work in that industry- which doesn't make me an authority, but I'm coming from a place of being pretty immersed in this kind of stuff. I'm not guessing when I say that my gripes with the state of the industry apply to more than 10% of it.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm. I was posting on my phone in a rush and didn't think the whole thing through. 

Basically, there are far more good games today than there were then. Maybe they're not proportionally good thanks to the vast majority of stuff on Steam being awful, mobile games (which I know literally nothing about, I've never played one), etc, but I think that if you've got far more options of good games than you did in the past that the state of the industry is fine. EA is a behemoth that's trying to shit up all the upper-mid tier developers and is succeeding to some extent, kind of like Disney is with movies (note: Disney's products aren't as bad and cynical as EA's), yeah, but there are so damn many indie games that AREN'T awful that come out along with plenty of big ones like those I mentioned that I find it hard to complain compared to what I said about back in the day when we were lucky to get 1-2 a month that are still worth playing today.

I dont get what you meant by "we're participants," I was trying to guess and it sent you off on some other rant about how gamers are awful and entitled or something. But yes, sometimes people absolutely are "beta participants" and it has nothing to do with entitlement. EA early access, for example? Or anything Warner releases for PC? They sometimes release legitimately broken products and just patch them later or release a GOTY edition as if the first release date was just a test to bleed people for money. 

Whatever, I buy almost nothing at release date and have a huge backlog of stuff that's legitimately good, far more on the PS4 than on N64 and GC combined for example. I have a ton of affection for those systems, I just don't get this repeated "old man yells at cloud" ranting about how everything is terrible now.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I just don't get this repeated "old man yells at cloud" ranting about how everything is terrible now.



Outside the triple A games and companies, and Steam's QC, it's not too bad. Triple A just gets all the attention. I try to ignore as much of it as possible, eg: almost every EA game (or every multiplayer that isn't a fighting game frankly) are games I have no interest in whatsoever. 



TedEH said:


> Consider that once a game got turned into a cartridge for something like an N64 - that's what you got. If you didn't like the ending, too bad. It is what it is, and probably for a reason. You can't complain to the creator and make them change it. Games at that time didn't go through years of being actively played by a paying audience before being deemed "complete", but that happens all the time now.



This really is the indictment of the times. Personally I'd rather wait for a complete game than get some early access incomplete game at full price, then pay some more for the rest of the game. The No Man's Sky debacle really shouldn't have happened IMO. I waited for FFXV's complete edition to finally buy the game (even if I know I won't like it for being a latter day FF game). Speaking of Square Enix, I've harped on them on this thread a few times, but I will say that when they hit home, they do a damn good job at it. Nobody expected Nier Automata to be huge last year, and Octopath Traveler, despite having not an original concept whatsoever (especially by Square Enix standards), was exactly what the doctor ordered as it champions all of the classic strengths of the company and the market is hungry for a simple non overbloated, no bullcrap JRPG. Seriously Octopath Traveler is REALLY making me want to buy a Switch right now.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The Pocket Racer does suck. They took Yakuza 5's Initial D street racing and watered it right down to just a stat based game. It does a good job a capturing the vibe of model car racing though, so I'll give it that. That's always been the series' strength. 4's dojo management really gave the 80s martial arts montage vibe and the hunting game in 5 is really engaging. The overall aesthetic of these games in general do that and it's great.



I wanted to bring this up again as I'm almost finished with that minigame. On it's own it's not a good mini game, but everything around it reminds me why I enjoyed it so much and continued to finish it off: these small attention to details is why I put up with everything in the Yakuza's subgames. Every subquest is a small story full of interesting characters, in the pocket racer case, the host gets called a virgin by kids but also struggles with multiple jobs. Kiryu gets accused of being a pervert by a racer's dad who's also a racer (and that sentence is odd for those who unfamiliar). Little things like that and Kiryu's sincere look of heartbreaking defeat when his car flies off the rails are what makes such a silly side game so engaging, you can't help but get invested. 

In fact I'm just going to bang on about Yakuza again. Kamurocho as a sandbox is pretty tiny by today's standards. And it's a map being reused for 7 bloody games. But all it's extra features and it's colourful population is what makes the sandbox so vast. It isn't just a bunch of fetch quests or filling up a checklist. These small little errands are chock full of backstory, some are actually integral surprises in the series' continuity (Ogita, young Daigo etc). How often is a sidequest when you get to help a sex worker improve her dominatrix skills in front of children in the park? Or go on a blind date that can either go well or go horribly wrong, or go well then beat up her ex boyfriend in the street? All these add up to how awesome a small sandbox can be. It's also the reason why I take my sweet time with Yakuza games.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Basically, there are far more good games today than there were then.


I'd argue that this is just by way of having a huge volume of games in total. There are also a lot more terrible games as well.



wankerness said:


> I dont get what you meant by "we're participants," I was trying to guess and it sent you off on some other rant about how gamers are awful and entitled or something.


Your guess wasn't far off from what I was saying. The catch is that gamers, on some level, have taken it upon themselves in a lot of cases to decide whether or not a product is done (which in a way means they're never done), or take a pretty serious role in the direction a title goes. Look at a lot of the biggest or most popular segments in games right now: Competitive multiplayer, class-based shooters, mobile micro-transaction-based time wasters, etc. These are all spaces where iteration continues to happen after the game is out there, based on player feedback, etc. Effectively, these are not one-off products, they're ongoing services, where the direction the product goes takes huge cues from the audience.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad. There's lots of stuff that happens in gaming right now that I really like as well. But like I said, I'm fairly immersed in this stuff, so it's just exhausting to constantly be running up against things that, to me, ruin a lot of what makes gaming fun to me. Take something like Quake Champions. It's basically Quake 3 Arena with new visuals, which sounds great on paper, but when you boot it up it's got that layer of loot-box/skinner-box/micro-transaction-y stuff so deeply woven into it's core experience that I just can't enjoy it. As soon as I see that stuff so deeply built into the core of a game, it kills the experience for me and I don't end up coming back to it. It's not a bad game - once you get past all the menus - the shooting part of the game is still fun - but you have to wade through all that standard loot-box-y nonsense to get there. And I have no desire to do that in any game. There are so many games I've installed, launched, got a minute or two into the lootbox tutorial, then just shut the game off and uninstalled it.


----------



## mongey

while I am no fan of loot boxes I think gamers are def part of the problem. the cost of developing a game , a AAA at that , has skyrocketed. and guess what if they try to charge more at retail for the game the internet explodes . You can't have a product isolated from inflation. DLC, loot boxes , whatever are needed to cover the costs of making the game.If the price went up a little every year then it wouldn't be an issue. but now it needs to happen in one jump

the reality is the cost of a season pass + game is the cost of a game now .they should just make it that way and be done with it


----------



## wankerness

The stuff about costs going up being used to justify loot boxes is BS. Some of the games that made the most money recently had no cynical monetization at all (Witcher 3, HZD). It's just them being moneygrubbing dicks cause people will bite. And a lot of people will take up their side of the argument!


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I wanted to bring this up again as I'm almost finished with that minigame. On it's own it's not a good mini game, but everything around it reminds me why I enjoyed it so much and continued to finish it off: these small attention to details is why I put up with everything in the Yakuza's subgames. Every subquest is a small story full of interesting characters, in the pocket racer case, the host gets called a virgin by kids but also struggles with multiple jobs. Kiryu gets accused of being a pervert by a racer's dad who's also a racer (and that sentence is odd for those who unfamiliar). Little things like that and Kiryu's sincere look of heartbreaking defeat when his car flies off the rails are what makes such a silly side game so engaging, you can't help but get invested.
> 
> In fact I'm just going to bang on about Yakuza again. Kamurocho as a sandbox is pretty tiny by today's standards. And it's a map being reused for 7 bloody games. But all it's extra features and it's colourful population is what makes the sandbox so vast. It isn't just a bunch of fetch quests or filling up a checklist. These small little errands are chock full of backstory, some are actually integral surprises in the series' continuity (Ogita, young Daigo etc). How often is a sidequest when you get to help a sex worker improve her dominatrix skills in front of children in the park? Or go on a blind date that can either go well or go horribly wrong, or go well then beat up her ex boyfriend in the street? All these add up to how awesome a small sandbox can be. It's also the reason why I take my sweet time with Yakuza games.



I watch a lot of Jim Sterling videos cause I like him, even though I'm not particularly invested in anything he talks about (ex, I haven't touched Steam in probably five years), and he had one about Yakuza 0 specifically about how great the "sandbox" was compared to all the gigantic open world games and how unique the construction of it was. I think that's the only Yakuza game he'd ever played, too, so it seemed like he was especially in wonder of it. 

You're right about the Pocket Racer subquests. I LOVED the announcer character, and I was so happy to see him again in Kiwami and Yakuza 6. I didn't like the minigame itself one bit, but everything surrounding it made it more than worth it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I wish more people played Titanfall 2. that game is awesome.


----------



## mongey

KnightBrolaire said:


> I wish more people played Titanfall 2. that game is awesome.


I hate it when that happens, I had 2 games on 360 I loved . rainbow 6 Vegas and shadowrun . both just died online when I wanted to keep playing


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> I hate it when that happens, I had 2 games on 360 I loved . rainbow 6 Vegas and shadowrun . both just died online when I wanted to keep playing


man i played the hell out of vegas on 360. I wasn't a fan of shadowrun (my friend convinced me to buy it day one  )


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> I wish more people played Titanfall 2. that game is awesome.



I played it like a madman when I bought it a couple months ago, but the ping spikes have become so awful in game for me that it's not even really enjoyable to struggle through anymore


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The stuff about costs going up being used to justify loot boxes is BS. Some of the games that made the most money recently had no cynical monetization at all (Witcher 3, HZD).


A handful of games being successful unfortunately doesn't change the reality that outside of the highest profile games, it's incredibly difficult to make a game commercially viable. The costs of making games is higher than it's ever been. The team sizes are bigger. The audience expectations are higher than ever. For every Witcher 3, there's a dozen of more slightly-less favorably received games that are just scraping by, and hundreds of games that lost money. Like it or not, putting monetization up front reduces risk in an environment where there's a lot of risk to try to navigate around. Not being willing to do this might mean nobody is willing to fund your game. Think about the games/franchises that are being "put on hiatus" because, despite selling well by some standards, didn't make enough to or get received well enough to justify going forward. A lot of them are single player experiences that appeal to me quite a bit, as well, which makes me a bit sad. Mass Effect, Thief, Deus Ex, etc. are what come to mind because I like those franchises. These games probably aren't going to have much new content any time soon. And they're exactly the kinds of gameplay-first, non-micro-transaction-y games that I wish we had more of.


----------



## wankerness

Mass Effect 3 was the first game I was aware of that sold RNG lootboxes, plus it had day 1 DLC that was actually an important chunk of the game (something I find pretty inexcusable), so I'm surprised they didn't do that in Andromeda. I thought Andromeda flopped more due to the fact that people thought it was terrible. I remember at release the most popular youtube videos were ones mocking the graphics and dialogue. I didn't buy it until it was down around 15 bucks cause of the narrative about it being terrible (even thought I discovered it wasn't), and I got the impression many people waited around for it to be on discount because of that. I also got the impression it was far, far cheaper than most AAA titles, considering they supposedly off-loaded it to their "new guys," and it very clearly was largely reusing models and animations from ME 2/3.

Game costs are stupid. They should just stop the graphical arms race if it's allegedly bankrupting them so hard. ESPECIALLY if your game sucks, maybe you shouldn't sink another 50 million on it to hire an army of staff to make it look slightly prettier?? Nier Automata was a huge seller and was probably my favorite game of 2017, and while it certainly wasn't ugly, the graphics on it were extremely simple compared to the likes of say, FF XV or HZD.


----------



## TedEH

It's sort of a lose-lose though. Who's to say that a game "sucks" when you're not close to finishing it? And how do you know that a game doesn't suck precisely because they did exactly that, and cut back on something essential? Also, people are SUPER critical of graphics quality. You could have a game that's ok, but is costing too much to maintain the visuals, so you cut that back, and suddenly you've lost your audience of people who are enthusiastic about those visuals.

Making games is a huge risk in part because, honestly, it's incredibly hard to know if what you're making sucks until almost literally the last second.



wankerness said:


> Mass Effect 3 was the first game I was aware of that sold RNG lootboxes


They had them, but they weren't at the core of the game. You could avoid it entirely, or even forget they were there.



wankerness said:


> I thought Andromeda flopped more due to the fact that people thought it was terrible.


I think you're right on this one. I enjoyed the game quite a bit - but of course, gamers have VERY high expectations now. A game is either BRILLIANT or IT SUCKS. There's no middle ground. (There's absolutely a middle ground for me though. Unless a game is truly un-enjoyable in some way, I'm very tolerant of a games flaws, relatively speaking.)


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Making games is a huge risk in part because, honestly, *it's incredibly hard to know if what you're making sucks until almost literally the last second.*



You're right in most cases, of course, but then there are some cases where it's clear that the gameplay was either not prioritized or was an afterthought at best (Beyond Two Souls and maybe the other games from that guy, The Order which contains a whopping 4 hours of gameplay yet looks like it cost a trillion dollars). People HAD to know way ahead of time that was going to be the reaction to it. Maybe some totally unrealistic release date was forced on The Order even when it became clear it was going to be ridiculously short? I guess Nintendo's endless delays on some products such as OoT really should be used as a model for producing quality when it comes to AAA titles that aren't practically subscription-based like sports games.

I dunno. I just hate the graphical arms race even though I do get why it happens as you said. It does make me question greatly why games cost 60 dollars each in the past. If the industry collapses or has to peak in terms of available staff on these things so the graphical quality has to level off for a few years until they figure out how to do it more efficiently, I will shed no tears. I bet in the meantime, the gameplay would actually improve.

The couple of companies that can get away with it since they're essentially subsidized (ie Naughty Dog, or whoever made GoW) or they're going to make about a billion dollars off the game no matter what (GTA sequels, RDR sequel) and thus can throw all the resources in the world at it kind of ruin it for everyone else. Well, except the more "indie" developers that just don't emphasize that. I'm sure we'll see more ripoffs of that kind of thing after the smash success of Octopath. I've loved some of those kinds of things, like Transistor and Child of Light, even though I don't think either of those were particularly big successes.


----------



## TedEH

All the more reason for me to keep playing older games. 
My relatively-modern PC makes even 5-6 year old games play amazingly, let alone games that count as "retro" now.


----------



## mguilherme87

Honestly, been loving the newer Dragon Ball Fighter Z game for PS4. Im not a big gamer, but I loved those games as a kid


----------



## mongey

finished all chapters 4's in ocotpath . Read up on the secret endgame boss and at this stage can not be assed leveling all my characters up enough to have a go . will give it a rest . even if I don't go back for the secret boss still clocked up 55 hours on it so got my moneys worth 

need a new switch game


----------



## TedEH

I got a pretty wacky deal on more retro games yesterday. The original ad was for some NES carts that I wanted (7 of them). Then I noticed he also had an ad for a Genesis that supposedly didn't work and all the carts he had for it (12 of them). I got him to throw the two ads together for about $10 more than the NES games on their own (which he had already undervalued compared to what they sell for individually in the area). I got there and he had thrown the SNES Mario World in the bag just cause he found it and didn't know what to do with it. Turns out a little de-oxit on the pins of the Genesis brought it back to life pretty much immediately. Combining that with the great deal I got for the N64 stuff a while back, I've got a pretty good little collection now for less than a new modern console would be. I'm in for not much more than about $200-ish total on all the old games and this has got me an NES, a Genesis, and a 64, with a good handful of the popular titles for each system (Zelda 1, FF1, Mario 1 + 3, Sonic games, Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, Ocarina, Starfox, etc).


----------



## synrgy

^As a side, I'm sad that Mario 2 kind of fell off the radar over the years. People still seem to love 1 and 3 and I feel like I'm the only guy left who thought 2 was an excellent game, depsite being pretty different from the rest of the franchise.


----------



## TedEH

In me eyes, it's kind of understandable though, given that it was not designed as a Mario game in the first place. I had that one as a kid, and I enjoyed it, but it's not a "Mario game" in the same respect.


----------



## wankerness

I see more people post about 2 than 1 and 3, that's for sure. I think everyone thinks the same thing you do, that no one else likes it, when in reality it seems to be that more people like it than 1 these days.


----------



## TedEH

I keep joking to coworkers that I'm being kind of a sucker in being willing to pay a bunch of money for ancient games with all their flaws and sketchy hardware, but at least I fully intend to actually play the games rather than just collect them or re-sell them like a lot of people seem to be doing. It feels justified to me, in the same way that someone might say "why would you spend thousands on a guitar when you can get a perfectly good one for a reasonable price?" and we find ways to make that value make sense to ourselves.


----------



## wankerness

I have ~50 SNES and N64 games, many with boxes/manuals in near-mint condition that I've wanted to sell for a while but just have been too lazy to do anything about, especially considering ebay's total lack of seller protection. Carmageddon 64 is pretty valuable!!


----------



## mongey

gotta admit I never gave mario 2 a fair go .just felt weird


----------



## StevenC

I've been playing MGSV again. Such a fun game, but I'm definitely not as sharp a Legendary Soldier as I used to be.



mongey said:


> finished all chapters 4's in ocotpath . Read up on the secret endgame boss and at this stage can not be assed leveling all my characters up enough to have a go . will give it a rest . even if I don't go back for the secret boss still clocked up 55 hours on it so got my moneys worth
> 
> need a new switch game



DK Tropical Freeze, Celeste and Mario + Rabbids are all excellent if you haven't played them. Prison Architect came out the other day and looks really good.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

synrgy said:


> ^As a side, I'm sad that Mario 2 kind of fell off the radar over the years. People still seem to love 1 and 3 and I feel like I'm the only guy left who thought 2 was an excellent game, depsite being pretty different from the rest of the franchise.



At one point (especially before 3 came out), I played Mario 2 a lot more than Mario 1. At the time it was heavily represented in that cartoon with Lou Albano (getting to play Toad and Peach were fantastic add ons), and aesthetically it was a big leap from 1. Funny because I felt a little bummed out when I found out that it was just Doki Doki Panic with a Mario pastiche, and labelled the "western oddity". That was around when I played Mario All Stars and Mario World back to back. But it made perfect sense why it wasn't a true Mario game. Side note: the Lost Levels... screw that game. 

It also made sense that around the time, sequels released were vastly different to the original that it could be a standalone game. Zelda 2 and Simon's Quest were the biggest examples, and I loved Zelda 2 a lot more than 1 actually (A Link To The Past also helped that by being a much more improved version of the original). Simon's Quest is something I really want to replay and finally finish once and for all.


----------



## wankerness

I liked Mario 2 a lot more than 1/3 when I was playing Mario All-Stars (my first exposure to those games). Mainly cause Peach floated so you got way more room for error on any hard jumps


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

^ That was me when I first started playing Mario 2. Then saw an older friend blast through with Luigi and converted me with that silly jump of his.


----------



## synrgy

I was all about Toad, at the time. Couldn't handle any of the others very well.

Fair points about Link's Adventure and Simon's Quest. Neither were anything like the games they were theoretically following-up.

I wanted to like Link's Adventure a lot more than I did. That was one of those games that I got maybe 1/3 of the way through and then lost interest. Same thing for Simon's Quest, actually. If I'm being honest, Super Castlevania IV was the only one in the entire franchise that I ever finished.

So long as we're discussing that era.. Any of y'all remember Faxanadu?


----------



## TedEH

synrgy said:


> Any of y'all remember Faxanadu?


I keep seeing copies of this one pop up in ads, and the name creeps into conversations, but I never played it and know nothing about it. I wonder if it's less known because it has a weird name?


----------



## cwhitey2

I stated Mafia 3 for ps4 about a week ago. I have around 10-15 hours into it. I like the game a lot...It's like GTA but better imo


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

synrgy said:


> I was all about Toad, at the time. Couldn't handle any of the others very well.
> 
> Fair points about Link's Adventure and Simon's Quest. Neither were anything like the games they were theoretically following-up.
> 
> I wanted to like Link's Adventure a lot more than I did. That was one of those games that I got maybe 1/3 of the way through and then lost interest. Same thing for Simon's Quest, actually. If I'm being honest, Super Castlevania IV was the only one in the entire franchise that I ever finished.
> 
> So long as we're discussing that era.. Any of y'all remember Faxanadu?



Toad was fun too. I remember doing a full non warp run of Mario 2 trying to optimise every character depending on the stage and remembering Mario being the best all rounder, but also the most boring to play because of it. 

Dude, administer Symphony Of The Night, STAT!  And if you get a chance to play Aria/Dawn Of Sorrow, do that too. 

Faxanadu always sparked my interest, but never found a copy back in the day, and I never bothered to actually pick it up. I probably should sit down and play it fully. I only recently found out it's distantly relative to a long running series by Falcom that still continues to this day. The most recent being Trails Of Cold Steel aka "every anime/JRPG trope in one game but pulls it of so damn well". I've rambled on about that part of the series and I'm still waiting for part 3 to come out outside Japan. 

Speaking of similar games, anybody played Battle Of Olympus? That was basically a spiritual successor to Zelda 2 and played just as well.


----------



## Ralyks

I feel like Mario 2 finally got some love in the last few years. I know a lot of people were upset that Mario Maker didn't have Mario 2 assets.

I do prefer Mario 1 and 3, but never had anything but love for Mario 2.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm looking forward to Majima's club management section. I'm getting similar vibes to Yakuza 4's Hostess management, where you had to recruit women and dress them up (full stats and detail) and watch them perform with clients. It's actually pretty boring in retrospect but so perplexing and intriguing that I just had to see it through the end.



Finally stated the Cabaret minigame with Majima in Yakuza 0. It's exactly as I expected it to be, only more elaborate and just as if not more extremely additive. The training to dressing up (complete with authentic RnB love music), I spent way too much time just to jack up Yuki's level. The actual managing part was a lot more involving than I thought, and much better for it. I may have misread a few cues but thanks to all the sidequests I've already did, I blew all my CP on additional hostesses, I've already got a harem of gold ranked ladies (and Yuki) to rank in the much needed cash. And I'm only on the Mars district alone.

If this keeps up, Makoto can rot away in that shed for all I care. 

I also managed to beat Majima's best dancer challenge (where she becomes a hostess later), which gives me hope in trying to beat Ogita. Probably because I liked Koi No Disco Queen more than that Michael Jackson Bad ripoff.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Finally stated the Cabaret minigame with Majima in Yakuza 0. It's exactly as I expected it to be, only more elaborate and just as if not more extremely additive. The training to dressing up (complete with authentic RnB love music), I spent way too much time just to jack up Yuki's level. The actual managing part was a lot more involving than I thought, and much better for it. I may have misread a few cues but thanks to all the sidequests I've already did, I blew all my CP on additional hostesses, I've already got a harem of gold ranked ladies (and Yuki) to rank in the much needed cash. And I'm only on the Mars district alone.
> 
> If this keeps up, Makoto can rot away in that shed for all I care.
> 
> I also managed to beat Majima's best dancer challenge (where she becomes a hostess later), which gives me hope in trying to beat Ogita. Probably because I liked Koi No Disco Queen more than that Michael Jackson Bad ripoff.



Isobe's also much more pleasant to watch twirling the stupid fans when you have to restart over and over. 

Isobe and whatshername the old lady in the bear sweatshirt are the most useful two hostesses in the game, IMO. There's one or two other generic ones (as in, I don't think they came from quests, or if they did, I don't remember) that are really good, I know one had huge technique. After getting all the platinum hostesses they still were just as useful. Many of the other gold ones kind of sucked, like Unknown. The rich guys hated her!!

Yeah, that minigame was my favorite part of the game. I'm really looking forward to getting Kiwami 2 tomorrow as it's supposed to be in it. I doubt it's as in-depth, but I'm hoping!! And like you, I was letting Makoto rot in the shed while I did it. I did the entire thing (as in, beat all the other clubs and finished the sidequests for all the platinum hostesses) without interruption, it took several hours!


----------



## Ralyks

Trying to figure ish Yakuza 6 (on chapter 10), because for some reason I pre-ordered Kiwami 2.... And still have 0 and Kiwami 1 sitting there.

Also, trading in Madden for this, because I'm absolutely not feeling it this year. Although watch the NFL season start and then I want to play more...


----------



## Quiet Coil

KnightBrolaire said:


> That's a series that really needs a reboot or remaster imo. It's been long enough and the concept is still solid. The boss designs were some of my favorite next to Devil May Cry or Dark Souls



Speak of the devil (er... genma)?
https://blog.us.playstation.com/201...imusha-warlords-comes-to-ps4-january-15-2019/

So it’s kinda-sorta-not-really a remaster? Whatever, so long as it’s not hideous and/or painfully clunky I’m down!

Also sounds like it was literally intended to be “Resident Evil with ninjas” (at first anyway). Here’s to hoping it’s received well enough to revive the series!


----------



## bostjan

synrgy said:


> I was all about Toad, at the time. Couldn't handle any of the others very well.
> 
> Fair points about Link's Adventure and Simon's Quest. Neither were anything like the games they were theoretically following-up.
> 
> I wanted to like Link's Adventure a lot more than I did. That was one of those games that I got maybe 1/3 of the way through and then lost interest. Same thing for Simon's Quest, actually. If I'm being honest, Super Castlevania IV was the only one in the entire franchise that I ever finished.
> 
> So long as we're discussing that era.. Any of y'all remember Faxanadu?



I was all about Mario 2, Zelda 2, and Faxanadu.

Before Mario 3 existed, I played Mario 2 a lot. I mean, at the time, there were two Super Mario games, and the second one was better than the first one.

Also, at that time, there were two Zelda games. I loved the original, but the second one had that RPG-style level-up system, so I felt more incentive to find secret p-bags and stuff, which led to more hours pf playing.

The interesting thing to me, about Mario 2, was that, at the time, all of the new enemies and characters were implemented into the TV show, and well into Mario legacy, then once SMB3 came out, everything except the bomb-omb was completely eschewed.

Faxanadu was like my third or fourth favourite game, for a long time. I played the shit out of that game. Somewhere out there in the world, a tree no longer stands, because I needed so much paper to write down so many "mantra" passwords. Going back to play it years later, I've realized that the battle mechanisms were pretty horrible (but still better than Wizards and Warriors 2: Ironsword, which always vexed me - why can't I swing my sword around when I attack?!). I loved the music in that game, it was so great - so much going on there harmonically. I was surprised the game got so little respect at the time it came out. Even now, it seems more like it has a small cult following. I bet that if it had a regular save function with a battery, and maybe had a little more colourful graphics, the cartridge would have sold much better.

But my favourite game on NES was Crystalis. It had the RPG level-up system, the overhead Zelda 1 style combat, diagonal movement, a satchel full of weapons with different powers, all sorts of spells, and particularly, a great storyline. The game never really caught on, but I thought it was every bit as great as any other classic 8-bit NES game. Never had any sequel, but there was a remake/remastered version for GBC, although the music is completely changed, when the original soundtrack by Yoko Osaka was iconic. The new soundtrack for GBC wasn't awful, but a lot of it was very sort of generic-video-game-music-ish, where the original had a lot of character that set the mood for the levels better, IMO. The music for the villiage of Leaf, for example, in the original, was so peaceful and folksy, and in the remake was much more upbeat, like "get ready to fight." It's a peaceful village, though... The overworld theme in the remake was more like music I'd expect in a casino world or something... And then, especially, Mt. Sabre, in the original, it sounded like it could have been an Iron Maiden song, and in the remake, just kind of generic beeping over a meandering bassline - no me gusta.

Anyway, if you get a chance, check it out. I think if you liked Faxanadu and Zelda, you might dig Crystalis.


----------



## synrgy

bostjan said:


> [Stuff And Things]



So we're clearly the same age-ish. 

I vaguely recall Chrystalis, but the memory isn't strong enough to tell you if that's because I've played it, or because I was merely aware of it at the time. Checked out some footage just now, though, and may have to give it a whirl the next time I'm feeling the retro itch.

For the first 2-3 years I had it, my biggest staples on the NES were Metroid and Castlevania, which is probably why I found Faxanadu appealing: It was kind of a blend of the two. It had its own weird-fantasy vibe going for it, too. My original copy (only still existing because my Dad held onto it for the better part of 20 years) still has a few scrap papers tucked into its sleeve, containing the mantras/passwords I'd last scrawled in my 9(ish) year old hand.

I hadn't thought about the Mario 2 canon stuff. I was about to say 'but you're totally right', and then I did some research: I know Pokey has been in several titles, and the others I clicked on (Ninjii, Phanto, Pidget, Snifit..) are listed in later titles.

What kills me these days, is that I _can't_ handle NES games any more, even though I was pretty great at them back in the day. I think of Mega Man 2: I used to beat that game on NES with surprisingly little effort (especially with the Arcade Stick that had 'turbo' mode for the A & B buttons), but I just tried to play the port of it on Xbox One a few months ago, and it was like I wasn't capable of anything but _death_. 

Which - as a side - probably means I've officially become my parents. Womp womp.

Then again, there were plenty of NES games that I was _never_ good at. One of my friends and I lost days together to this torture device:







Just looking at that screenshot is flaring up my anxiety.

Moving on, anyone recognize this old gem?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

synrgy said:


> Then again, there were plenty of NES games that I was _never_ good at. One of my friends and I lost days together to this torture device:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just looking at that screenshot is flaring up my anxiety.



^ I remember hating that TMNT water level when I first started playing it. After I got better and breezed through it I then remember hating how much of a slog the next 3-4 levels were.  That game was tough but fair in a sense. But I was glad that the "sequel" was a port of the arcade brawler, even if it was watered down for the NES hardware.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Isobe's also much more pleasant to watch twirling the stupid fans when you have to restart over and over.
> 
> Isobe and whatshername the old lady in the bear sweatshirt are the most useful two hostesses in the game, IMO. There's one or two other generic ones (as in, I don't think they came from quests, or if they did, I don't remember) that are really good, I know one had huge technique. After getting all the platinum hostesses they still were just as useful. Many of the other gold ones kind of sucked, like Unknown. The rich guys hated her!!
> 
> Yeah, that minigame was my favorite part of the game. I'm really looking forward to getting Kiwami 2 tomorrow as it's supposed to be in it. I doubt it's as in-depth, but I'm hoping!! And like you, I was letting Makoto rot in the shed while I did it. I did the entire thing (as in, beat all the other clubs and finished the sidequests for all the platinum hostesses) without interruption, it took several hours!



I looked up Kiwami 2's cabaret minigame and from the looks of things, they've added and refined it even more, complete with elaborate backstory. Trust the Yakuza games to fully tart up even the most mundane aspect to complete meticulous detail. Seriously the makeover music has no business in being this sincerely good. 

They're also adding Virtua-On in Club Sega, which is AWESOME. But I digress...

Look's like I'm following your footsteps in finishing this cabaret without interruption. I've just bought out Jupiter and Mercury, buffing up Ai's levels and getting enough cash and customer to bring Jupiter down... yeah Makoto can stay in that shed, I'm starting to feel sorry for her. 

I also noticed accidentally that Yakuza 0 has one thing omitted from the karaoke minigame: playing solo support without a date, resulting in this sad pathetic moment:



Good thing in 0, I got 2 Gandhara videos out of it.

Speaking of Karaoke, this one of a few examples of game developers cashing in:

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/NEODAI-32230

EDIT: Looks like Shenmue 1 and 2 have recently just been re-released. Took them long enough. While I fully respect and appreciate Shenmue 1's prestige as a revolutionary game, by damn has it aged poorly...


----------



## wankerness

I liked Jim Sterling's video on the Shenmue re-release. No way am I ever touching that game!

I started Kiwami 2 in the two hours I had free yesterday. I don't like the leveling system from Yakuza 6, and unfortunately it's identical here. Other than that, I'm loving it so far, and have already done tons of stupid side missions, the best being some extremely muscular creep in a thong named Poison who is a "fashion photographer" (spoiler: it ends in a fist fight, just like EVERYTHING). The graphics seem even better than 6, but maybe it's just a more stable framerate in an even busier-looking city.


----------



## Ralyks

I traded in Madden, Shadow of Mordor, and Batman Return to Arkham to pick up Yakuza Kiwami 2 steelbook. I expected to be caught up by this point, but I’m still on chapter 10 of Yakuza 6. Well, at least it’s there waiting.

That said, I had a surplus from trading those games in, and ended up paying only $7 for their only physical copy of Dead Cells. Wow. I see what the hype is about. This game is fun as hell. Tight as hell too. And I MUST FILL ALL OF THE JARS!!


----------



## mongey

After liking Inside sonmuch Bought limbo on switch. Played it on 360 so it’s been a long tine. Good game. Very similar to inside in allot of way, well in most ways I guess.


----------



## mongey

Dbl


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

None at the moment, i'm in a holding pattern sweating on Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 4, Read Dead 2 and maybe even Soul Calibur VI and Fallout 76. Damn I wish devs and publishers would spread their big releases out a bit more.


----------



## KanoraK

Just ordered Pro Evolution Soccer 2019. I know soccer games have the reputation of rehashing the same game over and over with just a few additional features...but the pleasure of playing online always takes over !


----------



## bostjan

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ^ I remember hating that TMNT water level when I first started playing it. After I got better and breezed through it I then remember hating how much of a slog the next 3-4 levels were.  That game was tough but fair in a sense. But I was glad that the "sequel" was a port of the arcade brawler, even if it was watered down for the NES hardware.


I've never made it through that water level without losing a turtle.
Then there was that stupid jump that you can just walk over. Man, when I spent 20 minutes trying to jump over it and falling down, climbing back up, trying to jump in a different way, falling down, climbing back up, etc., only to find out you can just walk over it, the 10 year old version of me thought that was not so much clever as just cruel. Nowadays, you can just look stuff like that up on the internet, but back then, unless you had a subscription to Nintendo Power and had the exact issue of the magazine that told you what to do, you were just stuck.

There is something that was an absolute blast when I was a kid that probably a vast majority of kids now will never get to experience, and that's playing one of those big arcade machines with a pocket full of quarters and three good friends. The TMNT arcade games were, of course, always four player, and those machines were pretty much never empty, so you'd wait until there were two kids playing, horn in on their game, and when they finally left, you'd yell out to your friends and they'd all join in. 

Even better yet, though, was the X-Men arcade game, six players, two TV screens..."Welcome to die!"  I would love for that to be legally available for playing at home. If I were to have lower moral standards, I would probably get a Raspberry Pi and set it up for MAME and download games like Rampage, TMNT, The Avengers, and X-Men, but I would probably be underwhelmed at the lack of dual screen support, but still play it with the family. 

I guess I'm just a real retro game dork. If I had the time, I could probably stand there and play the original arcade Pac-Man for hours and not get bored. If I try to play a modern game, I get bored to tears during the first tutorial. Funny how us old timers complain that kids these days have no attention span, yet these kids can sit through a ten minute long tutorial for a video game, and I'm turning the thing off before I can get to the 60 second mark.


----------



## wankerness

HeavyMetal4Ever said:


> None at the moment, i'm in a holding pattern sweating on Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Forza Horizon 4, Read Dead 2 and maybe even Soul Calibur VI and Fallout 76. Damn I wish devs and publishers would spread their big releases out a bit more.



Soul Calibur 6's DLC plans are so incredibly scummy that there's no way I'm giving them a dime until the inevitable "GOTY" edition. Do they make those when a game gets bad reviews but had a ton of DLC?


----------



## Ralyks

Anybody play Fire Pro Wrestling World yet? I’ve been waiting far too long for a good wrestling came to come out again, Fire Pro seems to have quite a positive legacy, and the NJPW association just makes this sound so much better.


----------



## synrgy

Still speaking my language, Bostjan! 

Great point about us not having the 'Net back then. I had the free year of Nintendo Power that came with our original NES purchase, but as soon as that free year ran out, that was it: If the part I was stuck on wasn't in one of my 12 issues, I had to hope one of my friends could help. I remember I got roughly 80% of the way through Bionic Commando, then got stuck at this part with a wall I couldn't figure out how to scale, and that was that.

I miss the 4-6 player arcade titles, too. X-Men was legit, and - IIRC - The Simpsons had a 4-player arcade title, also? It showed up after arcades were doing the death rattle, so I never got to play it, but I'm pretty sure I remember seeing it?

Some of the arcade fighters never quite measured up on console, either. The VF series was never as smooth on console as it was in the arcade, and I'd hazard the same observation on the entirety of the Street Fighter series.

The arcade also didn't have to play by quite the same rules as console. I remember there was a crazy fighting game called Time Killers in which the basic objective was to use one's weapons to dismember one's opponent limb by limb. It was eventually ported to Genesis, but that port was basically stripped of everything that made the game entertaining.

Ralyks: I've checked out FPW. For me, it just 'is what it is': If one wants a current roster applied to 1992 graphics/physics, more power to them, but that doesn't really 'work' for me. My favorite wrestling games to date were on the N64; WCW vs NWO, etc. The closest gameplay I've seen to that since, was WWE All Stars on X360, which - for better or worse - took things in an overly cartoonish direction. It would have been a solid arcade game.

I've been traveling all Summer; presently around the Raleigh vicinity of NC. Just last night, I drove past a place with a huge sign that said 'Arcade + Bar' and I got really excited. However, I was on the way to dinner with my wife and baby daughter, so I didn't get a chance to stop and see if they meant what I think they meant with 'arcade'. Still, there's hope: I feel like a resurgence is relatively imminent.

*edit* Wow, the place I drove by looks kind of amazing: http://theboxcarbar.com/raleigh/


----------



## KnightBrolaire

i wish someone would remake primal rage or clay fighter. those were some of my favorite fighters as a kid.


----------



## synrgy

^I definitely played a lot of Clay Fighter! Never owned it, but had a buddy who rented it for roughly a year straight.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

bostjan said:


> I've never made it through that water level without losing a turtle.
> Then there was that stupid jump that you can just walk over. Man, when I spent 20 minutes trying to jump over it and falling down, climbing back up, trying to jump in a different way, falling down, climbing back up, etc., only to find out you can just walk over it, the 10 year old version of me thought that was not so much clever as just cruel. Nowadays, you can just look stuff like that up on the internet, but back then, unless you had a subscription to Nintendo Power and had the exact issue of the magazine that told you what to do, you were just stuck.



Oh I remembered that small hole all too well. 

For the most part the water level was where most people use to sacrifice Raphael because he sucks even with the sub weapon buffs that I was completely unaware of at the time. Shame, he was my favorite turtle.



bostjan said:


> There is something that was an absolute blast when I was a kid that probably a vast majority of kids now will never get to experience, and that's playing one of those big arcade machines with a pocket full of quarters and three good friends. The TMNT arcade games were, of course, always four player, and those machines were pretty much never empty, so you'd wait until there were two kids playing, horn in on their game, and when they finally left, you'd yell out to your friends and they'd all join in.



The arcade brawlers haven't been active for a while, which is a shame. The big 4 player co-ops like TMNT, Simpsons and the 1 player less Final Fight were big crowd pleasers back in the day. I was disappointed that the SNES Final Fight port ditched Guy. I sort of understand they had to do similar to TMNT on NES, but sort of forgave Konami for releasing the wonderful albeit too easy Turtles In Time.

The 2D brawler has since gone the way of the dinosaur in the transition to 3D. The closest in it's place are mostly hack and slashers like the Dynasty Warriors series and it's clones. A few games had the same spirit like The Bouncer and Godhand, but they're either terrible (Bouncer) or stuck in cult status (Godhand). The most recent to come out is Mother Russia Bleeds, that looks pretty cool.



wankerness said:


> Soul Calibur 6's DLC plans are so incredibly scummy that there's no way I'm giving them a dime until the inevitable "GOTY" edition. Do they make those when a game gets bad reviews but had a ton of DLC?



I saw the Jim Sterling vid about his rant on SC6 and I agree. He also points out that sadly, this is what the fighting game genre has reduced itself to. I'm still bitter about how Capcom handled vanilla Street Fighter V, even if they finally got their act together with it's current state now.

Honestly they should be taking the Overwatch (and to some extent Smash Bros) approach and have every character available off the bat, and delegate the DLC and season passes to new stages, music, remixes, modes etc...



synrgy said:


> Great point about us not having the 'Net back then. I had the free year of Nintendo Power that came with our original NES purchase, but as soon as that free year ran out, that was it: If the part I was stuck on wasn't in one of my 12 issues, I had to hope one of my friends could help. I remember I got roughly 80% of the way through Bionic Commando, then got stuck at this part with a wall I couldn't figure out how to scale, and that was that.



Yeah. Pre internet, aside from magazines, we also had the older knowledgeable friend that outplays us, the guy who's uncle works at Nintendo/Sega or the kid in school who know such and such to help. During the NES era, I had all of the above  and I'd learn how to play every game well.

In the SNES era where I had a little spending money, I was all over the news agency reading magazines and buying whatever had the hot tips of whatever game I was playing. A lot of them were mostly terrible being payed by the developers to overrate games, but Super Play Magazine (UK) was the only independent magazine that spoke honestly. They were also the only magazine at the time to have full intensive coverage of anime, and everything to do with Japanese culture and entertainment. Their first issue was the first magazine I bought incidentally, and that ought to explain why I'm the way I am and why I know so many obscure games.  I'm still on the hunt for the others I'm missing. Hell, they even resurrected themselves with the original staff just to cover the SNES Classic and Starfox 2.

Eventually I ended up becoming one of the aforementioned "guys" who was selling typed up Mortal Kombat 2 and 3 movelists to school kids for a buck or 2 because I had the magazines. 

Australia also had a TV show called The Zone in the early mid 90s that gave reviews, hints and tips every Saturday morning. It only lasted 50 episodes. There were also gaming hotlines but those cost 3-5 bucks a minute. No way was I ever paying that!



KnightBrolaire said:


> i wish someone would remake primal rage or clay fighter. those were some of my favorite fighters as a kid.



I want this to happen too. Both were unique and trying to do their own thing rather following the SF/MK templates. It's a shame they're both janky as hell. So should the remakes happen, they need to have a good solid fighting engine.

I appreciate and even applaud what Primal Rage were doing with their completely original special moves input engine, but it just didn't work. That should have been the one aspect to rip of from the other successful fighting games. The first Clayfighter was utter jank and I disliked C2 Judgment Clay even more because it was a few steps back on the fighting engine.

To add to fighting games that need rebooting/remastering: TMNT Tournament Fighters. This was one of the few fighting games of the 16 bit era that came damn close to being a solid fighting game. It's certainly better and more substantial than the first Mortal Kombat or watered down ports of whatever SNK game was releasing every 5 minutes at the time.

Also every fighting game reboot I mentioned above needs to be made by Arc Systems Works (and not screw us over with stupid DLC/Season passes) or Rare. The former for TMNT, and the latter for PR/CF. If Dragon Ball FighterZ is of any indication the TMNT franchise are tailor made for that 2D quasi anime environment. And can you just imagine Primal Rage and Clay Fighter(s) with the Xbox Killer Instinct engine? Also with music by Mick Gordon? That would be sweet!


----------



## wankerness

The SNES Godzilla fighting game was pretty sweet, if only for the characters available. There were a couple in the GC/PS2 generation as well. I never played "Save the Earth" or whatever the second was called, but my friends and I had a ton of fun with the first GC one. It had a partially overhead perspective, an open space like a wrestling game, and there were buildings everywhere that you could toss people through. It ruled.

There's a Godzilla game on PS4 that's terrible, but it's not remotely the same with mechanics. Do something like the GC one again!!

I spent a lot of time with Primal Rage on SNES, even if it was heavily censored. The move system was awful. It was something like "hold down X and B, do a 360 on the D-pad starting from up!!!" Originality is about the only thing it had going for it.

Wasn't clayfighter pretty much the same as MK or Killer Instinct, just with humor instead of hit combos? I remember the special moves at least all being the same kinds of forward forward or quarter circle back things.


----------



## synrgy

wankerness said:


> Wasn't clayfighter pretty much the same as MK or Killer Instinct, just with humor instead of hit combos? I remember the special moves at least all being the same kinds of forward forward or quarter circle back things.



My memory of it aligns with yours.


----------



## TedEH

I realized yesterday that I've done a little bit of a dumb when it comes to gaming lately - I went out and got an updated video card not super long ago (went from a 770 to a 970, which doesn't sound like a huge jump, but the added vram makes a big difference) - but then immediately went on a "play all the ancient games" thing. 

Oops. Bad timing, but still worth it. hah.

That being said, there's something very satisfying about playing old games on super-over-powered hardware.


----------



## synrgy

^Yeah, I've been there. It's kinda like "Oh, so THIS is what it was SUPPOSED to run like, had I not been running it on an inadequate 286 in 1992.."


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Actually I just thought of another great fighting game that should be brought back. War of the Monsters. God that game was awesome. It had fully destructible levels, special moves, environmental traps, you could climb buildings and impale other monsters with street posts/radio antennas/power line poles.


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> Actually I just thought of another great fighting game that should be brought back. War of the Monsters. God that game was awesome. It had fully destructible levels, special moves, environmental traps, you could climb buildings and impale other monsters with street posts/radio antennas/power line poles.



Oh yeah, that game was rad for the time, very throwback like 40/50s monster/robot designs with modern mechanics and playability. Plus, I think you could do up to 4 people IIRC?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Oh yeah, that game was rad for the time, very throwback like 40/50s monster/robot designs with modern mechanics and playability. Plus, I think you could do up to 4 people IIRC?


yup 4 player splitscreen iirc


----------



## TedEH

I played some 007 the other day on the N64 -> Not Goldeneye, the other one: The World is Not Enough.

On some levels I like the game. The shooting mechanics are pretty solid for an early n64 shooter. But the game as a whole has some weird polish issues that I think explain why it's not remembered as fondly as Goldeneye. Not a bad game though.


----------



## Quiet Coil

I always hated fighting games...but...POWERSTONE!!!


----------



## synrgy

^I still lament that Dreamcast didn't really catch on in the States, and that it's failure effectively shunned Sega out of the console market. IMHO, it was a _great_ system. 

To this day, I don't understand how the PS caught on. IMHO, it was the worst of that generation of consoles.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

synrgy said:


> To this day, I don't understand how the PS caught on. IMHO, it was the worst of that generation of consoles.



Easy answer: Third party support.

The PS initially started life as a partnership between Nintendo and Sony as the SNES CD Rom. However Nintendo opted out and went with Phillips, hence those horrific Zelda/Mario games nobody talks about outside making fun of them. With the relationship soured Sony used this moment to go with their own console. Nintendo were on top of the world where even the failure of the Virtua Boy didn't slow them down, instead it was the use of cartriges for the N64 is what made every third party get cold feet and went to Sony instead. Namely 2 of the juggernauts of the time: Capcom with Resident Evil, and Squaresoft with Final Fantasy VII, both relationships took well over a decade to mend until recently (Nintendo jamming Megaman and Cloud Strife in Smash Bros was their way of showing everything is cool between us now). 

This was also the time when FMVs were becoming all the rage so every game at the time needed one. The PS was the worst of the 5th generation in power but it was the perfect medium to have something for everybody.

Sega was ready with the Saturn but shot themselves in the foot for releasing the console prematurely and the cancellation of it's flagship Sonic game. This killed their sales when Best Buy/Walmart dropped them. And as awesome as the Dreamcast was (solid games, especially in the fighting game department, powerful hardware), it was also hurt by lack of third party support and was the final death knell for Sega's console run.

It was a weird time where we even had a ton of other even more powerful competitors like the Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Amiga CD32 among others but they were all short lived. So the third parties ended up becoming the deciders of what's yet to come. And it even got better with the PS2, which is widely considered the best gaming console of all time thanks to it's massive library of games.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

I'm finally getting around to playing Dying Light. It's great so far. Has the same feeling as the original Dead Island games but with better graphics. The parkour is really cool too. Definitely makes your butt clench when you jump 20 feet from roof to roof avoiding zombies only to break through a crappy wooden roof and alert the Virals and have them chase you down. haha


----------



## mongey

synrgy said:


> ^I still lament that Dreamcast didn't really catch on in the States, and that it's failure effectively shunned Sega out of the console market. IMHO, it was a _great_ system.
> 
> To this day, I don't understand how the PS caught on. IMHO, it was the worst of that generation of consoles.



Sony had the marketing power and had the distribution in retail . all of a sudden every electronics retailer became a game retailer as well . the competitors you had to go to a gaming specialist shop to buy the console and the games


----------



## mongey

finished limbo . looking back I don't think I actually played all of it when it came on on 360 .maybe got distracted by something else or maybe just played the demo ? good game . thought provoking themes. allot of opinions online on what it all means and I think the car crash theory makes most sense 

bought Into the Breach as a fill in game for now, reviews are really good and it looks interesting as a strategy /puzzle game .haven't played it yet


----------



## synrgy

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Stuff



Yeah, see, I know all that history, but as you note, it was inferior hardware. Numerous titles mean nothing to _me_ when said titles effectively refuse to run smoothly on the hardware. Just me, though, I guess.

I mean, I get that if one's bag was either Gran Turismo and/or JRPGs, it was pretty much The Thing To Have. I'm not trying to be obtuse, or re-hash a 20-ish year old debate. Just saying, I'd have preferred that era (and therefore subsequent eras) turned out a little differently.


----------



## TedEH

synrgy said:


> Numerous titles mean nothing to _me_ when said titles effectively refuse to run smoothly on the hardware.


I find it interesting how that standard has evolved over time. A lot of my best gaming memories come from games and systems that performed horribly. Perfect Dark was a favorite game for a long time (and still is on some level) and it frequently dips below 20fps on the original hardware. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were also some really great games - with terrible performance. I spent a lot of time on some of my earliest PCs playing UT and Quake 3 with the setting cranked up as high as my poor old PC could take and gladly suffered the super low fps because it was just coooooooooooool.

But now we have "advocacy groups" to tear down games that don't consistently hit the promised 60fps on particular hardware, etc.


----------



## synrgy

I didn't mean to sound like a framerate snob. I've _never_ been able to afford to be.  Quake was a great example. I used to play the original Team Fortress mod with an online group despite having terrible FPS and even more terrible lag/ping.


----------



## TedEH

A good trick was always just to be a couple of years behind the trends -> just try to always get into games a generation or two behind in terms of hardware, and it'll always be a great experience. And easier on the wallet.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I find it interesting how that standard has evolved over time. A lot of my best gaming memories come from games and systems that performed horribly. Perfect Dark was a favorite game for a long time (and still is on some level) and it frequently dips below 20fps on the original hardware. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were also some really great games - with terrible performance. I spent a lot of time on some of my earliest PCs playing UT and Quake 3 with the setting cranked up as high as my poor old PC could take and gladly suffered the super low fps because it was just coooooooooooool.
> 
> But now we have "advocacy groups" to tear down games that don't consistently hit the promised 60fps on particular hardware, etc.



Below 20 fps? More like below 5!! I remember fondly some 4 player splitscreen on Perfect Dark where we'd be throwing N-Bombs around (yes, they're called that) and the game would go down to like 1 fps. 

I think a moderately consistent 20 fps on N64 was probably considered good. I don't remember caring about "FPS" back then unless it was really spikey. Though I do remember how silky smooth Turok 1 was compared to 2, even though 2 was relatively consistent and looked far, far more detailed. Probably because you could only see 3 feet in front of you in 1.

Sidenote, I think Turok 2 might be the best-looking N64 game.


----------



## TedEH

I was thinking mostly the single-player, but that's fair too, hah. With the "high quality" mode off, and sticking to single player it uuuuuusually stays reasonable. And by reasonable, I mean around 20, if I had to guess.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

wankerness said:


> Soul Calibur 6's DLC plans are so incredibly scummy that there's no way I'm giving them a dime until the inevitable "GOTY" edition. Do they make those when a game gets bad reviews but had a ton of DLC?



Thanks for the tip off, I had no idea about the DLC...yeah, screw them.


----------



## NotDonVito

Playing WoW for the first time since like 2006.


----------



## mongey

Into the breach is great , but its a challenge right from the start , well is for me anyway 

you really need to plan your moves . way more than xcom


----------



## FancyFish

Just decided to pick up Enter the Gungeon because of the new update. Been having fun so far.


----------



## MFB

Going between the Halo campaigns after the MASSIVE update, as well as the ACII storyline from the Ezio collection. After playing Origins, some of II feels a little dated, but its one of my top 5 of all time and I love it warts and all.

Halo, on the other hand, makes me feel like an idiot for not knowing where to go or what to do; but it came out ...17 years ago? I'm allowed to forget


----------



## wankerness

NotDonVito said:


> Playing WoW for the first time since like 2006.



Why did you pick it up? It seems like there's a bunch of people coming back for the first time in several years. All I can figure is the marketing was much better this goaround, cause this expansion is legitimately way worse than the last one. Ugh. I dunno if I can even wait for the first raid to come out. Right now all it is are a bunch of awful dungeons with a trillion trash mobs (I do kinda like the weird mythic with the giant octopus boss at the end, though) and a ton of rep grinds where you get 75 per WQ so you'll be at it for weeks. I got my shaman to ~330 item level so I will be roughly raid ready and I've kind of lost interest. The leveling zones are too boring for me to want to level my other bunch of characters from 110 to 120.

I've been playing Yakuza Kiwami 2, and it rules. I like it a lot more than Yakuza 6. I'm at chapter 10, so I'm afraid I might be getting somewhere close to the end. I've only done the intro missions for the cabaret club and the Majima construction, though. The first seems identical to Yakuza 0's, down to all the same animations with both hand gestures and for, well, basically everything that goes on in the club! It has a couple tiny new gimmicks, and it seems like getting new girls is more work. 

Majima Construction is like the Kiryu clan stuff in 6, which I didn't particularly enjoy and just cheesed my way through for the completion. It seems like it's going to be harder since you can't just input a hundred codes and unlock all kinds of overpowered characters. Too bad! I like that it seems to be more strategic so far, with limited characters instead of just feeding cannon fodder after cannon fodder onto the field. I guess I'll see. I almost fell asleep during the cinematics for it, the plot is SO boring.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I've been playing Yakuza Kiwami 2, and it rules. I like it a lot more than Yakuza 6. I'm at chapter 10, so I'm afraid I might be getting somewhere close to the end. I've only done the intro missions for the cabaret club and the Majima construction, though. The first seems identical to Yakuza 0's, down to all the same animations with both hand gestures and for, well, basically everything that goes on in the club! It has a couple tiny new gimmicks, and it seems like getting new girls is more work.
> 
> Majima Construction is like the Kiryu clan stuff in 6, which I didn't particularly enjoy and just cheesed my way through for the completion. It seems like it's going to be harder since you can't just input a hundred codes and unlock all kinds of overpowered characters. Too bad! I like that it seems to be more strategic so far, with limited characters instead of just feeding cannon fodder after cannon fodder onto the field. I guess I'll see. I almost fell asleep during the cinematics for it, the plot is SO boring.



That's good to hear, the original Yakuza 2 was the most loved in the series pre Zero. I'll need to pick up 6 and the 2 Kiwamis soon. Probably a while before I actually play them.

The reused animation was expected, I guess it helps Sega churn out so many of these games. It's one of the biggest flaws that start weighing down on you once you've played more than 2 of the series. I'm all worn out from the hostess training in 0 thanks to the amount of time spent getting dates in 4 and 5. Of course no point on fixing what isn't broken. I just finished the Cabaret minigame, and glad I did. It's so fun but incredibly soul and time crushingly addictive. I sort of over leveled in the Club Moon challenge without intention Maxed out Platinum, Gold and some Silver hostesses, tripled the Moon fanbase, the lot. Though it was because I didn't realise I had to advance the story and go to the Grand to trigger the challenge. Sega really need to release this minigame as a standalone for mobile phones.

EDIT: You were right about Isobe and the Obasan (grandma) pulling their weight up with the platinums. Even the Dolly mum was raking in the cash from the Mega Rich clients fairly well. I used her in the final challenge as she was a decent all rounder (like a much crappier Yuki). Unknown wasn't too bad for me, but she was just an inferior Dolly that relied too much of Fever to rake in cash. There were 2 great Silvers that lasted for the majority of the subgame too. Erranda being one and another with super high Love/Skill stats. I didn't bother with the Bronzes as they were all awful.


----------



## Anquished

Still working my way through DS Remastered. 

Is anyone else still actually playing it? I'm not getting invaded, nor am I getting summoned for co-op. I barely see anyone elses summon signs ever.


----------



## Ralyks

Got to chapter 11 in Yakuza 6 last night. I fear the end is near, but then I can go back to 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2 like I should have  A little disappointed I basically skipped side quests, especially the side story involving the NJPW guys (less for the mini game and more because I’m a fan of NJPW). Oh well, I’ve become enough of a fan of Yakuza thanks to 0 that I can see myself eventually going back through these games to get the Platinum.

Probably going to play some Destiny 2 tonight in preparation for Forsaken. I’m really hoping this gets me to stick with the game longer than the two smaller expansions did. I’m only light level 361 because I basically stopped playing Warmind after a few days.


----------



## wankerness

DO NOT try to platinum the Yakuza games, unless you have a very deep understanding of Shogi and Mahjong.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> DO NOT try to platinum the Yakuza games, unless you have a very deep understanding of Shogi and Mahjong.



Which is less likely, get the Platinum for the Yakuza games, or getting the Platinum for Persona 5


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Which is less likely, get the Platinum for the Yakuza games, or getting the Platinum for Persona 5



Yakuza, BY FAR. Persona 5 really isn't hard, just tedious. I got most of the ones people say are hard on my first playthrough and I wasn't following any guide religiously. I have no interest in trying, but it looks like you could do it easily in two playthroughs.

I think Yakuza 6 is probably not bad. I didn't really look into it. I don't recall having to play Mahjong or Shogi in it, which I think are 90% of the difficulty on the others. Playing through the whole game on ultrahard I think would also be a huge bitch. And then many of the games have some extra super tedious thing. Like, Kiwami with its massive, massive "Haruka's Whims" thing in NG+ that requires you to do like 25 more minigames with various score requirements.


----------



## mongey

Ok. It took a couple hours to hit my straps but into the breach is amazing. If you have a switch ,or pc, it’s a must buy. Especially at the price point.


----------



## TedEH

Played through Oxenfree - it's alright. Some decent ideas, but nothing ground-breaking. Kinda short. The art is good, and the voice acting is good, but occasionally strays into a sort of contextually tone-deaf territory (some lines are delivered really well, but with an incompatible mood with the scene).

I started a playthrough of Zelda 1. Made it through 3 dungeons so far. Collected a bunch of the optional stuff first. For as old and rough a game as it is, it's still enjoyable.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I've played through a few games during and after vacation.

Call of Duty: Black Ops - Yeah, never played it till now. I certainly see what all the hype was about, but I figured out the twist with Reznov by the third level he "appears" in. Fuck that game on veteran, though.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Probably the easiest one in the series to beat on Veteran and that's mainly because the enemies rarely throw grenades.

Call of Duty: Ghosts - The fact that there's no Ghosts 2 says enough about this game.

Homefront - Another game I'm just getting to. While the plot was definitely the high mark of the game, the setting was a bit hamfisted. I can believe the game is set in america if you just say it is or have a few american flags around, I don't need to see Full Throttle and NOS Energy machines all over the place or retake a Tiger Direct store to feel like I'm liberating 'merica. And I would have gave that a pass, because none of the characters call anything out by name, until either the second to last or the last mission where one of the (dumbass, braindead, thick headed cunts that I have to wait to open doors for me before proceeding through the game) support characters said "get to the Whitecastle". I mean come the fuck on, at least at Starbucks you can get a full body latte.

BioShock - Didn't like it when I first tried to play it in 2009, and now after playing it all the way through, I still don't like it.



Ralyks said:


> Which is less likely, get the Platinum for the Yakuza games, or getting the Platinum for Persona 5


 Is there anything like the Amon clan in Persona 5?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Carrion Rocket said:


> Is there anything like the Amon clan in Persona 5?



No, but there is one NG+ mega hard boss that will hand each of your body parts to you without excessive grinding.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Carrion Rocket said:


> I've played through a few games during and after vacation.
> 
> Call of Duty: Black Ops - Yeah, never played it till now. I certainly see what all the hype was about, but I figured out the twist with Reznov by the third level he "appears" in. Fuck that game on veteran, though.
> 
> Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - Probably the easiest one in the series to beat on Veteran and that's mainly because the enemies rarely throw grenades.
> 
> Call of Duty: Ghosts - The fact that there's no Ghosts 2 says enough about this game.
> 
> Homefront - Another game I'm just getting to. While the plot was definitely the high mark of the game, the setting was a bit hamfisted. I can believe the game is set in america if you just say it is or have a few american flags around, I don't need to see Full Throttle and NOS Energy machines all over the place or retake a Tiger Direct store to feel like I'm liberating 'merica. And I would have gave that a pass, because none of the characters call anything out by name, until either the second to last or the last mission where one of the (dumbass, braindead, thick headed cunts that I have to wait to open doors for me before proceeding through the game) support characters said "get to the Whitecastle". I mean come the fuck on, at least at Starbucks you can get a full body latte.
> 
> BioShock - Didn't like it when I first tried to play it in 2009, and now after playing it all the way through, I still don't like it.
> 
> Is there anything like the Amon clan in Persona 5?


I question your sanity for liking Homefront more than Bioshock. The single player in Homefront was basically RED DAWN: THE GAME, but they felt the need to update the boogeymen as asians and play up the racism aspect with Hopper's character (as limited as the game was in its exploration of racism/patriotism and other isms). The writing in general in that game was pathetic. It did have great multiplayer back in the day though.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

KnightBrolaire said:


> I question your sanity for liking Homefront more than Bioshock.



Didn't say I liked it. And I can believe it was intended for multiplayer considering how fucking dumb the AI is hence me calling them "thick headed cunts".


----------



## TedEH

Carrion Rocket said:


> BioShock - Didn't like it


Curious, what didn't you like about it?


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## synrgy

^Not trying to speak for CR, but for me, the control-scheme/gameplay was just too complicated for my enjoyment.


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## Ralyks

Anyone else play Destiny 2 Forsaken? It’s... interesting. Only got about two story missions in. Probably five more into it later. Bow and arrow is pretty badass though.


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## wankerness

synrgy said:


> ^Not trying to speak for CR, but for me, the control-scheme/gameplay was just too complicated for my enjoyment.



Huh? How so?? It's not any more complex than Quake III! I guess being able to hold more than 2 weapons at a time makes it more complex than some other modern shooters...

I guess there's the aspect of you having a gun and a plasmid at once, but the deployment isn't any different than the myriad of ancient games that had an "alt fire" mode. You can just switch them independently.

This said, I did find the game incredibly overrated. I didn't play it for a year or two after it came out, so maybe it was outdated or something by the time I played it, but I just didn't get all the hype. 90% of it is the same as any other classic FPS where you just walk around blasting people/monsters in the dark. The "big twist" was clever conceptually, but the gameplay is so non-story-based that I didn't really care about any part of the plot. Bioshock Infinite was the only one in the series where the story was directly forced into the gameplay and as a result the first one where I thought of it as anything other than a pretty Quake.


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## synrgy

I'm not as young as I used to be!


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## TedEH

I find that there's a case to be made about the difference between actual complexity and perceived complexity. If a game has a lot of depth, but is presented in a way that's easy enough for someone to digest, you might not call that a "complex" game, but a more shallow game in terms of number of, and layers of, mechanics that are hard to wrap your head around might be received as too complex.

I don't think of Bioshock games as complex, but something like a CoD game comes across as complex to me - in terms of how many little details (that I normally wouldn't care about) go into how those are balanced. (I don't actually play those games though, so the image I have in my head might be way off.) It may be less complex in terms of number of player-facing mechanics, but it's maybe more complex in terms of how interactions play out.


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## wankerness

COD is very complex in that you can't be competitive in multiplayer unless you know at least some of the maps and weapons inside and out and actually have proficiency with them. Bioshock, you pretty much just wander around shooting things in dark hallways and do whatever the pop up heads tell you to do. Nothing more complex than finding keys in Doom, iirc, besides maybe hacking things (which was a very, very simple minigame). I played the game at least twice (PC and Xbox 360) but I can't remember everything clearly.

I remember thinking that Bioshock 2 was better both times I played it. I think I just liked the interactions with the sisters more. I know virtually no one else likes it more, but I think that's tied to the plot being more clever in the first one, which I didn't really care about.

(Maybe I'm just a single-player FPS genius cause I played all the way through Turok 2 back in the day and thus my brain is rewired for understanding unbelievably convoluted maps and massive weapon wheels)


----------



## Mathemagician

So I just tried out the card game “Eternal” on my PC, some of the creators of magic work on it. Fun enough game, and definitely more depth than Hearthstone. Still bright & colorful design and clean UI.


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## TedEH

I actually never finished Bioshock 2. I've started it a bunch of times, but never got far before getting distracted by something else. I really should finish it though. It's not a bad game, it just never got it's hooks in before something newer and shinier came along.


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## wankerness

I never read any reviews, but if I had to guess, Bioshock 2 was probably rejected for looking and playing too similarly to the first. I bet people said "FEELS LIKE AN EXPANSION" or something stupid like that.


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## TedEH

I've heard that as a common complaint. And it's probably a lot of why I never got super into it. I could probably go back to it now, since it's been long enough since playing any Bioshock games at all.


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## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I've heard that as a common complaint. And it's probably a lot of why I never got super into it. I could probably go back to it now, since it's been long enough since playing any Bioshock games at all.


Bioshock 2 is great and adds some neat gameplay touches like the area defense sequence, and new weapons like deployable mini turrets and a rocket harpoon gun. There's way more depth gameplay wise imo, and the storyline is solid. I played bioshock 1 and 2 back to back a while ago, and while they do feel similar, there's enough changed to make it worth playing imo. It's overall a more fluid and action heavy game than the first, but it doesn't feel like it drags on like Infinite's last sections did.

I'm surprised to hear that some people didn't like bioshock. I loved that game because of the world building/art style and meeting creeps like sander cohen. His whole subplot was super interesting to me and kind of reminded me of House of Wax. The whole audio log idea/ghost trail thing is pretty overdone at this point but back when Bioshock came out it was still a fresh concept (since system shock was the only other game that used it). Obviously the game kind of went off the rails after the big twist, but I still think it's a great game in terms of story/world building/art style.


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## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I remember thinking that Bioshock 2 was better both times I played it. I think I just liked the interactions with the sisters more. I know virtually no one else likes it more, but I think that's tied to the plot being more clever in the first one, *which I didn't really care about.*


*Twitching intensifies*


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## wankerness

Infinite's kind of a mess, I replayed it a few months ago. I also hate the piano dropping sound that happens every time you kill something. BUT, the integration of Elizabeth into the gameplay and plot is masterfully done in terms of getting you to care about the character and I can't think of any other shooters offhand to successfully do that. I think God of War was the first thing that I've played since that did it as well, and that kid was kind of a little shit so it didn't work for me as well emotionally. I've never played Ico, but from what I've heard, that's one of the only other games to pull it off. I think part of it, though, is that like Atreus she's basically invincible so you don't feel like she's a pain in the ass like you usually do with characters you have to travel around with, which is probably cheating.


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## TedEH

^ Maybe Alyx Vance from HL2 is comparable?


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## LeviathanKiller

I bought the triple pack of the Bioshock series. I still need to play Bioshock 2 and Infinite. Infinite doesn't look as appealing. I've heard it said that Bioshock 1 was the scariest/creepiest anyway.


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## TedEH

I don't know that "scariest" is really a good way to rank the games - I don't think of them as horror games. The story isn't meant to be horror, I don't think.


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## LeviathanKiller

TedEH said:


> I don't know that "scariest" is really a good way to rank the games - I don't think of them as horror games. The story isn't meant to be horror, I don't think.



I liked the creep factor of the first one and it was labeled in the horror genre in Steam even I believe whereas the others are not. That's not to say the latter iterations are not as enjoyable, it's just that they're different and if you aren't okay with that, you won't enjoy them as much. Infinite seems way different from what I've watched of it and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to say that I enjoyed it as much as Bioshock 1. Bioshock 2, I have no clue really.

Still playing Dying Light for the time being. This game is massive. So many side quests and stuff to do. Most of them follow the same format, turn these things on, go retrieve this, etc. But at least the story that accompanies it is interesting. I'm in Old Town right now and virals keep spawning every minute or so it's kinda annoying. Idk if it's normal or glitched. Definitely makes lockpicking hard to finish.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> ^ Maybe Alyx Vance from HL2 is comparable?



Nah, she was just kind of a person that happens to follow you around. From what I remember. I'm pretty sure that I didn't finish that game.


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## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I don't know that "scariest" is really a good way to rank the games - I don't think of them as horror games. The story isn't meant to be horror, I don't think.



The first two are definitely horror-ish. Everything's extremely dark and atmospheric, you constantly hear the splicers off in the distance making insane noises, and there are a lot of jump scares (non-scripted). I would say that modern horror games probably took influence from Bioshock.


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## TedEH

I suppose, but I never interpreted that as the sort of core intent/content of the story, and more just a "mood" to set it in. That's just me though. Horror sort of loses it's edge to me as soon as you throw in the sort of power-fantasy-shooter kind of stuff on top of it. Not much is scary about being able to shoot+magic your way out of every situation.



LeviathanKiller said:


> they're different and if you aren't okay with that, you won't enjoy them as much


I find this always bothers me quite a bit when a game does poorly on the basis of not being the-same-enough to it's predecessors. Lots of really great work gets dismissed on this basis, and I find it kinda sad. I try as hard as I can to see everything on it's own merits - judging by the apparent intent of the creator, since it's *their* story to tell.


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## LeviathanKiller

TedEH said:


> I suppose, but I never interpreted that as the sort of core intent/content of the story, and more just a "mood" to set it in. That's just me though. Horror sort of loses it's edge to me as soon as you throw in the sort of power-fantasy-shooter kind of stuff on top of it. Not much is scary about being able to shoot+magic your way out of every situation.



I get what you mean. Yeah, horror is not the main focus, it's atmospheric horror (?) really.



TedEH said:


> I find this always bothers me quite a bit when a game does poorly on the basis of not being the-same-enough to it's predecessors. Lots of really great work gets dismissed on this basis, and I find it kinda sad. I try as hard as I can to see everything on it's own merits - judging by the apparent intent of the creator, since it's *their* story to tell.



I think 2 is going to be fine. People like consistency/cohesiveness though too. I feel like if something is _too_ different, it breaks storyline immersion unless the transitioning is done really really well.


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## TedEH

I suppose it's a double edged sword. Bioshock 2 was criticized for being too similar to 1. Infinite gets criticized for being too different. You can't win . 

Legit though -> you really can't win, 90% of the time. It's insanely difficult to satisfy an existing audience in gaming.


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## mongey

apart from nailing the feel and tone I feel like bioshock was ahead of the curve in offering interesting ways to dispose of enemies. things that games after it like Dishonored built upon . other games did it like half life 2 and the gravity gun but bioshock had allot more options . 

I never played 2 but I liked infinite .mainly for it's world . the opening sequence coming into the town is still one of my favorite game openings of all time . story wise it was a bit convoluted and up its own ass


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## TedEH

So I did a dumb and bought some games off of eBay -> some of them were fine, but a couple of GBA carts turned out to be fakes. They play, but the games have weird error messages at the beginning, and one of them doesn't save. Would have been one thing if I was expecting repros, but the ad for this one literally said "these are authentic" in the item description. Lesson learned, I guess.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> BUT, the integration of Elizabeth into the gameplay and plot is masterfully done in terms of getting you to care about the character and I can't think of any other shooters offhand to successfully do that. I think God of War was the first thing that I've played since that did it as well, and that kid was kind of a little shit so it didn't work for me as well emotionally. I've never played Ico, but from what I've heard, that's one of the only other games to pull it off. I think part of it, though, is that like Atreus she's basically invincible so you don't feel like she's a pain in the ass like you usually do with characters you have to travel around with, which is probably cheating.



Resident Evil 4 is another one to add. All the escort moments really got the heart pumping and Ashley Graham was smart enough to get out of the way and hide when things got too hairy.


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## wankerness

She's not like, integral to the game, though. If I remember right, that was kind of the "obligatory escort section" and then there was a chunk where you played as her that was the obligatory stealth section (I think?!). I dunno. I haven't played that game since the Gamecube heyday. I even re-bought it on Xbox 360 and then just never got around to it again. And almost bought it again on PS4 recently! People like to bitch about Skyrim re-releases, but I think there are at least 85 versions of RE4.

I finally started focusing on the cabaret club stuff in Yakuza Kiwami 2. It plays like the one in Yakuza 0 almost exactly, but it is less responsive, I think cause there's way more going on with polygon counts and whatnot, so it feels a little bit more dangerous trying to cut things close with responding to calls for help, etc. One huge Improvement is that the announcer guy is frickin hilarious, I laugh every time he comes on screen during big events in the plot. Also, the HP level of the hostesses really comes into play a lot, especially at lower levels, while it was sort of ignorable in 0. The dialogue sections are more tedious than in 0 cause you can't skip through the dialogue, but there are also only 3 of them per hostess instead of 5 or whatever it was. The animations in THOSE sections are new, and some of them are awful (particularly the hands together pose they keep doing), but almost everything else is recycled, most obviously the stuff that happens when you respond to platinum hostesses on the floor. 

The worst change by far are these button mashing QTEs that happen at the end of almost every session where you have to respond to an "Oil Baron" by trying to move a bar to 0 in 10 seconds or less, and it requires mashing at a much higher speed than say, Mario Party. BUT, yeah, still great. And that's my detailed reaction to one minigame in Kiwami 2 that no one wants to read. 

I'm going to Japan next month, primarily to hang out in the streets of Osaka and maybe Tokyo. I should buy a gray suit.


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## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I'm going to Japan next month, primarily to hang out in the streets of Osaka and maybe Tokyo. I should buy a gray suit.



There's always karaoke. Put this song on...



...and you'll know what to do.


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## Guitarmiester

I've been nerding out on the classic Streets of Rage games lately. They were free on Xbox last month and backward compatible to play on the One. 



LeviathanKiller said:


> Still playing Dying Light for the time being. This game is massive. So many side quests and stuff to do. Most of them follow the same format, turn these things on, go retrieve this, etc. But at least the story that accompanies it is interesting. I'm in Old Town right now and virals keep spawning every minute or so it's kinda annoying. Idk if it's normal or glitched. Definitely makes lockpicking hard to finish.



Just when I finally forgot about Dead Island 2 and the ridiculous wait for any news of it being released I saw your post about Dying Light. I remember leaving off at the very last mission for Dying Light and never got around to completing it. By the time I popped it in all of that free DLC hit. I was surprised to see how many side quests were added.


----------



## NotDonVito

wankerness said:


> Why did you pick it up? It seems like there's a bunch of people coming back for the first time in several years. All I can figure is the marketing was much better this goaround, cause this expansion is legitimately way worse than the last one. Ugh. I dunno if I can even wait for the first raid to come out. Right now all it is are a bunch of awful dungeons with a trillion trash mobs (I do kinda like the weird mythic with the giant octopus boss at the end, though) and a ton of rep grinds where you get 75 per WQ so you'll be at it for weeks. I got my shaman to ~330 item level so I will be roughly raid ready and I've kind of lost interest. The leveling zones are too boring for me to want to level my other bunch of characters from 110 to 120.


I just wanted to play an MMO and there aren't many other good ones.


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## synrgy

wankerness said:


> I'm going to Japan next month



I kinda hate you right now. I went for a (belated) honeymoon in 2014, and have been dying to return ever since. If reincarnation is A Thing, I'd like my next go-around to be there. Please do a thread with All Of The Pictures so we can live vicariously through you!


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## Xaios

Playing through Fallout 1 again, will play through 2 when I'm done. They do hold up as entertainment, although Fallout 1 does feel really slight compared to later games.


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## wankerness

There was a period of time in the early 00s where I remember Fallout 2 being referred to as the best RPG of all time by a few sources.


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## wankerness

Finished Yakuza Kiwami 2. I'm not sure if I buy the "obviously the best story!!" people, just comparing the story to 0, anyway. There are at least two too many twists on that roof at the end! It's a bit needlessly convoluted before then when it probably could have been stronger if it had more focus on Ryuji, who is a truly great villain in both design and personality. I liked Kaoru a lot, she's easily the best female character in 0/1/2/6.


Spoiler



I'm SURE I'm going to be infuriated by whatever happens to her in the sequel(s) though, considering I don't recall her being in 6.



Oh, and that goddam Cabaret sidegame has some incredible plot twists towards the end which make it even better. 10/10. I might like the gameplay on 0's a bit more, but they really succeeded with this one as well.

The Majima "chapters" feel kind of like hastily written DLC for Majima fans, but oh well, that's practically what they are. Plus, the voice acting's of a piece with the rest of the game, it does interlock into the plot a bit, and regardless of all the boring "plot," it contains some surprising stabs in the feels with a continuation of the Makoto plot from 0. It's worth it for that 10-15 minutes, if nothing else.

How do these guys so (apparently) effortlessly create such great characters?! Like, the only US thing I can think of that outdoes the 4 of these games I've now played are Naughty Dog games, and maybe a couple Bioware games like Mass Effect 2. When I played 0 I thought Kiryu was just personality-less Tekken character man, but now he's pretty much my favorite videogame character. I love that unlike a GTA game, you are funneled into only being able to do things in the open world that he would do. Like, you can't commit violence against civilians (besides bumping into them) or even steal things. He's a big brawny superman that is also a nice oaf that gets way too into things like pocket racing and two finger typing to cam girls.

I need to replay Yakuza 0 since it took me probably half the game before I really started getting acclimated to it. 

Unfortunately now I'm caught up to these things. 3/4/5 still haven't been announced for the US. I'm guessing we'll get them, but I don't know if it's going to be soon enough for me. I need to start checking around with my friends for a working PS3 that they don't want anymore (I tried this with my brother, but his doesn't have a working disc drive!!). 

God of War III is free this month, I'm looking forward to finally playing one of the entries before the new one.


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## TedEH

Xaios said:


> Playing through Fallout 1


I definitely made a point of wanting to play the original Fallout games at some point but never got around to it. I have waaaaaaaaay too many games on the backlog right now, especially considering the retro-game-buying-rampage I've been on. This weeks acquisitions: I had some SNES carts, but no SNES so I grabbed one, and ended up with Super Star Wars games, and DK Country to go with it.

But cooler than that: I found a good deal on a Gameboy Micro. This thing is cool. The screen is infinitely better than the one on my SP even though it's smaller. (The SP I have is the 001 model with the worse lighting though.) And I also solved my bootleg games problem -> Found some legit copies of the Pokemon gba games for dirt cheap because the batteries were dead. Some game pak surgury and new batteries later, and I have some 100% legit and functional Pokemon games again, which I'm sure I will sink a ton of time into despite having so many other games that want my attention right now. Say what you want about Pokemon, but the games (at least up the the GBA ones) are great.

An interesting observation, while I'm thinking about it:
One of the bootleg games I had refused to even save, and I found out why when I took it apart: The original gba carts used flash to save, not batteries, but some games used a battery for real-time events (since you need power to keep counting while the game is off) - the bootlegs had a battery, but it was being used to keep saves. Turned out that one of the two I had bought was so poorly assembled that one side of the battery wasn't soldered on correctly and had broken off.  I sent a message to the original seller calling him out on the fakes (because he advertised them as legit) and got refunded for them.


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## wankerness

Huh. All the carts I have that I'm trying to get rid of are legit. Is there any way to prove it through an ebay listing? I'm thinking maybe I can get twice as much from them if I can since it seems like 2/3 of the vintage game listings are fakes


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## TedEH

There's lots of guides out there that show what to look for in real carts (the type of screw, color of the plastic, type of the word 'nintendo' above the pins, what the labels should look like, etc) -> I think if you document it well enough in the ad, you'd be good.


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## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Unfortunately now I'm caught up to these things. 3/4/5 still haven't been announced for the US. I'm guessing we'll get them, but I don't know if it's going to be soon enough for me.



If you can wait until December, there's this:





Think Law & Order meets Ace Attorney but being able to turn people's teeth and skull fragments into your own shoe ornaments. Yakuza, but now in the other side of the law.

EDIT: Sorry, December is Japan's release date. A Western release is penned for next year so it's still pretty soon.

EDIT 2: For something sooner, there's Fist Of The North Star: Lost Paradise coming out October. Yakuza gameplay with the FOTNS characters and plot.


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## wankerness

Yeah, I watched a ten minute gameplay video of FOTNS yesterday and I'm sold. I hate that IP, but the game looked hilarious. It did look exactly like a really splattery version of Yakuza set in that world, humor and all. And it's coming out this year!!



The only thing that puts me off there is the SHAKE THE CONTROLLER! mechanic. God, do I ever hate motion controls in games. Based on how the players are talking during that, though, it requires you to shake to the point of ludicrousness, which while more annoying is also pretty funny.

I've never heard of Project Judge, I'll have to wait for reviews on that one. Videos look like they could go either way for me.


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## Bloody_Inferno

Project Judge is also set in Kamurocho. The city itself is so rich that it's a character itself.

I'm totally sold.


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## JustinRhoads1980

I have been playing a good amount of Killing Floor 2 and CSGO on my pc. Top 2 games for sure. I also sometimes play hatred, house party, and PUBG. I try not get these things to interfere with my guitar practice, although sometimes it just gotta be that way.

Also I spent like 4 hours playing yesterday since my pump in my Corsair H100i V2 Cooler died after having it for a year and a half and I don't do anything extensive on it. Really pissed me off


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## LeviathanKiller

JustinRhoads1980 said:


> I have been playing a good amount of Killing Floor 2 and CSGO on my pc. Top 2 games for sure. I also sometimes play hatred, house party, and PUBG. I try not get these things to interfere with my guitar practice, although sometimes it just gotta be that way.
> 
> Also I spent like 4 hours playing yesterday since my pump in my Corsair H100i V2 Cooler died after having it for a year and a half and I don't do anything extensive on it. Really pissed me off



I really enjoy Killing Floor 2 but never play. I should but...


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## JustinRhoads1980

LeviathanKiller said:


> I really enjoy Killing Floor 2 but never play. I should but...



I fall into the same issue. I end up thinking that "Yeah man this is my go to game" and I will listen to music while I play it. But over time of getting through 2-5 hours of the game through a week (it is really hard to put in over an hour into the game in a day) I think, yeah lets go play some CSGO MM instead, Then the game is forgotten until this happens again.

I am though getting close to getting all my perks to level 25! Something to look forward to


----------



## Gravy Train

Spiderman PS4. This game is great! Everything is so fluid and precise. Passed my expectations.


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## wankerness

It looks cool. I'll be sure to get it when it gets discounted.  Sounded like way too much Farcry style "fill in the map by taking out all the nodes of guys and their bases and their radio towers" for me to want to pay 60 bucks for.


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## LeviathanKiller

wankerness said:


> It looks cool. I'll be sure to get it when it gets discounted.  Sounded like way too much Farcry style "fill in the map by taking out all the nodes of guys and their bases and their radio towers" for me to want to pay 60 bucks for.



That "fill in the map" concept gets boring so quickly


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## mongey

still into the breach , its a deep little game when you get into it . unforgiving but fair 

I'm decent with zenith guard squad, but kinda useless in varying degrees with all the others


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## TedEH

I'm definitely curious about Into The Breach. But too many games, and too little time.


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## LeviathanKiller

That style reminds me of Graveyard Keeper. Apparently, it's one of the top selling games on Steam?


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## Gravy Train

wankerness said:


> It looks cool. I'll be sure to get it when it gets discounted.  Sounded like way too much Farcry style "fill in the map by taking out all the nodes of guys and their bases and their radio towers" for me to want to pay 60 bucks for.



I love the Far Cry game model fwiw


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## wankerness

Gravy Train said:


> I love the Far Cry game model fwiw



It's addictive, but it can feel SO empty. After playing through FC3 and FC, I discovered it bored me to tears by Assassin's Creed Origins.

Horizon Zero Dawn is about tied for my favorite game of the last ten years, though! It definitely copies the model in some regards.


----------



## Ralyks

I have this feeling I’m going to fall off of Destiny 2 soon. Between being a college student again, raising my son, work, and pushing myself to write some more music, I’ve fallen so far behind my clan mates that it feels like they’ll move on by the time I catch up. They’ve all been level 50 and power level 500 for like a week, I’m still level 39 and power level 408. I have such a back catalogue of games that I feel whatever gaming time I have, I’d rather just finish those games up.

For example, I may go hard on Yakuza this weekend. I’m chapter 11 in 6 which I’m guessing I’m near the end, then I’ll go back and finish up 0, and then Kiwami and Kiwami 2 are sitting on my shelf.


----------



## Gravy Train

wankerness said:


> It's addictive, but it can feel SO empty. After playing through FC3 and FC, I discovered it bored me to tears by Assassin's Creed Origins.
> 
> Horizon Zero Dawn is about tied for my favorite game of the last ten years, though! It definitely copies the model in some regards.



Yeah, I can see that. I almost exclusively prefer open world games as nowadays. I just love the freedom and choices you can make within the sandbox.


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## Bloody_Inferno

Gravy Train said:


> Yeah, I can see that. I almost exclusively prefer open world games as nowadays. I just love the freedom and choices you can make within the sandbox.



They're nice every now and then, but not when every Ubisoft sandbox game being released twice or thrice a year are all designed and played like that. The supposed freedom is favored over structural progress, but that freedom is just a bunch of unconnected events, repetitive challenges and tower climbing. It becomes a long mundane checklist rather than immersive gaming. 

Granted that I don't really play Ubisoft games (I've had Assassin's Creed 4 for years but still haven't unwrapped it), but my favorite sandboxes have at least some 'character'. Saints Row 2-4 and Just Cause 2 are still my favorite sandboxes. And I suppose the Yakuza games count here, and they too are plagued with the unconnected sidequests that lessen the urgency of the plot, but these games mentioned add their own interesting factor that give better incentive to play rather than just scratching the completionist itch. 

I do tend to play a non sandbox game right after one because of that. Except the Yakuza series, I'm willing to visit Kamurocho as many times as Sega makes games in that setting.


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## Bloody_Inferno

For the retro gamers, has anybody played this yet?

Abobo's Big Adventure

It's a free fan made parody game starring that big ugly dude from Double Dragon. I saw a let's play of the whole game and it's pretty freaking epic.


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## synrgy

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The supposed freedom is favored over structural progress, but that freedom is just a bunch of unconnected events, repetitive challenges and tower climbing. It becomes a long mundane checklist rather than immersive gaming.



Beat me to it.

I often feel like 'sandbox' is _worse_ than 'linear': I'm just the Whole World's Gopher, because.. Reasons? In a (game) World populated by _thousands_ of (npc) people, they _all_ ignore each other for their needs, instead thinking that I, _exclusively_, can/will assist them with whatever inane game of fetch they've concocted.

I've just been playing too long, I guess, but _everything_ feels the same, at this point: "Go get a new 'quest'; complete the 'quest'; rinse, repeat."


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## synrgy

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Abobo's Big Adventure





Looks legit!! I was already giggling by this point, but really lost it when I saw Jaws with a friggin' laserbeam strapped to his friggin' head.

The NES Jaws game, by the way? A buddy and I spent ages on it and could never beat that effing shark. Haven't thought about it in decades, but I'm getting all anxious just now.


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## mongey

synrgy said:


> Looks legit!! I was already giggling by this point, but really lost it when I saw Jaws with a friggin' laserbeam strapped to his friggin' head.
> 
> The NES Jaws game, by the way? A buddy and I spent ages on it and could never beat that effing shark. Haven't thought about it in decades, but I'm getting all anxious just now.



ha , that looks amazing


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

synrgy said:


> Beat me to it.
> 
> I often feel like 'sandbox' is _worse_ than 'linear': I'm just the Whole World's Gopher, because.. Reasons? In a (game) World populated by _thousands_ of (npc) people, they _all_ ignore each other for their needs, instead thinking that I, _exclusively_, can/will assist them with whatever inane game of fetch they've concocted.
> 
> I've just been playing too long, I guess, but _everything_ feels the same, at this point: "Go get a new 'quest'; complete the 'quest'; rinse, repeat."



Going back to the sandboxes I like. One of the biggest strengths of Saints Row is that it understands that the first incentive of the player thrown in a large sandbox is to abuse the freedom for all it's worth. The character avatar you choose has as much fun as you do, while also surprises you with his reactions. He or she is the perfect sandbox character. 

In the case of Just Cause, it's nothing but causing chaos and destruction in laughably cheesy 80s action format. It sounds shamelessly banal, but it's blatant mindless fun in it's purest form. And there's A LOT to obliterate, and the grappling hook mechanics keep things both interesting and creative. 

I recently banged on about Yakuza's town(s) are so rich in lore despite it's tiny size and barely changes over the course of 7 or 8 games, but it's one of the few sandboxes that makes you invest in the history and locale. Doing some of the overabundant minigames, dating some hostesses or beat a few guys up and you get to know the people and their backstories. They all have their live problems, often asking the player for help, often ending with you curb stomping somebody's jaw (this is a game about yakuzas after all). Yakuza games do get samey and often taunting you to go full 100% completionist insane, but it's the little stories of each subquest that embraces you as part of this zany city. 

That and no other sandbox has karaoke. Sleeping Dogs does, but nowhere near as wild and insane as this:



Seriously I can listen to Goro Majima all day. I WILL buy his album at some point.


----------



## wankerness

I played one of the Saints Row games for a while. I just remember it being funnier and a much more fun, varied GTA than San Andreas and earlier. (This was well before GTA V came out. I don't remember which entry it was, though. 3?)

I didn't know Yakuza Dead Souls had anything other than zombie killing. I am sure that one's not getting ported, unfortunately! The karaoke in those games is so good conceptually but the timings are all f'd up, they just don't feel right and if you're getting all the button presses perfect according to their scoring, the sound still is really off (just listen to the first half of that vid!!). Still, the back half of that vid is awesomely awful. An album of that would be something, alright.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Got to the point in Yakuza 0 where where most of the side stuff is either done or I'm bored of wallowing in, so I just straight up finished the story mode. Not going to bother with post game muckabouts as they're either trivial grind or challenges I can't be assed. I did beat Okita in the dance batter so there's that I suppose. 

Overall very satisfying, as with every Yakuza game I've played. They eat up so much of my time thanks to the long term investment. Though personally, I was a little disappointed with Majima's conclusion. Maybe I was expecting his transformation to be much more crazier. Being the insane eyed loon he's known for, I couldn't help but feel that the ending of his arc is rather anti climactic. But it is what it is. 

I suppose I can FINALLY start Nier Automata or Final Fantasy XV, but with the weekend sale I ended up buying Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 1 and watching them download as I type this.  My gaming time may be stuck in Kamurocho for a while....


----------



## narad

synrgy said:


> The NES Jaws game, by the way? A buddy and I spent ages on it and could never beat that effing shark. Haven't thought about it in decades, but I'm getting all anxious just now.



Funny you should mention this -- sometime around 1990 when I was just a kid I was at a friend's house who had Jaws. After about a week to learn the ropes, I was making what I thought was good progress (as you know, Jaws pops up whenever, so on some level it would seem like you could beat the game whenever / nonsequential), when she had to leave for a lesson or something. So I'm alone in her house, playing NES. Her mom comes home, hears some noise, asks if anyone is there. I'm too scared, keep shooting at Jaws in silence. She comes down, opens the door, sees me, throws me out -- not allowed in her house again. Never played Jaws again.

Then this past Thanksgiving I was spending it with a college friend explaining this story and how the game kind of still haunts me that I was never able to beat it, even though I had gotten Jaws' health down a fair bit. So the Thanksgiving theme became beating these old games from our childhood that were too much for us then. I did Jaws in about 2 hours -- the hardest part is after you beat him, you have to scare him out of the water and stab him with the boat in this way that has to be perfectly timed (in a non-obvious way -- if you time it perfectly based on common sense and what you expect in terms of watching the pixels bash into each other, that's not the correct timing). It is just pure trial and error overcoming shoddily coded game mechanics. You get 3 tries, and then have to do it all over again. Anyway, beat it, super weak ending sequence. Can move on with my life!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

recently got into destiny 2. story is super meh and boring. Enemies feel verrrry reminiiscent of the covenant/flood from halo (legion=brutes, fallen=elites, robots=robots, flood=infested). I can't resist a good loot whore game though, the shooting feels good and keeps the whole skinner box cycle going. PvP is surprisingly faster paced than I was expecting.


----------



## NotDonVito

Black Ops 4 BR beta. It's really fun, but runs like poop on my PC : (


----------



## LeviathanKiller

NotDonVito said:


> Black Ops 4 BR beta. It's really fun, but runs like poop on my PC : (



Well, that's not unusual for a CoD title on PC. lol


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Got to the point in Yakuza 0 where where most of the side stuff is either done or I'm bored of wallowing in, so I just straight up finished the story mode. Not going to bother with post game muckabouts as they're either trivial grind or challenges I can't be assed. I did beat Okita in the dance batter so there's that I suppose.
> 
> Overall very satisfying, as with every Yakuza game I've played. They eat up so much of my time thanks to the long term investment. Though personally, I was a little disappointed with Majima's conclusion. Maybe I was expecting his transformation to be much more crazier. Being the insane eyed loon he's known for, I couldn't help but feel that the ending of his arc is rather anti climactic. But it is what it is.
> 
> I suppose I can FINALLY start Nier Automata or Final Fantasy XV, but with the weekend sale I ended up buying Yakuza 6 and Kiwami 1 and watching them download as I type this.  My gaming time may be stuck in Kamurocho for a while....



PLAY NIER AUTOMATA, and play all 3 endings, immediately!!! The third playthrough is one of the best experiences I've ever had with a videogame. I hate the word epic, but it really is when combined with the score, which is easily my favorite in game history. I get chills just thinking about how Wretched Weaponry's full-blown version combines with what's going on at that point in the game. 

Make sure you DON'T do all the side missions before the post-game, the game is really easy to outlevel and make the bosses die *way* too quickly if you do. You'll get a lot more out of the gameplay if you skip most of them on your first 3 playthroughs IMO.

Yakuza 6 is a frustrating conclusion to the series IMO. I did not like how it was supposed to be the capper for the series yet primarily focuses on some dinguses that are introduced in it while the characters we care about are forced offscreen the whole time until the very end. Also get used to leveling through eating food, if you haven't played Kiwami 2 yet!! Kiwami 2 is a much more polished version of the gameplay in 6. Kiwami 1 is good, but get ready for one of the most infuriating bosses you can imagine towards the end. I watched a vid recently that was going through the most difficult bosses in the series (most of which I've never played), and that guy ended up #1 for the whole series, so fair warning!! I think I turned it down to easy for him, and I was still swearing nonstop. #2 on that list was the secret final boss in 6, who is a lot more skill-based and kind of awesome.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> PLAY NIER AUTOMATA.



Naturally.  It's been on my too priority list for so long since I briefly played it with a friend a while back. And I've practically done everything about the game aside from actually playing the damn thing. Enough delays.

I did briefly play chapter 1 of Kiwami during Nier's installation. Bad move. Immediately after finishing 0 I felt like I never stopped. So Kamurocho gets to take a break in favor of the Drakengard universe.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

LeviathanKiller said:


> Well, that's not unusual for a CoD title on PC. lol


ehh I'd say they're actually pretty good about optimizing the games. the beta runs well for me. unless you run an absolute potato rig you should be able to run most cod games. Battlefield on the other hand... I had to upgrade to a 970 from a 720 gtx to even play BF4/BF1. I swapped that for a 1080 and it just smashes every game I play, especially because I only play in 1080p


----------



## LeviathanKiller

KnightBrolaire said:


> ehh I'd say they're actually pretty good about optimizing the games. the beta runs well for me. unless you run an absolute potato rig you should be able to run most cod games. Battlefield on the other hand... I had to upgrade to a 970 from a 720 gtx to even play BF4/BF1. I swapped that for a 1080 and it just smashes every game I play, especially because I only play in 1080p



Seems like they're always a turd on release date though. Things smoothen up shortly after but still. Infinite Warfare was unplayable for many on PC initially, IIRC.


----------



## ramis

I like to play Battlefield and this year should come out Battlefield V. There will be a new game mode - a battle royale. What do you think?


----------



## Ralyks

I second the immediate playing of Nier:Automata, and I'm only halfway through playthrough 2.

I'm grinding through the Barons in Destiny 2 Forsaken slowly, basically one a night. Keeps me from losing interest, but still sucks that I'm so far behind the rest of my clan.


----------



## wankerness

Oh man, playthrough 2 of N:A is such a fakeout for 3. I think it's designed to lull people into thinking the game's like the first one, and then when you start up that third playthrough... 

Keep playing it!!!


----------



## Steinmetzify

COD Blackout. 

PUBG with zero jank


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I'm now getting deep with sidequests in Nier On Tomatoes. Funny enough the first thing I did when playing was set on hardest difficulty and kill myself at the beginning. I saw a friend do this so I couldn't resist a cheap ending. 

The game is giving me my Metroidvania fix though. The areas unlock naturally and the backtracking isn't too annoying (well not yet, but may change before the sidequests pile up more). And none of that gardening bollocks like the original Nier either. I'm also consciously trying not to be overlevelled. I've heard a lot of meaty dialogue happens during boss fights so I'll try to resist that urge to cap them as quickly as possible like I always do. The last 2 games I did (FF6 and Yakuza 0) made every boss fight petty and trivial because of that. 

Controls are the best in the franchise, certainly better than the original and Drakengard 3. I've wised up to Yoko Taro's antics but the controls did catch me off guard during the hacking sections (I accidentally let go of R1). Trust Platinum Games to deliver on that dept.

Apparently I'm not alone on this, but I would really want a mod to make 9S look like Millhouse.  He certainly gives me that vibe. Give 2B a Lisa Simpson mod and it all makes sense. 

Not going to add about the music. I've had the OST living in my car for a good year (and the original a few years before it) so I'm familiar with it's awesomeness.


----------



## wankerness

Sidequests WILL overlevel you, and it gets worse over time. The second time I played through A/B/C, I was trying to do the sidequests as I went. Even without getting 100% of the them as I encountered them, I was killing all the bosses in playthrough 1 in ~12 seconds by Ending A, and in the second playthrough, it was even worse. With C, there were some events that still seemed properly balanced, but all the formerly epic bossfights were also over as soon as they started. It sucked.

The difficulty balance is whack, too. If you set it to hard, the enemies die exactly as quickly so it doesn't fix the overleveling thing. However, they'll also kill YOU almost instantly! I had a few times, even with that chip that is supposed to guard you against getting hit more than once in a second or something, where I got instantly destroyed when a few enemies hit me at the same time. Like almost to the end of that very deep Emil cave. I was mad.

The backtracking isn't bad since the world is so small. I like how you actually get familiar with the world instead of having to stare at minimaps all the time like with almost all modern games these days. The only potentially frustrating stuff with backtracking comes during the abandoned factory stuff later in the game, just cause it's so massive and labyrinthine and you can get a really, really long way in there before realizing you're not doing the right thing.

Some of the sidequests will make you scream, BTW. The "child" escort mission in particular should never be attempted until the postgame when you are massively overlevelled, and even then that idiot will probably manage to get killed since his armor is made of paper. There are some other nasty ones, but nothing else that seems undoable at the intended level.

Compared to Nier, even the worst quests are the best. Nier was HORRIBLE. There were so many sidequests that were like "COLLECT 10 OF AN ITEM WITH A .05% DROP CHANCE THAT IS WORTH A FUCKLOAD OF INGAME CURRENCY THAT YOU NEED FOR WEAPON UPGRADES, AND TURN IT IN FOR A PAT ON THE BACK." Or fish 30 fish for a garbage reward, etc. The actual game was pretty good, but there were quite a few sidequests that were a gigantic waste of time. N:A has a few sidequests where you have to turn in a bunch of a similarly extremely rare drop, which gets really annoying if you're going for weapon upgrade 100%, but the game DOES make it so they're almost 100% drop rate until you hit the # required for the quest turn-in. It just doesn't play nice if you already had some of the rare item in your inventory and were planning on using them. Skip those quests!

The combat is fantastic compared to Nier cause they outsourced it to Platinumgames. If anyone knows how to make action combat feel good, it's the Bayonetta team!! They kept some of the core mechanics, so if you go from Nier to it there's the clever duplication of mechanics with the ability to chop/slash while holding down a trigger for your floating buddy to shoot projectile weapons or use big special attacks, but it plays so, so much better.

I've never played anything earlier than Nier. From the sounds of it, I probably wouldn't really like them anyway.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I've never played anything earlier than Nier. From the sounds of it, I probably wouldn't really like them anyway.



I think we had this conversation before in another thread but...

...Nier Automata while stlll feels like the original Nier is more akin to Drakengard 3. Obviously not as polished as Platinumgames' approach, but still fast paced and the most solid of the pre PS4 bunch. I was rapt when Square Enix announced their involvement, because outside JRPGs, they're not crash with controls. Drakengard 3 is where the relation to the 2 are brought together, albeit in a completely convoluted way. It certainly has Yoko Taro's prints all over it. Hell, I remembered about Drakengard 2 where he wanted it to be set thousands of years in the future with aliens from the first game. He was immediately vetoed, but got the last laugh here.

This really has gone a long way from a ho hum medieval Dynasty Warriors clone with dragon riding.


----------



## TedEH

Completely different topic/game but I'm getting close to the end (I think) of a run through Pokemon Ruby. I think at this point I've realized that my approach to the game is different in some ways to the way it was when I played these games as a kid. I'm trying to actually balance my team for success this time instead of just having one monster followed by a team of weaklings. I've also ended up doing a bit more save-scumming and reading into the things that influence catch rates and things like that so that I'm not ever really losing anything that I encounter. It feels aaaalmost like cheating, but it works. Like I encountered the "mascot" pokemon from the box art, and looking up the process shows that I had something like a 3% chance of success per capture attempt, so I succeeded by just trying over and over again until I got lucky and hit that 3%, reloading saves every time I ran out of balls. Is it cheap? Probably. Do I care? .....nah.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Completely different topic/game but I'm getting close to the end (I think) of a run through Pokemon Ruby. I think at this point I've realized that my approach to the game is different in some ways to the way it was when I played these games as a kid. I'm trying to actually balance my team for success this time instead of just having one monster followed by a team of weaklings. I've also ended up doing a bit more save-scumming and reading into the things that influence catch rates and things like that so that I'm not ever really losing anything that I encounter. It feels aaaalmost like cheating, but it works. Like I encountered the "mascot" pokemon from the box art, and looking up the process shows that I had something like a 3% chance of success per capture attempt, so I succeeded by just trying over and over again until I got lucky and hit that 3%, reloading saves every time I ran out of balls. Is it cheap? Probably. Do I care? .....nah.


I played all the Pokémon games by leveling my team together. Except Leaf Green. There was an event to get a Mew close to me and the day before I found out you needed to have beaten the Elite 4 in whatever game you wanted the Mew. So I booted up the game and realized I was still stuck on Cinnabar. Long story short, I beat the Elite 4 with a Lv 74 Blastoise, 40 something Snorlax, and 4 revive/potion slaves.

Also, since Black and White I have the policy of only catching legendaries with Premier balls.


----------



## TedEH

I'm pretty behind on these games. I've only finished Gen 1 + 2 games, almost done Ruby, and never played anything newer than that. I'll get to it someday. Waaaaaaay to much stuff on the to-do list to dive into another Pokemon game right after this one.


----------



## Ralyks

Sooooooo is the original Nier worth checking out for curiosity sake? It still seems to go for $30 - $40.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Sooooooo is the original Nier worth checking out for curiosity sake? It still seems to go for $30 - $40.



Understand that it's an inferior game to Automata overall, but the story is also very engrossing. If you like the story of Automata and want to delve in more into the Drakengard lore, then that should be enough incentive.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Sooooooo is the original Nier worth checking out for curiosity sake? It still seems to go for $30 - $40.



Yes, I played it afterwards. As mentioned before, some of the side missions are godawful and the combat is vastly inferior. But, the story is probably better and it's pretty cool and the characters are pretty engrossing. If you got into Nier Automata's plot at all I think it's more than worth playing. It's also pretty interesting as a sort of prototype gameplaywise.

Even if that hysterical outburst from Emil (you'll know the one when you get to it) is one of the most cringeworthy things I've ever heard!!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Holy shit I never knew that Nier: Automata was an offshoot of Drakengard. I remember playing that when it came out back in 03 and I was absolutely mesmerized by the story, even if I didn't know what the hell was going on. I got some reading to do to remember what happened in all the different endings,but N:A is definitely on my list after reading the comments here.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

BlackMastodon said:


> Holy shit I never knew that Nier: Automata was an offshoot of Drakengard. I remember playing that when it came out back in 03 and I was absolutely mesmerized by the story, even if I didn't know what the hell was going on. I got some reading to do to remember what happened in all the different endings,but N:A is definitely on my list after reading the comments here.



It took me a few years after Nier's release to figure it out as well. Remember the last Drakengard ending? Ending E; AKA the one that goes 8 ways bananas, so insane and incongruous to the rest of the game that it felt like an elaborate joke? That leads to the Nier story.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Hence why I gotta do some reading as to what happened. Haven't played the game since I was 12-13 when it came out. I don't remember if I sold it with other PS2 games but I'm pretty sure I did. May have to take back my PS2 and find a used copy... 

From what I remember it was at least a more fun twist on the Dynasty Warriors gameplay, so it kept me going.


----------



## BlackMastodon

So Monster Hunter World has its teeth in me. It plays on my GAS something fierce when I hunt a new monster and see what cool armor/weapons I can make using its mats, and the gameplay is fun enough that it'll keep me coming back and hunting monsters over and over. 

I'm using the longsword for offense, gun lance for defense, and the kinsect glaive for high mobility damage. Learning more and more of the fine details in the game too, definitely a lot more below the surface to this. 

Eventually when I get tired of this one I'm gonna start on Dishonored 2 to get my stealth fix.


----------



## Malkav

Currently jamming Bioshock 2, finished Bioshock 1 about a week ago and Infinite a few years back, so far Bioshock 2 is my favourite of the series though, really enjoying the gameplay and story so far.

Will be getting Dark Souls 3 on PC next month though, then I will say goodbye to having a social life for a while


----------



## TedEH

Some thinking out loud:

I've noticed a pattern lately where I'll get close to the end of a game, having mostly breezed through the story up to that point, then all of the sudden get railroaded by a difficulty spike in the final boss (whatever form that takes), and then lose all motivation to properly finish the game. It's sort of like the sharp difficulty curve is a big F-U to the player, and at that point you've seen everything except the credits, so where's the drive to continue? I did that before with some other games and have had to consciously decide to properly finish the game despite not having much motivation to do so anymore. Very weird. Having post-final-boss content/side-quests that's only available once you win the main story does help though.


----------



## Kaura

Picked up CoD: World at War again since I'm running low on choices while I'm on my laptop that on paper, should only pretty much run Doom (the original one). Playing on Veteran of course and using laptop gives a nice twist to the difficulty since the framerate is not so steady and everything looks like pixelated mess. Half the time I don't know where I'm even being shot from.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Some thinking out loud:
> 
> I've noticed a pattern lately where I'll get close to the end of a game, having mostly breezed through the story up to that point, then all of the sudden get railroaded by a difficulty spike in the final boss (whatever form that takes), and then lose all motivation to properly finish the game. It's sort of like the sharp difficulty curve is a big F-U to the player, and at that point you've seen everything except the credits, so where's the drive to continue? I did that before with some other games and have had to consciously decide to properly finish the game despite not having much motivation to do so anymore. Very weird. Having post-final-boss content/side-quests that's only available once you win the main story does help though.



What are games where this happened to you? I'm trying to think of some. I know this is a thing and that I hate it too. One I can distinctly remember that was so nasty that I just said "f this game" and never played it again was Metroid Prime 2, in which the game is definitely not easy throughout, but at the end you have to fight more than one very difficult boss in a row and then also escape the place before it blows up without save points in the middle. And those were the days before checkpoints. Ugh. I died a couple times on the FIRST boss (it was the final form of EVIL SAMUS iirc), looked up a faq, saw what else I had to do after, and said fuck this, no way am I having to replay this boss every single time I mess up on the NEXT boss or the escape as well!!! I really don't remember any other game that I got to the final boss and gave up. Some were very frustrating and long, though. Banjo Kazooie 2 comes to mind!

Games I've been playing the last few years tend to have some random boss in the middle or towards the end of the game that's nasty as hell, and then the final boss is a pushover in comparison. Yakuza Kiwami 1 comes to mind immediately! Horizon Zero Dawn's ground worms are much, MUCH harder than anything else before or after (well, besides the DLC final boss). Or Resident Evil 7, where the final boss is a COMPLETE joke but the bug lady a few hours earlier in the game was pretty rough. It's also a trend these days to put the horrific final boss that will kill you 99 times as a sort of optional post-ending boss, which I get. Nier Automata, most Yakuza games, etc.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> What are games where this happened to you?


My post was originally in reaction to reaching the end of Pokemon Ruby - the final fights are a pretty sharp difficulty spike, but I think it's by design. I know I also did this with Thief 2 the first time I played it - I find that this is a common design trap for games to fall into when the games _have_ combat, but don't rely on it by default until you reach a boss. The Deus Ex games were bad for this too.


----------



## Jacksonluvr636

Ring of Elysium is free on steam. Pretty cool. Is like Pub G - a little different but it is smooth and everything works. Not clunky like Pub G and the graphics are a bit more like Socom which is cool to me.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

Jacksonluvr636 said:


> Ring of Elysium is free on steam. Pretty cool. Is like Pub G - a little different but it is smooth and everything works. Not clunky like Pub G and the graphics are a bit more like Socom which is cool to me.



Have you or anyone else tried Cuisine Royale? It's been a bit since I've played but it's really fun and funny as well. I got it while it was still free. It was originally an April's Fools joke. The actual game coming out of it is _Enlisted_.


----------



## Jacksonluvr636

LeviathanKiller said:


> Have you or anyone else tried Cuisine Royale? It's been a bit since I've played but it's really fun and funny as well. I got it while it was still free. It was originally an April's Fools joke. The actual game coming out of it is _Enlisted_.


I did play it once.

What I liked about it vs. Pub is that the bullets actually worked lol. Was pretty cool for what it was.


----------



## wannabguitarist

So anyone back into Destiny 2 after the newest update? It's actually fun, I swear


----------



## Jacksonluvr636

wannabguitarist said:


> So anyone back into Destiny 2 after the newest update? It's actually fun, I swear


I waited in line for Destiny 1 and I will say it was probably one of the coolest gaming experiences playing that big 6 man raid. But after you beat it 25 times, meh.

I played through the second raid and have not touched the game since and had no desire for D2.


----------



## Ralyks

Got to the final chapter of Yakuza 6 last night, likely going to try to finish it tonight, or tomorrow the latest. Boy... there’s some twists there...


----------



## wankerness

I think Yakuza 6's big conspiracy is silly past the breaking point, which is really saying something in a series with things like gigantic castles that can go underground.

It was also weird seeing Beat Takashi in the game, and his very "casting" kind of gave away the surprise when they introduced him. I'm really only familiar with him from watching Battle Royale a lot of times, but I know how famous the guy is. You knew he wasn't just going to be the old goof!

Keep playing Yakuza 6 until you can fight the final substory boss (Jo Amon, as usual), IMO. The more I think about that boss, the more I like it. I don't know if I ever want to fight the dude again, but it was quite an experience!!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wannabguitarist said:


> So anyone back into Destiny 2 after the newest update? It's actually fun, I swear


I just got into it a couple of weeks ago. I'm enjoying the gunplay and fighting in the crucible, but haven't touched the expansion missions at all yet.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Jacksonluvr636 said:


> Ring of Elysium is free on steam. Pretty cool. Is like Pub G - a little different but it is smooth and everything works. Not clunky like Pub G and the graphics are a bit more like Socom which is cool to me.



Grabbed this, was getting bored with PUBG. Thanks!


----------



## Ralyks

Just watched the credits roll for Yakuza 6. Overall, I'm happy. Great game, a fine conclusion to Kiryus story, oh, and excellent soundtrack (we are on a music forum after all). Now deciding if I just back to 0 right away for maybe take a Yakuza break for a few days before jumping back in.


----------



## HeavyMetal4Ever

Been playing Forza Horizon 4 for a few days now. So far it's been great.


----------



## Steinmetzify

So Ring of Elysium is ridiculously easy; I just sniped a guy in the dome as he was traveling down a zip line. 

I felt like a cheater lol


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Just crossed 2B's playthrough on Nier Arigato Mr Roboto, with a few joke endings to spare. I may have failed about 2-3 sidequests when I didn't realise some of them had cutoffs when I got impatient. No biggie. 

Time to see what Thrillhouse puts on the table.


----------



## wankerness

Good! Keep failing them! Overleveling the bosses is the worst.

(Try doing that escort mission with the "child" to experience some rage)


----------



## Mathemagician

So I’m way late, but I’m like 20 hours into Darksiders 2, and man. This is one of the best Zelda style games I’ve ever played. It was good enough that I picked up part 1 as it was on sale this week. 

I wish there were more games like this. Open world “enough” to have secrets to find, but not Ubisoft Level “find the next tower just to find it” style open world where it just feels empty.


----------



## StevenC

Tonight, for the first time in years, I lost the game.


----------



## mongey

got my switch back after lending to my niece who was in hospital for 2 weeks .Bought iconoclasts after reading good thing. its ok I guess. hasn't really grown on me yet .

next main game purchase with be dark souls. never really got into the souls games but was a big fan of bloodborne.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Good! Keep failing them! Overleveling the bosses is the worst.
> 
> (Try doing that escort mission with the "child" to experience some rage)



Except I ended up over levelling anyway. 

The robo child escort gave me no trouble at all. Though the Amusement park trope did when the enemies spawning were a good 10 levels higher than me. I left it until later and did it without issues. The sidequests I failed were ones like The Wandering Couple where I didn't figure out how to get to the Abandoned Factory or Flooded City earlier. They failed me when I reached a certain point of the game. I am glad I did most of them though, especially the story/lore based ones. The ones with Emil and the rogue androids were excellent. 

But yeah, some of the bosses keeled over too quickly because of it. I let both Adam and Steve freely prance about and just evaded to milk out as much dialogue as I could. The 2 ball/crab bots were disappointingly easy, even with waiting about, especially when the one in the Abandoned Factory had an awesome atmosphere and music. 

I kinda wish weapon upgrading was easier without item farming. The Yoko Taro tradition of adding weapon stories are always fun and brings a lot of the lore together. Getting Caim's Dragoon Lance was a welcome touch. Putting Noctis's weapon in here is pushing the Squenix fanservice a bit though.


----------



## TedEH

I got most of the way through Hellblade this past weekend - and I think that game lives up to the praise/hype that it got. There's maybe not a whole ton of "depth" mechanically speaking (there's no skill trees, branching story lines, items and rpg elements etc etc etc), but I think this is a positive thing. Too many games try to do everything at once and half-ass all of those things at once, whereas this game does few things, but does them all well. I enjoyed the combat (although I'm not picky about "deep" combat systems), the visuals are great for what they are, the motion capture is really slick - but in particular I was impressed by the audio. They nailed the mix (lol), the binaural stuff is cool, the voice acting is mostly spot-on.


----------



## wankerness

I hated the combat, it seemed really perfunctory and tedious. Every so often a bunch of big Vikings with too much health spawn so you have to repetitively do the same counter motions over and over until they stop spawning, upon which there is no combat until you get to the next obvious “combat room.” As the game goes on the only variations are some have shields and the combat sections start throwing three at a time at you. Blah.

The boss fights were suitably tense, though. And that part where the fire chases you through the maze got me as freaked out as Senua!


----------



## TedEH

I think the combat is something that works well for some audiences and not for others. I'm not "good at" those kinds of combat systems, so the lack of depth to me is a plus rather than a minus. It was enough of a challenge that being a bit repetitive doesn't bother me. It's no worse in my mind than a more RPG-ish type game where encounters are super grindy. There's also the element of recognizing that the game was, from what I understand, made with a small team and budget - so gameplay nitpics aside, that's a huge accomplishment in my eyes. Making a game look/sound/play as polished as this is a huge challenge. I suspect that trying to make the combat appeal to someone who wants a more in-depth combat setup wouldn't have been doable within their constraints.

Edit: I think the trick is to think of it not as a combat game but as a narrative game. It's not really a good "combat game", and I didn't get the impression it was trying to be, but it excels (in my opinion) as a narrative/experience kind of a game. I could understand being disappointed if you think of the combat as being the core of the experience. Rather, I'm more willing to give the combat a pass as a mechanical stand-in for the conflict/struggle/etc., just as a servant to the story.


----------



## Ralyks

So after trying to decide through a few games for my Yakuza break before jumping back into 0, I went back to Nier:Automated Juicing Machine. And yeah... playthrough 2 is definitely filling in some holes.


----------



## TedEH

That's what she said?


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> That's what she said?



Given what just happened in the story, that’s not entirely inaccurate


----------



## mongey

given up iconoclasts. don't know , its just lost on me. don't like how it plays or something 

grabbed hollow Knight and right off the bat ,while similar style , its just more fun


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I think the combat is something that works well for some audiences and not for others. I'm not "good at" those kinds of combat systems, so the lack of depth to me is a plus rather than a minus. It was enough of a challenge that being a bit repetitive doesn't bother me. It's no worse in my mind than a more RPG-ish type game where encounters are super grindy. There's also the element of recognizing that the game was, from what I understand, made with a small team and budget - so gameplay nitpics aside, that's a huge accomplishment in my eyes. Making a game look/sound/play as polished as this is a huge challenge. I suspect that trying to make the combat appeal to someone who wants a more in-depth combat setup wouldn't have been doable within their constraints.
> 
> Edit: I think the trick is to think of it not as a combat game but as a narrative game. It's not really a good "combat game", and I didn't get the impression it was trying to be, but it excels (in my opinion) as a narrative/experience kind of a game. * I could understand being disappointed if you think of the combat as being the core of the experience. Rather, I'm more willing to give the combat a pass as a mechanical stand-in for the conflict/struggle/etc., just as a servant to the story.*



Exactly, it's perfunctory. They could have removed all those repetitive "vikings spawn over and over for 15 minutes" sections with no loss to the story. It would have been better fully embracing the walking-simulator nature of most of the rest of it and leaving the bosses in, I think. I guess the other stuff maybe needed to be there for practice, but those sections are SO time-consuming and bland and repetitive. The rest of the game is so damn atmospheric and character-based, while that stuff felt like a concession to people that wanted an action game. Whatev.

Playthrough 2 of Nier:Automata is a weird one. It's a lot like playthrough 2 of Nier 1, only done properly. IIRC that game was supposed to have the second playthrough as Kaine and they ran out of time. So, you get the perspective from the "demons" and you get the voices in her head, but the gameplay is completely identical since you're just doing the same damn stuff as Nier over again, just with bosses having dialogue (that you only hear if you skipped all the sidequests and were underlevelled enough that they lived long enough to deliver it all!!!).


----------



## TedEH

Had an interesting conversation about walking simulator-y games this morning with some coworkers and it ended up highlighting just how much weight I give to audio implementation in the assessment of a game. It's one of those things that can take a game from seeming like a cobbled together mess to a polished experience. I'm sure it's no surprise that being someone who already has had to learn to listen critically that I think I'm much more picky about this than other players. It's part of what elevated Hellbade to being great in my books. But also a big part of why a lot of indie games are hard for me to play - since the audio, anything from the mix to the voice acting itself, can end up being an afterthought and implemented really rough.


----------



## wankerness

I didn't enjoy Hellblade and wouldn't recommend it, but the audio design is impeccable and some of the best I've heard. With headphones it was a nightmare. I ran it through my surround system for a while, but that didn't achieve the same claustrophobic effect that they intended. 

I've played a couple walking simulators. I kind of like the idea in theory, but I haven't really loved any either (yet), except for that prototype The Stanley Parable. I've also played through The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Dear Esther, and . I bought a few others when they were on sale (Firewatch, Soma, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Oxenfree, What Remains of Edith Finch) and will get around to them someday.


----------



## TedEH

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.   Different tastes is all. Out of that list, I'd say try Firewatch and Soma for sure - I really enjoyed those. Oxenfree is alright too, but doesn't really stand out to me. Most of the rest of them fall into that level of walking simulator where there's so little interactivity that they may as well have just made a movie instead.


----------



## wankerness

Whoops, I listed Last Day of June, decided it was a puzzle game, deleted it from the list, and left the oxford comma and "and" in the sentence. Cool.


----------



## TedEH

I think there's a weirdly fuzzy line between walking simulators and "puzzle games" sometimes haha.


----------



## Ralyks

Firewatch and Edith Finch are great (and both can be heart wrenching in their own ways), Soma I’m trying to get back to as part of “marathoning scary games instead of scary movies” marathon for October, Oxenfree is kinda neat so far, same with Everybody’s Gone..., Esther and Ethan Carter I know I grabbed at some point for like 2 bucks a piece and will get to them at some point. At the very least, play Firewatch and Edith Finch.


----------



## Kaura

If any of you guys ever wanted to play Resident Evil 4 in a slow-mo mode then just get the cheapest laptop you can find and run it normally. I just installed the game hoping it would run at least solid 30fps on my laptop but no luck. It's odd since most games just become choppy slideshows when they don't run properly but this one plays really smoothly. Only problem is, it's literally runs like a slow-mo mode in other games. 

So yeah, installed Just Cause 2 instead and surprisingly, with the lowest settings it runs around 30fps. I'd really like to buy CoD:MW1 but 40 bucks for an over 10 years old game is just a big FU by Activion.

Edit: Okay, the remaster is 40$. But the original is still 20$. I'd say something like 5$ would be more reasonable.


----------



## TedEH

Is it possible you could clear up the weird slo-mo by turning off vsync or something like that?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Firewatch and stanley parable are excellent, and I say that as someone that doesn't even like walking simulators. I still have to get around to dear esther/Ethan carter/everybody's gone to the rapture


----------



## Albake21

Speaking of Yakuza, I need to get back into the grind. I started the series at Yakuza 0 a few months ago, then played 1, and then finished 2. I have taken a break, but I have Yakuza 3 staring at me on my shelf right now... It's time.

Which I want to say, fuck me the Yakuza series is so good, at least so far (0 through 2). I can't believe it went under my radar for this long.


----------



## wankerness

From what I have heard, 3 may be the low point and 5 the high point (it seems to be 0, 2/Kiwami 2 or 5 that gets brought up the most). I can't wait for those HD remasters of 3-5. Maybe I'll buy them in Japan and then become fluent specifically to play them. 

EDIT: Speaking of Yakuza, there's an utter embarrassment of riches from the studio. Fist of the North Star is evidently nearly identical to Yakuza as far as gameplay and rough tone go, just hyper-gory and with a different IP. And then they have another Yakuza-style game called Judge Eyes or something coming out shortly which even takes place in Kamurocho! But, you're a little FF-style girly man instead of a big burly guy that automatically is hilarious in the silly sidequests like Yakuza/FOTNS. Who knows. FOTNS is getting absolute raves, I can't wait to get that later this month. Jim Sterling's review in particular was great.


----------



## Albake21

wankerness said:


> From what I have heard, 3 may be the low point and 5 the high point (it seems to be 0, 2/Kiwami 2 or 5 that gets brought up the most). I can't wait for those HD remasters of 3-5. Maybe I'll buy them in Japan and then become fluent specifically to play them.


Yeah... I really wish these were coming to the West sooner. I really don't want to wait though. I did the same thing with Yakuza 2. Kiwami 2 was coming out in 2 months but I just said screw it and emulated the PS2 version because I didn't want to wait. I definitely plan on going back and playing the Kiwami version though because they added a Majima story.

So far out of the three I played, 0 was by far the best. 1 is solid, but you can obviously tell it's the first entry by the it flows and that was the Kiwami version. 2 was rough because I played the PS2 version, but the story was very go, especially towards the end. I have heard 3 is very much a love or hate kind of game. 

Man my life would be so much easier if I was fluent in Japanese lol


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

3 had the same problem that 6 had. A new engine was introduced, so a lot of focus was in the refinement, but stinged out on the plot and content that makes the Yakuza games so interesting.

I agree with Jim Sterling's points and I'm sort of itching to buy Lost Paradise asap. Both properties are so hilariously dumb but so sincere in their delivery, it makes sense that combining the 2 is a winning formula. At this point Sega might as well make a Sonic game in a Yakuza style, it might even save the franchise.

I'm looking forward to Judge Eyes. I'll be interesting to see another side of Kamurocho. Sure you play the guy from SMAP, but I liked some of the stuff I've seen with him in it. And it's also not the first time the series makes you play a 14 year old on the lawful side of the underground that looks like his voice actor, though Tanimura was a bit stiff. I'm also looking forward to what Kasuga Ichiban puts on the table. That and what both characters play in the Yakuza lore (I know Ichiban has a big role with the Tojo Clan). Sega isn't shy with adding nods, references all over the place, like Daigo, Ryuji and Ogita in 0.

I kinda wish the Project K spinoff gets a remastered port as well. I like the idea of Kamurocho in the view of an under aged runt. Then again, I want those Bakumatsu spinoffs to be released outside Japan too but I understand if that doesn't happen anytime soon.

0, Kiwami 2 and 5 are considered the top 3 Yakuza games. I haven't played 2 yet but I understand the sentiments as 0 and 5 are vastly huge in terms of story and content.


----------



## Ralyks

Judge Eyes takes place in Kamurocho? Awesome.

Didn't they already confirm a new Yakuza with a new Protagonist would be coming? As it is I'll be circling back to 0 once I'm done with Nier (goddammit, THAT game sucked me back in...)


----------



## LeviathanKiller

So update on my Dying Light playthrough:
I leveled all of the main skill trees and bought/scavenged some really high damage weapons before doing the final fight against Rais. What a letdown. You don't even fight him with anything you've scavenged or anything. It's timed button presses. Super disappointed. I couldn't even watch what was basically an interactive cutscene because the button pop-ups are lower on the screen so you can't look at Rais as he's speaking. That was a really dumb design decision imo. I'll play the DLC later at some point but I'm kinda pissed right now.


----------



## wankerness

Sounds kind of like Resident Evil 7!


----------



## Ralyks

So I started enough of playthrough 3 of Nier:Automata to see the opening credits and, uhh, boy did that escated quickly.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> So I started enough of playthrough 3 of Nier:Automata to see the opening credits and, uhh, boy did that escated quickly.



Hey, I just finished brolita's playthrough of Nier Far Wherever You Are as well.  Obviously a lot faster the second time around. 

Hello, the rest of the game.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Hey, I just finished brolita's playthrough of Nier Far Wherever You Are as well.  Obviously a lot faster the second time around.
> 
> Hello, the rest of the game.



Seriously, I'm maybe a half hour in and this game just took the leftest of turns.


----------



## mongey

Hollow knight is a damn good game. didn't realize I was getting myself into into basically a 2d souls game . its challenging in spots


----------



## Jarmake

Currently I am trying to save mankind against the alien overlords... On XCOM2.


----------



## Ralyks

So I just finished the first part of play-through C of Nier:Automata and


Spoiler



they just up and fucking kill 2B? The character basically all the promotion and cosplay and everything is centered around? What is this, Metal Gear Solid 2 with the bait-and-switch of protagonists? Also, the last bit you play as 2B was a pain in the ass.


 But otherwise, I'm looking forward to this play-through.


----------



## wankerness

The first time I got to the section you refer to, I immediately got blasted off the edge off the cliff into that canyon by an enemy and had to spend ten minutes trying in vain to pathetically climb out again while waiting for the death timer to run out


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

^ That part was easily the hardest part of the game for me. Everything else was a walk in the park. Granted I'm not playing on Hard mode as my time is limited and I want to smash through this quickly. That said, Endings C and D crossed off the list...


----------



## NotDonVito

Castlevania for Spooktober. Maybe I'll actually beat it for once.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> The first time I got to the section you refer to, I immediately got blasted off the edge off the cliff into that canyon by an enemy and had to spend ten minutes trying in vain to pathetically climb out again while waiting for the death timer to run out



THIS. GODDAMN THAT SECTION.

Also, am I wrong in that there's a difficulty spike, or am I an idiot for entering playthrough 3 at level 39? I'll admit I didn't exactly do a ton of side quests....


So I have a discount coupon for Gamestop expiring this weekend, and I'd like to use it and trade some stuff in too. I was trying to choose between God of War, Spider-Man, and Dragon Quest XI. Pretty much everyone so far is saying God of War.


----------



## wankerness

Play through 3 is harder, that first section with the zillion androids is a big spike. It gets easier from there. It is definitely worth being a bit underlevelled at the last bosses, or it just goes by way too quick.

I’m in Japan and have discovered that the insane amount of juice machines in Yakuza 6/Kiwami 2 was NOT a balancing mechanism for the buffs. If anything, there aren’t enough! I love it. There are like three a block. I’m going to Don Quixote in Shinjuku tonight, I think. Can’t wait!


----------



## TedEH

I recently grabbed a copy of Kirby's Adventure. Instant memories from when one of my elementary school classes had this game as a reward for people who finished their work with time to spare. And it still holds up if you're a fan of Kirby -> I think this was the first entry to have all the classic elements, copying powers, etc. All of the fun. No regrets.

ALSO I got a stupidly good deal out of nowhere:
I put up a used ad to try to get rid of an old car radio that doesn't fit my current car. I listed no price, just make an offer, I mostly just want to get rid of it. After a bunch of back and forth about the price, I suggest if he doesn't want to pay much then maybe a trade for some small token item - maybe he has some old video games lying around? What does he offer? Tysons Punch Out. Fk yeah, I'll trade that for a radio I was about to take $10 for.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> What does he offer? Tysons Punch Out. Fk yeah, I'll trade that for a radio I was about to take $10 for.



Wait, an actual MIKE TYSONS Punch-Out, or the Mr. Dream version?


----------



## TedEH

It's definitely the one with Tyson on it.


----------



## wankerness

Once again, truth is stranger than Yakuza. The checkout aisle had a bunch of bins with candy, cheap headphones, etc...and a big wooden penis. It also sells basically everything and is socrammed full of stuff it’s impossible to get around when it’s full of people (which it still was at midnight on a Thursday). And, they play that goddam jingle all the time. I think this about covers it for my Yakuza checklist IRL. What a great/terrible place. I got some wasabi and sweet potato kit kats.


----------



## Mathemagician

I am SO excited for the Yakuza game that’s with PSN+ next month. I’ve always wanted to try out the series.


----------



## wankerness

Persona 5 stuff is EVERYWHERE here. This display of little egg characters amused me.




I liked this Kleenex dispenser Kirby tree thing that looked like it was puking




I liked this grungy life size solid snake, in a grungy retro games shop’s grungy retro arcade floor.




Only in Japan would there be a spotlight section of a normal record store on Nier soundtracks. Some orchestral recordings of both soundtracks just came out. I got them and can’t listen to them cause CD. I did not opt for the art book version cause I had to carry whatever I bought for miles.




And finally, ARGHHHHH. The fact it was often the cheapest of the ps4 games just made things more frustrating. After spending several days here, though, I’m realizing there’s no way in hell I’d get anything out of the game without subtitles!




I bet all these image links are broken! This site and imgur need to get along, cause photobucket’s share links all give 404s. Hence the super-low resolution.


----------



## jco5055

So I've been playing Dark Souls II, temporarily stuck on Fume Knight, (I platinum'd Demon's and DS1) and, especially after also concurrently beating Uncharted 4, then deciding I should get all the single-player trophies for Last of Us Remastered, can't decide if I think SoulsBourne are the greatest games ever or I hate them.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> *tons of pictures of Japanese stores and merch*.



You have just made me insanely jealous and put my already longing desire to go to Japan into overdrive.


----------



## wankerness

jco5055 said:


> So I've been playing Dark Souls II, temporarily stuck on Fume Knight, (I platinum'd Demon's and DS1) and, especially after also concurrently beating Uncharted 4, then deciding I should get all the single-player trophies for Last of Us Remastered, can't decide if I think SoulsBourne are the greatest games ever or I hate them.



I beat Last of Us on regular and think I got 2 trophies out of the whole game. The completion % is like 2. It makes me feel like I didn’t play it, but I’m not going back to it in the foreseeable future.


----------



## jco5055

I beat it “fully” (meaning normal and normal+, getting all the collectibles and upgrades etc) back in 2013...the trophies are just like all the collectibles/upgrades and then the difficulty modes complete, so I imagine if I manage to beat it on grounded + like 10 trophies in a row will be unlocked haha


----------



## Mathemagician

jco5055 said:


> So I've been playing Dark Souls II, temporarily stuck on Fume Knight, (I platinum'd Demon's and DS1) and, especially after also concurrently beating Uncharted 4, then deciding I should get all the single-player trophies for Last of Us Remastered, can't decide if I think SoulsBourne are the greatest games ever or I hate them.



Remember you can sequence break one of the spirits and destroy all the shrines around the fume knight. I did it by accident myself actually. 

Even without that help that guy is a dick, lol.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Only in Japan would there be a spotlight section of a normal record store on Nier soundtracks. Some orchestral recordings of both soundtracks just came out. I got them and can’t listen to them cause CD. I did not opt for the art book version cause I had to carry whatever I bought for miles.



That's pretty normal. Tower Records had entire wall for Final Fantasy stuff last time I checked. There's a shop behind the Club Sega block in Akiba where they're focused solely on retro gaming with one floor that had every rare and hard to obtain OST known to man. I've spent so much money in that floor alone. I still need to get the Nier orchestra and piano stuff...

Speaking of rare OSTs, I finally got this:







Have you been to Kabukicho yet?


----------



## jco5055

I beat Fume Knight! Though only cuz I had a summoned player with me, so it almost feels like cheating haha. Strangely I think this is the first time I've even seen a summon sign all game, I just assumed the game is dead enough at this point for it to be rare to find someone.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Speaking of Nier, finally got Ending E of Nier'er My God To Thee. And knowing the first game, I DIDN'T make the decision to help the weak. Well, not until I try some of the extra stuff (I haven't fully explored Emil's stuff yet) before the purge. 

Keeping everything spoiler free...

Overall, it's a Yoko Taro game alright. Easily the best Yoko Taro game out there, gameplay and aesthetics wise especially. Frankly I'm still shocked this (and Persona 5) reached Triple A status but I'm glad they did, in this case it saved PlatinumGames from bankruptcy, and having a large corporation bend to the will of an eccentric auteur developer, Automata has given me renewed faith in Square Enix. 

It's not perfect by any means. PlatinumGames' gameplay design, while refined, were never sophisticated. For the most part, combat felt repetitive, and too easy on lower difficulty levels when you have auto heal preventing you from dying. The aerial mecha combat controls are the worst part of the game, as if feels like an incomplete bullet hell shooter. Seems it's a recurring theme in these games where aerial combat plays like ass. The backtracking got boring and repetitive thanks to the unique narrative and the mostly dull sidequests, also a flaw in Nier. It's still better than the predecessors. The sidequests definitely are, though not by much. Nier's bullet balls got trivial when you can just straight up block them. It's better than the buggy mess that is Drakengard 3. Having said that, it's still a beautiful game. Story and music are the obvious high points. There were so many moments that hit home: the Lunar Tear payoff (the music playing), Pascal's fate with one particular choice, seeing Devola and Pepola again (when Song of Ancients is played), that freaking Libraray, the whole emotional descent of the third playthrough... it's quite the existential trip. Funny enough, I'm immediately reminded of The Handmaiden here as it tells it's story very similarly. 

Playing Automata had me think about the Drakengard series overall. Each game prior while inferior always left a lasting impression, well maybe not D2 despite some awesome defining moments. The original Drakengard was immensely dark. The entire game makes you watch your literal silent protagonist (plot point) slowly descent into violent soul crushing bedlam and every one of the 5 endings punches you right in the gut and continues to kick you when your down. Drakengard 3 completely pales to Automata in retrospect (or even the original Nier), and the good/bad ratio is wonky as hell. Sure it had the "Emo", "90s Edgy" and "Sex" turned up right to 11 and pulled the knob off (hence the annoyingly obnoxious main character), sure it goes for the linear path instead of large scape massacre like the first 2, and you can clearly tell that the budget ran out mid production, I still find it solid. The music is the most 'Nier' sounding of the series, and it actually plays a huge role in the game mechanics. The first Nier acts as a proto game to Automata so understandably it's gameplay sort of sucks in comparison. And damn that whole Forest area. There's also 2 versions of this game that exist as Japan thought it was more prudent to have the West play as Dr Emmett Brown with black undies on his face, as opposed to I don't know, a young girly shonen boy like every other JRPG ever. But it's also a heavy hearted game, such a shame it flew under everyone's radar on it's release. 

Trying to understand the Drakengard lore is also a pain in the ass as a lot of of the themes are as much tangible as straight narrative. The evil red motif: red eyes showing insanity, red dress of key female characters, recurring theme of flowers (one flower is the catalyst of everything), flying demon babies, watchers/observers and the overall arching theme of the cycle of repeating events. Nier's duality also poses a few problems for the completionists. There's parts of the narrative where Repicant (Young Nier) works much better than Geshtalt (Old Nier), like where he starts sprouting the power of friendship (oh Japan) to one other disturbing side story. Either one is genuinely playable though. There's also a TON of side related media like manga, short stories, Drama CDs (that Japan has a massive fetish for) and those bizarre Automata prequel YoRHa Stage plays (you read that right). 

The Drakengard/Nier series is a convoluted and at times a frustrating mess, but I'm glad I got through them. Each (sans Drakengard 2) is a unique story experience not often explored in gaming. Mad respect for Yoko Taro, even if he's completely insane, and at time straight up prickish, which I must admit, I do kind of appreciate.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

jco5055 said:


> So I've been playing Dark Souls II, temporarily stuck on Fume Knight, (I platinum'd Demon's and DS1) and, especially after also concurrently beating Uncharted 4, then deciding I should get all the single-player trophies for Last of Us Remastered, can't decide if I think SoulsBourne are the greatest games ever or I hate them.


Dark souls 2 is the worst in the series by far. Bloodborne and DS3 are way better in terms of gameplay/level design imo. Also fuck the asylum section and the lava level, those were such bullshit in DS2


----------



## wankerness

[QUOTE="Bloody_Inferno, post: 4928091, member: 13005”]
Have you been to Kabukicho yet?[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I stayed there. I wandered around for a few hoursand got solicited by the black guys that seem to be the only ones in the country. I don’t speak Japanese plus am a Caucasian so no hostess clubs or worse for me. I went to the robot restaurant and got put front row and it was the best thing ever and I took a zillion pics that don’t belong in any existing thread on this forum.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Ring of Elysium, thanks to @Jacksonluvr636

The hang glider is fuckin awesome and no one ever expects you to be shooting from way up there.

Squad games/beer planned for tonight.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

I haven't played Demon's Souls so I can't comment, but Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne are the best work From has done since the start of the Souls series. Dark Souls III, as good as it was, still doesn't touch BB or DS1. DSII was a shitfest (probably because Miyazaki was only supervisor instead of being director.)


----------



## Mathemagician

Dark souls 2 had the MOST balanced PvP by far though as far as weapon and build variety goes. 

The bridge in front of the lava castle was THE place to invade/get invaded for fun. 

DS2 gets way too much hate, but then again I only played the GOTY (or whatever) edition and that one supposedly had way better enemy placement along with all the phenomenal dlc bosses.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Mathemagician said:


> Dark souls 2 had the MOST balanced PvP by far though as far as weapon and build variety goes.
> 
> The bridge in front of the lava castle was THE place to invade/get invaded for fun.
> 
> DS2 gets way too much hate, but then again I only played the GOTY (or whatever) edition and that one supposedly had way better enemy placement along with all the phenomenal dlc bosses.




PVP be damned, the level design was piss poor and the controls felt floaty. They didn't feel as tight as they did in Dark Souls I. I, myself, don't put a whole of stock into PVP as I'm not usually one who engages in it, so I'm speaking on the elements that actually gave the game depth. Lore-wise and level design both fell flat.

Also, as far as SOTFS goes, it made an already existing problem worse. One of the things that made games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne so great was context. There were reasons for why certain objects were found in certain locations and that applied to enemies as well. In SOTFS, it's as if they took all context away for the sake of making a game feel fresh (new enemy placement). All it did was spit on the Souls fans who care enough (like me) about what made the first game great.


----------



## jco5055

So do you guys think the next From game Sekiro Shadows Die Twice will be future GOAT material like the best of Souls is? Also as a big mecha fan I'm disappointed Armored Core never reached the same heights as Souls.


----------



## Ralyks

jco5055 said:


> So do you guys think the next From game Sekiro Shadows Die Twice will be future GOAT material Like the best of Souls is?



It looks cool, but that has to show it off the same time as Ghost of Tsushima, which looks similar and could be utterly brilliant.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

jco5055 said:


> So do you guys think the next From game Sekiro Shadows Die Twice will be future GOAT material like the best of Souls is? Also as a big mecha fan I'm disappointed Armored Core never reached the same heights as Souls.




It looks pretty good so far, but the thing to remember here is that it's not exactly a Souls game. There are no stats, no character customization, item usage appears to be quite different and so on and so forth. That said, that doesn't mean it'll be a bad game. From what I've seen so far, it's going to be a damn good delivery from FromSoft. 

I forget who it was, but someone on Youtube made the comment awhile back that FromSoft always does its best work when delivering a new IP. So far, I've found that to be true. The most praise I hear for From's most recent games are Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne, so if this pattern continues, Sekiro will be nothing short of astounding.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Dark souls 2 had the MOST balanced PvP by far though as far as weapon and build variety goes.
> 
> The bridge in front of the lava castle was THE place to invade/get invaded for fun.
> 
> DS2 gets way too much hate, but then again I only played the GOTY (or whatever) edition and that one supposedly had way better enemy placement along with all the phenomenal dlc bosses.


the goty version was vastly different with the enemy placement, which was my biggest gripe with the game (well that and the aforementioned lava level with the fire demon). ds2 was way cheaper with enemy spawns, with some areas having spawn points right next to a bonfire (prison lvl, spider level are the most egregious). ds1 never tried to screw you over with cheapness, it was tough but doable so long as you paid attention. ds2 tossed more enemies at you in worse conditions and basically limited weapon choices with the weird weapon durability/framerate bug.
magic was way more op in ds2 ime, same with bleed weapons.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Also, I find that Dark Souls rewarded skilled players quite well. Right after you beat Asylum Demon you can go in 5-6 different areas (provided you have the Master Key as a starting gift) right from the start, and while a few of them weren't necessarily meant for players to explore right off the bat, it's still quite possible and it rewards your tenacity with items that can make your character what might be considered OP. I mean, hell, you can get a +15 weapon by only killing two bosses in Dark Souls if you're patient and talented enough.


----------



## Mathemagician

The thing I give DS2 credit for is being quite a bit faster than DS1. 

If you bumped your agility to about 105 your I-frames were enormous and you could dodge so much stuff. 

By the time I played DS2 a lot of the spells effectiveness had been nerfed in PVE for being too good like mundane enchants and lightning arrows, but in PvP you only used like 1-3 spells in a build max because the spells were too slow for human AI. 

The main complaint I’ve heard from people however is that 2 felt a LOT more “gamey” due to the way levels just changed instantly from one zone/theme to another like a Zelda dungeon and less like a cohesive world. 

I can absolutely acknowledge that indeed happened but it just didn’t bug me as much as it seems to have bothered others. 

As far as boss cheapness in 2, the bosses were all easy as shit honestly. For the entire base game just ALWAYS dodge to your right/the enemy’s left. I swear that gets through almost every attack. 

The DLC bosses were butt-clenchers even with gear and lvls. 

I don’t know it was very different but to me still a very fun game. DS3 was very meticulously made but it just felt like “more DS1 but with QOL updates”. 

Could just be because it was the third in a series and sequels don’t ever feel as new as the first one one has played.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Dark Souls II is a good game, but it's not a good Dark Souls game. Dark Souls set a HUGE bar that any follow-up probably wouldn't have reached, but DSII felt like it didn't even try. Level design is a huge problem because it's part of what made Dark Souls so great. The level design made actual sense in terms of how the transitions took place. It felt more natural. I guess I'm harping on too much about it, but my favorite game USED to be Ocarina of Time. That got replaced by Dark Souls, albeit, it's still quite a close fight. I guess for me, personally, Dark Souls set that bar that hasn't been touched by a game other than Bloodborne since.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

PunkBillCarson said:


> Dark Souls II is a good game, but it's not a good Dark Souls game. Dark Souls set a HUGE bar that any follow-up probably wouldn't have reached, but DSII felt like it didn't even try. Level design is a huge problem because it's part of what made Dark Souls so great. The level design made actual sense in terms of how the transitions took place. It felt more natural. I guess I'm harping on too much about it, but my favorite game USED to be Ocarina of Time. That got replaced by Dark Souls, albeit, it's still quite a close fight. I guess for me, personally, Dark Souls set that bar that hasn't been touched by a game other than Bloodborne since.


EXACTLY, the level design is still one of the best examples of a truly cohesive and intertwining world, and i think between that, the unique pvp elements (at the time), pretty good/diverse combat system and general mystery around the lore/items it made a really unique experience that From software never managed to do quite right again. Bloodborne was damn close imo. Also, DS2 had some of the most bullshit bosses if you're playing a non-turtle or magic character imo. The opening boss (the seeker) was fucking infuriating to fight with a 2 hander, not to mention the lava demon with his fire chipping damage or the goddamn ratking/dog demon thing in the catacombs. I never raged as much playing DS1 or DS3 or bloodborne as I did with the og version of DS2.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

My opinion, I'll go ahead and put BB in line with Dark Souls. Those two are absolutely brilliant games and the Souls formula with a healthy helping of Lovecraft was the game we needed, but didn't deserve. Dark Souls III was a great game, and a good Dark Souls game, I just didn't like that you didn't have as much freedom at the beginning of the game as you do in Dark Souls I, unless you were really willing to take the fight to Dancer at low level with low level gear.


----------



## mongey

I was a big fan of BB. I have tried the souls games a couple times and they never grabbed me like BB did.I do want to grab the remaster on switch though and give it a good go 

the look and feel of BB really got me into it and over the gateway grinding hump. also my daughter was only a newborn and i had 2 months off work so I had allot of late night hours looking after her while my wife slept. there was many a time in my sleep deprived state I chose to push on and re fight a boss then go get some sleep myself when the baby slept


----------



## jco5055

I've finished the main story in DS2 (meaning I've seen the ending, but I haven't faced Vendrick yet), and now I just wanna finish getting all the achievements.

I'm really looking forward to playing Bloodborne, I have a feeling it will be my fave so far. After that I may take a little Souls break, I have a bad tendency to lose interest in a series once it looks like there's no amazing games coming out in the future etc. A good example is Final Fantasy, I'm almost done with 6 and have never beaten/played (other than renting as a child) 7-10, 12 aka the remaining ones that are considered very good, but now that the series isn't exactly dead thanks to 15 but definitely not the "every new game is a GOTY contender" like it used to be, and with a lot of people saying for example that Persona 5 is the best JRPG ever now, it's hard to get me to finish. 

Seems if you're a slow enough gamer like me eventually a lot of the classics get replaced haha.


----------



## TedEH

Finished a playthrough of Kirby's Adventure (NES) this weekend. I had never actually beaten it before. Much fun. Would play again. There was a level near the end that was just a throwback to the gameboy game, and it made me very happy for all the reasons.


----------



## wankerness

A lot of people tell me I’m wrong, but I really like ffxiii. I’m fine with things being fairly linear. I really liked the aesthetics and the battle system was really cool if you played it as designed instead of making it boring and just commandoing everything slowly. Like, farming those adamantoise required you to do it, but it was much earlier in the game that you got the abilities. I liked most of the characters apart from goddam Hope. Certainly vastly more than the group in XV, who weren’t terrible (besides Prompto-especially the utterly pointless and glosses over late-game reveal on him), but were so goddam bland and numbing to spend an entire game with. The couple sections of the game that you got girls with you were a short gasp of fresh air from the dick parade.

I still need to get through X-2 and 13-2. I started both but got distracted. I was ~80 hours into 8 when I got lost and couldn’t find my way back to the main plot, and I don’t know if I have the patience in my advanced age to spend hours drawing 99 curagas and Ultimas for every character and whatever else ludicrous grinding I did in order to beat the ultima weapon.
Other than that, I still haven’t played 7. I got about an hour in but lost interest even quicker than those mentioned above. I am planning on buying 12 when it goes on some big time sale on PSN.

I started Kingdom Hearts and I can’t tell what I think. I don’t like that the main character seems to be a Link-style blank slate, and I really hate the combat system when it comes to tall bosses. I just fought one of the first bosses, in the Alice in Wonderland level. It was too tall to hit without jumping at it from the giant furniture in the room, and my moron teammates kept running up to it to hit it in the legs and dying almost immediately, so the fight dragged on forever, took a few tries, made my hand cramp up, and caused lots of expletives. If one of the FIRST bosses is like this, I can’t imagine how bad the later ones are. Maneuvering the item menus during combat is also guaranteed to get you nailed since it’s realtime and the layout sucks and it resets your choice every time. And, your teammates seem to be limited to being idiot damage dealers. Ugh. But, I like the world and the aesthetics! Now I’m in Tarzan-land. We’ll see if I can pick it up again after the 11 day Japan break.


----------



## Mathemagician

The main character has a bit of personality as the first KH game goes on, and DEFINITELY has personality in the later ones. 

The “correct” way to play the game is to give yourself arthritis with the claw method. Where your left hand index finger is on the D-pad while your thumb stays on the analog stick. 

Also put potions/Hipotions/elixirs on shortcut. 

Also Goofy and Donald will 100% be dying during every boss fight. If I remember correctly they self-revive after a while to be ready to die again lol.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> The main character has a bit of personality as the first KH game goes on, and DEFINITELY has personality in the later ones.
> 
> The “correct” way to play the game is to give yourself arthritis with the claw method. Where your left hand index finger is on the D-pad while your thumb stays on the analog stick.
> 
> Also put potions/Hipotions/elixirs on shortcut.
> 
> Also Goofy and Donald will 100% be dying during every boss fight. If I remember correctly they self-revive after a while to be ready to die again lol.


Correct, they self Rez only to die again. I got lucky once in a while and they’d rez right as the boss got stunned, so they might have contributed about 10% of the damage. Oh, and I hate having to frantically run around picking all the orbs up before they disappear while also fighting a bunch of monsters. I guess this shouldn’t surprise me considering the vintage of the game. Maybe I should skip to 2!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

As far as FF linearity goes, FFX was the better game. That had it's issues too especially when played after IX, but I'll take that over XIII any day of the week. I'm also one of those mutants that actually enjoyed XIII all the way to the end, I can't deny the trainwreck plot, uninteresting (sans Zahs) to completely irritable characters (I hate Vanille more than Hope, at least the latter got more interesting in 2, but turned into a Children Of The Damned doll in LR). Funny enough, I thought Caius was the best character in the entire trilogy (complete with awesome theme song). At least the gameplay got better. The first 2 involved very little from the player (similar problem as XII), LR was at least a bit more exciting though messily executed. I will say I loved the music in all three XIII games, despite that silly metal version of the Chocobo theme.

Kingdom Hearts is a funny one. It's one of my favorite examples of asking somebody to explain the plot in an elevator pitch, and completely struggle. Well done Square Enix on making one of the most convoluted plots known to man.  I remember liking 2 more than 1 namely because of the primitive use of the camera control assigned to the shoulder buttons. But I also disliked KH2's incredibly tedious intro, and criminal use of QTEs to make everything even easier than the first game (including Sepiroth) or completely infuriating to the point you want to commit serious heinous crimes to the developers (I'm looking at you Little Mermaid section). I didn't have Donald and Goofy dying issue, namely I overlevelled (seems to be a bad habit of mine) and Donald kept everyone alive. 

I probably should start FFXV soon, but I've been lured to Kamurocho yet again....


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Maybe I should skip to 2!



Not recommended unless you don't mind spoiling the plot. Yeah I know I just bagged the story on my previous post, but whatever. The way KH2 begins will throw you off completely trying to figure out what the hell is going.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> spoiling the plot


The plot of Kingdom Hearts? I played a bunch of those games a while back and the plot was so hard to follow - in the sense that I'm not sure it's worth trying to keep it un-spoiled.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> The plot of Kingdom Hearts? I played a bunch of those games a while back and the plot was so hard to follow - in the sense that I'm not sure it's worth trying to keep it un-spoiled.



Exactly.  A friend of mine is a hardcore KH fan and I did ask her to try and summarise the plot if she was to explain it to non fans with a straight face. Needless to say, even she struggled hard. 

I know that the handheld games has a ton of side stuff that helps glue everything together, but to hell with all that.


----------



## mongey

Well hollow knight got the best of me. About 3/4 through it deleted it in a rage fit. Never want to see it again.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Exactly.  A friend of mine is a hardcore KH fan and I did ask her to try and summarise the plot if she was to explain it to non fans with a straight face. Needless to say, even she struggled hard.
> 
> I know that the handheld games has a ton of side stuff that helps glue everything together, but to hell with all that.



That side shit is so obnoxious and makes me unable to care about the plot knowing how much work it takes.I have the ps4 set where the main games are numbered 1.1 and 2.5 or something and then there are like six other games listed on the main screen with zero explanation. Ugh. I read a “short explanation” of all of the games and which are necessary that was like a page long and made my mind melt further.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ever since KH onwards, Square Enix have a nasty habit of over bloating their franchises with a ton of side content to expand the story. I'm a sucker for continuity as much as the next nerdy mutant but when your bread and butter requires at least 70-100 hours of gaming time, it's too much and not worth the effort if you're to suffer through a bunch of mediocre to sub-par crap. 

FFVII is the most popular of the Final Fantasys, and it happens to be the biggest offender too. Crisis Core is alright, but everything else outside of the original game sucks. XV could have been part of the XIII's trainwreck universe (haven't played Type 0 but I heard it's alright), so it's nice it ventured out, but then the movie and anime tie ins came along. I know for a fact that Squarenix are planning to expand the Drakengard/Nier into a bigger franchise now that Automata made them a ton of money. This rang every alarm bell, but since this is Yoko Taro's baby, as long as he gets most of the control, we'll have more of Automata and less of Drakengard 2. 

With all the bile and indignation I've given to Square Enix in this thread, I really should question why I still consider them one of my favorite gaming companies.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

FFVIII and FFIX were better than VII, fight me. Also, Breath of Fire III (released in the same year as VII) was a much better RPG.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

PunkBillCarson said:


> FFVIII and FFIX were better than VII, fight me.



IX, yes easily. VIII, not saying much. And that's from me, who's kicked VIII in the bollocks countless times in this subforum. 

No question on VII's popularity. But it's far from the best in the franchise. Everyone who rated VII as the best were all too young to have played VI.


----------



## Ralyks

VII is my favorite game ever, and I've played pretty much all of them from IV onward. No shame.

That said, I absolutely adore IX and VI, and VIII is criminally underrated and I hate how it's getting lost in all of the rereleases.


----------



## Demiurge

mongey said:


> Well hollow knight got the best of me. About 3/4 through it deleted it in a rage fit. Never want to see it again.



Where did you get stuck, if you don't mind me asking?

Love the game, but I still haven't beaten it all the way through (the harder endings, that is).


----------



## KnightBrolaire

tried rings of elysium earlier today and it seems ok.


----------



## mongey

Demiurge said:


> Where did you get stuck, if you don't mind me asking?
> 
> Love the game, but I still haven't beaten it all the way through (the harder endings, that is).



I was fighting soul warrior who spans the whatever they are called while you fight . Had way too many goes at it over 2 day and just hit the wall .I was already getting a bit frustrated as I wasnt sure where to go next . all my availbe exits were either dark or I could reach without new powers ,the double jump or swimming one. and grinding 1600 coins for the guiding light wasnt really grabbing me as a pastime at teh time 

was looking at a guide and 3/4 was over estimate., I was about half way

my save is still on the swtich so I may go back in a few weeks for another go if my wounds heal


----------



## Demiurge

^Oh, the Soul Master? Fuck that guy. I found that if you play it a bit more conservative it's a much easier battle, though. When he's teleporting and shooting fireballs, if you camp on the right side of the arena, many of the ones that loop overhead hit the little overhang. If you have the dark-dash, dashing through the fireballs will destroy them. Even though you get upgraded magic and a soul-related charm right before the battle, going in with nail-related charms is better IMO.


----------



## mongey

Demiurge said:


> ^Oh, the Soul Master? Fuck that guy. I found that if you play it a bit more conservative it's a much easier battle, though. When he's teleporting and shooting fireballs, if you camp on the right side of the arena, many of the ones that loop overhead hit the little overhang. If you have the dark-dash, dashing through the fireballs will destroy them. Even though you get upgraded magic and a soul-related charm right before the battle, going in with nail-related charms is better IMO.


I beat soul master in about 10 tireds. Soul warrior is in the same area , soul sanctum , but lower. You fight him to get the upgraded magic fireball thing. His moves aren’t too bad but he spawns those ghost things constantly. 

I think soul warrior is easier. But the fucker just had my number.


----------



## Manurack

I recently bought this gem a month ago on the Xbox Live marketplace on my Xbox 360 for $10. I finished it in 2 weeks as the Dark Side of the Force like I did when I was 12 years old.

And recently, my 6 year old daughter wanted to play it, so I took over and now I'm playing the entire game on the Light Side of the Force lol


----------



## chopeth

Starcraft II - legacy of the swarm


----------



## Demiurge

mongey said:


> I beat soul master in about 10 tireds. Soul warrior is in the same area , soul sanctum , but lower. You fight him to get the upgraded magic fireball thing. His moves aren’t too bad but he spawns those ghost things constantly.



Ohhhh, him. Fuck that guy, too, and fuck the Watcher Knights while we're at it.


----------



## wankerness

Got Ys VIII on sale cause I saw a post saying it was good. It's great! It's a Japanese action-RPG where you run around a cursed island trying to find survivors of a shipwreck while chopping up hundreds of monsters. The boss fights are frequent and the combat is a ton of fun. It's like FFXV's combat done right. You can't zap across the combat field, but you can switch between characters instantly and it just FEELS good. Most importantly, the camera doesn't get stuck in bushes. If you're looking for dark and gritty, look elsewhere, the characters are anime-style and the whole thing is extremely brightly colored and there isn't any gore to speak of. The characters are cartoony and fun ala FFIX or something instead of emo dicks.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

^ That's good to hear. I was supposed to pick that up some time ago but got put of from the reports of bad localisation, apparently they fixed that. Ys games are generally consistently good and the music from what I heard is spectacular (as expected from every Nihom Falcom game). I'll need to pick this up soon. 

Speaking fo Nihom Falcom, they really need to localise Cold Steel 3 and 4 already. I'm sick of being left hanging from the first 2...


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I read it got patched with a new translation while ago. I’m playing without the English audio anyway.

I paid 30 for it this week, it’s on sale for another day. It will probably go that low or lower again in the Black Friday/December PSN sales though.


----------



## beerandbeards

Assassins Creed Odyssey

Really fun and great visuals. Voice acting is a little lacking


----------



## Mathemagician

Black Ops 4. It’s just as hard to play against 12 year olds at 30 as it was when I was in college. Very fun game with many game modes, but I just gotta accept I’m gonna be bad for a while.


----------



## Ralyks

Back to Yakuza 0. Kinda grinding it out slower this time having been really busy recently, but still enjoy it.

I also tried going back to Hellblade since I think I’m only halfway through it. I may try to just crank it out and be done with it since it’s such a short game. I think I held off on getting further because I wanted to play it with good gaming headphones and just never got around to buying a pair.


----------



## mongey

grabbed hyper light drifter to check out .

its got a vibe. like the look and the sounds are great 80's synth type stuff . Its all very up in the air what you are supposed to actually be doing .so far worth a play though


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> grabbed hyper light drifter to check out . Its all very up in the air what you are supposed to actually be doing .so far worth a play though


that's kind of the point, the game is meant to be a callback to the days when you didn't get your hand held everywhere, like in the old zelda games. I like games that don't tell you much and expect you to figure stuff out on your own, with dark souls and breath of the wild being perfect examples of that idea.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ^ That's good to hear. I was supposed to pick that up some time ago but got put of from the reports of bad localisation, apparently they fixed that. Ys games are generally consistently good and the music from what I heard is spectacular (as expected from every Nihom Falcom game). I'll need to pick this up soon.
> 
> Speaking fo Nihom Falcom, they really need to localise Cold Steel 3 and 4 already. I'm sick of being left hanging from the first 2...



Well Ys VIII was on a massive price drop so I just up and grabbed it.  I needed my Nihon Falcom fix since Cold Steel 3 and 4 are currently on standstill.

While I'm well aware of their reputation (Ys has been going as long as Final Fantasy/Dragon Quest, but never popular outside Japan and parts of Asia), and I've dabbled with some of them (I'm starting to remember how Wanderers of Ys is in fact pretty crap so I take back what I said about them being consistently solid). But this may well be the first time I'll be fully immersing into a Ys game. All the previous ones I either played shortly via circumstance, or release in a console I had zero access to (the PC Engine was near scarce in Melbourne).

Looking forward to it once I've settled Kiwami 1.


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> that's kind of the point, the game is meant to be a callback to the days when you didn't get your hand held everywhere, like in the old zelda games.


When I played that game, I found that it took that idea a bit far. The "vibe" is great, the art style is great, the sort of feel of the game is really nicely put together, but the difficulty curve and lack of information/guidance were kind of a turn off of me rather than a plus. I never ended up finishing the game cause it was just too frustrating. Callbacks are great and all, but there are good reasons that game design has changed since that.


----------



## wankerness

It was fine when games didn't tell you what to do when it was a simple 2D world that your average 5 year old could map out with a pencil and some paper (though, often old games included maps with the manual!!). When you get a world more like Dark Souls, it's far, far more difficult since the geometry and world complexity are SO much higher than anything from back in the day was even capable of. People like to cry about "hand-holding" vs the "good old days" but as Ted said there are very good reasons for that!! People also like to talk about games being more "UNFORGIVING" and "BRUTAL", but you were just a little blip on the screen trying to avoid other blips with two buttons, not an object in a 3D world with probably 20 button bindings and other crap you have to get to through menus that you have to be aware of on top of any nasty mechanics. I hate tedious tutorial sections at the beginning of games as much as anyone, but people who want absolutely no explanation on anything are mostly HS/college kids and single people with easy/no jobs who have all the time in the world for games. 

Plus way more demographics play games these days, many of them old, and people with kids aren't going to want to spend 10 hours to figure something out when they probably have about one hour a day tops that they have time to themselves that they can use on games


----------



## TedEH

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan or more fluid/intuitive/leading kinds of tutorials rather than walls of text and "hand holding".
I suppose the thing that gets to me is not so much that there's too much tutorial stuff going on in modern games so much as there's too much.... difficult to navigate mechanical density? As in the tutorials I see as more a symptom than a problem in themselves. A lot of games now have so much depth embedded into the core of the experience, and your connection/control over that depth is complicated, such that you can't make progress without first wrapping your head around having "rtfm" first. And should you take a break and forget how these things work, you can't just continue where you left off.

I much prefer to think of game design in terms of being something that ideally can lend itself to intuitive play -> That doesn't mean less depth, but rather that you have to think of the UI and controls and such as being an interface that helps you navigate that depth -> and that interface should be something that (in my opinion) doesn't need a tutorial to understand. If the interface/control is intuitive, then you can have as much depth as you want. Something like WASD to move is intuitive, whether you're walking in a strait line or through a maze. Having a single button that serves as an "I want to interact with what's in front of me" message to the game is something easy to understand that can do so many things, as opposed to having dozens of keys to map out and memorize. Even just really simple things like not having multiple buttons do the same thing in different contexts. A button that goes "back" in a menu should also go back in dialog, or serve as "cancel" in any place where what you're doing is more or less the same action.


----------



## wankerness

Most modern games have actual different functions that have to happen smoothly and abruptly and having the same button do multiple things is not practical. FFXV was a good example of how infuriating it can be when a game tries to "simplify" by having the same button do different things in different contexts when the button would suddenly switch functions and you'd be mashing to do function A when it would suddenly switch to function B and you'd find you'd triggered function B multiple times and screwed everything up. Thus, having a million key bindings tends to actually be the easiest thing for most games, it just requires more memorization. As soon as FPS games started happening way back in the day that also included things like inventory items, it became a case of either having different keybindings for the items vs guns, or clunkily forcing the player to scroll through their weapons/inventory to arrive at the item they want to use and then hit the fire/use button, taking 10-15 more seconds, while you were frequently left open getting shot at the whole time you were screwing around trying to scroll through your inventory. Duke Nukem 3D vs Goldeneye was a representation of just that. It was a bit faster if you'd pause and select it manually that way, but that took you out of the action and you'd still get shot during the animation of looking down at your watch. Console games have just been playing catch-up to PC games this whole time with smoothness of use. And unfortunately it requires either tutorials, manuals, or just spending the 30 seconds to look at the controls in the menu screen to find out what the buttons do! I kind of prefer the latter.


----------



## TedEH

I suppose, at that point, to me, that's a sign of too much complexity. Lots of games are like that, you're right. I also don't like/play a lot of those games.  I state it mostly as a taste thing -> I prefer games that implement depth in an intuitive way, that's all.

I suppose that goes along with my unpopular opinion that inserting crafting into a game almost always makes it a worse game. Crafting sucks. I hate crafting in games.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, crafting generally is terrible and I think there's been a backlash to it recently (finally). It usually doesn't affect the controls, though. It's a waste of time side activity that clutters inventories up horribly. Also, it often makes it so you spend a lot of time pausing and having to destroy items in your inventory cause it's full of useless crafting stuff and you can't pick up useful objects.


----------



## mongey

TedEH said:


> When I played that game, I found that it took that idea a bit far. The "vibe" is great, the art style is great, the sort of feel of the game is really nicely put together, but the difficulty curve and lack of information/guidance were kind of a turn off of me rather than a plus. I never ended up finishing the game cause it was just too frustrating. Callbacks are great and all, but there are good reasons that game design has changed since that.



I agree . I am enjoying it, and i finally worked out what the hell is going on with the map and the currency and locks .But things progress for a reason .Difficulty so far isn't too bad. but Im guessing it will spike up as I have read


----------



## Ralyks

Still playing Yakuza 0, but the urge to buy Red Dead Redemption 2 May be too great...


----------



## Leviathus

Been shootin' these bastards on red bread reduction 2! :: spits ::

EDIT:


----------



## KnightBrolaire

been playing the hell out of black ops 4. I haven't played COD since blops 1 so it's fun to come back and play cod after so long.


----------



## Mathemagician

In CoD the rampart is imo the best gun until the spitfire. YMMV as I can’t snipe for shit.


----------



## wankerness

The reviews I read of Red Dead Redemption 2, even the raves, make it sound like it has clunky controls and is often intentionally being non-entertaining, partially artistically and partially because it seems more concerned with being COWBOY SIMULATOR instead of an arcade-type game like GTA V's single player. Like, taking cover behind stuff is a mess (clunk) or when you call your horse it doesn't instantly appear behind you like almost every other game with horses, it runs to you in real time and you have to wait (COWBOY SIMULATOR). It sounds risky enough that I'm not touching it until it either gets a big discount or until I play through the first one and find that I love it.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

wankerness said:


> The reviews I read of Red Dead Redemption 2, even the raves, make it sound like it has clunky controls and is often intentionally being non-entertaining, partially artistically and partially because it seems more concerned with being COWBOY SIMULATOR instead of an arcade-type game like GTA V's single player. Like, taking cover behind stuff is a mess (clunk) or when you call your horse it doesn't instantly appear behind you like almost every other game with horses, it runs to you in real time and you have to wait (COWBOY SIMULATOR). It sounds risky enough that I'm not touching it until it either gets a big discount or until I play through the first one and find that I love it.



Thanks for the warning on that then


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> In CoD the rampart is imo the best gun until the spitfire. YMMV as I can’t snipe for shit.


yeah i've been using the rampart and hades pretty much exclusively, they shred ppl


----------



## Mathemagician

I couldn’t figure out what I was always being murdered with the first week so I started watching the kill-cams and looking at the gun until I matched it up. I switched from a rank 9 ICR to a rank 0 Rampart and went from never winning gunfights to “oh that’s why”.


----------



## QuantumCybin

wankerness said:


> The reviews I read of Red Dead Redemption 2, even the raves, make it sound like it has clunky controls and is often intentionally being non-entertaining, partially artistically and partially because it seems more concerned with being COWBOY SIMULATOR instead of an arcade-type game like GTA V's single player. Like, taking cover behind stuff is a mess (clunk) or when you call your horse it doesn't instantly appear behind you like almost every other game with horses, it runs to you in real time and you have to wait (COWBOY SIMULATOR). It sounds risky enough that I'm not touching it until it either gets a big discount or until I play through the first one and find that I love it.



I’ve played it for about five hours so far and (mind you, I played the first RDR back in 2010 when it came out and loved it so I’m biased) but I am really enjoying it. Yes, the pace of the game is slow, but Rockstar put a ton of work into the little details of this game it’s pretty cool. The graphics, even on my standard PS4, are beautiful. I think RDR 2 will be an example of a game pushing the current console hardware as far as it’ll go.

There’s no traditional “fast travel”. So if traversing across a big map and spending most of the time doing so in the awesome “cinematic camera” (basically turns on auto run and makes your horse follow your waypoint automatically) sounds boring and shit to you, yeah I wouldn’t get it. This is a game that you should really take your time in, like The Witcher 3.


----------



## wankerness

I'm not talking about "Fast Travel," I'm talking about your horse making it to you to START travel. Like, Witcher 3, even if you rode everywhere, if you left your horse somewhere and ran around for a long time you wouldn't whistle for it and then wait for the horse to path through everything you did and eventually make it to you, it just instantly appeared off the edge of the camera and moved towards you. And I'm definitely not impatient with amount of content or depth of character bench or anything; I just played Witcher 3 a year or so ago and went through most of the side missions and all the expansion stuff and after taking about 5 hours to start enjoying it I loved the hell out of it and by the end though it was one of my favorite games ever, at least from a character point of view. That walk with Siri in the winter was the most moving thing I've ever experienced in a game, by FAR. Those writers and voice actors are only approached by Naughty Dog in quality, but ND never had the same size canvas to build a plot and characters with that much detail as their games usually just have to be cover-based shooters that clock in well under 40 hours and include lots of big explosions. Not to knock the likes of Last of Us, that is one brutal and uncompromising game with how the ending goes. 

ANYWAY, horse running to you, minor thing, I know, it just seemed emblematic of the kinds of things I was hearing about it. On the other side of the coin with the same attention to realism, though, the world really seemed alive in a way almost nothing else ever has. I am intrigued by this but again it sounds like something very potentially frustrating and thus I'm not going to dive in without playing the first one first until it gets cheaper. Based on GTAV, that probably won't be for several months at least, which is fine. I have RDR1, I just have been on an RPG/Action RPG frenzy for months and haven't yet wanted to interrupt it for 40 hours or however long that game is to check it out. Plus, my Xbox 360 controller is all clicky and gunky now!


----------



## mongey

really want to get RDR2 , but I just know I don't have the time to play it as much as it needs to be played . 

the changes to fast travel would piss me off though ,as a fast travel abuser


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

With all the Brown Alive Redemption 2 promos, I just remembered I still have Blue Poo Atonement 1 ready to go but still barely started it. Investing time in the Green Spleen Submarine series may be a bit difficult for me at the moment, but I did swear to start it because Purple Monkey Dishwasher 1 and 2 as a whole does look like a beautiful series to play, flaws and bugs and all. 

But to undermine everything I said, I finished Kiwami and started with both Yakuza 6 and Ys VIII. 

Thankfully Kiwami went through quickly. A solid remake, even if I didn't play the original, despite a few aesthetic flaws. I enjoyed the hell out of the Majima Everywhere mechanic. So much that I actively tried to hunt him down in every possible way (having him watching you read magazines was a nice surprise). My personal favorite was a throwaway gag with Majima yelling "I INVENTED THE TAX INCREASE". Not only does it nod to one of his sidequests in 0 (a game that actually does capture the spirit of Japan's excessive 'Economic Bubble' era), but also implies that Majima was the cause of the bubble burst that lead to the country's recession in the 90s. A cool historical attention to detail. 

Though the mechanic lead to some problems. First, the character's story role makes this narratively wonky as hell. Second is the truckload of experience he showers you after beating his ass (which was often), making the game way too easy. I was full capped by chapter 10, and even the dreaded Jingu keeled over quickly thanks to a certain mid range dash/slap move. The final boss fell even faster thanks to all that lovely furniture lying around just waiting to be weaponized. 



The transition from Kiwami to 6 is huge. I see how the Dragon engine has improved the aesthetics, Yakuza 6 is the most authentic representation of Japan in a game yet. They got the vending machines right (now even more product placements galore), and I can practically smell the food in the air, it made me miss Japan again. But this is the first Yakuza game that I've complained about loading times. I knew there was a rush to get the game out thus missed out on some refinement.

As for Ys VIII, it's scratching the itch left from Cold Steel and it's great. It's the same aesthetic right down to introducing characters, same engine and similar mechanics, though less Chrono Trigger and more Zelda, which is apt since Adol has been a bog standard silent RPG protagonist almost as long as Link has.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> With all the Brown Alive Redemption 2 promos, I just remembered I still have Blue Poo Atonement 1 ready to go but still barely started it. Investing time in the Green Spleen Submarine series may be a bit difficult for me at the moment, but I did swear to start it because Purple Monkey Dishwasher 1 and 2 as a whole does look like a beautiful series to play, flaws and bugs and all.
> 
> But to undermine everything I said, I finished Kiwami and started with both Yakuza 6 and Ys VIII.
> 
> Thankfully Kiwami went through quickly. A solid remake, even if I didn't play the original, despite a few aesthetic flaws. I enjoyed the hell out of the Majima Everywhere mechanic. So much that I actively tried to hunt him down in every possible way (having him watching you read magazines was a nice surprise). My personal favorite was a throwaway gag with Majima yelling "I INVENTED THE TAX INCREASE". Not only does it nod to one of his sidequests in 0 (a game that actually does capture the spirit of Japan's excessive 'Economic Bubble' era), but also implies that Majima was the cause of the bubble burst that lead to the country's recession in the 90s. A cool historical attention to detail.
> 
> Though the mechanic lead to some problems. First, the character's story role makes this narratively wonky as hell. Second is the truckload of experience he showers you after beating his ass (which was often), making the game way too easy. I was full capped by chapter 10, and even the dreaded Jingu keeled over quickly thanks to a certain mid range dash/slap move. The final boss fell even faster thanks to all that lovely furniture lying around just waiting to be weaponized.
> 
> 
> 
> The transition from Kiwami to 6 is huge. I see how the Dragon engine has improved the aesthetics, Yakuza 6 is the most authentic representation of Japan in a game yet. They got the vending machines right (now even more product placements galore), and I can practically smell the food in the air, it made me miss Japan again. But this is the first Yakuza game that I've complained about loading times. I knew there was a rush to get the game out thus missed out on some refinement.
> 
> As for Ys VIII, it's scratching the itch left from Cold Steel and it's great. It's the same aesthetic right down to introducing characters, same engine and similar mechanics, though less Chrono Trigger and more Zelda, which is apt since Adol has been a bog standard silent RPG protagonist almost as long as Link has.



I didn't notice Majima yelling about inventing the tax increase, that's awesome!

What difficulty did you have Kiwami on?? Jingu didn't kill me, but took FOREVER and I went through every single healing item I had and I got knocked down by bullets approximately 50 times before I managed to take out both of those guards the second time. So horrible.

Majima everywhere got incredibly tedious on the hard difficulty as when you were at max level, it would seriously take five minutes every time he jumped out, and I was trying to get every variant of him since there were trophies tied to them all (plus you had to fight him what, 50 times in the four main forms for the CP?). At some point during the post game I set the difficulty to easy just to avoid the annoyance cause then I could take him out in 30 seconds instead of a few minutes. The gulf was immense with amount of HP things had and the amount of danger he posed. His best form was either the ridiculous disco costume or when you go on a date with him as a woman.

I need to play VI again cause I read and saw a comparison of the map in VI to the red light district in Shinjuku, which was where I spent multiple hours walking around and had a hotel room right next to! I had no idea. I did recognize the format of the Don Quixote, but I didn't know that everything was a copy. A lot of it was practically indistinguishable from photos of the real thing in the comparison I saw.

RE: YS VIII, I'm ~40 hours in and I THINK I'm closing in on the end. It's been a lot of fun and the characters are charming in a FF VI/IX sort of way. The story is just as silly and nonsensical as an FF game, too, but it's less convoluted and difficult to follow. It's not going to compete with something like The Witcher 3, but it isn't meant to. The only thing missing from a story like an FF game is any romantic stuff, unless you count one particular tasteless subquest with a sidecharacter pulling off parts of her clothes that is so out of place that I laughed out loud. The main character is kind of a Link in terms of how much personality he has, but he does talk!

The biggest problem I've had with it are that the two characters with the "stabby" damage type are kind of obnoxious to play as, while the two with the "slash" are both great, but you need all three damage types to deal with all enemies you run across. All things being equal, the three-woman team is by far the best. I love the big fat green-haired farting guy, but he plays SO badly compared to the other one with crush damage. Not to mention, she's even more entertaining.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> What difficulty did you have Kiwami on?? Jingu didn't kill me, but took FOREVER and I went through every single healing item I had and I got knocked down by bullets approximately 50 times before I managed to take out both of those guards the second time. So horrible.



Admittedly I was only playing on Normal so it wasn't as frustrating. Against Jingu, I did stick with mostly Dragon and Rush and mashed evade the second I started hearing grunts, the queue before gunfire. After blowing some of my weapons, I was a bit conservative with the combos until I got behind Jingu himself. The second the cronies' knives came out, I started abusing the Tiger Drop as much as possible then used the dash/slap heat move from a distance every chance I got any meter. 

I found Jingu easier than the 2 Komakis in Yakuza 5, even on Easy mode, but then again, as Kiryu and Saejima, they weren't too bad. Akiyama and (especially) Shinada on the other hand...

Watching the recent Jimquisiton really reminded me of Yakuza 6 to an extent. 

Regarding Ys, from what I've known about the series, it's pretty light hearted overall. They all usually start the same way where Adol gets caught stranded somewhere. I've never played any of them extensively so it's going to be a treat to do so now. 

Another thing that's always stayed with Ys, is the awesome music. There are 2 different eras, so great for different reasons. Yuzo Koshiro who did Streets Of Rage and Actraiser series did the earlier music, and all the latter ones were done by Nihon Falcom, which personally I prefer as they're not afraid to get their shred/speed metal on as you've noticed on Ys VIII. 


My natural inclination is to recommend the Legend Of Heroes: Trails series. But that depends on taste and your current view towards JRPGs. Same makers, same feel in theme and aesthetics (albeit more darker), extensive lore and a deep combat system (I tend to call it Chrono Trigger on steroids). Only problems are the story moves extremely slowly, some of the games haven't been released outside Japan and more importantly it's packed to the gills with every anime trope known to man, so that can get extremely cringeworthy at times.


----------



## wankerness

YS VIII's music is wildly catchy. The metal stuff reminds me of the SNES Mega Man X games and F-Zero X (none of which I've played since about 2000, so my memories might not be accurate). It's not all good, but damn is it catchy and old-school, despite sounding like it's mostly played by actual musicians instead of midi tracks.


----------



## synrgy

RDR2, though I'm troubled a little bit because I haven't really done anything of merit yet, but the game says I'm nearing 20% completion, already. I've only done a few missions. I've mostly been exploring, hunting, dying, then re-loading my save from before dying. Barely a few hours in, really.


----------



## mongey

Finished Hyper light drifter. was shorter than I expected.I didn't collect all the beacon things , got 75% Id say .good game though. not as hard as I was expecting . Maybe Hollow Knight battle hardened me .last boss was surprisingly easy 

so I re downloaded hollow knight .and another 6 or 7 tries beat soul warrior finally . I beefed up my magic strength with the charm and that helped allot I think . so back on the hollow knight train til it pisses me of again


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

After months of threatening to play Salt And Sanctuary, I've finally got it on sale and dived right into it... and got murdered by the obligatory impossible first boss. Then played forward and died again from another boss. 

Yes, it's a Dark Souls clone alright. Right down to the find and replace Souls and Bonfires with Salts and Sanctuaries respectively. Right down to the dodge roll everything to death to the messed up hitboxes, to losing your Salt when you die... Actually, scratch that. Salt And Sanctuary IS Dark Souls. In 2D. So it's Dark Souls with Symphony Of The Night sprinkles, right down to getting flung across the screen from something as gentle as a flick in the ear. And I LOVE IT. 

I've needed my Metroidvania fix and Salty Sancho quenches that beautifully. 


I suppose I should get Castlevania Requiem too, even though I heard it's rather lazy and total lack of effort in the presentation side from Konami's end, which is unsurprising I guess.


----------



## Jarmake

I just started playing hitman (the newest one)... I also bought rdr2 from a sale for my wife. She loved the first one and from what i've seen thus far she seems to enjoy the second one as well. And holy shit does it look incredibly beautiful even on regular ps4. There is an insane amount of details everywhere... Maybe I will start playing it someday.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I suppose I should get Castlevania Requiem too, even though I heard it's rather lazy and total lack of effort in the presentation side from Konami's end, which is unsurprising I guess.



What'd they do, just the exact same thing as the 360 port? IE, same resolution as the original with a huge border around it? I don't know how the graphics worked on that game, like if they drew them at the resolution they appeared in game, or if they had original art that was then scaled down for the game, but if it was the latter I wish we'd see that with a full-fledged port.

But, I know all of Konami's effort is going towards fucking Pachinko machines. Worst dev out there now.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just started playing the PVE portion of Fortnite. 

The base defense/super colorful graphics are addictive. But man there are SO many mechanics under the hood. 

Worth the $20 on sale though for sure. Now trying to get a buddy to pick it up.


----------



## will_shred

Dark Souls 3 because I hate myself


----------



## Mathemagician

DS3 is fantastic but imo it’s the easiest one yet. Your character is fast by default and you’re likely coming in with prior Dark Souls experience.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> DS3 is fantastic but imo it’s the easiest one yet. Your character is fast by default and you’re likely coming in with prior Dark Souls experience.


Agreed, it's def easier than DS2 or Bloodborne. Those 2 made me rip my hair out in spots (for different reasons though).


----------



## Mathemagician

DS2 gets hate from the “video games are life” crowd, but PvP in that game was so well balanced especially summon stone arenas on the tower bridge. 

I only wish I’d played it while lightning bolts and mundane were still viable. And Majula is serene yet had so much evil just under the surface. 

I need to pick up the DS1 remaster though. Never did finish the game.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Mathemagician said:


> DS2 gets hate from the “video games are life” crowd, but PvP in that game was so well balanced especially summon stone arenas on the tower bridge.
> 
> I only wish I’d played it while lightning bolts and mundane were still viable. And Majula is serene yet had so much evil just under the surface.
> 
> I need to pick up the DS1 remaster though. Never did finish the game.




If you love the PVP in Dark Souls 2, I'd stay away from Remastered because they fucked the PVP up terribly in it with weapon levels. I understand it was to prevent twinking, but merely picking up certain weapons, whether you plan on using them or not (even on accident) puts you into a new weapon class which ended up alienating a lot of the fanbase. PVP is basically dead on Dark Souls I because of this. For PVE it's great, go ahead, just don't expect anything more than that. Even the co-op has been affected due to this.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> DS2 gets hate from the “video games are life” crowd, but PvP in that game was so well balanced especially summon stone arenas on the tower bridge.
> 
> I only wish I’d played it while lightning bolts and mundane were still viable. And Majula is serene yet had so much evil just under the surface.
> 
> I need to pick up the DS1 remaster though. Never did finish the game.


I had more design/enemy placement issues with DS2 than anything. That game out of the whole series really ramped up the artificial difficulty in the OG iteration with its bullshit enemy spawns and some bosses being stupidly hard to fight due to bullshit mechanics. DS1, DS3 and Bloodborne were much more along the lines of "so long as you pay attention and don't potato, you'll survive", while DS2 was more like "oh here let me put 15 enemies next to this bonfire that's right next to a ledge and all of them do knockback attacks"


----------



## PunkBillCarson

KnightBrolaire said:


> I had more design/enemy placement issues with DS2 than anything. That game out of the whole series really ramped up the artificial difficulty in the OG iteration with its bullshit enemy spawns and some bosses being stupidly hard to fight due to bullshit mechanics. DS1, DS3 and Bloodborne were much more along the lines of "so long as you pay attention and don't potato, you'll survive", while DS2 was more like "oh here let me put 15 enemies next to this bonfire that's right next to a ledge and all of them do knockback attacks"




The original DS2 was decent. What decency that DS2 had, they completely stripped away with SOTFS. Again, if you're not invested in the Souls/Borne series, the difference DS2 won't necessarily affect you, but what has to be understood is that DS1, III, and BB were amazing due to attention to detail.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

PunkBillCarson said:


> The original DS2 was decent. What decency that DS2 had, they completely stripped away with SOTFS. Again, if you're not invested in the Souls/Borne series, the difference DS2 won't necessarily affect you, but what has to be understood is that DS1, III, and BB were amazing due to attention to detail.


DS2 was artificially hard, all the others were pretty fair about their difficulty. If you died in DS1,DS3 or Bloodborne, it's because you suck at kiting/dodging/blocking/etc 99% of the time. It usually came down to user error. I know GIT GUD is/was a meme, but the games did force you to improve, just like old school games like ghosts and goblins. Or if you'll indulge my ridiculous theory of how the dark souls series ties into buddhist concepts: 
In order to reach nirvana (ie beat the game) one must realize that death is a cycle which can only be broken by shedding the shackles of ignorance (ie not sucking at the game and understanding the mechanics/enemies).


----------



## mongey

still plugging away on hollow Knight. made allot of progress since my 2nd wind and re install .Still not completely sure what I am doing .I just kinda wander aorund and looking for doors/holes I missed and fight any bosses I come across which seems to give me more powers and new doors/holes to go through.


----------



## Demiurge

^Have you done any Grimm Troupe stuff yet?


----------



## TedEH

I started a playthrough of the original Dragon Warrior.... maaaaaaaaan is that game ever grindy.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> What'd they do, just the exact same thing as the 360 port? IE, same resolution as the original with a huge border around it? I don't know how the graphics worked on that game, like if they drew them at the resolution they appeared in game, or if they had original art that was then scaled down for the game, but if it was the latter I wish we'd see that with a full-fledged port.
> 
> But, I know all of Konami's effort is going towards fucking Pachinko machines. Worst dev out there now.



Somewhat that. I believe there's a way to change the resolution and the background border and some other filter that makes the games look worse.

More or less a lazy bundle from Konami to cash in with the Netflix series. Extremely stingy on the extras dept (no image or audio galleries or anything), but there's a trophy system, which while nice, I've never really cared for. Just a bare bones compilation of the Richter saga. At the same time, that is exactly what this bundle has going for it, both excellent games among the best in the Castlevania catalog. And a good first time introduction to a proper port of Rondo Of Blood for those who didn't own an PC Engine/Turbo Graphix or PSP or resorted to dodgy ROMing or played that awful watered down SNES version.

The Symphony port is supposedly based on the Dracula X Chronicles, so you get to play Maria like the Dreamcast version. Not sure if they fixed the Richter sprite though. You also get the new dub so anyone expecting the "What is a man but a miserable pile of secrets" won't find it here. That's already been misused in Lords Of Shadow 2 as a tacky catchphrase, delivered sincerely by Robert Carlyle no less.


----------



## mongey

Demiurge said:


> ^Have you done any Grimm Troupe stuff yet?


don't think so .


----------



## Demiurge

^I recommend doing that sooner than later. It's a semi fetch-quest, but you get a semi-useful charm, a charm notch, and an opportunity to make your breakable charms unbreakable- all shit that you're going to want. Oh, and two awesome boss fights.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Somewhat that. I believe there's a way to change the resolution and the background border and some other filter that makes the games look worse.
> 
> More or less a lazy bundle from Konami to cash in with the Netflix series. Extremely stingy on the extras dept (no image or audio galleries or anything), but there's a trophy system, which while nice, I've never really cared for. Just a bare bones compilation of the Richter saga. At the same time, that is exactly what this bundle has going for it, both excellent games among the best in the Castlevania catalog. And a good first time introduction to a proper port of Rondo Of Blood for those who didn't own an PC Engine/Turbo Graphix or PSP or resorted to dodgy ROMing or played that awful watered down SNES version.
> 
> The Symphony port is supposedly based on the Dracula X Chronicles, so you get to play Maria like the Dreamcast version. Not sure if they fixed the Richter sprite though. You also get the new dub so anyone expecting the "What is a man but a miserable pile of secrets" won't find it here. That's already been misused in Lords Of Shadow 2 as a tacky catchphrase, delivered sincerely by Robert Carlyle no less.



I want to play the Saturn version, even though I heard the new areas sucked, so that’s good, but man, throwing out the original dub?? Total garbage. Reminds me of the Silent Hill HD debacle. I had to acquire the PC ports of the originals for that one.


----------



## Rosal76

Jarmake said:


> I just started playing hitman (the newest one)...



Awesome!!! Huge Hitman fan here but I won't be able to get it here in the U.S. until the 9th. What are you're initial thoughts of the game? Any cool things you've seen so far?


----------



## Jarmake

Rosal76 said:


> Awesome!!! Huge Hitman fan here but I won't be able to get it here in the U.S. until the 9th. What are you're initial thoughts of the game? Any cool things you've seen so far?



I meant the first season. I didn't know the second one was out anywhere. Sorry


----------



## Ralyks

Gave in and got Red Dead Redemption 2. Even though I should be continuing my adventures with Kiryu...


----------



## wankerness

You'll regret it!

I just finished YS VIII and it's fuckin adorable and was well worth the 45 hours or whatever. The gameplay also ruled, to go along with the kind of cutesy aesthetic/characters. I think the closest thing I could describe it as would be Windwaker meets FF IX, but the gameplay is so much faster-paced and unlike anything I've played. FF XV is maybe the closest in that department, but that one's so much slower and clunkier and only lets you play as one character. I've been over this before though. I can't wait for another. Unfortunately it sounds like the previous isn't too great.

So, now, I could play past the third hour of the last Zelda, or I could start Red Dead Redemption....but I think I'm finally going to continue Persona 4 or try starting Danganronpa cause I'm apparently a weeaboo POS!!!



I got the art book for HZD cause I'm a fanboy and it's pretty great, as far as those things go. It's actually concept art instead of some of these things where it's just a bunch of crummy promo art slapped together. It's cheap, too!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Despite starting Salt and Sanctuary as well as going pacifist on Undertale, I've decided tackling the games starting with Y (Yakuza 6 and Ys VIII) will be my focus.

And since I've fully invested in Kiryu's story, I'm trying to just get this out of the way as fast as possible. I'm only in Chapter 4, but so far I've ploughed through a ton of sidequests, all the hostesses, and a bunch of other random crap. Just to show how distracting from the critical path these games can really be, I could've stayed longer in Chapter 2 if I wasn't getting frustrated on getting one damn cat to spawn for the cat café. I was already overlevelled as is (most stats on rank B), so I just got bored and went to smash Akiyama's face in with a baby crib.

EDIT: I've also ever reached over 94% on karaoke until now. That song with him playing ukulele was easy enough to reach 98%.

Being in Chapter 4, the portrayal of Hiroshima is beautifully on point. I do agree that having the ink suit actors sort of spoil the plot a bit. Forget Beat Takeshi (that's too obvious) but having both Shun Oguri and Tatsuya Fujiwara immediately rang big alarm bells for me. I do love some of the callbacks to Yakuza 5, namely everything to do with Haruka.



wankerness said:


> So, now, I could play past the third hour of the last Zelda, or I could start Red Dead Redemption....but I think I'm finally going to continue Persona 4 or try starting Danganronpa cause I'm apparently a weeaboo POS!!!









You know you want to...


----------



## Kaura

Man, if you guys like Dark Souls then you should check out Chantelise...

Yeah... it looks pretty harmless and easy but I had to stop playing last night before I honestly would have ripped my laptop in half. That game is the definition of unfair difficulty. Either you have to have godlike skills and be able to read the shitty AI perfectly or you have to be like me and grind for hours until you make yourself so OP that you basicly one punch the boss.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Despite starting Salt and Sanctuary as well as going pacifist on Undertale, I've decided tackling the games starting with Y (Yakuza 6 and Ys VIII) will be my focus.
> 
> And since I've fully invested in Kiryu's story, I'm trying to just get this out of the way as fast as possible. I'm only in Chapter 4, but so far I've ploughed through a ton of sidequests, all the hostesses, and a bunch of other random crap. Just to show how distracting from the critical path these games can really be, I could've stayed longer in Chapter 2 if I wasn't getting frustrated on getting one damn cat to spawn for the cat café. I was already overlevelled as is (most stats on rank B), so I just got bored and went to smash Akiyama's face in with a baby crib.
> 
> EDIT: I've also ever reached over 94% on karaoke until now. That song with him playing ukulele was easy enough to reach 98%.
> 
> Being in Chapter 4, the portrayal of Hiroshima is beautifully on point. I do agree that having the ink suit actors sort of spoil the plot a bit. Forget Beat Takeshi (that's too obvious) but having both Shun Oguri and Tatsuya Fujiwara immediately rang big alarm bells for me. I do love some of the callbacks to Yakuza 5, namely everything to do with Haruka.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You know you want to...



I didn't recognize the other two actors, I don't watch very many Japanese movies apart from Godzilla movies  I was really frustrated with Yakuza VI being a self-contained narrative and also being the (supposed) last in the series. But, maybe it had a lot of callbacks and connections that I just didn't recognize since I didn't play 3-5!! It just needed a lot more Haruka and a lot less of that stupid guy yelling ANIKI!!!! Which, I was told by my friend, usually has gay connotations (at least in Osaka), which is a bit of context that the game does not provide! 

RE: Trails of Cold Steel, it looks like it's up my alley, though the first review I read pointed out that you have to return to the same multi-level dungeon SEVEN TIMES through the game. I hate backtracking! Unless it's a sorta side-thing like Mementos in Persona V; maybe it is? Also, I don't have a PS3 so I can't play it anyway. Looks like it's coming to PS4 in the US in 2019 sometime, though. Should be a good year for ports, if those Yakuza 3-5 ports finally get announced for the US as well. It seems like it should be a no-brainer, but it's been 6 months and they've started to come out in Japan and still no word whether they're going to make it here at all!


----------



## Ralyks

I really should just put my PSTV in my living room and finally get more than 15 hours into Persona 4 Golden.

Also just got to chapter 2 in RDR2. Man, this game is something.


----------



## Rosal76

Jarmake said:


> I meant the first season. I didn't know the second one was out anywhere. Sorry



It's all good. Cool to know that there are players who have a interest in that game despite it almost being 3 years old, now.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Ralyks said:


> I really should just put my PSTV in my living room and finally get more than 15 hours into Persona 4 Golden.
> 
> Also just got to chapter 2 in RDR2. Man, this game is something.



I found the slower pace a frustrating at first but after a little while when I clicked with the pace the game is trying to set i really began to enjoy it.



Still wish it had fast travel to the camp though.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> RE: Trails of Cold Steel, it looks like it's up my alley, though the first review I read pointed out that you have to return to the same multi-level dungeon SEVEN TIMES through the game. I hate backtracking! Unless it's a sorta side-thing like Mementos in Persona V; maybe it is? Also, I don't have a PS3 so I can't play it anyway. Looks like it's coming to PS4 in the US in 2019 sometime, though. Should be a good year for ports, if those Yakuza 3-5 ports finally get announced for the US as well. It seems like it should be a no-brainer, but it's been 6 months and they've started to come out in Japan and still no word whether they're going to make it here at all!



Let's just say, sort of - but not really. Come to think of it, it's a lot more streamlined than that. It's a multi floor dungeon that unlocks a new floor per every subsequent visit, so you can freely skip floors. The more I think in retrospect, every dungeon in the series is just a short corridor with a few exceptions, which I surprisingly didn't mind when the heart of the game play is either the combat system or the anime life sim. Think FFXIII but slow burn to a more rewarding experience. No rush into playing this series, they still haven't localized part 3 and 4 yet. 

Also regarding the ink suit actors, Yakuza 4 HD gets one significant change:



Voice actor changes is one thing (a la Destiny when Nolan North replaced Peter Dinklage when he fell asleep at recording) but this is the first time I've ever seen a full recast in a game. Since the original actor has since retired, I guess this was the logical step Sega had to take. Still doesn't make him any less boring, especially when standing next to the other 3 more interesting playable characters.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Kaura said:


> Man, if you guys like Dark Souls then you should check out Chantelise...
> 
> Yeah... it looks pretty harmless and easy but I had to stop playing last night before I honestly would have ripped my laptop in half. That game is the definition of unfair difficulty. Either you have to have godlike skills and be able to read the shitty AI perfectly or you have to be like me and grind for hours until you make yourself so OP that you basicly one punch the boss.



The definition of unfair difficulty; only Dark Souls 2 fits that description.


----------



## Mathemagician

Dark Souls 2 was fine. Just assume there’s like 8 dudes ready to gang bang you around every corner even behind secret doors and just tip toe in then back out and see what follows you.

Ok so all you people talking about Yakuza - I just played chapter 1 on the free PSN one this month.

I now lament never being able to become a Yakuza crime lord. It looks so awesome.

I’m assuming it all just works out dandy in the end of course.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

PunkBillCarson said:


> The definition of unfair difficulty; only Dark Souls 2 fits that description.


yeah, that was the only game in the series that I've ever turtled for entire sections of the game. There was some really stupid bullshit in that game (like how weapon durability was tied to game performance, so more frames=more durability loss).


----------



## Kaura

PunkBillCarson said:


> The definition of unfair difficulty; only Dark Souls 2 fits that description.



Heh, I guess so. Chantelise is just as retarded as I thought now that I got a bit further. I managed to beat the second boss just barely after couple of days trying. Then I get to the next boss and it turns out to be one of the easiest bosses in gaming history since it took me just a few tries to realise that I can kill it with two hits.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Binding of Isaac. This shit is like video game crack it's so addictive.


----------



## Ralyks

Have in an found a pretty cheap used copy of Spider-Man. Holy crap this game is awesome. I could spend hours just swinging around NYC (and living about and hour and a half north of it, it’s neat seeing all the places I sort of recognize).


----------



## wankerness

I’m hoping that Spider-Man gets cheap on Black Friday, but it might be a while. I have too big of a backlog to get that cheap right now.

Started Danganronpa and didn’t get into it in the first hour, started Divinity Original Sin and didn’t get into it in the first hour, I need to play one of them for longer instead of being ADD guy and starting more games.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I’m hoping that Spider-Man gets cheap on Black Friday, but it might be a while. I have too big of a backlog to get that cheap right now.



Lack of seeing any Black Friday deals on it is part of what made me grab a cheap used copy. Looking at what BF deals have been listed so far, I’m probably just grabbing God of War and Detroit for $25 each. Maybe Tomb Raider, maaaaaaaybe We Happy Few (I do want to try it despite lackluster reviews, but I’m not paying more than half price for it).


----------



## wankerness

I love the last two Tomb Raider games, but everything I've heard about this one turns me off (very little combat, more emphasis on the crummy characters, way more puzzles). As the last two plummeted in price in fairly short order, and it sounds like this one may have been less of a success, I'm guessing it will probably get cheaper shortly after BF than it does during it? And thus I will wait!

I don't really know what I want for BF. Spider-Man is the only game I can think of off the top of my head that I want to play apart from games that aren't out yet, like Trails of Cold Steel linked above and the non-announced Yakuza 3-5 ports Oh, I do want to play the probably-won't-be-discounted Fist of the North Star. I'm slightly interested in Monster Hunter, but if it's MMO-ish then maybe it's way too late for me to get into it due to the players left all being advanced.


----------



## Ralyks

Monster Hunter was actually pretty damn good, but for some reason I didn’t stick with it for long. I’ve thought about getting it again now that it’s cheaper.


----------



## mongey

hollow knight still. for $15 this is one big game .even if it drives me crazy its great value

beat watcher knights this morning. took about an hour of trying . they sucked but got there. used the chandelier trick to get them from 6 down to 5 . google gave me that one


unlocked 2 of the egg 3 bosses now . Guessing Im gonna have to fight these guys later ?


----------



## LeviathanKiller

I started playing The Evil Within, not really into it to be honest. The controls feel super clunky and non-responsive. I've gotten blown up several times already trying to disarm traps when my character moves too far forward because I was too far away prior to clicking to move forward. There's just so much acceleration on everything. The story is very meh so far. Nothing is explained much at all and talking is so minimum that it scares you when your character says something because it was so unexpected. Meh


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I love the last two Tomb Raider games, but everything I've heard about this one turns me off (very little combat, more emphasis on the crummy characters, way more puzzles). As the last two plummeted in price in fairly short order, and it sounds like this one may have been less of a success, I'm guessing it will probably get cheaper shortly after BF than it does during it? And thus I will wait!
> 
> I don't really know what I want for BF. Spider-Man is the only game I can think of off the top of my head that I want to play apart from games that aren't out yet, like Trails of Cold Steel linked above and the non-announced Yakuza 3-5 ports Oh, I do want to play the probably-won't-be-discounted Fist of the North Star. I'm slightly interested in Monster Hunter, but if it's MMO-ish then maybe it's way too late for me to get into it due to the players left all being advanced.


Monster Hunter isn't MMO style, you can just party up with people so long as you are both at the same point in the story to do certain missions, or you can just casually hunt with a party, or you can do what I do and fly solo. It's still enjoyable, and despite it being heavily centred around crafting, it's a pretty enjoyable cycle or hunting a monster > getting their mats > crafting sweet armour and weapons you want > hunt stronger monsters > repeat.


----------



## Metropolis

I started God Of War yesterday, this game is just epic.


----------



## Origin

SC2 and Diablo2. Some things never change... other than my declining patience for getting into new games.


----------



## Defyantly

Destiny 2 on PS4 has me hooked at the moment.


----------



## mongey

finished and got 1 of the ending on Hollow Knight .it was the basic ending where you only fight hollow knight . it said I had completed 71%. Id like to think I'll push on and do more but after 37.5 hours I think I'm done .That said killer game and killer bang for your buck


----------



## chopeth

Metropolis said:


> I started God Of War yesterday, this game is just epic.



It is. Huge adventure awaits


----------



## TedEH

I've been getting into A Link to the Past lately. I tried it once or twice when I was more into emulators, but now that I have a legit copy, makes sense to do a more serious attempt to finish it.

I've also been realizing that there's some value in the SNES mini, just in the sense that there's some games in there that would be waaaaaaaaay too much to try to get a real copy of for the original system, just because people have jacked the prices up to an extreme. All the titles I want for that system go for stupid prices - $70 CAD and up. I almost never pay that much for a _new_ game, let alone one that's almost as old as I am.


----------



## Leviathus

Been eatin' retics and alerting every guard in sight on Metal Gear Solid 3. Finally getting the whole aiming/shooting with square thing down, the 2004 controls felt pretty alien at first but they feel better the more i play. Fun game, really glad i scooped the MGS legacy HD collection for like 25 bucks a few months ago after getting into TPP.

Other than that still gunnin' down them god damn O'driscolls! Robbin' and Killin'!!


----------



## mongey

TedEH said:


> I've been getting into A Link to the Past lately. I tried it once or twice when I was more into emulators, but now that I have a legit copy, makes sense to do a more serious attempt to finish it.
> 
> I've also been realizing that there's some value in the SNES mini, just in the sense that there's some games in there that would be waaaaaaaaay too much to try to get a real copy of for the original system, just because people have jacked the prices up to an extreme. All the titles I want for that system go for stupid prices - $70 CAD and up. I almost never pay that much for a _new_ game, let alone one that's almost as old as I am.



Id like to replay link to the past . haven't played it since the 90's . hoping they start adding some snes games to the Nintendo online collection. would make me sign up for sure


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

A Link To The Past is 'still' awesome. I played the hell out if it back then and I still rate it as one of the best SNES games as well as among the top Zelda games. I've yet to replay it on my SNES mini, but I remembered playing it a few years ago and remembering how immersive it was for it's time. I can still remember everything on the game right now.


----------



## Mathemagician

A link to the past is my favorite Zelda ever.


----------



## wankerness

It's no coincidence that everyone's favorite, most-remembered games seem to be the ones they played when they were a little kid with a super-impressionable mind!! Hence: OoT is my favorite since that was the first I played 

My parents didn't let me play videogames until I was in middle school or so. I think that was a good move. Almost everything I know about science, etc seems to be what I learned before I got an N64. :X


----------



## KnightBrolaire

got underworld ascendant after waiting years for it to hit steam for non beta backers.
i'm a sucker for systems based gameplay like dark messiah/dishonored 1 and 2 so this should be hella fun for me


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> It's no coincidence that everyone's favorite, most-remembered games seem to be the ones they played when they were a little kid with a super-impressionable mind!! Hence: OoT is my favorite since that was the first I played



For the most part, yes that rings true. Though while I rate ALTTP highly, I still think Majora's Mask is the best Zelda game. I'm also not afraid to dump crap on some of my fond favorites like I did with Secret of Mana earlier in this thread. I'm sort of still planning to do that with Final Fantasy VI some time soon. 

Speaking of Zelda, I'm one of the guys who think once you've played one game, you've played them all. I breezed through Ocarina because of ALTTP and the original NES. For every subsequent game, the mechanics, aesthetics get better and the puzzles get more inventive and clever but the fundamental gameplay remains the same that it's hard to rate them against each other because they're more or less remakes. Aside from the terrible ones like Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks, you can pick a favorite and it really doesn't matter all too much. There's a Zelda game for every generation.

I do like it when Nintendo deviates for a more unique feel (sans Spirit Tracks). Wind Waker has that proto BOTW vast hugeness to it. Majora's Mask was a great change of pace after what felt like 'larger' ALTTP in Ocarina, which in turn was just a larger Zelda 1. And for all the crap it gets, I still like Zelda 2 a lot not just a successful deviation from the form but a solid game overall.


----------



## mongey

Link to the past will always be a favourote gaming experience of mine. But I’d say beath of the wild was a better game. I’d say probably top 5 all time for me.


----------



## Mathemagician

Spirit tracks was a very fun Zelda game in its own right. It just wasn’t a “core” game in the sense that it felt like the bigger games. Still a good Zelda. And the gameboy Zelda DX was very difficult in parts, was no slouch in the “feels like a real game” department.


----------



## wankerness

Zelda: Link's Awakening is one that gets left off lists cause people aren't aware of it, but tends to be rated extremely high on any list done by someone that's played it. Especially if they ever repeatedly robbed the shopkeeper.

I played through most of it on an emulator when I was in middle/high school or something, and I got stuck on the bird dungeon and started some other game and never came back to it. It was more complex and interesting than most of the earlier ones. I liked that you could equip two items instead of just having one "special item" slot. It felt more fluid than LTTP, partly because of this. (I'm talking the GBC version, I dunno if the 'original' played any differently).


----------



## PunkBillCarson

mongey said:


> Link to the past will always be a favourote gaming experience of mine. But I’d say beath of the wild was a better game. I’d say probably top 5 all time for me.




This is kind of unfair given that technology between the two are worlds apart.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Spyro: Reignited. Having all kinds of fun and I feel like a kid again.


----------



## mongey

PunkBillCarson said:


> This is kind of unfair given that technology between the two are worlds apart.


Maybe. But I’d still say super Mario is my fav game in the series even though I love Oddesy. My fav soccer game is sensible soccer. I think the old games can transcend the hardware gap.


----------



## wankerness

Played some FF12. I think I hate the license grid, but maybe I’m just too early (just got all 6 characters). I like the aesthetics, it reminds me more of ffiiv than any of the mainline ones. The voice acting is pretty bad, it sounds like everything was recorded through a ham radio, it’s weird that ffx didn’t have that problem. It reminds me of Shenmue!!

Vaan sucks, but everyone says that. I like Fran and her nihilism, it balances out the cringeworthy “giant sexy lady with bunny ears” design. Her buddy Balthier seems to be the best character so far, but I quite like Baasch and Ashe as well. 

Every time someone says PeNELo I get slightly annoyed.

I got Monster Hunter from the BF sale and played it for a couple hours. It is mind boggling how much of a crafting time sink it appears to be. The mini maps are more impenetrably dotted than an Ubisoft game. The gameplay was pretty fun though!! It seems like a good game to play in bursts of one expedition or quest at a time, but man, the gear upgrade menus make it look like it could be a bigger time sink than WoW.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Now in Chapter 11 in Yakuza 6. Some of the twists haven't been revealed yet but I can almost guess who's the guy who I'll be going on a shirtless decking in the final act. Some stray thoughts:

This may be the most J-Drama flavoured game I've ever played. From the main plot, to the entire baseball segment to the Cheers-esque social bar (which reminded me of a certain frustrating comedy sidequest in Yakuza 5 but thankfully much easier), to the Orange Mascot sidequests, to all the small subtle details (and of course the ink suit actors), this is essentially all the sappy J-Drama series I've seen game incarnate. It's quite charming actually. Only difference is that most problems are resolved with your fists, boots and the nearest bicycle, pot plant or communal bench.

I can understand why Kiryu is the sole playable focus, as the plot itself is a more smaller and personal affair, that putting anyone else in wouldn't work.

That said, the serious scene where Kiryu teaches Yuta a lesson in responsibility by punching him through a glass door was so unintentionally goofy it had me on hysterics and took away whatever emotional impact the scene was supposed to have.

The live chat segment is hilarious (largely due to Kiryu's permanent scowl and 2 finger typing) but could've been more refined. Having 2 porn stars isn't enough (I can't believe I just typed that ) compared to 0's abundant cast and replaying the live chat just for more vids gets old quick.

I don't mind constantly eating for EXP, but having reached the point where green technique points are becoming scarce is a little frustrating. I remember Sushi Gin in Kamurocho is good for this, but I'll have to wait from Onomichi.

I still haven't played Super Puyo Puyo yet.

The Darts minigame is thankfully much easier than any other Yakuza game. And getting drunk finally has some major adverse effect unlike previous games. No more bowling game for me to exploit...

Kiryu rapping to a M.O.V.E parody is the sole reason I sort of want his Karaoke album now.

Kinda sucks this is the only way to play Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown outside Japan. But it's still fun and there's at least a 2 player option.

The spearfishing minigame is practically a Virtua Cop reskin, right down to the bosses' attack patterns. It's fun and pretty well done, but again stingy in depth and payoffs (aside from an awesome Pitcher)... which is how I feel about a lot of the side stuff in this game frankly. Virtua Cop also needs to be in Club Sega in future intallments... Project Judge I'm looking ay you...

The Clan Creator's reverse tower defense game is ok at best, but I'm getting rather bored with it. There's a lot to grind towards the end so I'm just straight up cheating with the codes using usual series mainstays. The hilariously out of character points of using Date, Pocket Fighter and the Mascot have some appeal when they're awesome for the game.

And from a canonical perspective the whole clan creator is rather perfunctory when Kiryu has been trying to shake of his yakuza title over the course of the series let alone shown his prowess as a one man army. But eh, whatever. 


I need to get this out of my system quickly, as I'm itching to jump back into Ys VIII.


----------



## Metropolis

chopeth said:


> It is. Huge adventure awaits



It was! Finished the main story yesterday, I still have all the valkyries to beat, last Muspelheim challenge and Nifelheim to explore.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Now in Chapter 11 in Yakuza 6. Some of the twists haven't been revealed yet but I can almost guess who's the guy who I'll be going on a shirtless decking in the final act. Some stray thoughts:
> 
> This may be the most J-Drama flavoured game I've ever played. From the main plot, to the entire baseball segment to the Cheers-esque social bar (which reminded me of a certain frustrating comedy sidequest in Yakuza 5 but thankfully much easier), to the Orange Mascot sidequests, to all the small subtle details (and of course the ink suit actors), this is essentially all the sappy J-Drama series I've seen game incarnate. It's quite charming actually. Only difference is that most problems are resolved with your fists, boots and the nearest bicycle, pot plant or communal bench.
> 
> I can understand why Kiryu is the sole playable focus, as the plot itself is a more smaller and personal affair, that putting anyone else in wouldn't work.
> 
> That said, the serious scene where Kiryu teaches Yuta a lesson in responsibility by punching him through a glass door was so unintentionally goofy it had me on hysterics and took away whatever emotional impact the scene was supposed to have.
> 
> The live chat segment is hilarious (largely due to Kiryu's permanent scowl and 2 finger typing) but could've been more refined. Having 2 porn stars isn't enough (I can't believe I just typed that ) compared to 0's abundant cast and replaying the live chat just for more vids gets old quick.
> 
> I don't mind constantly eating for EXP, but having reached the point where green technique points are becoming scarce is a little frustrating. I remember Sushi Gin in Kamurocho is good for this, but I'll have to wait from Onomichi.
> 
> I still haven't played Super Puyo Puyo yet.
> 
> The Darts minigame is thankfully much easier than any other Yakuza game. And getting drunk finally has some major adverse effect unlike previous games. No more bowling game for me to exploit...
> 
> Kiryu rapping to a M.O.V.E parody is the sole reason I sort of want his Karaoke album now.
> 
> Kinda sucks this is the only way to play Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown outside Japan. But it's still fun and there's at least a 2 player option.
> 
> The spearfishing minigame is practically a Virtua Cop reskin, right down to the bosses' attack patterns. It's fun and pretty well done, but again stingy in depth and payoffs (aside from an awesome Pitcher)... which is how I feel about a lot of the side stuff in this game frankly. Virtua Cop also needs to be in Club Sega in future intallments... Project Judge I'm looking ay you...
> 
> The Clan Creator's reverse tower defense game is ok at best, but I'm getting rather bored with it. There's a lot to grind towards the end so I'm just straight up cheating with the codes using usual series mainstays. The hilariously out of character points of using Date, Pocket Fighter and the Mascot have some appeal when they're awesome for the game.
> 
> And from a canonical perspective the whole clan creator is rather perfunctory when Kiryu has been trying to shake of his yakuza title over the course of the series let alone shown his prowess as a one man army. But eh, whatever.
> 
> 
> I need to get this out of my system quickly, as I'm itching to jump back into Ys VIII.



I kind of liked the spearfishing virtua cop thing, simply because of the ridiculous bosses. The last one especially.

The food system was really annoying to me for quite a while, but I was used to it for Kiwami II. I did look up the best places/food combos to max certain stats, though. Sushi Gin was the place for technique, yes. I did max out all stats in that game. It didn't end up being that tedious if you get all of the appetite upgrades/downgrades (more capacity, getting hungry faster).

My friend in Osaka made me watch a couple episodes of some cheesy Japanese TV show on Netflix called Osaka Stories or something which seemed to pretty much be an anthology of light drama stories set around patrons in the same bar where one would have a minor problem and another would help them solve it. I DEFINITELY saw the similarity to Yakuza 6, so I'm guessing that's the kind of thing you're describing?

I laughed really hard the first time I did the typing thing, the furious 2-fingered typing animation combined with the stupid AIM-kid style things you type is hilarious. Of course, repeating it a few times was dull as heck, but so are all those sleazy minigames that are just supposed to give you video clips of girls in underwear making "come and get it big boy" faces in the games I've played.

The clan creator thing was too easily cheesed. I mean, I did it to myself just to get the extremely long plotline finished, but you could pretty much just send out a couple characters with the temporary invincibility and the rage mode buffs and destroy every level. Pocket Fighter is a must, and makes everything so much more fun. I think I used him, Date, some bad guy from the main game (I forget the name, some older serious guy with a moustache), Majima, and someone else and pretty much didn't have to do anything else other than blindly spam cannon fodder while rotating the buffs.

The same clan creator thing is in Kiwami II, but they removed those cheese abilities and it's vastly more involving as a result as there's actual strategy and placement involved. (Also, it was too much work so I didn't do more than a few "levels")

I always hate the arcade videogames in these things, because they're too old-school and frustrating for a wimp like me. Like, playing that car racing game (mode 7-ish) in Yakuza 0 over and over till I won was torture for me. I think Virtua Fighter in this one was the first I completed, since it's new enough to be playable instead of enraging. Super Puyo Puyo was WAY too hard for me to come close to touching the computer. I mean, I get the gameplay, but you have to be lightning fast to not get ten tons of trash dropped on your head before you can react. It seemed like every time I was getting anywhere the computer would just counter all my offense and hit me with twice as many trash blocks, too! I gave up quickly.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Played some FF12. I think I hate the license grid, but maybe I’m just too early (just got all 6 characters). I like the aesthetics, it reminds me more of ffiiv than any of the mainline ones. The voice acting is pretty bad, it sounds like everything was recorded through a ham radio, it’s weird that ffx didn’t have that problem. It reminds me of Shenmue!!
> 
> Vaan sucks, but everyone says that. I like Fran and her nihilism, it balances out the cringeworthy “giant sexy lady with bunny ears” design. Her buddy Balthier seems to be the best character so far, but I quite like Baasch and Ashe as well.
> 
> Every time someone says PeNELo I get slightly annoyed.
> 
> I got Monster Hunter from the BF sale and played it for a couple hours. It is mind boggling how much of a crafting time sink it appears to be. The mini maps are more impenetrably dotted than an Ubisoft game. The gameplay was pretty fun though!! It seems like a good game to play in bursts of one expedition or quest at a time, but man, the gear upgrade menus make it look like it could be a bigger time sink than WoW.



As I understand it (from long ago memories) Balthier or Baasch (one of them) was originally intended as the main character but then they changed goal mid production and introduced Vaan because they felt a young androgynous male might be more popular with audiences.

I’m not going to add another 4 seconds to google it but maybe someone whose a bigger fan can clarify what happened with that character. Cause he’s not as interesting as Zidane and his buddies from 9.


----------



## wankerness

I read a couple topics about the game when deciding whether to buy it. There were a million posts that said nothing more than that Vaan sucked, but there were a couple more constructive posts that said things like "it's not hard to play the game treating Vaan as the observer of a good story instead of treating the story as being about him" or something to that effect. Since I only just filled up the party, I haven't really had the chance to do that, but we'll see how it goes! At least he's not a mega-douche like Cloud Strife or Hope from FFXIII, he's merely bland and kind of annoying. Plus, of course, I always stick someone else as the party leader so I see them running around instead of Vaan whenever possible (it's not in the cities so far).


----------



## chopeth

Metropolis said:


> It was! Finished the main story yesterday, I still have all the valkyries to beat, last Muspelheim challenge and Nifelheim to explore.



You'd better do the Nifelheim first if you don't want to have a bad time with those freaking valkyries... you'll know why.


----------



## narad

Anything on steam sale worth getting?


----------



## Demiurge

That's a big sale, but I bought a pile of games during the last sale that I haven't even touched.


----------



## TedEH

If everything is always on sale.... is anything ever really on sale?

Nothing really stands out to me right now as a must-buy deal, but then.... the backlog is there to remind that I really don't need to purchase more games.


----------



## Mathemagician

I have like three hunnit games between steam and my consoles/PSN. I legit don’t need to buy games but...but....just one more....


----------



## TedEH

Steam is up to 484, then there's Origin games, console games, handhelds, phone games.....
I have a lot of games. Not sure how to feel about that.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

narad said:


> Anything on steam sale worth getting?


sniper elite is good stupid fun. you can shoot nazis in the nuts.
divinity 2 or pillars of eternity if you want an old school baldur's gate/planescape torment esque rpg 
nier automata: legit the only good rpg squenix has put out in years
shadow of war if you want to play assassin's creed set in middle earth mixed with gory batman esque combat/tower defense type gameplay
total war warhammer: total war but with filthy greenbloods.


----------



## ittoa666

Still putting plenty of time in on Red Dead 2. I can't stop singing the praises of that game. I'm still having so much fun playing it.


----------



## mongey

steamworld dig 2 as a short term distraction. its good

wanna get civ 6 on switch but it just came out and is $90 now for some reason. expensive even for Australia . will wait a couple weeks until it drops a bit


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> sniper elite is good stupid fun. you can shoot nazis in the nuts.
> divinity 2 or pillars of eternity if you want an old school baldur's gate/planescape torment esque rpg
> nier automata: legit the only good rpg squenix has put out in years
> shadow of war if you want to play assassin's creed set in middle earth mixed with gory batman esque combat/tower defense type gameplay
> total war warhammer: total war but with filthy greenbloods.



Huh. I forgot there’s a PC version of Nier Automata. I am tempted, if it’s at all well optimized and the assets hold up to higher resolution.


----------



## narad

I really want Nier but I feel like if I really dig in I'll be able to get it at like 75% off before I would ever have the chance to play it. It's just so expensive for something that's been on steam that long? But yea, saw a Nier Automata cafe last week and was like...ah, too bad I don't know anything about that.


----------



## wankerness

What? Where do you live that you saw THAT? Even Akihabara didn’t have such a thing when I was there last month.

I just upgraded to a ps4 pro and it came with RDR2...I’m kind of torn on possibly just selling it and buying it some day in the distant future when I want to play it, at which point it will probably also be cheaper. I’m curious, it just sounds like it will be a greatly inferior experience without having played the first, and my backlog is big enough already!


----------



## Ralyks

I picked up God of War, Detroit, and Dragon Quest XI for Black Friday, because I suck and have to much ADD


----------



## narad

wankerness said:


> What? Where do you live that you saw THAT? Even Akihabara didn’t have such a thing when I was there last month.



Ya, Akihabara. The square enix Cafe, done up in nier automata theme.


----------



## Mathemagician

Any of you Jabronis play Rainbow 6 Siege and got tips? So far I’m just doing like one tutorial a day when I find time and watching YouTube guides if I have a few minutes. Game is a lot to take in and distracts me from learning Mahjong in Yakuza.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Any of you Jabronis play Rainbow 6 Siege and got tips? So far I’m just doing like one tutorial a day when I find time and watching YouTube guides if I have a few minutes. Game is a lot to take in and distracts me from learning Mahjong in Yakuza.


1. git gud
2. never play tachanka
3. camping is always viable and is encouraged
4. always stick together
5. acogs are the best attachment


----------



## wankerness

narad said:


> Ya, Akihabara. The square enix Cafe, done up in nier automata theme.



Ah, looks like maybe they ditched that theme in February and are back to boring ol' FFXV. Good, I'm glad I didn't miss it, the Emil head food is pretty funny. I don't recall seeing that building when I was there, I was too busy being distracted by maid cafes and sega buildings with Yakuza Kiwami II banners. 

(on phones, it doesn't show people's location, I didn't see you were in Tokyo till now!!)


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I picked up God of War, Detroit, and Dragon Quest XI for Black Friday, because I suck and have to much ADD



I really want to play DQXI but it sounds like it's about a hundred hours long on average. I'm hoping by the time I would play it it's cheaper. I think it could be one of those games like Nier or Persona where it takes a really long time to get down to 30, though.


----------



## TheKindred

if you like hardcore, realistics shooters ....

get escape from tarkov. shit is amazing and addictive as hell. 

also 30% off right now for BF


----------



## wankerness

I’m steadily becoming more frustrated with the ps4 controller’s left stick placement. My thumb is almost hyper-extended when moving it right. The Xbox controller seems so much more intelligently designed; the ps4 controller is just a holdover from ps1 DualShock where most games still used the pad!

Looks like the only licensed controller with the stick on the far left instead of lower middle left is a hundred bucks. I could buy an Xbox one for that much!!

(Everything else about Xbox one is terrible besides backward compatibility and killer instinct)


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I really want to play DQXI but it sounds like it's about a hundred hours long on average. I'm hoping by the time I would play it it's cheaper. I think it could be one of those games like Nier or Persona where it takes a really long time to get down to 30, though.



The fact that it got a Black Friday sale is pretty much why I grabbed it now. And so far, it's the modern take on an old school JRPG I was hoping it would be.


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> sniper elite is good stupid fun. you can shoot nazis in the nuts.
> divinity 2 or pillars of eternity if you want an old school baldur's gate/planescape torment esque rpg
> nier automata: legit the only good rpg squenix has put out in years
> shadow of war if you want to play assassin's creed set in middle earth mixed with gory batman esque combat/tower defense type gameplay
> total war warhammer: total war but with filthy greenbloods.


Oi! You take that back about the greenskins! 

Also Slay the Spire is flipping awesome and a very addictive hybrid between a roguelike dungeon crawler and deck building game. Only single player but I can't recommend it enough.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I’m steadily becoming more frustrated with the ps4 controller’s left stick placement. My thumb is almost hyper-extended when moving it right. The Xbox controller seems so much more intelligently designed; the ps4 controller is just a holdover from ps1 DualShock where most games still used the pad!
> 
> Looks like the only licensed controller with the stick on the far left instead of lower middle left is a hundred bucks. I could buy an Xbox one for that much!!
> 
> (Everything else about Xbox one is terrible besides backward compatibility and killer instinct)


This is the reason it was so funny that Sony bragged about their 20 years of hardware designing advising the ergonomics of the PSVR. In 20 years they managed to add spikes to a SNES controller, put the thumb sticks in the dumbest places, and then they thought about softening the spikes.


----------



## Mathemagician

They got massive pushback when trying to make changes to the PS4 controller. The stupid corporate-nostalgia-brand-name-fanboys cried bloody murder.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally finished off Yakuza 6, including beating up Jo Amon: also known in my house as "wanker's cramp from incessant button mashing". Didn't bother completing the Clan creator as it got rather boring. 

I'm with the majority of fans who think this was lacking (certainly a few steps back compared to the content juggernauts of 5 and 0). But I also understand why it had to be based on the theme and story on where the series protagonist stands at this point. It didn't satisfy me as much as the aforementioned 2. As I suspected, the guy who looks like my local GP ended up being the final boss. So many have said he was a let down (again compared to previous games, fair enough), but from a plot perspective on how the character was developed, it works. I certainly felt satisfied making him my shirtless bitch after a barrage of heat moves. 

I sort of wished Sega took more time in polishing all the rough edges especially when introducing the Dragon engine making everything look so good. That said, having a rugby like segment with a baby being passed around and Kiryu punching a shark in the face are solid reasons why I love the series. And that says a lot in a series where Kiryu has stopped guided missiles by SCOWLING at them. Goofy dumb fun a plenty.



wankerness said:


> My friend in Osaka made me watch a couple episodes of some cheesy Japanese TV show on Netflix called Osaka Stories or something which seemed to pretty much be an anthology of light drama stories set around patrons in the same bar where one would have a minor problem and another would help them solve it. I DEFINITELY saw the similarity to Yakuza 6, so I'm guessing that's the kind of thing you're describing?



Sort of, yes. My sister and I were on a phase of watching a ton of these, mostly low budget and light hearted, spanning from comedy (of the Asian flavour) to soaps among others. Incidentally most we've seen had the guy who plays Someya. It's funny, we practically have watched the actor grow up over the years, so for me, it was quite fun beating him around with a bar stool. 

I said before that having the high profile actors in this game make them red flag spoiler alerts, though for the most part it's mostly for those familiar with them, hence why I said why I thought Beat Takeshi was too obvious, especially with Sega heavily promoting him. The Tojo triple threat of 0 were also that to an extent, since all three are well known for playing yakuzas for most of their film careers. I am curious how Beat Takeshi feels about being in Yakuza 6 since he's vocal on how he hates games going so far as putting his name on an NES game that actively hates the player. 



Anyways that's enough Yakuza for me (until I get a good deal on Kiwami 2) and laying right into Ys VIII to scratch my JRPG itch. Just got the blacksmith and already gone to my copious grinding habits.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Finally finished off Yakuza 6, including beating up Jo Amon: also known in my house as "wanker's cramp from incessant button mashing". Didn't bother completing the Clan creator as it got rather boring.
> 
> I sort of wished Sega took more time in polishing all the rough edges especially when introducing the Dragon engine making everything look so good. That said, having a rugby like segment with a baby being passed around and Kiryu punching a shark in the face are solid reasons why I love the series. And that says a lot in a series where Kiryu has stopped guided missiles by SCOWLING at them. Goofy dumb fun a plenty.



Did you play Kiwami II? I forgot. Regardless, it uses the same engine with a LOT more confidence. There's a hell of a lot more content, things load and run more smoothly, etc. I saw several people say that 6 was an awkward first step into the new engine the same way that 3 was back in the day. (I haven't played 3 yet, just parroting people!). I bet you were one of the ones who said that!

Jo Amon wasn't so much a button-mashing fest as a "my hands got really sweaty from the stress of dodging those goddam drones." That fight was pretty great, IMO. The first time I started it and the drones showed up I was like "hey, what are those." Then mines started happening and I started getting hit by drones while trying to dodge both them and mines and I had to laugh at how fast I blew up. Dodging those things with the game's system of not being able to punch and look around at the same time was not a good time, but I sure felt a sense of accomplishment at the end, even if I cheesed it by going into heat mode for as much of the end of his lifebar as possible and thus pretty much avoiding the worst stuff.



Mathemagician said:


> They got massive pushback when trying to make changes to the PS4 controller. The stupid corporate-nostalgia-brand-name-fanboys cried bloody murder.



That doesn't surprise me one bit, with everything like this there's always a giant contingent of screaming babies that tend to be the enemy of progress. Only Nintendo has really disregarded them and radically changed things every generation. Don't get me wrong, either, the PS4 controller WORKS and my thumbs only start getting messed up if I play too long, but it still seems like a really stupid design on the left side considering practically no game uses the pad primarily and it's in the accessible location. The XBOX controller has its own drawbacks, being clunky and stupidly large. Well, the 360 controller anyway, I've never played a an xbone.

It's just funny when you think about the ridiculous N64 controller having a more practical and usable left stick. Even if the pad was completely unusable at the same time unless you REALLY hyper-extended.

I got really into FF12 finally, and the last couple days I ground levels and money for a really long time and then ran around doing a bunch of marks, even though I'm barely into the story yet. The story is a goddam mess as usual, by the way. I could not care less about any scene that cuts to the sinister villains plotting (who have had 0 interaction with any heroes). I already don't remember a thing about them. I'm having fun with the gameplay, even though I hate that you can't queue actions for multiple people without unpausing and then repausing really fast.


----------



## Mathemagician

From what I gather Microsoft just reduced the 360 controller down a tad and added a better d-pad and called it a day. So like everyone was happy.

Sony made the PS4 controller a bit smaller too from the prototype, if remember the interview I read correctly but the PS3 was when they were going to try something different.

Microsoft has since released the pro controller however with the paddles/etc and that imo is huge for a first-party controller. I just got an adapter for paddles for my PS4 controller and it is the single biggest upgrade there is. Being able to move and aim while still jumping in FPS games is a huge benefit.

I’m a fan of getting the right tool for the job. For example after switching to an arcade stick for fighting games I 100% will not go back to using an uncomfortable controller ever again. Give me Sanwa/Seimitsu parts or give me K.O.’d.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> From what I gather Microsoft just reduced the 360 controller down a tad and added a better d-pad and called it a day. So like everyone was happy.
> 
> Sony made the PS4 controller a bit smaller too from the prototype, if remember the interview I read correctly but the PS3 was when they were going to try something different.
> 
> Microsoft has since released the pro controller however with the paddles/etc and that imo is huge for a first-party controller. I just got an adapter for paddles for my PS4 controller and it is the single biggest upgrade there is. Being able to move and aim while still jumping in FPS games is a huge benefit.
> 
> I’m a fan of getting the right tool for the job. For example after switching to an arcade stick for fighting games I 100% will not go back to using an uncomfortable controller ever again. Give me Sanwa/Seimitsu parts or give me K.O.’d.


mouse and keyboard is the best option by far for fps, especially since the ps4 can support em. Back when I dabbled in fortnite on ps4 i'd shred controller users. 
I'm not sure if the xbox one can support m/kb as well though.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

KnightBrolaire said:


> mouse and keyboard is the best option by far for fps, especially since the ps4 can support em. Back when I dabbled in fortnite on ps4 i'd shred controller users.
> I'm not sure if the xbox one can support m/kb as well though.



It can with third party hardware but from all the reviews I've seen, it's somewhat clunky. PS4 m+kb'ing sounds more feasible.


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> mouse and keyboard is the best option by far for fps


For a while I was really enjoying the steam controller for fps games - the combo of the touch pad thingie and gyro movement was accurate enough to enjoy. Wouldn't have cut it in anything competitive though.


----------



## Mathemagician

KnightBrolaire said:


> mouse and keyboard is the best option by far for fps, especially since the ps4 can support em. Back when I dabbled in fortnite on ps4 i'd shred controller users.
> I'm not sure if the xbox one can support m/kb as well though.



Oh no doubt no doubt no doubt. I don’t fanboy - consoles are my favorite for plopping on the couch. But while playing FF14 with a controller I was definitely like “man I wish I had this in my office to use simpler keystrokes for my 72 keybinds.” 

That’s ignoring how much better it is for FPS games. Thumb on spacebar to jump and click on enemies heads cannot be beat.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Microsoft has since released the pro controller however with the paddles/etc and that imo is huge for a first-party controller. *I just got an adapter for paddles for my PS4 controller* and it is the single biggest upgrade there is. Being able to move and aim while still jumping in FPS games is a huge benefit.



What is this? I googled that exact phrase and it looked like the results just made it easier to press L/R. What I need is something that lets you press the equivalents of ABXY while using the right stick!


----------



## Mathemagician

Collective Minds FPS Strikepack. 

It’s on amazon but they may have holiday sales going on on their own site. 

It has a “mods” mode and a “no mods” mode that is the default setting. 

The way it works is it plugs into your your controller mini usb and locks into the speaker hole on the controller. Each paddle can be re-mapped with a small button above the paddle. Hold the right button and then hold X and wait 2 seconds. Done. Now your X bottom and the right paddle do the same thing (usually jump). 

Hold the left button and hold circle. Now the left paddle lets you crouch/slide in COD. 

Can be remapped on the fly mid-game too. 

Idk shit about the mods mode because I ain’t a fucking lil’ bitch. Lol.


----------



## wankerness

Huh. And this thing can't/hasn't been broken by firmware updates/PS4 updates? Sounds like I should check it out.


----------



## wankerness

They’re trickling out Switches on Facebook for 180 bucks so I bought one like an idiot. I’ll buy that old school rpg and probably let it rot otherwise. Oh, and maybe Skyrim to play during breaks at work!!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> They’re trickling out Switches on Facebook for 180 bucks so I bought one like an idiot. I’ll buy that old school rpg and probably let it rot otherwise. Oh, and maybe Skyrim to play during breaks at work!!


get breath of the wild. literally the only reason to own a switch besides mario odyssey imo.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Breath of Fire III. Game is bringing back memories of my Playstation 1 days.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> get breath of the wild. literally the only reason to own a switch besides mario odyssey imo.



I have it for wiiu already, same with bayonetta 2, which I know are two big draws for people without wiius (aka almost everyone). I want smash bros and Mario odyssey and Mario kart at some point, but mainly I think it’s going to be a portable thing.


----------



## Ralyks

I got sidetracked again, this time by Donut County. Although this one I beat and got the Platinum in about 2 hours. But what a fun, quirky game with some funny writing. Also, the trashopedia is just the best.

Just got to act 3 of Spider-Man. Going to try to grind this one out and have it done by the end of the weekend. Then maybe go back to catching up with Kiryu-san...


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I got sidetracked again, this time by Donut County. Although this one I beat and got the Platinum in about 2 hours. But what a fun, quirky game with some funny writing. Also, the trashopedia is just the best.
> 
> Just got to act 3 of Spider-Man. Going to try to grind this one out and have it done by the end of the weekend. Then maybe go back to catching up with Kiryu-san...



EDIT: Ha, I got you confused with Bloody Inferno.


----------



## TedEH

I'm annoyed again this morning at the prices people ask for retro games. It's not worth $100 for a game that's older than me.


----------



## Mathemagician

Dungeons and Dragons. I’m 30 this year and have always wanted to try it so figured “fuck it.” Picked up the starter set and players guide and I’m just making my way through it with the wife (who found it very fun once she got into it). 

I read a tiny bit before hand and have decided to just let rules play second fiddle to moving the plot along since I didn’t want her to get bored waiting around. 

Best part was the realization that 90% of every rpg I’ve ever played can be traced back to this Gary Gygax dude and his nerd buddies.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> Best part was the realization that 90% of every rpg I’ve ever played can be traced back to this Gary Gygax dude and his nerd buddies.


I think that's why I was interested in the original Dragon Warrior / Quest. I might have my history wrong, but I think that was the origin of some elements of the JRPG.


----------



## Mathemagician

You’re 100% right. Apparently after DND came out a Japanese radio station (?) started running a campaign on the air for fun with a story they had in mind, and then it took off spawning a loyal fan base and even books starring the same characters adventuring etc etc. while it may not have been Pokémon/Harry Potter Level fame it was a long running series: they formed “Group SNE” and the storylines became better known as “Record of the Lodoss War” in the West.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

TedEH said:


> I'm annoyed again this morning at the prices people ask for retro games. It's not worth $100 for a game that's older than me.




Not to you, but to other people it is. It all depends on what people WILL pay.


----------



## BlackMastodon

PunkBillCarson said:


> Not to you, but to other people it is. It all depends on what people WILL pay.


100% true, unfortunately. We can say the same about guitars. Would we pay ridiculous amounts for guitars older than us? Some of us would, others that want the latest pickups/electronics/technology wouldn't. It's a collector's thing that's common across every medium.


----------



## wankerness

That's what ROMs are for!! or those hundreds of counterfeits that flood ebay


----------



## TedEH

I mean yeah, I get that - I get that it's potentially worth more to others, but I still don't think those high valuations are reasonable outside of the context of "that's what the market says they're worth". The fact that there's a lot of demand, and not much availability puts all the power in the hands of the sellers, who obviously are going to try to get the most they can out of it. I still think it's fair to be frustrated that the prices have been driven up this way.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Oh for sure. It's super frustrating if you're after the original cartridges. Otherwise like Wankerness said, I just stick to ROMs if I want to play the older games.


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Oh for sure. It's super frustrating if you're after the original cartridges. Otherwise like Wankerness said, I just stick to ROMs if I want to play the older games.



After reading reviews of the PS Classic and seeing the comments bitching about games that weren't included, I was reminded of the awesomeness of a couple games I played on it back in the day. I haven't really thought about Parasite Eve since I played through it, but I remember loving it. I'm going to be downloading that one for sure. I think I still have the disc somewhere, and I have a PS2 that still works, but it probably will look/play better on an emulator! I never played the sequel, either. I did play Silent Hill 1 somewhat recently on an emulator, so I'm covered with that one. A lot of people brought up Vagrant Story and Chrono Cross as well. I have the discs for Chrono Cross but have never played it, but don't have Vagrant Story. I'm curious about both. And of course, a lot of people brought up RE2 and how dumb it was that they only included the bad version of RE1 when RE2 was vastly superior and would have been great advertisement for the impending remake. RE2 was the only one I ever played pre-RE4. And, I remember getting grabbed by a zombie through the hallway, which scared me so bad I dropped the controller, and then promptly turned the system off and never touched it again. Having my TV/system in a dank basement wasn't good for my nerves.

Speaking of Silent Hill, I need to replay SH2 at some point. I played through SH3 multiple times on PC and loved it, but SH2 just didn't grab me at all. Hearing reviews over the last several years, it seems to be one of the most loved games of all time and the near-universal consensus for best of the series, if not THE best horror game ever, so clearly I need to try it again.

This is after the hundreds of hours worth of immediate backlog I have, of course.  I just got Dragon Quest in the mail after there was a blowout on the physical version during black friday. Plus, I'm sure I have a ton of FF12 left, especially since I'm now addicted to aiming for the marks and leveling up bigtime more than I am to the main story. And I'm only a bit into Monster Hunter so far! And I am going to receive a Switch shortly, though I have no games for it yet!

Speaking of comments about PS1 games that I was reading, I saw a bunch bringing up the re-release of Castlevania SOTN that were specifically addressing the voiceacting. Not only did they remove the hilariously cheesy voiceacting, but they even changed the lines! No more "miserable piles of secret"s!!! What a tragedy. I'll stick with the 360 version.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

TedEH said:


> I mean yeah, I get that - I get that it's potentially worth more to others, but I still don't think those high valuations are reasonable outside of the context of "that's what the market says they're worth". The fact that there's a lot of demand, and not much availability puts all the power in the hands of the sellers, who obviously are going to try to get the most they can out of it. I still think it's fair to be frustrated that the prices have been driven up this way.




How do you think I feel when I want a really badass 30 year old SG, but there's people out there that'll pay thousands rather than hundreds?


----------



## TedEH

We had an emulator with Mario World on it to keep us occupied during a road trip not super long ago - but today I fired up the real SNES and... for how much I like to complain that the NES controllers were not that great, the real SNES controllers (and the real TV, etc) feel so much more responsive than the cheap (but relatively modern) logitech usb controllers we had. It used to be a joke that people would blame the controllers for losing, but the usb controllers legit made the game harder. Even with the input lag of the modern TV, it seems more responsive than the emulator. I don't know if I'm imagining it, maybe.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

^No, you're not imagining it. Games on emulator don't even feel the same as they did back when. There's a definite difference there.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Did you play Kiwami II? I forgot. Regardless, it uses the same engine with a LOT more confidence. There's a hell of a lot more content, things load and run more smoothly, etc. I saw several people say that 6 was an awkward first step into the new engine the same way that 3 was back in the day. (I haven't played 3 yet, just parroting people!). I bet you were one of the ones who said that!



I haven't played Kiwami 2 yet, as I'm not prepared to pay full price for it just yet. Maybe later down the line when I want to visit Kamurocho again before Project Judge comes out. 

I did say that about 3, but it was also from observations. And from my experience with 4, it was RGG studios fully immersed with the new engine and went to town. Kiwami 2 sort of feels like that despite being a remake, and it does look like a much grander effort than Kiwami 1. And going from the Project Judge footage, they've really taken the Dragon Engine to town.



wankerness said:


> A lot of people brought up Vagrant Story and Chrono Cross as well. I have the discs for Chrono Cross but have never played it, but don't have Vagrant Story. I'm curious about both.



I'd be one of those guys too. Chrono Cross is great, but falls short compared to Trigger, namely due to being too overbloated and at times collapsing under it's own weight. Still a worthy Chrono game, just don't expect the same level as Chrono Trigger. 

Vagrant Story is awesome. One of the better fun attempts of 3D Metroidvania, I can almost call it a proto Dark Souls gameplay wise. Great story set in the Ivalice universe, highly recommended since you're currently on FFXII. 



wankerness said:


> This is after the hundreds of hours worth of immediate backlog I have, of course.



That's the standard gaming pile of shame. The amount of games I've abandoned is ludicrous but I also have a live to live. Hard to believe with my tastes gearing towards bloated JRPGs.  Funny enough FFXII was one of them. I abused the gambit system to the point that the auto attacks did most of the work and I got bored playing with one hand. I should revisit it soon. But after just seeing an FF concert, I do want to start XV some time. 

But Ys VIII is top priority for now, and really having fun with it. Funny I'm also reminded of Dark Souls with parts. Not just my kneejerk reaction to dodge roll in tight situations, but the world layout. Albeit toned down considerably and not as open, but more aesthetically. You know that what you see from a distance you will go there eventually. I did roll my eyes with one particular cave section and sighed "Oh look at all the cobwebs, and these spiders lusting for my flesh. I hope I don't encounter their giant mother." And lo and behold I spoke to soon. The boss shows up and I eyrolled so hard it could've given Tina Fey a run for her money. "Oh no, I'm screwed. Please let me beg for my life once I'm done picking the remains of the last 20 billion dead giant spiders from between my teeth." Perhaps I'm a little tired of yet another trope exploited by JRPGs as it just feels so slapdash now. 

Still enjoying it immensely. I also love the whole home base mechanic that reminded me of the township parts of Breath Of Fire 2.


----------



## wankerness

FFXII really has its teeth into me, which is a problem, as it has a MASSIVE amount of content. Like, in a big five hour play session with the travel/small battle speed mostly at 4x I'll progress the main plot a little bit and do a few hunts (sidequests) out of the like, 50 that there are, and MAYBE get an esper out of the several of those there are. I don't have a clue how much time a fairly complete run through is supposed to take, but I'm estimating around a hundred hours!!

The gambit system is fantastic. I would MUCH rather be able to run around autoattacking the "trash" enemies than have to get thrown into a battle screen where I have to manually choose "autoattack" for everyone and scroll through the menus and choose heal every now and then. It is so great being able to run through the world at 4x speed, killing all enemies in a flash at 4x speed, than having to plod through the open map and slowly do what I mentioned at 1x speed like basically ever other FF game. There's absolutely no difference in difficulty, just waste of time!

I have to micromanage bigtime whenever there's a boss that isn't massively lower level than me, so it's really not less interactive than any of the earlier games if you're in a "real" fight. And there's also the strategizing of coming up with new gambits for particularly hard fights to counter specific mechanics you encounter, like setting everyone to use a cure silence item immediately on being silenced, or setting one character to dispel as soon as a certain buff appears on the boss, that kind of thing. I dunno. Usually on first attempts, I have to do all that stuff manually, and occasionally I will pull it off. The only problem at all that I have with the battle system is either you can't (or I haven't figured out how to) queue up actions for multiple characters without inputting one action and then very quickly hitting the pause button again to choose a different character's action, leaving a split second of terror where you think the boss will kill you before you can get that next action input. The fights are pretty hard, too, as the battlefield is full 3D instead of some functionally 2D battle screen like most of these games. Having to cast "decoy" (the equivalent of misdirect) onto the "tank" is an absolute necessity on most of the difficult boss fights or else the boss runs wild trying to kill your caster/healer, or it will turn around and do cone damage at your non-tanks and wipe them out, etc. I occasionally forget to do it again before it wears off and that happens and GAME OVER.

It's really good. The only huge complaint I have is that the traps are bullshit. Like, they're EVERYWHERE, and there's absolutely no "disable trap" mechanic, and you can't control the pathing of your two teammates, so in some areas you're stuck either leaving on the accessory that lets you walk over them without blowing them up all the time, or having to switch it out constantly. You can roll the dice with walking on a trap, but some of them are insta-kill.


----------



## Mathemagician

I just re-upped my FF14 subscription and your description of how much content there is reminded me of what I may have just done, lol.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I just re-upped my FF14 subscription and your description of how much content there is reminded me of what I may have just done, lol.



I played that for a while when Heavensward was the current content. I think I hit max level with a healing class or job or whatever they were called, and then played up to mid-level on a few others. It's a good game as far as those things go, but the 2.5 second GCD just drove me insane, and it got worse and worse the further in content I got. It felt like I was handcuffed after every action! It actually caused me to re-subscribe to WoW even though I hadn't played it in five years just because I was having so much fun with FF14 but wanted a version that felt far more responsive.  It did mean the playstyle was more deliberate, in that you had time to think about everything you did, and it was less forgiving in that if you chose the wrong one you would very possibly cause a wipe right then and there even on the 5 man content, while with WoW you could screw up right and left unless you were in a mythic dungeon or something.


----------



## Mathemagician

Yeah wow just became every class does the same thing with different names and like a million skills. So each class feels fun at first but then you’re just always doing the same rotation. I actually like the slower pace of abilities in FF since it means you can better focus on cool mechanics.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Yeah wow just became every class does the same thing with different names and like a million skills. So each class feels fun at first but then you’re just always doing the same rotation. I actually like the slower pace of abilities in FF since it means you can better focus on cool mechanics.



FF14 had much simpler boss fights (seriously, raid guides in WoW these days have several pages for many bosses), but they were more unforgiving. Lots of "move out of the bad circle/path boss is going to suddenly rush," but unlike WoW where you could usually survive a tick or two with a tiny bit of health remaining, especially on regular or medium difficulty, you'd get 1-shot. The graphics were a lot better, though!

I played the new WoW expansion for a couple of months and totally lost interest and haven't touched it since the end of September. I absolutely hated what they did to the gear mechanics with the artifact weapon kinds of abilities being removed and then moved to drops, but even if you lucked out and got a drop that had the one or two good abilities out of ~30-40, the gear itself all had the abilities locked behind what could be multiple days of grinding before you could even use it!! The concept of dungeon/raid upgrades having to just sit in your bags for days was incredibly stupid. 

The game slowed down in pace again with simple mechanics as well, probably just cause of the gear reset, but every class lost even more abilities, which was saying something with how incredibly dumbed-down every class got from TBC on. The removal of talent trees at some point between cataclysm and WoD certainly made things less interesting to us borderline RPG nerds.


----------



## Kaura

Been playing Ring of Elysium for a couple of days. It's surprisingly fun. The funny thing is that it's pretty bug free and I haven't faced any lagging or crashing even though the game is still in early access. Bethesda needs to take some notes.


----------



## Mathemagician

As far as MMO/Grindy game I’m waiting on a localization of Lost Ark. great isometric graphics with proper MMO depth and group gameplay.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Farming Thunderjaws in Horizon: Zero Dawn. What's fun is when you get two in the same area and override one and watch them fight.


----------



## Ralyks

Think it said I'm 76% through Spider-Mans main story. Probably going to slow a bit on games for the next 2 weeks while I finish school work for the semester, but I'm looking forward to finally being done with this... And then probably get the DLC.


----------



## wankerness

FF12 is HUGE. I spent all weekend doing more marks and then doing another big chunk of story (beating


Spoiler



Cid and the thing controlling him


), and then I find there's a whole chunk of story left and even more marks were presented after I progressed the story! The production values on this thing were insane, things like the character models and effects actually still look pretty good considering it's a PS2 game. I am really loving the battle system, and it can really get DIFFICULT, far more than any other FF I've played. Some of these esper fights stressed me out more than any videogame I can remember playing, and I haven't even done the last two yet (Ultima/Zodiark). Even wandering around in the area by Zodiark is terrifying. I've seen people complaining that you can only control one character and that you could go afk while fighting, which isn't true at all. I'm thinking maybe they were like me and didn't realize you could change them on the fly without going into the menu. I didn't know that until I got annoyed by changing it in the menu and looked it up. And regarding the AFKing, that only applies to really easy areas/bosses. And it's a relief! The 4x speed is too. Playing this thing at normal speed would REALLY have meant I was never going to play anything else.

The thing that's bugging me right now is item farming for the upgraded weapons/armor. It's almost always off some enemy that's in a horrible area, and enemies don't respawn unless you go two loading screens back, which is a REALLY long and frustrating run in some of the cases. Particularly the Necrohol, where enemies repeatedly spawn and drain your mana to 0, and this game has no means of considerable mana regen apart from the unbelievably rare hi-ethers (don't want to waste those!) or save points (none in this whole godforsaken place). Arrrrr. I might just give up on trying the last couple of hunts/espers and move on to something else once I beat the game. Dragon Quest XI is sitting there staring at me, if I can get into it.


----------



## TedEH

I finished my playthrough of Link to the Past. The ending is arguably a tad anti-climactic, but I think it's appropriate for the time the game came out. Was enjoyable. On to the next thing.


----------



## wankerness

I totally lost interest in that game around the time the new items became bullshit. A wand that makes bricks, or something? I couldn't figure out what to do to progress at some point and just stopped. I think I had three dungeons remaining, or something. 

Maybe I just have a Zelda bias. I wrote BotW off after a couple hours for stupid reasons, too. Gave up on the GBC one after the bird dungeon looked like it required more thought than I felt like putting into it. Ah well.

I think I've only finished OoT (like 3-4 times), Windwaker, and that creepy one that was on GC and Wii. I can't even remember which system I played it on. Wii, I think? I liked it! It seems to be one of the ones that gets trashed a lot. Twilight Princess, that's it.


----------



## mongey

civ 6. only had a quick look so far. read Rome was a good all round beginners choice so starting there


but got some learning to do


----------



## beerandbeards

Red Dead Redemption2 was written so well

I was so invested in Arthur Morgan

I had to pour myself a drink when I finished the game


----------



## Leviathus

I just wanna know if horses really ran head first into trees back in the old west.


----------



## budda

Not as cool as some, but I have the "new" spyro waiting to come out of packaging.

Entirely nostalgia but who cares


----------



## TedEH

^ I care!  Part of me has been interested in revisiting Spyro again. I remember those being solid when I was a kid and didn't rate games on any level other than "am I entertained right now".


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

wankerness said:


> I played the new WoW expansion for a couple of months and totally lost interest and haven't touched it since the end of September. I absolutely hated what they did to the gear mechanics with the artifact weapon kinds of abilities being removed and then moved to drops, but even if you lucked out and got a drop that had the one or two good abilities out of ~30-40, the gear itself all had the abilities locked behind what could be multiple days of grinding before you could even use it!! The concept of dungeon/raid upgrades having to just sit in your bags for days was incredibly stupid.
> 
> The game slowed down in pace again with simple mechanics as well, probably just cause of the gear reset, but every class lost even more abilities, which was saying something with how incredibly dumbed-down every class got from TBC on. The removal of talent trees at some point between cataclysm and WoD certainly made things less interesting to us borderline RPG nerds.



Fear not; WoW classic coming back this summer! Too excited. 
I was a diehard blizzard nerd from WCII through MoP; but WoD just straight up _*murdered*_ the game for me. I tried to get back in again at the end, and again in Legion, but fell off both times. Trying again with BFA this week, but it's already feeling like it's going to drop off again. It's just too different from the game I grew up with, and after so many expacs, the game really is done. It's time for a WoW2, I think. 

I thought it would have been super cool if at the end of Legion, Sargeras just destroyed the world. Poof. Done. You lose, everyone dies. Then they launch WoW2, which is just a reboot of the entire game. Relaunch from vanilla using a newer, more modern engine rather than relying on the framework from 2001. Give new players a chance to (kind of) experience what we did. Maybe add in some cut content, get an excuse to pursue some ideas that never saw the light of day due to time constraints; and just iterate their way through all of the patches / expansions again. Would have been awesome imo and a great opportunity to reuse storyboards and resources while still pumping out tons of content.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I totally lost interest in that game around the time the new items became bullshit. A wand that makes bricks, or something? I couldn't figure out what to do to progress at some point and just stopped. I think I had three dungeons remaining, or something.
> 
> Maybe I just have a Zelda bias. I wrote BotW off after a couple hours for stupid reasons, too. Gave up on the GBC one after the bird dungeon looked like it required more thought than I felt like putting into it. Ah well.
> 
> I think I've only finished OoT (like 3-4 times), Windwaker, and that creepy one that was on GC and Wii. I can't even remember which system I played it on. Wii, I think? I liked it! It seems to be one of the ones that gets trashed a lot. Twilight Princess, that's it.



Zelda dungeons are item puzzles first and foremost. They aren’t usually THAT hard in older games like ALTTP, but hell I’ve never played a 3D Zelda because “I don’t wanna”. So if puzzles aren’t your preferred method of dungeon exploration then yeah that’s fine to stop early. 

And blizzard will never out out a NEW game without the lessons they learned publicly about what the average player wants. Any new game will have several easy ways to gear up and complete content. Things like attunements and less than 10% of the user base seeing raid content will not happen again. 

I think a lot of people’s nostalgia for the game comes from just how LONG everything took to accomplish. But the world was a much less connected and people had less things pulling on their attention once they got home in the evenings. 

The game is over 10 years old, there are players today who weren’t even born when the game launched. The playerbase of many games requires streamlined gameplay to keep numbers up. 

“Super hardcore” raid games like Wildstar (ex original wow devs) have all shut down and closed their studios.


----------



## budda

TedEH said:


> ^ I care!  Part of me has been interested in revisiting Spyro again. I remember those being solid when I was a kid and didn't rate games on any level other than "am I entertained right now".



The games I probably spent the most time on as a kid were Driver, Gran Turismo 2, and Spyro. But that was 16 years ago so I'm hazy on it .

At $50 for a new game, it's hard to beat.

I haven't beat a single game since we got the PS4 on black friday 2017. I just don't have a gaming schedule. When I have the house, I usually end up on here or playing guitar. It's usually when she's watching a show that I want to play something .


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Zelda dungeons are item puzzles first and foremost. They aren’t usually THAT hard in older games like ALTTP, but hell I’ve never played a 3D Zelda because “I don’t wanna”. So if puzzles aren’t your preferred method of dungeon exploration then yeah that’s fine to stop early.
> 
> And blizzard will never out out a NEW game without the lessons they learned publicly about what the average player wants. Any new game will have several easy ways to gear up and complete content. Things like attunements and less than 10% of the user base seeing raid content will not happen again.
> 
> I think a lot of people’s nostalgia for the game comes from just how LONG everything took to accomplish. But the world was a much less connected and people had less things pulling on their attention once they got home in the evenings.
> 
> The game is over 10 years old, there are players today who weren’t even born when the game launched. The playerbase of many games requires streamlined gameplay to keep numbers up.
> 
> “Super hardcore” raid games like Wildstar (ex original wow devs) have all shut down and closed their studios.



Most of my problem with WoW as it went on was that they destroyed the social concept. Servers used to be servers, where players had reputations, trade chat was alive, and most differently, you had to group manually. This was a gigantic pain in the ass compared to LFG, but basically created guilds since you’d constantly be finding new people on your server and finding out who was good and inviting them to your guild or vice-versa. The lfg tool immediately created a big difference to anyone who wasn’t already in a guild since they now were just anonymousplayer123 to anyone they’d group with, but had no effect other than a positive one to those already in guilds or antisocial.

As time went on, though, and blizzard then crammed servers together, and then even started cramming servers together with shards, the whole GAME became a LFG finder and all sense of community died. Trade chat tends to be ghostly, no one talks to each other, players in groups are vastly less friendly since there are zero consequences for being a dick, etc. I truly hate it. And it has NOTHING to do with the game becoming easier or more convenient, apart from the group finder.

Turning off pvp on every single server was just kind of putting the dirt on top of the coffin, but it was completely necessary after a combination of shards and faction transfers/imbalance made it randomly 100% unplayable when you’d phase into a shard with 100 of the other faction corpse camping and the totally nonexistent community meaning you couldn’t group up and strike back like you could in the old days.

WoW is dead. I’ll play the shit out of a new one if they go back to the old style of doing a lot of things.

WoW classic has LFG, doesn’t it? I dunno if I want to play it, anyway. It was kind of miserable back then from what little I played it pre-BC. Soooo clunky and much of the fun was from no one knowing what they were doing.


----------



## mongey

Well civ 6 is kicking my ass.


----------



## TedEH

I ended up with a copy of Yooka-Laylee in a sale so I've fired that up a few times recently. It's another one that I don't think deserved all the hate it got. Is it the most inspired game I've ever played? Maybe not. It's not going to blow any minds in terms of design so far, but it's mechanically sound, hasn't been buggy for me, and has done it's job of entertaining / passing time without doing anything that takes away from having a bit of fun.


----------



## lurè

Finally finished my new PC and purchased Arkham knight , the witcher 2 and Pillars of Eternity 2.

PS: the Arkham series Is so underrated.


----------



## MFB

I'm replaying the main three Arkhams right now, starting from the beginning (Asylum) through Knight and yeah - they really are a blast. The fighting is a bit too easy even on Normal, as the freeflow system is basically "counter here and there and you're totally fine" unless there's an absurd number of guys; but that's a minor complaint as Batman isn't meant to be a street brawler or anything like you might see with say ...Daredevil. The Riddler puzzles are good, there's a fair bit of detective work in the game itself, and it's linear while still giving you an open area to explore.

Arkham Origins can fuck right off though


----------



## wankerness

lurè said:


> Finally finished my new PC and purchased Arkham knight , the witcher 2 and Pillars of Eternity 2.
> 
> PS: the Arkham series Is so underrated.



Not at all, those were hyped to death for years. The first two, anyway. The last one was rightly raked over the coals by many for the horrible emphasis on the batmobile, but everything else about it was still great.

The only one you could possibly make a case for being "underrated" would be the third one, Origins, that no one ever talks about.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The only one you could possibly make a case for being "underrated" would be the third one, Origins, that no one ever talks about.


I can't speak for anyone else, but I definitely was just tired of the formula by the time I got to that one. Also, it had stability problems when I last tried it- constant crashes. Maybe it's fine now though. If ever I feel the need to revisit those games, I could probably start from Origins.


----------



## Mathemagician

Origins was the second one that starts off open world in Gotham right? I only got like 4 hours in but thought it was a fun change of pace from the “mostly interiors” of Asylum. 

I played asylum way after it came out and went “OOOH” it made perfect sense why people loved it, it’s was finally a great super hero game and Batman no less. The plot pacing was nice as well.


----------



## TedEH

I thought that was the third one....? Now I need to google it.

Edit: It's the third. Asylum, City, Origin, Knight.


----------



## MFB

Third game released, but it's a prequel to all the events that happen in the Aslyum onwards games; which is hilarious because somehow, pre-peak Batman defeats Deathstroke of all villains in the very first fight of the game, and it's really broke my suspension of disbelief; as did the fight stats at the end of any criminal encounter letting me know how I did.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

wankerness said:


> *WoW classic has LFG, doesn’t it*? I dunno if I want to play it, anyway. It was kind of miserable back then from what little I played it pre-BC. Soooo clunky and much of the fun was from no one knowing what they were doing.



Strongly agree with everything in this post.
And no, it won't. You were able to open the interface in the demo but the devs stressed that it was 100% not going to be in the game; it's just a remnant from porting the UI over. It didn't actually do anything. 

Me and a few buddies hopped on a vanilla private server after Classic got announced to get back in 'the zone' and to start planning out routes for when it launched, and it was a breathtakingly eye-opening experience coming off of retail. If you aren't opposed to it and have some time to kill, I'd suggest checking one out for a little while- just to bring you back to that point in time.

For us, all it did was get us even more excited for the launch.


----------



## wankerness

Ordacleaphobia said:


> Strongly agree with everything in this post.
> And no, it won't. You were able to open the interface in the demo but the devs stressed that it was 100% not going to be in the game; it's just a remnant from porting the UI over. It didn't actually do anything.
> 
> Me and a few buddies hopped on a vanilla private server after Classic got announced to get back in 'the zone' and to start planning out routes for when it launched, and it was a breathtakingly eye-opening experience coming off of retail. If you aren't opposed to it and have some time to kill, I'd suggest checking one out for a little while- just to bring you back to that point in time.
> 
> For us, all it did was get us even more excited for the launch.



I dunno. I definitely remember how the game played back then. I got a huntard to level 52 and a Warlock to 58 before BC launched, so I had some experience (albeit with the two easiest classes to play thanks to pet tanks), and AFAIK BC really didn't change much in terms of mechanics. Like, I remember well doing some bullshit achievements related to oldschool mechanics, such as levelling all weapon skills to 300 (even on a goddam priest). I have very, very fond memories of raiding in late BC and all through WOTLK. I just don't think going way back in time to classic content that's entirely populated by people that know what they're doing and likely already have a social group in place sounds too appealing as it would be HUNDREDS of hours. I'm still in touch with exactly 0 of the people I used to raid with, unfortunately.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

wankerness said:


> I dunno. I definitely remember how the game played back then. I got a huntard to level 52 and a Warlock to 58 before BC launched, so I had some experience (albeit with the two easiest classes to play thanks to pet tanks), and AFAIK BC really didn't change much in terms of mechanics. Like, I remember well doing some bullshit achievements related to oldschool mechanics, such as levelling all weapon skills to 300 (even on a goddam priest). I have very, very fond memories of raiding in late BC and all through WOTLK. I just don't think going way back in time to classic content that's entirely populated by people that know what they're doing and likely already have a social group in place sounds too appealing as it would be HUNDREDS of hours. I'm still in touch with exactly 0 of the people I used to raid with, unfortunately.



More or less in the same boat, but you'll be surprised.
Vanilla still has a lot of 'quirks' that people don't know; and coupled with how much Cataclysm and other expacs changed the old world, a lot of what people _*think*_ they know is not how things actually are. And it's always funny to see someone used to live roll up to a leveling area and pull 3 mobs thinking they're going to kill them all in seconds, and then just get destroyed because it's classic and things don't work like that 

Raids are going to get kicked over easy, I'm sure. But the sense of community is definitely there and I can only imagine it'll be there but stronger come this summer.


----------



## wankerness

Ordacleaphobia said:


> More or less in the same boat, but you'll be surprised.
> Vanilla still has a lot of 'quirks' that people don't know; and coupled with how much Cataclysm and other expacs changed the old world, a lot of what people _*think*_ they know is not how things actually are. And it's always funny to see someone used to live roll up to a leveling area and pull 3 mobs thinking they're going to kill them all in seconds, and then just get destroyed because it's classic and things don't work like that



Oh yeah, I remember VERY well how some zones were deathtraps, and some of the earliest zones were sure to teach you that. Like, Elwynn Forest with the goddam murlocs that would run away and pull more mobs as soon as their health got low, and then YOU'D have to run away cause they'd kill you. Or all those dudes around the entrance to deadmines, or all the guys in the northeast part of stranglethorn, etc. Worst thing in the world to suddenly get hit with a fireball by some guy that was behind you that you didn't know was there, you definitely had to run for it. (though with my huntard I could get out of there and feign death, and the warlock had this no-longer-existing ability with the voidwalker called sacrifice where you could make it blow up and then you'd get a damage absorption bubble so you could usually get way out of aggro range before it wore off) It was funny how if you were a dwarf/nightelf/gnome, you had a MUCH easier time for those first several levels. But, of course, then you'd have to get to Westfall as it was light-years faster for the next chunk of leveling.

I definitely remember well how much of a pain it was to get your little lowbie around to the proper leveling zones. I definitely had to do the super-long run of terror from the boat that came from the Night Elf continent to the wetlands (a level 20+ zone) where you'd have to run all the way through it, past various raptors, until you'd finally go through the gate and get to the dwarf area, and then you'd have to run through their city and take the tram and then run all the way to westfall. IIRC that whole process took at least 30 minutes. Those were the days, huh? 

I think I first started to level a horde character in mid-BC and I lost interest around level 25, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was even worse for them. I was undead, so at least I didn't contend with the infamously terrible barrens.

Argh. This is all so nostalgic. That game was rough, but kind of awesome. But, yeah, thinking back on it, there were all these chunks of levels that were pure pain (Badlands, Feralas, etc) between the small handful of zones that actually had proper quest design (Westfall, Tanaris, Felwood). That Cataclysm redesign was incredible. The only problem with it was that it was TOO good, so you'd level way too fast to see much of anything.


----------



## chopeth

Started Bloodborne again. How can this game be so fricking hard? It's even harder than the first time, I don't remember having such a bad time with the thirsty beast or vicaria. Plus, the hunters I find usually kick my ass numb in a couple of strikes, so fast and painfully hard!!!


----------



## Ralyks

Finished the main story of Spider-Man yesterday. Loved it, will go for the Platinum, and likely get the DLC.

Also, as mentioned in the other thread, just picked up my Smash Bros preorder.


----------



## Mathemagician

chopeth said:


> Started Bloodborne again. How can this game be so fricking hard? It's even harder than the first time, I don't remember having such a bad time with the thirsty beast or vicaria. Plus, the hunters I find usually kick my ass numb in a couple of strikes, so fast and painfully hard!!!



Hunter’s Axe Big dick swing all day. 

Shotgun, win every stun opening on bosses.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

chopeth said:


> Started Bloodborne again. How can this game be so fricking hard? It's even harder than the first time, I don't remember having such a bad time with the thirsty beast or vicaria. Plus, the hunters I find usually kick my ass numb in a couple of strikes, so fast and painfully hard!!!




I don't know what weapon you're using, but serrated weapons (Saw Spear, Saw Cleaver, Beast Cutter, Whirligig Saw) all have a damage bonus against beasts. Against Blood Starved Beast, bring Fire Paper (I used Bolt Paper), Pungent Blood Cocktails, and if you want to make it faster, Beast Blood Pellets. Use transform attacks to boost your beasthood and increase your damage output and throw the Cocktails somewhere where you can get between BSB it, that way he'll be trying to get past you while you're wailing away on him. 

Vicar Amelia, pretty much the same thing minus the Cocktails. Start of the fight, pop a Beast Blood Pellet and use a Fire Paper with a serrated weapon and start going to town on her limbs. When you break one, she'll be stunned enabling you go to for a visceral, but myself, I choose to wail away on her other limbs because the amount of damage you can do in the time she's stunned between a serrated weapon, fire paper, and beast blood pellets will far outrank a visceral at that point in the game.


----------



## chopeth

^The problem is that I have spent every fire paper, cocktails, etc earlier and I don't use a serrated weapon. Just the huge axe.


----------



## chopeth

Mathemagician said:


> Hunter’s Axe Big dick swing all day.
> 
> Shotgun, win every stun opening on bosses.



That's basically my approach. Whenever I miss the parish though, I get a blow sometimes taking away three quarters of my life and there's more coming, you know.


----------



## Mathemagician

With the axe just leave it in the outstretched mode and swing. Don’t bother with the short one except against super fast enemies. It hits so damn hard after you stun an enemy and it does tons in vicerals against humans and beasts just pump up strength and don’t bother with dex, that’s how it scales and is easier than trying to “balance” two stats and HP.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

I should say that the Hunter's Ax is a great weapon, but it's definitely well worth learning how to use either Saw Cleaver or Saw Spear early on, because as I've said before, it has a damage bonus against beasts and there are times when you're going to want it.


----------



## Mathemagician

I used the saw cleaver the entire game my first play through it’s just so cool. But the axe is single-stat cheese mode the whole non NG+ playthrough. 

Then the DLC brings some of my favorite weapons though. Shhhh not gonna spoil any.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Mathemagician said:


> I used the saw cleaver the entire game my first play through it’s just so cool. But the axe is single-stat cheese mode the whole non NG+ playthrough.
> 
> Then the DLC brings some of my favorite weapons though. Shhhh not gonna spoil any.




Saw Cleaver is best starting weapon, IMO, but Saw Spear has an edge due to reach and the fact that it's serrated whether it's open or closed while the Cleaver is only serrated when it's closed.


----------



## Ralyks

In addition to Smash Bros., Celeste finally went on sale. And I get the hype. Cool retro graphics, tight as hell controls, well written dialogue, great soundtrack, and a fantastic atmosphere.


----------



## wankerness

I am still not finished with goddam FF12. After killing all but two bosses and doing everything other than going back to the worst area in the game for two spells I missed, I finished the story. That might be it for me. The great crystal area is just an absolute nightmare, not because it’s difficult, but because there’s no map and it’s a huge maze with buttons that open timed doors multiple screens away, etc. it’s still a better area than the stealth horror bullshit in 15.

The lead-in to the last hunt, some huge-ass dragon, made me REALLY not want to do the last big-ass dragon. I lost track of time with this guy, but I think it was easily over half an hour, and it takes like 3/4 of that time to start getting hard, at which point he started killing party members left and right, so i’d Then get to panic while I resurrected people but immediately had to run them out of the dragon breath area before they’d instantly die again, and half the time they wouldn’t get out fast enough, or the decoy on the tank would wear off randomly and the dragon would turn around and kill everyone else, etc.

The concept of doing a harder version of that for over an hour with a mistake meaning you have to restart from the beginning does not sound in any way fun!!!

I didn’t do the last esper yet either, but it sure kicked my ass the first time I tried.

The last boss of the story is insane, I don’t know how it works at the appropriate level. My party was 85, and pretty much auto-attacked the first several forms in about 15 seconds each. Then the last form comes out, and starts hitting the whole group for nearly their full life bars really quickly, almost wiping me a few times. That seems like it would be totally impossible at a low enough level that all the other forms would have posed a challenge!! On the positive side, at least I had to pay attention.

The music in this game is so far beyond the simplistic stuff from the first 9 games that it’s nuts. It’s not as “catchy,” but a lot of it is really well-done, especially the end credits. I see the score get shat on for not being by the guy who did all the simplistic classic stuff, but those people are wrong and bad. FF13 has a few things that are better, but this is much better than 15.

Overall impression is that this is probably my favorite besides 6. The story’s a big confusing mess, but so are all of them. I wish there’d been a sequel about Balthier and Fran.


----------



## chopeth

Mathemagician said:


> I used the saw cleaver the entire game my first play through it’s just so cool. But the axe is single-stat cheese mode the whole non NG+ playthrough.
> 
> Then the DLC brings some of my favorite weapons though. Shhhh not gonna spoil any.





PunkBillCarson said:


> Saw Cleaver is best starting weapon, IMO, but Saw Spear has an edge due to reach and the fact that it's serrated whether it's open or closed while the Cleaver is only serrated when it's closed.



thanks, mates, but I think I'm going to pass. Lost time playing guitar in a game whose designers hate their customers for sure 

A friend tells me the dlc is glorious too, though


----------



## Mathemagician

Wait, is this your first time playing?

Ok ok ok. 

Wait. 

Don’t leave. 

The game is “hard” though. Because the first boss a giant fucking wall as is tradition in souls borne games. 

But the trick to this game is to prioritize dodging. You need to be aggressive because basically “kill it before it kills you” is the primary strategy. But not getting hit is just as important. It’s SUCH a well designed game I’d hate to see you drop it.

But seriously just farm and level up a bit. And hike up your HP/strength at first. Don’t bother with Arcane/Dex at all initially except to get high enough for your weapon of choice. 

But I get it. There is too much awesome stuff to do any given day that getting pissed at a video game of all things is just not worth it. 

In which case I recommend any of the new switch first party titles. Because Odyssey was GOTY last year.


----------



## wankerness

Odyssey now refers to AC, I forgot the Mario game was called that


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Mad Max [PS4]

The driving makes we wish we'd had another MotorStorm title and the combat make me wish the Arkham series didn't fall off a cliff in quality. And I'm not sure if the 1.06 patch screwed anything up, but I'm getting some really bad framerates almost at random now.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Odyssey now refers to AC, I forgot the Mario game was called that



Lol, you never have to worry about that from me. AC1 was terrible and I paid full price. So I don’t pay for AC games, bamboozled me once.


----------



## wankerness

Mario odyssey is on “sale” for 42 bucks. I also am tempted by Skyrim and diablo on switch for 30 bucks. Probably will just buy Celeste and call it a day.


----------



## TedEH

Having just finish Link to the Past, I figured now was a good time to get into Nintendo's handhelds and picked up a 2ds xl for cheap so I could play Link Between Worlds. I'm super glad I did this. Some games just sort of "feel inspired", and I think this is one. Every piece of it I've encountered so far feels like someone really cared about getting it right.

The music in particular is spot-on. Some might argue that a live recording would have been "better", but to my ears it's top notch electronically produced music. I could be wrong, but I think soooome tracks included some live instruments and voices mixed in though? I think? I'm guessing based on what I hear. Going strait from Past to Worlds though, being able to compare the music from the two- it's just great.

Edit:
The more I think about it, the games I've been into lately -> Zelda and Kirby games in particular - I think I really connect well with these games because of the music in them. The music from the gameboy Kirby game (I think it's the 1st Kirby game?) is pretty much going to stick with me forever, and Zelda audio is always top notch.


----------



## Metropolis

Which game should I buy for PS4 this christmas? These are on my list:
Red Dead Redemption 2
Shadow Of The Colossus
Spider-Man

I really like Rockstar's games, Shadow Of The Colossus seems kind of short but different and highly praised, and Spider-Man seems to have really fun and killer action.


----------



## TedEH

^ If it was me, I'd go SotC all the way. But I don't think you can go wrong either way.


----------



## wankerness

Metropolis said:


> Which game should I buy for PS4 this christmas? These are on my list:
> Red Dead Redemption 2
> Shadow Of The Colossus
> Spider-Man
> 
> I really like Rockstar's games, Shadow Of The Colossus seems kind of short but different and highly praised, and Spider-Man seems to have really fun and killer action.



From what I've heard from player reactions, Spider-Man is BY FAR the most fun, Red Dead Redemption is if you want a really in-depth and gorgeous cowboy simulator with frustrating controls, and Shadow of the Colossus is if you want to bitch about how the HD remake ruins much of what was good about the original/last remaster.


----------



## Metropolis

wankerness said:


> From what I've heard from player reactions, Spider-Man is BY FAR the most fun, Red Dead Redemption is if you want a really in-depth and gorgeous cowboy simulator with frustrating controls, and Shadow of the Colossus is if you want to bitch about how the HD remake ruins much of what was good about the original/last remaster.



RDR2 is really calling my name the most, since I never played previous games. Can't really justify if realism is took into interesting or annoying levels in it. GTA's have some frustrating controls in some situations too... Never played original version of Shadow Of The Colossus either, so I wouldn't bitch about those.


----------



## wankerness

Metropolis said:


> RDR2 is really calling my name the most, since I never played previous games. Can't really justify if realism is took into interesting or annoying levels in it. GTA's have some frustrating controls in some situations too... Never played original version of Shadow Of The Colossus either, so I wouldn't bitch about those.



I haven't played any version of SOTC either, I've just seen a lot of people say that removing all the fog and totally "modernizing" the controls goes a long way to changing the whole feel of the game and it's less interesting as a result. Like, that people approaching it for the first time won't get the hype. IDK. I'll get it when it's 10 dollars. It's probably still good.

GTA5's controls weren't great, but the game is a LOT less in-depth in terms of interaction with the environment, so it didn't matter as much (from what I hear). I have RDR2 sitting sealed in my house, I might just sell it and buy it sometime down the line when it finally goes on discount. Based on how long it took GTA5 to go down in cost, I might be waiting a REALLY long time, but oh well. I haven't played the first one yet and I feel like I should. It sounds like if you're at all interested in role-playing in the old west that it's a slam-dunk for you, as you can do basically anything.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I saw someone mentioned they were playing Civ 6 and on a related note, I've been eyeing Endless Legend the past few times it's been on sale but I don't know much about it and haven't watched any gameplay videos yet. Anyone played it before? Is it similar to Civ 6 in the campaign or is it a little more interactive? I can't get into Civ because it just feels like I'm not even playing a game. If it had more in depth combat or was more like the campaign from the Total War games (specifically Medieval 2 because I love that campaign) then I'll probably pick up Endless Legend on sale this month.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> The music in this game is so far beyond the simplistic stuff from the first 9 games that it’s nuts. It’s not as “catchy,” but a lot of it is really well-done, especially the end credits. I see the score get shat on for not being by the guy who did all the simplistic classic stuff, but those people are wrong and bad. FF13 has a few things that are better, but this is much better than 15.



I should probably post this in the game music thread you started but...

The music in FFXII is my favorite aspect of the game, because it's so different. More cinematic in nature and harmonically rich and dense but still catchy and memorable, albeit overbearing at times. I supposed it helped me playing FF Tactics and Vagrant Story prior, as Hitoshi Sakimoto score for all 3 really suits the Ivalice universe. Hell, I bought the deluxe OST and had him sign it himself at a meet and greet. 

I do like the XIII trilogy music much more. Namely because my bias towards Masashi Hamauzu, and he's the undisputed master of taking just one leitmotif and milking it for dear live with every single compositional variation known to man. That and putting piano on everything without sounding overused. 



wankerness said:


> The story’s a big confusing mess, but so are all of them. I wish there’d been a sequel about Balthier and Fran.



Square where going through some internal turmoil during XII development, which had the director (who also did the 2 other Ivalice games) quit mid production. Which explains a lot of it's faults. The plot starts meandering by the second half, Ashe and Basch felt underused (the latter especially since in early stages, he was meant to be the protagonist). Vaan and Penello get a ton of undeserved hate, but it doesn't help when the game isn't shy about them being dwarfed when surrounded by a much more compelling cast, or straight up making them look like tagalongs. 

I do think it's a solid game in the franchise. Great world, story (at least the first half), great visuals and aesthetics (Vaan's abs aside), and the best voice acting/localization in the series. Gameplay I have my gripes once I learned to abuse the gambit system, but it's been a while for me to remember, still better than VIII, but if I wanted to play a vast open JRPG with semi MMORPG elements, Xenoblade ended up scratching that itch and erased my want to play XII. 

Though I do honestly want to play XII again. I probably should pick up Zodiac Age sometime.


----------



## wankerness

FF12 is coming out on switch soon, so if you do the portable thing that would probably be the version to get. I read a lot about the differences between the original and the Zodiac version, and I’m glad that I started with this one, there are a lot of huge changes that mostly seem like big improvements. Plus it looks great and runs at 60 FPS all the time.

Did the soundtrack have the fully orchestrated version? I keep reading that the original was not. I’m kind of curious to hear it. I’m glad they put the budget in to fully realize the soundtrack so long after the fact.

I feel like every FF game has the excuse of Square going through turmoil, jeez. FF12 is really coherent and cohesive compared to 15 and maybe 13 as well. But, yeah, I spent probably more than half of my time running around doing hunts and sidequests and exploring, which I think are all great and don’t have the problems people say the main story has. Of course, your party doesn’t talk to each other during them ala Mass Effect 2 or something, which is too bad, but whatever. The gameplay, music, etc is GREAT and the hunts are so much better than the ones in FF15 that it retroactively made me think side stuff in FF15 was kind of a sad joke. 

What do you mean abuse gambits? I was having to change them all the time, a few times during some fights, while also having to do a ton of manual control during any boss fights I didn’t majorly outlevel. I was using a squishy team, though, cause I stupidly used all 12 classes instead of making OP combos and my main party ended up with an archer/caster, a tank (that I gave a greatsword eventually and ended up doing most of the damage), and a healer. Seems like most people did two melee and facerolled more.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Metropolis said:


> Which game should I buy for PS4 this christmas? These are on my list:
> Red Dead Redemption 2
> Shadow Of The Colossus
> Spider-Man
> 
> I really like Rockstar's games, Shadow Of The Colossus seems kind of short but different and highly praised, and Spider-Man seems to have really fun and killer action.


I'd get colossus or rdr2. or both. yeah, both.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I feel like every FF game has the excuse of Square going through turmoil, jeez.



Well, Square going through turmoil was the catalyst of the Final Fantasy franchise after all. 

In XII's case, that time around was a huge shakeup of staff, and the merge with Enix looming. A lot of internal disagreements leading to a lot of the core staff leaving the company (including FF founder Hironobu Sakaguchi and composer Nobuo Uematsu). That was a big deal with the series now going in new directions and direct sequels being pumped relentlessly (something Sakaguchi was strongly against).

I sort of fall in that camp, even despite playing the XIII sequels. But then again, I haven't really been floored by any FF after VI (sans IX or even X to some extent). A lot of the charm is gone, too much focus on spectacle rather than substance. XIII's plot is a train wreck and I barely care about any of the characters there, well Zahs at least is sort of interesting (terrible design aside). And I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm not going to like Noctis very much, maybe some of his boy band may be more interesting...

As for 'abusing the gambit system', perhaps I'm being too harsh. It has been a long time since playing XII so my memory is hazy, but all I remember at one point I was so overlevelled that I was only playing with the left analog stick with the gambits doing everything else. Didn't help that every single dungeon was a LONG boring slog. Granted that it was my usual fault of overlevelling, but feeling like playing a system involving the player as little as possible isn't my idea of a gaming experience. I ended up getting bored and barely forgot most of the story because of it. XIII was worse where at one point, all battles felt like a 'press X to resolve' situation with the occasional switch formations.

Again perhaps I'm being too harsh. I do want to revisit the game and give it a proper go.


----------



## Metropolis

KnightBrolaire said:


> I'd get colossus or rdr2. or both. yeah, both.



I got both since Shadow Of The Colossus was so cheap, only 19,90 

Mainly RDR2 because;

- Huge highly detailed world full of everything
- Roleplaying aspect where choices matter and a character you can assumably relate to
- Fullfilling my secret dream as an outlaw in 19th century North-America


----------



## mongey

BlackMastodon said:


> I saw someone mentioned they were playing Civ 6 and on a related note, I've been eyeing Endless Legend the past few times it's been on sale but I don't know much about it and haven't watched any gameplay videos yet. Anyone played it before? Is it similar to Civ 6 in the campaign or is it a little more interactive? I can't get into Civ because it just feels like I'm not even playing a game. If it had more in depth combat or was more like the campaign from the Total War games (specifically Medieval 2 because I love that campaign) then I'll probably pick up Endless Legend on sale this month.


That was me with civ 6 and I agree. I have given it about 8 hours and im not feeling it.it doesn’t feel fun or like I’m playing a game. Just not my thing. 

Gonna trade it in on dark souls.


----------



## Leviathus

MGS: Peace Walker for PS3. They did a really good job porting it from PSP, it's been fun. I like how the missions are short and numerous, as well as the jungle atmosphere. Been on a Metal Gear tear the last few months and am running outta titles to complete. Ground Zeroes is up next, which thankfully went on sale on PSN today for 5 bucks, whoo!!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished the main story of Mad Max last night. I'll probably come back to it here and there to clean up the trophies, but I'm done playing it for now.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Been doing Ring of Elysium with my brother. Good times, FAR less frustrating than PUBG who should take notes bitches. 

Uninstalled PUBG and will never play it again. 

After doing BRs for most of the year picked up Black Ops 4 on sale; nice to get back to COD after a year away. 

Playing it on PC using a PS4 controller cause console controls rule hard.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> Finished the main story of Mad Max last night. I'll probably come back to it here and there to clean up the trophies, but I'm done playing it for now.



How good/bad is it? I couldn't tell from your post whether you meant you thought the driving/combat sucked so you wished those other two series were still around, or what!

I LOVE Fury Road and I got this game for free on some PS Plus month, it just has been sitting in the queue on my system cause I've never really heard anything about it so I haven't downloaded it.


----------



## mongey

traded civ 6 for dark souls remastered . Its good. already more fun than civ 6 . 


runs pretty decent on switch . enjoying it so far . loved Bloodborne, but haven't gotten into the souls games .


----------



## Orzech

steinmetzify said:


> Been doing Ring of Elysium with my brother. Good times, FAR less frustrating than PUBG who should take notes bitches.
> 
> Uninstalled PUBG and will never play it again.



What's so frustrating about it?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

wankerness said:


> How good/bad is it? I couldn't tell from your post whether you meant you thought the driving/combat sucked so you wished those other two series were still around, or what!
> 
> I LOVE Fury Road and I got this game for free on some PS Plus month, it just has been sitting in the queue on my system cause I've never really heard anything about it so I haven't downloaded it.



It's a competent enough game, but it does nothing special nor original. To quote the late TotalBiscuit, "it's open world game, the open world game".


----------



## Steinmetzify

Orzech said:


> What's so frustrating about it?



Desync mostly....I can't tell you how many times I've shot a guy and hit him with every single round but because of the client side crap the game doesn't register it and dude two taps me in the dome and I'm done, and it happens EVERY SINGLE GAME at least once. I have numerous videos of what from my POV looks like me sneaking up on a guy from behind and unloading on him, only to watch in abject horror as the guy that rightfully should have died instead turns around in the midst of raging gunfire and two taps my head. 

I've been playing video games a long time, and while I'm not the best there ever was, I don't fully suck either....as evidenced by the kills I get with ease on ROE....PUBG is a shit ton more needlessly harder, for no reason other than they can't get their shit together and actually fix things that make it harder. Instead, we get gun skins...

Ain't going to rag entirely, it was a lot of fun right in the thick of its newness, but after almost 900 hours of being frustrated at the problems, I'm just done with it. The mobile version ran better day 1 than the PC version ever did for fuck's sake.


----------



## Ralyks

Literally just have to finishal of the street crimes and I'll have the Platinum for Spider-Man. I'll eventually buy the DLC, but after the Platinum (which I'm going to attempt to grind out tonight), I'm going to put it down for a while.

Of course, now I'm torn on if I continue Celeste or go back to Yakuza 0 - Kuwami 2, RDR2, Detroit, Dragon Quest XI...


----------



## wankerness

I got way too frustrated at the RNG with Zodiark in FF12 and started Dragon Quest 11 instead. The music is making me deeply regret this decision.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I'm really baffled why Dragon Quest XI opted with the midi soundtrack when a 2 disc OST with full orchestrated versions was released. There's been mods that have fixed that at least, but only for Windows version.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

been playing a bunch of smash ultimate, but of course when cap falcon challenges me I'm playing as yoshi and eating pizza. Now I have to wait til he pops up again since I lost


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm really baffled why Dragon Quest XI opted with the midi soundtrack when a 2 disc OST with full orchestrated versions was released. There's been mods that have fixed that at least, but only for Windows version.



Blah, too late. I wish they had that for console in the form of those language packs you can often download for big games. It’s doubly bizarre cause the opening of the game even puts a big credit about the Japanese Philharmonic or whatever group recorded that opening. The midi is SO BAD. It’s not just the grating tones, it’s the often repetitive themes that just keep drilling in your ears. It’s like FF6 or 7 with inferior composition (well, sort of, at least nothing’s quite as gratingly repetitive as things like the town music in FF6).


----------



## Orzech

steinmetzify said:


> Desync mostly....I can't tell you how many times I've shot a guy and hit him with every single round but because of the client side crap the game doesn't register it and dude two taps me in the dome and I'm done, and it happens EVERY SINGLE GAME at least once.



Okay, fair point. I can see how this can be very frustrating. Check out the new map though - I think it's pretty fun. I enjoy RoE too despite it sending so much data about your computer to the Chinese.


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> been playing a bunch of smash ultimate, but of course when cap falcon challenges me I'm playing as yoshi and eating pizza. Now I have to wait til he pops up again since I lost


You can open any "New challenger appears!" that you lost somewhere in the menus. Don't own a Switch but we did it at my buddy's last week.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> You can open any "New challenger appears!" that you lost somewhere in the menus. Don't own a Switch but we did it at my buddy's last week.


oh cool, didn't know that.


----------



## wankerness

There's a smash thread that went over that!


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Finished Darksiders 3 yesterday, really enjoyed it as a follow up to DS2.

And today I decided to visit the mountain of purchased-but-neglected vids, starting with Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. Heard it was a short game, but a worthwhile follow up to D2. Really underrated series IMO, doesn't get enough love.


----------



## Ralyks

Got the Platinum for Spider-Man. Time for a break before I get the DLC.

Started going back to Detroit...... And went right back to Yakuza 0. I missed Kiryu-san and friends...


----------



## wankerness

Been playing Dragon Quest XI a whole lot. The terrible town music is imprinted in my brain and is on constant loop even when the game is off. Especially the terrible percussion!

Pep is possibly the worst main combat gimmick ever. At least limit breaks were triggered by something roughly! And there are all these quests where you have to have multiple characters have this total RNG gimmick happen at the same time and argh.

It’s the only unique thing about the combat at all. Fortunately so far it has been completely unnecessary for any bosses. Otherwise it’s just like your standard RPG turn-based with haste, which is my favorite old-school style (ex, FFVI). It’s slightly harder than I was led to believe, one spider boss stomped me a couple times, and I did get wrecked by a frost witch before I realized the other available healer could do AOE. The main character is a charisma vacuum on par with Link which drives me nuts (give me Gerald or Aloy or some other written character any day!!) but all the supporting characters are great and are maybe the best thing about it. 

Everything’s pretty polished and the first 25ish hours are reasonably good, or at least were once I had a party of 4. It’s pretty addicting. I’ll see how things go, the fact I’m less than 1/3 through makes me wonder if it’s going to turn into too much of a red herring/“the princess is in another castle!” chain which eventually makes me lose interest.


----------



## Ralyks

I actually got Dragon Quest for the simple fact of getting an old school style RPG in the modern era. I'm only a few hours in, but that's what I'm getting so far, and am happy.

That said, Kiryu and Majima got their hooks back in me. Just got to chapter 8 of Yakuza 0 last night. Probably going to be catching up on my back catalogue now that the semester is over for the next month.


----------



## TedEH

I've been kinda interested in the Dragon Quest games after I played a bit of the NES original one. Guy nearby has a ps2 copy of VIII. I heard that was one of the better ones in that franchise?


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I've been kinda interested in the Dragon Quest games after I played a bit of the NES original one. Guy nearby has a ps2 copy of VIII. I heard that was one of the better ones in that franchise?


Everything I’ve read about xi that puts it in franchise context compares it directly to viii and many say they’re almost equal. Besides graphics.


----------



## TedEH

Hm.... Sounds like I need to play both then.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

VIII is widely considered the peak of the Dragon Quest series, even with XI's release. It was a huge deal in the franchise. I only played it briefly before disappearing in my never ending pile of shame.

Come to think of it, I've never delved deep into the DQ series oddly enough with my JRPG addiction. I do remember III being a big deal too back in the day. But you can only keep up with so many of these time sucking games I guess.  Perhaps I just felt it being too meat and potatoes in a time I was fully getting into the genre.

I suppose I should put XI on the list as the alternate old school but modern JRPG available that isn't named Octopath Traveller.

Speaking of games with a long running prestige and the number 8...

I'm in chapter 5 in YS VIII, 60% of the map filled and up to date with the fetch quests. I'm getting the hang of the Evasion and Flash Guard mechanics to near fighting game precision. It really reminded me of Star Ocean Last Hope (another game I recently abandoned a second time), but at least here, you don't need a licence to operate the Hubble telescope to work the battle system. So it's much better implemented here. Whoever designed Dana... they should've given her more clothes.

One thing that's starting to irk me is the dialogue choices you're given. Every single one of them end up with a choice between "YEAH!" and "OF COURSE!", where the whole thing felt rather slapdash and underutilised. Adol is already just a smiling block of wood, at least give his choices more effect in the game. Especially when I'm suspecting that this game will have multiple endings based on my relationships with the support cast... incidentally like Star Ocean funny enough.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I suppose I should put XI on the list as the alternate old school but modern JRPG available that isn't named Octopath Traveller.
> 
> 
> I'm in chapter 5 in YS VIII and 60% of the map filled. I'm getting the hang of the Evasion and Flash Guard mechanics to near fighting game precision. It really reminded me of Star Ocean Last Hope (another game I recently abandoned a second time), but at least here, you don't need a licence to operate the Hubble telescope to work the battle system. So it's much better implemented here. Whoever designed Dana... they should've given her more clothes.



Octopath Traveller initially had hype, but now it's been out for a while most of what I read about it is that the story is a disaster. I guess most JRPGs have nonsense stories, so maybe that doesn't matter.

YS VIII is SO GOOD. I never really got good enough at Flash Guard to feel safe using it against really dangerous enemies over evasion.

RE: Dana, that is really a theme with these Jrpgs. Dragon Quest XI has the same thing. Kiddie game where the female NPCs frequently seem designed by some pervert, to say nothing of one of your travelling companions who is in booty shorts and has tremendous highlighted breasts! Plus there are alternate costumes that accentuate it even further, including a quest in which you have to attain a "bunny girl" costume where they're dressed up like a playboy bunny. Different society, I know. I mean, I am not complaining exactly, I just would probably have to put a disclaimer in there before recommending it to any women because it's REALLY pronounced in comparison to the male characters, unlike most WRPGs of the last several years.

Oh, and it has that infamous anime thing where you have a little girl character who's ACTUALLY of legal age because of magic. Nothing gross has happened with her yet at least.


----------



## Ralyks

Surprisingly, as a JRPG guy myself, DQXI is my first DQ.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Octopath Traveller initially had hype, but now it's been out for a while most of what I read about it is that the story is a disaster. I guess most JRPGs have nonsense stories, so maybe that doesn't matter.
> 
> YS VIII is SO GOOD. I never really got good enough at Flash Guard to feel safe using it against really dangerous enemies over evasion.
> 
> RE: Dana, that is really a theme with these Jrpgs. Dragon Quest XI has the same thing. Kiddie game where the female NPCs frequently seem designed by some pervert, to say nothing of one of your travelling companions who is in booty shorts and has tremendous highlighted breasts! Plus there are alternate costumes that accentuate it even further, including a quest in which you have to attain a "bunny girl" costume where they're dressed up like a playboy bunny. Different society, I know. I mean, I am not complaining exactly, I just would probably have to put a disclaimer in there before recommending it to any women because it's REALLY pronounced in comparison to the male characters, unlike most WRPGs of the last several years.
> 
> Oh, and it has that infamous anime thing where you have a little girl character who's ACTUALLY of legal age because of magic. Nothing gross has happened with her yet at least.



I didn't really expect Octopath Traveller's story to be groundbreaking let alone cohesive. I hear the 8 characters don't really interact with each other on a deeper level, and the whole conceit is 8 different but intertwining stories, so that's a few leg trips down convoluted station. The first thing the game reminded me are the messy SaGa series it's quasi free reign style gameplay that make the narrative a bloody mess. Still no biggie as I hear it's also the same level of challenge with the SaGa series and Bravely Default so there's that. And at least you know the music is fantastic. 

For Ys, yeah it's usually more prudent to go for the evade than flash guard. There were moments were I was near mashing the R1 and getting a similar effect to SF3 or Garou Mark of the Wolves style multi guarding/parrying. Though admittedly I was more flukes against the dinosaurs.

The whole underaged girl with spunky attitude in JRPGs and anime don't bother me because I've seen so much of them from both media. It's ubiquitous, yet only a small example of how every JRPG ever is heavily trope driven. But whatever. Xenoblade X took this to ridiculous extremes, thanks to the series' ability to dress everyone in swimsuits, but I do commend them for not changing the age of the 13 year old girl during localisation.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The whole underaged girl with spunky attitude in JRPGs and anime don't bother me because I've seen so much of them from both media. It's ubiquitous, yet only a small example of how every JRPG ever is heavily trope driven. But whatever. Xenoblade X took this to ridiculous extremes, thanks to the series' ability to dress everyone in swimsuits, but I do commend them for not changing the age of the 13 year old girl during localisation.



I'm talking about the "loophole" that a bunch of games/anime used to avoid being labelled animated pedophilia as they were about sex with little kids but they were ACTUALLY 100-year-old dragons in the body of a little kid so it's OK!!! I'm totally fine with spunky little kids, just my guards are up expecting something disgusting the second a game introduces the "actually, they're not a little kid, they're an adult in a little kid's body!!"


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's ubiquitous


That's sort of the problem in itself though, isn't it? It shouldn't be ubiquitous. Stuff like that is a lot of why I avoid anime. I deal with it in games, but still find it weird.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> That's sort of the problem in itself though, isn't it? It shouldn't be ubiquitous. Stuff like that is a lot of why I avoid anime. I deal with it in games, but still find it weird.



From a Western perspective, yes it's an issue. But I'm not going to go through another ramble on cultural differences... at least not again. 

A lot of Japan's "weirdness" were responses to Western influence. And I've sort of banged that drum all over the anime thread. But to put things in the topic of games, Nintendo is the classic example of this. Look up their history with Hanafuda cards, their own love hotels and that weird Love Tester.


----------



## TedEH

I fully get the cultural differences thing. I can still cringe and think of it as inappropriate though. Games have a pretty big problem with "trying to be taken seriously" and this is something of a hurdle in that context. Western games do it too.


----------



## wankerness

To be clear, I think 3/3 of the female Dragon Quest XI characters are perfectly appealing and likable and non-gross (apart from one of their costumes) based on the 30 hours I've played, it's just the NPCs all over the place, and some of the quest-givers (ex, the mermaid sidequest). And REALLY strangely for a Japanese game, one male is, shall we say, extremely flamboyant. No actual romantic content so far, though. He's a celibate gay man!


----------



## TedEH

I've never really understood why people care so much about the sexuality of video game characters. It almost never has anything to do with the plot, doesn't tie into mechanics in any meaningful way, etc. It just feels shoehorned in, most of the time. I mean, I understand the whole "everyone has to be represented" sentiment, but there's no reason they can't just leave what happens behind closed doors to your imagination. I've always been a fan of the Mass Effect games, for example, but why do I need to put saving the universe on hold to manage the drama of who the protagonist wants to bone?


----------



## wankerness

Cause many, many people who play BioWare games really like the boning aspect!! Same deal with so many Japanese games having the “dating simulator “ aspect integrated. And if they lock off sexuality choices in a true character building game (ie, you’re supposed to be able to be able to have a lot of options for how to act) like ME or Dragon Age of course people get mad.


----------



## TedEH

People get mad at everything though. In this day and age, it's not a video game if someone isn't raging about it. 

I know there will always be someone who wants that in every game possible. To some people, character building = sex, for some reason. I don't get it. To each their own I guess.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I suppose Peter Molyneux may have pushed things too far; overhyping the character building options in the Fable games with unmatched enthusiasm, only to fall short. Sure the ability to have sex in Lesiure Suit Larry was mind and pants blowing back then, but that was part of the character. I agree that a lot sex is shoehorned in most games. At least the Witcher 3's writing helps (even with that stupid unicorn). 

Probably my favorite use of sexual themes in games is used in Silent Hill 2. The sexy nurses were manifestations of James Sunderland's sexual frustration of searching for his wife, turning against him. Which is why every subsequent SH game that has the nurses completely missed the point of them. 

I guess this was my fault bringing in Dana from Ys. Oh well.


----------



## TedEH

I've not played any Silent Hill games, but that sounds like a perfectly reasonable use of a sexual theme in a game. I'm thinking more of those sort of "fan-service-y" cases, for lack of a better word - the kind of thing where it serves no purpose to the game and you're mildly embarrassed when it comes up for no reason when anyone is around whose opinion you care about.

I remember playing the Arkham games at one point, and my ex comes into the room during a cutscene. I don't even remember which character it was, but the fact that any of the women in the game would work for this example is telling: Ex says "Aaaah, now I see why you like this game", as camera does the "check out this chick" pan over whatever character it was. Substitute that for any anime-esque game with skimpy outfits and weird cat-ladies and it still works. (Also, why is it always cat ears? It's not cute, it's weird.) Those are never the reason I'm playing the game, but it's there anyway and doesn't make the experience better. You can aaaaaaaaalmost justify it in a Batman game in the sense that heroes are understandably fit, and the costumes are tight on everyone, but it's _every_ character and it's very obviously played up for eye candy.

I'm not saying there's no place for that in games or in anything else - I'm not one to say sexuality shouldn't exist in media at all, but I think there should be a point to it outside of trying to market your game to teenage dudes. At least, if we want said games to be taken as something more than just eye candy. (That being said, some games probably _do_ strive to be just eye candy, full of explosions and sexy women etc., not unlike action movies. Nothing wrong with that, per se, as long as it's recognized for what it is, and ideally isn't what _all or most_ games end up being.)


----------



## MFB

I actually just replayed Arkham Asylum, and my favorite thing was noticing that Poison Ivy is supposed to be wearing an inmate uniform; but it just happens to be so ill-fitting and small that it accentuates her in 'all the right places.' Harley's outfits have always been like that, the corset and everything, but Ivy's suit was just ridiculous


----------



## TedEH

I think that's sort of where I make the distinction - I could probably come up with ways to justify Harley being dressed that way, but then you add a conveniently ill-fitting inmate costume aaaaaaaand...


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I actually just replayed Arkham Asylum, and my favorite thing was noticing that Poison Ivy is supposed to be wearing an inmate uniform; but it just happens to be so ill-fitting and small that it accentuates her in 'all the right places.' Harley's outfits have always been like that, the corset and everything, but Ivy's suit was just ridiculous



I don't really remember what she looked like in that game, but I sure do in Arkham Knight! I guess I just assumed that's how the comics character has always been cause comics are for manchildren and nerdy 13 year olds and many, many women in them DO look like that and it's really part of their characters, ESPECIALLY with Ivy whose main gimmick is killing anyone who comes in contact with her, so of course she'd be as tempting as possible. Rogue in X-Men is the same way IIRC. Anyone approaching a game like that has to already be expecting that kind of thing. The only thing I find objectionable in those games are the rape threats directed at you by random mobs when you play as catwoman in Arkham City. Like, who wants to go to a videogame to hear THAT? It's so out of place. The tone isn't Game of Thrones-like otherwise!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> comics are for manchildren and nerdy 13 year olds


Substitute comics for video games or action movies and it still works. I don't find any of the content we're talking about to be "objectionable" in it's own right, so much as the volume of it poses a challenge to taking the medium as something with more artistic value, for a wider audience, to be taken seriously, etc.

In much the same way that I can choose to watch an action film with explosions and sex everywhere, I can decide to watch a serious drama or a kids film or arty nonsense or whatever else - there's lots there for everyone, it explores a lot of different spaces- I'd like to be able to do that with games. Wouldn't it be nice to play a JRPG without cat-eared skimpy-dressed high school girls all over it? I mean those do exist, but as soon as you throw a vaguely anime style over a game, I'm primed to expect cringey content.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I don't really remember what she looked like in that game, but I sure do in Arkham Knight! I guess I just assumed that's how the comics character has always been *cause comics are for manchildren and nerdy 13 year olds* and many, many women in them DO look like that and it's really part of their characters, ESPECIALLY with Ivy whose main gimmick is killing anyone who comes in contact with her, so of course she'd be as tempting as possible. Rogue in X-Men is the same way IIRC. Anyone approaching a game like that has to already be expecting that kind of thing. The only thing I find objectionable in those games are the rape threats directed at you by random mobs when you play as catwoman in Arkham City. Like, who wants to go to a videogame to hear THAT? It's so out of place. The tone isn't Game of Thrones-like otherwise!



Ignoring the bolded part, Rogue in X-Men has always had a full body suit in some fashion, and shows very little skin from any time I've seen her because that's the part of her that harms others the most; if she's stacked and it gets drawn a little bigger than usual, that's an artist choice, but it's totally covered and one of the better examples of how to do a female's suit. 

The mob quotes things is also slightly alarming, like I get it - they're inmates, they're not going to be nice, but it's not like there's a similar line they could say to Batman and have it be OK either. It's very clearly said because she's a woman, and that's a thing that happens to them. My personal favorite is the line that one of them says about his suit, something like "Nice suit Bats, did your mommy make that for you?" Which is hilarious considering the only reason he becomes Batman, is because his mother and father are _shot and killed right in front of him as a child._


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Ignoring the bolded part, Rogue in X-Men has always had a full body suit in some fashion, and shows very little skin from any time I've seen her because that's the part of her that harms others the most; if she's stacked and it gets drawn a little bigger than usual, that's an artist choice, but it's totally covered and one of the better examples of how to do a female's suit.



Oh, yeah, I know she's generally a good guy and thus is trying to "cover" all her skin, but sort of the point I thought was if anyone touches her they die so they make her body as hilariously proportioned as possible to accentuate the "but you'd WANT to!!!" thing, with that oldschool green/yellow skintight outfit basically being as boob/butt-enhancing as possible. Kinda like Poison Ivy, the good guy version!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I've not played any Silent Hill games



If you're interested, best start with 2, then 4. 3 is give or take, but you can skip the rest. 



TedEH said:


> I think that's sort of where I make the distinction - I could probably come up with ways to justify Harley being dressed that way, but then you add a conveniently ill-fitting inmate costume aaaaaaaand...



Let's just say it could be worse, like Quiet from MGS5 or Other M. But that's something you'd expect from Hideo Kojima and Team Ninja respectively. The latter just straight up doesn't exist to me.


----------



## wankerness

You're the first person I've ever seen that suggested playing 4 and skipping 1/3!! It's got some good ideas but the fact the rumor about it not being a Silent Hill game during development is way too believable, as it totally lacks the atmosphere! The only thing that's really stuck with me about it were those giant dodo-baby things with the hands for feet, but their death squawk/animation really deflated the concept. One huge problem with that game was it was nearly an action game by that point.

3 is EASILY my favorite of the series, I've played it at least 3 times through, even though I've seen videos dissecting how the development went wrong and how the game suffered as a result. 2 is very clearly the critical favorite as well as most peoples' favorite, and as I've mentioned recently it's often turning up on actual "best games ever" lists with no other qualifiers. I played it once and don't remember having much of a reaction even though I can still remember a few things from it (like, the prison with its giant monster clanging around just out of camera range, or the infamous hanging-bed-thing boss fight, or obviously Pyramid-head). 1 is definitely the scariest of the series, even if it's a bit undermined by the graphics being 32 bit! But man, I played it on a PC emulator after playing 2 and 3 in hi-rez on the same machine, and it freaked me the fuck out in comparison. 3 is more effective than 2 when it comes to scariness, partly because of the horrific sound design whenever you cross over that pretty much puts you into panic mode and makes you want to get out of there as fast as possible. But 1 has them both beat! To their credit, the sequels had even less jump scares, but SH1 was already a lot less "cheap" than the likes of RE2 with its jump scares.

One thing I think probably holds true with 2 is that it has some of the most bizarre and twisted imagery in videogame history.


----------



## Ralyks

I liked the first Silent Hill. The technological limitations actually enhanced the atmosphere a ton.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Perhaps time and my bias has sort of diminished my opinions of 1 and 3, but I still stand that 2 and 4 are my favorites, and first to recommend. Having said that, 1 and 3 are perfectly fine games, perhaps great. I sort of downplayed them wrongly I'll admit, and the first 4 games have very little gap between each other. Personally I think the large focus on The Order brings both 1 and 3 down somewhat. 

Silent Hill 2 masters the atmosphere of cold hard loneliness and the symbolism and use of subtlety that makes you question who is the true enemy. It takes the concepts of 1 and brings it to new and greater heights doing so. 4 takes it further away to new interesting concepts by using entrapment and clever use of the 1 room and not even going to the actual town. It's such a shame that gameplay is even worse than the first 3, which in fairness suck in all 4 games anyway, because you're playing normal everyday human beings oblivious to their environment. In which case 4's protagonist seems more dumber than the rest. And of course when the game switches to escort in the second half brings it down even further. Despite all that I still appreciate it more because it develops the Silent Hill mythos further out there as opposed to being shackled to it like 3 did. 

1 and 3 are still better than everything after 4. Most of those are all trying to ape Silent Hill 2 whilst simultaneously missing the point completely. When the protagonist in Homecoming is looking for his little brother, it's absolutely stupid adding the Nurses outside fanservice sake. At least it sort of makes sense in 3 but considering Heather's story, making them sexy like 2 instead of deformed like 1 certainly doesn't.


----------



## CapinCripes

I have a backlog of around 100 games on steam i've never played all the way through. Currently slogging through doom 3. And I do mean slogging. Its a long and tedious corridor and PDA sim with occasional demons, I swear. At first I thought the game got more flak than it deserved but then after about the 10th hour of PDA's and dimly lit grey hallways with bullet sponge demons I was just about losing my mind.


----------



## TedEH

I see no shame in bailing on a game that you don't enjoy if you gave it a good shot. Haven't completed is one thing.... but then there's the backlog of games that have never even been launched.


----------



## wankerness

I almost never bail on things because I'm an idiot that has to be able to say "I watched that/played that." Sunken cost fallacy, I guess. That said, in the last year, I did bail on Monster Hunter World (I might go back to that one, I kind of enjoyed the gameplay/crafting/look of it, I just *really* don't like 30 minute boss fights where you have to start all over again from the beginning if you make a mistake at minute 28), Beyond Two Souls (ugh, no way I'm touching this turd again, nor anything else this guy's name is on), Danganronpa (totally didn't do it for me in the first hour), and some indie game where you were a detective in the future and it had graphics along the likes of one of the old Monkey Island games. At my advanced age, life is starting to be too short.

I haven't played Doom 3 since it stressed the hell out of my computer to the point where I had to quit a few hours in, but it sure didn't grab me. I did play through Quake 4 one computer later, though!!


----------



## CapinCripes

I tend to have a problem with getting distracted mid way through and never getting back to things before the inevitable "wtf was going on in this again" sets in when i get back to it. So i force myself to play or watch my way through media all the way as a means to avert the problem.


----------



## TedEH

I definitely have a handful of games that I've played the first few hours of several times, just to get distracted, come back to it like a year later, wonder wtf was going on, start over again.


----------



## mongey

enjoying dark souls on the switch 

and I think my fellow train commuters get entertainment from my salt when I die stupidly .most of them anyway


----------



## cwhitey2

I'm on the fence about getting either the VR for PlayStation or getting a Switch.

I haven't used either...obviously they are 2 totally different products, but I want to hear your opinions about both.


----------



## wankerness

What do you want it for? They serve two very different purposes. My limited experience with the VR is that it’s a gimmick that still has kinks in it, but that’s based on me using it for two hours at a friend’s house and always managing to end up turning myself away from his TV in short order due to disorientation. Plus, back then, about the only game he had that was even remotely impressive was a jack-in-the-box horror game where you walked through a haunted carnival. Now I think it is still mainly just ports of games that just become more “immersive” in VR, like older FPS games, but Resident Evil 7 would probably be a trip. Still, my uneducated opinion is it’s probably a gimmick.

Switch has some great exclusives and lets you play overpriced ports of Skyrim and Doom while sitting on the toilet. Get a switch!


----------



## TedEH

Having owned neither of the two I'd say go for the Switch. It has the games, it has the portability - it's going to be a console you can potentially keep playing for quite a while. PSVR might be cool for a while, but if there's no serious stream of decent games for it... it basically just becomes a novelty, even if it's really cool at first.


----------



## cwhitey2

@wankerness I like some of the games on VR, but not sure if it's worth the price currently. The ones I used in the past were pretty mehhh, but they were also not used on a PlayStation...

I would get a switch for the Mario and Zelda series. I also like the fact that's portable...not that I _need_ that, but it's a cool option.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

Just picked up SoulCalibur VI since I saw they added 2B to the roster (speaking of disappointingly sexualized characters...), and holy christ this game has gotten way more complicated since the last time I played it. I think the last time I played a SoulCalibur game was SC2 way back when on the GameCube. 

Having fun with it so far but damn my dudes, I was not expecting to have to retrain myself this much


----------



## Rosal76

cwhitey2 said:


> @wankerness I like some of the games on VR, but not sure if it's worth the price currently. The ones I used in the past were pretty mehhh, but they were also not used on a PlayStation...



A friend of mine's cousin has the VR and he (friend) told me he loves it. I believe they were playing some kind of tank game. My friend is thinking of getting one now because they have the Borderlands 2 VR game, which is one of his favorite games. I wanna see how the Sniper Elite 4 VR plays. If he gets the VR, I'll definitely wanna try it out.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

TedEH said:


> I definitely have a handful of games that I've played the first few hours of several times, just to get distracted, come back to it like a year later, wonder wtf was going on, start over again.



Recently had this with MGS5: Ground Zeroes. Started it over a year ago, booted up my save recently and I found myself standing inside a storage room surrounded by an army base with no rations and my gun is equipped …







On a side note, can anyone on here comment on MGS5: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain? I got both on PC and it looks it's gonna be quite the time investment. Worth it?


----------



## TedEH

Just realized the steam winter sale is on now. Another year of impulsively purchasing games and possibly not ever playing them.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Just realized the steam winter sale is on now. Another year of impulsively purchasing games and possibly not ever playing them.



I've managed to go a few years without buying a PC game apart from WoW expansions, I broke the cycle! I just still have about 80 things in my steam backlog with no desire to play them.


----------



## Ralyks

Somehow I suckered myself into getting Castlevania Reqium on PS4, since it’s half off..

Other than that, just got to chapter 9 in Yakuza 0. I hope to have this one finished and moved on to Kiwami before years end.


----------



## wankerness

Ordacleaphobia said:


> Just picked up SoulCalibur VI since I saw they added 2B to the roster (speaking of disappointingly sexualized characters...), and holy christ this game has gotten way more complicated since the last time I played it. I think the last time I played a SoulCalibur game was SC2 way back when on the GameCube.
> 
> Having fun with it so far but damn my dudes, I was not expecting to have to retrain myself this much



I haven't played one of those games since basically button mashing against my friends on Gamecube, either! I'm kind of curious about this one.

2B is sexualized in such a bizarre, stylistic way that compliments 9S and his stupid short pants (which blow off when you do his self-destruct move!!!) that I am not bothered. Certainly she's light-years better than Kaine!! (or A2) I love the look of that game in every respect, I just wouldn't put a big poster of it anywhere women would see it.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

wankerness said:


> I haven't played one of those games since basically button mashing against my friends on Gamecube, either! I'm kind of curious about this one.
> 
> 2B is sexualized in such a bizarre, stylistic way that compliments 9S and his stupid short pants (which blow off when you do his self-destruct move!!!) that I am not bothered. Certainly she's light-years better than Kaine!! (or A2) I love the look of that game in every respect, I just wouldn't put a big poster of it anywhere women would see it.



Oh I agree. It's the overarching trend that's disappointing to me; rather than 2B in particular. I want to be able to nerd out about my favorite games with all of my friends without having to worry about certain ones less entrenched in that culture judging me because of tropes/stereotypes that may not even apply.

What's funny was that I bought SoulCalbur II for a guest character too (Link)


----------



## thedonal

TedEH said:


> Just realized the steam winter sale is on now. Another year of impulsively purchasing games and possibly not ever playing them.



Yep. Just downloading Doom 3 BFG (oh the nostalgia! That theme tune!!) and The Witcher 3 GOTY- been eyeing this up for such a long time but at £13.99 it's clearly a steal. There goes getting anything done in January! (OK-that's not true- I've gotta start the job hunt and really rekindle the music production so priorities, priorities...!)


----------



## Carrion Rocket

COD: Infinite Warfare. Surprisingly good. The basic gameplay obviously isn't much different aside from the suit abilities. And the Raptor combat was a cool new addition, even if it didn't have much depth to it. But having to do that launch sequence every single time got old real quick.


----------



## Leviathus

GatherTheArsenal said:


> Worth it?


For sure.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Caved and bought Frostpunk and Northgard to satisfy my strategy/city-building itch.

Also started to play Dishonored 2 the other day, doing a high chaos (murdering everyone I see) as Emily first. So far really like it, just more of the first game which honestly is exactly what I wanted. Love the world they made with the little details sprinkled around in books and audio logs, and the gameplay is fluid and varied enough where there are multiple ways to accomplish the same thing in the mission. I'm surprised I didn't hear more about this one after it came out, which nowadays might be a good thing? I dunno, either way, I'm having a great time and I hope they don't let the franchise die since it's one of my favourite original concepts/IPs in the last decade.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

BlackMastodon said:


> Also started to play Dishonored 2 the other day, doing a high chaos (murdering everyone I see) as Emily first. So far really like it, just more of the first game which honestly is exactly what I wanted. Love the world they made with the little details sprinkled around in books and audio logs, and the gameplay is fluid and varied enough where there are multiple ways to accomplish the same thing in the mission. I'm surprised I didn't hear more about this one after it came out, which nowadays might be a good thing? I dunno, either way, I'm having a great time and I hope they don't let the franchise die since it's one of my favourite original concepts/IPs in the last decade.



Agreed, it's underrated as a series but I think it's actually doing well enough to continue, every release got really high reviews across the board so I don't think it'll go anywhere anytime soon. Keep in mind Bethesda had way bigger IP's like Fallout 4 released only a year prior in 2015 and they kept adding mods to it all through 2016, even in the same month that Dishonored 2 was released they put out a major modding patch for the ps4. That's likely why not a lot of ppl were talking about it.

Not long after they released Dishonored 2 they followed it up with Dishonored: Death of the Outsider which i'm currently going through right now. Low chaos trying to be sneaky, it's more challenging I find. But i can't wait to finish so I can start over on the newgame+ mode which they recently added in a patch, including a pretty nifty black+white filter where they're only letting red's show to emphasize blood in said black+white color scheme. I'm gonna murder everything and everyone in sight ... In fact, there were a few guards that were a royyyyyal pain in the backside to deal with and I got plans for em… gonna play hot potato with grenades, it's gonna be sweet.

I also like the setting too, they really managed to pull off a coherent blend of 1800's-era / British empire / steampunk world with a good amount of dark ambient fantasy. Very unique.


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

Ordacleaphobia said:


> Just picked up SoulCalibur VI since I saw they added 2B to the roster (speaking of disappointingly sexualized characters...), and holy christ this game has gotten way more complicated since the last time I played it. I think the last time I played a SoulCalibur game was SC2 way back when on the GameCube.
> 
> Having fun with it so far but damn my dudes, I was not expecting to have to retrain myself this much



What helped me was watching a couple tournaments to see people playing characters I liked and what moves they used often. Like half of the movelist never gets used, which made it WAYYYY easier for me to get into. I've just started using 2b and she's extremely good cause all her moves are fairly easy and hit pretty dang hard. Very fun character!


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

ThtOthrPrsn said:


> What helped me was watching a couple tournaments to see people playing characters I liked and what moves they used often. Like half of the movelist never gets used, which made it WAYYYY easier for me to get into. I've just started using 2b and she's extremely good cause all her moves are fairly easy and hit pretty dang hard. Very fun character!



Yeah, I've been playing 2B, Groh, and Kilik and it's starting to come back. Nightmare too but he feels like such a broken character I try to avoid him 
It's been fun so far; don't know why I ever stopped playing fighting games.


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

Ordacleaphobia said:


> Yeah, I've been playing 2B, Groh, and Kilik and it's starting to come back. Nightmare too but he feels like such a broken character I try to avoid him
> It's been fun so far; don't know why I ever stopped playing fighting games.



I don't play voldo as often for the same reason  feels almost dirty winning with him at times. I had took a long break from fighting games for a few years and then came back in when Tekken 7 came out. Got around to building a fightstick only to have it gather dust cause I sucked with it. Now I use it all the time for SC6 and I suck at the game on controller!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ordacleaphobia said:


> Yeah, I've been playing 2B, Groh, and Kilik and it's starting to come back. Nightmare too but he feels like such a broken character I try to avoid him
> It's been fun so far; don't know why I ever stopped playing fighting games.


kilik and nightmare have been consistently good across the series. I've always been more of a maxi/mitsurugi player myself. 
I'm pretty apprehensive about playing sc6 considering how badly they fucked up 4 and 5.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

KnightBrolaire said:


> kilik and nightmare have been consistently good across the series. I've always been more of a maxi/mitsurugi player myself.
> I'm pretty apprehensive about playing sc6 considering how badly they fucked up 4 and 5.



Yeah I remember really enjoying them back in SC2, so that was kind of where I defaulted. I haven't touched the series since 2 for....really no reason, so I've really got no reference; but 6 feels pretty good so far. I'd say it's worth it if you're into that type of game. I snagged my copy off G2A for like $30 so if grey market is cool with you, I definitely feel like I have my money's worth.


----------



## TedEH

I finished Link Between Worlds just before the holidays, so next I'm going to play..... Kirby Super Star Ultra.  On a bit of a Nintendo and handhelds thing lately I guess.


----------



## MFB

Cooling off in Overwatch for a bit after picking it up, and jumping back to the Arkham series. I finished Asylum previously after only getting part way through my first time, so now I'm replaying City and trying to do as much as I can, and then also going to wrap up Arkham Knight. I had tried it when it first came out, but just didn't jive with it for some reason.


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

KnightBrolaire said:


> kilik and nightmare have been consistently good across the series. I've always been more of a maxi/mitsurugi player myself.
> I'm pretty apprehensive about playing sc6 considering how badly they fucked up 4 and 5.



I hadn't played SC since 3 or 4, but I bought to deluxe for this one and it feels well worth it for a fighting game. The DLC characters so far feel fleshed out and fitting, which is nice


----------



## wankerness

I would like to play SC, but man, it’s on sale right now and is still over 70 bucks. Guess I’m waiting for the GOTY collection that will inevitably have more content and cost way less! 

I just beat the main boss of DRagon Quest XI and am starting on the “post game,” I think I love this game besides the pep system. The characters are so damn endearing and the story is so free of bullshit compared to basically all other JRPGs. Very satisfying game!


----------



## chopeth

prey


----------



## mongey

Got snash. Only had 10 mins so far to have a go. Seems fun.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

My sister bought me Soul Calibur 6 for Christmas so I had a bit of a go on that. Certainly much more effort put in than 4 and 5. Though putting Tira as DLC is still crap, should have put those Muppet Babies from 5 instead, and I'm rather tired of the story presentation in modern fighting games, despite how extensiclve it is here. But it's all about how much you can get away with from the character creation. Of course somebody made Homer and Marge Simpson, Pikachu and Sonic.  Don't get me started with the stupid Voldos with penises...

I did buy my sister a PS4 with FFXV so I know for a fact she might want to borrow this. 

Also got Fist Of The North Star Lost Paradise on a sale so sweetness to that. But I promised myself that Ys VIII takes priority.


----------



## Ralyks

I've am basically zeroing in on finishing Yakuza 0 (no pun intended) at this point. Got to chapter 13 today, and basically want to have it done by the end of the week.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Also got Fist Of The North Star Lost Paradise on a sale so sweetness to that. But I promised myself that Ys VIII takes priority.



Add Yakuza Kiwami 2 to the sales list. Interesting which of the 2 I'll be choosing after Ys. Probably Lost Paradise...


----------



## ThePhilosopher

Civ6 & The Long Dark.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Add Yakuza Kiwami 2 to the sales list. Interesting which of the 2 I'll be choosing after Ys. Probably Lost Paradise...



I saw FOTNS was only 20 bucks on amazon and got that too! I kind of want to play AC Odyssey, but I know if I do that there’s 100 hours gone


----------



## Frostbite

Bought Assassins Creed Odyssey during the Steam sale and I've been playing that. Origins didn't really do a whole lot for me story wise even though I loved all the game play changes they made. Odyssey is just awesome and it's a super beautiful game.


----------



## Frostbite

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Add Yakuza Kiwami 2 to the sales list. Interesting which of the 2 I'll be choosing after Ys. Probably Lost Paradise...


I need to play Kiwami 2. I beat 0 and got to the very end of 1 (just fuck the second to last boss fight on the heli pad. Fuck it right in it's fucking stupid face) and Yakuza is a top series for me at this point. I've been holding off playing 6 hoping that they re-do/re-release the old ones like they've been doing


----------



## Tenaba

Anyone played Enter the Gungeon or Nuclear Throne? I've been playing both of them, but I can't beat either one.


----------



## Mathemagician

Cardbird said:


> Anyone played Enter the Gungeon or Nuclear Throne? I've been playing both of them, but I can't beat either one.



I played Enter the Gungeon and found it super hard but fun. I already own binding of Isaac however and idk if I can play through another very similar roguelike since I’m apparently bad at them.


----------



## Tenaba

Mathemagician said:


> I played Enter the Gungeon and found it super hard but fun. I already own binding of Isaac however and idk if I can play through another very similar roguelike since I’m apparently bad at them.



Rogue-lites are just hard in general, so I don't blame you. And I agree on Gungeon, I just bought the game yesterday but I've been enjoying in a bunch. The Binding of Isaac is great too, I just haven't picked it up in a while because I played it so often around the time of the Afterbirth expansion packs.


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

Frostbite said:


> Bought Assassins Creed Odyssey during the Steam sale and I've been playing that. Origins didn't really do a whole lot for me story wise even though I loved all the game play changes they made. Odyssey is just awesome and it's a super beautiful game.



I felt the same way about Origins and I absolutely LOVE Odyssey, it gives you a lot to do that keeps you playing even after the main story and that's all anyone could ask for. The story was really engaging and the gameplay feels really good/satisfying.


----------



## Frostbite

ThtOthrPrsn said:


> I felt the same way about Origins and I absolutely LOVE Odyssey, it gives you a lot to do that keeps you playing even after the main story and that's all anyone could ask for. The story was really engaging and the gameplay feels really good/satisfying.


Yeah the combat is great. Plays right into how I play the Souls games which is to abuse i-frames because I can't stand shields haha. Plus they finally fixed executions to the point where the weapon just doesn't stick into the enemy character model and the move around before taking it out. Like for the most part they stay stuck in place. Honestly super immersion breaking for me to stab a guy then see my character model move and the sword moves with him in the dudes chest


----------



## Ralyks

Just finished Yakuza 0. What a ride. Debating if I like 0 or 6 more, but goddamn 0 was great. Taking a break before jumping into Kiwami.

And that break is Tetris Effect, which I grabbed today.


----------



## DudeManBrother

I got my kids an NES classic for Christmas: so yeah I was up late beating Super Mario 1 for the first time since the early 90’s  still remember the warp spots and everything!

Also was (not so fun) getting my ass kicked against Soda Popinski from Punchout just like I remember growing up. 

Now I’m not sure if I got it for them or me


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I saw FOTNS was only 20 bucks on amazon and got that too! I kind of want to play AC Odyssey, but I know if I do that there’s 100 hours gone



Nice. My predicable bias will tell you to ditch Odyssey and jump straight to Lost Paradise. I've got a weird relationship with AC. Got bored with the first, skipped right to 4, enjoyed that a bit then stopped caring about everything afterwards. 



Frostbite said:


> I need to play Kiwami 2. I beat 0 and got to the very end of 1 (just fuck the second to last boss fight on the heli pad. Fuck it right in it's fucking stupid face) and Yakuza is a top series for me at this point. I've been holding off playing 6 hoping that they re-do/re-release the old ones like they've been doing



Yakuza 3-5 are definitely getting re-releases. Though just HD remakes as opposed to being rebuilt with new engines like the Kiwami games. 4 getting the most significant change with 1 main character's actor being re-casted. No idea when they're being released outside Japan though. 



Ralyks said:


> Just finished Yakuza 0. What a ride. Debating if I like 0 or 6 more, but goddamn 0 was great. Taking a break before jumping into Kiwami.



While I thoroughly enjoyed 6, I still thought 0 was the more fulfilling gaming experience. That's not to say 6 had it's fair share of content (it's a Yakuza game, there's always plenty) but felt strangely lacking compared to previous installments. This of course was deliberate to make 6 a more grounded and personal affair, which does well. 

Speaking of 6, I just found out that the more you play the Live Chat mini game, you get to unlock the full softcore vids for the 2 ladies a la 0's video store. So that's where Sega hid them this time around.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Yakuza 3-5 are definitely getting re-releases. Though just HD remakes as opposed to being rebuilt with new engines like the Kiwami games. 4 getting the most significant change with 1 main character's actor being re-casted. No idea when they're being released outside Japan though.
> 
> 
> 
> While I thoroughly enjoyed 6, I still thought 0 was the more fulfilling gaming experience. That's not to say 6 had it's fair share of content (it's a Yakuza game, there's always plenty) but felt strangely lacking compared to previous installments.



As this point, I feel Yakuza has finally caught on enough in the West that I feel confident the 3 - 5 remasters will come over here. Honestly, it feels like they should just be sold on a bundle. Also, aren't they already out in Japan?

And with some time to reflect, yeah, 0 definitely felt more dense and full. I think I finished 6 is 21 hours. 0 I put 33 in while doing minimal side stuff, and apparently only did 15.51% of the game  Although I'm pretty sure in general 0 is longer than 6, I think 0 was 17 chapters and 6 was 14?
And yeah, now I'm regretting finishing 6 first. The transition from 0 to Kiwami story wise feels so much smoother and I don't feel lost.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> As this point, I feel Yakuza has finally caught on enough in the West that I feel confident the 3 - 5 remasters will come over here. Honestly, it feels like they should just be sold on a bundle. Also, aren't they already out in Japan?



I know 3 HD is already out in Japan, with 4 following suit next month. Sega did say that the HDs are meant for newcomers so a Western release is inevitable. Whether they sell it as a bundle or separately is another story. 



Ralyks said:


> And with some time to reflect, yeah, 0 definitely felt more dense and full. I think I finished 6 is 21 hours. 0 I put 33 in while doing minimal side stuff, and apparently only did 15.51% of the game  Although I'm pretty sure in general 0 is longer than 6, I think 0 was 17 chapters and 6 was 14?
> And yeah, now I'm regretting finishing 6 first. The transition from 0 to Kiwami story wise feels so much smoother and I don't feel lost.



I think part of what makes 0 feel longer is having a second playable character, despite having roughly the same amount of chapters. The script and pacing become longer when there's more people involved. I certainly felt that when playing 5, and that's with going through the mammoth content.


----------



## lurè

Finished Arkham knight and started the witcher 3.
Lots of stuff to do and it's gonna take a while.
Meanwhile I'm also very tempted on buying Nioh. I'm not the biggest fan of souls-like games due to their difficulty but nioh seems more "human" and I love the atmosphere.


----------



## TedEH

I've been playing Samus Returns over the last few days, simply because the 2ds is easy to take to family things and play for a bit when nothing is happening. Reviews had said it wasn't great for a Metroid game in the context of the series, but that seems to be a strength to me - I haven't really played any other Metroid games so this has been a good intro. Classic enough to give me enough of an idea what those games were about, but modern enough that I don't feel like I'm playing something from back when game design wasn't quite figured out yet. I can't tell you if it's good relative to other Metroid games, but it's good if you don't know the rest of the series to put it in context.


----------



## Ralyks

Tetris Effect is serenity. It is happiness. And it's also a dash of "Oh, right, Tetris can be a motherfucker sometimes." But good Lord is this game beautiful, and such amazing sound design, and I can't think of anyone I wouldn't recommend this to outside of the few people who don't like Tetris (c'mon, how could you not like Tetris even a little?!)


----------



## Santuzzo

I went back to playing Far Cry 4 on my PS4 the past days. Awesome game, I used to play it a lot when I first got my PS4 (about 2 years ago) and then haven't played it much since....


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

Seeing all the glowing opinions of it, I picked up Yakuza 0 since it was on sale on Steam, excited to give it a try!


----------



## wankerness

Make sure you give it some time, I think I was about 3 hours in before it clicked. The side missions in the open world are where it’s real character starts coming out. The combat also gets better the further into the game you get. I also found kiryu really boring in that game, it wasn’t till the next game that I liked him, but Majima is awesome.

I finished Dragon Age XI. The final final boss had some gimmick where you can massively weaken him that I didn’t notice for the first few attempts, so I was confused why I kept dying. It pays to pay attention to dialogue and item descriptions!! Great game overall, took me 90 hours, that was with 90% achievements and a fair amount of best gear though.

I started AC Odyssey and it’s shocking how much more I like this than Origins, which I lost interest in after a few hours. The controls just feel a lot better and I’m much more interested in the main character and the flashbacks aren’t a confusing mess.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm 75% of the way through the War Stories for Battlefield 1.

I tried to play Battlefield: Hardline earlier, but the disc wouldn't read after installing ~48% of the game.

Still grinding my way through the scrap collecting in Mad Max.


----------



## Ralyks

Going through my playthrough of Yakuza Kiwami. This one is suppose to be fair short I'm comparison to the recent releases, correct?

Also, still adore Tetris Effect. This is sneaking into my top 10 list for 2018, for sure.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Got a GS card for Xmas, used some of it to grab Spider-Man. DLing now, got 3 days off, should be a good time.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Going through my playthrough of Yakuza Kiwami. This one is suppose to be fair short I'm comparison to the recent releases, correct?
> 
> Also, still adore Tetris Effect. This is sneaking into my top 10 list for 2018, for sure.



I don't know if Kiwami is notably shorter. I THINK I put about 30 hours into 0, 1 and 6 and I tried doing most of the sidequest stuff that didn't seem miserable (ex, Mahjong).


----------



## MFB

Downloaded QUBE 2 off XBL since its one of this months free games, and damn if it isnt a nice little breathed; I'm usually hot garbage when it comes to puzzle games, but something about this one is different, my brain can actually break it down and digest the type of puzzle they're setting up. Maybe it's because its not a "you can die during this puzzle" type game, but its great.

Kind of like Journey, where you play it once or twice as an experience and then its served its purpose.


----------



## thedonal

Well. I can only really say that The Witcher 3 is stunning. What a world- so beautifully realised. The weather and lighting are amazing. The ground even looks wet when it rains. 

A good few hours in so far- only level 7 and a lot to learn but loving it (even the sweary moments- the big battles!). It does seem damn hard to get all the ingredients to get a good set of potions and bombs etc ready and at the moment cash is very hard to come by, but I'm sure that'll get easier...


----------



## BlackMastodon

Speaking of currency in video games, does anyone else ever find that they almost never need it or use it? I can't remember the last game where I was strapped for cash and it was a problem. Any Zelda games I've played, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dishonored, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect all of these I could find materials or potions or armour/weapons in the world and rarely ever need to buy anything. Unless it's a strategy game I always end the games I mentioned above with an absurd amount of money that I almost never need, maybe the occasional potion or upgrade that you can't find or make yourself. I feel like there's just no urgency to having money and spending it in a lot of these games. 

Not sure why but I've been thinking about this recently and thedonal's post reminded me of it.


----------



## Demiurge

^I'm always stingy with resources that usually cost money like ammo, life-potions, etc. so by the end of the game I'm usually flush with supplies and more money than I'll ever need...

Except for Castlevania Order of Ecclesia. Maybe I was just really bad at this one, but life-potions were expensive as hell and, perhaps underpowered throughout, I would get knocked-around like a rag doll. After every area where I'd get my ass-kicked, I would need to grind for money to buy supplies before forging-ahead. It's really the only game in the series where I found myself grinding a lot.


----------



## Mathemagician

FF14. I found that there is a shiba-Inu minion. And since collecting pets/mounts is my endgame this is my new goal. I needed a calmer game to play alongside the new smash bros.


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Speaking of currency in video games, does anyone else ever find that they almost never need it or use it? I can't remember the last game where I was strapped for cash and it was a problem. Any Zelda games I've played, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dishonored, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect all of these I could find materials or potions or armour/weapons in the world and rarely ever need to buy anything. Unless it's a strategy game I always end the games I mentioned above with an absurd amount of money that I almost never need, maybe the occasional potion or upgrade that you can't find or make yourself. I feel like there's just no urgency to having money and spending it in a lot of these games.
> 
> Not sure why but I've been thinking about this recently and thedonal's post reminded me of it.



It's just your playstyle with some of those. Skyrim, for example, I'd CONSTANTLY be running out of money while leveling alchemy/blacksmithing/enchanting since the fastest/easiest way by far is to constantly buy out all the resources you find in the alchemy/smithing vendors. After that, of course, you don't need any, but that's a gigantic amount of money for a very long amount of time that you need to be spending. Zelda BotW I never had enough money if I actually wanted to repair decent weapons instead of using trash ones like sticks that I'd find everywhere, so again, there's either not nearly ENOUGH money (using the repair mechanics) or you don't really need any (ignoring that whole function and just using whatever crap you happen to have at the moment). It's been so long since I played the older ones that I don't even remember what I needed to buy apart from the occasional bomb or some money sink that would gate progression.

Mass Effect 1 just threw pointless money at you, but in ME2 you actually had to go exploring to have enough money to buy all the upgrades, and you had to buy most of the upgrades, as well as not waste tons of money on probes/health packs, to not lose anyone in the last mission! I don't really remember ME3's credit deal, it probably split the difference.

AC: Odyssey I'm always loaded in, but that's because I NEVER upgrade anything or engrave anything, since it's hideously expensive. It would be very easy to run out of money in five minutes flat if I wanted to optimize my gear or ever upgrade any of the good legendaries that I tend to only use for about an hour before they're too low-level vs enemies. And I'm constantly running out of resources trying to upgrade my ship! So yeah, if you want to play like a miser, you can amass great quantities!

Potions, yeah, I was just talking about this with friends IRL last week. All of us apparently have the same psychological block to ever using any good non-buyable consumable items in games, like elixirs in Final Fantasy games, since we always are thinking "no! this is too rare! I might need it for something hard down the line!!" and end up just never using it when we could have and it would have made life easier. If I only treated actual real life money that way, I'd be pretty loaded right now!




thedonal said:


> Well. I can only really say that The Witcher 3 is stunning. What a world- so beautifully realised. The weather and lighting are amazing. The ground even looks wet when it rains.
> 
> A good few hours in so far- only level 7 and a lot to learn but loving it (even the sweary moments- the big battles!). It does seem damn hard to get all the ingredients to get a good set of potions and bombs etc ready and at the moment cash is very hard to come by, but I'm sure that'll get easier...



I'm curious to revisit The Witcher 3 after playing AC: Odyssey. I think the world is a lot smaller and that the graphics are probably a lot worse (ON PS4, not PC). I also remember the combat being pretty lackluster, though that might have been me generally sucking at it and having to limp through the early game by using that shield ability on cooldown to stun guys and then having to run away until it came back. BUT, I remember the characters were just great and that I got REALLY into the story after the confusion of the first half or so where I had no clue who most people were. Ex, pretty much anyone you were supposed to know any backstory about other than Ciri, Triss, Yennefer, Philippa, and Vesemir, who mainly just were introduced properly as if you hadn't played the last games (apart from Triss, who I did remember from 2, unlike all the other characters, besides Roche and his stupid head diaper). Oh, and those other two Witcher guys you meet up with towards the end.

The story in Witcher 3 kind of crept up on me. At some point I was loving the character interactions as much as Mass Effect 2/3, which are my gold standard for likable characters and enjoying cutscenes. The story in this, though, hits so much harder than those games. I got the most extended, "good" ending in Witcher 3, and it was probably the most emotional that any game ever made me. It's the one with the cabin in the winter, to not give anything away, but so in the event you get it you'll know what I mean! The characters here are all so alive and feel so thoroughly written and fleshed out, which is a real rarity. Other games with decent characters/plots still look horrible in comparison, like Dragon Age: Inquisition for a game that came out at a similar time and put a similar emphasis on character and plot. And having a hero that was a firmly established character that you played as instead of some player cipher really worked for me, even though I know it pissed plenty of RPers or people that just didn't like Geralt off.


----------



## Steinmetzify

thedonal said:


> Well. I can only really say that The Witcher 3 is stunning. What a world- so beautifully realised. The weather and lighting are amazing. The ground even looks wet when it rains.
> 
> A good few hours in so far- only level 7 and a lot to learn but loving it (even the sweary moments- the big battles!). It does seem damn hard to get all the ingredients to get a good set of potions and bombs etc ready and at the moment cash is very hard to come by, but I'm sure that'll get easier...



Been gaming since about age 6, I’m almost 45 and W3 was by far the best game I ever played in terms of storyline immersion, graphics and combat. 

We had a group of us playing on another forum and ran it a whole year, trading builds and doing the DLC. Was just awesome. 

About 30% into Spider-Man...controls took a minute but I’m FLYING thru the city, all these turns and twists and rolls you can do as far as webslinging, it’s just awesome. Everything I always wanted to be able to do with the character in every SM game. 

Story is creeping on me, sad one guy bit it; MJ interaction bugged me at first but I’m rooting for Pete. Graphics are great. Combat is ok, if repetitive but it’s fine. The stealth shit reminds me of the Arkham games, but a lot faster paced if you don’t want to roll like that. 

All in all worth it for a free Xmas present lol


----------



## StevenC

BlackMastodon said:


> Speaking of currency in video games, does anyone else ever find that they almost never need it or use it? I can't remember the last game where I was strapped for cash and it was a problem. Any Zelda games I've played, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dishonored, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect all of these I could find materials or potions or armour/weapons in the world and rarely ever need to buy anything. Unless it's a strategy game I always end the games I mentioned above with an absurd amount of money that I almost never need, maybe the occasional potion or upgrade that you can't find or make yourself. I feel like there's just no urgency to having money and spending it in a lot of these games.
> 
> Not sure why but I've been thinking about this recently and thedonal's post reminded me of it.


MGSV screwed me over on in game currency a couple times. It has offline and online currency separated for no good reason, and in the earlier versions of the game displayed them together in most of the regular menus. Essentially, playing the game cost in-game currency because deployment had a cost depending on your loadout, so as I got new weapons that cost more I was using them and doing FOB missions that I was told were giving me loads of money. But then the MGSV online patch came out and all of my money got segmented and I was way overdrawn in the offline money. The way it currently is, all the best equipment is locked behind huge sums of online money gathering and not fun playing, while all the offline money can be spent upgrading the stuff you'll use in a regular playthrough. That means when you finish the main game you're greeted with a bunch of cool features you can't be bothered to unlock while also not having the money to do the things to unlock them.

Konami ruined that game so well.


----------



## thedonal

steinmetzify said:


> Been gaming since about age 6, I’m almost 45 and W3 was by far the best game I ever played in terms of storyline immersion, graphics and combat.
> 
> We had a group of us playing on another forum and ran it a whole year, trading builds and doing the DLC. Was just awesome.



Yep- been gaming since around 11- a week or so off 46 here. I'm absolutely astounded so far by The Witcher III. More so the further I get into it. It's plenty big- even just running the stories around Novigrod would have been a large part of a game, not too many years ago. I love all of the background colour- he street characters and run-ins with bandits and thugs. Running the story around the bath house is amazing- the dialogue alone is properly entertaining- particularly as a Brit! I can't imagine the sheer amount of time that went into the scripting and voice work for all of the stories. Sure some lines from the main cast are repeated, but many others are complete scripts. 

And those moments- when you're stood on the road. Wind blowing the trees. Dark clouds with the sun peeking through- it's absolutely heavenly- especially when you look at Geralt or the scenery, lit by said sun against such a dark background (I love those contrasts! Properly moody). Each area has such a strong character. 

The design is stunning- some of the creatures are truly horrifying- in particular The Ladies Of The Wood. Proper grim! And- despite the 'average' combat, fighting things is particularly satisfying- especially once you have signs amped up (Igni is a firm favourite with me).

It took me a long time to get this game- and I think for the price I got it for (£14) it's really an absolute steal! 20 hours in now. Getting the hang of about everything except that damned card game!!! So I've left that alone. But well worth the wait...


----------



## BlackMastodon

StevenC said:


> MGSV screwed me over on in game currency a couple times. It has offline and online currency separated for no good reason, and in the earlier versions of the game displayed them together in most of the regular menus. Essentially, playing the game cost in-game currency because deployment had a cost depending on your loadout, so as I got new weapons that cost more I was using them and doing FOB missions that I was told were giving me loads of money. But then the MGSV online patch came out and all of my money got segmented and I was way overdrawn in the offline money. The way it currently is, all the best equipment is locked behind huge sums of online money gathering and not fun playing, while all the offline money can be spent upgrading the stuff you'll use in a regular playthrough. That means when you finish the main game you're greeted with a bunch of cool features you can't be bothered to unlock while also not having the money to do the things to unlock them.
> 
> Konami ruined that game so well.


That's just plain fucked up. I've never heard of a game that has a currency gate and forces you to alternate between online and offline play in order to keep playing the story (at least that's what it sounds like you're describing). If it was F2P then that's ones thing but not for a full on AAA release.


----------



## Steinmetzify

thedonal said:


> Yep- been gaming since around 11- a week or so off 46 here. I'm absolutely astounded so far by The Witcher III. More so the further I get into it. It's plenty big- even just running the stories around Novigrod would have been a large part of a game, not too many years ago. I love all of the background colour- he street characters and run-ins with bandits and thugs. Running the story around the bath house is amazing- the dialogue alone is properly entertaining- particularly as a Brit! I can't imagine the sheer amount of time that went into the scripting and voice work for all of the stories. Sure some lines from the main cast are repeated, but many others are complete scripts.
> 
> And those moments- when you're stood on the road. Wind blowing the trees. Dark clouds with the sun peeking through- it's absolutely heavenly- especially when you look at Geralt or the scenery, lit by said sun against such a dark background (I love those contrasts! Properly moody). Each area has such a strong character.
> 
> The design is stunning- some of the creatures are truly horrifying- in particular The Ladies Of The Wood. Proper grim! And- despite the 'average' combat, fighting things is particularly satisfying- especially once you have signs amped up (Igni is a firm favourite with me).
> 
> It took me a long time to get this game- and I think for the price I got it for (£14) it's really an absolute steal! 20 hours in now. Getting the hang of about everything except that damned card game!!! So I've left that alone. But well worth the wait...



Dude wait until you get to the snow world; the tune that starts playing when you hit it is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever heard in a video game. Stoked for you man, you have a whole immersive world experience waiting for you. Don’t quit, it’s totally worth the time you put in to get to the end.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

BlackMastodon said:


> Speaking of currency in video games, does anyone else ever find that they almost never need it or use it?



Yep. Not since the late 90s/early 00s era. I remember being strapped for currency to buy new weapons in some of the older Zelda games, desperate for gil to use for bribes in FFX, and the crazy grind for bolts in the PS2 Ratchet & Clank games. Aside from those stand out memories, I don't think I've ever really cared about in game currency.

And yeah, with consumables etc. I would always bank everything for later thinking I'd need them only to end up literally never using anything


----------



## wankerness

Many, many RPGs will put good weapons and armor on vendors and basically have upgrades every town you get to. You can't possibly afford them all unless you grind, so you have to either go with only buying them every few towns or mainly using the stuff you find in dungeons (FF games, Dragon Quest XI are examples of this).


----------



## Mathemagician

Buy all the weapons and only upgrade gear when you need to. By mid game you should have enough money to buy whatever - every rpg I’ve ever played.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Mathemagician said:


> Buy all the weapons and only upgrade gear when you need to. By mid game you should have enough money to buy whatever - every rpg I’ve ever played.


Just thinking Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Mass Effect, it's basically this formula but instead of buying it's kill a person and loot their gear and weapons then upgrade them.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Buy all the weapons and only upgrade gear when you need to. By mid game you should have enough money to buy whatever - every rpg I’ve ever played.



Right, just saying in some games currency isn't this infinite resource that you have nothing to spend on like BlackMastodon's experiences.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> Right, just saying in some games currency isn't this infinite resource that you have nothing to spend on like BlackMastodon's experiences.


Yeah to be fair I don't play JRPGs, I was curious about other peoples' experiences. Like my quick post said above yours, I find that I never have trouble or feel outgeared when I just mostly scavenge for stuff. Although I guess MMOs were an example where currency really mattered for materials for crafting.


----------



## StevenC

I like how in Octopath Traveller you can steal almost all the things you're able to buy, instead.


----------



## Ralyks

I feel like the last time I had currency issues in a game were... Like, Super Mario RPG or Final Fantasy VI. Maybe FFIX.


----------



## wankerness

Dude, you played Yakuza 6, there's no way you didn't have currency problems there!! I had to farm CONSTANTLY in that game for the ability points. That game (and to a lesser degree Kiwami 2) are two of the nastiest as far as currency is concerned. The way it works I don't really consider it exp, I guess, partly cause I came from Yakuza 0 where money and exp were literally the same thing.


----------



## Ralyks

Nah, opened up that vault above Serena and I was pretty much set. Mind you, I pretty much just ended up mainlining the story, otherwise I’d imagine I would have spent more currency.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Nah, opened up that vault above Serena and I was pretty much set. Mind you, I pretty much just ended up mainlining the story, otherwise I’d imagine I would have spent more currency.



Ah. I got all my stats up to 200 or whatever the "soft cap" was and got almost all the abilities, so I was farming A LOT of technique points and probably spent more time in that Sushi shop than any other location in game! Even with that, Jo Amon was scary.

EDIT: In looking up Jo Amon's name, I saw this: 

https://kotaku.com/the-end-of-yakuza-6-is-some-bullshit-1826216191

I kind of agree with this. I REALLY didn't like the plot in that game compared to the other three I've played, especially towards the end, even though I was really happy about the Kiyomi thing mentioned in there cause she was great.


----------



## thedonal

In Some games, cash barely matters or becomes an issue- particularly lotters- Diablos etc. You know you will get drops to improve your situation and if you grind your levels this will help, so you can build up a cash stash.

I'm really struggling to get much at the moment in Witcher 3- so I'm going to be side questing like hell to save up for the boat trip to Skelligen!! And maintaining my gear is costing a bit too where I don't have the repair kits (though often finding a craftsman is well out of my way at that point too!!).

The pig shrine quest I did last night was most amusing! It's nice to have a lot of nasty stuff and then the odd amusing local stories to get involved with too.

I'm going to have to be very careful with my questing- got started with the Hattori quest in Novigrad and accidentally triggered it later whilst running past the warehouse- where I agreed to meet him. All opponents over 10 levels above me and I failed it! Oh well...  I did manage to beat a few dwarves at that level earlier in the story but something went wrong at the warehouse.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I definitely got wrecked by high level enemies in that game while running around trying to fill in sections of the map a few times.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Just finished Ys VIII getting the True Ending. Enjoyable light hearted fun overall.

The game isn't all too original, nor difficult. I've already complained earlier about the giant spider infested mountain. Then comes the ghost ship and plain temples this side of Cold Steel and the middle to the end sections get on the predictable side. But reading about the Ys series, they're not exactly the most sophisticated nor overtly convoluted. They all start the same and finish the same with insert whatever adventure dujour in the middle. At least the game doesn't completely beat the 'use the power of friendship to commit deicide' shtick over your head like every JRPG ever... well not too severely anyway.

The gameplay is the game's strongest asset. Fun simple and comfortable hacky slashy. I said it wasn't too difficult as it eases you into the game until you get your rhythm down. Playing fighting games and whatever time I spent on Dark Souls conditioned me to either Get Gud with Flash Guard or Dodge Roll everything. Bosses keel over once you're dodge rolling and spend the frame advantage wailing away at their buttocks. Admittedly I fluked flash guards pretty well later on, and that made me recall Capcom Vs SNK 2 (which I've been watching tournament vids lately oddly enough). The amount of items the game showers you with also made things a bit easier. I had all the food with extra buffs and enough mangoes to survive even the toughest bosses and sauropods.

Ys does begin to bear it's fangs later on once they introduce the night quests, hunts and huge dinosaurs. One particular night quest for a damn egg ended in a conga line of super aggressive raptors and T-Rexes. I was supposed to run away from them but by playing Ys like how I play Yakuza (halt the entire game to clean up sidequests), I was already high level enough to obliterate them and leisurely stroll the field and fish as the badass boss music awkwardly continues on. Speaking of which, Fishing is just like Cold Steel; mash heavy to the point of violent rage on the last parts.

I'm not going to hark on about the awesome music anymore than I've already done. I've even got the OST blaring in the car. That said, it's always fun when the music to climbing a mountain has enough shred and double kick to rival even the most oily chested power metal band.

A few nitpicks aside, it's a fun simple light hearted action RPG. 71 hours clocked in and I'm satisfied with the game. It certainly made me want to give the series a proper chance. So far Ys Origin's on PS4, so when I have time. There's always that extra dungeon I suppose. I still have the permanent stat boost potions that I didn't even bother to use compared to all those mangoes...


I've actually started the first chapters of Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Lost Paradise just before finishing Ys. I'm still trying to decide which to invest first. They're essentially the same damn game.


----------



## Steinmetzify

thedonal said:


> In Some games, cash barely matters or becomes an issue- particularly lotters- Diablos etc. You know you will get drops to improve your situation and if you grind your levels this will help, so you can build up a cash stash.
> 
> I'm really struggling to get much at the moment in Witcher 3- so I'm going to be side questing like hell to save up for the boat trip to Skelligen!! And maintaining my gear is costing a bit too where I don't have the repair kits (though often finding a craftsman is well out of my way at that point too!!).
> 
> The pig shrine quest I did last night was most amusing! It's nice to have a lot of nasty stuff and then the odd amusing local stories to get involved with too.
> 
> I'm going to have to be very careful with my questing- got started with the Hattori quest in Novigrad and accidentally triggered it later whilst running past the warehouse- where I agreed to meet him. All opponents over 10 levels above me and I failed it! Oh well...  I did manage to beat a few dwarves at that level earlier in the story but something went wrong at the warehouse.



Dude I ended up really liking that about that game; it didn’t cater to you as a noob at all. Really changed how I approached things, knowing that those 5 guys could be 10 levels above me and I wouldn’t know unless I engaged them...


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Just finished Ys VIII getting the True Ending. Enjoyable light hearted fun overall.
> 
> The game isn't all too original, nor difficult. I've already complained earlier about the giant spider infested mountain. Then comes the ghost ship and plain temples this side of Cold Steel and the middle to the end sections get on the predictable side. But reading about the Ys series, they're not exactly the most sophisticated nor overtly convoluted. They all start the same and finish the same with insert whatever adventure dujour in the middle. At least the game doesn't completely beat the 'use the power of friendship to commit deicide' shtick over your head like every JRPG ever... well not too severely anyway.
> 
> The gameplay is the game's strongest asset. Fun simple and comfortable hacky slashy. I said it wasn't too difficult as it eases you into the game until you get your rhythm down. Playing fighting games and whatever time I spent on Dark Souls conditioned me to either Get Gud with Flash Guard or Dodge Roll everything. Bosses keel over once you're dodge rolling and spend the frame advantage wailing away at their buttocks. Admittedly I fluked flash guards pretty well later on, and that made me recall Capcom Vs SNK 2 (which I've been watching tournament vids lately oddly enough). The amount of items the game showers you with also made things a bit easier. I had all the food with extra buffs and enough mangoes to survive even the toughest bosses and sauropods.
> 
> Ys does begin to bear it's fangs later on once they introduce the night quests, hunts and huge dinosaurs. One particular night quest for a damn egg ended in a conga line of super aggressive raptors and T-Rexes. I was supposed to run away from them but by playing Ys like how I play Yakuza (halt the entire game to clean up sidequests), I was already high level enough to obliterate them and leisurely stroll the field and fish as the badass boss music awkwardly continues on. Speaking of which, Fishing is just like Cold Steel; mash heavy to the point of violent rage on the last parts.
> 
> I'm not going to hark on about the awesome music anymore than I've already done. I've even got the OST blaring in the car. That said, it's always fun when the music to climbing a mountain has enough shred and double kick to rival even the most oily chested power metal band.
> 
> A few nitpicks aside, it's a fun simple light hearted action RPG. 71 hours clocked in and I'm satisfied with the game. It certainly made me want to give the series a proper chance. So far Ys Origin's on PS4, so when I have time. There's always that extra dungeon I suppose. I still have the permanent stat boost potions that I didn't even bother to use compared to all those mangoes...
> 
> 
> I've actually started the first chapters of Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Lost Paradise just before finishing Ys. I'm still trying to decide which to invest first. They're essentially the same damn game.



Ys's gameplay was wonderful. I really want another game that plays like that, but from what I've read, there really isn't anything. It's in a weird spot between action RPGs and Zelda. I LOVED the on-the-fly character switching. You say it's not original, but what do you think is like it? The earlier Ys games are not that similar from a gameplay POV, either. I hope that studio manages to put out another game. I'll have to get its OST, I loved it all the way through, it definitely had a Mega Man X sort of vibe, but much better-sounding and at least as catchy. Unlike say, Dragon Quest XI's music which is nostalgic in exactly the wrong way!

I got destroyed by that "bonus" boss in Ys the first few times (I assume it's what you're referring to by Extra Dungeon), but it wasn't too hard otherwise once I did some sidequests, yeah. I tried doing it well before the end of the game since I didn't realize it was an "endgame" boss when I went in there. The invasions or whatever they were called were very frantic at times. I don't think I ever failed any, but I definitely was having to run around like crazy to avoid anything smashing at the gate. And yeah, I got killed a couple times messing around in areas with enemies that massively outleveled me, like when I was poking around in that foggy area with the T-Rex. My main combat tactic was the easiest possible, which was basically just mashing the bicycle spin move that little club girl had, which used little enough energy that I could often do it through entire fights, and periodically unleashing something more damaging. I hated playing as the hero and never did once I got Dana. I played as Dana fairly often, too, but she had to regular attack more often. Her specials, though, definitely did more than club girl. Then I'd always use fencing girl as the third cause I couldn't get used to gun guy. She sorta sucked to play as, so I just used her as computer-controlled except when I had to take out flying enemies or something.

I do all sidequests in most games I play that are not insanely boring and overpopulated with them (ex, FFXV) and was INFURIATED that I put off one at the very beginning and then the character got "killed off" really early on so I failed the quest, destroying the achievement for great rep with everyone. After that, I started doing them all as soon as they were possibly available. I forgot about that egg quest, I think that was the hardest.

You know how I feel about Kiwami 2 (best of the four I've played for sure), but you do you! I got Lost Paradise off Amazon for 20 bucks a week or two ago, I want to finish AC Odyssey before I do anything else, though. That could be a LONG time, unfortunately! I also played a couple levels of Bayonetta 2 cause a friend wanted to see it after not knowing who she was in Smash Bros, so now I feel a need to play it. Even if my right hand was like "holy shit am I not used to this" through the prologue. I haven't had to mash buttons at anything approaching that speed since, well, Bayonetta 1! YS didn't come close!


----------



## TedEH

I had picked up a copy of Majora's Mask a while back (the N64 one) and finally got around to starting a playthrough. I used to be able to get through the main story in one day, but it's been so long since I played it. I always spoke very highly of the game, time to see if it still holds up. So far... I'm confident it does.


----------



## thedonal

steinmetzify said:


> Dude I ended up really liking that about that game; it didn’t cater to you as a noob at all. Really changed how I approached things, knowing that those 5 guys could be 10 levels above me and I wouldn’t know unless I engaged them...



Absolutely. I love games where there are areas that are off bounds because you will get smooshed very hard. KoA-Reckoning had that too. I liked that and it really feels like you're progressing when you can then approach these areas.

I'm a bit mixed on games with level scaling- this why I didn't get on with TES: Oblivion- it went in a way that meant I never felt like I was getting better. Though it was better handled in Skyrim so you still had opponents you could beat as you progressed.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I had picked up a copy of Majora's Mask a while back (the N64 one) and finally got around to starting a playthrough. I used to be able to get through the main story in one day, but it's been so long since I played it. I always spoke very highly of the game, time to see if it still holds up. So far... I'm confident it does.


My biggest regret in life will always be playing that game as a kid and always having the the official player's guide open next to me. I so wish I would've just played it naturally and found out things for myself. Still my favourite Zelda game to date and one of my all time tops for sure.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Ys's gameplay was wonderful. I really want another game that plays like that, but from what I've read, there really isn't anything. It's in a weird spot between action RPGs and Zelda. I LOVED the on-the-fly character switching. You say it's not original, but what do you think is like it? The earlier Ys games are not that similar from a gameplay POV, either. I hope that studio manages to put out another game. I'll have to get its OST, I loved it all the way through, it definitely had a Mega Man X sort of vibe, but much better-sounding and at least as catchy. Unlike say, Dragon Quest XI's music which is nostalgic in exactly the wrong way!
> 
> I got destroyed by that "bonus" boss in Ys the first few times (I assume it's what you're referring to by Extra Dungeon), but it wasn't too hard otherwise once I did some sidequests, yeah. I tried doing it well before the end of the game since I didn't realize it was an "endgame" boss when I went in there. The invasions or whatever they were called were very frantic at times. I don't think I ever failed any, but I definitely was having to run around like crazy to avoid anything smashing at the gate. And yeah, I got killed a couple times messing around in areas with enemies that massively outleveled me, like when I was poking around in that foggy area with the T-Rex. My main combat tactic was the easiest possible, which was basically just mashing the bicycle spin move that little club girl had, which used little enough energy that I could often do it through entire fights, and periodically unleashing something more damaging. I hated playing as the hero and never did once I got Dana. I played as Dana fairly often, too, but she had to regular attack more often. Her specials, though, definitely did more than club girl. Then I'd always use fencing girl as the third cause I couldn't get used to gun guy. She sorta sucked to play as, so I just used her as computer-controlled except when I had to take out flying enemies or something.
> 
> I do all sidequests in most games I play that are not insanely boring and overpopulated with them (ex, FFXV) and was INFURIATED that I put off one at the very beginning and then the character got "killed off" really early on so I failed the quest, destroying the achievement for great rep with everyone. After that, I started doing them all as soon as they were possibly available. I forgot about that egg quest, I think that was the hardest.
> 
> You know how I feel about Kiwami 2 (best of the four I've played for sure), but you do you! I got Lost Paradise off Amazon for 20 bucks a week or two ago, I want to finish AC Odyssey before I do anything else, though. That could be a LONG time, unfortunately! I also played a couple levels of Bayonetta 2 cause a friend wanted to see it after not knowing who she was in Smash Bros, so now I feel a need to play it. Even if my right hand was like "holy shit am I not used to this" through the prologue. I haven't had to mash buttons at anything approaching that speed since, well, Bayonetta 1! YS didn't come close!



Just to clarify, being unoriginal doesn't always mean bad. Perhaps the familiar ground is good and comfortable here. Granted that I complained about the spider cave and ghost ship being too token, but to be fair, there's only so many ideas you can put when the entire premise is being stranded on an island. 

I loved the instant character switching too. It was awesome in Secret of Mana and it was awesome in Warriors Orochi as well, the latter was excellent for fast paced hack/slash without breaking flow and that got me into the Dynasty/Samurai Warrior series in the first place. The AI are certainly more smarter than most, so that helps a lot. One thing I didn't like is how to execute the super moves, though that's more my fault. With all the dodge rolling I was doing, the amount of times I pulled them out accidentally is rather embarrassing. Reading through the series, it's definitely the best Ys combat system to date. The original 1 and 2 had Adol killing enemies by running into them. It's cute the developers gave you an item that allowed run damage as a nod to the series heritage, but I'll take the brand new hack/slash fighting thanks. 

All my comparisons to Dark Souls were not used lightly. I said before that the landscape design borrows heavily from that game to great effect. Look into the distance like a small island in the bay or that lone leaning tower in the east and you'll know can get there. You can see the castaway village from the highest mountain. To me that's great immersion that more games need to emulate. The Xenoblade games are the only other JPRG style games that do this. 

The raids and hunts were a lot of fun. The late ones certainly got rough when they were just relentless dinos trying to maul you down. I didn't lose a lot of health due to my levels but it did get annoying getting rag dolled around Alucard style after a messed up attempt to dodge roll. 

One small part that I liked was the Nameless assassin subplot. It was a cool Cluedo moment that I wished went longer but got resolved and ended too abruptly. 

While compared to other playable characters, Adol is about as interesting as a pack of Maccas Fries with ketchup on top (even Dogi seems more interesting than him), he's certainly the strongest in the game (with Dana on close second). I guess it's a design trope where the protagonist(s) become the strongest because the plot demands it (both get penultimate weapons over the rest). And once Adol learns the dash attack move from the gorilla (also a boring looking move) even the sauropods and that hidden rock golem boss became trivial chumps. Dana was certainly more fun but her dragon buff made bosses even easier. All that said, each character was a ball to play. Hummel contributed to the easy factor by bring a gun to a knife fight and just sniping enemies from a distance. Any time I was in a pickle, I'd bust him out and fire away. Those giant bullfrogs and the boss in the spider cave keeled over thanks to this. But they were all fun. I tend to try to keep everyone at equal levels, but it was a joy using every character here (even Adol). 

The extra dungeon I mentioned is a post game reward that I assume you get after the true ending. You basically get to revisit the Sanctuary Ruins, only more dilapidated and full of much tougher enemies. I tried it for a bit but got bored. Usually I don't care for post game muckabouts as once the story is done, I'm done. But I might give it a go at some point. Which reminds me...



Spoiler



I actually got stuck with past Dana's dungeon. After the first boss and some main game progress, the game didn't let me enter the next section. It turns out that I used a different time warp point instead of intended and the game doesn't even bother telling you that. It's like going through the wrong door in the Academy Awards. 



One of the big factors that made me want to check out the other Ys games was the dialogue with some characters after maxing out their friendships. Reading up on the series confirms it. Dogi's in every other game, and Griselda is also a recurring character too. I sort of wish they were easier access to play. Add to the fact that these are typically ordered not by title. Ys VIII takes place before Ys VI and VII? What? 

Also Ys IX is already in development. 




All your posts about Kiwami 2 here does make me lean towards that. I guess it's that familiar ground again. I mean I've put off FFXV again and again for whatever reason, just to set foot on Kamurocho again. Hell, I'm putting that game off just to try to fill the 100 custom character slots in Soul Calibur 6.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished the Journey Mode for Tetris Effect. Please, I implore everyone to try this game at least once. Few games give me the feels like this game did. I'm seriously considering buying a PSVR headset for this.


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

Finally picked Bayonetta back up. Forgot how over-the-top the game is!


----------



## Mathemagician

I just booted up Splatoon 2 this weekend and I spent 10 minutes clicking through the intro. If that’s normal then i’ll see the game again in 6 months.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ...about Kiwami 2 here does make me lean towards that. I guess it's that familiar ground again.



And I did just that. Up to Chapter 4 and the Cabaret floodgates have just opened. I blew a large chunk of my money on scouting for all the Gold and Silver hostesses to give Koyuki a day's rest, only to come back with a vengeance to make that money back. Damn I miss this. 

Thankfully Lost Paradise also has the Cabaret game, because OF COURSE IT DOES.


----------



## wankerness

Damn, guess I’ll be playing Lost Paradise after AC Odyssey! Hostesses are going to be in the post apocalypse I guess, even though no other country has them AFAIK.


----------



## TedEH

I made the mistake of accidentally watching one Jimquisition video and now I keep getting suggested more by the YouTube machine. For all the complaints about things wrong with games media, I think channels like his are the biggest problem with games coverage. That and every second reviewer being "angry" for whatever reason. I find that this flavor of criticism seems to grant people a general license to just be assholes and justify it as "criticism" as if it's something constructive. It's not constructive. It's just being an asshole.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I made the mistake of accidentally watching one Jimquisition video and now I keep getting suggested more by the YouTube machine. For all the complaints about things wrong with games media, I think channels like his are the biggest problem with games coverage. That and every second reviewer being "angry" for whatever reason. I find that this flavor of criticism seems to grant people a general license to just be assholes and justify it as "criticism" as if it's something constructive. It's not constructive. It's just being an asshole.



Says the guy being an unconstructive asshole by complaining about a video that's complaining! ;D

I dunno what you're talking about with him TBPH. He's complaining about MODERN PRACTICES IN VIDEOGAMING the vast majority of the time, aka the exact kind of thing you seem to hate too with your general "everything made less than 10 years ago is bad" posting history in this thread! What videos of his ticked you off? My opinion on him is he produces way too many videos and thus hammers on the same points way too often, ie, there's a video every time ANY game is loaded with disgusting microtransactions or has 5 different editions of varying prices. Both of which are well worth being called out, but happen so damn often that he can't keep up with it and it's repetitive! He also hates that Konami has horrible customer service/employee treatment and destroys their IPs by turning them into pachinko machines or Metal Gear Invasion, hates that EA kills good publishers/developers like Bioware, etcetcetc. He also is a crusader for Steam Greenlight to actually moderate their shit, which seems like it's never going to happen, but is desperately needed. His "jimpressions" are usually pretty funny.

He likes games that are good and his main thing is focusing on cynical monetization/laziness. I don't think he's what you describe, at all. What you're describing sounds more like the video game equivalent of cinemasins. Which probably exists, but I don't watch any other videogame channels on youtube.

EDIT: This sounds crankier than it's supposed to, the first line is entirely supposed to be kidding and the rest is just defending that channel with my experience of it, which is considerable over the last several months. I skip many of his videos and think he's repetitive, but think his heart's always in the right place and he tends to like a lot of the things I like, even if they're "TRIPLE AAaaaaA" like he was die-hard for Nier Automata and Horizon Zero Dawn and a big fan of God of War, etc. If you want something that's repetitive and always negative about everything, watch Zero Punctuation!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Took 5 seconds to google search "Jimquisition" and based off his appearance in his videos alone I already hate him.


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Took 5 seconds to google search "Jimquisition" and based off his appearance in his videos alone I already hate him.



Yeah, he's a weirdo and I don't get the look with the gloves and the hat. I can't remember why I didn't have that same reaction. I think I was listening to some other youtube video go and that one came on when I wasn't looking and I liked the cut of his jib before I saw him. Plus, he enrages right-wingers with some of his videos and that always makes me happy since the video game world is extremely backwards. Regardless, this is stupid. I am not a die-hard Jimquisition channel watcher. I tend to listen to his videos when I'm doing something else if the subject looks amusing. Once in a while if the game looks ridiculous enough I'll watch his videos where he plays bad games. I'll also watch his jimpression videos if it's a game I'm at all interested in. So, I very rarely actually see the guy! I'm just defending him against the knee-jerk hate here on display since I think he's one of the very few non-odious guys with any repute in video-game-youtube-land.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> Yeah, he's a weirdo and I don't get the look with the gloves and the hat. I can't remember why I didn't have that same reaction. I think I was listening to some other youtube video go and that one came on when I wasn't looking and I liked the cut of his jib before I saw him. Plus, he enrages right-wingers with some of his videos and that always makes me happy since the video game world is extremely backwards. Regardless, this is stupid. I am not a die-hard Jimquisition channel watcher. I tend to listen to his videos when I'm doing something else if the subject looks amusing. Once in a while if the game looks ridiculous enough I'll watch his videos where he plays bad games. I'll also watch his jimpression videos if it's a game I'm at all interested in. So, I very rarely actually see the guy! I'm just defending him against the knee-jerk hate here on display since I think he's one of the very few non-odious guys with any repute in video-game-youtube-land.


Totally fair, the image made me imagine the right-wing try-hard gamer who would scream that gaming isn't a boys' club anymore and that games are trying to be inclusive and his fragile white privelage is in danger and yada yada. 

But if that's not his deal then power to him. This is why I just stick to a couple of comedy related gaming channels that don't really have anything to do with opinions and I can largely stay clear of all the stuff I poked at above.


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Totally fair, the image made me imagine the right-wing try-hard gamer who would scream that gaming isn't a boys' club anymore and that games are trying to be inclusive and his fragile white privelage is in danger and yada yada.
> 
> But if that's not his deal then power to him. This is why I just stick to a couple of comedy related gaming channels that don't really have anything to do with opinions and I can largely stay clear of all the stuff I poked at above.



Yeah, he's English and lives in Alabama or Mississippi or something so the rare occasions he dips into "political" material it's usually to make fun of *exactly* what you mentioned above or just sigh at the concept of privatized healthcare, as if you're an Englishman living in the deep south of America you're probably going to be pretty horrified. 

What comedy-related gaming channels do you watch? I obviously like gaming a lot, but I'd MUCH rather play than watch someone else play a game so if I see a let's play that's hours long like seem to be all the rage I will not click on it. They seem to be what's most popular. I have heard good things about a couple of trollish Twitch streamers that really piss off the CHUDs, like Kaceytron and that Tourettes chick, but I have no interest in Twitch in general!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Had a coworker sell me his 360 the other day so I hit up the local gamestops to find some cheap 360 games I hadn't played when I originally had one (about six years ago). I'll be playing Halo 4 once I get everything set up.

Plus I found a Sega Genesis console at the local Goodwill today. It didn't have any cords or controllers so I'm not sure if it works or not, but it was only $10. I'll check ebay for some third party accessories and a couple cheap games.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> Yeah, he's English and lives in Alabama or Mississippi or something so the rare occasions he dips into "political" material it's usually to make fun of *exactly* what you mentioned above or just sigh at the concept of privatized healthcare, as if you're an Englishman living in the deep south of America you're probably going to be pretty horrified.
> 
> What comedy-related gaming channels do you watch? I obviously like gaming a lot, but I'd MUCH rather play than watch someone else play a game so if I see a let's play that's hours long like seem to be all the rage I will not click on it. They seem to be what's most popular. I have heard good things about a couple of trollish Twitch streamers that really piss off the CHUDs, like Kaceytron and that Tourettes chick, but I have no interest in Twitch in general!


I only stick to small handful but I don't really go searching either.

Rooster Teeth - been a fan of their since RvB season 1 way back when, even though I stopped watching that show several years ago. They're more of entertainment company as a whole but sometimes have video game related stuff, such as Immersion, or they talk about them in the RT podcast. I don't bother with the Achievement Hunter group of them because I'm like you, I don't want to watch let's plays, unless they're short and entertaining. Which brings me to...

Funhaus - my buddy showed me them and they also have a lot of content, but a lot of it is really funny and I like their sense of humour. Their Demo Disc videos and Hitman playthroughs are a riot, as well as other more obscure series', like Heavy Metal and Alekhine's Gun.

Killian Experience - I free that he doesn't or out a ton of content and I also love his sense of humour so they're quite entertaining videos. Generally nothing to do with him playing the game and more so spoofing the game. His Civ 5 featuring Canada is pretty great.

Otherwise I've dabbled a bit in Monster Factory because I love me some McElboys. Probably my favorite podcast to listen to though I don't delve too much into their YouTube stuff.

Honestly I rarely log into YouTube just to see what's going on. It's only usually when I have something to look for. Curious what you guys watch regularly/semi-regularly and what kind of stuff they do.


----------



## Ralyks

Never really got Jimquisition. I had a phase where I was really into Zero Punctuation, but haven't watched him in some time. When it comes to video game media, really, Giant Bomb is my shit.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Jamming on Spider-Man; got thru the Mr. Negative man campaign and thought it was winding down, next thing I know Octavius broke everyone out of Ryker’s AND the Raft, and then the Sinister Six showed up, so holy crap.


----------



## Ralyks

steinmetzify said:


> Jamming on Spider-Man; got thru the Mr. Negative man campaign and thought it was winding down, next thing I know Octavius broke everyone out of Ryker’s AND the Raft, and then the Sinister Six showed up, so holy crap.



That moment was cool. I too finished the Mr Negative part, figured everything was winding down.... Then I noticed I was less than 50% of the campaign. And then that happened. Still, great game, and it was nice to get the Platinum.

Got to chapter 7 of Yakuza Kiwami last night. I do think it's great, but I can see why people consider it the weakest of the recent Yakuza Western releases.

Oh, and have I mentioned how great Tetris Effect is?


----------



## MFB

I picked up Overwatch about a month ago now on the recommendation of a co-worker, got pretty into it learning the heroes, their abilities, the maps, what team builds work together, and have moved on to playing Competitive mode when I can. Sad part is, the same co-worker who recommended it, absolutely KILLS my season ranking when we play together (we've yet to win together) and the one mode he can practice on, he claims is useless because no one cares about winning (not true); so he just gets online, goes right into Comp mode, then gets mad when he can't win, but he barely knows the game as well as I do because I'm willing to put in the time to 'git gud.'

I don't expect to go play for Uprising or anything, but I enjoy Comp. Overwatch like people enjoy Hardcore TDM on COD, so if you're going to complain about it, at least know what you're complaining about


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> I picked up Overwatch about a month ago now on the recommendation of a co-worker, got pretty into it learning the heroes, their abilities, the maps, what team builds work together, and have moved on to playing Competitive mode when I can. Sad part is, the same co-worker who recommended it, absolutely KILLS my season ranking when we play together (we've yet to win together) and the one mode he can practice on, he claims is useless because no one cares about winning (not true); so he just gets online, goes right into Comp mode, then gets mad when he can't win, but he barely knows the game as well as I do because I'm willing to put in the time to 'git gud.'
> 
> I don't expect to go play for Uprising or anything, but I enjoy Comp. Overwatch like people enjoy Hardcore TDM on COD, so if you're going to complain about it, at least know what you're complaining about



Yeah it’s an issue of “if you can’t even aim well/strategize on a map you can’t expect to do well in a mode where it’s assumed EVERYONE can”. And also, unranked randoms can still smash you in. So sounds like he just doesn’t take game seriously (enough) to do more than run into comp lose and then do it some more. In fighting games 80% of my time is in training mode just practicing inputs, as time is limited.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Got to chapter 7 of Yakuza Kiwami last night. I do think it's great, but I can see why people consider it the weakest of the recent Yakuza Western releases.



I LOVED Kiwami 1 as it was my second one of those games and 0 set up the characters so well that the drama really landed. Like, I even really cared about what happened to minor characters like Serena. If I'd played Kiwami 1 first or had played games other than 0 before it I might not have liked it so much. The characters did feel really thin if I stood back and looked at is a self-contained unit, so I'm really glad I played 0 first.

I am getting there with AC Odyssey, there are still tons of "character" quests left, but I have every single achievement besides the two nuts completionist exploration ones. Then I realized I didn't have the DLC pack installed, so I have to do that! I have enjoyed this game quite a bit, and I like the main character, but the story is kinda weak and on par with your average decent videogame story. There was nowhere near the impact of something like Nier Automata or Witcher 3 or the later more sci-fi parts of Horizon Zero Dawn with it, and you're just kind of a standard videogame avatar running around talking to characters that in general are just boring NPCs. Socrates is the one I really liked. The gameplay got fun as I got further into the game, it was infuriating and I died quite a bit, especially in the conquest battles, before I noticed there was a self-heal that I could invest points in! Ship battles could also suck when mercenaries would show up in the middle of them and you could go 100-0 in a matter of seconds if you were in a bad position. I had it on normal, so I could usually just cheese it by killing/boarding the easy ships to heal myself as the other ships will just wait for you until you take command again!

The huge Odyssey chain that starts with what's listed as a side-quest to find your lost father and morphs into the weirdest stuff in the game by far is fantastic. I dunno why they stuffed it deep into your quest log until you actually find him. I didn't die to any of the bosses, but the fights were still quite tense, especially


Spoiler



Medusa.



This game was fun enough that I think I'm going to go back and try some more of these things. I only got a few hours into Origins, and I think I only got a few MINUTES into AC2 back in the day, but it played like absolute trash with keyboard/mouse. Coincidentally, the whole series is heavily discounted on PS4 right now. I got the "Ezio Collection" and want to try that first, though it sounds like the only one I am sure I'll enjoy is Brotherhood. There are too damn many of these games. I got Syndicate and Unity as well since they're also quite cheap, and have had Black Flag for a long time and haven't gotten around to it, but skipped Rogue remastered since the price was highest (as it's most recent pre-origins) and the reviews are mostly quite bad! I love having a monster backlog that I'll never get through. At least Spider-Man jumped back up to like 80 bucks instead of 40 so I wasn't tempted to get it.

Oh, and I got Mario Kart for Switch for 20 bucks so I can practice cause I have friends that like to make me play it and I'm quite bad.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I dunno what you're talking about with him TBPH


Edit: Regarding Jimquisition, since lots of conversation happened since. 

It's not so much the types of games that he targets, so much as the tone -> The cynical, angry, "the bigger the business, the more evil by default" mentality, the snark, the grating voices and characters being put on, etc. And a lot of content I've seen from him is sort of just beating the dead horse of whatever drama is happening in gaming at the time. It's the fact that his criticism amounts to "this game is shit" and "whoever made this must have shit for brains", as opposed to "ok, something here clearly didn't work, lets try to figure out what". It's not that he's wrong -> it's that he's a dick about it. Being publicly right and an asshole at the same time (and being successful for being an ass about being right) gives other people license to be assholes with they think they're also right.

That's why I keep coming back to Errant Signal I think -> Because it's not always positive, but it's respectful - and almost always constructive, or at least tries to be analytical. There's a ton of the cynical stuff out there, a ton of the angry stuff, and there's even a ton of the "game makers toolkit" style videos out there that like to talk about design and mechanics but always in a sort of dry academic light that doesn't talk about when things don't work, or the impact of any particular title. I know it's not the same kind of video, but that's the lament I guess - that we have too many Jim Sterlings and Angry Nerds, and not enough Errant Signals.

Another one I really like is Ross's Game Dungeon - just because it's such a genuine take on things. He only gets angry/cynical when there's good reason to, but sometimes instead is just thrilled to show you a cool thing in a game.

Edit: Also, for the record, I do like modern games.  This past year has been all "retro" stuff, for who knows what reason. I mostly don't keep up with all the new junk cause I tend to be behind the curve in terms of PC hardware, consoles, etc. I still don't have a PS4 or XBone (or a switch for that matter). Also, I hate paying $80 cad for every new title. For all the complaining about prices of old games, it's still cheaper to play old stuff and to stay a year or two behind what's new. I also find I get pretty quickly burnt out on indie games for some reason. I tend not to be a huge fan of a lot of the gameplay trends that find their way into those - every second indie game either being a metroidvania or souls-like in some way, or trying some completely out-there gameplay that doesn't hold up for very long. All that to say..... the classics are classic for a reason, IMO.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Edit: Regarding Jimquisition, since lots of conversation happened since.
> 
> It's not so much the types of games that he targets, so much as the tone -> The cynical, angry, "the bigger the business, the more evil by default" mentality, the snark, the grating voices and characters being put on, etc. And a lot of content I've seen from him is sort of just beating the dead horse of whatever drama is happening in gaming at the time. It's the fact that his criticism amounts to "this game is shit" and "whoever made this must have shit for brains", as opposed to "ok, something here clearly didn't work, lets try to figure out what". It's not that he's wrong -> it's that he's a dick about it. Being publicly right and an asshole at the same time (and being successful for being an ass about being right) gives other people license to be assholes with they think they're also right.
> 
> That's why I keep coming back to Errant Signal I think -> Because it's not always positive, but it's respectful - and almost always constructive, or at least tries to be analytical. There's a ton of the cynical stuff out there, a ton of the angry stuff, and there's even a ton of the "game makers toolkit" style videos out there that like to talk about design and mechanics but always in a sort of dry academic light that doesn't talk about when things don't work, or the impact of any particular title. I know it's not the same kind of video, but that's the lament I guess - that we have too many Jim Sterlings and Angry Nerds, and not enough Errant Signals.
> 
> Another one I really like is Ross's Game Dungeon - just because it's such a genuine take on things. He only gets angry/cynical when there's good reason to, but sometimes instead is just thrilled to show you a cool thing in a game.



Fair enough, that's accurate.



TedEH said:


> Edit: Also, for the record, I do like modern games.  This past year has been all "retro" stuff, for who knows what reason. I mostly don't keep up with all the new junk cause I tend to be behind the curve in terms of PC hardware, consoles, etc. I still don't have a PS4 or XBone (or a switch for that matter). Also, I hate paying $80 cad for every new title. For all the complaining about prices of old games, it's still cheaper to play old stuff and to stay a year or two behind what's new.



Dawg. If you don't have a PS4 or Xbone, you're not "two years behind," those things have been out for over 5 years! And on PS4, most games plummet in value to the 20 dollar range after a year and more like the 10 dollar range after another, unless they're the small handful of games that hold value (ie Grand Theft Auto). Like, probably the biggest, best AAA title of 2016 on PS4 was Horizon Zero Dawn, which is currently being sold for 13.50 with all the DLC.  God of War from 2018 was just selling for 25. Not saying you NEED to buy a PS4, just saying at this point Xbox 360 almost counts as retro. Haha. 

If you have a switch, then yeah, games will be 50-60 until probably the next nintendo system comes out. Zelda BOTW from the same time as HZD and the same production values/critical reaction is still 60 dollars!



TedEH said:


> I also find I get pretty quickly burnt out on indie games for some reason. I tend not to be a huge fan of a lot of the gameplay trends that find their way into those - every second indie game either being a metroidvania or souls-like in some way, or trying some completely out-there gameplay that doesn't hold up for very long. All that to say..... the classics are classic for a reason, IMO.



I generally have no interest in indie games, especially this trend with roguelike everythings. There's *nothing* I dislike more than roguelikes as I want to progress and/or beat the game, not just have an infinite hamster wheel that resets your progress every time you die. I also really loathe platformers, ESPECIALLY ones that are all about frustration like super meat boy, and I'm also really not a fan of 8/16 bit graphics/sound. I know that's the only thing most indie developers can DO without a big team, I get it, it just personally doesn't appeal to me. Mostly, the indie games I've played and liked are very polished, stylish ones that are barely even "indie." Like, Transistor is absolutely great gameplaywise and has a really slick look/sound to it as well. Limbo was decent, nothing to write home about. I guess I'm really superficial.

I like some funny ones as they're allowed to get much, much more demented than most Western non-indie games, like I laughed my ass off at Jazz Punk (featuring some voice acting from JIM STERLING, coincidentally!!!) and have West of Loathing on the docket soon. People have been telling me to play Undertale for a long, long time now, but I can't work up the interest. Maybe someday!

I've played a couple walking simulators and light puzzle games that were OK and I appreciated the creativity of, I like Metroidvania games based purely on the Castlevania games from SOTN through the GBA/DS games (haven't played one since), and I own a couple more indie games that will be on the docket at some point like Hollow Knight and Celeste. Just...yeah. I mostly don't care. I'm a corporate whore.


----------



## Ralyks

Oh man, Jazzpunk is an underrated gem (and an easy Platinum to boot).


----------



## MFB

Mathemagician said:


> Yeah it’s an issue of “if you can’t even aim well/strategize on a map you can’t expect to do well in a mode where it’s assumed EVERYONE can”. And also, unranked randoms can still smash you in. So sounds like he just doesn’t take game seriously (enough) to do more than run into comp lose and then do it some more. In fighting games 80% of my time is in training mode just practicing inputs, as time is limited.



Yeah, you can't look at something where there's people getting paid to play this and go "I bet I can get good without practicing" because it's not going to happen. Take time, jump in Quick Play, act like it matters (because it also does as an overall multiplayer rank) and learn how to play the damn game. Work as a team, learn your hero and their moves, the best way to play them, map routes, everything; but don't say you're sorry for dragging us down and then laugh it off because it's true, and now I have to work to get grind my ass back to where I was, and especially don't ask if I want to play another round :rmad:


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Dawg. If you don't have a PS4 or Xbone, you're not "two years behind," those things have been out for over 5 years!


Lol I mean two years for PC releases. Console-wise... I'm like a decade behind, at least. I'm trying to think of the last game that I played in the same year it came out.....
Minit? It was a decent game, lol.
Youka-Laylee I think I was a year behind.
Doom 2016 I definitely played in 2016.
Most stuff like the newer Tomb Raiders I'll end up playing a year or two after they've been out, and have had time to be patched up and put in holiday sales.


----------



## mongey

Downloaded steep as the free psn game. 

Played for about half hour and it seems a good time waster cruising the mountain finding stuff to do.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Halo 4. It's been a while since I've played a Halo game, but 4 seems like 343 tied too hard too early. The whole morality of the Spartan-II program they teased at the start of the game was interesting, but then wasn't even mentioned in the rest of the game. And some of the Cortana rampancy stuff got really cringe-worthy. The Promethean's are an interesting addition to the series although the insistence of autolock in the Halo games making fighting them (especially the Crawlers) a pain in the ass.


----------



## Ralyks

Steep is a good time. Although it just makes me wish a new SSX would come out. Or port the original to PS4. I'm cool with either.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Carrion Rocket said:


> Finished Halo 4. It's been a while since I've played a Halo game, but 4 seems like 343 tied too hard too early. The whole morality of the Spartan-II program they teased at the start of the game was interesting, but then wasn't even mentioned in the rest of the game. And some of the Cortana rampancy stuff got really cringe-worthy. The Promethean's are an interesting addition to the series although the insistence of autolock in the Halo games making fighting them (especially the Crawlers) a pain in the ass.


Halo 4 is what made me check out of the series. I loved 3 and Reach is probably one of my favourite FPS games and easily my favourite in the series but 4 was such a disappointment. Lame story that was slapped together and seemed to have no coherence, shit multiplayer that tried so damn hard to be CoD, bleh. It's one of the only games I've ever traded in but a week after beating it I had no desire to ever start it up again.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Lol I mean two years for PC releases. Console-wise... I'm like a decade behind, at least. I'm trying to think of the last game that I played in the same year it came out.....
> Minit? It was a decent game, lol.
> Youka-Laylee I think I was a year behind.
> Doom 2016 I definitely played in 2016.
> Most stuff like the newer Tomb Raiders I'll end up playing a year or two after they've been out, and have had time to be patched up and put in holiday sales.



Oh, yeah, that's modern. If your computer ran Doom 2016 fine you should be able to play nearly anything current just fine if you leave it on 1080P and don't try to turn on pointless bells and whistles.

Tomb Raider 1 and 2 have been sub-10 dollars recently, they might even be right now! I REALLY like both of those. The story/characters are trash but the gameplay is a really good version of the stuff it blatantly rips off (ex, Uncharted). I had more fun with them than Uncharted from a gameplay POV, even if the stories/characters in Uncharted are actually worth paying attention to  The tombs are much better-designed than the ones in Uncharted, and the combat gameplay has a lot more variety than just "shoot everyone with similar variants on guns all the time or occasionally do some crappy stealth before you set off the alert, then shoot everyone." I mean, you're still shooting everyone, but the weapons have a lot more variety in feel and the stealth sniping emphasis is fun.

Tomb Raider 3 has only gotten down to like 30 so far, but it came out less than a year ago. It has much less of an emphasis on shooting/stealthing and much more on exploration so I'll probably like it less, thus I'm waiting for the inevitable ~$15. The bow and arrow is SO satisfying in the two preceding games.

Steam's price slashing is probably even more ruthless than PS4's. I haven't bought one single thing off Steam in 3 years now, I broke the cycle (and moved it to PS4). At some point I realized I hated playing on my computer due to the whole physical process of doing so (having to sit in a non-relaxed position, mouse killing my wrist, having to be really close to the monitor, etc).


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> Steep is a good time. Although it just makes me wish a new SSX would come out. Or port the original to PS4. I'm cool with either.


Steep was almost the perfect SSX game not made by EA, they just needed to push the insanity more, like amped 3 (which is the best snowboarding game since ssx3 imo).


----------



## Ralyks

Steep tries more for realism. SSX is Mario Kart meets 1080 Snowboarding. Or Snowboard Kids meets 1080 Snowboarding.

Side note, am I the only one that thought Snowboard Kids 2 was a damn fun game back in the day?... or play it at all?


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> Tomb Raider 1 and 2 have been sub-10 dollars recently, they might even be right now! I REALLY like both of those. The story/characters are trash but the gameplay is a really good version of the stuff it blatantly rips off (ex, Uncharted).


 Wasn't Uncharted just a shiny rip off of Tomb Raider?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Wasn't Uncharted just a shiny rip off of Tomb Raider?


not really. both are big homages to indiana jones and old school adventure novels but they approach it differently. uncharted always leaned heavily into the big setpiece schtick and a lot of action while tomb raider was usually more puzzle/exploration focused comparatively


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Wasn't Uncharted just a shiny rip off of Tomb Raider?



I dunno, I only really played TR 3 back in the day and it was frustrating and wooden enough that I only played a couple hours. The CONCEPT of Uncharted is. But, with the games, the tomb raider reboots are absolutely direct rip-offs, from the dialogue/characters/look all the way down to the silly cinematic "your character falls down something and you climb back up it as it falls using the controls that make all the jumps practically automatic" sections. Or the "you flee towards the camera while stuff falls down around you," though that might be a Crash Bandicoot ripoff now that I think about it


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

I've always been more of a fan of Uncharted vs Tomb Raider due to that big setpiece and action aspect. Really felt like a movie, which I find really enjoyable in single player games.


----------



## wankerness

Have you played the last three? I can’t imagine not liking them if you like that about Uncharted. The only thing missing are the good characters!


----------



## dr_game0ver

BlackMastodon said:


> Wasn't Uncharted just a shiny rip off of Tomb Raider?


More like a Vera Jones rip off.
i' ve only played the first one and it sucked. It is like sitting thru a really beautiful really bad épisode of Relic Hunter... Without Tia.


----------



## wankerness

dr_game0ver said:


> More like a Vera Jones rip off.
> i' ve only played the first one and it sucked. It is like sitting thru a really beautiful really bad épisode of Relic Hunter... Without Tia.



Uncharted 1 is not very good. 2 was an instant classic and is where it found its footing. A ton of game series are like that. Assassins Creed, The Witcher, Marathon, etc. I played the remastered 1-3 when I got my PS4 and thought 2 and 3 held up pretty brilliantly, I really liked them. 1 just established all the characters but the gameplay was trash.

SPEAKING of AC2, I started it (again) yesterday and it was interesting after just playing a zillion hours of Odyssey. There's a lot more depth to the gameplay in some ways, like you actually have to climb up handholds on walls instead of apparently being Spider-Man, and the stealth is a LOT more involved, unlike AC Odyssey which works exactly like most modern games where you are basically invisible when you're in the strategically placed shrubberies that are around all bases and visible at all times when you aren't and are in LOS. This one has the stuff like blending in with crowds, behavior affecting detectability, being able to hire a crowd of courtesans to follow you around and serve as camo/bait, etc. The combat is terribly stilted in comparison, of course, and the controls are more janky, and climbing down surfaces is TERRIBLE (keep mashing O over and over for each ledge descent!!), but it definitely has its charms. It's kind of fun being able to take on a gigantic crowd of enemies just by easily countering and 1-shotting them all as they try to hit you. I also am interested that it keeps the animus thing in mind most of the time. Not that I really care about the plot, but at least they were trying back then.

Some of the aspects of Odyssey I assumed were more recent were also here, down to stupid things like having to climb up high places to do eagle-eye views of the city to unfog the map, and then always being able to jump off them dramatically into a lump of straw.


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

wankerness said:


> Have you played the last three? I can’t imagine not liking them if you like that about Uncharted. The only thing missing are the good characters!



I haven't played the latest one, but I have played the 2 before it. They're good, no denying that. But the characters and dialogue are what puts Uncharted over the top and give it its charm!


----------



## wankerness

ThtOthrPrsn said:


> I haven't played the latest one, but I have played the 2 before it. They're good, no denying that. But the characters and dialogue are what puts Uncharted over the top and give it its charm!



Yeah, definitely, I don't know if I would have even made it through the first Uncharted if I didn't like the characters so much. The ending of Uncharted 4 really, really worked and made me realize I was more attached to those characters than any other ones in the history of videogames. 

(PS - Uncharted 4 is the worst of the 4 storywise cause they throw in Sam out of nowhere, who sucks, and make the whole damn game about him!)


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

wankerness said:


> Yeah, definitely, I don't know if I would have even made it through the first Uncharted if I didn't like the characters so much. The ending of Uncharted 4 really, really worked and made me realize I was more attached to those characters than any other ones in the history of videogames.
> 
> (PS - Uncharted 4 is the worst of the 4 storywise cause they throw in Sam out of nowhere, who sucks, and make the whole damn game about him!)



Yeah, I wasn't much of a fan of Sam, but they still handled his random appearance pretty well compared to how other games would've done it.
Did you see the live action short they did with Nathan a while back?


----------



## Ralyks

ThtOthrPrsn said:


> Did you see the live action short they did with Nathan a while back?



And they STILL won’t give Nathan Fillion the role. Fillion is born to play that role!


----------



## wankerness

Maybe Nathan Fillion 15 years ago! That character is hyper-athletic young dude, Fillion doesn't look like someone that could be climbing up falling train cars etc. He could play the epilogue for Uncharted 4 though


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

I believe that was the reason he either turned it down or he wasn't cast for it. Now if it was Nathan during Serenity, it'd be all his!


----------



## Ralyks

Sigh... Black Ops IIII was half off at Best buy, plus some coupons and friends pestering me to get it...


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Trudged my way through Gears of War 3. I'd played a little bit of the first Gears years ago, maybe two levels worth, never really got into it. But I have to wonder what asshole keyed sprint and cover to the same button?


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

wankerness said:


> SPEAKING of AC2, I started it (again) yesterday and it was interesting after just playing a zillion hours of Odyssey. There's a lot more depth to the gameplay in some ways, like you actually have to climb up handholds on walls instead of apparently being Spider-Man, and the stealth is a LOT more involved, unlike AC Odyssey which works exactly like most modern games where you are basically invisible when you're in the strategically placed shrubberies that are around all bases and visible at all times when you aren't and are in LOS. This one has the stuff like blending in with crowds, behavior affecting detectability, being able to hire a crowd of courtesans to follow you around and serve as camo/bait, etc. The combat is terribly stilted in comparison, of course, and the controls are more janky, and climbing down surfaces is TERRIBLE (keep mashing O over and over for each ledge descent!!), but it definitely has its charms. It's kind of fun being able to take on a gigantic crowd of enemies just by easily countering and 1-shotting them all as they try to hit you. I also am interested that it keeps the animus thing in mind most of the time. Not that I really care about the plot, but at least they were trying back then.
> 
> Some of the aspects of Odyssey I assumed were more recent were also here, down to stupid things like having to climb up high places to do eagle-eye views of the city to unfog the map, and then always being able to jump off them dramatically into a lump of straw.



The entire Ezio trilogy has so much replay, especially the remasters they released, just another excuse for me to play them again and enjoy the immersive stories and characters. Especially AC2 it stands out above the rest, don't you think?

And I agree totally on how the early games made more of a point on keeping the animus in mind, not to mention the brotherhood vs. templars story arc and the first civ. Up until AC4 they were really laying it on thick with developments in those plots and it was really intriguing! But I lost a considerable amount of interest starting from AC4 moving forward since those unique plot lines became an afterthought.

I totally thought Origins would pick back up but nope, so I played it and sadly I just kinda gave up on AC having any meaningful story anymore. It's obvious they're not interested in putting that kind of writing (different writers anyway than the Ezio Trilogy), so I need to adjust my expectations accordingly. 

Origins really had no reason to bear the AC name since the majority of the time it's so easy to forget you're an "assassin", i.e. gladiator arenas and chariot races... like really? Fun gameplay granted and wow amazing visuals (which seems like that's mainly what ubisoft wants to get out of AC titles lately) but the plot was just one long power trip with a healthy dose of vengeance, becoming an assassin was purely coincidental. Fun as it is, but the series feels like a hollow husk of it's former self. It's gone the way of CoD where story is really not what you should be looking for. 

That's the main reason I haven't picked up Odyssey, it's like last on my list. I'll get it eventually but my interest is just coincidental since I have an affinity for Greek history and mythology.

Not sure if you'd agree with my view on the series?


----------



## wankerness

GatherTheArsenal said:


> The entire Ezio trilogy has so much replay, especially the remasters they released, just another excuse for me to play them again and enjoy the immersive stories and characters. Especially AC2 it stands out above the rest, don't you think?
> 
> And I agree totally on how the early games made more of a point on keeping the animus in mind, not to mention the brotherhood vs. templars story arc and the first civ. Up until AC4 they were really laying it on thick with developments in those plots and it was really intriguing! But I lost a considerable amount of interest starting from AC4 moving forward since those unique plot lines became an afterthought.
> 
> I totally thought Origins would pick back up but nope, so I played it and sadly I just kinda gave up on AC having any meaningful story anymore. It's obvious they're not interested in putting that kind of writing (different writers anyway than the Ezio Trilogy), so I need to adjust my expectations accordingly.
> 
> Origins really had no reason to bear the AC name since the majority of the time it's so easy to forget you're an "assassin", i.e. gladiator arenas and chariot races... like really? Fun gameplay granted and wow amazing visuals (which seems like that's mainly what ubisoft wants to get out of AC titles lately) but the plot was just one long power trip with a healthy dose of vengeance, becoming an assassin was purely coincidental. Fun as it is, but the series feels like a hollow husk of it's former self. It's gone the way of CoD where story is really not what you should be looking for.
> 
> That's the main reason I haven't picked up Odyssey, it's like last on my list. I'll get it eventually but my interest is just coincidental since I have an affinity for Greek history and mythology.
> 
> Not sure if you'd agree with my view on the series?



I don't really have a view on the series since AC: Odyssey is the only one I've played all the way through. AC2 is the second one I've played! I'm 20 hours in and what you say about Origins going non-assassin seems at least partly true of Odyssey, as well.

Odyssey has a lot of the same aspects as 2, tbh, like the same kinds of assassination contracts and the main "plot" involves collecting clues about the members of some secret society and killing them off. You can usually stealth in and kill them instead of basically going in swords swinging, but the game lets you do builds for the latter if you want to just kill everyone instead of be stealthy. However, it does also have an equivalent of the "notoriety" meter from 2 where you get attacked by nastier and nastier elites at higher and higher paces depending on your notoriety level (based on things like killing people in view of others, stealing things when people can see you, various plot developments, etc). Most amusingly, if you get high notoriety, the elites will even come out to get you on the high seas!

From what I heard about Origins you were pretty much forced into just fighting everyone and disregarding stealth.

Stuff like exploration of the countryside with horses happens in 2 as well, as does filling in maps with finding tower points, maps with ten million icons all over them, looking for all kinds of stupid shit for completion (feathers, puzzle icons on the wall, buying paintings, etcetcetc). It's just that Odyssey seems to be trying to slug it out with Witcher 3 for world size and it went full action RPG while AC2 was extremely technically limited and mostly just keeps you in the city. But, I don't really think they're THAT disparate; it seems like 2 wanted to be an action RPG from the beginning with doing sidequests to get "exp" (money) to upgrade stats (granted through better gear). Guys just don't drop gear so it's a lot less Diablo-like.

2's plot is a little bit better, I think, and it keeps you a bit more involved, partly through the weird (and effective) gimmick of making you pay attention to all the cutscenes via randomly throwing button prompts into them! Apart from the main "cult that needs to be worn down through killing various members" plot, it has some other aspects to Odyssey, like throwing Leonardo Da Vinci in as a comic relief sidekick (Odyssey has a few of those historical guys, with Sokrates being the main one).

And the Animus stuff might as well not exist in Odyssey. IIRC there are TWO cuts back to the animus through the main questline and references to the templars don't really start coming into play at all until the "post game" stuff (there's a large continuation of the main questline with more cuts back to the "real world" that most probably do after they beat what's nominally the main quest involving weirder sci-fi stuff and it ends with a very out-there real world event).

There are a couple things that I hate about 2. The worst thing are the tombs - I mean, I'm sure a lot of people like them, but they stress me out like no other since the jumping is wonky and some of them I've done, especially the church one, are a MASSIVE series of precision jumps going higher and higher up where the consequences of missing one get worse and worse. I also hate the races partly cause of the controls. I mean, they're not awful and were probably pretty impressive at the time, but there are still severe limitations to them with not being able to predict what your character's going to do in some platforming situations.

Speaking of chariot races, I don't think there's anything like that in Odyssey (if there is, I don't recall encountering them), but I sure just played a section of 2 yesterday in which I had to drive a horse carriage around for a long time while tons of guys chased after me, jumped on the carriage, and shot flaming arrows in my path, so that isn't completely out of left field!


----------



## mongey

oh dark souls remastered. How can I love you and hate you so much at the same time

I think this is what it must be like to be physically beaten by your partner daily.


----------



## wankerness

I played that for like two hours on Xbox 360 and just didn't get it. It seemed wooden and clunky and uninteresting. I quit out of boredom before I could quit out of frustration, I guess. I am just not cool.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I played that for like two hours on Xbox 360 and just didn't get it. It seemed wooden and clunky and uninteresting. I quit out of boredom before I could quit out of frustration, I guess. I am just not cool.



How far did you get in? Admittedly 2 hours ain't enough to be even considered a 'sample'.

Dark Souls (or any From Software game that has the words Souls, Blood or Sekiro on the title) are games that may not look like much initially and doesn't bother to welcome you into it's own world, they practically hate the player.  I certainly didn't like it initially. First impressions are to the series' detriment, it's the kind of games that you need Cliff's Notes before even attempting. The controls do suck (worst jump command ever).

But after a few attempts, let's plays, readings and plenty of deaths, the game opened up after the second boss fight. The challenges are tough, but fair, so whatever crap happens to you can also happen to the enemies and bosses. It wasn't obnoxiously difficult like say 3D Ninja Gaiden where your most dangerous enemy is the camera.

There were 2 parts in the game that made me 'get' Dark Souls. First after a few deaths, I still wanted to keep playing. Second after a few deaths either I wanted to keep playing the one path, or go explore the alternate paths that opened up after getting to this point. Suddenly it became one of the best Metroidvania games I've ever played, certainly the best 3D Metroidvania game anyway. Add to the fact that the story is all about showing without telling adds to the grand atmosphere.

Yeah, the series does breed some smugness in the community that say nothing but 'git gud' or it gets better the more you die/play, but that's like saying you feel less pain the longer you lay your hand on a lit stove. Again, first impressions to the game's detriment. And once you really get into it that you get in the danger of being smug yourself.  But whatever.

For a similar experience, but more familiar gameplay, I suggest Salt And Sanctuary. It's literally Dark Souls but in 2D.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> I played that for like two hours on Xbox 360 and just didn't get it. It seemed wooden and clunky and uninteresting. I quit out of boredom before I could quit out of frustration, I guess. I am just not cool.



I can totally see that . and I even felt that way to a degree. but there's a point where you just accept your fate , and that's when you accept you are truly broken and worthless. And that you deserve ,or even desire , to die over and over


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I played that for like two hours on Xbox 360 and just didn't get it. It seemed wooden and clunky and uninteresting. I quit out of boredom before I could quit out of frustration, I guess. I am just not cool.


as someone that's spent unseemly amounts of time playing souls games, you really needed to spend some more time with the game. The level design in Dark Souls is still basically unmatched to this day in the way that it manages to connect all of its areas in a relatively seamless manner (unlike the other games in the series). It's a game that essentially forces you to get better at it, which for some modern gamers makes it difficult. It's not really a hard game but it's one that demands patience and paying attention. Especially in Anor Londo/Sen's Fortress/Blighttown.


----------



## Mathemagician

Blightown is the -

[spoilers]

Cavern with all the wooden ladders and walkways right?

Guys just go left. You can run all the way around it. I swear it was designed that way on purpose for us “always go the wrong way first” types. You walk around a toxic lake and skip almost all enemies. 

Walk AROUND the entire area then just go up two or three ladders. That’s it. 

I didn’t know that area was such a shit show until I ran through I backwards to make sure I didn’t miss any items.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Blightown is the -
> 
> [spoilers]
> 
> Cavern with all the wooden ladders and walkways right?
> 
> Guys just go left. You can run all the way around it. I swear it was designed that way on purpose for us “always go the wrong way first” types. You walk around a toxic lake and skip almost all enemies.
> 
> Walk AROUND the entire area then just go up two or three ladders. That’s it.
> 
> I didn’t know that area was such a shit show until I ran through I backwards to make sure I didn’t miss any items.



there's a few ways to traverse it. one is to use the master key in the valley of the drakes, which lets you bypass a big part of blighttown. the "main" path is to go through the sewers/depths but that way sucks, you have to traverse a lot more of the ladders/switchbacks and deal with way more enemies.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

I feel like not enough people pay attention to just how good the level design actually is and the lore paired with it. If you pay attention to your surroundings, you'll start understanding how the two intersect. For example, why is there seemingly a petrified (cursed) Andre of Astora (on the top of the tower after you beat Moonlight Butterfly) who just happens to have the Divine Ember AND the Watchtower Basement key to access Havel? Those are the kinds of things that Dark Souls is about. Those little tidbits to make you think. As a matter of fact, something else to consider is the fact that Havel was a priest and where's Andre the Blacksmith? Right outside the Church at the bottom of a tower, which... that's funny because Havel himself was also put away at the bottom of a tower.

Dark Souls is full of things like that to get the brain cooking. When you get time between combat, read your item descriptions, look at your surroundings, and talk to your NPC's. These games that FromSoft makes in this style are so much more beyond the combat.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Also, I feel it's worth mentioning that Blighttown is an amazing place for farming Large Titanite Shards and Green Titanite Shards. The slugs in the swamp drop either 1 large titanite or 5 green titanite. Once you're good enough at the game to confidently take Blighttown on your own and even beat Quelaag before the Gargoyles, you'll find that you can be quite OP early on.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

PunkBillCarson said:


> Also, I feel it's worth mentioning that Blighttown is an amazing place for farming Large Titanite Shards and Green Titanite Shards. The slugs in the swamp drop either 1 large titanite or 5 green titanite. Once you're good enough at the game to confidently take Blighttown on your own and even beat Quelaag before the Gargoyles, you'll find that you can be quite OP early on.


well yeah, farming is always good. Choosing the right build from the start is a bit more helpful ime. pyromancy/magic spec is super strong for most of the game, same with high strength builds. I actually liked running a faith/int build so I could the astora sword in the valley of the drakes early on. It's one of the strongest swords besides the drake sword for early- maybe mid game. It scales way better than most swords too, so as long as you pump points into faith it kicks ass, plus you can go into the catacombs early with it.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Myself, my favorite weapon is between the Halberd and Balder Side Sword. As far as going into the Catacombs early on, I don't pay attention to the skellies, I just go right for the Necromancer. The first one's easy, just get down into where the bonfire is, quit out, go back in and it resets the skeletons. The next one you meet depending on the path you take has a tendency to run from you, so it's good enough for a one shot backstab, ESPECIALLY if you have the Hornet Ring and a high crit weapon at the start. Bandit's dagger is underrated for that. Level it up a few times, there's no reason you can't beat the Stray Demon back at the Asylum fairly quickly, especially if it's buffed. The absolutely crazy thing is you can have a +15 weapon with only two bosses down. Of course, that's if you have the patience to farm Dark Wraiths who occasionally drop slabs.

As far as farming and builds, it's smart to do both. More damage early on is never a bad idea.


----------



## Anquished

I found out earlier last week that FFX is on Steam so I grabbed that for some nostalgia. 

The game is fun but Christ, I don't remember the dialogue being so cringey.


----------



## chopeth

I finished Bloodborne once, painful and delightful task as someone says. Loved the game. Started again and after arriving to the Bloodthirsty bitch I can't go on, I quit. Then I got Prey and I'm locked, I spent like two or three hours walking around and I don't know where the hell should I go or what should I do. Abandoned it and last week got Resident Evil Origins. Hell if those games aren't difficult either. No idea how injured you are until you die, you have to be very careful with your ammo and herbs, you don't have space to carry items and in zero you don't even have a storage to keep them...

I'm getting too old for videogames I think. I'm deep into frustration. My last a decade ago was the xbox 360 and I finished most games but now I have to be glad the PS4 makes me lean so much upon getting to play my guitars xD


----------



## NotDonVito

Oblivion GOTY, but I wish I got the version with the wizards tower and shit.(even though i never could afford to furnish the damn thing)


----------



## Anquished

NotDonVito said:


> Oblivion GOTY, but I wish I got the version with the wizards tower and shit.(even though i never could afford to furnish the damn thing)




Hi!
What's new with you!?
Bye. 
Goodbye!

RadiantAI was the most entertaining part of Oblivion.


----------



## wankerness

I burned through Oblivion on PC at some point a long time ago, like 2009 or 2010, and don't remember liking it apart from the thieve's guild end quest, which was appropriately awesome and should have been the real end of the game. Then I tried playing Oblivion GOTY a few years later on console after playing Skyrim and just couldn't do it. It is SO clunky and buggy and slow and miserable, partly because the level design is also clunky and slow and miserable. Those demon gates or whatever they're called are miserable slogs. I also had played it using some mods to improve the gameplay and fix the litany of bugs on PC and those obviously weren't there in the base game. I understand why some people were pissed at Skyrim for simplifying further from Oblivion, but I'll take the removal of some trash like the conversation system and mashing jump 100% of the time you are travelling around for an actual fairly smooth gameplay experience any day of the week.

Some 3D games of that vintage hold up over the years even with horribly outdated graphics (KOTOR, Jedi Knight, Unreal Tournament, UT2004 and Quake I are still a blast to play IMO), but that game is just a mess. I've heard a ton of people say that Morrowind is a much, much better game, but I have never tried it and probably won't.


----------



## Tenaba

Anquished said:


> Hi!
> What's new with you!?
> Bye.
> Goodbye!
> 
> RadiantAI was the most entertaining part of Oblivion.




The uploader's whole channel is like this.


----------



## Anquished

Cardbird said:


> The uploader's whole channel is like this.




That's brilliant. 



These guys absolutely nail it!


----------



## mongey

I’m just finishing depths now , at the boss fight almost beat him last 2 tries so only a couple more should get him , and about to enter Blighttown. Sounds like it’s only gonna get worse.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> I’m just finishing depths now , at the boss fight almost beat him last 2 tries so only a couple more should get him , and about to enter Blighttown. Sounds like it’s only gonna get worse.


gaping dragon really isn't hard, especially if you summon an npc to draw aggro. Even solo he's not really hard. Just avoid the lunge/slam and the toxin spew, hang out near the tail/ legs. If you chop off his tail you get a sweet axe (you need a shit ton of str to use it though).


----------



## mongey

KnightBrolaire said:


> gaping dragon really isn't hard, especially if you summon an npc to draw aggro. Even solo he's not really hard. Just avoid the lunge/slam and the toxin spew, hang out near the tail/ legs. If you chop off his tail you get a sweet axe (you need a shit ton of str to use it though).


Yeah the toxic spew got me the last 2 times when I was close to killing him. Know I need to get out of there now when he does it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> Yeah the toxic spew got me the last 2 times when I was close to killing him. Know I need to get out of there now when he does it.


if you basically just hug his back legs and smack them ad nauseum he goes down quick. He can be a bit annoying to fight if you're using shorter weapons like axes or one handed swords but then I'd say just use a bow/crossbow/magic to dink him when he moves out of range.


----------



## Anquished

mongey said:


> Yeah the toxic spew got me the last 2 times when I was close to killing him. Know I need to get out of there now when he does it.



If you stand infront of him just out of his slam down range, usually he'll charge at you and ram into a wall. This gives you tons of time to lay into him before he gets back up.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I burned through Oblivion on PC at some point a long time ago, like 2009 or 2010, and don't remember liking it apart from the thieve's guild end quest, which was appropriately awesome and should have been the real end of the game. Then I tried playing Oblivion GOTY a few years later on console after playing Skyrim and just couldn't do it. It is SO clunky and buggy and slow and miserable, partly because the level design is also clunky and slow and miserable. Those demon gates or whatever they're called are miserable slogs. I also had played it using some mods to improve the gameplay and fix the litany of bugs on PC and those obviously weren't there in the base game. I understand why some people were pissed at Skyrim for simplifying further from Oblivion, but I'll take the removal of some trash like the conversation system and mashing jump 100% of the time you are travelling around for an actual fairly smooth gameplay experience any day of the week.
> 
> Some 3D games of that vintage hold up over the years even with horribly outdated graphics (KOTOR, Jedi Knight, Unreal Tournament, UT2004 and Quake I are still a blast to play IMO), but that game is just a mess. I've heard a ton of people say that Morrowind is a much, much better game, but I have never tried it and probably won't.


The only thing about Morrowind is that in combat you have random missed attacks even though your standing right next to the guy. But otherwise there's significantly less handholding, like you'll have to actually read the in-game books to know where to go instead of having an icon on the minimap/compass. 

I'm in the same boat about Oblivion. I loved it when it was out and played it a lot but when Skyrim came out, maaaaan was that a breath of fresh air. Made me realize how much I hated the Oblivion gates.


----------



## NotDonVito

wankerness said:


> wall of text


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Went from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5 in the time sink that is Kiwami 2 over the course of a week. Barely budged an inch. 

It was smart for the game to stop me from progressing the Cabaret Club any further. I would've done the same like I did in 0 and straight up finish it before even thinking about progressing the main game. Then along came the Majima Construction. It's at least better than the clan creator on 6 though not by much. Being a tower defense mechanic means there's actual strategy involved as opposed to spawn a bunch of dudes, exploit invincibility buff, spawn more dudes, rinse and repeat. Though with all the money earned from Cabaret, I ended up sinking all that to the defense buffs and sending that hilarious ad pamphlet to recruit all the good SRs. Spending time in the colosseum helped a lot too.

Speaking of colosseum, I'm glad the New Japan Pro Wrestlers were utilized better this time around albeit only slightly thanks to the colosseum. You get to see all their cool moves up close and personal if you let them, which is awesome. I suppose I could just go get Fire Pro Wrestling World to get my fix, the guys in Yakuza 6 are mostly all in there as well.

Also the karaoke game seems a lot harder this time around. I don't remember Ring being this difficult in 5, I struggle to even get above 80%.


----------



## wankerness

Re: Oblivion vid, The feeling’s mutual, buddy!

I didn’t play the construction game in Kiwami 2 much. I dunno what you’re even referring to with the pro wrestling stuff, so I guess I didn’t do that either!! 

What’s the gate on the cabaret club? I thought I did it all at once, but maybe I was breaking it up with chunks of plot for variety’s sake.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Most if not all of the main characters in both Clan Creators are actual real life Pro Wrestlers ink suit acting as fictionalized versions of themselves. Signature moves and all. 

The Cabaret cap was against the 4th grand prix battle (Millionaire) where Yuki doesn't allow you to challenge or even play the mini game until you 'come back later'.


----------



## mongey

BlackMastodon said:


> I'm in the same boat about Oblivion. I loved it when it was out and played it a lot but when Skyrim came out, maaaaan was that a breath of fresh air. Made me realize how much I hated the Oblivion gates.


I remember being blown away by the first oblivion gate. 2nd I still thought it was cool. By 3rd I realized they all a cut and paste rehash. I didnt do much more after that.


----------



## mongey

Beat the dragon on my next go. Just took my time and it was pretty easy. 

Well Blighttown does indeed suck. Up to now Been one shoting everything with my +6 claymore. Now I actually have to fight again. 

Did some reading and got the spider shield which at least hopefully will help with the toxic poisoning on my next go.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> Beat the dragon on my next go. Just took my time and it was pretty easy.
> 
> Well Blighttown does indeed suck. Up to now Been one shoting everything with my +6 claymore. Now I actually have to fight again.
> 
> Did some reading and got the spider shield which at least hopefully will help with the toxic poisoning on my next go.


it's worth backtracking to darkroot basin for moss farming if you keep struggling with blight town.


----------



## wankerness

Assassins Creed 2 is making me just want to get to the end of it, mostly cause of the camera and controls frequently resulting in you turning around on poles or dropping off the side of something you wanted to jump off of, etc. I did manage to do what seems to have the most complaints with only 10-15 minutes of tries (some timed series of directional wall jumps in a tomb), but I think I will be very glad to move to a more modern game!!

I do like that the missions are all culminating in an assassination, but I hate that the leadup tends to be like “play capture the flag against a computer!!”


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Good news is, those slugs drop large titanium shards. Farm those and get your claymore to +10.


----------



## Ralyks

Chapter 10 of Yakuza Kiwami. Considering were getting a big snow storm this weekend in my area, I foresee myself finishing it and moving on to Kiwami 2 before the weekend is out.


----------



## Leviathus

Just attained 100% completion/plat'd MGSV:TPP. Thank heavens for stealth camo and the parasite suit for all those mission tasks lol.


----------



## TedEH

Finished Majoras Mask not long ago and confirmed- It's still as good as I remembered. I played in such a way that when I made it to the final battle I had all the masks and had completed the bombers notebook. Sometime I should do a run through OoT, given that I've never beaten the 64 version of it, only the remake. I think there's more differences that I originally thought when I played the remake.

Currently playing: Escape from Monkey Island... the worst of the Monkey Islands . I never finished it, and I like to finish things. So I'm righting a wrong hah.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

decided to boot up FEAR again. still holds up really well.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Playing the Virtual-On port in Yakuza Kiwami 2 made me raise 2 points:

1: Awesome as it was when it first came out, Cyber Troopers Virtual-On has not aged well.  Even worse is that it's less fun when you're not inside a giant arcade cockpit with 2 stick controls. 

2: It made me miss classic mecha action games of yore. It made me think of the old SNES classic Assault Suit Valken/Cybernator. I loved that game back in the day. Then I found out it's prequel Assault Suit Leynos/Target Earth got a PS4 remake. Saw it for 5 bucks and immediately threw my card at it. So looks like I'll be doing the rounds on that. 

Come to think of it, I'm rather picky with mech games. I can't get into FPS based, so Mech Warrior/Battletech and Titanfall are out for me. All the strategy/build based games like Front Mission are nice for a bit, but get old quickly. And I've come to a realisation that I don't like Gundam games unless they use the Dynasty Warriors hack slash gameplay. There hasn't been an Armoured Core game in a while either. I suppose FromSoftware are more focused on milking the Souls cash cow and making us forget that the last mech game they made was a complete utter pile of crap.


----------



## wankerness

Ha, I forgot about that game. I avoided playing the arcade games in all the Yakuza games due to them being A) dated B) hard as hell. Like, it took me a whole ton of tries before I could beat the Electric King or whatever his name was at the car racing game in Yakuza 0. Virtua Fighter in 6 was the only one I ever "completed." I think I got a few rounds into that Mech one before dying and then never playing it again. It reminded me of some of the shareware 3D demo games that I used to get for Mac on sampler CD-Roms back in about 1998.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Playing the Virtual-On port in Yakuza Kiwami 2 made me raise 2 points:
> 
> 1: Awesome as it was when it first came out, Cyber Troopers Virtual-On has not aged well.  Even worse is that it's less fun when you're not inside a giant arcade cockpit with 2 stick controls.
> 
> 2: It made me miss classic mecha action games of yore. It made me think of the old SNES classic Assault Suit Valken/Cybernator. I loved that game back in the day. Then I found out it's prequel Assault Suit Leynos/Target Earth got a PS4 remake. Saw it for 5 bucks and immediately threw my card at it. So looks like I'll be doing the rounds on that.
> 
> Come to think of it, I'm rather picky with mech games. I can't get into FPS based, so Mech Warrior/Battletech and Titanfall are out for me. All the strategy/build based games like Front Mission are nice for a bit, but get old quickly. And I've come to a realisation that I don't like Gundam games unless they use the Dynasty Warriors hack slash gameplay. There hasn't been an Armoured Core game in a while either. I suppose FromSoftware are more focused on milking the Souls cash cow and making us forget that the last mech game they made was a complete utter pile of crap.


i played an unhealthy amount of virtual on back in the day (largely because the twin joystick thing was so cool as a kid) . prob my fave arcade game besides virtua fighter, afterburner or primal rage.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Playing the Virtual-On port in Yakuza Kiwami 2 made me raise 2 points:
> 
> 1: Awesome as it was when it first came out, Cyber Troopers Virtual-On has not aged well.  Even worse is that it's less fun when you're not inside a giant arcade cockpit with 2 stick controls.
> 
> 2: It made me miss classic mecha action games of yore. It made me think of the old SNES classic Assault Suit Valken/Cybernator. I loved that game back in the day. Then I found out it's prequel Assault Suit Leynos/Target Earth got a PS4 remake. Saw it for 5 bucks and immediately threw my card at it. So looks like I'll be doing the rounds on that.
> 
> Come to think of it, I'm rather picky with mech games. I can't get into FPS based, so Mech Warrior/Battletech and Titanfall are out for me. All the strategy/build based games like Front Mission are nice for a bit, but get old quickly. And I've come to a realisation that I don't like Gundam games unless they use the Dynasty Warriors hack slash gameplay. There hasn't been an Armoured Core game in a while either. I suppose FromSoftware are more focused on milking the Souls cash cow and making us forget that the last mech game they made was a complete utter pile of crap.




Actually if you'd been following FromSoft AT ALL, you'd realize there is another Armored Core game in the works.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

PunkBillCarson said:


> Actually if you'd been following FromSoft AT ALL, you'd realize there is another Armored Core game in the works.



I forgot they were making a new one. I think I even said they did earlierin this thread. Maybe I'm just trying to wipe Steel Battalion out of my memory.


----------



## Ralyks

Watching the end credits for Yakuza Kiwami. I see what you guys mean about that second to last battle. Anyway, I'd say it's my least favorite of the Yakuza games I've played so far, but still a great time. I've had Kiwami 2 sitting on my shelf since release, going to pop it in and at least start it before calling it a night.


----------



## wankerness

Haha, how many times did you have to stare at Kiryu lying there on the ground after being unavoidably shot since three guys can shoot at much faster intervals than the big CD on the dodge? I really think I got knocked down over 25 times before I managed to even take out ONE of those guards. AND THEN THEY RESURRECT! IIRC they had melee weapons after that at least. That was seriously one of the most infuriating bosses I've ever fought that didn't kill me repeatedly.  That's very specific.

I finally finished AC2, and actively hated it by the end. I guess this collection version forces you to play all the DLC between the second-to-last and last chapter, and all my frustrations came from that. The plot zags off and becomes pointless for two LONG chapters, and all the difficult stuff occurs in it, stuff that's hard enough that it breaks the game's shitty controls/camera. Having to chase really fast guys that randomly path up and around and all over the city while fighting with the game's buggy controls/camera is a truly miserable experience, and that one assassination on the guy on the boat was infuriating. I now have no desire to play Brotherhood/Revelations, haha. I should look up when the controls for the series became decent. I'm guessing Black Flag, maybe?

I also played the new DLC for Odyssey, which was kinda fun. I was annoyed by the thing that I later discovered was the source of gigantic controversy, because the son of Darius is a stupid mopey dork with a stupid mopey face and moptop that I was always choosing the mean options to talk to, yet...ack. I hope part 3 says it was all a dream. I get all the outrage, but I wasn't really invested in the characters anyway.


----------



## BlackMastodon

PunkBillCarson said:


> Actually if you'd been following FromSoft AT ALL, you'd realize there is another Armored Core game in the works.


Please please please tell me it'll be fast paced again like the AC4 and AC4A, goddamnit I loved those ones and have played them since AC2 on PS2. When I heard they went back to the old school slog I didn't even want to give ACV a chance.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

BlackMastodon said:


> Please please please tell me it'll be fast paced again like the AC4 and AC4A, goddamnit I loved those ones and have played them since AC2 on PS2. When I heard they went back to the old school slog I didn't even want to give ACV a chance.




There's not been a whole lot of talk about it, only that they're making it.


----------



## mongey

finally slogged my way to 2nd bonfire at bottom of Blight town .fuck me. what a prick of a time


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Went from Chapter 4 to Chapter 5 in the time sink that is Kiwami 2 over the course of a week. Barely budged an inch.



Now in Chapter 6. Still haven't budged an inch.

I pulled out of the Majima Clan Creator for a bit towards the end missions feeling I don't have enough SR guys. So I'm going through the random street bosses to see if there's any good employees among them. 

That and the Cabaret Club opened up again so once again I dragged Kaoru along and sunk all my game time to finishing that off. The last battle was actually more challenging than in 0, even with Yuki and all the Platinums and Golds all maxed out, it still took a bit of work. But having double the clientele helped a lot. I'll probably still play the mini game viciously later on as I'm still missing a few Silver and Gold Hostesses. All the money I spent on Majima Constructions, I made right back and then some thanks to Four Shine. The substory did give some nice closure and callbacks (that last hostess substory was pretty funny), and also having Majima as commentator is always fun. 

I'm giving Kaoru the same treatment as Makoto in 0 where they can just wait for all I care. 

The Majima chapter has also unlocked, but I don't think I'll be giving that a go until Kiryu's last chapter... or maybe I will...


----------



## wankerness

Iirc the Majima chapters unlock one at a time through the game so you might want to save them till the end.

His fight style is a variant on the mad dog one from 0, where you pretty much run in a straight line stabbing and have to steer him onto the enemy repeatedly to avoid breaking the combo. It’s weird. Kind of a fun break from Kiryu, but it gets repetitive, so maybe doing his chapters broken up isn’t bad.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I'm fine with Majima being just on Mad Dog mode. I wasn't really expecting all too much for his section.

Also side note, the Majima Construction ad is amazing.







Going back to the Cabaret, I also noticed it was harder to doll the girls up for 3 S ranks this time around. Yua in particular was a challenge and I ended up buying a ton of clothes, hairstyles and accessories to get the right stats up. I mean it's easy to jack up the stats without worrying about their appearance, but I took it as a personal challenge to get them all with 3 S stats without making them look like little 4 year old girls who raided their mum's wardrobe and makeup dresser for the first time. I was also a bit disappointed not being able to dress up Yuki, though it didn't matter in the end as she cleaned up just fine.

Yes I'm totally comfortable talking about dolling up women in a game about crime drama.  I've done it in 3 games and already looking forward to the 4th.

Once again, I really think Sega should make the Cabaret Club a standalone game for phones. They're already trying to upcharge players with extra clan members and the mechanic is tailor made for it, they may as well go all out. They can make it about Akiyama and his Club Elise, there's plenty of story mileage on that as well.


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> finally slogged my way to 2nd bonfire at bottom of Blight town .fuck me. what a prick of a time



Shoulda gone left. 

I’ll say this until I’m blue in the face.


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> Shoulda gone left.
> 
> I’ll say this until I’m blue in the face.


I saw your post on that. And I looked left. But couldn’t find another path.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Shoulda gone left.
> 
> I’ll say this until I’m blue in the face.


you mean go through the drake canyon shortcut?


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> I saw your post on that. And I looked left. But couldn’t find another path.





KnightBrolaire said:


> you mean go through the drake canyon shortcut?



Ok so I just sat down and watch a few guides on youtube to get my bearings as it’s been years since I played, and I cannot find the point I was talking about so now I feel crazy. 

Basically as I remember it I “entered” B-Town all the way on the ground near the toxic lake. So I simply walked left along the lake until it wrapped around to the Ferris wheel side of things. 

Now in reality I may have just taken ladders/etc down first. But yeah I can’t figure out how it connects to the way most people get there which seems to be from “the depths” which is that path that looks like a vertical well. 

So yeah until I play it and can show what I “think” I mean just file this under “old man yells at clouds.”


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Once again, I really think Sega should make the Cabaret Club a standalone game for phones. They're already trying to upcharge players with extra clan members and the mechanic is tailor made for it, they may as well go all out. They can make it about Akiyama and his Club Elise, there's plenty of story mileage on that as well.



That's the kind of thing that *could* cause the outrage brigade to take note. Yakuza flies under their radar right now, but a standalone game about something very few in the west are even aware of that is so blatantly sexist by western standards might be asking for it, especially considering how good sales of 6 were in this country. They're apparently already changing Yakuza 3 to get rid of something that's apparently much more offensive than that (some joke quest about a trans person - iirc we already had those in 0 and 1 or something? it was probably worse), but it shows they're looking at things.

The minigame is DEFINITELY harder in Kiwami 2 than 0. It's partly that the controls are less responsive, maybe due to the graphics being a lot more complex, or maybe on purpose. The big mechanic change, though, is that HP levels actually matter. I can't remember ever running out of HP on a single girl in 0, but you have to really pay attention to it in 2. It's probably a change for the better. It's still not a difficult minigame, but it was smart to add some kind of challenge beyond that infuriating thing that happens in challenge battles where you get all your girls kicked off tables and can get completely F'd depending on luck of when/what customers come in that round.

Then there's the button mashing baron thing that I didn't like, but w/e. It was a good bonus to put me over the top in a couple battles. It was all worth it for the announcing. I like the story in both games, but the announcer in 2 is frickin hilarious and the plot twist rules.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> That's the kind of thing that *could* cause the outrage brigade to take note. Yakuza flies under their radar right now, but a standalone game about something very few in the west are even aware of that is so blatantly sexist by western standards might be asking for it, especially considering how good sales of 6 were in this country. They're apparently already changing Yakuza 3 to get rid of something that's apparently much more offensive than that (some joke quest about a trans person - iirc we already had those in 0 and 1 or something? it was probably worse), but it shows they're looking at things.



Oh don't ruin my fun. 

In all seriousness, I'm not surprised in the slightest. I live in a country where censorship runs an all time high (we didn't get the anal probe related stuff in Stick Of Truth and Saints Row 4), and been here and played games long enough to see it coming.

Yakuza 3's original localization was already censored in a few ways. Mostly due to time constrains but a lot of the cultural stuff as well. The hostess dating was cut out, but then put right back with a vengeance in 4 onwards. I get cutting out the transgender subquest, even if they're currently getting away with Mama in Earth Angel and the Pleasure King in 0.

And of course if the hostess game becomes a mobile game, it'll probably be packed to the rafters with microtransactions and other things I can't stand about mobile games that I'll probably end up avoiding it like plague anyway.  I've seen gameplay footage of Ryu Ga Gotoku Online and I'm not impressed at all. I'll just have to wait to play Ichiban on the next console game.

Funny because I remember the first time censorship taught me a lesson to look past it and see if the game can still stand on it's own merits. The first Mortal Kombat game was groundbreakingly influential but underneath all the gory spectacle and motion capture, the game was incredibly shallow compared to it's main competition SF Turbo. But I digress.


----------



## wankerness

Yakuza 3's first release was technically censored, but I guess I view it as very different when they leave a bunch of stuff on the floor cause they think the Westerners won't understand it/enjoy it as opposed to cause they think it's offensive. Maybe I just use the word too specifically most of the time.


----------



## mongey

so finished blight town . beat the spider chick. she wasn't too bad . feel like they took it fairly easy on you after dealing with blight town

saw the sen's fortress gates open in the cut scene after ringign the 2nd bell so went there , needed t go to blacksmith anyway to get the armor upgrade box I neglected to get on elaier visits , and it was a brutal slog to get not far. I'm only lv 40 and most guides recommend 50+ to tackle it. so went back to the darkroot gardens which I didn't do that much exploring of when I opened it and going through that to farm souls to level up


----------



## alinas

Currently playing happy wheels and it's damn hard: https://happywheels13.com


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Resident Evil 2... I've been on the verge of shitting myself since the first 10 minutes and I'm loving it. It feels like I'm 10 years old again!!!


----------



## wankerness

Assassin's Creed Origins - It's amazing how many subtle improvements were made with Odyssey that make this infuriating to go back to. #1 is how the bows are almost useless thanks to tiny arrow capacity, 4 separate bow types that all use separate ammo, and inability to refill arrows without either finding an ammo dump (only in certain types of areas) or buying them at a blacksmith. OH, and you can't even charge up most bows, they rapid fire like a machine gun! The skill tree is terrible, with you mostly just stuck mashing light/strong attack through every fight. 

Then of course there's the fact it takes place in the desert meaning it looks really drab. 

OH WELL. I will probably finish it anyway. It's not awful, there are just all these annoyances in comparison to Odyssey that mean I should have played it first.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

anyone know if it's worth it to play through all of the kingdom hearts games? I was thinking of just replaying 1 and 2 to get ready for 3 and just watching recaps of the others on yt.


----------



## TedEH

^ I remember those games being fun, so I'd say replay them for that reason. But I always found the story in that series so hard to follow (much like most people, I guess), so it seems like you'd be better served trying to find a written summary somewhere. Or do both.


----------



## TedEH

I've been playing through a strange and not-seemingly-well-known game: Anachronox. It's kind of like a Final Fantasy-esque game mashed up with Deus Ex or Mass Effect or something. The humor is a key point and is pretty great. I can't think of a better way to describe the game than "charmingly janky". The visuals span from acceptable for the time to just plain ugly, the animations aren't great and jump all over the place, the whole game just lacks a layer of polish, but it almost kind of works in it's favor - the characters a likeable, the dialog is funny, and I legit want to see how it progresses. While it hasn't yet crashed, and I've not gotten stuck, there's pretty bad bugs in a lot of places - characters that will jump around the map or get stuck or fall out of bounds, UI elements that draw in the wrong places - even the battle system has a really obvious one where if you kill an enemy, then target it with another character before the animation is done, it still has an icon you can select but it's description text is just an error message. And this happens pretty much every fight in the game. So many little pieces of the game feel like they're just barely held together with duct tape, and there's a lot of content - but it almost seems right that way. Like the world of the game is kind of a darkly humorous setting where everything and everyone is broken and depraved, so it almost feels right that the game itself is also kinda broken.


----------



## jco5055

TedEH said:


> I've been playing through a strange and not-seemingly-well-known game: Anachronox. It's kind of like a Final Fantasy-esque game mashed up with Deus Ex or Mass Effect or something. The humor is a key point and is pretty great. I can't think of a better way to describe the game than "charmingly janky". The visuals span from acceptable for the time to just plain ugly, the animations aren't great and jump all over the place, the whole game just lacks a layer of polish, but it almost kind of works in it's favor - the characters a likeable, the dialog is funny, and I legit want to see how it progresses. While it hasn't yet crashed, and I've not gotten stuck, there's pretty bad bugs in a lot of places - characters that will jump around the map or get stuck or fall out of bounds, UI elements that draw in the wrong places - even the battle system has a really obvious one where if you kill an enemy, then target it with another character before the animation is done, it still has an icon you can select but it's description text is just an error message. And this happens pretty much every fight in the game. So many little pieces of the game feel like they're just barely held together with duct tape, and there's a lot of content - but it almost seems right that way. Like the world of the game is kind of a darkly humorous setting where everything and everyone is broken and depraved, so it almost feels right that the game itself is also kinda broken.



I actually started it like almost a year ago and played like the first area...it definitely has promise but in my current life and limited free time I don't dedicate to music I figured I might as well play a game that isn't as clunky haha


----------



## jco5055

I'm I guess almost done with Bloodborne (currently on the Lady Maria fight)? I actually do think it's probably my fave in the series so far (haven't played DS3) and I really haven't had much trouble at all with it but I feel like I'm not really skilled...like facing Sir Alonne or Artorias I definitely was in the zone to beat them, but I feel like I've almost just gotten lucky button mashing and excessively dodging basically in BB so far.


----------



## TedEH

jco5055 said:


> I might as well play a game that isn't as clunky haha


Right at this moment, that clunkiness is lending it much of the charm that I'm enjoying from it.


----------



## wankerness

Finished AC Origins’ main story. It’s got a much better plot than Odyssey, I’ll give it that. I was surprised that it switches to Aya instead of the main character for the last two bosses, so you can’t use a gear crutch. The combat is definitely worse than Odyssey, but the lack of any heal ability other than a really slow and incomplete regen makes it a lot more difficult, especially on the level 40 bosses that take fifteen minutes or more. I got more than ten minutes in on a couple attempts on an elephant (slowly died since you can’t heal and if miss a dodge about 1/5 of the time) and the giant alligator god (died to a one shot ability from an add) and just quit when the boss then started over from the beginning. I have no patience for that kind of shit anymore!! Odyssey has nothing like them, since the heal means you aren’t totally screwed if you make an early mistake. Plus they’re not nearly as ridiculous “arrow sponges.”

Argh. This game also has multiple zones that seem to have absolutely nothing in them - I spent over half an hour riding through all those western desert zones and never found a single thing, not even a viewpoint. Just don’t put them in the game if you’re not going to put anything in them!! Odyssey had some large dead spots and they’ve filled them in with the DLC, origins clearly didn’t.


----------



## beerandbeards

Resident Evil 2... more fun than I remember! The changes they made are welcome. 

The two issues, albeit minor, are that it takes multiple headshots to down a zombie, even then it doesn’t mean it’s down for good. The other being the dialogue. Everyone talks so cool and calm and collected. Like the world is a zombie apocalypse!!!


----------



## MFB

Snagged KH3 on pre-order last night, got the downloaded started; and since Blizzard is doing maintenance on Overwatch for all of tonight - literally 7PM to 8AM - I have nothing else I would even think about playing.

Only took 14 years but we finally have it


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m gonna buy the super special champion edition in like two years because I am finally adult to admit my backlog needs to be progressed through. It’s rough having so many steam gems tucked away.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

beerandbeards said:


> The other being the dialogue. Everyone talks so cool and calm and collected. Like the world is a zombie apocalypse!!!



Writing dialogue was never Capcom's strongest suit. Especially in the Resident Evil series.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

wankerness said:


> Finished AC Origins’ main story. It’s got a much better plot than Odyssey, I’ll give it that. I was surprised that it switches to Aya instead of the main character for the last two bosses, so you can’t use a gear crutch. The combat is definitely worse than Odyssey, but the lack of any heal ability other than a really slow and incomplete regen makes it a lot more difficult, especially on the level 40 bosses that take fifteen minutes or more. I got more than ten minutes in on a couple attempts on an elephant (slowly died since you can’t heal and if miss a dodge about 1/5 of the time) and the giant alligator god (died to a one shot ability from an add) and just quit when the boss then started over from the beginning. I have no patience for that kind of shit anymore!! Odyssey has nothing like them, since the heal means you aren’t totally screwed if you make an early mistake. Plus they’re not nearly as ridiculous “arrow sponges.”
> 
> Argh. This game also has multiple zones that seem to have absolutely nothing in them - I spent over half an hour riding through all those western desert zones and never found a single thing, not even a viewpoint. Just don’t put them in the game if you’re not going to put anything in them!! Odyssey had some large dead spots and they’ve filled them in with the DLC, origins clearly didn’t.



Totally get you on how Origin's empty zones are annoying, especially to a person who likes to adventure (and supposedly be rewarded for adventuring). There was only one zones that was completely desert but had a below ground forerunners tomb to explore. That was awesome, but never happened again so boo...

And yeah Origins end on a weak note, they just sort of shuffled the cards at the end and were like here play as Aya byeeeee.... and the gods battles were so out of place lol... Like randomly walking through a sunlit swamp and a big ass alligator god just pops up like kablaaaargh... lmao like fack off brah.



beerandbeards said:


> Resident Evil 2... more fun than I remember! The changes they made are welcome.
> 
> The two issues, albeit minor, are that it takes multiple headshots to down a zombie, even then it doesn’t mean it’s down for good. The other being the dialogue. Everyone talks so cool and calm and collected. Like the world is a zombie apocalypse!!!



Agreed, it just looks so good. I really like the new one more than the first release.



Bloody_Inferno said:


> Writing dialogue was never Capcom's strongest suit. Especially in the Resident Evil series.



Yeah I always wondered why? I mean so many Capcom games are a lot of fun but they seem to drop the ball on scripts and general dialogue. Also it seems like they just strongly prefer to fall back on highly stereotyped characters, rather than original personalities.

It's a shame if they never manage to get their act together on that front, their games are usually fun to play.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Meh, I've learned to expect that from Capcom. Doesn't bother me. As far as the headshots go, if it were really that easy to take a zombie down, there'd be virtually no challenge to the game and you wouldn't have to worry about conserving ammo.


----------



## wankerness

beerandbeards said:


> Resident Evil 2... more fun than I remember! The changes they made are welcome.
> 
> The two issues, albeit minor, are that it takes multiple headshots to down a zombie, even then it doesn’t mean it’s down for good. The other being the dialogue. Everyone talks so cool and calm and collected. Like the world is a zombie apocalypse!!!



Of course it's more fun than you remember! Try playing it on emulator and see how miserable you are. Not only are the controls abominable, you have to collect typewriter ribbons to save!

The dialogue is straight from the original, isn't it? I haven't played the new one yet. I just heard it was very faithful in some ways but mostly a MASSIVE improvement in everything related to gameplay. Like, one of the best remakes ever.

I'm not sure if I WILL play it. I'm a wimp when it comes to these things. I'll probably wait till it's down in the 20 buck range like I did with the GOTY edition of 7 either way.


----------



## beerandbeards

wankerness said:


> Of course it's more fun than you remember! Try playing it on emulator and see how miserable you are. Not only are the controls abominable, you have to collect typewriter ribbons to save!
> 
> The dialogue is straight from the original, isn't it? I haven't played the new one yet. I just heard it was very faithful in some ways but mostly a MASSIVE improvement in everything related to gameplay. Like, one of the best remakes ever.
> 
> I'm not sure if I WILL play it. I'm a wimp when it comes to these things. I'll probably wait till it's down in the 20 buck range like I did with the GOTY edition of 7 either way.



It’s not word for word no. It’s new dialogue but you don’t get the idea that the walking dead are surrounding you as you first meet Claire lol

I’ve try playing games from just a few years ago and it amazes me how things have improved. Doesn’t seem like much at the time but yeah old games are sometimes unplayable


----------



## beerandbeards

@wankerness


----------



## Leviathus

Finally caved and scooped BFV on sale. For sure the most satisfying part is dropping the V1 rocket as squad leader and wiping out whole blocks.


----------



## SenorDingDong

Grim Fandango


----------



## Ralyks

Tonight was probably the first night in like a week and I had that I actually played any games. I put on Kingdom Hearts 1.5 Final Mix (because you have to spell out the long convoluted names of each KH game) so I can work my way through to get to 3... And I have no fucking clue where I left off.

Also, chapter 4 of Yakuza Kiwami 2.


----------



## TedEH

SenorDingDong said:


> Grim Fandango


'nuf said.  I finally played through Full Throttle over the holidays - didn't realize how short a game it is. Started and finished it in the same day.


----------



## SenorDingDong

TedEH said:


> 'nuf said.  I finally played through Full Throttle over the holidays - didn't realize how short a game it is. Started and finished it in the same day.



I miss the old Lucas Arts, man.


----------



## wankerness

Started playing Celeste, hated it, didn't realize it was a Super Meat Boy deal.

Started playing Hollow Knight, hated it, didn't realize it was metroid in level design but not gaining abilities to unlock new areas. Didn't realize you had to grind for currency. Didn't realize it was like Dark Souls where if you die to a boss it both resets your currency (unless you go recover it from the boss room) but it kicks you way back to the previous save point and you have to run all the way back for the next attempt that may last 5 seconds. Etc. Killed first boss, discovered all I was given for my trouble was a ranged attack, ran around a bit more, lost interest.

I guess it's all RPGs for me!


----------



## Ralyks

Ok, remembered where I was in Kingdom Hearts. Just got to Monstro.


----------



## mongey

ah that feeling in dark souls when you slog all the way to the bonfire, just make it and light it ,but you forget to rest at it . then you die shortly after and think oh well I made progress . then you go back to where you were before. 

Happened to me in sens fortress yesterday. just turned it off in disgust


----------



## Ralyks

Sounds like a typical Dark Souls session, yes.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Picked up Stellaris yesterday for under $10 and played a few hours today. I'm not a big fan of Civ but this one seems a little better. Very overwhelming walking into it but after a little while I found out what the resources all did and mostly figured stuff out. Don't know if I'll get into any other 4X games but I was eyeing Endless Legends/Space a little while ago.


----------



## ThtOthrPrsn

Been playing a good bit of Enter the Gungeon this week, will be playing a whole bunch of the Anthem demo for sure this weekend.


----------



## Ralyks

So I played the Resident Evil 2 demo, which seems like it kicks ass, and the Anthem demo, which... Seems fun, I guess? May wait a couple of weeks and see what people think of it before buying that one.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Crossed off Kiwami 2. 

Not much to say about the story since I already knew about it from Yakuza 4's reminiscence mode. But playing through it all makes me see why it's highly regarded and why Ryuji and Kaoru are loved by many fans. I'll admit I did laughed my ass off at the entire climactic finale (like I did a particular point in Yakuza 4, same exact location no less), and that says a lot since this game throws a ton of goofy dumb camp at you... more than usual. 

Usual gameplay muckabouts here too. I spent way too much on the side stuff to the point that I kept playing the Cabaret Club long after the story arc for it was finished. Hell, I did a lot of Haruka's needy requests to the point of even playing the gambling games I tend to avoid at all costs (the Hanafuda Koi Koi game was more fun than I thought). And Otome My Life is still as adorable as ever. Though I gave up on the golfing, as I was so terrible at it. So no Amon fights for me this time, that includes the extras on the Bouncer and Majima Construction missions. Speaking of Majima...

Finished the Majima Story as well a few days ago in one sitting. I knew it was a short diversion (like most DLCs in games) but it's still a lot shorter than expected. I even tried to milk it by doing side stuff like his one karaoke song that's even more emotional in context, since the payoff was fantastic. It's funny because Yakuza 5 actually gave Majima a fair amount of depth as a character, but after the release of 0, and now this, his additional backstory is so good that it overshadows a lot of his stuff in 5. One thing's for sure, Majima has a type. 

That'll probably be enough Kamurocho based games for me for a while (Judge Eyes and Yakuza 3 HD won't be out for a while longer). Except I'll be jumping right in post apocalyptic world of Lost Paradise, aka, THE EXACT SAME GAME AGAIN. 

I suppose I could just get Kingdom Hearts 3 but it'll be a while before I could be assed actually playing it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

started playing killing floor 2 again. It's still a lot of fun to just run around and destroy zeds, especially with the kickass gore system.


----------



## wankerness

im


Ralyks said:


> So I played the Resident Evil 2 demo, which seems like it kicks ass, and the Anthem demo, which... Seems fun, I guess? May wait a couple of weeks and see what people think of it before buying that one.



I badly want to play a new BioWare game cause I like Mass Effect, even Andromeda, and the last two Dragon Age games a lot...and then their new game is a fucking MMO shooter. Guess I’ll be waiting a while.


----------



## Ralyks

Hey, there's a new Dragon Age coming!
... In probably a mini.um of 2 years?

Y'know, unless Anthem tanks and puts BioWare under.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Ralyks said:


> So I played the Resident Evil 2 demo, which seems like it kicks ass, and the Anthem demo, which... Seems fun, I guess? May wait a couple of weeks and see what people think of it before buying that one.



I've said this a thousand times and it bears repeating... Don't let the hype of others dictate your expectations or experience. You've got the right feeling about Resident Evil 2. Regarding Anthem, I don't know, but you're better off experiencing it or anything else for yourself.


----------



## wankerness

PunkBillCarson said:


> I've said this a thousand times and it bears repeating... Don't let the hype of others dictate your expectations or experience. You've got the right feeling about Resident Evil 2. Regarding Anthem, I don't know, but you're better off experiencing it or anything else for yourself.



That's true to a point, unless it involves dropping 60 dollars to find out if you like something or not. Unless you have a lot of money to waste, of course. Fortunately these are rare cases where demos are available. 

Anthem's demo is supposedly quite different from how the finished product will be, from what I've heard. Worse, in fact. So if you like it, you'll probably like the real thing more.


----------



## beerandbeards

I rarely buy games Day 1. I like to see multiple reviews first. The Anthem demo is fun but there’s a lot of negative vibes toward EA and BioWare. 

Am I alone in the thought that Microtransactions are hurting video games? I know developers want to monetize and make more money but it seems like the intentions are more greedy than to put out more content for the consumer. Any thoughts on that?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

beerandbeards said:


> I rarely buy games Day 1. I like to see multiple reviews first. The Anthem demo is fun but there’s a lot of negative vibes toward EA and BioWare.
> 
> Am I alone in the thought that Microtransactions are hurting video games? I know developers want to monetize and make more money but it seems like the intentions are more greedy than to put out more content for the consumer. Any thoughts on that?


They're absolutely about greed, they saw a profitable business model in a different type of game, and modified it to apply to a super high budget AAA game. Take Black Ops 4, it's just constantly inundated with ridiculous looking skins/armor sets. It basically follows the same progression as any other modern game like League of Legends, etc where it's a fucking slog to level up stuff, and an even longer slog to get the skins/etc. Even stuff that really shouldn't be behind that super slow progression like weapons are now behind it in Black Ops 4. Sure, you can get them without buying them, but it's a huge time sink. The older COD games (ie MW2 and Black Ops 1) did progression better imo, as the pacing behind leveling up and getting new weapons didn't take as long as it currently does.


----------



## wankerness

beerandbeards said:


> I rarely buy games Day 1. I like to see multiple reviews first. The Anthem demo is fun but there’s a lot of negative vibes toward EA and BioWare.
> 
> Am I alone in the thought that Microtransactions are hurting video games? I know developers want to monetize and make more money but it seems like the intentions are more greedy than to put out more content for the consumer. Any thoughts on that?



No, everyone has that thought.


----------



## MFB

If I had friends that I regularly gamed with, Anthem would probably be on my buy list, but as a solo queue player? No thanks. Feels prettt slow moving, and the gun play is pretty same-y, so I'm OK with skipping out on it.

I think my next purchase will be the FF-X Remaster, as playing KH3 makes me which there was more hack n slash/old school RPGs for the XB1.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

IMO, video games should just be raised to 70 dollars and no microtransactions. You pay 70, you get everything unless the developer gives a sizable expansion.

As for what I'm playing, Resident Evil 2, still and I just got my first taste of Brutal Doom on PC and I'm loving that as well.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I badly want to play a new BioWare game cause I like Mass Effect, even Andromeda, and the last two Dragon Age games a lot...and then their new game is a fucking MMO shooter. Guess I’ll be waiting a while.


Right there with you. It looks and sounds like a game like Destiny and I already wasted $80 on that one with the season pass and only played it about 10 times. Just not my thing.


----------



## Mathemagician

PunkBillCarson said:


> IMO, video games should just be raised to 70 dollars and no microtransactions. You pay 70, you get everything unless the developer gives a sizable expansion.
> 
> As for what I'm playing, Resident Evil 2, still and I just got my first taste of Brutal Doom on PC and I'm loving that as well.



Adjusted for inflation it’d be closer to $90.

And now that it’s a known entity just how much micro transactions make they would just sell the games for $90 and then implement the exact same MTX in the games.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Mathemagician said:


> Adjusted for inflation it’d be closer to $90.
> 
> And now that it’s a known entity just how much micro transactions make they would just sell the games for $90 and then implement the exact same MTX in the games.




Which is unfortunate. I think the reason why MT's even exist is because they were probably afraid of raising the prices of games. If they did, no questions asked before MT's were even a thing, MT's might not even exist, but then you'd have people getting pissed the fuck off at having to pay more for a game. Myself, I wouldn't mind paying more money for a game as long as I got everything there is to offer. Day one DLC is bullshit though.


----------



## Mathemagician

Activision (naturally) wanted to push prices higher with COD from $59.99 to $69.99 “or higher” Bobby Kotick was quoted as saying. Microsoft said no and held the cost at $59.99 so then having multiple editions come out like hardened or veteran editions with more “fluff” and “discounts on map packs” became a thing. 

Meanwhile on PC no one had ever really charged for some fucking maps.


----------



## Ralyks

I'd pay 70 to not have to pay more later, sure.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

PunkBillCarson said:


> IMO, video games should just be raised to 70 dollars and no microtransactions. You pay 70, you get everything unless the developer gives a sizable expansion.



Also known as what games used to be, but now an archaic thing of the past or left to the indies. My tastes in games has at least for the most part allowed me to avoid most of the triple A games with MTs, DLCs and Season passes aplenty, but sadly it's these exact things are what every modern fighting game is gearing towards. It's the reason why I still refuse to play Street Fighter 5. 

I sort of feel bad about not playing Soul Calibur 6 enough. Because it was given to me as a present, at least paying for the season pass was tolerable. But knowing that they've got more characters, most already available for free in previous games held as DLC ransom is still off putting.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Right there with you. It looks and sounds like a game like Destiny and I already wasted $80 on that one with the season pass and only played it about 10 times. Just not my thing.


the gunplay looks worse than destiny with the only mildly interesting thing being the combo system (which is just a half assed attempt at what magicka did). 
On that note, everyone go play magicka. That game is super entertaining and funny.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Street Fighter 5 I almost would have been fine with until they didn't even have fucking Guile in the base game. Guile, Balrog, Blanka, Sagat, how the fuck can you justify making veterans of the series pay more for what should be base game fucking characters? Thankfully Capcom redeemed themselves with MHW, RE2, and very likely RE3. That left a sour taste in my mouth with that, and luckily they bounced back. Let's see if Bethesda can do the same. If they're going to, though, whatever they kick out with Starfield and TES6 better be nothing short of astounding and gamechanging. That said, I don't expect that to happen. They're probably still going to be using the same bullshit engine. You can't even climb ladders in your typically Bethesda game yet...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

PunkBillCarson said:


> Street Fighter 5 I almost would have been fine with until they didn't even have fucking Guile in the base game. Guile, Balrog, Blanka, Sagat, how the fuck can you justify making veterans of the series pay more for what should be base game fucking characters?



They did that in Street Fighter 3. At the time I was more forgiving as they were trying to do the whole, New gen/pass the torch kind of thing. That and I ignored 3 until Third Strike anyway. But having every character mentioned already available in SF4 as well as being an interquel between 4 and 3 (dammit Capcom) completely undermines this. 

Which sort of leads me to the paradoxical problem I have with fighting games. Capcom have been doing this since SF2 and every subsequent upgrade from the original template, it's tailor made for DLC, season passes, version patches etc. It's weird that I had gladly paid for every version of whatever SF was out, because despite being the same game, the upgrades were substantial. But this is Capcom, who have in the past insultingly charged money for colour swaps. Not costume redesigns or add ons, pallet swaps.


----------



## mongey

plus the fact that sf5 just isn't a very fun SF game IMHO . It just feels like fish for a crush counter , pull out your stock CC combo, then repeat. 4 was a way better game IMHO . it had the flashy tech but you could still play it in an old school manner with out the focus dash cancels and all that and do well. actually read your opponent and punish


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I've had a few gripes with SF4 in general, but yeah it's still a solid game. For the old school purists, Super Turbo is still tough to beat. It's showing it's age but still amazing that it's still highly replayable. 


Now in chapter 2 of Lost Paradise. Some stray thoughts so far:

Yakuza veterans will be right at home here. It is a pastiche after all. More of a disclaimer than anything. 

I've stuck with the Japanese voice actors. Clearly I can't seem to get enough of playing an uber meathead with Takaya Kuroda's deep manly voice. Unsurprisingly, I'm recognizing all the Yakuza voice actors playing their quasi counterparts this early on. 

The game is as extremely over the top as what a FOTNS/Yakuza mashup could and should be. Any less of overflowing blood and gore, eruptions of body chunks and yelling special moves at execution will not do the Hokuto No Ken lore any justice. 

The first few chapters are a bit slower and linear but the plot makes that by design. I haven't come across the plethora of sidequests and minigames just yet. But it's shown some fair share of action. The combat difficulty curve is higher here too, which is fun. And the first major boss is a good indication of how Lost Paradise will be different from the usual RGG developed game.


----------



## wankerness

I heard that the difficulty in Fist of the North Star is a hell of a lot lower than Yakuza if you invest in one particular skill that makes you able to basically kill everyone instantly, but heard that pretty much makes you accurate to the series.  I haven't played it yet, but I have the disc!


----------



## mongey

fucking Ornstein and Smough

'nuff said


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Agreed on the opinions held on SF5, I'm still not gelling with it as much as SF4 either. 

It moves quite a bit slower in comparison which I noticed both during my own gameplay and in watching tournaments. I tried playing on my fighting stick and it's slightly improved but overall just kind of a meh feeling. And the V trigger is such an inferior tool they added to replace focus attacks.

Though I will add that it's great that they're making it more accessible, that's good for the series longterm. But a good deal of fun gameplay is lost in doing so. 

I was willing to put up with the different pace of gameplay until two things happened: 

1. Their continued oversight on great characters they really shined in SF4 (Gouken, Abel, Oni, Rufus, Dudley, Hakan) but left out in favour of characters that are boring in comparison. So it just felt like a mix of less fun gameplay and few appealing characters, and they wonder why ppl groaned when it launched.

2. I saw my boy Akuma...talk about underwhelming. Not so much a raging demon as much as lethargic demon


----------



## mongey

GatherTheArsenal said:


> Agreed on the opinions held on SF5, I'm still not gelling with it as much as SF4 either.
> 
> It moves quite a bit slower in comparison which I noticed both during my own gameplay and in watching tournaments. I tried playing on my fighting stick and it's slightly improved but overall just kind of a meh feeling. And the V trigger is such an inferior tool they added to replace focus attacks.
> 
> Though I will add that it's great that they're making it more accessible, that's good for the series longterm. But a good deal of fun gameplay is lost in doing so.
> 
> I was willing to put up with the different pace of gameplay until two things happened:
> 
> 1. Their continued oversight on great characters they really shined in SF4 (Gouken, Abel, Oni, Rufus, Dudley, Hakan) but left out in favour of characters that are boring in comparison. So it just felt like a mix of less fun gameplay and few appealing characters, and they wonder why ppl groaned when it launched.
> 
> 2. I saw my boy Akuma...talk about underwhelming. Not so much a raging demon as much as lethargic demon


I just don't know that it is any more accessible than 4. moving from the beginner to the somewhat intermediate you work out , ok he does that special move and misses I can punish them . you go from just mashing to actually having a plan. 5 just seems to have so much unpunishable ,abusable shit in it that I feel liek it discourages that jump

I also haven't played the last 2 seasons at all so that may have changed


----------



## thedonal

So I'm back on a new go of Empyrion. Granted it's still in alpha and putting a lot of time in to Minecraft at the moment. I'm 46. I know!!!- It's just my escape and chillout from a VERY stressful job and just quite enjoyable in the same way Lego was as a kid. I'm starting to wonder about the whole big open world survival thing.

Now- granted, there's more 'content' population going on in Empyrion- but, multiplayer aside, it does seem to be a big empty gather stuff, build stuff, look around game with little other point past the base and ship building geek thing. I'm a geek- I've no hang ups on that at all (I think that being a geek is a good thing in many ways). But aside from that, it seems quite an empty experience. 

Has anyone else come across this feeling on the open world, sandbox survival thing? 

I mean- like in life, the only real point is the point that you make for yourself. But- once you've built a base, a ship, gathered many materials, levelled up completely, explored the solar system. What else is there to do? (once again understanding this game is in alpha, missing a bigger universe and more content). I just don't know. It's interesting as a philosophical question at least. Maybe this post should have its own thread... 

At the end of the day- I'm a sci fi and fantasy guy since childhood and this game really ticks the sci fi box and building your own big spaceship is a wonderful thing (if in fiction/fantasy only!), but the game seems quite empty otherwise- built in missions are just really extended tutorial as far as I can see..


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> fucking Ornstein and Smough
> 
> 'nuff said


always kill ornstein first, otherwise you have to deal with the mega version of him and he's a huge pain in the ass. summoning and magic/ranged attacks/having the eagle greatshield (or whichever one you get in blighttown that gives lightning resistance) help as well.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

GatherTheArsenal said:


> It moves quite a bit slower in comparison which I noticed both during my own gameplay and in watching tournaments. I tried playing on my fighting stick and it's slightly improved but overall just kind of a meh feeling. And the V trigger is such an inferior tool they added to replace focus attacks.



Even if I don't own SF5, I've sort of understand the V trigger concept. Didn't care much in vanilla but now with more options does give each character some much needed depth. Some are awesome, others not so much.



GatherTheArsenal said:


> 1. Their continued oversight on great characters they really shined in SF4 (Gouken, Abel, Oni, Rufus, Dudley, Hakan) but left out in favour of characters that are boring in comparison. So it just felt like a mix of less fun gameplay and few appealing characters, and they wonder why ppl groaned when it launched.



Methinks Capcom will be reintroducing at least some of them in future season pass/DLC releases. Unless they've been written out of the story/canon, but as stated, this is Capcom and coherent stories are not their forte. 


EDIT: Speaking of dumb stories, the more I play Lost Paradise, the better it gets. I've been ragging on about how one of the reasons I love the Yakuza series is because they're so hilariously dumb, yet so sincerely delivered it's awesome. It doesn't get any dumber than Fist Of The North Star (in itself is a good thing) and matching the property with Yakuza's gameplay really is a perfect match. 



Spoiler



Hell, Nugget from Yakuza 0 is in this game.  And it also has the best version of Majima's theme in the entire series.


----------



## Ralyks

Trying to work my way through Kingdom Hearts 1.5 final mix, got to Halloween Town earlier. I may just go through 1.5 and 2.5 to get to 3 and I’ll play all the other ones later. Unless someone here gives me a convincing argument otherwise.

Man, I need to get back to Kiwami 2...


----------



## wankerness

If you're trying to play them to understand the plot of 3, you're going to have to play all the other ones, too.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> If you're trying to play them to understand the plot of 3, you're going to have to play all the other ones, too.





There's a "memories" recap section in KH3, and it does absolutely fuck all at understanding the story and how incredibly convoluted and self-indulgent it became


----------



## TedEH

I'm not sure anyone understands the plot of Kingdom Hearts.

Me to any Kingdom Hearts game: "Hey... what is even going on here?"
Kingdom Hearts game: "Uuuuuh.... hey look, it's Mickey!"


----------



## wankerness

I wouldn't even try. Who cares? It's just hanging out with Donald and Goofy and going to various immaculately rendered Disney lands. That's cool. The other stuff can f right off!


----------



## mongey

KnightBrolaire said:


> always kill ornstein first, otherwise you have to deal with the mega version of him and he's a huge pain in the ass. summoning and magic/ranged attacks/having the eagle greatshield (or whichever one you get in blighttown that gives lightning resistance) help as well.


yeah I just grinded back to depths to farm a few humanity to summon the NPC. had 1 humanity and summoned and we got fairly close. I think a few tries and we'll get them 

also annoyingly I turned my +10 claymore in the the cursed sword of whatever its called not realizing I need 18 faith and intelligence to use it . My meathead tank knight has no faith or intelligence . so also farming to get those up high enough to use the damn thing


----------



## TedEH

In a move that will surprise exactly nobody, I've started playing.....
Mario 64.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> yeah I just grinded back to depths to farm a few humanity to summon the NPC. had 1 humanity and summoned and we got fairly close. I think a few tries and we'll get them
> 
> also annoyingly I turned my +10 claymore in the the cursed sword of whatever its called not realizing I need 18 faith and intelligence to use it . My meathead tank knight has no faith or intelligence . so also farming to get those up high enough to use the damn thing


yeah, if you're running a str build then crystal will give the highest damage, at the cost of durability. Just building Raw or regular is fine though, so long as the weapon has good scaling. I always like the good ole mace, it has B scaling and can deal a lot of damage. same with the demon Machete/ Mildred's butcher knife or the black knight greatsword.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Just gave MGS5 a break in favor of something a bit lighter and less...well...pervy.

Started Mirror's Edge: Catalyst last night. Been wanting to play it for years, it's lighter tone, beautiful design and easier to follow plot is a welcome break. Took awhile to get used to the controls and mechanics, but about 2 hours in I'm having a blast traversing the rooftops of Glass City.

It's like Dying Light but without the zombie apocalypse. Not too shabby.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

GatherTheArsenal said:


> Just gave MGS5 a break in favor of something a bit lighter and less...well...pervy.
> 
> Started Mirror's Edge: Catalyst last night. Been wanting to play it for years, it's lighter tone, beautiful design and easier to follow plot is a welcome break. Took awhile to get used to the controls and mechanics, but about 2 hours in I'm having a blast traversing the rooftops of Glass City.
> 
> It's like Dying Light but without the zombie apocalypse. Not too shabby.


more like dying light is mirror's edge but with zombies, since the first game came out wayyy before dying light


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

MFB said:


> There's a "memories" recap section in KH3, and it does absolutely fuck all at understanding the story and how incredibly convoluted and self-indulgent it became



Sounds about right. 

Let's face it. The gameplay greatly saves the Kingdom Hearts series. I can bare the messy story when the hack & slash gameplay is solid and fun, and also less of that Little Mermaid QTE overload in KH2. Also building your own Gummy Ship is one of the best aspects in the game.


----------



## ferret

Just finished a multi-week spree in Conan Exiles after it was on sale near Christmas. Had fun for several weeks but then had basically done everything there was to do unless I was going to be serious about PVP or something.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Sounds about right.
> 
> Let's face it. The gameplay greatly saves the Kingdom Hearts series. I can bare the messy story when the hack & slash gameplay is solid and fun, and also less of that Little Mermaid QTE overload in KH2. Also building your own Gummy Ship is one of the best aspects in the game.



Building Gummy ships just confuses the hell out of me. I've barely done anything other than add extra turrets to the default ship.

Someone told me KH3 combat has a Nier:Automata feel to it. Which interests me greatly.


----------



## wankerness

I played about 4 hours of Kingdom Hearts 1 and HATED it because of the gameplay, ironically. I am interested in 3 cause of statements like that. I think I'll follow my own advice and just ignore the plot and probably enjoy it.

Nier Automata has great-feeling combat, and I like the carpal tunnel-inducing turret, but it's too easy to outlevel the enemies and basically 3 shot them, even on hard mode. That statement still has me curious.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Building Gummy ships just confuses the hell out of me. I've barely done anything other than add extra turrets to the default ship.
> 
> Someone told me KH3 combat has a Nier:Automata feel to it. Which interests me greatly.



The Gummi builds aren't mandatory but help in the more intense stages like the last flight in KH2. It confused me at first but ended up spending hours loving it. But then again I am one of those guys who can spend hours on building mecha in Front Mission and creating characters in Soul Calibur more than playing the actual game.

Haven't played KH3 yet but from the looks of things it looks largely the same as 2 but with super moves and 2 more AI supports can be added as opposed to switching Goofy (for me anyway) out with mandatory world character. I'm fine with that as KH2 corrected all the problems I had with KH1.

For a good alternative hack & slash with the Japanese flavor, I recommend Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana. I've rambled about it a few times in this thread already but the combat mechanics are incredibly fun to play. Less fast paced than Nier Automata but tarted up and refined extremely well.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

KnightBrolaire said:


> more like dying light is mirror's edge but with zombies, since the first game came out wayyy before dying light



True true, I played dying light first so i guess my comparison is more subjective in that case. 

Did you like either of them? Or both?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

GatherTheArsenal said:


> True true, I played dying light first so i guess my comparison is more subjective in that case.
> 
> Did you like either of them? Or both?


both are really fun. mirror's edge is a bit more realistic movement wise, but dying light felt smoother overall


----------



## Steinmetzify

Brother and I were drinking and playing last night.....he decides he wants to grab Mortal Kombat for funs and nostalgia; was $5 on Steam. I warned him.

2 hours later we were having a blast, and he still hadn't won a single game....nice to see things don't change even though I haven't played in decades.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> For a good alternative hack & slash with the Japanese flavor, I recommend Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana. I've rambled about it a few times in this thread already but the combat mechanics are incredibly fun to play. Less fast paced than Nier Automata but tarted up and refined extremely well.



Yep, great game. It seems there’s very little like it, as deceptively simple as it feels. This would also be an attempt to fill that gap. In my soul. 

I am contemplating getting far cry 5 since it’s cheap right now and I heard all the dlc totally sucks so I wouldn’t have to pay for that! I got a kick out of primal and 3/blood dragon back when it was newish.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

KnightBrolaire said:


> both are really fun. mirror's edge is a bit more realistic movement wise, but dying light felt smoother overall



Hmmm yeah I think that's fairly accurate. With Mirror's edge I feel like my feet are firmly planted on the ground with all movements i make. And it's really easy to bail if my control inputs aren't on point, like when falling from any height for example. Dying light felt like I was floating on air most of the time, hand-to-hand combat felt solid though.



steinmetzify said:


> Brother and I were drinking and playing last night.....he decides he wants to grab Mortal Kombat for funs and nostalgia; was $5 on Steam. I warned him.
> 
> 2 hours later we were having a blast, and he still hadn't won a single game....nice to see things don't change even though I haven't played in decades.



Which MK? Some in the series are easier to remember and fall back into than others. 

I'm more or less the same with Street Fighter. Me and my friend dove back into SF Third Strike and yeah, 31 games in total. A couple of really close calls but overall no losses for me. Hooray for muscle memory!


----------



## Ralyks

I'm about to head to Hallow Bastion in KH. Somebody please say I'm nearing the end.


----------



## Mathemagician

In KH 1? Nah fam. Close if you don’t do any side stuf. But first trip there isn’t the end. Idk how anyone can not enjoy KH it’s so over the top campy to be inside the creators interpretation of disney’s worlds. I love it. I also love 40* hour jrpgs soooooo, lol.


----------



## Ralyks

Oh I really like KH. It's just.... Goddamn there's a lot to play before I can even touch KH3


----------



## MFB

God damn, I don't think I can finish KH3, the voice acting is just so terrible and no one seems to have a clue what's going on or how to interact with each other; it's like they're all in their own world and can see each other, but not actually interact with them. I'm wondering if the first ones were like this and I was just too young to notice, but holy hell, it's such a drag to play after all these years waiting for what it could have been. The gameplay is OK, it's a hack and slash for without any gore, but none of the worlds even feel that fun, it's just going through the motions somehow, even though we've never gotten to actually play through them.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished the first go around at Hallow Bastion in KH before calling it a night. Goddamn that fucking dragon.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> In KH 1? Nah fam. Close if you don’t do any side stuf. But first trip there isn’t the end. Idk how anyone can not enjoy KH it’s so over the top campy to be inside the creators interpretation of disney’s worlds. I love it. I also love 40* hour jrpgs soooooo, lol.



Oh, I have played more than one 80+ hour game recently. My problem with Kingdom Hearts wasn't length, it was the actual combat mechanics. That boss in Alice in Wonderland-land where you had to clunkily try and jump off a table at it and hit it in the face, yet the really janky hit detection occasionally let you just stand in front of it and jump and achieve the same result, was where I wrote the game off. On top of the horrendous hit detection, your teammates would die in sub-20 seconds no matter what, there was literally nothing you could do to keep them alive, they were just worthless. I think they both res'd and died again about 10 times before I finally killed the stupid boss, since you could get in about 1 hit before having to run all the way around the room and climb up everything and ugh.


----------



## Mathemagician

Lmao. I forgot that. Yeah the game is a single player game. Your party members are negligible. As a kid it was easy for me to go “ok yeah that’s fine i’ll ignore them”. I’d be much more annoyed as an adult. 

And that boss/zone was whimsical but I 100% agree that it was an extreme example of them pushing their engine to do things that seem very difficult for it. 

I didn’t like fights there. I love the longer more spread out zones like Tarzan and Aladdin/Cave of Wonders.


----------



## mongey

god damn. so after 70 odd tries over a week I beat Orstein and Smough . ended up just doing it alone as I couldn't be bothered going back to depths to farm more humanity

as with all things dark souls once i actually just calmed down and went slowly it got easier , still a prick of a thing though


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> god damn. so after 70 odd tries over a week I beat Orstein and Smough . ended up just doing it alone as I couldn't be bothered going back to depths to farm more humanity
> 
> as with all things dark souls once i actually just calmed down and went slowly it got easier , still a prick of a thing though


if it makes you feel better, most of the bosses from that point on aren't really hard. The only really bad ones are gwynn/artorias/4 kings


----------



## BlackMastodon

Keep coming back to Monster Hunter World and still thoroughly enjoying it. The difficulty curve keeps things interesting and I've got a pretty good feel for some of the nuance of the game. Glad this turned out to be a game I can step away from and then come back in after a time and still enjoy it since I'm not diving into any of the multiplayer features.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally got to dip my toes in the Cabaret club game in Lost Paradise. It's got some significant differences to the Yakuza games, and it's too early to judge for me which is more fun, but still just as absurd. That said, it's a lot more streamlined and moves at a much faster pace. I'll admit I'm a little disappointed you can't play dress ups with your top ranks this time around. Silly as it was, it added some depth to the gameplay and I spent so much time doing so. And at least your starting low ranked cast prove their usefulness unlike Yakuza's Bronze ranks where you ditch most of them once you got the Silvers and Golds.


----------



## wankerness

Started playing Far Cry 5, beat the first "lieutenant." It's a shock how much harder it is than Assassin's Creed, purely cause you're doing the same things in first person. Driving in first person is a nightmare.

EDIT: After playing AC Odyssey and AC Origins back-to-back, I'm reflexively hitting R1 for melee attacks whenever things get hectic and I have a gun out. That is the grenade/dynamite-throw button, which certainly has caused some problems.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Problems? Or highly efficient solutions?


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Problems? Or highly efficient solutions?



I realize what happened, and then have to run away really fast. It's near-impossible to actually damage any enemies with grenades/dynamite if you don't "cook" it first, so all I manage to do is make everyone scatter. It stops them from shooting me for 3 seconds, at least, so that's sort of a solution! My stupid dog and/or companion like to stand right on it while it blows up though.


----------



## mongey

KnightBrolaire said:


> if it makes you feel better, most of the bosses from that point on aren't really hard. The only really bad ones are gwynn/artorias/4 kings


I flew through 4 king's yesterday. High poise and just tanked them . would've done it first go but didn't heal when I should've and went for that last hit and died , did it 2nd go though


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> I flew through 4 king's yesterday. High poise and just tanked them . would've done it first go but didn't heal when I should've and went for that last hit and died , did it 2nd go though


yeah they're only bad if you don't burn em down fast enough, then they swarm you.


----------



## Demiurge

WalMart is blowing out those Playstation Classics for $40 so I, a probable rube, ordered one. With the rep it has, the $100 price point was a non-starter, but with the mods out there, this should at least not be a waste?


----------



## Ralyks

Just finished Kingdom Hearts 1.5 finally. Man, that fucking last sequence of boss fights.

Spoiler: Pinocchio becomes a real boy.

Anyway, starting Re:Chain of Memories now, but I'll likely takes KH break and get back to Kiwami 2.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Just picked up AC Odyssey and the new Tomb Raider, debating which one to get into first.



Demiurge said:


> WalMart is blowing out those Playstation Classics for $40 so I, a probable rube, ordered one. With the rep it has, the $100 price point was a non-starter, *but with the mods out there, this should at least not be a waste?*



Mods? What mods? Just picked on up myself, you can mod them??


----------



## Demiurge

Last I checked, people have found a way to access the emulator's options menu and to have it play additional games off of a thumb drive. The latter is pretty big since people were complaining about the game selection.


----------



## Drew

Been playing a bit of Diablo III for kicks lately. Still a lot of fun, I miss the randomized levels of the older ones but the replay value is good here.


----------



## wankerness

Drew said:


> Been playing a bit of Diablo III for kicks lately. Still a lot of fun, I miss the randomized levels of the older ones but the replay value is good here.



Well...they're a little bit randomized! There are a bunch of events that can happen different places or not at all, doors that can be open or closed in some places, enemy placement, etc. It sure isn't a roguelike. I never played 1/2 so I should STFU.



GatherTheArsenal said:


> Just picked up AC Odyssey and the new Tomb Raider, debating which one to get into first.
> 
> 
> 
> Mods? What mods? Just picked on up myself, you can mod them??



AC Odyssey is wayyyyy longer than TR so might want to do TR before devoting weeks? I really liked AC Odyssey, but it's a lot of game!



Demiurge said:


> Last I checked, people have found a way to access the emulator's options menu and to have it play additional games off of a thumb drive. The latter is pretty big since people were complaining about the game selection.



They did jailbreak the thing. IIRC you have to upload the ISOs from the drive onto the hard drive, though, so you can only put a handful of new games on there at once. 

IMO, if you're a nerd big enough, there's no reason to buy their hardware as it uses the exact same emulator that you can get off the internet for free, only I don't think it will be able to be updated, and you've got some serious space limitations. I guess if you like the look and want the non-dual-shock controller for lord knows what reason (it sure makes some games awful) then go for it.


----------



## Drew

wankerness said:


> Well...they're a little bit randomized! There are a bunch of events that can happen different places or not at all, doors that can be open or closed in some places, enemy placement, etc. It sure isn't a roguelike. I never played 1/2 so I should STFU.


Oh, 1 is dated as hell and doesn't offer _nearly_ as much endgame play, but it's absolutely worth tracking down and spending some time playing. Two real reasons - first, the sparseness of the storyline is pretty damned awesome, and adds to the creepiness - there's no backstory, you start in this town and the townspeople are like, "yo, the king's son was kidnapped and now skeletons are coming out of that old cathedral. You look tough, maybe you should check it out," and that's that. You only really learn what's going on as you play, and even then the very ending threw me for a loop. Second, there's no fixed dungeon design - the town is fixed (and a very small, closed world), but every of the 16 levels of the dungeons is randomly generated as you explore. Sometimes that works in your favor - I remember once the stairwell to the next level was right next to the one I'd just come down - but it makes the game a lot less predictable, especially because there are also a bunch of random "events" like DIII. And some of them are pretty nuts - you never forget the first time you stumble upon the Butcher.  

D2 was a lot like that, but with a bit more in the way of endgame options (I don't think they really expected people to beat DI and then wonder "what next," whereas in D2 as they continued to update the game post release they definitely focused on character level up and late game replay - they did a much better job of it in D3, I think, with torments and boounties, but the inspiration of that was replaying boss fights as high level characters in D2). It was also _mostly_ randomized, though there were fixed sections. 

D3... You got a MUCH bigger world, a much more cohesive and fleshed out storyline, a ton of customizaton in the game for each player class, and some really robust end-game play... But, in return, the only randomization you have is that there are some one-off events that don't consistently appear. I think it would be tough to do random maps on a scale of the world of D3, but I miss walking into a dungeon the third or fourth time I do a playthrough and literally having no idea what the map is going to look like.


----------



## StevenC

Tetris 99 is now the only game I will ever play


----------



## mongey

inching towards finish line of dark souls .I'm kinda over it but it needs to be finished to close the chapter

flew through dukes archives and crystal cave in a couple of sessions . boss in the Crystal cave was easiest yet . in demon ruins now which seems like it will amp up in difficultly again after an easy section before


----------



## Ralyks

StevenC said:


> Tetris 99 is now the only game I will ever play



Boy, this came from out of nowhere. And who knew Battle Royale Tetris would actually work. Still partial to Tetris Effect, but that doesn't have multiplayer. Tetris 99 more than scratches the Tetris multiplayer itch.


----------



## TedEH

I finally beat Mario 64. I'm only 22 years late.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I finally beat Mario 64. I'm only 22 years late.



Wow! How far did you get when it was "current?" 

I got 120 stars in that thing wayyy back when I first got an N64 (I got one right after OoT came out). It's a good game, but I have 0 desire to ever set foot in Tick Tock Clock or Rainbow Ride again! I also have vivid memories of trying to crank the camera around with the C buttons, having it give that "error" noise that it can't turn more, having to turn it back around the other way, having that fail, switching to "Mario cam," cranking it around both directions for another little while, and finally having it go exactly where I wanted it to, all in the interest of performing one jump. And I remember just thinking that was normal, that's how cameras work, since it was about the first to allow any of this and thus no one could comprehend a system where this stuff functioned! Oh, how times change.


----------



## TedEH

I had never progressed past the first floor of the castle before, but I also never owned a copy.

The camera is definitely one of the best and worst things about the game at the same time.


----------



## wankerness

It IS an interesting system, having a physical, visible object in the world that's holding a camera, and allowing an alternate camera that goes outside of that. I'm guessing they originally intended Lakitu to be the only camera in the game, and just ran into SO many problems that they whipped up the Mario cam in addition. Man, can it be a pain in the ass. I think 90% of the time I just used the zoomed out Mario cam.

I tried playing the DS port at some point. It uses stylus pressure to mimic the directional stick. It is very hard to get used to!!


----------



## TedEH

Can confirm -> Game cameras still haven't been completely "figured out".


----------



## Ralyks

Started Re:chain of Memories, said "eff this card game nonsense", watched a summary video, schlept through the 3 hours of 358/2 Days, and got right into KH2.

That said, now I get why those two games were needed to give KH2 any context.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Far Cry 5, started New Dawn, which I had no clue was coming out soon, let alone about a day before I finished 5. It has a weirdo Mad Max vibe with the enemies, and there are neon pinks everywhere, and it has stranger weapons, and I dunno. It's pretty good. I've really bought into these Ubisoft open world fill in the overworld games.  So, here's another stupid game to use to delay starting Fist of the North Star and Spider-Man!


----------



## mongey

never been a huge Tetris fan but downloaded 99 .I was on the fence about getting an online membership and it just pushed me over the edge to sign up .Its fun, haven't cracked top 20 yet .23rd is my best

my wife loves Tetris and is competitive as fuck. so think she is going to get right into it


----------



## TedEH

Played through Orwell this weekend - an interesting change compared to what I've been playing lately. The politics of the game are a little on-the-nose, but it makes a decent story. I expected to get bored of a game made up almost entirely of text, but it kept my interest. I was also worried that it might end up being a really cringy kind of "found phone" game with unconvincing characters, and it's not that. The characters are a little stereotype-y, but there's enough time spent developing them to get out of the weird boxes they kind of start in. Good stuff.


----------



## StevenC

Managed to get 2nd in Tetris 99 two days ago. I've never been so proud.


----------



## blacai

Installed the last expansion for Civilization VI, Gathering storm. Not bad. It adds enough changes into the gameplay.
I play Civ series since civ II and I would say the VI is being far better than V and I do not think IV is the best all time. So happy I can finally spend some more turns with this series again.


----------



## beerandbeards

Finished my 2nd run through Resident Evil 2 as Claire. That game was so fun and delightfully stressful especially with headphones on. Just to here Mr X’s foot steps! I recommend the game to anyone who enjoys the RE series or is looking for a fun single player.

Sooooo, I MIGHT get Anthem. Nothing else is on the horizon for me as MUST GET but my brother and nephew are picking it up so it should be a fun co-op experience. The micro transactions are aesthetics only so not an issue until EA tries some shady business. Even if I get a couple weeks of enjoyment from it I think it’ll be worth getting.


----------



## TedEH

I think the next game(s) on my list are going to be the Splinter Cell games. I've only ever played small pieces of them, but I've always liked stealth games. Not sure when/where I got them, but I've got all of the steam ones already (which doesn't include the second game for some reason), so I started off on game 1 this weekend.


----------



## Ralyks

KH2 is fucking weird. So far I feel like a huge Disney fan said "fuck it, this game needs more Matrix."

I'm tempted to get Anthem because I already have a few friends committed via preorders, but I feel like I really should just go through my back catalogue for a while. Also, as weird as KH2 is, I really do want to get to KH3 as of right now.


----------



## wankerness

Anthem's a huge question mark right now, I would definitely not preorder it. It looks like it has Fallout 76 level of preorder burn possibilities.


----------



## StevenC

I got 2 wins on Tetris 99 tonight!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

jumping back into bloodborne and nioh again.


----------



## beerandbeards

wankerness said:


> Anthem's a huge question mark right now, I would definitely not preorder it. It looks like it has Fallout 76 level of preorder burn possibilities.



Fallout 76 seemed unplayable at first and probably still. Anthem is at least operational so far minus long loads from current reviews (early releases for a premium can suck it EA). I feel like preordering is a gamble nowadays. I feel like everyone should wait at least a day if not a week before purchasing and reading multiple reviews.


----------



## beerandbeards

KnightBrolaire said:


> jumping back into bloodborne and nioh again.



Niho crushed my soul. I wasn’t worthy to play it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

beerandbeards said:


> Niho crushed my soul. I wasn’t worthy to play it.


it's very brutal, but not quite ninja gaiden levels of "THIS IS BULLSHIT". That game still fucking infuriates me after all these years.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> KH2 is fucking weird. So far I feel like a huge Disney fan said "fuck it, this game needs more Matrix."



Now imagine playing that at launch without knowing all the hand held side stories. 

The more I learn about KH3, the less I think of it. For one, aside from the Moogle save points, there's a suspicious absence of Final Fantasy characters from every promo and gameplay footage I've seen. And I smelt a rat, in this case a mouse. It's obvious Disney is the moneymaker on this crossover game, but to hide away most of the other half of the crossover is a bit much. Though I also suspect there will be a looming cloud of DLC with them over the horizon. Seriously Square Enix… 

That, and the 14 years since KH2 haven't been kind. While I admit I was too old to even play 1 and 2 at the time, the Muppet Babies FF characters and the raging Squenix fanboyism lulled me in, blinding the gaping flaws of the original games. I'm remembering how the battle system was never really that good, being a hybridized Hack Slash meets JRPG menus, then getting repetitive and tedious. And by design, visiting the Disney individual worlds do little to the overall experience other than replaying how their respective movies go and already spoiled to those who already seen the movie. Visit world, go through the motions, have someone in a trenchcoat remind you it's a KH game, rinse and repeat. 

I'll probably play this eventually since I'm already too deep in the stupid lore.  But no way I'm paying 70 aud for it.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Preordered Devil May Cry 5 today thanks to a discount from Green Man Gaming. Excited is an understatement for how I feel that it got brought back to Capcom after... whatever it was that Ninja Theory did. Still laugh to this day when I think of what a collosal douche the director of that "reboot" is for making Dante look like how he wished he looked.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Preordered Devil May Cry 5 today thanks to a discount from Green Man Gaming. Excited is an understatement for how I feel that it got brought back to Capcom after... whatever it was that Ninja Theory did. Still laugh to this day when I think of what a collosal douche the director of that "reboot" is for making Dante look like how he wished he looked.


ninja theory's reboot was a better game than dmc 2 or 3 imo.


----------



## wankerness

I thought it was generally well regarded? I haven't played any of these since 1 and then 4 which I played for about an hour before I couldn't deal with it anymore.


----------



## Ralyks

I liked DmC personally. Even if reboot Dante was meh. Still played fun.

I’m finally feeling like I’m somewhere in KH2 after what felt like a 3 and a 1/2 hour intro (seriously, it was that long before I even saw the title screen). The story is still “what the hell?”, but I will say the gameplay feels better. Not sure how, guess just some quality of life fixes over the first game.

I was told other that KH2, the only ones really worth playing before 3 are Dream Drop Distance and Birth by Sleep, the rest I’m fine with a YouTube recap (which I did for Re:chain, because fuck that card game nonsense).


----------



## Ralyks

And now to complicate things, Amazon currently has AC Odyssey new for 20 bucks... and I gave in.


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> ninja theory's reboot was a better game than dmc 2 or 3 imo.


DMC2 is by and far the worst one, but I refuse to believe the reboot better than 3, which was my favourite of them. I'm also gonna stick my fingers in my ears and talk really loud, nothing will ever make me want to play through it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> DMC2 is by and far the worst one, but I refuse to believe the reboot better than 3, which was my favourite of them. I'm also gonna stick my fingers in my ears and talk really loud, nothing will ever make me want to play through it.


 I've played em all, and the reboot was really good. I didn't like that they rebooted DMC back when I first heard about it, but I grudgingly played through it and eventually really liked it because the combat was really smooth and excellent. Considering it's selling for 20$ and under consistently it's well worth the money.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> And now to complicate things, Amazon currently has AC Odyssey new for 20 bucks... and I gave in.



The DLC/multiple editions of that game confuse matters. I think the season pass is actually worth it in this case since on top of the story DLC you get a full remake of AC3 with the new engine. I got whatever edition had the season pass and not even more extra garbage on top of it. Maybe the season pass will be on sale again sometime, it was last week. They like to discount the edition that includes the season pass but not the season pass, though!

Great game, regardless of all the silly release garbage. And don't for a second think that the ability to pay for EXP boost means it's hard to level, I hit the level cap easily before even finishing the main quest. I know people freaked out and were like "omg 2x exp boost for sale??? that means the game is designed to not be fun without paying for that!!!"


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> I've played em all, and the reboot was really good. I didn't like that they rebooted DMC back when I first heard about it, but I grudgingly played through it and eventually really liked it because the combat was really smooth and excellent. Considering it's selling for 20$ and under consistently it's well worth the money.


That's fair. Some people I talked to were in the same boat as you and did enjoy it. I'm just holding a grudge against it since I absolutely loved the DMC games growing up. Honestly I haven't paid attention to the series for the past several years until the announcement of DMC5 and I'm just excited for the return to form. And with how much I'm loving Monster Hunter World I'm pretty optimistic with Capcom handling it.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

BlackMastodon said:


> That's fair. Some people I talked to were in the same boat as you and did enjoy it. I'm just holding a grudge against it since I absolutely loved the DMC games growing up. Honestly I haven't paid attention to the series for the past several years until the announcement of DMC5 and I'm just excited for the return to form. And with how much I'm loving Monster Hunter World I'm pretty optimistic with Capcom handling it.



To be fair, there were some great conceptual designs used in the reboot, like the computer news network or the negative water reflection mission. And the combat is exaclty what a DMC game should be. It's arguably better than DMC4. What I didn't like is that contrived mop on head scene, where the game feels so proud of itself.


----------



## mongey

end of dark souls is in sight. got the 4 souls. did the dlc. arotias wasn't too bad. but the final manus dude was a prick .Id put him in top 5 hardest bosses in the game for sure. maybe top 3

not all I gotta do is kill gwyn . Had 1 quick go and got him halfway without really trying so don't think it will be too bad . my save file is 53 hours . seriously ready to finish it and pack it away . might even sell it. have enjoyed the battle but fuck I never want to play it again


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Devotion. It's a Taiwanese horror game. Ten minutes in and I'm already planning on buying fresh underwear.


----------



## mongey

And done with dark souls. Gwyn took a bit longer than I initially thought. But got his ass.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Far Cry 5/New Dawn, starting on Spider-Man. New Dawn and 5 are an interesting compliment - New Dawn is nominally more fun in certain ways, but also feels too small in comparison. It probably is a BETTER size for people with lives, though! I like the cast of companions in 5 more, too. I miss Jess Black - the equivalent to her in New Dawn is The Judge, and the AI is so fucking bad that it often takes him 30 seconds to attack things that you direct him to, and half the time he shoots the wall, and the other half of the time it takes like 3 hits to kill the enemy so the stealth component is worthless. Ugh. The main companion also has a nasty habit of throwing dynamite everywhere and killing hostages and/or you! I think having a boar instead of a bear for the big chaos companion might be more fun, though. I do like the ability to re-do bases, as 5 rapidly became a dead world once you'd knock out a region's boss and no more enemies would spawn.

Spider-Man is fun. I mostly have my lizard-brain still triggered from Far Cry, so I ran around getting all the photos/backpacks before I did anything with the plot! The controls sure do feel good. They're also ludicrously complex, with the ability to do pretty much anything - I have a hard time remembering some of the more esoteric controls. I have yelled a lot of profanities during combat sections when two fat guys come after you and knock you out in about 3 hits with very little chance of reprisal due to them being right next to each other. The story seems pretty good, even though I don't care about "DEMONS" yet! The characters are appealing.


----------



## Ralyks

They made a new Toejam and Earl game that’s GOOD!!! 

Also, approaching 20 hours into Kingdom Hearts 2. How long is this game if you keep the side stuff to a minimum?


----------



## lurè

Finished DA Inquisition base game and jaws of hakkon. It's still Dragon Age. 
I was skeptical at the beginning due to the bad reviews but at the end I enjoyed the game as much as the first 2 releases.

After finishing the other dlcs I've ME Andromeda on the list.


----------



## wankerness

What bad reviews? That game got great reviews compared to two and won a ton of awards.

Spider-Man feels like a chore, it just progressively adds more and more icons to the map and ping pongs you everywhere. I like how complex the gameplay is, but I hate the stealth sections, especially the timed ones. I probably could have done without the MJ sections as well, but maybe they’ll pay off eventually? My completion is 75% (Doc Oc finally lost it after hours of it being inevitable!).


----------



## Anquished

DMC5 tomorrow and the reviews are glowing. Can't wait!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Same boat. Now to get my gf to stop playing XCOM on my PC...


----------



## Leviathus

Been rotating around a lot recently on PS4; Overwatch, Apex, COD4 remastered (shouts to PS+), MGSV, and BFV. 

aka SHOOTIN' folks!


----------



## Ralyks

About 25 hours into Kingdom Hearts 2 now, more than I put into the first game. Basically, have two more worlds to go through a second time. I'm assuming there's more, but that's where I stand.

Also, got Modern Warfare as part of PS Plus and will probably boot that up later, as I recently got a PS Platinum Headset and am looking for a new experience for it.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

STILL in Chapter 6 in Lost Paradise, and still haven't budged an inch on the plot.  Just mucking about in a massive time sink. 

Going through the plethora of Cabaret Club missions gets much more challenging and actually forces you to be more alert with the floor staff. Still as fun as ever. Though I'm staggering it in between all the other muckabouts since some the hostesses I've yet to find are scattered around the wasteland. 

And if that wasn't enough, the game throughs a bunch of other random crap for you to do. There's a doctor/clinic minigame that's the substitute for the karaoke and dancing rhythm games in Yakuza. It's as ridiculously over the top as it sounds. A racing game has just been introduced where you can do up your buggy so it's Yakuza 5's Taxi street racing all over again. You get to excavate old arcade games from the wasteland so Eden has it's own Club Sega. And that baseball substitute... Some do get fetch-questy, like that market managing for Not-Haruka, but I'm glad I flushed out the Bartending part early so I have a lot of cash and makes the shopping list much easier to get. The subplot for it is pretty adorable and hilarious though. 

Just like Yakuza, 95% of the subgames end with you beating the crap out of somebody. But unlike Yakuza, you get to straight up murder everyone via head and body explosions, as expected with this property. Sure you can't used improvised weaponry like bicycles, but you get to kill someone with the deathcry of his own friend.  

Driving around the wasteland does get a little mundane at parts since there's not much going on with the occasional gang of 'lowlifes' lining up for you to massacre. But with checkpoints, I actually don't spend too much time on the field. It is nice to do some donuts and drift around the open world since Sega are good with driving game mechanics, again evident here. And the music selection keeps things from getting too dull. Namely this:



At this rate, by the time I'm done, Judge Eyes will be released and it's back to Kamurocho doing the same thing again.


----------



## wankerness

I'm very upset about that game and Judge Eyes not having my buds Kiryu and Majima, but maybe I'll still end up loving them. I've had Lost Paradise for weeks now and just haven't gotten to it yet after starting Far Cry 5 and finishing that/New Dawn and then starting Spider-Man. I'm still dragging my way through Spider-Man desperately wanting it to end cause after spending this much time I have to finish it, dammit!


----------



## mongey

Played a couple hours apex to check it out. It’s got sone cool stuff in it. But I still Prefer overwatch.

Apex is Too slow to start for me.


----------



## Demiurge

Been playing the Guacamelee games. Both pretty tricky but in a fun & satisfying way. Fucking funny as hell, too.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Demiurge said:


> Been playing the Guacamelee games. Both pretty tricky but in a fun & satisfying way. Fucking funny as hell, too.


I love the Guacamelee games. They're so much fun, even when the platforming bullshit makes me want to rip my hair out, the luchador combat and their use of memes makes up for it


----------



## Demiurge

^I made it a point to get the "good" ending in each game which means not rage-quitting all the tricky platform stuff and keeping at it until I got it right. It was kind of rewarding. I usually button-mash my way through most games and do alright, but this one really makes you earn some shit.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I'm very upset about that game and Judge Eyes not having my buds Kiryu and Majima, but maybe I'll still end up loving them.



I feel like Judgement/Judge Eyes/Ace Yakuza, Attorney at Law will eventually cross over with the Yakuza world, even if its cameos. Plus, aren't they still working on a new Yakuza game too?

I'm about 30 hours into KH2 and while I do enjoy it (cheesy voice acting aside), I'm ready to move on to get closer to KH3. I was told the only really important games to play bewteen KH2 and 3 are Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance, and I can just YouTube the rest. I also noticed I don't seem to see 2.8 Final Way Too Long Name Gaiden Prologue Epilogue in stores. Or even the Story So Far pack.


----------



## thedonal

I'm heavily back on Empyrion at the moment. I know it's still in alpha, but it's got a long way to go. The building aspect of it is great in its way but I find the interaction between other factions (single player) really need a lot of work. I love the game in principle and look forward to seeing it grow but I think there's a fair bit of grassroots that are needed before the features are improved.

And by the Gods some of these newer survival games- like Subnatica (LOVE that game) it seriously spin up the fans on my PC. I do wonder how much calculation they have to do to generate/render the game- could these games be made more efficient? (I'd say visually, Subnautica will require a lot more to render). I wonder if half the 'glitches' or annoyances in Empyrion are driven by how laggy the game is (i5 quad 6600k here- 3.5Ghz and GTX1060SC- not a poor system by any definition- but performance really isn't great on the game). Maybe an alpha thing again, but I wonder.


----------



## wankerness

Finished the DLC on AC Odyssey, it's fine, the voice-acting/animations get even worse in part 3 and I didn't care about the dumb story, but that's not really what I was playing the game for to begin with! Part 3 added an adrenaline-building ability, which seems like it should have always been there. Then again, the game has WAY too many abilities considering the harsh limit of 4. I never really experimented with most of them since the core ones were just too good (teleport-assassinate, heal, in-combat assassinate, and shield break or kick depending on situation).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Looks like Judge Eyes/Judgement's western release may be up in the air.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/13/sega-pulls-judgement-voice-actos-cocaine-arrest/

I'm guessing they'll do exactly the same with Tanimura in Yakuza 4 and straight up recast Pierre Taki's character and image model, just like Hiroki Narimiya before him. But given Japan's draconian view on celebrity scandals and with Sega halting sales and deleting all promotional tweets, this could prove a long delay.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Looks like Judge Eyes/Judgement's western release may be up in the air.
> 
> https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/13/sega-pulls-judgement-voice-actos-cocaine-arrest/
> 
> I'm guessing they'll do exactly the same with Tanimura in Yakuza 4 and straight up recast Pierre Taki's character and image model, just like Hiroki Narimiya before him. But given Japan's draconian view on celebrity scandals and with Sega halting sales and deleting all promotional tweets, this could prove a long delay.



I dunno if those Japanese laws also apply to EXPORTS, but it's not like anyone in any other country would be aware of it or care. Dumb.


----------



## TedEH

I'm a sucker for Kirby games for some reason, so I ended up grabbing Extra Epic Yarn.  It's.... not the best Kirby. But it's still Kirby.


----------



## Ralyks

Boy, the Japanese are strick about their drugs.

Meanwhile, I'm assuming Kevin Spacey hasn't been patched out of Advanced Warfare.


----------



## Mathemagician

Tevin Stacey. Father of three, wakes up early to go for a run with his dog, makes sure to pick up milk on the way home from work at space-Business.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I dunno if those Japanese laws also apply to EXPORTS, but it's not like anyone in any other country would be aware of it or care. Dumb.



Nobody outside Asia cares about this sort of thing and those laws don't apply. Sega went on damage control to save face since scandals in Asia can ruin a person's career. Even if the allegations get cleared (in Tanimura's actor's case) the scandal was severe enough to force the guy into retirement. If the actor only lent his voice, then the international dub will go on and call it a day (local version just redubs the role). But since the character is modelled after the actor then it complicates things.

Judgement's Western release for late June was already set in stone. The real question is if it's delayed and Sega will recast the character (they will), how long will it be. No idea on the process in the case of mocap and dubbing though. It could be the similar case with the Chinese casting of Lao Gui of Yakuza 0, but that was more planned out. I'm guessing at least 5-6 months.


----------



## Anquished

Beat the new DMC5 on the first two difficulties, now just working my way through the third.

I didn't realise:



Spoiler



That you could actually beat Urizen in the prologue, I thought his shield generating thing was invincible until I smashed it on the second difficulty. Then I rinsed him before he could regenerate it. The little, "well, err, you beat the game, err, congrats I guess?" ending was pretty hilarious.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> *Nobody outside Asia cares about this sort of thing and those laws don't apply. * Sega went on damage control to save face since scandals in Asia can ruin a person's career. Even if the allegations get cleared (in Tanimura's actor's case) the scandal was severe enough to force the guy into retirement. If the actor only lent his voice, then the international dub will go on and call it a day (local version just redubs the role). But since the character is modelled after the actor then it complicates things.
> 
> Judgement's Western release for late June was already set in stone. The real question is if it's delayed and Sega will recast the character (they will), how long will it be. No idea on the process in the case of mocap and dubbing though. It could be the similar case with the Chinese casting of Lao Gui of Yakuza 0, but that was more planned out. I'm guessing at least 5-6 months.



Oh, I was wondering whether Japanese law prohibits the exporting of the image of someone convicted of drugs even if domestically it's gone. The article was misleading and made it sound like it was a LAW that you couldn't sell things domestically featuring the image of someone arrested for cocaine or whatever.

Regardless, it sounds completely idiotic to me that they'd delay an international release so people in OTHER countries wouldn't be able to see some guy that only offends Japanese people. Release the current version internationally and re-cast your domestic version! Only you guys care!


----------



## Ralyks

https://kotaku.com/why-japan-is-so-strict-about-drugs-1833286755
This Kotaku article they put up in the wake of what happened with Judgement explains things pretty well, I feel. I was definitely looking forward to some more adventures in Kamurocho, too.

Anyway. I think I'm in a position where I can have Kingdom Hearts 2 finished tonight. I may immediately move on to Birth By Sleep, or debate if I want to get Division 2.


----------



## Ralyks

Yup, finished KH2. Overall much better than everything that preceeded it so far. Jumped right into Birth By Sleep, watching the intro now.


----------



## Crash Dandicoot

Anquished said:


> Beat the new DMC5 on the first two difficulties, now just working my way through the third.
> 
> I didn't realise:
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> That you could actually beat Urizen in the prologue, I thought his shield generating thing was invincible until I smashed it on the second difficulty. Then I rinsed him before he could regenerate it. The little, "well, err, you beat the game, err, congrats I guess?" ending was pretty hilarious.



Devil May Cry 5 has been a fucking trip. The depth of the combat is so unbelievably satisfying the goofy as hell story points don't bother me at all, and the RE engine is pretty damn impressive. Glad Capcom undid the DmC reboot and kept going with the original series. Just started DMD mode and I'm hyped for Bloody Palace, hopefully turbo mode gets implemented when:



Spoiler



Capcom releases the Vergil DLC.


----------



## Anquished

Crash Dandicoot said:


> Devil May Cry 5 has been a fucking trip. The depth of the combat is so unbelievably satisfying the goofy as hell story points don't bother me at all, and the RE engine is pretty damn impressive. Glad Capcom undid the DmC reboot and kept going with the original series. Just started DMD mode and I'm hyped for Bloody Palace, hopefully turbo mode gets implemented when:
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Capcom releases the Vergil DLC.



Man I've enjoyed this game so much, I've loved the DMC series and I didn't mind the reboot so much but still preferred this series. Cannot wait for Bloody Palace either, I sunk so many hours into DMC4s one.


----------



## mongey

Deleted apex legends. Too slow to start for me. and most of the hardcore players you get teamed up with with are dickheads.


----------



## Ralyks

https://m.ign.com/articles/2019/03/...nist-confirmed-auditions-open-for-female-lead

New Yakuza protagonist confirmed. Well alright... Wait, who?

Also, KH Birth by Sleep... I'm digging these protagonists more (especially Aqua), but this deck system is... Eh. At least it's not that that card game bullshit from Chain of Memories.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> https://m.ign.com/articles/2019/03/...nist-confirmed-auditions-open-for-female-lead
> 
> New Yakuza protagonist confirmed. Well alright... Wait, who?



Yeah, they're going on with a new guy who's already playable in the Yakuza Online phone game. It's got a rather 'interesting' trailer:



He's essentially Ken Masters to Kiryu's Ryu, right down to the red suit and more colorful persona. Unlike Judge Eyes, this is more directly related to the usual Yakuza plot as he's part of the Tojo Clan and gets to interact with the series regulars. 

For RGG studios to publicise auditions for the female lead will mean it'll be played by a high profile actress (in Japan) getting full mocap and all.


----------



## wankerness

That’s great and all...now where are 3-5?!?!?!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

God knows when those are coming out in the West. 3 and 4 been in Japan for a while, and 5's not far off for release. They're all getting global releases no doubt (that's the whole reason why they'd remaster the 3 games), but Sega are tight lipped about it. There's a possibility of them being released as a bundle, but that's blind speculation.

And on a separate note:

So far every review I've seen of Left Alive has been terrible. Not surprised in the slightest but I got rather concerned with this only because the game was considered part of the Front Mission series. I'm one of those mutants that loved the Front Mission games for their micromanaging mundanity, but Square Enix have been sweeping that series under the rug since 2005 along with the occasional in between tripe like Gun Hazard and Evolved (despite the former having an amazing soundtrack with the awesome foursome of JRPG OSTs, both I still hold grudges to ). If they're going to put a game as a quasi-franchise revival tie in, at least make it good. Sadly another dump stain in the already overlooked series. I guess that's another bullet dodged.


----------



## Ralyks

If Yakuza 3 - 5 are remasters instead of remakes, then yeah, I think a bundle makes sense. I have to imagine they'd come outside of Japan though, with the new found popularity the game has found (at least here in the states), and that big ol' gap sitting between Kiwami 2 and 6...

Granted, I got 4 and 5 on PS3 when they were free at different times and I could always eBay a copy of 3, but... Wanna do it right you know


----------



## wankerness

I downloaded the reddit app specifically so I could follow the Yakuza channel and look at it every week or two to see if there's any news regarding a western release of 3-5. 90% of it is Majima fan art and screenshots of the PC versions with models swapped out for hilarity.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

https://apptrigger.com/2019/03/22/judgment-coming-west-june-25-pierre-taki-ethered/

So Judgment's Western release will remain unaffected and Pierre Taki's character will be revoiced as expected. They'll just be altering his look somehow to look less like the actor.

Either way, looking forward to going back to Kamurocho again.


----------



## Ralyks

More Persona 5?!? Huzzaahhhh!!!!
Going to guess this takes place concurrently with the original game.


----------



## Mathemagician

Saving my game juice for Sekiro though I don’t know if I’ll even have time to play it the next few months.


----------



## KJGaruda

Crash Dandicoot said:


> Devil May Cry 5 has been a fucking trip. The depth of the combat is so unbelievably satisfying the goofy as hell story points don't bother me at all, and the RE engine is pretty damn impressive. Glad Capcom undid the DmC reboot and kept going with the original series.



Devil May Cry 5 was such a satisfying play-through. They cleared up the story and addressed pretty much all the fan questions and they dropped some serious story bombs that had me like "DUUUUUUUUDE" while playing.

Also, just beat the main story of Horizon Zero Dawn (another phenomenal game), and I'm gonna start the Frozen Wildlands expansion when I have time. After that I think I'll start The Witcher 3, Ace Combat 7 and Sekiro.


----------



## MFB

I downloaded Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, as its on Games with Gold, and uh... Boy, MGS can't catch a break with its spin offs can it? This is pretty much a joke in terms of what you need to do, just spamming X during none boss battles, and during boss battles, you lock in to Blade Mode and spam X AND Y! I wasn't expecting it to be reinventing the action genre in an MGS suit, but more than that would've been nice.

It makes me feel bad for anyone who paid for it back when it came out

Guess this gives me the incentive to pick up DMC5 and Sekiro now, as I've been wanting something action-y, and Revengeance just failed to scratch that itch.


----------



## Ralyks

I rented We Happy Few. I know it got crap reviews, but I wanted to give it a shot anyway, with it's 1960's almost Bioshock vibe. Well... It definitely feels like they rushed this one out the door. Maybe I'll pick it up if it goes down to 10 - 20 bucks. The story seemed ok enough.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I downloaded Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, as its on Games with Gold, and uh... Boy, MGS can't catch a break with its spin offs can it? This is pretty much a joke in terms of what you need to do, just spamming X during none boss battles, and during boss battles, you lock in to Blade Mode and spam X AND Y! I wasn't expecting it to be reinventing the action genre in an MGS suit, but more than that would've been nice.
> 
> It makes me feel bad for anyone who paid for it back when it came out
> 
> Guess this gives me the incentive to pick up DMC5 and Sekiro now, as I've been wanting something action-y, and Revengeance just failed to scratch that itch.



That game got good reviews! I've been meaning to play it for a while. Surprised you hated it. Did you have it on easy mode or something?


----------



## MFB

Hate's a strong word in this sense, it's more just like when a band releases something that's so distinctly NOT them, but it's got their name on it so you think they had a hand in it, and you're left going "What the fuck is this?" Metal Gear was the defining stealth genre game, and there's few games that hold a candle to the experience that was Metal Gear Solid and how self-aware it was as a medium and with it's details: the Psycho Mantis save file check, or literally having to abandon Sniper Wolf's fight to go BACKWARDS for Diazapam just so you COULD fight. Even SOP/Snake Eater/MGS4 still felt like they existed in the same world and were a continuation around Snake and the FOXHOUND stories, but Revengeance's world just feels different, less grounded and more action/anime-esque (the first boss fight is against a Metal Gear Ray, which you naturally slice ALL the way through, like you would with a sword).

Maybe I have to get further than where I currently am, but it's not what I was expecting it to be, especially now reading the reviews.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Hate's a strong word in this sense, it's more just like when a band releases something that's so distinctly NOT them, but it's got their name on it so you think they had a hand in it, and you're left going "What the fuck is this?" Metal Gear was the defining stealth genre game, and there's few games that hold a candle to the experience that was Metal Gear Solid and how self-aware it was as a medium and with it's details: the Psycho Mantis save file check, or literally having to abandon Sniper Wolf's fight to go BACKWARDS for Diazapam just so you COULD fight. Even SOP/Snake Eater/MGS4 still felt like they existed in the same world and were a continuation around Snake and the FOXHOUND stories, but Revengeance's world just feels different, less grounded and more action/anime-esque (the first boss fight is against a Metal Gear Ray, which you naturally slice ALL the way through, like you would with a sword).
> 
> Maybe I have to get further than where I currently am, but it's not what I was expecting it to be, especially now reading the reviews.



Oh, yeah, it absolutely was reviewed as an action/ninja/anime kind of thing instead of a standard metal gear game. I could see the shock. I don't know enough about it to know if they should have even kept the license on it or if it's essentially an unrelated game with the name on it to try to sell copies (like the terrible base defense game from a year or two ago).


----------



## BlackMastodon

I've had MGS:Revengeance in my Steam library for a while now when I got it on sale but haven't booted it up yet. Looks like it'll be a fun hack-n-slash though. I just remember the trailer for it before it released and it had me laughing at how over the top cheesy it was. "REVENGE..... VENGEANCE..... REVENGEANCE"


----------



## StevenC

I really liked Revengance. Obviously not meant to be a stealth game or anything like the MGS games, but a lot of hack and slash fun. It's Platinum after all, so it's exactly that type of game and certainly benefits from higher difficulties. Not as good as Bayonetta, though.

I agree that the world feels different, but you have to remember in the story it's all post Snakes and post Patriots, so the rapid technology advancement fits well enough. And Raiden has been the guy with the sword for a long time. It's pretty jarring if you only played MGS and MGS3, but otherwise I find it pretty much in the same vein as the rest of Metal Gear.


----------



## Ralyks

I didn't finish it, but I enjoyed what I played of Revengeance. And maybe now I have the PS3 setup in the bedroom, think I may go revisit that one soon.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

BlackMastodon said:


> I just remember the trailer for it before it released and it had me laughing at how over the top cheesy it was. "REVENGE..... VENGEANCE..... REVENGEANCE"



It is a Hideo Kojima game after all. This is a guy so detached from reality, giving Raiden the character arc that a 12 year old usually musters just to continue convincing the audience the character is cool, is rather tame to say, flaming whales. 

This is a big call, but Revengance is my favorite Metal Gear game. And that's largely due to the hack/slash gameplay. It's also a rare example of carrying the spirit of runty old school sequels of yore when they were drastically different to the original game (Zelda 2, Mario USA, Simons Quest etc) and still good.


----------



## Leviathus

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Revengance is my favorite Metal Gear game..


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Leviathus said:


>



Perhaps I should've posted that in the Unpopular Opinions thread... 

Without hyperbole, Snake Eater is my favorite of the main games. And it is rather unfair to compare 2 different gaming styles to each other despite being under the Metal Gear name. Still, I stand by Revengeance. I appreciate it embracing how ridiculous the series has become (or arguably, has always been), and there's always a nice catharsis of mindless hacking and slashing as opposed to the stealth bread and butter of the main series.


----------



## wankerness

I still haven’t played a single MGS game past the first. I started the 360 port of the psp one for some reason but gave that up after about 45 minutes. At this point the series seems too overwhelming, especially when I usually hate stealth sections of action games :x MGS was different cause you had to be like four feet in front of enemies before they could see you!

I actually think that I own 2, 3, 4, 5 and that aforementioned psp thing. As well as revengeance. Yes, I have backlog problems. I do only have 4 and 5 cause they were free on ps plus, and I don’t own the ps3 to play 4! So I’m not completely wasteful.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

There is no dispute. Snake Eater is hands down the best MGS game, except for V imo. I love all the little details like how if I destroy ammo/supply caches, it actually affects the enemy soldiers. Their weapons get progressively worse over time, and they get desperate for food, which leads to some fun traps involving claymores and food (or porn mags). Not to mention the still awesome camouflage system, how killing enemies actively makes The Sorrow's boss sequence harder, etc.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> This is a big call, but Revengance is my favorite Metal Gear game. And that's largely due to the hack/slash gameplay. It's also a rare example of carrying the spirit of runty old school sequels of yore when they were drastically different to the original game (Zelda 2, Mario USA, Simons Quest etc) and still good.



Or Snake's Revenge! 



wankerness said:


> I still haven’t played a single MGS game past the first. I started the 360 port of the psp one for some reason but gave that up after about 45 minutes. At this point the series seems too overwhelming, especially when I usually hate stealth sections of action games :x MGS was different cause you had to be like four feet in front of enemies before they could see you!
> 
> I actually think that I own 2, 3, 4, 5 and that aforementioned psp thing. As well as revengeance. Yes, I have backlog problems. I do only have 4 and 5 cause they were free on ps plus, and I don’t own the ps3 to play 4! So I’m not completely wasteful.



If you liked 1 play 2. If you don't want to do any stealth, you can play V that way. If you want stealth, play 3.

Haven't played Portable Ops, Peace Walker or MGS4. But i think Peace Walker is the PSP one you played, and it's kinda similar to V in game play but without sandbox style maps and more straightforward mission design, IIRC from watching my brothers play it. People love that game though.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Or Snake's Revenge!



Best example funny enough.  Having lack of Kojima's involvement may had a lot to do with it, still even he says it's better than Survive, but that's low hanging fruit.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> I still haven’t played a single MGS game past the first.



Any reason?

EDIT: Ohh wait the rest of everything you said, was a long night last night whoops....


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> Any reason?
> 
> EDIT: Ohh wait the rest of everything you said, was a long night last night whoops....



I didn’t have a PS2 and then didn’t play any console games after Gamecube until 2011 when I got a 360 at the end of its lifespan. So, I missed all the releases.


----------



## Leviathus

Gotcha, how do you have 4 without having a PS3 though?

Speaking of, PS3 is the quintessential metal gear platform at this point in time. I have 1,4, and V (which is obv better on PS4) installed, and the HD collection disc in rn! Trying to remember the basics of CQC.


----------



## mongey

grabbed Baba is you on switch 

haven't played it enough to really have an opinion yet. but its interesting so far that's for sure


----------



## Ralyks

Baba is You One, is a great name, two, the Soviet Russia joke writes itself, and three, genuinely looks fun.

Working through Birth by Sleep as Aqua still. I’m starting to think she sounds like she’s on Valium all of the time.

Also, finally downloaded the final season of Telltales Walking Dead, to break up the Kingdom Hearts action. This series became like the Saw movies to me: started great, went downhill, but I’m already this far in, May as well see it through to the end. Shame they seemed like they finally did a couple of things to the engine just in Time to shut down the company and fuck over a ton of employees on a half hours notice. Hopefully my purchase helps them out.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> Gotcha, how do you have 4 without having a PS3 though?
> 
> Speaking of, PS3 is the quintessential metal gear platform at this point in time. I have 1,4, and V (which is obv better on PS4) installed, and the HD collection disc in rn! Trying to remember the basics of CQC.



If you log in through the sony site you can add the free PS3 games to your collection without owning one, so if/when you get the system they'll be downloadable. Unfortunately I only discovered this the last month that they were giving PS3 games away with Plus.


----------



## mongey

Ok, Baba is you is actually incredibly clever and amuses me . took me an hour so so to get my head round the puzzles but am really enjoying it now. its a very original idea . to me anyway

puzzle wise it is already hard and have read it gets really hard towards the end


----------



## Ralyks

Just finished Aquas part of Birth By Sleep. Goddamn those last few bosses were assholes. Onto Ventus playthrough, saving Terra for last.


----------



## Ralyks

https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/03/29/judgment-announcement-trailer

Kamurocho, I knew you'd come...


----------



## StevenC

Picked up Yoshi's Crafted World for Switch. Just had some serious surgery so something laid back and bright will hit the spot.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

found out that risk of rain got a sequel, and it's in 3d. I played the hell out of the original, so I'm gonna grab this one as well.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just downloaded Path of Exile on PS4. Holy shit it’s like diablo 3 except hard. Not sure if I “love” it yet as I’m mostly soloing through on my first character. But it’s definitely fun.


----------



## thedonal

I picked up the Deus Ex collection on sale on Steam this weekend. Enjoying Human Revolution again but looking forward to the original as well- never played much of that.


----------



## TedEH

I played the original Deus Ex last summer (I think it was last summer?) and as long as you're tolerant of the janky-ness of that era of PC games, it still holds up pretty good. Invisible War was also better than it got credit for IMO.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Finished Dishonored 2 over the weekend and it enjoyed it about as much as the first, which is to say a lot. I played it as Emily on High Chaos for the Flesh and Steel achievement (rejected Outsider' gift so no magic) so it didn't do anything too crazy different from the first. Looking forward to trying a Ghost run with spells and seeing the difference between Emily and Corvo.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Snagged Soul Caliber 6 with a game card for my bday; woman suggested it as we haven’t played anything with each other for a long time and we both enjoyed the last two, it’s been years. 

Slowly learning everybody again, we’ve had a blast kicking the shit out of each other. Haven’t played a 3D fighter for a long time, still fun and at 45 I still kick ass. 

My nephew 12 yr old is a MONSTER at anything video games and he can’t come close...


----------



## TedEH

Did I mention at any point that I've started playing Pokemon X? The thing that strikes me with these entries is that even though this is the 6th gen, with something like 17 or 18 years in between, it shares so much design with the original games still.


----------



## mongey

still enjoying baba is you. as you get into it ,it does have its frustrations. been stuck on a couple puzzles and checked online for help and at time it feels like it changes the rules on you without telling you 

still great ideas though


----------



## NotDonVito

thedonal said:


> I picked up the Deus Ex collection on sale on Steam this weekend. Enjoying Human Revolution again but looking forward to the original as well- never played much of that.


Just remember to invest points in what you want to do. It's more of a traditional RPG, so even if you have perfect aim, you can miss every shot if your pistol skill is too low.


----------



## thedonal

NotDonVito said:


> Just remember to invest points in what you want to do. It's more of a traditional RPG, so even if you have perfect aim, you can miss every shot if your pistol skill is too low.



Cheers! Willdo. It's interesting to see the different skill mechanics in different RPG systems- even across a particular series (Diablo comes to mind- skill books in the first then skill trees in the second, or TES with skills that improve specifically as you use them- my favourite mechanism).

Currently on Human Revolution- might have to do the Game plus second playthrough just to max it all out! I'm sure I've missed a few secrets on this playthrough. Interesting to see how the boss battles have changed on the Director's Cut. 

I did another 45 mins of Alien Isolation last night- very early on. Bloody terrifying!


----------



## Ralyks

I'm waiting for Borderlands to be on the PSN store (all the Gamespot around here basically have their copies spoken for) so I can download now and it's ready when I get out of work.... And it's not there. What the hell Gearbox?

EDIT: Nevermind, apparently Gearbox tweeted the game is dropping 10am ET. Sooo another 45 minutes.


----------



## Seabeast2000

That Twitter thread is a disaster


----------



## Ralyks

I'll say. The game still isn't up!


----------



## wankerness

I'm a big fan of the ability to start downloads on the PS4 remotely. 

I realized I don't know how much this costs...and don't care!! Well, as long as it isn't 100 bucks.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I'm a big fan of the ability to start downloads on the PS4 remotely.
> 
> I realized I don't know how much this costs...and don't care!! Well, as long as it isn't 100 bucks.



Xbox One allows for it as well, you just need to have your settings set to allow for it as one of the startup modes


----------



## Ralyks

The PS App is being a pain and now letting me finish my Borderlands purchase. Bastards.

Also going to go put my Borderlands 3 preorder down ASAP. May even splurge on one of the fancy editions.


----------



## wankerness

It's a game where I have some faith in the season pass, as the first two games both had multiple good DLC packs that I would have bought anyway. It's been a while so maybe I'll get ripped off, but whatever. I'll just hope they go more the BL1/2 route than say, the Far Cry 5 route.


----------



## Ralyks

I heard the writing for BL3 is suppose to be more like the first game.

Anyway, yup, playing Borderlands. It's glorious. I don't remember the first one being gorier than the other games. Anyway, Ralyks03 on PS4 if anyone wants to play.


----------



## wankerness

The first one is radically gorier than the sequels. Heads and limbs pop off in sprays of blood, guys get electrocuted or melted into skeletons, etc. The second one removed all those effects in a conscious effort to not get in trouble with some countries’ censors I think was the story. It took some of the ridiculousness away IMO!

I just hit level 20 and called it a day. I died a few times in random encounters and trying to do the circle of slaughter or w/e at level 13. I’m rusty. At least sledge was a pushover. I’m going siren with defensive skills and the overpowered smg mod like a coward.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Finished Dishonored 2 over the weekend and it enjoyed it about as much as the first, which is to say a lot. I played it as Emily on High Chaos for the Flesh and Steel achievement (rejected Outsider' gift so no magic) so it didn't do anything too crazy different from the first. Looking forward to trying a Ghost run with spells and seeing the difference between Emily and Corvo.


her shadow beast moves are awespme, but corvo has blink, which is a wayyyyy faster and better traversal tool, especially if you're trying to ghost ( i've been caught mid swing with emily's shadow tendril move)


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> The first one is radically gorier than the sequels. Heads and limbs pop off in sprays of blood, guys get electrocuted or melted into skeletons, etc. The second one removed all those effects in a conscious effort to not get in trouble with some countries’ censors I think was the story. It took some of the ridiculousness away IMO!



Wonder if 3 will have the gore, since they retained it for this rerelease. You're right, it as an awesome layer of ridiculousness!

Anyway. I got to level 10 and called it a night. I foresee playing a lot through the week. So much for my Kingdom Hearts binge...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Putting Lost Paradise aside for a bit and started playing the Assault Suit Leynos/Target Earth remake. I wasn't familiar with Leynos as I was with Valken/Cybernator, but the controls and gameplay are the same. And it's old school hard. Relentless and unforgiving if you make a mistake and not keep your shield up, and I died a lot, but never frustrated and more determined to keep playing... reminds me of another hard game. Loving it as an alternative to the large time sinks that I've accustomed to lately.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

This is way too elaborate for just an April Fools gag but it's still pretty damn awesome. Well played Sega.


----------



## Seabeast2000

wankerness said:


> The first one is radically gorier than the sequels. Heads and limbs pop off in sprays of blood, guys get electrocuted or melted into skeletons, etc. The second one removed all those effects in a conscious effort to not get in trouble with some countries’ censors I think was the story. It took some of the ridiculousness away IMO!
> 
> I just hit level 20 and called it a day. I died a few times in random encounters and trying to do the circle of slaughter or w/e at level 13. I’m rusty. At least sledge was a pushover. I’m going siren with defensive skills and the overpowered smg mod like a coward.



So I too fired up the new GOTY yesterday. 
Rusty, I have goals listed on my screen but the navigation arrow isn't showing up to get to them. I seem to remember the nav arrow doesn't show up until you're in the right land but I don't know what land to go to ell oh ell.


----------



## wankerness

The906 said:


> So I too fired up the new GOTY yesterday.
> Rusty, I have goals listed on my screen but the navigation arrow isn't showing up to get to them. I seem to remember the nav arrow doesn't show up until you're in the right land but I don't know what land to go to ell oh ell.



You have to have the mission selected and you only get direction from the minimap. Only one mission has objectives visible at a time, and it only shows one of those objectives at a time (ex, collection quests only show one of the objects on the map at a time, the next marker shows up after you pick up the one the game has marked). If you're not in the right zone it shows you the entrance to that zone.


----------



## wankerness

I played a bit more Borderlands last night, up to level 27 or so now, just killed Krom. It's been so long since I played this, and I played so much Borderlands 2, that I forgot about some of the annoyances and quirks of this game compared to 2 and am getting caught off-guard. Primary might be how terrible the vehicles are and how they barely scale. I remember now that doing the vehicle-heavy DLC pack was endless frustration as you could practically be two shot and your vehicle's damage output was a joke, and there were tons of very long tracks that you had to navigate that were very bad news if your car exploded. Even that early Mad Mel fight is incredibly difficult to survive without getting at least one vehicle destroyed, I know I never have! The big tweak to vehicle scaling was one undeniably huge improvement in 2. On the plus side, the rocket launcher car is massively better than the machine gun for vehicle combat, while it was opposite in 2, and the rocket launcher is much more fun.

Another is that there's less point to different elements on guns. I mean, fire is ridiculously overpowered but does crap damage against shields, so shock/fire are just as good if not better than 2, but corrosive and explosions are pretty useless. And hooooly crap are rocket launchers useless in this game! Oh, and there's the weapon leveling that I forgot about, so if you stick to a couple weapon types they get massively better over time, which is kind of a fun mechanic. It discourages switching, of course.

I love that you don't lose half your frickin money every time you die. That was so infuriating in 2. Though, it was balanced out by how you could never get anything very good out of vending machines so it wasn't as important!


----------



## Ralyks

I played some earlier as well, but only level 15 and just getting to Sledge. This is also making me want to go back and finally get the Platinum for BL2, which is basically finish the side quests and discover a few areas I apparently haven't yet.

Also, finally finished the Final Episode of Birth By Sleep. That one feels like it was the shortest, yet apparently I put more hours into it total than KH1 and 2. Probably the easiest story to follow of the KH games I've played so far, but that's not saying much  Ill probably put in 2.8 tomorrow and start Dream Drop Distance.


----------



## wankerness

BL2's quests are way more obnoxious than 1's, there are things like those timed vehicle missions that I outright hate. Though I think there are some of those in the Knox DLC, I guess I'll see. I just finished the Zombie DLC. That ~500 brains quest is the first really annoying thing I've encountered (I finished every mission in the base game already). It was a lot less painful this time as I'd found one of those revolvers that have regenerating ammo so I ended up headshotting probably 80% of the zombies I encountered anyway; I probably only spent a few minutes GRINDING, it just involved a lot of running back to the stupid questgiver since however many you have disappear whenever you turn in the piece of the chain you're currently on.

I found another thing that's a huge improvement in 2 - in coop, the guns are free-for-all! In 2 everyone sees their own. Ah well. The only achievement I have left apart from max level is to kill a major boss in coop. I'll probably make an alt for that. Siren is so ridiculously overpowered compared to my memory of soldier and hunter, not that they were any slouch at max level, but siren can phasewalk (go invisible/invincible) and regenerate 80% of its health, and then resist 70% of damage for 5 seconds, with only about a 10 second cooldown in between each use! Assuming you aim for the CD reduction talents in the first and third trees, anyway.


----------



## thedonal

I never finished Borderlands 2- I found it much more difficult than the first and just lost interest. I might give it another go at some point. I rarely fire up the 360 now. I did start KoA:Reckoning again recently- just very infrequent play.

A shame re Anthem. From the reports that have come out, it seems like all of the working world is the same now- grind staff into desperation and tears and undo your own work (this is not just down to the games industry- though the serious hours that are involved and pressures are quite particular to those companies). I doubt EA will put as much into making things right that even Activision/Bungie have done over time with the Destiny games. EA are more likely to fire/move people around and close studios than stick with things and get it right over time (look what great work Hello Games have done with No Man's Sky since launch- they are a real example to the industry).

What is a real shame with these games is the scope of them is often shrouded in mysterious aspiration when they reveal them and then the actual game is actually a fairly closed experience- even with big open sections and repetition/excessive grind is rife.


----------



## rifftrauma

Platinum'd Sekiro over the weekend, would highly recommend, fantastic game.


----------



## wankerness

thedonal said:


> I never finished Borderlands 2- I found it much more difficult than the first and just lost interest. I might give it another go at some point. I rarely fire up the 360 now.



Borderlands 2 initially did feel a lot harder than 1, but some of it's down to different gimmicks. Basically you need a good corrosive gun to deal with the endless streams of robots cause nothing else is good vs them, a good fire weapon to deal with the endless streams of dudes, and a lightning or regular weapon to deal with shields. It's all about switching guns vs the first which tunneled you into whatever you used the most, or if your class had talents for certain ones. The fact you run out of ammo like crazy in the early game before you've upgraded also necessitates switching weapons a lot. Oh, and look at the levels of quests/enemies, you get some quests way before you should be trying to do them - take the level suggestions seriously! I died TONS of times on things like mutating the huge flying insects around Tiny Tina, or fighting the huge burrowing fire dude that stole the guy's leg.

Oh, and your action abilities are less overpowered than 1 so you can't get overwhelmed and then hit the action button to instantly be safe again until late game and even then only with soldier/gunzerker.

So yeah, you have to be more careful but it doesn't really end up feeling that hard once you get into the swing of it besides the occasional infuriating guy that suicides on top of you so you have no one left to get second wind off of. >:O I think it's worth trying again, but yes, the first bit of it is pretty dire when you have terrible guns and no character talents.


----------



## lurè

Finished MA Andromeda. It desperately needs a sequel or some decisions you have to make are total nonsense.
Overall great game but I can see why took some fans away from the saga: less roleplay and companions management during combat.

Didn't understand why putting 20 skills for combat 20 for biotics and combat when you have 3 slots max for usage.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

^Unfortunately any planned sequels were shelved and with Bioware in trouble it could be a while before anyone tries a go at the franchise again.

I finished Dragon's Dogma - Dark Arisen recently. In some ways the best action RPG I've played and in many ways the worst RPG I've played. I hope they make another game taking into account the good and bad from the first. If you put some of the combat mechanics into Dragonage or the Witcher it would bring those games to another level. 

Nothing else I want to play on Xbox now and its 5 weeks until Rage 2 which gets released at a time when I don't play games for months. Time for another Skyrim play through I think.


----------



## Ralyks

lurè said:


> Finished MA Andromeda. It desperately needs a sequel or some decisions you have to make are total nonsense.
> Overall great game but I can see why took some fans away from the saga: less roleplay and companions management during combat.
> 
> Didn't understand why putting 20 skills for combat 20 for biotics and combat when you have 3 slots max for usage.



From my understanding, there’s a bunch of points in Andromeda where you can tell they may as well have said “place DLC content here”, then they abandoned the game.

I’m playing a bunch of Borderlands 1 still, but Gearbox fucking up the connectivity issues since launch for online co-op is hampering it a little. I managed to get into one game earlier today, then it disconnected after like 15 minutes and wasn’t able to get on again. Basically, the best part of the game hasn’t worked since launch.

Oh, and Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance.... this one is weird. I like some of the new combat mechanics, but just when shit couldn’t get more confusing... I just really want to get through the 2.8 collection and finally play KH3.[/spoiler]


----------



## StevenC

Lorcan Ward said:


> ^Unfortunately any planned sequels were shelved and with Bioware in trouble it could be a while before anyone tries a go at the franchise again.
> 
> I finished Dragon's Dogma - Dark Arisen recently. In some ways the best action RPG I've played and in many ways the worst RPG I've played. I hope they make another game taking into account the good and bad from the first. If you put some of the combat mechanics into Dragonage or the Witcher it would bring those games to another level.
> 
> Nothing else I want to play on Xbox now and its 5 weeks until Rage 2 which gets released at a time when I don't play games for months. Time for another Skyrim play through I think.


Get a Switch so we can play Mario Kart!!!


----------



## MetalHex

Replaying Thief ll - The Metal Age. Greatest TRUE stealth game ever made for PC.


----------



## mongey

ok. BABA is You has pissed me off now

First half of the game was hard but good. really clever puzzles . now it just feels like a random try this fest . stuff seems to work on one level but not the next . feels like there's no consistency in the rules of the puzzles and instead of clever solution's it becomes convoluted and overly complicated. just not fun for me 

gonna shelf it.


----------



## Ralyks

Man, I was thinking of grabbing Baba Is You at some point too...


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> Man, I was thinking of grabbing Baba Is You at some point too...



first half was great .maybe if you are a real puzzle game sadist then you'll like 2nd half too.I feel like I'm decent at puzzle games. got all through the witness with no googling.

maybe I'm a little slow and dumb as well. that's a possibility


----------



## wankerness

lurè said:


> Finished MA Andromeda. It desperately needs a sequel or some decisions you have to make are total nonsense.
> Overall great game but I can see why took some fans away from the saga: less roleplay and companions management during combat.
> 
> Didn't understand why putting 20 skills for combat 20 for biotics and combat when you have 3 slots max for usage.



Yep. The teammate combat was infuriating since it was completely down to AI. Even the first Mass Effect had far more depth with teammate management, and 2/3 basically had the same AI as this one but with the manual ability triggering on top of it that was really smooth. It's doubly frustrating since the actual shooting mechanics and player control is the best of the series. If they hadn't chopped out the ability for manual control it would have been fine. I don't know how I felt about the player "builds" either, as you ended up feeling like you were just playing simplified versions of the classes from the last two games, but whatever, you could swap it so easily it wasn't really detracting.

I kind of enjoyed the game, but part of it is I like exploring and filling in maps. The actual characters were really bad compared to the previous 3. Like, they're not terrible as far as video games go, but they're just so weak and non-memorable. Peebee had the most personality but was mostly unfunny and annoying, girl with the fashy haircut was like an even more boring Ashley that had the extra characteristic of mope, I don't even remember anything about the black guy besides he liked "old stuff," the alien dude had all the personality of the DLC dude from ME3, and the Krogan was fine I guess, he just basically was the last two guys with "old" added to the personality traits. And was that it? I feel like even 2 had more squadmates.


----------



## TedEH

MetalHex said:


> Replaying Thief ll - The Metal Age. Greatest TRUE stealth game ever made for PC.


Yeeeeeeeees. Also play the first one if you haven't. It starts off slow, but it's just as excellent, IMO.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

TedEH said:


> Yeeeeeeeees. Also play the first one if you haven't. It starts off slow, but it's just as excellent, IMO.



Hmm, will look into these


----------



## MetalHex

TedEH said:


> Yeeeeeeeees. Also play the first one if you haven't. It starts off slow, but it's just as excellent, IMO.


I've beaten 1 and 2 a dozen times. Best games ever! I love being sneaky. I could sit there and eat an apple while a guard unknowingly walks right in front of me and get a semi rush-high


----------



## Rosal76

MetalHex said:


> I've beaten 1 and 2 a dozen times. Best games ever! I love being sneaky. I could sit there and eat an apple while a guard unknowingly walks right in front of me and get a semi rush-high



Huge +1.

I love stealth games. Especially Hitman and Splinter cell. I don't have a gaming PC so I am unable to play the Thief game you mentioned but that won't stop me from watching and enjoying the Thief gameplay videos on Youtube.


----------



## Leviathus

Yall got me interested, do these games work on Windows 10 though?


----------



## TedEH

Leviathus said:


> do these games work on Windows 10 though?


Thief games are a tad janky now in terms of widescreen and resolution support, but IMO they otherwise work fine. Early Splinter Cell games have some lighting issues that make playing them on modern PCs a bit of challenging sell. I can't speak for Hitman.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

hitman 1 and 2 still works on windows 10 iirc


----------



## Leviathus

I should have clarified just the Thief games. I have the og Splinter Cell trilogy and Hitman 2-4 on ps3, though I hate Hitman on controller, needa fiberwire folks with a m&k.


----------



## mongey

grabbed ape out as I was curious about it. Its pretty cool but damn its short .almost finished it in one short siting . for $20 it feels too short . $10 I can see


----------



## Ralyks

They fixed the online issues with Borderlands on PS4. So a whooollleeee bunch of that.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm attempting to play Deus Ex: Mankind Divided at the moment, but I keep running into brick wall after brick wall both in terms of progression and overall fun.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

trying out the mechromancer in borderlands 2.


----------



## Tenaba

KnightBrolaire said:


> trying out the mechromancer in borderlands 2.



Very fun class to play as with the anarchy build. She's got some good dialogue (monologue?) too.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Cardbird said:


> Very fun class to play as with the anarchy build. She's got some good dialogue (monologue?) too.


Yeah I haven't touched the game in years. I did runs as zero and salvador wayyyy back but never bothered trying her or krieg. The anarchy mechanic seems really well suited to getting up close and personal with shotguns/pistols/smgs since it increases damage and decreases accuracy.


----------



## MFB

Snagged AC:Odyssey for $20 on Amazon, opened it up last night, and proceed to play it for about 5 hours into the early morning. It feels good so far, I just wish they'd commit to making these their own franchise as a legit RPG, instead of shoe horning them in with the likes of AC2 or Black Flag.


----------



## MetalHex

Rosal76 said:


> Huge +1.
> 
> I love stealth games. Especially Hitman and Splinter cell. I don't have a gaming PC so I am unable to play the Thief game you mentioned but that won't stop me from watching and enjoying the Thief gameplay videos on Youtube.


I dont have a gaming PC either, just a regular PC. I would imagine you could run thief from steam on just about any PC .


----------



## MetalHex

Leviathus said:


> I should have clarified just the Thief games. I have the og Splinter Cell trilogy and Hitman 2-4 on ps3, though I hate Hitman on controller, needa fiberwire folks with a m&k.


Yes I am currently playing Thief 2 from Steam that i just downloaded last week. Win10. I couldnt find Thief The Dark Project (T1), but The Metal Age T2 is just as good some say even better. It's a true stealth game in the sense that it discourages confrontations with enemies and gaurds at almost all cost (depending on difficulty level). You can steal and sell loot for different types of arrows and other stealthy tools. You start out with a sword and a blackjack. I suppose you CAN muscle your way through the game, but it is very difficult to do so; in fact it's is impossible on the difficult setting.

Right now I am trying to "ghost" the game which is to go through the entire game undetected. (I think suspicion is ok, but when a gaurd actually sees you and chases you, thats not ghosting anymore. Though hardcore purists would even say that raising suspicion is not true ghosting...


----------



## TedEH

MetalHex said:


> I couldnt find Thief The Dark Project


In Steam, it's listed as Thief Gold. I'll agree that Thief 2 is the best Thief game though.


----------



## MetalHex

TedEH said:


> In Steam, it's listed as Thief Gold. I'll agree that Thief 2 is the best Thief game though.


Awesome to know! So yeah then I would suggest to @Leviathus to play Thief Gold first.


----------



## MetalHex

MetalHex said:


> Awesome to know! So yeah then I would suggest to @Leviathus to play Thief Gold first.


If you ever do get it and want to talk about Thief I will be glad to talk


----------



## thedonal

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided now. After really hammering Human Revolution on Sat (that extra level in the director's cut is a bitch!!). Gonna dip in and out of the Game+ mode on HR too. Living the power fantasy out when I max out my augs!!

They really stepped the looks up in Mankind Divided. And ledge grabbing- something SORELY missing from the first. It's nice to be out of the amber glow of Detroit at night too!

Dipping back into EVE too- I check in regularly and have a bunch of stuff up on the market. I lost a hawk and a 500mil clone in my first attempt at Abyssal Space the other day- tier 1 site too! Hammered!! A lesson- looking forward to dipping into the Abyss though- cruisers for now though. Better tank!!


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> Yeah I haven't touched the game in years. I did runs as zero and salvador wayyyy back but never bothered trying her or krieg. The anarchy mechanic seems really well suited to getting up close and personal with shotguns/pistols/smgs since it increases damage and decreases accuracy.



The Anarchy mechanic is one of the worst base playstyles in the entire game IMO. It's way too easy to lose stacks, and with how long it takes to GAIN them in many situations with sparse enemies, you can lose 20-30 minutes of progress to get them all back. There are talents that make it less bad, but it takes quite a few levels to get them. And even with those, if you die on a boss, you will go from however many stacks you had to 0 for any subsequent attempts, making your damage output pathetic and making things all that more difficult. It's a cool idea and really fun once you start gaining them, but unless you never die it doesn't work solo as you can instantly be turned useless if you get killed. And you will get killed a lot in that game - I just love getting abruptly blown up by a guy dropping a grenade as he dies and killing me with no other enemies around for second wind, that stretch towards the end with all the dudes hidden in cover with missile launchers, etc!

EDIT: I played some more Borderlands. I'm trying to do all the quests before going on second playthrough, which is a mistake. I finished the base game's pretty quickly, but the Knoxx ones are a nightmare, especially with Marcus's "kill 200+ enemies and come back to me" quests that are successive so you can't do more than the first during the main quest. I guess it was a good idea for getting people their money's worth! The knoxx dlc also has that terrible amount of vehicle stuff, like the long roads between all the zones. 

For a breather, I went to do some Underdome - I forgot how frickin LONG it takes to finish 5 rounds. 5 rounds actually means 25, and that's for the STARTER challenge! I can't remember how long the "real" one is, but I didn't want to start it after it took like an hour and a half just to do 1/3 of the levels' starter challenges. Ouch. You can also get screwed by RNG on the multipliers. Like, if you get Rocket Launcher challenge combined with Crit challenge combined with no shields, have fun!


----------



## LeviathanKiller

Has anyone played Generation Zero yet?


----------



## Ralyks

Honestly, I'm have a grand ol' time with Borderlands now that I can play online. And the more I look at it, the more I think "Yeah, I could Platinum this."


----------



## KnightBrolaire

The more I look at the mechromancer skill tree, the less I like the pure anarchy route, especially with the weird competing moves, like the one that offers benefits for prematurely reloading (which removes all your anarchy stacks). I think I'll just build towards ricochets and elemental proc chance.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Honestly, I'm have a grand ol' time with Borderlands now that I can play online. And the more I look at it, the more I think "Yeah, I could Platinum this."



It's one of the easiest platinums there is in this incarnation, I had all of them within about 2 days of release besides the ones for using action skills of the other classes. It sucked on Xbox 360/PS3 cause there was a bizarre achievement that you had to play with someone who'd played with a Gearbox employee.



KnightBrolaire said:


> The more I look at the mechromancer skill tree, the less I like the pure anarchy route, especially with the weird competing moves, like the one that offers benefits for prematurely reloading (which removes all your anarchy stacks). I think I'll just build towards ricochets and elemental proc chance.



It doesn't remove all your stacks, it drains them steadily as you heal and have some huge damage buff, but you can stop the drain (and the buff) by just hitting reload again.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> It's one of the easiest platinums there is in this incarnation, I had all of them within about 2 days of release besides the ones for using action skills of the other classes. It sucked on Xbox 360/PS3 cause there was a bizarre achievement that you had to play with someone who'd played with a Gearbox employee.



I actually got that achievement within my first few hours of playing the first one back on 360 because there were people/developers running around joining lobbies and immediately leaving and then suddenly you’d see the achievement pop. Was pretty cool.


----------



## TedEH

New game started: Earthbound. I never really properly played it before. Now that I'm older and have some context, I'm seeing a lot of the DNA of much older RPGs in this. When I was younger and tried this out once or twice I just thought "oh this is a bit quirky", but now I kinda understand where it fits between older NES games and more "modern" games that came after.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I actually got that achievement within my first few hours of playing the first one back on 360 because there were people/developers running around joining lobbies and immediately leaving and then suddenly you’d see the achievement pop. Was pretty cool.



I got the 360 version a couple years after it came out so multiplayer was a desert, unfortunately!

I've been playing through Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on GBA. This one is kind of miserable compared to my memory of the later GBA/DS games, mostly because the castle is monstrous and there are no teleport points and only a couple places where you can transition between the EVUL castle and the regular castle and you frequently have to do so, plus the screen is so small that it's incredibly difficult to tell where there are gaps in the wall that signify places you need to go. I have all of the items that unlock areas, something like 180%, and can't figure out where the hell I'm supposed to go to just kill the final boss!! This is a design problem!

Oh, the music completely sucks, too. It's weird to say that about a Castlevania game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Oh, the music completely sucks, too. It's weird to say that about a Castlevania game



Yeah, it's widely considered the worst music in the series. Which sucks considering Michiru Yamane was involved and even her contributions were ho hum at best. It's flaws (and Harmony of Dissonance in general) really shows when side by side with Circle of the Moon and Aria of Sorrow.


----------



## Leviathus

Hadda good laugh playing MGS1 last night on ps3. Got to the Mantis fight and put the controller on the floor for shits & gigs, i have hardwood floor and when it started vibrating my cat was stricken with fear and quickly abandoned the couch lol.


----------



## MetalHex

Here's a question for everyone...

How long do you try to get through a part that you're stuck at?

I might try a couple times then be like, alright I got other shit to do! Lol.

Thats my situation with just about every game nowadays. Maybe its because I'm older now. When I was a kid I would stay persistent until I got through but now, I cant be bothered.


----------



## Empryrean

Been jamming out some Risk of Rain 2. 


MetalHex said:


> Here's a question for everyone...
> 
> How long do you try to get through a part that you're stuck at?


Honestly if I can't do it in the first two or three times, it either goes one of two ways:

I stop playing and try to think of what I could be doing better

I keep trying for hours and stop playing the game for months


----------



## MetalHex

Empryrean said:


> Been jamming out some Risk of Rain 2.
> 
> Honestly if I can't do it in the first two or three times, it either goes one of two ways:
> 
> I stop playing and try to think of what I could be doing better
> 
> I keep trying for hours and stop playing the game for months



Yeah same here. I burn out on games in general and will stop playing altogether for months.


----------



## Malkav

Currently getting it handed to me by Sekiro, absolutely loving the game though #feelsgoodman


----------



## LeviathanKiller

I completely finished Slime Rancher since it was free through Epic Games. It's an amusing game with lots of bright colors and stuff. I actually really enjoyed how advanced you can get in trying to devise a plan to have the most efficient farm using drones and pairing the right slimes that eat certain foods together. Not a lot of content to the game really though. I beat it in like a few days. The story is trying to be interesting and philosophical/reflective at times but isn't at all really imo. Feels like a beta release still.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MetalHex said:


> Here's a question for everyone...
> 
> How long do you try to get through a part that you're stuck at?


depends on the game for me. with dark souls 2 i wasted hours fighting the goddamn lava demon because I was being stubborn and trying to beat him without blocking. 
i have a lot of patience for bullshit any more, as a kid I got pissed at the desert level of mario 64 and never finished it. same with the water temple in ocarina of time (i beat ocarina when i was way older).


----------



## wankerness

MetalHex said:


> Here's a question for everyone...
> 
> How long do you try to get through a part that you're stuck at?
> 
> I might try a couple times then be like, alright I got other shit to do! Lol.
> 
> Thats my situation with just about every game nowadays. Maybe its because I'm older now. When I was a kid I would stay persistent until I got through but now, I cant be bothered.



That's a really good question! I tend to give things anywhere from 3-10 tries (depending on annoyance of time it takes to re-try it) before I will look up a youtube video or forum posts about how to do it the easy way. I don't think that I have gotten stuck on anything for legitimate mechanical difficulty that required me to "get gud" in a long time. Probably cause if things start tending to just annoy the shit out of me I'll turn the difficulty down a notch. Ex, I got really far into Yakuza Kiwami and it was taking ~5 minutes every time the roaming, unavoidable, un-perma-killable miniboss Majima attacked me, so I just said "screw, it I mainly care about the story anyway" and turned it down so I could knock him out in more like 45 seconds and not get really annoyed every time he showed up.

Most of the time when I get stuck on something it's cause I can't tell what I'm supposed to do, not that I can see but can't do it. If it's something like a really long obnoxious section of a game where I'd have to do the entire thing over if I died, and I'm not having fun, I'll sometimes pause the game and look it up really fast much closer to the FIRST try.  Ex, the puzzle buildings in Assassin's Creed 2 or some of the sections of puzzles in Tomb Raider Reboot 2 that would kill you instantly if you didn't know exactly what you were doing.


----------



## Mathemagician

I will give it a few goes, but if I honestly seem to be dying and making no progress like “is there a trick to making him take damage, am I even doing this right?” i’ll Just look it up online.

I’d watch all boss fight for FF14 online beforehand because I didn’t have time in the evening to fuck up and start over (and I was tanking so if I messed up we died).

I leave a gap for the soulsborne games as the whole point is learning. So I take those slowly. 

Life is short I play my FPS’s on medium at worst now. I’m trying to see the ending.


----------



## wankerness

Oh man, if you're a tank in an MMO, you BETTER look up the strats beforehand. Even though DPS almost never seems to know what they're doing, EVERYONE hates the tank if they don't know the fight going in and will kick them if they don't (in WoW, anyway - I never was in an FF14 group where they hadn't). It's amazing. It's partly cause the fights are all designed to kill everyone if the tank doesn't move the bosses into the right space/use defensive cooldowns at the right times/face them the right way, where no one but the healers really care if a DPS stands in a fireball and loses half their health.  I never tanked in endgame again after I stopped playing WoW more than a couple hours a day, it was too frustrating and stressful and you were expected to massively outgear every encounter (even though no one else was).


----------



## Mathemagician

Tanking in WoW was easy because wow uses the enmity/threat mechanics as the tanking abilities. IE “press these buttons and hold aggro, press anything else and die”

FF14 Tanks are just DPS classes with extra threat generation. So as a Warrior I would end up out DPS-ing sub optimal/bad dps.

Hardest part of tanking in FF14 is getting used to dropping tank stance and tanking in dps stance.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Tanking in WoW was easy because wow uses the enmity/threat mechanics as the tanking abilities. IE “press these buttons and hold aggro, press anything else and die”



Oh, holding threat was a joke the last several years of WoW, but it was knowing exactly when and where you had to move things during encounters or the entire group would be killed that was the stressor. I played a bunch during the Legion expansion and they'd REALLY increased the amount that tanks had to do in encounters and the punishment if they didn't do it right. Lots of huge death fields, or areas where the boss would instantly enrage if you didn't move them out of it, or bosses that would shoot out cone damage that would instantly kill everyone that was in front for 100 yards, encounters where you fought packs that would spawn really far away from each other, those kinds of things.

I last tanked in WOTLK as a warrior. That was the class that had the most buttons, but the only real difficulty in 5 mans once you had gear that meant you could live through everything was that you'd have morons in your group that would immediately single target mobs before you could touch them and then you'd have to run and chase them and then moron #2 would focus fire on mob #2, repeat ad nauseum. "TANK BETTER1!!11" It almost immediately turned me into the asshole tanks I hated playing with when I was a healer/DPS who just aoed every group of mobs and intentionally let people die if they pulled extra stuff or FF'd wrong. The only instance I remember having trouble with regularly was Halls of Reflection, where mobs would spawn one after the other and only some would run at you instead of spamming ranged abilities, and they hit harder than enemies in regular dungeons. Since warriors had most of their good abilities on long cooldowns it made it hard to pick everything up if people were being dumb. Ugh.

I did tank some raids back then, and at the time, before LFR queues existed, the only things you were PUGing on most servers were like...Trial of the Champion or the first couple bosses in Arthas's citadel, where as a tank you mostly just stood in one place and mashed your threat rotation and maybe taunted off the other tank when DBM told you to and it was twice as easy as 5 mans. Times have sure changed!

I played FF14 for a while. I think I almost maxed out a healer in the Heavensward expansion and thus did all the raids on the way to max level once or twice in queue. It was annoying how as a healer you had to switch between healing and dps. There was a lot less room for error than in WoW as a healer since the GCD was so damn long that any mistake essentially had double the impact. I only tanked for the first couple instances before I stopped playing and went back to WoW so I don't really remember what you describe about DPS.


----------



## Mathemagician

Yep. Healers in FF14 are ALSO dps classes, just like tanks. And they can pump out 50-70% of the damage as any given dps class and are expected to.

FF14 is the fastest dungeons and raids I’ve ever seen. And that’s just expected.

I much prefer it to WoW’s “were gonna play for 4 hours tonight” raid model.

I didn’t seriously raid in WoW since TBC. Every time I went back though the game felt identical. Like there was no real growth. Thankful for that as it’s what finally got me off the game.


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> I much prefer it to WoW’s “were gonna play for 4 hours tonight” raid model.



I gave up on WoW after 2 weeks and even I know 4 hours is short for a raid in that game


----------



## wankerness

4 hours is if you’re doing it with a guild/pug that either really sucks or has never done the bosses before. Or if you’re just kind of shooting the shit on discord, which is more fun than being hardcore about it anyway. They weren’t designed to be cleared in one sitting unless everyone really knew what they were doing. Most guilds did 2-3 nights a week.

The LFR thing chops raids into 30 minute chunks (unless again the group is so terrible they keep wiping even on that mode). Most players do it that way now since the community has been so splintered that raiding guilds are rare, plus it’s so much easier. And you can vote kick people that go AFK.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Most guilds did 2-3 nights a week.



That was so much worse. Oh god. Ugh. Nope.


----------



## wankerness

Haha. I had some terrible guilds where even one night felt like a job, and a couple that were really fun, so that 2-3 night thing doesn’t hit me with any sense of revulsion. I doubt I could have that kind of fun again at my advanced age, though. Lots of edgelord jokes and whatnot as was the case with most video game players. The couple of later better guilds I was in were milder, got through shit a lot faster, didn’t get furious after wipes and had a few women though. I quit due to moving a few time zones away from my server, and don’t think there’s any way I could get back into it again on that social level. But absolutely, playing with raid guilds in WoW that I had a lot of friends in led to many of the most fun times I’ve ever had in games. A lot of boring and frustrating ones too!


----------



## Ralyks

So I can't complete "Keep Your Insides Inside" in Borderlands because Dr. Zed isn't there. Apparently this is a glitch from the original releases that they never bothered fixing?


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So I can't complete "Keep Your Insides Inside" in Borderlands because Dr. Zed isn't there. Apparently this is a glitch from the original releases that they never bothered fixing?



https://www.playstationtrophies.org...orruption-cure-prevention-glitch-removal.html

Looks like it's a contagious bug (everyone you play with will get their game bugged, too) and has two possible fixes on ps4 - delete save file, or do coop with a host who's so early in the game they haven't gotten to that mission yet! Owned. Everyone on PC that had it just modded their savegame. I wish you could do that on PS4. You could on Xbox360.

Now I know that I need to do a save backup every time I do coop with randos!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Started up XCOM 2 last night and played for a few hours. I think the changes they made for the world map view and base building are really cool but it takes some getting used to coming from ~60 hours of playtime in the first one. The "new" classes have some cool abilities, too, so that part is still fun, but holy shit does the game as a whole feel harder. I never did any ironman play-throughs or even on the harder difficulties (I'm on veteran) but I'm surprised how much I find myself reloading from autosaves during the missions. Although I do remember it being significantly harder in the first XCOM before you get good weapons and armour for your squad. Still enjoying the challenge, though.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Started up XCOM 2 last night and played for a few hours. I think the changes they made for the world map view and base building are really cool but it takes some getting used to coming from ~60 hours of playtime in the first one. The "new" classes have some cool abilities, too, so that part is still fun, but holy shit does the game as a whole feel harder. I never did any ironman play-throughs or even on the harder difficulties (I'm on veteran) but I'm surprised how much I find myself reloading from autosaves during the missions. Although I do remember it being significantly harder in the first XCOM before you get good weapons and armour for your squad. Still enjoying the challenge, though.


honestly xcom2 isn't too hard except in the beginning because your squaddies suck (same as any xcom game). Actually I take that back, once the chosen start showing up it gets wayyyy more annoying and hard since they can develop resistances/immunities to techniques you use on them. They can be a fucking nightmare to deal with (especially if they show up during chrysalid attacks). I should never have tried to do ironman with that DLC enabled ;_;


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> do coop with a host who's so early in the game they haven't gotten to that mission yet!



That was the first thing I tried. Said I was "Inelligibile" for the mission and did nothing when I talked to Dr. Zed. I'll try again, I'd rather not start over but whatever, it's Borderlands, I'll just zoom through the story missions until that one before Co-oping.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> That was the first thing I tried. Said I was "Inelligibile" for the mission and did nothing when I talked to Dr. Zed. I'll try again, I'd rather not start over but whatever, it's Borderlands, I'll just zoom through the story missions until that one before Co-oping.


Oh, the host has to be starting play-through 2 also, not 1, since that mission is a replacement for the buy a shield one. It’s like the third mission. They’d be the one initiating/completing it.

Edit: I can do that quick if you want to add me on psn. I haven’t started playthrough 2 since I’ve been doing all the dlc first. Hopefully you won’t infect me. Name is cakefactory07.


----------



## Ralyks

Oh. I’m still on my first playthrough


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Oh. I’m still on my first playthrough



That shouldn’t be in your log yet! Nice bug. Maybe it will clear when you start playthrough 2 yourself then.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m debating downloading Dark souls 1 and finally beating it (never beat the twins back on 360), or just replaying DS3 but now with all the DLC, as I quit my last save at the dragon rider fight with terrible camera angles over 2 years ago so I recall nothing.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> That shouldn’t be in your log yet! Nice bug. Maybe it will clear when you start playthrough 2 yourself then.



So is it not necessary to complete play through 1?


----------



## wankerness

You have to beat the last boss to unlock playthrough 2 on a character, but you don’t have to finish side quests etc cause you can switch between the two playthrough a on the start menu.


----------



## Ralyks

I was wondering because KYII is labeled as a story mission.


----------



## Choop

Been having fun playing/goofing off in WoW lately. I faction changed one of my main toons to Alliance from Horde recently to help with unlocking the new races. I've always been a full-on Horde player, so it feels really strange to be playing Alli--still unsure that I like it haha! Mostly I just wanted to make a Lightforged Draenei and be a hoity toity paladin, but the Kul Tirans seem kind of cool too.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> Been having fun playing/goofing off in WoW lately. I faction changed one of my main toons to Alliance from Horde recently to help with unlocking the new races. I've always been a full-on Horde player, so it feels really strange to be playing Alli--still unsure that I like it haha! Mostly I just wanted to make a Lightforged Draenei and be a hoity toity paladin, but the Kul Tirans seem kind of cool too.



I stopped playing after a couple months of the new expac cause I hated it. Did they back off on the stupid thing with gear having random effects instead of stats? Are you still supposed to be constantly farming CRYSTAL POWER or whatever it was called? I think the other problems I was having were mainly due to everything feeling slow and wallowy thanks to the gear being so trash (largely because of that new system basically removing haste/crit from the endgame). Everything was SO slow that I could only get one character to max level while still managing to do instances/etc since going back to the other characters to level them felt like torture, while with the previous expansion I was having a blast and got like 3 characters to max level almost back to back. By the end of Legion I had max level of every class besides DK scattered between horde and alliance.

I did unlock all the races that were available at the time of leaving (Kul Tirans weren't out yet). Void Elves were cool. They looked like a much cooler version of blood elves and had a great racial ability, but the big trade off was no spinning jumps!!!

I tried playing Bloodborne for the first time today. I've never played any of these games before. I think maybe I'm just too bad at games. I got squashed by the first boss (Clerical Guard or whatever? Big werewolf thing) about 10 times before my splat of thousands of souls decided not to spawn after a death so I couldn't recover it, that made me rage quit.  Before that I was fairly calm about the whole thing, even though it felt like I was fighting the goddam camera far more than fighting the boss. I'd roll behind the boss, hit him a couple times, try to roll away, my entire screen would show nothing except boss arms, it seemed like I was stuck against the wall but I couldn't see anything, YOU DIED!!!! The first time I fought him I got him to ~25%, but I didn't realize that only your bullets carried over between deaths so I had no healing potions for the subsequent attempts other htan the handful I'd get en route to the boss unless I wanted to just totally stop and refarm. Lesson learned, go get squashed by the boss repeatedly before using any potions.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I stopped playing after a couple months of the new expac cause I hated it. Did they back off on the stupid thing with gear having random effects instead of stats? Are you still supposed to be constantly farming CRYSTAL POWER or whatever it was called? I think the other problems I was having were mainly due to everything feeling slow and wallowy thanks to the gear being so trash (largely because of that new system basically removing haste/crit from the endgame). Everything was SO slow that I could only get one character to max level while still managing to do instances/etc since going back to the other characters to level them felt like torture, while with the previous expansion I was having a blast and got like 3 characters to max level almost back to back. By the end of Legion I had max level of every class besides DK scattered between horde and alliance.
> 
> I did unlock all the races that were available at the time of leaving (Kul Tirans weren't out yet). Void Elves were cool. They looked like a much cooler version of blood elves and had a great racial ability, but the big trade off was no spinning jumps!!!
> 
> I tried playing Bloodborne for the first time today. I've never played any of these games before. I think maybe I'm just too bad at games. I got squashed by the first boss (Clerical Guard or whatever? Big werewolf thing) about 10 times before my splat of thousands of souls decided not to spawn after a death so I couldn't recover it, that made me rage quit.  Before that I was fairly calm about the whole thing, even though it felt like I was fighting the goddam camera far more than fighting the boss. I'd roll behind the boss, hit him a couple times, try to roll away, my entire screen would show nothing except boss arms, it seemed like I was stuck against the wall but I couldn't see anything, YOU DIED!!!!


bloodborne is definitely NOT the first souls style game to learn on. It's the fastest paced and demands that you learn how to properly counter/dodge basically immediately. DS1 and DS2 comparatively, let you turtle up with shields, which is really the best option for first timers imo. There are shields in bloodborne but they're not common, and by the time you get a decent one you'll have spent most of the game getting good at dodging/countering, so they're not really useful.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> bloodborne is definitely NOT the first souls style game to learn on. It's the fastest paced and demands that you learn how to properly counter/dodge basically immediately. DS1 and DS2 comparatively, let you turtle up with shields, which is really the best option for first timers imo. There are shields in bloodborne but they're not common, and by the time you get a decent one you'll have spent most of the game getting good at dodging/countering, so they're not really useful.



Heh. That makes me feel better about sucking. But, I only have 1 on Xbox360/PC and I'm not sure if I care enough to hook one of them up. I do need to play RDR1 at some point also though so maybe it's time.

I thought 2 was supposed to be the hardest of the DS games?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Heh. That makes me feel better about sucking. But, I only have 1 on Xbox360/PC and I'm not sure if I care enough to hook one of them up. I do need to play RDR1 at some point also though so maybe it's time.
> 
> I thought 2 was supposed to be the hardest of the DS games?


2 is hard only because it has bullshit enemy placements in spots and has some really nasty level designs (ex lots of enemies that can do knockback damage and send you flying off of the numerous ledges/platforms). it's the one souls game i'd say to not even bother with just due to it being the least like ds1 or demon's souls. DS1 and the others were hard, but fair, so long as you pay attention and fight intelligently. DS2 is much meaner spirited with the enemy placement and general level design. I remember screaming THAT'S BULLSHIT on more than occasion playing it, whereas DS1 and bloodborne//DS3 didn't make me rage anywhere near the same amount.


----------



## Leviathus

I can't count how many times i've uninstalled/reinstalled Bloodborne at this point haha, might be time for a reinstall actually as i wanna get Sekiro but idk how much it's gonna kick my ass.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> I can't count how many times i've uninstalled/reinstalled Bloodborne at this point haha, might be time for a reinstall actually as i wanna get Sekiro but idk how much it's gonna kick my ass.


ehh from what I've heard sekiro is easier if only because you have the option to stealth. It still forces you to git gud as far as countering/blocking though. If anything it's more brutal in that aspect as you literally have to get good at those mechanics to progress.


----------



## mongey

I played bloodborne first. the first few hours are really a grind fest but once you get a taste for it ,it really is a great game.

I don't know how many times I grinded through the first level loop to level up . but once i got through that first hurdle it felt pretty balanced


----------



## wankerness

Did you level up before fighting that first boss? Maybe that's my problem. I leveled once.


----------



## Mathemagician

The cleric beast strategy (first real boss) I use is to get get in his face and be aggressive. Also dodge left. For 90% of bosses “dodge left” works when you’re unsure.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I was backing up out of range all the time so he’d occasionally jump, and it seemed like a crapshoot as to whether he’d miss me or squash me no matter how much/little I moved. And I’d always dodge right!

I wasn’t sure why he’d occasionally get stunned, either. I never risked using the gun since I have the slow-firing blunderbuss. I think that was the wrong choice!


----------



## Ralyks

Pretty sure I'm towards the end of KH Dream Drop Distance. Since Birth By Sleep 0.2 is suppose to be short, I'm trying to get to KH3 by this weekend.


----------



## Ralyks

Aaaaand Dream Drop Distance done.


Spoiler



I dug how it kinda ended up being Rikus story. He's totally redeemed himself for me after the first game


 Probably just going to grab KH3 later since BBS 0.2 is basically demo length. I get now how you really need to play everything to even attempt to know what's going on.


----------



## wankerness

Far Cry 4 - I HATE EAGLES!!!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Far Cry 4 - I HATE EAGLES!!!


EAAAAAAAAAAGLE 
seriously though they are the fucking worst enemy in that game.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Did you level up before fighting that first boss? Maybe that's my problem. I leveled once.


Yeah for sure. I was totally sucking so probably grind 10 levels


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> EAAAAAAAAAAGLE
> seriously though they are the fucking worst enemy in that game.



Every time I hear someone yell "Eagle" and they're in the vicinity I'm headed, I have to stop what I'm doing and look for the eagle flying around and try to sharpshoot the damn thing since I usually can't kill it after it starts swooping at me without taking half my life in damage!! It really upsets the flow. Same thing with if I hear that eagle cry and it's loud. I am not surprised they ditched eagle attacks for 5. It's ridiculous that they're so much more dangerous than tigers/leopards.

The other thing I really don't like is when enemies try to retake outposts, so again I have to stop whatever I'm doing and head back there and shoot dudes for a while. Still better than eagles! Other than these two annoyances this seems pretty good. People complain about the villain not being any good, but who cares? It's pretty much just a gameplay loop/sandbox. Whenever I have to watch people talk to me I want there to be a skip cutscene button  I like that it doesn't use that FC5 system where if you did much of anything you'd get unavoidably captured by the faction that controlled that region and do some non-optional plot quest, repeat a couple times, and then all enemies would just permanently disappear so you couldn't do all the quests in a region in one playthrough. I like grinding out all the towers and bases without worrying about doing too many of them causing everything else to disappear!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Every time I hear someone yell "Eagle" and they're in the vicinity I'm headed, I have to stop what I'm doing and look for the eagle flying around and try to sharpshoot the damn thing since I usually can't kill it after it starts swooping at me without taking half my life in damage!! It really upsets the flow. Same thing with if I hear that eagle cry and it's loud. I am not surprised they ditched eagle attacks for 5. It's ridiculous that they're so much more dangerous than tigers/leopards.
> 
> The other thing I really don't like is when enemies try to retake outposts, so again I have to stop whatever I'm doing and head back there and shoot dudes for a while. Still better than eagles! Other than these two annoyances this seems pretty good. People complain about the villain not being any good, but who cares? It's pretty much just a gameplay loop/sandbox. Whenever I have to watch people talk to me I want there to be a skip cutscene button  I like that it doesn't use that FC5 system where if you did much of anything you'd get unavoidably captured by the faction that controlled that region and do some non-optional plot quest, repeat a couple times, and then all enemies would just permanently disappear so you couldn't do all the quests in a region in one playthrough. I like grinding out all the towers and bases without worrying about doing too many of them causing everything else to disappear!


yeah the having to retake outposts is kind of annoying, but at the same time, stuff felt kind of desolate once I took all the outposts in 2 and 3. It adds some dynamics to the game, kind of like random encounters in red dead or witcher.
I haven't played 5 yet since I'm still messing around with sekiro.


----------



## wankerness

So far the only feature I'm really missing in FC 4 from 5 are the companions. They're kind of lazily programmed (the dog can't even get in the car with you!!! crime rectified in FC New Dawn at least) and just repeat the same lines a lot, but they're fun, can help a lot depending on which you use for what situation, and they make running around the wilderness seem a lot less desolate. Even if you have to wait for them sometimes.


----------



## Ralyks

Finally got to Kingdom Hearts 3. About 4 hours in, it was worth going through the other games to get here. Beautiful game, combat is a fun as it's ever been, the story actually feels like it's coming together, and even the dialogue, while still cringy at the points, still feels like a step up.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m doing a big ass 1000 piece puzzle of cats doing yoga with the wife. It’s fucking hard. Lmao. Thankfully it wasn’t “beautiful mountainside sunflowers” for 1k pieces.


----------



## wankerness

Are jigsaw puzzles games? Are hot dogs sandwiches?!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Are jigsaw puzzles games? Are hot dogs sandwiches?!


yes and yes. also ketchup is a smoothie


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep DLC... so good...


----------



## beerandbeards

Currently playing Days Gone. There were some bugs but the patch they released fixed them.

The play style feels like Horizon Dawn to me.

Hordes of zombies (Freakers in the game) are stressful if you come across.

Sons of Anarchy + Walking Dead = Days Gone


----------



## Anquished

Dark souls 3. 

Finally got round to doing the DLC, the painted world sucks and I suck.


----------



## Mathemagician

Anquished said:


> Dark souls 3.
> 
> Finally got round to doing the DLC, the painted world sucks and I suck.



“Two great tastes that go great together” - Miyazaki


----------



## Ralyks

I reeaaalllyyy like Kingdom Hearts 3.


----------



## TedEH

I've been playing through Doom II after reading through the Game Engine Black Book that was written about those games, and I've discovered the joy that is Brutal Doom.


----------



## wankerness

beerandbeards said:


> Currently playing Days Gone. There were some bugs but the patch they released fixed them.
> 
> The play style feels like Horizon Dawn to me.
> 
> Hordes of zombies (Freakers in the game) are stressful if you come across.
> 
> Sons of Anarchy + Walking Dead = Days Gone



How annoying is the resource management? Hearing there's weapon durability and frequent having to go get gas for your motorcycle really turned me off.


----------



## beerandbeards

wankerness said:


> How annoying is the resource management? Hearing there's weapon durability and frequent having to go get gas for your motorcycle really turned me off.



You have an unbreakable knife, but all the other melee weapons decay. You can unlock a perk that allows you to repair melee using scraps.

Gas and scraps are pretty available. Plus you can refuel and repair your bike at any camp.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Currently at 200 hours on AC Odyssey and going strong, I'm completing the main storyline really slowly and I haven't even touched much of the DLC yet. I just can't put it down for anything else and I'm building up quite the backlog over here... haaalp.

Pleasantly surprised with how it turned out, it feels as polished as when AC2 came out when it did. In the sense that the game really built on the successful elements of the previous game and tweaked out all the stuff that didn't work.


----------



## wankerness

The REALLY huge QOL improvement from AC Origins to Odyssey is the arrow system. Playing Origins after Odyssey was an exercise in frustration, having multiple different bow types that all used different ammo that you could not craft (plus, finding arrows in that game in enemy bases is much rarer than Odyssey). Plus, many of them had the wonky mechanics where they didn't charge and instead they fired like a pistol/sniper rifle, unlike every other game of the last several years to include a bow. With Odyssey they just directly copied HZD (and even made crafting completely automatic so for all intents and purposes you have infinite ammo), which may have been an extra step too far, but man is the combat improved. It's actually viable to play as archer-heavy even in skirmishes; I sure did once I got that legendary armor set from the sisters.

The one thing that's a gigantic QOL improvement from Origins to Odyssey that might be too big of an easy button is the fact you have a nearly full-life heal on a short CD that's usable with absolutely no negative repercussions, while in Origins you had no heal button at all. You have to intentionally make the game harder for yourself to ever choose a different talent in that slot. I have a hard time doing that except with games I've really played through multiple times. The fact you only have a few slots and there are something like 25 talents I guess encourages you to not use it just for variety, but oh well.


----------



## MFB

My backlog of quests/bounties is getting quite large and unruly in Odyssey as well  I'm level 35, and just dealt with Perikles in Athens, so I'm pretty sure I'm really not far in the story at all, but I just kept getting distracted exploring the massive world they've given us.

I totally forgot about Origins wonky as bow system, but yeah, I didn't care for that at all. The abilities they've given you with the new system allow for crowd control, and I'm glad there's two melee wheels or else I'd be SOL trying to pick which skills I actually use.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> My backlog of quests/bounties is getting quite large and unruly in Odyssey as well  I'm level 35, and just dealt with Perikles in Athens, so I'm pretty sure I'm really not far in the story at all, but I just kept getting distracted exploring the massive world they've given us.
> 
> I totally forgot about Origins wonky as bow system, but yeah, I didn't care for that at all. The abilities they've given you with the new system allow for crowd control, and I'm glad there's two melee wheels or else I'd be SOL trying to pick which skills I actually use.



With how awful switching wheels is, you might as well only have one in-combat for all intents and purposes! It just means you can set two "specs" basically. I guess that was another benefit of going full archer, you legitimately had two easily accessible ability wheels that way 

My favorite ability when I was low level and often biting off more than I could chew with elite enemies was the spartan kick. I definitely won a few boss fights by running up a cliff and baiting them into coming to where I could kick them off.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

Totally agreed on the combat improvements across the board, and yeah the bow thing was annoying after awhile in Origins. Glad they sorted that out. I lean on my bow too much, especially hades' legendary bow, it was a real game changer once I got it.

I'm at level 79 nearly 80, playing as Kassandra with mostly a moral approach to decisions, legendary armory and weapons up the wazoo, and my ship is about 20,000 leather shy of legendary. All locations on the map are discovered except for the caldera of fate (no spoilers plz), majority of side missions with cut scene dialogue are done, legendary creatures are all dead (those were seriously awesome btw!) and the cult has about 3 members left.

Since we're talking gripes, here are a couple I've noticed at this point of the game. Not sure if you guys would agree or not?

a) once you reach level 50 you've pretty much maxed out whatever skills you figured out were the best combo. Enemies are a buncha push overs at this point at level 79 and the awesome combat that once was is now showing an obvious plateau. I haven't died in a long time, it's no longer challenging so I don't get into scuffles as much since I avoid them because I'm like ya ya not worth the time.

b) the mercenary system was really cool at first glance, like the first time I had 5 bounty hunters after me I nearly shat myself at the tension of fending off 4 hunters at once, 3 of them with their own battle animals they brought along (a bear, jaguar and a lynx). Luckily it went down at a big temple so I just kept going round and round trying to bottle neck them, the guards at the temple were the last thing I needed too ffs... The healing skill was at it's lowest at that point so it was really tough. 15 mins later of circling the temple nonstop everyone was dead and I was like yes! i got my money's worth with this game! Which is probably the best feeling I look forward to with any new game. That feeling hasn't come around in awhile, bounty hunters are not as much of a challenge anymore, not much tension anymore.

c) Same goes for naval battles, my ship is almost legendary and I got the hang of how to fight other ships so i kinda just avoid pirate ships on the regular and only fight bounty hunters for their loot. But man you think back to AC4 Black Flag and compare it to now, the naval aspect of the games has improved leaps and bounds, it's really nice now. Also, just the feeling of punting a sailor off the ship with a well timed spartan kick feels so goddamn good lol!

d) Last I'd say I didn't like amount of resources it takes to upgrade your gear, especially legendary. It just empties out like hours and hours of resources you've collected. So because of that I don't switch gear too often but I'd like to if it was more accessible. I have stuff I'd like to equip that's at level 40 but to upgrade it to level 79 is just a ridiculous amount of resources... drachmae, wood and iron are easy to come by but everything else is just a slow grind. Really hope they fix that to encourage more frequent equipment changes.

Oh and just one last small thing, the underwater areas are really bland. I wish there were more enemies other than one type of shark to go up against. Or underwater bosses maybe? Imagine cruising along on your ship in a thunder storm and something grabs a hold of it only to find out it's a giant squid (kraken)? Or fighting a moby dick kind of whale that's out for blood and its been wrecking ships all over the Aegean?

What do you guys think?


----------



## MFB

I hate any mercenary with a companion, like, be a fucking man/woman and fight me solo coward. Don't bring your god damn pet to fight your battles. Not to mention I'd have the same thing where I get two or three on me, and I'm in a shitty place and now I also have random citizens picking up arms to fight me? And they can withstand the brunt of my blows despite being an average schmoe? Fucking no.



wankerness said:


> With how awful switching wheels is, you might as well only have one in-combat for all intents and purposes! It just means you can set two "specs" basically. I guess that was another benefit of going full archer, you legitimately had two easily accessible ability wheels that way
> 
> My favorite ability when I was low level and often biting off more than I could chew with elite enemies was the spartan kick. I definitely won a few boss fights by running up a cliff and baiting them into coming to where I could kick them off.



I can switch wheels just fine, I always have a finger on my LT and you can hit the D-down while an animation is going - for instance, I have shield smash on a different wheel than spartan kick, so I'll change it while the smash happens and it's fine.


----------



## wankerness

A) Yeah, though they'd add some with every DLC that were fun to experiment with. I don't REALLY mind since there were tons of skills I never spec'd into so it's kind of my own damn fault that I'm not changing up the combat.
B) Mercenaries do NOT become pushovers as you get higher level if you are setting off the alarms and getting attacked by a couple of them at a time. I still regularly encounter ones that will kill me in about 2 seconds if I let them get anywhere close to me or get hit with their projectiles, and I'm still not in the highest couple of tiers. Those might also have been added with DLC so maybe you're hitting an earlier ceiling, I dunno how those were expanded. But yeah, Mercenaries all have difficulty tiers, the ones you run into wandering when you're not "wanted" are usually going to be at least a few below you and thus able to be knocked out really fast if you get the drop on them.
C) I didn't like the naval battles much. At some late point you get skills to heal a lot more during combat and that was when I finally felt somewhat safe. But, there were many times when I'd get attacked by ~4 ships at the same time that would all be circling and it would be really difficult to live long enough to knock each of them out and heal. It's kind of funny that you can just board one and heal while the others do nothing. But again, start setting off the wanted levels (I can't remember the name!!) and you'll start getting attacked by mercenary ships that will wreck you if you're in the middle of naval combat.
D) If you try to upgrade every level, yeah, it's nuts. I tried to go ~10 levels between upgrading my legendaries, since it's the same amount of materials to upgrade something from 40-41 as it is to (hypothetically) upgrade the same piece from level 1-41. 

Underwater areas are bland, yeah, but less so than origins! The sharks were a pain in the ass, I could never master fighting them underwater so I'd end up trying to snipe them from the surface for long periods of time. Since there's an achievement for clearing all the underwater areas I spent a lot of time doing so.


----------



## GatherTheArsenal

I see what you're saying but in terms of mercenaries I'm telling you, I have to pick a fight with one that has a skull over it's head to feel any tension. With those bastards I'm constantly dodging arrows and projectiles, if I trip up once it's game over. 

I'm regularly on 3-4 bounty wanted levels on land and 5 bounty on the water. And yeah for the most part I get bounty hunters that are like 1-2 levels below and they love to gang up on me, but every now and then I'd get one that's 3-5 levels above and that's tough. Though rarely do these higher levels gang up on me, it's usually one at a time so it's manageable.

On the water I'd be at a 5 bounty wanted level but you only get 2, maybe 3 mercenary ships gang up on you at any given time. Haven't died yet particularly because of the weird mechanic you mentioned of boarding a ship and refilling all your health. So I'd just take them one at a time and I'm golden. If it wasn't for that perk yeah it'll be harder. That's even more if your ship isn't fully upgraded I'm finding that really helps.

Has anyone bought the recent Atlantis DLC? Any thoughts?


----------



## wankerness

GatherTheArsenal said:


> Has anyone bought the recent Atlantis DLC? Any thoughts?



Is that even out yet? I played through the preliminary plotline a week or two ago and it wasn't. 

The first DLC series is kind of lame. There are some fun things here and there and I like a couple of the new abilities (including a much-needed way to charge adrenaline). The new one looks much more ambitious, but I really don't care about the modern day plot and it looks like it has heavy focus on that. The preliminary questline sure did, anyway.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

TedEH said:


> I've been playing through Doom II after reading through the Game Engine Black Book that was written about those games, and I've discovered the joy that is Brutal Doom.




YESSSS!!! I started playing Brutal Doom not long ago and I've been having an absolute blast!!!


----------



## TedEH

I can't help but laugh at how blatant the music is about being ripoffs of stuff.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I can't help but laugh at how blatant the music is about being ripoffs of stuff.



Even funnier that the composer even said that John Romero specifically asked those songs to sound like the originals they're trying to rip off.

I wanted to do a full write up on the Game Music thread about that and how generally speaking that so much of game music were doing blatant ripoffs of released music. I sort of still do, maybe when I can be arsed.


----------



## wankerness

I could swear I read a longform interview about that soundtrack and that issue with it.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

TedEH said:


> I can't help but laugh at how blatant the music is about being ripoffs of stuff.




There's a mod on moddb.com that allows for the modern Doom music to be played during Brutal Doom in case you want something a little different.


----------



## Leviathus

Saw this on reddit and hadda repost it somewhere, my apologies...


----------



## Ralyks

I'm pretty sure I'm nearing the end of Kingdom Hearts 3


Spoiler



probably because I just left an area called "The Last World"


 and so far I really am enjoying the last act, and the game as a whole (cringy dialouge aside, but I've come to expect it at this point, and it's somewhat better than previous games.


----------



## wankerness

I'm almost done with the new AC:Odyssey DLC. It's a hefty amount of content, and is kinda cool and different to the rest of the game. It's very reminiscent of that AC: Origins DLC that took place in various underworlds. I'm not sure where the next two chapters are going, but this is a good one.

It adds some more abilities (as an archer, I really like the one that puts you in slow-mo until you get five headshots, it works great when you're trying to shoot people in near-melee range like I always end up doing) and a ton of content and it looks GORGEOUS. As someone who grew up reading Greek myths as a kid, I also really enjoy the stuff where you're interacting with "gods" (this one's mainly based around Persephone/Hermes). It's kinda got Far Cry: New Dawn visuals going with the zillions of pink flowers, but hey. The enemies are also *much* more threatening than usual, with the regular guys all possessing the ability to lock out your adrenaline, powerful projectiles and AOE melee attacks, and then tons of these living statue dudes with laser beams that are a pain to dodge properly. Fun stuff!

I'm surprised this was included on the first season pass, I figured they'd be dicks and go "haha, now it's season 2!!!"


----------



## MFB

It's funny, I was playing yesterday and I've been using my bow more instead of just turning every fight into a 1v30 in open ground, and it was the one time where I wished you could use the light bow like in Origins. While it didn't do as much damage, having that quick fire ability to lay arrows into someone then switch back to melee was solid.

If they made that into an ability to assign I'd be on board


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> It's funny, I was playing yesterday and I've been using my bow more instead of just turning every fight into a 1v30 in open ground, and it was the one time where I wished you could use the light bow like in Origins. While it didn't do as much damage, having that quick fire ability to lay arrows into someone then switch back to melee was solid.
> 
> If they made that into an ability to assign I'd be on board



It is an ability, it's in the first segment of the first DLC iirc. As it is, though, the bows are practically insta-fire if you don't care about max damage. I have a bow engraved with the fire bow skill so I pretty much just run around rolling away from dudes and hitting them with non-fully charged shots to stack fire on them.


----------



## Mathemagician

I just picked up NHL ‘19 after realizing “Wow hockey is pretty awesome” at a game last month. So now i’m going to quietly learn the rules & lingo in tutorial mode set to “easy enough for a grandpas to play”.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> It is an ability, it's in the first segment of the first DLC iirc. As it is, though, the bows are practically insta-fire if you don't care about max damage. I have a bow engraved with the fire bow skill so I pretty much just run around rolling away from dudes and hitting them with non-fully charged shots to stack fire on them.



Ah, that explain it, I haven't gotten to that point yet - only around 40% through the main story so far, and then going on to the DLCs afterwards


----------



## Leviathus

take the wind right out of yo sssSSAAAAIIIIIILLLLLL....



EDIT: shit thought this was the "what are you listening to" thread 

mods feel free to delete/move....


----------



## Ralyks

Watching the ending to Kingdom Hearts 3 and I'm not crying you're crying ok?!


----------



## StevenC

Started playing Bayonetta on hard the other day and the first level kicked my ass for like two hours, so I gave up and just played through it on normal. Had so much fun with that I've started playing through on hard again and everything after the first level is way easier.


----------



## Jarmake

Got myself a nintendo switch by accident and now I'm playing super mario odyssey. Next up: breath of the wild.


----------



## Mathemagician

Jarmake said:


> Got myself a nintendo switch by accident and now I'm playing super mario odyssey. Next up: breath of the wild.



IMO, you could literally play just those two games and feel like you got your money’s worth on the switch.


----------



## Jarmake

Mathemagician said:


> IMO, you could literally play just those two games and feel like you got your money’s worth on the switch.



Well yeah... I'm probably going to sell the switch after those games and for a hefty profit too! It was so cheap that I couldn't pass on it.


----------



## wankerness

That's kind of why I bought a Switch, too - I saw it on sale for 150 bucks! I've barely touched it besides for Smash, and I barely have any friends who still want to play that!


----------



## Jarmake

wankerness said:


> That's kind of why I bought a Switch, too - I saw it on sale for 150 bucks! I've barely touched it besides for Smash, and I barely have any friends who still want to play that!



Yeah. I got this switch and 3 games for 170e. Very cheap when considering that I live in finland. 

I hadn't even thought about buying a switch before I found it so cheap.


----------



## Leviathus

Father Gascoigne has to be so bored of killing me at this point.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> Father Gascoigne has to be so bored of killing me at this point.


git gud boiii


----------



## Leviathus

KnightBrolaire said:


> git gud boiii


lol gettin there, finally just got him.


----------



## Ralyks

Now that I'm out of Kingdom Hearts to play, I finallygo back to Yakuza Kiwami 2 to see what my boy Kiryu-san is up to.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Now that I'm out of Kingdom Hearts to play, I finallygo back to Yakuza Kiwami 2 to see what my boy Kiryu-san is up to.



I got a popup video ad for the PC release of that yesterday. It was the first time I've ever been happy to see a popup ad.


----------



## Ralyks

It's weird, I definitely beelined 0, 6, and Kiwami, but Kiwami 2 I'm actually just taking my time living in the world and checking out as much as possible. Might go back to those games now and do the same until they finally bring the rasters of 3, 4, and 5 stateside.


----------



## Jarmake

Played breath of the wild for a few hours and now my switch has been sold 

I think it's fair to say that it wasn't my game at all.


----------



## thedonal

So I'm in Golem City in Deus Ex Mankind Divided.

For such a narrow play area, it's got an amazing sense of vertical scale and location. Absolutely loving this game- it's such a leap forward from the previous one.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> Played breath of the wild for a few hours and now my switch has been sold
> 
> I think it's fair to say that it wasn't my game at all.



Was it the weapon-breaking? That's what stopped me!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Was it the weapon-breaking? That's what stopped me!


legit one of the most annoying things in breath of the wild, especially since better weapons still have shit durability.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Weapon durability is the devil. Never would've expected to see it in a Zelda game but I guess BotW was pretty ambitious as far as the typical Zelda game goes. I haven't played it since I don't own a Switch but I've watched a buddy play it a bit.


----------



## Ralyks

The weapon durability, now that I think about it, may be why I haven’t gotten far is BotW, considering I got that and. Switch like a month after launch.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Late to the game but just finished Horizon Zero Dawn. Great story with some really impactful moments.

Now on to Far Cry New Dawn.

Edit: yeah BOTW was not for me either. Survival mechanics/gear wear and tear elements in general are big turn offs for me.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I had absolutely no fun in the 3-4 hours I played botw, easily the worst Zelda out of those I’ve played.

FC New Dawn is kinda fun. I’m too bad at FPS games to do the high level side missions though. It made me sad!

The other thing about that game I didn’t like was what they did with sidekicks, they’re less controllable. There’s no one close to the super-OP bow woman in 5, the bow guy in it was total crap even when leveled up!


----------



## Jarmake

Yeah, it was one of the reasons I wasn't into botw. Well, I made a pretty penny selling it so it doesn't matter.


----------



## Leviathus

Been queuing up some CS 1.6 lately, can't believe i can still load 2k servers in 2019!


----------



## BananaDemocracy

Wow, what a healthy video game sub section !
I am Nintendo head!
I literally only play my switch
Right now playing 

KATAMARI DAMACY REROLLED

I love it, even more than the original ps2 version I bought over a decade ago!

Any Nintendo switch lovers?


----------



## wankerness

Wait, what!? This is the first I’ve heard about a new one of those! I had the original and really liked it. I’ll have to check it out.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Has anyone picked up RAGE 2 yet?


----------



## Ralyks

Lorcan Ward said:


> Has anyone picked up RAGE 2 yet?



I was looking forward to this, but I may wait for this one to drop in price. Heard it's like a mix of Doom and Mad Max, but gets repetitive quickly.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I found DOOM a little repetitive by the very end but Mad Max kept me captivated with the world, story and scenery changes. I don't like buying games until they get a few patches so I think I will wait too.


----------



## TedEH

That description kind of fits what I was expecting. But it also doesn't sound that exciting. I'd suspect the "style" of the game would get old real fast, to me. I could just play Doom and watch Mad Max instead.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Wait, what!? This is the first I’ve heard about a new one of those! I had the original and really liked it. I’ll have to check it out.



Reroll is the HD remake of the original Katamari Damacy, for the Switch.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I could just play Doom and watch Mad Max instead.



I meant more like the Mad Max game that came out a couple of years ago, but yeah, that works too 

I'm working my way through the PS4 port of the first Borderlands anyway, so I'm good on the wasteland-RPG-Shooter genre. Plus I plan on going back to Borderlands 2 to finish the Platinum before BL3 comes out.


----------



## Demiurge

I picked up the Castlevania Anniversary Collection on Steam. In probably some of the least-shocking news of the year, it's kind of flawed.

The games mostly run fine but there are annoyances. For instance, you cannot re-map buttons and for the NES & Gameboy games you are stuck with (X-Box Controller) B & A as (Nintendo) A & B, respectively where X-Box A & X as A & B would be more conventional. The SNES & Genesis games are mapped more intuitively, but you can re-map in the game anyway.

The sound is also kind of weird- it's very bass-heavy. In the original CV the percussion & bass is so loud the channel playing the melody is barely audible. It's a bit better in the other NES & Gameboy games but still prominent. CV4 is bass heavy and the sound crackles. The Genesis game sounds fine.

It's $20 right now and I would recommend waiting for a sale or if these issues are fixed.


----------



## Ralyks

Konami did the bare minimum with their collection. I have the Symphony/Rondo collection. Glad I grabbed it on sale because it feels pretty bare bones (I mean, one influential game and one damn good game aside).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Over the course of trying to keep up with busy schedules and pop culture maelstrom, finally finished Lost Paradise. The sidequests got rather tedious after a while so sodded those off. 

Like the 2 sources the game cannibalises from, Lost Paradise is goofy right until the end. A bunch of betrayals and characters pulling out guns only to wave around and soliloquising full of angst before finally firing only not to kill their intended target... another Yakuza game really, only your victims swell up and blood, pus and body chunks explode... like a Fist Of The North Star victim should. 

But these games live and die by their rich and weirdly hilarious side content, and ultimately I don't like Lost Paradise as much as it's flagship series. 

For a start, it feels like a step back from the best of the Yakuza games. I don't mind not being build on the Dragon Engine, but it feels a lot smaller. The North Star characters don't really have much else about them. And Eden, while chock full of life, is certainly no Kamurocho. There's not enough Jagi either.  The minigames are still fun. "Baseball" is awesome here, and while I didn't enjoy the Clinic game as much as Karaoke as music rhythm proxy, it's still fun and challenging. Just different (must be the song choices). 

But what finally broke me was all the excessive grinding for money and collecting materials. A certain obscene amount of cash was needed for a sidequest and all the time spent on cabaret managing just didn't make enough to reach the quota. Getting materials only rewarded possibilities to customising the dune buggy to better at racing with it. And I reached the point where the rare materials became so scarce. And it doesn't help that you either grind at racing, or drive around the wasteland full of largely bugger all. It got over grindy that I stopped giving a crap. 

Granted that I still had a lot of fun, and at heart, it's still a Yakuza game and having a Fist Of The North Star pastiche is still a stroke of genius that shouldn't have worked. Add to making it one of the most violent in the Hokuto canon does have it's gleeful moments. But even compared to the Yakuza series (which are already hilariously dumb), Lost Paradise does feel more shallow. But I guess that's to be expected with the North Star series as a whole really, a fun bulk buy economy brand game to enjoy while ordering a barbecue meat lovers with a 2 litre Coke. Add extra meat and sauce.

Still haven't bought Sekiro yet, so I probably should just start that copy of Final Fantasy XV that's gathering dust in the corner once and for all...


----------



## Leviathus

Starting to really enjoy Bloodborne after beating a few more bosses and lighting up some more lamps. Feels like the game's really opening up. Planning on scooping Sekiro at some point, guess i'm just waiting for it to go on sale on Steam.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Playing Last of Us... Very, very late to the party but only got a PS4 a few weeks ago.


----------



## chopeth

ImNotAhab said:


> Playing Last of Us... Very, very late to the party but only got a PS4 a few weeks ago.



me too, it's great


----------



## TedEH

I started digging into the games on the SNES Classic. I actually enjoy the old StarFox more than most I think. I missed Yoshis Island when it was fresh, but there's lot of good stuff in there. I plan on spending a good amount of time with Mario RPG in the near future.


----------



## wankerness

OG Star Fox is better than 64 in many respects I think. The three paths have some real variety to them and there’s a lot of challenge that’s just not there in the incredibly easy 64. The wallowy frame rate sucks, but you get used to it. It has fantastic music, too, imo much better than 64’s. My favorite levels were Fortuna, Macbeth, and Sector Y I think.


----------



## TedEH

Speaking of music, I never realized how great the Yoshi's Island music is. It's fantastic. Also one of the tunes sounds a looooooot like something from Zelda. Pretty sure it's half of the same melody. (The castle theme vs. the Song of Storms.) I know that's not new to anyone already familiar with those games, but still. I like it.

Edit: I wasn't expecting so much of the Starfox 64 dna to come strait from the SNES version. It's almost all there. At some point I'd like to dig into StarFox 2. I kind like the whole strategy thing on top of it so that it's not just more of the same. There's some good ideas there.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I missed Yoshis Island when it was fresh, but there's lot of good stuff in there.



Yoshi's Island was mind boggling back in the day. Nintendo really went to town to pillage the hardware to great effect. Little things like blowing a balloon as a floating platform, to the watermelon seen spitting effects, it was so masterfully done. And agreed with the music, it has my favorite Invincibility Star theme in any Mario game (the jazzy melody brings the 2 chord vamp to life IMO). 

Having said that, my biggest gripe of the game is the introduction of the '100% compeltionist' collecting. Granted it was still fun, I ended up preferring Super Mario World's exploration in my latter years instead. 




wankerness said:


> My favorite levels were Fortuna, Macbeth, and Sector Y I think.



Those just happens to be mine too.  Fortuna's theme has an excellent groove. Add Venom lv2 as well for my list of favorites. 

I realised recently why the original Starfox music was so different from the rest of the series; the composer ended up leaving Nintendo just before Starfox was released to form his own music-on-demand company. Good on the guy for branching out and doing his own thing, but the franchise's music suffered for it. Nintendo's composer staff and not even Koji Kondo himself can top the original's futuristic and cinematic style.


----------



## Mathemagician

Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars (full name allowed only) is imo one of the best traditional RPGs ever made. It’s made my Squaresoft, but has so many Nintendo references, new characters and unique things like movement puzzles. Idk, one of my faves that I accidentally picked up at the flea market as a kid.


----------



## mongey

KnightBrolaire said:


> legit one of the most annoying things in breath of the wild, especially since better weapons still have shit durability.


It is annoying. But you don’t have to push far into the game before it’s a non issue. There’s allot weapons around. 

But early game it was annoying as hell.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I probably should just start that copy of Final Fantasy XV that's gathering dust in the corner once and for all...



And after months of neglect, I finally started the tale of Noctis and his boy band cruising and frolicking around the countryside. A good time as any since Distant Worlds just announced a concert here in a few months and FFXV composer Yoko Shimomura is the guest of honour. 

Sadly I didn't play so much of XV as I did watching the title screen as it barred me from beginning the game for 25 minutes until it's fully installed. Still, the Royal Edition cost me 20 bucks so at least a majority of DLC was free. 

And of course being a Final Fantasy game, I took liberties of delaying the plot to a screeching halt just to dilly dally about with Hunts and exploration. I'm rather disappointed with the driving. Being a JRPG I didn't expect total freedom and control in fovour of finding and unlocking busywork, but being unable to drive on the wrong lane of the street is a bit much. Perhaps coming from Lost Paradise of driving freely around a large world of bugger all into a cruising down large stretches of bugger all isn't much of a step down but a massive fall into a ditch. 

Oh well, at least the story is simple enough that it's harking back to classic FF games like IV and VI. This is going to be a long one, so I may as well kick back and enjoy it for what it is...


----------



## wankerness

The driving is so boring that you'll want to unlock fast travel asap. It's pretty much autopilot.

The hunts are awful compared to XII. Just repetitive junk.

I didn't play any of the DLC I don't think. Maybe some day! I got the SUPER COMPLETE edition but not the SUPER COMPLETE *AND ROYAL* EDITION so I probably am missing something. Eh. I doubt it's all good!

HAVE FUN IN THE ENDLESS CHAPTER OF GLOOM! It's really too bad they made it so long and so miserable, it is completely what sticks in my head about that game. I THINK I was sorta enjoying it for a while (apart from trying to navigate that Venice-y city), but that sucked all the joy out of me and felt like it was as long as the rest of the campaign combined. I get what they were going for, and they certainly succeeded, but I am pretty sure they made the wrong decision in turning it into a misery simulator.

In better news, the most recent patch for AC: Odyssey added a quest chain that made me lol heartily a few times, cause I still kinda have the sense of humor of a ten year old.


----------



## Ralyks

1. The chapter of Gloom in FFXV, I believe they modified to make it, y'know, suck less? Don't know, I finished it before that patch. It didn't bother me as much as a lot people, but still felt very unnecessary.

2. Yoshi's Island is an underrated gem, crying Mario aside.

3. Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars is one of the greatest games of all time, and wish they would do a TRUE sequel with Geno, Mallow, Johnny, Smithy, etc etc since they have a working relationship with Square Enix again, who I assume own the rights to those sadly underutilized characters.

4. I'm 4 trophies away from getting the Platinun in the first Borderlands and think I can finish that by the weekend. May go back and finally get the Platinum for BL2 after.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> 1. The chapter of Gloom in FFXV, I believe they modified to make it, y'know, suck less? Don't know, I finished it before that patch. It didn't bother me as much as a lot people, but still felt very unnecessary.
> 
> 2. Yoshi's Island is an underrated gem, crying Mario aside.
> 
> 3. Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars is one of the greatest games of all time, and wish they would do a TRUE sequel with Geno, Mallow, Johnny, Smithy, etc etc since they have a working relationship with Square Enix again, who I assume own the rights to those sadly underutilized characters.
> 
> 4. I'm 4 trophies away from getting the Platinun in the first Borderlands and think I can finish that by the weekend. May go back and finally get the Platinum for BL2 after.



BL2 trophy is a grindfest unless you started out with zer0 and salvador, you have to get them both to reasonably high level. I can't remember if there was anything else really time consuming in that one (I did it on 360 a while ago). I think finding all the locations was bad news since I didn't do it systematically with a guide.


----------



## Ralyks

I have an OP8 Zer0 and more overpowered guns than I know what to do with. The only trophies I need are basically finding whatever areas of the map I haven't, finish the rest of the side quests, and finish level 1 of all the non-level-specific challenges.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> 2. Yoshi's Island is an underrated gem, crying Mario aside.



Crying Mario, bad aiming mechanics and the inorganic 100% competionist gameplay aside, Yoshi's Island was a great game and certainly broke ground at the time. One thing that left a lasting impression is the inventive boss fights. Nintendo has always understood well in their games that bosses are the examination of what has been learned from the world they reside, not just another enemy with a longer health bar. And Yoshi's Island was one of the better example of this by being creative with it. Every boss is just a small grunt given magical steroids, with the one exception where you get shrunk and fight inside the boss, an idea later reused in that Mario game where you go inside Boswer. 



Ralyks said:


> 3. Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars is one of the greatest games of all time, and wish they would do a TRUE sequel with Geno, Mallow, Johnny, Smithy, etc etc since they have a working relationship with Square Enix again, who I assume own the rights to those sadly underutilized characters.



Funny enough I actually didn't rate this all too much at the time I played it the first time. Probably because it came out the same time as FFVI, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Terranigma etc, which were all monstrous competitions coming from Square and Enix firing on all 4 cylinders. Not to say that it's a bad game, it was and still is great for taking the Mario franchise out of it's norm and launching the Paper Mario series. 

I bag Nintendo a hell of a lot, but they're awesome when they're dead on.


----------



## thedonal

So now that I have my PC cabling setup updated (I have it plugged into my AV system/TV as well as the monitor at the studio end- I've now got an usb hub up there for a second keyboard, mouse and joystick setup to rock from the sofa!), I'm going to start diving back into Elite Dangerous. It's been many months since I played- kind of rage quit from being shot up entering a station (think I'd picked up an illegal cargo mission that wasn't really suitable for a Python...at first no idea why I was let in then suddenly trespassing). 

I quite fancy a spot of mining to get the credits up for an Anaconda. Then maybe fit that out for buggy, fighters and range to go out exploring again.


----------



## Santuzzo

I have been playing Battlefront 2 on PS4. I don't have a PS+ network subscription so I am only playing the single player campaign. 
I had asked about this game a while ago and most people said this game was not too interesting for offline single player gaming, but I saw it for a good price and decided to get it. No regrets!


----------



## Ralyks

Got the Platinum for Borderlands. Went back to BL2 to finish that Platinum. Seems doable to not take very long, and I got to remember how much I love BL2.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

5 hours in FFXV, levelled up the 4 prettyboys up to Lv9 with a bunch of hunts, occasional sidequests, finding campsites and other such dilly dallying. And then started Chapter 2. Some thoughts:

- The music is excellent, but I don't expect any less from the woman who wrote Guile's Theme, Parasite Eve OST and Dearly Beloved. I should by that massive OST soon and really looking forward to the Distant Worlds concert this coming August. Also adding extra Squenix music in the car stereo is a nice touch.

- I appreciate the day/night mechanics coming back. I'll probably get a little frustrated on the inevitable Dead Rising esque timed quests but I had enough practice with Lightning Returns. Also I only stopped playing because I got cocky at night before getting mauled by a Lv38 night monster. 

- Some of the character's unique traits are weird. Noctis' fishing skill seems to be the only one that makes any degree of sense. The other 3 are situational, 2 are at least useful in moments but the photos are goofy as hell.

- The combat is a muddled mess at first, but I'm slowly getting used to it. I'm not great at warping to high locations to strike yet and my finesse grade is usually a D unless the hunts are higher levels than my black clad boyband.

- Did you seriously put cover mechanics in a Final Fantasy game Square Enix? Let alone one where the combat system is as chaotic as this? 

I know this isn't grandpa's Final Fantasy of yore so I shouldn't be yelling at some clouds coming into this. I do appreciate the little 16 bit versions of Noctis and the black wear boys and having bits of the FFIV soundtrack in the car.


----------



## wankerness

The combat is fun, but a mess. Wait until you fight a particular boss towards the middle of the game with a very hemispheric battlefield and very fast reactions needed. Oh, and a GIANT one further in.


----------



## ChugThisBoy

Star Citizen for now. You can say what you want about this sim but nothing beats listening to Tool and cruising through space and planets in the same time. It's beautiful. 
On the other hand, I'm waiting for Borderlands 3. I was playing Anthem for some time since I've had Origin Sub but I abandoned it. The same goes with Darksiders 3 which is really awesome. I'll wait some time and buy Sekiro as I always wanted to play that.


----------



## beerandbeards

I just finished Days Gone and got the platinum trophy. 

I have to say the highlight of the game was finding and destroying the hordes. I found it cool to be able to have so many rendered enemies at once.


----------



## beerandbeards

I’m currently playing Zelda Link to the Past on my SNES Classic. 

Something about this era of games (not just nostalgia) holds up. I feel like playing PS2 games are difficult to play because of the graphics. Maybe it’s because those earlier games are far enough from modern that it’s its own thing; where ps2 era has some semblance of modern gaming just less refined and polished


----------



## TedEH

beerandbeards said:


> Something about this era of games (not just nostalgia) holds up.


I tend to think that this era (the "fourth gen" I guess, of consoles?) is when games started getting consistently good. The hardware was far enough along, and the design of the games were starting to mature. The consoles before that did have some great games, but much fewer, and pretty consistently with much less depth. I find it interesting to see how the range in quality widens at this point too. There are some amazing SNES/Genesis/etc titles but there's also a ton of them that still use very dated designs for the time. Compare something like the Mario RPG to something like Earthbound, which is also still a good game, but feels a bit like it sits design-wise in a space between what was possible on the NES vs SNES.



beerandbeards said:


> I feel like playing PS2 games are difficult to play because of the graphics.


For some games, I'd agree - but there are definitely some very aesthetically pleasing PS2 games. SotC and Ico still look and feel great, IMO. These are games I'd rather play on an old fuzzy TV though. They aren't meant to be sharp.



beerandbeards said:


> ps2 era has some semblance of modern gaming just less refined and polished


I think that's a good way to describe it.


----------



## StevenC

Beyond Good & Evil HD! Missed back when it came out and have had it sitting on my Xbox One from Games with Gold for years now. Boy have I been missing out, fantastic game.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Grim Dawn. Been seeing it all over Steam and decided to give it a shot. Four hours in, and I went ahead and bought both expansions. Yep... I'm addicted, I think.


----------



## MetalHex

Black Ops 3 Team Deathmatch. I stay with the Hive and the Purifier. I am a rocket launch king.....it is my main weapon. And i go for big theatrical jump shot kills. Sometimes around the corner too.


----------



## beerandbeards

TedEH said:


> Earthbound, which is also still a good game



That’s next on my list after Zelda LttP


----------



## mongey

grabbed this war of mine for some train distraction . Nintendo is having a sale so was half price . survival games arnt usually my thing , but it so damn dark that I'm enjoying it so far


----------



## Leviathus

No idea why, but folks have been infiltrating my FOB's on MGSV left and right for the last few weeks. Just started out of no where and i've never had an infiltration before or invaded someone else's (not counting events). Mildly infuriating i must say, especially cos their defense levels are usually way higher than mine are...


----------



## Mathemagician

Just need the Wisp Blueprint from the new content patch for Warframe. The new boss is actually pretty fun since it’s interactive and doesn’t just go invisible randomly to artificially prolong the fight.


----------



## mongey

Well I can’t play this war of mine. As a father of 2 it’s just too fucking depressing and stressful.


----------



## Ralyks

I finally got around to having my PSTV set up in my room, and have spent the past few evenings before bed finally getting back to Persona 4 Golden. Only 19 hours in and just got Kanji last night. This could be my main summer game.


----------



## BlackMastodon

mongey said:


> Well I can’t play this war of mine. As a father of 2 it’s just too fucking depressing and stressful.


This reminds me of a personal observation I had last year.

From early 2017 to mid 2018 I had a hiatus from gaming and barely played any games, not really by choice but because I didn't have space for it. When I came back to it I started playing Monster Hunter World when it released on PC and for the first time I think I had a moral conundrum about, well, hunting these monsters. I had changed my diet and had been vegetarian for some months so maybe I was just more conscious of it, but it seemed weird to be hunting down these animals for seemingly no reason since I've never been into hunting and don't care to get into it. I got over it shortly after and told myself it's just a game and I can disassociate myself from real world actions by doing it in a game, similar to how I murder countless people in Skyrim or any other shooter. Maybe the first example of that was the Bunny kill count in Skyrim; I feel like that was added to shame you.  Also very easy to not care when the enemies are zombies or demons whose sole purpose is to try kill you. Was just interesting to have a conscious revelation like that.

Anyone else find themselves actually considering moral implications of what they do in games as they get older, or as games get more and more realistic? Wonder what the state of VR games will be in the near future for shooters or hack and slash games where you're killing enemies up close and personal.


----------



## Mathemagician

Yep recently on Warframe but MH gave me some pause too. 

There is an achievement for killing random small animals. Like birds or rabbits, but they have no real purpose and will move away from you on their own. I much prefer it accidentally happening from splash damage than from me targeting them. Idk getting older sucks, lol.


----------



## MFB

I was that way with AC:Odyssey - there are mercenaries who have companions, and while some are more traditional and feared animals (bears, lions, lynx, etc...), there are some that just have dogs that will fight you; and there are citizens in the city whom have dogs, or strays, that if you get into a fight near them, they'll jump in and it's like "I don't want to kill a domesticated animal, this shouldn't be used in this capacity."


----------



## KnightBrolaire

meh I feel no remorse about murdering digital portrayals of anything. I remember back in the day when the killable children mod came out for skyrim and I spent hours hunting down the little fuckers just because it was fun to be so blatantly evil.


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> remorse about murdering digital portrayals


To me it's always been less strictly about the murder part, and more about the higher level messages behind it. Glorification of cool guns and war / military and such. I don't even really need much of a justification for game violence - if anything it's the other way around. Some of the attempted "justifications" make me more uncomfortable than the violence in the first place.

I remember at one point thinking about the question of "why is there so much violence in games/movies/etc", but it doesn't seem like a complicated puzzle by any stretch: Stories aren't very interesting without conflict. (I use the term "story" very loosely here - I just mean to say that conflict = motivation.)


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> To me it's always been less strictly about the murder part, and more about the higher level messages behind it. Glorification of cool guns and war / military and such. I don't even really need much of a justification for game violence - if anything it's the other way around. Some of the attempted "justifications" make me more uncomfortable than the violence in the first place.
> 
> I remember at one point thinking about the question of "why is there so much violence in games/movies/etc", but it doesn't seem like a complicated puzzle by any stretch: Stories aren't very interesting without conflict. (I use the term "story" very loosely here - I just mean to say that conflict = motivation.)


 Very few games justify the violence and actually do it well. Spec Ops the Line is one of the few games that actually made me a tad uncomfortable in that sense. As the game progresses kills get more and more savage - a pretty neat attempt to visually showcase the main character's descent into madness. That and the infamous willy pete scene stuck with me for a long time after playing it. There's alot of cool meta stuff going on that game actually.


----------



## TedEH

I'll give that game credit for going to the effort of trying to make the audience uncomfortable with the violence on purpose. I found the game kind of boring on a mechanic level, but the narrative made it worth it, even just for the discussions that surrounded it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I'll give that game credit for going to the effort of trying to make the audience uncomfortable with the violence on purpose. I found the game kind of boring on a mechanic level, but the narrative made it worth it, even just for the discussions that surrounded it.


I've seen some arguments that they deliberately made it seem like a bland and generic cover shooter as an attempt to make people pay more attention to the story or something like that. I don't buy it as that would be uber meta and the game wasn't thaaaaat smart. That's some Bioshock level meta discussion on game design if they did do it on purpose though.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Yeah I used to be indifferent or would even purposely attack NPC's for laughs when I was younger but I'm curious if it was age, the quality of the digital portrayals becoming more life-like, or just taking a break that made me look at it differently.

I didn't pay attention to Spec Ops the Line at all when it came out but now I'm more interested.


----------



## TedEH

BlackMastodon said:


> I didn't pay attention to Spec Ops the Line at all when it came out but now I'm more interested


IMO the trick with this one is that if you watch any of the reviews or things that go with it, it spoils the biggest thing the game has going for it. But it's also not super interesting if you don't know anything is coming, sooooo.....


----------



## Ralyks

I really wish Spec Ops the Line got the "remastered for current consoles" treatment, I didn't get far in that game but would totally go back to it. Then again I have a PS3 and it's on PS Now so I guess there's options...


----------



## PunkBillCarson

The only death that ever bothered me in a video game is:



Spoiler: Borderlands 2 content



Bloodwing, when Jack uses the collar to blow her up. Understanding as a pet owner and empathizing with Mordecai makes it unbearable for me which is why I always look away when that happens, not to mention the fact that I hate the idea of abusing animals for no reason.


----------



## wankerness

The only death I can think of offhand that really bugged me was in Bioshock Infinite DLC, since it's so completely tasteless and does the character dirty. I hate that kind of crap. I can't think of any times when I was made sad by videogame characters' deaths since they always ring so hollow compared to a good movie/TV show.

That said I also feel guilty if I make decisions to do really evil stuff in games that are even halfway decent in developing NPCs. Like, even Star Wars the Force Unleashed!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> I really wish Spec Ops the Line got the "remastered for current consoles" treatment, I didn't get far in that game but would totally go back to it. Then again I have a PS3 and it's on PS Now so I guess there's options...


just get it on pc. 


BlackMastodon said:


> Yeah I used to be indifferent or would even purposely attack NPC's for laughs when I was younger but I'm curious if it was age, the quality of the digital portrayals becoming more life-like, or just taking a break that made me look at it differently.
> 
> I didn't pay attention to Spec Ops the Line at all when it came out but now I'm more interested.


It's definitely worth a playthrough imo.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Will add it to the wishlist and keep an eye on sales.


----------



## MFB

There was a death in AC Origins that I genuinely didn't expect the crew to commit to, as it was killing a kid (aside from the main characters son) and in a grizzly way. Traditionally in the series, you'd have a last minute save of someone resulting in you jumping in and fighting off guards and everything goes great. 

But this one? You showed up late even though you did everything correct, and you go to save this little girl, but the map marker is underwater and shes just tied to a weight, and as you swim closer, never going faster, you get this pit in your stomach and shes been dead the whole time. They Prince Ali'd the shit out of this little girl who had no hand in helping me, I believe her parents give you some info and not much, and she's the one who pays the price.


----------



## Mathemagician

KnightBrolaire said:


> I've seen some arguments that they deliberately made it seem like a bland and generic cover shooter as an attempt to make people pay more attention to the story or something like that. I don't buy it as that would be uber meta and the game wasn't thaaaaat smart. That's some Bioshock level meta discussion on game design if they did do it on purpose though.



I can’t speak for whether it was from a design perspective but I do remember not giving a shit about it because it just LOOKED like a generic FPS, had a generic name, and reviews initially just seemed to say “pretty good”. Perhaps in an effort to not spoil the plot?

After a while though everyone was saying if the game got one thing right it was the narrative and not just being a power fantasy game.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> There was a death in AC Origins that I genuinely didn't expect the crew to commit to, as it was killing a kid (aside from the main characters son) and in a grizzly way. Traditionally in the series, you'd have a last minute save of someone resulting in you jumping in and fighting off guards and everything goes great.
> 
> But this one? You showed up late even though you did everything correct, and you go to save this little girl, but the map marker is underwater and shes just tied to a weight, and as you swim closer, never going faster, you get this pit in your stomach and shes been dead the whole time. They Prince Ali'd the shit out of this little girl who had no hand in helping me, I believe her parents give you some info and not much, and she's the one who pays the price.



That character was such an annoying little prick that I wasn't sad about it, but I WAS also shocked that they went there. If that kid was likable that would have been very effective.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> That character was such an annoying little prick that I wasn't sad about it, but I WAS also shocked that they went there. If that kid was likable that would have been very effective.



The girl? I don't remember interacting with her at all really, I thought she was more a peripheral character that was in the scenes when you dealt with her parents, but that was it. 

On the other hand,


Spoiler



Phoebe's death in Odyssey felt like a cheap rip off of this, and she got real old, real fast trying to act like a big kid with Alexios/Anathousa/etc


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> The girl? I don't remember interacting with her at all really, I thought she was more a peripheral character that was in the scenes when you dealt with her parents, but that was it.
> 
> On the other hand,
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Phoebe's death in Odyssey felt like a cheap rip off of this, and she got real old, real fast trying to act like a big kid with Alexios/Anathousa/etc



I just saw AC: O and filled in Odyssey in my mind! And since I played the games back to back I applied that visual to Odyssey, I guess. Yeah. I don't remember the kid in Origins at all but I definitely remember that event.


----------



## Ralyks

As far as Borderlands 2


Spoiler



Angels fight and death got to me



Also, PS4 people who don't have it should get it when the Handsome Collection is free next week.


----------



## mongey

With war of mine as soon as a sick kid showed up I had to look after I was done. Too depressing


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> As far as Borderlands 2
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Angels fight and death got to me
> 
> 
> 
> Also, PS4 people who don't have it should get it when the Handsome Collection is free next week.



All attempts by that game to be dramatic fell flat for me since Jack was so incredibly annoying and had been made too comedic and petty through the preceding 15 hours or whatever.


Spoiler



Angel's lone personality trait (pause, stumble, and insert non-swear word instead of profanity) also didn't do a good job of making me care too much about her, plus you find out her true nature like, right before that scene you reference! AND they stick the stupid Roland scene in there, another one which fails because the game's treated him and Lilith as a joke up until that point as well! Which is all after the very similar Bloodwing thing. Argh.


They had some solidly defined 2.5 dimensional characters in that game, it just didn't work very well in terms of tonal manipulation - it would suddenly drop deaths on you that were applied to joke characters and ask you to care as if they were not joke characters. We'll see how 3 goes. I expect more of the same since at heart they're silly games.


----------



## Ralyks

BL3's writing is suppose to be more like the first game from what I've heard. I liked Jack, but I also believe they said 2, Pre-Sequel, and Tales are the end of Jacks story (although not-Troy Baker Rhys’s appearance so far has me already conjuring up theories).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

All the callback references to FFVI in FFXV made me realise that I haven't finished my current playthrough of VI. So I did that. Made my team, placed Cyan and Umaro in the bench where they belong and plowed right through Kefka's tower. Friendship powered, malevolent god slain, 20 minute ending viewed, game gets to go away until next time I want to remind myself why it's the best in the series. 

Well, it's got it's flaws of course. Especially playing now, without the rose blinding nostalgia goggles. And since I'm not shy to give even my favorite games a good kicking in the bollocks, may as well be my favorite Final Fantasy game right?

First and foremost, the game is too easy. 

Granted that my JRPG play style is to press pause on the story to do some side muckabouts resulting in my party becoming overpowered harbringers of death (Kefka's entire divine comedy entourage keeled over so easily). But even playing it dare I say 'casually' is still pretty simple and straightforward. Can be considered a good thing compared to the modern overthought latter day FF games, simplicity is good until the stray random strong monster 'casually' nibbles down your spine. 

Getting to the overpowered bit: the character balance is all over the place, which isn't as rewarding for the inexperienced. 

This is almost the same level of imbalance as most fighting games. To add more confusion, the game's 2 acts shifts the balance about making some of the character's focus jump either up or down. Mog for example gets a massive downgrade by the second act, which is no wonder why people try to recruit him as early as possible. Gau can either be another bench warmer or game breaking death incarnate, but that depends on how much grinding the player is willing to go through. To some extent, same with Setzer. Looks rather boring and useless, but slots are underrated, and give him Offering/Fixed Dice and watch him slaughter legions. Edgar is probably the most consistent of the lot, and being a magic focused game, Terra and Celes become the best characters in the game. Cyan and Umaro are characters who look great on paper, but in a sense of the fancy designs on toilet paper, ends up in butthole after use. Cyan in particular being most painful since his backstory is awesome, but my recent playthrough against Wrexsoul was straight up insulting. He possesses Terra, but was so overpowered that I was forced to resort to Strago's Roulette Lore waiting to 'accidentally' kill my best character to kill the boss. Seriously, screw you Cyan. 

Too many characters and none of them being a central focus. And it's more harmful to the gameplay than the story. 

Terra is ostensibly the main focus, but the lack of central character was deliberate. This was fine at the time, and perhaps even now. There's a nice little soap opera style narrative where shifting focus between characters and their mini backstories bring together an epic world with most of them you care about (more on this later). But 18 characters (some optional) is a hell of a lot of JRPG micromanagement. Even worse when you're switching weapons and equipment, at times encouraged by the game itself for optimum use. Either keep them on and forget to lose an important relic, or go back to tediously dressing up everyone up again. Sprint Shoes can piss right off (especially when they become mandatory to get Gogo). 

The 'meandering' on the second half of the game kills the urgency of the story. 

This was discussed much earlier in the thread, and while I defended it as it became a proto open world of free exploration to do whatever the hell you want, and the game has plenty for you to do and discover, but I've failed to admit that it does set the plot aside so that one's on me. Perhaps I was playing too much Yakuza games where that issue was the series' biggest detriment. The moment Setzer gets his new airship is where the world opens right up. You can either go straight to Kefka and finish the game (and die trying) or go search for your friends. Do the latter and you get all the loose ends all tied up. Some better than others (Strago and Relm get the short end), but a lot of them are worth it, especially for the amazing payoffs the game's ending presents. Obviously every player waits for Shadow before the plunge (his throws are way too good). Terra weirdly becomes optional but it's totally worth getting her back. Gau for me is mandatory, especially the charming scene of him in a suit. Locke is worth the payoff as he also gets some substantial upgrades, and as much as I bag on Cyan, he has one of the better stories so it's worth getting him back if only just to loiter the airship.... blah blah blah and here is where all these flaws come together where I ended up in a grinding time sink just for the sake of some Colosseum rewards to make the game even easier than it already is. No wonder I forgot to finish this playthrough recently. 

Oh yeah, and the game is showing it's age as time goes by. Low hanging fruit yes, but there's a reason a real choir of One Winged Angel is more remembered than the choral midi samples of Dancing Mad. Funny enough the series didn't get high tier orchestral quality until VIII, but I digress...

Over six paragraph walls of babbling text taking a dump on FFVI aside, I still think it's the best in the series. It balances the fine line of classic fantasy setting with latter day tech and ambition but without disappearing up it's own overdesigned overthought butt. Graphically, the rise of indie gaming giants like Undertale and Stardew Valley makes most iterations sit just fine. The music may have shown age, but the strong themes more than make up for it. Plus there's many official renditions of some of the score's finest moments (look up both the Distant Worlds and Black Mages rendition of Dancing Mad for instance). Of course there's also that issue of FFVI not having a definitive version to get the full experience, each have strengths and flaws, like the iOS version looking like a slapdash cash grab. Eh, whichever version is fine I suppose.


----------



## Empryrean

Been playing a night in the woods. I've given up on fighting games for now


----------



## Ralyks

Empryrean said:


> Been playing a night in the woods. I've given up on fighting games for now



I really want to do a second playthrough of this with different decisions. I adore this game. It's actually my PS4 menu theme.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Just beat DMC 5. Really fun game, story is ridiculous as is expected with the series but the gameplay is as slick as ever and that's the main draw anyway. Let the replays commence.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Actually, minor gripe about DMC 5: why did they drastically change some of the character's appearances? One that stuck out for me was Lady. When you see her in DMC 3 she looks hardened and I don't think she smiles once, like she's always ready for shit to go down. In DMC 5 here features are completely softened, the scar across her face is barely distinguishable, and she looks like she could fit a standard damsel in distress role. Most of the other returning characters also have some changes in their facial structures, so it just kind of distracted me a bit. Rant over.


----------



## Empryrean

Ralyks said:


> I really want to do a second playthrough of this with different decisions. I adore this game. It's actually my PS4 menu theme.


It's worth it! I have played it twice now with different choices and accidentally did a few of them the same as the first time, it's a cute game!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Master Chief Collection for PC prices revealed: Reach is only $10.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Any and everything Doom in order to prepare for Doom: Eternal. Also, after having found out that Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out in April which is when Borderlands 3 hits Steam, BL3 can lay by the wayside for a bit.


----------



## TedEH

Soooo, I can't be the only one watching E3 stuff and thinking that it's stiiiiiiiiiiiill really weirdly dissonant that we keep seeing stick-it-to-the-man, anti-corporate, etc. narratives being pumped out by..... gigantic companies that are exactly the thing the game narratives are calling evil.... right?


----------



## MFB

Is this in relation to SqEnix's Avengers conference where they announced flat out: free DLC expansions, no loot boxes, and no pay-to-win mechanics?


----------



## wankerness

Started playing the new AC: Odyssey DLC. God, this map is so ugly that it makes me not want to play it. It IS the underworld, after all, but still...


----------



## TedEH

MFB said:


> Is this in relation to SqEnix's Avengers conference where they announced flat out: free DLC expansions, no loot boxes, and no pay-to-win mechanics?


Are you asking me this question?

I'm thinking along the lines of things like Watch Dogs, BG&E, Mirrors Edge, etc. where the big theme/conceit of the story is "corporations are literally evil". But those games are made, and sold to us, by corporate giants. I can't turn off the part of my brain that reads this as ironic.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, I was thinking you meant as a real world developer commentary of sticking it to the companies who are pushing GaaS, not in-game 'company bad, little guy good'

Of the three mentioned, I've only played Mirror's Edge - but I believe that one was that you were betrayed by the person who hired you (a courier), and now you're just trying to stay alive while they hunt you down. I thought Watch Dogs was more about government spying and basically becoming a totalitarian state so that's why the protagonists were basically hacking towers and trying to free information, etc...

But yeah, any time there's a movie or media where "big X is the enemy" it never really sells me on it because you know, a different big X had to help make this product


----------



## Mathemagician

So on the topic of preordering everyone who preordered Shenmue via Kickstarter just to have the studio announce they were going through a big publisher after the fact has just announced that they won’t be honoring the steam release they made promises of and are going exclusively through the Epic launcher. 

Ostensibly because they were paid a ton of money to be exclusive though they have tried to play it off like an objective decision. 

So, sucks for anyone dumb enough to throw money at a preorder of an idea for a game several years out from even entering production.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Shit that sucks. I'm so iffy on Kickstarter projects now when I keep hearing shit like this, or projects just never seeing the light of day.


----------



## Mathemagician

Last one I backed was Star citizen. And I’m still salty the studio is trying to create “the matrix for chubby IT guys with disposable income” versus deliver an complete and concise space flight sim. 

I don’t need a whole second existence and job, I just wanna shoot dudes and steal stuff from other dudes. Maybe get my stuff stolen too.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Shit that sucks. I'm so iffy on Kickstarter projects now when I keep hearing shit like this, or projects just never seeing the light of day.


I've had pretty good luck with Kickstarter games tbh, you just have to be extremely diligent about not backing anything that doesn't have gameplay to show, and not backing inexperienced teams. I backed Darkest Dungeon (which is fantastic), Hyper Light Drifter (also fantastic), Jotun (excellent), The Long Dark (brutal but good), and Wasteland 2 (SO GOOD). I've only backed one game that I regret a bit and that was Aragami. Awesome concept but the execution wasn't quite there. Still, it's as close as we could get to a fresh take on Tenchu style stealth games.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I've been eyeing Darkest Dungeon to myself and my gf to get a good dungeon crawler going again.
Also bought The Long Dark back in 2017 I think and played it for a night. Definitely brutal but I've been meaning to come back to it, especially after several updates.
Didn't realize those titles were Kickstarters, though, so that's very interesting. Agree with you on the inexperienced devs with nothing to show yet, that's just asking for a shitshow.


----------



## Mathemagician

If you value your time play darkest dungeon on “easy”. It’s not easy. It just less “ok fuck this game” imo.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

I just started playing Dauntless (Monster Hunter clone-ish via Epic Games storefront). Pretty fun I suppose. It has nice visuals and stuff. I somehow managed to get stuck in the ground after doing a weird jump-pad move last night though. lol


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> If you value your time play darkest dungeon on “easy”. It’s not easy. It just less “ok fuck this game” imo.


yeah the normal mode is just fuckloads of grinding. Also fuck the crimson court


----------



## Leviathus

BlackMastodon said:


> Master Chief Collection for PC prices revealed: Reach is only $10.



I'm down with the $10 per title stuff, but WHERES THE RELEASE DATE?!!?


----------



## Ralyks

I stumbled upon the Haderax the Invincible boss in Borderlands 2, one, goddamn he was hard, two, his boss music is Bad. Ass.


----------



## Leviathus

Still Bloodborning and enjoying myself, but hadda rage today at the god damn brainsuckers in upper cathedral ward.... fuck those guys.


----------



## Werecow

I've just started a replay of GTA 5 singleplayer. The story telling is so well done and Trevor really makes me belly laugh.


----------



## wankerness

Finished the new AC:Odyssey DLC. It's not as good as the previous, but it has some fun boss fights, there are a lot of characters that died in the main plot that come back, and there's less tedium in fighting tons of those automaton guard dudes. The setting is just so damn ugly!


----------



## LeviathanKiller

LeviathanKiller said:


> I just started playing Dauntless (Monster Hunter clone-ish via Epic Games storefront). Pretty fun I suppose. It has nice visuals and stuff. I somehow managed to get stuck in the ground after doing a weird jump-pad move last night though. lol



I've been grinding on this game for a few days now and it's actually really fun. You're doing the same thing over and over essentially but somehow it doesn't feel so repetitive to want to quit.

The matchmaking sucks at times. If someone joins your (up to four) party but leaves, that spot won't fill in with someone else. And sometimes you may never get all of the spots filled before the load timer puts you into the game. It's only on occasion. Maybe 1/7 matches end up like that.

I also like the difficulty progression. As you go, you unlock new behemoths (as they're called) but also they will have new versions of the same base-level behemoths but with more advanced attacks and higher damage and so on.

Equipping the right armor (with built in perks), equipping the right cells in armor and weapon slots, and having the right weapons, consumables, and lantern all play into how you're going to fight the battle a lot. 

Just a note
Valomyr is too easy imo
Nightstalker is too hard


----------



## Tree

All the OG Splinter Cell games were just announced for back compatibility, so I will definitely be replaying the hell out of them soon. I'm stoked!


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Sigil, which is a map pack released by Romero (one of Doom's OG creators).


----------



## beerandbeards

Finally getting around to Ace Combat 7. I do enjoy this series and it looks awesome. However, I always thought the stories were weird and didn’t make a ton of sense to me. Just get me in the cockpit and tell me who to shoot down


----------



## BlackMastodon

Anyone pick up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night? I think it just released yesterday and I'm waiting for reviews but it looks pretty dang cool.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

LeviathanKiller said:


> I've been grinding on this game for a few days now and it's actually really fun. You're doing the same thing over and over essentially but somehow it doesn't feel so repetitive to want to quit.
> 
> The matchmaking sucks at times. If someone joins your (up to four) party but leaves, that spot won't fill in with someone else. And sometimes you may never get all of the spots filled before the load timer puts you into the game. It's only on occasion. Maybe 1/7 matches end up like that.
> 
> I also like the difficulty progression. As you go, you unlock new behemoths (as they're called) but also they will have new versions of the same base-level behemoths but with more advanced attacks and higher damage and so on.
> 
> Equipping the right armor (with built in perks), equipping the right cells in armor and weapon slots, and having the right weapons, consumables, and lantern all play into how you're going to fight the battle a lot.
> 
> Just a note
> Valomyr is too easy imo
> Nightstalker is too hard


I spent like 2hrs playing Dauntless yesterday. It's fun, it's like a less tedious Monster Hunter. I wish you could have skipped the tutorial and cinematics at the beginning though. So fucking annoying when games don't give the option to skip crap like that.

I'm having a lot of fun running around with the war pike and the chain scythes. Some of the faster behemoths like the Shrike were such a pain in the ass to fight with slower weapons.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

BlackMastodon said:


> Anyone pick up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night? I think it just released yesterday and I'm waiting for reviews but it looks pretty dang cool.



Just bought it digitally and waiting for installation. 

Though unfortunately my tight schedule is currently giving little time to be able to play it. Certainly doesn't help when I've still got FFXV to pummel through, and now Judgement's release date is just around the corner. I'll hopefully try to squeeze it in before the end of the week.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

KnightBrolaire said:


> I spent like 2hrs playing Dauntless yesterday. It's fun, it's like a less tedious Monster Hunter. I wish you could have skipped the tutorial and cinematics at the beginning though. So fucking annoying when games don't give the option to skip crap like that.
> 
> I'm having a lot of fun running around with the war pike and the chain scythes. Some of the faster behemoths like the Shrike were such a pain in the ass to fight with slower weapons.



Fighting Embermane (and the other dog-like variants) with anything other than the chain blades or guns is super hard because they run around so much.

Other than for completing challenges, guns are the way to go imo


----------



## Rosal76

Tree said:


> All the OG Splinter Cell games were just announced for back compatibility, so I will definitely be replaying the hell out of them soon. I'm stoked!



That is cool news. My God, that Bath house level (mission 9) in Chaos Theory! Trying to get 100% stealth on that mission was f__king hard!!!


----------



## Tree

Rosal76 said:


> That is cool news. My God, that Bath house level (mission 9) in Chaos Theory! Trying to get 100% stealth on that mission was f__king hard!!!



But so much fun! I played Chaos Theory very religiously back in the day. It's still my favorite I think.


----------



## thrsher

BlackMastodon said:


> Anyone pick up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night? I think it just released yesterday and I'm waiting for reviews but it looks pretty dang cool.


im actually a KS backer of the project. i got the game on monday but im gonna wait for some patches before is start playing. im still massively obsessed with mk11 anyways


----------



## KnightBrolaire

LeviathanKiller said:


> Fighting Embermane (and the other dog-like variants) with anything other than the chain blades or guns is super hard because they run around so much.
> 
> Other than for completing challenges, guns are the way to go imo


I made the mistake of fighting the regular embermane with an axe the first time. Holy shit was that annoying. there is something super satisfying about staggering fast behemoths with the hammer though


----------



## ImNotAhab

I have given up on Hollow Knight. I am just not cut out for it.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So... Bloodstained Ritual Of The Night is a retro style 2D platformer kickstarter project by Koji Igarashi's Konami exodus team similar to Castlevania. Or to better explain it, Bloodstained Ritual Of The Night is Castlevania. Seriously it's just Castlevania. Same Metroidvania exploration, same 2D hack/slash, same visual style, same music, it IS Castlevania, well namely SOTN, Aria/Dawn of Sorrow style Castlevania. And it's awesome because of it.

Only just spent a few minutes going through the tutorial level and boss and already having fun with the weapon styles and the raging itch to backtrack later. I'm a bit disappointed that it starts rather slapdash: on a ship during a storm where you can guess what the boss is kinda like. It's the fantasy equivalent of having an open helicopter full of soldiers being shot down. Hell even Salt & Sanctuary started the same way. Intro and laughable story aside, it's classic utterly shameless Castlevania aping fun. The Lords Of Shadow series don't even count as proper Castlevania games compared to this.

One thing I don't miss from it's Konami made ancestors is that your character isn't a dramatic ponce like Alucard, Soma or the entire Belmont clan and hurl herself backwards with so much as an ear flick. So no annoying pushback to previous rooms from a stray enemy's cough here thankfully.

TL/DR: One of the better Kickstarter success stories.

With this, FFXV, the inevitable Judgement, and my procrastination to get Sekiro, it's going to be tough to juggle gaming time in the next few months.


----------



## MFB

ImNotAhab said:


> I have given up on Hollow Knight. I am just not cut out for it.



I love almost every aspect of it, the exception being the part that there's absolute ZERO guidance or direction as to what to do or where to go.


----------



## ImNotAhab

MFB said:


> I love almost every aspect of it, the exception being the part that there's absolute ZERO guidance or direction as to what to do or where to go.



I am beyond crap at this game. It's really quite embarrassing. My sanity, parental responsibilities and cowardice prevents me from devoting time to Souls-Borne style masochism, even the 2D adorable kind.


----------



## wankerness

I* hated *Hollow Knight cause of the soulsborne mechanism of losing all your currency when you die unless you run back and pick it up again. It made bosses very annoying. Especially when the game would bug out and all your "souls" disappeared. I think I got past the first boss and said screw this. I'd been expecting a metroidvania game, not a soulsborne with metroidvania setting.


----------



## mongey

ImNotAhab said:


> I have given up on Hollow Knight. I am just not cut out for it.


You can do it. I quit twice. Even deleted it , the a week later re installed. Was def happy when I finished it. Have a few bosses I didn’t fight wanna go back one day but not ready yet.


----------



## Leviathus

Beat Bloodborne a few days ago, great game. Debating whether to start a new build and do a fresh playthrough or NG+ next go around, but that'll be a bit as i scooped Dark Souls 3 on the Steam sale over the weekend to usher in a new era of ragequitting. Also good to see the front man from Portal get a cameo...


----------



## BlackMastodon

Decided to get Bloodstained this morning and played it for a few hours. So far I really like it, it's a good challenge and something I really gotta get used to since the game is not as much hack and slash as it is reading the enemy's attacks and reacting. I never really got into metroidvania style games so this is new territory, but I like that there are some RPG elements to the game in varying your equipment and having different weapons attack in specific ways, switching out spells to accommodate situations. It doesn't really seem punishing like a Souls game so I'm enjoying the challenge.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

BlackMastodon said:


> It doesn't really seem punishing like a Souls game so I'm enjoying the challenge.



Yeah, Bloodstained is less of the Rougelike and Soulsbourne flavoured recent 2D Meteroidvania games like Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight, more harking back to the originators of the Metroid and Castlevania inbreeding. It's even to the point where the short/long sword strikes are exactly like SOTN where you'll be diagonal/down slashing a bunch of annoying weedy enemies a lot to get by. I did that impulsively when I started but after getting a few weapons like the katanas, I had to rethink that bit. 

So far it's moderately tough but not full relentless (at least on normal difficulty). I am struggling with the second boss as I'm still getting used to the dodge as it's not the same as Alucard's moon walking.

I probably should give Hollow Knight a go but between this and Salty Sancho, I've got my Metroidvania itch well and truly scratched for a while.


----------



## MFB

One thing I'm realizing with HK, is that I don't think there is a truly defined "order" its just that the areas you get to dependant on the skills you have/ability to traverse through another one define it. The only truly locked areas Ive found are obes where the switch is blocked and therefore inaccessible. 

Today alone I've found 3 new areas, so its weird trying to get use go that after so many years of, "I have a mission that requires me to go here, and as part of THAT mission, I now have to go over there."


----------



## BlackMastodon

Also the main theme I've heard in blood so far has a similar melody to the chorus in Ghost's Crucified (which I think is a cover anyway). Just makes me think of it all the time.

Also Salty Sancho


----------



## mongey

damn wonder boy in monster land is coming out on switch this week . gonna have to get it. was obsessed by this game back in the arcade days .used to be able to finish it off 1 credit . think I even finished it a few items without using the revival pill you start with


----------



## Leviathus

Kinda wish i never got Overwatch for the PC (used to be on ps4). It's a rarity when you have a game where there isn't someone being shitty in the text chat, but can't go back to controller and lower framerates now .


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

BlackMastodon said:


> Also the main theme I've heard in blood so far has a similar melody to the chorus in Ghost's Crucified (which I think is a cover anyway). Just makes me think of it all the time.
> 
> Also Salty Sancho



Yeah, the music is excellent and like every other aspect, utterly shameless in being a Castlevania game in all but name. Same composer as well, and gets even more obvious with some of the instrument choices sounding just like SOTN.

The "Crucified" descending chord progression (for the sake of naming), is a the long standard of baroque composition, but it fits right at home with the whole Dracula horror trope so I can see why it's milked in every Castlevania game. 

Also I love Crucified. Original, and the Ghost cover. The original clip on the other hand...


----------



## TedEH

Steam sale has started.... I definitely had a moment of going "ugh, I dunno if I can stretch these games at these prices" them immediately remembered that I paid more than that for my coffee this morning.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Yeah so far the Steam sale hasn't hit my wallet yet, might splurge for Warhammer Total War 2, but I haven't touched the first one in a couple years and might wait a bit longer. I know they both interact with each other as if 2 is an expansion for 1, where if you own both, you get to use all the races in the campaigns for both, but I'm not in a huge rush. Maybe when I work through my backlog or get an extended amount of free time, maybe this winter when I also jump back into painting my Warhammer minis again. 

Also, Bloodstained is feeling significantly easier at the moment after gearing up a bit and hitting level 16 or so, but I am about to move on to a couple of new areas so I'm sure I'll eat my words. It is really nice to only take 1 damage from bats I didn't notice out of a 500 hp bar, instead of taking 5 damage when I only have 140 hp like I did earlier. Made traveling back to tougher areas where I need to keep as much hp so much harder.


----------



## Mathemagician

Dark Souls 3 is far and away the easiest DS game. You have almost the exact speed of blood borne from the get-go, and you have years of experience taking it slow from prior games. 

Also you can reduce the # of mana flasks for more estus sunny D flasks. 

It’s a brilliantly designed game, but not “hard” at least relative to prior games IMO.


----------



## lurè

I really need to play Divinity 1 and 2 and also Baldur's Gate. The announcement of BG3 has really pumped me, plus I'm a huge rpg fan and I've never played those games. 
Shame on me.


----------



## Bearitone

Played some split screen Halo 4 with some friends over the weekend. By far my favorite halo game


----------



## Leviathus

Scooped Wooden Cog Liquid V: The Ghostly Discomfort on the Steam sale. Couldn't pass it up for 12 bucks, always wanted to try out the mods for PC.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm trying to clean up the rest of the trophies for Mad Max on PS4. Collectibles are the worst part of open-world games.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

grabbed Sunset Overdrive for PC. Hopefully it's a decent port.


----------



## Ralyks

So for some reason, I was compelled to finish the first Batman Telltale game over 2 days. Enjoyed it quite a bit. Started Enemy Within, may play a bit more tonight.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Ran into a glitched camp in Mad Max. Opened a box of scrap but can't collect it. I'm gonna see if uninstalling and reinstalling the game might fix it.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just started playing FF10. I forgot how addicting a good JPRG is. Never played it past like Luca. Just got there so looking forward to actually learning the story. I should have picked standard grid because I have zero idea what I’m doing in expert. YOLO I’m learning steal ASAP. I bet there’s cool stuff to steal. Never realized in the past that Khimari was a blue/red mage.


----------



## mongey

Grabbed wonderboy in monster land. So good. Def is a happy place for me.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Uninstalled and reinstalled Mad Max. Still busted. There goes getting that platinum.


----------



## TedEH

I finished Mario RPG finally. It's a good game but I feel like after a while it looses that sense of mechanical satisfaction just because there's not much variety, and the story is kind of thin for what it is. You know how some games or movies or stories or whatnot might hook you and leave you with a sense of "ok now what" when it's done? This game doesn't have that. It's more of a "well, that's out of the way" kind of feeling. Is it weird to review a game on the basis of your feelings when it's done? Maybe. But that's what I do, apparently. 

I sat down and played Quarantine Circular last night though. It's one of those short narrative-based indie type deals. In a sense, it's a glorified text/conversation game with some visuals behind it, but I still like what they did. It definitely "has an angle" or "has an agenda", but isn't tooooo on the nose about the "right options" even if it lets you make all the choices. It's presented as sort of "here's a situation, and each character looks at it from a very different angle" but the author sort of fails in a way to avoid painting some of those options as antagonistic. It's hard to describe without spoiling it for anyone who wants to play it. Good game? Yes. Do I like what they're trying to do? Yes. Does it succeed at what it's trying to do? Mostly. It has it's flaws, but it's a decent short experience.


----------



## Ralyks

My only issue with Mario RPG was that it never got a direct sequel and most of those great characters were lost to time and probably Square having ownership when they and Nintendo had their falling out.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

lurè said:


> I really need to play Divinity 1 and 2 and also Baldur's Gate. The announcement of BG3 has really pumped me, plus I'm a huge rpg fan and I've never played those games.
> Shame on me.



I’m enjoying reading about new players experience with BG, since I grew up with it I’ve forgotten how unforgiving and complicated it can be when you first start. Dragonage, elder scrolls, withcher etc have a lot of BG influence in them.



Carrion Rocket said:


> Uninstalled and reinstalled Mad Max. Still busted. There goes getting that platinum.



It’s really depressing that game never got a final patch to address those issues and to add in reset options for camps and convoys.


----------



## Mprinsje

I have recently bought Medieval 2 Total War again, really enjoying it. That's the only game i'm playing every now and then


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Going through Bloodstained ROTN, and accidentally got myself the bad ending by stumbing into the 'final boss' room like an uninvited guest.  I should've known better since the signs were all there (large destructible staircase) and it's an Igavania game; aka I'm supposed to troddle about more doing random arbitrary stuff whilst filling out that map. That pool of blood isn't going to clean itself.

The deeper I go, the flaws are starting to be more apparent. And that's not just the random frame drops and freezing when too much is going on either.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Curious what you mean by the flaws. I've seen several bugs where I can't pickup dropped loot from demons and had the game crash once or twice, but anything else besides bugs? I'm still at a point now where the game is quite easy: I was fighting the guy to get the double jump ability and didn't even need to heal.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> My only issue with Mario RPG was that it never got a direct sequel and most of those great characters were lost to time and probably Square having ownership when they and Nintendo had their falling out.


Technically true, but that was the point of the other Mario-based RPG games wasn't it? Paper Mario and the Mario+Luigi games? I haven't played them, but from what I understand, they're supposed to be sort of spiritual successors.


----------



## Ralyks

While you are correct, I'm taking about the the universe with Geno, Mallow, Boshi, Frofucious, Punchinello, Jonathan Jones... Characters like that.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

BlackMastodon said:


> Curious what you mean by the flaws. I've seen several bugs where I can't pickup dropped loot from demons and had the game crash once or twice, but anything else besides bugs? I'm still at a point now where the game is quite easy: I was fighting the guy to get the double jump ability and didn't even need to heal.



My gripes are largely based on the fact that Bloodstained is a kickstarter game fueled by nostalgia. Not a flaw itself but this game lives and dies by nostalgia and it brings along all the flaws with it. I'm not one to strongly encourage this, and all the poltergeists with the portraits of the backers started really weighing it down. These guys threw a lot of cash to Igarashi and co to dig through Konami's graveyard for chunks of Castlevania 2D corpses and Frankenstein a 'Castlevania' game in all but name and get immotalised in it. Hell, Shovel Knight is in here.

In turn, for better or worse, it's exactly that. But it also brings it's issues. For one, it's a harrowing reminder that Symphony Of the Night (1997) and Aria Of Sorrow (2003): the 2 games this apes the most, are showing signs of age. So the pioneers of Metroidvania are getting overshadowed by the new games like the Soulsborne inspirations because Bloodstained offers nothing new. The difficulty is the same as well; the RPG elements make the game really easy and trivial. Getting the Rhava Bhurial weapon made me get away with reckless tanking, well at least until the lower depths anyway. Structurally it's also the same. The map looks suspiciously similar to SOTN, and even the gameplay structure to achieve full exploration to the good endings are similar too. And despite the big exploration aspect, it's actually a lot more linear if you really break it down... as if it was a 20+ year old game.

Maybe I'm just nitpicking, dipping my fly in the nostalgia ointment ruin and ruining everyone's fun. But I'm actually having fun myself. I'm about 75% of the map explored, just grabbed a shard that works like a huge part of SOTN and on my way to the northwestern part. I'm still loving the game, even if I've already done this all before.



I probably should've got Bloodstained Curse Of The Moon first, since that's a prequel. And you get to play more characters, the main guy being that dude who looks like the most Japanophile cosplayer at your local Comic Con (aka, me at 17).


----------



## Demiurge

I downloaded Bloodstained the other day. My computer kind of sucks but I got it to run acceptably with all the graphical effects set to low. It looks good and seems like it has a shitload of stuff to do. Game starts crashing when attempting to open a book from the first bookcase in the castle which is apparently a known issue. I'm just gonna wait a few patches before I really tuck into it because lord knows its probably got a bunch of other bugs that haven't been worked-out.

I am a shameless Metroidvania slut so I know I'll get around to it and enjoy it, but in the meantime there was a Steam sale so I'm just adding to my backlog.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Had a but if a struggle with the hyperspeed dude and then blood lady kicked my ass several times today, so game is definitely back on the tough side.  

Ididn't bother using the Rhava Bhurial weapon at all since the weapons I had at the time had better stats. I'm curious what the weapons that you buy with the 8-bit coins are even for though. By the time I could afford to buy one of the coins all my gear was loads better than any of those weapons.


----------



## Tenaba

Mprinsje said:


> I have recently bought Medieval 2 Total War again, really enjoying it. That's the only game i'm playing every now and then


It really is a great game, probably my favorite from the franchise. The Kingdoms expansion is also great, especially the Britannia subcampaign.


----------



## mongey

been playing smash ultimate after not really getting into it when it came out. enjoying it allot more this time round . just dicking around unlocking all the characters ,trying them all . think I have 4 left to unlock 

will venture online and see how bad I get wiped soon


----------



## KnightBrolaire

been playing a bunch of dauntless because it's a fun timewaster. I prefer it to Monster Hunter since it's nowhere near as grindy (granted it also lacks the depth  ). The radiant/umbral monsters are super cool.


----------



## TedEH

I started playing System Shock Enhanced.... and if there's ever a game that you could say hasn't aged very will, this might be the one. Enjoying it? Yes. Also sometimes struggling with it? Also yes.

I also spent a lot of time this weekend hungover and playing DK Racing. Apparently, that game is much easier as an adult. Adventure mode completed up to the first credits screen in two sittings. (Spoiler, that's not really the end of the game.)


----------



## StevenC

Had Celeste on my Switch for a long time and finally got to playing it. I'm dying so much and I love it!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Demiurge said:


> I'm just gonna wait a few patches before I really tuck into it because lord knows its probably got a bunch of other bugs that haven't been worked-out.



Another small but slightly irritating bug is when some of the map outlines start disappear on map mode. This is most evident late in the game when most of the map is filled.



BlackMastodon said:


> Had a but if a struggle with the hyperspeed dude and then blood lady kicked my ass several times today, so game is definitely back on the tough side.
> 
> Ididn't bother using the Rhava Bhurial weapon at all since the weapons I had at the time had better stats. I'm curious what the weapons that you buy with the 8-bit coins are even for though. By the time I could afford to buy one of the coins all my gear was loads better than any of those weapons.



After the bloodless, I was wandering in the mines until I figured out how to progress. It's like how SOTN doesn't bother to tell you how to get to places. Then suddenly the difficulty got higher. I'm struggling at the point I'm in, thinking I can get through before realising I'm out of pizzas and heal potions and cowering back to the nearest warp. 

The Rhava Bhurial has weak stats but the attack is so mash friendly fast and creates wide wave slashes in front of you. SOTN had the same weapon as well. At least here it gets obsolete later on. Then I found out you can craft a Rhava Velar, which I'm one rare ingredient away... bloody hell. 

The 8-Bit coin weapons don't look like much, other than a unique trait. And looks like you can upgrade them with 16-bit and 32-bit coins making them stronger. I've got 2 8-Bit coins but haven't used them yet.


----------



## NotDonVito

Leviathus said:


> Kinda wish i never got Overwatch for the PC (used to be on ps4). It's a rarity when you have a game where there isn't someone being shitty in the text chat, but can't go back to controller and lower framerates now .


I pretty much quit OW cause' I was tired of putting up with it's chaotic nature. I've climbed from silver to masters over 6 loooooong ass seasons, and literally nothing has changed  

MAYBE role que will fix the game since 99% of arguments start over team comps in solo que. I think Blizzard should have thought this element out more. You can't expect to do well when you've got Hog otp filling on fucking Ana. LFG sucks because it takes too long to organize, and you can't even use it anymore if you're GM+ now because Korean pro teams were abusing ladder and farming SR off average andy east coast players, so now it's limited to 2 people per group. I feel like they're gonna do away with it one day, it just seems like a misguided afterthought.

The best community solution for solo que atm would be to learn Ball/Mercy comp since it's so random and flexible, but then the reality hits that most elo's aren't skilled enough to pull it off, not to mention that Rein/Zarya have fallen out of the meta slightly, which is what Ball/Mercy was so good against in the first place. /rantover


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> Technically true, but that was the point of the other Mario-based RPG games wasn't it? Paper Mario and the Mario+Luigi games? I haven't played them, but from what I understand, they're supposed to be sort of spiritual successors.



Paper Mario’s were unique in their own right but they were not anything like Super Mario RPG.

And the Mario + Luigi games were amazing Mario rpg games, but not in the same universe (as stated above) or with any of the cool characters or unique “fat sprite” art style, etc etc.


----------



## Ralyks

Hastag Justice for Geno and Mallow!

Anyway, just wanted to say in Borderlands 2, the grind to level 80? The struggle is real. And now you can get to OP10? Shit. BL3 will be out by the time I get to that.


----------



## mongey

StevenC said:


> Had Celeste on my Switch for a long time and finally got to playing it. I'm dying so much and I love it!


I need to go back to it. Was enjoying it and got to the windy section. Hit a wall and never went back. It’s def worth another try.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> Mario + Luigi games were amazing Mario rpg games


I don't hear them talked about very often, but it's tempting to track those ones down and try them out. Seems like it'd be cheaper than trying to get a copy of Paper Mario.


----------



## Ralyks

StevenC said:


> Had Celeste on my Switch for a long time and finally got to playing it. I'm dying so much and I love it!



I need to get back to this. Have it on PS4. Tight gameplay, amazing soundtrack, intriguing story.... Then I hit a wall and haven't been back.


----------



## Metropolis

I picked up few old games from Steam's summer sale, because I never played these; Borderlands 2, Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Also first Borderlands from mmoga.com, because it was cheaper there than in Steam's sale. And I had to pick up The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt game of the year edition for PC too, because it's that good. We have that one also for PS4 though. 40 euros well spent  Bought DOOM too a while ago, haven't got time to touch any of these yet.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Decided to put Noctis and his paid friends on hold to lean right into Bloodstained for the week. Spent some time grinding for shards, items, weapons and food (namely for that gluttonous old wench), past a few major plot moments, 95% of the map filled and now in the endgame. And just when I discovered the joys of the Welcoming Party shard...



Bloody_Inferno said:


> The Rhava Bhurial has weak stats but the attack is so mash friendly fast and creates wide wave slashes in front of you. SOTN had the same weapon as well. At least here it gets obsolete later on. Then I found out you can craft a Rhava Velar, which I'm one rare ingredient away... bloody hell.



...and now I have the Rhava Velar. It's the Crissaegrim all over again. Between this Welcoming Party, the enemies and boss fights just got trivial. Granted that at this point there's not much challenge left, but the satisfaction of going back to the enemies I had trouble with and proceed to multi slice them out of sheer pettiness is as fun as ever. 

I do want to experiment on other weapons, even if it means taking the time to craft them. I spent one of my 8-Bit coins on what is essentially a light saber, and I noticed a shard that makes weapon speed faster so I want to try that out with the great swords and spears I've been avoiding due to how slow they are.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Picked up Burnout Paradise Remastered at the local walmart on my lunch break. Still has the same shitty soundtrack, and annoying game mechanics, but it's 19 year old me's favorite game all prettied up.


----------



## Ralyks

As someone who never played the original Burnout Paradise, I love the hell out of the remaster.... Except it feels impossible to navigate the soundtrack, yeah.


----------



## MetalHex

Far Cry Instincts Predator is now backward conpatible for the Xbox One!


----------



## wankerness

I finally played Bloodstained somewhat seriously. I think I'm about 7 hours in and ~95% map coverage, level 40 or something. I've only done one of the "optional" bosses (the carpenter) and it sucked up all my healing items and was scary; I'm guessing I should be higher level! I haven't gone into the last zone (the ice cave or whatever) to try the last boss yet. It's overall fairly fun, like kind of a greatest hits combo of the two best Castlevania games (SOTN and the last GBA one) but a bit less polished. I've had the game crash out on me a couple times on PS4 and it has some trouble with loading rooms/pause screens sometimes. Plus, the map and skills just feel a little bit more janky and thrown together. And I am not a fan of the crafting system, especially the fuckin food, partly thanks to money being hard to come by, partly thanks to shards getting downgraded if you sell "spares" of them, cutting that possible source of revenue off!! Still, great fun if you're into this kind of thing, which I definitely am. I'd put it up there with the DS games for sure. I'm pleasantly surprised something this polished actually came of this. I remember funding the kickstarter and choosing an xbox 360 version years and years ago  I'm glad they didn't lock you into that decision given all the years it took!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

^ I just finished it on the weekend and cleaned 100% on the map. I'm just gearing up because I think there's one more boss around...

Yeah it's a great "successor" to "Castlevania", and all the stuff incorporated from Aria Of Sorrow and Order Of Eclessia (namely the shards mechanic), is excellent. I'm sort of finding it difficult to get money to afford the expensive stuff like the discount cards and 16/32 bit coins, but with my current state, I probably don't need it. Maxing out the Luck stat helps a lot though, and I didn't realise maxing the stat buffing shards adds a permanent effect.

I'm not a fan of crafting in games even in the best of times, and having it here brings it down too. Food is definitely important thanks to permanent stat boosts and cheaper than the Hi/EX potions, but to craft it just to be available for purchase (and then at high prices) makes it a pain for tougher bosses. Me having the Crissaegrim equivalent not withstanding. 

I've already said my biggest gripe is that Bloodstained lives and dies by nostalgia, and the fact that it actually succeeded is a double edged sword. On one hand, yeah, Igarashi and co finally made the game both they and the fans wanted, but on the other hand, it's going to be the main poster game that perpetuating nostalgia can be championed when the fans who want more of the same things they've already had throw fist fulls of cash at them. But even as I beat that around, I'm just happy we got a good Metroidvania out of it.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ^ I just finished it on the weekend and cleaned 100% on the map. I'm just gearing up because I think there's one more boss around...
> 
> Yeah it's a great "successor" to "Castlevania", and all the stuff incorporated from Aria Of Sorrow and Order Of Eclessia (namely the shards mechanic), is excellent. I'm sort of finding it difficult to get money to afford the expensive stuff like the discount cards and 16/32 bit coins, but with my current state, I probably don't need it. Maxing out the Luck stat helps a lot though, and I didn't realise maxing the stat buffing shards adds a permanent effect.
> 
> I'm not a fan of crafting in games even in the best of times, and having it here brings it down too. Food is definitely important thanks to permanent stat boosts and cheaper than the Hi/EX potions, but to craft it just to be available for purchase (and then at high prices) makes it a pain for tougher bosses. Me having the Crissaegrim equivalent not withstanding.
> 
> I've already said my biggest gripe is that Bloodstained lives and dies by nostalgia, and the fact that it actually succeeded is a double edged sword. On one hand, yeah, Igarashi and co finally made the game both they and the fans wanted, but on the other hand, it's going to be the main poster game that perpetuating nostalgia can be championed when the fans who want more of the same things they've already had throw fist fulls of cash at them. But even as I beat that around, I'm just happy we got a good Metroidvania out of it.



In this case I really couldn't care less that it's "more of the same" as most of those DS/GBA games were basically just more of the same done well from SOTN. Everything released since then has totally sucked and been something else so this really feels more like an official sequel than the likes of anything else with the Castlevania game since Order of Ecclesia, besides maybe that frustrating multiplayer rush SOTN looking thing. It didn't feel to me like a pure nostalgia thing as it used a modern engine and whatnot to just recreate the same kind of gameplay. If it had been done with the same graphical style or something maybe I'd think it was more of a nostalgia cashgrab. I disliked the 8-bit "prequel" thing for that reason.


----------



## Leviathus

Grabbed the OG Thief trilogy off the Steam sale, came to $3.10 with tax whoo!! Will try later.


----------



## MetalHex

Leviathus said:


> Grabbed the OG Thief trilogy off the Steam sale, came to $3.10 with tax whoo!! Will try later.


Awesome let me know how you like them!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished up the elite license and collectibles in BP: Remastered. I started a little bit of Big Surf Island and then I might work on some of those garbage online trophies.



Ralyks said:


> Except it feels impossible to navigate the soundtrack, yeah.


While I can respect that they didn't THPS HD the soundtrack, much of the license soundtrack is late '00s trash. The last gen versions allowed you to use a custom soundtrack from the music on the game system, but the sound was so muted it's was pointless. Especially when a bunch of the cars don't have incar speakers and thus there's no soundtrack played when driving those cars.


----------



## Empryrean

I've just gotten into Bloodstained lately and I gotta say this is really scratching my Hollow Knight itch while we wait for silk song


----------



## mongey

anyone playing bloodstained on switch ? Id be keen to play it but I read bad things about the switch version .Home life means all my gaming is done on my commute. so ps4 play through inst going to happen


----------



## KnightBrolaire

been playing a shitload of siege. I haven't played in years, so I'm trash at the game, but it's still a ton of fun.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Decided to prolong my negligence or Prince Noctis and The New ManPower Generation and bought Samurai Shodown 2019 on a whim.

It's a weird fighting game to release in the climate of anime ADD combos and gimmicky mechanics. SamSho19 ignores all that, and offers almost nothing new. Whatever unique mechanics have all been in previous SNK games before. The game barely if not ever focuses on combos, and rushing in on the offense or even a slight mistake punishes you HARD. Lots of focus on defense, pokes/footsies, slow but powerful round ending weapon strikes. Matches are much slower paced and drawn out to the point of agonising at times. Some matches may just be staring matches between turtles that suddenly becomes a race against the clock on who makes the first mistake.

And that's exactly why I love the Samurai Showdown games. It's a real patient man's game. There's unique charm in every character that so many fighting games lack and it's still the deepest weapon based fighting game. SamSho19 is certainly scratching that itch better than Soul Calibur 6 did so I'll be enjoying the hell out of this for a while... well until I get Judgement at a decent price anyway.


----------



## StevenC

Been playing loads of F1 2019, need to resist buying a racing wheel.


----------



## BananaDemocracy

Ok right now I’m playing:
Mega man 11
Robonauts and one strike *total of 50 cents in the Nintendo sale shop

Anyone else love Qubic games?


----------



## ImNotAhab

Just finished all the Uncharted Games. Good fun but a bit overrated.

Not sure what to play next... There is nothing new that i would pay full price for. Maybe i will dive back on to my "Asshole" Play through of Fallout 4 i put aside two years ago.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

ImNotAhab said:


> Just finished all the Uncharted Games. Good fun but a bit overrated.
> 
> Not sure what to play next... There is nothing new that i would pay full price for. Maybe i will dive back on to my "Asshole" Play through of Fallout 4 i put aside two years ago.


If you have FO4 on PC, then install a bunch of mods, they really breathe new life into the game.


----------



## ImNotAhab

KnightBrolaire said:


> If you have FO4 on PC, then install a bunch of mods, they really breathe new life into the game.



Cheers brother, thats a great suggestion. I have not messed around with any mods in FO4/Skyrim. I am not part of the PC master race but I am sure there are some decent mods available on the xbox.


----------



## Mathemagician

I know Xbox got the lions share of good Skyrim mods. I’m on PS4 and due to some limiting rule they basically cut out any good or interesting mods.


----------



## WhiteLightOfDeath

I jUST DOWNLOADED the DLC for SPLATOON 2 and SUPER SMASH BROS
It’s on sale which never happens! DLC and Nintendo sales are rare

Target.com is where i got mine so heads up Nintendo Fans!


----------



## Goatfork

Just finished Red Dead Redemption 2 last night and I absolutely loved it.


----------



## Mathemagician

Took a break from FF10 after a Marlboro in calm lands just TPK’d my party for the first time ever after I’d been capturing creatures for a half hour. 

Just started playing Dragons Crown Pro. The levels are short enough that I’m really liking the pacing/gameplay loop and I like being able to use AI conpanions. The art style is so awesome too. Running around as a blonde Ghimli swinging hammers.


----------



## Ralyks

Chapter 11 in Yakuza Kiwami 2. Probably going to buy Judgement after I finish YK2 so I can still hang out in Kamurocho until either one, finally announce the Yakuza 3 to 5 remasters in the west or two, I just hunt down a copy of 3 on PS3 since I already got 4 and 5 for free at random points on PS3.


----------



## Ribboz

Replaying Fallout New Vegas for the 20th time. sigh. Everything I wanted to play got pushed to 2020. >:| Epic.


----------



## WhiteLightOfDeath

Anyone who plays splatoon or super smash, please add me, we can get a friend game/lobby going...
PM me with your switch code and user/name....please, And thanks! 

My name is hiddnsword, ill post code later


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Started Warframe on PC and considering Octopath Traveler since it went to PC as well.


----------



## Werecow

Ribboz said:


> Replaying Fallout New Vegas for the 20th time. sigh. Everything I wanted to play got pushed to 2020. >:| Epic.



I love New Vegas. What games got pushed to 2020 for you? I'm guessing Outer Worlds is one?


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Werecow said:


> I love New Vegas. What games got pushed to 2020 for you? I'm guessing Outer Worlds is one?




So far, that's still in October. I was going to start Borderlands 3 in April until CDProjektRed fucked that up in the best way possible.


----------



## Werecow

PunkBillCarson said:


> So far, that's still in October. I was going to start Borderlands 3 in April until CDProjektRed fucked that up in the best way possible.



Ribboz mentioned Epic, so i'm assuming that like for me, it definitely means 2020 release date 

Yeh man, i really can't wait for Cyberpunk. I've gone on blackout now though as i think they're revealing too much of the story (including that last trailer from E3). I don't want to know anymore about the game.


----------



## Ribboz

Werecow said:


> I love New Vegas. What games got pushed to 2020 for you? I'm guessing Outer Worlds is one?


Outer Worlds is one. Was really looked forward to it. But the first insult was Metro Exodus. I don't preorder. But I was willing to spend full price. Then I heard it was being taken off steam. Quickly jumped to buy it. I missed out on buying Metro Exodus by a MINUTE. I know because I added it to my cart, refreshed the page, and it was taken down. Now I have to wait a year. Well they lost out on full price. I'll wait for a sale. Same for Outer Worlds.

I'm also extremely excited for Cyberpunk 2077. I'm buying that from GoG.


----------



## Ribboz

Werecow said:


> Ribboz mentioned Epic, so i'm assuming that like for me, it definitely means 2020 release date
> 
> Yeh man, i really can't wait for Cyberpunk. I've gone on blackout now though as i think they're revealing too much of the story (including that last trailer from E3). I don't want to know anymore about the game.



Oh yeah, Borderlands 3 too. I can wait.

And yeah I'm on black out all the games I mentioned. Haven't watched one video on Metro Exodus yet.

Edit: sorry about double post. Didn't see edit button.


----------



## Mathemagician

PunkBillCarson said:


> Started Warframe on PC and considering Octopath Traveler since it went to PC as well.



I’ve got like 600 hrs in Warframe on PC. Such a fun diablo style game. Definitely a game I don’t mind putting a few $ into every year or two.


----------



## Werecow

Ribboz said:


> Outer Worlds is one. Was really looked forward to it. But the first insult was Metro Exodus. I don't preorder. But I was willing to spend full price. Then I heard it was being taken off steam. Quickly jumped to buy it. I missed out on buying Metro Exodus by a MINUTE. I know because I added it to my cart, refreshed the page, and it was taken down. Now I have to wait a year. Well they lost out on full price. I'll wait for a sale. Same for Outer Worlds.
> 
> I'm also extremely excited for Cyberpunk 2077. I'm buying that from GoG.



I managed to jump on Metro before it went from Steam. I won't spoil anything about it, will just say that it's one of my favourite games of the year, and definitely worth getting 

I love the first two Metros and i think Exodus is my favourite. There's quite a bit of open-world in it, but it still definitely feels like Metro to me.


I'm trying to look at the Outer Worlds situation as getting a fully patched and bug-free version by the time it hits Steam hahaha.


----------



## chopeth

Dark Souls III a friend lent me

Arrived to a dragon spitting fire and had the chance to escape but there's a knight who destroys me everytime I arrive to that point. In the other path there's a guy almost naked with a long sword and kills me in a couple of strikes too. Starting to get stuck and only got one boss


----------



## BlackMastodon

chopeth said:


> Dark Souls III a friend lent me
> 
> Arrived to a dragon spitting fire and had the chance to escape but there's a knight who destroys me everytime I arrive to that point. In the other path there's a guy almost naked with a long sword and kills me in a couple of strikes too. Starting to get stuck and only got one boss


This sounds exactly like my experience with DS whenever I try to get into it.


----------



## NotDonVito

Tried auto chess, discovered it's just hearthstone except you'll be dead IRL by the time a match is over.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

chopeth said:


> Dark Souls III a friend lent me
> 
> Arrived to a dragon spitting fire and had the chance to escape but there's a knight who destroys me everytime I arrive to that point. In the other path there's a guy almost naked with a long sword and kills me in a couple of strikes too. Starting to get stuck and only got one boss




If you're talking about the Master Swordsman at Firelink, I can tell you the best way to beat him. Do not attack while he's got his sword at his side. He'll just parry you. When he's got his sword straight up like he's blocking, hit him. His poise is low enough (because this is DS3, what the fuck is poise in this game) that you'll start getting strikes in. Just make sure you leave enough stamina to roll out of the way at the end of your flurry. Again, only strike when his sword is up.


----------



## gunch

Tried apex and came to the conclusion that battle royale games aren't for me


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> This sounds exactly like my experience with DS whenever I try to get into it.


filthy casual, DS1 and 3 aren't really hard, they just force you to pay attention. DS2 is the only seriously bullshit game in the series.
- signed, someone that loves Dark Souls games.


----------



## Ralyks

gunch said:


> Tried apex and came to the conclusion that battle royale games aren't for me



I came to this same conclusion after Apex. I've tried that, Fortnite, Black Ops 4, and nothing sticks. It's like MMORPGs, youd think they'd be my ideal genre, but I can't do it.

Anyway, chapter 12 of Yakuza Kiwami 2, and I sense my latest adventure with Kiryu is coming to a close soon.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I've come to the point in Bloodstained: Konami of Sorrow where with the accelerator and rhava velar, the game turns into Strider. That and grinding for crafting the best weapons and optimized shards, something I usually never bother post game, says a lot for me. Even more so with all my kickstarter complaints have made me resent that I love playing Whitesnake: Still Of The Night. Oh well, I guess I'll just enjoy it some more until another rare crowdfunded diamond emerges from the mire mediocre nostalgia pandering and discarded money. Or just wait until the Zangetsu DLC comes out. 

I probably should just get Judgment soon, since I've been essentially playing the tales of Noctis and his paid friends just like a Yakuza game, aka, put the plot to a screeching halt in favour of side muckabouts and hunts. I only just got to Lestallum in Chapter 3, overlevelled, only to go back and do some more random mundane crap again.


----------



## wankerness

I mostly stopped playing videogames the last several weeks due to real life, but I got addicted to bloodstained last week and have also been farming the crap out of enemies with accelerator/rhava. I'm addicted to upgrading the passive shards to skill shards.  The one that makes me very upset is the alchemy one where it costs 9 gold every level!!

I haven't gone through an achievement guide or anything, but I might be getting somewhat close? I have the achievements for all the shards and all the demons. The items one is going to be the really bad one probably. There are a couple hidden achievements that I don't know what they are, not sure if any of those are slow.


----------



## gunch

-Nobody plays Modern Warfare 2, 3 or MW Remastered on PC, Probably Infinite Warfare too 
-WWII is full of hackers
-I slept on Black Ops IV and III takes up 150GB of HD space (fk that)
-My only other choices are CSGO, Owerwatch or TF2 when all I want is a mindless deathmatch shooter with gun leveling/stat tracking 

I seriously hope the new MW is good this year


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I probably should just get Judgment soon, since I've been essentially playing the tales of Noctis and his paid friends just like a Yakuza game, aka, put the plot to a screeching halt in favour of side muckabouts and hunts. I only just got to Lestallum in Chapter 3, overlevelled, only to go back and do some more random mundane crap again.



I am likely grabbing Judgement once I'm done with Kiwami 2 (which is looking like before the week is out, just got to chapter 14 last night), because Kamurocho is the best.

Honestly, I played FFXV pretty similarly. I'm pretty sure I had 15 - 20 hours in at least before I even moved last chapter 4.


----------



## wankerness

I'm waiting for Judgement to get cheaper, everything I read/saw about it suggested I will like it a lot less than the mainline Yakuza games. Like, all the "detective" gameplay stuff they added like searching for clues or tailing people in stealth are apparently both not fun and shoved down your throat with the game making you do them constantly. Everything good about it is the stuff that was the same in the last couple games, there's just less of it thanks to the new bad stuff.


----------



## gunch

gunch said:


> -Nobody plays Modern Warfare 2, 3 or MW Remastered on PC, Probably Infinite Warfare too
> -WWII is full of hackers
> -I slept on Black Ops IV and III takes up 150GB of HD space (fk that)
> -My only other choices are CSGO, Owerwatch or TF2 when all I want is a mindless deathmatch shooter with gun leveling/stat tracking
> 
> I seriously hope the new MW is good this year




I couldn't get into any games because windows 10 defender firewall is a fuck, I'm happy (for now)


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

RE: Judgment, this is petty coming from me, but it turns out they've ditched the karaoke minigame. Given Yagami's VA, this to me is a wasted opportunity. Perhaps Kimura's asking price may have been too high or his lack of singing at this stage of his career may have played a part of that. Oh well, at least Fighting Vipers is now playable in Club Sega, which is nice.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

gunch said:


> -Nobody plays Modern Warfare 2, 3 or MW Remastered on PC, Probably Infinite Warfare too
> -WWII is full of hackers
> -I slept on Black Ops IV and III takes up 150GB of HD space (fk that)
> -My only other choices are CSGO, Owerwatch or TF2 when all I want is a mindless deathmatch shooter with gun leveling/stat tracking
> 
> I seriously hope the new MW is good this year



Try Warface
https://store.steampowered.com/app/291480/

Also, while looking absolutely ridiculous, Roblox Phantom Forces is actually really enjoyable imo. Didn't encounter too many hackers on there.

I don't understand why FPS deathmatch games die so easily on PC unless it's just because of easier hacking and maybe choice overload. These days I use console for deathmatch shooters because the player base is still pretty large on games that are older even. Meanwhile, BO3 multiplayer is dead on PC and half of anyone left is a hacker. It was pretty much unplayable last time I logged in.


----------



## LeviathanKiller

I'm currently playing through Just Cause 3. What a horrible game imo. 

Vehicle and wingsuit controls are horrible. I'm going to try to use a controller for that next time I play. 

All of the control assignments seem off compared to most other games. Ctrl is what backs you out of menus, C is melee, and some other weird ones. 

Sometimes when you grapple towards something, reaching your target hurts you for no reason and you get stunned. And object impact stun duration is way too long too.

Random crashes. Every session I play, I crash at least once. It'll just hiccup, freeze, and then lock my computer up and I have to force kill via the task manager.

Loading screen takes forever.

You can't aim down sights until after completing a few challenges. You have to Google to find the location of said challenge because it isn't made known to you at the beginning of the game either.

Some of the challenges are impossible to earn a 5-star score the first time you encounter them because you might need better weapons, vehicles, or gear mods unlocked to do so. This means a lot of backtracking in order to unlock everything.

Enemies spawn mere feet behind you as soon as you turn your vision away. It's super bad. Full-blown missile-equipped helicopters will appear out of nowhere when you're in an aircraft even.

Some of the locations to liberate feel like exact copies of others. All of them have similar objects to destroy and whatnot but the layout of some of the bases and towns feel annoyingly similar. I've had a deja vu feeling a bit more than I'd like with those.

When picking up Di Ravello audio tapes, the audio will play simultaneously over the top of other speech. Super annoying. At least one of the audio stream will have subtitles though.

Weapons will sometimes disappear if you drop them, use another real quick, and then look to pick the other back up. Meanwhile enemy weapons will stay there for much longer than you probably care about.

Random encounters will get failed randomly because somewhere in the world a civilian got injured. Most likely by terribly glitched AI that happens every once and a while.

I've gotten insta-killed in vehicles a few times and it doesn't seem like correct behavior. Undamaged military helis take like 3-4 missile hits before blowing up instantly yet I've gotten in some before and one hit got killed before eve taking off. Makes no sense whatsoever.

Getting the highest damage weapon in each category is pretty much the best idea. There's pretty much never a good reason for selecting something with a higher rate of fire or anything unlike other games where almost each weapon has a time and place. You acquire most of the best weapons pretty early on too so there's basically no progression in the game at all sadly.

The DLC cutscenes are all moving drawings. Just feels super cheap honestly when the main story line isn't done that way.

Getting the eDen spark weapon completely changes the game. I like how much easier it is since I get screwed over by so much of the stuff above. Can't use it everywhere though. It only works when the target has open sky above it except in some glitchy places where it works anyway.

At this point, I'm just playing it because I already bought it and it is at least a pretty good game visually and the Di Ravello tapes storyline is quite interesting. This game feels a lot like a solo session of GTA Online with some nice military vehicles and weapons unlocked.


----------



## MFB

The Bavarium wingsuit is the only worthwhile part of JC3, once you get that it's just an Iron Man simulator


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I'm waiting for Judgement to get cheaper, everything I read/saw about it suggested I will like it a lot less than the mainline Yakuza games. Like, all the "detective" gameplay stuff they added like searching for clues or tailing people in stealth are apparently both not fun and shoved down your throat with the game making you do them constantly. Everything good about it is the stuff that was the same in the last couple games, there's just less of it thanks to the new bad stuff.



Maybe I'll go the same route, or maybe as a christmas gift to myself. I have enough of a back catalogue and Borderlands 3 coming. I just really love Kamurocho.

I'm curious as to who the new protagonist for Yakuza will be.


Spoiler



Daigo Dojima makes sense to me, and there'd be some interesting things you could do controlling the Chairman of the Tojo clan. Or hey, see what Majima is up to!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> I'm curious as to who the new protagonist for Yakuza will be.



It's this guy:



Pretty much a mirror opposite, the Ken to Kriryu's Ryu, right down to the colour scheme of his suit.


----------



## wankerness

Wow, hadn't seen that. He looks like a chill surfer and barely looks asian. That seems...off? Guess we'll see!


----------



## Mathemagician

No more games. Just CFA. CFA is life.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's this guy:
> 
> 
> 
> Pretty much a mirror opposite, the Ken to Kriryu's Ryu, right down to the colour scheme of his suit.




Didn't see that either. Ok. Did they confirm if past characters return? I'd be curious about Daigo and Haruka and Majima and co.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Didn't see that either. Ok. Did they confirm if past characters return? I'd be curious about Daigo and Haruka and Majima and co.



Considering the past characters return for the mobile phone game where Ichiban is the main character and he has strong ties with the Tojo clan, chances are likely. The next game is billed Shin Ryu Ga Gotoku, which means Like A New Dragon, so Sega is pushing him to officially replace Kiryu.

The phone game has a cool trailer for it too. I posted it ages ago but here it is again.



Of course this could be RGG studios messing with us. They started the Lost Paradise in Kamurocho exactly like that previous teaser too.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Played Bloodstained again the other day, also accidentally ran into the Gebel boss fight and tooled him. I may be over-levelled a little... I'm going back in and trying to complete the rest of the map before I got back to him and finish it...again. Prior to that I absolutely wrecked the nether dragon, or whatever the big black/red one is. Might try this out on a harder difficulty down the road because I have had very little trouble, and a lot of is just button mashing and correct placing when fighting a boss. Also found a Rhava Bhurial at random and tried it out just to see what it's like and holy shit, I see what you guys were talking about.


----------



## Leviathus

After like 3 hours i finally completed the mission "Guild" on Thief Gold.... such a labyrinth of frustration lol.


----------



## lurè

Started Divinity Original Sin; combat Is really fun but after 5 minutes in in the first city I have like 20+ quests to do.


----------



## Ralyks

Got to the final chapter of Yakuza Kiwami 2 last night. Definitely finishing tonight. Then debating on waiting for the remasters of 3 to 5 to come west or hunt down a copy of 3 on PS3.


----------



## Ralyks

And finished I have. I'm debating if Kiwami 2 is my favorite so far. Fucking excellent.

So I'm going to take a Yakuza break before finding a copy.of 3/hoping the remasters come here. In the meantime, I'm trying to decide which of these games I've already start that I should go back to And finally finish:

NieR:Automata (on playthrough 3)
God of War
Red Dead Redemptiom 2
Dragon Quest XI
Herizon: Zero Dawn
Witcher 3
Wolfenstein series
Okami
Last of Us
Needlessly spend money of Shenmue 1 and 2 while they're on sale and continue my obsession with games based in Japan.

There's plenty more, but those are probably the main ones. Help me out here guys.


----------



## Werecow

Leviathus said:


> After like 3 hours i finally completed the mission "Guild" on Thief Gold.... such a labyrinth of frustration lol.



Thief 1 and 2 are probably my two favourite gaming experiences ever! Is this your first time playing?


----------



## Werecow

lurè said:


> Started Divinity Original Sin; combat Is really fun but after 5 minutes in in the first city I have like 20+ quests to do.



Stick at it. When the murder investigation is resolved it'll sort of make sense why. It's just a bit more non-linear than most modern games


----------



## Leviathus

Werecow said:


> Thief 1 and 2 are probably my two favourite gaming experiences ever! Is this your first time playing?



Yup! Getting into almost every swordfight with the guards imaginable , but really enjoying it so far, love the atmosphere.


----------



## Werecow

Leviathus said:


> Yup! Getting into almost every swordfight with the guards imaginable , but really enjoying it so far, love the atmosphere.



I actually envy you playing it for the first time haha 

I like Thief 2 even more than the first one by the way.


----------



## mongey

grabbed xenoblade Chronicles 2 for my commute. been meaning to play it for ages . still early days , about 90 min in , but I see potential for it getting good 


last week after a few beers bought death coming on switch as it sounded interesting ,and it was for a couple levels .but its amusing qualities don't last for long


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I like Thief 2 even more than the first one by the way.


+1
Thief 2 is definitely on my list for best games ever made. I'm gonna +1 that game every time it's mentioned, cause I like it that much.

I haven't had much time to play games lately - but I recently got a hold of Kirby 64 (because I must own and play every Kirby thing) and it's..... possibly one of the worst Kirby games, but it's still entertaining for what it is. It's not _baaaaad_, and there's some good ideas in there, but it feels slow/heavy, and suffers from some of that early 3d platformer jank.

I also recently got a hold of the first Mario+Luigi game, which I figured would be a good place to go after finishing the SNES Mario RPG (given that I don't feel like paying the prices people want for the Paper Mario games). Haven't had time to reaaaally try it, but it looks promising.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> And finished I have. I'm debating if Kiwami 2 is my favorite so far. Fucking excellent.
> 
> So I'm going to take a Yakuza break before finding a copy.of 3/hoping the remasters come here. In the meantime, I'm trying to decide which of these games I've already start that I should go back to And finally finish:
> 
> NieR:Automata (on playthrough 3)
> God of War
> Red Dead Redemptiom 2
> Dragon Quest XI
> Herizon: Zero Dawn
> Witcher 3
> Wolfenstein series
> Okami
> Last of Us
> Needlessly spend money of Shenmue 1 and 2 while they're on sale and continue my obsession with games based in Japan.
> 
> There's plenty more, but those are probably the main ones. Help me out here guys.


NA playthrough 3 is the best section of gaming I've ever experienced. As long as you aren't overlevelled and thus killing every boss in two seconds before you can experience everything. I hope you skipped sidequests. If not, I'd suggest nerfing yourself by not using huge damage boost chips or the self-healing ones.

After that I'd say HZD is my favorite game of this generation besides maybe Nier: Automata, and Witcher 3 is close to it if you are into the plot. Especially if you get that "best" ending with the winter cabin. Last of Us is also almost as good as its reputation from a character/plot standpoint and DQXI is really great if you have a hundred hours. Okami is way too repetitive and long for long's sake. Haven't played Wolfenstein or RDR2 and don't really care to.

AND SKIP SHENMUE omfg that game is horrible


----------



## thedonal

Dammit. I got reeled back into Warframe after a long break.

I forgot how addictive the game can be and how epic the grind is!!!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> NA playthrough 3 is the best section of gaming I've ever experienced. As long as you aren't overlevelled and thus killing every boss in two seconds before you can experience everything. I hope you skipped sidequests. If not, I'd suggest nerfing yourself by not using huge damage boost chips or the self-healing ones.



I did indeed go with NieR.



Spoiler



I'm level 43. Fuck Hegel. Fuck that centipede looking mother fucker so hard.[\spoiler]


----------



## Ralyks

Ok, I need to talk about NieR for a moment.



Spoiler



So I got to the part where all of Pascals village children commit suicide. I went with the option to erase Pascals memory. I just found the village as 9S, and of course Pascal doesn't know me. But I just realized he's selling me the parts of the dead children. And with all of those events and that happening just now, I think I need a hug and/or to crawl into fetal position. Goddamn this game gets heavy.


----------



## Werecow

I'm replaying Dead Space 1, and gonna move onto 2 afterwards, which i haven't completed yet.

Jesus christ i'd forgotten just how scary/creepy it is. The graphics still look great, and it still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.


----------



## chopeth

^Loooved it


----------



## mongey

hhhmm. my jury is still out on xenoblade Chronicles 2 . the battle system is so complicated and odd . its either going to click and be amazing . or just put me off


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally spending more time with Prince Noctis and the absurd haircuts. Being overlevelled at chapter 3 (sidequests are mundane but the hunts are fun) made me breeze through 4 like it was nothing. Now in chapter 5 and car less. Thankfully I did all the Chocobo sidequests early. 

But since this story had to be spanned in different media, I gave A King's Tale FFXV a quick go. It's a 16 bit 2D brawler of all things where you play King Regis where the stages are presented in bedtime stories he tells to a young Noctis. Despite the lack of a jump button (dodge replaces it here), it's got some decent mechanics where each attack is different giving strategy against certain enemies.

Aesthetically it looks like Mother Russia Bleeds, but without the gratuitous violence. Which reminds me I really need to check out more Devolver Digital games, so far Katana Zero is on the top of that list.

Whilst playing King's Tale, I'm reminded at how arcade 2D brawlers are a bygone genre. The Final Fights, Streets Of Rages and Turtles In Times died on the 3D transition. The Bouncer tried to keep that spirit alive (sort of) but the 3D hack n slashers like God Of War and the Dynasty Warriors games have taken over that void. I don't really miss it, but it's nice playing one again after a long absence. And it's good some developers be it triple A or indie are keeping these alive. 

I probably should check out Mother Russia Bleeds now, same as that bizarre Bud Spencer/Terrence Hill game Slaps And Beans. Either that or just replay Turtles In Time for the umpteenth time again (SNES port, not that reboot with the inferior soundtrack).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> hhhmm. my jury is still out on xenoblade Chronicles 2 . the battle system is so complicated and odd . its either going to click and be amazing . or just put me off



Did you play the first game at all? I'm curious in how much it's changed from the original, which I didn't mind. Looked like a semi complex MMO but not really, semi real time but menu driven type affair.


----------



## Ralyks

I finished NieR. I think I need a hug. That was intense. And maybe a YouTube video to really explain what the fuck I just played through.


----------



## mongey

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Did you play the first game at all? I'm curious in how much it's changed from the original, which I didn't mind. Looked like a semi complex MMO but not really, semi real time but menu driven type affair.


no

getting a bit put off.in the first 6 hours its manged to be overly sexist , racist and homophobic


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Modern Warfare Remastered. It's COD4. Remastered. What more can I say? Top billin'.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Anyone play the new Fire Emblem? These games always interested me but I don't own a Switch (yet?) and never got into the 3DS games because I don't like playing my 3DS for more than an hour at a time with my bear paw-sized hands.


----------



## Ralyks

So after getting the Platinum and true ending for NieR, I traded that and a bunch of other games in today to get Mario Maker 2, plus pay off a Madden 20 preorder ('tis the season for Madden. Please be better than last year).


----------



## Mathemagician

I am stuck trying to choose between Mario maker 2 (never played the first one) or marvel ultimate alliance 3. Just looking for a fun group game and I figure mm2 can work in a “pass the controller” way if I download some of the crazy levels I’ve seen people make online.

Then again I want some single player RPG’s but my PS4 backlog has so many I need to play through.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Back on PUBG; watched some vids, started dropping hot, averaging 1-5 kills per game. 

They’ve fixed a lot of the bugs that really annoyed me. 

Decent time, something to do on a day off when nobody else is home.


----------



## StevenC

BlackMastodon said:


> Anyone play the new Fire Emblem? These games always interested me but I don't own a Switch (yet?) and never got into the 3DS games because I don't like playing my 3DS for more than an hour at a time with my bear paw-sized hands.


Best Fire Emblem in a while. Fire Emblem battle system but more of a Persona social element.


----------



## Ralyks

Been doing endless runs in Mario Maker 2 before bed. Also tried going back to Horizon: Zero Dawn today now that I'm done with NieR. I may stick with it. Problem is I have a copy of Madden waiting at GameStop for after work, and Borderlands 3 is out in a month.


----------



## Mathemagician

Downloaded Mario maker this week. I downloaded a ridiculously cool “speedrun” level but it’s only 20 seconds long.

I need to figure out where/how people list the best levels to try. The search system doesn’t seem robust.


----------



## PuriPuriPrisoner

I tried to get into Warframe recently but it's really a bit too grindy for me. For the past couple years, R6S has been my fall back game whenever I get tired of a game.


----------



## StevenC

Mathemagician said:


> Downloaded Mario maker this week. I downloaded a ridiculously cool “speedrun” level but it’s only 20 seconds long.
> 
> I need to figure out where/how people list the best levels to try. The search system doesn’t seem robust.


I just do all the levels videogamedunkey plays.


----------



## Choop

Playing Dark Souls 3 roughly three years late .-. it's hella good, though! Big props to my girlfriend for not getting mad at me for muttering profanities to myself as I die to practically everything.


----------



## PuriPuriPrisoner

Choop said:


> Playing Dark Souls 3 roughly three years late .-. it's hella good, though! Big props to my girlfriend for not getting mad at me for muttering profanities to myself as I die to practically everything.



lol just wait until you reach midir and the last dlc boss. I died to midir more than any other souls game’s bosses combined.


----------



## chopeth

^me too

I just finished with the Abyss Watchers, when do the dlc come? am I very into the length of the game?


----------



## Leviathus

^me 3

Just beat the Abyss Watchers the other day as well, lol....


----------



## Choop

I think the Abyss Watchers are the first lord of cinder boss(es) that you fight, so 3 more in the main game aside from DLC! Well that's how it was for me, I assume I'm playing in order but sometimes it isn't clear. :X Also optional bosses throw me off.

My body is not ready for Midir. I know his health pool is just stupid huge, ughhh! D:


----------



## NotDonVito

Bought a playstation classic for $40 and put autobleem on it. You can basically make a retropie machine for half the price, and it comes with 2 controllers.  I wanna see if my fightstick will work with it later.


----------



## ImNotAhab

I have gone back to play the Daud DLC for the original Dishonored. 

God i love those games. It kills me they weren't more popular, i hope they make more eventually.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

Not really playing anything right now, but getting super hype for the WoW Classic launch later this month.
If any of you guys are hopping in on the train, send me your tag and I'll add you! Should be cool to play with some forumbros.


----------



## Mathemagician

Probably going to get Borderlands 3. I can’t decide between the beast tamer dude and the six-armed woman. I wanna fill the screen with stuff. That’s how you know a game is fun.


----------



## Werecow

ImNotAhab said:


> I have gone back to play the Daud DLC for the original Dishonored.
> 
> God i love those games. It kills me they weren't more popular, i hope they make more eventually.



That's my favourite modern game series 

I've replayed them all so many times now it's embarrassing.


----------



## TedEH

For the last couple of days I ended up going back to Borderlands 2 for a couple hours before bed. That game never gets old.
Otherwise.... haven't really been playing much. I picked up Mario + Luigi Superstar Saga and I find that it hasn't quite hooked me in the way I was hoping it would. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for games lately.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Been getting my ass whooped in ranked on R6. I'd swear I'm actually worse at this game than I am CSGO (which I am awful at). Still, I vastly prefer playing R6.


----------



## mongey

fires up overwatch for first time in ages .had a couple new characters I hadn't seen . wish I had time to play it again


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Up to Chapter 8 at of the Tales of Noctis and The Absurd Hairdos. A bit of development, some progress and a character that yells fanservice to the FF veterans. Ooh a sexy dragoon lady with a Highwind themed special move joins your party to fight a Valefor looking Quezacoatl boss. Sadly I never saw the move since I was so overlevelled and the boss keeled over too soon. Then smashed the brakes on the main plot to jump right back to the sidequest/hunts muckabout. 

While I'm enjoying it so far, there was one obnoxious moment where I basically had to stop the game. One baffling sidequest had Gladiolus stop me in my tracks to shill me the joys of Cup Noodles. It was a word for word commercial so off putting I'm blaming it for the headache I woke up with this morning. Now I know about Asia's views on commercialism and the partnership with Cup Noodles and all (that stupid DLC hat for Noctis you're expected to pay real money for wasn't bad enough). I was actually fine with having their products on billboards and being available for food, but this? Seriously screw you Square Enix. 


Actually, while I did stop playing, I gave Episode Gladiolus DLC a crack. The FFXV story is something I wanted to experience chronologically, since I've already invested in the movie, anime, brawler etc. So I was curious looked up when to play the extra stuff that really should've been in the game already. And since musclebound mullethead leaves the party at where I was, that was the recommended time to play his gaiden voyage. Once again, Square Enix disappoints like a champ. You get to play Mr Stomach Crunches through a long corridor with much more simplified combat mechanics. This is something that could've easily be intertwined with the main story. It's been done in the past. FFVI party splits in the World of Balance, the Laguna tangents in FFVIII, Shadow's dreams to some extent, at least they're all in game. Also doesn't help that Gladiolus is the least interesting member of the 4 piece boy band (says a lot since the others aren't much chop either). 

Oh well, I said I'm committing to this and seeing it through to the end, even if it means trudging along through all it's flaws.


----------



## TedEH

I got sort of suckered into Pokemon GO again. I'm not a "gaming with friends" kind of person, but I'll take this over most "multiplayer" kinds of things I guess.


----------



## Azyiu

Days Gone... second run... I completed the entire game, as in unlocked, collected everything on my first run.


----------



## Thaeon

Second run through of Mass Effect Andromeda. I wish it had a story still.

Taking my first Destiny playthrough as a Titan in D2. Normally run Hunter. So... Some of the mechanics are... Offputting. Warlock controls are more similar to the Hunter. At least to me. It's nice being more tanky. But, I miss some of the mobility, and definitely the supers.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Aside from driving around with Angst, Abs, Austere and Androgynous, been squeezing in a few Samurai Shodown time. Being left cold for so long, this may be the game that's rekindling my love for the genre. 

Version 1.11 just came out and looking at the changes, it's practically a different game. Looking at some of the changes, Genjuro obviously gets nerfed since he was way too good, and bottom feeders like Kyoshiro and Shiki get much needed upgrades. 

I'm glad it's no longer like the old days where patch changes like these mean another new game release.


----------



## stevexc

Picked up the newly updated No Man's Sky, giving that a shot... seems decent so far!


----------



## Mathemagician

I got to the last act in FF10 and did what I always do with any RPG and that’s to stop playing altogether because I want to maximize everyone’s stats and gear and stuff and ain’t nobody got time for that so I just stop altogether because that makes sense. 

Anyways, been playing mega man X through X4 and Borderlands 2 because that’s cheaper than buying Borderlands 3.


----------



## Leviathus

Still trying to love BFV, hasn't been working out...


----------



## PunkBillCarson

So I had the extra money and bought Sekiro and have had an hour with it. So far, Sekiro seems like a brilliant game. Feels like a FromSoft game, it just doesn't feel like a Souls/Borne game and that works in this game's favor by a large margin. So far from what I've seen, where people fuck up is trying to play this game like a game where they have to kill everything head-on. You can kill everything but you're better off doing it with stealth attacks until you hit a boss or the like. I'm sure I'll die, I'm sure I'll rage, but I'm going to keep playing the way it was meant to be played and that should minimize both. The parrying feels nice, I must say. It feels more immediate and as a result, quite satisfying when you come up the better person in a duel.


----------



## Leviathus

PunkBillCarson said:


> So I had the extra money and bought Sekiro and have had an hour with it. So far, Sekiro seems like a brilliant game. Feels like a FromSoft game, it just doesn't feel like a Souls/Borne game and that works in this game's favor by a large margin. So far from what I've seen, where people fuck up is trying to play this game like a game where they have to kill everything head-on. You can kill everything but you're better off doing it with stealth attacks until you hit a boss or the like. I'm sure I'll die, I'm sure I'll rage, but I'm going to keep playing the way it was meant to be played and that should minimize both. The parrying feels nice, I must say. It feels more immediate and as a result, quite satisfying when you come up the better person in a duel.



Agree, i also just scooped this (steam sale i presume?) and have been really enjoying it so far, bout 5 hours in.


----------



## chopeth

^I'm fighting the dragonslayer armor in DS3 at the moment and after I finish it, I think I'm going to give Sekiro a try. I have heard it's more difficult than the Souls and Bloodbourne. That must be insane


----------



## KnightBrolaire

chopeth said:


> ^I'm fighting the dragonslayer armor in DS3 at the moment and after I finish it, I think I'm going to give Sekiro a try. I have heard it's more difficult than the Souls and Bloodbourne. That must be insane


it's not really that hard, it just forces you to master parrying for boss fights .


----------



## PunkBillCarson

chopeth said:


> ^I'm fighting the dragonslayer armor in DS3 at the moment and after I finish it, I think I'm going to give Sekiro a try. I have heard it's more difficult than the Souls and Bloodbourne. That must be insane




It's only harder if you go in and try to play it like a Souls/Borne game. It's a FromSoft game for sure but do NOT go into it thinking you're going to play it like Souls. You have vertical movement for a reason. Your character is meant to be a stealthy assailant, so play him like so. Obviously, that's not always an option in boss fights, so there you're going to have to make do with actually fighting them. I went in with a completely open mind, did everything I could to not play it like Dark Souls, I'm at my first memory and I've only DIED died once, and I've resurrected twice. I recommend give it a go, you're just going to have to alter your gameplay.


----------



## Ralyks

Horizon Zero Dawn is apparently my single player game of choice until Borderlands 3. Also, a bunch of Madden 20. I seem to be one of the few people enjoying. It's at least way better than 19.

Somewhere in there I bought Crash Team Racing. Gotta say.... Not really feeling it. Thought it'd be something my son would enjoy, and he's not feeling it either. Oh well, I guess there's still Mario Kart on Switch...


----------



## chopeth

PunkBillCarson said:


> It's only harder if you go in and try to play it like a Souls/Borne game. It's a FromSoft game for sure but do NOT go into it thinking you're going to play it like Souls. You have vertical movement for a reason. Your character is meant to be a stealthy assailant, so play him like so. Obviously, that's not always an option in boss fights, so there you're going to have to make do with actually fighting them. I went in with a completely open mind, did everything I could to not play it like Dark Souls, I'm at my first memory and I've only DIED died once, and I've resurrected twice. I recommend give it a go, you're just going to have to alter your gameplay.



Nice, I'll do


----------



## chopeth

KnightBrolaire said:


> it's not really that hard, it just forces you to master parrying for boss fights .


awesome


----------



## BlackMastodon

Got a coupon code for Vermintide 2 for under $8 and I'm considering picking it up for me and the gf. I'm gonna see if it's something she'd be into so we could cut through hordes of Chaos and Skaven together. If not I may still pick it up. I only played some Vermintide 1 but it was fun. Just hope it can hold my attention than Left 4 Dead.


----------



## Jacksonluvr636

Took a long break from gaming but I started again.

I still play Pub g and also Insurgency Sandstorm


----------



## Choop

Finished Dark Souls III Last night! Cleared all bosses--game is super rad. The DLC boss fights were really something else-- I enjoyed the Slave Knight Gael fight a whole lot, and even if Midir was pretty tough, that fight was cool, too. I didn't die to Midir super hard, but I got really lucky on one of his attack cycles where he didn't do anything excessively unpredictable or damaging. TBH I think I died to the Dancer of Boreal Valley more than any boss in the game. Could be that I was under leveled or just built bad for that fight in particular, but it was pretty rough. Now I want to play Bloodborne but I don't gots a PS4 :C. 

Has anyone played it on PC with the PS Now thing they have going on with it?


----------



## Mathemagician

Dancer for me was a 1 shot boss. Dodge left and poke. Also Black Sword. Black Great Sword? Black Greatsword thing that looks like a fat normal sword and has a much lower requirement than it should for the damage it deals. Use it. Become nachos.


----------



## Choop

It was the second phase that messed me up with her, the first wasn't too bad. Also I was playing with a dex build first, but eventually did change my weapon setup and that helped a lot .-. I just started using the pillars in the boss room to block her until she calmed down and it got a lot better.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I might just set my time with the Spice Boys and their fancy car aside and jump right back on the Kiryu train.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I might just set my time with the Spice Boys and their fancy car aside and jump right back on the Kiryu train.




Came here to post this. Just as I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow..... Welp, back to Komurocho as soon as I get home. WOOT


----------



## Choop

My girlfriend has been playing the new Dragon Quest, and it's making me want to jump into that series! I have access to Dragon Quest VIII on PS2, anybody played this? Seems super good!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> My girlfriend has been playing the new Dragon Quest, and it's making me want to jump into that series! I have access to Dragon Quest VIII on PS2, anybody played this? Seems super good!



I missed the boat on the Dragon Quest series, briefly played 3 on NES years ago but never finished it, but VIII is considered the peak of the series so it'd be a good place to start. XI is another one on my long list of shame as I've heard it's pretty simple, straight forward and easy to get into. Either way it looks good too. That is if you can tolerate the bafflingly low quality quality music. Either way, VIII or XI are good choices.


Speaking of games that I missed out on, Grandia HD collection is out. Alas not on PS4, which is unfortunate for me. I loved the first Grandia but never got to finish it.


----------



## Ralyks

Having not played any Dragon Quest games previously, I did pick up XI on Black Friday last year. Definitely a fun old school-yet-modern JRPG that I really would like to continue at some point if the next few weeks didn't have the Yakuza collection, Final Fantasy VIII remastered, and Borderlands 3. Also, that Control game is soon and looks intriguing.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Choop said:


> My girlfriend has been playing the new Dragon Quest, and it's making me want to jump into that series! I have access to Dragon Quest VIII on PS2, anybody played this? Seems super good!


Play the NDS ones.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Came here to post this. Just as I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow..... Welp, back to Komurocho as soon as I get home. WOOT



Bought it on launch myself. Installation complete, and it stares at me with it's bedroom scowl waiting to march back into Kamurocho (and I still have to get Judgment too...). Believe me it's hard to resist a Yakuza game where Kiryu spends most of his time in a Hawaiian shirt. But I'm committed to finish my time with Angsty Spice, Manly Spice, Serious Spice and Kooky Spice. Speaking of which...


Up to Chapter 9, which I assume is the midway point since I'm in a port city, unable to sail back to the open world, yet the game contrives a silly way to return to previous areas. Still, while the vast open world is starting to feel big now I'm stumbling into certain dungeons and other high level quests. Of course granted I can do these now since I'm at lv 52, I'll hold back and play the actual story for a change. That way I can go back and make these a walk in the park I suppose.

That and I'll be seeing Distant Worlds tomorrow. Really looking forward to hearing One Winged Angel and Apocalysis Noctis live with full orchestra and choir.


----------



## Ralyks

Jealous of you don't Distant Worlds. Enjoy!

I found it easy too easy to get overpowered in FFXV. I'm pretty sure I only say the game over screen like 2 or 3 tones total. I was definitely overpowered by the I got to where you are in the game.

And yeah, I'll likely grab the Yakuza collection when I get back this weekend's, and I too still need to play Judgement. I plan on getting it at least before the year is out/I tire of Borderlands, whichever comes first.


----------



## Mathemagician

Finally got an arcade stick so now I’m on that Street Fighter 5. So now I can actually make my character so what I want versus using the PS4 controller. It was nice knowing all of you. Going to go be a world warrior.


----------



## Choop

Mathemagician said:


> Finally got an arcade stick so now I’m on that Street Fighter 5. So now I can actually make my character so what I want versus using the PS4 controller. It was nice knowing all of you. Going to go be a world warrior.



Who are you playing so far? I was more into SF4, but in SF5 I pretty much only play Bison! I'd like to play more but the netcode is really inconsistent for me right now, though it could just be my Spectrum internet here. .-.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m liking Chun Li lot. And I’m thinking Nash/Mika as a second. I like good normals and mobility. 

In 4 I played Bison in vanilla then moved to Seth, Cody & Makoto then Yang with Seth being the most fun character to play as. #teampoongko

Bison seems even better in 5 than 4 but I don’t like the way he “feels” as much. 

For now I’m just trying to learn chun’s BNB with the buffer timing.


----------



## Choop

Mathemagician said:


> I’m liking Chun Li lot. And I’m thinking Nash/Mika as a second. I like good normals and mobility.
> 
> In 4 I played Bison in vanilla then moved to Seth, Cody & Makoto then Yang with Seth being the most fun character to play as. #teampoongko
> 
> Bison seems even better in 5 than 4 but I don’t like the way he “feels” as much.
> 
> For now I’m just trying to learn chun’s BNB with the buffer timing.



Oh rad! I played Seth a lot in SF4, too. He's super fun with all of the offensive options that he has! I played Blanka and Bison the most in that game, and right at the end I played E. Ryu a good amount but that's pretty much it. 

Regarding tiers Bison is way way better in 5, but yeah he's definitely a little slower, and scissor kicks aren't as easy to abuse. His normals are incredible though and damage output is good. That was the big drawback to Bison in SF4 IMO.

I really like Chun in SFV, at first she was REALLY strong, then got nerfed. Even after nerfs she is good, and MOV made her look top tier still. I personally like her much more in SF5 than SF4. Good luck with your World Warrior journey. :V


----------



## stevexc

*sigh* WoW Classic.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

stevexc said:


> *sigh* WoW Classic.



HAH. You having as much fun with these queue times as I am?


----------



## Mathemagician

Haha WoW nerds! J/K enjoy storing your thorium ores in your felcloth bags. Nerds.


----------



## stevexc

Ordacleaphobia said:


> HAH. You having as much fun with these queue times as I am?



Eh, it'll cool down in a day or two once people realize a) classic is way harder than they remember and b) classic is missing ALL of the QOL fixes they've come to rely on.

But yeah. I had no queues all day, but now that I see your post... 2650 in line. Wellp.


----------



## lurè

Jumped into the Wolfenstein saga.
Wolfenstein 1 was really good loved every single moment, even the slightly repetitive "kill the generals first" mechanic.

Started W2 and it's looking good so far but stealth Is actually impossibile and the game Is quite hard even at normal difficulty.


----------



## NotDonVito

Been in a retro shooter mood lately. In particular Star Fox 2 and Space Harrier on 32x.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I 'm stuck in bronze hell in r6 ranked.


----------



## Ralyks

Yakuza 7 was formally announced and.... It's a JRPG..... Boy am I conflicted.

Anyway, I've been playing more Madden than I expected. I didn't like the last two years, meanwhile I like this one, and most people seem to hate it, go figured.

That said, I'm cramming in FFVIII Remastered next week until Borderlands 3.


----------



## wankerness

Argh, I haven't played a videogame other than some couch Smash Bros sessions since getting a new anti-videogame girlfriend a few months ago so I'm way behind the times. The Yakuza 7 thing actually sounds interesting to me, far more than Judge Eyes anyway. I have loved some turn-based things and I did get really sick of punching people at times (particularly the goddam Majima Everywhere system in Kiwami 1) so the change of pace might be nice. I just skimmed through the trailer at work and didn't see any characters I recognized, though, which seems possibly unfortunate. I was hoping for some continuity.

I still haven't bought Judge Eyes, I guess at this pace I'll just wait for it to be 20 bucks!!

I wish they'd announce the frickin ports of 3-5 already. THAT is what I'm really waiting for, far more than any new releases.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Yakuza 7 was formally announced and.... It's a JRPG..... Boy am I conflicted.



I posted the April Fools Vid with the turn based system a few pages back. Didn't think they would fully go ahead with it. 

Still, judging from the photos, it's looking less like traditional JRPGs, and more like Persona 5. A plus in my book since that combat system was fast paced and even at times rhythmic, which had some visceral catharsis. And it's a nice change of pace since ally the Yakuza games get into a long samey blur the more you play them. Sure I'm just one game away from playing Kiryu's entire story but I need to savor not playing it until I get back on the Kamurocho groove again. Judge Eyes is another one I'm delaying, namely because I don't want to pay 99 bucks for it. 

On the subject of JRPGs, midway through Chapter 10 of Prince Broody and the Chirpy Chippendales. I said I wanted to try to finish this soon as the ton of crap inane side quests (most if not all are fetch quests) are finally weighing me down (which is more on me and my high tolerance for pain). But decided I went back and tried some of the tougher quests/dungeons. Did that FFXIV collab quest, and surprise that was also crap. Ok the boss fight was cool and I got a summon out of it, but the build up to it sucked. But since I'm already overlevelled, I may as well get on with the story and come back later on. I hear Chapter 13 is an utter slog so I might do a ton of the big dungeons then. That and Episode Prompto so I can reap some of the DLC rewards. 

Sidebar: Distant Worlds was fantastic. Glad to hear Somnus and Apocalypsis Noctis live with a full orchestra and choir.


----------



## atracksler

Starting red dead redemption again.


----------



## wankerness

Oh, I should have read this thread more closely, I didn't realize you guys were talking about a Yakuza 3 4 5 collection. 3's already available?! Jeez. Guess I know what I'm doing next week. That IS infuriating, though, that I either have to buy them twice or skip the physical edition unless I want to wait until February!!!


----------



## Ralyks

The Yakuza Collection will probably be on my Black Friday list. Right now, Control and Judgement are also on that list.

Speaking of which, anyone at Control yet?


----------



## Brutal08

After 5-6 years of dust gathering on my shelf im giving a try at metro series i dont know why i bough this game to have it side lined for this long but this is awesome im starting the second outside part of metro 2033 on ranger difficulty it reminds me of the stalker serie im pretty impressed so far!


----------



## Mathemagician

Trying the DLC in Borderlands 2 for the first time ever. This Tiny Tina storyline is awesome. But man, I was just NOT prepared for the difficulty jump from normal to TVHM. Some guy randomly gave me $60 million in normal just because, when I was lvl 15 or so. 

I’m down to $2 million at level 45. Just from fucking dying. This game is HARD, lol.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Trying the DLC in Borderlands 2 for the first time ever. This Tiny Tina storyline is awesome. But man, I was just NOT prepared for the difficulty jump from normal to TVHM. Some guy randomly gave me $60 million in normal just because, when I was lvl 15 or so.
> 
> I’m down to $2 million at level 45. Just from fucking dying. This game is HARD, lol.


it's a ballache solo, especially if you're not speccing towards survivability options. I just did a recent playthrough as the mechromancer and she desperately needs certain survival perks, otherwise she dies like immediately. I've found the gunzerker and krieg have the best base survivability for solo playthroughs.

On another note, I'm getting slightly better at R6. Only 50hrs of playing to not be complete trash


----------



## Werecow

Brutal08 said:


> After 5-6 years of dust gathering on my shelf im giving a try at metro series i dont know why i bough this game to have it side lined for this long but this is awesome im starting the second outside part of metro 2033 on ranger difficulty it reminds me of the stalker serie im pretty impressed so far!



I love Metro. Metro Last Light is awesome as well, i like it even more than 2033. Metro Exodus will give you even bigger Stalker vibes in that it has open-world areas.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Trying the DLC in Borderlands 2 for the first time ever. This Tiny Tina storyline is awesome. But man, I was just NOT prepared for the difficulty jump from normal to TVHM. Some guy randomly gave me $60 million in normal just because, when I was lvl 15 or so.
> 
> I’m down to $2 million at level 45. Just from fucking dying. This game is HARD, lol.



The game was horribly balanced for single-player compared to 1. If you have the absorb shield that drops off the BUNK3R boss, it's more than playable. If not, it's neverending frustration of getting literally one-shot by half the enemies you see and constantly being in fight for your life mode. And with the way the respawn fees scale with your money so you can lose billions each death until you're very rapidly back to no money, it's like money might as well not exist in that game except to make you rage when you die to one of those unwinnable, completely not-fun situations where some dude snipes you and then hides in cover for the entire duration of FFYL so you can't possibly do anything except die.

I played to max level with zero, salvador, maya and the commando guy. It wasn't horrible as any of them, I think the start of the game before you have any weapons or abilities that aren't worthless is the hardest part. But, at some point at max level if you turn the difficulty up it becomes obvious that you are not supposed to be able to play solo. It's outright stupid how damage scales relative to shield capacity (you might as well not HAVE a shield if it's not that absorb one since every enemy will take the entire shield and all your health with a single shot).

Man, thinking about this has just pissed me off enough that I'm not buying BL3. Haha. I'll wait for it to get a lot cheaper unless there's confirmation that it plays in 1 player more like the first game (everything apart from vehicle scaling was more than balanced and you could solo anything except the raid bosses without infinite frustration).

EDIT: I started Yakuza 3. The graphics are definitely a lot worse and the combat is definitely clunkier (the enemies block way too much). Also, holy shit, the fishing is the worst thing ever. You have to use bait for EVERY CAST even if nothing bites. And, actually catching the fish is quite tedious, it reminds me of Nier 1 or something but with like 4x the time required per fish. BUT, I instantly was sucked into the story and I love, love, love orphan dad hawaiian shirt version of Uncle Kaz. Plus, Majima is like the first fight in the game!


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> The game was horribly balanced for single-player compared to 1. If you have the absorb shield that drops off the BUNK3R boss, it's more than playable. If not, it's neverending frustration of getting literally one-shot by half the enemies you see and constantly being in fight for your life mode. And with the way the respawn fees scale with your money so you can lose billions each death until you're very rapidly back to no money, it's like money might as well not exist in that game except to make you rage when you die to one of those unwinnable, completely not-fun situations where some dude snipes you and then hides in cover for the entire duration of FFYL so you can't possibly do anything except die.
> 
> I played to max level with zero, salvador, maya and the commando guy. It wasn't horrible as any of them, I think the start of the game before you have any weapons or abilities that aren't worthless is the hardest part. But, at some point at max level if you turn the difficulty up it becomes obvious that you are not supposed to be able to play solo. It's outright stupid how damage scales relative to shield capacity (you might as well not HAVE a shield if it's not that absorb one since every enemy will take the entire shield and all your health with a single shot).
> 
> Man, thinking about this has just pissed me off enough that I'm not buying BL3. Haha. I'll wait for it to get a lot cheaper unless there's confirmation that it plays in 1 player more like the first game (everything apart from vehicle scaling was more than balanced and you could solo anything except the raid bosses without infinite frustration).



Man that explains so much! I didn’t know about that BNKR shield. I’ll have to drop back down to TVHM to fight that boss a few more times assuming I can even solo it. 

Every time I play with 2-3 people the enemies seem way easier than solo (because of all the damage) but once a 4th joins the seem super hard to kill again. But solo is just not fun: Crit headshot on a bandit = 20% of their life bar. Body shot? May as well have not happened. 

And playing as Krieg means that unless I can pop his special 2 shots will absolutely kill me without cover. 

I’m going to hold off on BL3 until the super mega edition comes out next summer. Starting to study for an exam and don’t need any more distractions from new games. 

Also someone dropped me a shiny OP10 machine gun that seems to do a half million+ per shot. Am I realistically ever going to get to use it? “OP” comes after the UVHM right?


----------



## StrmRidr

I'm actually looking forward to this year's COD. I haven't really played any of them since MW3 but the new one looks very promising and a proper return to form. I'll be giving the Beta a go on PS4.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm waiting for my son to go to bed so I can play Final Fantasy VIII remastered. I'm actually surprised as how excited I am to play it. Haven't played it since I beat it back in the day and basically 100% it.


----------



## Steinmetzify

I just wanted to come in here and say that as a console player that bought a gaming PC just so I could play PUBG, I’m REALLY EXCITED that I just found out about the Splitfish FragFX. 

I’m going to order this thing RIGHT THE FUCK NOW and then dominate for exactly 3 months and then quit this piece of shit game. 

/rant


----------



## StevenC

Played Link to the Past over the weekend with the news SNES app on Switch. Pretty good game, better than my other experiences with top down Zelda.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Played Link to the Past over the weekend with the news SNES app on Switch. Pretty good game, better than my other experiences with top down Zelda.



Still one of my favorite SNES titles, or even Zelda titles. Tightly designed with very little flaws, it was a large world of it's time that openly encouraged exploration while still being cohesive. I need to replay this again soon and see how much I still remember from the game.


----------



## wankerness

I completely lost interest in LTTP somewhere around the time the dungeon items starting feeling like they were just random padding crap designed to lengthen the game (ex, CANE THAT MAKES BLOCKS APPEAR!!!). I still haven't finished it!


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I completely lost interest in LTTP somewhere around the time the dungeon items starting feeling like they were just random padding crap designed to lengthen the game (ex, CANE THAT MAKES BLOCKS APPEAR!!!). I still haven't finished it!


I didn't so much mind that cane, I liked how it was used in the last dungeon. The ice rod was dumb, being that it's only purpose is to beat one boss that you can't beat otherwise and you don't even get it in that dungeon. Magic Cape only has one use, too, an optional heart piece. I kept forgetting the hookshot existed because I'm so used to big "hookshot here" targets in other games. Medallions are pointless, too. And in a game with such clunky item switching the Book was just annoying.

Cane of Bryna and Bombos Medallion were really cool items though, but basically worthless. Cane is good for Blind, but otherwise they're a bit overpowered for an action game.

Couple other things. The bosses were all basically trivial except for Moldorm because of the falling off the stage, Ganon because of the falling off the stage, and that moth dickhead. I hate that moth. Worst boss ever. Gives moths a bad name. In fact, screw that whole dungeon.

Item drops were way too low. Not enough magic to make it worth using or even trying your fancy items until you get to the section that requires it. And there aren't enough rupees in the game to make it worth buying magic potions to use those items. And between those two things you end up just running past every enemy in the game because it's not worth the magic or risking the hearts. On the other hand, I had more arrows and bombs than I knew what to do with.

Now, I'm happy to admit some of these criticisms are from playing the game in 2019 and all that comes with it. It's a SNES game and it shows in a lot of ways. But I have the same issue with this as the original Zelda, my main weapon is a sword and I never want to fight people with my sword. I played Oracle of Ages when it came out and enjoyed it, but my child brain couldn't get very far and if I wanted to play Zelda, Majora's Mask was right there...

All that said, I'm super excited for Link's Awakening remake next week and really hope they do Oracles in the same style soon.

I'm going to play F Zero for the next while, because it's the best game on SNES.

EDIT: I should probably say what I actually liked about the game. Being more or less the start of the series, certainly the lore, it really has that Zelda sense of magic. The "legend" bit. It makes me want to know more about the Imprisoning War and makes me think about the Master Sword sitting there untouched for so long (poor Fi). And all that is only enhanced with later games in the series. I'm sitting here wondering what happened to the Master Sword between ALBW and Botw that Zelda I link never found it.

Also, while some dungeons just felt meandering and random, others felt really tight and fun. I don't really mean the linear vs non linear dungeons either. Just the loops you had to go through in some dungeons were fun and some were annoying. 

Finally, it does that other Zelda thing. You start the game off very vulnerable and scared and by the end you're running through dungeons with all the experience and equipment you've gained along your journey.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

In fairness, that was released at a time where Nintendo were beginning their formula of remixing and refining the original game.

ALTTP was their first attempt, and yes there were a ton of superfluous and redundant items. Especially all the obvious padding items like Titan's Mitt, the Book Of Mudora, Moon Pearl or that bloody Shovel. Then the overabundance of upgrades, but then again having the red boomerang is sweet and so are 2 Master sword upgrades.

I certainly preferred the Cane of Somaria over whatever that top business in Twilight Princess was. There were some puzzles that required cool usage of it and superseded bombs for others. And yeah it was pretty much the most important part of Turtle Rock. 

The Cape IIRC is good to pass through certain bumper obstacles and in terms of invulnerability, I used it much more than the Cane of Byrna (which I always found useless). Medallions for the most part are useless aside from contrived but elaborate ways to open paths. The Bombos I only used once against the Ice palace boss and that's it. Ice Rod definitely had much less use than the awesome fire rod, and that's against 2 bosses. The hookshot game usage was still in it's infantile stages, but I thought it was great at the time.

I didn't have that rupee issue since the secret caves were always chock full of them. There was one near Lake Hylia on the way to the Ice Rod that gave an easy 500 of them. I always raced for that quickly since after that I never ran out of money again. 

ALTTP has certainly aged at this point, but I still think it's one of the top tier games in the Zelda canon. Perhaps on par with Ocarina both just below Majora's Mask and maybe Wind Waker.


----------



## Seabeast2000

So BL3 anyone?

Edit: it's not out for a few more days. Thought it was today.


----------



## Mathemagician

The906 said:


> So BL3 anyone?
> 
> Edit: it's not out for a few more days. Thought it was today.



Purposely burned myself out on BL2 this past month. I’ll see you next year for the $40 collectors edition! Flak looks super fun.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> In fairness, that was released at a time where Nintendo were beginning their formula of remixing and refining the original game.
> 
> ALTTP was their first attempt, and yes there were a ton of superfluous and redundant items. Especially all the obvious padding items like Titan's Mitt, the Book Of Mudora, Moon Pearl or that bloody Shovel. Then the overabundance of upgrades, but then again having the red boomerang is sweet and so are 2 Master sword upgrades.
> 
> I certainly preferred the Cane of Somaria over whatever that top business in Twilight Princess was. There were some puzzles that required cool usage of it and superseded bombs for others. And yeah it was pretty much the most important part of Turtle Rock.
> 
> The Cape IIRC is good to pass through certain bumper obstacles and in terms of invulnerability, I used it much more than the Cane of Byrna (which I always found useless). Medallions for the most part are useless aside from contrived but elaborate ways to open paths. The Bombos I only used once against the Ice palace boss and that's it. Ice Rod definitely had much less use than the awesome fire rod, and that's against 2 bosses. The hookshot game usage was still in it's infantile stages, but I thought it was great at the time.
> 
> I didn't have that rupee issue since the secret caves were always chock full of them. There was one near Lake Hylia on the way to the Ice Rod that gave an easy 500 of them. I always raced for that quickly since after that I never ran out of money again.
> 
> ALTTP has certainly aged at this point, but I still think it's one of the top tier games in the Zelda canon. Perhaps on par with Ocarina both just below Majora's Mask and maybe Wind Waker.


I think I got too many upgrades at the shrine of happiness, money wise. I definitely didn't need 70 arrows. I think all the later games, particularly the 3D ones, just got the balance right for a lot of things. That comes with experience, so it's hard to fault ALTTP too much for it. I only got all the arrow upgrades because they're so useful in other Zeldas, same for bombs. And those games are usually happy to give you bombs and arrows if you need them, but still reward economizing and getting the upgrades. Here, the one enemy that required bombs alway dropped bombs and were in rooms filled with bombs, same for bomb puzzles. Arrows were in seemingly ever pot and blade of grass. But after dying to that bastard moth I just kept letting the Wallmaster get me so the 2 hearts in one room would respawn, because it was such a hassle to get out of the dungeon and back in to heal.

I know this is still the era of Nintendo hard, but this isn't a difficult game. It's just frustrating in a bunch of places.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally finished Noctis: Some Day His Prince Will Come, and all the extra DLC episodes.

Where to start? For a Final Fantasy game it has traits that could lead to FF6 or 9 levels of greatness, but it trips over itself and falls hard face first way too many times to reach those heights. The fact that the game is incomplete thanks to 10 years of development hell, even with the Royal edition and all the DLCs, feels so obvious, seriously harms the game's story. It's so clumsily put together.

There's a big bruhaha about how utterly crap the entire Chapter 13 part of the game was, and I'd like to report that all these critics are completely right. I will defend it's tone and feel; it's supposed to be bleak, dark and uncomfortable yes, and it does that well at least. But it goes on for far too long, a lot of repetitive running about, and takes away a ton of story and screen time for some characters (coughRAVUSunconvincingcough) and the Ring of Lucii isn't exactly as worth using as the lore implies. Adding the extra verse (where you control Gladiolus and Ignis) highlights the chapter's story flow even more. I was swapping between the 2 and ended up spoiling major plot points because of it. Seriously screw you Square Enix.

Also, when it comes to modern gaming, it's usually against my playing style to do side stuff post game and will try to do as much if not all before seeing the main ending, but to lock parts of the post game stuff like the Airship equivalent is a small pet peeve of mine. I didn't like it in XIII vanilla, and I don't like it any better here. Speaking of side stuff, most of it (non hunts) is crappy fetch quests, so there's even less incentive for me to do them. I don't mind inane side quests if they're interesting like the Yakuza series. But FFXV doesn't have anything more than get stuff or take photo for some dudes we don't really care for.

I do appreciate that the final boss is just a regular built dude and not some overbloated deity like every JRPG ever. And also that the game allows you to troll the ending sequence with a photo of your choice. 

As for the DLC stuff:

Episode Prompto: I've spent a lot of time making fun of this guy, though I respect that he's the game's Edgar equivalent and having a drill and buzzsaw weapons and being the sensible person of bring a gun to a knife fight deserves respect. That said, his episode made me actively angry. I'm not one for cover based shooter mechanics, and I don't like them here.  I appreciate the change of genre, but I guess I'm not a fan.

Episode Ignis: I had to play this post game since apparently it was spoiler galore, but turns out it wasn't really that much. Again the clumsy story telling doesn't help. The supposed ninja class where his lighting dash attacks are janky as hell and you're given a hookshot for a few minutes only to have it taken away. The alternate ending is a neat touch though.

Comrades: Perhaps my first ever attempt in playing a MuMorPerGer. Being an old school nerd I made a character named Clyde Arrowny armed with shurikens and daggers. I was actually looking forward to this one. But it turns out it's just The Hunts from the main game with a hub and a waiting lobby. And it got grindtastic real quick. I didn't bother going further, and had I known that bandit Clyde was going to show up in Chapter 15, only to be underlevelled and frequently died as I tried to figure out what Noctis and co were doing under the Behemoth King's legs... I still wouldn't've played Comrades more.

Episode Ardyn: Ok this was actually fun. Everyone likes the story, which is pretty much a chapter from Live A Live, but I digress. I liked this one because the game suddenly turns to Saints Row 4 meets Prototype. You get to wreak havoc and carnage over a small Tokyo-esque city and the game rewards every destruction caused. Come to think of it, the Live A Live comparison wasn't done lightly. Difference is that LAL was an actual shock twist, while this was more of a character backstory study. It's not bad but I thought it could've worked better if the whole story was, well... you know...told properly.

Apparently the cancelled Episodes for Noctis and Luna will be released as novels, so a big buggernuts to them.

I guess who am I to complain that this isn't the FFs of yore. But there are moments that show it's name heritage that I like. For instances the small moments spend with Noctis's boyfriends after camping or sleeping hark back to Shadow's dreams. The open world may be a ton of picturesque bugger all but the exploration is classic JPRG gaming. All the little references especially to FF6 (yes perhaps I should just marry that game), are aimed square at my direction.

All in all, the Charcoal Clad Chippendale Club is a good game, but with too many birth defects to make it great. A shame because I remember when the XIII Versus trailer dropped, I'd thought it was a game changer for the franchise. Oh well.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Apparently the cancelled Episodes for Noctis and Luna will be released as novels, so a big buggernuts to them.



Scratch that. I just read the Wiki for FFXV Dawn Of The Future because screw it. 

Huh, it actually sounds pretty epic. It's a more of an elaborate mulligan of Chapter 14-15, there's a ton of fanservice pandering and it turns more into another slapdash JRPG ending, but it would actually make a pretty cool full game, well at least by latter day Square Enix FF standards anyway. 

But alas, we may never know...


----------



## TedEH

Not sure how to feel that the game I've been playing most lately is... Pokemon Go.


----------



## Seabeast2000

Mathemagician said:


> Purposely burned myself out on BL2 this past month. I’ll see you next year for the $40 collectors edition! Flak looks super fun.



You mean you are going to do a Me and wait until the price drops over time and buy it then?


----------



## Mathemagician

The906 said:


> You mean you are going to do a Me and wait until the price drops over time and buy it then?



Yep. Have a giant exam in June and need to begin studying now due to my hectic work schedule. So no way am I adding an addictive brightly colored loot game to my rotation. But NEXT year? Oh bby heck ya. Lol.


----------



## Empryrean

finally cracked open Sekiro after buying it like 2 months ago and not touching it for no good reason. Very fun game if you can get into the combat mechanics


----------



## Leviathus

Empryrean said:


> finally cracked open Sekiro after buying it like 2 months ago and not touching it for no good reason. Very fun game if you can get into the combat mechanics



Nice! i just got it a few weeks ago and am 5 or 6 bosses through, really cool game. Wonder if they'll ever put out DLC for it.


----------



## Ralyks

The906 said:


> So BL3 anyone?
> 
> Edit: it's not out for a few more days. Thought it was today.



Yup. My GameStop is selling an early release tomorrow at 9 pm, so I'll be playing all but, and I'm off from work Friday so I'll be playing it most of the day as well.


Oh, and I forgot how great FFVIII is. Just got Rinoa. Find memories re-emerging.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Still one of my favorite SNES titles, or even Zelda titles. Tightly designed with very little flaws, it was a large world of it's time that openly encouraged exploration while still being cohesive. I need to replay this again soon and see how much I still remember from the game.





StevenC said:


> I think I got too many upgrades at the shrine of happiness, money wise. I definitely didn't need 70 arrows. I think all the later games, particularly the 3D ones, just got the balance right for a lot of things. That comes with experience, so it's hard to fault ALTTP too much for it. I only got all the arrow upgrades because they're so useful in other Zeldas, same for bombs. And those games are usually happy to give you bombs and arrows if you need them, but still reward economizing and getting the upgrades. Here, the one enemy that required bombs alway dropped bombs and were in rooms filled with bombs, same for bomb puzzles. Arrows were in seemingly ever pot and blade of grass. But after dying to that bastard moth I just kept letting the Wallmaster get me so the 2 hearts in one room would respawn, because it was such a hassle to get out of the dungeon and back in to heal.
> 
> I know this is still the era of Nintendo hard, but this isn't a difficult game. It's just frustrating in a bunch of places.



All the Zelda 3 talk made me drop FFXV completely and played it then and there. Probably as I took it as a dare. 

Played just under 2 hours last night and frankly I'm disappointed with myself. I forgot about getting the Mushroom right after leaving Sanctuary so I got the Magic Powder later than I used to. And I died near Lake Hylia out of carelessness, trying to be ambitious with getting heart pieces as early as possible, but thankfully kept 2 fairies bottled. Still I managed to grab 800 rupees before attempting the first palace. Only stopped after maxing the Bombs/Arrows quantity since it was getting late.

Seriously, give me a full free afternoon and I'll attempt to finish this entire game.


----------



## chopeth

Just killed the Demon Prince at DSIII... took me a good while


----------



## wankerness

I preordered BL3 season pass edition cause I'm a mark  I ordered the physical version like someone stuck in the 90s. I wonder how many hundreds of gigabytes I'll have to download to play it after inserting the disc?!


----------



## MFB

Ralyks said:


> Yup. My GameStop is selling an early release tomorrow at 9 pm, so I'll be playing all but, and I'm off from work Friday so I'll be playing it most of the day as well.
> 
> 
> Oh, and I forgot how great FFVIII is. Just got Rinoa. Find memories re-emerging.



I booted up the FFVIII remaster over the weekend, and I immediately got goosebumps at the opening of _Fithos, Lusec_ and seeing everything remastered on _XBOX._ Seeing actual faces on characters after all this time is like having the game catch up to your imaginations of what you saw as a kid.


----------



## Ralyks

I played Borderlands 3 until 2 in the morning.... And I'm about to play a bunch more. It's more Borderlands with some new features. That's all I needed, and that's what I got. Quite happy so far.


----------



## wankerness

How is it single-player? I don't do coop cause I have no friends so I'm hoping it's balanced like BL1 where you got progressively stronger instead of 2 where you eventually started getting 1 shot by everything.


----------



## Ralyks

So far hasn't been bad solo. And I've done both solo and co-op. Actually playing solo as we speak.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So far hasn't been bad solo. And I've done both solo and co-op. Actually playing solo as we speak.



Do the skills have a lot of survivability increases in them? in BL1 you functionally became a tank with some of the classes once you started hitting high levels (ex, good luck getting killed as the Siren or the soldier in particular). I was a big fan of ammo regen too. BL2 was all about you running out of ammo fuckin constantly so you had to be switching weapons all the time, especially at lower levels, which was infuriating as you usually only had one or two guns that did any damage. Plus, the only class that even remotely approached the survivability all the characters had in 1 was the gunzerker at high levels, but even he was a glass cannon when the skill wasn't active.

Been playing some more Yakuza 3 and doing tons of substories, they're a lot less funny here than in the later games (and Kiwami 1/2 - I assume those were heavily re-written from the original games??). Still kind of charming, though. I recently got to walk some 6 scoop ice cream cones carefully to a man's children a few blocks away. Even the actual missions so far are mostly just doing things to help your orphans, which is also endearing - I last located a runaway dog!


----------



## Ralyks

I haven't really died much Solo. I definitely died more in co-op. They weren't kidding when they said there's a lot of customization with how you want to spec your character.

I am going to get that Yakuza collection, but I'm probably putting it on he Black Friday list along with Judgement and Control. I'd say Death Stranding is on that list but, we'll, I ended up pre-ordering it along with FF7 Remake when I was picking up Borderlands last night. And now when I need to pee, I'm probably just going to tell people I'm going to go make mushrooms.


----------



## Mathemagician

BL2 was very fun in normal mode, and then it’s just been awful every level after 30. TVHM sucked unless grouped with randoms, and UVHM is the same but worse. Like, it’s NOT fun getting “weaker” the more you play. The difficulty reset isn’t bad, it’s never feeling stronger after lvl 30 even when working towards “OP” builds. They aren’t “OP” if they are required to stay alive.

Is BL1 on PS4? That sounds more fun imo. Even solo.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Currently up to the Misery Mire section of ALTTP. After all these years, I didn't realise I could get the Magic Cape without the Titan's Mitt, and in turn, the Cane of Byrna. I'm assuming it was a design oversight that a certain statue was laid out to deceive my younger self. And with that, the next 3 dungeons and bosses became much easier. It certainly made the Skeleton Forest a breeze now that the Wallmasters can't touch me.

The moth is the most difficult non Ganon boss in the game, but with the cape and the 1/2 magic buff made it much easier. Back then, I would have used up 3 bottles of fairies and blue potions frantically trying to survive and get a few hits, but it was smooth reckless tanking without consequence now. 

Knowing I will finish this by the weekend, I've just grabbed Judgment thanks to a sale. Gonna start that then right to Yakuza 3, so it's back to good ol' Kamurocho for me. Though I'll probably put both on old the second I get Trails Of Cold Steel 3 now it's finally being released quenching my 3 or so year wait.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> I played Borderlands 3 until 2 in the morning.... And I'm about to play a bunch more. It's more Borderlands with some new features. That's all I needed, and that's what I got. Quite happy so far.





wankerness said:


> How is it single-player? I don't do coop cause I have no friends so I'm hoping it's balanced like BL1 where you got progressively stronger instead of 2 where you eventually started getting 1 shot by everything.


If you guys are playing on PC hit me up : JURGMANDR


----------



## Ralyks

I take back what I said in BL3: by the end of the second planet, shit got hard. Not impossible, but hard. Although I haven't done that many side quests, so for all I know if I did those, I'd be a lot more powerful and that stuff would have been easier.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> BL2 was very fun in normal mode, and then it’s just been awful every level after 30. TVHM sucked unless grouped with randoms, and UVHM is the same but worse. Like, it’s NOT fun getting “weaker” the more you play. The difficulty reset isn’t bad, it’s never feeling stronger after lvl 30 even when working towards “OP” builds. They aren’t “OP” if they are required to stay alive.
> 
> Is BL1 on PS4? That sounds more fun imo. Even solo.



Yeah, BL1 is on PS4 now. They released a remaster a few months ago. It’s still fun but it shows its age. The vehicle scaling is the one thing about it that’s infuriating, you basically die in two hits by the time you’re a high level if you’re in a car. It’s almost more practical to get out of the car when an enemy vehicle appears!

I have 3 on ps4 unfortunately. Installing now! Probably won’t play it much for a few days though.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Started Hollow Knight last night. Super cool, great sound track, adorable art, challenging. We'll see how long it takes for me to get pissed at it, but I managed to take out the False Knight on the 4th attempt. 

I'm finding out I'm terrible at jumping on platforms.


----------



## ChugThisBoy

I'm playing WoW Classic with some friends and we have lots of fun, actually. I'm getting BL3 in a few weeks, I played 1 and 2 and I just love the series. Hmm, what else... Star Citizen sometimes, also trying to finish all storylines in AC Odyssey - this game is massive, I'm telling you. And I'm waiting for nice price drop of Sekiro.


----------



## wankerness

Played BL3 for a bit. First impression is that it's really hard telling common quality items apart from ammo! Second impression is that it pretty much is BL2, at the beginning at least. I started playing as the big guy with the pets and so far it's less frustrating than 2, but if I didn't have a pet drawing fire and independently killing things with no threat to me I might feel differently.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm playing BL3 on PS4 as well (PSN = Ralyks03). I'd say I've put roughly 15 hours in, give or take. Playing a siren. I'm still enjoying it a lot, although I gotta say the feeling doesn't feel nearly as good as BL2 (or at least right now, theres some vehicle customization which is new to the series).

I'm sure since my son is with grandma for the evening since I'm currently sitting in an accounting class, I'll be playing a bunch more tonight in a couple of hours. That or I'll jump back to FFVIII.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> I'm playing BL3 on PS4 as well (PSN = Ralyks03). I'd say I've put roughly 15 hours in, give or take. Playing a siren. I'm still enjoying it a lot, although I gotta say the feeling doesn't feel nearly as good as BL2 (or at least right now, theres some vehicle customization which is new to the series).
> 
> I'm sure since my son is with grandma for the evening since I'm currently sitting in an accounting class, I'll be playing a bunch more tonight in a couple of hours. That or I'll jump back to FFVIII.


I'm playing as Moze right now and she's pretty fun tbh. Burly enough to not get melted in normal combat and her mech is a lot of fun if you use the flamethrower/grenade launcher combo with her splash damage/incendiary boost abilities. She can shred enemies pretty easily ime, though I'm only a little bit into the Promethea storyline
Also tediore and COV guns are my favorites since they synergize so well with her skills.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Rage 2. This game is exactly why I'm starting more and more not to trust people when they say something sucks, just because it got a 7/10.


----------



## Mathemagician

PunkBillCarson said:


> Rage 2. This game is exactly why I'm starting more and more not to trust people when they say something sucks, just because it got a 7/10.



I don’t know if you’re a monster hunter fan, but the free game Dauntless is great imo, and the anime-inspired games Toukiden 1 & 2 are also really fun. I love when you find a B/B+ of a genre you’re a fan of.


----------



## mongey

with the SNES update on swtich am playing Zelda link to the past for the first time since the early 90's . Its amazing how much useless information you really can keep in your brain 

its even holding really well to what i remembered .awesome game


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> with the SNES update on swtich am playing Zelda link to the past for the first time since the early 90's . Its amazing how much useless information you really can keep in your brain
> 
> its even holding really well to what i remembered .awesome game



I just finished the game last night as well. Managed to still remember everything too, though it got wonky for me during the latter dungeons like Misery Mire and Ganon's Tower when I was getting the Big Key and featured treasure long before I got the map. 

Also my reflexes have deteriorated since the 90s. I was using the medallions, cape and the Cane of Byrna more often now, especially during the ascending floors in Ganon's tower. No idea how I managed back then, but getting the cape early was a godsend.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Mathemagician said:


> I don’t know if you’re a monster hunter fan, but the free game Dauntless is great imo, and the anime-inspired games Toukiden 1 & 2 are also really fun. I love when you find a B/B+ of a genre you’re a fan of.




I played Toukiden: Kiwami and it was pretty damn decent. I guess for me, not every game has to be an amazing experience. Sometimes, I like a more laid back casual experience. That's why I still like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry and such.


----------



## TedEH

Making it very slowly through Link's Awakening still.... I made it most of the way through the 5th dungeon and seemed to bug it out somehow? I think there's an order to how you're supposed to go after those mini-boss type dudes, but it wouldn't trigger until I gave up, save and quit, and re-attempted the dungeon.


----------



## thedonal

PunkBillCarson said:


> Rage 2. This game is exactly why I'm starting more and more not to trust people when they say something sucks, just because it got a 7/10.



I've got my eye on that for the future. I LOVE the first one despite it's limitations (and feeling that it's either an expansion short or unfinished)- played through it a few times on X-Box 360.


----------



## dr_game0ver

The first rage is so much fun. For now, i'm going thru the Earth Defense Force games (2025 and insect Armageddon). The closest we get to a Body harvest remake.


----------



## mongey

grabbed Divinity original sin 2 on switch

I think its gonna be great but it is def overwhelming for the first few hours


----------



## StevenC

Link's Awakening didn't show up so looks like Untitled Goose Game for me tonight


----------



## MFB

StevenC said:


> Link's Awakening didn't show up so looks like Untitled Goose Game for me tonight



If UGG didn't require me to use the download and go through the process of using the Epic Store, I'd be playing it tonight, it looks so god damn fun


----------



## StevenC

MFB said:


> If UGG didn't require me to use the download and go through the process of using the Epic Store, I'd be playing it tonight, it looks so god damn fun


I'm playing on Switch, but apparently it's really short so probably not worth engaging with the Epic store.


----------



## Werecow

PunkBillCarson said:


> Rage 2. This game is exactly why I'm starting more and more not to trust people when they say something sucks, just because it got a 7/10.



I love Rage 2. The driving feels a bit disconnected to the world, like no one seems to attack you much and it would be better if there were "random encounters" like in the Fallout games. But i just see the driving as getting to the next fight, and the world is gorgeous to drive through. The fights are amazing though, especially once you start using the powers more often.


----------



## Werecow

mongey said:


> grabbed Divinity original sin 2 on switch
> 
> I think its gonna be great but it is def overwhelming for the first few hours



It's an amazing game. Best RPG for years and years. It even converted me from being a turn-based hater to preferring that.


----------



## BlackMastodon

One day I'll cave and try Divinity. On paper it has everything I'd like. But now that the devil is doing Baldur's Gate 3 I might just wait for that.

Jumped back into Northgard yesterday. Fun RTS and has a good mix of 4X elements to it while being way more accessible as an RTS. Still learning a lot of the nuance, but would recommend it. Sating my RTS fix until WC3 Reforged releases.


----------



## StevenC

Only played a few dungeons, but way preferring Link's Awakening over Link to the Past.


----------



## Ulvhedin

Primarily just Vigor these days, along with a round of Far Cry New Dawn and Battlefield 5. But the latter is fading away..


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Only played a few dungeons, but way preferring Link's Awakening over Link to the Past.



Yeah, I played Link's Awakening before LTTP and remember thinking the gameplay was a lot more dynamic and fluid. Even if you used to have to pause to switch items CONSTANTLY. LTTP felt really wooden to me in comparison.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Werecow said:


> I love Rage 2. The driving feels a bit disconnected to the world, like no one seems to attack you much and it would be better if there were "random encounters" like in the Fallout games. But i just see the driving as getting to the next fight, and the world is gorgeous to drive through. The fights are amazing though, especially once you start using the powers more often.



I've heard the game feels unfinished like a lot of parts could have been way more developed. I'm waiting for it to come down in price. Still €60+ anytime I check in stores. 



Werecow said:


> It's an amazing game. Best RPG for years and years. It even converted me from being a turn-based hater to preferring that.



Its looking more and more likely Baldurs Gate 3 will be turn based like Divinity. I must give it a try sometime to see what Larian are capable of.


----------



## Werecow

Lorcan Ward said:


> I've heard the game feels unfinished like a lot of parts could have been way more developed. I'm waiting for it to come down in price. Still €60+ anytime I check in stores.
> 
> 
> 
> Its looking more and more likely Baldurs Gate 3 will be turn based like Divinity. I must give it a try sometime to see what Larian are capable of.



Yeh a few of the outside areas feel a bit empty, not to me in a scenery type way though, but like i said, it needs more enemies to actually attack you while you're driving and random events happening like the Fallout games have. There are convoys you can attack for missions, but even they just sort of fly past you without attacking much if you happen to meet them. The on foot fighting (there's lots of that) is glorious. Once you get a few powers the fighting is really creative.


I'm so excited for Baldur's! I liked the old games, but i've actually played through D:OS2 more than 4 times now. It's so good. I think Baldur's Gate is equal in hype to Cyberpunk for me.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Link's Awakening


I'm pretty curious about the remake just on the basis of how I feel like these are generally really good games but lack a lot of modern conveniences and design choices. It's not uncommon to get stuck not having any idea what you're supposed to do next. I have a feeling that the new one might correct for a lot of the little things that make older games feel inaccessible.


----------



## wankerness

Everything I've heard is that it's exactly the same with the controls/inventory management made a lot less annoying purely by virtue of more buttons. Like, no changes to any rooms in the dungeons or anything like that. Making the price tag seem a bit ridiculous, even if it is a great game and the visual/aural overhaul was excellent.


----------



## StevenC

Yeah it's the same game as the original and DX, just new sound and visuals, with the benefit of L for running, R for shield, and X and Y for items. I can't imagine this game being as good on the GB, but the big detractors for LttP is that it had exactly as many buttons as this Switch version uses, yet still manages to miss the obvious two items on X and Y. The seemed to take all that stuff on board for Ocarina though.

About half way through now, got most of the shells and heart pieces, still loving it. One thing is in LttP I was sometimes worried about the hassle of getting back to different places so didn't explore as much in the rivers and stuff. Here the overworld just seems so much better and the warp points much handier. 

Hoping for Oracles remakess really hard now, because it worked for Link's Awakening.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Slogging away at Judgment. Now at chapter 2, and some stray thoughts:

It's much darker than the mainline series. Make no mistake, it's still a Yakuza/Ryu Ga Gotoku game through and through, same ol' Kamurocho, same goofy and insane inhabitants. But going through a particular side quest where you track down a cheating husband and it resolves in a divorce is pretty heavy even for Yakuza standards. Even the goofy sex pests you have to catch, still have that dark undertone to them, even if I laughed my ass of during the Ass Catchem segment.

It's a lot slower paced as well, but it works. The Kamurocho lore does beg itself to have a noir crime drama theme, and Judgment does it well. It starts off at the pace of a dying man's crawl but that's how it should be in this case. Though it didn't help when the moment the friends mechanic unlocked I tried to get as many of them as I could, hence why I dawdled in chapter 1 for so long.

Yagami is certainly no Kiryu, and it took some time to accept that. Part of Kiryu's appeal is that he's the staunch unmovable anchor in the sea of goofy wackiness. Yagami seems to go through the motions, thus makes him a less interesting protagonist. Doesn't help that I've seen some of the actor's drama series where he plays the same exact character. Yagami is a grower though, and he's much better than their first attempt in a detective character in Yakuza 4.

The combat seems harder than previous games. Maybe it's me but I found the difficulty curve ramped earlier than what I'm used to. Then they add mortal wound mechanics that can straight up kill you with a few timed hits. Basically a lot less tanking through, and Yagami's kung fu styles (well at least the Crane style) are tailored for graceful fighting than straight brawling. The wall jumping and climbing on cars are pretty sweet.

Having Fighting Vipers in Club Sega is a nice touch. It hasn't aged well thanks to the 5th gen 3D polygon look, and it's janky as all hell, but it had some cool unique mechanics rarely seen in other fighting games.

I've said before that Sega have made some excellent rail shooter mechanics and should capitalise on it for the series. The spear fishing minigame in Yakuza 6 was great, so I'm glad they did it again. The Kamuro Of The Dead minigame is exactly that: House Of The Dead with the Yakuza Dead Souls pastiche. I still suck at it though.


----------



## TedEH

The more I think about it.... for all the hype and praise around Links Awakening (the original), it feels like one of the weaker Zelda games I've ever played. I mean - it's all there, but it lacks some of the hooks and feeling of drive that the others have. When I play something like Majora's Mask, even though I've beat it 100 times I still get home and feel that "gatta keep going, gatta continue" thing, but with this one.... it's more of a "meh, I have nothing better to do right now" kind of thing. It's not a bad game, it just isn't as.... hook-y?


----------



## Mathemagician

You’re playing an early game in a series that has been slowly and carefully polished over 30 years. It’s going to feel “rough”. Imagine comparing that game against other options back when it came out for more context. 

Personal favorite is ALTTP because I played it as a kid on the SNES and it was just this huge never-ending game. 

It’s going to feel almost “paint by numbers” to someone playing it today instead of 1996 sitting on the floor having mostly played side-scrollers. 

LA is rough by today’s standards. I’m not saying it was a perfect game, but it was really really good. 

For example I think a lot of people are going to play the FF7 remake for the first time after hearing from nerds for 20 years about how great it is and are going to be like “this is it?”


----------



## TedEH

You're not wrong - but I know I'm able to get hooked by old games. This was, what, 93? ALTTP felt more "hooky" than that one. And a handful of NES games before that kept my attention really well (Kirby, etc). I definitely give it a pass as far as modern values go though.

I dunno if it's just me though. I haven't really been able to be "hooked" by a game in a good while. Pretty much all summer I've been in a sort of "meh, maybe I'll go do something else" mood when it comes to games.


----------



## wankerness

[QUOTE="Mathemagician”]For example I think a lot of people are going to play the FF7 remake for the first time after hearing from nerds for 20 years about how great it is and are going to be like “this is it?”[/QUOTE]

not comparable, that thing resembles the original in no way shape or form with the gameplay. This one is identical besides more buttons.


----------



## chopeth

abandoned DSIII

Can't beat midir or gael, so I got bored after a week trying to beat both.


----------



## Ralyks

Just finished the Borderlands 3 campaign with a siren. Damn that was a long campaign. Oh well, still Borderlands, still love it, still going to play more. Next on the list is my Death Stranding preorder anyway.

Although I do see the Yakuza collection is on sale...


----------



## Brutal08

chopeth said:


> abandoned DSIII
> 
> Can't beat midir or gael, so I got bored after a week trying to beat both.



Same here i satarted again and again with different character only to get stucked at midir and starting over


----------



## chopeth

Brutal08 said:


> Same here i satarted again and again with different character only to get stucked at midir and starting over



With the rest of bosses including Gael I notice progression from being harmless at the beginning to hitting more and more as I fight them but with that damned dragon I can't even tell when the different attacks start or finish nor the range.


----------



## Ralyks

I like to play horror games in October. Sooooo just started a new game of Last of Us. Hopefully I'll actually beat it this time.


----------



## lurè

Started Shadow of the tomb Raider after finishing the first two chapters (Rise of and Tomb Raider). Loving It so far, especially the crypt and Tomb exploring. Graphically Is stunning.

Also pumped af for Death Stranding.


----------



## TedEH

I found an ad for the 3ds Ocarina of Time remake - it was 5 minutes away from home and they only wanted $5 for it. I couldn't say no. Not playing it yet.... but it's gonna happen. My 2DS has basically become a glorified Zelda machine.


----------



## wankerness

lurè said:


> Started Shadow of the tomb Raider after finishing the first two chapters (Rise of and Tomb Raider). Loving It so far, especially the crypt and Tomb exploring. Graphically Is stunning.
> 
> Also pumped af for Death Stranding.



I really liked Tomb Raider and Rise of.., but I heard that the new one had very little combat, which is most of what I liked about the previous two! I wasn't huge on the puzzle tombs even if they were better than the equivalents in Uncharted. As someone who loves the TR remakes for their combat, would this be worth it? I've been putting off buying it since the "ultimate edition" or whatever that includes the season pass is still around 40 bucks on sale.



Ralyks said:


> I like to play horror games in October. Sooooo just started a new game of Last of Us. Hopefully I'll actually beat it this time.



How far did you get in the past? I hate to rave about it like a fanboy as I don't think it's the UNPARALLELED MASTERPIECE OF MEDIA that it occasionally is heralded as, but it truly does have a stunner of an ending. Probably the best I can think of for any game. I didn't really buy the Joel/Ellie relationship for long stretches of the game, but I absolutely loved the whole section where you play as her and then that ending. I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel. Even though I hate stealth games in general.


----------



## Ralyks

I last remember having to push Ellie on a door in the middle of a flooded town to get to a higher point. I'd say it was halfway. It was definitely after the high school.


----------



## lurè

wankerness said:


> As someone who loves the TR remakes for their combat, would this be worth it?


I'm at the beginning so I've done just the mandatory first enemies used as tutorial plus a couple of animals, so my judgement could be premature. The first two weren't much combat focused at the beginning but they escalated quickly towards the end of the game; so far I'm not seeing much of a difference.

The exploration was what got me in the first place so i liked TR but loved Rise of, the combat was fairly enjoyable too but in Rise of they clearly nailed the crypt/ tomb exploring.

I grabbed the 20th year anniversary pack for about 30€ from steam but didn't get the oldies ( underworld, anniversary….) because I've already played them.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Up to Chapter 5 of Judgment, and like every other Yakuza game, I've reached the point where I'm comfortable that it becomes a trance. 

The girlfriend system is the proxy in place of hostess dating, since Yagami's a good boy, and his ink suit actor has a reputation to uphold. But it's still the same, pump them with presents Killer Is Dead style, take them to dates via mini games (still sour with no karaoke option) and involve a subplot that requires the usual conclusion of smashing a bicycle or table over the offender's head. Of course the first girlfriend I encounter is a 19 year old busker, and draws attention to the age difference to my 35 year old character. 

More friends/reputation mean more sidequests and unlockables so of course I'm milking it putting the plot on hold. But it's good the game staggers that flow and halts you from going overboard dawdling. Certainly better than say Yakuza 6 where I had all the hostesses maxed and a lot of sidequests done before midway the first chapter. Though I may give certain ones like the Mahjong clerk a pass because (even now slowly learning the rules) I can't play Mahjong to save my life. The No Good Tora mahjong player was a nice touch by the localization team.

The drone racing is a lot of fun but it's tough at first. I can never trigger the startup boost, but after trudging through the beginner grand prix (and watching Yagami's big dumb victorious grin), a friend is unlocked and he makes you fetch quest for QR codes all around town to unlock better drone parts. Yeah it's dull but it's better than hunting for minerals in Lost Paradise driving a large wasteland of bugger all. 

The detective mechanics kinda suck. The tailing is kindergarten Assassin's Creed 3 level. Sure you follow them, then hide at specific spots when they stop to keep the alarm meter down, but that's it. I actually messed up the first trailing when I accidentally sprinted directly to the suspect and embarrassed myself directly in front of him. But since my meter was down the AI just looked around awkwardly until I ran back to a hiding spot just to be polite. The Ace Attorney stuff is pretty basic and obvious as well with all the homages being rather tacked on contrived, but I am still early in the game after all. Doesn't help that I grinded up my detective skills early either. 

Apparently there's always a stray cat in every occasion an examination mode occurs. I've already missed a few.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Werecow said:


> Yeh a few of the outside areas feel a bit empty, not to me in a scenery type way though, but like i said, it needs more enemies to actually attack you while you're driving and random events happening like the Fallout games have. There are convoys you can attack for missions, but even they just sort of fly past you without attacking much if you happen to meet them. The on foot fighting (there's lots of that) is glorious. Once you get a few powers the fighting is really creative.



Sounds very similar to the Mad Max game. Its like the team didn't listen to any of the complaints or suggestions people made. 

Anyone playing Greedfall? It didn't get the reception it was hoping for.


----------



## dr_game0ver

RDR2 anounced on PC. To the surprise of no one.


----------



## WarMachine

dr_game0ver said:


> RDR2 anounced on PC. To the surprise of no one.


It surprised me honestly lol. I looked into this a few months ago and it was iffy at best. Which makes me feel that much better about getting rid of my PS4 lol. I can get all the same games on PC that i had on it, except so far for God of War, but yeah, zero regrets. Just finished trying out Killer Instinct, downloading Rage 2 ATM, still have CoD WW2/Agony Unrated/The Evil Within 2 to run through. I've beat the evil within 2 when i had my PS4, but i'm just a few years late to playing KI/CoD/Agony lol.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

got back into hearthstone. kind of fun for killing time.


----------



## Ribboz

Currently playing "UnderRail". It is great! If you enjoy fallout 1&2 type RPGs then you may enjoy this. I was on the fence. Then this video convinced me to give it a go. Super glad I did.


----------



## Choop

About to check out the new Spyro trilogy remake on PC since it was in the Humble Monthly this round. I had read reviews about it having some not super tight controls or whatever, but I'm hella casual and probably won't mind so much.


----------



## TedEH

I got a deal I couldn't pass up for a rift - this seems to be the best way to play rhythm games.


----------



## Leviathus

CS 1.6

Still the best FPS of all time IMO.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Bloodborne. Cause you know what the Souls series was missing? Machine guns.


----------



## chopeth

dr_game0ver said:


> Bloodborne. Cause you know what the Souls series was missing? Machine guns.



Me too, where are you?


----------



## dr_game0ver

At the cathedral, just after father whatever, where a guy on top of his tower is shooting at you with his gatling gun. I just started yesterday. Still better than the previous game i was playing: Lords of the fallen...


----------



## chopeth

great, I'm near the end... dunno when I'm supposed to start the DLC though


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaned up some trophies in the original Homefront and made the mistake of playing the sequel. The only good thing about it is that (a couple playable levels of) Timeplitters 2 is hidden within the game.


----------



## mongey

ok. I just cant get into divinity original sin 2 . I have tried for 6 hours and its just not gelling with me. Im sure im the problem. Busy at work and sleep deprived form a 7 month old who hates sleeping in his cot . think I just dont have the brain power tickets for it right now on my commute 

just grabbed witcher 3 to play instead . Never played it so think it will be a better choice ofr my fried brain


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> ok. I just cant get into divinity original sin 2 . I have tried for 6 hours and its just not gelling with me. Im sure im the problem. Busy at work and sleep deprived form a 7 month old who hates sleeping in his cot . think I just dont have the brain power tickets for it right now on my commute
> 
> just grabbed witcher 3 to play instead . Never played it so think it will be a better choice ofr my fried brain


it's all fine til you do the first wight/banshee or vampire fight in Witcher 3. Then you better pay attention to prepping your gear and potions. also get good at dodging/countering.


----------



## mongey

Che


KnightBrolaire said:


> it's all fine til you do the first wight/banshee or vampire fight in Witcher 3. Then you better pay attention to prepping your gear and potions. also get good at dodging/countering.


chwers

i actually have played it a little. I had it when it first came out but I was playing a butt lot of street fighter at the time and didn’t really play it past the first couple hours. So ended up trading it.


----------



## wankerness

I beat Witcher 3 without many problems after the first couple hunts that I was sorely underlevelled for (I remember fighting a ghost thing towards the very beginning of the game that totally kicked my ass), and I generally suck at videogames. I played it on regular difficulty or whatever, and on that difficulty you can pretty much survive everything through the first parts of the game with just the shield spell and dodging/melee. The only potions I ever really used for fights were the ones to increase damage against the appropriate enemy type, and the health ones. I remember some boss somewhere pretty far in the game in the sewer being a huge pain in the ass, but other than that and then dying a lot to some flying vampire dude in one of the DLCs I don't recall thinking the game was too difficult. I'm sure it's a very different story on the higher difficulty settings.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I beat Witcher 3 without many problems after the first couple hunts that I was sorely underlevelled for (I remember fighting a ghost thing towards the very beginning of the game that totally kicked my ass), and I generally suck at videogames. I played it on regular difficulty or whatever, and on that difficulty you can pretty much survive everything through the first parts of the game with just the shield spell and dodging/melee. The only potions I ever really used for fights were the ones to increase damage against the appropriate enemy type, and the health ones. I remember some boss somewhere pretty far in the game in the sewer being a huge pain in the ass, but other than that and then dying a lot to some flying vampire dude in one of the DLCs I don't recall thinking the game was too difficult. I'm sure it's a very different story on the higher difficulty settings.


yeah I played on a higher level difficulty, and it was a loooot more difficult. Like borderline rage inducing at times.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I tried Metro Exodus since it was on Games Pass. Not digging it at all. The game mechanics worked for claustrophobic tunnels but it falls apart in an open setting. The Outer Worlds is out in 2 weeks and comes with games pass so I'll give that shot. 



mongey said:


> Im sure im the problem. Busy at work and sleep deprived form a 7 month old who hates sleeping in his cot . think I just dont have the brain power tickets for it right now on my commute



When work is crazy busy for me I prefer something like DOOM or a puzzle game. Just boot it up and start playing straight away. No inventory management, crafting or any other stuff that you aren't in the mood for.


----------



## Ancestor

Luigi's Mansion. I just made it past the Terrace. That took the longest so far. It's fun! The DS XL 2 was a great investment. It's small enough to take everywhere.

It's been years since I played. I got turned off when my second PS3 drive failed. But I feel good about this.


----------



## mongey

witcher 3 is great . really enjoying it. port isnt bad for a massive game on a handheld


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Up to Chapter 11 on Judgment, and it's up to boiling point.

I've ragged on the detective/Ace Attorney-esque mechanics being not very good, and even during a particular sidequest that involved a familiar mascot, the evidences are so glaringly obvious. Adding keys and opening doors is the most unnecessary mechanic included in a Yakuza game. But the writing really does more than make up for it. This is the darkest game in the canon by far. It is an extremely slow burn, but as with every Yakuza game, the plot goes eight ways bananas the deeper you go.

Once I'm done with Judgment, I'll probably hold off Kamurocho for a while (Yakuza 3 was next and 4 HD will be available soon). I have 2 games on my sights this month. 1 is Indivisable, which has an interesting multi genre gameplay and has the Secret Of Mana composer doing the music. The other is Trails Of Cold Steel 3, which I've been waiting for the localization for ages and it's finally happening by the end of the month.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Up to Chapter 11 on Judgment, and it's up to boiling point.
> 
> I've ragged on the detective/Ace Attorney-esque mechanics being not very good, and even during a particular sidequest that involved a familiar mascot, the evidences are so glaringly obvious. Adding keys and opening doors is the most unnecessary mechanic included in a Yakuza game. But the writing really does more than make up for it. This is the darkest game in the canon by far. It is an extremely slow burn, but as with every Yakuza game, the plot goes eight ways bananas the deeper you go.
> 
> Once I'm done with Judgment, I'll probably hold off Kamurocho for a while (Yakuza 3 was next and 4 HD will be available soon). I have 2 games on my sights this month. 1 is Indivisable, which has an interesting multi genre gameplay and has the Secret Of Mana composer doing the music. The other is Trails Of Cold Steel 3, which I've been waiting for the localization for ages and it's finally happening by the end of the month.



As someone itching to return to Komurocho after completing all of the current PS4 games, should I get the collection and play 3 first, or is Judgement away with from the Kiryu story that nothing would be spoiled anyway?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> As someone itching to return to Komurocho after completing all of the current PS4 games, should I get the collection and play 3 first, or is Judgement away with from the Kiryu story that nothing would be spoiled anyway?



Judgment despite being in Kamurocho has little or nothing to do with Kiryu's main story. You can just pick up and play. Any references are relatively subtle at best and mostly taken from the PS4 games. E.G. 2 obvious parts of the map indicate that the setting takes place after Yakuza 6 (you'll know it when you see it.)


----------



## wankerness

I have a friend that's never played a Yakuza game that inexplicably bought Judgement during a sale recently and really likes it. I am trying to get him to play more in the series now. He hasn't said anything about being confused.


----------



## Mathemagician

So I caved and bought Borderlands 3 and it’s FANTASTIC story-wise. But it’s long so I redownloaded Destiny 2 for some PVP action. And man it’s a fun game. The lore is cool enough and frankly idc about gear that much. It all feels pretty same-y but I’m basically at the lowest power levels right now and haven’t seen what “endgame” is supposed to be like. I like that there tons of people playing since it’s free and has cross-play.


----------



## wankerness

Borderlands 3 is horrible storywise IMO. The streaming villains are incredibly annoying, only interact with the player through unfunny unskippable cutscenes that you have to watch every playthrough, and feel considerably more disconnected from the player than Jack did (not that I think he was nearly as good as his wildly overrated reputation would suggest, either). I kind of hate the appearances of most of the recurring characters from the series, too. It seems like fanfiction, or something. Everyone seems broader and less funny/weird than they did in 2. Ex, Tiny Tina, who was kind of annoying to begin with but at least was unique. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this. 

Gameplay's still pretty fun, though! Although I'm having a hard time adjusting to the charge-up on Maliwan weapons. I guess it makes sense with how overpowered many of them are. I wrecked face for several levels with a green quality flame shotgun.


----------



## Ralyks

Borderlands 3 story didn't bother me, but I enjoyed 2's more (best Borderlands story goes to Tales).


Spoiler



Also, losing Maya and Lilith by the time the story was over really saddened me.


 Still having fun playing it, but it seems like all of my friends that played hit level 50 and went back to Destiny (which I'm really resisting going back to since I basically stopped a week after Forsaken came out) and Fortnite (No. Just, no).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Crossed Judgment off the list.

All the nagging about the small minigames like trailing, lockpicking and even the pointless use of keys that the game tends to forget about at times (like your own apartment), the story, the writing, and all the absurdity that makes a Yakuza game more than makes up for them. The main plot does feel like a typical J-Drama at times, but it takes the best aspects of them.

This was a much slower burn than any other Yakuza game though, in every aspect.

I learned to appreciate the less fighting styles. There's a fun satisfaction from wall jumping then breaking down a slew of fat blokes with a hurricanrana or a heat move that circle kicks multi dudes before slamming another dude with a neck buster. The final boss was actually exhilaratingly fun; with the Mortal Wounds mechanic, a stupidly long health bar, a dramatic rainy scenery, and some lovely couches waiting to be smashed onto his face... certainly one of the most memorable fights in the canon.

It took a while to warm up to Yagami too. Sure he's not the stoic anchor that Kiryu was, and doesn't work as well especially in the Kamurocho dynamic. But that's what the series needs as a refreshment, and as the plot descends into dark twisting insanity, Yagami becomes the right grounded character, it's pretty much the same role his ink suit actor has done in many law based dramas in the past. He's certainly better than RGG's first attempt at a playable detective. I'm still disappointed in the lack of karaoke and insist that not having one here is a wasted opportunity, but that ship has sailed.

I've said that the references to the mainstream games are extremely minimal. To add more without spoiling, there are 2 cameos (one given away in the trailers) both are really cool. The game also addresses that it's a small standalone affair especially when it came to the association with the Tojo Clan. 

As for the other new stuff Judgment has to offer:

I got 48/50 Friends, but stopped with the last 2 since one of them requires to play Mahjong with some esoteric rules, and the other being the Ebisu Shop owner wanting items that require extensive gambling: neither I bothered with the other Yakuza games, so bugnuts to them here.

I wowed all 4 girlfriends. Essentially the same as the hostesses, though sadly, unlike the Persona games, this game doesn't punish your infidelity (I wish it did), but Yagami does question them with the odd comment and nothing more. Curiously one of them uses a similar facial model as Yuki in Kiwami 2, much like how a certain story character resembles Makoto in Zero (so easy for RGG studios to cut corners).

There's something similar to the Majima Everywhere mechanic with a certain game with 4 bosses. It's good for grinding though not as fun or amusing. One of them is a genuine pest since guns are an actual serious threat in this game.

There's a VR style minigame that's just a glorified board game intertwined with the game's usual gimmicks. The presentation is great (with matching techno kawai J-pop) but it wasn't as fun. I wished they really went full on with it, at least borrowed aspects from the Virtua On games or Cyber Sled (yeah the latter isn't a Sega property but still...). 

I've said before that the Drone minigame is solid and can stand on it's own. I sort of abandoned it since getting better parts require constant racing/grinding and became too much of a distraction. The latter courses got really challenging especially the ones where you fly inside the Millennium Tower. 

There's also a pinball machine in Yagami's office that's a fully functional game, even available on Steam. I suck at pinball so I didn't spend too much time on it. 

Didn't bother with any of the paid DLC since they're either for dressing up dates or just a bunch of lore gags to decorate your office. 

All in all it's certainly a worthy spin off/successor to the Yakuza series, I certainly had more fun here than Lost Paradise (which while also had it's moments, the novelty wore thin rather quickly). It's also another reminder of why Kamurocho is such a great living sandbox: no matter how many samey games that constantly reuse it, there's always new interesting layers to explore.


----------



## TedEH

I mentioned a while back that I ended up with a rift - and what is the game that sold this to me as a good purchase? Doom. In particular, the gz3doom engine port that lets you play all the old school doom stuff in VR. It's all of the win. Then stack Brutal Doom on top of that. Yeeeeeeeeeees.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Spent more time with Indivisible. This is an odd one. What the game gets right, it's great but a lot of aspects the game gets wrong, and really crashes and burns with it. 

Getting the good out of the way:

The music is great. It's one of the big draws I bought this. A lot harkening back to Kikuta's best in the Mana games. And he's got a great ear of using South/South Asian instruments. Speaking of which.

The presentation is also great. Vibrant and colourful in the Western-anime aesthetic, meets SNES 2D retro platformers. Makes sense since it's from the developers of Skullgirls. I love the setting and use of Hindu/South East Asian elements. 

The gameplay is hybrid of a bunch of core elements: A 2D Metroidvania platformer with turn based combat mechanics direct from Valkyrie Profile with a dash of fighting game combo and juggle physics. It's certainly an interesting take.

Now come the bad...

The last good point is also where a lot of the bad points lie. The platform gameplay isn't as flowy as say, Bloodstained, and at times really feel awkward. The old school mentality where jumping without dashing loses momentum is fine, but a flow breaking axe climb and unable to change wall jump trajectory has made me mess up way too much. 

The combat is fun and simplistic, in a watered down JRPG way. There's always a satisfaction of juggling enemies in games where you can kill them five times before they hit the ground. That said, it's not a really deep system, some long fights become a drawn out chore, and you can get away with just picking 4 of the same characters for the most part. I'm not far in but so far I've had no reason to swap out the first 2 default characters. Also speaking of characters...

This has the Chrono Cross pandemic where there's a ridiculous plethora of characters, most having little to no substantial reason to join your quest. "Oh I'm looking for flowers, let's be friends and murder the nearest god!" But perhaps the biggest offender of all is the main character Ajna herself. She's the most annoyingly perfect 'Mary Sue' of the anime fanfiction kind. Her story arc begins in the most cliché way possible too. Granted it's a light hearted fantasy adventure, but they could at least make an effort rather than what feels like a first time webcomic. There's at least an interesting twist on the 'hero's journey' right at the start, but the gag gets repetitive as the game goes on. 

I suppose I'll just use Indivisible as my pick up and play game, until I get sick of it and go back to Kamurocho and bash Majima around for a bit before going to Okinawa with a Hawaiian shirt (which I did). Or at least wait for Cold Steel 3.


----------



## chopeth

I abandoned Bloodborne for the second time near the end 

Can't do the DLC even when I bought the GOTY edition including Old Hunters. The problem is that I can't find the Blooddrunk eye that should appear somewhere after killing someone and interacting with certain stuff. I don't know if my game is flawed or what, but second time not being able to play one of the best DLC in From Software catalogue (as I have been told) makes me want to quit this kind of games forever.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Borderlands 3 is horrible storywise IMO. The streaming villains are incredibly annoying, only interact with the player through unfunny unskippable cutscenes that you have to watch every playthrough, and feel considerably more disconnected from the player than Jack did (not that I think he was nearly as good as his wildly overrated reputation would suggest, either). I kind of hate the appearances of most of the recurring characters from the series, too. It seems like fanfiction, or something. Everyone seems broader and less funny/weird than they did in 2. Ex, Tiny Tina, who was kind of annoying to begin with but at least was unique. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this.
> 
> Gameplay's still pretty fun, though! Although I'm having a hard time adjusting to the charge-up on Maliwan weapons. I guess it makes sense with how overpowered many of them are. I wrecked face for several levels with a green quality flame shotgun.


story was never borderlands' strong suit imo. Humor and guns are where they consistently succeed and BL3 definitely delivers in those aspects.


----------



## Mathemagician

Yeah when I said awesome story I meant for Borderlands. I personally really like the universe they’ve built and I like that we got to meet many of the manufacturers of weapons because TORGUE was awesome in BL2, we got tons of backstory on guys like Hammerlock (I haven’t played any of the BL2 DLC yet), and I thought the new new antagonists were awesome in a super terrible way. Like, dude, they fucking suck. But so does Handsome Jack. They are just garbage people in a Wild West of a universe. 

Also just wondering: Did you collect every Typhon log as you went through the zones? I liked how it tied to the main story too. It’s not like a modern piece of cinema, but to me it was definitely still Borderlands. 

IE - Balex was the most random character addition ever and I found the quest line funny but most importantly he’s voiced by Ice - T.

But it is true that it’s more Borderlands, it’s mostly HS toilet humor and explosions. Their commercials are basically just the word “guns” over and over.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I can’t wait to start playing The Outer Worlds this weekend. I haven’t played a game on day 1 since New Vegas so I’m a little wary of bugs but I’ve heard it’s quite stable.

On that note Fallout 76 is a game that keeps on giving. Now a subscription service to offer things they said weren’t possible and the unlimited storage has deleted peoples items lol.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Yeah when I said awesome story I meant for Borderlands. I personally really like the universe they’ve built and I like that we got to meet many of the manufacturers of weapons because TORGUE was awesome in BL2, we got tons of backstory on guys like Hammerlock (I haven’t played any of the BL2 DLC yet), and I thought the new new antagonists were awesome in a super terrible way. Like, dude, they fucking suck. But so does Handsome Jack. They are just garbage people in a Wild West of a universe.
> 
> Also just wondering: Did you collect every Typhon log as you went through the zones? I liked how it tied to the main story too. It’s not like a modern piece of cinema, but to me it was definitely still Borderlands.
> 
> IE - Balex was the most random character addition ever and I found the quest line funny but most importantly he’s voiced by Ice - T.
> 
> But it is true that it’s more Borderlands, it’s mostly HS toilet humor and explosions. Their commercials are basically just the word “guns” over and over.



I still haven’t finished the campaign, it seems really long even compared to 2 (I am doing at least half of the side missions to stay leveled with the main content instead of rushing through it). But, I really haven’t found much funny. Hammerlock turned really tiresome around the time they decided his primary shtick/character trait was how he was gay in that BL2 DLC, but then also decided they have to be serious about it, so they made sure he was never funny or entertaining. They *really *bore down on that aspect here, especially in introducing the Jakobs guy. Like, it would be nice if the character was funny or interesting instead of just some kind of mouthpiece to attempt to show how progressive they are. It's fine for that to be asides with the characters that are tonally goofy like everything else (Tiny Tina, Hammerlock in BL2 proper, Moxxi's constant discussion of her past relationships including the likes of Motor Mama), or if it's some minor character that it's OK that they're using that as their defining characteristic (I thought that one area in BL2 that was some kind of gay bandit base with showers and silly costumes was amusing), but I don't even know what they're trying to do here. Score cheap woke points, I guess. If their writing wasn't so bad it wouldn't be so annoying. Last of Us's DLC and apparent plans for the sequel, great. Ubisoft's and Bioware's catering to that crowd, sure. This, bleh. It makes me sound like some gamergater CHUD.


----------



## Mathemagician

Idk I thought Jakob’s was believable as a rich kid who didn’t think he could live up to his parents expectations of running their company. He’s a southern gentleman who happens to be gay. He’s not a caricature. That’s the two main enemies role IMO.

Tina has some quests later that I think you’ll enjoy. I think you just may not be far enough in for the characters to flesh out. 

However you are right in that they are all a bit more mature/different from BL2, though I didn’t find that to be an issue for me. 

The story is long a shit though. For real it goes Lvl 1-50 before you’re done. I could have played through BL2 2.5 times by now and I’m not done.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Yeah when I said awesome story I meant for Borderlands. I personally really like the universe they’ve built and I like that we got to meet many of the manufacturers of weapons because TORGUE was awesome in BL2, we got tons of backstory on guys like Hammerlock (I haven’t played any of the BL2 DLC yet), and I thought the new new antagonists were awesome in a super terrible way. Like, dude, they fucking suck. But so does Handsome Jack. They are just garbage people in a Wild West of a universe.
> 
> Also just wondering: Did you collect every Typhon log as you went through the zones? I liked how it tied to the main story too. It’s not like a modern piece of cinema, but to me it was definitely still Borderlands.
> 
> IE - Balex was the most random character addition ever and I found the quest line funny but most importantly he’s voiced by Ice - T.
> 
> But it is true that it’s more Borderlands, it’s mostly HS toilet humor and explosions. Their commercials are basically just the word “guns” over and over.


I love the writing and lore surrounding a lot of the corporations/gun manufacturers, that's pretty cool to me. Tyreen/her brother are extremely annoying. The writing in general in 3 has fallen flat for me barring some of the goofy humor like the Extreme Chadd side mission, the whole schtick with Moxxi and Killavolt, Tina calling a bomb a "pizza", cl4pt4p trying to build a girlfriend. 

I've found most of the typhon logs but honestly they're just a tired attempt at trying to differentiate audio logs. I've been sick of audio logs since Bioshock tbh. Yeah they add some lore and interesting backstory if they're done well, but the Typhon logs are generally boring and felt like something I HAD to do if I wanted shiny new loot (which I always do). IDK maybe it's just the actor's voice for DeLeon but they really grate on me.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

the new modern warfare single player campaign is soo goood


----------



## Mathemagician

I bought COD last year so I’m good until 2022/2023 at the earliest.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

The Outer Worlds is pretty great so far.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I got about 2 hours in. I really like it! The dialogue and the humour are my favourite things so far. I’m very rusty with first person shooters so I’m making a mess of the combat sections right now. Inventory management is quite easy. Lots of game mechanics to read through and get to know which is no surprise for an RPG. Also melee weapons work great. Levelling up looks very rewarding too. 

You can’t help but compare it to fallout/elder scrolls but this is the engine they should be using. I’m delighted I can finally use a ladder and enter a house without a loading screen.


----------



## Grand Moff Tim

They could've named it "Mass Effect: New Vegas." That isn't to say it's derivative or anything, I just get strong vibes of both of those series when I play TOW. That's A-O-kay with me, since I enjoyed both Mass Effect and FO:NV, haha.


----------



## Leviathus

After like 25 tries i finally beat


Spoiler



Hirata Owl


 on Sekiro, praise buddha.


----------



## Blytheryn

Thinking about putting a windows partition on my MacBook so I can play RUINER again. God damn I love that game.


----------



## NotDonVito

uwu


----------



## Ralyks

Blytheryn said:


> Thinking about putting a windows partition on my MacBook so I can play RUINER again. God damn I love that game.



I really need to go back to that game. Its like cyberpunk meets Hotline Miami, which are two things I love.

Been doing Borderlands 3 for the Bloody Harvest. It's fine. Fun little extra timed event. I think my biggest issue with this game is that it feels much harder to play with other people online unless you invite them. I miss having a list of active games to choose from and join in and let them decide if they want to boot me 

Oh, plus a Madden league in which I'm doing shit, and trying to finish Last of Us. For real this time. I swear. Preferably before Death Stranding comes out next week.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> I love the writing and lore surrounding a lot of the corporations/gun manufacturers, that's pretty cool to me. Tyreen/her brother are extremely annoying. The writing in general in 3 has fallen flat for me barring some of the goofy humor like the Extreme Chadd side mission, the whole schtick with Moxxi and Killavolt, Tina calling a bomb a "pizza", cl4pt4p trying to build a girlfriend.
> 
> I've found most of the typhon logs but honestly they're just a tired attempt at trying to differentiate audio logs. I've been sick of audio logs since Bioshock tbh. Yeah they add some lore and interesting backstory if they're done well, but the Typhon logs are generally boring and felt like something I HAD to do if I wanted shiny new loot (which I always do). IDK maybe it's just the actor's voice for DeLeon but they really grate on me.



I hate the Typhon logs and virtually all the voice crap in Borderlands mainly because the game forces you to listen to the ENTIRE THING before it shows you your next objective. Like, would it have killed them to put the objective marker on the map for the next objective as soon as you trigger the dialogue? Or show the Typhon cache as soon as you pick up the third one, instead of forcing you to stand there for two minutes while that guy blathers on about something uninteresting and then Tannis chimes in and THEN you can finally see it on the map and start moving again?! ARGH!!!!

I'm working on all the sidequests now. I am level 49 now and probably still have 15 of them, not including those VERY long circle of slaughter things. I really don't like that they adopted the length from the Moxxi DLC from 1, though at least it seems like you can resume between the "main" rounds if you take a break. Those things were murder before since they'd literally take you three hours and you couldn't take a break unless you were playing one player, in which case you could just pause but were still stuck till the bitter end and had to start all the way over from the beginning of the three hours if you died in the final round.

It's got its hooks into me in terms of the gameplay loop becoming fun, though, considering how the loot drops like crazy with the mayhem modifiers turned on. It was a really great decision to include that mode on the "clean-up" part of the first playthrough. I thought it was going to be like the last two games where if you want to do quest completion you have to go back and do all the low level quests with low level rewards or else start the whole completist thing over on playthrough 2.

What guns are people liking the most this go-around? I've been focusing on Jakobs stuff (Shotguns especially, but pistols and snipers are great too - haven't liked a single Jakobs assault rifle) since I'm playing FL4K with the crit build, but some of the maliwan weapons are absolute beasts as well. Especially their chargeable pistols, I find they might melt enemies the fastest of anything. It's great. That's the weapon that the charge-up is the least annoying on, too - I find their sniper rifles unusable because of it and the SMGs are annoying to spin up when trying to fight multiple enemies, but the pistols hit a sweet spot.

I have really not touched Atlas, Hyperion, Dahl (with a couple exceptions), Torgue or Tediore stuff at all. CoV stuff can be fun and useful, Vladov is kinda crappy. I forget what else there is.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I hate the Typhon logs and virtually all the voice crap in Borderlands mainly because the game forces you to listen to the ENTIRE THING before it shows you your next objective. Like, would it have killed them to put the objective marker on the map for the next objective as soon as you trigger the dialogue? Or show the Typhon cache as soon as you pick up the third one, instead of forcing you to stand there for two minutes while that guy blathers on about something uninteresting and then Tannis chimes in and THEN you can finally see it on the map and start moving again?! ARGH!!!!
> 
> I'm working on all the sidequests now. I am level 49 now and probably still have 15 of them, not including those VERY long circle of slaughter things. I really don't like that they adopted the length from the Moxxi DLC from 1, though at least it seems like you can resume between the "main" rounds if you take a break. Those things were murder before since they'd literally take you three hours and you couldn't take a break unless you were playing one player, in which case you could just pause but were still stuck till the bitter end and had to start all the way over from the beginning of the three hours if you died in the final round.
> 
> It's got its hooks into me in terms of the gameplay loop becoming fun, though, considering how the loot drops like crazy with the mayhem modifiers turned on. It was a really great decision to include that mode on the "clean-up" part of the first playthrough. I thought it was going to be like the last two games where if you want to do quest completion you have to go back and do all the low level quests with low level rewards or else start the whole completist thing over on playthrough 2.
> 
> What guns are people liking the most this go-around? I've been focusing on Jakobs stuff (Shotguns especially, but pistols and snipers are great too - haven't liked a single Jakobs assault rifle) since I'm playing FL4K with the crit build, but some of the maliwan weapons are absolute beasts as well. Especially their chargeable pistols, I find they might melt enemies the fastest of anything. It's great. That's the weapon that the charge-up is the least annoying on, too - I find their sniper rifles unusable because of it and the SMGs are annoying to spin up when trying to fight multiple enemies, but the pistols hit a sweet spot.
> 
> I have really not touched Atlas, Hyperion, Dahl (with a couple exceptions), Torgue or Tediore stuff at all. CoV stuff can be fun and useful, Vladov is kinda crappy. I forget what else there is.


Depends on how I spec my character tbh. When I had moze focused on splosions Torgue guns become godlike(especially the shotguns). If I specced her for fire rate/crit then jakobs, maliwan and dahl whoop ass


----------



## TedEH

I've been hearing things about Outer Worlds that make me want to give it a shot.

I decided I needed to own Majora's Mask 3D finally - and I immediately can feel the differences from the original. It's changed a lot more than I had anticipated.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Spending more time with Indivisible since I want this done asap. About half way in from the looks of things.

And it's safe to say that this game is unfinished. 

It's bad enough there's a surplus of characters that you'd most likely never use, but to have a lot of the latter cast having incomplete movesets and lack of super moves is a real disappointment. Fighting games like say Skullgirls (because if I'm going to bag a developer I may use one of their own examples), can get away with post release content, but not so much Metroidvania/RPGs. 

I tend to avoid most if not all games that are part of the cultural indictment of being released incomplete on launch day, and perhaps wait a few months if not years to finally buy and play it hoping it's finished by then. I'm still sour about FFXV and I'm disappointed with Lab Zero on this one as well. I would have preferred if they delayed the game for another 6 months and release a finished product, but alas here we are. I suppose Indivisible has a better chance of being completed down the line. 

Oh well, at least I now have Trails Of Cold Steel 3 ready and waiting to go. That and Yakuza 4 HD just unlocked too, so there's plenty for my gaming time.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I've been hearing things about Outer Worlds that make me want to give it a shot.
> 
> I decided I needed to own Majora's Mask 3D finally - and I immediately can feel the differences from the original. It's changed a lot more than I had anticipated.



Outer Worlds sounds great. I never played Fallout New Vegas, though, which is what everyone freaking out about this keeps talking about (saying that was a classic and this is even better). I really didn't get much enjoyment out of FO3 in the few hours I played it, but maybe this will be more my style? 

I just never get time to play videogames anymore, so a really long, story-driven thing that I have to remember what's going on between sessions might be a bad idea. I want to support a true one-player game with no microtransactions, though, so maybe I'll just buy it now anyway.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

The more I play the outer worlds the more I think it’s not for me. It has so many of the things I really disliked about Pillars of Eternity. It took me a while to click why until I remembered Obsidian made both.


----------



## NotDonVito

I've been on a Diablo 1+2 kick ever since Diablo 4 was announced. Took me forever to find a version of D2 that didn't require a CD to use, but I got it working. I'm also playing Path of Exile again, but starting fresh on the Xbox version of the game, which is okay, but the controls aren't as refined as something like Diablo 3. I loved the roll dodge mechanical in the console version for playing characters that don't have mobility spells equipped.

I was also playing Metro 2033 for the first time, but kind of gave up since I decided to play on the hardest difficulty. I'm stuck at a section of the game where I can't find any ammo and am just getting rekt. Maybe I'll just read the novels, cause I don't want to turn the game down after playing it this way for so long.


----------



## wankerness

Played a bunch more BL3, cleaned up all the sidemissions besides the Circle of Slaughter ones. I started off with the Maliwan zone (quest called Slaughterstar 3000?). It took me a few tries, but it was doable (if quite hard, especially the waves with tons of those dogs that snipe you and then jump away!!). However, this goddam halloween event where half the enemies you kill spawn ghosts that will attack you through walls or even when you stealth is incredibly annoying and is making stuff like this far more difficult than it would be normally. I should look into whether you can turn that off!

I discovered at some point that apparently the worst part of the maliwan circle of slaughter is dealing with the heavy shock troopers that will kill you nearly instantly. Right when I turned on Mayhem and hit 50, some random enemy dropped The Transformer shield that gives you 100% shock resist, so I sure cheesed that part of the trial without meaning to! I haven't had any desire to try a different shield, and it seems like I shouldn't!


----------



## TedEH

I've been watching someone play BL3 a bit, and it looks good. Makes me want to try it.


----------



## lurè

Lorcan Ward said:


> The more I play the outer worlds the more I think it’s not for me. It has so many of the things I really disliked about Pillars of Eternity. It took me a while to click why until I remembered Obsidian made both.



I was very close on buying it but wanted to hear some reviews first. I really liked pillars of eternity but haven't played deadfire yet.
What aren't you liking so far?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

PSA: soulcalibur VI and Yakuza Kiwami are on Humble Bundle Monthly for 12usd.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Almost finished Indivisible. Up to the final area but stopped out of frustration since the late game platform sections are so diabolically hard. I'll probably never play this again once I'm done, not even for DLC characters, or even if they finish the bloody thing. That is if I listen to that wonderful OST enough to draw me back. Yes this an abusive relationship I have with this game. 

Also started Cold Steel 3. And also had to stop for a bit. Not out of difficulty frustration, but storywise. This is Chekov's Munitions - The Game and a whole plethora of references to the 5 prequels I never got to play are being volley fired left right and center in the first hour. I had to start watching long recaps on YouTube just to know who the hell half of these characters being introduced to me. Not to be churlish about it since I did wait a few years after to the second game to finally play it.


----------



## Leviathus

Beat Sekiro when i got up today, great game, maybe my favorite From title i've played.


----------



## Cynicanal

wankerness said:


> Outer Worlds sounds great. I never played Fallout New Vegas, though, which is what everyone freaking out about this keeps talking about (saying that was a classic and this is even better). I really didn't get much enjoyment out of FO3 in the few hours I played it, but maybe this will be more my style?
> 
> I just never get time to play videogames anymore, so a really long, story-driven thing that I have to remember what's going on between sessions might be a bad idea. I want to support a true one-player game with no microtransactions, though, so maybe I'll just buy it now anyway.


The Outer Worlds rules, yeah, although I don't think it's all that much like New Vegas, aside from being a first-person RPG that's heavier on dialogue and stat-checks than a Bethesda game. The way it's structured reminds me more of Fallout 1 or Arcanum (which the directors of TOW previously worked on) than it does New Vegas; side-quests are structured in such a way to point you towards the main quest and help advance it, it's not open world so much as lots of smaller locations that you can hop between, non-linearity is frequently subtle and in the "what methods you use to accomplish your goals" sense than the New Vegas "choose your own adventure" sense.

TBH, even though I like certain aspects of New Vegas a lot, on the whole, I think it's really overrated. The Outer Worlds is fantastic (aside from the combat, which is kind of shitty, but it was also shitty in New Vegas, so whatever).


----------



## wankerness

How bad is the combat? I enjoyed gameplay in Skyrim and Mass Effect (especially 2/3), for examples of other story-driven RPG shooter thingies that I like, but I really did not like it in Fallout 3 at all.


----------



## Cynicanal

I'd say it's probably worse than Fallout 3 or New Vegas combat. It's really quite bad. It's an Obsidian game, you're playing it (and probably enjoying it) in spite of its combat, not because of it.


----------



## NotDonVito

I played Outer Worlds for about 30 minutes before I got annoyed by the characters. I would pick the dialog option that would piss them off the most, until I realized I was wasting my time playing a game arguing with virtual people.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished Indivisible. Huh, first Platinum Trophy I've got too. Not something I care for, but here I am. 

That final platform area really was utterly hellish but ultimately doable. Going through it and going through all the countless pit falls and instadeath spikes, it clicked to me that the developers being versed in fighting games were applying the same kind of precision to platforming. A concept that works great in theory but can really mess you up in practice. I won't be going through that part again in a long time.


----------



## Ralyks

As mentioned in the other thread, Death Stranding. But more importantly, did you know they ported Castle Crashers to modern consoles? Because HELL YES I downloaded it after finding out last night.!


----------



## Mathemagician

They have Aladdin and Lion King SNES/genesis era games as a double pack on PS4 (and I’m guessing xbox) and I remember how hard I had to work to beat those on SNES. Man I’m debating whether a nostalgia trip is worth $30.....


----------



## Kaura

Needed something to keep me busy during the No Nut November so I decided to try Ring of Elysium again. Still fun, that is if you're willing to wait for 5-10 minutes in the queue to find a match and even then you only get like 10 people in the match.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Kaura said:


> Needed something to keep me busy during the No Nut November so I decided to try Ring of Elysium again. Still fun, that is if you're willing to wait for 5-10 minutes in the queue to find a match and even then you only get like 10 people in the match.


They're probably busy jerking off.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> They're probably busy jerking off.


or playing a less shit game


----------



## NotDonVito

Kaura said:


> Needed something to keep me busy during the No Nut November so I decided to try Ring of Elysium again. Still fun, that is if you're willing to wait for 5-10 minutes in the queue to find a match and even then you only get like 10 people in the match.


;_; same thing happened to me last time I tried playing

Rip ring of saturnus


----------



## Kaura

KnightBrolaire said:


> or playing a less shit game



What exactly makes it shit? Are you against BR games in general or do you really think PUBG is better, let alone Fortnite?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Kaura said:


> What exactly makes it shit? Are you against BR games in general or do you really think PUBG is better, let alone Fortnite?


It had some neat ideas, I just think their execution of said ideas (snowboard/zipline) made the game janky. I'll give it credit for having some good quality of life tidbits like automatically putting attachments on weapons/not taking forever to pick shit up though. *cough* PUBG*cough* That being said, I think Apex is about the best option out there right now.


----------



## TedEH

Made it to the last dungeon (I think?) of Links Awakening. Took long enough to get there. Not a lot of time for games lately.


----------



## TedEH

Kaura said:


> Are you against BR games in general


Unpopular opinion time! Battle-royale games are all the worst parts of gaming rolled together. (In terms of my old-man video game tastes, at least.)


----------



## Kaura

TedEH said:


> Unpopular opinion time! Battle-royale games are all the worst parts of gaming rolled together. (In terms of my old-man video game tastes, at least.)



Ok, boomer. 

I gotta admit, though. I hated the trend too until RoE came out.


----------



## TedEH

Kaura said:


> Ok, boomer.


I had to google what RoE is.

I'm perfectly ok with being out of touch with whatever appeals to teens these days.


----------



## Choop

I stopped following BR stuff, but there for a while they were more just ripoffs of the Day Z mod, right? They felt like games stuck in alpha that were being sold as full releases. Maybe they're better now. Apex kind of looks like a cross between several titles really.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Hoping to jump into Jedi Fallen Order when it comes out. The review embargo does not lift until release so I won't be pre ordering. Guess I will have to try my best to enjoy the game without those extra lightsaber hilts (if I even buy it at all). 

In the meantime I have been playing Bioshock 2. Decent fun if a little grindy.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Choop said:


> I stopped following BR stuff, but there for a while they were more just ripoffs of the Day Z mod, right? They felt like games stuck in alpha that were being sold as full releases. Maybe they're better now. Apex kind of looks like a cross between several titles really.


nah, PUBG was the only one that really directly aped Day Z's mod (and the creator that made that mod had a big hand in making PUBG, so it makes sense). All the others do their own thing mechanically. They may have similar concepts (shrinking battlefield zones and gathering weapons) but that's basically where the similarities end for most of the BRs.


----------



## wankerness

ImNotAhab said:


> Hoping to jump into Jedi Fallen Order when it comes out. *The review embargo does not lift until release *so I won't be pre ordering. Guess I will have to try my best to enjoy the game without those extra lightsaber hilts (if I even buy it at all).
> 
> In the meantime I have been playing Bioshock 2. Decent fun if a little grindy.



Seriously? That's a red flag. No way am I preordering that, either.

I'm now going through the last DLC on AC: Odyssey. This map is huge. Ubisoft might have some problems as a publisher, but generosity of content is not one of them. It's nice that this thing was a truly one-player game, too. I can't complain about the microtransactions as I never at any point felt like the XP or drachmae acquisition was too slow without paying for an upgrade, and thus never spent any money on it!


----------



## TedEH

I don't know that I could a review embargo as a red flag. Lots of big budget games do it, from what I understand. I've seen some games do it, come out, get reviewed positively, all things are fine. I don't think it means anything.


----------



## Choop

KnightBrolaire said:


> nah, PUBG was the only one that really directly aped Day Z's mod (and the creator that made that mod had a big hand in making PUBG, so it makes sense). All the others do their own thing mechanically. They may have similar concepts (shrinking battlefield zones and gathering weapons) but that's basically where the similarities end for most of the BRs.



I think H1Z1 also ripped off Day Z mod, that's all I can think of from the top of my head though.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Choop said:


> I think H1Z1 also ripped off Day Z mod, that's all I can think of from the top of my head though.


Oh I meant PUBG copied the br mod for arma, not Day Z. There were a bunch of dayz esque games but pretty much all of them besides 7 days to die are absolute garbage.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I don't know that I could a review embargo as a red flag. Lots of big budget games do it, from what I understand. I've seen some games do it, come out, get reviewed positively, all things are fine. I don't think it means anything.



Review embargos till it's too late for anyone to cancel a preorder strike me as a huge red flag. Review embargos of the sort that they're only allowed to come out at the same time a week ahead of release or something (ala Death Stranding) do not. Maybe it means nothing for the quality of the game, but it definitely is stupid and I would not preorder anything other than a really known quantity (ie, a Naughty Dog game or a sequel with much of the same people on board) that doesn't allow for any warning until it's too late. Especially considering refunds are not a thing anymore.


----------



## TedEH

Refunds aren't a thing anymore? I thought most platforms were moving more _towards _the availability of refunds as opposed to the other way around. I could be wrong though.


----------



## Mathemagician

Easy refunds digitally are still mostly not a thing in the US. For context for the EU peeps the EU has several consumer protection laws that companies spend a LOT of time and money to smear. They include things like supporting digital refunds. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Steam until recent years all had a “all sales are final go fuck yourself” attitude. Typically parceled with a “One single refund is allowed per account per lifetime. If you do a chargeback we will ban you permanently with no recourse.”

And then boot-lickers will defend those policies with “WeLl It WaS iN tHe RuLeS aNd YoUr FrEe NoT tO bUy It!” 

People will have a pissing contest over how “capitalist” they can be when it comes to giving up their own expectations for service and quality on behalf of a multinational company “as long as they are being told they’re getting fucked up front”.


----------



## TedEH

I suppose I'm thinking just overall - EU seems to be moving towards making it easier. And I know Steam in Canada lets you refund stuff pretty easily. I dunno how different that is for consoles and in the US.


----------



## Mathemagician

Very rough on consoles, and unless something changed recently (as in within this year) they all follow the “one token refund maximum” policy. Steam US saw what could happen if they start getting regulated like brick and mortar stores and threw out a better policy a few years ago that was something like “if it hasn’t been downloaded and played within the first 24 hours (may be 48) or has less than 1 hour total play time within that window you can request a refund”. So at least there is that.

Lots of companies were happily throwing up shit games for preorder with the “intent” of fixing bugs after launch because digital sales were final. 

I would never personally buy a game without reviews being out first. We’re not talking about trying to get a physical copy of an obscure RPG in the mid 90’s here, it’s 2019 and a lot of us expect to know the quality of what we may be in for.


----------



## Cynicanal

Steam in the US lets you refund easily, I do it all the time (basically, every game has a free two-hour demo now).

EDIT: The exact policy is much less strict than what Mathemagician claims. It's "we'll refund you if you've owned the game for less than two weeks and have played two hours or less". In some situations, they'll still offer a refend refund even if you don't meet those criteria (such as if you've got over two hours of playtime but that's because you've been trying to make it work, unsuccessfully).


----------



## wankerness

Cynicanal said:


> Steam in the US lets you refund easily, I do it all the time (basically, every game has a free two-hour demo now).
> 
> EDIT: The exact policy is much less strict than what Mathemagician claims. It's "we'll refund you if you've owned the game for less than two weeks and have played two hours or less". In some situations, they'll still offer a refend refund even if you don't meet those criteria (such as if you've got over two hours of playtime but that's because you've been trying to make it work, unsuccessfully).



Yeah, Steam getting refunds was a huge step in the right direction. I use PS4 and digital downloads most of the time, though, and they will only refund if you haven't even STARTED to download the game, let alone trying to play it! So if you preorder something and it pre-downloads to your system, you're already unable to get a refund even if you were unable to play it if you tried.


----------



## Cynicanal

TBH, Steam's refund policy is the most generous I've ever seen in the PC gaming world. Back in the day of brick-and-mortar stores, if the box had been opened, you couldn't return it.


----------



## Mathemagician

Good deal. I wasn’t really knocking them as apparently I was off in the number of days but not hours played. Either way that should be the gold standard for digital distribution in the US.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Steam getting refunds was a huge step in the right direction.


Maybe I'm biased 'cause I see it from the dev side, but I'm not sure I'd blanket-ly call it the right direction. Refund systems are an easy target to be exploited. And I wouldn't find it any more reasonable to get a refund for a game you don't like than to get a refund for a movie you didn't like. If it doesn't function at all, then sure - maybe you don't have a compatible PC or something. Maybe a build gets rushed out that doesn't actually launch. I could see the value in being able to refund for those who get offended by surprise objectionable content, but at the same time in the age of lets-plays and such, that one's a bit of a stretch. I imagine that most of the time, a person buying a game knows more-or-less what they're getting into when they commit to purchasing a game.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Maybe I'm biased 'cause I see it from the dev side, but I'm not sure I'd blanket-ly call it the right direction. Refund systems are an easy target to be exploited. And I wouldn't find it any more reasonable to get a refund for a game you don't like than to get a refund for a movie you didn't like. If it doesn't function at all, then sure - maybe you don't have a compatible PC or something. Maybe a build gets rushed out that doesn't actually launch. I could see the value in being able to refund for those who get offended by surprise objectionable content, but at the same time in the age of lets-plays and such, that one's a bit of a stretch. I imagine that most of the time, *a person buying a game knows more-or-less what they're getting into when they commit to purchasing a game.*



They almost never do when it comes to the indie crap on steam. There are thousands of broken-ass games for sale on there for as much as, if not more, than professionally published ones. Some of them are good, most are terrible, and some are just asset flips and broken crap that is more likely to crash than allow you to successfully finish them. There's a fair amount of stuff like that on the PS4 store, too. No idea on the Xbox store or whatever it's called.

I think refunds are more than fair when it comes to something truly terrible considering demos are basically a thing of the past. They used to have them for almost all AAA games, now they don't seem to have them for much of anything, and if they do, it's usually hard to find it (buried on the publisher's website or something). I think in a perfect world that you'd be able to get a refund as long as you only played the game for an hour or two (assuming standard game length of ~10+ hours). But yeah, if someone plays all the way through a single player game they should have to at least pay something. Since game rentals are also mostly a thing of the past (except with like, Gamefly, which only works for consoles and even then is a huge hassle considering so many games require you to download many gigs of data even if you have a disc) there's no way to test anything anymore without dropping the full price.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> They almost never do when it comes to the indie crap on steam.


I don't think I agree with that. If you're going around steam picking up little indie games with no reputation, no reviews, no recommendations, etc., then you're well aware of the level of risk involved in doing so. It's not like there's not enough selection of games out there, or enough review Youtube channels, enough retro games, enough information out there about what asset flips are etc. Nobody is going in blind. Nobody goes "ah man, I bought Borderlands 3 and totally got blindsided by the unity asset flip". Or, you could flip through the "latest releases" on Steam tagged with "indie" - nobody is exactly going to be surprised by the impressive quality of "Lesbian Breakout" for $0.71. Or the weird game I just found about getting revenge for being fired by shooting up an office building. Stay classy, indie devs.


----------



## NotDonVito




----------



## TedEH

Don't get me wrong, I get the "games aren't serious business" angle, but they're a bigger industry than film right now (in some ways).


----------



## NotDonVito

I think that's more of an argument to pirate than anything else.


----------



## TedEH

I honestly don't know what the point of the image was supposed to be. Seemed like it was just putting down people who put any value in games. I mean, that's not a great argument for piracy either.


----------



## Mathemagician

Personally it just looks like satire of both angles to me. “Doesn’t even one a credit card” doesn’t seem like a real way to live, so it reads tongue-in-cheek to me.


----------



## wankerness

I liked it. The virgin vs chad comparison is a well-worn meme and that's a good example of it. It's usually a parody of arguments as to why something is awesome and something sucks. There's definitely many levels of irony involved (usually it's pro-whatever the Chad is, but it's always done by the same kind of memesters that hate Chads; the arguments are usually overblown in intentionally ludicrous ways, etc). I've seen plenty of them with political candidates recently.

And you WERE kind of taking up some of the "pro-corporation" argument in the "sure maybe indie games are sometimes complete crap but if you take a chance on it you know you're throwing money down the toilet!" line you had there.


----------



## TedEH

It's not a pro-corporate line -> most of those indie games I'm talking about "gambling" on are made by small "teams" of one guy who threw it together in an hour. Nothing to do with corporations. I stand by what I said. There's enough information out there that there's no unknown "risk" to buying video games. Buying a game is not a gamble.


----------



## jonsick

I just finished The Room series from Steam (on windows). Absolutely hooked! I just got a couple of others in the same vein, namely Talos Principle, Please Don't Touch Anything, realMyst (never played the original), Serena and The house Of Davinci.

If you like a really immersive puzzle game with some spooky undertones, pick up The Room.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

The Last of Us: Remastered.

Jesus Tapdancing Christ, I forgot how long that game is. I never did a new game plus playthrough on PS3 so I'm doing that now.


----------



## chopeth

Carrion Rocket said:


> The Last of Us: Remastered.
> 
> Jesus Tapdancing Christ, I forgot how long that game is. I never did a new game plus playthrough on PS3 so I'm doing that now.



Curious, it felt very short for me as soon as I finished it and had to start the ng+ right away. Anyway, awesome game.


----------



## alinas

Been playing happy wheels and shadow fight 3.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Put Yakuza 3 on hold thanks to Cold Steel 3. Did the same thing 3 years ago incidentally enough.

Looking up footage of Yakuza 7, the new JRPG style combat looks more akin to Persona 5 (and Cold Steel to some extent) so there's still a bit of fast rhythmic pacing and still as violent as ever.



And the minigames are still as Japan levels of absurdity.







Also karaoke is finally back.


----------



## Ralyks

Yakuza meets Persona? There is absolutely nothing I dislike in that sentence.

I've been enjoying Death Stranding but... Jedi: Fallen Order looks dope and got good reviews, and I have a preorder waiting after work...


----------



## TedEH

In a move that will surprise nobody, I started playing another old game -> We started a run of Mario 3 on the NES. I used to cheat all the time so there's so much of the game I've never actually seen/beaten before. There's a lot of level design stuff late in the game that I wouldn't have appreciated as a kid.


----------



## wankerness

I finally finished AC:Odyssey, maybe I can clear that 87 gigs of hard drive space now! Good game, but at this point I don't know if it's worth playing everything if you weren't keeping up with the DLC as it came out. I can't even imagine the endurance required to complete the main game and then all the DLC as if it was one thing. It makes AC: Origins GOTY edition look like The Order.

If anyone gets this at Black Friday or something, I'd highly recommend the main game and the Atlantis DLCs, especially parts 1 and 3, but the first three DLCs are stupid and could be skipped.

I can't wait for BL3's goddam Halloween event to finally be over. It's unbelievably aggravating still getting attacked by ghosts nonstop when I just want to play the game!!!


----------



## MFB

I'm at the part of Disc 2 in FF8 where the Garden become mobile, and as an adult, who now looked into the actual workings of the junction system - it's tedious and boring as fuck for a game/battle mechanic. Like, I understand the logic of X spell at Y value = Z% stat change, but you when there's three levels to elements spells and you can stock up on one spell, from a weak enemy type in one battle and just go ham for a bit? Eh. 

I have Squall with probably double the amount of health as everyone else/base level, and his damage has 99 with a tier 2 spell type and it's fucking shit up. Most of the boss battles come down to a few hits from my regular party, coupled with a boosted GF here and there, and it's over.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

chopeth said:


> Curious, it felt very short for me as soon as I finished it and had to start the ng+ right away. Anyway, awesome game.



Granted, the game is the perfect length for the story being told. There's a couple parts I'd have trimmed a bit, but it wouldn't be the same experience if you just started hacking parts out. And to be fair, I was also trying to do as many collectibles as possible in a single playthrough before giving up on that.


----------



## Ralyks

So Jedi: Fallen Order is doooope. Feels like a mix of Unchartee, Dark Souls, Force Unleashed, and Metroid. Best Star Wars game in quite some time.


----------



## Mathemagician

Considering how good the campaign for Titanfall 2 was, I’m glad it sounds like Respawn is consistently good.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Jedi Fallen Order aka God of Soulsbornevania.


----------



## wankerness

The promo stuff all made it look like a boring uncharted clone with jedis, but now I keep hearing people say it’s more Metroid/DS style?? Maybe I SHOULD get this game. EA I guess just thinks that what people want are boring, linear games with tons of cutscenes and tried to cover that up!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> The promo stuff all made it look like a boring uncharted clone with jedis, but now I keep hearing people say it’s more Metroid/DS style?? Maybe I SHOULD get this game. EA I guess just thinks that what people want are boring, linear games with tons of cutscenes and tried to cover that up!



To be fair, it's Respawn.


----------



## TedEH

The promo stuff I've seen so far makes me think of Jedi Academy, and I mean that in the best way. I haven't played a new-ish game in quite a while, but this has my interest.


----------



## Thaeon

On my second play through of Outer Worlds. Is not long enough is probably my only complaint.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Buddy is trying to get me into Tarkov. 

I just can’t. It’s slow, it’s way too involved and I don’t have the fucking time. Wish he’d STFU about it.


----------



## Leviathus

steinmetzify said:


> Wish he’d STFU about it.


----------



## TedEH

I somehow thought it would be a good idea to try to document how many games I have - in digital libraries and physical copies, etc. Turns out I have an insane number of games. A truly insane library of video games. I will very likely never play a good number of these.


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> I somehow thought it would be a good idea to try to document how many games I have - in digital libraries and physical copies, etc. Turns out I have an insane number of games. A truly insane library of video games. I will very likely never play a good number of these.



I literally first-world-bum-myself-out when I look at my steam collection.

Like. Why. Why do all these games I need to play exist? How am I ever going to play any of these? I didn’t even have time for one round of team death match in COD/Destiny/whatever.

Why do I love RPG’s. When will I practice fighting games?

...Por que, Maria?


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> I literally first-world-bum-myself-out when I look at my steam collection.
> 
> Like. Why. Why do all these games I need to play exist? How am I ever going to play any of these? I didn’t even have time for one round of team death match in COD/Destiny/whatever.
> 
> Why do I love RPG’s. When will I practice fighting games?
> 
> ...Por que, Maria?



I feel this way every time I look at my excessively large PS4 library.... And ditto of RPGs/fighting games....


----------



## TedEH

I continued the documenting process.... I'm over 700 titles so far. I think there's a few things I've missed though.


----------



## wankerness

Thaeon said:


> On my second play through of Outer Worlds. Is not long enough is probably my only complaint.



Here's hoping there's a black friday discount, or something. I really want to play it, but I'm still into Borderlands 3 enough that I don't think I'd get to it right away, and hey maybe there will be a 10-20 dollar discount if I wait another week! 

I love that BL3's legendary drop rate is through the roof compared to 2, where you had to farm the same damn mob and reload the game over and over and over again for each individual legendary you wanted. With this, you can pretty much just run around doing whatever you want and your chances are barely worse than if you sit there doing the BL2 thing with Graveward or whatever. If you're after one specific gun/shield I guess it would be annoying, but I'm not! 

I got a FL4K pretty maxed out and now started an Amara with the melee build (always a bad idea in these games). I am not having nearly as much fun; maybe I should go the elemental gun build or just start over as Moze!


----------



## Mathemagician

I went Melee in both 1 and 2 just because I liked the character design so much and honestly fucking HATED the gameplay a lot of the time. Each time I would swap to the siren (ranged in 1 & 2) and immediately have a much better time. This time I went with Fl4k from the get-go and have enjoyed the game a lot. 

I’m still not that great at FPS’s though so the difficulty can somewhat spike during bosses for me when they stop taking damage during an invincibility phase and I don’t have cooldowns.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, first playthrough had a lot of close calls with boss fights. They’re way more exciting than bosses in the first two games that you could typically melt in 10 seconds unless you were underlevelled.

I just hate the occasional guys that have one-hit kills and no adds so you can’t get a second wind (ex, the first barrages of the Katagawa Orb).


----------



## Mathemagician

I glitched past the katagawa boss by going online and joining a game that was just past the boss then I went back to single player by re-logging and the boss stayed “dead” and I continued the quest. Fuck that fight. I had no idea what I was doing and he just melted me.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I glitched past the katagawa boss by going online and joining a game that was just past the boss then I went back to single player by re-logging and the boss stayed “dead” and I continued the quest. Fuck that fight. I had no idea what I was doing and he just melted me.



I killed him first try with FL4K both times, but he killed my siren a few times before I was able to just hide during the first barrage and melt the armor with some overpowered corrosive gun. The fight gets radically easier for his second and third lifebars, the first one just involves him chain spamming a sustained homing-missile barrage attack that instantly killed me if I poked out of cover for a second during it. 

The most exciting boss was probably that first Vault boss, the big ape-looking thing. It took a long time and had a lot of close calls and each phase got more difficult, as should be. Graveward also was pretty tense, as long as you didn't get smacked off the front of the platform and instantly killed.

The money mechanic is still infuriating - the more money you have, the more ridiculous death fees are, to the point where dying once will set you back hours worth of farming. Fortunately money is completely useless after you have all the upgrades, it seems. The slot machines take a pittance (28000 or something?) and my character's been hovering around 20 million for a long, long time. Just frustrating when you lose 3 million a death, and the most any weapon will sell for is ~100k with most more in the neighborhood of 9k!


----------



## Mathemagician

Yeah I made sure to “spend down” my money on the first upgrade I could afford & wanted each time. It’s hard to come by early on then useless. But at least it’s more useful than in 2. It was straight up worthless in that game.


----------



## wankerness

I wish they'd put legendaries in vending machines again like they had in the first game. It at least gave you something to occasionally dump large amounts of money on. Either that or like, allow you to use 10x the money on the slot machines for a higher chance or something.


----------



## Mathemagician

They “sort” of did that with the eridium vending machine next to weird al Vaultavitch.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

So what's the current opinion on Jedi: Fallen Order? Worth getting?


----------



## wankerness

Lorcan Ward said:


> So what's the current opinion on Jedi: Fallen Order? Worth getting?



After seeing a lot of videos and hearing a lot of complaints about the sliding sections, I'm waiting for a discount


----------



## Werecow

Lorcan Ward said:


> So what's the current opinion on Jedi: Fallen Order? Worth getting?



I'm really liking it so far, and strangely i've hated any souls-like games before.

The only thing i think is missing is more interesting force powers like force grip and lightning, like the old Jedi Knight games had. It's very much a purely light saber based combat system. But there's a lot of adventuring and exploring to do.

The strangest thing about it is 99% of the collectables/loot in the game are cosmetics. I really don't care about what skin my light saber has, when you'd need a magnifying glass to see it. I guess this was EA publisher pressure on the dev team though. It's just annoying because you still have to collect them, as there are stimpack upgrade crates as well. It'd be so much better if you collected light sabers and armour with different characteristics instead of skins. Maybe i'm just out of touch with what kids want


----------



## Ralyks

Lorcan Ward said:


> So what's the current opinion on Jedi: Fallen Order? Worth getting?



I'm really digging it, but it's hard. Can't go in like a glass Cannon on this one.

Meanwhile, Black Friday sales are live, so I just grabbed Control, Judgement, Concrete Genie, Shenmue 1 and 2, Catherine, and Bloodstained for just as little over a hundred bucks. So I'll be hibernating this winter...


----------



## Werecow

Ralyks said:


> I'm really digging it, but it's hard. Can't go in like a glass Cannon on this one.
> 
> Meanwhile, Black Friday sales are live, so I just grabbed Control, Judgement, Concrete Genie, Shenmue 1 and 2, Catherine, and Bloodstained for just as little over a hundred bucks. So I'll be hibernating this winter...



Control is fun, and the atmosphere is amazing. Some seriously weird and creepy stuff.


----------



## wankerness

I kinda want to play Control and Judgement, but considering every store on the planet has Black Friday sales and the PSN store deals really aren't that great I guess I'll just wait another while for them to go down to 10 bucks or so. I feel the same way about Shadow of the Tomb Raider, that's on sale for 24 bucks with all the DLC but that's just not cheap enough for me!!  Plus, now I'm leveling Borderlands 3 alts! Working on Moze now. Her character voice stuff really sucks, but the mech power is highly entertaining.


----------



## Ralyks

Werecow said:


> Control is fun, and the atmosphere is amazing. Some seriously weird and creepy stuff.



Played for about 45 minutes. Really dig it so far.

That said, I still need to finish Norman Reedus's Undead UPS Simulator, and I don't know why...


----------



## BlackMastodon

Ralyks said:


> Norman Reedus's Undead UPS Simulator, and I don't know why...


Amazing. 
Have no plans of playing Death Stranding but this description fits perfectly with everything I've heard about the game, including people feeling the need to keep playing it and not even knowing why. 

I think Kojima is an evil genius.


----------



## Ralyks

BlackMastodon said:


> Amazing.
> Have no plans of playing Death Stranding but this description fits perfectly with everything I've heard about the game, including people feeling the need to keep playing it and not even knowing why.
> 
> I think Kojima is an evil genius.



I've never enjoyed a game so much, yet have such a difficult time recommending. This is a game that sorely needs a demo.


----------



## Werecow

Ralyks said:


> Played for about 45 minutes. Really dig it so far.
> 
> That said, I still need to finish Norman Reedus's Undead UPS Simulator, and I don't know why...



Loads of people seem to be saying they genuinely don't know why they're playing it


----------



## Ralyks

Honestly, you just get caught in a cycle and just want to keep spinning around it. Again, still don't know why...


----------



## StevenC

It gives a really weird sense of duty to do a bunch of stuff you don't want to do and for the most part gets the reward and sense of accomplishment (TM) right. I really don't want to go near any BTs, but at the same time I've got packages to get to the other side.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Gave up on The Outer Worlds, just really not for me but I downloaded Rage 2 now its on Xbox Games Pass.


----------



## TedEH

Finally made it to the end of Link's Awakening. I might be ridiculously late on that one, buuuuut I did it.
I'm running out of Zelda content to consume, so I'll have to get a Switch. It's the only way. It's out of my control.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I'm really digging it, but it's hard. Can't go in like a glass Cannon on this one.
> 
> Meanwhile, Black Friday sales are live, so I just grabbed Control, Judgement, Concrete Genie, Shenmue 1 and 2, Catherine, and Bloodstained for just as little over a hundred bucks. So I'll be hibernating this winter...



Where did you get control and Judgement? They're not in the PSN sale!

I caved and bought tomb raider last night. Won't get a chance to play it till the saturday or sunday after Thanksgiving, though  BOO FAMILY!!!


----------



## Ralyks

Control and Judgement were both 30 bucks at Best buy, as was Catherine. The others were 15 - 20 bucks each.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Salt and Sanctuary. Finally killed The Unspeakable Deep.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Control and Judgement were both 30 bucks at Best buy, as was Catherine. The others were 15 - 20 bucks each.



Ah. I forget about discs being for sale apart from steelbooks. 

Catherine's fancy version with all the DLC is on the PSN black friday sale. I dunno if I want to play that game again. I remember enjoying it, but I also remember being stressed out in a not-fun way by the puzzles by the end. I liked the plot/dating sim aspects of the game more than the clunky puzzle sections, even though they're really the core of the gameplay. If they very heavily polished the controls maybe!


----------



## TedEH

I discovered the other day that there's a promo for gamepass to give you access to a bunch of stuff for three months for $1. There's also now a steam sale starting......
Time to get more games that I may or may not play.


----------



## Choop

Lately I've been visiting old titles that I never got the chance to play. Right now I'm playing Dragon Quest VIII, and it is absolutely fantastic! Not gonna lie though, I've been getting an itch to just play regular old gameboy Pokemon Red...maybe that will follow DQ.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Started up Children of Morta and it's really neat. The art style is kind of like Hyperlight Drifter where it's retro, but not really. My favorite part is the killer soundtrack and how the it's essentially a dungeon crawler/roguelike with an actual story/progression. Everytime you die you lose the powerups you get, but you get to keep your experience and gold, so there's a steady progression in terms of power.


----------



## NotDonVito

Played TF2 for the first time in years. Holy shit, this game has gone down hill. Hackers in 50% of the lobbies or people afk trading in non trade servers. On top of that OG Source engine feels like crap nowadays.


----------



## Mathemagician

Playing that new Chinpokomon Shield. It’s 3D pokemon so far.


----------



## Mathemagician

Update on chinpokomon Shield. I’m playing along with my wife and man these new Pokémon are adorable. They did a really good job making all the “new” early pokemon look like tweaked real animals which I always liked about the early games. I’m pretty sure this turtle thing I caught is buck-toothed and that’s awesome.


----------



## TedEH

Started a little bit of We Happy Few. No idea when I'll have time to get back to it, but it seems promising.


----------



## Leviathus

Bought Battlefield 4 on sale for the PC. I've played it on ps3+4 already, but for 5 bucks i couldn't pass it up. A lot of fun and plenty of populated servers. Started a new Bloodborne playthrough a few days ago too for the single player fix.


----------



## TedEH

Going through some nonsense, so retail therapy means I got myself a Switch. Only really played for a handful of hours but BotW feels really solid so far. The hype seems worth it. Awakening remake also sound great. Also new Pokemon titles? Odyssey? A shop nearby has that Mana Collection for dirt cheap. Yay for drowning out your problems with video games!


----------



## NotDonVito

I've gotten addicted to krunker.io. It's a browser fps with UT/Quake movement and COD guns.


----------



## Ralyks

Just got back from Buffalo for 2 days, right in time for a snow storm over the best two days to catch up on gaming. Might try to go through all of Concrete Genie, since it's short, fun, and my son likes it.

Also, Amazon had Outer Worlds for 35 bucks, so that's on its way and I believe I'm done getting games for 2019 (well, except maybe the Yakuza collection).


----------



## KnightBrolaire

got Sunset Overdrive and Hitman 2 gold edition for dirt cheap. Prob gonna take off tomorrow and just play video games all day lol


----------



## Mathemagician

On the switch I picked up Monster Hunter 4G Ultimate Rathalos Edition (1/2 that is made up). 
Looking forward to trying all the flips and cool abilities. Seems like it has every monster up until that game came out. If anyone else plays let me know and I’ll add you.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Pillars of Eternity. At first, this game is quite difficult, especially if you're not used to these kinds of games. That said, after a couple of hours once you've gotten the rhythm down and actually get more party members, it gets easier.


----------



## Leviathus

Just finished my Bloodborne playthrough and checked PSN again to see if The Old Hunters is on sale... and it is. Wish i'd checked earlier before slayin' Gehrman, but whatev.


----------



## PunkBillCarson

Leviathus said:


> Just finished my Bloodborne playthrough and checked PSN again to see if The Old Hunters is on sale... and it is. Wish i'd checked earlier before slayin' Gehrman, but whatev.




The Bloodborne DLC can start way before Gehrman. You only have to kill Vicar Amelia to access it.


----------



## Leviathus

PunkBillCarson said:


> The Bloodborne DLC can start way before Gehrman. You only have to kill Vicar Amelia to access it.



For sure, i'm just on NG+ now, not sure how hard the DLC is gonna kick my ass.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

caved and bought the master chief collection for PC. Goddamn I suck at Halo now


----------



## Ralyks

Outer Worlds is sitting in my PO Box... And I probably can't get to it until mkndaym next place I live in has its own mailbox...

Anyway, one trophy away from getting the Platinum for Concrete Genie. What a delightful 8 hour tomorrow that game turned out to be. Back to the Adventures of Reedus and BB after that until at least I get my hands on Outer Worlds...


----------



## Leviathus

KnightBrolaire said:


> caved and bought the master chief collection for PC. Goddamn I suck at Halo now



So close to coppin' it...


----------



## Leviathus

Leviathus said:


> So close to coppin' it...



and i did, can't wait to give it a whirl later.


----------



## Boofchuck

This is only game that's caught my attention since Dark Souls/Sekiro. I love it.


----------



## Mathemagician

Boofchuck said:


> View attachment 75252
> This is only game that's caught my attention since Dark Souls/Sekiro. I love it.



I want to say something about taking this long to play it. But it doesn’t matter as it’s just a really good platformer that holds up identically to when it first launched. Such a good game with SO many levels for the masochists out there. The regular initial levels kicked my ass enough to get me to go play other games, lol. 

Best of luck to your controller.


----------



## Boofchuck

Mathemagician said:


> I want to say something about taking this long to play it. But it doesn’t matter as it’s just a really good platformer that holds up identically to when it first launched. Such a good game with SO many levels for the masochists out there. The regular initial levels kicked my ass enough to get me to go play other games, lol.
> 
> Best of luck to your controller.


I have such a huge backlog of games and pretty much zero interest in anything new that I've seen. Plus it's good for short bursts of gaming when I can find the time. 

....I'll try not to break anything haha.


----------



## Ralyks

I was trying to save Judgement for later, but I couldn't resist and popped it in last night. One hour in and it's dooooope.


----------



## Choop

Boofchuck said:


> View attachment 75252
> This is only game that's caught my attention since Dark Souls/Sekiro. I love it.



It's an excellent game! The controls are very tight and responsive--it just feels great to play. Also the music is good and the levels feel very well thought-out.

Been sorta itching to play WoW classic lately...and I know it would be bad and that I should not. >< Hopefully Dragon Quest VIII can continue holding my attention. It's a solid game!


----------



## TedEH

I've made it a good chunk of the way through BotW now.... and it's got it's hooks into me. I think it's exactly the kind of game I wanted/needed right now. Tons of content. Lots of little details. Lots of "dynamic" between calm explore-y bits and the more adventure-y quest bits. You're not told what to do, but there's subtle guides to point you the right way if you look for them. The exploration also feels pointed - where I find a lot of other open-world-y games sort of feel like just killing time to kill time.


----------



## Boofchuck

TedEH said:


> I've made it a good chunk of the way through BotW now.... and it's got it's hooks into me. I think it's exactly the kind of game I wanted/needed right now. Tons of content. Lots of little details. Lots of "dynamic" between calm explore-y bits and the more adventure-y quest bits. You're not told what to do, but there's subtle guides to point you the right way if you look for them. The exploration also feels pointed - where I find a lot of other open-world-y games sort of feel like just killing time to kill time.


It's a lovely game.


----------



## TedEH

There's some games where you feel like you're consuming a product. This game definitely feels like you're exploring someone's work. It feels like some real care went into this one.


----------



## wankerness

I'll replay that game when they release a PC version and someone mods it to make the weapons behave like they aren't made out of balsa wood.

I started Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I did two challenge tombs so far and am now in the first "village," so far it's enough like the last two that I still like it. I had heard so many times that there was way more emphasis on talking to people, puzzles, etc and far less on combat that I didn't want to buy it till it was dirt cheap, but that hasn't bugged me yet.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I'll replay that game when they release a PC version and someone mods it to make the weapons behave like they aren't made out of balsa wood.
> 
> I started Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I did two challenge tombs so far and am now in the first "village," so far it's enough like the last two that I still like it. I had heard so many times that there was way more emphasis on talking to people, puzzles, etc and far less on combat that I didn't want to buy it till it was dirt cheap, but that hasn't bugged me yet.


god nothing pissed me off more about breath of the wild than kicking the crap out of a leo for the first time and then having the sword they drop break after fighting like 4 basic enemies.


----------



## TedEH

Realistically, if anything frustrates me about the game it's when you get one-shot'd by something you weren't expecting, and haven't saved in a while, so you lose like an hour of progress.


----------



## spudmunkey

Unless you are INTIMATELY familiar with the online builder, call.

I ordered my first one online in 2008, and recommended it for years after. I can no longer do that. With them expanding their options, their "old" builder has trouble keeping up. It's too easy to accidentally pick conflicting options, add unessesary options so that you get charged twice, or you might misunderstand just how an option might work on your specific build since some of them depend on all sorts of other options.


----------



## TedEH

I have a suspicion that you responded to the wrong thread.


----------



## MFB

Finally hooked up the PS4 I bought on Black Friday and started going through God of War. I have missed Kratos to a level I didn't realize, and the change in gameplay doesn't feel like it takes anything away from the series, it's like a natural shift.


----------



## spudmunkey

TedEH said:


> I have a suspicion that you responded to the wrong thread.



Ok, this is fucked up. Ha! I swear I started typing this, and the. I scrolled up and it was somehow in the wrong thread. So I cut it and pasted it when I thought was the right one, and...it's somehow in the wrong one stoll.


----------



## M3CHK1LLA

kinda went back old school playing tomb raider legend on ps2...somehow i missed that one


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I'll replay that game when they release a PC version and someone mods it to make the weapons behave like they aren't made out of balsa wood.



Think you'll be waiting a while before Nintendo releases... well, anything on PC.


----------



## wankerness

Oh, I am well aware, it would have to be an illegal port/rip of some sort and will probably take a few years. But, I hated the weapon thing so much that I couldn’t get into that game during the first few hours and I think it would take something like that to get me to go back.


----------



## TedEH

There's definitely a learning curve to how the combat works, but once I got past that part (didn't take too long), I've yet to feel like I'm lacking in weapons to use.


----------



## StevenC

I never understood this criticism of Breath of the Wild. Sure the weapons break relatively quickly, but at the same time the game is overflowing with weapons and basically throws good ones at you. 

It's pretty easy to get good, durable weapons early on, and even with maxed out weapon slots I'm constantly giving up good swords and bows the game gives me. You just have to get over the fact the weapon breaks and use the next one up. 

Worst comes to worst, there's always a branch somewhere and you've always got bombs to farm new items.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> always got bombs to farm new items


How do you farm for items with bombs....?

I get the impression this is one of those games everyone plays a bit differently.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> How do you farm for items with bombs....?
> 
> I get the impression this is one of those games everyone plays a bit differently.


You go and kill dudes with bombs. The main way to get weapons is by looting corpses, so I just mean you've always got a way of creating corpses.


----------



## TedEH

Ooooh right. In that sense, you're never left without a way to attack.



Spoiler



Maybe not much of a spoiler, but I've made it as far as one of the divine beasts. I appreciated it that the beast itself felt like playing a tiny, but more traditionally Zelda-y dungeon. Also, the health perk that came from winning it makes it much less frustrating when you encounter something new and would have otherwise died in one hit.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Ooooh right. In that sense, you're never left without a way to attack.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe not much of a spoiler, but I've made it as far as one of the divine beasts. I appreciated it that the beast itself felt like playing a tiny, but more traditionally Zelda-y dungeon. Also, the health perk that came from winning it makes it much less frustrating when you encounter something new and would have otherwise died in one hit.


Do you know you can swap shrine orbs for health and stamina? Also, there's a statue in one village that will swap stamina bars into hearts and vice versa, if you ever spend too heavy on one or the other.


----------



## Mathemagician

I stopped playing after the second totem/beast thing. Then just ran around the map for like 8+ hours exploring.


----------



## TedEH

Yeah, the orbs for health/stamina is pretty up front. Early game placement makes the statues almost impossible to miss. I only know about the swapping from one to the other because of the loading screen tips.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> I stopped playing after the second totem/beast thing. Then just ran around the map for like 8+ hours exploring.


the exploring and the hijinx that comes with it is the best part tbh. I still remember when I got ambushed in the mountains by a leo/goblins/skeletons, at night/while it's raining, and then I got struck by fucking lightning because I was wearing metal armor. Of course I quickly figured out that if I kept fighting in the rain the goblins would also get electrocuted since they had metal weapons and I was running around with clubs/sticks. It's stuff like that made me really love BoW.


----------



## wankerness

I realized that Blizzard somehow started charging my credit card for WoW subscription after I had paid for 3 months with Paypal and assumed that the 3 months running out meant the subscription was cancelled as I hadn't recalled choosing anything recurring. Fucking blizzard. I guess that's what I get for not monitoring my credit card statements like a hawk. Since I've paid ~100 bucks to NOT play WoW for a year, I'm now checking out the anniversary event while I wait for the subscription to expire for real (of course the recurring was set to 3 month chunks instead of 1!). 

Anyway, I missed a lot. This nazjatar zone is one of the worst things to navigate in WoW history unless you have flying mounts unlocked, which obviously I do not as you need revered reputation with the zone's faction to do so, which requires weeks of grinding. Ugh. I hate this game. Haha. 

I just wanted to play the anniversary throwback raids, and I got my item level up to 380 from 340 in about 5 hours of quests so I can queue for them now. I did the BC one yesterday. It's kind of amusing getting bastardized LFR versions of pieces of Vashj/Kael/Archimonde, as someone who actually did those raids when they were current content it was laughably easy, though! Ah well. Still fun. I remember how hyped we got when we finally could reach the part of the Kael fight where he activated, and how awesome that gravity thing he did seemed. Ah, memories.

Archimonde is still an annoying idiot and the fact tremor totem can't be abused to neutralize his fear mechanic like you could do back in the day is sad. Fortunately they made the fire damage incredibly trivial on LFR. I wish the LFR version had more than one tear-clicking thing, though!


----------



## TedEH

I wasn't really following much of the gaming related news the last few days, but I just saw the Hellblade 2 trailer. That's a good trailer.


----------



## Mathemagician

Downloaded Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate on Switch. Trying out Heavy Bowguns for the first time ever. Bit of a nostalgia trip with graphics coming down from MHW on PS4 (which is amazing btw).


----------



## alinas

Currently cat ninja pro is my only headache


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Monster Energy Supercross

Got it with PS+ and figured I'd check it out since I haven't played a racing game in a while. And I think free is a good price for it. It's not outright bad, but it's from a developer/publisher that's known for releasing budget games at full price simply because they're licensed.


----------



## TedEH

I gave Outer Worlds a quick try the other day. Feels like it wants to be Borderlands and Fallout at the same time.


----------



## MFB

Not sure how far into God of War I am, but hoo boy is it just what I needed after years of just drowning myself in online multiplayers. 



Spoiler



Unlocked the Blades of Chaos, with winds of Hel manipulation, and that means I've also got the piece of the chisel to open the hidden chambers and can travel between any mystic doorways I find. I've taken down two Valkyries since that's all I've found so far, but Kara seemed to go down far easier than G-whatever the hell her name was. I have no clue how leveling up works/if it's even a thing, but currently my stuff is at level 7, and where I am in the game from what I've heard, I feel like that's nearing the top of the ladder. I've also got almost all my skills maxed out, and Atreus wise I'm just missing his Superior (I believe that's the highest?) armor set so he'll be at his highest. Having that little dude chain storm arrows with max stun/damage while I rail on enemies with the Leviathan is worth investing in.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I gave Outer Worlds a quick try the other day. Feels like it wants to be Borderlands and Fallout at the same time.



I wish. Feels more like Fallout and Mass Effect to me, which is also a fun combo.

I think I'm at the point where I'm trying trying to finish Jedi Fallen Order and Death Stranding before moving on to anything else. Also have a little less gaming time short term because I'm taking a winter semester class, which is 15 weeks condensed into... 3...

Speaking of Borderlands and 3, I forgot the new DLC drops any day now.


----------



## TedEH

I think the Borderlands thing I'm picking up on is more on the aesthetic and audio side than the mechanical parts of the game, so to speak. Stuff like the music having that weird western-y slide sound all the time.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Since starting Cold Steel 3, I can practically be classified by the Missing Person's Bureau as 'legally dead'.  Though this happened to me with the first 2 games as well.

Also finished a YT series that summarized the entire Trails In The Sky trilogy and the Trails of Zero/Azure duology, since I just don't have time to play 5 100 hour JRPGs just to catch up on story an lore that Cold Steel 3 has been firing non stop. It'd enhance the experience more if I played the games themselves, but I'm all good, now I'm caught up and know who are the key players in the past games that have turned up and will come up later down the line. 

I will say that I'm glad that I started with Cold Steel rather than the beginning, as it's far more aesthetically pleasing from it's isometric chibi beginnings. The town of Crossbell that was central to Zero/Azure looks great in full 3D. And it was neat that they covered everything from street layout to architecture in meticulous detail. 

The music is exceptional as always (typical Nihon Falcom). I probably should snag the OSTs some time.


----------



## Leviathus

Picked up my NG+ on Sekiro after seeing it won GOTY at the game awards. At the last boss fight of the Shura ending and i think ima be here for a while.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I wish. Feels more like Fallout and Mass Effect to me, which is also a fun combo.
> 
> I think I'm at the point where I'm trying trying to finish Jedi Fallen Order and Death Stranding before moving on to anything else. Also have a little less gaming time short term because I'm taking a winter semester class, which is 15 weeks condensed into... 3...
> 
> Speaking of Borderlands and 3, I forgot the new DLC drops any day now.



I HATE how they stuck an intrusive ad screaming BUY THE DLC!!! in Sanctuary that doesn't go away even if you own the season pass. (It's the highlighted ! on the minimap that's also visible as a floating objective through the floor, etc.) I mean, it would still be gross that they implemented it, but at least it would only annoy people that they were trying to extract more money from.

That said, I like most things about that game now. Especially now that the f'in ghosts are gone.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I HATE how they stuck an intrusive ad screaming BUY THE DLC!!! in Sanctuary that doesn't go away even if you own the season pass. (It's the highlighted ! on the minimap that's also visible as a floating objective through the floor, etc.) I mean, it would still be gross that they implemented it, but at least it would only annoy people that they were trying to extract more money from.
> 
> That said, I like most things about that game now. Especially now that the f'in ghosts are gone.



Fuck those ghosts.

Also, I found it annoying in BL1 and Handsome Collection that they were like "BUY BORDERLANDS 3!!!". We get it. Mostly likely, we already did.


----------



## Werecow

I finally completed Fallen Order.
I enjoyed it more and more as the game went through and holy shit the ending is awesome if you're a SW nerd, with the way they let a certain character flex their muscles. I really want a sequel now, and considering immediately re-playing the game on the top difficulty this time.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Untitled Goose Game.

Utterly delightful.


----------



## MFB

I got far closer to the end of GOW than I thought, as I played for another day or so just dicking around doing side gigs before what I thought was another few hours and then BAM - final fight time  Got like, 70-75% completion of Midgard through my first playthrough, as well as all of Muspelheim done (and I mean, ALL) but I had no intention of doing the same for Nifelheim when I have so many other games to play. Loved it overall, easily a 9/10 for me.

I'm on to Fallen Order now, it's good but tough, and GoW spoiled me on the camera where now I feel like it'd improve FO where it'd be good to have it fixed and then R3 would switch the shoulder side (a la RE4)


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> I got far closer to the end of GOW than I thought, as I played for another day or so just dicking around doing side gigs before what I thought was another few hours and then BAM - final fight time  Got like, 70-75% completion of Midgard through my first playthrough, as well as all of Muspelheim done (and I mean, ALL) but I had no intention of doing the same for Nifelheim when I have so many other games to play. Loved it overall, easily a 9/10 for me.
> 
> I'm on to Fallen Order now, it's good but tough, and GoW spoiled me on the camera where now I feel like it'd improve FO where it'd be good to have it fixed and then R3 would switch the shoulder side (a la RE4)



I found Fallen Order tough a first, but then the combat just suddenly clicked with me. Realising the importance of parrying and even what you can parry against is paramount. You can parry & block almost everything other than the red glowing super moves and some special moves. I didn't even try parrying/blocking against the big monsters at first, it felt silly to me to just stand my ground against them, but it works really well at the right time.

Also, the sprinting jumping slash move you can upgrade to (that doesn't use Force) is your friend against any tough enemy.


----------



## Werecow

Well after loving Fallen Order and seeing people compare the combat to Sekiro, i've bought Sekiro now. The first Fromsoftware game i've owned. Not sure what i've let myself in for


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Werecow said:


> Well after loving Fallen Order and seeing people compare the combat to Sekiro, i've bought Sekiro now. The first Fromsoftware game i've owned. Not sure what i've let myself in for


better get good at parrying boi


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> better get good at parrying boi



If he's played Fallen Order before this, it should definitely be in his DNA by now  That game has made me go from "Stormtroopers can't aim" to "come god damn closer so I can kill you for shooting me so much"


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> If he's played Fallen Order before this, it should definitely be in his DNA by now  That game has made me go from "Stormtroopers can't aim" to "come god damn closer so I can kill you for shooting me so much"


Yeah but in Sekiro, you literally have to get good at it (because Miyazaki is a sadist lol), or you'll get your ass stomped pretty much from the get go, especially in boss fights.


----------



## MFB

Werecow said:


> I found Fallen Order tough a first, but then the combat just suddenly clicked with me. Realising the importance of parrying and even what you can parry against is paramount. You can parry & block almost everything other than the red glowing super moves and some special moves. I didn't even try parrying/blocking against the big monsters at first, it felt silly to me to just stand my ground against them, but it works really well at the right time.
> 
> Also, the sprinting jumping slash move you can upgrade to (that doesn't use Force) is your friend against any tough enemy.



So, I unlocked the Precision Evade, and that is the most gamebreaking OP move there is. Combat has boiled down to "block incoming fire, slow ranged enemies, kill, precision evade, double attack, more precision evading, slow + overhead kill" and for the first time I feel like NOW combat is where it should be. Parrying still isn't my strong suit, I'd rather just evade attacks entirely than put myself in the line of fire and hope it works out.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> So, I unlocked the Precision Evade, and that is the most gamebreaking OP move there is. Combat has boiled down to "block incoming fire, slow ranged enemies, kill, precision evade, double attack, more precision evading, slow + overhead kill" and for the first time I feel like NOW combat is where it should be. Parrying still isn't my strong suit, I'd rather just evade attacks entirely than put myself in the line of fire and hope it works out.




I guess it's technically ranged parrying, but the timing for blocking the ranged fire can send it back at them to kill them, the double-ended saber will send lots of shots back at enemies. Sometimes it'll kill everyone in a room almost instantly by doing that. It's great  With mixed groups i tend to dodge melee while concentrating on parrying ranged shots to kill them that way, then get into the normal melee fighting.

There's a power that'll become available to unlock a bit later that will auto-block all blaster fire while you're sprinting, it's really useful, but it never sends the blaster fire back at them like a parry. It's great for just sprinting straight at a ranged guy and slashing him though.


----------



## MFB

Oh yeah, the double blade when you run into the commando trooper with the mini gun is one of my favorite things to deflect and just go, "Bitch, you thought." I've got almost all the skills unlocked, now I'm at the point of needing 3 points per skill, which feels like eternity in the game.

Story-wise I've done Zeffo and Bogano to 100%, gone through Kashyykk twice, and now have to go through Dathomir in it's entirety as I've just put it off for too long


----------



## NotDonVito

007 Goldeneye


....for the wii


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m back on Monster Hunter for Iceborne. Logged in for the first time in a year and was just totally thrown off by the game. Looking forward to more hunts.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition. Had this on my PS3 for a while now and figured I'd finally play it. Having to use the shoulder buttons to cycle through the weapons is a real pain when you're getting shot to shit or being chased by those suicidal sentry drones.


----------



## Steinmetzify

New Modern Warfare...really not bad, seeing as how you don’t spawn right in front of enemies just like EVERY OTHER COD GAME. 

Also, cross play for multiplayer is pretty cool, my brother plays on Xbox, nice to run games with him even though I’m on PC. 

Also also, console players SUUUUUCK lol

Nice to own at COD without half trying.


----------



## Seabeast2000

So figured I'd ask here, any PC gamers successfully use a keyboard/mouse on Xbox One? I see there is a XIM or something that does the conversion but its $125 just for the interface.
EDIT: I ask because I figure it would be easier to just spend money on a single library but I can't aim/shoot for shit on a controller. I can drive good in GTA though . Also, I don't want to have to get a gaming PC to keep up with releases from 2010's lol.


----------



## Orzech

We've started Helldivers today and I can recommend this for anyone willing to have easy fun in coop mode


----------



## wankerness

Borderlands 3 DLC is fun. It is still a bit dialogue-heavy, but not as bad as in the main game, and you can actually skip a couple of the cutscenes!!!  I haven't messed around much with the new legendaries, but the new FL4K mod seems pretty good and this one rare Jakobs corrosive pistol is the most OP thing in the game if you're fighting bots, it basically one shots all enemies even though I was playing on Mayhem 3 or whatever it's called.


----------



## Sumsar

Currently into The Witcher 3 after completing Star Wars: Fallen Order. Fallen Order was pretty decent, tough it really felt as if had been made for console, since the control was a bit too 'helpfull' in places, rather than just letting the played control, because, you know, we have keyboards and mouse (trackball) and can control everything pretty precise.

Witcher 3 is consuming many an hour of my winter solstice holiday, but that is fine by me. It is like Skyrim but better and without all the Bethesda bugs and general mess.


----------



## TedEH

I've made it to 80+ hours in Breath of the Wild and still haven't been to the castle yet. I just finished the fourth of the main bosses, and there's still some chunks of land I've not explored yet. There's so much stuff in this game. And it's a relatively simple game too. I'd be willing to call this a favorite game at this point.


----------



## MFB

Wrapped up Jedi Fallen Order today, I'd say overall a 7/10. Really solid mechanics, combat by the end feels like you've actually gotten stronger and can deal with Stormtroopers with ease; some choices with things I disagree with, but it's because they allow for a specific type of play style so I understand why they were that way. 



Spoiler



Unfortunately it suffers the same major flaw as most background stories in Star Wars, in that you know even if they got the Holocron, nothing will come of it as there's no new Jedi Order formed by the time Luke and Leia are on the scene. I liked Cal as a protagonist, and seeing Vader flex at the end and instead of having him fight to the death, a lack of fight is the smartest way to do it. BD-1 is probably my favorite droid in the franchise as well.



Now on to Spiderman!


----------



## Ralyks

I'm at the point now where I'm playing nothing else until I finish Jed: Fallen Order. I really, really like this game.

Also, somewhere in episode 5 of Death Stranding, whenever I get back to that.

I really should play the Borderlands DLC....


----------



## toner

Outer Worlds and always have Path of Exile in rotation.


----------



## TedEH

I finally finished Breath of the Wild - it took just about 90 hours before I beat Gannon. I continue to make my way through Outer Worlds. For how well reviewed this game was, it's definitely got some flaws. Especially when you put it right next to something like Breath of the Wild - which felt like each detail was artfully crafted - but Outer Worlds feels like a game that has features to say it has those features.


----------



## Ralyks

Watching Jedi: Fallen Order credits. I really liked it and nice ending. 

Now more deciding if I'm going to continue playing through Death Stranding, Judgement, or Control


----------



## Metropolis

I was playing Red Dead Redemption 2 at the second time, and it felt so different when you knew all the mechanics and all that (never played the first one). Approach is this time really different, still going on with it tho because it's a massive game.

Then I've got Jedi: Fallen Order waiting in the shelf and probably gonna pick up tomorrow Need For Speed: Heat just for good old casual arcade racing action. If it would remind me how good Underground & Underground 2 were back in the day, which I really hope.


----------



## NotDonVito

NotDonVito said:


> 007 Goldeneye
> 
> 
> ....for the wii


disc is scratched, can't finish the game, weekend ruined, life ruined


----------



## TedEH

I had the thought today that I wonder how different Outer Worlds is when you just murder everyone instead of (relatively) peacefully progressing through missions.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I had the thought today that I wonder how different Outer Worlds is when you just murder everyone instead of (relatively) peacefully progressing through missions.



It's always been great fun finding that out in past Obsidian games.


----------



## Mathemagician

Dark souls remastered. Man this game still holds up.


----------



## Ralyks

Holy shit, is Control awesome or what?


----------



## Werecow

Ralyks said:


> Holy shit, is Control awesome or what?



Yeh i love it. The creepiest game i've played in a long time, without resorting to jump scares. The sound design is amazing. I like the combat too.

I got the game free with a graphics card. I found the combat in Alan Wake pretty boring, and didn't get Quantum Break after reading reviews, so i wasn't expecting much. I really love Control though. Looking forward to the DLC.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Since starting Cold Steel 3, I can practically be classified by the Missing Person's Bureau as 'legally dead'.  Though this happened to me with the first 2 games as well.
> 
> Also finished a YT series that summarized the entire Trails In The Sky trilogy and the Trails of Zero/Azure duology, since I just don't have time to play 5 100 hour JRPGs just to catch up on story an lore that Cold Steel 3 has been firing non stop. It'd enhance the experience more if I played the games themselves, but I'm all good, now I'm caught up and know who are the key players in the past games that have turned up and will come up later down the line.
> 
> I will say that I'm glad that I started with Cold Steel rather than the beginning, as it's far more aesthetically pleasing from it's isometric chibi beginnings. The town of Crossbell that was central to Zero/Azure looks great in full 3D. And it was neat that they covered everything from street layout to architecture in meticulous detail.
> 
> The music is exceptional as always (typical Nihon Falcom). I probably should snag the OSTs some time.




Yeah I'm the only one here playing this game, but whatever. 

Up to Chapter 4, which means the last leg before the game will take a hard left turn to bring Armageddon to your doorstep. I say this because Cold Steel 3 is suspiciously told similarly to CS1. Instead of the whole anime school story, you're now the instructor with a new ragtag bunch of usual anime trope archetypes. But much like the Persona games, the little mundane things and relation building make you get invested with each character and their world. Every single character is deeply flawed and humane, and whoever resembles a Mary Sue is obviously hiding a deep dark secret that eventually gets revealed later down the line anyway. It's one of the few well written series in the JRPG genre. 

I also started paying more attention to the sneaky way the game does it's world building more now since the first 2 games. You can buy books that not only reflect the game's story but also foreshadows a ton of stuff that eventually happens many games later. Normally I don't bother with dossiers or whatever backstories are clogged in the options menu, as at times it's a bad way tell don't show exposition (FFXIII was the biggest offender when it came to this). In this case I actually wanted to read the little books you buy. One case where the tabloids don't report your exploits but praise a rival school due to dodgy government or propaganda was quite engaging. 

It's also sneaky with some of the subquests. Yeah it rewards only the completionists but that's JRPGs for you. One particular side quest was pretty casual with presenting itself and can be skipped, but if you do it, you get to play a bunch of key characters from the last 7 games in your party in a small boss rush, which I thought was really neat. Oddly enough none of the main leads have showed up to be playable as yet, but that's the Chekhov's Gun loading again.


----------



## TedEH

I started Pokemon Sword not too long ago and I've decided that it sort of feels like.... every other Pokemon game and not much else. I think this is the most formulaic franchise I've ever seen. I keep thinking about how the older games, the gameboy ones, were a little more adventurous, a little more RPG, etc. - there were stories and puzzles to the whole deal, as opposed to just doing exactly the same thing you've been doing for years.

i suppose I see this game as .... technically well done, but also kind of uninspired so far? Someone clearly enjoyed making all the monsters fight as giants, and the visual effects, etc., but mechanically it's kinda boring so far.


----------



## mongey

with my 10 month old starting to slightly settle into a routine been fitting in some games of SF5

Havent played it for a long time and the game has def improved with time. also helps they added Blanka who was(oddly as i never touched him in other games) my main if SF4 . He's not too bad .


also fit in a few games of over watch . such a fan of this game. still the best in its genre IMHO


----------



## ExileMetal

Slay the Spire. Incredible game.


----------



## Choop

mongey said:


> with my 10 month old starting to slightly settle into a routine been fitting in some games of SF5
> 
> Havent played it for a long time and the game has def improved with time. also helps they added Blanka who was(oddly as i never touched him in other games) my main if SF4 . He's not too bad .
> 
> also fit in a few games of over watch . such a fan of this game. still the best in its genre IMHO



I mained Blanka in SF4 too! For the majority of the time I played that game anyway. TBH I didn't like the feel of Blanka as much in SFV, but I think I have that sentiment for SFV as a whole. If I were to play it again I'd probably be playing Bison still.

Almost done with Dragon Quest VIII! Excellent game, and my first DQ game. Still have some stuff to wrap up in it, but I've already started playing Halo: Reach on PC, as well as Dragon Ball Fighterz. It's been a while since I have played DBFZ, so it'll nearly be like learning from scratch at this point. Gonna test the new characters out today to try and throw together a strong team.


----------



## mongey

Choop said:


> I mained Blanka in SF4 too! For the majority of the time I played that game anyway. TBH I didn't like the feel of Blanka as much in SFV, but I think I have that sentiment for SFV as a whole. If I were to play it again I'd probably be playing Bison still.



he def feels different in V . his hop is slower and seems less safe. cuts back on the shenanigans a bit . nice to have an easy to cancel into CA though .not that I get to it much as I burn my meter on EX up balls


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Yeah I'm the only one here playing this game, but whatever.
> 
> Up to Chapter 4, which means the last leg before the game will take a hard left turn to bring Armageddon to your doorstep. I say this because Cold Steel 3 is suspiciously told similarly to CS1. Instead of the whole anime school story, you're now the instructor with a new ragtag bunch of usual anime trope archetypes. But much like the Persona games, the little mundane things and relation building make you get invested with each character and their world. Every single character is deeply flawed and humane, and whoever resembles a Mary Sue is obviously hiding a deep dark secret that eventually gets revealed later down the line anyway. It's one of the few well written series in the JRPG genre.
> 
> I also started paying more attention to the sneaky way the game does it's world building more now since the first 2 games. You can buy books that not only reflect the game's story but also foreshadows a ton of stuff that eventually happens many games later. Normally I don't bother with dossiers or whatever backstories are clogged in the options menu, as at times it's a bad way tell don't show exposition (FFXIII was the biggest offender when it came to this). In this case I actually wanted to read the little books you buy. One case where the tabloids don't report your exploits but praise a rival school due to dodgy government or propaganda was quite engaging.
> 
> It's also sneaky with some of the subquests. Yeah it rewards only the completionists but that's JRPGs for you. One particular side quest was pretty casual with presenting itself and can be skipped, but if you do it, you get to play a bunch of key characters from the last 7 games in your party in a small boss rush, which I thought was really neat. Oddly enough none of the main leads have showed up to be playable as yet, but that's the Chekhov's Gun loading again.




Well I finished Cold Steel 3. It took that left turn alright. Everything went straight to hell and swords of Damocles rained down like a flying sword anime trope. I didn't expect the serious magnitude of the situation. The game punches you in the face with a cliffhanger ending harder than the first. So the eventual localisation and release of Cold Steel 4 is going to be a damn long wait. 

One thing I noticed is that gameplay wise, it was the easiest of the Trails games. Works for me since my game time is limited, but slightly disappointed since 1 and 2 was more meatier with challenge. Perhaps some of the new mechanics like the order system which adds certain party buffs depending on the character. And since it's a game of speed and interruptions, some battles turn trivial when my party was doing laps long before the enemy even takes a turn. 

While I praised the music (Nihon Falcom aka Nihon lots of high energy riffs, catchy and shreddy guitar/violin melodies and grand prog esque arrangements Falcom), the music here is the weakest of the 3 I've played so far. I mean it's still good, but no outstanding bangers compared to some of the speed metal highlights of 1 and 2. 

Flaws aside, it's another Legend Of Heroes: Trails game. A LOOOONG AND SLOOOOOW paced JRPG that can and will put a lot of people off, but for extremely patient anime fans, or manic completionist nutters who are a platinum trophy away from a massacre, this perseverance will reap some great rewards.


----------



## Ralyks

So I have Outer Wilds waiting for when my son goes to bed. I blame Giant Bomb for this development.


----------



## Leviathus

Still trying to get the Shura ending on Sekiro on NG+.



Spoiler



Isshin Ashina is a motherfucker. Some of this fight I dont understand, like how the mortal blade whiffs right through his body sometimes and deflect legit seems to not work on a few of his moves. Feel like this fight's gonna take me longer than Owl:Father, which i struggled on the most (prob 25-30 tries, i'm prob 15 in on IA). Sword Saint was easier for me because at least you have a big ass field to run around in, being in that box at the top of Ashina castle paired with dude's quickness is something else. Gotten close a few times, but pretty much have to turn the game off after 2 attempts cos it gets me so worked up, lol...


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> So I have Outer Wilds waiting for when my son goes to bed. I blame Giant Bomb for this development.


Yeah I grabbed this too on ps4 after a mate telling me about it. Havent had a chance to play it yet.


----------



## TedEH

I keep confusing Wilds with Worlds.......

Can't remember if I mentioned that I finished Outer Worlds. And it's a good game, but something about it feels.... very video-game-y to me. I don't know how to explain it. Like, I did enjoy playing, but it's sort of like it didn't do much that a hundred games before it didn't already do. And the anti-corporate message is a little on-the-nose. Not a bad game, but maybe a tad in the over-rated pile for me.


----------



## Leviathus

Leviathus said:


> Still trying to get the Shura ending on Sekiro on NG+.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Isshin Ashina is a motherfucker. Some of this fight I dont understand, like how the mortal blade whiffs right through his body sometimes and deflect legit seems to not work on a few of his moves. Feel like this fight's gonna take me longer than Owl:Father, which i struggled on the most (prob 25-30 tries, i'm prob 15 in on IA). Sword Saint was easier for me because at least you have a big ass field to run around in, being in that box at the top of Ashina castle paired with dude's quickness is something else. Gotten close a few times, but pretty much have to turn the game off after 2 attempts cos it gets me so worked up, lol...



Got it on the second try after i woke up today, funny how a good night's sleep works wonders for these games.


----------



## Ralyks

I've been playing Outer Wilds for an hour now and I have NO idea what the fuck I'm doing.


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> I've been playing Outer Wilds for an hour now and I have NO idea what the fuck I'm doing.


I am 100% with you. I played about an hour last night and am clueless. I put it down to being tired after looking after kids solo all day.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I finished Rage 2 this weekend. It was fun but definitely a half baked game.


----------



## John




----------



## TedEH

I finished the story on Pokemon Sword yesterday... and I'm still pretty mixed on whether or not I think this was any good a game. It does all the things a Pokemon game should do, but that's about it. There are hints of what looks like a better game in here, but it doesn't quite execute on it. Oh well.

Edit:
But I will give some props to certain audio things in the game. The dynamic music during matched I think was well done.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

PSA: humblebundle has an amazing bundle with Void Bastards and a ton of other games that directly support Australian wildlife charities/help combat the wildfires


----------



## Frostbite

KnightBrolaire said:


> PSA: humblebundle has an amazing bundle with Void Bastards and a ton of other games that directly support Australian wildlife charities/help combat the wildfires


Yeah it's honestly one of the better bundles they've put out recently. Void Bastards, Euro Truck 2, Hand of Fate 2, Hollow Knight and MR Shifty are all great games and there's more then that that I haven't played


----------



## Ralyks

Pretty sure I’m on the second to last mission of Control. If I actually played this in 2019, it would have been my GOTY.


----------



## Leviathus

Ralyks said:


> Pretty sure I’m on the second to last mission of Control. If I actually played this in 2019, it would have been my GOTY.



I'm gonna get that game at some point, keep hearing good things about it.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Stupid question because I don't use Humble Bundle often: can I just pick some of those games or am I gonna flood my Steam library with games I probably won't play? I think it's an awesome cause but am really only interested in Void Bastards and Armello.

Edit: add Tower of Guns to that short list. That looks like a really fun time.


----------



## TedEH

^ You're given individual keys. You can choose not to redeem the ones you don't want. Or give them away. Or, I think Steam can hide titles now?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Stupid question because I don't use Humble Bundle often: can I just pick some of those games or am I gonna flood my Steam library with games I probably won't play? I think it's an awesome cause but am really only interested in Void Bastards and Armello.
> 
> Edit: add Tower of Guns to that short list. That looks like a really fun time.


The games have individual keys. You can cherry pick exactly what you want and ignore the rest/give em away. I usually give games I don't want to my friends or random people


----------



## Ralyks

So I indeed finished Control, and I can not recommend this game enough. I’m even going for the Platinum (which seems like it will mostly be done by wrapping up the 5 - 7 side quests I have remaining).

After that, my focus is Judgement, because I never want to leave Kamurocho.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Done and done, got that bundle and gonna start a couple of those titles tomorrow. Also picked up FTL for less than $3.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So I indeed finished Control, and I can not recommend this game enough. I’m even going for the Platinum (which seems like it will mostly be done by wrapping up the 5 - 7 side quests I have remaining).
> 
> After that, my focus is Judgement, because I never want to leave Kamurocho.



I started playing Control. I went all in and bought the season pass bundle. I'm starting to think that may have been a mistake. The vague dreaminess of it makes me not care about any of the plot or cutscenes at all, and that's coming from a big Twin Peaks fan. I dunno. The gameplay's alright, and I've played it for ~4 hours so obviously it's doing something right (I ragequit Prey much, much faster than that the same day). But, so far I'm just frustrated and annoyed at how impenetrable everything is and I hate the ugly color scheme of everything.

I never really played much of Alan Wake so I'm guessing it's similar. I remember similar weird extremely long videos that would play on TVs, but not much else about the plot there.


----------



## TedEH

I tried out Void Bastards because of that recent bundle - and it seems good, but it's also pretty tough for my tastes. Could be that I'm just unlucky for this first attempt, or maybe I'd enjoy the game on an easier setting.

Also recently got to the end of Mario Odyssey - the end of the story part, anyway. There's soooo much to do in the end-game, but I'm not sure I'm very motivated to continue right away.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I tried out Void Bastards because of that recent bundle - and it seems good, but it's also pretty tough for my tastes. Could be that I'm just unlucky for this first attempt, or maybe I'd enjoy the game on an easier setting.
> 
> Also recently got to the end of Mario Odyssey - the end of the story part, anyway. There's soooo much to do in the end-game, but I'm not sure I'm very motivated to continue right away.


Void Bastards is a rogue-like of sorts so it's definitely harder depending on the traits/loot table you get.


----------



## TedEH

I don't think I have the mindset for rogue-likes so the death of a character really feels like a fail state. If it happens often it feels kind of punishing, but if you manage to make a character last then the loss of that character hits a little harder too.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I don't think I have the mindset for rogue-likes so the death of a character really feels like a fail state. If it happens often it feels kind of punishing, but if you manage to make a character last then the loss of that character hits a little harder too.


yeah but that's literally the core loop of the majority of rogue likes.


----------



## TedEH

You're not wrong.  It's somewhat of a barrier to entry for people who don't play those kinds of games often. But I think there are other design elements that can negate those points (in this game and in others).


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I started playing Control. I went all in and bought the season pass bundle. I'm starting to think that may have been a mistake. The vague dreaminess of it makes me not care about any of the plot or cutscenes at all, and that's coming from a big Twin Peaks fan. I dunno. The gameplay's alright, and I've played it for ~4 hours so obviously it's doing something right (I ragequit Prey much, much faster than that the same day). But, so far I'm just frustrated and annoyed at how impenetrable everything is and I hate the ugly color scheme of everything.
> 
> I never really played much of Alan Wake so I'm guessing it's similar. I remember similar weird extremely long videos that would play on TVs, but not much else about the plot there.



Shame. I never played Alan Wake or Quantum Break, but I ended up moving Control (oh, and I got the Platinum 10 minutes ago). I think I really liked how it was creepy, but not a straight up horror game. And the game play was much more fun once you got more abilities.


----------



## wankerness

I busted out Wii Sports Resort cause this is 2009 and I'm a filthy casual. That swordfight adventure mode is so viscerally satisfying.

I can't stop playing Borderlands 3, and it's making me unable to play the other games in my backlog!! I now have three classes to 50 and capable of doing Mayhem 3 very easily. Mayhem 4 is bullet sponge idiocy and I hate it.


----------



## TedEH

I keep seeing trailers for that Temtem thing... and I keep wondering if Nintendo is trying to shut that down.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I don't think I have the mindset for rogue-likes so the death of a character really feels like a fail state. If it happens often it feels kind of punishing, but if you manage to make a character last then the loss of that character hits a little harder too.


Played this for about 4 hours over the weekend and had a great time, although it is quite difficult. Extremely not used to having to scavenge ammo as much as I am, and when I run out of ammo on a ship I'm basically dead. Running out of ammo is definitely punishing but once you're on a roll it's a great time, and a cool mix of rogue-like and FPS.

Been loving Armello from the same bundle. I like that I can start and finish a game in about an hour and be really satisfied.


----------



## TedEH

I do need to check out the other games from that bundle when I have time.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I can't stop playing Borderlands 3, and it's making me unable to play the other games in my backlog!! I now have three classes to 50 and capable of doing Mayhem 3 very easily. Mayhem 4 is bullet sponge idiocy and I hate it.



I really need to get back to BL3. I pretty much only started the DLC. What console are you on?


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I really need to get back to BL3. I pretty much only started the DLC. What console are you on?



PS4. It crashes now and then, but overall I'm glad I'm not trying to run it on my PC.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> PS4. It crashes now and then, but overall I'm glad I'm not trying to run it on my PC.



Ralyks03 if you ever want to team up. I'm usually gaming after 8 - 830 eastern time.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

After Cold Steel 3 left me hanging by a thread, I noticed I had a free copy of God of W4r on the backlog. I probably should start that sometime this week. 

Instead I jumped back to Yakuza 3 and mucked about the hostess clubs of Okinawa, both running them and being a customer.  It's the only Yakuza game I haven't played (bar the PSP sidegames) and since Yakuza 7 is still yonks away, I may as well complete it. 

Also downloaded Doom 2016 and Street Fighter V (at long last) with the Champion Edition upgrade. After resisting for many years since getting put off by vanilla edition, I'm back on the SF train. Probably because been listening to the brilliant OST a lot helped, which also the same reason I grabbed Deum.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> After Cold Steel 3 left me hanging by a thread, I noticed I had a free copy of God of W4r on the backlog. I probably should start that sometime this week.
> 
> Instead I jumped back to Yakuza 3 and mucked about the hostess clubs of Okinawa, both running them and being a customer.  It's the only Yakuza game I haven't played (bar the PSP sidegames) and since Yakuza 7 is still yonks away, I may as well complete it.
> 
> Also downloaded Doom 2016 and Street Fighter V (at long last) with the Champion Edition upgrade. After resisting for many years since getting put off by vanilla edition, I'm back on the SF train. Probably because been listening to the brilliant OST a lot helped, which also the same reason I grabbed Deum.



^I may give SFV another whirl--last I remember though I was having issues with connections and matchmaking. Could be a problem with my connection, but SF4 runs pretty smooth online for me so I'm not sure if that's it. Anyway, who are you going to play in SFV?

I've been learning DBFZ more lately, is anybody here playing that? Started out with a full top tier team haha, but I am subbing Trunks in there because he is so fun to use--even if he is relatively mediocre in the tiers. Also looking to clear some single player backlog--so finally getting around to playing Mass Effect 3! ><


----------



## wankerness

I LOVE Mass effect 3, I hate how people cried so much about the ending not being what they wanted that it seems to have a negative rep. For the most part, it's just as good as ME2, if not better. The characters are just as appealing as ever, and the leveling up systems and class differences are less dumbed-down than they were in 2. And it's much more in-depth than Andromeda, where you couldn't even control your stupid teammates' abilities.

The multiplayer is really fun, too. I have no idea if it's still active. I would suspect it might be, since it was so good and unique. It was unfortunately an early example of "loot boxes" (you'd earn loot boxes that may or may not have anything good in them, and you could buy them with real money if you wanted to speed things up), but you earned them frequently enough through just playing it that it isn't an egregious example that makes you want to spend real money.



Ralyks said:


> Ralyks03 if you ever want to team up. I'm usually gaming after 8 - 830 eastern time.



Cool, I'll add you. I'm very rarely able to game after about 7 PM EST since that's usually when my girlfriend gets home from work, but maybe the stars will align at some point!


----------



## Mathemagician

Just looked up a guide/checklist and realized that Anor Londo after Sen’s Fortress is MAYBE 50% of the way through the game. 

Jesus. 

My first playthrough on Xbox 360 ended at Ornstein & Smough. I had assumed I was pretty close to the end. 

Oh how young and full of juicy humanity I was.


----------



## Leviathus

Plat'd Sekiro and started a new MGS4 playthrough for before bed, still gotta find something new to play though, not sure what.


----------



## Rosal76

Leviathus said:


> Plat'd Sekiro and started a new MGS4 playthrough for before bed, still gotta find something new to play though, not sure what.



If you're a fan of stealth games, have you looked at Hitman 2 from 2018? IMHO, it is the best stealth game out right now. It is possible, depending on your play style, to complete the whole game without firing a single shot and/or engage in any kind of combat with the targets you have to eliminate.


----------



## Leviathus

Rosal76 said:


> If you're a fan of stealth games, have you looked at Hitman 2 from 2018? IMHO, it is the best stealth game out right now. It is possible, depending on your play style, to complete the whole game without firing a single shot and/or engage in any kind of combat with the targets you have to eliminate.



Perhaps i shall, i played a little of the 2016 reboot and it didn't track for whatever reason and just assumed Hitman 2 (aka 7, Silent Assassin will always be Hitman 2 for me lol) wouldn't either.


----------



## Rosal76

Leviathus said:


> and just assumed Hitman 2 (aka 7, Silent Assassin will always be Hitman 2 for me lol)



Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (2002). Wheeew!!! Now that game had some hard missions to get Silent assassin ratings on. "At the gates" and "Temple city ambush". Man, gamers were ready to smash their controllers playing those missions.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Rosal76 said:


> Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (2002). Wheeew!!! Now that game had some hard missions to get Silent assassin ratings on. "At the gates" and "Temple city ambush". Man, gamers were ready to smash their controllers playing those missions.


I always loved the BDSM party/slaughterhouse level in that game. So much atmosphere


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> ^I may give SFV another whirl--last I remember though I was having issues with connections and matchmaking. Could be a problem with my connection, but SF4 runs pretty smooth online for me so I'm not sure if that's it. Anyway, who are you going to play in SFV?
> 
> I've been learning DBFZ more lately, is anybody here playing that? Started out with a full top tier team haha, but I am subbing Trunks in there because he is so fun to use--even if he is relatively mediocre in the tiers. Also looking to clear some single player backlog--so finally getting around to playing Mass Effect 3! ><



I'm boring bog standard protagonist kind of guy so I'll probably main Ryu first. And then go Guile. That said last time i dabbled V I was using Zangief a fair bit and had a lot of fun with him. And Urien looks interesting and fun as well.

Either way there is a lot of cobwebs to dust off and I have a lot to catch up on if I want to transcend being a filthy casual, especially if I want to pass my friend's Birdie.


DBFZ is a game I've been wanting to pick up but never did. Maybe later down the line.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm boring bog standard protagonist kind of guy so I'll probably main Ryu first. And then go Guile. That said last time i dabbled V I was using Zangief a fair bit and had a lot of fun with him. And Urien looks interesting and fun as well.
> 
> Either way there is a lot of cobwebs to dust off and I have a lot to catch up on if I want to transcend being a filthy casual, especially if I want to pass my friend's Birdie.
> 
> 
> DBFZ is a game I've been wanting to pick up but never did. Maybe later down the line.



You're following the path of Daigo Umehara!  I like Ryu in SFV, especially ever since they added his donkey kick from SF3. I think maybe the hardest things to learn after having not played for a while are the matchups with all of the new characters, but you'll get back to it! I recommend DBFZ, it's a super well-made game. It really feels like a marriage of Marvel and other Arcsys fighters to me right now, but it's easier to play than Guilty Gear IMO.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> You're following the path of Daigo Umehara!  I like Ryu in SFV, especially ever since they added his donkey kick from SF3. I think maybe the hardest things to learn after having not played for a while are the matchups with all of the new characters, but you'll get back to it! I recommend DBFZ, it's a super well-made game. It really feels like a marriage of Marvel and other Arcsys fighters to me right now, but it's easier to play than Guilty Gear IMO.



Oh no it's happening again.  I remember taking up C-Guile in CVS2 because of Daigo. Ryu in SFIV was just me, but turned out Daigo mained him too. Looks like I'm still following his choices whether I like it or not. 

I do think Guile's V-Triggers are interesting to take time to invest.

Admittedly my interest in fighting games have plummeted until the recent Samurai Showdown game, which is slowly rekindling my love for them. Eventually I will take up DBFZ anyway as yeah it does look easier than MVC or Guilty Gear (the latter actually got me off fighting games altogether despite loving the series and music). Basically any game with an air dash and/or roman cancel mechanic is something I'll have to slowly ease back to.

All the Guile talk has reminded me how much of a great job Godspeed did for his new theme too.



IMO still goes with everything.


----------



## Mathemagician

They added my boy Seth. So now I have to come back to triple upper cut my friends.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I LOVE Mass effect 3, I hate how people cried so much about the ending not being what they wanted that it seems to have a negative rep. For the most part, it's just as good as ME2, if not better. The characters are just as appealing as ever, and the leveling up systems and class differences are less dumbed-down than they were in 2. And it's much more in-depth than Andromeda, where you couldn't even control your stupid teammates' abilities.
> 
> The multiplayer is really fun, too. I have no idea if it's still active. I would suspect it might be, since it was so good and unique. It was unfortunately an early example of "loot boxes" (you'd earn loot boxes that may or may not have anything good in them, and you could buy them with real money if you wanted to speed things up), but you earned them frequently enough through just playing it that it isn't an egregious example that makes you want to spend real money.
> 
> 
> 
> Cool, I'll add you. I'm very rarely able to game after about 7 PM EST since that's usually when my girlfriend gets home from work, but maybe the stars will align at some point!


Agree with this but I also agree that the ending shouldn't have boiled down to walking down one of 3 paths for your ending. Even if it was those 3 choices, it would've been nice if they just picked the one that most applied to your playthrough choices instead.

That beings said I fucking loved that multiplayer and played it into the ground. So much fun as a coop horde mode. Unfortunately Andromeda's died out by the time I came back to the game, but it was just as good I'd say since I really liked the gameplay of Andromeda. Don't have ME3 for PC so can't check how the multiplayer community is for that game.


----------



## beerandbeards

After I finished The Witcher on Netflix I had that strong urge to replay Witcher 3. Started from scratch and I’m loving it just as much as the first time I played it. It holds up today with story and gameplay. I know they basically ended the series but I want another one so bad. 

I can’t wait to see the final product of Cyberpunk 2077. CDPR will deliver for sure.


----------



## Ralyks

beerandbeards said:


> After I finished The Witcher on Netflix I had that strong urge to replay Witcher 3. Started from scratch and I’m loving it just as much as the first time I played it. It holds up today with story and gameplay. I know they basically ended the series but I want another one so bad.
> 
> I can’t wait to see the final product of Cyberpunk 2077. CDPR will deliver for sure.



I told myself 2020 would be the year.i finally beat Witcher 3. Or rather, get Pat the first few hours. I swear I will this time!


----------



## Mathemagician

Just beat Ornstein and Smough for the first time ever. Been wondering what happens next since 2011. Time to find out!


----------



## TedEH

I just finished playing Last Day of June - notable because the soundtrack is done by Steven Wilson (it's mostly instrumental versions of existing songs) - and I found the game to be.... ok. Narrative I like what they did, but as a game, mechanically, it's clunky.


----------



## puolimatkankrouvi

Started playing TomClancy's The Division 2 recently.
I like how in the beginning the tutorial seamessly changes to the actual game, the game gets bit harder and you receive less and less support.
The storyline seems to be a bit shallow for my taste, let's see if it goes deeper later.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I just finished playing Last Day of June - notable because the soundtrack is done by Steven Wilson (it's mostly instrumental versions of existing songs) - and I found the game to be.... ok. Narrative I like what they did, but as a game, mechanically, it's clunky.



Yeah, I played that on some recommendation and was VERY pleasantly surprised when I saw Steven Wilson in the opening credits. I liked the game alright but uninstalled it when I was done.


----------



## TedEH

Started Into the Breach this weekend. I've never been very good at strategy games, but this feels pretty accessible so far.


----------



## Leviathus

Picked up DS2 on sale last week, man have i been getting wrecked.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> Picked up DS2 on sale last week, man have i been getting wrecked.


it's the hardest in the series imo, if only because it does a lot of cheap bullshit


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

With SFV and Doom 2016 still getting their optimal expansions getting installed; SFV in my case installing like a dying man's crawl, my options with V is stupidly limited. At least Deum is more substantially playable so finally started that. First FPS game I've played since Bioshock Infinite, this will probably be my "pickup and play" game for a while (at least until the V roster is finally playable). Yeah I'm late to the Doom party but it's great visceral fun. The glory kills are slight pace killers, but not really deal breakers as I'm smashing my R3 a fair bit already since I'm so terrible at FPS games. 

Still slogging through Yakuza 3 as well. The game being called a precursor to Yakuza 6 is getting more apparent. Smaller sandbox set in the countryside, swearing oaths to local gang leader with one of them yelling aniki all the time (even the same voice actor, though he had a different role in 6), much more smaller scale story, and small in content. Granted there's still a ton to do. The transition from chapter 3 to 4 and I'm already thrown with a ton of sidequest shenanigans. Probably why I started playing Deum...


----------



## wankerness

I really lost interest in Yakuza 3 and dunno when I'll get through it and get to 4. The combat is a lot worse than 0 and newer, of course, but more unfortunately the sidequests are also missing most of the character that you get in the later games (well, earlier too, assuming those in Kiwami 1/2 are like those in the original 1/2). I don't hate it, but it feels like a slog so far. I'm probably ~10 hours in.


----------



## PuriPuriPrisoner

I’ve been addicted to mordhau.


----------



## narad

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Oh no it's happening again.  I remember taking up C-Guile in CVS2 because of Daigo. Ryu in SFIV was just me, but turned out Daigo mained him too. Looks like I'm still following his choices whether I like it or not.
> 
> I do think Guile's V-Triggers are interesting to take time to invest.
> 
> Admittedly my interest in fighting games have plummeted until the recent Samurai Showdown game, which is slowly rekindling my love for them. Eventually I will take up DBFZ anyway as yeah it does look easier than MVC or Guilty Gear (the latter actually got me off fighting games altogether despite loving the series and music). Basically any game with an air dash and/or roman cancel mechanic is something I'll have to slowly ease back to.
> 
> All the Guile talk has reminded me how much of a great job Godspeed did for his new theme too.
> 
> 
> 
> IMO still goes with everything.




They hired Godspeed to do that? That's pretty cool. But IMO, Guile's theme should be a bit bombastic / American. This is great music in terms of dynamics and overall composition, but not the approach I would have recommended for his theme in particular. Guile should have the Van Halen "Beat It" solo of the SF world -- that's kind of the impression I inferred from the SFII version.


----------



## RBadel

Currently i am addicted to Destiny 2


----------



## Merrekof

I don't have much time for gaming like I used to, with a wife, kids and job you know..
There are like 2 games I played in 2018. Civilization V with nearly 800 hours. (Yes, 800) and Kingdom Come: Deliverance at about 80 hours.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I've been playing a ton of World of Tanks lately. The history nerd in me loves the specs/technical stuff but goddamn do I hate trying to figure out weak spots on upper tier tanks. I regret playing the americans since all of their tanks have underpowered guns until like tier 5.


----------



## Merrekof

KnightBrolaire said:


> I regret playing the americans since all of their tanks have underpowered guns until like tier 5.


+1 for realism then?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Merrekof said:


> +1 for realism then?


yep, verrrrry much so. The british, german and russian tanks kick the crap out of them in lower tiers (at least in terms of firepower). Even the Sherman is garbage until you get the british quarter pounder gun, which is quite literally when shermans became somewhat viable irl.


----------



## MFB

Finished all the games I got with my Black Friday PS4 (along with getting as many trophies as I could on first go), rankings of each would be:

1. God of War (9.5/10)
2. Horizon Zero Dawn (9/10)
3. Spider-man (8/10)
4. Jedi Fallen Order (6.5/10)

I wish I could give J:FO more, but there's some QoL changes I would make to it, along with arguing that it feels like you can blow through it in a weekend if you know what you're doing; so for shelling out $60, it's probably closer to worthwhile at $30/40.

I'll probably try and wrap up some loose ends on HZD, and then do the Frozen Wilds DLC. Not really feeling a huge desire to go back and do NG+, but God of War would be fun to revisit.


----------



## BlackMastodon

PuriPuriPrisoner said:


> I’ve been addicted to mordhau.


How's it compare to Chivalry?


----------



## PuriPuriPrisoner

BlackMastodon said:


> How's it compare to Chivalry?


I've never played Chivalry so I wouldn't know. Mordhau's combat seems much smoother compared to the Chivalry gameplay I've seen.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> How's it compare to Chivalry?


It's essentially like Chivalry but with deeper and more ridiculous combat. Want to murder someone with a pan or spoons? you can do that. two pans? yep. only throw rocks? yep. Throw your shield at people like Capt America? yep.


----------



## PuriPuriPrisoner

KnightBrolaire said:


> It's essentially like Chivalry but with deeper and more ridiculous combat. Want to murder someone with a pan or spoons? you can do that. two pans? yep. only throw rocks? yep. Throw your shield at people like Capt America? yep.


God damn pan users are the worst. I can never get the block timing right against them.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Best salespitch I've ever heard for a game.


----------



## ImNotAhab

PLayed A PLague Tale... Pretty good but some really frustrating sections with some lame design that have one solution and you have to attrition your way through to get it _just right_.

Moved on to Hellblade - Senua's Sacrifice... Not really getting it. The pacing and combat are a bit of a chore and I am wondering is it worth sticking with.


----------



## wankerness

I really didn't like Hellblade, the combat is incredibly perfunctory and mechanical. Extremely simple puzzle section, kill a bunch of bland respawning viking guys for a while, repeat. The boss fights are more interesting. I guess it comes down to whether you think the incredibly oppressive atmosphere is cool or not, since that's its only really unique trait.


----------



## TedEH

I liked Hellblade for what it was. Like you've said - it's not super deep mechanically, but it does a good job as an atmosphere piece. For fans of walking simulators maybe?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I liked Hellblade for what it was. Like you've said - it's not super deep mechanically, but it does a good job as an atmosphere piece. For fans of walking simulators maybe?


If it's a walking simulator than it's way better than most in the genre (barring Firewatch) imo.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

PuriPuriPrisoner said:


> God damn pan users are the worst. I can never get the block timing right against them.


Personally I like to chuck rocks at people. Largely because there's a HEMA manuscript from 1611 that shows it as a legit tactic. But also because it pisses people off


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> If it's a walking simulator than it's way better than most in the genre (barring Firewatch) imo.


I mean, it's not, since it has combat and puzzles and such, but I think it has a similar appeal.

+1 for Firewatch though. I really liked that one.


----------



## wankerness

The best walking simulator is Jazzpunk!


----------



## PuriPuriPrisoner

KnightBrolaire said:


> Personally I like to chuck rocks at people. Largely because there's a HEMA manuscript from 1611 that shows it as a legit tactic. But also because it pisses people off


If only the game would let me unscrew my pommel and end people rightly with it. That would be peak historical accuracy.


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> I LOVE Mass effect 3, I hate how people cried so much about the ending not being what they wanted that it seems to have a negative rep. For the most part, it's just as good as ME2, if not better. The characters are just as appealing as ever, and the leveling up systems and class differences are less dumbed-down than they were in 2. And it's much more in-depth than Andromeda, where you couldn't even control your stupid teammates' abilities.
> 
> The multiplayer is really fun, too. I have no idea if it's still active. I would suspect it might be, since it was so good and unique. It was unfortunately an early example of "loot boxes" (you'd earn loot boxes that may or may not have anything good in them, and you could buy them with real money if you wanted to speed things up), but you earned them frequently enough through just playing it that it isn't an egregious example that makes you want to spend real money.



...I'm really liking Mass Effect 3 so far! It's pretty much just like you said, there's a little more to the level-up system than ME2 but it isn't clunky or complicated either. I'm not super far in, but I do like the characters, and it just feels good to be back on the Normandy hah! Unfortunately I'm playing it on PS3 and don't have access to any online, but I assume it is probably pretty cool--being able to roll is a nice new feature, and using the omni tool as a stabby stabby sword as well.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Damn, FTL is hard.


----------



## Merrekof

BlackMastodon said:


> Damn, FTL is hard.


That's an awesome game. So simple yet so hard!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Damn, FTL is hard.


yes. yes it is. Especially that final boss. I fucking hate the final boss.


----------



## Merrekof

KnightBrolaire said:


> yes. yes it is. Especially that final boss. I fucking hate the final boss.


This one time, I based my tactics around boarding and killing the crew. My thought was, if the crew is dead, then it will be easy to finish off the ship..appareantly it has an auto pilot..there goes that tactic!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Merrekof said:


> This one time, I based my tactics around boarding and killing the crew. My thought was, if the crew is dead, then it will be easy to finish off the ship..appareantly it has an auto pilot..there goes that tactic!


The only thing that worked for me was having an engi crew and constantly spamming emps and missiles.


----------



## Mathemagician

This is timely as I just installed FTL after having in my list of games for years.


----------



## Merrekof

KnightBrolaire said:


> The only thing that worked for me was having an engi crew and constantly spamming emps and missiles.


Several tactics work, but you got to have luck troughout the game on your side.
Lots of lasers to take down shields, boarding crews to disable the boss' weapons or a big flak gun to do random damage..


----------



## wankerness

I got into Control in my second long play session, it’s cool. I still don’t really like the Silent Hill levels of awkward in all the dialogue and cutscenes, but I now like the atmosphere and just unlocking sections of the map. 
I sure hate those enemies that go invisible and then reappear for a second and hit you for half of your life bar!!


----------



## Leviathus

KnightBrolaire said:


> it's the hardest in the series imo, if only because it does a lot of cheap bullshit



Fuck the Iron Keep!!!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> Fuck the Iron Keep!!!


oh it gets worse. much worse.


----------



## Leviathus

KnightBrolaire said:


> oh it gets worse. much worse.


I don't doubt it. I also don't doubt that my Alt+F4 keys will be worn out by the time i finish this game lol.


----------



## Empryrean

After longing to play Muramasa rebirth but not wanting to buy a psVita only to play one game, I found out the Original Muramasa was a Wii title that I am able to play without buying a new console, good thing I kept my wiiU!


----------



## TedEH

I didn't think I was going to, but I keep going back to Mario Odyssey to just mindlessly hunt for more moons. I think the combination of the expressive movement and the gigantic seeded world of stuff to just keep doing has been a really strong point in modern Nintendo stuff.


----------



## natedog_approved

I've been playing Shadow of War and I can't get over it. 

Something so very satisfying about brutally executing orc captains after they talked shit.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

natedog_approved said:


> I've been playing Shadow of War and I can't get over it.
> 
> Something so very satisfying about brutally executing orc captains after they talked shit.


I loved Shadow of War. The nemesis system is so much deeper in the sequel and the combat was awesome but repetitive.


----------



## natedog_approved

KnightBrolaire said:


> I loved Shadow of War. The nemesis system is so much deeper in the sequel and the combat was awesome but repetitive.



Agreed! Not the best game by any means but I picked it awhile ago on sale, the definitive edition was like, 12 bucks? 

I'm sure I'll get bored soon but for now I'm enjoying it.


----------



## stevexc

I've been swapping between Pokemon Shield and FE:Three Houses lately. I couldn't get into any of the previous Fire Emblem games that I tried but Three houses is really doing it for me.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing more Control. I HATE the control point respawn mechanic when it comes to boss fights. I guess it's how Dark Souls worked so if I played those games I'd be more used to it, but there's nothing (to me), other than maybe weapon durability, that is less fun than fighting a boss, dying in ~10 seconds, and then having to clear back through a whole bunch of enemies that respawn every time that you die to get back to the boss only to die again in 10 seconds. Horrible. Insult to injury being added that the game drains your resources by a certain percentage with every death, and the fact that you have enough health to get 3 shot instead of 2 shot even if you get every single health upgrade!!!

I like the game mostly, but they needed to tone down the damage on some of the bosses, bigtime. I died ~4-5 times on the third form of the "Essej" fight, and a couple times on the big mold guy (which I then inadvertantly cheesed by finding out if I just mashed fire non-stop on the gun he got stunlocked). The mechanics are just messy - sometimes the screen will erupt in a big puff of smoke that takes the framerate down to about 5 fps, and then you die before it recovers since you're so squishy. The fact you can only heal by killing enemies is a serious problem with boss fights - if you get hit once at the beginning, you're flat-out screwed in many cases since when it goes into supermode at the end you need to have full health.

I just got to some new boss that seems even more tedious and obnoxious (some big floating laser eye thing that seems to be able to be hit for ~5% of its healthbar once every 30 seconds).

Maybe it's better on PC!


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Been playing more Control. I HATE the control point respawn mechanic when it comes to boss fights. I guess it's how Dark Souls worked so if I played those games I'd be more used to it, but there's nothing (to me), other than maybe weapon durability, that is less fun than fighting a boss, dying in ~10 seconds, and then having to clear back through a whole bunch of enemies that respawn every time that you die to get back to the boss only to die again in 10 seconds. Horrible. Insult to injury being added that the game drains your resources by a certain percentage with every death, and the fact that you have enough health to get 3 shot instead of 2 shot even if you get every single health upgrade!!!
> 
> I like the game mostly, but they needed to tone down the damage on some of the bosses, bigtime. I died ~4-5 times on the third form of the "Essej" fight, and a couple times on the big mold guy (which I then inadvertantly cheesed by finding out if I just mashed fire non-stop on the gun he got stunlocked). The mechanics are just messy - sometimes the screen will erupt in a big puff of smoke that takes the framerate down to about 5 fps, and then you die before it recovers since you're so squishy. The fact you can only heal by killing enemies is a serious problem with boss fights - if you get hit once at the beginning, you're flat-out screwed in many cases since when it goes into supermode at the end you need to have full health.
> 
> I just got to some new boss that seems even more tedious and obnoxious (some big floating laser eye thing that seems to be able to be hit for ~5% of its healthbar once every 30 seconds).
> 
> Maybe it's better on PC!




I find it interesting reading people's experiences with the Boss fights in Control. I don't know if it's the build people make, the weapon choices, or just the player's skillset. For instance i killed Essej on my first attempt, but that Mold boss i just found impossible for a long time. Think i must have died 15 or 20 times. But yeh, respawning for some of the boss fights are a bit annoying. Still love the game though 

Yeh, i play on PC and don't have that framerate issue you describe, but then a slow PC would probably run into problems.

If you mean the Anchor as that floating eye boss, there is a way for it to take more damage than that, but not with guns.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I destroyed the anchor boss on the third attempt with little trouble. I guess you just throw a clock at its eye every time you see it, and then fly to the next platform. Took like 5 hits, was only sketchy cause of all the spawning adds.

I beat Mr Tommasi on the third or fourth try, but that took a LONG time (probably 10, 15 minutes an attempt?). As far as I can see from Google, he is widely considered the most horrible boss in the game. I used a cowardly strategy of hanging out on the platform above him so I had more time to react to the stupid adds and more cover from his projectiles.

So, I've done all the sidequests and now am working on finishing the game. I got to what I assume is probably the end section (big red area with platforms that rise out of the ground as you progress), and killed monsters and progressed through an area for ~20 minutes, died, and then found I had to start the entire thing over again. Fuggin ridiculous. I'll probably give it another two tries and then say "i played enough of that game." 

Oh, the Inception-style level with all the perspective shifts was kind of cool, except that the soundtrack jarringly switched from the atmospheric weirdness of the rest of the game to some silly metal with lyrics yelled about Control.  Kind of ruined it.


----------



## Boofchuck

Well this takes me back.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Control without too much trouble, I guess my first attempt at the end of the game I died right at the very end when two "boss" mobs spawned at the same time. I easily won on the second attempt. The sidequest bosses are much harder than anything in the game proper, which is how it should be.

I curiously got all the trophies except the bureau alert ones - I literally never got a single one after about the first 4 missions of the game. And the first five I got, I either ignored or failed due to dying to something else, so I never got to do one! Not a single one spawned after those, after I started doing sidequests and got towards the end of the game and would have bothered trying! So, I guess I'm not getting a platinum on this game! I think it was a pretty good game, but that it had some serious wonkiness with how squishy your character is vs random enemy damage (those stupid hiss distorted things would sometimes take me from full health to a tiny sliver with ONE HIT even though I had all the health upgrades and a +45% health mod on top of that), and some REALLY serious problems with framerate. Like, seriously, the game slows down horribly just from being paused and unpaused. It's worse than Borderlands 3! And it makes no sense, cause the menu is just some plain text. The map frequently fails to load or takes a really long time to load, too, despite just looking like a flat graphic.


----------



## Leviathus

Got to the DS2 ending. Still have the DLC, but idk how much i care. I dug the world but the bosses were pretty underwhelming. BB and Sekiro are the From games for me i think, wonder what Elden Ring will be like.


----------



## dr_game0ver

You're not a true From Software game fan until you have finished one of the King's field games.


----------



## Qweklain

dr_game0ver said:


> You're not a true From Software game fan until you have finished one of the King's field games.


What if you own all of them (US releases anyway) and have beaten them all? Cause I have. I wish they would make more, but it will never be...


----------



## dr_game0ver

I own the second and fourth game. Haven't played them yet but planning on doing it soon.


----------



## BlackMastodon

dr_game0ver said:


> You're not a true From Software game fan until you have finished one of the King's field games.


*cough* Armoured Core *cough*


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

BlackMastodon said:


> *cough* Armoured Core *cough*



Genuinely good games though Kings Field series were the first of From Software's developed games. Kinda like pre Demon Souls level of hipsterish. But just for fun...




dr_game0ver said:


> You're not a true From Software game fan until you genuinely enjoyed playing the Steel Battalion games.



Fixed. 

Guess I'm not a true From Software fan after all.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Steel battalion? The Xbox game with the giant ass controller?
The Armored Core games are on my list. Started collecting them. I have so many games i have to play...

Currently on DuckTales Remastered. Game keeps crashing on the last boss...


----------



## Mathemagician

Leviathus said:


> Got to the DS2 ending. Still have the DLC, but idk how much i care. I dug the world but the bosses were pretty underwhelming. BB and Sekiro are the From games for me i think, wonder what Elden Ring will be like.



I’m biased as I ended up loving DS2 as much as 1 for different reasons. Most people agree that the DLC is the highlight of DS2. From level design to boss design it’s peak From Software. I can’t oversell its quality, and imo definitely go in cold with no guide.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

dr_game0ver said:


> Steel battalion? The Xbox game with the giant ass controller?



Yes. Particularly Steel Battalion Heavy Armour, where From Software ditched the giant controller and thought combining the gamepad and kinnect was a good idea.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

Finally picked up Three Houses. First time playing a Fire Emblem game since the GBA era, so suffice to say it's been a while. 
But I'm having a blast so far! The game's evolved a lot since the last title I played.


----------



## wankerness

Got the platinum on control by going afk and reading a book for 20 minutes between bureau alerts popping up - very stupid mechanic. 

Back to Yakuza 3! This is very bad compared to the later ones, unsurprisingly. The plot feels like more of an exposition dump - all of a sudden many hours into it the story seems to have finally started, and it's less interesting than usual and the exposition is dumped in larger chunks than in the later games. Eh. I'll try to power through it to get to 4, which seems to be a fan favorite again.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Got the platinum on control by going afk and reading a book for 20 minutes between bureau alerts popping up - very stupid mechanic.
> 
> Back to Yakuza 3! This is very bad compared to the later ones, unsurprisingly. The plot feels like more of an exposition dump - all of a sudden many hours into it the story seems to have finally started, and it's less interesting than usual and the exposition is dumped in larger chunks than in the later games. Eh. I'll try to power through it to get to 4, which seems to be a fan favorite again.



So yeah, not only did I get the Platinum for Control within 2 days after beating it, but I'm currently starting Yakuza 3 as we speak...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Slogging through Yakuza 3 myself while waiting for SFV Champion to be released and Yakuza 5 to install.

Yeah it's the weakest in the series by far, with 6 being the distant second (not counting the non remakes of 1 and 2). I still intend to finish it since it's the only Yakuza game I haven't finished (also not counting the Samurai and PSP spinoffs).

It is great and convenient now that all the Yakuza games are available in 1 console. Depending on how I go with 3, I should revisit 4 some time. 5 is still somewhat fresh in my mind so it'll be a while before coming back to it, and by then Yakuza 7 would be released in the west I suppose.

I was checking out the prices of Tales Of Beseria knowing it's a prequel to Zesteria, one of the Tales games I was rather meh about (except the music) and this supposed to have improved and retconned some of the game. It is cheap so might have to grab it to scratch the JRPG itch.


----------



## wankerness

Yakuza 3's biggest problems, I think, are the poor writing for the substories and the very bad combat. Like, basically everything you do gets blocked, and when they DO connect, your punches hit like a wet noodle since there's no mechanic for upgrading attack power in this game, unlike the later entries. So, basically the only way to do any substantial damage is to do heat moves, but you can't build any heat if you get your attack blocked, and it drains almost instantly if you get hit, so it's just a very terribly balanced system.

Basically I just have to use the Komaki counter moves that you get from beating his 3 apprentices or whatever, and that's the only consistent, reliable way to do any damage against bosses.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Anyone play Daemon X Machina on the Switch? I'm curious how it compares to the Xbox 360 era Armored Core games. I really loved those over the older ones because of the fast-paced mech combat and was disappointed to hear they went back to the old style in the later releases.


----------



## natedog_approved

BlackMastodon said:


> Anyone play Daemon X Machina on the Switch? I'm curious how it compares to the Xbox 360 era Armored Core games. I really loved those over the older ones because of the fast-paced mech combat and was disappointed to hear they went back to the old style in the later releases.



Dude. I totally forgot about Armored Core. I used to play that on PS2. Such a sick game.


----------



## StevenC

BlackMastodon said:


> Anyone play Daemon X Machina on the Switch? I'm curious how it compares to the Xbox 360 era Armored Core games. I really loved those over the older ones because of the fast-paced mech combat and was disappointed to hear they went back to the old style in the later releases.


I only played the prerelease demo, but I have never felt less engaged with a game because the aiming system and HUD made me completely unaware as to whether I was hitting anything ever. On the other hand they apparently took feedback from the demo and adjusted the final version accordingly, but I haven't played that.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Started Nioh. Lots of fun.


----------



## Ralyks

Yeah, I'm kinda iffy on Yakuza 3 Soo day. But I'm kind of pushing through it because I hear 4 is a high point for the series, and I feel I really need to complete the Yakuza serious at this point since I've already beaten 0, Kiwami 1 and 2, and 6.

Anyone play Dreams yet? I've been contemplating grabbing it since it's only 40 and I have some GameStop credit and games to trade, but I feel like I'd mostly play the story mode and other people's instead of making my own.



Bloody_Inferno said:


> I was checking out the prices of Tales Of Beseria knowing it's a prequel to Zesteria, one of the Tales games I was rather meh about (except the music) and this supposed to have improved and retconned some of the game. It is cheap so might have to grab it to scratch the JRPG itch.



I rented this randomly when I still had a gamefly account and ended up keeping it. I didn't get super far but remember enjoying what I played. I would like to revisit it one day.


----------



## ImNotAhab

dr_game0ver said:


> Started Nioh. Lots of fun.



Started Nioh and gave up after many, many deaths in a very short amount of time. This is a theme with me and the soulsbourne genre. Obviously I have the reaction times and coordination of tortoise on xanex.

The only souls ish experience I made it through was Jedi Fallen Order because at least they gave some difficulty tiers.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just to get ahead of the other souls fans. If it has difficulty tiers it’s not a souls game. That said personally idc as long as people get to enjoy a great game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Yeah, I'm kinda iffy on Yakuza 3 Soo day. But I'm kind of pushing through it because I hear 4 is a high point for the series, and I feel I really need to complete the Yakuza serious at this point since I've already beaten 0, Kiwami 1 and 2, and 6.



4 was my gateway to the series. It's considered a high point because it fixed everything lacking with Yakuza 3 and upped the ante with extra content, characters, goofiness. Adding the extra characters bought a lot more personality to the series as well. 

How was the combat system in Berseria? I forgot if it was full action based or the traditional Tales arrangement. I remember getting really put off with Zestiria because of the lack of camera control during battles. Looks like they fixed it here.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> How was the combat system in Berseria? I forgot if it was full action based or the traditional Tales arrangement. I remember getting really put off with Zestiria because of the lack of camera control during battles. Looks like they fixed it here.



It was my.only Tales game so I'm not sure. I remember it being very action filled but you could switch between your party. Come to think of it, it kinda felt like a somewhat more strategic FFXV. I could be wrong, it's been a while, but I remember it being fast paced.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> It was my.only Tales game so I'm not sure. I remember it being very action filled but you could switch between your party. Come to think of it, it kinda felt like a somewhat more strategic FFXV. I could be wrong, it's been a while, but I remember it being fast paced.



Cool. I'll probably still check it out since I've been invested enough from Zestiria so I want to see the thousand year connection. 

Though the next few months will be dangerous since all the interesting releases will be dropping then, 2 being Persona 5R and Trials Of Mana, being on the top of my priority list, so it'll be a while before then.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Cool. I'll probably still check it out since I've been invested enough from Zestiria so I want to see the thousand year connection.
> 
> Though the next few months will be dangerous since all the interesting releases will be dropping then, 2 being Persona 5R and Trials Of Mana, being on the top of my priority list, so it'll be a while before then.



My two favorite games of all time are Final Fantasy VII and Persona 5, respectively. So you can imagine how I feel about their remakes coming out within like 2 weeks of each other.


----------



## Mathemagician

Isn’t persona 5 like 3 years old?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> My two favorite games of all time are Final Fantasy VII and Persona 5, respectively. So you can imagine how I feel about their remakes coming out within like 2 weeks of each other.



I purposely didn't mention FFVII Remake since the episodic structure is giving me some Monday morning dread. Granted I'll eventually play it anyway. 



Mathemagician said:


> Isn’t persona 5 like 3 years old?



Yes. 5 Royale is an updated or directors cut version with added features/characters/plot etc. Atlus have been milking this formula for years since 3.


----------



## blacai

Thinking about buying the Dragon Ball Z Kakarot... I am a total fan of this anime for more than 25 years ...
I am totally out of current "gaming". I just play world of warcraft, so I have no idea if I can buy any XBox gamepad for my PC and play with it in steam or I do need a Steam Controller, which I cannot find anymore in Steam store but only online for 90€...

Any idea?


----------



## dr_game0ver

The production of the Steam controller stopped. Get a One or PS4 controller. There is plenty of controllers on the market for PC, MSI, Logitech, Razer, Trustmaster...


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Yes. 5 Royale is an updated or directors cut version with added features/characters/plot etc. Atlus have been milking this formula for years since 3.



I mean, P3 FES and P4 Golden are fucking great though, so I guess it’s a working?


----------



## lurè

Bouncing between Outer Worlds and DBZ Kakarot.
I'm not a huge Fallout fan and OW Is pretty much Fallout in space.
DBZ Kakarot brings me back to when I was 10 yo; higly suggested if you're a fan of the saga.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> I mean, P3 FES and P4 Golden are fucking great though, so I guess it’s a working?



No complaints here. I didn't flinch when they released Persona 2 in 2 parts. And hell, the P4 fighting games being direct sequels are legit great anime fighters. I'll certainly be playing the P5 Musou game too. So yeah, it's working alright.


----------



## TedEH

I didn't realize P5 was also on the PS3. I never got a PS4, so that game fell off my radar. Maybe I can find someone to borrow a copy from. Hopefully it's not one of those cases where the game clearly targeted the then-next gen, and stripped out all the cool stuff to port backwards.

I ended up getting the Collection of Mana on Switch for cheap and started trying out the really old Final Fantasy Adventure - which.... holds up about as well as you'd expect any old gameboy game to hold up. It leaves me wanting to play a Zelda game instead though, but I've played soooo much of that franchise in the last year or so that I don't really want to do that.

I also grabbed a Switch copy of Skyrim and started a file yesterday. I never got into that game before, but I feel like this is the right platform for its open-world-y-ness, since that makes it so much easier to put it down and pick it back up.

Probably going to bounce back and forth between those two titles until they're done. Might also go back to the other two Mana games, since I remember those being solid.


----------



## Mathemagician

I need to stay out of th is thread until after exams


----------



## MFB

Bought FFX/X2 on PS4, and having no memory of FFX besides remembering I couldn't get past the Blitzball game (10yr old me thought I had to win to continue), this game is tedious as fuck. So many cutscenes just for a few lines of dialogue that you can't even skip through, coupled with Tidus's overrun just to explain what we JUST saw, and save prompts after save prompts after nothing of importance has happened. 

It better cut this shit out soon or its going to get deleted for space


----------



## Ralyks

MFB said:


> Bought FFX/X2 on PS4, and having no memory of FFX besides remembering I couldn't get past the Blitzball game (10yr old me thought I had to win to continue), this game is tedious as fuck. So many cutscenes just for a few lines of dialogue that you can't even skip through, coupled with Tidus's overrun just to explain what we JUST saw, and save prompts after save prompts after nothing of importance has happened.
> 
> It better cut this shit out soon or its going to get deleted for space



I remember being sorely disappointed when I got this game back on PS2. Then I got the PS4 remaster and honestly, outside of the awful voice acting, I ended up loving FFX. And yeah, those issues kinda die down as you go on.


----------



## wankerness

I played through FFX on PS2 a couple years ago for the first time and enjoyed it. I totally disregarded blitzball except for the one or two places it forces you to (aka, I didn't get Wakka's ultimate weapon). 

I did play it a lot, I even did that frickin lightning dodge thing for the weapon. 

I haven't played the remaster, but the videos made it look paradoxically WORSE thanks to the facial expressions going away.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> How was the combat system in Berseria? I forgot if it was full action based or the traditional Tales arrangement. I remember getting really put off with Zestiria because of the lack of camera control during battles. Looks like they fixed it here.


Berseria is the best of all the Taleses. Certainly the best since Vesperia.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Berseria is the best of all the Taleses. Certainly the best since Vesperia.



I quite enjoyed the 2 Xillia games, but this is good to hear.


----------



## TedEH

I realize I'm pretty far behind the times on this series, but I've decided that Skyrim has a bunch of things that kinda bug me from a design standpoint. I wanted to play it as a sort of sneaky / stealthy / thief kind of character, but it punishes you for doing this. Hired thugs come after you even if you don't get caught stealing things. On top of that, I think there's a bug where you occasionally are "caught stealing" things that use the normal white interaction prompt instead of telling you in red that you're about to steal, like it normally would.

Also some of the voice acting is hilariously bad. 

I can appreciate a lot of what the game has going for it, but maaaaan, there's some jank in there.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Wouldn't be a Bethesda game without some of their signature jank.

I still consider Skyrim one of my favourite games but after playing it with mods I can never go back to vanilla.


----------



## natedog_approved

BlackMastodon said:


> I still consider Skyrim one of my favourite games but after playing it with mods I can never go back to vanilla.



Mods are really the only way to play Skyrim now.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

natedog_approved said:


> Mods are really the only way to play Skyrim now.


mods are the only way to play basically any bethesda game since morrowind.


----------



## TedEH

Unfortunately, Switch means no mods. At the same time though, I think there's something to be said about experiencing it as-is.

I remember trying to play this game years ago and didn't give it much of a shot- and I think I remember why: Trying to take in everything going on at once. The game is kind of overwhelming with information at any given time. I tend to play a lot of games by entering an area, and trying to explore and do as much as I can before moving on - but this game throws SO MUCH at you in a given location that I think I need to focus on doing things a quest/objective at a time and do a lot of traveling back to places or something. 'Cause it's just too much to process or remember sometimes. My list of quests has a bunch of stuff in it that I already can't remember anything about and I'm only a handful of hours into the game.


----------



## Steinmetzify

So you you have online buddies right? You play shit with them, they play shit with you, you get a vote and then they get a vote etc. 

My votes are fun and entertaining and then my online bro voted for fuckin Fortnite. 

This is the DUMBEST LOOKING GAME EVER CREATED. I’d rather rock Doom ‘95 than this shit, it’s just fuckin retarded. 

/rant


----------



## beerandbeards

I’ve been playing Witcher 3 for like the 4th time, but only played the DLC once before. This game still holds up and I don’t remember the DLC so it’s fresh. Trying to discover all locations and do everything except Gwent

best of all time game maybe


----------



## TedEH

steinmetzify said:


> So you you have online buddies right?


Nah, just stick to single player stuff. Problem solved. 

I'm only half kidding.

But also 90s Doom is always great.


----------



## natedog_approved

beerandbeards said:


> I’ve been playing Witcher 3 for like the 4th time, but only played the DLC once before. This game still holds up and I don’t remember the DLC so it’s fresh. Trying to discover all locations and do everything except Gwent
> 
> best of all time game maybe



The DLC's are fantastic! More people should play through those, it seems like a lot people haven't.

Though I agree with you about it possibly being one of the best games ever, I can't play it again. I tried a couple years ago when the show was announced and again after I watched it. Each time I finish up the first few quests about to when you meet up with Yennefer after killing the griffin, and then I stop and dont go back. Dont know why.


----------



## wankerness

I almost never see anyone talk about Witcher 3 without plugging the DLCs, and the GOTY version is usually the one on major sale, so I feel like most people at least have them. I was not huge on the Gaunter O'Dimm DLC like everyone else seems to be, it had its moments, but I just didn't really like the character and it felt really underwhelming after how wrapped up I was in the game proper's story. Blood and Wine was better - it's lower key, but it's kind of a nice coda to the whole thing.

Both are still some of the best DLC I've ever seen (other candidates would be some specific pieces of ME2/3 DLC), there's more content and polish there than in some full-blown AAA releases.

I finished Yakuza 3 - final stat was 29 hours. I only did about 50% of the hitman missions, barely touched the hostess club thing (I found the mechanics inscrutable and boring compared to 0/Kiwami 2), didn't feel like going on dates with hostesses in the other clubs since it also felt too grindy compared to the later entries, only did ~60 substories out of 100 or whatever there really are, and was kind of itching for it to be over by the end. SO MUCH BLOCKING. The last two bosses actually were less obnoxious than some of the earlier ones and some of the hitmen. And that overhead slam technique you learn at some point at least is almost never blocked, so things got less tedious after I learned that.

I did not like the cliffhanger ending that was resolved DURING THE END CREDITS. What the heck?! At least leave us hanging till the start of 4!

I need to quick do that Borderlands 3 valentines event that is limited to this week, I guess. Apparently they raised the level cap to 53, making all the farming I did pointless since now purple random drop guns will be better than legendaries. Ah well. I just need to get some more projectile recursions and cutsmans, I guess.

I got Days Gone after hearing a lot about how underrated it is, partly due to a ton of updates and bug fixes applied after all the reviews hit. I only started it and it's sort of dreary so far, but I also heard from almost all fans of it that it takes 4-6 hours before things start getting good. Ack.


----------



## natedog_approved

Different circles, I guess. I was talking to my brothers just a few weeks ago, both of whom have the DLC's but never played them. Heathens.

I liked the von Everic character more than O'Dimm, but yeah, Blood and Wine was better. Longer story, more map and the final boss was the hardest fight in any game I've played for a long time.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

natedog_approved said:


> Though I agree with you about it possibly being one of the best games ever, I can't play it again. I tried a couple years ago when the show was announced and again after I watched it. Each time I finish up the first few quests about to when you meet up with Yennefer after killing the griffin, and then I stop and dont go back. Dont know why.



I had the same problem. I tried too play it last year but struggled through White Orchard and then gave up once I got to Velen. After watching the show I was itching to play it again but struggled even more. I kept at it playing an hour or so every few days and now I'm hooked haha. It's an incredible game but definitely has some major flaws once you come back to it. Like any game you can get over them easy enough and just enjoy the parts that make it great. 

Blood & Wine is an incredible DLC and is a throw back to the old days of really big add-on expansion packs like Throne of Bhall and Lord of Destruction. I loved the new setting and high level monsters. The story was really good too and a nice ending to Geralt's story.


----------



## natedog_approved

Tell me you guys found the Tyrion Lannister in a sky cell easter egg.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SFV Champion Edition finally installed and having fun with the arcade mode. Pretty nifty to add the different play styles from each Street Fighter era. Story mode is still a woeful 3 match affair but whatever. Loading times are still a chunk load of ass, and equally obnoxious when each round load screen is a sponsorship ad reminding me of all the extra features I've already got after forking a decent sum of cash. 

On the flip side, they sort of 'fixed' Ryu's crouching medium kick. That's sort of a big deal for me.


----------



## TedEH

Someone nearby was selling a copy of Paper Mario for a reasonable price. So obviously I grabbed it. Not playing it yet, but it's on the list now.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> SFV Champion Edition finally installed and having fun with the arcade mode. Pretty nifty to add the different play styles from each Street Fighter era. Story mode is still a woeful 3 match affair but whatever. Loading times are still a chunk load of ass, and equally obnoxious when each round load screen is a sponsorship ad reminding me of all the extra features I've already got after forking a decent sum of cash.
> 
> On the flip side, they sort of 'fixed' Ryu's crouching medium kick. That's sort of a big deal for me.




Oh wow, I wasn't aware that they had done anything with his cr. med kick, is it that the hitbox got nudged forward? It was ridiculous how far the model moved in front of the hitbox before. 

Also I just installed this, going to have a go at it again. Need to look at the full update list, but TBH Seth is looking pretty fun.


----------



## jco5055

Finally started playing FF7. I've beaten FF1-5, and am basically at the end of 6, I just am a little "eh do I really wanna grind/do all the extra stuff for 100% completion"?

It's good so far, and I'm starting to get the urge to play through all the classic PSX and Ps2 FFs I never beat or even played: 7-10, 12. Though I also kinda feel like maybe in 2020 turn based combat is kinda obsolete, like it can still be fun but I'd rather play something like DOOM etc.


----------



## beerandbeards

natedog_approved said:


> Tell me you guys found the Tyrion Lannister in a sky cell easter egg.


 There’s a ton of Easter Eggs in that game. There was a note from Smigole looking for a spoon... his precious

there’s a fighter named Durden the Tailor (Tyler Durden from Fight Club). 

the list goes on!


----------



## wankerness

jco5055 said:


> Finally started playing FF7. I've beaten FF1-5, and am basically at the end of 6, I just am a little "eh do I really wanna grind/do all the extra stuff for 100% completion"?
> 
> It's good so far, and I'm starting to get the urge to play through all the classic PSX and Ps2 FFs I never beat or even played: 7-10, 12. Though I also kinda feel like maybe in 2020 turn based combat is kinda obsolete, like it can still be fun but I'd rather play something like DOOM etc.



You think FF combat should be replaced with Doom combat, cause the former is obsolete and Doom (from 93, still basically the same today with more kill buttons and look up/down and jump) isn't?! :O

Those classic systems are absolutely a legit method of combat and some recent games with turn-based (or, to be more precise, ATB - I don't think FF was actually turn-based after the NES era) combat were huge hits (ex Persona 5, Octopath Traveler). Turning everything into an action game isn't always the best option. I'm looking forward to Yakuza 7.


----------



## natedog_approved

beerandbeards said:


> There’s a ton of Easter Eggs in that game. There was a note from Smigole looking for a spoon... his precious
> 
> there’s a fighter named Durden the Tailor (Tyler Durden from Fight Club).
> 
> the list goes on!



Oh yeah, definitely. Tyrion was just my favorite one. I remember rowing the little boat up to the fort and seeing the sky cells from the water and going "Hey! Just like in GoT!"


----------



## jco5055

wankerness said:


> You think FF combat should be replaced with Doom combat, cause the former is obsolete and Doom (from 93, still basically the same today with more kill buttons and look up/down and jump) isn't?! :O
> 
> Those classic systems are absolutely a legit method of combat and some recent games with turn-based (or, to be more precise, ATB - I don't think FF was actually turn-based after the NES era) combat were huge hits (ex Persona 5, Octopath Traveler). Turning everything into an action game isn't always the best option. I'm looking forward to Yakuza 7.



I guess I just mean it seems like turn based combat was at least initially created as kind of part of a hardware's limitation at the time to do real-time combat well? Idk, I guess I feel like as much as games like the Witcher 3 often get praised as like GOTYAY, then I see people mention the gameplay is the worst part of it turns me off. I'm much more a classic Nintendo-minded person who loves when a game is just so perfect gameplay wise like Mario Odyssey (IMO) even though you can argue it's presentation/story etc is way behind the times.


----------



## wankerness

jco5055 said:


> I guess I just mean it seems like turn based combat was at least initially created as kind of part of a hardware's limitation at the time to do real-time combat well? Idk, I guess I feel like as much as games like the Witcher 3 often get praised as like GOTYAY, then I see people mention the gameplay is the worst part of it turns me off. I'm much more a classic Nintendo-minded person who loves when a game is just so perfect gameplay wise like Mario Odyssey (IMO) even though you can argue it's presentation/story etc is way behind the times.



I dunno. It might have come about partly as a hardware limitation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't also inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. It certainly exists now as a very different, very tactical approach to things that is not at all similar to truly real-time combat. Like, it turns things into kind of a game of chess (albeit one with the pressure afforded by effects like slow/haste in an ATB system like FF6-9 or Dragon Quest XI) where you have to be very deliberate and careful about what you're choosing, partly by removing your button mashing/reflex abilities from the equation. XCOM and some other games use the same kind of thing. It's just different, it's definitely not "outdated" IMO.


----------



## jco5055

wankerness said:


> I dunno. It might have come about partly as a hardware limitation, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't also inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. It certainly exists now as a very different, very tactical approach to things that is not at all similar to truly real-time combat. Like, it turns things into kind of a game of chess (albeit one with the pressure afforded by effects like slow/haste in an ATB system like FF6-9 or Dragon Quest XI) where you have to be very deliberate and careful about what you're choosing, partly by removing your button mashing/reflex abilities from the equation. XCOM and some other games use the same kind of thing. It's just different, it's definitely not "outdated" IMO.



yeah, I think for me it's more the often tied in with aspects of Grinding/random encounters etc that is more the issue for me, which I know more modern rpgs seem to have gotten better with for sure.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

jco5055 said:


> yeah, I think for me it's more the often tied in with aspects of Grinding/random encounters etc that is more the issue for me, which I know more modern rpgs seem to have gotten better with for sure.



Honestly, the simpler the turn based/ATB system, the better. 

What made the FF games fun, particularly 6 was the fact that battles happened and ended really quickly (made more urgent with the active time bar). It was simple hit hit hit and job done. And funny enough 6 was the least grindtastic of the early games (granted that you didn't have to with any of them with the worst exception being FF2). 

What brings down a lot of the turn based combat is innovation for innovation's sake, where adding more features result in some bad design. Combining the Junction system with the enemies levelling up to Squall in FF8 really brought it down for me... that is until I learned how to abuse it. Ni No Kuni 1 was perhaps the biggest offender here too, trying to combine traditional turn based combat, Pokémon management and active movement, resulting in a jumbled mess. No wonder they simplified in Ni No Kuni 2. And of course FFXIII where the combat tries to involve the player as little as possible.

As stated, there are some modern turn based games that successfully update the system. The Persona games are actually pretty deep, but pretty simple and straightforward. 5 adds some nice stylish touches to keep things rhythmic and fun, and the fact it's being incorporated to Yakuza 7 is something I'm also looking forward to (and it's intertwined in the story since the new main character is an avid Dragon Quest fan). Indivisible ALMOST could've made the good cut hadn't been for the dumb janky damage physics, making what could have been joyful combo happy fights into long chores. 

Also regarding Doom, that gameplay is essentially a full simple retro worship, taking away all the excessive features of a lot of modern FPS shooters hence probably why I enjoy it so much.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Also regarding Doom, that gameplay is essentially a full simple retro worship, taking away all the excessive features of a lot of modern FPS shooters hence probably why I enjoy it so much.


Are we talking Doom 2016? 'Cause I'd argue that there's a lot of modern stuff going on in that combat system. The intended feel is definitely retro-inspired, but I have doubts that the execution of it is as simple as we're describing it. It's got all the modern balance consideration and iteration time that any other modern shooter would have.

Then again, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, amirite? I still play different variations of Doom pretty regularly. At least some form of Doom needs to be installed on every device I own.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> Are we talking Doom 2016? 'Cause I'd argue that there's a lot of modern stuff going on in that combat system. The intended feel is definitely retro-inspired, but I have doubts that the execution of it is as simple as we're describing it. It's got all the modern balance consideration and iteration time that any other modern shooter would have.



Yes, Deum. And yes I suppose I am simplifying it for the sake of argument. Retro inspired (level based, no gun reloading, no health regeneration) with modern development executions. I don't agree all modern additions such as the glory kills that kills the fast pacing more than the demons, but ultimately the retro direction made the game much better than a lot of post Half Life modern FPS shooters. At least that it feels like for me.


----------



## wankerness

The Borderlands event was OK, I played it as a Moze with explosion build and used the flakker, though, so it might be frustrating if you're playing a character that doesn't cause half of the screen to explode with every shot.

I played Days Gone for a few more hours yesterday, and am getting into the open-world grind addiction loop with it that I got in all the Far Cry games. It's definitely no Horizon Zero Dawn (so far), but it's pretty good. I don't like bikers and I don't like zombie apocalypses, so if you like one or both of those things I could see it being considerably better. Weapon durability is a big thing here, but fortunately you can get a skill to repair them very early on so I don't mind it, unlike Zelda, where it made me hate the game. I dislike the bike fuel mechanic, it's mainly just annoyance at this point. I'm grinding straight for the fuel tank upgrades first so I can ignore it more. The map is impressive. The voice acting sound quality is bizarre and reminds me of Shenmue 1 where everyone sounds like they're talking through a fan. It's like they recorded the voices as 64 kb/s MP3s and did everything else in DTS-HD! I haven't seen anyone else mention that in forum topics about it. It's not gamebreaking by any stretch, it's just a weird thing that sticks out as seeming unpolished. 

The zombie hordes are something that I've just been fleeing from at this early point. I look forward to when I'll have the abilities and inventory space to take them out. They're certainly visually impressive.


----------



## stevexc

Finally got around to picking up Return of the Obra Dinn. Best one-bit magical pirate insurance adjustor simulator I've ever played.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Been jamming Modern Warfare.....just got some news that they're going to do a 200 person Battle Royale sometime early next month. 

This game feels great, and I'm excite for this.


----------



## Leviathus

steinmetzify said:


> Been jamming Modern Warfare.....just got some news that they're going to do a 200 person Battle Royale sometime early next month.
> 
> This game feels great, and I'm excite for this.


Been waiting for it to go back on sale on bnet, seems like the best COD in a while.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> Been waiting for it to go back on sale on bnet, seems like the best COD in a while.


it's great, provided it's not crashing. Easily the worst optimization/buggiest cod in years.


----------



## Steinmetzify

KnightBrolaire said:


> it's great, provided it's not crashing. Easily the worst optimization/buggiest cod in years.



Really? I haven’t had one issue since I bought it, this runs great for me.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

FFIX, Ni No Kuni 2 and Tales of Berseria were on sale on PSN so I impulse bought them on a whim. 

Not sure which to start after I clean up Yakuza 3. Most likely Berseria...


----------



## Randy

Got baited into Division 2 because of the price. It's been okay but it's kind of a redundant time waster game. The co-op stuff is fun, the storyline feels like it gets in the way more than moving the game along in any meaningful way.

Might pickup Just Cause 4 next time it's on sale. Played the hell out of JC3XL, didn't bother getting 4 because half the appeal to me of the last on were the visuals and this game looks fugly, but I miss the gameplay.


----------



## Choop

Played through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the first time over the past few days, and wow. I'm feeling gamer withdrawals after having finished it. >< Castlevania is a series that I never got into heavily, but now I'm probably going to go back and play all of the classic ones.


----------



## natedog_approved

Choop said:


> Played through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the first time over the past few days, and wow. I'm feeling gamer withdrawals after having finished it. >< Castlevania is a series that I never got into heavily, but now I'm probably going to go back and play all of the classic ones.



Maybe a bit off topic, but watch Netflix's Castlevania series if you haven't. Really good, imo.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> Played through Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the first time over the past few days, and wow. I'm feeling gamer withdrawals after having finished it. >< Castlevania is a series that I never got into heavily, but now I'm probably going to go back and play all of the classic ones.



If you like that, you might not want to move further backwards in the series, you'll probably be disappointed as SOTN really added a TON of mechanics. Instead, play the GBA/DS ones, all of them are pretty good and some are great. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will also scratch the itch.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> FFIX, Ni No Kuni 2 and Tales of Berseria were on sale on PSN so I impulse bought them on a whim.
> 
> Not sure which to start after I clean up Yakuza 3. Most likely Berseria...



What did you do in Yakuza 3 for substories, etc? I really lost patience with that game and just wanted it over and thus skipped content I did in all the other entries I've played (ex hostesses/your club).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> What did you do in Yakuza 3 for substories, etc? I really lost patience with that game and just wanted it over and thus skipped content I did in all the other entries I've played (ex hostesses/your club).



I'm still dawdling in chapter 6, just started the hitman side stuff. They're a bit more challenging than the rest of the grunts since they have little stagger times and some carry guns. 

Cleaned up all the Hostesses and Club management. The former, largely due to the hefty EXP points and the Karaoke minigames, but both are tests of patience, especially the latter. Perhaps playing 4 first got me ready for the tedium. 

For sidequests, most are done except anything that requires me to get a decent score in minigames. I can't cheese bowling nor can play the billiard games for crap, so I'm ditching those. Aside from some colourful side stories, which are little here compared to the rest, you aren't missing out on much.


----------



## wankerness

I did probably 2/3 of the hit men, but it was getting tedious when they all had guns they couldn’t drop and blocked practically everything and could take about 100 hits even if you didn’t get blocked. I just lost interest.

I did all the sub stories that I came across, pretty much, but that was only about 70 and I think the game has something like 100. I did all of them in 0/1/2/6 besides ones that involved shogi or mahjong so it was a huge step back for me. I’m hoping I like 4/5 more, but I have some other games to play first.


----------



## Ralyks

Not gonna lie, Yakuza 3 hasn't drawn me in like any of the other games so far. I haven’t played any games in general the last week or two, but yeah.... it’s at least more Yakuza?

I am also only on like Chapter 3 so who knows, but you guys are giving me the vibe that it doesn’t really get any better or worse. Apparently Yakuza 4 is a high point of the series though?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Not gonna lie, Yakuza 3 hasn't drawn me in like any of the other games so far. I haven’t played any games in general the last week or two, but yeah.... it’s at least more Yakuza?
> 
> I am also only on like Chapter 3 so who knows, but you guys are giving me the vibe that it doesn’t really get any better or worse. Apparently Yakuza 4 is a high point of the series though?



I've said a few times how Yakuza 3 is the weakest in the series. It's still a Yakuza game so you'll still have the usual fun, just not as much as the others.

Hearing from people who played the original PS2 versions of 1 and 2, Yakuza 3 had similar issues I had with Yakuza 6. Sega got excited with the new engine and tried to fully utilize it with polished presentation but gloss over the fun factor. Hence why a lot of the sidequests and other minigames aren't as whack or zany as the successors, but they were starting to get foothold here (like the massage game that I can't play to save my life). The 'music video' segments in the karaoke minigames also didn't get interesting until 4 as well.

Granted that time has aged 3, and I sort of enjoyed the hostess management in 4 at the time I played it (which is the same as 3) due to the sheer perplexity of it all. But that segment has since soured when 0 came along. Funny because the original localisation of 3 didn't include the hostess management or massage segments at all.

Yakuza 4 is considered a highlight for a few reasons. It was a gateway to many for it's time (it was for me anyway), but it also the first game that shows Kamurocho from a new and different perspective, which was a big refreshing change after 3 games with Kiryu. And it really shows, especially with Majima (as shown as how he begins his arc in 0). And also how some of the new characters are quite interesting themselves, almost to the point in overshadowing Kiryu. The game essentially started planting seeds for games like Judgment and 7 and solidified Kamurocho as a much more vast and interesting sandbox to many of the larger games out there. And everything 4 did, 5 eventually made better.

EDIT: I've also said that 5 and 0 are my top 2 favorites of the series, that said, in terms of gameplay polish, obviously 0 has the edge and to play 5 now will make that more apparent. Making Isshin and bringing all those elements to 0 really did help the franchise on the standard brawling department. And after playing both was why I thought 6 was a bit of a letdown despite the huge aesthetic improvement with the Dragon Engine.


----------



## Leviathus

Just started playing Half-Life 2 for the first time, man this shits cool.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> Just started playing Half-Life 2 for the first time, man this shits cool.


Have you been living under a rock for the last 16 years? lol


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> Have you been living under a rock for the last 16 years? lol


Imagine though being able to go back and experience a game like that as if it was fresh again.
Sometimes I also like to live under a rock. It's comfy under said rock.


----------



## Werecow

Leviathus said:


> Just started playing Half-Life 2 for the first time, man this shits cool.



Have you played HL1? The remake Black Mesa is finally about finished now. It's great.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> Imagine though being able to go back and experience a game like that as if it was fresh again.
> Sometimes I also like to live under a rock. It's comfy under said rock.



I've always thought in that "what super power would you choose?" thing that people ask, i'd choose selective memory erasure. Imagine being able to experience your favourite games, books, movies as if for the first time, any time you want.

I'm lucky if i get 1 game a year i truely love nowadays, so it'd be awesome to be able to continually play the classics.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Werecow said:


> Have you played HL1? The remake Black Mesa is finally about finished now. It's great.


About time, feels likes it's been a decade in the making but I'm excited. I remember when they first announced the remake, I just gave up on HL1 because I got stuck and figured I'd just wait for Black Mesa.


----------



## BlackMastodon

In other news I finally picked up a Switch yesterday, and now the painful realization of how expensive the games are, even digitally. I bought Mario Kart 8 and Fire Emblem 3 Houses and they were about C$95 each. Luckily Breath of the Wild was on sale at the Best Buy near my work on Friday.

Probably gonna wait on getting Smash Ultimate and just keep getting my ass kicked by my gf in Mario Kart for now.


----------



## Leviathus

KnightBrolaire said:


> Have you been living under a rock for the last 16 years? lol


Lol, just never got around to it, wasn't much of a gamer a lot of those years. Picked it up on steam for a dollar a few months ago and just ran through the original's campaign (which i've played way back in the day, probably on my older brothers comp or something) to refresh my memory, so now it is time.


----------



## TedEH

BlackMastodon said:


> I finally picked up a Switch yesterday


I agree on the prices - I'm so used to the whole PC thing where deep discounts are the norm, so the $80 CAD per game thing is hard to get used to. I've mostly been buying games used to make up for it, or wait for sales even though they're less deep and less frequent than PC.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Ralyks said:


> Not gonna lie, Yakuza 3 hasn't drawn me in like any of the other games so far.



Well, Sega did neuter the game in localization.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Carrion Rocket said:


> Well, Sega did neuter the game in localization.



On the initial PS3 release, yes. The HD remaster brought most of the cut content back, bar a few sidequests like one involving the Earth Angel mama.


----------



## TedEH

I made the realization last night that PS3 is able to play PS1 games even if it lacks the PS2 compatibility. I don't know why this is, it makes little sense to me, but hey, why not. It means a bunch of games just became accessible without wiring up another console.


----------



## dr_game0ver

It can read PS1-2 games from the PSN. Only the tank PS3 was able to read PS1 and 2 games CDs.
Speaking on that, there that rumor that the PS5 will be able to read PS 1-2-3-4 physical copies. Still no denial nor confirmation from Sony...


----------



## TedEH

^ See, that's not quite it either. The PS1 and 2 compatibility are distinct from eachother. And PSN is a whole other thing.

The digital part of it, yeah, I think any of them will play those because they have ps3 specific builds (as I understand it). The PS2 compatibility is limited only to a small handful of the original models that still have the hardware in it. PS1 however.... apparently just about every PS3 can play PS1 games off the original disks. I'm guessing it's software emulation. I have one of those middle-ground fat PS3s that lacks the PS2 hardware, and doesn't have the PS2 software emulation either, but it DOES accept any PS1 disk I've given it.


----------



## Ralyks

Fucking exhausted from going to the city last night and kind of just want to lay in bed until I have to be at work by noon

*Sees there's a FFVII Remake demo out*

FUCK GET THE PLAYSTATION ON NOW!!!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> *Sees there's a FFVII Remake demo out*



A friend of mine jumped on it immediately and I've heard nothing but great things.

The whole episodic notion still has me make whatever food I had in my stomach jump out of my mouth in protest, so I don't see myself playing the demo and will probably wait release or later on. 

That said, I'll certainly be rushing to buy to OST since A: the original OST production is cactus and hasn't aged well, and B: Masashi Hamauzu is heavily involved.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> A friend of mine jumped on it immediately and I've heard nothing but great things.
> 
> The whole episodic notion still has me make whatever food I had in my stomach jump out of my mouth in protest, so I don't see myself playing the demo and will probably wait release or later on.
> 
> That said, I'll certainly be rushing to buy to OST since A: the original OST production is cactus and hasn't aged well, and B: Masashi Hamauzu is heavily involved.



Your friends is right. This demo was GREAT and I'm even more pumped for April 10th.


----------



## natedog_approved

Epic Games had Kingdom Come for free the other day so I picked that up. Excited to try it out when I get a chance.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> A friend of mine jumped on it immediately and I've heard nothing but great things.
> 
> The whole episodic notion still has me make whatever food I had in my stomach jump out of my mouth in protest, so I don't see myself playing the demo and will probably wait release or later on.
> 
> That said, I'll certainly be rushing to buy to OST since A: the original OST production is cactus and hasn't aged well, and B: Masashi Hamauzu is heavily involved.



Yeah, the episodic thing is BS. I feel like after given FFXV coming out at initial full price, periodically releasing more DLCs and "complete" editions that weren't truly complete until they cancelled the last couple DLCs, that I'm not touching this thing with a fifty foot pole until I know what their ultimate plan is. I bought the FFXV "complete" version that came out before the Royal edition, so I'm missing like one or two DLCs that cost on their own almost as much as the Royal Edition usually costs!!! What a mess.

I just unlocked the second map in Days Gone, which looks to be the size of the first map. I hadn't even reached max rep level with any of the three factions on the first map, so I was not even close to done with HALF the game, and I'm like 30+ hours in and have only killed two hordes. This game is too big, I think. 

I think it would be more fun if your character was more superhuman and had more ridiculous ammo capacity. The hordes are fun, but running out of ammo/explosives every time you fight a horde and having to clean out your funds to replenish it isn't very fun. Basically, the survival elements coexist a little uneasily with the arcadey gameplay.


----------



## Ralyks

I guess I'm the only one that doesn't mind having 40 - 60 hours to explore Midgar...


----------



## Leviathus

Ohh shit, Halo:CE has been released on Steam. Might have to bust out some brown liquor and give that campaign a go later tonight.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Crossed Yakuza 3 off the list.

Didn't bother with a lot of the sub games. The older mechanics for Darts and Fishing have aged when the latter games took over and made them less fiddly, and that golfing game can go and die in the gutter. I suck at pool for the most part and couldn't cheat bowling so ditched those. And as per usual tradition, I avoided the gambling games altogether. I really tried to get decent on mahjong during Judgment but just couldn't get the hang of it.

Finished all the hitman sidequests and it was nice revealing a surprise character in the end to tie up a loose end from a previous game. Spoiler alert, it ends the same way as every sidequest: you kick his face into the ground.

Yeah, the sub stories aren't as strong or goofy as the latter games, but some of them are quite charming. Play that janky massage game at least once and you'll get one of the more 'interesting' sub story. Per tradition, Date gets one that gives him some character development. And the goofy couple that shows up on the previous 2 games get their ridiculous conclusion here.

Speaking of goofy, this game has the single most goofiest boss battle QTE in any game. Ok, Sega actually topped it with this number but I haven't played Ishin since it's not localised so I'm not counting it. 

I didn't mind the smaller scope story (until it balloons to usual ridiculousness towards the end). For good or ill, the slow build was a nice change of pace, seeing Kiryu's more sensitive side with all the kids in the orphanage up close and personal. The Okinawa Ryukyu setting is fun and would've looked awesome back then as Hiroshima in Yakuza 6 does now. The 2 games really do parallel each other in many ways, right down to the smaller country sandbox, small local yakuza family, and even Rikya's voice actor (listen to him saying Aniki!). Kiryu in a Hawaiian shirt is still awesome any way you cut it.

I liked the main big bad guy. The precursor to the boo hiss dude in Yakuza 6, but with a more traditional but memorable arc. His back ink is pretty stylish too (well, they all are). And it was also nice having the voice of Ryuk from Death Note playing him too.

The post credits scene really does kill the cliffhanger ending. Especially with the transition to Yakuza 4 would've made it more impacting since it's a focal part of that game too.


Now having played all 7 main titles of the franchise along with one spinoff, time for a break from Kamurocho. It'll be a some time before revisiting Yakuza 4 and 5, and I guess I'll be back to the face stomping mayhem only when Yakuza 7 Like A Dragon drops in the west.


From one long lasting series to another, I jumped onto Tales of Berseria. Jumping back to the same game universe as Zesteria, same daemon possession plot device, same good ol' Motoi Sakuraba fantasy meets old school prog score. Probably a dangerous thing jumping into another long JRPG when 3 of my more anticipated titles (Ok 2 anticipated and 1 crippled by episodic sickness) will be coming out by April.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Finished all the hitman sidequests and it was nice revealing a surprise character in the end to tie up a loose end from a previous game. Spoiler alert, it ends the same way as every sidequest: you kick his face into the ground.
> 
> Yeah, the sub stories aren't as strong or goofy as the latter games, but some of them are quite charming. Play that janky massage game at least once and you'll get one of the more 'interesting' sub story. Per tradition, Date gets one that gives him some character development. And the goofy couple that shows up on the previous 2 games get their ridiculous conclusion here.
> 
> Speaking of goofy, this game has the single most goofiest boss battle QTE in any game. Ok, Sega actually topped it with this number but I haven't played Ishin since it's not localised so I'm not counting it.



Can you elaborate on all these? What was the end boss of the hitman thing? I'm never going to finish it!

What was the goofy couple from the last two games? I probably did the quest and didn't recognize them.

What QTE are you referring to?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Can you elaborate on all these? What was the end boss of the hitman thing? I'm never going to finish it!
> 
> What was the goofy couple from the last two games? I probably did the quest and didn't recognize them.
> 
> What QTE are you referring to?



The hitman sub story:


Spoiler



The head boss of the reapers was Arase from Yakuza 1: the dude with the red/purple trenchcoat and guns who's boss fight in 1 leads to Shinji's death.



Akimoto and Mizuki:
That's the same goofy couple from 1 and 2 where the dude keeps threatening suicide. Their arc ends in 3 in the most retarded way possible... well at least by Yakuza standards.

The QTE:


Spoiler



The boss fight with Kanda in the love hotel.


Funny enough, that dude shares the same voice actor as a certain Aniki yelling character from Yakuza 6 continuing the parallel themes.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I definitely saw the Yakuza 6 parallels with all the Aniki business and the island setting. I liked the idea of all the time spent on doing things to help the orphans, but thought it also kind of ended up being a slog. 

I forgot about the fishing, jesus christ was that horrible. And you had to use a consumable for every cast, and you had the tiny inventory, and they didn't stack, and the fishing was incredibly touchy besides!! I just gave up and spent all the money to buy a fish for the one substory that tried to get you to get some rare fish.


----------



## Ralyks

So how long would you say it would take to mainline Yakuza 3 without doing much side stuff? I feel like I just want to cross this game off the so I can getctoc4 and 5, or before Persona 5 Royal and FFVII Remake consume all of my gaming time, whichever comes first.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So how long would you say it would take to mainline Yakuza 3 without doing much side stuff? I feel like I just want to cross this game off the so I can getctoc4 and 5, or before Persona 5 Royal and FFVII Remake consume all of my gaming time, whichever comes first.



I dunno how fast you could "mainline it." It would probably be frustrating trying to do some of the later bosses if you skip all the substories and thus don't level up your heat actions/health quite a bit. Plus, if you don't do the sidequests with Komaki to get the counters, you will probably get wrecked by the later guys that block everything. Maybe if you have it on the easiest difficulty it would be OK. 

It seemed just as long as the later entries to me, but maybe that was cause I was bored. I'd guess 12-15 hours even if you try to skip everything?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

^ Pretty much. As tedious as they can be, the exp points will certainly help. The AI is indeed a bit more aggressive here, but that balances out since I get to clean up the restaurant lists. Some sidequests are dead easy and you'll simply just run into like the gang under the monorail. And some of the staggered ones like Learn English are simple too. That said, there's some good sidequests worth doing like, the massage one (do one sesh and go to Bantam), the Café Alps murder (almost proto Judgment), and that retarded couple to name some (the latter 2 give a chunk of exp). 

Definitely do the Komaki and Doc Brown IFR trainings. You also get the Tiger Drop early in this game so grab it and abuse it. 

You can skip all the Hostess related minigames (unless you're like me and want to hear them sing or like the idea of Kiryu bedding the dates). You can skip Haruka's trust as well, since the items aren't worth it and she'll pester you to go full completionist mode. 

You can skip the hitman quests as well. I've kept my post about them in spoiler tags so if you don't want to do them, you can spoil away.


----------



## Werecow

I started Black Mesa last night now it's come out of early access. I've only just got to the test chamber and it's so good so far. I've been waiting for this for 15 years, and not replayed HL for about 10 years. It's so good to be back.


----------



## NotDonVito

Yakuza megathread


----------



## StevenC

Without ever mentioning the only Yakuza games worth playing: Super Monkey Ball


----------



## Merrekof

dr_game0ver said:


> Steel battalion? The Xbox game with the giant ass controller?


Oh man, you have no idea how hard I wanted that when I was a teen!


----------



## wankerness

I finished Days Gone with the majority of the completion stuff (didn't bother with the stupid shit like "drift for ten minutes total"). I ended up liking it quite a bit, even though I never really liked the fuel mechanic (it becomes totally irrelevant once you can buy the Death Stranding tanks on the second map, though). I was constantly out of a handful of extremely important crafting resources that you could not buy from any vendor and thus had to happen upon in the world, which was incredibly annoying and tedious - gunpowder, growlers, and pipes were the bane of my existence. By the end of the game you have some serious machine guns unlocked, along with the napalm molotovs, and thus most hordes could be killed just by nuking them with a couple projectiles and then throwing grenades at your feet and rolling away a few times and doing cleanup with a machine gun on the last few of them. Cheesy, but fun! I guess they fixed most bugs with this game, as I heard it was really buggy initially but never encountered any myself, other than the time I led about 50 zombies into a lake and then couldn't hit them and they couldn't get out so I had to go to sleep to despawn them. 

I started Yakuza 4, within the first 15 minutes it was already way better than 3. I'm a couple hours in now. Akiyama is awesome. The gameplay is a lot more fluid and more like Yakuza 0/Kiwami 1 than the wooden 3. The soul orb leveling system is much more pleasing than the tedious linearity of 3's leveling. The story is instantly involving this go-round, too. I'm pleased.


----------



## Leviathus

Bout to check out this free MW battle royale. Hear it's just 3s (at least thus far), so prayers up for my squadmates.


----------



## Mathemagician

In the alpha for Crowfall. Decided to finally log in and run around for a few minutes. Haven’t made it past the menus yet but hey, at least it’s further along than Camelot Unchained and Starciti-gofuckyourself.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> From one long lasting series to another, I jumped onto Tales of Berseria. Jumping back to the same game universe as Zesteria, same daemon possession plot device, same good ol' Motoi Sakuraba fantasy meets old school prog score.



A good few hours in Berseria right now and it's already infinitely better than Zestiria thanks to being able to control the camera during battles, as opposed to leaving it to the whims of fate. I get shooting for innovation in Zestiria using the right analog stick for real time tactical command changes, but the game camera, much like the working class, if not controlled, it will plot to destroy you. 

I will be critical of the main character design, since it's just like Miriam from Bloodstained ROTN all over again, in which Velvet looks like she's designed using an anime waifu dress up sim then sitting on the keyboard.


----------



## Werecow

I started my first ever honor mode attempt at Divinity: Original Sin 2. Some of the fights are really scary now. I think for ages if i'm ready for a certain fight and if there's anymore i can do to level up or prepare beforehand. Getting through 100hrs of gameplay without ever dying sounds mad, but a fun challenge as well.


----------



## StevenC

300 fish and 20 fishing rods today in the Island Getaway Package


----------



## Dayviewer

Bought Doom Eternal, I am not a shooter guy at all, but I just fell in love with the self aware over the top tone of the franchise and the design philosophies so I had to get it.
9 hours in, completely loving it, I might be playing it on the easiest difficulty mode but I am still getting enough challenge out of it in some sections and yea, it's just awesome.
The soundtrack totally rips too by the way, Mick Gordon totally brought it again and stepped up his game.
Can definitely recommend it even if you are not that much into shooters, because it works for me too haha!


----------



## SpaceDock

DOOM!


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Waiting on my DOOM Eternal order to arrive


----------



## TedEH

I'd like to say Doom, but I've been holding back on making large mostly-unnecessary purchases. It's hard to justify $80 (CAD) right at this moment. $6 for Doom 64 though........ it's been tempting.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I'd like to say Doom, but I've been holding back on making large mostly-unnecessary purchases. It's hard to justify $80 (CAD) right at this moment. $6 for Doom 64 though........ it's been tempting.



Apparently the new Doom 64 has an extra episode with lore that ties into Doom 2016 & Eternal. I wonder if the fan theory that the story continued from that game is correct, and that it's the same Doomguy.

I've got Eternal but i've been feeling so anxious with looking after my parents through this Corona shit that i've not been in the mood for something that gets your adrenaline going even more


----------



## BlackMastodon

Everyone's probably playing Animal Crossing but I picked up Octopath Traveler while it's 50% off, to far pretty cool, I like the modernized take on the old school FF type gameplay and I've only heard great things about the game. At the very least, the music is absolutely beautiful.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

replaying doom 2016 before I start eternal.


----------



## mongey

given up on witcher 3 on switch. this is my second go. tried it on 360 when it first came out. something about it just doesn't resonate with me

got a fair few hours into it this time, but don't know that I actually enjoyed any of it.

Started a new magic based play through of dark souls instead .and having way more fun


----------



## Ralyks

I haven’t really done much gaming (or guitar) as everything going on with my anxiety has kept me from doing much, but I’ve starting again in the past couple of nights.

Im playing the demo for Coffee Talk right now, and it’s been pretty good for my anxiety. Especially the soundtrack. May get this and VA-11 Hall-A if that’s similar.

Played the Resident Evil 3 demo. That game will be dope.

Might get Animal Crossing. I feel that game could be calming, and my son might dig it.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Picked up Doom: Eternal after work. On the second level now and while I'm enjoying it so far, it's got a couple things I'm not trilled about.



Spoiler




Wall Climbing/Vaulting
Even on 'Hurt Me Plenty' weaker enemies take more damage than in the previous game
Some collectibles are clearly there for the sake of having collectibles
Got stuck on level geometry twice; annoying but not game breaking


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> Apparently the new Doom 64 has an extra episode with lore that ties into Doom 2016 & Eternal.


I realized yesterday that the Switch version of the original doom lets you have "add-ons" now that let you run some of the more popular WADs - but it also include that new-ish Sigil pack. There's some good stuff in there.


----------



## Choop

I've been doing my first full playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas lately--feels strange now, since I started a couple weeks before the Covid-19 situation broke into full pandemic mode. .-.


----------



## Werecow

Choop said:


> I've been doing my first full playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas lately--feels strange now, since I started a couple weeks before the Covid-19 situation broke into full pandemic mode. .-.



Awesome. I'm actually a bit envious of you experiencing it for the first time. But yeh, post apocalyptic games feel a bit closer to home and more anxiety provoking to me now.


----------



## Leviathus

Finished HL2. Really enjoyed it, Ravenholm was my fav area, great soundtrack too. Kinda was expecting a boss fight at the end though, homie just drops the gun and runs away? Other than that been on MW and a bit of Bloodborne, the latter being very appropriate right about now.


----------



## TedEH

I've played more of Doom 64 than I expected to. It's a great Doom title.


----------



## Kaura

Choop said:


> I've been doing my first full playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas lately--feels strange now, since I started a couple weeks before the Covid-19 situation broke into full pandemic mode. .-.



Funny you mention that. When I played New Vegas for the first time, I had pneumonia. All that fever and the antibiotics that I took made the whole game feel like a fever dream.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Kaura said:


> Funny you mention that. When I played New Vegas for the first time, I had pneumonia. All that fever and the antibiotics that I took made the whole game feel like a fever dream.



I got really bad food poisoning a few years ago and I had been playing Witcher 3 the past week. I had a half awake nightmare/hallucination that I was Geralt running around but I got stuck in the woods just North of the first inn in Velen. 4-7? hours of deliriously running around a wood in my mind. Horrible experience.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Lorcan Ward said:


> I got really bad food poisoning a few years ago and I had been playing Witcher 3 the past week. I had a half awake nightmare/hallucination that I was Geralt running around but I got stuck in the woods just North of the first inn in Velen. 4-7? hours of deliriously running around a wood in my mind. Horrible experience.









Im playing Pillars of Eternity. Quite enjoyable.

On a side note the Xbox Game Pass is pretty decent. I have played a bunch of games I wanted to check out but did not want to pay for like Shadow of Mordor and Hellblade.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Picked up Divinity: Original Sin 2 while it's on sale too. I think I'm set for games for the next while.


----------



## Nicki

Remnant From the Ashes. Holy crap. It's like Destiny and Dark Souls had a baby.


----------



## Mathemagician

Nicki said:


> Remnant From the Ashes. Holy crap. It's like Destiny and Dark Souls had a baby.



is this a good thing? Been eyeing it on PS4 since it launched.


----------



## Nicki

Mathemagician said:


> is this a good thing? Been eyeing it on PS4 since it launched.


Yes! It's a great game. I don't know what the online community is like on PS4 since I play on Xbox but I usually just leave my session public for anyone that wants to join in.


----------



## gabito

Finally got around to play The Witcher 3.

I actually started playing it 2 or 3 years ago, but it didn't click with me. But then I gave it another go a few months back and it turned out to be really good.

Incredible amount of meaningful content in this game. Interesting world and lore, fleshed out characters, good enough gameplay, cool graphics (Toussaint looks FANTASTIC) etc., etc., etc. 

Already finished all main quests (main game and DLC), and now cleaning up secondary quests, witcher contracts, treasure hunts, etc. I may end up playing 40 more hours. Or 100, who knows...


----------



## StevenC

BlackMastodon said:


> Everyone's probably playing Animal Crossing but I picked up Octopath Traveler while it's 50% off, to far pretty cool, I like the modernized take on the old school FF type gameplay and I've only heard great things about the game. At the very least, the music is absolutely beautiful.


Octopath is terrific!

On the other hand, I've only got 3 fish and 6 bugs left to catch to be up to date with my museum for March


----------



## Werecow

gabito said:


> Finally got around to play The Witcher 3.
> 
> I actually started playing it 2 or 3 years ago, but it didn't click with me. But then I gave it another go a few months back and it turned out to be really good.
> 
> Incredible amount of meaningful content in this game. Interesting world and lore, fleshed out characters, good enough gameplay, cool graphics (Toussaint looks FANTASTIC) etc., etc., etc.
> 
> Already finished all main quests (main game and DLC), and now cleaning up secondary quests, witcher contracts, treasure hunts, etc. I may end up playing 40 more hours. Or 100, who knows...




I really wish i could get into that game, as everyone seems to love it so much. I just hate the combat though. I don't think i've ever been so bored with a game's core gameplay as much as when i try to play it. I've tried three times now.

I love open-world games and RPGS, so i genuinely find it upsetting that i can't get into it


----------



## Adieu

Got into a nifty lil arena gacha mobile game.... was called Brown Dust a month ago, but apparently got renamed Brave Nine (facepalm) sometime later?

It's chock full of pervy otaku character art and the whole "English version of a Korean game being entirely voiced in Japanese" thing (by a star-studded who's who catalog from the anime industry, it seems) is a bit odd... BUT the underlying gameplay is pretty good, it IS properly playable F2P

I'm not sure if it's been done before, but the game mechanics are pretty nifty: you choose your fighters, troop deployment, positioning, and turn order. AND THAT'S IT. Then you spectate the actual fight with no further control.

Campaign revolves around puzzling out what to use (there's like a couple hundred levellable units) and in what order after looking at the level's enemy lineup.

Arena PVP is all about anticipating what you MIGHT encounter.... well, that and grinding out well-developed high level units.

And then there's a pretty cool feature called "novice arena" that BANS all high level units entirely, and limits you to 3x 4* units and the rest 3* on your team (normal Arena is mostly teams of 5* and 6* 'legend' units, with the super-occasional usage of a meta 4*)


Conclusion: this is addictive enough to kill a month or two of social distancing seclusion. It's like half chess-puzzle, half cheering for a soccer match on tv


----------



## gabito

Werecow said:


> I really wish i could get into that game, as everyone seems to love it so much. I just hate the combat though. I don't think i've ever been so bored with a game's core gameplay as much as when i try to play it. I've tried three times now.
> 
> I love open-world games and RPGS, so i genuinely find it upsetting that i can't get into it



I actually had to read some of those "Tips before you play..." articles before getting to play it the second time. The first time I played the game *really* annoyed me with a ton of tips and tutorials with a (to my eyes) very small typography which I couldn't stand (or read ).

I obviously skipped most of them... And got nowhere.

By reading the articles I got a grasp of the basics and then I learned as I went along playing. All tutorials disabled, of course. I find them really really annoying.

You don't have to like the game, though, there are *many* popular games I don't like or don't have an interest in. And many of us have a big backlog anyways, so we can play something else if we don't like some particular game.

You may try turning the difficulty up maybe? Normal difficulty is kind of easy IMO, but hard / harder difficulties require some planning and skills.


----------



## Werecow

gabito said:


> I actually had to read some of those "Tips before you play..." articles before getting to play it the second time. The first time I played the game *really* annoyed me with a ton of tips and tutorials with a (to my eyes) very small typography which I couldn't stand (or read ).
> 
> I obviously skipped most of them... And got nowhere.
> 
> By reading the articles I got a grasp of the basics and then I learned as I went along playing. All tutorials disabled, of course. I find them really really annoying.
> 
> You don't have to like the game, though, there are *many* popular games I don't like or don't have an interest in. And many of us have a big backlog anyways, so we can play something else if we don't like some particular game.
> 
> You may try turning the difficulty up maybe? Normal difficulty is kind of easy IMO, but hard / harder difficulties require some planning and skills.



I plan on having another attempt at some point. I'll try your suggestions and see how it goes. But yeh, i might just have to accept it's not for me.


----------



## natedog_approved

Werecow said:


> I plan on having another attempt at some point. I'll try your suggestions and see how it goes. But yeh, i might just have to accept it's not for me.



The combat definitely isn't the games highlight. I enjoyed but I can see how others don't. But other than that slight dip (IMO), the game is superb and is miles ahead of almost every game I've ever played.

I also think CDPR is singlehandedly going to save the games industry. Every other AAA publisher puts out half a game for full price and makes you pay like triple that if you want the rest. CDPR does not and ensures their games are top notch out of the gate.
Fanboy over.


----------



## wankerness

So I've been playing the crap out of Yakuza 4. I was loving everything with Akiyama and doing all the substories and even the hostess junk. 

THEN I HIT THE PRISON BREAK SEGMENT

I now hate this game. The second character plays like trash. The game is a breeze up until that prison break segment, but I died a few times through there and was swearing at the screen about as much as I did in that boss fight at the end of Kiwami 1 with the multiple guys with assault rifles. Then there's another boss fight where you keep getting tiger dropped for 1/5 your life and your opponent moves twice as fast as you. I beat that on the first try, barely, swearing again. Does it get better again?!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Going back and forth between Samurai Shodown, SFVCE and Bersiria.

I guess I've come to peace with season passes when I'm paying per character in fighting games, thanks SNK. Also thanks for not assigning Mina's arrow projectiles into her normal like SSV. Now she's no longer broken and more thoughtful strategy is involved.

I'm getting too complacent with just playing Ryu and Guile, so I'm dabbling with other characters in CE. So far, Kage seems to interest me the most, but he's quite fiddly with a standard PS4 pad. Maybe I should just get a proper fighting game controller once and for all. I do enjoy the V skill/trigger choices that allows 6 variations of the same character.

Though Bersiria is my main focus at this stage, want to try to get it done before Trials Of Mana drops. It feels like I've past mid way and the game suddenly adds the tactical mechanics from Zestiria, which seems a little too late and while it's better than assigning the command to the right analog stick, it's still pretty fiddly with 2 buttons in the heat of battle. But of all the hybrid combat systems in JRPGs, at least the Tales games (or Namco Bandai games) at least get it decently playable.



wankerness said:


> So I've been playing the crap out of Yakuza 4. I was loving everything with Akiyama and doing all the substories and even the hostess junk.
> 
> THEN I HIT THE PRISON BREAK SEGMENT
> 
> I now hate this game. The second character plays like trash. The game is a breeze up until that prison break segment, but I died a few times through there and was swearing at the screen about as much as I did in that boss fight at the end of Kiwami 1 with the multiple guys with assault rifles. Then there's another boss fight where you keep getting tiger dropped for 1/5 your life and your opponent moves twice as fast as you. I beat that on the first try, barely, swearing again. Does it get better again?!



That change in the game is indeed incongruous. Certainly when you're going for a quick legged suave money lender into a shaved bear with the face resembling the San Andreas fault. You'll almost have to treat him like Kiryu's Beast style in 0/Kiwami since it's more or less a proto version of it. And yeah you'll have to get used his grappler style since most of his bosses are going to be faster than you. Well, at least until the next character change anyway.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I played through the first 3 hours of DOOM Eternal last night. Honestly I'm really disappointed with a lot of it. They took out a lot of the things I loved and added in things I don't like about FPS. Its more Quake Arena mixed with Rage 2 than DOOM 2016 and has some questionable platforming parts, rock/paper/scissors mechanics and quite a bit of hand holding. The change in subtle storytelling where you pick up a weapon off a dead guard or a keycard from the mouth of an imp to just finding them out in the open hovering in the air is my biggest disappointment since it completely takes you out of the immersion. I'll keep at it but I was expecting a sequel to DOOM 2016 and this really doesn't feel like one


----------



## NotDonVito

You know it's time for a PC upgrade when you can't run a god damn android emulator. I tried to play the new Mega Man gachashit game and it's impossible. But I can't tell if it's my PC or the fact I'm playing on Taiwanese servers and maybe the lag is just bad.


----------



## natedog_approved

NotDonVito said:


> You know it's time for a PC upgrade when you can't run a god damn android emulator. I tried to play the new Mega Man gachashit game and it's impossible. But I can't tell if it's my PC or the fact I'm playing on Taiwanese servers and maybe the lag is just bad.



I've needed some upgrades for awhile now. Games made in 2017 is about the newest I can play. Some of those are even pushing it.


----------



## Werecow

NotDonVito said:


> You know it's time for a PC upgrade when you can't run a god damn android emulator. I tried to play the new Mega Man gachashit game and it's impossible. But I can't tell if it's my PC or the fact I'm playing on Taiwanese servers and maybe the lag is just bad.





natedog_approved said:


> I've needed some upgrades for awhile now. Games made in 2017 is about the newest I can play. Some of those are even pushing it.



Be best to wait for whatever new generation Nvidia & AMD are cooking now i think. Both for performance and bang per buck. Specially with the new consoles coming. Console ports are about to get more demanding on hardware.


----------



## Ralyks

Just grabbed Animal Crossing. Seemed like a good way to distract myself from all of the news and help my anxiety.
Anyone else?


----------



## Empryrean

Ralyks said:


> Just grabbed Animal Crossing. Seemed like a good way to distract myself from all of the news and help my anxiety.
> Anyone else?


Been playing it with my SO, though its more her's than mine


----------



## Choop

I have an Intel gaming system using an i7 4770k, which for me is still really great, but to fully utilize any newer video cards I would pretty much need to do a full CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade to not have any bottlenecks. Upgrading core PC components is both very fun and exhausting!


----------



## Werecow

Ralyks said:


> Just grabbed Animal Crossing. Seemed like a good way to distract myself from all of the news and help my anxiety.
> Anyone else?



When my anxiety is really bad i tend to go back to games i've played before but still love. I don't want anything too surprising happening. I guess Animal Crossing is pretty chill though  I only have a PC to game on so i only know what i've seen on youtube about it.


----------



## Ralyks

Tom Nook is still a capitalist pig, I see.

Still, already feel a bit more relaxed playing this game.


----------



## StevenC

Ralyks said:


> Tom Nook is still a capitalist pig, I see.
> 
> Still, already feel a bit more relaxed playing this game.


NO HE ISN'T!!!!!!!

Tom Nook gives 90% of his profits to an orphanage 3 towns over and gives you a house for the price of 980 pieces of fruit on a loan you never have to pay. Dude let you move to an island and pay it off by talking to you neighbours.


----------



## Ralyks

StevenC said:


> NO HE ISN'T!!!!!!!
> 
> Tom Nook gives 90% of his profits to an orphanage 3 towns over and gives you a house for the price of 980 pieces of fruit on a loan you never have to pay. Dude let you move to an island and pay it off by talking to you neighbours.



Ok, I was being a bit sarcastic  That said, I don't know if I'm finishing 5000 Nook Miles tonight now that my kid is in bed and I want to get back to the Red Dead 2 game I restarted.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Tom Nook 2020


----------



## Ralyks

Day 2 of AC. It's been a good distraction. Although it definitely literally takes a few days to open up it seems.

Also, late night whiskey and Red Dead 2 sessions have been fun.


----------



## Leviathus

Bout to give this a spin later, once the whiskey arrives...


----------



## gabito

Leviathus said:


> Bout to give this a spin later, once the whiskey arrives...



Cool game.

I really liked the kind of mysterious "plot" and lore, setting, gameplay, etc. The only "souls" game I got to finish, even having Dark Souls I and II in my backlog (I abandoned both after less than an hour).

Not that I don't like this kind of game (in theory at least), but I found Demon's Souls really demanding and I ended up kinda mentally exhausted after finishing it. Couldn't find the energy or will to do it all again on another game(s).


----------



## Seabeast2000

Ooof Doom 64 on a big screen. My ice!!!


----------



## StevenC

Ralyks said:


> Day 2 of AC. It's been a good distraction. Although it definitely literally takes a few days to open up it seems.
> 
> Also, late night whiskey and Red Dead 2 sessions have been fun.


In a day or two my Switch is going to stop saying "last played X days ago" and start saying an embarrassingly high number of hours.


----------



## Ralyks

StevenC said:


> In a day or two my Switch is going to stop saying "last played X days ago" and start saying an embarrassingly high number of hours.



I haven't touched my Switch in what feels like a year before I got Animal Crossing. It's been a good distraction from the madness going on in the world that I usually play during the time I allow my son to watch TV, and save my PS4 games for after he goes to bed.


----------



## lurè

Since Warcraft 3 remastered seems to be an abortion, I picked up AoE 2 Definitive Edition and, oh yes, lots of good memories. Hope they will implement some new campaigns overtime.


----------



## Mathemagician

Back on Final Fantasy 14. Shadowbringers story is awesome.


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> Back on Final Fantasy 14. Shadowbringers story is awesome.



I'm so close to saying fuck it and play FF14.

Anyway, my adventures with Arthur Morgan are going fine. However, since GameStop is closed and holding my preorders, I went ahead and pre-ordered Persona 5 Royal digitally and it's preloading as we speak.

Oh, and Animal Crossing, so far, still fun.


----------



## BlackMastodon

lurè said:


> Since Warcraft 3 remastered seems to be an abortion, I picked up AoE 2 Definitive Edition and, oh yes, lots of good memories. Hope they will implement some new campaigns overtime.


Seems like WC3 Reforged got a shitload of undeserved hate based mostly on the fact that they didn't change the cutscenes like they said they were going to, and because there aren't online tournaments and ladders yet. Is the gameplay actually bad and buggy or is it just a whiney fanbase?


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> I'm so close to saying fuck it and play FF14.



Have you ever played it/other MMO’s before?


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> Have you ever played it/other MMO’s before?



I did 2 weeks of WoW. It's not that I don't like the MMORPGs, it's just so daunting the amount of stuff you can do.

But seeing as I'm on call with my main job for another 8 weeks anyway and I only.work my other job in the morning...


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> I did 2 weeks of WoW. It's not that I don't like the MMORPGs, it's just so daunting the amount of stuff you can do.
> 
> But seeing as I'm on call with my main job for another 8 weeks anyway and I only.work my other job in the morning...



oh heck yeah give up your life. But seriously I’ll just explain a bit: as far as MMO’s go it IS an MMO IE there is raiding/crafting/etc. BUT it’s a final fantasy game first and foremost. It has a full single player story that “feels” like a square Enix JRPG. And you only ever have to do a dungeon “once” to continue the story. You can just stop playing, come back later to continue it. 
That’s my “soft sell” since I like JRPG’s a lot and FF14 is so well done.


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> oh heck yeah give up your life. But seriously I’ll just explain a bit: as far as MMO’s go it IS an MMO IE there is raiding/crafting/etc. BUT it’s a final fantasy game first and foremost. It has a full single player story that “feels” like a square Enix JRPG. And you only ever have to do a dungeon “once” to continue the story. You can just stop playing, come back later to continue it.
> That’s my “soft sell” since I like JRPG’s a lot and FF14 is so well done.



I think I’ll end up playing sometime in May. I do want to play, especially if it has a true FF feel, but my semester starts up again this week, Persona 5 Royal will be playable in 1 hour and 59 minutes, and FFVII Remake.


----------



## wankerness

Ffxiv is great, but it makes the current state of WoW look like a light time investment in terms of amount of stuff required for anything to make sense. WoW’s story is nonsense and you can ignore expansions, but ffxiv actually has a solid plot that only makes sense if you do EVERYTHING as far as raids etc.

I stopped playing Yakuza iv cause I hated the second character’s gameplay so much, and picked up Octopath Traveler. I love the hell out of the gameplay, character design, etc but sure feel like skipping all the endless cutscenes. Great game so far, though, and it has me doing stuff like save scumming to steal rare items off of villagers so I know it has its hooks in me. I’m a little ways into chapter two.

I also started playing Mario Odyssey with my girlfriend, with me playing as the hat and the secondary camera control. It sounded awful and bizarre but it’s quite fun. You basically function as Mario’s bodyguard while they’re free to move around safely since they aren’t having to aim any hat throws! I really like the level designs, it reminds me of Mario 64 in the good ways.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> I think I’ll end up playing sometime in May. I do want to play, especially if it has a true FF feel, but my semester starts up again this week, Persona 5 Royal will be playable in 1 hour and 59 minutes, and FFVII Remake.



FF14 is also 40% off on PC through 4/22.


----------



## SamSam

Just bought FFXII and Fire Emblem for the Switch, now I just need to wait for my pre-ordered Switch to arrive


----------



## TedEH

I'm pretty thankful to have a lot of games at my disposal right now. Half Life Alyx is a legitimately good time right now. There's also lots of Skyrim left for me to get through (I made it to almost 100 hours and still haven't visited all the holds yet). Also picked up the N64 cart of Paper Mario a while back, so that's on the list.


----------



## MFB

Fired up the Master Chief Collection the other night to play SWAT, and boy, after playing all the new multiplayers that have come out in the past decade, the Halo multiplayers sure do show their age. Slow, almost snail like pace for movement, odd default layouts for 90% of what you want to do (pretty sure trigger and walk are the only correct ones), and the map design feels very confusing in it's use of vertical/horizontal corridors leading to many intersections where you get pinged without ever seeing the person.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I'm not one to download demos of current upcoming games, but I broke that today with the Trials Of Mana demo. 

This is exactly what an SNES remake should be, to be specific, what the recent remake of Secret Of Mana should have been as opposed to a lazy half assed cash in that it was. It does much more than carbon copy the original Seiken Densetsu 3, but does everything to improve it. Full 3D, adding verticality (which opens up the terrain since jumping didn't exist in the orginial), and refining the combat to a more fast paced feel. It actually feels similar to Ys VIII gameplay wise (which I adored and also another game I wished SOM should've been before being tossed aside).

It was also nifty allowing you to choose to play your support character's intro story as a flashback when he/she joins you, well done. Voice acting I can give or take, but there's always the Japanese audio. You can also toggle the music from remake to the original SNES 16 bit songs. But unlike SOM, the new renditions isn't a 50/50 spastic ratio of really good and abhorrently unlistenable: all the songs I've heard so far have been excellent. They can be criticised as safe or perhaps pandering, but at least they don't stab your ears with hot pokers with terrible renditions of Distant Thunder. 

Also the turban wearing shopkeepers dance frantically, just like the original and in Secret as well. This is a big deal since the SOM remake committed the cardinal sin of not making them dance. 

Of the 2 Square Enix remakes, the tarted up FFVII Remake will be getting all the glitz and central attention. But I'll be hanging with her less popular and less glamourous sister, who I know will give me a good time in the back seat. I would at least want to like Square Enix again during this time like I used to, before going back to hating and hurling verbal abuse at them like I've been doing nowadays. 

Bring on April 24.


----------



## Werecow

I'm still carrying on with my D: OS 2 honor playthrough.
Just got off Fort Joy, and the encounter at the end was crazy. I'd done it a couple times before on tactician difficulty sort of no problem, but this time a certain enemy decided to target solely my party. It was a really close-run thing. I had to use 4 resurrection scrolls and i was down to one party member standing at one point.
It's amazing how a perma-death mode changes how you feel playing a game.


----------



## Ralyks

Guess what. Persona 5? Still fucking great.


----------



## beerandbeards

Replaying God Of War. It is such a well made game. Beautiful level development and a great story. I can’t wait to see how they continue in the next installment.

looking forward to Last if Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Since FFVIR was already available here in AU, I had a few friends already asking if I've started playing it. Naturally, I disappointed each and every one of them. 

Instead, I when through the General story mode of SFV, something I was completely unaware was available as a free DLC, since it wasn't part of the main add on and also subtitled 'A Shadow Falls'. Thanks Capcom, ya nobs.

The story mode was fun, though it also taught me that I'm just not good with some characters: Bison (dictator)'s walking speed is surprisingly woeful, and Vega (claw) feels like a brand new character (and not very good). It's also nice seeing the characters interact outside fights, especially the mainstays, which is a nice added bonus depth since fighting games are the best examples of 'character exhibition'. Also surprised how Karin played a big role in the plot. Speaking of plot, it's also nice that it's just above your average 'hilariously dumb' stories like every fighting game ever (though that's also part of their charm). Certainly more than the whole "OH YEAH?!?" premise of Third Strike.

And of course there's a bunch of non playable fighters thrown in for Capcom to cash in later as potential DLCs, a la Mortal Kombat 11. They've already did that with Gill...


----------



## Nicki

BlackMastodon said:


> Seems like WC3 Reforged got a shitload of undeserved hate based mostly on the fact that they didn't change the cutscenes like they said they were going to, and because there aren't online tournaments and ladders yet. Is the gameplay actually bad and buggy or is it just a whiney fanbase?


The problem with WC3:Reforged is that what was delivered wasn't what was promised. Just about nothing was updated at all and everyone who purchased the game felt (rightly) lied to. You can go buy the original games and get the exact. same. experience. as you would the "remaster". It really is a shitshow and only further highlights what publishers like Activision do to well respected dev shops like Blizzard (and Bungie).


----------



## BlackMastodon

Fair point, but didn't they update it onto SC2's engine? Obviously the 3D models looks way better than the classic version but is that pretty much where it ends?


----------



## TedEH

I'm enjoying HL:Alyx, but the rift headset is giving me headaches after a while. I've got glasses, and they end up pressed into my face in order for me to be able to see properly.


----------



## Nicki

BlackMastodon said:


> Fair point, but didn't they update it onto SC2's engine? Obviously the 3D models looks way better than the classic version but is that pretty much where it ends?


Nope. There's a whole list of features that were planned to be added in the 2018 reveal that got cut from the final product. I suggest watching this video. It sums it all up pretty well.


----------



## Ralyks

Well, Last of Us Part 2 got delayed indefinitely....


----------



## gabito

Ralyks said:


> Well, Last of Us Part 2 got delayed indefinitely....



Damn...


----------



## Leviathus

4 bosses into Demon's Souls, really been diggin' it. I like how you can just head to any of the areas after you beat the first boss. The enemy battle cries are hilarious as well... "mMRraAArrRGgghH!!!" Perfect. Good boss music too, and the riposte camera shake is super satisfying. Been on some MW too, which is one battlepass away from being flawless.


----------



## Mathemagician

Guys I just bought that Power Rangers fighting game on PS4. Holy balls the nostalgia. Someone fite me.


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> Guys I just bought that Power Rangers fighting game on PS4. Holy balls the nostalgia. Someone fite me.



I actually heard that game is surprisingly legit.


----------



## beerandbeards

Ralyks said:


> Well, Last of Us Part 2 got delayed indefinitely....




Wait, what?! Say it ain’t so


----------



## Ralyks

beerandbeards said:


> Wait, what?! Say it ain’t so



https://www.ign.com/articles/the-last-of-us-part-2-delayed-indefinitely-no-new-release-date-set


----------



## beerandbeards

Ralyks said:


> https://www.ign.com/articles/the-last-of-us-part-2-delayed-indefinitely-no-new-release-date-set



what a bummer! I hope this isn’t the same for the other near future releases


----------



## Ralyks

beerandbeards said:


> what a bummer! I hope this isn’t the same for the other near future releases



I have a bad feeling anything projected between May and August has a fair chance at the delay. I would get very worried if, say, Cyberpunk got another delay.


----------



## soliloquy

currently playing The Witcher 3. 
finished the main story line some 3 weeks ago. Just finished Heart of Stone DLC.
over the weekend, may start Blood and Wine?


----------



## Mathemagician

soliloquy said:


> currently playing The Witcher 3.
> finished the main story line some 3 weeks ago. Just finished Heart of Stone DLC.
> over the weekend, may start Blood and Wine?



You know I own this & the DLC and never played it or any of the others. I played for like and hour then said “nope game too big” and turned it off. Every third person in this thread has mentioned it though. May have to go back & play it. After all I <3 single player rpgs.


----------



## Ordacleaphobia

Nicki said:


> The problem with WC3:Reforged is that what was delivered wasn't what was promised. Just about nothing was updated at all and everyone who purchased the game felt (rightly) lied to. You can go buy the original games and get the exact. same. experience. as you would the "remaster". It really is a shitshow and only further highlights what publishers like Activision do to well respected dev shops like Blizzard (and Bungie).



Not even- I was one of the purists that _*wanted*_ them to change nothing and just re-release the game, but with modernized graphics, and updated framework to support current QOL stuff- ultrawide monitors, higher resolution, etc. 

What I _*got*_ was a steaming heap of buggy garbage. I was glad to see that a lot of the changes that they had discussed weren't made; but disappointed to learn that the game played _almost_ as smoothly as a poorly put together mobile game. I saw a bunch of people shitposting about how the game looked like it was going to be outsourced-to-china, mobile-game-esque, lowest-common-denominator garbage and thought they were being pessimistic or your typical impossible to please crowd, but my god, they were right. It absolutely plays like an outsourced low-effort chinese mobile game. Blocky gameplay and bugs everywhere.

As if that wasn't enough, there were actually features that were straight up removed. I liked to play against the AI a lot- and that wasn't even supported. There were others as well, but that was the big one for me. I've been a Blizzard fanboy for close to 20 years and was beyond excited for this release from the day it was announced, but I had a ticket in for a refund day 1. I have never, ever tried to refund a Blizzard title before, and never felt scammed by a Blizzard title before- except here.


----------



## Werecow

Ralyks said:


> I have a bad feeling anything projected between May and August has a fair chance at the delay. I would get very worried if, say, Cyberpunk got another delay.



I don't mind a delay, i'm more worried about the Cyberpunk team and the Baldur's Gate team getting sick and it significantly affecting them and the game. I hope they're being sensible and all working from home now. Losing any creative leads from those two teams would be really upsetting to me. I really love the Larian guys as people especially. Their youtube & kickstarter update videos are so heartwarming.


----------



## soliloquy

Mathemagician said:


> You know I own this & the DLC and never played it or any of the others. I played for like and hour then said “nope game too big” and turned it off. Every third person in this thread has mentioned it though. May have to go back & play it. After all I <3 single player rpgs.



is the game big? absolutely. 
is it fun? absolutely.
is it the best game ever? maybe. 

while playing this, i was reminded of my favorite RPG games from yesteryear. Games like Ocarina of Time, Majoras Mask, Kingdom Hearts, Legia, Tales of Symphonia, Shadows of the Colossus, Final Fantasy etc. I find that the N64, and PS2 era games never really had a repeat during PS3 and PS4. Sure, we had games like skyrim and other big RPG games, but after playing those, i never really felt anything of amazement. Dark Souls is the same way (in my opinion). sure the game is big and super challenging, but after defeating anything, i personally dont feel any enjoyment. 

where as the Witcher kept me entertained for a good 130 hours (and now the DLCs are an additional 20-30 hours each). there is TONS of things to do, but none are frustrating to complete. each is quirky, and interesting. to me, this really does feel like the games i enjoyed on n64 and ps2 have grown up, went through puberty, and are brought back to me in this fashion. 

start small. do a quest at a time at first. then when the game opens up, do a task at a time. they can take anywhere between 2 minutes to complete, to maybe a few hours, depending on what they are. and you can easily pick it up between your chores as well. sometimes i pick it up for 5 or 10 mins. play it, and then move onto next chore i have in life. 

keep in mind, i've been playing this game since October of 2019, and i just clocked in 130 hours. I could easily have run through it over a few weeks if i chose to.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I hope they're being sensible and all working from home now.


Most of the devs I'm familiar with have transition to working from home at this point, with the unfortunate exception of some QA.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm still trying to work my way through Doom: Eternal. I've honestly given up trying to like it and am just trying to beat it so I can get it out of my life.


----------



## Adieu

Ordacleaphobia said:


> Not even- I was one of the purists that _*wanted*_ them to change nothing and just re-release the game, but with modernized graphics, and updated framework to support current QOL stuff- ultrawide monitors, higher resolution, etc.
> 
> What I _*got*_ was a steaming heap of buggy garbage. I was glad to see that a lot of the changes that they had discussed weren't made; but disappointed to learn that the game played _almost_ as smoothly as a poorly put together mobile game. I saw a bunch of people shitposting about how the game looked like it was going to be outsourced-to-china, mobile-game-esque, lowest-common-denominator garbage and thought they were being pessimistic or your typical impossible to please crowd, but my god, they were right. It absolutely plays like an outsourced low-effort chinese mobile game. Blocky gameplay and bugs everywhere.
> 
> As if that wasn't enough, there were actually features that were straight up removed. I liked to play against the AI a lot- and that wasn't even supported. There were others as well, but that was the big one for me. I've been a Blizzard fanboy for close to 20 years and was beyond excited for this release from the day it was announced, but I had a ticket in for a refund day 1. I have never, ever tried to refund a Blizzard title before, and never felt scammed by a Blizzard title before- except here.



Blizzard has never been the same since the peak of Diablo I


----------



## BlackMastodon

Picked up a few Switch titles on sale last night for less than $40 CAD: The Room, Phantom Doctrine, Transistor, and Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

Played through The Room last night and this morning with the gf and it was a great experience for less than $4. Basically 4 escape room style puzzles so we were having a great time, but the controls were a little frustrating at times since you have to point the small Switch controllers at the TV. Still very satisfying to get through and worth a few hours of fun.

Started the first Spyro game and it looks great and is a ton of fun, but the controls could also be better.

Been eyeballing Phantom Doctrine on PC for a long while now since we both love XCOM gameplay, so I'm excited to give that a try. This takes out the most frustrating part of XCOM's combat, which is the RNG chance to hit the target even when they're out in the open and directly in front of you. I can't believe how deep the discount was so I couldn't pass it up for less than $3 CAD.

And then I heard so many good things about Transistor and it was also for a great price so I said sure, let's give it a go.


----------



## beerandbeards

Just platinumed God of War


Downloading Spider Man now


----------



## TedEH

Finished HL:Alyx yesterday. Best VR thing I've played by far. Definitely wish it was longer though.


----------



## soliloquy

I also recently played Inside and Limbo. such simplistic, yet beautiful games. both are side scrollers with a kind of 2D/2.5D look and feel. Both are puzzle solving games that are challenging at times. kind of haunting and beautiful.


----------



## nickgray

Carrion Rocket said:


> I'm still trying to work my way through Doom: Eternal. I've honestly given up trying to like it and am just trying to beat it so I can get it out of my life.



I gave up on the second to last level, noped out of the boss battle at the end of that level, seemed too damn long and annoying, and by this point I've seen everything the game has to offer.

It's honestly a weird game. At times, it eclipses Doom 2016. At times, it's a step back. And then some changes feel like unnecessary step sideways - a change for the sake of a change. I think the devs tried to overengineer the game, there's just too much shit going on for no apparent reason. And for some aspects they didn't go far enough. For instance, for better or worse, the platforming is a major part of the game now, but it's just too simplistic and dull, it should've either been largely scrapped or made to be more involved and interesting. Same goes for some other aspects of the game.


----------



## Ralyks

So not only was Last of Us Part 2 delayed indefinitely, they removed it from the PS store and issues refunds.

Anyway, anyone get FFVII early? I'm currently between Gamestops customer service and the store I pre-ordered from after getting an email asking me if I want it shipped to me, or if it will be at the store I pre-ordered it from after the second email I got said that.


----------



## Grindspine

On PC (Steam): Doki Doki Literature Club
On PC (B.net): Modern Warfare
On PSP: Dracula X Chronicles - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
On Nintendo 3DS: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
On Nintendo GBA: Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

This is while still working four days a week. I really do not sleep. My girlfriend keeps stealing my PSP and Nintendo DS though.


----------



## TedEH

I was in a vaguely-sneaky-game mood yesterday and fired up Dishonored. There's something really satisfying about running an old game on mostly-overpowered-for-it hardware. Also it's still a good game.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I was in a vaguely-sneaky-game mood yesterday and fired up Dishonored. There's something really satisfying about running an old game on mostly-overpowered-for-it hardware. Also it's still a good game.



I love all the Dishonoreds. The atmosphere is so amazing and immersive.
It's making me want to replay them all yet again now just thinking about it. Sort of the perfect thing to hopefully distract me from my anxiety at the moment.


----------



## TedEH

I play Dishonored as if they're successors to Thief. I really wanted the Thief reboot to be good.... and it's not the worst, but Dishonored is still a better Thief than Thief is now.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I play Dishonored as if they're successors to Thief. I really wanted the Thief reboot to be good.... and it's not the worst, but Dishonored is still a better Thief than Thief is now.



That's exactly what they are to me as well!  Thief 1 and 2 are two of my favourite games of all time. Dishonored 1 had already replaced it in modern times for me, but when i heard Stephen Russel's voice in D2 it gave me goosebumps.

I got the Thief reboot for free with a graphics card when the game launched, but i still haven't summoned up enough courage to try it. Not sure if i even want to now. Is it worth giving it a go?


----------



## TedEH

Would I play it for free? Absolutely. Would I pay full price for it? Not a chance. Would I pay a tiny amount for it, even? Yeah I would, it's not THAT bad.

I do think the game has some redeeming levels and features. The constant loading gates are irritating, but modern hardware helps that out a bit. Install on an SSD, and you're ok. I appreciate that the lighting still matters in Thief where it doesn't in Dishonored.


----------



## mongey

soliloquy said:


> I also recently played Inside and Limbo. such simplistic, yet beautiful games. both are side scrollers with a kind of 2D/2.5D look and feel. Both are puzzle solving games that are challenging at times. kind of haunting and beautiful.


Both are great but I really loved inside. Did not go where I thought it was going.


----------



## spudmunkey

Anybody have some suggestions for fairly simple mobile games? Like...ones that play like old school arcade games, but with modern graphics?

Think of games like galaga, or Gradius, or simple tower defense games, etc. Even better if there's an entertaining story, which Apocalypse Meow and Radiant both had.

An example might be Apocalypse Meow, or Radiant which I think are pretty good...but I'm tired of most of these types of games that a) look like geocities flash games, b) are just micro-transaction machines. I've played a shit-ton of Defender III, but there's 44 goddamn resources to collect, and 68 different things you can upgrade with those resources...and 8 that you can only get with a real-money purchase. I'm on stage 1522, and If i were to buy all of the resources i'd need to "max out" everything (since there's no final level, that's how i'd define 'beating' the game), my best estimate is that it would cost me $21,000. Now...I haven't paid a dime for anything in this game, got to level 1522 just by gringing, and I'm happy to sit through ads...but that's already after playing the game nearly every single day, getting almost every single day's "daily quests", for almost 2 years.


----------



## Leviathus

Finished Demon's Souls, was very cool. Maneater and Sword Saint King Allant were my fav bosses.


----------



## TedEH

spudmunkey said:


> Anybody have some suggestions for fairly simple mobile games?


Tilt to Live maybe? Is that still a thing? I played a bunch of that before I started to avoid mobile games.


----------



## soliloquy

mongey said:


> Both are great but I really loved inside. Did not go where I thought it was going.



I agree. And I also love how all the reviews, and the makers refuse to elaborate on the story line. they all just say to play it and see it yourself. and its kind of based on different interpretations on the ending. 

one thing i didn't understand is how the section where the shockwaves are thrown at us at a specific interval, what exactly does that have to do with the story overall.


----------



## sleewell

dominations on my phone


----------



## Lorcan Ward

nickgray said:


> I gave up on the second to last level, noped out of the boss battle at the end of that level, seemed too damn long and annoying, and by this point I've seen everything the game has to offer.
> 
> It's honestly a weird game. At times, it eclipses Doom 2016. At times, it's a step back. And then some changes feel like unnecessary step sideways - a change for the sake of a change. I think the devs tried to overengineer the game, there's just too much shit going on for no apparent reason. And for some aspects they didn't go far enough. For instance, for better or worse, the platforming is a major part of the game now, but it's just too simplistic and dull, it should've either been largely scrapped or made to be more involved and interesting. Same goes for some other aspects of the game.



It's growing on me the more I play it but I can't help wondering why all the changes and did they not see how bloated it was getting when they started testing. That said its really intense at times and has some cool throwbacks to the originals.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I picked up Vermintide 2 a while ago but played it for the first time on a whim the other day and I love it so far. The character progression and unlocking perks/gearing up keep me hooked, and if I get 20-40 hours of enjoyment out of it then it'll be worth it. Seems more exciting than I remember Left 4 Dead being, especially since I'm a huge fan of the Warhammer universe, but then again L4D is 11 years old at this point.


----------



## mongey

soliloquy said:


> I agree. And I also love how all the reviews, and the makers refuse to elaborate on the story line. they all just say to play it and see it yourself. and its kind of based on different interpretations on the ending.
> 
> one thing i didn't understand is how the section where the shockwaves are thrown at us at a specific interval, what exactly does that have to do with the story overall.



its been a year since I played it but from memory arnt the shockwave from the big machinery again in the background. 

I need to play it again.


----------



## soliloquy

mongey said:


> its been a year since I played it but from memory arnt the shockwave from the big machinery again in the background.
> 
> I need to play it again.



possibly. Though I dont understand how that is relevant to the story. As the shockwave only take place in one specific part of the game. Everything before and everything after are connected, but the shock wave is a separate
thing all together


----------



## Ralyks

Sitting in my car outside of GameStop waiting for them to open so I can get my FFVII preorder... In the meantime, I brought my Switch, Animal Crossing, and Smash Bros with me.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Bought Days Gone because it was on sale. Man, what a grind. It feels so "off" to me, like very incohesive. There are no elements that are actually fun so it has been abandoned for Nier Automata which I am enjoying thankfully.


----------



## Triple-J

Picked up an XB1 after christmas in a crazy deal but life got in the way so it's been sat in a bag since January but quarantine means I now have plenty of game time so I've started picking up games here and there. 
First off was Streetfighter Anniversary and I must confess that I'm a SF nut but man I forgot how all the variations of SF2 seem similar on the surface but are different in terms of speed & gameplay balance plus the OG SF1 is on the disc and it's the only game in the series I've never played so I rushed to play it and er....yeah....it's nothing like the rest of the series and plays like International Karate with special moves.


----------



## Ralyks

Into chapter 3 and so far, yeah, FFVII Remake was worth the wait.


----------



## wankerness

ImNotAhab said:


> Bought Days Gone because it was on sale. Man, what a grind. It feels so "off" to me, like very incohesive. There are no elements that are actually fun so it has been abandoned for Nier Automata which I am enjoying thankfully.



days gone gets good about 10-15 hours in. It’s a lot of slog to get there.


----------



## NotDonVito

Resident Evil 3.... for the PS1


----------



## Adieu

spudmunkey said:


> Anybody have some suggestions for fairly simple mobile games? Like...ones that play like old school arcade games, but with modern graphics?
> 
> Think of games like galaga, or Gradius, or simple tower defense games, etc. Even better if there's an entertaining story, which Apocalypse Meow and Radiant both had.
> 
> An example might be Apocalypse Meow, or Radiant which I think are pretty good...but I'm tired of most of these types of games that a) look like geocities flash games, b) are just micro-transaction machines. I've played a shit-ton of Defender III, but there's 44 goddamn resources to collect, and 68 different things you can upgrade with those resources...and 8 that you can only get with a real-money purchase. I'm on stage 1522, and If i were to buy all of the resources i'd need to "max out" everything (since there's no final level, that's how i'd define 'beating' the game), my best estimate is that it would cost me $21,000. Now...I haven't paid a dime for anything in this game, got to level 1522 just by gringing, and I'm happy to sit through ads...but that's already after playing the game nearly every single day, getting almost every single day's "daily quests", for almost 2 years.



Try the gacha-RPGs

Evertale has great graphics and a decent campaign but is kinda meh after, once you hit the wall of going up against whales in PVP

Brave Nine aka Brown Dust has interesting tactical stuff, more of a community feel, and better pvp and f2p viability 

There's also some final fantasy android game but iirc the single player content was just no challenge whatsoever button mashing


----------



## Necris

Resident Evil 3 Remake
Beat it the day it came out and enjoyed it and playing it through again has just cemented my initial opinion. It has a lot of the flaws the original had and trades others for new ones; but overall those flaws never really detract from the experience, so I don't care. It's fun.


----------



## narad

Man... no one playing the Final Fantasy 7 remake? Am I so out of touch?


----------



## Quiet Coil

Shinsekai: Into The Depths

About the only thing I don’t like about this game is that I’m stuck playing it on my phone - would love to kick back with a controller and work my way through it.

So far it’s scratching an itch I forgot I had. I love 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and this gives me a lot of those vibes.


----------



## Ralyks

narad said:


> Man... no one playing the Final Fantasy 7 remake? Am I so out of touch?



 Got to chapter 4 last night. This game was is great.​


----------



## SamSam

16 hours in right now


----------



## Kaura

GTA: San Andreas once again...

This time I'm mostly just reprogramming the vehicles. For 3 days I've been trying to get the tractor to do wheelies and I'm so close. The only problem is that I have no idea what all the parameters do so there's a lot of trial and error going on.


----------



## TedEH

GoG conveniently having a sale on the Dishonored franchise as I get close to finishing the first game's main story. Looks like I'll be going through the DLC and rest of the franchise now, because why not. I never played any of the DLC before but apparently they're pretty good (I generally avoid DLC normally). Also never played Outsider, which is the one I'm excited for and actually want to give a shot - but feels like I should do them in order to keep everything in context. Not like I don't have the time for it.


----------



## wankerness

I'm now about 90 hours into Octopath traveler (though that's massively inflated by times I walked away from the game in the middle of a battle since it's turn-based). I love the gameplay on this so much, but the plot I just could not care less about. Partway through Chapter 2 I just started skipping all cutscenes since it was much more fun getting to the gameplay than listening to stilted dialogue for long, long periods of time. I have finished all but one of the character's plotlines, and got all 4 of the "secret" jobs. Looking forward to seeing what "endgame" stuff there is, if any. GREAT game. I really hope they make another game like this, but maybe with a more unified plot ala FF6 or something.


----------



## Ralyks

I think I'm already done with Animal Crossing. At this point I almost want to sell my Switch because it barely gets playtime, but kind of hesitant because it does actually have great games, plus the NES and SNES games.

FFVII Remake, however, is a goddamn masterpiece. On chapter 5 now.


----------



## Mathemagician

narad said:


> Man... no one playing the Final Fantasy 7 remake? Am I so out of touch?



Everyone I know is playing this. And I should be excited as I loved the original. But like, idk. Maybe I don’t care as much about Cloud’s hair gel as I thought? Hmmm. 

20 year old spoilers:

Someone just needs to tell me if you can still link KotR with Mimex3, or Ultima + Quadra magic. That’s all that matters.


----------



## narad

Mathemagician said:


> Everyone I know is playing this. And I should be excited as I loved the original. But like, idk. Maybe I don’t care as much about Cloud’s hair gel as I thought? Hmmm.
> 
> 20 year old spoilers:
> 
> Someone just needs to tell me if you can still link KotR with Mimex3, or Ultima + Quadra magic. That’s all that matters.



If you love the original, I think you *have* to play it. My two criticisms prior to playing: (a) episodic, this release is basically just Midgar, and (b) no turn-based battles, mixing hack-n-slash. 

On point a, wow, I mean, I wish the game could go on for the entire FF7 story, but the depth that you go into in the midgar discricts, the size of the towns, is phenomenal. It makes the time spent in these places in the original seem like a cursory glance. And on point b, while this combat mechanic does give up a little bit of the pure strategy of the old one, it works out really well. It took a while to understand how the dynamics of the old system were still there, even though you run around during battle controlling a single character at a time.

Most of all, when I saw the battle system and some other things I thought, "Ahh, they ruined it!", like I was the true judge of what is faithful to the original (because it's my 2nd or 3rd favorite game and I've played through it like 10 times). Now being 27 hours in, I can tell that it was truly the result of incredible efforts by people who love the game (and I could concede, maybe even more than I do!). 

But yea, we're gonna have to wait another 3-5 years probably for KotR...


----------



## Mathemagician

narad said:


> If you love the original, I think you *have* to play it. My two criticisms prior to playing: (a) episodic, this release is basically just Midgar, and (b) no turn-based battles, mixing hack-n-slash.
> 
> On point a, wow, I mean, I wish the game could go on for the entire FF7 story, but the depth that you go into in the midgar discricts, the size of the towns, is phenomenal. It makes the time spent in these places in the original seem like a cursory glance. And on point b, while this combat mechanic does give up a little bit of the pure strategy of the old one, it works out really well. It took a while to understand how the dynamics of the old system were still there, even though you run around during battle controlling a single character at a time.
> 
> Most of all, when I saw the battle system and some other things I thought, "Ahh, they ruined it!", like I was the true judge of what is faithful to the original (because it's my 2nd or 3rd favorite game and I've played through it like 10 times). Now being 27 hours in, I can tell that it was truly the result of incredible efforts by people who love the game (and I could concede, maybe even more than I do!).
> 
> But yea, we're gonna have to wait another 3-5 years probably for KotR...



THANK you for the detailed explanation. But in that case I’ll wait for it all to be available. I’m in no rush/drought of games to play. That’s super cool to hear that there’s more content and area to explore. Is it a full priced release for what’s effectively a few “episodes” of the overall story? Or maybe it really does full like a huge game so far.


----------



## wankerness

Screw the remake, I just got the original on Switch! Maybe I'll finally try playing it. Octopath has me in retro RPG mood. I feel like I"ll appreciate the remake more if I play the original first, too. Guess we'll see.


----------



## Ralyks

narad said:


> If you love the original, I think you *have* to play it. My two criticisms prior to playing: (a) episodic, this release is basically just Midgar, and (b) no turn-based battles, mixing hack-n-slash.
> 
> On point a, wow, I mean, I wish the game could go on for the entire FF7 story, but the depth that you go into in the midgar discricts, the size of the towns, is phenomenal. It makes the time spent in these places in the original seem like a cursory glance. And on point b, while this combat mechanic does give up a little bit of the pure strategy of the old one, it works out really well. It took a while to understand how the dynamics of the old system were still there, even though you run around during battle controlling a single character at a time.
> 
> Most of all, when I saw the battle system and some other things I thought, "Ahh, they ruined it!", like I was the true judge of what is faithful to the original (because it's my 2nd or 3rd favorite game and I've played through it like 10 times). Now being 27 hours in, I can tell that it was truly the result of incredible efforts by people who love the game (and I could concede, maybe even more than I do!).
> 
> But yea, we're gonna have to wait another 3-5 years probably for KotR...



Summed up perfectly. I'm about 9 hours in, but where I'm at in the story is like, maybe a little over an hour in the original FFVII. How they've fleshed out Midgar exceeded my expectations to a degree I didn't think possible. Also, they made me care about The Avalanche crew (which, given how things played it in the original, is already making me sad and angry). Hell, all of the characters were fleshed out in ways that surprise me so far.

Seriously, I love this game. Even if it's made me neglect Persona 5 Royal.


----------



## SamSam

Mathemagician said:


> THANK you for the detailed explanation. But in that case I’ll wait for it all to be available. I’m in no rush/drought of games to play. That’s super cool to hear that there’s more content and area to explore. Is it a full priced release for what’s effectively a few “episodes” of the overall story? Or maybe it really does full like a huge game so far.



This is a AAA title, it's packed with content and even it doesn't tell the "whole story" it will take you a decent chunk of time to complete. I honestly doubt that the future releases will be anywhere near as fleshed out. The game would end up taking years to finish!

Also, credit to the top tier cat animation


----------



## soliloquy

the original FF7 i've had mixed feelings for. i know it was/is super popular, and adored by fans. But maybe i got to the game way after everyone else, and having played several other RPGs, this kind of left me more annoyed than amused. the turn base action was annoying, but i could deal with it. the random battles that spawned out of no where, that was exhausting. 

however, my biggest issue with the game was the final level. They gave you one save sphere to be used at our disposal. Going with the pattern of every other game, including FF7, whenever they gave us such an opportunity, it usually meant that the final battle is just around the corner, so best to use it now. I entered the level, used the save sphere, and then progressed for another hour of random battles, till eventually i landed at the final battle, all exhausted, and depleted of my items. Commence Sepheroth, and i fought him for a good hour and a half, and he changed forms several times. Just when I thought i had to dish out one more team attack, the prick transforms once again, and does a one hit kill, game over. 

2.5 hours of pain...not doing that again.

as such, i never truelove finished the game. just ended up being frustrated and walked away bitter


----------



## Mathemagician

soliloquy said:


> the original FF7 i've had mixed feelings for. i know it was/is super popular, and adored by fans. But maybe i got to the game way after everyone else, and having played several other RPGs, this kind of left me more annoyed than amused. the turn base action was annoying, but i could deal with it. the random battles that spawned out of no where, that was exhausting.
> 
> however, my biggest issue with the game was the final level. They gave you one save sphere to be used at our disposal. Going with the pattern of every other game, including FF7, whenever they gave us such an opportunity, it usually meant that the final battle is just around the corner, so best to use it now. I entered the level, used the save sphere, and then progressed for another hour of random battles, till eventually i landed at the final battle, all exhausted, and depleted of my items. Commence Sepheroth, and i fought him for a good hour and a half, and he changed forms several times. Just when I thought i had to dish out one more team attack, the prick transforms once again, and does a one hit kill, game over.
> 
> 2.5 hours of pain...not doing that again.
> 
> as such, i never truelove finished the game. just ended up being frustrated and walked away bitter



Thats 1997 design philosophy. Was supposed to feel like an epic struggle. Gotta pump those levels up. Those are rookie levels. 


Also, imagine having gone from Super Nintendo graphics earlier that year to those FF7 FMV sequences. That game made a lot of people realize what games “could” be one day. Hell FF7,8,9 all had sales numbers from people who didn’t even like RPG’s but wanted to see more crazy cinema scenes like that.


----------



## BlackMastodon

soliloquy said:


> the original FF7 i've had mixed feelings for. i know it was/is super popular, and adored by fans. But maybe i got to the game way after everyone else, and having played several other RPGs, this kind of left me more annoyed than amused. the turn base action was annoying, but i could deal with it. the random battles that spawned out of no where, that was exhausting.
> 
> however, my biggest issue with the game was the final level. They gave you one save sphere to be used at our disposal. Going with the pattern of every other game, including FF7, whenever they gave us such an opportunity, it usually meant that the final battle is just around the corner, so best to use it now. I entered the level, used the save sphere, and then progressed for another hour of random battles, till eventually i landed at the final battle, all exhausted, and depleted of my items. Commence Sepheroth, and i fought him for a good hour and a half, and he changed forms several times. Just when I thought i had to dish out one more team attack, the prick transforms once again, and does a one hit kill, game over.
> 
> 2.5 hours of pain...not doing that again.
> 
> as such, i never truelove finished the game. just ended up being frustrated and walked away bitter


I'm in the same boat where I dipped my toe in the FF7 waters waaaaaaay too late to appreciate it. I played for a few hours at a buddy's house in high school and got exhausted quickly by the random battles popping up all the time and didn't want to deal with a huge level grind for it, so I didn't bother trying anymore. 

This one has me more interested but at this age I'm so daunted by games that have more than 40 hours of gameplay, especially when there's massive elore and side quests. Really I know I'm doing myself a disservice since I love massive lore like that, but I think I'll just appreciate it from a distance for now.

Graphically, the game looks absolutely jaw-dropping, but that's the status quo with FF games for the past, I dunno, 23 years I guess. I am also glad to hear they didn't go with the antequated turn based combat, but can understand some peoples' frustration with that decision.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Screw the remake, I just got the original on Switch! Maybe I'll finally try playing it. Octopath has me in retro RPG mood. I feel like I"ll appreciate the remake more if I play the original first, too. Guess we'll see.


Don't forget the demo for Bravely Default 2.


----------



## Mathemagician

Playing Half life 2 on Xbox in college what when I realized that ANY game could be an RPG. If the story is good idc how the combat plays, as long as they make it engaging somehow (for It’s genre) so if the remake is action combat then so be it. “Pureists” tends to make anything unfun.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> Hell FF7,8,9 all had sales numbers from people who didn’t even like RPG’s but wanted to see more crazy cinema scenes like that.


I definitely only played FF8 because I was impressed by the cutscenes. It's not really "impressive" anymore, but still.

Unrelated - I made it to the Dishonored DLC missions. Glad I didn't skip them this time, there's some good content there that gives the other games a lot of context I was missing before.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I definitely only played FF8 because I was impressed by the cutscenes. It's not really "impressive" anymore, but still.
> 
> Unrelated - I made it to the Dishonored DLC missions. Glad I didn't skip them this time, there's some good content there that gives the other games a lot of context I was missing before.



Yeh they're amazing. The two Dishonored story DLC pretty much add up to an extra game as well.


----------



## Choop

I'm a fan of old school turn-based combat (or really just turn-based in general), but it looks like the combat for the FF7 remake has been done in a creative way that integrates aspects of the old combat system with their more modern Final Fantasy combat systems. Finishing up Fallout right now though, and moving on to probably Red Dead 2 or Sekiro! Two very different options...


----------



## soliloquy

speaking of FF games, i have a feeling these cut scenes were never part of the final games:



the idea of this seems interesting. starting a world/universe after it was obliterated by Bahamut(i think thats bahamut?) and slowly piecing together whatever happened in history. Did this game ever come out?


----------



## Choop

soliloquy said:


> Did this game ever come out?



I believe that was just a video to go along with the end of FFXIV's version 1.0, before A Realm Reborn came out. Also, apparently the new expansion or whatever they are calling for FFXIV it is really good if you're into MMO stuff.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just finished the main FF 14 story “shadowbringers” for the newest expansion. And holy shit, this is such a good FF game. And so much side stuff to do if you like Gold Saucer, Crafting, leveling alt classes, etc.


----------



## soliloquy

Choop said:


> I believe that was just a video to go along with the end of FFXIV's version 1.0, before A Realm Reborn came out. Also, apparently the new expansion or whatever they are calling for FFXIV it is really good if you're into MMO stuff.



though I havent played any MMO's on gaming platforms (aside from phones), i dont think i'd enjoy MMOs much. but speaking of video to go with the game, around the time of that video for FFXIV came out, there was another video of another proposed FF game. It was something to do with a religious group fighting some sort of army in a dessert/shanty town setting, where Ifrit comes out and starts destroying things. Dont think it amounted to much, but that also seemed promising. 

i wonder why FF series focuses so much on random projects, but never complete them. Even FF15 had a different feel to it in the early 2010's, when it was initially proposed. They scraped most of the things shown in the trailer. 

also, in line with final fantasy, what was everyone thoughts on FF15, and its related movie? 

as much as i was enjoying playing the game, and exploring its lore, i got sidetracked half way through, and never finished the game. I was glad that, in my opinion, after FFX, the Final Fantasy franchise didn't get any decent games up until 15. 13, and its many expansions, seems to have irritated me the most.


----------



## BlackMastodon

soliloquy said:


> though I havent played any MMO's on gaming platforms (aside from phones), i dont think i'd enjoy MMOs much. but speaking of video to go with the game, around the time of that video for FFXIV came out, there was another video of another proposed FF game. It was something to do with a religious group fighting some sort of army in a dessert/shanty town setting, where Ifrit comes out and starts destroying things. Dont think it amounted to much, but that also seemed promising.
> 
> i wonder why FF series focuses so much on random projects, but never complete them. Even FF15 had a different feel to it in the early 2010's, when it was initially proposed. They scraped most of the things shown in the trailer.
> 
> also, in line with final fantasy, what was everyone thoughts on FF15, and its related movie?
> 
> as much as i was enjoying playing the game, and exploring its lore, i got sidetracked half way through, and never finished the game. I was glad that, in my opinion, after FFX, the Final Fantasy franchise didn't get any decent games up until 15. 13, and its many expansions, seems to have irritated me the most.


Never played FF15 but I did watch Kingsglaive. Story wise it was okay, thought Aaron Paul's voice acting was very lukewarm. Visually, though, holy shit was it beautiful. I couldn't stop thinking about how good it looked and how close the facial expressions were to real life. If nothing else it's worth a watch for that quality alone.


----------



## soliloquy

BlackMastodon said:


> Never played FF15 but I did watch Kingsglaive. Story wise it was okay, thought Aaron Paul's voice acting was very lukewarm. Visually, though, holy shit was it beautiful. I couldn't stop thinking about how good it looked and how close the facial expressions were to real life. If nothing else it's worth a watch for that quality alone.



typical of FF games, the game does create a visually beautiful world to explore, and makes it fun to roam around and explore. Gives you the ability to customize your car if you want to. 

and unlike FF13, where the world is beautiful, but you can only go in a linear fashion, FF15 on the other hand, you can explore any/everything. It is kind of like a giant open-world sandbox type of game. 

the movie related to it was more of a prequel, if i'm not mistaken.

action wise, the game does deliver as well.


----------



## ZXIIIT

I finished Mad Max recently, was a fun game, but I ended up getting the dreaded Jeet glitch as well.


Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was a blast too.


It's kinda unfortunate how buggy and glitchy some current gen games are, not to mention the "DLC everything" infused with games.


----------



## Leviathus

cs1.6 > cs:go


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

soliloquy said:


> also, in line with final fantasy, what was everyone thoughts on FF15, and its related movie?
> 
> as much as i was enjoying playing the game, and exploring its lore, i got sidetracked half way through, and never finished the game. I was glad that, in my opinion, after FFX, the Final Fantasy franchise didn't get any decent games up until 15. 13, and its many expansions, seems to have irritated me the most.



XV had a lot of potential of returning to form, but too many factors prevented it. Being unfinished on launch, and remaining unfinished is a major factor. And even with a bunch of DLC, and other media trying to piece missing parts of the story together still didn't help some of the clumsy moments, like underdeveloped characters (Ravus) or that messy Chapter 13. They are releasing a novel, which incorporates the cancelled Episodes of Noctis and Lunafreya, and goes so far as go for a brand new ending (and an epic, if not cliché one at that), but it's not the same as actually playing a game.

XV's story is actually pretty streamlined and simple to understand over the convoluted trainwreck and bad expositions of XIII. The combat while too chaotic at times, was fun, and I certainly enjoyed milking the open world of hunts and fetch quests. So it was great that Squenix decided to put gameplay behind the wheel and story to shotgun directions, much like the classic games.

I'm glad I waited and bought the Royal Edition for 20 bucks, ok I had to pay an additional 9 for Episode Ardyn, but still better than retail launch price and extra for DLC. 

I will say that A King's Tale was a fun brawler.


----------



## wankerness

XV's story is awful and incoherent. From what I've heard, you have to go to extra-game sources like that movie to make any sense of it. The strengths of that game were that the core group of characters was generally likable and they gave you enough time with them to bond. Just bumming around the open world with them was somewhat engaging. But the actual "plot" parts of the game were a disaster. Especially everything with the one notable woman character, whose role makes little or no sense. And the villain has a memorable swagger but I couldn't tell you what he was trying to do or how that plot resolved if you held a gun to my head.

XIII's was fairly incoherent, too, but at least it was all IN THE GAME. It was mainly just confusing with all the idiotic terminology that sounded the same and thus was impossible to keep straight. Lcie, falcie, whatever. I liked XIII alright and really enjoyed the battle system in the last stretch of the game when you had to learn more intricacies of how it worked instead of just blindly spamming RAV RAV COM to stagger, COM COM COM to do damage, and something with healing whenever you needed it. Like, taking down adamantoise was really exciting. I liked the characters alright, too. One thing I really didn't like in XV was that all the characters were guys.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So I did what I said I wasn't going to do, and I still feel a little dirty to myself about it...

But I bought FF7 remake. Played the intro demo section, finished it, then had the game tell me to sit in a corner for a while since only 44% of the game has been installed. Of course.  But I suppose playing the actual game was better than having Somnus play in the background for 45 minutes (gorgeous piece mind you but even the most sainthood patience will break if you listen the same song straight for that long no matter how great it is).

I guess I'll have to get used to this 'Tooth Chipper' roller coaster ride.


----------



## narad

Man, just finished FF7 remake. What a game! I don't have much time for games these days so when I make the decision to play something it's a really deliberate effort. Like I want to play Octopath Traveler..well, guess I have to go buy the fucking Switch to do that. Then get the game. Then get bored of the game like 10 hours into it or something. Then get Breath of the Wild. And get bored like 10 hours into it. I'm so used to being let-down.

FF7 was the opposite. I had lots of love for the original, but like a sequel, you can't go in expecting the same magic. But it was amazing. I look back on the original now, and, assuming the remaining chapters are as good as these, I wouldn't even recommend playing the original! This just goes so far beyond.

I can of course levy a bunch of criticisms of the remake, but honestly they're so overwhelmed by the positive. I was psyched the moment I heard it was in development, and it just feels great to have wrapped it up now in finally a satisfying experience. Now if they can just manage to not fuck up the rest of it...


----------



## Ralyks

So one, FFVII Remake stands as my game of the year so far. Easily. Well, ok, first let's see what happens when I go back to personal 5 Royal. But this game has exceeded my expectations. I'm in Wall Market right now and I'm just fascinated looking aroind. And interacting. And the combat is very well done. I understand why some compare it to XIII (which honestly, I loved the combat in that game), but it's similar but quite different. Just so well done.

Anyway, I originally came to say that someone tried comparing it to "Final Fantasy meets Yakuza"... And I can't say they're totally wrong?

EDIT: And one other thing that seemed really cool about this game that seems like a minor detail: look up. And see the plate and the small parts here and there where you can see the sky. It was such an integral part of the story in the original, but with the camera perspective, you never really felt the full weight of that. Here, it's just crazy taking in that massive covering that covers your whole peripheral. Just touches like that are what make this remake so good as far as the story goes.


----------



## Pav

narad said:


> Man, just finished FF7 remake. What a game! I don't have much time for games these days so when I make the decision to play something it's a really deliberate effort. Like I want to play Octopath Traveler..well, guess I have to go buy the fucking Switch to do that. Then get the game. Then get bored of the game like 10 hours into it or something. Then get Breath of the Wild. And get bored like 10 hours into it. I'm so used to being let-down.
> 
> FF7 was the opposite. I had lots of love for the original, but like a sequel, you can't go in expecting the same magic. But it was amazing. I look back on the original now, and, assuming the remaining chapters are as good as these, I wouldn't even recommend playing the original! This just goes so far beyond.
> 
> I can of course levy a bunch of criticisms of the remake, but honestly they're so overwhelmed by the positive. I was psyched the moment I heard it was in development, and it just feels great to have wrapped it up now in finally a satisfying experience. Now if they can just manage to not fuck up the rest of it...


I'm balls-deep in FF7 right now. As much as I'm loving it, it's tearing me apart (Lisa) that we've only gotten 30% of the the full game and have to wait an indeterminate amount of time before we get anymore. It wouldn't surprise me if it was several more years before Remake covered the entirety of FF7.


----------



## soliloquy

I may pick this game up again:









I took no pleasure in taking down these giant colossi, as each one I killed, it broke my heart. However, the game was so visually beautiful. I forced a friend of mine to play it recently, and he kept sharing its screenshots as he was mesmermized by its beauty. I didn't realize that the ps4 version was a complete remake, and not just a graphics update.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing mostly coop stuff with my quarantine buddy. Cat Quest 2, and more Mario Odyssey. This Mario game is fantastic and reminds me of my fondest memories with Super Mario 64 - I haven't felt this good about a mainline Mario game since that one. I did play a lot of Sunshine and a bit of Galaxy, and never got into either. 

Cat Quest 2 is an amusing hack and slash action RPG thing. It has jaw-droppingly terrible puns galore, but it's been quite fun with simple dodge/attack mechanics and a lot of basic RPG stuff (gear drops/upgrades, learning spells, leveling, etc). I just got it cause it was on sale and I heard it had a good couch co-op mode, and it really does. We've had a blast with it. I dunno how far we are in it, but our characters are level 50 so I have to imagine more than halfway through (it's been about 5-6 hours). 

I also started FF7 (switch port). I like that the characters are actually a bit endearing and distinctive unlike Octopath, but god are the battles slow and terrible, and the 90s level design is in full force (tons of backtracking, bland screens with nothing useful on them, long convoluted paths of ladders that just waste time, etc). Thank god for the 3x speed thing - getting attacked by 4+ enemies who all go through the same slow attack animation one after the other to start each battle is mind-numbing. I'm only a little ways into it, just finished the whole Cloud cross-dressing thing. 

Oh, and I started the new Borderlands expansion - I REALLY don't like it compared to the previous one. I hate the Lovecraftian feel they are going for, and I absolutely HATE the new enemies (it's biased against FL4K as many of the enemies heal like crazy if you get in melee range - and the same applies to your damn pet. first boss had to have healed multiple entire lifebars, the fight took 15+ minutes and I was in full level-equivalent legendaries with a build that was letting me do M4.  I guess they're jacking up the level cap in a few days, so all progress is pointless right now anyway. They're adding 10 levels of Mayhem, which I think might kill the game for me. I had no interest in Borderlands 2 as soon as I hit the OP levels or whatever they were called, it was just more and more minmaxing for glass cannon builds since they practically required you to use the Bee shield for pure offense and thus be able to get 1 shot by practically anything. Ugh. We'll hope things are less grindy, tedious and frustrating than BL2 quickly got after TVHM was completed and you'd gotten the base levels of all the good legendaries/Sandhawk.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Anyway, I originally came to say that someone tried comparing it to "Final Fantasy meets Yakuza"... And I can't say they're totally wrong?



I can certainly attest to that. The moment the sidequests were available, I up and did them all before even catching up with Barrett the next day. Next thing I knew, I'm overlevelled and can cast Fira.

So yeah, the comparison of putting the plot to a screeching halt to do side muckabouts does have merit. Though, not as overtly quirky as Yakuza (the stuff that makes the series more interesting), well that I know of just yet anyway. So it feels more like FFXV to me, like how I spent a lot of time in chapter 3 and 5 crossing off a massive checklist, which I guess is like a typical triple a game I suppose.

I'm still taking my time with VIIR since I'm still slogging through Berseria, which is now taking it's toll on my patience and want to finish it asap. Not helping with Trials of Mana about to drop in 2 days to boot too.


----------



## natedog_approved

Since I cant afford to buy Bannerlord at the moment, I'm revisiting Total War Attila and new mods there. Nothing like large scale medieval warfare


----------



## BlackMastodon

The good news about quarantine is that I only spend money on food and games. The bad news is I'm buying a lot of new games. 

Picked up Total War Warhammer 2 after playing it on the free weekend with a couple of DLC's because I'm a sucker for Warhammer and Total War, I think it was the cheapest I've seen it so fuck it. I'll get dozens of hours out of it. 

Speaking of Warhammer, I saw that Warhammer Underworlds Online is out of early access. Will wait for that one to go on sale but I'm curious how it plays. 

Waiting for XCOM Chimera Squad to come out later this week. Came close to starting War of the Chosen but will save that for another time. 

I keep bouncing around between games, but haven't touched Fire Emblem Three Houses in a while, it's gonna be a while before I beat that.


----------



## natedog_approved

BlackMastodon said:


> The good news about quarantine is that I only spend money on food and games. The bad news is I'm buying a lot of new games.
> 
> Picked up Total War Warhammer 2 after playing it on the free weekend with a couple of DLC's because I'm a sucker for Warhammer and Total War, I think it was the cheapest I've seen it so fuck it. I'll get dozens of hours out of it.
> 
> Speaking of Warhammer, I saw that Warhammer Underworlds Online is out of early access. Will wait for that one to go on sale but I'm curious how it plays.
> 
> Waiting for XCOM Chimera Squad to come out later this week. Came close to starting War of the Chosen but will save that for another time.
> 
> I keep bouncing around between games, but haven't touched Fire Emblem Three Houses in a while, it's gonna be a while before I beat that.



I love Warhammer, and I love Total War, but for some reason I cant stand TW WH


----------



## Prince Acheampong

Playing call of duty ghost


----------



## _MonSTeR_

Finished FFVII remake and thought it looked amazing, but like narad said, there are a couple of things I’d have liked to see them do a little differently. But not many.

Tried to fire up my old Star Wars the Old Republic account again, to try to recreate some Of the magic of the Mandalorian, but I’m locked out as the game “doesn’t recognise” my PC and the one time password won’t work...

Have to find something else now...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Trials Of Mana has dropped, and so has some funds from my account. Dammit Square Enix. 

Stopped FF7R, and will probably only jump in here and there. I'm set in finishing Berseria and will be playing Trials a lot, doing multiple playthroughs and trying how the different team/class dynamics work in the new battle system. Thankfully the substantial demo has given me a decent head start. 

Though, it may be unhealthy trying to juggle the 2 (if not 3) games since I'll be confused as hell jumping back and forth between the similar but different hacky slashy controls.


----------



## lewis

gone balls deep into Assassins Creed Origins. Bought all the DLC this time around.
Plan to pick up Odysseeysysysssssyysy when Im done.

I really liked it the first time around, this time around I love it. The best AC ever imo


----------



## ImNotAhab

lewis said:


> gone balls deep into Assassins Creed Origins. Bought all the DLC this time around.
> Plan to pick up Odysseeysysysssssyysy when Im done.
> 
> I really liked it the first time around, this time around I love it. The best AC ever imo


Origins is probably my favorite of the Creeds. I really liked Odyssey too but it was just too large, I found it lost some of the coherence but that is me being picky.


Clearing some gaming backlog and I went back to Spiderman to play the DLC. Absolutely dreadful. Completely uninspired next to the main game, feels like a cash grab.


----------



## lewis

ImNotAhab said:


> Origins is probably my favorite of the Creeds. I really liked Odyssey too but it was just too large, I found it lost some of the coherence but that is me being picky.
> 
> 
> Clearing some gaming backlog and I went back to *Spiderman to play the DLC. Absolutely dreadful. Completely uninspired next to the main game, feels like a cash grab*.



Ah man!
That was next on my list after loving the Main game!

Dont think I will now. The trailer had me worried that was the case. Shame because I loved the Black Cat elements to the main game so was more looking forward to seeing more of that continue. Their relationship has always been way more my jam than him and MJ or Gwen.


----------



## beerandbeards

Felicia Hardy all day


----------



## wankerness

lewis said:


> gone balls deep into Assassins Creed Origins. Bought all the DLC this time around.
> Plan to pick up Odysseeysysysssssyysy when Im done.
> 
> I really liked it the first time around, this time around I love it. The best AC ever imo



I played Odyssey first and liked it more. The combat feels much more refined, especially if you go bows. The bow mechanics in origins always bugged me (how there were multiple bow types that you needed to alternate based on what you were fighting, how some of them fired the second you touched the trigger instead of charging, and most frustratingly how limited the arrows were and how you couldn’t make more).

part of it is also just what you think of the settings. I found Ancient Greece far more engaging than ancient Egypt, but part of that was just me being really into Greek myths as a kid and not having any connection to Egypt. I also found the desert a lot less interesting to look at.

the last three expansions for Odyssey are also bonkers and have some gorgeously weird locations in them. Origins had a bit of that in the DLC too, but Odyssey’s mythology stuff is awesome.

The one thing I’ll give Origins is the story/characters are better, even if the ultimate climax ended up feeling weird with the character switches.

speaking of DLC, I finished up the Control DLC, “The Foundation.” It’s going to be great for you if you liked the difficult side mission bosses like Tomassi in the base game, but a couple things are extremely punishing if you had difficulty with the base game. One side mission in particular where you are on a moving train and have to jump to avoid pillars while simultaneously fighting enemies and bosses and can’t heal except through mods stands out as being infuriating, especially due to the game’s Dark Souls-style death system where you get kicked back to the last checkpoint and thus have to spend about five minutes every attempt just getting back to the hard part. It only took me about four tries, but it was really tense. The last boss is also extremely long and can kill you in an instant if you let up your guard, but that feels more fair and the respawn system doesn’t feel nearly as annoying with it.

the level designs are even weirder than the game proper and it introduces some new abilities that are fun. I’d definitely recommend it for anyone who likes the main game enough to do the side stuff.


----------



## CerealKiller

I found Origins really cool, there's nothing like smashing people with a trident while listening to Black Seeds of Vengeance. 

Spending lockdown playing through Divinity Original Sin 2.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

CerealKiller said:


> I found Origins really cool, there's nothing like smashing people with a trident while listening to Black Seeds of Vengeance.
> 
> Spending lockdown playing through Divinity Original Sin 2.


Ooh good idea, now I want to play Origins while listening to Nile.


----------



## Ralyks

Watching the end credit to FFVII Remake. Early game of the year, early game of the decade. Gonna take a break before going for the Platinum. In the meantime, back to the Persona 5 gang.

Also, has anyone played Dreams? Thinking it could be fun to mess around with during the time I'm stuck inside.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm trying to work my way through some older games I have on my PS3s HDD and I decided to see if I could plat Crysis. Man, there's nothing more frustrating than trying to get through a janky port of a janky game on the hardest difficulty.


----------



## TedEH

I started playing Paper Mario. It's not quite what I expected. I don't know what I expected, but the way combat is balanced is strange. Not bad, just strange. Decent game so far.


----------



## Mathemagician

Still plugging away at Shadowbringers FF14 main story. I don’t really play for raiding/endgame just the story and this one is nuts. Finished the main story and got to the second arc and man it’s really good. Loving the side story for the Eden raids as well, feels MUCH more connected to the MSQ than Alpha/Delta/Sigma scapes did. Also went back and finished the Alexander story series and the Crystal Tower as I had never done them. I need to get around to doing Bahamut but otherwise I’m almost caught up on the story.


----------



## narad

I absolutely loved the FF7 remake but I concede there are some valid points in this:


----------



## ImNotAhab

Replaying God of War. Great game, you can appreciate certain plot points a little differently on the replay which is nice but you also see where the hardware limited aspects of the game. I cannot help but consider how good this would look on next gen hardware with all the bell and whistles like ray tracing, VRS, better mist and water effects.

It also makes me hopeful of the claims of quicker loading times for next gen, I for one am bored of dudes crawling slowly through cracks to cover loading times.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Plat'd Crysis. The game gets really easy once you start fighting the aliens.


----------



## BlackMastodon

ImNotAhab said:


> Replaying God of War. Great game, you can appreciate certain plot points a little differently on the replay which is nice but you also see where the hardware limited aspects of the game. I cannot help but consider how good this would look on next gen hardware with all the bell and whistles like ray tracing, VRS, better mist and water effects.
> 
> It also makes me hopeful of the claims of quicker loading times for next gen, I for one am bored of dudes crawling slowly through cracks to cover loading times.


PS2 era God of War or the latest "reboot?"


----------



## beerandbeards

Streets of Rage 4!!! It’s bringing me back to playing with my brother back in the day. It hits all the nostalgia while adding some fresh new ideas and art


----------



## ImNotAhab

BlackMastodon said:


> PS2 era God of War or the latest "reboot?"


 Reboot. Never actually played the originals unfortunately.


----------



## NotDonVito

Deus Ex but I got frustrated half way through and started using the cheat codes.


----------



## Werecow

NotDonVito said:


> Deus Ex but I got frustrated half way through and started using the cheat codes.



Did your character build go wrong?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished my first runthrough of Trials Of Mana. Now post game dungeon thrown at me and a new class upgrade as well.

I've been very vocal about Trials being the better Square Enix remake to come out in the month of April this year. And it's not hard to justify. It's a complete game. It doesn't unnecessarily and artificially pad the gameplay, so it's tight and concise. It's not the Secret Of Mana remake... I could go on and on. But it's also not safe from my boot stomping criticisms. In fact, it's going to be fun bending this game over and going to town on it. No rose tinted glasses of nostalgia will stop me here.

The fact that it's a remake also carries all the flaws of a game that came out of 1995, and the spoils of modern gaming have not aged these well. The first bugbear is the story: another scenario of using the power of friendship to kill The Dragon, the Antichrist or the False Prophet (depending on your character choice). Can't really change that I suppose, but there really isn't much to expand beyond it so newcomers will get tired of it quick. Also being a SNES remake means the game isn't very long. 1 playthough will last at least 40 hours, which felt like a lifetime in the 90s but in today's gaming climate, it's a mere sample.

Second is the English voice acting and most of it is atrocious. Which is a shame since the characters have been given more personality and depth. They turned Hawkeye into Rob Paulsen's TMNT Raphael with a touch more of annoyance, and Charlotte and Kevin are by far and large the worst offenders. I am planning to pick those 3 for my next playthrough and I'm looking forward it with Monday morning dread. There's also a ton of annoying stuttering with some of the dialogue that happens everywhere throughout the game. I guess you can just change to Japanese, and it's not like you're missing out on all the quips and complaints about the weather.

The music of the original is one of the finest in the era, so I'm a little disappointed that they played it extremely safe for the new arrangements. Yeah it's faithful to the original (much like a lot of this game), and there's no ear trashing crap like in the Secret Of Mana remake, but there's not much new. They even got the weird annoying guitar synth that sounds like a midi right for some battle themes. I mean they got Tsuoyshi "Black Mages make a soundtrack to a strategy game with symphonic metal" Sekito to arrange some tracks. Why not let him off the leech? This safe arrangements are nice but also makes the option to switch to the original OST completely perfunctory. 

But I guess I should give it some deserved complimentary bum slaps since I still enjoyed the game. Trials has done a lot right.

I've gone on record to say that Ys VIII is the game that the Secret Of Mana should've been. So it was totally right for Squenix to mug it and steal it's combat engine. It's not sophisticated by any stretch: but it does the job. The camera is 100% manual so any stupid angle aiming towards some flowers in the heat of battle is completely on you. The dash/run is assigned to the L3, which is as logical as the jump control in Dark Souls. That aside, you can happily dodge roll everything to death and most bosses keel over once you get into their bum and slash away. That said some of the bosses suddenly get sinister and jack up the difficulty curve, so it's not all sunshine dodge rolling.

Making it single player is logical since multiplayer doesn't work with this 3D environment. And since this, like Secret is story driven, support players are just second and third fiddles that don't do anything outside combat. That said, I have issues with the AI not really doing what's required. I built Duran as a Liege to heal but he's barely doing that even with the right strat settings. And Riesz at higher levels has a tendency of using her Summons at any given moment, even with the enemies well beneath my levels, like rocking up to a knife fight with the Death Star.

What really made the original Trials my boo is class changing mechanic. Yeah it's nothing new for all the D&D and Forgotten Realms master nerds, but a choice of 3 of 6 characters that have 3 tiers of 6 class changes gave a ton of replay value. Lots of fun for team dynamics as well as potentially stumbling to mass redundancy (a team of Duran, Charlotte and Kevin as 3 healers is boring and dumb). This is also a cunning way to disguise the old school style of padding and making you repeat playing the game and knowing that you won't get the cool class perks until a third into it. Thankfully Trials allows you to reset your classes (with fees and limited items) so you don't have to repeat as much. The penultimate extra class changes added to the remake is a neat incentive to play more, but sort of undermine the levels before it since your choice was part of the appeal, and making the extra class a combination of the 2 previous classes (based on light/dark dichotomy) feels like a cop out. Also Hawkeye's Vigilante class ABOVE a Ninja Master or Night Blade sounds anticlimactic. At least add 2 more classes for each character to give some uniqueness. It's not like it'll take up more gaming data and make this into an episodic affair. This is still Square Enix and I won't be surprised if they throw new ones as DLC for money grubbing.

I have my ups and downs with Square Enix. And this year I got 2 remakes, one an up and one a down. Ok, one an up, and one only a smidgen of a down that cost more than the up. At the very least they've paid their penance from treating the Mana series like their unwanted child. Trials Of Mana is one of the games that Square Enix are capable of doing things with heart.


----------



## Demiurge

Amazon was blowing-out those Neo Geo minis for $30 so I picked one up. I will never want for another fighting or Metal Slug game again.


----------



## natedog_approved

ImNotAhab said:


> Reboot. Never actually played the originals unfortunately.



Get on it! Great games.


----------



## CerealKiller

Finally finished Divinity Original Sin 2, really enjoyable  

Now playing Disco Elysium - it's hilarious, after getting over a frustrating hurdle of dying over and over again because I didn't know what I was doing.


----------



## Werecow

CerealKiller said:


> Finally finished Divinity Original Sin 2, really enjoyable
> 
> Now playing Disco Elysium - it's hilarious, after getting over a frustrating hurdle of dying over and over again because I didn't know what I was doing.



I'm intrigued by Disco Elysium. It sounds incredibly weird in a good way from the comments i've seen about it.
The thing that's held me back is that i've never played an RPG without combat before, and i just don't know if it's my thing.


----------



## NotDonVito

Werecow said:


> Did your character build go wrong?


Yeah I put all my points into lockpicking and pistols  I was also playing on the hardest difficulty which probably didn't help. I started a new game on normal because as hilarious as it is to zap everybody with unlimited GEP gun ammo, it got pretty boring after a while.


----------



## Werecow

NotDonVito said:


> Yeah I put all my points into lockpicking and pistols  I was also playing on the hardest difficulty which probably didn't help. I started a new game on normal because as hilarious as it is to zap everybody with unlimited GEP gun ammo, it got pretty boring after a while.



Oh well, at least you didn't put all your points in swimming


----------



## Nicki

Went through Halo:MCC (Reach - Halo 4) on Legendary with my friend from work. Finished AC2 last night. Will probably start AC Brotherhood tonight.


----------



## CerealKiller

Werecow said:


> I'm intrigued by Disco Elysium. It sounds incredibly weird in a good way from the comments i've seen about it.
> The thing that's held me back is that i've never played an RPG without combat before, and i just don't know if it's my thing.



I think that if you generally like D&D style RPGs, don't mind reading a lot, and always dreamt of being a speed-sniffing detective, you'll enjoy this.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Finished my first runthrough of Trials Of Mana. Now post game dungeon thrown at me and a new class upgrade as well.



Finished the Post dungeon and got New Game Plus.

Frankly I'm mostly disappointed with the post game level design since the astral realm with floating rock islands is JRPG shorthand for "I've run out of ideas". The final boss is a nice nod to Heroes Of Mana (which apparently a prequel to this game), and Dawn Of Mana (only related via franchise abode), but since I was so pimped and OP'ed, the boss keeled over quickly. The game is already too easy, even on Normal settings, so I might just bump it onto Hard on subsequent plays.

And it turns out I still enjoy the Ninja Master/Liege/Star Lancer team just like the SNES, only even more so with the extra abusable perks. I heard Angela has been buffed substantially from the SNES, but that'll have to wait until I do my Kevin/Charlotte/Hawkeye playthrough. And that is gowing to suck wit da vewy vewy tewiboo voice acting.


----------



## Mathemagician

I need to figure out whether to get the 1-3 Mana game bundle or the Trials of Mana. Is that one “new” or a remake?


----------



## Ralyks

Yakuza: Like a Dragon looks awesome.

Anyway, after I beat FFVII Remake, I thought about going back to Persona 5 Royal. Then they announced a new date for The Last of Us Part 2, and said screw it, I should finally finish Last of Us. Actually got much further than my original playthrough.
That said:



Spoiler



I just got the the part where you reunite with Tommy. For the love of God, am I almost done?


----------



## _MonSTeR_

NotDonVito said:


> Deus Ex but I got frustrated half way through and started using the cheat codes.



Alex Brandon who wrote the music for Deus Ex used to be a member on JEMsite and I recall used to play a 7VWH. Not sure if he was ever a member here or not.


----------



## NotDonVito

_MonSTeR_ said:


> Alex Brandon who wrote the music for Deus Ex used to be a member on JEMsite and I recall used to play a 7VWH. Not sure if he was ever a member here or not.


cool info, I love the deus ex soundtrack, but i'm not really familiar with anything else he's done


----------



## arasys

Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord is really interesting, fighting is difficult till you get use to it and game feels old school. Definitely recommend it, devs been patching the game very frequently too. It's like a medieval Heroes of Might and Magic 3, and RPG mix type of game.
I remember back in in 2017 same guys who made Middle Earth mod for the first game started working on armor designs for Bannerlord, can't wait for that mod too.. 

Been playing Skyrim forever since I quit Elder Scrolls Online again, I can't wait for Skyblivion and Skywind mods


----------



## NotDonVito

Streets of Rage 4

Not as good as the Double Dragon Neon reboot, but still fun


----------



## TedEH

Finished Paper Mario yesterday. It ended quite strong, IMO. Huge improvement over the Mario RPG that came before it.

Been trying to decide what to play next- there's a reasonable number of things on the list that I've never finished (or started). Was thinking Bioshock 2 because I've never gotten very far in it and it would be a change of pace compared to the last few games I've played. I've also got Oracle of Seasons that I bought on 3DS and never played. There's also a Mario&Luigi game on GBA that I started and never finished. Was also thinking Kathy Rain, which I know nothing about, but I've always like adventure games.


----------



## NotDonVito

The Oracle Zelda games are still good. Had them back in the day and played through them again in 2018, wasn't bored/disappointed.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Finished Paper Mario yesterday. It ended quite strong, IMO. Huge improvement over the Mario RPG that came before it.
> 
> Been trying to decide what to play next- there's a reasonable number of things on the list that I've never finished (or started). Was thinking Bioshock 2 because I've never gotten very far in it and it would be a change of pace compared to the last few games I've played. I've also got Oracle of Seasons that I bought on 3DS and never played. There's also a Mario&Luigi game on GBA that I started and never finished. Was also thinking Kathy Rain, which I know nothing about, but I've always like adventure games.


Thousand Year Door


----------



## Ralyks

Just finally finished Last of us, and uhh, boy was that last third heartbreaking. Doing the Left Behind side story now.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> Thousand Year Door


Normally, I'd be all for continuing the series right away, but I don't have a copy, or a gamecube. I generally avoid emulators, so that rules it out unless I come across a great deal somewhere. The only copy I found for sale locally wanted $100 for it.



NotDonVito said:


> The Oracle Zelda games are still good.


I definitely plan on going back to this one at some point. I've also recently gone through Links Awakening, but I've also played so many Zelda titles in the last while that a bit of a break from it isn't a terrible idea. I think in the last year or two I've gone through Majoras Mask, Links Awakening, Link to the Past, Link between Worlds, BotW, got about half way through OoT, etc. Don't get me wrong, I really like Zelda games, but after a while some change is good.

I started up Kathy Rain this morning and the writing of that game is kinda grating. It's mechanically fine - the point and click elements are what you'd expect, and the art is well executed, but the writing has that high-school-level quality of nobody really acting the way a person would act, and the main character never bothered establishing any motivation for what you're doing. In classic adventure games this is fine because of the layer of humour, but this game plays everything strait. They started painting a picture of a rebellious, rude, social-outcast-y type of person who immediately 180s to take interest in an unprompted investigation into something her grandmother said. For reasons.

Maybe I'll come back to it, but decided Bioshock 2 wins out this time. I have the remaster version on steam, and I know I never got very far before. I think I've played the intro a dozen times intending to continue and just never did. Now I've got the time to continue I suppose.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> Maybe I'll come back to it, but decided Bioshock 2 wins out this time. I have the remaster version on steam, and I know I never got very far before. I think I've played the intro a dozen times intending to continue and just never did. Now I've got the time to continue I suppose.



The weird thing with Bioshock 2 was that the story was not nearly as good as the first (but still not bad), but the gameplay itself was way better than the first (which was great in itself). One of these days I'll play the PS4 collection, I really loved playing the games back on Xbox 360, and I probably put the first game in my top 10.


----------



## TedEH

It's been really long since I've played the first one, so in my mind they play the same. The second game sort of registers to me as just an incremental improvement to the first (mechanically). I can't judge the story yet, since I've not gotten very far.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Normally, I'd be all for continuing the series right away, but I don't have a copy, or a gamecube. I generally avoid emulators, so that rules it out unless I come across a great deal somewhere. The only copy I found for sale locally wanted $100 for it.


There's a good chance it's getting a rerelease on the Switch this year for the 35th anniversary.


----------



## TedEH

That's likely to be a buy from me if that happens.


----------



## Ralyks

StevenC said:


> There's a good chance it's getting a rerelease on the Switch this year for the 35th anniversary.



I think the only one that might get a rerelease is the original Paper Mario. Otherwise, there's suppose to be a new Mario RPG/Paper Mario/Mario and Luigi game in the works.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Played Forza Horizon today out of boredom. Holy crap I am dreadful at driving games, hahahaha.


----------



## StevenC

Ralyks said:


> I think the only one that might get a rerelease is the original Paper Mario. Otherwise, there's suppose to be a new Mario RPG/Paper Mario/Mario and Luigi game in the works.


AlphaDream is no more, so I'd be surprised if it's a new M&L game. It'd be super lame if they only release Paper Mario 1 because Thousand Year Door is so much better.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> I need to figure out whether to get the 1-3 Mana game bundle or the Trials of Mana. Is that one “new” or a remake?



The Collection of Mana bundle consists of the first 3 Mana games in their original form. So Secret and Trials will be their SNES ports and the first Mana game will be the Gameboy FF Adventure port. 

I guess it boils down to the choice of which version of Trials of Mana you want to play since the remake is a huge reworking of the original that it feels like a new game.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Ralyks said:


> The weird thing with Bioshock 2 was that the story was not nearly as good as the first (but still not bad), but the gameplay itself was way better than the first (which was great in itself). One of these days I'll play the PS4 collection, I really loved playing the games back on Xbox 360, and I probably put the first game in my top 10.


I don't think it's weird really, I think that's a very common thing in video games when there's a sequel to a game that has a top notch story; the sequel can improve on gameplay but it rarely can match the depth of the story from the first title. Mass Effect is only of the biggest examples of this. I haven't played Dead Space in years but I remember the atmosphere and story of the first one being better overall than the second. Got the 3rd on but haven't played it yet, I don't even know if my 360 will start up anymore. :\

Re: TedEH + Bioshock 2, I have a very similar experience with Bioshock Infinite. I started it back in 2014 and only played a couple hours but never got back into it. I'll have to start a new game just to remember what happens at the start.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> I don't think it's weird really, I think that's a very common thing in video games when there's a sequel to a game that has a top notch story; the sequel can improve on gameplay but it rarely can match the depth of the story from the first title. Mass Effect is only of the biggest examples of this. I haven't played Dead Space in years but I remember the atmosphere and story of the first one being better overall than the second. Got the 3rd on but haven't played it yet, I don't even know if my 360 will start up anymore. :\
> 
> Re: TedEH + Bioshock 2, I have a very similar experience with Bioshock Infinite. I started it back in 2014 and only played a couple hours but never got back into it. I'll have to start a new game just to remember what happens at the start.


infinite has a far better story than bioshock 2. imo. lots of cool ways they play with the idea of interdimensional tears and the characters are more interesting. I still say bioshock 2 had the best array of approaches to combat (infinite dumbs it down a bit).


----------



## Crundles

Bought Hades yesterday, since it was 20% off and I've been meaning to check it out.

Played pretty much 6 hours straight, got the babys-first-win with the shield.

Game good. Game definitely good. If you like your rogue-lite hack-n-slashes, you should probably give it a shot.


----------



## TedEH

BlackMastodon said:


> I don't even know if my 360 will start up anymore. :\


This is a big part of why I've usually preferred to get things on PC. I'm never without a working PC.

I've noticed today that I somehow ended up with a copy of Dead Space 1 and 3, but not 2. Not sure how.

Infinite, I think, was a bit of a victim of reviews being taken a little too seriously. It didn't review well, from what I remember, and that has a huge impact on how people in general are going to receive the game. I had no problem with that game's shooting mechanics - to me that wasn't the end-all of the game anyway. Infinite was, IMO, a great game as a whole package. Not the same impact as the original Bioshock (and I think that's the metric people focused on too much), but it's better than the original game in a bunch of other ways IMO.


----------



## MFB

Bought AC:Black Flag while it was on sale for $9, now I can finally go back and finish what I started when I got my first PS4. Being a game student at the time, and next-gen having just launched, I kept just looking around and made it ...maybe 2 missions in to the game before just never picking it up again.

Plus, with the more limited scope compared to Origins/Odyssey, I know it won't go for 200+ hours of grinding out fetch quests


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I finished DOOM : Eternal a week or two ago. By the end I loved it but it was very hard for me to get into.



Spoiler



Pros:

Fully upgraded arsenal is so much fun to play with when you have all the rock, paper, scissors mechanics down. It makes the start of the game clunky and messy but once you get the hang of it it was so much fun jumping around the combat arenas
Fast intense combat
The game world looked amazing, lots of variation across the levels
Lots of new monsters, 2 from Heretic I was delighted to see
Much more usable weapons so players aren't just relying on the super shotgun
Bosses from a previous levels become common enemies in later levels
Secrets much easier to find and you weren't punished this time for not exploring and grinding levels
Cheat codes for redoing levels to complete challenges and find secrets
Graphics and gameplay were incredible even on console

Cons:

Rock, Paper, Scissors mechanics that force the player into only playing one particular style
Story was an absolute mess and felt like a game was missing in-between 2016 and Eternal
Forcing the "epic" serious story on you when 2016 went out of its way to parody story driven FPS games
Cutting out the visual story telling of DOOM 2016 and replacing it with arcade elements ruined the immersion for me, it felt like I was playing a simulation rather than being involved in an actual story with realistic world building
Platforming was really out of place at times and was there to just pad out the lack of content in some levels, bringing the intense pace of the game to a grinding halt as you fall into lava 10 times trying to figure where you actually have to jump to
Low ammo *flash* low ammo *flash* low ammo *flash*
Icon of Sin was underwhelming compared to the Cyberdemon and Spidermastermind of 2016
Melee doing absolutely nothing
Arch Vile and Cyberdemon just appearing in a level with no cool introduction, even though the arch vile was supposed to appear on Mars as we saw in the early gameplay teaser




Overall it was a lot of fun once I accepted the changes and gameplay mechanics. I was hoping for a continuation of DOOM 2016's story with more weapons and monsters but got a very different game than what I was expecting. In many ways its closer to old school DOOM but I'm still puzzled why they changed up so much of what worked in the last game. DLC hopefully out in a few months!


----------



## wankerness

I've heard so much about Doom Eternal forcing you to run out of ammo constantly that I have no desire to play it. I hate extreme ammo scarcity (or breaking gear, for a similar problem). I don't like to feel like I can't use the items in a game. It's related to my same tick where I'd almost never use any consumables in any RPGs cause I wanted to save them for when I'd REALLY need them!



I finally played some more Yakuza 4 the last few days. After getting some more skills as Saejima and getting past the horrible prison break sequence I didn't mind playing as him. I quickly burned through all of the third guy's stuff, most of Kiryu's stuff and then did all substories as all 4 characters and now am at the verge of finishing the game, I assume. I ended up liking it quite a bit, but the story kinda seemed convoluted for the sake of convolution even more than normal - it was hard to keep track of all the bad guys since there were like 5 of them that weren't the REAL mastermind and would kill each other off etc. It's definitely a lot better than 3, even if I kinda liked that one's focus on Dad Kiryu.

I think I might play Outer Worlds before starting Yakuza 5 (the last of these things for me till 7! Well, until Judgment gets reduced in price to 20 bucks). It's a great, great series. But, I think 0 (the first I played) and Kiwami 2 are still the easy pinnacles. I am tempted to replay 6 just so I'll actually know who the character cameos are this time, but I remember the vast majority of that one just being new characters so maybe I won't bother, since it wasn't one of the best of the games anyway.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I've heard so much about Doom Eternal forcing you to run out of ammo constantly that I have no desire to play it. I hate extreme ammo scarcity (or breaking gear, for a similar problem). I don't like to feel like I can't use the items in a game. It's related to my same tick where I'd almost never use any consumables in any RPGs cause I wanted to save them for when I'd REALLY need them!
> 
> 
> 
> I finally played some more Yakuza 4 the last few days. After getting some more skills as Saejima and getting past the horrible prison break sequence I didn't mind playing as him. I quickly burned through all of the third guy's stuff, most of Kiryu's stuff and then did all substories as all 4 characters and now am at the verge of finishing the game, I assume. I ended up liking it quite a bit, but the story kinda seemed convoluted for the sake of convolution even more than normal - it was hard to keep track of all the bad guys since there were like 5 of them that weren't the REAL mastermind and would kill each other off etc. It's definitely a lot better than 3, even if I kinda liked that one's focus on Dad Kiryu.
> 
> I think I might play Outer Worlds before starting Yakuza 5 (the last of these things for me till 7! Well, until Judgment gets reduced in price to 20 bucks). It's a great, great series. But, I think 0 (the first I played) and Kiwami 2 are still the easy pinnacles. I am tempted to replay 6 just so I'll actually know who the character cameos are this time, but I remember the vast majority of that one just being new characters so maybe I won't bother, since it wasn't one of the best of the games anyway.



I own Doom Eternal and not played it yet, but must admit i've been a bit put off by what i've read too. With the ammo thing it sounds like the chainsaw pisses ammo at you again, so you have to use that. I don't like the sound of the platforming either. It sounds like the environments are less "realistic" and gamified. Guess i'll just wait till i'm suddenly in the mood for it.

I love Outer Worlds. I'd suggest playing it on at least "Hard" difficulty. My first game i restarted it because my character got super overpowered very early on in the game, and there was suddenly zero challenge.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> the story kinda seemed convoluted for the sake of convolution even more than normal - it was hard to keep track of all the bad guys since there were like 5 of them that weren't the REAL mastermind and would kill each other off etc. It's definitely a lot better than 3, even if I kinda liked that one's focus on Dad Kiryu.



Yakuza 4 is just a salad of shifting alliances, with everyone betraying each othet so many times it becomes hilarious. I admitted I laughed my ass off inappropriately during the dramatic scenes.  

Kiryu's appearance also feels like an afterthought, like he has the least to do out of the 4 leads, let alone the least interesting in both story and gameplay. He gets the the most hostesses but eh.


----------



## Leviathus

Psyched to play Halo 2 on steam later, it's been so long.


----------



## TedEH

I think I'm remembering why I keep bailing from Bioshock 2. Once you get a few levels into the game, the core loop of the game starts feeling a bit monotonous. Follow waypoint. Shoot big daddy. Defend while collecting adam. Follow waypoint. Shoot big daddy. Maybe fight sister thingie. Collect adam. Follow waypoint. Etc, etc. Most of the locations are hallways connecting arenas. There are certainly some interesting environments, but the moments of any real environmental story telling feel spaced out pretty far. It also feels a bit like the difficulty has spiked right around this time as well.

I think most of my attempts to play the game ended around this point, but I'll continue this time. Maybe it's just a weak segment in an otherwise fine game.


----------



## CerealKiller

Finished Disco Elysium, I don't remember laughing so much for a game before. 

Now either Pathfinder: Kingmaker, or FF XII remake on the Switch. Still have about a month of furlough to kill.


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> I think I'm remembering why I keep bailing from Bioshock 2. Once you get a few levels into the game, the core loop of the game starts feeling a bit monotonous. Follow waypoint. Shoot big daddy. Defend while collecting adam. Follow waypoint. Shoot big daddy. Maybe fight sister thingie. Collect adam. Follow waypoint. Etc, etc. Most of the locations are hallways connecting arenas. There are certainly some interesting environments, but the moments of any real environmental story telling feel spaced out pretty far. It also feels a bit like the difficulty has spiked right around this time as well.
> 
> I think most of my attempts to play the game ended around this point, but I'll continue this time. Maybe it's just a weak segment in an otherwise fine game.



The story is pretty good for 2, like an 8.5-9 out of ten compared to 1’s 10/10. The combat can get same-y if you don’t try various weapon and plasmid combos, etc. but Combat was never really that series strength for me. “Fill the enemy with everything you got while running away” isn’t exactly deep. I’d finish it for the exposition though.


----------



## SamSam

I'm about 55 hours into Three Houses and have to say that buying the Switch was worth it. I haven't played a FE game since the GBA games and I'm loving it!


----------



## TedEH

I could have sworn I've never beaten this game before, but every new level I enter seems weirdly familiar.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

wankerness said:


> I've heard so much about Doom Eternal forcing you to run out of ammo constantly that I have no desire to play it. I hate extreme ammo scarcity (or breaking gear, for a similar problem). I don't like to feel like I can't use the items in a game. It's related to my same tick where I'd almost never use any consumables in any RPGs cause I wanted to save them for when I'd REALLY need them!



Old school RPGs are the worst for that. You hoard all the potions and spells(Baldurs Gate) or chems(Fallout) and rarely if ever use them. The ammo thing is fine once you accept it but it was super frustrating at the start. It also means you need to keep in mind not to kill the zombies in a big arena fight and often find yourself jumping around the arena waiting for your chainsaw to recharge.

I'm trying to decide should I finish my Witcher 3 play through. I finally got to Skellige which is where I wanted to play from originally or do I start Jedi Fallen Order.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Playing the original inFAMOUS trying to get the plat that I abandoned over a decade ago. Almost there. Only got ten more shards to go. Where ever the fuck the are.


----------



## efiltsohg

Kenshi and Noita


----------



## Quiet Coil

Having fun with Bleak Sword on my iPhone. Probably the closest I’ll ever get to playing a Souls game!


----------



## Werecow

I completed D: OS 2 in honor mode . The achievement is now my rarest one, at 0.6% of people having done it according to Steam.

I'm gonna go straight back into a replay of D: OS 1 now


----------



## Kaura

Looks like it has become an annual tradition for me to play through Cod:WaW, MW2 and BO1. Last weekend I finished WaW and started MW2. Planning to finish MW2 this weekend and hopefully get through BO1 too. Sucks that MW1 is still like 20 bucks on Steam and none of the pre-WaW games work on modern operating systems, iirc.


----------



## Ralyks

Looks like I was right about a new Paper Mario. Paper Mario and The Origami King announced for... July? Damn, soon.


----------



## TedEH

My recent sudden interest in Paper Mario I guess is very conveniently timed.


----------



## NotDonVito

Kaura said:


> Looks like it has become an annual tradition for me to play through Cod:WaW, MW2 and BO1. Last weekend I finished WaW and started MW2. Planning to finish MW2 this weekend and hopefully get through BO1 too. Sucks that MW1 is still like 20 bucks on Steam and none of the pre-WaW games work on modern operating systems, iirc.


Call of Duty 2 works but only if you don't run it at anything higher than 800x600


----------



## Kaura

NotDonVito said:


> Call of Duty 2 works but only if you don't run it at anything higher than 800x600



800x600, never again...


----------



## TedEH

I'm glad I stuck with Bioshock 2 through the parts that felt a bit like a slog. Getting close to the end and finally reached some content I've never seen before. The ending is going some places I didn't expect.


----------



## Werecow

Kaura said:


> Looks like it has become an annual tradition for me to play through Cod:WaW, MW2 and BO1. Last weekend I finished WaW and started MW2. Planning to finish MW2 this weekend and hopefully get through BO1 too. Sucks that MW1 is still like 20 bucks on Steam and none of the pre-WaW games work on modern operating systems, iirc.



COD1 & COD2 work absolutely fine for me at 1440P widescreen resolution after a tweak for each.

Follow this for COD1 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=155485238 (had to enter the cg_fov command manually as it wasn't already there).

Follow this guide for COD2 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=492109413 (i only had to untick overlay, copy the Steam .dll files, and change the compatibility to winXP sp3 on my system).

I've just started both up to verify. Both play at 1440P 120hz for me, Windows 10 version 1909, no problems at all (i only play singleplayer though).


----------



## Kaura

Werecow said:


> COD1 & COD2 work absolutely fine for me at 1440P widescreen resolution after a tweak for each.
> 
> Follow this for COD1 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=155485238 (had to enter the cg_fov command manually as it wasn't already there).
> 
> Follow this guide for COD2 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=492109413 (i only had to untick overlay, copy the Steam .dll files, and change the compatibility to winXP sp3 on my system).
> 
> I've just started both up to verify. Both play at 1440P 120hz for me, Windows 10 version 1909, no problems at all (i only play singleplayer though).



Thanks, dude! Sadly, I already went and bought MW1 since I knew it was going to work but I'll try to remember your post if I get into the first two games later.


----------



## Werecow

Kaura said:


> Thanks, dude! Sadly, I already went and bought MW1 since I knew it was going to work but I'll try to remember your post if I get into the first two games later.



No problem.
They're both games i replay every couple of years, so was actually a bit worried they'd become unplayable very recently. But no, they do work after those tweaks


----------



## mongey

Been playing a few rounds of over watch eveynight when the kids go to bed and the wife is busy. Such a fan of the game. 
There are always going to be top tier characters but the game is so balanced for how many characters and play styles it has.


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> Been playing a few rounds of over watch eveynight when the kids go to bed and the wife is busy. Such a fan of the game.
> There are always going to be top tier characters but the game is so balanced for how many characters and play styles it has.



Just picked it up again after a few years and am loving Baptiste. Great for pushing a point with all that throughout.


----------



## Leviathus

Been mosying along in the DS2 DLC's, idk why i do this to myself.


----------



## Ralyks

I started Torment: Tides of Numenara because it was on PS Now and I thought I heard good things. I feel like I’m playing futuristic D&D and not sure I have the attention for it.

I really should get back to P5R.


----------



## TedEH

I started playing this game called Paradigm. It's.... weird. It's not super deep as far as adventure games go, and I could see the humour in it not being to everyone's taste, but there's some good wacky nonsense fun to be had.


----------



## Nicki

Just pre-ordered Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. I have the Gamestop reprint on Wii but never got too far into it. I did play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and enjoyed it so I'm looking forward to this one.

Also, not sure if I had mentioned this already but a friend from work and I went through all of the Halo games on Legendary. Once we accepted that death/restarts were inevitable, it became easier to cope with, but it was far and away the hardest one to get through.


----------



## TedEH

I've started trying to get through Metriod II. I got a copy of the GB cart for $5 from someone not long ago. Interesting to see that the SP and the Gameboy Player for the SNES are colourising the game differently. I expected the game to be kind of a slog because of its age, but it's reasonably solid as long as you find a map or something online. It kills the exploration element unfortunately, but a game that age can only do so much in terms of variety to keep different areas from all looking the same, so it's a choice between exploring forever and getting lost, or making any real progress but losing the sense of exploration.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Playing through Last of Us again to hype myself up for the sequel.


----------



## NotDonVito

KnightBrolaire said:


> Playing through Last of Us again to hype myself up for the sequel.


I guess I'm doing the same, I bought some PS3 lot on ebay months ago(which had TLOU in it), and the USPS center it was stuck at finally decided to drop it off yesterday.


Mathemagician said:


> Just picked it up again after a few years and am loving Baptiste. Great for pushing a point with all that throughout.


I've been playing Bap a lot lately cause I'm sick of playing tank and DPS que is too long for me to bother.


----------



## Kaura

Still going through MW1. Man, even though MW2 campaign had some frustrating moments. The first one is just busting my balls. And I haven't even got to the Mile High Club mission which is supposed to be the most difficult.


----------



## Mathemagician

NotDonVito said:


> BAP



I tank in most MMO’s. I have NO IDEA how to “tank” in this game. However healing? That’s all just spatial awareness baaaayyyybeeee I don’t even gotta know how to aim good or nothin. So that’s me, because there’s always someone more skilled dying to play a ninja or cowboy.

His healing throughput is insane for that short window where all your CD’s line up. Not the best at healing large groups though.


----------



## NotDonVito

Mathemagician said:


> I tank in most MMO’s. I have NO IDEA how to “tank” in this game. However healing? That’s all just spatial awareness baaaayyyybeeee I don’t even gotta know how to aim good or nothin. So that’s me, because there’s always someone more skilled dying to play a ninja or cowboy.
> 
> His healing throughput is insane for that short window where all your CD’s line up. Not the best at healing large groups though.


Funny enough I think you need more aim on baptiste than any other healer. Even Ana's heal has that giant triangle hitbox. Bap grenades have travel time, and the splash effect isn't generous enough IMO. His damage has a lot of recoil too, not easy to hit those shots either.

I honestly think tanking in this game is a practice in nihilism and futility. Most tank games I lose seem to be when I'm try harding on Rein, and the enemy Rein just has better support players. And this is from like 2500 when I first started playing MT, to about 3800 where I peaked like 3 seasons ago. But when I troll around playing dive tanks on 2CP defense, I always win because I'm not so much at the mercy of what my team is doing. Kind of the same reason I hate playing characters like Zen or Pharah, anything that needs to be babysat and/or pocketed constantly isn't for me.


----------



## Mathemagician

I haven’t played in forever, I just remember Zendaya hitting so hard it was basically “a DPS that could also heal”. Playing a melee character like rein just doesn’t work in random games as no one heals you and then you pancake. Also no one follows calls/communicates. I’ve never actually played ranked though, so maybe it gets better there.


----------



## NotDonVito

Mathemagician said:


> I haven’t played in forever, I just remember Zendaya hitting so hard it was basically “a DPS that could also heal”. Playing a melee character like rein just doesn’t work in random games as no one heals you and then you pancake. Also no one follows calls/communicates. I’ve never actually played ranked though, so maybe it gets better there.


Well that used to be the case, but they nerfed Zen's projectile speed back in like 2018. You used to be able to charge a shot and one tap people around corners so fast they couldn't react. Discord was actually nerfed for a long time too(because of GOATS), but they reverted that on yesterday's patch, so he's a little better right now than he has been. Lucio has been the meta off support for the past year or so.


----------



## mongey

NotDonVito said:


> Well that used to be the case, but they nerfed Zen's projectile speed back in like 2018. You used to be able to charge a shot and one tap people around corners so fast they couldn't react. Discord was actually nerfed for a long time too(because of GOATS), but they reverted that on yesterday's patch, so he's a little better right now than he has been. Lucio has been the meta off support for the past year or so.



even though I despise the character design Lucio is the support and has been for ages .


been messing with wrecking ball as a tank , didn't really play him when he dropped, and hes good times. not sure any characters main weapon can shred health as fast


----------



## Mathemagician

NotDonVito said:


> Well that used to be the case, but they nerfed Zen's projectile speed back in like 2018. You used to be able to charge a shot and one tap people around corners so fast they couldn't react. Discord was actually nerfed for a long time too(because of GOATS), but they reverted that on yesterday's patch, so he's a little better right now than he has been. Lucio has been the meta off support for the past year or so.



I love Lucios design, he reminds me about Jet Grind Radio. I remember him feeling faster. He feels slow AF now and that makes him unfun to me. However myself and 3 other teammates were booped into the well on that Greek map by a Lucio and I couldn’t even be mad.


----------



## Leviathus

Overwatch is a lot of fun. Teammates blame-gaming and everyone thinking they're an expert gets annoying after a while though, so much in game whining after round 1 doesn't go so well...


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> I love Lucios design, he reminds me about Jet Grind Radio. I remember him feeling faster. He feels slow AF now and that makes him unfun to me. However myself and 3 other teammates were booped into the well on that Greek map by a Lucio and I couldn’t even be mad.




but roller blades ? never cool


----------



## Mathemagician

You take that back. Roller blades were for those who lived by the skate.


----------



## ferret

Still on the Overwatch train, gotta get those new anniversary skins.


----------



## NotDonVito

Funny enough I actually bought some Corr rollerblades on ebay around the time overwatch came out. I was pretty decent riding them, but man it was embarrassing and seriously uncool to be in the park with those fuckers on! I wish someone would make rollerblades cool again the same way people made skateboarding cool again by going to class on a longboard.


----------



## Mathemagician

NotDonVito said:


> Funny enough I actually bought some Corr rollerblades on ebay around the time overwatch came out. I was pretty decent riding them, but man it was embarrassing and seriously uncool to be in the park with those fuckers on! I wish someone would make rollerblades cool again the same way people made skateboarding cool again by going to class on a longboard.



I’m going to old-man you here and say “do whatever the fuck you want”. It’s fun, it’ll get you in shape and get you legs your partner will like. Who is going to make fun of you? Other dudes? Kids? Whatever brah, I just wanna skate.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still happily playing Trials of Mana, while FF7R stays sorely neglected. Some stray thoughts:

Newcomers should start on Normal, then bump to Hard on NG+. The game is already too easy (the original is still challenging though) which leads to many factors, and full build parties on NG+ suddenly becomes a spreadsheet on who can rank the highest DPS proficiency grid.

The game throws so many healing items at you that healing spells can be classified as redundant at times. Chocolates and Poto Oils can last right up to the post endgame dungeon, so healers just become quality of life luxury. Granted that you could get by in the original without a dedicated healer (stock up Poto Oils), so in this case you're free to try new different class party combinations.

There is absolutely no reason to save your class strikes (super moves). All the perks that raise them, and all the damage you can dish out with them makes it pointless to store. I tweaked all my AI supports to blow through them every chance they get. Plus they all look so damn cool.

I haven't reached the point of changing classes with Kevin as of yet, but in the original, he gets extra Throw style class strikes that do tremendous damage as well as look badass. Looking up on boards, nobody seems to talk about them, so I'm assuming they're not here. A bit of a shame since it's one of Kevin's unique perks outside beat everything up, but it's no real dealbreaker since Kevin becomes a cross between Goku and Kratos with the right buffs it doesn't matter. Also the simplicity of Kevin beating everybody up is already a fun gameplay loop.

My first playthough I was set on who I wanted to use and how to build them. With all the changes, I'm rethinking to the point of overthinking to avoid any redundancy. Currently with Kevin, Charlotte, Hawkeye, I'm set on what to do with the guys (Fatal Fist/Rogue), but Charlotte is interesting. All builds are viable but I'm not sure which will best compliment the team.

In turn, I'm already struggling to think who I'd like as a third member for my Duran/Angela playthrough since that's more open to redundancy over other combos. While redundancy isn't really going to kill your party, it does play majorly to the fun factor of getting high on the DPS grid I suppose. And I've said before, having 2 or 3 members doing the same thing is dumb. After the third play, I'll try out some other different combos I've never got to do in the original right until I get bored or want to play something else, which I feel may take a while.

If Square Enix will add DLC to this, I honestly have no idea what they'll bring out since it's already a complete game, I'm genuinely curious what they'll add, so long as it's gameplay oriented and not pointless cosmetics (hope I didn't jinx it).

I'm basically treating Trials Of Mana as a brawler or a fighting game. 




On a completely different note (or maybe not), I recently watched a Let's Play on the old Alien Vs Predator arcade brawler by Capcom. I didn't realise it before, but that's probably the most deep and comprehensive brawler ever made. Since the walk to the right brawler gameplay loop is so simple and gets repetitive and boring quick, the game remedied that by giving the 4 player characters a ton of different moves and mechanics so you have many unique and cool ways of punching/slashing/shooting a bunch of Aliens and Weyland Yutani grunts. So pretty much similar if not the same reasons I'm really enjoying Trials Of Mana right now.


----------



## mongey

NotDonVito said:


> Funny enough I actually bought some Corr rollerblades on ebay around the time overwatch came out. I was pretty decent riding them, but man it was embarrassing and seriously uncool to be in the park with those fuckers on! I wish someone would make rollerblades cool again the same way people made skateboarding cool again by going to class on a longboard.



rollerblades ...
Cool ..,
Again ?

wait what ? 


Btw sarcastic old skater(Board) dude here. Do whatever you feel and love it.


----------



## wankerness

Burned through The Outer Worlds in 2 days, think I did most of the sidequests and the two main endings. It's an amusing game but definitely reflects its budget with drab, often small environments and the short length. It reminded me a bit of mass effect meets what little I have played of Fallout 3. The combat was kind of samey, even by the standard of something like Skyrim, and it mostly just came down to grinding EXP with quests to get higher dialogue and hack/lockpicking skills. I liked a bunch of the satire. 

On to Yakuza 5!


----------



## wankerness

Oh man, I just started Yakuza 5. This is a HUGE upgrade over 4 in the gameplay and engine departments. I thought 4 and 5 ran on the same engine, but if they do, 5 really took it to a whole new level. I haven't played 0 or Kiwami 1 in a long time now, but this one's insane framerate and much more detailed character models have me thinking it probably looks just about as good. 

Enemies already block too much at the beginning of the game, but I also already got to beat up some punks for threatening an injured dog and a little girl, so this is exactly what I wanted!  I have high hopes for this one, I've seen a few people say it's bloated and the plot is pointless compared to 4, but I've seen several others say it's the most ambitious game in the series and the best in some respects.


----------



## Mathemagician

Moderate FF14 & Kingdom Hearts spoilers.

So playing through kingdom hearts 3 and I just realized that square enix has exactly ONE trope for villains - bad guys who wear black coats and travel through time by killing themselves in some fashion or another. Wow, the Org 13 are basically Ascians from FF14, like it’s painful how much overlap there is. Only KH’s story is nonsensical pseudo-anime-Power of Friendship and FF14 at least tries to keep it cohesive with their big reveals.

Thankfully KH3 is a blast to play and the individual world stories are fun as ever! I vaguely remember KH1 and don’t remember anything About 2, so I’ve been piecing everything that’s happened in all the side games and 2 from all the exposition in 3 and just wow it’s not very fun. Like I got the gist by the second to last world but it was rough. Doesn’t help that the dialogue is watered down.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> So playing through kingdom hearts 3 and I just realized that square enix has exactly ONE trope for villains - bad guys who wear black coats and travel through time by killing themselves in some fashion or another. Wow, the Org 13 are basically Ascians from FF14, like it’s painful how much overlap there is.



That one trope is Tetsuya Nomura's massive fetish, and he's hell bent on putting them on every single game he's involved in. Personally between that and his overdesigned characters, I'm weary of his style, since he really hasn't evolved much.

I won't mention any further without spoiling FF7R, but you may want to hold off on that game for a while...


----------



## Mathemagician

Is Nomura the original lead on FF14 who was kicked off and replaced with Yoshi-P? 

And yeah The worst part is all the KH3 villains have cool hair and weapons and then...that’s it. Just ugly same-y black coats. At least the Ascian’s have cool lore/history to dig into, in KH it just feels like lazy character design/cost cutting. 

And yeah it’s a badass plot idea to be fair but it’s like writing the same book over and over. Maybe if I hadn’t played them so close together and IDK, maybe if it wasn’t verbatim.


----------



## TedEH

Finished Metroid 2 this weekend and decided that it would make sense to move on to Super Metroid, since I've never played that one either. I feel like now that I sort of "get" Metroid, I see why people praise Super so much.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> Is Nomura the original lead on FF14 who was kicked off and replaced with Yoshi-P?
> 
> And yeah The worst part is all the KH3 villains have cool hair and weapons and then...that’s it. Just ugly same-y black coats. At least the Ascian’s have cool lore/history to dig into, in KH it just feels like lazy character design/cost cutting.
> 
> And yeah it’s a badass plot idea to be fair but it’s like writing the same book over and over. Maybe if I hadn’t played them so close together and IDK, maybe if it wasn’t verbatim.



I don't know much about FFXIV so I'm not sure if Yoshi-p did replaced him.

Considering Nomura's claim to fame was designing a ninja in a FF game (which admittedly was cool in the 90s), it's at least nice for him to go back to the simple black design. Certainly better than strapping a ton of belts, or turning Shiva into sisters that scissor each other in to a motorbike for a dude to ride on. But yeah, constantly putting them with the same plotline in everything is too much.


----------



## dr_game0ver

So, just went thru Saints Row 2, 3 and 4. was a good GTA3 style game, unfortunaly it came out on the early days of the PS3 in all it's glory: no colours, terrible driving, runs in negative FPS... 3 was really fun, 4 is what you get when crossing SR3, prototype and Far-Cry Blood Dragon.


----------



## wankerness

Finished the first two chapters in Yakuza 5, and am currently thinking it's about tied with 0 and Kiwami 2. The major minigames are almost on a level with the Cabaret club in 0/2, I loved the racing and hunting storylines. Some of the other random little ones are great, too, with darts and pool being as developed as they are in later games and some other originals like snowball fights being amusing. And the sidequests are a hell of a lot better than 3/4, they're very much of a piece with 0/Kiwami 1/Kiwami 2's. Also, the story is vastly more involving than 4. Great stuff. Now it's time to play as Haruka and do a ton of dance battles, so I might change my mind.

Oh, and the cutscenes are a bit much. I did get quite fed up with how slow the prison break stuff went.


----------



## mongey

Since a cut in one work day a week due to Covid budget cuts for 3 months I actually have some time to okay a gane at home with the wife at work and kids at school or day care. 

after really enjoying 2 play throughs of dark souls on the switch I grabbed dark souls 2 on ps4. Everything I read says it’s the weakest of the series but for $25 can’t hurt to try and get through it.


----------



## Ralyks

dr_game0ver said:


> So, just went thru Saints Row 2, 3 and 4. was a good GTA3 style game, unfortunaly it came out on the early days of the PS3 in all it's glory: no colours, terrible driving, runs in negative FPS... 3 was really fun, 4 is what you get when crossing SR3, prototype and Far-Cry Blood Dragon.



I was actually thinking of grabbing the Remaster of 3 this week. While I didn’t physically playing it myself, sometime after the game came out, I’d get super stoned with two of my buddies who would pass the controller back and forth, laughing our asses off at some of the crazy shit happened... and then it was like 4 in the morning.


----------



## NotDonVito

downloaded iw4x for MW2, it's private servers for MW2 on PC

jesus christ I forgot how broken everything is in that game, but I still had fun. unfortunately the only active US server when I got on was a 24/7 terminal and that got old quick.

i've also been playing through river city girls for my beat em' up fix, although I still need to finish sor4


----------



## Choop

mongey said:


> Since a cut in one work day a week due to Covid budget cuts for 3 months I actually have some time to okay a gane at home with the wife at work and kids at school or day care.
> 
> after really enjoying 2 play throughs of dark souls on the switch I grabbed dark souls 2 on ps4. Everything I read says it’s the weakest of the series but for $25 can’t hurt to try and get through it.



For sure, it's still a really good game--I enjoyed DS2 a good bit. The DLC helped round out that game IMO.

ATM I'm on the old-games kick still, replaying Pokemon Red (just caught the Snorlax and named it "Schnoozy") and started the Halo CE solo campaign on the Master Chief Collection last night. I *had* been playing Street Fighter 4 pretty hard online but lately my internet has been hot dookie. .-.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Ralyks said:


> I was actually thinking of grabbing the Remaster of 3 this week. While I didn’t physically playing it myself, sometime after the game came out, I’d get super stoned with two of my buddies who would pass the controller back and forth, laughing our asses off at some of the crazy shit happened... and then it was like 4 in the morning.


Just pick the original. It's $4 on GOG and run like a charm.


----------



## wankerness

I'm now in the Haruka section of Yakuza 5 and it rules. The rhythm game feels a lot tighter than the dancing in 0, so the difficulty feels more "fair" than the couple of extremely nasty dance battles in 0.


----------



## mongey

Choop said:


> For sure, it's still a really good game--I enjoyed DS2 a good bit. The DLC helped round out that game IMO.
> 
> ATM I'm on the old-games kick still, replaying Pokemon Red (just caught the Snorlax and named it "Schnoozy") and started the Halo CE solo campaign on the Master Chief Collection last night. I *had* been playing Street Fighter 4 pretty hard online but lately my internet has been hot dookie. .-.



yeah Im a few bonfires in and I'm really enjoying it so far 

feels a little easier than the first game , but its still early days


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> yeah Im a few bonfires in and I'm really enjoying it so far
> 
> feels a little easier than the first game , but its still early days


it is definitely not easier than the first. just wait.


----------



## wankerness

I picked up Windwaker HD a couple weeks ago to introduce my girlfriend to the Zelda series, as the only other one I have on a modern system is the new one, which I dislike and is probably too hard for a total videogame noob. This game frickin holds up. I last played it in about 2004, but I don't see too much in the way of changes apart from the obvious HD graphics. The visuals really hold up compared to the awful-looking N64 entries, or I'd probably even argue the subsequent technically superior Twilight Princess (I haven't played the other Wii one). It's so stylized and colorful that it hasn't really aged. I remember seeing that first teaser footage long before release with this character design and thinking WTF THAT LOOKS LIKE TRASH, yet here I am praising it decades later. 

Anyway, we just got through the first bunch of dungeons, last one being the one where you fight phantom ganon and save your sister, and have just been bumming around filling in all the map squares and getting all the stuff like the strength gloves and the fire arrows and the fairy upgrades. great game


----------



## TedEH

^ How is it faring as a game for non-gamers? I've always found it insanely difficult to get a newcomer to sort of understand the language of games, for lack of a better way to put it. I've heard games like Portal are great for this.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> ^ How is it faring as a game for non-gamers? I've always found it insanely difficult to get a newcomer to sort of understand the language of games, for lack of a better way to put it. I've heard games like Portal are great for this.



I dunno. She’d played Mario Kart for Switch and some assorted mobile/DS games like some Sims port and some old LEGO game before, so she wasn’t totally ignorant of concepts, but she’d never really played anything seriously before.

We started with Mario Odyssey, with her controlling Mario (and it on easy mode with the helper trails and with me doing all the hat throwing, which trivialized a couple bosses like that darn puking rabbit). That got her accustomed to things I took for granted and sort of forgot I ever had to learn, like tricks that seem obvious to anyone who’s played platformers now but certainly aren’t explained by the game, like “if you have to walk on a narrow ledge or line up jumps it’s a hell of a lot easier if you put the camera straight behind you.” Mario Odyssey is also an incredibly good game for beginners in that it throws a ton of mechanics at you in easy-to-learn ways, with all the various creatures you control that almost all have some weird gimmick that you have to use to solve puzzles or defeat bosses.

Zelda was definitely a big step up, and the first couple bosses just stressed her out and made her throw the controller at me before they killed her, but she definitely has adjusted to it (she dealt with a few huge gauntlet sections and the last few bosses, though I definitely had to give her some advice here and there since the game doesn’t always tell you, ex how you have to hit fireballs back at Ganon with your sword). 

it’s good for teaching basic rpg mechanics like inventory management and gradual “leveling up” with heart pieces and item acquisition, and it’s a lot less forgiving than Mario if you don’t know tricks like keeping fairies in bottles, etc. She got right into the exploration and the windwaker stuff, and the various “side quests” in towns, etc. the combat is definitely harder than most everything Mario Odyssey throws at you, but still easy enough she wants to keep playing.

I dunno, it’s cool to see. I’m trying to not be a backseat driver, but there are definitely things that jump out at me as not being able to be figured out without getting injured/killed a lot for gaming noobs, like how different enemies require different weapons or sometimes a combo of them, or how if you’re locked on the grappling hook/bow/etc behave totally differently (she was manually aiming at everything which can get very hairy, especially if you have the bow bound to any button other than R - though the gyro aiming in the port makes that way less of an issue).


----------



## TedEH

That's cool that it sounds like she's actually getting into it -> I've always found it really hard to convince "non-gamers" to give any game a serious shot. There's so much design language that just doesn't connect if you're not looking for it.


----------



## NotDonVito

Non-Japanese version of PSO2 PC released the other day. I'm bust af right now, but I'm planning to grind this game hard.

edit: my XBL name is HelloKinky(i think with 2 capitol I's in place of the ll's)


----------



## TedEH

Finished Super Metroid last night. I imagine it would have taken a lot longer to get through without the availability of save states - but I tried not to use them much.

Time to pick a new game again - Oracle of Ages is still on the list. Now that I've been in the Metroidvania kinda mood, there's a few along those lines that would be worth trying - Axium Verge, Hollow Knight, etc. I also ended up with a copy of XIII, which could be a change of pace. I have too many unplayed games. I forget which ones I listed last time.


----------



## TedEH

I wonder how much more time I've spent playing games because of the whole stay-at-home thing. Since leaving the office I've gone though all of the Dishonored series, two Metroid games, Paper Mario, HL:Alyx, Paradigm, Bioshock 2, got about half way through Perfect Dark again (didn't bother finishing it cause I've done it so many times), got something like 18 levels through Doom 64, and I'm probably forgetting something.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> Finished Super Metroid last night. I imagine it would have taken a lot longer to get through without the availability of save states - but I tried not to use them much.
> 
> Time to pick a new game again - Oracle of Ages is still on the list. Now that I've been in the Metroidvania kinda mood, there's a few along those lines that would be worth trying - Axium Verge, Hollow Knight, etc. I also ended up with a copy of XIII, which could be a change of pace. I have too many unplayed games. I forget which ones I listed last time.


I wanna try Hollow Knight again. I got stuck at Hornet and after about a dozen attempts I gave up for the night and haven't tried again. Much more difficult than Bloodstained which I was just coming off of.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Speaking of Bloodstained...

I forgot the game promised a Richter/Zangetsu mode. And it's sneaky how unlocking it was implemented. Get the update, then kill the final boss again for the good ending. THEN start a new game and Zangetsu mode is playable. The news, nor the game itself doesn't even bother to tell you that you had to do that. Even dumber for me was that I tried that the first time but the PS update didn't enable and the ending didn't show the completely unsubtle hint that it worked. So I shut down, reset, saw the update and killed the final boss twice. No biggie I suppose since with my current Miriam build, the boss died in 30 seconds.  But still...

As for the actual Zangetsu mode, yeah, it's Richter mode all over again. Much more streamlined, no NPCs, and no plot. You do level up though and you can items to max HP and MP, but no equipment. It plays similar to Strider 2014 with sword hacking, kunai throwing; both have additional Neapolitan ice cream style buffs (fire/ice/lightning), hookshot and specials. Best of all, Zangetsu gets Alucard's moonwalk. 

What I don't like is the hookshot assigned to the right analog stick, since shooting them in the angle you want feels so arbitrary. Minor quibble I suppose. I'm already lost on where to go, since Miriam's story style at least has some linearity, here you're free to go wherever you want, with some tricky jumps/hookshooting to get to certain bits. 

It is fun playing Bloodstained again, even in it's much more shallow mode. Still it's a fun challenge and always nice to be back in the world of not quite Castlevania monsters holding their fingers under their noses faux mustache style again.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm, I didn't hear about any of that Bloodstained update stuff. I found much of the fun of that game being the equipment and spell variety, so I dunno if I'd enjoy that so much. I did like Richter mode in SOTN except when fighting frickin Galamoth (sit on a ledge and mash attack for literally 15 minutes). Maybe I'll at least take a look.

Since coronavirus hit in the US, I've been living with someone, so I'm not wasting as much time on games as I might without having to pay attention to anyone else. However, I still managed to burn through Days Gone, Yakuza 3 (started it a really long time ago, but didn't finish it till more recently), 4, working on 5, and Outer Worlds, the Control DLC, along with TONS of time on Borderlands 3 when I got briefly into it. And then the stuff I've been playing with the woman, like Mario Odyssey, Mario Kart for Switch, Cat Quest II (this is a fun coop indie game), Zelda Windwaker HD, and just started Lego Harry Potter.  

When I'm done with Yakuza 5 in a week or so, I might try out Resident Evil 2 and/or Prey, two games that might stress me out too much. I might also do AC: Black Flag, since I'm kind of in a pirate mood.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Finished Super Metroid last night. I imagine it would have taken a lot longer to get through without the availability of save states - but I tried not to use them much.
> 
> Time to pick a new game again - Oracle of Ages is still on the list. Now that I've been in the Metroidvania kinda mood, there's a few along those lines that would be worth trying - Axium Verge, Hollow Knight, etc. I also ended up with a copy of XIII, which could be a change of pace. I have too many unplayed games. I forget which ones I listed last time.


Metroid Fusion is the best 2D Metroid, but also play Hollow Knight. Oracles are the top of my "please remake these so I don't have to dig out my GameBoy" list now that Link's Awakening remake is out.


----------



## TedEH

I've got Oracle on the 2DS, so that's pretty low friction in terms of how to play it. I still like the 3DS/2DS. Fusion, I currently don't have a copy of. In terms of Metroid titles, I've got 2, super, and Samus Returns - all of which I've finished within the last year or so. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out for the GBA entries, since I've heard good things - but prices aren't likely to be great and I generally don't do emulation anymore (outside of legitimate copies like the Virtual Console etc).

Hollow Knight however, I do have a copy of, and I've not played it yet.


----------



## TedEH

Would be cool to get ahold of one of those consolizer kits or a GameboyPlayer though. Expensive, but IMO the GBA looks good enough to justify having it on a TV.


----------



## mongey

BlackMastodon said:


> I wanna try Hollow Knight again. I got stuck at Hornet and after about a dozen attempts I gave up for the night and haven't tried again. Much more difficult than Bloodstained which I was just coming off of.


It’s a great game. You just gotta push through. I rage uninstalled it during my play trough. But came back a week later.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> Would be cool to get ahold of one of those consolizer kits or a GameboyPlayer though. Expensive, but IMO the GBA looks good enough to justify having it on a TV.



Still an expensive option, but if you have a Gamecube there is the GBA player for that! Can do GB/GBC/GBA through the Gamecube on a TV. I've always wanted one, but my handheld collection isn't too large, and the player is around 100-120 USD a lot of the time. GBA carts especially have really taken off in price. :C


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still committed to Zangetsu mode on Bloodstained ROTN.



Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm already lost on where to go, since Miriam's story style at least has some linearity, here you're free to go wherever you want, with some tricky jumps/hookshooting to get to certain bits.



So I found out that Zangetsu's uppercut slash can be chained so that lets me access a ton of the high upper areas much earlier. This was a game changing revelation to me since I was getting slightly annoyed with the grappling mechanics. 75% of the map done and up to making my way to the northwestern weaboo part. 

There is one annoying part in Livre Ex Machina (library) area where adding a Max HP power up in a room that's completely unobtainable for Zangetsu. I died a few times trying get it only realising it's a design oversight.


----------



## TedEH

Choop said:


> if you have a Gamecube there is the GBA player for that!


I don't have a gamecube either, so that would end up costing as much, or more, than one of those consolizer kits, as well as still limiting the output options. I've been legit considering one of those kits - I think they need an original GBA to be sacrificed though.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> Still an expensive option, but if you have a Gamecube there is the GBA player for that! Can do GB/GBC/GBA through the Gamecube on a TV. I've always wanted one, but my handheld collection isn't too large, and the player is around 100-120 USD a lot of the time. GBA carts especially have really taken off in price. :C



Huh. I've never heard of that thing before. I do have a handful of GBC and GBA games (currently use a DS lite for the GBA games, and dunno if my GBC even works). I dunno if I care 59 dollars worth to get them on the TV, though.

I got Metroid Fusion off ebay and it was a bootleg that the save function doesn't work on. So, if I want to beat it in one sitting, I can do that! Obviously that destroyed all my will to play it pretty quick.


----------



## TedEH

The trick with the Gamecube player is that you need a disk to boot it, and most people have lost the disk - so the price of them is reflects the rarity. Otherwise I'd have grabbed one by now.


----------



## Choop

Lately I've been buying up old PS3 games that I've never played, and picked up 3D Dot Game Heroes. Anybody ever played it? I haven't yet--hopefully I will have time to today. It looks to be just a classic Zelda ripoff with neat blocky 3D graphics.


----------



## C_Henderson

BlackMastodon said:


> I wanna try Hollow Knight again. I got stuck at Hornet and after about a dozen attempts I gave up for the night and haven't tried again. Much more difficult than Bloodstained which I was just coming off of.



I finally got to play it last month for the first time (I know, too late...) and wow, saying it's good would be an understatement. I'm totally hooked, I haven't found a metroidvania this good basically since SotN. And objectively speaking, purely from a player's perspective it is the best.
It has some really tough parts for sure, but all the years of playing games of this genre and souls-like are paying off. Cleared the third Pantheon yesterday, just the last two left for 112%.


----------



## TedEH

I ended up starting Hollow Knight a couple o days ago. Actually just did the fight with with Hornet, and it definitely took a few attempts.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just started Witcher 3. 2015 here I come.


----------



## C_Henderson

TedEH said:


> I ended up starting Hollow Knight a couple o days ago. Actually just did the fight with with Hornet, and it definitely took a few attempts.


They did a fantastic job with that fight IMO. When you're getting started it feels a bit tough but never unfair, and it works great for teaching you when to dodge, attack, jump... In fact I feel like the difficulty curve is perfectly adjusted all throughout the game... right until the very end and the DLC's, where all semblance of fairness goes right out the window


----------



## Tenaba

C_Henderson said:


> They did a fantastic job with that fight IMO. When you're getting started it feels a bit tough but never unfair, and it works great for teaching you when to dodge, attack, jump... In fact I feel like the difficulty curve is perfectly adjusted all throughout the game... right until the very end and the DLC's, where all semblance of fairness goes right out the window



I recently finished Hollow Knight and agree on the difficulty curve, it feels perfectly paced from start to completion. I last tried to complete the Grimm Troupe DLC, but I can't even beat Nightmare King Grimm. Apparently there's a Godmaster DLC where the fight is even more difficult, I don't think I'd be able to do it.

But I love the atmosphere of the game, and the music as well.


----------



## TedEH

My only complaint about Hollow Knight so far is that it feels a bit aimless, and I tend to get lost for longer than I'd like to on occasion, although I imagine some would think of this as a feature more than a bug, so to speak. Having just finished Super Metroid, there was never a point in that one where I stopped and went "what am I doing exactly?" Sometimes I couldn't find whatever my goal was, but the goal never felt arbitrary. 

The characters in this game all speak in a vague "there's a mystery to unfold" speak, so I actually have no idea what my character is trying to do, other than just explore stuff and eventually reach the end. Maybe they stated it in the beginning and I've forgotten because there's not really a "plot" happening. Mechanically, the game is fine - arguably very good - but there's less "story" than I expected. Lots of character, but character is not story. I think people confuse these pretty easily.


----------



## mongey

Cardbird said:


> I recently finished Hollow Knight and agree on the difficulty curve, it feels perfectly paced from start to completion. I last tried to complete the Grimm Troupe DLC, but I can't even beat Nightmare King Grimm. Apparently there's a Godmaster DLC where the fight is even more difficult, I don't think I'd be able to do it.
> 
> But I love the atmosphere of the game, and the music as well.


I was the same with Grimm. By the time I got to it I was happy to step away and come back for another try later, but never did 

I agree with everyone on the difficutly curve . Its fair but butal

at least with dark souls you can grind levels and get overpowered


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> My only complaint about Hollow Knight so far is that it feels a bit aimless, and I tend to get lost for longer than I'd like to on occasion, although I imagine some would think of this as a feature more than a bug, so to speak. Having just finished Super Metroid, there was never a point in that one where I stopped and went "what am I doing exactly?" Sometimes I couldn't find whatever my goal was, but the goal never felt arbitrary.
> 
> The characters in this game all speak in a vague "there's a mystery to unfold" speak, so I actually have no idea what my character is trying to do, other than just explore stuff and eventually reach the end. Maybe they stated it in the beginning and I've forgotten because there's not really a "plot" happening. Mechanically, the game is fine - arguably very good - but there's less "story" than I expected. Lots of character, but character is not story. I think people confuse these pretty easily.



Hollow Knight is using the same show don't tell story telling method as Dark Souls. Very little exposition given, instead told via suggestion through the environment explored. You learn more of the world lore the deeper you play and you piece everything together yourself as you reach the end.

It makes sense when Dark Souls in essence is a Metroidvania game, some consider the best 3D Metroidvania game available (certainly better than any 3D Castlevania game anyway), and Hollow Knight apes DS heavily.

I guess with Super Metroid, the plot was as simple and told right in the prologue, so the main motive remained strong and clear no matter how deep you go within Zebes. Also helps that Samus is an established character. Dark Souls and Hollow Knight doesn't have that clear intention instead throwing you the player into a world and piecing what the hell is going on is for you to find out yourself.

I appreciate both kinds of story telling since gameplay is still taking center stage.


----------



## C_Henderson

Cardbird said:


> I recently finished Hollow Knight and agree on the difficulty curve, it feels perfectly paced from start to completion. I last tried to complete the Grimm Troupe DLC, but I can't even beat Nightmare King Grimm. Apparently there's a Godmaster DLC where the fight is even more difficult, I don't think I'd be able to do it.
> 
> But I love the atmosphere of the game, and the music as well.



Yeah Nightmare King Grimm is one of the hardest bosses by far. It took me a while to beat him but now he's become my favourite boss, it's just so much fun. I'd recommend you to take a few tries just to learn how to read and dodge his attacks before even trying to deal damage, it helps a lot. I used Sharp Shadow + Unbreakable Strength + Longnail + Soul Catcher (+ Grimmchild of course)

I'm currently doing the Godmaster DLC and that's where shit really hits the fan. It's basically like an enhanced boss rush area on steroids. The first two pantheons are fine enough, the third one was really hard but I managed to do it... the fourth one I'm still struggling but I'm sure I'll be able to beat it eventually. But the last one is just insane, I'll try it out but I won't hold my breath trying to beat it.



TedEH said:


> My only complaint about Hollow Knight so far is that it feels a bit aimless, and I tend to get lost for longer than I'd like to on occasion, although I imagine some would think of this as a feature more than a bug, so to speak. Having just finished Super Metroid, there was never a point in that one where I stopped and went "what am I doing exactly?" Sometimes I couldn't find whatever my goal was, but the goal never felt arbitrary.
> 
> The characters in this game all speak in a vague "there's a mystery to unfold" speak, so I actually have no idea what my character is trying to do, other than just explore stuff and eventually reach the end. Maybe they stated it in the beginning and I've forgotten because there's not really a "plot" happening. Mechanically, the game is fine - arguably very good - but there's less "story" than I expected. Lots of character, but character is not story. I think people confuse these pretty easily.



Don't worry, everything will start to make sense soon enough. The storytelling is similar to Dark Souls, it's a bit cryptic but there's an excellent story behind and everything makes sense in the end. It's normal to get a bit lost though, that was part of the fun for me. It's done on purpose because once you reach a certain point there are many different ways you can reach other areas, so you can keep on exploring as you see fit and never get stuck.


----------



## TedEH

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for environmental storytelling. I do think that "cryptic" isn't a good thing for stories most of the time though. Open to interpretation? Sure. Having major driving motivations be intentionally vague though? I'm not so sure that's a great idea. Getting lost I think is a perfectly valid mechanical feature of this kind of game, although it risks player frustration. Getting lost narratively is a bit of a different risk though. If I'm lost, but I have a clear motivation to find my way, then I'm naturally driven to keep searching - and whatever the motivation is can serve as a hint to where you need to search. But if I'm lost AND unmotivated because I don't know what my character wants, then what's driving me to come back to a game the next day to keep playing?

I'm being very critical about a very minor thing though - the game so far is good. I just think this style of storytelling is not as strong as other examples I've more recently played - which is notable because of how talked-up the narrative of this game is. I'm open to changing my mind as the game continues. We'll see.

For all the talking people do about Dark Souls, I've never played it. Some part of me thinks I should, but at the same time.... it sounds very unappealing as a game, and I'm not sure why.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> For all the talking people do about Dark Souls, I've never played it. Some part of me thinks I should, but at the same time.... it sounds very unappealing as a game, and I'm not sure why.



I played (and finished) Demon's Souls a few years ago. I liked it: graphics, atmosphere, cryptic (environmental?) storytelling, replayability... but I also found it *very* tiring. They are pretty demanding games, and I don't know if I can or want to spend so much time and attention with a game, unless I find it very very appealing.

So even when I have Dark Souls I / II in my backlog, I don't think I'll ever play them.

I think I like more *the idea* of these games than playing them.


----------



## MFB

TedEH said:


> My only complaint about Hollow Knight so far is that it feels a bit aimless, and I tend to get lost for longer than I'd like to on occasion, although I imagine some would think of this as a feature more than a bug, so to speak. Having just finished Super Metroid, there was never a point in that one where I stopped and went "what am I doing exactly?" Sometimes I couldn't find whatever my goal was, but the goal never felt arbitrary.
> 
> The characters in this game all speak in a vague "there's a mystery to unfold" speak, so I actually have no idea what my character is trying to do, other than just explore stuff and eventually reach the end. Maybe they stated it in the beginning and I've forgotten because there's not really a "plot" happening. Mechanically, the game is fine - arguably very good - but there's less "story" than I expected. Lots of character, but character is not story. I think people confuse these pretty easily.



You just expressed my biggest issue with Hollow Knight, mechanically it works, and because of that I'd love to have finished it; but I have zero clue what's going on and why I should care about any of this. It's like they gave us an onion and want us to peel back the layers, but if we're just ho-hum on onions in the first place, it's not that appealing to do all the work for something you're not 100% in on.


----------



## gabito

I'm playing "UNCHARTED: The Nathan Drake Collection" - which I got a few months ago on sale- to pass the time until TLoU Part II is finally released a few weeks from now (I hope).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> For all the talking people do about Dark Souls, I've never played it. Some part of me thinks I should, but at the same time.... it sounds very unappealing as a game, and I'm not sure why.



The biggest flaw of the Soulsbourne series is the first impressions are really off putting. Both in terms of presentation, and the smug 'git gud' community that say "It's awesome! You should play it but oh we can't tell you why, you should find out for yourself!" You get thrown into a decrepit world with whatever character you make and figure out what to do and die a lot trying. 

It also takes a while to actually get going into the groove of things. Controls are clanky, the difficulty curve is tough (you will die a lot), and the cryptic lore at first is uninteresting especially when you're dying a lot. Somewhere by the third boss (if you haven't given up) when you start feeling like you 'get' the Souls games, and the game really opens up. 

I suck hard at Souls games. Even Salt And Sanctuary (aka 2D Dark Souls), I'm pretty horrible at, but I do love playing them now and then. Though I completely understand how off putting it can be for many when playing for the first time.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Speaking of sucking at Metroidvania games...

I might just throw the towel at the final boss with Zangetsu Mode on Bloodstained. Got the full map, and I knew it was going to get tough since the curve gets nasty somewhere 2/3ds into it. But despite getting decent and double jumping, moon walking, dodging, stomping, kunai spamming a la Strider 2014, I'm just not cut out for the boss. Namely because I can't completely cheese the battle.  

And much like the Richter and Julius modes from it's spiritual predecessors, I really start missing Miriam and all her perks. I played my old save file again and recently found the Valkyrie Sword, which comes with a hidden move but I'm so used to Rhava Velar. 

I should try Miriam in Boss Rush mode. There's also a Randomiser mode added with Zangetsu, though I appreciate the feature, I can't see the appeal for myself to play through it.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I finished DOOM64 recently. I’d never played it before but this is a game I would have loved as a kid. It nails DOOMs claustrophobic feel where you are afraid of what’s around the corner and need to get out of a level after spending too long in it. Level design is very cool and what they did with the limited resources available. Sprites are mostly good but some were obviously rushed. Guns are very satisfying to shoot. So many modern games fall completely flat here with how lifeless the guns feel. The puzzle elements are one of its biggest strength, reminding me of Hexen and the levels collapsing into new areas is very Duke Nukem. Soundtrack is it’s biggest weakness. It’s 5e on Xbox marketplace. Well worth checking out.


----------



## wankerness

Doom 64's biggest weakness was that it was on a tiny N64 cart. As a result, the animation frame count is lower than even the older PC versions and it looks really herky-jerky, when the actual sprites look a lot better than the classic ones. The music might be a victim of the same thing. I do remember it having really creepy ambient stuff with crying babies and stuff, though, which definitely gave it a different feel than the much less oppressive PC ones. 

If they had the original artwork for Doom 64 somewhere and redid the animations to not be compressed into 16 megabytes or whatever that would be awesome. I am guessing the ports didn't do anything that drastic.


----------



## Ralyks

Every time I've tried to pick up a game in the past week or two, I feel like I don't get far before just putting it down. I've made some progress in Persona 5 Royal, but still remain in the second palace. Sad, considering how much I fucking love the original P5.

Also, I feel like I'm just complacent, gaming-wise, until Last of Us Part II comes out.


----------



## TedEH

I've only ever played the Switch port of Doom 64, and I think it's solid. It definitely still gets some things right that modern games don't. 100% agreed about the importance of the weapon feel. Compare that to Doom 3 - I find the weapons in 3 don't feel very satisfying in comparison to just about any other doom game.


----------



## mongey

Couple bosses into dark souls 2 and am enjoying it. Don’t love the humanity mechanic where you lose overall health every time you die. Also warping back every time you want to level up is annoying. 
But all in all it’s worth playing.


----------



## Choop

mongey said:


> Couple bosses into dark souls 2 and am enjoying it. Don’t love the humanity mechanic where you lose overall health every time you die. Also warping back every time you want to level up is annoying.
> But all in all it’s worth playing.



Hah, yeahhhh, that health mechanic was really dumb--I guess the developers realized it, too, because they didn't implement that again into Dark Souls 3 lol.

Just finished Halo: CE in the Master Chief collection--it's probably been like 15 years or something since I played through it. Thinking about hopping into Hollow Knight with all of this talk here about it!


----------



## BlackMastodon

EA sale on Steam so I picked up Dragon Age: Origins. This will be my first time playing a DA game and I've heard this one is the best one if not one of (haven't heard good things about the PC port for DA2).

Hoping I'll dive deeper into this one than I did Divinity: Original Sin. That one just felt a little overwhelming and I've left it alone after playing it for a couple days. But it is a BioWare game so I think I'll love it.


----------



## mongey

BlackMastodon said:


> EA sale on Steam so I picked up Dragon Age: Origins. This will be my first time playing a DA game and I've heard this one is the best one if not one of (haven't heard good things about the PC port for DA2).
> 
> Hoping I'll dive deeper into this one than I did Divinity: Original Sin. That one just felt a little overwhelming and I've left it alone after playing it for a couple days. But it is a BioWare game so I think I'll love it.



I had the same experience with divinity Orignal sin

I just didnt it get it. Way too complicated.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

BlackMastodon said:


> EA sale on Steam so I picked up Dragon Age: Origins. This will be my first time playing a DA game and I've heard this one is the best one if not one of (haven't heard good things about the PC port for DA2).



While I can't speak for the PC version of DA2, the game its self isn't much to write home about. Alot of recycled areas, the companions are kinda bland, and I experienced a few quest breaking bugs myself when the game came out.

Inquisition is what 2 should have been and I'd say to just skip to it, but as with the Mass Effect series there is some carry over between game if you have saves from the previous titles. Although there is (or was, it may been taken down) a site you can go to and make a timeline of events to import into Inquisition if you have a Bioware account.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I think BioWare did that for both ME2 and ME3 so I wouldn't be surprised. I'll see how invested I get with DA:O and maybe pick up 2 on sale at some point. There's also EA DRM even on the Steam version according to some of the negative Steam reviews, which is a little annoying, but I already have an EA Origin account so if it's just signing in through that then it's no skin off my back.


----------



## wankerness

DA2 is better in some regards as it feels like it has less filler and the characters are pretty vibrant. The location reusing isn't as egregious as some like to make out, as the story is much more personal and lower scale so it makes sense. I like the game quite a bit and think the gameplay's vastly better than 1 - the abilities are actually fun to use! I like 3 and have played through the game proper 3 times and most of the DLC once, but i think it's a bit bloated with pointless sidequests (feels like a bad MMO at times, both with crappy gathering quests, boring collection items everywhere, and especially the terrible "set your troops to achieve a goal that takes 8+ hours") and has some zones that are just useless and bland and feel like padding to be able to say they had a lot of locations. Still, pretty good game.


----------



## TedEH

I tried to play one of the Dragon Age games (Inquisition I think?) and gave up a good part of the way through, 'cause it was way too lore heavy and I had no idea what was going on. The game wasn't interesting enough mechanically for me to want to dig through everything I was missing. I think it's probably a great game/series for people who like that level of depth, but it wasn't for me.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> I tried to play one of the Dragon Age games (Inquisition I think?) and gave up a good part of the way through, 'cause it was way too lore heavy and I had no idea what was going on. The game wasn't interesting enough mechanically for me to want to dig through everything I was missing. I think it's probably a great game/series for people who like that level of depth, but it wasn't for me.



It'd probably be better to start with Origins IMO, that way you get a fresh take on the lore and world, even if it isn't absolutely required to have played Origins to be able to play Inquisition.


----------



## TedEH

It sort of felt required at the time. I had no context for any of what I was doing. I know I'm not much for deep game lore in the first place, but yeah, starting at the beginning probably would have helped.


----------



## wankerness

I don't think Origins is necessary. I played 2 first and didn't feel any more lost than I would have otherwise. There are definitely references to things in the first one, but most of them aren't really given much explanation there, either, and there isn't really a plot continuation. 

Come to think of it, I don't think I ever finished Origins. I lost interest pretty late in it. I just hated the combat SO much. It was way more tactical than the more arcadey 2 and 3, but it was so frickin clunky and annoying. And the fight patterns all had to go the same. Cast lockdown with one character on the most dangerous enemy, everyone attack a different one, rinse/repeat. And god forbid any of the fights require character placement - it was even worse than FF12 in that regard.


----------



## NotDonVito

I've been grinding valorant for the past week and i can't decide if it's going to tilt me or if it's going to be fun.


----------



## AxRookie

mark520 said:


> What game are you playing? whatever platform. Post a screenshot of yours (if possible).Just starting up Final Fantasy XII and I have a feeling I am in for quite a lengthy game. It's actually quite good so far, far from what I would have expected even.


Only and always Tempest 4000!!! I've been #1 on the PC world leader board in all three modes of play for over a year!

It helps that I've built my own custom rotary controller just for playing Tempest 4000...


----------



## spudmunkey

Holy crap...that's impressive. Amy pics of the controller?


----------



## AxRookie

It's not very impressive looking as it's made out of a wooden coffee table box for easy adding of different elements to it or changing things around which I have done a few times...

This is the very first incarnation of it...














But I needed to add some way of steering up/down and left/right for points between levels and some bonus rounds where you can get BIG points flying through rings so I first tried a "hat" switch I dissected from an old gaming joystick...





But it wasn't precise enough so I tried making it into a micro joystick...





Which worked great while it lasted but it broke down with no way to repair it so I tried making other micro joysticks, some digital, some analog...











But nothing I could make myself was as good as the first one that broke down, so I went looking into industrial "hat" switches and I found "Ruffy Controls" who made the perfect industrial grade hat switch that didn't cost over a hundred dollars!!!





And that's where my custom controller is now, there is more to it than can be seen in those pictures like foam wedges on the bottom that make it sit up on one leg at an angle so I can comfortably use it for hours... 

I've never been #1 in the WORLD at anything before but now I've been #1 in the world at something for over a year and I don't see that changing any time soon... Cross my fingers...


----------



## wankerness

Finished Yakuza 5!!!

Some things about it are actually better than the subsequent games - healing after the frickin coliseum is #1 by ten miles. It was an absolute nightmare in 0, where if you lost a match, it started you outside the coliseum, and if you didn't have any health drinks, you had to LIMP the entire way back above ground to find somewhere to heal while hoping you didn’t get jumped by a pack of guys that would kill you in one hit. The food system actually has a point here, unlike 4, 0 and Kiwami 1. There are more locations than in the other games. The graphics are better than what I remember in 0, arguably. Combat seems a bit easier, mostly due to Komaki’s Tiger Drop being the most overpowered in this game besides maybe Kiwami 1 (seriously, you can take a boss’s entire lifebar off with one, even when a full heat move does about 1/4 of a single lifebar). The difficulty in general seems lower, but maybe it’s cause I’ve been playing too many of these games recently. I think the Tiger Drop being able to kill final bosses in ~20 seconds as both Kiryu and Saejima definitely made things easy, though. Oh, and the rhythm stuff actually seems properly syncd, which was a gigantic issue with the dancing in 0 and the Karaoke in, well, all of them. Not sure if it’s something with port optimization, but it was a very welcome change from having to sort of fudge everything since the visuals/button presses didn’t sync to the audio in 0.


Shinada is absolutely terrible, and Akiyama isn’t much better. It’s not that they aren’t fun to play as, but you have a gigantic disadvantage if you play as either one of them as compared to Kiryu or Saejima. Especially Shinada.

Worst gameplay mechanic is probably how long knockdowns last. I think half of the average fight in which I was trying to do anything other than stomp guys into the dirt as fast as possible consisted of waiting for enemies to get back up again. Made doubly annoying when you have characters like Shinada who get big bonuses for killing guys with weapons, and you can’t hit them with a weapon while they’re down unless you attack at exactly the right angle, and every time you hit them they fall down again! Grinding weapon levels was terrible.

IF8R - the sidescrolling is AWFUL, with enemies constantly getting pushed off the screen by your normal attacks and then hitting you when they’re out of range and sight. Plus, the removal of most mechanics means Shinada is less than half as effective as all the other characters, since the end of his regular combo attack (the tackle) gets removed and thus everything he has is blockable and mostly low damage. Fortunately it’s still easy. The flashback battles are not nearly as awful as they could have been, since you can just charge up your climax heat for the first one and use it every single attempt.

The plot - it is definitely the best apart from maybe 0. The character threads are complex, but go together much more satisfyingly than 4. And the focus on Kiryu/Haruka again is great, as that’s one of the best parts of the series and Kiwami 1 is the only other one that really spends time on it. Kind of makes me less annoyed about 6’s terrible job with it, as at least this game is there for an actual satisfying plot. Shinada is sort of an annoying distraction at times, and if they were going to prune anything, he definitely could have been, but he’s not that bad plotwise (except for the lengthy baseball ending to his chapter), just gameplaywise. The finale is great, and I like that almost all the twists and ridiculousness actually involve characters we care about for a change (Daigo, Majima, etc). Usually it’s all with some villains/side characters we have never seen in a previous game and never will again. There’s an ultimate villain that you don’t care about, but it ends up with an adorable coda that doesn’t involve him. It’s the best outside of the terrible tragedy in that Majima ending in 0 (which was probably more effective for me having never played any of these games before it, cause I didn’t know what was coming). 

The length - it’s ridiculous. I spent over 100 hours on it before I finished it (106 was the total on the ending screen - ack!!), I only had 53.24% completion according to the ending screen, and only had like 66% of the trophies. Afterwards, I spent a few hours grinding (mostly weapon skills for Amon and then everyone to level 23ish) and doing the remaining bunch of Haruka’s side story and then fought all 5 Amons. I think I’m done with what I wanted to do, though there are still a bunch of trophies left!

Amon was a frickin’ asshole. I killed the first four of them with no issues and no healing items apart from Parasol attack section on normal, and then proceeded to get destroyed by the final Kiryu version twice in a row, switched to easy, STILL got destroyed, and then eeked out a victory barely on attempt #4. I made a critical error not equipping Kiryu with any armor or putting more than a few healing items in his inventory, but I’d have had to re-fight the first 3 forms if I wanted to go back and do anything about it! I was swearing at the screen A LOT.

So, in conclusion, I’d say this one’s about on par with 0 and Kiwami 2. The side missions aren’t as funny as either, and the cabaret club in those two is more fun than any of the sidegame sideplot things here. But, a lot of things about this game are really impressive, and it’s probably the most ambitious in the series.

Now I'm thinking about burning money on Doom Eternal and that Star Wars game cause they're both discounted in a PSN sale!


----------



## MFB

I can't seem to bring myself to finish Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, despite being quite close to the ending. I've met up with Sage Roberts and his crew, and maybe it's because I know the ending, or because this whole time I'm playing as a person whose personality/motivations I don't align with (Edward's only motivation this whole time has been to sell the observatory to the highest bidder vs. Ezio wanting revenge for his family's murder). Bayek was the same way, he had something taken from him, and thus got involved in the whole web of proto-Templars and Hidden Ones rivalry.

Bought the Command & Conquer/Red Alert Remastered editions at launch on Friday, and while the nostalgia is there, I'm forgetting just how old those games are. Point and click functionality for troop movement, having to use the arrows to scroll around the map, and some people have been posting about issues within the game that are straight bugged and weren't fixed either (as it is just new paint on the old code) where some missions require you to know the maps beforehand or else you'll fail no question. I had one that seems like you're meant to fail it two or three times before you get it, and it's frustrating, but not like it's incredibly long to playthrough even with those "failures" so I'll finish it regardless.

I also have Thurs/Friday off, so I finally caved and bought Sekiro on PS4 since it's on sale right under $40, and I'm in need of a new single player game.


----------



## TedEH

Maybe not quite in the spirit of the thread, but I've been wanting to keep playing Hollow Knight and just haven't gotten much time to do so, since a bunch of stuff keeps coming up. Gaming is very much my sort of comfort-food, for lack of a better expression, and I've been unable to take much time to play this week.


----------



## AxRookie

MFB said:


> Jeff Kiesel said: ↑
> Again Suhr, Tom Anderson, Knaggs, etc etc all better guitars hands down!


I have a question MFB, why do you have a fake quote in your sig???


----------



## Mathemagician

Minor Update: Damn, this Witcher is good stuff. 

“The side quests are exactly as great as the main story”.


----------



## MFB

AxRookie said:


> I have a question MFB, why do you have a fake quote in your sig???



It was a hilarious in-the-moment "look what it looks like Jeff said even though he'd never say that"

I honestly forget I have it 100% of the time


----------



## AxRookie

MFB said:


> It was a hilarious in-the-moment "look what it looks like Jeff said even though he'd never say that"
> 
> I honestly forget I have it 100% of the time


How is it hilarious for anyone other than you who knows what it is?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Shinada is absolutely terrible, and Akiyama isn’t much better. It’s not that they aren’t fun to play as, but you have a gigantic disadvantage if you play as either one of them as compared to Kiryu or Saejima. Especially Shinada.



Gameplay wise, I can see that when Shinada doesn't have the quality of life stuff like Tiger Drop and has to rely on weapons. He seems even more of a grapple character than Saejima and it's awkward after being thrown in to his play style after going through 3 characters you're accustomed to (Haruka not withstanding since she throws the core combat loop out the window). This is most painfully obvious against the Komaki duo where Shinada really falls back. I brought a gun to that fight since Indiana Jones had the right idea against the swordsman. 

Plotwise, I found Shinada to be a riot, not to Majima's level but a lot of fun. It's the right kind of Asian drama style of dumb and goofy, certainly more livelier than Tanimura ever was. I guess playing this right after 4 made me appreciate him much more. To some extent, same deal with Saejima. His core plot has been established with 4 and Sega allowed him to loosen up in 5, which is what you want to happen to an ugly 25 year prison escapee. You dress him up as Santa, get the hottest hostess of the lot, play snowball fights and go hand to hand against a giant bear. 

Between 5 and 0 are the main reasons why I was so disappointed with Yakuza 6. Sure the Dragon Engine made for wonderful immersion (perhaps the best in the series pre Judgment) but it's all the extra content and hilariously dumb side stuff is what makes the Yakuza series so fun.


----------



## StevenC

AxRookie said:


> How is it hilarious for anyone other than you who knows what it is?


Didn't Randy already answer this in a completely different thread 2 weeks ago?


----------



## MFB

StevenC said:


> Didn't Randy already answer this in a completely different thread 2 weeks ago?



I thought that was a fever dream, but thanks for confirming it did happen; because of that, I'm not going to waste anymore of my breath answering it.


----------



## AxRookie

StevenC said:


> Didn't Randy already answer this in a completely different thread 2 weeks ago?


He did? do you have a link?


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Gameplay wise, I can see that when Shinada doesn't have the quality of life stuff like Tiger Drop and has to rely on weapons. He seems even more of a grapple character than Saejima and it's awkward after being thrown in to his play style after going through 3 characters you're accustomed to (Haruka not withstanding since she throws the core combat loop out the window). This is most painfully obvious against the Komaki duo where Shinada really falls back. I brought a gun to that fight since Indiana Jones had the right idea against the swordsman.
> 
> Plotwise, I found Shinada to be a riot, not to Majima's level but a lot of fun. It's the right kind of Asian drama style of dumb and goofy, certainly more livelier than Tanimura ever was. I guess playing this right after 4 made me appreciate him much more. To some extent, same deal with Saejima. His core plot has been established with 4 and Sega allowed him to loosen up in 5, which is what you want to happen to an ugly 25 year prison escapee. You dress him up as Santa, get the hottest hostess of the lot, play snowball fights and go hand to hand against a giant bear.
> 
> Between 5 and 0 are the main reasons why I was so disappointed with Yakuza 6. Sure the Dragon Engine made for wonderful immersion (perhaps the best in the series pre Judgment) but it's all the extra content and hilariously dumb side stuff is what makes the Yakuza series so fun.



Heh, yeah, I bought a bunch of shotguns and used them on both Akiyama and Shinada for those Komaki breakthrough fights. They were pretty scary on Kiryu and Saejima (don't think I used more than a healing item or two, but it was a damage race to get rid of the fast guy before you got stunlocked and demolished) and not having any good defense moves made me not even want to try with the other two.

Yeah, my favorite part of the game might have been the couple of brief segments with Saejima in a Santa suit. He looks so mad! I liked him a lot in this game. His haircut alone made the character more appealing. I didn't really mind him that much in 4 after the horrific early segments where you haven't learned any of the good abilities and just get destroyed by that nasty jailbreak sequence/boss (which also happens before you can stock up on healing supplies).

I'm currently working on the coliseum a bit for the trophy. I have heard scary things about the victory road fight, but I might try it at some point.

I bought both the last Star Wars game and Doom Eternal, and am looking forward to playing them both on easy like a filthy casual cause there are no trophies tied to difficulty and I've heard a lot of warnings about Doom Eternal that it on easy is harder than Doom 2016 on hard! I don't remember dying a ton in Doom 2016 on regular, but I don't remember it being a breeze either.


----------



## MFB

Just an FYI, Fallen Order is a "parry is your greatest asset" type game, along with the Combat Dodge; its not overly hard on Normal, I'd say on par with any recent single player action game that has come out recently. The only real gripe is the heal delay, but its just another curve to learn.


----------



## wankerness

Alright, I remember when it came out people were saying it was really hard and like Dark Souls. I'll start it on normal and see what happens.


----------



## AxRookie

MFB said:


> I thought that was a fever dream, but thanks for confirming it did happen; because of that, I'm not going to waste anymore of my breath answering it.





StevenC said:


> Didn't Randy already answer this in a completely different thread 2 weeks ago?


No he didn't answer why it's in his sig, A mod just said where it came from?


----------



## MFB

AxRookie said:


> No he didn't answer why it's in his sig, A mod just said where it came from?



Its in my sig because I quoted it and put it there


----------



## TedEH

I think I've reached a point in Hollow Knight where the difficulty curve has gotten a bit frustrating. I can see two paths forward, both are blocked by bosses, and I can't beat either of them. I think one of them is optional and just give an optional item, the other looks like it's part of the main path. I find repeated failures and having to repeat the same sequence over and over just to die again to be really frustrating. I like the exploration, I like the general pattern used for progression, but the bosses basically grind all momentum to a halt.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Picked up some little indie game called LA Noire. Never heard of it. Hopefully its good.


----------



## AxRookie

MFB said:


> Its in my sig because I quoted it and put it there


Well, that was a whole lot of nothing...


----------



## AxRookie

MFB said:


> Its in my sig because I quoted it and put it there


Well, that was a whole lot of nothing...


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I think I've reached a point in Hollow Knight where the difficulty curve has gotten a bit frustrating. I can see two paths forward, both are blocked by bosses, and I can't beat either of them. I think one of them is optional and just give an optional item, the other looks like it's part of the main path. I find repeated failures and having to repeat the same sequence over and over just to die again to be really frustrating. I like the exploration, I like the general pattern used for progression, but the bosses basically grind all momentum to a halt.



Yeah, as soon as I saw it was a Dark Souls type mechanic and I had a boss that I'd been trying for a while (with the lengthy path back to the boss every attempt) bug out and make me lose all my exp, I said screw this game, I hate it.


----------



## BlackMastodon

AxRookie said:


> Well, that was a whole lot of nothing...


Take it to pm. This isn't a Kiesel thread, don't turn everything into a Kiesel thread. Thank you, bye.

Unless...




This is some kind of game you're playing?


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I think I've reached a point in Hollow Knight where the difficulty curve has gotten a bit frustrating. I can see two paths forward, both are blocked by bosses, and I can't beat either of them. I think one of them is optional and just give an optional item, the other looks like it's part of the main path. I find repeated failures and having to repeat the same sequence over and over just to die again to be really frustrating. I like the exploration, I like the general pattern used for progression, but the bosses basically grind all momentum to a halt.


That's what made me quit for the night, I really wish it would just respawn you outside of the boss room. Making your way back to the boss seems needlessly punishing.


----------



## TedEH

BlackMastodon said:


> I really wish it would just respawn you outside of the boss room


100% this. I've got some time to kill today so I might take a few cracks at it again. Maybe there's some reason it couldn't be done that way, but it seems like a pretty straightforward way to make the boss fights less tedious without removing any of the actual challenge of the fight.


----------



## BlackMastodon

The only reason I can think of was to better qualify it as a "souls-like" game so that you have to risk losing the currency you accumulated before dying? Which is still kinda pointless because the second I step into the boss room I'm gonna pick up my shit anyway.


----------



## AxRookie

BlackMastodon said:


> Take it to pm. This isn't a Kiesel thread, don't turn everything into a Kiesel thread. Thank you, bye.
> 
> Unless...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is some kind of game you're playing?


Already did and someone explained it all... Thank you, bye.

Oh and "Unless..."? what's that supposed to be? or a better question would be Unless what???


----------



## wankerness

To try and stop all the derailing about sigs, I wanted to say I got heavily addicted to Star Wars Fallen Order, up until the game had a fatal error and crashed right when I boarded the ship at the end of the arena avent, so i had to do the entire thing over. F THAT. Borderlands 3 autosaves like, practically livestream, so it doesn't matter unless it happens in the middle of a mob. This game is running on Dark Souls technology. >:O


----------



## mongey

with hollow knight there were a bunch of boss fights I really struggled with until I worked out a good combo of charms for it

dark souls 2 - ok I,this losing 5% health mechanic every time you die may be a deal breaker . just getting annoying now. I mainly suck . I die allot. I'm prepared to die allot and work at it . but when I'm being extra punished for dying allot , it blows


----------



## CrushingAnvil

I have been playing Fallout 4 and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint again. I loved TC GR Wildlands, and have a love-hate relationship with BP - I just wish they'd fix more of the issues. 

I was playing Skyrim for a few weeks. Thought I was done with it but felt like leveling a character and it was fun while it lasted.


----------



## TedEH

Went back to Hollow Knight today and..... remembered that I don't have to do all the bosses, or even in any particular order. I moved on to something else, and maybe at a later time I'll be able to beat those ones easier with the powerups etc. Turns out neither thing I was stuck on was on the critical path.


----------



## MFB

Man, Sekiro feels like it took Fallen Order and said "let me be tedious for the sake of tedious." Minuscule health bar to start with? Check. Only way to increase the health bar is by collecting items from multiple mini-bosses? You got it. No explanation on posturing for combat? Check. No worthwhile long range mechanic forcing you to close the gap on every enemy? Check. Every environmental object can be destroyed giving you away in stealth? Check. That's just what I can remember off hand.

It's one thing if a game doesn't want to hold your hand/spoon food you stuff, but I've never had a game feel like it's punishing me just for playing it. Even checking out any boss info leads back to, "From punishes players who anticipate, the moves are broadcast for a reason!" Like, sure, but no fucking enemy would actually fight like this in the real world, so why would I wait for them to attack when I can just kill them first? Look, the big hammer is going behind him, then slowly swinging over and now down towards me, guess I'll now move/parry instead of just stabbing him in the throat before he starts doing any of that. Couple the fact with any little hit taking away a huge swath of your health (archers take about 1/4 of the health, and have a much faster fire rate than expected), and I have to weigh my options for when to rest WAY more heavily than I ever did with FO.


----------



## Leviathus

MFB said:


> Man, Sekiro feels like it took Fallen Order and said "let me be tedious for the sake of tedious." Minuscule health bar to start with? Check. Only way to increase the health bar is by collecting items from multiple mini-bosses? You got it. No explanation on posturing for combat? Check. No worthwhile long range mechanic forcing you to close the gap on every enemy? Check. Every environmental object can be destroyed giving you away in stealth? Check. That's just what I can remember off hand.
> 
> It's one thing if a game doesn't want to hold your hand/spoon food you stuff, but I've never had a game feel like it's punishing me just for playing it. Even checking out any boss info leads back to, "From punishes players who anticipate, the moves are broadcast for a reason!" Like, sure, but no fucking enemy would actually fight like this in the real world, so why would I wait for them to attack when I can just kill them first? Look, the big hammer is going behind him, then slowly swinging over and now down towards me, guess I'll now move/parry instead of just stabbing him in the throat before he starts doing any of that. Couple the fact with any little hit taking away a huge swath of your health (archers take about 1/4 of the health, and have a much faster fire rate than expected), and I have to weigh my options for when to rest WAY more heavily than I ever did with FO.



L1 is your best friend, you can even deflect the gun guys. Also holding guard (L1) lowers your posture faster. Just keep at it, you'll come to understand the combat system, it pretty much forces you to.


----------



## C_Henderson

TedEH said:


> Went back to Hollow Knight today and..... remembered that I don't have to do all the bosses, or even in any particular order. I moved on to something else, and maybe at a later time I'll be able to beat those ones easier with the powerups etc. Turns out neither thing I was stuck on was on the critical path.



Yeah that's one of the things I like the most about it, once you have the basic items to move around the map you can do things in any order you want. If you get stuck somewhere you can just come back later. Just to know, where were you stuck? Maybe I can give you some tips if you want.

I haven't had much time to play this week either, so I'm still stuck at the 4th Pantheon. I've just had enough time to finish my second playthrough, just to get some of the achievements you can't get on your first one. And phew, everything becomes so much easier the second time. Bosses that killed me 10-20 times I can now beat them in 1 or 2 tries, platforming sections seem much easier... even the White Palace, the first time it took me over an hour, yesterday I did it in 15 minutes.

Path of Pain is still hell though, not touching it for a while.


----------



## MFB

Leviathus said:


> L1 is your best friend, you can even deflect the gun guys. Also holding guard (L1) lowers your posture faster. Just keep at it, you'll come to understand the combat system, it pretty much forces you to.



Apparently you're also not supposed to try and immediately do the Hirate Estate missions once you unlock them, just get the two prosethetic pieces and bounce; would've been nice to know since there's no real increase in difficulty to it besides the boss it seems like, so at least now I can jump back to him when I'm later in the game. I've made it to Ashino Castle, but Blazing Bull always seems to be erratic enough that I'm too patient with it and it just stomps right over me - which isnt tough considering it does half your half bar in one hit.

But hey, I did manage to glitch myself to a free prayer bead so I upgraded my health!


----------



## Leviathus

MFB said:


> Apparently you're also not supposed to try and immediately do the Hirate Estate missions once you unlock them, just get the two prosethetic pieces and bounce; would've been nice to know since there's no real increase in difficulty to it besides the boss it seems like, so at least now I can jump back to him when I'm later in the game. I've made it to Ashino Castle, but Blazing Bull always seems to be erratic enough that I'm too patient with it and it just stomps right over me - which isnt tough considering it does half your half bar in one hit.
> 
> But hey, I did manage to glitch myself to a free prayer bead so I upgraded my health!



I tend to just chase the bull and hit him once or twice when he turns, firecrackers are also good.


----------



## wankerness

Jedi Fallen Order - I liked this. It's quite short, so I'm glad I waited until it was ~25 bucks. I got the platinum on it in about 2 days, though I did spend a lot of hours those days! It has a lot of good aspects (the combat when dealing with stormtroopers, the look/feel are occasionally very star wars, the abilities are fun and you feel more like a badass as the game progresses). It also has some serious problems (the sliding sections are AWFUL, especially late game when you're supposed to make tight turns onto narrow strips or figure out what the game is trying to do when it catapults you back and forth and the camera can't keep up). I also experienced a few issues going through walls and one where I fell through a solid floor thanks to it not loading properly! It also has some framerate issues, especially in cutscenes, and some of the graphics are inexplicably inferior to much of the game (the wookies in particular look bad). I also absolutely hated the lack of any kind of quick travel when you need to go to a planet and spend 25 minutes getting to that one data thing you need to scan, and then have to spend the full 25 minutes running back to your ship, despite having cleared out the planet and been there a few times. 

The combat against random little monsters is also extremely obnoxious, with their attack patterns and behavior being a lot harder to counter properly than any stormtroopers, even the elite ones. I usually ended up just rushing them all and 1 shotting them with the charge attack.

It seems like kind of a rushed product in some regards. But, it also is vastly superior to a frickin multiplayer grindfest/DLC extravaganza like the Battlefront games. It was kind of a Tomb Raider reboot meets Dark Souls meets Metroid Prime meets Jedi Outcast. I would very much like more games in this vein. It occasionally reminded me of some of my fond memories playing Dark Forces/Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight/Jedi Knight II: Outcast back in the day. I really wish that there was a playable console port of them - I've heard the Outcast port is virtually unplayable just due to a complete lack of any auto-aim and thus it being impossible to hit anything since controllers are so handicapped compared to mouse/keyboard. Ah well.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, for $60 the initial game wasn't that worth it and I wish I had waited until it was like, $45 but with the free content they just added does help the value since I've considered replaying it on NG+ which should have existed in the first place. I still have some issues with it that you mentioned, the random alien encounters, the sliding (which I pray is tweaked for the sequel) and some of the map design is a bit annoying (looking at you linear Kashyyyk with a magic elevator that takes you back to the beginning), but as an overall product in the Star Wars gaming universe, it's a really good starting point for what can hopefully the next generation of single player focused games.


----------



## mongey

As battlefront 2 is free I grabbed it. 

I never got it ion release with all the loot box hullabaloo. Have to say loot boxes or not it’s an extremely polished package. Looks great and sounds great. 

the single player story is really well done.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

mongey said:


> As battlefront 2 is free I grabbed it.
> 
> I never got it ion release with all the loot box hullabaloo. Have to say loot boxes or not it’s an extremely polished package. Looks great and sounds great.
> 
> the single player story is really well done.


wait where is battlefront 2 free?


----------



## mongey

Ps plus for this month


----------



## mongey

Ok I think the battlefront 2 story is better than the last 3 movies combined.


----------



## Metropolis

Doom, and it's hell of a fun (pun intended). Very late to the party, but I'm probably going to get Doom: Eternal too.


----------



## wankerness

I got Doom Eternal and played through one level so far. I really don't like the teensy ammo capacity thing, but maybe it will grow on me or the ammo limits increase.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

wankerness said:


> I got Doom Eternal and played through one level so far. I really don't like the teensy ammo capacity thing, but maybe it will grow on me or the ammo limits increase.


You can upgrade the praetor suit for more ammo capacity but there's still times where the game forces you to run out of ammo.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

It gets better and the game is very fun when you have all the upgrades but the ammo thing did bug me the whole game.



wankerness said:


> Jedi Fallen Order - I liked this. It's quite short, so I'm glad I waited until it was ~25 bucks. I got the platinum on it in about 2 days, though I did spend a lot of hours those days! It has a lot of good aspects (the combat when dealing with stormtroopers, the look/feel are occasionally very star wars, the abilities are fun and you feel more like a badass as the game progresses). It also has some serious problems (the sliding sections are AWFUL, especially late game when you're supposed to make tight turns onto narrow strips or figure out what the game is trying to do when it catapults you back and forth and the camera can't keep up). I also experienced a few issues going through walls and one where I fell through a solid floor thanks to it not loading properly! It also has some framerate issues, especially in cutscenes, and some of the graphics are inexplicably inferior to much of the game (the wookies in particular look bad). I also absolutely hated the lack of any kind of quick travel when you need to go to a planet and spend 25 minutes getting to that one data thing you need to scan, and then have to spend the full 25 minutes running back to your ship, despite having cleared out the planet and been there a few times.
> 
> The combat against random little monsters is also extremely obnoxious, with their attack patterns and behavior being a lot harder to counter properly than any stormtroopers, even the elite ones. I usually ended up just rushing them all and 1 shotting them with the charge attack.
> 
> It seems like kind of a rushed product in some regards. But, it also is vastly superior to a frickin multiplayer grindfest/DLC extravaganza like the Battlefront games. It was kind of a Tomb Raider reboot meets Dark Souls meets Metroid Prime meets Jedi Outcast. I would very much like more games in this vein. It occasionally reminded me of some of my fond memories playing Dark Forces/Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight/Jedi Knight II: Outcast back in the day. I really wish that there was a playable console port of them - I've heard the Outcast port is virtually unplayable just due to a complete lack of any auto-aim and thus it being impossible to hit anything since controllers are so handicapped compared to mouse/keyboard. Ah well.



I just started it this week and I'm really enjoying it. So far I can agree with everything you've said. It reminds me of how I felt when I was playing Jedi Knight as a kid too. To be able to relive that feeling and immersion as an adult is helping me ignore any of the negatives. Hopefully we see a lot more SW games of this quality in the future.

Is anyone playing the Command & Conquer remaster?


----------



## MFB

Lorcan Ward said:


> Is anyone playing the Command & Conquer remaster?



I bought it and I've only completed the first maybe, 4 missions, but it's definitely taken some of the nostalgia goggles off the game. I don't remember the blitzkrieg nature needed in some of the early missions, and there's definitely some straight up flaws in the design of them (needing map knowledge before the mission begins, etc). It might smooth out later, but right now I'm just sort of lukewarm on them, not because of anything it did as a remaster, just because stuff like that wasn't addressed in the remaster and therefore the flaws still carry with it.


----------



## Choop

Going all in on creating a top tier Gamecube experience. I did buy the Game Boy player, but I am probably going to use Swiss to boot an alternative Game Boy interface--to avoid having to shell out for the boot disc. Also I bought a Carby HDMI adapter! Will post pics when it's all up and running.


----------



## mongey

gonna grab last of us 2 this morning on the way home from the gym 

been a long time since I bought a game on release day, or even close to it


----------



## Ralyks

Last day of State of Play for Sony was yesterday, so I grabbed Devil May Cry 1 - 3, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, Crash Bandicott N. Sane Trilogy, Uno, and Fire Pro Wrestling World for pretty cheap.

..... Not of which will matter for a while when I get Last of Us Part 2 after work tomorrow....


----------



## Werecow

I'm playing Witcher 3. I've had 3 failed attempts at getting into it the past few years since its realease, because i found the combat boring. People kept promising to push through for the story and it'll get better, but it's still not doing much for me. The combat is still dodge, slash, slash, slash, dodge, slash, slash over and over and over again, apart from a small handful of creatures that greatly benefit from signs being cast, and that's just so you can slash, slash, dodge yet again.
I've got to Novigrad this time and all the quests are either "they're not here at the moment but i know where they might be" usually followed up by more dodge, slash, slash, slash at the end of it. The exception is using the INVESTIGATE! button where you always follow a bright red trail till you get to somewhere where you dodge, slash, slash, slash yet again 

RPGs are my favourite genre of game, and i love open world games as well. So why am i finding this game so average? The only reason i've got further into it this time is because i'm feeling shit, lonely at home with time on my hands.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ok I just got to Novigrad too (first time after dropping it an hour in a few years ago) and what I did was meander immediately when I got to Velen/Novigrad. I did a bunch of side quests and the Baron storyline. And man, even tiny side quests are well written and interesting. Yes there is a lot of cross map travel that’s why there is fast travel. But I think you’ll like it more if you go exploring to see what comes up. I’ve also never played 1 or 2.


----------



## mongey

Werecow said:


> I'm playing Witcher 3. I've had 3 failed attempts at getting into it the past few years since its realease, because i found the combat boring. People kept promising to push through for the story and it'll get better, but it's still not doing much for me. The combat is still dodge, slash, slash, slash, dodge, slash, slash over and over and over again, apart from a small handful of creatures that greatly benefit from signs being cast, and that's just so you can slash, slash, dodge yet again.
> I've got to Novigrad this time and all the quests are either "they're not here at the moment but i know where they might be" usually followed up by more dodge, slash, slash, slash at the end of it. The exception is using the INVESTIGATE! button where you always follow a bright red trail till you get to somewhere where you dodge, slash, slash, slash yet again
> 
> RPGs are my favourite genre of game, and i love open world games as well. So why am i finding this game so average? The only reason i've got further into it this time is because i'm feeling shit, lonely at home with time on my hands.



your not the only one. I tired it once on 360 when it came out and once again on switch. I got further into it the 2nd time but eventually just got bored. 

I just don’t find the combat fun it’s been done much better.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I'm playing Witcher 3. I've had 3 failed attempts at getting into it the past few years since its realease, because i found the combat boring. People kept promising to push through for the story and it'll get better, but it's still not doing much for me. The combat is still dodge, slash, slash, slash, dodge, slash, slash over and over and over again, apart from a small handful of creatures that greatly benefit from signs being cast, and that's just so you can slash, slash, dodge yet again.
> I've got to Novigrad this time and all the quests are either "they're not here at the moment but i know where they might be" usually followed up by more dodge, slash, slash, slash at the end of it. The exception is using the INVESTIGATE! button where you always follow a bright red trail till you get to somewhere where you dodge, slash, slash, slash yet again
> 
> RPGs are my favourite genre of game, and i love open world games as well. So why am i finding this game so average? The only reason i've got further into it this time is because i'm feeling shit, lonely at home with time on my hands.



It's more that the character and stories are vastly better written and more engaging than in most similar games. I agree the combat wasn't really that great. But, it was more than good enough for me to call it one of the best games I've played, with the writing/characters/plot being the main driver behind that statement.

Speaking of clunky combat, I started AC: Black Flag. The swordfighting is SO BAD. But, it's better than AC2 (the only earlier game I've played). Odyssey is lightyears better in this regard. But, the ship battles are far more in-depth than Odyssey. Plus, I really like the setting and I am a sucker for the Ubisoft "complete the map and pick up all the icons!!!" gameplay loop. I'm only on like, sequence 4 of 13, so I will probably be working on this for a couple weeks.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

played through the first couple of hours of Last of Us pt2 and mannnn they come out of the gates swinging. It is definitely meaner and nastier than the previous game, both in tone and combat


----------



## Ralyks

I'm about 2 - 3 hours in to Last of Us 2. It went from "this is a slow burn" to "I want to destroy every last mother fucker" pretty instantly.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> I'm about 2 - 3 hours in to Last of Us 2. It went from "this is a slow burn" to "I want to destroy every last mother fucker" pretty instantly.


yeah once you hit Seattle it's pretty fucking relentless. There is a really great sequence that balances it out but it's hours further into the game.


----------



## wankerness

How do you guys feel about its status as a game designed to simply make you feel miserable, especially at this point in our world situation? I read a couple reviews (one was Kotaku, I forget the other) that made me think “I never want to play this, but especially not now” since it sounded like it was designed to just mortify you and make you feel awful, including lots of graphic brutality and rape and whatnot. And this was from big fans of the first game! I count myself as one of those, too, but gawd, those spoilers made me not want to touch it. I hate that the reviews didn’t allow spoilers cause I’m most interested in whether those play out in a satisfying way before I even think about subjecting myself to it.


----------



## Rosal76

wankerness said:


> How do you guys feel about its status as a game designed to simply make you feel miserable, especially at this point in our world situation?



I purchased the game because I'm a huge stealth gamer and was impressed with the stealth game play that I saw in the early demo play throughs. That being the first and foremost reason, there are some pretty brutal/emotional cut scenes in the game. Some scenes, which I won't point out, was uncomfortable to watch but everyone is different. I'm sure all the Make them die slowly (1983) and The Green Inferno (2013) movie fans aren't phased one bit, though.



wankerness said:


> I hate that the reviews didn’t allow spoilers cause I’m most interested in whether those play out in a satisfying way before I even think about subjecting myself to it.



It's going to be subjective to everyone but IMHO, Naughty Dog made it to where when you finish the game, you do think about consequences and karma. My take on the game for what I can apply in real life is, "don't screw with other people in any bad way because it might come back to you later in life" and "man has to have his limitations and stop at some point".


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> How do you guys feel about its status as a game designed to simply make you feel miserable, especially at this point in our world situation? I read a couple reviews (one was Kotaku, I forget the other) that made me think “I never want to play this, but especially not now” since it sounded like it was designed to just mortify you and make you feel awful, including lots of graphic brutality and rape and whatnot. And this was from big fans of the first game! I count myself as one of those, too, but gawd, those spoilers made me not want to touch it. I hate that the reviews didn’t allow spoilers cause I’m most interested in whether those play out in a satisfying way before I even think about subjecting myself to it.



So far, I feel it works effectively, but I'm not super far. As far as the timing of the release, it has been as depressing as it's been, surprisingly, cathartic. These times have instilled me with anger and fear at times. And I'm not really a violent person. Which is why I have video games. And this game somehow manages to help. I mean, I still feel awful after a lot of the major scenes, and I'm not that far yet, but yeah, it's been interesting, emotion-wise.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> How do you guys feel about its status as a game designed to simply make you feel miserable, especially at this point in our world situation? I read a couple reviews (one was Kotaku, I forget the other) that made me think “I never want to play this, but especially not now” since it sounded like it was designed to just mortify you and make you feel awful, including lots of graphic brutality and rape and whatnot. And this was from big fans of the first game! I count myself as one of those, too, but gawd, those spoilers made me not want to touch it. I hate that the reviews didn’t allow spoilers cause I’m most interested in whether those play out in a satisfying way before I even think about subjecting myself to it.


I personally don't find the game as being designed to make you miserable. Is it a bleak unrelenting story with minimal relief/bright spots? Yes, but so was the first game, and those moments of levity really stick with you, just like they did in the first game. You can feel the Cormac McCarthy influence permeating the game, especially in the sequel. 

Some people are horrified by the violence but honestly it's not any more brutal than gears of war, it just feels a bit more mean spirited because they try to ground the violence in reality. The kills aren't that big of a jump in terms of brutality over the first game, but it's the little details that have made some people uncomfortable (their facial reactions as you kill them, the screaming, death rattles/gurgles and limb removal all feels plausible versus other games that have done those mechanics). 
They try to get you to almost empathize with your enemy when they cry over their blown up dog, or scream their dead friend's name out after they find their corpse, but it's a shallow mechanic. Other games have done a better job of trying to humanize your foe before (Valiant Hearts, Spec Ops: The Line and This War of Mine) Honestly the game is a really good meditation on the cycle of revenge/violence. The violence serves a purpose. It's not a game that you can plow through in one sitting due to the mood/tone and pacing of the game. It holds a relentlessly brutal pace for a good chunk of the game, and it takes its toll. I felt fucking exhausted mentally from playing it.

If you liked the first game, you'll probably like the second game imo. They have very different feels in terms of gameplay (with part 2 feeling much more fast paced overall with a greater stealth focus imo) but the excellent writing and character development is still very present in the game. The combat sections in particular are very layered and offer a good amount of replayability in terms of testing different routes/playstyles. There's far less linear progression and world maps, with lots of nooks and crannies that are worth exploring for flavor text/supplies (which becomes critical on higher difficulties).


----------



## wankerness

That’s good feedback. I still will probably wait for a discount in a few months, but that seems to assuage my fears.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> That’s good feedback. I still will probably wait for a discount in a few months, but that seems to assuage my fears.



Honestly, I find a lot of the user complaints to be more vindictive and the review bombing to be nonsense right now. But for now, with my ability to focus on one game at a time lately (despite making other purchases), I'll probably focus on this game to completion and give you a better synopsis then.



Spoiler



I will say, they definitely pulled a Metal Gear Solid 2 with some of the advertising. Maybe not as extreme, but definitely some misdirection



And speaking of aforementioned purchases, I have a feeling I'll need something like the Spyro Reignited Trilogy to balance me out after Last of Us 2.


----------



## wankerness

Speaking of one of my main “spoilers” questions with last of us 2 -



Spoiler



Does this new scary muscley young character actually work? She/he (I honestly don’t know if it’s supposed to be a trans character or just a tough woman, not trying to be gamergatey) seemed like a miserable charisma void that I absolutely would not want to play as based on the leaked stuff. Naughty Dog has a pretty good track record for solid characters, but I’m curious if they pay off or if it’s an MGS2 scenario where part of the problem is the new character totally sucks.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Speaking of one of my main “spoilers” questions with last of us 2 -
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Does this new scary muscley young character actually work? She/he (I honestly don’t know if it’s supposed to be a trans character or just a tough woman, not trying to be gamergatey) seemed like a miserable charisma void that I absolutely would not want to play as based on the leaked stuff. Naughty Dog has a pretty good track record for solid characters, but I’m curious if they pay off or if it’s an MGS2 scenario where part of the problem is the new character totally sucks.





Spoiler



ehh the problem with Abby (she's a very muscled up female fyi) is that they give you far less time to empathize/make you feel connected to the character versus how they did it with Ellie in the first game. In the first game controlling Ellie fits perfectly storywise (since joel was out of commission) and emotionally since the game spent a lot of time developing the bond between Joel/Ellie. The new character does not benefit from that kind of synergy, and it feels more disjointed and jarring when you're forced to play as her. The game makes it blatantly clear as to WHY she did what she did, but getting gamers to see past that and empathize with the antagonist is a difficult proposition, as seen by the review bombing. The execution wasn't that great as far as the transition either, so it kind of kills the momentum of the game tbh. I thought it was going to be a little flashback sequence, but then they started throwing collectibles and upgrade parts at me and I knew I'd have to play her for a good while, which sucks because I wanted to see the resolution between Ellie and Abby right away, not sit through hours of story that fills in the gaps as to what Abby was doing in seattle. Story pacing is my #1 complaint about the game tbh.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Crossed Tales Of Berseria off the list. 

Bloody hell this was a long game. Once the first act is established, I felt that it kept bolting more stuff onto itself feeling like the longest second act in JRPGs, then even towards third act where everything falls to hell, it felt the end was still a long way away. Didn't help that the game doesn't tell you how to Fast Travel and I only found out until I was at the save point right before the final boss. I guess it was nice to be overlevelled because of it, and the hover board you get near the end help cut down all the tedious battles I was getting bored of. Turns out this is a common complaint where even some die hard Tales fans found this game exhausting. 

I am glad I played both this and Zestiria. I still insist this is better than it's predecessor, certainly a more complete experience. It was fun to see all the lore connections and nods between them, and it was one of the few JRPGs where you play a rag tag of screw ups, surprisingly no use of 'power of friendship' here. I mean you still commit deicide but baby steps. 

There's a full post game dungeon with a few extra bits, but I'm honestly done with this game. Story's finished and I'm not going through that and a bunch of elite bosses just so see the token anime bath scene these games always insist on having. So I spoiled it for myself... ok this one slightly different to the other games I guess. 

So another game of the Tales series I've completed and probably forget the series for a while. These are big hefty servings and they're satisfying once done, but they're overbearing and you feel bloated after you're done, not wanting you play these for a while until you're hungry for them again.


----------



## Rosal76

wankerness said:


> That’s good feedback. I still will probably wait for a discount in a few months, but that seems to assuage my fears.



+1.

There are some really cool things that you can do in the game. Trivial but may come in handy when playing in the highest difficulty.

You can stealthy lead Runners and Stalkers (Infected A.I.) to attack human enemies. I alerted a Runner to the presence of 3 human enemies in the same area and it (Runner) took them all down with no problems at all. I stayed hidden and watched them from a distance and it was not all fun and games for me. I couldn't see her but I heard one of the woman enemies scream in terror, assuming the Runner had attacked and killed her. The other 2 human enemies were running for their lives. Enemy or not, I normally don't like to see Infected A.I. attack/kill human A.I. I only did that because I thought the humans would be able to kill the Runner but that idea went backwards. For a second, I did think of helping them (humans) but they would just attack me. I thought it was weird that the weakest Infected enemy in the game was able to take down 3 human enemies armed with guns.  I plan on finishing the game on it's hardest difficulty so saving as much ammo as I can for ambushes and boss fights would be a top priority and letting the Runners do my dirty work (when available) is a necessary evil.


----------



## Metropolis

Last Of Us 2... combat is more evolved version from the first game, don't know what to think about dodging and delivering melee attacks to infected. It's not too intuitive feeling. At least you don't have to use those stupid shivs on clickers or locked doors anymore, and having to use a melee weapon is wastly decreased because now Ellie uses a knife. A.I. of the infected is definetly improved and they can sense you now more effectively in the environment.

The game itself looks beatiful and exploring ruins of bombed Seattle is amazing. You don't even have to explore all the buildings, but hopefully I found almost everything. At this point it's not a really nice story in certain sense because... it's a revenge.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Metropolis said:


> Last Of Us 2... combat is more evolved version from the first game, don't know what to think about dodging and delivering melee attacks to infected. It's not too intuitive feeling. At least you don't have to use those stupid shivs on clickers or locked doors anymore, and having to use a melee weapon is wastly decreased because now Ellie uses a knife. A.I. of the infected is definetly improved and they can sense you now more effectively in the environment.
> 
> The game itself looks beatiful and exploring ruins of bombed Seattle is amazing. You don't even have to explore all the buildings, but hopefully I found almost everything. At this point it's not a really nice story in certain sense because... it's a revenge.


The shiv mechanic is still in the game but it's for another character you play as.


----------



## Metropolis

KnightBrolaire said:


> The shiv mechanic is still in the game but it's for another character you play as.



Okay, I'm just only five hours in and used ton of time exploring the first part of Seattle.


----------



## mongey

about 3 hour to last of us 2 and its an extremely polished package . looking forward to getting more into it


----------



## BlackMastodon

Fuck I wish I had a PS4 now.


----------



## Choop

BlackMastodon said:


> Fuck I wish I had a PS4 now.



Same... .-. trying to hold out for a PS5 but it sure is hard lately with this game and the FF7 Remake Pt 1 having just come out.

Oh Yeah, I've gotten far into Hollow Knight! I'm not sure how to describe how much progress I've made, but I feel like it's probably ~80% complete just looking at stuff I've unlocked and bosses defeated/map area exposed. It's really fun--the music is excellent and so are the controls.


----------



## Leviathus

Man, fuckin' steam will never put dark souls remastered on sale again i swear. Thought i mighta caught a break today with the summer sale but nope .


----------



## Kaura

Finally caught GTA:VC on sale on Steam. It's been at least 15 years since the last time I played it.


----------



## Leviathus

Leviathus said:


> Man, fuckin' steam will never put dark souls remastered on sale again i swear. Thought i mighta caught a break today with the summer sale but nope .


Update: Gamebillet to the rescue.


----------



## mongey

Choop said:


> Same... .-. trying to hold out for a PS5 but it sure is hard lately with this game and the FF7 Remake Pt 1 having just come out.
> 
> Oh Yeah, I've gotten far into Hollow Knight! I'm not sure how to describe how much progress I've made, but I feel like it's probably ~80% complete just looking at stuff I've unlocked and bosses defeated/map area exposed. It's really fun--the music is excellent and so are the controls.


I have no doubt there will be a ps5 remaster of last of us 2 . probably on release day


----------



## MFB

mongey said:


> I have no doubt there will be a ps5 remaster of last of us 2 . probably on release day



lolwut


----------



## NotDonVito

Kaura said:


> Finally caught GTA:VC on sale on Steam. It's been at least 15 years since the last time I played it.


Good luck with the RC helicopter mission, it's fuckin' impossible on keyboard.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> lolwut



that’s basically what happened with the first game, which is probably why he said it. It was part of the reason I got a ps4! Since I skipped the ps3 and that was one of the few games I wanted to play.


----------



## mongey

MFB said:


> lolwut



what wankerness said

from what I have played so far -probably the best game SP game released on ps4 , delivered very late in the ps4 life cycle ,and Sony being up for pretty much remastering whatever.

they re releasing the 3rd generation of gta5 FFS 

maybe it wont be release day. but it wont take long


----------



## Kaura

NotDonVito said:


> Good luck with the RC helicopter mission, it's fuckin' impossible on keyboard.



Already beat it. First try.


----------



## MFB

mongey said:


> what wankerness said
> 
> from what I have played so far -probably the best game SP game released on ps4 , delivered very late in the ps4 life cycle ,and Sony being up for pretty much remastering whatever.
> 
> they're releasing the 3rd generation of gta5 FFS
> 
> maybe it wont be release day. but it wont take long





wankerness said:


> that’s basically what happened with the first game, which is probably why he said it. It was part of the reason I got a ps4! Since I skipped the ps3 and that was one of the few games I wanted to play.



Yeah, but it wasn't immediate, and I think it was only that way because we lacked backwards compatibility for a game that people were raving about; and while the sequel is also being touted the same way, we do now have backwards compatibility for the first time in two generations, so I'm personally not expecting them to do a remaster when it will just run that much better on PS5.


----------



## Metropolis

I got some games from Steam summer sale...

- Doom Eternal
- Bioshock collection, all three games included
- Kingdom Come Deliverance deluxe edition earlier, it was a total bargain on sale
- Metro Exodus
- Prey
- Frictional collection which includes all Amnesia & Penumbra games, and SOMA

For example there is still titles like Dead Space, Dishonored, and Mass Effect on my wishlist, which are on sale too right now. I have always been interested about Deus Ex series, but the first one seems a little bit outdated at this point. You got any recommendations in vein of these?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Metropolis said:


> I got some games from Steam summer sale...
> 
> - Doom Eternal
> - Bioshock collection, all three games included
> - Kingdom Come Deliverance deluxe edition earlier, it was a total bargain on sale
> - Metro Exodus
> - Prey
> - Frictional collection which includes all Amnesia & Penumbra games, and SOMA
> 
> For example there is still titles like Dead Space, Dishonored, and Mass Effect on my wishlist, which are on sale too right now. I have always been interested about Deus Ex series, but the first one seems a little bit outdated at this point. You got any recommendations in vein of these?


system shock 1 and 2 obviously.
The newer Prey game.
Wasteland 2(turn based but it's got a shitload of depth to the writing and choices).

Guess it depends what you want out of the game. There's not many really exceptional shooter/scifi rpgs that give you the kind of options you have in the Deus Ex series.
The first game and the newer games are really good and totally worth playing imo.


----------



## Metropolis

KnightBrolaire said:


> system shock 1 and 2 obviously.
> The newer Prey game.
> Wasteland 2(turn based but it's got a shitload of depth to the writing and choices).
> 
> Guess it depends what you want out of the game. There's not many really exceptional shooter/scifi rpgs that give you the kind of options you have in the Deus Ex series.
> The first game and the newer games are really good and totally worth playing imo.



Thanks! System Shock seems really old school at this point and Wasteland as turn based game is not my thing. Deus Ex among with other similar type sci-fi shooters should be enough. I even have Black Mesa to play also. Maybe replay Half-Life 2, in order first the Black Mesa and then HL2.


----------



## TedEH

Metropolis said:


> I have always been interested about Deus Ex series, but the first one seems a little bit outdated at this point. You got any recommendations in vein of these?


I played all the Deus Ex games a while ago, and if you can handle some old-game jank, I'd say play em all. The first game does things the others don't and sets the tone for what the other games are trying to accomplish. It's strict to its design ideas, to a fault. The second kinda dumbs things down to a generic action game and is an ok game, but skippable as far as the series goes. Human Revolution is what I think of when I think of Deus Ex - it has it's flaws, but it's the most complete experience, IMO. Mankind Divided is just sort of more Human Revolution with a fresh coat of paint on it.

Then play Prey. It's great on it's own, but it's also got a lot of Deus Ex DNA in it.


----------



## Werecow

Metropolis said:


> I got some games from Steam summer sale...
> 
> - Doom Eternal
> - Bioshock collection, all three games included
> - Kingdom Come Deliverance deluxe edition earlier, it was a total bargain on sale
> - Metro Exodus
> - Prey
> - Frictional collection which includes all Amnesia & Penumbra games, and SOMA
> 
> For example there is still titles like Dead Space, Dishonored, and Mass Effect on my wishlist, which are on sale too right now. I have always been interested about Deus Ex series, but the first one seems a little bit outdated at this point. You got any recommendations in vein of these?



Very good selection so far  Have you played the two earlier Metro games? They're both great, and need to play them first really to understand the gravitas of what happens in Exodus.

I'd say play the first Deus Ex too. The second one (Invisible War) is a bit dodgy. The whole series is probably my joint favourite series along with Dishonored. I still play the first Deus Ex every couple years or so, and regularly play Human Revolution and Mankind Divided (often just for the atmosphere).

Also.... get Dead Space and Dead Space 2! They're classics. They're two of the best horror games of all time.


----------



## wankerness

Played a lot more Black Flag, did a lot of the 100% completion kind of crap (ex, I killed the legendary ships - that was intense), but am only doing the story when i have to to unlock upgrades/locations. I HATE the tailing and especially "overhear conversation" objectives. Ugh. And it seems like there's at least one of each in every chapter of the game!

I like so much about these games, but the early ones all seem to have some kind of fatal flaw like this. I read that AC: Rogue is basically a simplified Black Flag minus those two kinds of missions, so I should get it - unfortunately it's the one game in the series that ISN'T on sale right now! And I skipped it when they had a franchise sale a while back for some reason after reading a few bad reviews. So, I have III, the ezio collection (only played through 2 so far, was kind of too dated for me), Unity (everyone seems to hate this), and Syndicate that I haven't played yet. I loved Odyssey and really liked Origins. I'm thinking maybe I'll check out Syndicate next.


----------



## TedEH

I may be a bit biased since I'll take any opportunity to point out my name is in the credits for Human Revolution.


----------



## Metropolis

Werecow said:


> Very good selection so far  Have you played the two earlier Metro games? They're both great, and need to play them first really to understand the gravitas of what happens in Exodus.
> 
> I'd say play the first Deus Ex too. The second one (Invisible War) is a bit dodgy. The whole series is probably my joint favourite series along with Dishonored. I still play the first Deus Ex every couple years or so, and regularly play Human Revolution and Mankind Divided (often just for the atmosphere).
> 
> Also.... get Dead Space and Dead Space 2! They're classics. They're two of the best horror games of all time.



I have remastered versions of first two Metro games but haven't played them through yet. Have read the Metro 2033 book though, so I know what it's all about.


----------



## Werecow

Metropolis said:


> I have remastered versions of first two Metro games but haven't played them through yet. Have read the Metro 2033 book though, so I know what it's all about.



It's not so much about what it's about, but that something massive happens in Exodus (story-wise) that'd make playing the first two afterwards feel a bit weird about your objectives i think. I know it would have for me anyway.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I may be a bit biased since I'll take any opportunity to point out my name is in the credits for Human Revolution.



You worked on it in some way? It's in my top 5 games of all time i think


----------



## Kaura

Okay, I already kind of finished Vice City but the thing is that I have to make like $70k to unlock the last mission. Honestly, easier and quicker done in real life than in that shitty game...


----------



## Ralyks

I took a breather from the heaviness that is Last of Ua 2 to play some Spyro. That was needed. Probably go back to Last of Us 2 tonight.

As far as Last of Us 2 on PS5, I bet it happens, but I think you won't have to pay for a full game again. It will probably be a free/cheap upgrade like a few games have confirmed to be doing.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> You worked on it in some way?


In a suuuuuuuuper minor way. I work for one of the companies that helped with the Directors Cut edition - but I joined that team late in the process, and I'm not sure I could point at any specific thing and say "I did some of that". Maybe a bug fix or two.


----------



## Alberto7

Decided to download Assetto Corsa about a month ago. I effed up. It's fun enough playing it with an Xbox One controller, but now I want a proper sim racing setup, and that's almost as deep a rabbit hole as the guitar hobby is.


----------



## wankerness

Started AC: Syndicate. It’s pretty good so far. I like that the season pass included the XP boost, as the game is wayyyy more fun when you have access to your abilities. It plays like a clunkier version of AC:Origins in the melee department, although I kind of prefer its melee combat system (clearly trying to copy the WB Batman games). 

GF finished wind waker doing most of it herself (she’s new to video games with the coronavirus outbreak) apart from puppet Ganon. What the hell is with that guy, especially the third form? It’s a HUGE difficulty spike from the rest of the game. And then the actual final boss is vastly easier again! 
Now she’s playing OoT (she isn’t bothered by graphics in the least). I’m amused that my n64 still works perfectly. I have it hooked up through my receiver and have no upscalers/line doublers or anything to make it look better, and no ability to force the image to 4x3, but she’s really into it, much more than the first 7 hours of Twilight Princess. She just finished the fire temple and is now rooting around for the eye of truth. It’s funny to me how horrendously the controls aged - the single hardest thing we’ve encountered so far was just a timed event in a dungeon where you had to run up a narrow winding staircase!! Those N64 controllers are NOT like riding a bicycle (which SNES controllers tend to still be). It feels so weird and wrong after decades of dual shock setups having the stick be controlled with the left hand and control both all movement and all turning! And the mandatory Y flip on aiming is really hard for her to adjust to (and me a little bit too, even though I only just finally stopped using the option myself last year when I encountered a game that wouldn’t let you change it and figured enough was enough). But, the gameplay holds up pretty well and the scope and ambition is still striking. It feels like a much bigger game than Wind Waker, and that time travel conceit was really cool. And the Ganon stuff is built into the plot WAY better than Wind Waker.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Tried playing kingdom hearts. Don't think it's for me. Gave Stardew Valley a go too. Also not for me, not into job simulators.

Not having much luck lately unfortunately! Ghost of Tushima just might save the day in a few weeks.


----------



## Mathemagician

ImNotAhab said:


> Tried playing kingdom hearts. Don't think it's for me. Gave Stardew Valley a go too. Also not for me, not into job simulators.
> 
> Not having much luck lately unfortunately! Ghost of Tushima just might save the day in a few weeks.



Idk if you like retro games, but megaman X-X4 is available as a bundle and if you didn’t play them on the SNES/PlayStation they are really good side scrollers. Just throwing something out there.


----------



## TedEH

I made it to the end of Hollow Knight, and I'm glad I stuck with it. At some point, it clicked that because of how non-linear the game is, if any challenge was too much, there was enough stuff in the game that I could go do something else, still make progress elsewhere, and come back to something once I had improved or got some new power or something. If you can deal with the difficulty spikes, the game does a lot of stuff right.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I made it to the end of Hollow Knight, and I'm glad I stuck with it. At some point, it clicked that because of how non-linear the game is, if any challenge was too much, there was enough stuff in the game that I could go do something else, still make progress elsewhere, and come back to something once I had improved or got some new power or something. If you can deal with the difficulty spikes, the game does a lot of stuff right.



Does that mean you're ready to give Dark Souls a go? 

These Souls like games really should take their own advice and "git gud" before the 10-15 hour mark.


----------



## TedEH

Hah - honestly, I've considered giving Dark Souls a shot. Even if it's for no other reason to have experienced the thing that every other game is compared to now.


----------



## Møkshā

brattysis


----------



## Leviathus

Been on CoD:MW in all forms and Bang-your-sword-against-the-wall-in-a-narrow-hallway simulator: remastered.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> Been on CoD:MW in all forms and Bang-your-sword-against-the-wall-in-a-narrow-hallway simulator: remastered.


*laughs in lightning spear*


----------



## TedEH

Today I tried to go back to Alien: Isolation, since I never finished it. It didn't take long to remember why I had put it down. This game is relentless. I'm not new to playing video games, and I'm not adverse to a challenge, but it feels like I need to cheese the mechanics to make any progress. If you're spotted even once, you're more or less dead - and your own visibility is severely limited. Combine that with the inability to save when you want to, a lack of feedback on how how you're doing, and it's just frustrating. You end up replaying the same bits over and over again.

IMO what makes a stealth game is the sense of taking control of an area/situation - the ability to gather information, make choices, then see the results of those choices. That's why something like Thief works really well: you're given multiple routes, vantage points, hiding places, etc., that give you the ability to scope out what's going on and decide how you want to progress, and there's a bit of leniency if you screw up. None of that is here. You take the singular entrance into a room, get immediately shot. Try it again, manage to get into the room at all, hide behind a big prop in the room - a character patrolling through a shadow that you can't see spots you and you get shot anyway. Attempt 3, try to use the leaning mechanic - you still get spotted. There's no leeway, there's very little in the way of the normal stealth game cycle of an NPC going on alert first, investigating, allowing you room to correct your mistake, etc.

It's a game I _want_ to like - the visuals are really well done, the player movement is solid, audio is mostly good, etc. But after replaying every segment for a third or fourth time, the game isn't scary, it's just frustrating.


----------



## chopeth

TedEH said:


> It's a game I _want_ to like - the visuals are really well done, the player movement is solid, audio is mostly good, etc. But after replaying every segment for a third or fourth time, the game isn't scary, it's just frustrating.



Agree with you but if you are talking about frustration better stay away from the Souls games


----------



## KnightBrolaire

chopeth said:


> Agree with you but if you are talking about frustration better stay away from the Souls games


ehh ds1 and 3 are way more lenient than 2 imo. Fuck that game. I'm a pretty patient dude but I raged so much playing that, even as someone with like 500+ hours in DS1


----------



## TedEH

I find it's a distinction between whether or not it's satisfying to get over the challenge, and whether that's an intentional design feature incorporated into the rest of the game. Hollow Knight was tough, but it knows this, and is designed in such a way that any challenge can be overcome with some practice, or by choosing a new path. You have the opportunity to go another way, or succeed, before frustration sets in.

From what I understand, that's part of the _point_ of Dark Souls, that you go in knowing it's going to kick your ass at first, then you get good, and feel a lot of satisfaction once you get past it.

Alien is not designed this way. It doesn't have multiple paths, a save system that goes easy on you knowing you'll die often, or even challenges that are mostly skill based. It's meant to be "scary" and "immersive" and "tell you a story through gameplay" etc etc. You're not _supposed to_ consistently fail and lose hours of progress. It's supposed to be challenging, but not _that_ challenging.

Challenge is ok. Killing the playing frequently _can_ be ok. Making the player feel like they've wasted their time is not.


----------



## dr_game0ver

TedEH said:


> Hah - honestly, I've considered giving Dark Souls a shot. Even if it's for no other reason to have experienced the thing that every other game is compared to now.


Or you can get Nioh. That way, you get to discover that kind of game, and play a good game at the same time.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I find it's a distinction between whether or not it's satisfying to get over the challenge, and whether that's an intentional design feature incorporated into the rest of the game. Hollow Knight was tough, but it knows this, and is designed in such a way that any challenge can be overcome with some practice, or by choosing a new path. You have the opportunity to go another way, or succeed, before frustration sets in.
> 
> From what I understand, that's part of the _point_ of Dark Souls, that you go in knowing it's going to kick your ass at first, then you get good, and feel a lot of satisfaction once you get past it.
> 
> Alien is not designed this way. It doesn't have multiple paths, a save system that goes easy on you knowing you'll die often, or even challenges that are mostly skill based. It's meant to be "scary" and "immersive" and "tell you a story through gameplay" etc etc. You're not _supposed to_ consistently fail and lose hours of progress. It's supposed to be challenging, but not _that_ challenging.
> 
> Challenge is ok. Killing the playing frequently _can_ be ok. Making the player feel like they've wasted their time is not.


Dark Souls only kicks your ass if you don't pay attention. It's not like Sekiro where you HAVE to master the base mechanics in order to progress (the game is basically impossible without getting good at countering).


----------



## Dumple Stilzkin

Playing my way through Ultimate Doom after not playing it since middle school (roughly 20 years ago). Also Perfect Dark (both original and the updated graphics version for seXBoX.). Although the above post has me wanting to dust off my copy of Ocarina of Time.


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> Dark Souls only kicks your ass if you don't pay attention. It's not like Sekiro where you HAVE to master the base mechanics in order to progress (the game is basically impossible without getting good at countering).



Countering isn't enough as I'm learning, you also have to known when to be aggressive vs. patient. Like, I just got past the Ashina Elite boss after spending two hours one night having him kick my ass every since fight, because his posture regenerates incredibly fast, so you have to push him at times if you can't do it purely on counter-attacks. But with Blazing Bull, you have to run around like an idiot that gets you killed anywhere else in the game, and just get what pot-shots you can in.

It's a nightmare trying to think you have the game figured out


----------



## Randy

Been slogging through Just Cause 4 but it's so unenjoyable. Coming from JC3XL, this game is so ugly, the story is blah, the weapons system and supply drops are a downgrade in playing experience and the actual mission progression is almost unplayable bad.


----------



## Leviathus

KnightBrolaire said:


> ehh ds1 and 3 are way more lenient than 2 imo. Fuck that game. I'm a pretty patient dude but I raged so much playing that, even as someone with like 500+ hours in DS1


2 is weird. The world/regular enemies were much more challenging compared to the bosses which i found to be pretty easy and predictable (DLC excluded). It's like your reward for getting through an annoying area is an easy boss that's first try-able.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Countering isn't enough as I'm learning, you also have to known when to be aggressive vs. patient. Like, I just got past the Ashina Elite boss after spending two hours one night having him kick my ass every since fight, because his posture regenerates incredibly fast, so you have to push him at times if you can't do it purely on counter-attacks. But with Blazing Bull, you have to run around like an idiot that gets you killed anywhere else in the game, and just get what pot-shots you can in.
> 
> It's a nightmare trying to think you have the game figured out


yeah knowing when and when not to push is very important


Leviathus said:


> 2 is weird. The world/regular enemies were much more challenging compared to the bosses which i found to be pretty easy and predictable (DLC excluded). It's like your reward for getting through an annoying area is an easy boss that's first try-able.


ehh i'd agree except for the first fire demon and the rat king boss. Those were quite infuriating on my first playthrough


----------



## Cabinet

Alien Isolation is $10 on Steam, so I'll be playing that!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Randy said:


> Been slogging through Just Cause 4 but it's so unenjoyable. Coming from JC3XL, this game is so ugly, the story is blah, the weapons system and supply drops are a downgrade in playing experience and the actual mission progression is almost unplayable bad.



Just 4 Cash feels like a game that's way too late to the sandbox party, and to the franchise itself. Rico's whole deal was already resolved in 3 (and that had a few tidbits I didn't like such as the large island full of bugger all). It just looks and feels like a lazy cash in.

This coming from someone who absolutely loved Just Cause 2.


----------



## TedEH

I've only ever played Just Cause 2... and it was..... ok? My memory of it is just being way too open for my tastes, and felt mostly unfocused.

I haven't given up on Alien yet.... I plan on continuing to give it the chance it probably deserves. I got far enough to get the motion tracker, which eases up the difficulty a tiny bit. Lacking that tool makes the intro just brutal.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I've only ever played Just Cause 2... and it was..... ok? My memory of it is just being way too open for my tastes, and felt mostly unfocused.



I think you mentioned something similar much earlier in this thread, and I also defended the game back then as well. 

Anyways, I still think Just Cause (2 for me) is the best example of pure primal catharsis of going into a sandbox and obliterating everything. It is unfocused, yes, since the core gameplay loop is to blow everything up, wank on the remains, rinse and repeat. The story and dialogue is laughable, but I don't expect the game competing with The Last Of Us for the gaming Oscarbait title. The sandbox is huge to the point of too much (becomes a detriment to the sequels too), yes, and playing mercenary mode (or completionist mode) starts feeling like a Ubisoft style cross off checklist style sandboxes. But I had a lot of fun when I'm stealing a tuk tuk and spend some time driving around the awesome South East Asian landscape, or skyjack a plane mid flight, fly to my next destination by surfing on the nosecone then crashing it to an enemy stronghold then open fire on anything with a pulse. It was the much needed downtime in between the general screwing around and destroying everything. The hookshot and infinite parachute mechanics also made it the best Spiderman game outside Spiderman 2 (movie tie in) and the recent Insomniac Spiderman. 

After the Saints Row series (2-4 are my favorite sandbox games of all time), Just Cause 2 was my pick up and play of choice.


----------



## TedEH

Yeah, I think it did come up before. It's a game I would have had a lot of fun with in my teens, but my 30s brain can't cope with the lack of focus in sandbox games anymore. I need a clear goal that can be reached and completed, otherwise it just feels like a time-sink.


----------



## wankerness

Finished AC Syndicate. I loved doing the city gang takeovers, leveling up skills/gang skills, and the core gameplay loop, but was mostly annoyed and bored by the main quest (same deal as Black Flag, really!). I guess that I really like filling out maps on ubisoft style games, but really don't like when the main missions are less fun. Odyssey and Origins did MUCH better jobs with the main quest and didn't make it feel like a chore. Horizon Zero Dawn also did a great job. I'm sorta in AC mode, though, and might have to check out 3 or Syndicate next. I want to play Rogue, but don't want to pay for it until it's on sale! I also have Brotherhood and whatever the other Ezio one is, but don't really want to mess with them if they're on the 2 engine. Ugh.

I also am thinking about trying Shadow of Mordor again. I played it briefly when I first got the system, but didn't like it. I think it's heavily AC-style and that now I'd be a lot better at it. 

Still not feeling any need to go back to Doom Eternal - that ammo thing REALLY turned me off. And I was constantly on the verge of getting killed, even on the first level! Ack. Stress-fest.

GF's on Water Temple in OOT, it was fun reliving that yesterday as we tried to figure out where the hell to go. Missed the passage under the floating block in the middle of the structure, as usual.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I also am thinking about trying Shadow of Mordor again. I played it briefly when I first got the system, but didn't like it.


It too me a while to get into that one too, but once I got the hang of things, I found that the violence was very satisfying.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

TedEH said:


> I've only ever played Just Cause 2... and it was..... ok? My memory of it is just being way too open for my tastes, and felt mostly unfocused.



It doesn't help that JC2 forces you to do the faction missions, which are boring as hell, before you can do the actually fun story missions.



wankerness said:


> I also am thinking about trying Shadow of Mordor again. I played it briefly when I first got the system, but didn't like it. I think it's heavily AC-style and that now I'd be a lot better at it.



As someone who can't stand Assassin's Creed, I loved Shadow of Mordor. Granted, it's not a deep experience, but it was a quick and enjoyable one. Easy platinum too, although a couple trophies are a bit glitchy; Burning Vengeance in particular.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Carrion Rocket said:


> It doesn't help that JC2 forces you to do the faction missions, which are boring as hell, before you can do the actually fun story missions.
> 
> 
> 
> As someone who can't stand Assassin's Creed, I loved Shadow of Mordor. Granted, it's not a deep experience, but it was a quick and enjoyable one. Easy platinum too, although a couple trophies are a bit glitchy; Burning Vengeance in particular.


Shadow of War is even better imo. It really fleshes out the mission types, the nemesis system and the skill tree. The fleshed out nemesis system in particular is suuuper cool and adds a ton of emergent gameplay


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> Shadow of War is even better imo. It really fleshes out the mission types, the nemesis system and the skill tree. The fleshed out nemesis system in particular is suuuper cool and adds a ton of emergent gameplay



Hmm. All i ever heard about that one was "MICROTRANSACTIONS OMG." I think they fixed that in updates, but no one ever reviews a game based on how it is months after release. So it's good? It's on sale right now for 10 bucks.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Hmm. All i ever heard about that one was "MICROTRANSACTIONS OMG." I think they fixed that in updates, but no one ever reviews a game based on how it is months after release. So it's good? It's on sale right now for 10 bucks.


The microtransactions have no bearing on the base game ime. The base game was good on release and it's still good. People just bitched about the microtransactions because of the multiplayer assault mode, where the microtransactions made it borderline pay to win.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m working through guild wars 2. Tried it at launch and dropped my thief at lvl 30. Leveling a Mesmer this time and I like the class a lot more. However it’s definitely a game I’d play and hour or so at a time.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still waiting for Disco Elysium to show up on PSN AU. Been intrigued with the game since hearing about it. But in the mean time I did notice Ys: Memories of Celceta being available. Since I'm still on a Trials of Mana hack n slash high, that'd be a fun alternative to play.

...or I should just stop putting FF7R episode 1 on hold and continue on with it...


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I also am thinking about trying Shadow of Mordor again. I played it briefly when I first got the system, but didn't like it. I think it's heavily AC-style and that now I'd be a lot better at it.



I'd compare the combat to the Batman Arkham games, which I thoroughly enjoyed and it made for a fun fluid experience. I'd also recommend turning off enemy combat prompts and just giving yourself a bigger challenge to fully take advantage of the nemesis system.


----------



## chopeth

Bought Days Gone for 20€, I'll give it a try as soon as I finish Borderlands III


----------



## Mathemagician

Started playing apex legends for the first time. Really fun game especially when you get teammates who communicate on the mic. 

Also overwatch again. Aggressive Zenyatta is the way.


----------



## wankerness

chopeth said:


> Bought Days Gone for 20€, I'll give it a try as soon as I finish Borderlands III


Days Gone takes a LONG time to get good, but it really does. You need to give it like, 8 hours plus. Once you start getting enough skills/weapons to reasonably start fighting hordes, it's fantastic. It's too bad it's such a slog to get there.

I played a bunch of Shadow of Mordor, did most of the side things (ex got sword/bow to level 10), did a bunch of the main quest (did the hunting stuff which was fun, but then got frustrated at the stupid mechanics for mind controlling chiefs when they can spawn in the midst of a huge group of guys and be completely immune to combo finishers and ranged and stealth). The combat is fine, it's like a slightly inferior version of the Arkham games. But, I HATE the movement controls and the way your character moves. I was thinking that AC Syndicate felt janky, but this is FAR worse. I'm constantly getting stuck on ledges during times I need to run after someone, blindly jumping onto the ground when it looks like I should be able to get to the ledge across, etc. And then the main character walks like he has a huge pole lodged all the way up his butt and out his mouth. Like, he VERY stiltedly starts walking VERY SLOWLY unless you hold down the run button, in which case he leaps into reasonable move speed with a huge delay. It makes AC: Black Flag look like AC: Odyssey!!! The game's not terrible or anything, but the core gameplay experience feels really dated already. I did order the sequel (complete edition was 12 bucks off ebay with free shipping!) based on knightbrolaire's rec, and I'd certainly assume they fixed the controls in the years following as this one mainly just feels exactly like the old batman games but with the stealth in the wrong kinds of spaces for it to work. The inability to tag enemies combined with the huge open multilevel areas combined with the fact that all enemies seem to infinitely respawn no matter what makes the stealth infuriating, while in the batman games it was kind of exciting.

I don't know how much can be blamed on age, either. Playing OOT recently on the N64, I was struck by how much more fluid the movement feels compared to so many games that are decades newer. Nintendo really knocked it out of the park with that one (well, apart from the many bugs).


----------



## wankerness

After starting Assassins Creed: Unity, I played about an hour before deciding I hated it. They like, intentionally made it as clunky and floaty-feeling as AC2 for some reason, and as a result despite massively upgraded graphics, it feels much older than AC: Black Flag. Combine that with the fact the first several missions are just sneaking around with little or no combat and lengthy sequences you have to repeat if anyone sees you, and I don't think I'll ever play this game again. Syndicate is a quantum leap forward in every respect other than graphics, which are pretty good here, too.

I think I might not play Shadow of Mordor again unless I feel like finishing it for the sake of finishing it, but the plot seems kind of perfunctory and just a training session for the basic mechanics of branding chiefs, with all the actual missions within feeling like products of a random mission generator like the one in Skyrim.

In better news, I started Majora's Mask for the first time ever, on my wii virtual console version I bought several years ago and never tried. It is surprising how good it looks! I'm running it through the Wii interface on my Wii U, and it looks a lot better than the N64 does through av cables. The game itself is a mixed bag. It's one hell of a lot weirder than OOT, and it feels like a bunch of psychos were given the assets from OOT and told to go wild. Most of the exact same townspeople models are reused in weird ways, there are horrifying things like a dancer's torso mask that sticks out of your face and makes you creepily writhe around, the transformation masks have these horrific animations associated, the whole plot involves a psycho-faced moon crashing into earth inevitably after 3 days of in-game time, etc. I'm going along with a guide so I'm not constantly feeling frazzled by the timer (I did the same thing with Persona 5 and it vastly improved the experience for me). I finished the first two dungeons, and god DAMN is this game a hell of a lot harder than OoT.

The first two dungeons are far more convoluted than even the water temple, and are filled with punishing mechanics that make you have to retread multiple rooms if you miss jumps. This, combined with the extremely touchy and difficult controls on things like charging up Goron rolls, have produced more profanity already than a full completion of OoT ever caused! I hated the lengthy platforming segment with the floaty deku form that involved you having to start all over from the beginning if you got shot down by enemies OR missed a precision landing with the wonky controls/camera, and I especially hated lining up Goron jumps between extremely narrow platforms and falling back multiple rooms when I missed. That said, I like it. I will hope the next dungeons are less dependent on very touchy and unnatural mechanics by Zelda standards!


----------



## Randy

Rage deleted JC4. Bought MudRunner+DLC and I'm having more fun literally spinning wheels in mud for 20 minutes a pop than playing the other game.


----------



## Choop

Finished Hollow Knight! Defeated The Radiance and ended with +100% complete. I initially began to do some of the Godhome stuff, but honestly I got antsy with it and am ready to just start something else, despite it being a fantastic game.


----------



## TedEH

^ I felt the same sentiment without even getting "the real ending". As soon as the credits roll, I'm done.

IMO, most of the time the first ending you see should generally count as "a real ending". Something more than that should be an easter egg, or bonus for completionists or something, but to set things up such that the "true ending" of the game isn't reachable without expending a bunch of extra effort after you thought you had beaten a game feels a bit disrespectful of the audience's time. Imagine going to see a movie, and the end credits bonus clip wasn't a teaser for the next movie, but the actual resolution to the film.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> How do you guys feel about its status as a game designed to simply make you feel miserable, especially at this point in our world situation? I read a couple reviews (one was Kotaku, I forget the other) that made me think “I never want to play this, but especially not now” since it sounded like it was designed to just mortify you and make you feel awful, including lots of graphic brutality and rape and whatnot. And this was from big fans of the first game! I count myself as one of those, too, but gawd, those spoilers made me not want to touch it. I hate that the reviews didn’t allow spoilers cause I’m most interested in whether those play out in a satisfying way before I even think about subjecting myself to it.



I feel like I felt playing the first game: I loved it - one of my favourite games-, and hated how it made me feel most of the time LOL.

Part II is a very bleak and tense game, not very different from Part I IMO. It's better on almost every aspect, except maybe the story? I mean, I liked it, but it's easier to relate to something like "Father seeks redemption saving adopted daughter" than "Teens have fit of rage, go on killing spree", and maybe that's why.

It seems people forget that Part I had scenes of torture, attempted rape / pedophilia, cannibalism, etcetera... not really a "fun" game. It also had some diversity to its cast, so nothing new there either.

Didn't care about NPCs calling their friends by their names, or me killing their dogs. It's me or them, and couldn't care less about murdering digital people (or animals). In this type of game I usually kill every enemy on an encounter before moving on when possible, so whatever.

I found Part II to be a little too long, maybe. Not bloated, but towards the end I felt like "Please end this fucking thing already FFS, why are you doing this?!?!"

In summary: I really liked it. I'm currently replaying it.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> I feel like I felt playing the first game: I loved it - one of my favourite games-, and hated how it made me feel most of the time LOL.
> 
> Part II is a very bleak and tense game, not very different from Part I IMO. It's better on almost every aspect, except maybe the story? I mean, I liked it, but it's easier to relate to something like "Father seeks redemption saving adopted daughter" than "Teens have fit of rage, go on killing spree", and maybe that's why.
> 
> It seems people forget that Part I had scenes of torture, attempted rape / pedophilia, cannibalism, etcetera... not really a "fun" game. It also had some diversity to its cast, so nothing new there either.
> 
> Didn't care about NPCs calling their friends by their names, or me killing their dogs. It's me or them, and couldn't care less about murdering digital people (or animals). In this type of game I usually kill every enemy on an encounter before moving on when possible, so whatever.
> 
> I found Part II to be a little too long, maybe. Not bloated, but towards the end I felt like "Please end this fucking thing already FFS, why are you doing this?!?!"
> 
> In summary: I really liked it. I'm currently replaying it.



Part I did have that stuff, but it was balanced with some moments of light, and it also had FAR less emphasis placed on making things as disgustingly brutal as possible (based on what I've seen in videos of this). It was also more worth it as the plot/characters were so strong, especially at the end, while most people who like this game seem to still agree the plot goes way off the rails by the end and that it lacks almost any emotional resonance. It also didn't have the designers saying things like "IF YOU HAVE FUN WITH THIS GAME, WE FAILED AT OUR JOBS." Which they apparently did, cause from what I've heard the combat is much more fun than the first game.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Part I did have that stuff, but it was balanced with some moments of light, and it also had FAR less emphasis placed on making things as disgustingly brutal as possible (based on what I've seen in videos of this). It was also more worth it as the plot/characters were so strong, especially at the end, while most people who like this game seem to still agree the plot goes way off the rails by the end and that it lacks almost any emotional resonance. It also didn't have the designers saying things like "IF YOU HAVE FUN WITH THIS GAME, WE FAILED AT OUR JOBS." Which they apparently did, cause from what I've heard the combat is much more fun than the first game.



Yeah, I mostly agree with you.

Part I's plot is more relatable, and everything's new, we're curious about this world, the characters, and everything else. Won't argue with that.

I couldn't relate with Part II characters' revenge driven rampage, but I think that's only natural for most of us haha... I also don't need to relate with a character to like a story. Never felt the need to annihilate the whole greek pantheon, but I loved every God Of War game anyways.

Part II has some moments of light. Probably more than Part I. I don't want to spoil the game, but the relationship with Dina is one of them. There are a few flashbacks in the game too which are really nice, but I can't say more without spoiling the thing.

It isn't a torture fest, either. Reports were greatly exaggerated 

Maybe they wanted players to feel disgusted with brutality? I don't know, it could be just a side effect of everything being more realistic, but I think we should feel disgusted by it. I didn't care about it for the most part (I'm not really sensitive to on-screen violence TBH, they're just fake things on a screen), but flinched a few times... (a breaking-an-arm scene comes to mind, ugh) But if that was the game designer's intention I think it's OK. They wanted us to feel the pain and despair, so probably they succeeded at it.

Gameplay is good. You can call it "fun", if you have fun playing it. I enjoyed my "Kill everything on this encounter" approach, and others may enjoy not killing anyone. I don't care what the game designers want (or what Ellie wants), that's how I decided to play the game. So, it was fun / enjoyable for me.

Story is not fun, and I'm OK with that. I doesn't need to. The game is usually compared with The Road, another book / movie which is also definitely not fun and I liked too. I wouldn't say "enjoyed" though, because it's not made to be enjoyed.

I agree about the game's ending / final hours, it lacks the resonance of the first game, but probably the whole story does because it's difficult to relate to teens on murdering rampages (it is for me at least LOL). I think the feeling of "C'mon, why are you doing this? Just end it already!" is only natural.

Anyways, I'm not sure if you played the game, but you should play it if you didn't and draw your on conclusions. Reviews of this game were BS thanks to ND's embargo, and people's opinions are mostly BS too (including mine ).


----------



## wankerness

I'm not playing it till it's ~20 bucks, I was glad I played through the first one but I didn't "enjoy it" all the time as the stealth stuff mostly just stressed me out. As it was intended to do! But, I have too many games I want to play right now that will not make me miserable. Haha. Resident Evil 2 is the one on my docket that I'm putting off due to it going to stress me out, and that one I think lacks the nihilism and ugliness that LoU2 seems to be going for. 

I'm kind of more in a happier Nintendo mood right now. I ordered the remake of Link's Awakening for Switch. I think I'm going to mod my Wii-U today and try out some stuff like Mario 3d World and maybe start up Twilight Princess HD. I think I'll be finished with Majora's mask in another day or so - I'm kind of glad it's shorter than OoT as the dungeons are REALLY not doing it for me. I like the boss fights, but the tone on the dungeons is just...OFF. The third dungeon, a big industrial water plant, seems like it's from Donkey Kong 64!!


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I'm not playing it till it's ~20 bucks, I was glad I played through the first one but I didn't "enjoy it" all the time as the stealth stuff mostly just stressed me out. As it was intended to do! But, I have too many games I want to play right now that will not make me miserable. Haha. Resident Evil 2 is the one on my docket that I'm putting off due to it going to stress me out, and that one I think lacks the nihilism and ugliness that LoU2 seems to be going for.
> 
> I'm kind of more in a happier Nintendo mood right now. I ordered the remake of Link's Awakening for Switch. I think I'm going to mod my Wii-U today and try out some stuff like Mario 3d World and maybe start up Twilight Princess HD. I think I'll be finished with Majora's mask in another day or so - I'm kind of glad it's shorter than OoT as the dungeons are REALLY not doing it for me. I like the boss fights, but the tone on the dungeons is just...OFF. The third dungeon, a big industrial water plant, seems like it's from Donkey Kong 64!!



Yeah, played RE2 remake recently too... or suffered through it would be more like it. Fucking zombie games stress me out too, even when there's no bleak setting / world view à la TLOU. It's a short game at least, and a pretty good game too.

Not gonna play RE3 remake, though. Enough is enough.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> IMO, most of the time the first ending you see should generally count as "a real ending". Something more than that should be an easter egg, or bonus for completionists or something, but to set things up such that the "true ending" of the game isn't reachable without expending a bunch of extra effort after you thought you had beaten a game feels a bit disrespectful of the audience's time. Imagine going to see a movie, and the end credits bonus clip wasn't a teaser for the next movie, but the actual resolution to the film.



Not quite the same comparing to a movie, since the interactive aspect allows the player to choose their ending. 

I get where you're coming from. If a game implies that there will be a good or bad ending based on the story, then yes, the natural inclination is to aim for the good ending since that's the most fulfilling plotwise. A game like Shadow Hearts where lifting a curse off a major character determined the ending was a big incentive to aim for the good ending, despite all the extra side stuff to achieve it. Leaving the good or true ending as a post game, is definitely a 'Richard Relocation' so to speak. I also heard a recent Blair Witch game that automatically gives you a bad ending without bothering to tell you that NOT killing enemies gets the good ending. That's just straight up stupid. 

Moral choice games on the other hand, I would agree from your perspective. With 2 equally viable endings, they only force you to play the game twice, with the promise of gameplay variety in the good/evil dichotomy but not really. You have to lean hard into one or the other to get the best upgrades you'll never get if you hybridise your choices. The Fable games were the biggest offenders, and as much as I enjoyed Infamous 1 and 2, so are they... yeah it's their namesake but whatever.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> the interactive aspect allows the player to choose their ending.


That's not really what's happening in games like Hollow Knight though. You're not really given an explicit choice - at no point does the game go "are you ok with this ending, or do you want something else?" There's no "this is a point of no return if you intended to end this differently". Most people playing that game without knowing there's another ending will just see the first one and shut the game off, not knowing that what they've just seen isn't the canonical / "real" ending of the game.

Even just the choice of making the end-game content narratively important enough that people are going to call it "the real ending" - the fact that the conclusion of the story happens _after_ many people will have seen the credits already. I think it's absolutely comparable to the movie I described.

Choice of ending? I'm all for that. Rolling the credits before wrapping up the narrative? No thanks. It's not THAT there's multiple endings, it's HOW you implement them.


----------



## Choop

I was ok with it regarding Hollow Knight as far as getting the "Dream No More" ending, because it didn't require much more to do in regards to where I already was in the game--plus I got to see a couple cool new areas that I had previously missed. If anything, I think the game could have done a better job emphasizing how important something like the Kings Soul charm is, whether it be through clues or whatever. I had to go reference the wiki to know exactly where to go, because it had been so long since I passed the area to get the other half of the charm. Even that isn't the best possible ending, but I'm not about to grind the Pantheons right now--the backlog is beyond full over here in my steam library. :X


----------



## TedEH

I honestly thought that was a weak point in Hollow Knight -> the world building was interesting, but it didn't do a very good job of telling you what you should be doing or why. It was a great way to build a bit of mystery, but not a great way to drive you forward. The goal, your progress toward that goal, etc., was never very clear. I knew that I hadn't beaten the game yet because there was more map to explore, and the credits hadn't rolled - but I never really knew _what_ I was looking for, past just exploring whatever I came across.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm about 12 - 13 hours into Last of Us 2. I've already gotten one twist that was pretty dad even if the end result was inevitable, and everyone says there's a huge twist aroundnwhere I am now, so still forming an opinion, but otherwise, yeah, this is a effin' good game.

Also, been balancing out the nihilism of LoU2 with some Spyro Reignited sprinkled in. Helps to not end my night feeling sad.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> That's not really what's happening in games like Hollow Knight though. You're not really given an explicit choice - at no point does the game go "are you ok with this ending, or do you want something else?" There's no "this is a point of no return if you intended to end this differently". Most people playing that game without knowing there's another ending will just see the first one and shut the game off, not knowing that what they've just seen isn't the canonical / "real" ending of the game.
> 
> Even just the choice of making the end-game content narratively important enough that people are going to call it "the real ending" - the fact that the conclusion of the story happens _after_ many people will have seen the credits already. I think it's absolutely comparable to the movie I described.
> 
> Choice of ending? I'm all for that. Rolling the credits before wrapping up the narrative? No thanks. It's not THAT there's multiple endings, it's HOW you implement them.



Perhaps because I haven't played Hollow Knight yet that I can't judge. Having said that, playing Symphony of The Night first time is a similar sort of experience. The game doesn't really tell you much else aside from raid castle and kill things. It certainly doesn't tell you that you'll get the bad ending and miss out on the second half of the game if you don't do a bunch of extra exploring and random arbitrary stuff. And it doesn't tell you about the 'true' ending and token awful Celine Dion style ballad if you don't spick and speck out every pixel aspect of Dracula's entire castle map and then some. Hell, it doesn't even bother to tell you what to do with the wolf transformation attack. 

It's not necessarily a good thing and I guess why that kind of design is from the bygone era, since most modern triple A games are terrified if the player misses out on a few secrets. So it became exclusive to the Metroidvania genre until Dark Souls brought it right back. Dark Souls in essence does have some Metroidvania DNA in it's gameplay. 

Giving your stance on endings, you may want to avoid Nier Automata. Yoko Taro has a peculiar view on what an 'ending' means.


----------



## wankerness

Nier Automata at least gives a lot of blatant messages telling you to start a "new playthrough" that are unavoidable. I don't remember if it tells you that it will be different, but it definitely doesn't try to keep the "playthroughs" B and C a secret. The biggest problem with it is that if you do playthrough B, it's similar to Nier 1, where the alternate playthroughs are not that different from the game proper and you're just going through the same story from a different perspective, which might lull you into thinking the third playthrough will be the same thing yet again, when in reality it's the second half of the story and takes place after A/B!

Been trying to mod my Wii U - still having trouble with VC games, but got Wii U games to download and install and become playable from the homescreen as if they were legit. This is amusing. It's too bad I already have almost everything for Wii U that I wanted! I'm mainly just going to try out Pikmin 3 and Mario 3D World and maybe do Twilight Princess.

Hopefully I'll be able to figure out the VC stuff, in which case I'll also be trying Skyward Sword (everyone seems to hate this now, but when it was brand new I remember people thinking it was incredible) and get some of the N64 games I'd like to replay since Majora's Mask through the Wii VC looked FAR, FAR better than my N64 does through my receiver, and the Wii Pro controller is way better than the N64 controller


----------



## TedEH

It's been a while, but I remember liking Skyward Sword. I had nitpicks, but I forget most of them by now. Some bosses were a bit frustrating I think...?


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> It's been a while, but I remember liking Skyward Sword. I had nitpicks, but I forget most of them by now. Some bosses were a bit frustrating I think...?



I mostly see people saying the full motion controls are incredibly tedious and annoying, and that the stuff between dungeons is really repetitive and bland, like there's nothing at all in the sky when you fly around (?). Sounds like people would love an HD version that removed the motion controls, though.


----------



## TedEH

At this point I've put close to 30 hours into Alien: Isolation, and I really _want_ to like the game, but it consistently frustrates me. It does _so many thing right_, but the combination of the spaced out save points and the fact that a single mistake means you've lost a huge chunk of progress makes the game more frustrating than fun. Even after getting far enough into it to grab the flamethrower, getting one-shot-ed by an invincible monster because you have to step out into the open to reach any objective is just waaaaaaaaay too frequent an occurrence. There's no other game in recent memory that makes me swear at my computer so frequently.


----------



## Ralyks

In regards to Last of Us 2



Spoiler



I’m 14 hours in and now playing as Abby. Did I get truly MGS2’ed and I’m Abby the rest of the game now?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> In regards to Last of Us 2
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I’m 14 hours in and now playing as Abby. Did I get truly MGS2’ed and I’m Abby the rest of the game now?


not quite


----------



## Ralyks

KnightBrolaire said:


> not quite





Spoiler



Ok, but so far I don’t like her enough to want to play as her. Do they somehow find a way for me to be sympathetic with someone who took out Joel and Jesus what the fuck with Jesse out of nowhere?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Ok, but so far I don’t like her enough to want to play as her. Do they somehow find a way for me to be sympathetic with someone who took out Joel and Jesus what the fuck with Jesse out of nowhere?





Spoiler



yes. Get ready to spend a lot of time bonding with abby for the next ohhh 10+ hours or so.


----------



## Ralyks

KnightBrolaire said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> yes. Get ready to spend a lot of time bonding with abby for the next ohhh 10+ hours or so.





Spoiler



Greeeaaat. Oh, and I have to craft shivs again? Swell. I was really hoping those were left behind in the first game


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Greeeaaat. Oh, and I have to craft shivs again? Swell. I was really hoping those were left behind in the first game


yup. invest in the perk for being able to make multiple shivs early. Also the incendiary shotgun shells (those are fucking awesome).


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> After starting Assassins Creed: Unity, I played about an hour before deciding I hated it. They like, intentionally made it as clunky and floaty-feeling as AC2 for some reason, and as a result despite massively upgraded graphics, it feels much older than AC: Black Flag. Combine that with the fact the first several missions are just sneaking around with little or no combat and lengthy sequences you have to repeat if anyone sees you, and I don't think I'll ever play this game again. Syndicate is a quantum leap forward in every respect other than graphics, which are pretty good here, too.
> 
> I think I might not play Shadow of Mordor again unless I feel like finishing it for the sake of finishing it, but the plot seems kind of perfunctory and just a training session for the basic mechanics of branding chiefs, with all the actual missions within feeling like products of a random mission generator like the one in Skyrim.
> 
> In better news, I started Majora's Mask for the first time ever, on my wii virtual console version I bought several years ago and never tried. It is surprising how good it looks! I'm running it through the Wii interface on my Wii U, and it looks a lot better than the N64 does through av cables. The game itself is a mixed bag. It's one hell of a lot weirder than OOT, and it feels like a bunch of psychos were given the assets from OOT and told to go wild. Most of the exact same townspeople models are reused in weird ways, there are horrifying things like a dancer's torso mask that sticks out of your face and makes you creepily writhe around, the transformation masks have these horrific animations associated, the whole plot involves a psycho-faced moon crashing into earth inevitably after 3 days of in-game time, etc. I'm going along with a guide so I'm not constantly feeling frazzled by the timer (I did the same thing with Persona 5 and it vastly improved the experience for me). I finished the first two dungeons, and god DAMN is this game a hell of a lot harder than OoT.
> 
> The first two dungeons are far more convoluted than even the water temple, and are filled with punishing mechanics that make you have to retread multiple rooms if you miss jumps. This, combined with the extremely touchy and difficult controls on things like charging up Goron rolls, have produced more profanity already than a full completion of OoT ever caused! I hated the lengthy platforming segment with the floaty deku form that involved you having to start all over from the beginning if you got shot down by enemies OR missed a precision landing with the wonky controls/camera, and I especially hated lining up Goron jumps between extremely narrow platforms and falling back multiple rooms when I missed. That said, I like it. I will hope the next dungeons are less dependent on very touchy and unnatural mechanics by Zelda standards!


One of my greatest regrets is that I went through Majora's Mask as a kid using the official guide the entire time. I wish I could go through that game with fresh eyes and discover everything like it was new. Goddamnit I love that game.


----------



## mlp187

Just finished TLOU2 about a half hour ago. Started a second playthrough and realized i'm going to need at least a few months before another replay. Great game, highly recommend. Now to finally get to RDR2.


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> One of my greatest regrets is that I went through Majora's Mask as a kid using the official guide the entire time. I wish I could go through that game with fresh eyes and discover everything like it was new. Goddamnit I love that game.



I have some mental block with anything on a timer that I probably would have enjoyed it LESS without the guide. Especially the fairies in the dungeons, and how you have to get all of them in one go! I just finished the fourth dungeon yesterday with all the fairies, and jesus christ is that place convoluted. I said the first two dungeons made the water temple look simple, but the third dungeon (that looks like a DK64 reject) is way more confusing and the puzzles are non-intuitive and just bad. The fourth dungeon seems more intuitive, but also incredible clunky with how you have to exit and weigh down switches with the statue songs when switching masks (all made super tedious by the fact that each mask takes up an item slot out of your THREE available!) to flip it and then get back to the entrance when it's right side up. Ah well. It's certainly a really impressive creation, I just feel as though the time limit would make it very annoying to try and figure out yourself, as if you don't finish it in one cycle everything resets!

The sidequests and things definitely seem like they'd have been much more delightful to discover through exploration, as few of them are very dependent on time (although it's very annoying when you have to go to a store that opens at 10 pm and you can only skip to 6 pm, so then you just have to sit there for a few minutes waiting). I guess the 3DS one made it so you could skip to exact times, which would have been nice. I'm most curious to play that version because of the apparently huge changes they made to the bosses, especially the fourth boss, which was seriously probably one of the lamest bosses in Zelda history (you literally run around after him and hit him with a sword till he dies, with no time limits or obstacles to speak of). The graphics sure look a lot better, too. But, I dunno if they made it any easier to do Goron jumps on narrow ramps, which was my major complaint. The Zora swimming is kind of messy, too, with it being very hard to just get out of the water easily without bonking your head repeatedly, but that's far less annoying than the couple of nasty Goron jump sections.

I'm not really sure what's left in the game, I will probably finish it today sometime though.

I started up Twilight Princess HD and got through the first dungeon - that game sure is less annoying with regular zelda controls where you don't have to swing the wiimote to attack. It looks pretty good in HD, too, even though I think the animations and controls are a lot more wooden than in WW, OoT, and Majora's Mask, especially when it comes to Link himself. It's weird how hard they dropped the ball there.

AC: Rogue just got a price drop to 10 bucks, so I bought that. I guess that's what I'm doing next when i get out of my Nintendo mode.


----------



## TedEH

I went through Majora's Mask again, about a year ago. I hadn't played it since I was a kid, but I remembered juuuuust enough that nothing was quite a surprise. The dungeon layouts, a lot of the details of side quests, etc., had been forgotten a good while ago, so maybe that's the best of both worlds. I was able to get through everything, including collecting every mask, within a few weeks.


----------



## StevenC

Majora's Mask is still the best game ever made. Twilight Princess HD really improved the game just by looking a little bit better. Skyward Sword is great fun, but can just be really slow particularly the beginning. I know some people who love the motion controls and just seem to have them down, but the Girahim fights and even just regular shielding bokoblins.

MM>BOTW>WW>OOT>TP>SS


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> MM>BOTW>WW>OOT>TP>SS


I don't think I can fault that.

I'd put LttP and LbW somewhere close to where OoT is. Then most of the gameboy ones are around TP status.

I've not yet played a bad Zelda game though, excluding maybe 2.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I don't think I can fault that.
> 
> I'd put LttP and LbW somewhere close to where OoT is. Then most of the gameboy ones are around TP status.
> 
> I've not yet played a bad Zelda game though, excluding maybe 2.


I didn't enjoy LttP, but I only played it for the first time recently. Link's Awakening is right up there with WW though. Haven't played most of the other GBx or DS games though, so I was just going for 3D. Four Swords Adventure kicks ass if you've got a few friends though.


----------



## TedEH

Was there anything in particular you didn't like about Link to the Past? Depending on what it is, Link Between Worlds has a lot of quality of life improvements, and plays a lot more "modern", so maybe you'd like that one.

Oracle of [whatever] is on the backlog currently. I have a 3ds/virtual console version, but haven't gotten around to it yet.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> excluding maybe 2.



I'm one of the guys who think Zelda 2 is a great Zelda game, just not in a traditional sense that started with Zelda 1. It wasn't just a Doki Doki Panic reskin (which was already a solid game making Mario 2 a solid non traditional Mario), but a well thought out experiment. Still a massive open world (for it's time) and surprisingly fluid control. Yeah you have RPG elements meaning you have to grind, and it's difficult as hell, but was great fun nonetheless. It was the Dark Souls of my generation come to think of it.


----------



## TedEH

I've not played Zelda 2 enough to have a fair opinion of it, I suppose. I always thought Mario 2 was great, and it was almost disappointing to learn it was a reskin.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Was there anything in particular you didn't like about Link to the Past? Depending on what it is, Link Between Worlds has a lot of quality of life improvements, and plays a lot more "modern", so maybe you'd like that one.
> 
> Oracle of [whatever] is on the backlog currently. I have a 3ds/virtual console version, but haven't gotten around to it yet.


I played it about I think last year. Didn't like the controls and combat, so I avoided enemies like the plague because there aren't any health drops to make it worth it. Felt janky and dated, padded with difficulty and there weren't any good dungeons. Felt like I was exploring the map to not miss things, rather than to find things. Tells you find the ice rod at the same time it tells you to find the Zora king in language that isn't clear they're two different events, and even if you do both there's enough near the ice rod to make you think you've found what you were looking for. And then you don't need the ice rod until the very end so you don't know you're missing something either. I've played enough Zelda to know that the number of items left to find isn't always the same as the number of dungeons left, and they're happy to give you an otherwise pointless item two rooms before the final boss just to beat them. The Ganon fight sucks hard.

Planning to play LBW soon when I can work up the courage to hunch over a 3DS for a bunch of hours. Enjoyed Oracles when I played as a kid but never finished them because I was a kid, so hoping for a remake.

Mario 2 is better than Lost Levels.


----------



## Leviathus

Finished Dark Souls: remastered and got the dark lord ending, def the best game of the trilogy.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Went back to do the Horizon Zero Dawn Expansion. 

Holy crap, I cannot wait for the new gen consoles. Loading times are BRUTAL.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> I played it about I think last year. Didn't like the controls and combat, so I avoided enemies like the plague because there aren't any health drops to make it worth it. Felt janky and dated, padded with difficulty and there weren't any good dungeons. Felt like I was exploring the map to not miss things, rather than to find things. Tells you find the ice rod at the same time it tells you to find the Zora king in language that isn't clear they're two different events, and even if you do both there's enough near the ice rod to make you think you've found what you were looking for. And then you don't need the ice rod until the very end so you don't know you're missing something either. I've played enough Zelda to know that the number of items left to find isn't always the same as the number of dungeons left, and they're happy to give you an otherwise pointless item two rooms before the final boss just to beat them. The Ganon fight sucks hard.
> 
> Planning to play LBW soon when I can work up the courage to hunch over a 3DS for a bunch of hours. Enjoyed Oracles when I played as a kid but never finished them because I was a kid, so hoping for a remake.
> 
> Mario 2 is better than Lost Levels.




Given your previous rankings don't include the first 2 NES Zelda games, this makes sense.

Link To The Past was just the third Zelda game ever and 1993 was a bloody long time ago, and it's certainly showing it's age. But from Zelda 1 to 3, it was a quantum leap at the time of what you can do with gameplay. At the time it was a joy trying to get the Magic powder, Ice rod and the final sword and bow upgrades, and while the game doesn't tell you the ice rod's usefulness in the traditional Zelda sense (find a token item in a dungeon that's important to completing it), part of the fun was experimenting with it's usage. You get full magic when you freeze an enemy and use a hammer to shatter them, and the 3 sandworms die much quicker with a few well timed shots. I do agree that a lot of the items were unnecessary padding: the shovel, Lv2 gloves, aforementioned magic powder, and a few are downright redundant (Cane of Byrna is pointless when you have the Cape, which you needed to get the cane anyway). But comparing to the 2 games before it it was just a massive upgrade in every sense. It's what led to the tried and true template updating that Nintendo has been doing for the last 40 years.

If I had a go at playing the original NES Zelda now, I'd probably blast it in the same way, if not more so, than your post. 

Mario 2 is indeed better than Lost Levels since it's far more than just a Mario 1 mod with a difficulty overhang instead of a curve.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Jumped back into FF7R (whilst playing Trials of Mana on the side). Up to Chapter 8, and I'll have to say, this game is confused (not confusing), confused with itself and it's tone. Add all the amounts of unnecessary padding when traversing through the levels. I guess that's what happens when you stretch the original to ridiculous extremes then suddenly have to figure out how to fill the newly made space. It's also feeling more and more like FFVIII in the walking down the corridor department, albeit a bit better with more likeable characters.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Given your previous rankings don't include the first 2 NES Zelda games, this makes sense.
> 
> Link To The Past was just the third Zelda game ever and 1993 was a bloody long time ago, and it's certainly showing it's age. But from Zelda 1 to 3, it was a quantum leap at the time of what you can do with gameplay. At the time it was a joy trying to get the Magic powder, Ice rod and the final sword and bow upgrades, and while the game doesn't tell you the ice rod's usefulness in the traditional Zelda sense (find a token item in a dungeon that's important to completing it), part of the fun was experimenting with it's usage. You get full magic when you freeze an enemy and use a hammer to shatter them, and the 3 sandworms die much quicker with a few well timed shots. I do agree that a lot of the items were unnecessary padding: the shovel, Lv2 gloves, aforementioned magic powder, and a few are downright redundant (Cane of Byrna is pointless when you have the Cape, which you needed to get the cane anyway). But comparing to the 2 games before it it was just a massive upgrade in every sense. It's what led to the tried and true template updating that Nintendo has been doing for the last 40 years.
> 
> If I had a go at playing the original NES Zelda now, I'd probably blast it in the same way, if not more so, than your post.
> 
> Mario 2 is indeed better than Lost Levels since it's far more than just a Mario 1 mod with a difficulty overhang instead of a curve.


Totally.

Every time I try to play Zelda 1 I give up pretty quick because there's 0 sense of where to go or what to do and it's brutally difficult at the start. Switch Online has a bonus version where you start with loads of upgrades and then it's trivially easy. 

LtP is obviously a massive leap and I'm all about trying to appreciate games in the context of their time. But even then there are loads of NES and SNES games that do still hold up, it's mostly just that kind of adventure game. I also bet I'd enjoy Link's Awakening far less on GameBoy just having A and B, but on the other hand LtP has all the controls that Switch uses for LA and doesn't use them to what seems the obviously level now.

The reason I didn't bother with any experimenting was probably because, not being 1993, it wasn't the only game I had to play and all the resources for experimentation being dropped so rarely to just enjoy the game. 

But yeah, trying to only put games on the list that I played fairly concurrently with their release. We only got GBs for Gold and Silver and an N64 after that so, aside from some SNES and PS1games various uncles had, it doesn't feel fair to rate a lot of games from before then.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Majora’s Mask with all 20 masks, so the last boss was trivial. I’m contemplating fighting him again without using the god mode mask! But, there’s soooo much waiting involved on the n64 version! Ah well. It’s an interesting game for sure. It just feels like a weird art/horror movie compared to OoT being one of the Lord of the Rings movies, or something.

I now have Minish Cap, Skyward Sword, and the Link’s Awakening remake to try out. And the DS ones, but no one seems to like those! And the HD Twilight Princess, but since I’ve actually finished that game before I dunno if I’ll bother.

I played LttP some time after I played OoT and remember liking it for a while, but eventually losing interest when the dungeon items started getting stupid and the puzzles stopped feeling intuitive. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back and finish it. Partly cause my save was on an snes cart and it’s a safe bet the battery is dead by now! And restarting it on the Switch online version seems like quite an ordeal.
I’m interested in the 3DS one, but I’d have to buy the system. Maybe I’ll get one with an R4 - I’ve gotten a ton of mileage out of my regular DS with one of those.


----------



## Boofchuck

wankerness said:


> Zelda stuff


I think you should use the Fierce Diety Mask, you've earned it! 
Also, everyone has their opinions on different Zelda games. I for one really enjoy Skyward Sword and Minish Cap.


----------



## Boofchuck

Also, I moved into a yurt (mostly) without electricity a few months ago. So I've been playing OOT Master Quest on the 3ds for the first time. The puzzles are genuinely challenging for me.


----------



## Adieu

Boofchuck said:


> Also, I moved into a yurt (mostly) without electricity a few months ago. So I've been playing OOT Master Quest on the 3ds for the first time. The puzzles are genuinely challenging for me.



There's a pandemic about and you're living in a yurt without power


....2020 is like a bad 80s movie innit?


----------



## Boofchuck

Adieu said:


> There's a pandemic about and you're living in a yurt without power
> 
> 
> ....2020 is like a bad 80s movie innit?


Honestly it's a pretty good place to be. We have a big garden, a Solar pump for water, and relatively low overhead. And we're not in a city. 

2020 is weird as hell.


----------



## BlackMastodon

The talk about Hollow Knight made me wanna give it another go. Jumped back in last night and promptly got my ass handed to me by Hornet, but over the next few tries I got back into how the game should play and instead of rushing at her headlong I played really patient and finally beat her. It was very satisfying when I was doing it right, and very frustrating when I was playing like an idjit. 

So now I have the dash ability and no idea where to go.


----------



## Demiurge

^IIRC there's a ledge in the lower part of Greenpath, leading to the next area, that you can air-dash onto.

Once you get the next movement upgrade things really open up.


----------



## wankerness

Dabbled a bit in Pikmin 3 and Zelda Minish Cap today, kind of enjoyed both but wasn't immediately grabbed. Pikmin 3 reminds me of my memories of the first two games, both of which I remember liking but also remember stressing me out greatly cause I couldn't bear to sacrifice Pikmin. I bet I would be shocked how much worse the graphics were in them, cause this just looked like my memories, but I am sure it looks incredibly advanced in comparison.

Minish Cap was amusing, I finished the first dungeon and started bumming around town. Reminds me of LttP, but with the flexibility of Link's Awakening, N64 sound effects, and a different gimmick (shrinking). I'll have to give it some more time.


----------



## Ralyks

At the point where I’m trying to get Last of Us 2 done because I forgot Ghost of Tsushima comes out Friday and I paid for it already.



Spoiler



I’m 20 1/2 hours into LoU2, where Abby and Lev are descending down from the bridge to get to the hospital. I still don’t like Abby, but I’m starting to understand her story. I miss Ellie though. Also, I’m worried about where the story goes with Lev.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> At the point where I’m trying to get Last of Us 2 done because I forgot Ghost of Tsushima comes out Friday and I paid for it already.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I’m 20 1/2 hours into LoU2, where Abby and Lev are descending down from the bridge to get to the hospital. I still don’t like Abby, but I’m starting to understand her story. I miss Ellie though. Also, I’m worried about where the story goes with Lev.


oh that's when all the cool shit starts happening.


----------



## Choop

I'm doing the Sam and Max Telltale series, and it is great.  I did have an issue where the game wasn't saving, but it turns out it was my antivirus preventing the game from making changes to its own folder. >< 

Also doing CS:GO to scratch the fps itch--I used to play CS:S a whole lot back in the day, but haven't played CS:GO all that much over the years. It's super solid, but I doubt I will take it beyond just playing casually.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Blasting through my second NG+ playthrough of Trials Of Mana just to complete the third path. At this point having the infinite MP buff makes this game far too trivial like putting down a rabid pit bull terrier with tactical carpet bombing.

And I'm already hungry for more fun hacky slashy game that doesn't take itself too seriously. Lord knows how FF7R will give me that satisfaction despite it's massive ultra HD sword. And that counts my neglected free copy of God Of W4r out (I will play it eventually). So I impulsively bought Ys: Memories Of Celceta on sale. A 2020 port of a 2012 remake/retcon and 3d incarnation of the 4th canonical game made in the 90s, part in the long running Ys series... the early Ys games get remade as much as Seven Samurai apparently.

I also borrowed my sister's copy of Insomniac's Marvel's Spider Man, so that's another game I'll be playing as a palette cleanser in between all the anime based white noise.


----------



## Werecow

I'm playing Black Mesa. It's been awesome so far. The atmosphere and general impact of it is better than i remember it when first playing Half-Life. So for it to be better than my rose-tinted memory is pretty impressive.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> And I'm already hungry for more fun hacky slashy game that doesn't take itself too seriously.



Have you ever played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance?


----------



## Mathemagician

Started playing Apex again. It’s really a fun game, but I keep it casual after about 45 minutes I swap to something else. Won exactly one game so far, so I’m still pumped about that.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> Have you ever played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance?



That newish Platinum game Astral Chain is on sale for Switch right now too.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

getting hyped for Ghost of Tsushima.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> Have you ever played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance?



I've gone on record saying the unpopular opinion that it's the best Metal Gear game in the series. 

I probably should revisit it some time.


----------



## Quiet Coil

KnightBrolaire said:


> getting hyped for Ghost of Tsushima.


I actually relished the tiny moments of tranquil everyday life in games like Onimusha, I’d imagine there’ll be plenty of that here (in comparison anyhow). All about the atmosphere...


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Finished Majora’s Mask with all 20 masks, so the last boss was trivial. I’m contemplating fighting him again without using the god mode mask! But, there’s soooo much waiting involved on the n64 version! Ah well. It’s an interesting game for sure. It just feels like a weird art/horror movie compared to OoT being one of the Lord of the Rings movies, or something.
> 
> I now have Minish Cap, Skyward Sword, and the Link’s Awakening remake to try out. And the DS ones, but no one seems to like those! And the HD Twilight Princess, but since I’ve actually finished that game before I dunno if I’ll bother.
> 
> I played LttP some time after I played OoT and remember liking it for a while, but eventually losing interest when the dungeon items started getting stupid and the puzzles stopped feeling intuitive. I’m not sure if I’ll ever go back and finish it. Partly cause my save was on an snes cart and it’s a safe bet the battery is dead by now! And restarting it on the Switch online version seems like quite an ordeal.
> I’m interested in the 3DS one, but I’d have to buy the system. Maybe I’ll get one with an R4 - I’ve gotten a ton of mileage out of my regular DS with one of those.



I agree Majora's Mask _is _the best!

Phantom Hourglass is mostly a good game, but there are two or three bits that suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I've heard Spirit Tracks is pretty good though.

LA Remake is so good. Minish Cap is excellent, usually people call it one of the best 2Ds.



wankerness said:


> Dabbled a bit in Pikmin 3 and Zelda Minish Cap today, kind of enjoyed both but wasn't immediately grabbed. Pikmin 3 reminds me of my memories of the first two games, both of which I remember liking but also remember stressing me out greatly cause I couldn't bear to sacrifice Pikmin. I bet I would be shocked how much worse the graphics were in them, cause this just looked like my memories, but I am sure it looks incredibly advanced in comparison.
> 
> Minish Cap was amusing, I finished the first dungeon and started bumming around town. Reminds me of LttP, but with the flexibility of Link's Awakening, N64 sound effects, and a different gimmick (shrinking). I'll have to give it some more time.



Pikmin really is a game for people who like a bit of anxiety in their life. One of those games that stops you from sleeping and makes you not want to play the game again tomorrow because of the pressure. That's mostly the first one though. The others only do that if you want the best score/ending. Pikmin 1 and 2 still look really good to be fair, loads of Gamecube games still don't honestly (Sunshine, Double Dash, Metroids). You get over the dead Pikmin quickly and you learn how to not get them killed, but that's never been the stress for me. It's the same Majora's Mask thing of getting all you need to get done in the time you've got.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I've gone on record saying the unpopular opinion that it's the best Metal Gear game in the series.
> 
> I probably should revisit it some time.



I feel like a jerk, because I remember really disliking the concept of it when it came out, but it's actually awesome. :C


----------



## mongey

annoyingly its school holidays here in Oz and I haven't been able to play last of us 2 as my 5 year old is constantly around .I'm about 7 hours in and super keen to progress the story 


but we did grab sonic and mario at the olympics for the switch as wife and I are working from home and need a new distraction for her . been playing it with her and its pretty fun. the old school events are good as someone who loved the old track and field game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> I feel like a jerk, because I remember really disliking the concept of it when it came out, but it's actually awesome. :C



In fairness, the title is a jarring shift to the usual Metal Gear's bread and butter stealth gameplay. And it was Kojima's second attempt in making you play Raiden thinking he's as cool as Solid Snake, but at least had the decency not to surprise you with it the second time around.  That said, turns out Kojima was right that Raiden IS fun to play, so long as Platinumgames are in charge of development. 


All the hack/slash talk made me remember that I still need to finish Killer Is Dead. But unfortunately it happens to be one of Suda 51's least interesting games, despite all the quirks you'd typically find in his style, I just ended up being disinterested in the whole thing.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> In fairness, the title is a jarring shift to the usual Metal Gear's bread and butter stealth gameplay. And it was Kojima's second attempt in making you play Raiden thinking he's as cool as Solid Snake, but at least had the decency not to surprise you with it the second time around.  That said, turns out Kojima was right that Raiden IS fun to play, so long as Platinumgames are in charge of development.
> 
> 
> All the hack/slash talk made me remember that I still need to finish Killer Is Dead. But unfortunately it happens to be one of Suda 51's least interesting games, despite all the quirks you'd typically find in his style, I just ended up being disinterested in the whole thing.


I keep meaning to replay Revengeance now that I've played Bayonettas and know what I'm doing. Must dig out the disc and get it on backwards compatiblity for X1.


----------



## Rosal76

KnightBrolaire said:


> getting hyped for Ghost of Tsushima.



As a hardcore stealth gamer, I'm really interested in seeing the stealth gameplay for that game. I probably won't do very well in that game because I don't really do well in melee style combat but doesn't mean I can't enjoy watching Youtube videos of gamers playing the game.


----------



## MFB

Just bought _Ghosts of Tshushima_ before tomorrow, thinking I could get the 35GB preload file people were mentioning to download and save some time overnight, but apparently not. Guess I'll just have to let it go while I rest, but I'm not looking forward to working tomorrow knowing I've got an openworld samurai game waiting for me.


----------



## Ralyks

I too have Ghost of Tsushima waiting. However. I can't play just yet. Because Last of Us 2.



Spoiler



Ok, first they pull an MGS2, now they pull a Return of the King? I think it's over, Dina and Elli and JJ can live happily ever after, Tommy DIDN'T die. But no, Ellies gotta have revenge, and now I'm playing as Abby again in some parts of California. I only stopped because it's now midnight here. And I hated how ELLIE was a boss fight. I really like that game, but I'm also wanting to be done and over with. Whew.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> I too have Ghost of Tsushima waiting. However. I can't play just yet. Because Last of Us 2.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Ok, first they pull an MGS2, now they pull a Return of the King? I think it's over, Dina and Elli and JJ can live happily ever after, Tommy DIDN'T die. But no, Ellies gotta have revenge, and now I'm playing as Abby again in some parts of California. I only stopped because it's now midnight here. And I hated how ELLIE was a boss fight. I really like that game, but I'm also wanting to be done and over with. Whew.





Spoiler



You're almost done. There's basically 2 more sequences as Ellie and the game is done. Also the MP5SD is REALLLLY GOOD. Damn shame they didn't put it in the game earlier. Oh well, at least I get to use it in NG+.



I started up Days Gone just for shits and giggles. Have to say that I hate the shooting in it versus TLOU2. It feels floatier and less impactful when you shoot someone. Same with melee combat besides finishers. I'm sure once I spend more time with it I'll get into it though.


----------



## chopeth

KnightBrolaire said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> You're almost done. There's basically 2 more sequences as Ellie and the game is done. Also the MP5SD is REALLLLY GOOD. Damn shame they didn't put it in the game earlier. Oh well, at least I get to use it in NG+.
> 
> 
> 
> I started up Days Gone just for shits and giggles. Have to say that I hate the shooting in it versus TLOU2. It feels floatier and less impactful when you shoot someone. Same with melee combat besides finishers. I'm sure once I spend more time with it I'll get into it though.



I was going to start DG today, is it good?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

chopeth said:


> I was going to start DG today, is it good?


I think it has potential, but I'm only about 2 hours in so far. I got so annoyed by a camera glitch (camera was stuck inside the character ) that I shut it off last night.


----------



## TedEH

New Paper Mario is out today ... but I'm not going to start it until I finish Alien: Isolation, since I'm so close to the end of that game and don't want to abandon it.

But that means avoiding reviews or spoilers until I can get to it.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> New Paper Mario is out today ... but I'm not going to start it until I finish Alien: Isolation, since I'm so close to the end of that game and don't want to abandon it.
> 
> But that means avoiding reviews or spoilers until I can get to it.


I'm waiting to hear reviews for Origami King, hoping it's good but have enough games to play to wait on a verdict.


----------



## wankerness

Bought Ghost of Tsushima after reading about it - gameplay-wise, sounds like the last couple AC games where it isn't all forced tedious stealth like say, AC: Unity. Graphically, it looks vastly better than any Ubisoft stuff. This is the first game I've bought at full price in a while! IT BETTER BE GOOD!

Watching my GF go through the Link's Awakening remake, too - that game has a great look and feel. It's too bad it seems like they didn't do too much to the game itself other than the admittedly huge change of taking advantage of more buttons on the controller to not have to be equipping items and unequipping them every 10 seconds.


----------



## TedEH

I find that I generally don't want early reviews to influence my opinion of a game. If enough time is passed, I might look to reviews to inform whether or not I think a game is worth the purchasing decision, but if I care enough to buy a game at full price before it's out, I want the opportunity to asses the game on it's own merit - knowing that my tastes tend to vary pretty wildly from a lot of reviewers, and that reviewers in themselves are going to vary wildly. I don't want anyone's opinion of a game to bias me in some way before I give the game it's fair chance.

After I've played though -> I actually quite like looking up reviews for a game I've finished to see if reviewers came to the same conclusion I did.


----------



## MFB

MFB said:


> Just bought _Ghosts of Tshushima_ before tomorrow, thinking I could get the 35GB preload file people were mentioning to download and save some time overnight, but apparently not. Guess I'll just have to let it go while I rest, but I'm not looking forward to working tomorrow knowing I've got an openworld samurai game waiting for me.



I hate being right, the game is fired up and ready to go on my PS4, and today is dragging on like theres no such thing as tomorrow.

And hey, thankfully it wasnt nearly as large as I thought, just shy of 40GB for whats said to be 30 hrs for the main game and then 90 hours of world content.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I find that I generally don't want early reviews to influence my opinion of a game. If enough time is passed, I might look to reviews to inform whether or not I think a game is worth the purchasing decision, but if I care enough to buy a game at full price before it's out, I want the opportunity to asses the game on it's own merit - knowing that my tastes tend to vary pretty wildly from a lot of reviewers, and that reviewers in themselves are going to vary wildly. I don't want anyone's opinion of a game to bias me in some way before I give the game it's fair chance.
> 
> After I've played though -> I actually quite like looking up reviews for a game I've finished to see if reviewers came to the same conclusion I did.



Video game reviews are a weird thing for me. Especially today, when so many games are vastly better a year after release than they were on release. I tend to read recommendations on forums and use a review or two just to get an idea of how the gameplay works, and maybe to read the primary complaints. A lot of the time, I know if I'm going to like the thing through descriptions of what it's supposed to be like, and then some initial reading of primary complaints. If the complaints are things like "it's too repetitive, the combat is too easy" it probably won't affect whether I wait since I'm often OK with that. If it's stuff like "the difficulty is really spiky" or "the game has a ton of tedious fetch quests and tutorial sections" then I'm going to take it more seriously and maybe wait for more feedback and/or a bigger discount. If it's not even a complaint and people talk about it being very nasty with deaths causing a ton of backtracking, or weapons breaking, I'm probably going to avoid that game until it's cheap unless I hear a LOT of good things to balance it out! 

Video game reviews in general are terrible and are mainly just advertisements. I read movie reviews a lot, but with video games so many outlets are very strongly incentivized not to say anything bad, or else they don't get free copies anymore!!! It's like youtube "reviewers" with access to movie premieres - you only get shilling, because otherwise they don't get invited.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Video game reviews in general are terrible and are mainly just advertisements.


This is why I prefer the channels that do more of "essays on games in general" rather than reviews. Stuff like Errant Signal in particular. Or when Accursed Farms does a piece on a game, you know you're just getting one guys thoughts on a game without going through the lens of "is this worth $80 and should you buy it" or whatever the local price for games is.


----------



## Ralyks

I have Tsushima in my hand, but won't play it until I finish Last of Us 2. Which I fully plan on trying to accomplish tonight


----------



## Ralyks

Update: watching the end credits to The Last of Us Part 2



Spoiler



So overall, I would say my main complaint is that it overstayed it's welcome. A few hours could have been shaved off here and there. However, the last half hour ended really solid, and I'm glad Ellie didn't die, though she's now Django on guitar. But man, that ending was depressing. I liked Dina, but can't blame her for bailing. I ALMOST had sympathy for Abby at the end, but still don't like her. But I understand why they put her section of the game in. Overall, this will probably make my top 10 for 2010, probably in the mid range. I also think they could end the story here and be fine, but I think it leaves it open to have Part 3. I mean, Sonys got a new console coming.... So obviously we'll get Part 2 Remastered within a year and Part 3 right before the PS6 launches. And alas, I see there's NG+. Maybe down the road for the Platinum.



Anyway, might start Tsushima then head to bed.


----------



## wankerness

Played Tsushima for several hours, in Japanese and in color of course. It’s pretty good. I’ve done a bunch of exploration, two of the “song” quests, and am almost to the point where you make a grappling hook. 

My main advice is make sure you laser in on being able to parry spear attacks with your talent points because you will be very angry at the game quite frequently until you do!!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Played Tsushima for several hours, in Japanese



I'm worried because I've heard the Japanese track isn't great, and noticeable doesn't sync with the characters. I'll probably still start it in Japanese and see how I feel. I mean, I went through all the Yakuza games and Judgement, Plus I'm doing Persona 5 Royal is Japanese after doing P5 in English.


----------



## MFB

Same here, Japanese subs with color first, but the sync is kind of offputting and the dialogue in game having to be subbed pulls you away from looking at what you're doing. It sounds great, and the aesthetic is 100% on point for what it should be, it's just a little jarring to get used to.

Ghosts of Tsushima dump time:

Story-wise: Got through the main sequence and started my journey, biggest points I did were the major legend increases from Ishikawa and the Straw Hat Ronin's quests, probably going to get the minor portions later today, along with some other general explorations and killing. They integrated the tutorial portion for each little bit well, between sneaking around the camps with Yuna first and learning stand-offs, then having her also be the stealth tutorial, and bow from Ishikawa and seeing the in-world elements that can help you.

Combat wise: I've killed a decent amount of guys for how little I've played, and biggest thing I need to work on is parrying in this one. I got it down solid in GoW, and Sekiro's parrying is a bit more obvious than this, but there's always way too many guys, and like all new games recently one archer hit seems to take out half your health - especially without auto blocking projectiles. I've killed enough leaders to learn Water Stance (only took three), so I did break that out last night for the shield stagger increase, and it works well if you can get the combo in (hold triangle, then triple tap) but usually you're dealing with so many others there's no time. Biggest issue with combat seems to be lack of auto-lock since the camera then kind of floats all around as you do too. There's no 'camera center' button each like Ninja Gaiden used to have, so it can be a bit tricky in the early stages with going between guys. I'm still trying to find the best way to spend technique points, right now I've put the bulk into Standoff chains, and then dodge roll/dodge strike, but I need to start diversifying; it's just tough because there's so many places you can put the skills between, and it has a weight to it when you earn one.

World-wise: let me pet them foxes! Each one since the first has run off and I can't give them their little reward scratches for leading me to the shrine, but they deserve them damn it. I can't for the life of me find an armorer or swordsmith, and I've got upgrades for both, but I'm sure I just need to play a little bit further and I'll find them soon enough. Visually, it's beautiful as all get out, and I can see myself doing a few playthroughs just for the world alone.


----------



## TedEH

I got to the end of Alien: Isolation. I would describe it as.... a good game that I don't want to play again.

I got an hour or two into new Paper Mario and I would describe it as.... delightful.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> Update: watching the end credits to The Last of Us Part 2
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> So overall, I would say my main complaint is that it overstayed it's welcome. A few hours could have been shaved off here and there. However, the last half hour ended really solid, and I'm glad Ellie didn't die, though she's now Django on guitar. But man, that ending was depressing. I liked Dina, but can't blame her for bailing. I ALMOST had sympathy for Abby at the end, but still don't like her. But I understand why they put her section of the game in. Overall, this will probably make my top 10 for 2010, probably in the mid range. I also think they could end the story here and be fine, but I think it leaves it open to have Part 3. I mean, Sonys got a new console coming.... So obviously we'll get Part 2 Remastered within a year and Part 3 right before the PS6 launches. And alas, I see there's NG+. Maybe down the road for the Platinum.
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, might start Tsushima then head to bed.





Spoiler



yeah the pacing was my number 1 complaint. That and the fucking transition into playing abby. I wish they'd interwoven Abby and Ellie's seattle gameplay instead of breaking them up the way they did. It completely killed the flow of the game the way they did it. Making me sit through 10+ hours of abby gameplay just to see that fight resolve the way it did left a sour taste in my mouth. Same thing with the end fight and how utterly depressing/pointless it made the game. I get that they were trying to REALLLY hammer home the whole cycle of revenge/REVENGE=BAD MMKAY theme but it wasn't necessary at that point. If anything it made Ellie into a absolutely monstrous selfish shit who couldn't control her hatred and need for revenge. I think it was a huge miss to just give Abby that redemptive arc where she realizes that revenge is pointless and solves nothing. She wasn't the character that everyone bonded with over the course of two games. 
The cynic in me feels like they're setting up for part 3 to be the misadventures of Abby/Lev rather than focusing on Ellie anymore.


----------



## Ralyks

KnightBrolaire said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> yeah the pacing was my number 1 complaint. That and the fucking transition into playing abby. I wish they'd interwoven Abby and Ellie's seattle gameplay instead of breaking them up the way they did. It completely killed the flow of the game the way they did it. Making me sit through 10+ hours of abby gameplay just to see that fight resolve the way it did left a sour taste in my mouth. Same thing with the end fight and how utterly depressing/pointless it made the game. I get that they were trying to REALLLY hammer home the whole cycle of revenge/REVENGE=BAD MMKAY theme but it wasn't necessary at that point. If anything it made Ellie into a absolutely monstrous selfish shit who couldn't control her hatred and need for revenge. I think it was a huge miss to just give Abby that redemptive arc where she realizes that revenge is pointless and solves nothing. She wasn't the character that everyone bonded with over the course of two games.
> The cynic in me feels like they're setting up for part 3 to be the misadventures of Abby/Lev rather than focusing on Ellie anymore.





Spoiler



Honestly, before I saw the ending, I really thought Abby would kill Ellie, and Part 3 would be playing as Dina going on a rampage. I think Dina may have been my favorite character in that game. I also agree with, if we're getting stuck with Abby, at least intertwine the stories instead of 12 hours of Ellie and then another 10 with Abby. As for the ending, I'm seeing all of these theories that maybe Ellie and Dina moved back to Jackson. Ellie was wearing Dinas bracelet when she went back to the ranch which she didn't do in Santa Barbara, she didn't have any weapons on her, and she didn't call out for Dina, like she knew her and JJ weren't there. That perhaps she went back to get the guitar, but left it there in a symbolic gesture to just leave the past in the past (even though SOMEONE could have told her who Djano Reinhardt was, but I digress...). Anyway, conspiracy stuff, but between that, the fact that there's months between Ellie going to Santa Barbara and back they can flash back so, and the title screen changes to where the Fireflies supposedly are, yeah, we're getting Part 3


----------



## wankerness

Played Ghost of Tsushima most of the day, got the clan armor in act 2 and then started doing completionist stuff on the first "map." The difficulty on this is REALLY nasty once you hit the second map - I had to shift down to easy when I started having to infiltrated fortresses with ~50 guys in them all clustered so there's no possible way to stealth, and they're the tier 3 guys that fill the map so they all need to be staggered before you can touch them and they're all swinging huge axes around and shooting bazookas at you. There's just not enough tools or leveling power-up in this game to ever make that seem doable through anything other than hit and run cheese, as far as I can tell.

Easy made it way TOO easy. I'm hoping they balance things a bit better in a patch. I guess currently my recommendation is play on normal till you hit a brick wall, and then adjust it back up whenever you're in an easy area. I dread to think what hard looks like in this game. Part of the issue may be I'm playing through a receiver into a cheap LCD, and thus there's a tiny bit of lag, and thus it's *extremely *difficult to do the damn standoffs after the first map.

Voice acting - the Japanese voices are vastly superior. It's too bad the lip movements are synced to the english track. But like, the voices just seem off in the english track - especially the main character, who sounds like some kind of early 20s wimp in english, or sounds like a 40+ grizzled samurai in the Japanese! It's true, though, that it's occasionally annoying if you have it subtitled in Japanese since you sometimes get exposition spouted at you while you're supposed to be doing something and that occasionally makes it hard to read and watch where you're going at the same time.

EDIT: Oh, and the comment above about the camera during combat is true BIGTIME. You're having to twirl the camera around during combat all the time. It reminds me of the early Yakuza games, only worse since there's no lock-on button. At least it's fast and fluid, but with the way the PS4 controller is laid out, if the camera screws up you have to stop attacking while you fix it. It really needed some kind of lock-on or "snap camera behind you" button or something. 

Another HUGE combat complaint is one that the game shares with some of the Assassins Creed games and Shadow of Mordor - if you happen to jump on a rock during a fight, you get stuck on it, so if you're on like a little 1x1 rock and some guy tries to spear you and you hit roll, you don't go ANYWHERE cause you're stuck to the rock until you press the jump button to get off of it. This happens with a lot of slightly elevated areas and it's maddening.


----------



## wankerness

On a positive note, this game has some of the fastest load times I've ever seen in a AAA PS4 game.


----------



## MFB

I switched the game to English for all of about ...5 minutes and couldn't deal with it; everyone sounds so much better in the Japanese audio. I'll deal with subs as is, but for now, the Japanese audio with color is the best way to play it.

I didn't realize Masaka and Ichikawa's stories are NINE god damn missions long, that feels like an eternity for what starts of as a simple request. I just liberated Azamo bay, and have half of the Ichizura portion liberated as well. I can finish Act 1 any time I please as I've got the main points down, I'm just so close to getting Moon stance that I want to have that before going to the Castle and dealing with more Brutes. I also put enough points that I know auto-parry spears, which will be nice going forward, but I still wish shield-bearers were faster to deal with.



wankerness said:


> On a positive note, this game has some of the fastest load times I've ever seen in a AAA PS4 game.



Honest to God, I can't even read the tips on the screen because it loads so fast


----------



## wankerness

I've had it on English for a few hours for laziness's sake (I don't have to look at the screen during boring cutscenes while doing things like the aforementioned 9-mission-long sidequests). Some of the english voice acting is just terrible. The main guy is not great (he usually sounds really gentle but randomly sounds like he's trying to sound more like the Japanese voice actor), but the worst is absolutely that old archery instructor guy - he sounds absolutely comical. Some of them are fine, like the older woman ally.

There's also just the intellectual dissonance I have from being to Japan and watching a zillion subtitled Japanese movies and then hearing a lot of people with very light or non-existent asian accents in the period Japanese garb. But, i assume that most people will play this in English and it will help it reach a much larger audience, so whatever.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> There's also just the intellectual dissonance I have from being to Japan and watching a zillion subtitled Japanese movies and then hearing a lot of people with very light or non-existent asian accents in the period Japanese garb. But, i assume that most people will play this in English and it will help it reach a much larger audience, so whatever.



Honestly Sucker Punch should have given the team From Ryu Ga Gotoku that worked on Judgement a call. They did a pretty good job handling both language tracks. I personally have been playing whatever games with Japanese tracks in Japanese (basically, the Yakuza games, Judgement, and Persona 5 Royal) to try to help in picking up the language, and was hoping to do the same here.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Played Ghost of Tsushima most of the day, got the clan armor in act 2 and then started doing completionist stuff on the first "map." The difficulty on this is REALLY nasty once you hit the second map - I had to shift down to easy when I started having to infiltrated fortresses with ~50 guys in them all clustered so there's no possible way to stealth, and they're the tier 3 guys that fill the map so they all need to be staggered before you can touch them and they're all swinging huge axes around and shooting bazookas at you. There's just not enough tools or leveling power-up in this game to ever make that seem doable through anything other than hit and run cheese, as far as I can tell.



You weren't kidding about Act II. I broke into it today, enough to get the Sakai Clan Armor, and oh boy, what a world of difference. I wasn't one-shotting any enemies on Medium, I'd have my reminders that I still have to be smart about stances in combat, but act II's mantra seems to be "nothing you do will matter because here's three of each enemy at once." So now I have to upgrade all my stance attacks to do as much damage, or have as much speed as possible, because I'm getting wrecked unless I hit and run.


----------



## wankerness

I fixed my TV's video sync (a firmware update broke "game mode" until I did a factory reset on it - I wouldn't have noticed except the audio sync was off with blu-rays), and without input lag, I can actually consistently win standoffs and do perfect parries! It's night and day! This is just one of the only games I've played in a while where a tiny amount of input lag really matters. Now I've done a TON of sidequests and exploration and have the difficulty back to normal instead of easy and am not having any trouble, except I usually die once or twice on the duels cause those are tense. I can pretty easily deal with groups of 5+ as long as they aren't those straw hat assholes (I usually can instantly kill them with the charge-up sword stab, though). After getting your sword up to the highest level and putting a couple points in every stance, guys start dying as easily as they did in Act I. I'm guessing Act III will reset it again and I'll feel overwhelmed again!

Combat on this game is REALLY good, I've decided now that I'm not playing with input lag. It's vastly more complex and polished than the Assassin's Creed series, which is this game's closest cousin. I hope AC: Valhalla takes a page from its playbook.

The English voice actor on the old archery jerk Ishakawa sounds like a Japanese guy trying to sound like Lord Humongous from The Road Warrior.


----------



## wankerness

Just beat the main plot on Ghost of Tsushima, on normal. The last boss is really hectic and fun and it's nice that it isn't just another duel. I died a couple times in some sections of it. Basically, you better make sure that you can properly fight the game's targeting system and focus guys quickly down, and you better have your stances upgraded and your sword/armor upgraded!

Now it's time for the zillions of hours of clearing outposts and doing sidequests to platinum this sucker!


----------



## MFB

Maxing out the Stance trees really ups the damage you do with them, or maybe it's just because I want back to round out some parts of the first map. The Brutes I fought with the finished Moon stance tree were either done in one triple triangle move, or required one light attack; and same for the upgraded Water stance - shieldmen go down like nothing with the heavy attacks + damage multiplier. I'm working on finishing off Stone stance for the increased heavy speed but I need one dang more point that seems to take forever to get after doing all the others.

Plotwise, I'm trying to get the Gosaku armor after already grabbing the Sakai armor which is great for the added standoff bonus. I did have one weird hiccup earlier where I won a standoff against the first enemy, and then none of the rest triggered for the animation when I should have had three more lined up; not sure if that's how the Terrify effect works, since I had it also affect another enemy earlier and he just straight up ran and it considered the combat over.


----------



## wankerness

I had the terrify effect off most of the time, but the Ghost “enrage” mode you get that makes everyone freak out is SO fun. Except when a damn dog shows up and breaks your streak.


----------



## WarMachine

Finished up Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2. Definitely better than the 1st and still feels just like an old NES game. Need to play through Ritual of the Night again and try out the Zangetsu mode. May do that this weekend in between RDR2.


----------



## Adieu

Guys, HELP!

I'm suddenly staring at a job interview related to the video games industry, and need some convincing bullsh!t to spout, ASAP.

They're asking about titles I know and like, and my honest answer would out that I've fallen behind since the early 2000s (Black Isle DnD games, Might and Magic series, isometric Fallouts) and haven't played anything except a couple Android gachas since, like, Oblivion


Need more current stuff to namedrop ASAP!!! They're in the localization business, so presumably text-heavy shit like RPGs or MMOs or something


----------



## Mathemagician

Pick a few major games, and watch YouTube videos on them. Grab AAA stuff with lots of text if that’s relevant to your job, so Witcher 3, Fallout 3/4/New Vegas, Skyrim, world of Warcraft, etc. 

Time to do your homework, and good luck.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Pick a few major games, and watch YouTube videos on them. Grab AAA stuff with lots of text if that’s relevant to your job, so Witcher 3, Fallout 3/4/New Vegas, Skyrim, world of Warcraft, etc.
> 
> Time to do your homework, and good luck.



most of those are also oldies at this point! If you’re talking text based or generally good writing RPG stuff, maybe try mentioning Undertale (it’s a few years old, but still way newer than WoW or FO3) and Disco Elysium, they’re both slightly under the radar and quirky and writing/gameplay over graphics. Maybe Witcher 3 - even though that is a huge modern AAA action RPG, it’s generLly very well respected. Maybe also Persona 5 and Divinity: Original Sin 1/2 if you’re trying to build RPG nerd cred.


----------



## TedEH

Adieu said:


> Need more current stuff to namedrop ASAP!!!


I work in games - my  is that they're only asking as a point of interest or maybe to get a sense of your character, or if this is for localization it might be just an arbitrary topic they can throw at you to see how well you communicate. Namedropping things you haven't played and know nothing about isn't going to serve you well, since you won't be prepared to talk about them in any depth. Run with what you know and can communicate about in-depth - if it even becomes a question in the first place.

Unless you're about to get into a design role, you don't need to be a _gamer_ to work on games, you just need to be qualified for the work you're applying to do. If the place you're going to is hiring on the basis of how many recent games you can name drop, then I can't imagine it'll be a great experience to work there.


----------



## Adieu

TedEH said:


> I work in games - my  is that they're only asking as a point of interest or maybe to get a sense of your character, or if this is for localization it might be just an arbitrary topic they can throw at you to see how well you communicate. Namedropping things you haven't played and know nothing about isn't going to serve you well, since you won't be prepared to talk about them in any depth. Run with what you know and can communicate about in-depth - if it even becomes a question in the first place.
> 
> Unless you're about to get into a design role, you don't need to be a _gamer_ to work on games, you just need to be qualified for the work you're applying to do. If the place you're going to is hiring on the basis of how many recent games you can name drop, then I can't imagine it'll be a great experience to work there.



Localization Translator.... one of those few jobs where actual familiarity with the content HELPS.

Like for-real-helps.

Once upon a time, I played an otherwise decently localized game that prominently translated 'staff' (as in singular of "staves") as if it were staff (employees). Also, ALL the 'artifact'-grade items in the entire game were curiously missing from the translated version's drops.... presumably because somebody well-educated but thematically unqualified read that as meaning "leftovers" or cut content and promptly removed all files marked artifact from the build as extraneous junk.

Whoops.


...otherwise a good translation.


----------



## TedEH

Adieu said:


> thematically unqualified


I don't think you need to be "up to date" on modern games to be thematically qualified. If you've played any games at all in the last 10 years and didn't struggle through the basic language-of-games, then I'd personally prioritize someone who has more cultural understanding of the source and destination regions. Like you've demonstrated, localization isn't about translating words one-for-one, it's about understanding the context it came from and the context it's going to. Part of that is understanding the language of games in general, but that's something a lot of people have at this point. The real challenge is the cultural level of the localization, IMO.

Even just the fact that you can have this conversation, and pick out an example of where the translation might have been "technically" correct, but thematically or culturally wrong - THAT's what you want to demonstrate in the interview IMO. Don't worry about name dropping titles. I imagine you'll be fine if you can have this same conversation with the interviewer.


----------



## wankerness

Got the platinum on Ghost of Tsushima, that was a great game. Not too many BS trophies, either, except maybe the one for bowing to signs. It's not as big as AC Odyssey, the stealth felt a little more half-baked than it too, but the graphics/art direction/combat were all far better. I might have to try Infamous 2.


----------



## mongey

Pretty hyped on skater XL coming out next week . was gonna grab it on switch for my commute but its looking a little rough in the little footage I've seen of it .

might need to grab it on ps4


----------



## Kaura

Just restarted playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl last night. Man, I didn't remember how janky that game is. Just moving around feels like hopping on one leg.

Decided to go with the highest difficulty setting instead of the lowest this time because I heard it makes enemies less like bullet sponges. I can't really tell if that is true but it definitely makes all the enemy encounters more intimidating since a single shotgun blast from short range can kill you.


----------



## Werecow

Kaura said:


> Just restarted playing STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl last night. Man, I didn't remember how janky that game is. Just moving around feels like hopping on one leg.
> 
> Decided to go with the highest difficulty setting instead of the lowest this time because I heard it makes enemies less like bullet sponges. I can't really tell if that is true but it definitely makes all the enemy encounters more intimidating since a single shotgun blast from short range can kill you.



I love open world games and i love post-apocalypse games. The first time i played Stalker, i got to a part where i had to to save these people who were dug in and about to be attacked by another group. I killed the attackers and they thanked me, then about 15 seconds later before i could even explore their camp and move on, the entire attack happened again as if time was on a loop. I felt so disappointed and never played it again. I don't know if it was a bug or if the world has MMO-like qualities where events happen on a loop all the time, but it instantly turned me off the game.


----------



## Kaura

Werecow said:


> I love open world games and i love post-apocalypse games. The first time i played Stalker, i got to a part where i had to to save these people who were dug in and about to be attacked by another group. I killed the attackers and they thanked me, then about 15 seconds later before i could even explore their camp and move on, the entire attack happened again as if time was on a loop. I felt so disappointed and never played it again. I don't know if it was a bug or if the world has MMO-like qualities where events happen on a loop all the time, but it instantly turned me off the game.



Haha, I think what you're talking about because I've noticed the same thing happening. There's even a mission to destroy a bandit camp behind the area where the attack happens but those damn bandits still pop up. The game (series) is notorious for its bugs but I think that in a weird way it makes it so charming.


----------



## Werecow

Kaura said:


> Haha, I think what you're talking about because I've noticed the same thing happening. There's even a mission to destroy a bandit camp behind the area where the attack happens but those damn bandits still pop up. The game (series) is notorious for its bugs but I think that in a weird way it makes it so charming.



I try to really get into games like this and get immersed in the atmosphere. That sort of bug really just reminds me i'm playing a game instead 
I loved Metro Exodus, and in my head it was what i wanted Stalker to be all those years ago.

Did you see Stalker 2 was teased recently in the Xbox stream? I'm really looking forward to that despite my experience with the original.


----------



## Kaura

Werecow said:


> Did you see Stalker 2 was teased recently in the Xbox stream? I'm really looking forward to that despite my experience with the original.



Yeah! That's what made me want to revisit the first game. Tbh, not too excited about the fact that it's going to be released on a console in fear that they dumb down some of the mechanics and that it ends up being more like the Metro games but on the other hand, I hope they polish it more because it's going to be released on a console.


----------



## TedEH

I've gotten far enough into the new Paper Mario that I can say it's worth it. Not done yet, so I'll reserve any sort of "review"-esque opinion until it's done. I avoided any reviews, so I dunno what the "consensus" is, but IMO if you're on the fence, and not the type who will be mad that it's not literally just the first game with a coat of paint, then do it up.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm waiting for my son to go to bed because holy shit they surprise released Cuphead on PS4 today 

Oh and Ghost of Tsushima is dope. I'm only a few hours in but I dig it.


----------



## TedEH

Finished the story in Origami King just now. Enjoyable overall. Will try to keep this spoiler-free for anyone who's playing it:

The boss fight at the end felt a little anti-climactic. There's a few really weird points where the game would throw you to game-over screens at weird times but you never really lost much progress when that happened and it was normally warned ahead of time. The game wasn't stupidly long, nor did it feel too short - there's enough content that it doesn't feel stretched out or padded, nor does any particular scene or idea overstay its welcome.

Battles are a not traditional RPG fights, and I think some people won't like that, but I enjoyed it. It was unique enough and had enough challenge that the novelty didn't wear off, but the game is arguably easy overall. Some might also argue that fights are "useless", but I wouldn't agree. You're not forced into them, you can avoid them, but doing them _does_ reward you with stuff that's useable and trains you for bosses and cases where you need to fight to progress the story.

The writing isn't super deep but the characters are "believable", and there's a moment or two that hit a bit harder than you would expect it to going in. Lots of moments that make you go WTF in a good way, lots of little moments that catch you off guard, lots of spots where the game just has fun with a concept even if it doesn't make the most sense.

I have some nitpicks, but they're just that: nitpicks. I think some people will really like the game and others will find things to be critical about.


----------



## mongey

Skater xl.

it feels like it’s still in beta a little bit but what’s there is great. It’s pretty unforgiving. I wouldn’t imagine many non skaters or ex skaters would enjoy it.

but if trying the same trick over and over is your thing. It’s pretty tight.


----------



## Yelir

mongey said:


> Skater xl.
> 
> it feels like it’s still in beta a little bit but what’s there is great. It’s pretty unforgiving. I wouldn’t imagine many non skaters or ex skaters would enjoy it.
> 
> but if trying the same trick over and over is your thing. It’s pretty tight.


Never heard about this one, but was briefly following Session. I just bought the PS4 version, hope it shows up soon.

I've been playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I've mostly been keeping to PS Now titles aside from VR.


----------



## MFB

I'm into Act 3 of _Ghost... _right now, and I can tell I'm closing in on the ending.



Spoiler



I hate that they waited until the end of Act 2 to give you the Ghost armor. I tried doing a stealth gameplay in the beginning, but it seems like there was an emphasis on stand-offs and how OP they are at a certain point, so I didn't put much into sneaking around and being stealthy despite being called GHOST of Tsushima. But then the guys get more armored, do more damage, and more tightly grouped together and stealth becomes necessary, and the forced style of gameplay with the Ghost armor, and chain assassin abilities, but it's like, why so late in the game? 

Act 3 is called "Kill The Khan" and the intent is to get your shit together and kill. the. Khan. Why have this section of the map that's got all this to explore if it's supposed to be the final moment? The narrative of it seems kind of confused, maybe because it's broken into acts vs other open worlds that are just purely mission based and this point in any other game would be saying "there's no going back after this mission, continue?" or some sort.

If they introduce a NG+ via patch, I'd be all about doing a purely stealth/assassin gameplay using the Ghost armor/tools and such, but I'm not sure when I'll return to it after I finish it this time; it's definitely a game I've put a lot of time in without realizing just how much.


----------



## wankerness

I'm kinda with you on the Ghost Armor thing, but I dunno. There's some other stealth armor you can get quite early on, and that Ghost proc ability thing isn't really very stealthy anyway!

I think maybe the gameplay flow intention was for you to go through the story and then go back and do all the sidequests, strongholds, etc, but the way I play these things, there were only about 25% of them left by the time I finished the story, so I didn't get to play with some of the last tools that much. There are a lot of games where you HAVE to do those before you finish the game, but this one doesn't lock you out of anything at all if you progress the main story.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I think maybe the gameplay flow intention was for you to go through the story and then go back and do all the sidequests, strongholds, etc, but the way I play these things, there were only about 25% of them left by the time I finished the story, so I didn't get to play with some of the last tools that much. There are a lot of games where you HAVE to do those before you finish the game, but this one doesn't lock you out of anything at all if you progress the main story.



Same here, I've done so many of the forts already because I've been conditioned to expect some gatekeeping via level/techniques that I don't have that many left to justify the endgame experience they may have intended. Even all the side stories that you can do don't affect whether or not your allies actually join you for the main missions they're needed during; I was thinking it'd be like Mass Effect and that maybe the more you do with them, the more aide they are etc.

I will say, Ghost might be the first game where when you have allies in combat, they kill far more then your normal AI does. Some games they're there for looks and you have to one many army everything, but in this, I was fighting for scraps most of the time.


----------



## Ralyks

CUPHEAD 

And maybe more Tsushima later tonight.

Also, has anyone played VA-11 HALL-A or Coffee Talk? They seem like good, short, chill games to kind of wind down with quick sessions.


----------



## mongey

sunk a bunch more hours into skater xl to the point I can actually control it. 

I really like it .But if the idea of thinking of a trick , trying it 10 times , finally making it sketchy and then trying it 15 more times to do it smooth enough , for absolutely no in game reward or recognition doesn't appeal to you , then it i most definitely not a game for you.

It is rough around the edges , needs patching and more content .But even how it is now , its the game I wanted the skate series to be . 

soundtrack is also annoying. whats there is fine to listen to but the track list is short and loops far too often. music is now muted


----------



## Kaura

Been playing a bit of Stalker: Clear Sky after finishing Shadow of Chernobyl. What a ruthless game. I've already died probably three times more than I did in Shadow of Chernobyl in total.


----------



## Werecow

I'm playing Singularity. Not many people have played it or even heard of it, but it's one of my favourite games and i replay it most years.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Werecow said:


> I'm playing Singularity. Not many people have played it or even heard of it, but it's one of my favourite games and i replay it most years.


I remember that game. basically system shock/bioshock with time powers. It was a lot of fun to mess with the powers


----------



## Werecow

KnightBrolaire said:


> I remember that game. basically system shock/bioshock with time powers. It was a lot of fun to mess with the powers



Yeh it's great. I love the horror elements. It should have sold a lot more.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing the shit out of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen on PS4 (I’m about level 80 and beat the “daemon” or whatever the dlc boss was called). This game is really janky and dated, the story is terrible, walking around the overworld takes FOREVER, it’s RNG/Grindfest in the endgame to a ludicrous extreme, but I kind of love it. The combat’s a ton of fun, it kind of reminds me of a tougher, more slashy version of Dragon Age 1 combined with 2, plus manual bow and arrow aiming, and with the great mechanic of doing damage by climbing on the giant monsters and stabbing away. 

I just wish behavior of your other party members was more controllable. You can equip skills and make them take a personality test to determine their general behavior, but that’s about it other than them learning smarter strategies through grinding. DA3’s highly customizable party behavior would have been welcomed!


----------



## Kaura

Got back home to my trusty desktop pc and installed Stalker: Call of Pripyat. I can't believe I put +70 hours after playing through it once back in the day. Played for a couple of hours and I can't say I got bored but the mechanics and pacing feel so wrong to me playing it now. Shadow of Chernobyl is definitely the best one of the series.


----------



## MFB

Finished _Ghost of Tsushima_, overall its an easy 8/10 for me.



Spoiler



I had read something about the showdown between the Ghost and Shimura, although I don't recall the exact phrasing but it seemed vague, so I wasn't sure if it was going to be a cinematic or setup for a sequel that now you have to avoid deal with them as the new version of the Strawhats. There was part of me that when I left the note for him in his quarters, he'd show up to help crush Khan's army, and then double-cross me as the Ghost and eliminate both his problems at once; obviously that doesn't happen, but it would've been a twist - or if they had Shimura doing a long-con with Khan and wanting to take more for himself, also would have really surprised me. I did enjoy the main story, with Jin's story not being black/white, he definitely seemed to struggle with having to give up the Samurai code for the greater good of saving the island, and as he says in the end, he legitimately gives up everything he has for it as the Shogun takes away his family's clan title and land rights. Pretty fucked up.

Right now I'm doing trophy hunting since I have about 80% of the trophies, and the rest are just completing Tales and then the hidden Shrines one which I'll need to use a quest for. Some of the ones you need for the Platinum are so specific I have no clue how people found them (looking at you Cooper Clan customization). I'd say my "complaints" with the game are:

Every side quest seemed to end with the person you're looking for being dead already
A lock-on for combat should be an L3/R3 toggle option, as there are times when it definitely helps to focus in on one enemy instead of letting me fly by him
Lack of endgame, as I've already mentioned, I expected some gatekeeping via level/techniques so I did the majority of camps/forts BEFORE finishing the game when they definitely seem meant for the endgame when you have the Ghost armor and more abilities unlocked

For a sequel, I'd love to see the ability to save armor/charm sets so that I can swap immediately to the Traveler set, or switch to Ghost/stealth charms for camps vs. samurai armor/combat charms when exposed, etc...



Dying Light super-ultra-DLC-everything edition is on sale as part of the PS Summer sale, so I think that might be my next game to play through; but I don't know if I can do another open world so quick.


----------



## Werecow

Kaura said:


> Got back home to my trusty desktop pc and installed Stalker: Call of Pripyat. I can't believe I put +70 hours after playing through it once back in the day. Played for a couple of hours and I can't say I got bored but the mechanics and pacing feel so wrong to me playing it now. Shadow of Chernobyl is definitely the best one of the series.



When i looked up the Stalker games last year with the intention of trying one again, the consensus almost everywhere i looked was that Call of Pripyat was the best game. What's different about it?


----------



## Kaura

Werecow said:


> When i looked up the Stalker games last year with the intention of trying one again, the consensus almost everywhere i looked was that Call of Pripyat was the best game. What's different about it?



I can't really tell. They're all pretty much the same. I guess Call of Pripyat is kinda just most polished so that's why people gravitate towards it. Also, even though the map (or maps as it has 3 main areas you have to sit through a loading screen when you move between them) feels a bit smaller compared to the other games (which pretty much share the same locations compared to CoP with a fully new map) it's still really fun to explore the world and hunt artifacts. 

I'd still recommend starting with Shadow of Chernobyl. The first hour or so is a complete drag and has put so many people off the game but more hours you put into it and let yourself immerse in the game better it gets. Also, if you start with CoP then you probably find SoC a bit of a downgrade.


----------



## Werecow

Kaura said:


> I can't really tell. They're all pretty much the same. I guess Call of Pripyat is kinda just most polished so that's why people gravitate towards it. Also, even though the map (or maps as it has 3 main areas you have to sit through a loading screen when you move between them) feels a bit smaller compared to the other games (which pretty much share the same locations compared to CoP with a fully new map) it's still really fun to explore the world and hunt artifacts.
> 
> I'd still recommend starting with Shadow of Chernobyl. The first hour or so is a complete drag and has put so many people off the game but more hours you put into it and let yourself immerse in the game better it gets. Also, if you start with CoP then you probably find SoC a bit of a downgrade.




Cheers. Do you play with any mods or unofficial patches?


----------



## Kaura

Werecow said:


> Cheers. Do you play with any mods or unofficial patches?



Just Complete Mod. It's pretty close to vanilla. It pretty much just adds bug fixes and enhances the weather effects. This time I actually played SoC vanilla and to my surprise didn't have it crash more than two times and both times happened in the same spot.


----------



## Werecow

Kaura said:


> Just Complete Mod. It's pretty close to vanilla. It pretty much just adds bug fixes and enhances the weather effects. This time I actually played SoC vanilla and to my surprise didn't have it crash more than two times and both times happened in the same spot.



Thanks  i'll give it a go with that mod soon. It was bugs that completely put me off all those years ago when i tried it.


----------



## MFB

Picked up Bloodborne instead of Dying Light, definitely gonna need an adjustment period after Ghost of Tsushima what with the "block doesn't exist" and other typical From Software tactics. Mechanically it works fine, just need to get used to the worlds rules.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Picked up Bloodborne instead of Dying Light, definitely gonna need an adjustment period after Ghost of Tsushima what with the "block doesn't exist" and other typical From Software tactics. Mechanically it works fine, just need to get used to the worlds rules.


If you can dodge a scythe you can dodge a ball or something like that


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Picked up Bloodborne instead of Dying Light, definitely gonna need an adjustment period after Ghost of Tsushima what with the "block doesn't exist" and other typical From Software tactics. Mechanically it works fine, just need to get used to the worlds rules.



I can’t help for pvp, but for pve I preferred a shotgun sidearm to a pistol for the spread. Especially for a certain graveyard fight.

Also remember this password: Pizza Cutter.


----------



## Ribboz

Kaura said:


> Got back home to my trusty desktop pc and installed Stalker: Call of Pripyat. I can't believe I put +70 hours after playing through it once back in the day. Played for a couple of hours and I can't say I got bored but the mechanics and pacing feel so wrong to me playing it now. Shadow of Chernobyl is definitely the best one of the series.


Have you played Call of Chernobyl? It's pretty great.


----------



## Kaura

Ribboz said:


> Have you played Call of Chernobyl? It's pretty great.



I've heard of it but haven't played it. Might try it after I'm done with CS and CoP.


----------



## Ribboz

Kaura said:


> I've heard of it but haven't played it. Might try it after I'm done with CS and CoP.


If you enjoy stalker enough to play all three in a row, I'm betting you'll enjoy it.  

It's more a stalker sandbox. But there are really good add-ons. It's a really impressive creation.


----------



## TedEH

In the pursuit of my life's goal to play every Zelda game, I grabbed the two DS titles and started on Phantom Hourglass. I think I can see why these were not as well received, but not a bad game so far.


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> If you can dodge a scythe you can dodge a ball or something like that





Mathemagician said:


> I can’t help for pvp, but for pve I preferred a shotgun sidearm to a pistol for the spread. Especially for a certain graveyard fight.
> 
> Also remember this password: Pizza Cutter.



So, I went with Axe/Pistol over Cleaver/Blunderbuss, long term will this affect anything or is it just in the beginning where it's like "you have to only have these for a while, but eventually you'll get the other one you didn't pick." I also need to figure out this whole "transformed mode" version it has, but I'm pretty sure the Cleaver has that too.

I did buy the upgraded Hunter armor set after managing to get (and keep) enough blood echoes from the mob in Central Yharnam, so that improved the hell out of my defense; it's just upping my offensive speed that I need to work on. Going from a heavy attack into a light swing always seems like it won't be allowed, just by the speed of the attacks and the enemy reaction times, then he does it and my brain immediately thinks we won every battle which gets me in trouble. I'll be playing more tonight, my current task is either dealing with the two werewolves on the bridge or going around them and through the sewers which I inevitably fall into and have to fight a bunch of rats that kill me.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> So, I went with Axe/Pistol over Cleaver/Blunderbuss, long term will this affect anything or is it just in the beginning where it's like "you have to only have these for a while, but eventually you'll get the other one you didn't pick." I also need to figure out this whole "transformed mode" version it has, but I'm pretty sure the Cleaver has that too.
> 
> I did buy the upgraded Hunter armor set after managing to get (and keep) enough blood echoes from the mob in Central Yharnam, so that improved the hell out of my defense; it's just upping my offensive speed that I need to work on. Going from a heavy attack into a light swing always seems like it won't be allowed, just by the speed of the attacks and the enemy reaction times, then he does it and my brain immediately thinks we won every battle which gets me in trouble. I'll be playing more tonight, my current task is either dealing with the two werewolves on the bridge or going around them and through the sewers which I inevitably fall into and have to fight a bunch of rats that kill me.


You can swap weapons later on. If you're not totally into the weapons then don't waste upgrade points on them. You're better off chaining light into heavy attacks, not vice versa.


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> You can swap weapons later on. If you're not totally into the weapons then don't waste upgrade points on them. You're better off chaining light into heavy attacks, not vice versa.



I did manage to grab one of the upgrade items from the Executioner(?) and it looks like that auto-socketed to my Axe, so hopefully I can switch that once I get the Saw Cleaver. I also would've expected heavy > light to be the better one since you'd have the stagger damage on them from the heavy to give you a window for the light, but OK, I'll switch that tactic.


----------



## Steinmetzify

COD MW Season 5 dropped last night. Big update, something like 60GB on PC for the whole game and WZ. 

Got a couple days off, back to grinding.


----------



## MFB

Every COD patch has been a minimum of like, 40GB, so I'm not surprised at all that this one for the new season was 60. Fucking ridiculous that they've become so lazy about their file sizing and compression that they're rolling out patches that are bigger than full game releases.


----------



## Kaura

MFB said:


> Every COD patch has been a minimum of like, 40GB, so I'm not surprised at all that this one for the new season was 60. Fucking ridiculous that they've become so lazy about their file sizing and compression that they're rolling out patches that are bigger than full game releases.



Maybe they think since disk space is so cheap these days that people have a petabyte of disk space on their computers now but ever since SSDs got popular people suddenly had less disk space so those huge patches become a problem.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Every COD patch has been a minimum of like, 40GB, so I'm not surprised at all that this one for the new season was 60. Fucking ridiculous that they've become so lazy about their file sizing and compression that they're rolling out patches that are bigger than full game releases.


not to mention every mini patch is like 500 mb. Looking at total file size, CODMW takes up close to 300gb on my PC right now. Fucking ridiculous.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is like 50 gbs FOR THE ENTIRE GAME
Sekiro is like 15gb FOR THE ENTIRE GAME
Shit even Gears of War 4 only took up 110 gb


----------



## SpaceDock

I got Sleeping Dogs on steam for 2.99, never really heard of it before but it is like Yakuza meets GTA. Really great so far and I can’t believe I didn’t hear of it sooner.


----------



## Ralyks

SpaceDock said:


> I got Sleeping Dogs on steam for 2.99, never really heard of it before but it is like Yakuza meets GTA. Really great so far and I can’t believe I didn’t hear of it sooner.



Super underated game. I really need to go back to that one.


----------



## Werecow

SpaceDock said:


> I got Sleeping Dogs on steam for 2.99, never really heard of it before but it is like Yakuza meets GTA. Really great so far and I can’t believe I didn’t hear of it sooner.



It's a great game. The fighting and story is good. The driving physics can be a bit weird, super arcadey and it can feel like it's impossible to spin the car out with a lot of cars. But the city looks great at night even now.

By the way, there's a radio station while driving with metal on it


----------



## SpaceDock

I think the driving camera could use some work but overall some of the best driving combat that I’ve played in a long time.


----------



## NotDonVito

Zelda on nes. It’s one of the only Zelda games I’ve never played because I always thought it was a game where you had to play it when it came out to appreciate, but it’s surprisingly fun to walk around and figure out all the cryptic shit like where the fuck is this next dungeon at?

Also no Sleeping Dogs 2 ever ;_;


----------



## SpaceDock

Yeah, I have been playing Clash of Clans everyday for 7 years lol.


----------



## diagrammatiks

ring fit is legit guys.


----------



## MFB

So Im up to Father Gascoigne in Bloodborne, and uh, this fight is like fighting Shadow Link in Ocarina of Time. Both hunters with axes, but he's got the blunderbuss and I've got the pistol. The amount of times we heavy attack at the same time is absurd, and I can get him close to dead but cant seem to be that transformation.

The biggest thing that gets me more than anything is the fucking terrain. I get that its part kf the battle, knowing the battlefield but c'mon man, this shits weak.


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> So Im up to Father Gascoigne in Bloodborne, and uh, this fight is like fighting Shadow Link in Ocarina of Time. Both hunters with axes, but he's got the blunderbuss and I've got the pistol. The amount of times we heavy attack at the same time is absurd, and I can get him close to dead but cant seem to be that transformation.
> 
> The biggest thing that gets me more than anything is the fucking terrain. I get that its part kf the battle, knowing the battlefield but c'mon man, this shits weak.



[Fight Spoiler]









Ok. Stun him mid attack with your sidearm, then walk up and R1 Visceral Attack him. Over and over. Then back up and dodge his combo. It takes a bit to get used to timing your opening. Once he starts transforming get in your free hits, then back off. And just try to get in cheap shots at the end of his combo. If you get a stun visceral attack again. 

Do not heal unless he’s animation locked or super far from you. It leaves you open and he’s fast.


----------



## MFB

Conveniently, right after I posted that, I also found the area where the Maneater Boar is so I was able to get the Saw Hunter Badge, and thus, the Saw Cleaver. I fortified it immediately to where it does more damage than my axe, so I have speed on my side now as well. I can get his health down to where its right under "Father" I just need that opening for one. more. hit. He always gets me with a combo when I think I have him and then it's game over.


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Conveniently, right after I posted that, I also found the area where the Maneater Boar is so I was able to get the Saw Hunter Badge, and thus, the Saw Cleaver. I fortified it immediately to where it does more damage than my axe, so I have speed on my side now as well. I can get his health down to where its right under "Father" I just need that opening for one. more. hit. He always gets me with a combo when I think I have him and then it's game over.



Patience young panda. Do not get greedy with the hits. 1-2 cheap shots means 1-2 cheap shots. It’s never one more hit left. It is secretly 5. Always 5 more. Let the were-priest come to you.


----------



## mikernaut

Anyone else playing Fall Guys? This is an absolute riot, I can't stop playing. (free if you have PS+ for Ps4)


----------



## Ralyks

mikernaut said:


> Anyone else playing Fall Guys? This is an absolute riot, I can't stop playing. (free if you have PS+ for Ps4)




Came here to post basically what you said.


----------



## MFB

Defeated Father Gasciogne, and pushed through a few different areas after him. Got through Old Yharnam, retrieved the ritual blood and defeated Blood Starves Beast; I rang the Hunter's Bell without realizing it and got Alfred killed, I assume this means he's gone from the game entirely now? Not just like, "He died as a companion for this battle." 

I also got picked up by a snatched, and went to the Unseen Village which was 0% fun at all. Everyone there was OP, between the snatchers and the grim reaper dudes, couldnt do shit. 

Got the Sword Hunter Badge from the Healing Church clinic or whatever its called, but I've got a good chunk invested in my Saw Cleaver that I dont know if I'll switch weapons. 

Kind of lost as to where to go now, need to see if anything has opened up since defeating the BSB. But that's not stopping me from farming blood echoes on these bitches, got myself to level 33 with a balance between spending on VIT/END/STR.


----------



## Leviathus

^Head upwards from Cathedral Ward. There might be a door that's opened by the lamp too, i'm not sure tho.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally finished FF7R. Eh, it's alright.

Ok, I spent 40+ hours in it so surely it must have had some great moments. Yes, there were some great moments, but there were also a ton of excessive padding. I mean it's the nature of the beast when the only setting you have to work around is underneath the rotting pizza, so most of the exploration feels largely cut and pasted. But to have paths collapsed to a longer alternate route to end up exactly where you were is rather contrived. I mean Midgar does look pretty and the visual scope is massive, but feeling big isn't the same as being big. I guess that's for Episode 2 onward...

I can also see the Yakuza comparison, but unlike Kamurocho and it's crazy inhabitants, the side stuff here is far less interesting. Most of it was an excuse to cross off a checklist and the odd weapon upgrade points. Some cool bits like optional bosses and those cute Pull Ups and Dancing minigame. The latter 2 felt like something I didn't feel like revisiting unlike say, Kiryu and Majima dancing to Bubble era Citypop or Michael Jackson ripoffs.

The combat is perhaps the best of the modern Final Fantasy kind. Definitely improved over 15, where you only control Prince Angsty over his paid Chippendales (though you can play them in Royal, which is about as forcefully put in as Wendy Testaburger's breast implants). Though the AI in FF7R is a bit on the thick side, rather cunning way to tell you you're supposed to change in-between characters. At least they're all fun to play.

The story feels confused. That whole extra section with infiltrating a base with the 3 Avalanche members was in itself constantly shifting in tone that it's jarring. Now for the spoilery parts...


Spoiler



I don't know what Tetsuya Nomura's fascination is with black cloaked characters, but putting them here feels tacked on. Yeah I get what he's trying to do, and that the game non subtly tells you that you are now change the fate of the original plot, but tacking on Kingdom Hearts style bollocks is still tacking on. Still, I commend Nomura for pissing off a few fans in the process.

Also introducing Sepiroth this early was a mistake. Part of his mystery of the original was that he was barely in the first part of the game. Making Cloud hallucinate him throughout the remake and end it by reenacting the final battle in Advent Children is splooging your load far too early... that is if Nomura is planning to go all the way with changing the course of the original game, I guess it's too early to tell. At this rate we can only find out well after an actual meteor hits our earth.



The music is awesome, but that my biased opinion on Masashi Hamauzu's work.

Clearly there was a lot of work put onto the game and I commend Kitase and co for the final product, but it's not the groundbreaking FF game that fans of the original cried out for after seeing Advent Children. That said, this is the game FFXIII should have been, since is shares so many similarities.


----------



## mongey

mikernaut said:


> Anyone else playing Fall Guys? This is an absolute riot, I can't stop playing. (free if you have PS+ for Ps4)
> 
> [/QUOTE
> 
> .
> 
> .




Haven’t had heaps of goes but a fair few. Probably 10 or so. 

it’s fun. Controls felt a bit clunky to start but I think that’s part of the vibe. 

I sucked pretty good for the first bunch of games. Took me about 5 or 6 to even make the first cut. My best so far is top 12


----------



## TedEH

Finally got into Borderlands 3 since it went on sale. I had avoided it at first because it looked like it was just 2 with a new coat of paint. I still mostly think that, but it's quite the coat of paint. Sort of feels like the game knows what it is and just embraces it now. Lots of little quality-of-life improvements over the last few games. The environments look great, the vehicles drive great, the guns are all fun, I'm playing with Fl4k and the pets are fun, etc. No regrets diving into this one.

The writing though.... it's not "bad", it's just.... so hipster-y. Some of missions feel like they're beating you over the head with "this is from 2019". A lot of the jokes amount to "FACEBOOK AMIRITE?!" "COFFEE, AMIRITE?!?!" A lot of the Borderlands character is still there, but now with all the side-shave-haircuts, ear stretchers, obsession with social/streaming, out-of-character virtue signals, etc. to remind you that this is a modern game written in modern times by people with modern values.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> Finally got into Borderlands 3 since it went on sale. I had avoided it at first because it looked like it was just 2 with a new coat of paint. I still mostly think that, but it's quite the coat of paint. Sort of feels like the game knows what it is and just embraces it now. Lots of little quality-of-life improvements over the last few games. The environments look great, the vehicles drive great, the guns are all fun, I'm playing with Fl4k and the pets are fun, etc. No regrets diving into this one.
> 
> The writing though.... it's not "bad", it's just.... so hipster-y. Some of missions feel like they're beating you over the head with "this is from 2019". A lot of the jokes amount to "FACEBOOK AMIRITE?!" "COFFEE, AMIRITE?!?!" A lot of the Borderlands character is still there, but now with all the side-shave-haircuts, ear stretchers, obsession with social/streaming, out-of-character virtue signals, etc. to remind you that this is a modern game written in modern times by people with modern values.


yeah but that's kind of the whole joke with BL3. They're not really going OOOH LOOK AT HOW WOKE WE ARE, they're more or less jumping on the dogpile by making fun of that crap. They really did make the antagonists as repugnant as possible though. At least Handsome Jack was kind of a sympathetic villain.
The writing was fine imo but the main storylines and their characters have never been the interesting parts in the borderlands series. The side quests are where all the fun and magic happens imo (same as Oblivion and Skyrim).
After playing BL2 right before BL3, I really appreciated the change in the overall character speed/adding a slide move, the use of semi-destructible cover, and how the weapons felt like they had more impact to their hits. I think they were smart in just tweaking the core gameplay (which was already quite good).


----------



## TedEH

I definitely think the character mobility is big improvement - being able to jump and mantle onto things is a huge boost to that sort of "player's expressive movement" type thing.

I'm not sure I agree with that interpretation of the writing though - it's definitely poking fun at itself, but it's still painfully "of the times", and they aren't really digging very deep. It's not so much that the game strikes me as trying to be "woke" so much as it just feels very one-note so far. Yes, we get it, "internet culture" is ridiculous. I just worry that by the time you get to the 40hr mark, that same joke will be way too played out. 

Arguably this isn't really a game "about story" and it's certainly not ruining the game for me or anything like that, but humour has always been a big element of these games. To me, so far, the humour isn't really landing in the same way it used to.


----------



## Choop

Currently playing Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse and it's excellent. :V Also doing Street Fighter IV again on the PC. Trying to level my Bison back up to it's former glory.


----------



## MFB

Leviathus said:


> ^Head upwards from Cathedral Ward. There might be a door that's opened by the lamp too, i'm not sure tho.



Yeah, the door by the lamp is the one that leads to the Healing Church Clinic, which I went through and cleared to get the Sword Hunter's Badge; holy hell, Ludwig's blade is 20K! I get that it has a higher attack out the gate than any of the other weapons, but I wonder if the speed of it is that good as well, that's like, 2/3 of what I've spent in my entire gameplay already.

I'm gonna do some exploring tonight, the thing with the Soulsborne verse that I'm not crazy about is there's really no direction, you just have to explore and see if anything opened up since you did something  And don't even get me started on figuring out that there are NPC Quests.


----------



## SpaceDock

Borderlands 3 is the only game of the series that I played all the way through, huge improvement over the previous games imo.


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Yeah, the door by the lamp is the one that leads to the Healing Church Clinic, which I went through and cleared to get the Sword Hunter's Badge; holy hell, Ludwig's blade is 20K! I get that it has a higher attack out the gate than any of the other weapons, but I wonder if the speed of it is that good as well, that's like, 2/3 of what I've spent in my entire gameplay already.
> 
> I'm gonna do some exploring tonight, the thing with the Soulsborne verse that I'm not crazy about is there's really no direction, you just have to explore and see if anything opened up since you did something  And don't even get me started on figuring out that there are NPC Quests.



If ludwigs blade is the one I’m thinking of then it’s worth it. One of the best/balanced weapons in the game.


----------



## TedEH

SpaceDock said:


> Borderlands 3 is the only game of the series that I played all the way through, huge improvement over the previous games imo.


Was there something in particular you didn't like about the other ones?


----------



## Ralyks

Im actually surprised how quickly I stopped on Borderlands 3 after I finished the main story, consider 2 is one of my favorite favorite games ever. I was actually ok with it being “BL2 with a fresh coat of paint”. But hey, Sony said I played BL3 more than any other game in 2019, so..... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I may jump back in soon. I got the edition with the season pass and I haven't touched the DLC much, although I hear it's all been good so far.


----------



## TedEH

I've heard some suggestion that the DLC is better than the main game so far, so I made a point to grab everything while it was "cheap".


----------



## wankerness

Borderlands 3 has a lot of big quality of life improvements over BL2, especially the manteling and some of the looting mechanics (the way you pick up money, ammo etc for example). I also GREATLY appreciated the removal of slag, cause having to switch weapons constantly with a console controller really blew. 3's mechanics of certain weapons being effective against certain types is vastly superior IMHO; that's kinda how the first two games were but 2 added that stupid slag as an additional layer on top and I hated it.

The big sticking point for a lot of people is the plot. It IS pretty bad, and the characters are annoying and definitely a lot less funny than 2's, but I was a minority who thought 2's plot was pretty annoying. I think the characters being crappier is balanced out by the fact that 2 had a ton of super-tedious backtracking, while 3's only big annoyance is having to go back to the ship and talk to Lilith every time you go through a new zone. The games would just be better if they ditched all pretense of a plot, like the first game. I think that one's the best plotwise cause it is by far the least annoying. Very, very little standing around twiddling your thumbs for what feels like 10 minutes while people blab and VERY SLOWLY walk somewhere to open a door, etc.

3 also has a *huge *problem right now with the higher difficulty settings - last time I played (after DLC2, I haven't logged on since the release of DLC3), there were literally about 10 guns in the entire game, out of THOUSANDS, that could do any amount of damage against basic enemies whatsoever. Like, the VAST majority of legendaries were completely worthless. They were supposedly going to continue buffing some of the countless bad legendaries, but it was incredibly un-fun being relegated to using the same handful of weapons if you wanted the game to be even remotely playable. I think last I played I had an OPQ from a holiday event, a yellowcake from the same holiday event, some super-rare SMG that dropped off some boss only if you were on Mayhem 4+, and the sandhawk sniper rifle (same deal). Everything else might have been a peashooter, even things like the projectile recursion that had been incredibly good before the release of higher mayhem levels. No weapons from either DLC1 or DLC2 were viable. I think a shield and a grenade from DLC2 were good, maybe. And by good, I mean they were less bad than others due to bonus effects - for some idiotic reason, grenade damage doesn't scale with mayhem levels, so they also become absolutely worthless besides bonus effects triggered by using them as soon as you notch the difficulty up.

If you stick to mayhem 4 and below, I think it's a really fun game with a huge variety of weapons. I played the hell out of it, getting 3 of the 4 characters up to clearing Mayhem 4 (pre-launch of Mayhem 10) and one of them clearing Mayhem 10 after that. But it's very, very broken in the higher difficulties right now, assuming they haven't done some monstrous revamping since DLC3 hit.

ANYWAY, I bought Animal Crossing New Horizons since I'd never played any of those games, and it looked like maybe my girlfriend would like it. It's quite something. It was extremely addictive especially in the early stages where it was easy to catch new fish/bugs. It's turning into more of a daily chore to log on and talk to people and pay off part of your house loans or whatever, but it's still a fun game with really amusing style. I like it a lot more than I thought I would.

She finished Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch) and now is going through Twilight Princess HD. I'm stunned by how good some of the design is in Twilight Princess - she finished the water temple the other day, and that place is really cool. I loved the bosses in the fire and water temples, they're a hell of a lot more exciting than the mostly perfunctory bosses in Windwaker and the mechanics in the HD version are much smoother than in OoT, so you never feel like you're fighting the game mechanics as much as the boss. Only problem she's having with the game are the tedious lengthy wolf sections where you have to run around collecting bugs before you're allowed to go back to human form, but I think that's now moot and you can switch back and forth at will. 

I just bought a 3DS and Star Fox 64 3D, Ocarina of Time 3D, Majora's Mask 3D, and A Link Between Worlds. I can't wait to play the last, but I think I'm going to get hung up on nostalgia with the others first. My thumb feels cramped by the weird slidy resistance pad thing, but I'll probably get used to it. I definitely turned the 3D off quickly - it is a weird effect that just seems like it will cause eyestrain!

Oh, and I've been playing the shit out of Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen still. I'm ready to call this one of my favorite action RPGs ever. It has so much wrong with it, especially in the quest department and almost everything about the base game, but the core gameplay and the huge "dlc" (dark arisen) is just addicting. I went mainly assassin up to 100, and then switched to sorcerer and am now 150 and starting to wreck enemies in BBI. The sorcerer mechanics are frequently infuriating, with the way spells require you to charge up for 10-20 seconds a spell and if any enemy knocks you around it has to be started over again, but it's so satisfying when they work! And now that my gear's good enough, I can mostly just run around with the charged basic attack and destroy things. It's a great game. I love it. I am planning on going magick archer when I finally hit 200. It has a very japanese-style leveling system where different classes give different stat bonuses on level-ups, so if you choose the wrong class to level as you end up being very gimped. I so want to just play magick archer, but then my attack won't scale anymore!


----------



## SpaceDock

TedEH said:


> Was there something in particular you didn't like about the other ones?



I found the older ones to not have as good of mechanics in gunplay and felt too grindy. 3 just played through real smooth and I didn’t have to backtrack just to level up


----------



## wankerness

SpaceDock said:


> I found the older ones to not have as good of mechanics in gunplay and felt too grindy. 3 just played through real smooth and I didn’t have to backtrack just to level up



That reminds me - another HUGE improvement, at least if they haven't walked it back, is that you don't need to play through the main game more than once unless you are leveling another character. You can hit max level practically from just one playthrough and DLC/sidequests, and don't need to bother with "True Vault Hunter" mode at all (as it was before DLC3, anyway, it was not worth playing - it slightly increased difficulty and droprate changes were negligible between normal and TVHM, especially with mayhem turned on). 2 caused INCREDIBLE fatigue as you had to watch all the goddam cutscenes every single time you played, and you HAD to play through the main game to get to zones, so you were going through the entire main story multiple times on every character. With 3, you clear it once and bam, you can teleport anywhere you want at any time and everything auto-scales to you even if you stay on normal. It's great.

Oh, which reminds me of another huge QOL improvement - you don't need to run to a teleporter console thing to use fast travel, you can initiate it anywhere!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> you don't need to run to a teleporter console thing to use fast travel


I wasn't sure how to feel about that - I've always found that fast-travel can take certain elements of exploration away if it's too easy to use. This particular case doesn't seem too bad, but it's often a bandaid for the travel not being much fun, which is strange in a game where the fun is mostly derived from the grind in the first place.



wankerness said:


> I just bought a 3DS and Star Fox 64 3D, Ocarina of Time 3D, Majora's Mask 3D, and A Link Between Worlds.


I got a 2DS a while back and it's basically a glorified Zelda machine now. Completely worth it. Majora's Mask in my pocket anywhere I go? Absolutely. IMO Link Between Worlds is best enjoyed immediately after Link to the Past. It just makes sense that way.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I wasn't sure how to feel about that - I've always found that fast-travel can take certain elements of exploration away if it's too easy to use. This particular case doesn't seem too bad, but it's often a bandaid for the travel not being much fun, which is strange in a game where the fun is mostly derived from the grind in the first place.


The thing with borderlands 2/3 is that the grind was about farming the same specific named enemies over and over again, with the majority of enemies just "trash" on the way to the boss that offered nothing after you were at max level. With 2, you would end up farming the same guy over and over and over again cause it was the most efficient since travel took so damn long. With 3, you can do a lot of fun boss hopping routes quickly to keep things more varied since you're no longer stuck farming the same enemy over and over again unless there's only one enemy you want loot off of.


----------



## TedEH

I think I play those games very differently cause I never felt a need to farm anything. I just did every side mission in roughly the order of the level requirements, and called it done when I reached the end of the story.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I think I play those games very differently cause I never felt a need to farm anything. I just did every side mission in roughly the order of the level requirements, and called it done when I reached the end of the story.



Yeah, that's certainly one way to do it, and how I usually play RPGs. In BL3, I found most of the side missions badly written and annoying and just used them as EXP dumps to get to where the fun was, where the mechanics take over and you're just in a quest for better weapons to kill bosses and the "circle of slaughter"-style areas more efficiently/excitingly/on higher difficulties. Especially since quest rewards, etc became worthless as soon as you turn on mayhem mode since none of them scale.

I think getting cool guns and trying out new builds is where the fun in BL3 is, and that really starts at max level. It sure isn't in the story/quests IMO, though getting through the story really isn't painful or anything. It's just kind of like an MMO, where leveling is the prelude to the endgame, which ends up getting most of the developer attention.


----------



## Mathemagician

Question regarding BL3 endgame/difficulties. Does it scale better when jumping up tiers, or is it like BL2 where (to a casual like me) it didn’t get tougher with stronger enemies. It got brutal immediately and became unfun as everything had tons of health and did way more damage than I could take. I didn’t even finish the second difficulty as it felt impossible to play solo.


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## wankerness

BL3 is night and day better. Enemies become bullet sponges, but damage stops scaling pretty quickly (I think it hits max at 4/10?). With the right builds I NEVER felt like I did in 2, where you were constantly getting taken from full shields to fight for your life in less than one second. Sure, it’s tough, especially if you don’t keep repelling the affixes to get easier ones, but it’s wayyyyyy less frustrating.


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## Mathemagician

Thanks I’ll have to check it out again at some point. That’s really good to hear. 

Yeah in 2 I didn’t mind looking up builds or whatever, but there was nothing that was going to help except farming the same 2 bosses forever and like, why even play if I have to kill myself 40 times just to be allowed to have fun farming? 

In 3 I stopped after beating the base story once last fall.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Downloaded the Modern Warfare 2 Remastered Campaign on PS+. It's MW2. Remastered. Game is either jankier than I remember or it's an issue with the remaster. 'Cause your character sticks to more terrain than Spiderman, thus I got shot to shit a bunch on Veteran before having to lower the difficulty to save my sanity.


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## TedEH

There's still something about the BL3 writing grating on me though - it feels like everything narratively has a political slant to it. The game wants you to know how progressive they are. I said earlier that I didn't feel like the game was "trying to appear woke" and I think I'm going to take that back. They made sure all the couples in the game are gay or some other not-hetero minority and that you're told about it. They made sure that one of the playable characters was non-binary (despite being a hypermasculine robot...?). They have several beats in the main story line where the cast of almost-entirely women protagonists chastise Claptrap for some on-the-nose "sexism" despite the fact that half the characters in the franchise aggressively sexualize everyone else almost constantly.

I don't think it ruins the game or anything, but it's all entirely tangential to anything happening, and clearly presents these topics with a bias. I mean, you're in space searching for vaults and treasure and shiny guns and exploding people's heads and stuff - I really don't care how horny and "sexually liberated" the characters are while this is happening.


----------



## tacotiklah

TedEH said:


> There's still something about the BL3 writing grating on me though - it feels like everything narratively has a political slant to it. The game wants you to know how progressive they are. I said earlier that I didn't feel like the game was "trying to appear woke" and I think I'm going to take that back. They made sure all the couples in the game are gay or some other not-hetero minority and that you're told about it. They made sure that one of the playable characters was non-binary (despite being a hypermasculine robot...?). They have several beats in the main story line where the cast of almost-entirely women protagonists chastise Claptrap for some on-the-nose "sexism" despite the fact that half the characters in the franchise aggressively sexualize everyone else almost constantly.
> 
> I don't think it ruins the game or anything, but it's all entirely tangential to anything happening, and clearly presents these topics with a bias. I mean, you're in space searching for vaults and treasure and shiny guns and exploding people's heads and stuff - I really don't care how horny and "sexually liberated" the characters are while this is happening.




I actually just got this as a bday gift to myself and I like the more progressive elements in it. If you played the Hammerlock DLC in BL2, you find out that he's gay/bi there, so they're just building on that here. And it was pretty well established in 2 that Moxxi and Ellie are bi and Tiny Tina is gay. Like, all of this was set up in the previous game and they were fleshing it out a bit more here. I agree that the attempt at making a computerized playable class "non-binary" as something of a punchline with woke points was bad. They could have done that much better. But I like that there was a good mix of male and female psychos and a better mix of black and while characters in it (Like with Tyreese and Amara). Salvadore was a Truxican (the game's version of Mexican) in BL2 so again, nothing new. Just kinda building on what they already had going. We live on a pretty diverse world here on earth, so projecting that out into a multi-galaxy universe doesn't seem far-fetched to me.

The real thing that has me triggered af is the shit-tier writing for the main story that is by and large a complete nonsensical clusterfuck that often pretends like the previous games never happened and steamrolls over the previous arcs of a lot of beloved characters. A quick look shows that none of the five guys tapped for writing have EVER written a story for a game before, and one of them was involved in the making of Duke Nukem: Forever. So that should give you clue just how fucking terribad this is. At least the voice acting of Ashley Burch and Ice-T were really good and enjoyable. A lot of the unique (blues with flavor text) and legendaries have awesome references that had me fan-girling. Seeing Breath of the Dying (big Diablo 2 fan here) and Creeping Death (Metallica reference) gave me some smiles and uttered some "hell yeah!"s. I think if you just ignore the bad main story, there's still a lot to enjoy in the game. Glad I got it on the steam sale for half price. I wouldn't pay full price for it, but for half price it's worth it.

Also, that 80.9GB initial download for the base game is brutal. Rip to anyone with slow internet that wants to try this game.


----------



## tacotiklah

Also, right now they're having an increased loot rarity drop event going on and it's raining legendary guns. I'll have all my SDUs purchased and have my siren pimped out at this point. 

It's also worth mentioning (without spoilers) that the events in the main story surrounding Lilith, Tannis, Maya and Eva are utterly facepalm inducing and I hate it. Again, for future releases, they need to fire the writers for this game and get some real talent in there. Mix the stellar game play of this game with the kickass story elements of 2 and it'll be an instant classic for sure.


----------



## TedEH

tacotiklah said:


> Just kinda building on what they already had going. We live on a pretty diverse world here on earth, so projecting that out into a multi-galaxy universe doesn't seem far-fetched to me.


Don't get me wrong, I know that this has always been a bit of a "woke" franchise, and I've got nothing against diversity in the game. Some of it strikes me as realistic, and other parts of it read as signalling or baiting or just slanted or biased. 

The addition of the female psychos caught me off guard for a split second because they weren't there before, but it makes sense. A number of the main characters being established as gay ahead of time also makes sense. Making almost _every_ character gay isn't really realistic though - it reads to me like a sort of "affirmative action" style of representation. Like they had to check a "this person is a minority of some kind and they need to signal it to you" box to allow a character into in the game.

The whole Fl4k thing seems like it was either baiting argument or just a cop out, and I can't decide which one it reads as to me. If you're going to put a non-binary character in there, why would you make the character hyper-masculine if not trying to bait people into arguing about it? Alternatively, if they wanted to make a proper statement about people's gender struggles, a robot seems like an almost insulting way to have that conversation. I'll at least give them the "get it? Non-Binary? As in 1s and 0s? Cause he's a robot?" joke. IMO a video game about shooting people for space treasure is not the place to have that discussion.

I won't go as far as saying I don't think games should ever get political, 'cause I don't believe that. But I think the writing suffered for all the time spent trying to signal how progressive the writers were instead of developing a compelling narrative. I mean, the game's got some horny writing to it, and there's some charm to that. I just finished the Moxxi / Killavolt mission and that whole plot line is very sexually charged/aggressive. The game has made it very clear that it's acceptable to aggressively sexualize their characters and punch at male ego, but then you get this almost whiplash moment immediately after that where Claptrap makes the mildest possible joke at the expense of the women in the story and they pause a moment to make sure you understand that this was Very Bad.

As I mentioned, I don't think it detracts that much from the mechanical fun of the game, but it would be nice to have fewer eye roll moments. Maybe a good way to put it is that I think I see what they were going for... but it's kind of a swing and a miss.


----------



## tacotiklah

Yeah, I agree with most of that. There's a fair bit of "this feels really forced and like queer-baiting to me". I mean, Wainwright Jakobs and Hammerlock being a thing made sense to me and you could see it in their interactions with each other that they lightly bicker like an already married couple while also showing how much they really do care about each other. I don't have the DLC for them that fleshes that out further, but it's a brief moment of good writing in the story that I enjoyed.

But yeah, with Fl4k basically saying enbies are robots is garbage to me and beyond forced. I don't take too much issue with masculine expression as an enby as that is a thing IRL. Gender identity and gender expression don't always coincide either. But they really fucked up with Fl4k. When it comes to the "woke" parts it's a hit and miss for me. Some things they do well and others are serious cringe. There's no in-between on that, which is kinda weird.


----------



## wankerness

I think Eva is the most hated character in Borderlands history. I constantly see people raging on the BL reddit about how you can’t


Spoiler



kill the main baddie of the story, the one that killed Maya!



ordinarily this kind of character hatred is driven by gamergater nerds who also rage about “progressive politics” and “woke points” and just hate women that aren’t sexual used, but here it seems pretty universal and not that at all. She’s pretty awful. People liked all the other women characters, even Ellie! I sorta think she’s less annoying than Tina in 3 (Tina was funny in 2), but get it.


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## TedEH

tacotiklah said:


> When it comes to the "woke" parts it's a hit and miss for me. Some things they do well and others are serious cringe. There's no in-between on that, which is kinda weird.


IMO pretty much everyone's politics on these kinds of topics are hit and miss, so a video game is the wrong place to make absolute statements about it as if you've got it all figured out. They could have gone in with exactly the opposite politics and I'd be cringing half the time at that too.

I'm of two minds about it kind of... on one hand I'm rolling my eyes pretty frequently, but on the other hand, maybe they deserve some credit for being willing to approach the topics in the first place? I don't know.


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## TedEH

Straying from that topic though - I'm finding myself trapped in that weird loop of getting almost kind of too invested / attached to particular weapons because of their effectiveness for some time, but the carrying limits mean you have to make constant decisions about which gear to keep, and the natural progression of the game ends up meaning your guns aren't actually as good as they were when you got them etc etc etc. So do you throw away the gun you've liked at the risk of something that might be less effective? Do you throw away something else that might actually be quite good but you've just not tried it yet? Do you prioritize rarity/colours? 

A lot of the decisions have to be made in a short time while trying to progress through the game, but the true effectiveness of a weapon is hard to judge from just the stats - sometimes a gun that's not very good "on paper" actually works really way for your play style, and you can't know until you try them all. I feel like BL2 was much easier to judge the effectiveness of a weapon by its specs. Or maybe I'm imagining that. I dunno.

None of that is a complaint, just an observation. Clearly the loot and trying out all the random guns is a lot of the fun of the game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> Straying from that topic though - I'm finding myself trapped in that weird loop of getting almost kind of too invested / attached to particular weapons because of their effectiveness for some time, but the carrying limits mean you have to make constant decisions about which gear to keep, and the natural progression of the game ends up meaning your guns aren't actually as good as they were when you got them etc etc etc. So do you throw away the gun you've liked at the risk of something that might be less effective? Do you throw away something else that might actually be quite good but you've just not tried it yet? Do you prioritize rarity/colours?
> 
> A lot of the decisions have to be made in a short time while trying to progress through the game, but the true effectiveness of a weapon is hard to judge from just the stats - sometimes a gun that's not very good "on paper" actually works really way for your play style, and you can't know until you try them all. I feel like BL2 was much easier to judge the effectiveness of a weapon by its specs. Or maybe I'm imagining that. I dunno.
> 
> None of that is a complaint, just an observation. Clearly the loot and trying out all the random guns is a lot of the fun of the game.


Make sure you fully upgrade your SDU slots. It makes choosing between guns less of an issue, plus with instant fast travel you can just throw them in your vault and rotate them out. I used Moze on my first playthrough so I pretty much exclusively ran electric/fire type smgs/lmgs or jakobs repeaters since those paired extremely well with the way I specced her.


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## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Straying from that topic though - I'm finding myself trapped in that weird loop of getting almost kind of too invested / attached to particular weapons because of their effectiveness for some time, but the carrying limits mean you have to make constant decisions about which gear to keep, and the natural progression of the game ends up meaning your guns aren't actually as good as they were when you got them etc etc etc. So do you throw away the gun you've liked at the risk of something that might be less effective? Do you throw away something else that might actually be quite good but you've just not tried it yet? Do you prioritize rarity/colours?
> 
> A lot of the decisions have to be made in a short time while trying to progress through the game, but the true effectiveness of a weapon is hard to judge from just the stats - sometimes a gun that's not very good "on paper" actually works really way for your play style, and you can't know until you try them all. I feel like BL2 was much easier to judge the effectiveness of a weapon by its specs. Or maybe I'm imagining that. I dunno.
> 
> None of that is a complaint, just an observation. Clearly the loot and trying out all the random guns is a lot of the fun of the game.



Some weapons are legitimately a lot better than most others and thus can last you a long time. Like, my last character I was leveling, post-Lob buff, used a Lob and was still 1-shotting enemies with it when it was more than 10 levels lower than me. Nothing else came close, even other legendaries I happened on. I had similar experiences while leveling with a couple frozen machine guns from DLC-1. Speaking of which, if you're playing as an operative, you need to do that ASAP and get the class mod from it, cause even a low level version of it outclasses every single other mod in the base game by a huge amount.

EDIT: Wow, looking at my posts above, I need to stop posting from a phone without extensive editing. Autocorrect just butchers anything not considered a regular word by my iphone. Sexualized to Sexual used? Rerolling to repelling? ugh.


----------



## Mathemagician

I know that with the flak mid tree, if you get a Jakob’s weapon that’s is automatic instead of semi-auto/bolt action, keep it forever. They’ll last you 10+ levels, more if you’re unlucky with drops.


----------



## TedEH

I've definitely been buying the SDU slots as soon as I can afford them. Part of my brain tries to avoid fast-travel (that's on me though), so maybe I need to remember to use that more often.


----------



## tacotiklah

Well you wanna get the guns that work best with your class/build idea. I'm running elemental dot Siren, so I prioritize smgs with various elements. And since it's raining legendaries, it's nowhere near as hard to keep the best guns on you at all time. I'm on TVHM at the moment and the legendary AAA pistol I have does a stupid amount of base damage and with phasegrab with the links modifier, anything I shoot that's phasegrabbed passes that damage onto nearby enemies at half rate. Perfect for the high fire rate of this burst fire dahl pistol as well as maliwan SMGs. Sometimes you go the orange shinies, other times the mods on blue weapons with red text are best. It all comes down to what the gun does for your build.

And +1 on keeping your bank SDU topped off. By the time you complete your first playthrough, you'll acquire something really cool that basically makes it to where as long as you're farming eridium, you'll have all the guns and cash you could ever want.


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## TedEH

Maybe I'm the weirdo in this one but I've never really played towards a "build" of a character either. I typically will just pick 1 long range gun, 1 short range gun, and 1 high damage gun regardless of what it is, and run with that regardless of the character class/skills/etc.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> Maybe I'm the weirdo in this one but I've never really played towards a "build" of a character either. I typically will just pick 1 long range gun, 1 short range gun, and 1 high damage gun regardless of what it is, and run with that regardless of the character class/skills/etc.


 I find that in this game moreso than BL1 or 2, build/weapon synergy REAAAALLLY makes a difference, especially later in the game and on higher mayhem levels. Moze is basically useless if you fill her iron bear tree, but with her assault/crit tree she becomes nigh unstoppable with the right weapons.


----------



## wankerness

Yep, builds and (in endgame) anointments are the entire deal. If you just pick random stuff that looks good you're probably going to be stuck at M1. Which is fine, as you sound like you're not going to ever experiment anyway.

The easiest build by far I found was one for FL4K that combined the crit tree with the gamma burst ability/tree. Did crazy damage, but also survivability was through the roof, especially if your action skill was active, which was for a huge % of the time compared to most characters. It didn't work until you were above level 50, and it was boosted tremendously if you had weapons with abilities that added radiation damage during action skill, or damage during action skill, or the old faithful "300% weapon damage when target is above 80% health" that seemed brokenly powerful since it applied to all shield/armor damage done along with any shots fired before their red health bar dropped below 80%. Maybe they've nerfed that since.

Amara did a bit more damage than fl4k, but survivability wasn't nearly as overpowered as that FL4K build. I messed with Moze a bunch and haven't played her since DLC2 launched so I don't really know much about her. When I played and the level cap was 50, she was pretty terrible cause they hadn't yet made iron bear viable in mayhem mode. I was using some cheese build where you basically used the shield absorption lightning ability and then had lots of tediore guns with lightning damage so you could heal yourself while spamming reload bombs.

Tradition in borderlands games has been that until you're close to max level, the action skills seem somewhat useless since their cooldown is too long and they don't do enough damage. But by max level, playstyle changes completely.


----------



## TedEH

IMO there's as much a focus on having a single player experience for those who want that, otherwise why have a 30-40 hour campaign if the whole point of the game is the endgame? Like looking at Mario Odyssey, the main game is very short so that you can get to the meat of just collecting junk. I've found that the action skills end up being great as a way to recover from close calls - currently using Fl4k's Fade Away as a way to get out of sticky situation, mixed with that modifier that lets you fire as many times as you want while still hidden.


----------



## Mathemagician

BL3 imo has a much more fun campaign than prior games in terms of level design and overall world building. Are the DLC’s worth it?


----------



## WarMachine

TedEH said:


> In the pursuit of my life's goal to play every Zelda game, I grabbed the two DS titles and started on Phantom Hourglass. I think I can see why these were not as well received, but not a bad game so far.


The platform man. Having to be stuck using just a stylus to play Zelda is off as it gets. I do remember 1 cool thing about it tho. I was playing Phantom Hourglass when it first came out. I had just finished up a dungeon and couldn't figure out wtf the deal was with the map in the last room passed the boss. So i said fuck it and closed the lid on the DS. Heard the little "found something" jingle lol and was like "the fuck?". Opened the lid to see it transferred from the top screen to the bottom screen. Kind of frustrating but at the same time i couldn't help but think that was a really cool idea. Of the portable titles, i'd say my favorite is probably The Minish Cap. Long playthrough and a more unique story in general. Although i'm pretty biased to the 3D "retelling" of ALTTP with A Link Between Worlds.


----------



## TedEH

I didn't really hate the stylus movement... it wasn't "good" but it wasn't the end of the world. I actually quite liked the idea of being able to take notes on the map that easily though. I haven't tried Minish Cap yet. It's harder to get a hold of a legit copy. It's one of those items people know is harder to get so they jack the price up. A quick search has results in the $70-150 range. No thanks.

The lid flipping thing though.... I think it would have been a good trick if it had been hinted at a bit better. I sat having no idea what to do for a while until I gave up and googled it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

working on finishing up days gone, then starting up Nioh for another playthrough. Prob going to grab nioh 2 and play through that afterwards.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I didn't really hate the stylus movement... it wasn't "good" but it wasn't the end of the world. I actually quite liked the idea of being able to take notes on the map that easily though. I haven't tried Minish Cap yet. It's harder to get a hold of a legit copy. It's one of those items people know is harder to get so they jack the price up. A quick search has results in the $70-150 range. No thanks.
> 
> The lid flipping thing though.... I think it would have been a good trick if it had been hinted at a bit better. I sat having no idea what to do for a while until I gave up and googled it.


I've never played Phantom Hourglass, but I feel like I definitely heard about that trick from promotional material. Maybe I'm just misremembering.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> IMO there's as much a focus on having a single player experience for those who want that, otherwise why have a 30-40 hour campaign if the whole point of the game is the endgame? Like looking at Mario Odyssey, the main game is very short so that you can get to the meat of just collecting junk. I've found that the action skills end up being great as a way to recover from close calls - currently using Fl4k's Fade Away as a way to get out of sticky situation, mixed with that modifier that lets you fire as many times as you want while still hidden.



I've never played BL3 multiplayer, the endgame can be done either way. BL3 is infinitely more single-player-friendly than BL2 was, since you're getting knocked into FFYL mode about 1/4 as often in my experience on the higher difficulty settings. I was constantly getting 1-shotted by guys from across the map who'd then dive behind cover in BL2, leaving me no option but to respawn. I hated that so much. That rarely happens in 3, the most annoying and common deaths in my experience are from when you kill an enemy right before a grenade explodes.


----------



## TedEH

I find the game feels a bit biased towards ranged combat. You're able to spotted and shot at from insanely far away. Fights get easier (but arguably less fun) if you just pick people off from a distance.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I find the game feels a bit biased towards ranged combat. You're able to spotted and shot at from insanely far away. Fights get easier (but arguably less fun) if you just pick people off from a distance.



Makes sense, for a game about guns.  I did an Amara melee build for a while (I think you have to be high level to get enough skill points for it to do much damage), and it was fun, but with the way damage scales it's completely non-viable past Mayhem 4 as you might as well be hitting enemies with a feather, even if you have a bladed weapon equipped. From what I hear, Krieg was a lot better in BL2. Never played as him. Zero was about the same level of gimped as Maya when it came to doing a lot of melee damage on higher difficulty.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I didn't really hate the stylus movement... it wasn't "good" but it wasn't the end of the world. I actually quite liked the idea of being able to take notes on the map that easily though. I haven't tried Minish Cap yet. It's harder to get a hold of a legit copy. It's one of those items people know is harder to get so they jack the price up. A quick search has results in the $70-150 range. No thanks.
> 
> The lid flipping thing though.... I think it would have been a good trick if it had been hinted at a bit better. I sat having no idea what to do for a while until I gave up and googled it.



I believe that you can get minish cap through virtual console on wii/wii-u if you want to do things legally without spending an arm and a leg. I've been playing it on Wii-U, it's good. Probably partly due to not being made by Nintendo, it has kind of a different atmosphere and sense of humor, but it's very good and doesn't feel "wrong."


----------



## TedEH

You could sort of say Doom is also "about guns" but it's designed in such a way to encourage you to get real up-close.


----------



## MFB

TedEH said:


> You could sort of say Doom is also "about guns" but it's designed in such a way to encourage you to get real up-close.



Can't rip and tear if you're 20 ft away


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> You could sort of say Doom is also "about guns" but it's designed in such a way to encourage you to get real up-close.



Well, Doom 2016 and especially Doom Eternal have almost everything about the gameplay tied to being forced to do melee attacks unless you don't want to ever get health powerups or ammo, while Borderlands has a few halfhearted bonuses that don't actually help you much. To say nothing of the relative damage. It's more comparable to original doom, if it didn't have the berserker packs or the chainsaw! Sure, you can weave around and punch enemies 16 times to kill them if you want, but it sucks!

If you like that style, though, it becomes viable with Amara somewhere in the mid-30s (you need to dump 26 points in the brawl tree for the capper skill, and then 6 points in the Elements tree for the 75% melee damage increase). It's completely non-viable before you have the capper in the brawl tree, and pretty bad until you also have that 6 points in the elements tree, but as soon as you get both of those, hoo boy, you basically can fly around meleeing guys in 1-2 shots in a big chain of death since kills reset the cooldown on that capper, which teleports you into melee range of any guy you aim at and hit the melee attack button at if they're anywhere close to you at all. It's great.


----------



## TedEH

Honestly I think the brilliance of something like Borderlands is that it enables this kind of stuff for just about everyone. There's enough going on mechanically that you can engage with it more or less on your own terms and still get something out of it. It does to shooter mechanics what "immersive sims" do to adventure/RPG mechanics.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaning up some trophies in Killzone 3.

I'm really debating picking up Fallout: New Vegas since the walmart near me has a copy of the complete edition in stock still for like $10, but I've already got such a backlog of games and I didn't like FO3 to begin with.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Makes sense, for a game about guns.  I did an Amara melee build for a while (I think you have to be high level to get enough skill points for it to do much damage), and it was fun, but with the way damage scales it's completely non-viable past Mayhem 4 as you might as well be hitting enemies with a feather, even if you have a bladed weapon equipped. From what I hear, Krieg was a lot better in BL2. Never played as him. Zero was about the same level of gimped as Maya when it came to doing a lot of melee damage on higher difficulty.



My mistake in both 1 and 2 was picking the melee character because they seemed “awesome”.

In a game about guns. With gun-related abilities. I’m running around getting shredded trying to punch enemies that snipe me and run away.

I haven’t played Amara but I can not recommend staying away from melee in BL enough. It’s like a different worse game. Idk why it took me forever to figure out.


----------



## SpaceDock

Anyone play Remnant? I see it goes free on Epic tomorrow


----------



## Adieu

wankerness said:


> I think Eva is the most hated character in Borderlands history. I constantly see people raging on the BL reddit about how you can’t
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> kill the main baddie of the story, the one that killed Maya!
> 
> 
> 
> ordinarily this kind of character hatred is driven by gamergater nerds who also rage about “progressive politics” and “woke points” and just hate women that aren’t sexual used, but here it seems pretty universal and not that at all. She’s pretty awful. People liked all the other women characters, even Ellie! I sorta think she’s less annoying than Tina in 3 (Tina was funny in 2), but get it.




...omfg, is there nowhere you can hide from this stuff anymore?


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> My mistake in both 1 and 2 was picking the melee character because they seemed “awesome”.
> 
> In a game about guns. With gun-related abilities. I’m running around getting shredded trying to punch enemies that snipe me and run away.
> 
> I haven’t played Amara but I can not recommend staying away from melee in BL enough. It’s like a different worse game. Idk why it took me forever to figure out.



Even the controls don't want you to spam melee. Clicking the stick in repeatedly really fast is not good for anything.

I think Brick (and maybe Krieg) switched to using L/R for melee when you used your action skill, or something?


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Even the controls don't want you to spam melee. Clicking the stick in repeatedly really fast is not good for anything.
> 
> I think Brick (and maybe Krieg) switched to using L/R for melee when you used your action skill, or something?



Yeah the first time I used Brick’s ability and ran around punching I thought it was hilarious. Then afterwards I went back to my guns but with no real cool damage buffs. The Sirens were way more fun. Have only played Fl4k in 3 but his beasts & fade away were top notch goodness. Either way melee wasn’t didn’t feel better with any particular “build” either.


----------



## wankerness

AFAIK there's no melee viability at all for any character other than Amara. If you're on normal difficulty, it's just kind of a thing to do to finish guys off if you're close-up and reloading. Did DLC3 add a new character yet?


----------



## Mathemagician

No idea I haven’t played since launch. Don’t own any dlc/haven’t followed the game since.


----------



## mongey

after being distracted by skater xl pushing , no pun intended , on with TLOU2 as i do really want to finish it. 

I have a ways to go through, looking at a mission list I'm only just under half way done.


----------



## MFB

MFB said:


> Yeah, the door by the lamp is the one that leads to the Healing Church Clinic, which I went through and cleared to get the Sword Hunter's Badge; holy hell, Ludwig's blade is 20K! I get that it has a higher attack out the gate than any of the other weapons, but I wonder if the speed of it is that good as well, that's like, 2/3 of what I've spent in my entire gameplay already.
> 
> I'm gonna do some exploring tonight, the thing with the Soulsborne verse that I'm not crazy about is there's really no direction, you just have to explore and see if anything opened up since you did something  And don't even get me started on figuring out that there are NPC Quests.



Alright alright, after a decent chunk of running around and finding the not right path, I finally figured out where I was supposed to go; but man the new enemies and corridors its throwing at me really made it difficult because at the end of everything was... the next boss!

Seriously, fuck the Church Doctors and the Church Servants at the Grand Cathedral, big sons of bitches with their long ass reach. They're not bad if you get the first blow with a transformed axe heavy attack, but that kills all you stamina so look out. But hey, I also took down Vicar Amelia in roughly a dozen tries. Probably because she was similar to Cleric Beast, so I knew somewhat to expect, and once you get through her first half she slows down enough to be manageable; doesnt mean she gets easy, she just trades movement + single attacks for stationary + combos. Didn't get a single stagger on her either, honestly couldn't figure out when the opening or timing of it was needed, but shes dead now and thats what counts.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Started Ys Memories of Celceta and going from FF7R and Trials to a this took some control adjustment. The camera is fixed and the right analog stick is just for zooming in, which I never used during field and combat since you want visibility. It does give an old school Zelda vibe since it's top down. 

Still, it's a lot of fun. I loved Ys Lacrimosa of Dana, so I'm enjoying this, despite the technological downgrade. I did end up levelling up significantly out of stubbornness, when I came across a giant Ape monster 4 times my level, but siting next to an instant heal point so I cheesed in beating his fat ass. Twice.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing the shit out of animal crossing new horizons, and more grinding in dragon's dogma. Both great. Dragon's Dogma is quickly becoming one of my favorite action RPGs of all time. I wish they would develop a new one along similar lines. There are definitely some huge QOL issues with it, but the base combat and class systems are excellent. Make casting take less time and make stats able to be changed somehow so you don't need to spend ~80 hours re-leveling if you screw up the process, and everything would be perfect there. It's still very fun playing as a sorcerer, imo, since when you can actually get the spells off, you really wreck. 

I need to add that Ys game to my wishlist. I loved Lacrimosa of Dana but my backlog's too big to justify full price right now.


----------



## Leviathus

MFB said:


> Alright alright, after a decent chunk of running around and finding the not right path, I finally figured out where I was supposed to go; but man the new enemies and corridors its throwing at me really made it difficult because at the end of everything was... the next boss!
> 
> Seriously, fuck the Church Doctors and the Church Servants at the Grand Cathedral, big sons of bitches with their long ass reach. They're not bad if you get the first blow with a transformed axe heavy attack, but that kills all you stamina so look out. But hey, I also took down Vicar Amelia in roughly a dozen tries. Probably because she was similar to Cleric Beast, so I knew somewhat to expect, and once you get through her first half she slows down enough to be manageable; doesnt mean she gets easy, she just trades movement + single attacks for stationary + combos. Didn't get a single stagger on her either, honestly couldn't figure out when the opening or timing of it was needed, but shes dead now and thats what counts.


I tend to just gun-parry the church guys, their "parry window" is pretty forgiving, rarely doesn't take.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Been playing the shit out of animal crossing new horizons, and more grinding in dragon's dogma. Both great. Dragon's Dogma is quickly becoming one of my favorite action RPGs of all time. I wish they would develop a new one along similar lines. There are definitely some huge QOL issues with it, but the base combat and class systems are excellent. Make casting take less time and make stats able to be changed somehow so you don't need to spend ~80 hours re-leveling if you screw up the process, and everything would be perfect there. It's still very fun playing as a sorcerer, imo, since when you can actually get the spells off, you really wreck.
> 
> I need to add that Ys game to my wishlist. I loved Lacrimosa of Dana but my backlog's too big to justify full price right now.


Have you got the blue roses yet?


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Have you got the blue roses yet?



Nah, haven't messed with flower planting at all really. Just lots of building inclines and expanding my house and catching bugs/fish/sea creatures. And spamming plane tickets trying to get other kinds of fruit, without success!! My island has bamboo, pears, and peaches and that's all they want to give me!

I newly unlocked the island star rating thing and I'm solidly 1 star!


----------



## MFB

Leviathus said:


> I tend to just gun-parry the church guys, their "parry window" is pretty forgiving, rarely doesn't take.



The majority of them are easy enough to just side step and R1/R2 combo for 90% of their health, but the crucifix ones have such god damn range on them it's absurd. Same for the new scythe ones I'm encountering. Cane? Lamp? No sweat. Crucifix/Scythe? Well shit. I'm also terrible at remembering to parry enemies for visceral attacks, my mind thinks that it doesn't exist in Bloodborne (which really it doesn't, you're not parrying in the true sense of the word), so I just look at my pistol as a way for some easy health knocks.

Found my way down to Hemwick Charnel Lane, beat the boss on the first try which felt really good, but it's a pretty easy fight compared to the other four that I've gone up against so I'm staying modest about it. Tried going to Castle Cainhurst but apparently there's some summons I need before I can do that, so for now I'm going into the Forbidden Woods!


----------



## chopeth

MFB said:


> The majority of them are easy enough to just side step and R1/R2 combo for 90% of their health, but the crucifix ones have such god damn range on them it's absurd. Same for the new scythe ones I'm encountering. Cane? Lamp? No sweat. Crucifix/Scythe? Well shit. I'm also terrible at remembering to parry enemies for visceral attacks, my mind thinks that it doesn't exist in Bloodborne (which really it doesn't, you're not parrying in the true sense of the word), so I just look at my pistol as a way for some easy health knocks.
> 
> Found my way down to Hemwick Charnel Lane, beat the boss on the first try which felt really good, but it's a pretty easy fight compared to the other four that I've gone up against so I'm staying modest about it. Tried going to Castle Cainhurst but apparently there's some summons I need before I can do that, so for now I'm going into the Forbidden Woods!



That freaking forbidden woods will take you a bit to inspect thoroughly


----------



## narad

Just finish "Ghosts of Tsushima", or as I believe it is colloquially called, "Ghosts of Return to Tale Area (15)". Really solid game, and even though the implementation was not amazing, I'm impressed how it pushed some actual culture on you, forcing you to reflect in haiku yourself. And a lot of homage to old samurai movies in the cinematography.

I usually say one long game a year is allowed, but now FF7 remake, Last of Us 2, Ghosts of Tsushima, ..jeeez. And now Baldur's Gate 3 coming? This is not a productive year, but well, exceptions for covid.


----------



## MFB

chopeth said:


> That freaking forbidden woods will take you a bit to inspect thoroughly



I'm committing to the Forbidden Woods now that I've gotten to - and promptly smoked by - the boss at Cainhurst Castle. I'm level 53(?), and I didn't realize the recommended levels were 60-80, so I'm definitely punching outside my class there. Even the Bloodsuckers in the beginning killed me with minimal effort, it's absurd.

I managed to carve out a good chunk of Forbidden Woods, both with the path back up to Yharnam and pushing the right hand side with all the god damn trap floors; also found my first Viper Pit, and did NOT enjoy that enemy. Got one shotted real quick and lost like, 20-30K blood echoes to it, and died on my way back too so they're legitimately gone.

Also bought Ludwig's Holy Blade and upgraded it to the same point as my Saw Cleaver, so now I'm doing more damage and have a higher rally stat, and strength scaling; combined with my increased endurance, depending on the enemy, I can kill them quickly with a three R1 combo.


----------



## Ralyks

My TV's screen shit the bed, since I had warranty, I took the credit and upgraded to a newer Sony Bravia 65 inch with 4K and Dolby Vision/HDR10... And now I just want to go back to some games I haven't played in a while to see how awesome they look on this thing.

Anyway, still playing Ghost of Tsushima, and I like it, but I also feel like I'm playing it to finish it. I want to go back to Persona 5 Royal, I want to platinum FFVII Remake (which means grinding a whole bunch and then starting hard mode...), And I may move my PSTV into the living room to go back to Persona 4 Golden because I feel shameful for only being 20 hours into that game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaning up some trophies in Binary Domain.


----------



## wankerness

Finally killed Death in Dragon's Dogma, and hit level 200, now playing as Magickal Archer and it's fantastic. Wish I'd started the game as such, though apparently you don't gain any attack power as you level from 100-200 as that class and thus you'll be a weakling at 200 if you didn't level as something else instead! It's so ridiculous and oldschool. The game probably is better on PC, not just because of mods that do things like let you choose stat growth per level, but because it's all about manual aiming with some of the archer classes and thus is a bit rough on console. Magickal archer has cursors that snap to the target if you're even remotely close, so it's far easier to play on console!! I might have to get the game on PC and mod it out since I liked it so much.

Watched my girlfriend play through the desert temple in Twilight Princess HD. Now this one I have some vivid memories of, especially the boss, which is one of my all-time favorite Zelda bosses. That gear thing you can surf around on is one of the most fun items in any of these games, and I haven't encountered it in any other Zelda game yet. It was a great idea!

Went to a used game store and got Animal Crossing New Leaf, Bravely Default, and Metroid: Return of Samus for 3DS, so now I have a backlog on it too! Awesome. I have problems. At least I haven't bought any PS4 games in a while. Also picked up a legit copy of Skyward Sword that they had jammed in the corner of a display case for a mere 17 bucks cause it was in a jewel case instead of the original case. Hell yeah, I'll pay half as much for the same game without the original case!


----------



## Leviathus

Debating picking up Mortal Shell, sucks it's only on the epic games launcher for now though.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Thought I was gonna finish cleaning up trophies for Binary Domain tonight, but I found out that if you already have a completed game save and then go back through with chapter select it doesn't save any data from the chapter select run. So I wasted about four to five hours yesterday and cut into my sleep schedule for only a few collectibles to register.


----------



## gnoll

I started playing Magic: The Gathering Arena a few months ago. It's an online version of the card game. I've not played much games in the last couple years but I felt I wanted a game to play for those moments when I just wanna chill out and don't feel like watching a movie.

Now I'm thinking of quitting. What bothers me about it is the daily/weekly quest system. In order to get gold to buy cards to play with you have to complete your quests. I hate those kinds of systems! I want to play when I feel like it, which is mostly not every day, and sometimes not even every week or month. But the game forces me to log in to complete those stupid quests. And when I've completed them, the incentive to play disappears because the game ends up being about completing quests and not about having fun. Gah!

So now I'm thinking of giving it up and maybe finding a game that feels less like a chore. Shame though, because I think MTG is a good game.


----------



## wankerness

Got "Fall Guys" cause it was free and I saw people talking about it. I played once, got second place, was stressed out but laughed a lot. My girlfriend played it once and stumbled into first place through almost pure luck in the last round. So now I have the best opening record of anyone who's ever played that game (obviously), and think I'll retire in honor.


----------



## mikernaut

I just got my Fall Guys character up to max level 40 for the season, it's soo tricky to get those crowns. You get a few unlocked along the way for certain levels but to actually win them in game can be dumb luck at times. Had 5 crowns at the end of my 40 levels (spent a few along the way). Decided to spend some and get the goofy super hero outfit. I just hope they keep cranking out new levels and goofy cosmetics to keep the game going strong. The tail grabbing games are pretty painful with the latency.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Finally killed Death in Dragon's Dogma, and hit level 200, now playing as Magickal Archer and it's fantastic. Wish I'd started the game as such, though apparently you don't gain any attack power as you level from 100-200 as that class and thus you'll be a weakling at 200 if you didn't level as something else instead! It's so ridiculous and oldschool. The game probably is better on PC, not just because of mods that do things like let you choose stat growth per level, but because it's all about manual aiming with some of the archer classes and thus is a bit rough on console. Magickal archer has cursors that snap to the target if you're even remotely close, so it's far easier to play on console!! I might have to get the game on PC and mod it out since I liked it so much.
> 
> Watched my girlfriend play through the desert temple in Twilight Princess HD. Now this one I have some vivid memories of, especially the boss, which is one of my all-time favorite Zelda bosses. That gear thing you can surf around on is one of the most fun items in any of these games, and I haven't encountered it in any other Zelda game yet. It was a great idea!
> 
> Went to a used game store and got Animal Crossing New Leaf, Bravely Default, and Metroid: Return of Samus for 3DS, so now I have a backlog on it too! Awesome. I have problems. At least I haven't bought any PS4 games in a while. Also picked up a legit copy of Skyward Sword that they had jammed in the corner of a display case for a mere 17 bucks cause it was in a jewel case instead of the original case. Hell yeah, I'll pay half as much for the same game without the original case!


BD is probably the best game on 3DS! You won't regret it.


----------



## mikernaut

WOW! hope this gets finished and makes it over to the West


----------



## JozefJ

I just got back to playing D&D with my friends, and I'm telling you - it's much more fun now, than it was 10 yrs ago


----------



## Mathemagician

JozefJ said:


> I just got back to playing D&D with my friends, and I'm telling you - it's much more fun now, than it was 10 yrs ago



On this note I’m looking forward to Baldurs Gate 3. Like cannot wait to get some good rpg action.


----------



## MFB

MFB said:


> I'm committing to the Forbidden Woods now that I've gotten to - and promptly smoked by - the boss at Cainhurst Castle. I'm level 53(?), and I didn't realize the recommended levels were 60-80, so I'm definitely punching outside my class there. Even the Bloodsuckers in the beginning killed me with minimal effort, it's absurd.
> 
> I managed to carve out a good chunk of Forbidden Woods, both with the path back up to Yharnam and pushing the right hand side with all the god damn trap floors; also found my first Viper Pit, and did NOT enjoy that enemy. Got one shotted real quick and lost like, 20-30K blood echoes to it, and died on my way back too so they're legitimately gone.
> 
> Also bought Ludwig's Holy Blade and upgraded it to the same point as my Saw Cleaver, so now I'm doing more damage and have a higher rally stat, and strength scaling; combined with my increased endurance, depending on the enemy, I can kill them quickly with a three R1 combo.



Finished up the Forbidden Woods, conveniently on my birthday the other night, also beat that boss on the first try (Shadow of Yharnam), and then pushed through Brygenworth quickly. Summoned the Madaras twin who helped take down the Hunter with relative ease, and I had gotten a couple visceral's in, then pushed up through Rom. Summoned the other Hunter for him, so got the ranged attack while I hit up close at the mob spiders/Rom with the Tonitrus for bolt damage buff. 

Now I'm fighting my way through Yarghul, and not enjoying Chime Maidens or lesser Amygdalas at all. Only one of them has used it's dickhead laser ability to screw me over, and once I figure out C.M. buff and were responsible for enemy respawns, I learned to make them my priority. I hope to have it done either tonight or tomorrow, since I think I've only got a few bosses left after this; killing Rom put me at ...7 dead so far.


----------



## mikernaut

Started Mortal Shell, I'm enjoying it and love the Art Direction but I'm not very good at these Dark Souls/From Software style games , hah!


----------



## MFB

Missed killing Darkbeast Paarl on my first try by one hit, ONE HIT! I'm kicking myself for it, but he died on the second go, and as many said, the camera is truly the biggest enemy in that battle.


----------



## Choop

You're not helping my itch to finally break down and get a PS4 solely to play Bloodborne, MFB.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Choop said:


> You're not helping my itch to finally break down and get a PS4 solely to play Bloodborne, MFB.


If not for bloodborne, then grab one for the last of us 1/2 and infamous games/spiderman.


----------



## Choop

KnightBrolaire said:


> If not for bloodborne, then grab one for the last of us 1/2 and infamous games/spiderman.



There are rumors that Bloodborne has undergone playtesting for a PC version recently, which I would hugely appreciate! If that's false though, at the very least I'm probably going to hold out for a PS5 at this point.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Choop said:


> There are rumors that Bloodborne has undergone playtesting for a PC version recently, which I would hugely appreciate! If that's false though, at the very least I'm probably going to hold out for a PS5 at this point.


They've had rumours about Bloodborne coming to PC since before the game came out lol


----------



## Choop

KnightBrolaire said:


> They've had rumours about Bloodborne coming to PC since before the game came out lol



I mean, that was just hopeful thinking since the Dark Souls titles had all launched later on PC, but I guess Sony has an exclusive deal with Bloodborne. It'd make more sense now, since the PS4 will be phasing out pretty soon!


----------



## Mathemagician

Allegedly Sony has been going after exclusives even harder for the PS5. So I wouldn’t count on them letting Bloodborne go unless Fromsoft had a clause where exclusivity ends at some point.


----------



## WarMachine

Choop said:


> I mean, that was just hopeful thinking since the Dark Souls titles had all launched later on PC, but I guess Sony has an exclusive deal with Bloodborne. It'd make more sense now, since the PS4 will be phasing out pretty soon!


I've been keeping an eye on this as well but like others have said it's been a rumor since it hit the PS4. I had it for a little bit, played it and it completely kicked my ass lol. But it was fun and of course challenging. It would be badass i agree if they got it ported to PC. I've in the last 6 months built a gaming rig and sold off my PS4 just because the games were coming to it also and most of them played/looked nicer.


----------



## MFB

Choop said:


> You're not helping my itch to finally break down and get a PS4 solely to play Bloodborne, MFB.





KnightBrolaire said:


> If not for bloodborne, then grab one for the last of us 1/2 and infamous games/spiderman.



I grabbed a PS4 back when it first launched, and didn't have much use for it after the initial wave of games, but coming back to it since the Black Friday sale, the single player games on here are fantastic; between HZD, GOW, Spiderman, Fallen Order, Ghost of Tsushima, Bloodborne, it's got a lot to offer. If you can find one cheap, I'd snag it.

I'm also bloody awful at From games, like, my experience with Sekiro before Bloodborne was maddening - I had spent 2 hours straight dying to a boss and still couldn't get close to killing him in that entire time. Then there's another boss right after him as well, and it's like, how do I win here? But Bloodborne thankfully isn't as brutal as that one, and once you get the mechanics down, it's fun and challenging to play through at the same time. I've done a good amount of grinding that I probably shouldn't have, but the game still finds way to kill me and say "you're not as good as you think," which is nice, so I'm on the fence on if I'll continue into the DS series after this.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Speaking of Spiderman, this deepfake is amazing


----------



## MFB

r/raimimemes is leaking


----------



## Leviathus

Doing the stupid challenge for the Bruen LMG on MW, they'll probably nerf the gun before i even get it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Leviathus said:


> Doing the stupid challenge for the Bruen LMG on MW, they'll probably nerf the gun before i even get it.


lol they already nerfed it 2x in the last week
Holger 26 and pkm are better anyway imo


----------



## MFB

Holger is the god damn good, or at least it was before; not sure if it's gotten any sort of nerf since I stopped playing.


----------



## Leviathus

KnightBrolaire said:


> lol they already nerfed it 2x in the last week


How wonderful!


----------



## John

I've been back at it with some older Zelda related games, as of late. Even the stuff on Wii/Wii-U despite the not so popular controls for that console.


----------



## wankerness

The HD remakes on Wii-U are fantastic. I really like the interface, too, with the inventory/minimap being on the touchscreen so you can easily switch weapons and whatnot without pausing. The game would obviously still work on Switch with it going back to having to pause to change inventory, but the Wii-U versions of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker seem pretty definitive. They look great, too. Only problem is Twilight Princess is loaded with worthless chest rewards relating to the now-defunct "Miiverse."

I played Twilight Princess probably 10 years ago, once, and I didn't remember much, but my girlfriend this weekend just went through the "dungeon" that's the yeti's house where you get the huge ball and chain item and I remembered almost all of it! That has to be another of the best dungeons in Zelda history. It's such a weird location and it really works. And the gathering-the-soup-ingredients dungeon progression is fun, as is the alarming final boss. I don't remember at all what the next dungeons are, but hopefully when she gets to them I'll be similarly delighted by remembering just how good this game was.

I remember when I finished it thinking that it was bizarre that its rep wasn't better, as I thought it was the best in the series. Watching her play through the first couple dungeons made me see why people probably hate it, as there's a lot of tedious bullshit and it wasn't at all fun to be stuck in wolf form for hours, but when it opens up, I think it's best of the best. Plus, you get to play fetch with puppies and carry around kittens!


----------



## Leviathus

Been messin' around on the cinders mod for ds3, it's pretty sweet.


----------



## Mathemagician

F1. My first racing game outside of Mario Kart in 20 years. Holy crap I’m bad at driving. What do you mean I can’t just HOLD THE GAS?! One hair too close and my car crumbles?!?! 

Thank god for flashback.


----------



## Daemoniac

Replaying Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

Still the single greatest gaming experience of my life, and my single favourite piece of visual media (of any variety) I have ever experienced.


----------



## TedEH

Daemoniac said:


> Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.
> 
> Still the single greatest gaming experience of my life


I'd be curious to hear what else you've played that you're comparing that to - not to say that I don't think that's a good game (I did think it's a good game), but it's not one that commonly lands on "best game I've ever played" lists.

Someone at my work yesterday tried to poll people for what their favourite game is - and I couldn't come up with a singular answer. There are so many games - and so many great games - and so many different _kinds_ of games, that there's lots of obvious answers, as well as so many not-so-obvious answers that are just as good for completely different reasons.


----------



## Ralyks

Madden 21. Already regretting it.


----------



## MFB

Last boss of Bloodborne, this is maddening.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

slooooowly working my way through Shadow of the Colossus.

also I went 66 and 17 on Rust in MW today lmao. I never do anywhere near that well, with my kd usually around 1.5. The Finn LMG with the adverse twist barrel is an absolute monster, it's like a better MG34.


----------



## Daemoniac

TedEH said:


> I'd be curious to hear what else you've played that you're comparing that to - not to say that I don't think that's a good game (I did think it's a good game), but it's not one that commonly lands on "best game I've ever played" lists.
> 
> Someone at my work yesterday tried to poll people for what their favourite game is - and I couldn't come up with a singular answer. There are so many games - and so many great games - and so many different _kinds_ of games, that there's lots of obvious answers, as well as so many not-so-obvious answers that are just as good for completely different reasons.



I'm an avid gamer, so I've played plenty of other games (it'd take too long to list them all here), and have been since N64/PS1 days. I have missed out on a lot of Nintendo titles, but PS2/3/4 and PC I've played plenty.

Hellblade hit the closest to home for me, and was the reason I got checked for schizophrenia. One of those games I wish I could forget just to experience it again for the first time. The gameplay was solid (maybe not as tight as something like Bloodborne or Devil May Cry or Sekiro) and entertaining enough to figure out all the combos you can come up with, but the story... Just incredibly well told.


----------



## Daemoniac

For reference, Bloodborne, Dark Souls, Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4, Final Fantasy 7 and 8, Tomba!, Devil May Cry 1 and DmC, Metroid Fusion, and Ocarina Of Time would all be up there as favourites as well.

EDIT: Forgot Deus Ex 1 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.


----------



## MFB

MFB said:


> Last boss of Bloodborne, this is maddening.



Fuck to the god damn YES, fucking YES.



Spoiler



Beat Gehrman, AND popped all tbree umbilical cord pieces DURING my fight with him (he was literally at health lower than where his name started when I did it), and best Moon Presence on my first attempt. Had 23 blood vials going in, used 15 on Gehrman, and 5 on MP as he got a couple of those hits that drop you to 1HP but not actually KILL you.

I'm gonna hold off on going through NG+ immediately, but I do want to go back and get the other trophies for some of the bosses I missed (Celestial Emissary, Ereiabatas, etc...)


----------



## Daemoniac

@MFB NG+ is _punishing_. The regular game isn't quite so bad, but some of the DLC bosses are just... painful. I'm on NG+++ on a couple of mine.


----------



## beerandbeards

PGA Tour 2k21. I haven’t played a golf game since Tiger Woods whatever year. I’m having a ton of fun in the career and more fun playing online with my brothers. Not a Lot bells and whistles Which is appreciated after playing NBA2k which has way too many bells and whistles and cutscenes etc.


----------



## MFB

Daemoniac said:


> @MFB NG+ is _punishing_. The regular game isn't quite so bad, but some of the DLC bosses are just... painful. I'm on NG+++ on a couple of mine.



Yeah, I wanted to see what it was like, and even at level 90 with a 9+ on both Ludwigs Blade and the Saw Cleaver, even the townsfolk in Yharnam take a out three hits to kill; so even if I was over leveled at the end of my regular game, I don't think NG+ is about to have any sort of grace period where I can still breeze through it. But I think it'll still be quicker to do those optional bosses on NG+ then grinding to get through them with a new character.


----------



## Daemoniac

MFB said:


> Yeah, I wanted to see what it was like, and even at level 90 with a 9+ on both Ludwigs Blade and the Saw Cleaver, even the townsfolk in Yharnam take a out three hits to kill; so even if I was over leveled at the end of my regular game, I don't think NG+ is about to have any sort of grace period where I can still breeze through it. But I think it'll still be quicker to do those optional bosses on NG+ then grinding to get through them with a new character.



I'm a chronic farmer, so from memory I was at level 220 before the end of my last time playing through the normal game.


----------



## StevenC

Mathemagician said:


> F1. My first racing game outside of Mario Kart in 20 years. Holy crap I’m bad at driving. What do you mean I can’t just HOLD THE GAS?! One hair too close and my car crumbles?!?!
> 
> Thank god for flashback.


I'm glad I play guitar or I would have spent all my money on the most over the top sim racing setup just for F1. Usually the default setups suck, especially for controller, so check the F1 game forums for setups. Those people are dedicated and resourceful. 

Also, play the practice programs if you want to get a handle on the game. Sometimes the tyre management seems abstract and unfair, so try to do those later in the weekend once the track has rubbered in. I usually play on 80s or 90s in difficulty because that's the limit for the PS4 controller's ergonomics and range. Any higher than that and the AI just kills me on race pace, but it's hard to get a balance of being competitive in the faster cars and not just dominating every session.


----------



## Mathemagician

StevenC said:


> I'm glad I play guitar or I would have spent all my money on the most over the top sim racing setup just for F1. Usually the default setups suck, especially for controller, so check the F1 game forums for setups. Those people are dedicated and resourceful.
> 
> Also, play the practice programs if you want to get a handle on the game. Sometimes the tyre management seems abstract and unfair, so try to do those later in the weekend once the track has rubbered in. I usually play on 80s or 90s in difficulty because that's the limit for the PS4 controller's ergonomics and range. Any higher than that and the AI just kills me on race pace, but it's hard to get a balance of being competitive in the faster cars and not just dominating every session.



Yeah I’ve watched enough F1 to have a basic idea of how practice and quals are supposed to work. (I know like 60-70% of what’s going on) but I have most assists turned on except for like I reduced traction control a level. 

Just working through F2 right now, with one 30 minute qualifying session but 12 races total. 

I’m actually not sure how much is “live” and following the real season, so far I’ve just noticed it’s the tracks. 

I’m delightfully bad so I can hold off on any dumbass setup purchases. But I would absolutely lying if I said I hadn’t looked up various wheel/pedal and cages online, lol.


----------



## StevenC

Mathemagician said:


> Yeah I’ve watched enough F1 to have a basic idea of how practice and quals are supposed to work. (I know like 60-70% of what’s going on) but I have most assists turned on except for like I reduced traction control a level.
> 
> Just working through F2 right now, with one 30 minute qualifying session but 12 races total.
> 
> I’m actually not sure how much is “live” and following the real season, so far I’ve just noticed it’s the tracks.
> 
> I’m delightfully bad so I can hold off on any dumbass setup purchases. But I would absolutely lying if I said I hadn’t looked up various wheel/pedal and cages online, lol.


F1 2020 is just following the originally planned calendar and the F2 campaign is very made up. Glad they made it into a full season instead of the short scenarios from last year. It's good fun, I usually try to play an online season with a friend every year and mirror the real season, but we rarely make it the full thing.


----------



## MFB

Daemoniac said:


> I'm a chronic farmer, so from memory I was at level 220 before the end of my last time playing through the normal game.



 220! That's insane, I got nervous any time I had to collect 35K+ blood echoes to level up, I can only imagine what getting into the low triple digits took per level. 

Bloodborne aside, I started playing _Ratchet & Clank_ last night, for a tonally different game; you know, one where I'm not nervous any time I open a new part of the game or see a new enemy, and in the words of Misha, I can "just have fun with it"


----------



## Daemoniac

@MFB by the time I got into NG+ I was collecting millions per level... it was stressful.


----------



## MFB

Well, call me a liar (and a sadist/masochist) because I'm going through NG+ like I daid I wouldn't. Took out Cleric Beast and Papa G (got like 3 visverals on him, plus two Molotov and only a few hits to kill him after his 3rd phase) on first try for each, which gives me confidence in this run. Reading online, the enemy scaling is the hardest in the beginning, but I'm doing well right now so I'm hoping its not crazy later and that everyone was full of shit.

Biggest question in my mind is how are the other hunters you run into.


----------



## TedEH

I finally made it to the end of the Borderlands 3 main story - steam claims this took 63 hours, which I think is longer than the average playthrough.
I plan on doing the DLC missions, but I think I've seen enough to make a fair assessment at this point. Keep in mind the context of playing through as if it's basically a single player experience and that I'm not someone who "plays it for the endgame" or "post-game". I have no interest in grinding extra missions without much motivation after the credits roll, both because that kind of gaming doesn't interest me, but also because lets not kid ourselves - the core loop of Borderlands games is to grind, and I've got better things to do than grind for the grinds sake.

Basically, verdict seems to be that the gunplay and visuals are a big step forward in terms of polish and comfort features, but a lot of the rest of the game took a step or two back. I maintain that the writing took the worst hit. I won't comment on the character of each vault hunter you can play as, since I only used one and it was literally a robot - but the rest of the characters.... well, they lacked character. I liked what Fl4k's pets added to the gameplay though. Story beats were cliche, there was little-to-no character growth or development, the main antagonists were obnoxious and their whole social-media shtick was painfully bad, just to have their motivation suddenly change at the end for no reason. There's a lot of sort of moral-lesson-subtext to a lot of the dialog as well that's hard to ignore. The female empowerment and inclusion themes are not subtle, to the point of feeling like signalling sometimes. The games have always been (as was previously pointed out) very inclusive/progressive in their characters and themes, but this one feels like it reaaaally wants you to notice this time around. The one narrative element I did like was the Typhon logs - because it was the only real case of a narrative showing some character development, and they found a way to tie it into the core loop and reward you in a meaningful way with the loot drops you get from it.

Vehicles were just ok, not bad, but not great. It felt like they were designed to be functional, and just another thing for you to grind out missions and collectables for. Sort of a symbol of how the game has a lot of completionist-type stuff jammed into it. Get all the vehicle parts! Get all the logs! Get all the dead Claptrap parts! Get all the special hunting targets! The game has no shortage of things to do, but some of it just adds more grind to a game that already has a lot of grind to it.

I felt like levels were visually well put together but occasionally felt like there was some missed opportunity to make use of that visual fidelity to design something a bit more clever. There was almost no puzzle elements and very little in terms of environmental story telling. Enemies mostly rush you or follow basic patterns, so you didn't have to use the environment much in that regard either. Most collectible things weren't too far off the beaten path, so there was little reward for exploration. The old-school "leave the mission are and we'll kill you" type of borders feels like it should have been solved a better way by now.

While the combat improved in terms of things like gun feel and the weight of the firing sounds and things like that, the AI itself mostly feels pretty dumb. Most enemies just rush you, or have one set behaviour that they follow. Sometimes the game just throws waves of bullet sponges at you. Sometimes you find a gun that clears rooms before you have a chance to register how many enemies there were in the first place. On some level, that's the fun of the game - the AI isn't meant to be particularly clever, but it's again something that feels like a missed opportunity in terms of how there's no real noticeable improvement over the previous games.

Realistically, it's a good game and I'm glad I've been playing it - and if it existed in a vacuum without being the fourth in a series, I'd think it was a brilliant game. But that's not the case. And I kept thinking to myself that 2 did a lot of this stuff better. On a technical level it's great, but as a story it's not very a good, and as a sequel it's a missed opportunity. 

I've heard that the DLC is very good though - so we'll see how that goes.


----------



## SpaceDock

Hitman was free on Epic, really digging it so far. That Paris mission has so much going on for a first level.


----------



## Daemoniac

MFB said:


> Well, call me a liar (and a sadist/masochist) because I'm going through NG+ like I daid I wouldn't. Took out Cleric Beast and Papa G (got like 3 visverals on him, plus two Molotov and only a few hits to kill him after his 3rd phase) on first try for each, which gives me confidence in this run. Reading online, the enemy scaling is the hardest in the beginning, but I'm doing well right now so I'm hoping its not crazy later and that everyone was full of shit.
> 
> Biggest question in my mind is how are the other hunters you run into.



Some of them are tough as nails.



Spoiler



The one that appears with Eileen The Crow where you fought Gascoigne is quite hard, as is the one that kills her, and the one on the bridge in the Hunters Nightmare just after the room with the spiders is an absolute cunt.

Like I said earlier, the main game isn't _too_ bad, but the Hunters Nightmare (the DLC) is next level punishing.


----------



## MFB

Spoiler



Ah, Henryk then. He showed up the first time and Eileen joined in and ended up dying during the fight since he was focused on her, then I took out the last of his health. Not sure who the one that's supposed to kill her would be, since my playthrough clearly didn't finish her story  I don't have the DLC so that saves me some headache, but thinking back off hand, the group of hunters in Yhar'gul and at the bridge in Nightmare of Mensis are probably going to fuck me up.



Got up to Vicar Amelia last night, she's surprisingly doing a number on me despite taking down Cleric Beast without any real problem. Not sure where the disconnect is, but it's frustrating.


----------



## Rosal76

SpaceDock said:


> Hitman was free on Epic, really digging it so far. That Paris mission has so much going on for a first level.



It's an awesome game. The huge amount of ways you can assassinate your targets and infiltrate the locations is amazing. The Paris chateau is freaking beautiful. Man, I spent a lot of time exploring that place and just gawking on how much detail they put into that place. Bumping into AIs' and hearing their responses is amusing. I bumped into a lady guest and she says sarcastically, "I guess you didn't see me with all that hair covering your eyes". LOL.


----------



## Daemoniac

MFB said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Ah, Henryk then. He showed up the first time and Eileen joined in and ended up dying during the fight since he was focused on her, then I took out the last of his health. Not sure who the one that's supposed to kill her would be, since my playthrough clearly didn't finish her story  I don't have the DLC so that saves me some headache, but thinking back off hand, the group of hunters in Yhar'gul and at the bridge in Nightmare of Mensis are probably going to fuck me up.
> 
> 
> 
> Got up to Vicar Amelia last night, she's surprisingly doing a number on me despite taking down Cleric Beast without any real problem. Not sure where the disconnect is, but it's frustrating.



Mate, if you haven't done the DLC, buy it. It is absolutely fucking sensational, and fleshes out the history of the universe so, SO well. To the point that I honestly don't think it makes much sense _without_ playing the DLC.


----------



## MFB

I heard the DLC is like, punishingly tough on NG+, so maybe I'll roll the dice on it when I do my 2nd character; for this playthrough, I want to finish the main game and get the ending without consuming the three items, as I did that my first go around. Now I want to just beat the last boss for that ending, and then get the easiest one with a new character.

I've read a good chunk of the lore summaries and explanations, but 90% of it is still over my head, so I'm just in it for this Lovecraftian/gothic Victorian/Berserk themed game about hunting monsters


----------



## MFB

Welp, Old Hunter DLC was on sale for 50% off, so I bought that and Shadow of the Colossus Remaster for $10 as well 

There's way more games in the summer sale that I'll also end up picking up, didn't see this coming honestly, but I'm OK with it.


----------



## MUTANTOID

Since lockdown, I've been addicted to Escape from Tarkov.


----------



## Daemoniac

MFB said:


> Welp, Old Hunter DLC was on sale for 50% off, so I bought that and Shadow of the Colossus Remaster for $10 as well





Just prepare yourself for a punishing on The Old Hunters. Even at stupid high levels it's a fucking challenge.


----------



## Ralyks

If I wrote for a website or publication of sorts, this would be my final review of Madden 21:

I traded it in for Tony Hawk 1+2 Remastered.


----------



## Leviathus

Epic store finally lured me into the van with a $10 coupon and THPS 1+2. Having a blast, still got the hang of it after not playing one of these games in like 15 years. Hope they come out with the remake for 3, best one imo.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Replaying Divinity 2. What a bloody great game.


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> I heard the DLC is like, punishingly tough on NG+, so maybe I'll roll the dice on it when I do my 2nd character; for this playthrough, I want to finish the main game and get the ending without consuming the three items, as I did that my first go around. Now I want to just beat the last boss for that ending, and then get the easiest one with a new character.
> 
> I've read a good chunk of the lore summaries and explanations, but 90% of it is still over my head, so I'm just in it for this Lovecraftian/gothic Victorian/Berserk themed game about hunting monsters



Bro it’s punishing AF the first go-around.


----------



## MFB

I'll save it for when I do my 3rd run through to get all the endings then 

I'm level 150 now on NG+, did some farming after taking forever to beat Micolash this time around, last time I got him down on under a handful of tries; he was getting me bad with Call from Beyond's AoE but I didn't realize if you roll through it you can dodge it. Eileen went aggro on me even though I only had one interaction with her, it didn't even give me the Henryk fight at the graveyard with her, so not sure what that was all about. All the NPC stuff in this game is lost on me, I just do the main story and move on. 

Since I've opened up all the paths to Mergo's Wet Nurse, I'm gonna go back and try to get as many of the trophies for things as I can, as I've also gotten really close to killing Logarius at Cainhurst, I've opened up the Orphanage for Celestial Emissary, etc... I only need a few more weapons/items to pick up as well and I think I can put a pin in most of those for completionism; I'll just need one more playthrough to get some more items like the aforementioned third ending, but that'll happen much further down the road.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I downloaded Wasteland 3 on games pass but was told to wait because there are countless bugs right now, many game breaking ones but mostly ones that will crash to the Xbox home menu. It’s meant to be an amazing game but I’ll wait a few weeks for more patches to come out.


----------



## wankerness

Started playing Zelda: Skyward Sword for the first time this weekend. I'm about 7 hours in, and have kind of a love/hate relationship with it. It's certainly different in feel, and has BY FAR the best music of any Zelda game I've played yet, and the character models are really fantastic and emotive, and the controls are polished to hell. But, I also kind of hate the controls. Almost everything in this game is inextricably tied to them, even things like freeing your bird from a cage involves a lot of "trace the lines with the wiimote swing paths!!" and even the most basic enemies require you to do specific maneuvers with the wiimote/nunchuck, sometimes in tandem. Very basic enemies like Skulltulas become infuriating (ex, with those, you have to spin attack them, and then madly jab at them to hit them in the belly as they swing around you rotating). It makes for a more immersive game, but it's also extremely annoying. I HATED the first miniboss and first real boss. My arm was getting tired from all the attempts to get Link's arm pointing the right way before initiating the swing to avoid being instantly parried. I even more especially hate the "bowling" motion you have to do to roll bombs (a cool mechanic that I haven't seen in the other games), as if you try to do it while slouched on a couch like a slob you often just can't get the remote pointing down low enough to initiate the roll fast enough, and you really have to be able to do it fast to deal with some enemies. I guess if you like standing and waving wiimotes around, this is the game for you.

The bird flying is kind of annoying, too, but I'm getting the hang of it.

The Wii-U is the best Zelda system, I think. I have almost the entire series covered between it and the 3DS! You can play the DS, N64, Wii, and the GBA ones through virtual console on Wii-U but not Switch, there are the two wonderful HD remakes that are still system-exclusive, and Breath of the Wild is virtually indistinguishable from the Switch version. Then 3DS has the superior remakes of OoT, MM, and the exclusive (which I've seen ranked best in the series multiple places).

I heard that Skyward Sword was rumored for Switch in the next year. I really have no idea how they'll pull that one off without totally revamping almost all of the gameplay. You can certainly use most of the items, but almost every single enemy you interact with requires motion control. Maybe they'll either remove all that parrying stuff and make it the same as the other Zelda games, or come up with some convoluted scheme where you have to aim slashes with the right stick.


----------



## MFB

Started the HD remaster of _Shadow of the Colossus_ last night, and I'll give the game full credit for it's ambition, but man the execution just feels clunky to go back to. The camera is overly fluid to the point where it feels like it's sliding on ice, the light focus should trigger a hard fixed camera behind the player instead of letting you now control to independent objects with different controls, the sprint function for Agro is necessary every 3rd gallop or you'll never get anywhere, the it's and these were ones I noticed right out of the bat jumping in. 

Aesthetically I do love it, and as a teen I don't remember having these same questions about it (or if I did I was alone in thinking it because no one I knew played it), but the remaining colossi seem more like a chore now that I'm getting familiar with the game.


----------



## lurè

Finished Red Dead Redemption 2 last night.

I almost cried.


----------



## wankerness

lurè said:


> Finished Red Dead Redemption 2 last night.
> 
> I almost cried.



You hated it that much??


----------



## lurè

wankerness said:


> You hated it that much??


I loved it


----------



## SpaceDock

I’m on my second play through of RDR2 and AOC Origins, really need some new games.


----------



## Kobalt

Hitman 1 & 2. So good, the stealth genre is a dying breed... Can’t wait for the third instalment, moar levels!!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

About half way point of Ys IV Meanderings of Chlamydia, judging from the map percentage, some big reveals and a not so subtle title drop (well the title from it's first remake). At first it felt a little slapdash with Adol, Not Dogi and whoever came along for the ride go through little adventures, but it certainly gets better and more challenging. Hopefully I'll finish this soon before November comes along and Trails Of Cold Steel IV sucks away my will to live. 

That said, I just bought Spiritfarer out of sheer curiosity. So far a lighthearted indie 2D management sim, where you're a girl who takes over Charon in finding spirits and helping them to the afterlife. Thought would be a nice pick up and play kind of game, but after first play, I had to force myself to quit when I realised a good 3 hours have passed.


----------



## Choop

I decided out of the blue to replay the Metal Gear series, so I just beat MGS and got to the Big Shell portion on MGS2. These games are still excellent--and I love the aesthetic of MGS 1-3.


----------



## wankerness

How are you playing 1? The original PS1 version? Or do you have the super-expensive gamecube remake?


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> How are you playing 1? The original PS1 version? Or do you have the super-expensive gamecube remake?



PS1 version on PS3! I'll maybe eventually play Twin Snakes via Dolphin or something in the future.


----------



## wankerness

There’s an official pc version of 1, too, but it definitely looks worse than twin snakes. I dunno if mods exist. I should look into that. I have fond memories of the game (I played through it 4 or 5 times), but haven’t played it since the ps1 was still a current system! I bet it didn’t age gracefully. I remember even at the time thinking the graphics were weird with the semi-faceless characters whose arms didn’t quite connect to their bodies.


----------



## wankerness

I've been playing a lot of Hyrule Warriors on Switch. I bought it after seeing the hype about Hyrule Warriors 2's announcement and remembering Jim Sterling freaking out about how fun it was. It's got probably the worst minimap and ally AI I've encountered in a game this generation, but it's somehow still really fun. Just, whenever you're on a map where you need the AI to do ANYTHING, you're going to be swearing at the TV a whole lot (ex, the level where you have to intercept three characters running opposite directions on a time limit at the same time). The minimap is unspeakably terrible, and when you're paused it's slightly easier to read, but still awful, as you can't read what anything is without clicking on it, and the map has hidden gridlines that don't line up with the rooms so you'll often have to click all four grids that surround a dot to try and figure out what said dot actually is. Also, you frequently get warnings about X character needing immediate help, and you have NO idea where they are on the map, and with the shitty pause screen map you can't find them either unless you want to go around and click all hundred grid icons. If Hyrule Warriors 2 gets an even close to acceptable map, it's going to be such a gigantic improvement over this game - the map is the biggest impediment to enjoying this game, by far.

I thought I'd really like playing as Zant, but it gets old fast stubbing your toe. I thought I'd like playing as Tingle, but his weapon is terrible and he's always accidentally blowing up the wrong target when it matters. Instead, Twili Midna and Zelda and the overpowered Link are the most fun for me so far. I'm working on unlocking weapons and characters through the adventure maps now, after finishing up the campaign. The music and combat are great and remind me very much of YS VIII, which is a very good thing. It's basically F-Zero X versions of Zelda music, with clangy snare and distorted guitar melodies everywhere, and I love it.

I'm not sure how aware people are of this game, but it's a blast as someone who has a longstanding love of the 3D zelda games and who likes twitchy super-Japanese games. It has some annoying cutesy Japanese female character tropes in it (mostly added characters - Linkle and Lana are the biggest offenders) and the annoying voiceacting that comes with it, but it's OK since it also lets you play as characters like the insane bug girl from Twilight Princess.


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> There’s an official pc version of 1, too, but it definitely looks worse than twin snakes. I dunno if mods exist. I should look into that. I have fond memories of the game (I played through it 4 or 5 times), but haven’t played it since the ps1 was still a current system! I bet it didn’t age gracefully. I remember even at the time thinking the graphics were weird with the semi-faceless characters whose arms didn’t quite connect to their bodies.



One advantage Twin Snakes gives you over the original is being able to aim in first person. I wanted to play the original as-is first because I think that'll change the way the game feels quite a bit. IMO it has aged well, but I'm not a stickler for graphics really -- it just seems appropriate for the time that the game was made.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Hyrule Warriors



Hyrule Warriors being a Musou (Dynasty Warriors) game with a Zelda reskin, I'm not surprised of the bad maps. The 'Warriors' games never had any good map systems; they're more or less vague suggestions of what the actual terrain looks like. And the ally AI is always awful making you the lone bastion of competence in the entire battlefield running back and forth from one end to the other trying to instigate your allies to actually fight the officers as opposed to just doing a little dance... more often than not you killing the officers yourself. I wouldn't expect much of that to improve significantly in the next game to be honest. 

I do find these Musou games a guilty pleasure... each and every incarnation of them. There's a fun catharsis in being a one man slaughterer of legions using one combo. 

I got heavily into Warriors Orochi because it was my excuse to get Dynasty and Samurai characters in one game, only to end up playing their respective games anyway.  I adored the DW Gundam reskins a lot because it added the whole mecha build mechanic that deepened the gameplay. Hell, I loved Capcom's attempt of Samurai Warriors because this an extreme example of Japan taking liberties with their historical figures and making everything explode like a Michael Bay film. 

Incidentally enough, I never played Hyrule Warriors. 

Sidebar: Jim Sterling's hatred of Dynasty Warriors 9 is legendary. Largely because he's a massive fan of the series and how awful 9 was being an extremely steep cliff fall from the awesome DW8.


----------



## TedEH

The only Warriors type of game I've played (that I remember) was Hyrule Warriors. It was.... ok, I suppose.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> The only Warriors type of game I've played (that I remember) was Hyrule Warriors. It was.... ok, I suppose.


I haven't played one since Drakengard.


----------



## wankerness

Drakengard is like that?? I know they're connected to the Nier games in some weird way so I had no idea.

After looking through many screens in the pause screen I found there are entirely separate tabs for showing useful information (ex character/enemy location/health). There's NO reason they had to split it all into separate maps and make the command functions only work from the most impenetrable of them. Damn devs. Probably it's just been that way since Dynasty Warriors 1 and the longterm fans don't ask for an improvement.


----------



## mikernaut

Love this artstyle, hope it comes to console eventually. ( not much of a PC player these days)


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Another non stop binge on Spiritfarer and it's becoming a grindfest. 

I'm running around the ship, sailing from island to island, doing variations of crafting, and that odd Yakuza karaoke esque moment when you're planting vegetables, sailing around from just to satisfy all the passengers, then adding some more of them. It becomes meandering busy work but I don't hate it. 

The writing is great, you get invested in the characters the more you do all their quests. It's really heartwarming especially when you give everyone (and your cat) a hug for morale. Though of course there's that undercurrent that despite you're the happiest protagonist smiling all the time, she's still a freaking psychopomp so a violent knee kick in the feels may come unexpectedly...


----------



## Mathemagician

Two monster hunter games were just announced so I’m morally obligated to buy those and disappear from society for a bit when they launch.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> Drakengard is like that?? I know they're connected to the Nier games in some weird way so I had no idea.


I haven't played it in about 16 years but from what I remember the core gameplay was DW-esque. You and your incompetent army vs a much bigger army, but this one you could ride the dragon and make people explode and it was fun for a time. Plus the story was absolutely buck-wild.

The nier connection comes from one of the multiple endings and is like a single thread that connects them. I still really wanna try Nier Automata but I'm waiting for it to go on sale again.


----------



## StevenC

mikernaut said:


> Love this artstyle, hope it comes to console eventually. ( not much of a PC player these days)



Literally just announced on Switch


----------



## KnightBrolaire

watch dogs 2 is free on epic, so I'm going to finally give that game a shot.


----------



## Leviathus

Choop said:


> PS1 version on PS3! I'll maybe eventually play Twin Snakes via Dolphin or something in the future.


I actually installed Dolphin yesterday and got TTS running cos y'all brought it up, never played it. Got on the elevator without alerting the guards but the tank hangar was a different story, lol. Got the rom for 007: Nightfire too, just for good measure.


----------



## TedEH

KnightBrolaire said:


> watch dogs 2 is free on epic, so I'm going to finally give that game a shot.


Whether you happen to like or dislike Epic for whatever reason, the whole giving-away-tons-of-free-games strategy has been pretty brilliant.


----------



## Choop

Leviathus said:


> I actually installed Dolphin yesterday and got TTS running cos y'all brought it up, never played it. Got on the elevator without alerting the guards but the tank hangar was a different story, lol. Got the rom for 007: Nightfire too, just for good measure.



That's awesome! Dolphin is such a well-optimized emulator. I think the last thing I played on it was either Smash Melee or RE1, but it's been years ago now. 



TedEH said:


> Whether you happen to like or dislike Epic for whatever reason, the whole giving-away-tons-of-free-games strategy has been pretty brilliant.



Could you even dare say that it has been...EPIC?! :O


----------



## wankerness

I hate using my computer, so much, but I might have to check out that dolphin thing. What are you using as a controller? 

My gamecube still works fine, but the C-stick on one of the controllers stopped working and I don't know how long the other one has to live, and the third party ones blow, and the first party cost an arm and a leg thanks to the controllers STILL being the best controller for Smash Bros and Nintendo not continuing to make them despite still supporting them.


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> I hate using my computer, so much, but I might have to check out that dolphin thing. What are you using as a controller?



I used a wired 360 controller, which IMO is great except the d-pad is hot garbage. Now I have an Xbox One controller--haven't used it with any emulators yet, but it does appear to at least have a much improved d-pad. I dunno how much that would come into play with Gamecube titles...but I remember playing the OG NES Zelda on an emulator way back when on the 360 controller, and movement was super janky at times lol.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

been playing orcs must die 3 on stadia. Seems to work pretty smoothly. Only had one hiccup in 3 hrs of gameplay. I'm curious how well it would work for multiplayer games though...


----------



## Mathemagician

Just picked up some sales on the switch.

Crypt of the Necrodancer
Ni No Kuni
Tales of Vesperia
Hades


Been literal years since I went ahead and bought multiple games at once. Hades is from the developers of Bastion so, sold. And I’ve been meaning to play ToV since I heard about it on the Xbox 360 like 12 years agohmygod I’m old. The other two just looked dope. There goes my weekend, lol.


----------



## SpaceDock

KnightBrolaire said:


> watch dogs 2 is free on epic, so I'm going to finally give that game a shot.



I played this about a year ago, started out a bit overwhelmed but I loved using the remote control cars big time once I understood the right approach that worked for me.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally got to my first goodbye/kill in Spiritfarer, and ooh boy it's a real violent kick right in the feels. 

You spend the game gaining more passengers in houseboat, each with a nuanced backstory. You're listening to their problems then solving them, feeding them, hugging them making them happy, by that point you've put some emotional investment in them and their quirky personalities. You're engaged, then, bam, your duty as the new ferryman in the River Styx needs to be done and you're saying goodbye to your animal friends. They're gone, that's it. Even more poignant is that the house you built just for them remains empty on the boat for the rest of the game. 

Sure Nier Automata gave you a good existential shot in the arm, but this is something else. The characters you gather, nurture, then eventually let go are well written and grounded, flawed and humane, you can't help but get into emotional engagement.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Just picked up some sales on the switch.
> 
> Crypt of the Necrodancer
> Ni No Kuni
> Tales of Vesperia
> Hades
> 
> 
> Been literal years since I went ahead and bought multiple games at once. Hades is from the developers of Bastion so, sold. And I’ve been meaning to play ToV since I heard about it on the Xbox 360 like 12 years agohmygod I’m old. The other two just looked dope. There goes my weekend, lol.


Necrodancer is awesome


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Just picked up some sales on the switch.
> 
> Crypt of the Necrodancer
> Ni No Kuni
> Tales of Vesperia
> Hades
> 
> 
> Been literal years since I went ahead and bought multiple games at once. Hades is from the developers of Bastion so, sold. And I’ve been meaning to play ToV since I heard about it on the Xbox 360 like 12 years agohmygod I’m old. The other two just looked dope. There goes my weekend, lol.



I HATE the entire concept of Roguelikes, so much, but I'm a bit curious about Hades. I absolutely loved the same studio's Transistor (another game belonging to a genre I didn't care about beforehand) and it has me curious about this, even though the game itself seems to be the opposite of what I want to play. At least it has some actual progression in terms of permanent unlocks. 

I might get Tales of Vesperia, I've been curious about it for a while, and I've been playing my Switch a ton recently. 15 bucks is cheappppp. I'm still stuck on Hyrule Warriors in a huge way, though, and might be for a while as that game has HUNDREDS of hours of grind/content. And I have the Mario 3d all stars set coming today or tomorrow.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

The Tales Of Vesperia talk is making me want to play it, but saw the PS4 price and it's too much for me to pay for a 12 year old game. I do want to cross it off the long list of JRPGs to catch up on. 

Though with Ys IV Dawn Of The Mask Of Celceta's Sun, Spiritfarer, then Cold Steel 4 will eat a few months out of me, I'm set for at least Yakuza 7. And since I'm still fresh off another Tales game, Vesperia will have to wait...


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I HATE the entire concept of Roguelikes, so much, but I'm a bit curious about Hades. I absolutely loved the same studio's Transistor (another game belonging to a genre I didn't care about beforehand) and it has me curious about this, even though the game itself seems to be the opposite of what I want to play. At least it has some actual progression in terms of permanent unlocks.
> 
> I might get Tales of Vesperia, I've been curious about it for a while, and I've been playing my Switch a ton recently. 15 bucks is cheappppp. I'm still stuck on Hyrule Warriors in a huge way, though, and might be for a while as that game has HUNDREDS of hours of grind/content. And I have the Mario 3d all stars set coming today or tomorrow.



It’s SuperGiant Games. Buy it. It DOES have permanent progression so it gets (marginally) easier each time as you get into the flow of it. 

Also the story delivery is just SO on point. Not spoiling or anything, but you really do feel like you’re progressing. 

If you’re open to tougher action RPG’s this may be a solid compromise with the Rogue-like formula. 



Bloody_Inferno said:


> The Tales Of Vesperia talk is making me want to play it, but saw the PS4 price and it's too much for me to pay for a 12 year old game. I do want to cross it off the long list of JRPGs to catch up on.
> 
> Though with Ys IV Dawn Of The Mask Of Celceta's Sun, Spiritfarer, then Cold Steel 4 will eat a few months out of me, I'm set for at least Yakuza 7. And since I'm still fresh off another Tales game, Vesperia will have to wait...



It’s $15 schrute-bucks on the switch. Sooooooo, buy it there instead.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> t’s $15 schrute-bucks on the switch. Sooooooo, buy it there instead.



I don't own a Switch... yet. And once I get one, the first game I'll get is Xenoblade 2.

Getting Vesperia isn't the problem. It's the time to play it. Plus I recently just finished Berseria which wore me down, so I suppose I'm good without a Tales gsme for a while.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ah yeah I get it. I do that with souls games. “Ok, I’ve grinded everything awesome. Time to not play a fromsoft game for 6 months....”

6 months later I am rejuvenated. 

I haven’t played a single Xeno-anything game aside from Xenogears on PS1. I’ll get around to it next year when I beat the rpgs I just loaded up on, lol.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Replaying Divinity 2. Really digging that style of RPG. Might check out Pillars of Eternity 2 but I know the minute I buy it will get released for Game Pass.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> It’s $15 schrute-bucks on the switch. Sooooooo, buy it there instead.



Went to buy it this morning, and it was 49.99. Guess I won't be getting it after all!


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Went to buy it this morning, and it was 49.99. Guess I won't be getting it after all!



On the plus side, you’ll have so much more time for activities. Like practicing the guitar! 

>.>


----------



## Ralyks

My group of friends from my old job and I have basically been playing stoned Fall Guys at least every other night. Not that it's a brilliant game, but it's hilarious with our stoned banter.


----------



## Choop

Forgot about posting this, so no time like the present. A while back I modded a Gamecube for some pretty cool results:










I installed a Xeno mod chip onto the console's board so that it can play discs from any region or even burned discs. Now I have an SD card loaded into the bottom serial port (via an adapter) that allows it to run Swiss and even upload games straight from the SD card. Pretty nuts--this is my actual copy of Super Mario Sunshine though--because I am also testing a Carby digital video adapter as an alternative to the elusive Gamecube component cables. It's hard to get a good photo of the picture with my old-ass phone, but here are some examples of it running at 480p on my 42" Vizio. I don't have any comparison pictures, but trust me, it looks a LOT better than when using composite cables and noticeably better than when running s video (however s video is pretty good as well for being a cheaper option).


----------



## mongey

you guys talked me into Hades on the switch . just grabbed it 

was $30 here in Oz. not bad 

wont get to try it until my train commute Friday


----------



## mongey

put a bit of time into Hades and its good. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing or what was what for the first hour but worked it out


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> put a bit of time into Hades and its good. I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing or what was what for the first hour but worked it out



This is every Rogue-like. I’ve had bonding of Isaac since the switch launch. My longest run was about 30 minutes, only like 8 hrs on it and I still have no idea what is going on. But sometimes I just want to spray skinless demons with my tears.


----------



## StevenC

Mario 64 in 3D All Stars! Just finishing off Cool, Cool Mountain and then there's a water level so I'll probably take a break.

The first wing cap level sucks so much harder than the Sand Bird level in Sunshine.


----------



## BlackMastodon

BlackMastodon said:


> I still really wanna try Nier Automata but I'm waiting for it to go on sale again.


Speak of the devil. 50% off on Steam right now, yes please.


----------



## Leviathus

Been on a new dark souls 2 playthrough to not summon for fume knight this time and fight sir alonne, probably will just skip the other DLC's. I bounce back and forth from "this game is unique and cool" to "this game is a gigantic turd" every half hour or so but at the end of the day it's always fun and the hollow female deathcry cracks me up every time. Also grabbed goose game and stilt fella on steam, will try soon.


----------



## Mathemagician

Leviathus said:


> Been on a new dark souls 2 playthrough to not summon for fume knight this time and fight sir alonne, probably will just skip the other DLC's. I bounce back and forth from "this game is unique and cool" to "this game is a gigantic turd" every half hour or so but at the end of the day it's always fun and the hollow female deathcry cracks me up every time. Also grabbed goose game and stilt fella on steam, will try soon.



While the DLC bosses are more exciting/difficult, Idc what anyone says. A lot of the characters are really well designed, the jarring zone transitions DOES make it feel “game-y” but even DS1 established that distances aren’t going to make sense, the view from Majula, and the pvp being super balanced as well as


Spoiler



working your way down the well to “see what’s at the bottom” is great level design even for a souls game.


----------



## TedEH

I made it through 3 of the 4 BL3 DLCs and.... Yeah, I think I agree now that they're better than the core game.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I made it through 3 of the 4 BL3 DLCs and.... Yeah, I think I agree now that they're better than the core game.



I want to jump back in because I only got through half of the first DLC, but part of me just might wait for the PS5 port so I can finish other stuff in my back catalog.


----------



## MFB

Up to colossi #10 in _Shadow..._ and uh, yeah I forgot how little of an attachment there is to form with that game, so I don't even know if I'll finish it; this one is pissing me off with how simple the mechanic to beat it is, but the hint it gives you during the battle is absolutely useless to help (as are most of them). This is one that I think I'd like to see another studio take the concept of, and boil down to say, 8 longer battles with two or three stages of the colossi fights instead of just the same mechanic over the over for each.

Moved on to playing _Ratchet & Clank _remake that came out after the movie, whenever that was. It's fun, some parts were frustrating just going back to a platformer that I'm probably overthinking the mechanics of, but it's opened up more now and I'm back in the swing of it. The gameplay does lend itself to switch guns to really make work of the enemies, and in a way, it reminds me a lot of Doom (2016) in that getting up close and personal isn't viewed as the worst thing to do where the gun is your main tool.


----------



## Leviathus

Straid is a bitch, Ornifex is a babe....


----------



## mongey

More time on hades and sucking a bit less now . Improved a bit when I unlocked the spear. Is a good mix of melee and ranged.

still haven’t beaten Meg yet. But I got annoyingly close.


----------



## StevenC

I take it back, Tiny Huge Island is the worst part of this game. What an awful level.


----------



## Ribboz

Really enjoyed Homefront The Revolution. Surprisingly. Then Wasteland 3. Good, really good in many ways. But they consolized it and that created many issues. Back to Underrail. 150 hours in one playthrough, and still not done with DLC or Deep Caverns. Great game. 

Do any of you not feel the same thrill in games? Maybe it's my anxiety and all the issues outside the game. But it's more difficult to be completely immersed. And I never feel that same satisfaction. Maybe it's the depression.


----------



## mikernaut

Reading MFB's post about Shadow of the Colossus , I did love that game but felt it was kinda half finished and could have been much more epic. The Last boss felt like such a cop out and a cheap finale as a player. I absolutely loved their previous game ICO and had high hopes for Last Guardian, which was still good but janky and broken abit from my playthrough. I'm guessing a case of the developer most likely running out of time on their deadline with the publisher breathing down their neck.


----------



## mongey

ok so meg in Hades is pissing me off now. I'm at the point where I can get there every time easily but just haven't been able to finish her off .

I foolishly had not upgraded to the 2nd dash. Just did it and hopefully its gonna help doge her stuff and take my time


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> ok so meg in Hades is pissing me off now. I'm at the point where I can get there every time easily but just haven't been able to finish her off .
> 
> I foolishly had not upgraded to the 2nd dash. Just did it and hopefully its gonna help doge her stuff and take my time



If you need to, use the shield and use the dash attack. As in spam that move. Pickup the deflect while dashing or attacking buff from Athena, and try for both poison from Dionysus and Weakness from Aphrodite. 

That right there should let you smash straight through her. 
Also buff the mirror ability that increases your damage if the gem is inside the enemy and keep that hooked into bosses.


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> If you need to, use the shield and use the dash attack. As in spam that move. Pickup the deflect while dashing or attacking buff from Athena, and try for both poison from Dionysus and Weakness from Aphrodite.
> 
> That right there should let you smash straight through her.
> Also buff the mirror ability that increases your damage if the gem is inside the enemy and keep that hooked into bosses.



the shield is the one weapon I havent messed too much with .Ill give it a go

good tip on the gem thing too. didn't think of that. does it stack ? If they have 2 gems does it double the damage ?


----------



## Mathemagician

I don’t THINK so. But each buff is a 10% increase. So that maxed out plus the base increase in damage from attacking from behind anyways (which you’ll do by virtue of just getting better) is massive. 

I would do a run or two focused on keys and dark energy to buy more buffs. The extra HP to start is a nice QOL boost too.


----------



## mongey

Always the way. 
Had a hades game paused last post a few rooms in and ended up beating Meg with the spear that run. 

have beat her 4 or 5 times now and ventured into next level fairly Deep. 

have been investing time in the other weapons but spear is def my favorite by far so far.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Been finally playing through Metal Gear Revengeance lately. Only a few hours in, and while some of the stuff was really innovative at the time I find the lack of a dodge button kind of annoying. Makes the game feel a bit more dated. Otherwise the game is so over the top and ridiculous that's its quite fun.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Picked up THPS 1+2 yesterday. 100%'d the THPS1 side earlier and am working on THPS2. The fact that original soundtracks (minus three songs) are there is really cool, but the majority of the new songs are really forgettable.


----------



## Blytheryn

Starting playing Blasphemous last weekend. It’s kinda’ like Slain but fleshed out much better and it’s a lot of fun for a metroidvania style game that’s like a 2D Dark Souls.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Gotten to play a lot of games since the various lockdowns we’ve all been under. Finished Lego city undercover with my seven-year-old son. Then got 100% completion on Captain toad‘s treasure tracker and Mario maker 2. And I just finished up uncharted 4 this past weekend. Now I’ve got to play Spiderman and God of war up next.


----------



## Choop

Blytheryn said:


> Starting playing Blasphemous last weekend. It’s kinda’ like Slain but fleshed out much better and it’s a lot of fun for a metroidvania style game that’s like a 2D Dark Souls.



This is on my backlog and I forgot about it haha. Need to get on it, since it looks and sounds like a blend of 2 things that I like a good bit!

Doing Metal Gear 3 now, and yeah, gameplay-wise it's definitely still my favorite. Just beat The Fear with the Mk 22, so I'm roughly halfway through at this point, or just shy of it from what I remember. Gotta say though I enjoy the codec conversations from MGS1 and some from MGS2 better. MGS3's codec stuff is kind of too tongue-in-cheek and self-aware for me to want to listen to them outside of being forced to.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Choop said:


> This is on my backlog and I forgot about it haha. Need to get on it, since it looks and sounds like a blend of 2 things that I like a good bit!
> 
> Doing Metal Gear 3 now, and yeah, gameplay-wise it's definitely still my favorite. Just beat The Fear with the Mk 22, so I'm roughly halfway through at this point, or just shy of it from what I remember. Gotta say though I enjoy the codec conversations from MGS1 and some from MGS2 better. MGS3's codec stuff is kind of too tongue-in-cheek and self-aware for me to want to listen to them outside of being forced to.


MGS3 is my favorite hands down. I loved how you could destroy enemy supply caches, and it would actually affect the soldiers in game. I used to deliberately do that so I could get them to eat poison dart frog, or ambush them in interesting ways. I remember one time I put on the poop camo and hid in the bathroom, then used claymores to wipe out the whole compound since the doorway was a perfect choke point. Also more games need to have non-lethal options for beating the game. There's something hilarious about just tranquilizing a whole army with a single shot pistol.


----------



## p0ke

TheShreddinHand said:


> Lego city undercover



That's what we're playing too  Me and my 10 year old stepson beat it like 2 years ago, but we still keep playing it because there's just so much stuff to find all over the place. Finding a pig and shooting it back to the farm with a canon never gets old


----------



## MFB

Finished up _Ratchet & Clank_, that last boss fight actually gave me more trouble than I thought it would; lots of little bullshit minions/obstacles to also deal with while fighting the big bad that I don't particular care for as a mechanic. Started playing through _Nioh,_ the menu is probably the most frustrating part of it, as it's option to open the status menu and then option again while on there to fully pause the game. Seems a bit Souls-y in it's mechanics with a ki (stamina) bar, but it beat Ghosts of Tsushima to the punch with it's stance options. Curious to see where it goes, the opening is quite vague, but if I hear "Amrita" one more time I'm gonna lose it.


----------



## Mathemagician

KnightBrolaire said:


> Necrodancer is awesome



Idk, but this game is hard AF, and gems are super rare. So feels like I can only move up by luck as I can’t even save them. 


And I picked up Disgaea 5 because it was on sale having never played this series. Wtf, this is cheesy and addicting. I love turn based games but usually want a really good story to go with all the little number crunching. Instead I am invited to bribe a senate hearing. This is so dumb, it’s great.


----------



## NotDonVito

I'm not playing anything atm, but on the topic of Metal Gear, Konami has been releasing some of their older catalog on PC recently. Metal Gear, MGS 1+2, and Silent Hill 4. They're only on GOG weirdly enough.


----------



## Blytheryn

Choop said:


> This is on my backlog and I forgot about it haha. Need to get on it, since it looks and sounds like a blend of 2 things that I like a good bit!
> 
> Doing Metal Gear 3 now, and yeah, gameplay-wise it's definitely still my favorite. Just beat The Fear with the Mk 22, so I'm roughly halfway through at this point, or just shy of it from what I remember. Gotta say though I enjoy the codec conversations from MGS1 and some from MGS2 better. MGS3's codec stuff is kind of too tongue-in-cheek and self-aware for me to want to listen to them outside of being forced to.



The mood in it is just like DS3, and they even have places called Jondo “Anor Londo reference?” And a library level amongst others. Besides that it’s pretty much it’s own thing, but I couldn’t get enough of the DSIII atmosphere so I’m glad this exists


----------



## ImNotAhab

Finished Divinity 2 again and bought Pillars of Eternity II. Man, the loading is a serious shitshow. 

Maybe I will put this off until i get a Series X and see if that helps.


----------



## wankerness

Breath of the Wild went on sale for Switch so I rebought it and will force myself to play it using a controller that is comfortable, even if I hate every minute of it!!! I ordered it through Amazon today, so I'll probably get it in a month, the way things are going with the USPS.

Played another hundred or so hours of Hyrule Warriors, have all the level 3 weapons and most of the level 4/4+, just doing cleanup now. It's great.

Got Dynasty Warriors 8 to see what it was like, thought it was quite terrible, missions took WAYYYYY too long, all enemies were ridiculous damage sponges that blocked everything, movement etc was far, FAR clunkier than Hyrule Warriors, etc. Maybe I'll change the difficulty from normal to very easy and give it another go sometime.

I really have been having the urge to play Skyrim again. If it goes on sale for PS4, I'm going to buy the shit out of it. Unless it takes long enough to go on sale that my urge ends, of course.

Bought Transistor again for Switch cause it's 3.99 and I really liked it on PS4 and having a portable version seems like a good idea. I like that game vastly more than the much more popular Bastion, and I still haven't played their other games, though it sounds like sooner or later I'm going to have to get Hades.

Played some Mario Galaxy in the Mario 3D All Stars thing. I actually really like how the motion controls work with the pro controller. Pointing the cursor around the screen feels a lot quicker and faster using the pro controller than it did with a wiimote, and everything else obviously feels better than it did using the wonky Wiimote setup. I don't know if this would work for the rumored Skyward Sword port and think they'd actually have to redo those controls, but we'll see. I've heard Mario Galaxy 2 has similar issues that would not make such a port this easy.

Played some Mario Sunshine, too, and failed to go fast enough in the squid race/crashed my squid a bunch of times and ragequit. That game is way harder than Galaxy/64!!!


----------



## mongey

managed to scrape to the 2nd boss in Hades only to die in quick time .it was pretty devastating. haven't tried again 

I don't mind hard games but at least the souls games give you a shortcut to the boss . don't think I'm a fan of this roguelike game design, starting from scratch every time just too annoying .

shame cause i like everything in the game allot . might just god mode it to go through the story


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

NotDonVito said:


> I'm not playing anything atm, but on the topic of Metal Gear, Konami has been releasing some of their older catalog on PC recently. Metal Gear, MGS 1+2, and Silent Hill 4. They're only on GOG weirdly enough.



Having Silent Hill 4 being re-released at all is a small miracle, it was practically abandonware since the initial release so any kind of treatment for it is good I guess.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

p0ke said:


> That's what we're playing too  Me and my 10 year old stepson beat it like 2 years ago, but we still keep playing it because there's just so much stuff to find all over the place. Finding a pig and shooting it back to the farm with a canon never gets old



Nice! I was pleasantly surprised to at how funny the game was but should have figured with it being Lego. The construction site Arnold impersonator was hilarious!


----------



## wankerness

Played a bunch of Link Between Worlds, it's fantastic, it's very much in the vein of the remake of Link's Awakening, but with some more modern mechanics due to it not being a remake of a decades-old game. I really like it so far, I've finished the second dungeon.

Started Breath of the Wild (again), this time I'm just trying to roll with the breaking weapons thing and try my hardest to not let it bug me. I was surprised by how little I remembered from the first time I started it, such as the whole weird future tech aesthetic that I don't think is really in any other Zelda games. It's similar in a lot of ways to Horizon Zero Dawn, of all things! It's sorta scratching the Skyrim itch of running around running away from monsters and collecting herbs until I get more powered up. But, Skyrim's weapon durability was barely a thing. Hey, there I go again. Whatever, I'm going to give it some more time! This time I'll at least make it to Kakariko village! Also, I bought the DLC (and the newest DLC pack for Smash Bros) so I'm all in on this.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I still haven't started BotW but I don't blame you for hating the weapon durability thing. I talked about it with my friends over physically-distant-lawn-beers this weekend and it was such a weird design choice by Nintendo. Not only has it never been a thing in previous Zelda games but it's also barely a thing in modern gaming. The closest thing would be MMO's or Diablo but in any cases like that you can repair and keep the weapon. Here they just break and they're gone after a few swings. 

On the one hand it encourages different playstyles and creativity, and you also pick up more weapons than you'll use, but on the other hand WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> I still haven't started BotW but I don't blame you for hating the weapon durability thing. I talked about it with my friends over physically-distant-lawn-beers this weekend and it was such a weird design choice by Nintendo. Not only has it never been a thing in previous Zelda games but it's also barely a thing in modern gaming. The closest thing would be MMO's or Diablo but in any cases like that you can repair and keep the weapon. Here they just break and they're gone after a few swings.
> 
> On the one hand it encourages different playstyles and creativity, and you also pick up more weapons than you'll use, but on the other hand WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?!


I liked the durability idea for weaker weapons breaking in a few hits but jesus it really should have scaled up with better ones. It was so annoying to go through the trouble early in the game to kill a Leo, get their sword and only have it last like one enemy. Don't even get me started on the master sword's schtick.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I'm just trying to roll with the breaking weapons thing and try my hardest to not let it bug me


I ended up finishing all the shrines in the game about a week ago - making well over 100 hours of play time. I pretty rarely found the breaking weapons to be much of a problem, as long as you're not actively avoiding doing things that reward you with more weapons. If you avoid the shrines and don't engage in much combat, you might run out of good stuff, but as long as you keep engaging with the game, you'll get decent stuff pretty constantly. You could arguably farm some of the shrines to get good stuff - the combat challenge shrines will give you what the enemy drops as well as the chest at the end. I remember thinking I wouldn't like the mechanic during the early game but after a while it becomes more of a shuffle to get rid of the worst stuff you have, rather than ever lacking something good.

Unrelated - I've been simultaneously going through Oracle of Ages (on the 2DS virtual console) and Ni No Kuni on the PS3. Oracle basically feels like every other 2d Zelda game so far - just more Links Awakening basically. It's failing to keep my attention very well. Ni No Kuni I started yesterday, and the production quality is pretty high, which I was expecting. The combat is a bit weird though - it didn't get far in it, but it feels a bit like you don't have very much control over what's happening. Maybe this feeling will go away with time. Some of those voice acting has that hard-to-take-seriously juvenile fantasy thing going on, but it's not too grating so far.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I just realized BotW is reaaaaally gonna challenge that video game hoarding instinct I have where I don't end up using consumables at all because I'm "saving them for the right moment."


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I've been dying a LOT in this game. Half the enemies I encounter kill me in one hit, even many of the stupid gray goblins. I am used to games like this having clearly delineated "danger levels" of some sort for areas, while this doesn't really seem to have anything like that other than areas that kill you cause you don't have the gear necessary to survive the heat/cold. I am just sort of going around trying to fill in the towers and climb mountains and running out of stamina at the top while running through lots of enemy camps full of guys I can't kill and trying to do shrines that I encounter along the way. Not sure if that's how this game is supposed to work, but hey.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I've been dying a LOT in this game. Half the enemies I encounter kill me in one hit, even many of the stupid gray goblins. I am used to games like this having clearly delineated "danger levels" of some sort for areas, while this doesn't really seem to have anything like that other than areas that kill you cause you don't have the gear necessary to survive the heat/cold. I am just sort of going around trying to fill in the towers and climb mountains and running out of stamina at the top while running through lots of enemy camps full of guys I can't kill and trying to do shrines that I encounter along the way. Not sure if that's how this game is supposed to work, but hey.


Yeah they don't really tell you anything, but that's kind of the beauty of the game. It just forces you to wander around/play it to figure it out, kind of like Dark Souls before people figured out the systems. I remember the first time I got electrocuted in the game, I was running around in a lightning storm while wearing metal armor. I took it off and laughed really hard when the bokoblins got fried because they had metal armor and weapons. 

I spent a lot of the game cheesing fire arrows and bombs tbh. Smashing enemies with telekinetic boxes is also pretty funny, if you're willing to drag them around.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I've been dying a LOT in this game. Half the enemies I encounter kill me in one hit, even many of the stupid gray goblins. I am used to games like this having clearly delineated "danger levels" of some sort for areas, while this doesn't really seem to have anything like that other than areas that kill you cause you don't have the gear necessary to survive the heat/cold. I am just sort of going around trying to fill in the towers and climb mountains and running out of stamina at the top while running through lots of enemy camps full of guys I can't kill and trying to do shrines that I encounter along the way. Not sure if that's how this game is supposed to work, but hey.



if you push through there's a point where the weapons suddenly get good enough to hang . that's how I remember it anyway, haven't played it from the start since it came out . you just have to accept that weapons are disposable , even the ones you really like . that took me a while 

i'm a big fan of it . I thought it was great


----------



## SpaceDock

I’m waiting for the wave of new games about to drop: AC Valhalla, Watch Dogs Legion, Cyberpunk 2077 etc 

while waiting I have been playing all the rereleases of the classic Doom games that Bethesda has been updating, they are really great! Doom, Doom 2, Doom 64 all with widescreen, high refresh rates, and mouse support. Really a fun return to my younger years! 

BTW, anyone here into Dusk?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Still playing THPS1+2. Finished the THPS 2 tour and am working on the Ranked tour. Unlocked the Alien skater also. I swear the Ollie the Magic Bum goal is in a different order from the original, but it could just be my memory.

I also got Vampyre (which I'll probably play next) and Need for Speed: Rivals (which I'll probably never play) off PS+. And I'd like to thank Sony for adding another fucking menu to go through to get the new games now. I thought my membership had lapsed at first until I selected the my games prompt and there they were ready for me to download.



NotDonVito said:


> I'm not playing anything atm, but on the topic of Metal Gear, Konami has been releasing some of their older catalog on PC recently. Metal Gear, MGS 1+2, and Silent Hill 4. They're only on GOG weirdly enough.



From what I've read in reviews MGS is playable upon download (although the only in game language is English which is weird considering it was originally a port exclusive to Japan), but MGS2 still needs the fan made mods for the original release to work relatively well.


----------



## wankerness

Played BOTW for a while more. I still don't like the weapon mechanic - it was fine for a while when I was finding shrines and thus had lots of weapons that did ~15 damage or more, but then they all broke and I was stuck with fighting enemies with their own weapons, many of whom dropped things that did ~3 damage a hit and broke after about 6 swings when some enemies had upwards of 250 HP. I actually ran out of weapons for a bit with the lizalfos (most of whom don't have melee weapons) and had to switch to the bow. It was very annoying.

HOWEVER - this issue pales in comparison to the real scourge of this game, RAIN. Have a quest where you need to light a bunch of torches and it starts raining in the middle? Have to climb up a cliff for your next objective? Welp, time to go AFK for five minutes since there's no way to stop it other than going back to an inn and sleeping!

It's about as annoying and shitty as Twilight Princess's lack of any ability to change from day to night in the late game when you were trying to do poe farming and they only spawn at night and day takes like 10 minutes. 

I did a bunch of shrines (20 or so?) and just started on the first of the four spirit beasts or whatever they're called by getting to Zora's domain. I like this OoT kind of Zora design much more than the frog monster one in Link Between Worlds!

EDIT: I have to comment on the combat, too - they did one thing that I hate, which is they mapped the button to dodge/jump to X, meaning you can't smoothly swap between attacking and dodging like in all previous 3D zelda games unless you use some bizarre controller grip where your thumb points downwards. It also seems considerably harder to evade attacks, Link just seems clumsier. And then there's a few mechanics that are probably a nod to modern game design like DS with parries and counters, which are OK, I suppose, but very annoying to consistently trigger and weirdly difficult in places. Like, the guardians that roam around the countryside that can see you and kill you from 1000 yards, have absolutely no cover that you can use to LOS their beams, and require three perfectly timed parries in a row to kill! So annoying. I died probably 20 times on those things at various times so far. At least you can save anywhere!


----------



## BlackMastodon

I actually find the rain/weather mechanics really appealing, I love when games take that extra step in immersion, even if it's inconvenient I still like the extra layer of gameplay. 

I also like that they made the game a bit more difficult. The only other time I've had a hard time in Zelda games is when I try to do a 3 Heart play-through.


----------



## StevenC

BotW rewards a very particular play style with the weapons, and that is a complete disregard for their sanctity. If you get a cool weapon that you like go hang it up in your house. Everything else just kill dudes with them. It gets better later on when enemies have better weapons consistently, but I have 150 hours in that game and the last time I used a weapon I didn't like had to be 120 hours ago. There's plenty of ways to get good weapons like raiding the castle, chasing tougher enemies and doing the Divine Beasts. Then you get the master sword and you've always got something decent.

Another trick is to pick up rusty weapons and throw them at octoroks to produce Royal weapons. Also throwing a weapon when it's only got one hit left in it does the most damage.

I would say my main issue with the weapons came later on (like the past few months) when I was mopping up a few sidequests and messing around. I found that when I wanted to kill the higher level Lynels I was using up 3 or 4 or 5 strong weapons (depending on Master Sword charge) and only getting one sword or axe and maybe a bow or shield. Which isn't super useful if you're just farming Lynel bits for clothing upgrades because you burn all your weapons on them and have to restock.

The game to some extent feels like it was meant to have some sort of repair/crafting mechanic for the weapons that ended up getting cut. It would have made a lot of sense, but instead we've just got the one ancient kiosk to buy stuff from.

My vibe from the whole thing was that Link was on his own and just grabbing what he found along the way to kill Ganon and his dudes. Which conceptually made sense, so I'd just run through enemy camps killing and looting with that in mind.

----

106 stars in on Mario 64. Only got 4 left each on Rainbow Ride and Shifting Sand Lands, a couple coin stars on the annoying levels, and the wing cap stars. And since those two levels suck, 100 coins isn't fun and the wing cap is the worst thing in all of video games, I've decided to leave it there and call it a day. Will beat Bowser some other time when I can be bothered to grind out the last few.


----------



## wankerness

Shifting Sand Land isn't that bad, the only thing I remember not liking was platforming up the inside of the pyramid. But, it pales in comparison to the nightmare that is Tick Tock Clock. Rainbow Ride is also horrible, I always disliked levels in platformers where you are forced to keep moving, and when you combine that with having to stay on a tiny platform with the janky old camera, it's bad times. I think it was still probably easier than Tick Tock Clock, though.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Shifting Sand Land isn't that bad, the only thing I remember not liking was platforming up the inside of the pyramid. But, it pales in comparison to the nightmare that is Tick Tock Clock. Rainbow Ride is also horrible, I always disliked levels in platformers where you are forced to keep moving, and when you combine that with having to stay on a tiny platform with the janky old camera, it's bad times. I think it was still probably easier than Tick Tock Clock, though.


Tick Tock Clock isn't so bad once you know what speed you need things going at. But my goodness, that camera makes me want to pull my hair out. And such a terrible song. But somehow the best Mario Kart track and song.

I've spent a million lives trying to stand on top of all the towers trying to get it to acknowledge that I have done that. The inside of the pyramid was fine, but the damn tornados and the bird and quicksand. It just makes for an annoying level.

Same with Tiny Huge Island and Wet Dry Land. And the one with Dorothy and the metal cap. There are so many sucky worlds in this game and all that's left is like Bob-omb Battlefield, Thomp Fortress, the snow levels and Boo Mansion are OK, and Tall, Tall Mountain?

Another thing is that people gave Mario Odyssey a hard time for having so many easy Moons that were seemingly trivial things, but that's like half the stars in 64. And there's an order of magnitude difference in the number of collectibles. 

I probably haven't played this game in most of 15 years since it came out in DS, but I'm remembering all the reasons I stuck to replaying Sunshine.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Spent more time on Spiritfarer and I was stuck for a bit feeling like I'm not making progress, then I realised there was one character, the hedgehog lady, stayed in her little cabin not moving the whole time. After speaking to her triggered a sequence of scenes that hit me like a bulldozer. She had dementia, and started losing her memories, calling my character her daughter's name. After repeatedly helping her walk around the ship, it was finally time to put her down, and for one brief moment before her passing, she remembered who I am before disappearing permanently. 

It was heartbreaking enough we lost Eddie Van Halen, but playing Spiritfarer during the hedgehog's final moments on the same day broke me and I completely lost it.  I ended up getting 2 new passengers after her passing but her house is still on the ship...

This game is heavy. I'm actually looking to play Pyre after this as my pick up and play game. Same developers as Bastion/Transistor/Hades, and it has the a similar narrative of character permadeath but combined with some bizzarro NBA Jam basketball gameplay, which admittedly intrigues me.


----------



## wankerness

"Dorothy"? I had to look that one up! 

I dunno, I kind of liked that one (Hazy Maze Cave), Tiny Huge Island, and Wet Dry World. The mechanics on the latter two at least varied things up a bit, even if they were clunkily implemented at times. 

I really like the Boo mansion, that might have been my favorite. Also, Jolly Roger Bay! The Lava level I hated at first, but then grew to like when I got better at the game.

This is all speaking to my experience with this back in about 1998, though, I have only played this re-release for about 3 hours. 

Played some more BOTW, finished up the water and bird dungeons. The bosses in this are pretty nasty compared to historical zelda ones, and I don't know if I like how they don't really have any connection to the rest of the dungeon gameplay-wise. Like, almost every other zelda game that I've played has the final boss using whatever skills/item you got in the dungeon as a big part of the strategy, and it all feels nice and unified. This one, you don't really get any skills in the dungeons, and thus they end up feeling like kinda generic bosses. They sure mess you up in a hurry, though - I loved when the first (water) boss came out and the narrator said something like "make sure you're ready!" and then I ran up to him, tried to attack, and instantly got one-shot. Awesome. It only ended up taking me a couple tries for each, but they were sure stressful compared to historical zelda bosses. I think I'm going to stock up on some more heart containers before going after the next ones, especially the lightning one that I hear is so bad. Currently I have two full stamina wheels but only like 7 hearts.

That high-jump ability you get from the bird dungeon sure makes exploring much more fun, though I don't like the way the cooldown works (it doesn't start to refresh until you use all 3 charges, instead of a "rolling cooldown" like most abilities like this in games, so you're stuck without it for 15 minutes or something).


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> "Dorothy"? I had to look that one up!
> 
> I dunno, I kind of liked that one (Hazy Maze Cave), Tiny Huge Island, and Wet Dry World. The mechanics on the latter two at least varied things up a bit, even if they were clunkily implemented at times.
> 
> I really like the Boo mansion, that might have been my favorite. Also, Jolly Roger Bay! The Lava level I hated at first, but then grew to like when I got better at the game.
> 
> This is all speaking to my experience with this back in about 1998, though, I have only played this re-release for about 3 hours.
> 
> Played some more BOTW, finished up the water and bird dungeons. The bosses in this are pretty nasty compared to historical zelda ones, and I don't know if I like how they don't really have any connection to the rest of the dungeon gameplay-wise. Like, almost every other zelda game that I've played has the final boss using whatever skills/item you got in the dungeon as a big part of the strategy, and it all feels nice and unified. This one, you don't really get any skills in the dungeons, and thus they end up feeling like kinda generic bosses. They sure mess you up in a hurry, though - I loved when the first (water) boss came out and the narrator said something like "make sure you're ready!" and then I ran up to him, tried to attack, and instantly got one-shot. Awesome. It only ended up taking me a couple tries for each, but they were sure stressful compared to historical zelda bosses. I think I'm going to stock up on some more heart containers before going after the next ones, especially the lightning one that I hear is so bad. Currently I have two full stamina wheels but only like 7 hearts.
> 
> That high-jump ability you get from the bird dungeon sure makes exploring much more fun, though I don't like the way the cooldown works (it doesn't start to refresh until you use all 3 charges, instead of a "rolling cooldown" like most abilities like this in games, so you're stuck without it for 15 minutes or something).


I meant to say if you're really annoyed about the climbing you should do the Rito dungeon first. I never found the recharge too bad, I end up using them infrequently enough that I don't really notice. Also, literally blanking on this, but which abilities have rolling cooldowns in BotW?

The electric boss will mess you up. Like for real. The others aren't that bad except the Zora one when the place fills up with water. They can take a few tries, but that's the only one that feels cheap. It's an unfortunate side effect of making the game this way without the signature items that the bosses become more generic, I guess they could have put the Runes in the Divine Beasts, but that would have probably sucked more than not. I did enjoy all the actual bosses though, plus the Yiga dude, Molduga fights and the DLC bosses felt complete enough for me.

I just thought Hazy Maze Cave was a bit boring, same with the others, to the point that if you have any sense of what you're doing or where you're going the rest of the level feels like a loading screen that can kill you 1 in 10 times. Jolly Roger Bay is a water level and therefore excluded. I know it's massively against popular opinion, but I just feel like this game really benefitted from the time it came out. The levels aren't exciting enough to explore if you've played Sunshine, Odyssey or Honeyhive Galaxy. But if this is the only game you've got, I can 100% understand why it became a speedrunning/glitching classic.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Started Doom Eternal. Holy shitsnacks it's intense... Even more so than the last one. This can't be good for the heart.


----------



## Mathemagician

Thoroughly addicted to No No Kuni and Hades atm. Since each Hades run takes me ~45 min I need to make sure I don’t do more than one or two or the whole evening disappears.


----------



## wankerness

Alright, the rain in Zelda BOTW is just flat-out stupid. In the last 20 minutes I've had it start raining in the middle of a fight against one of those big stone guys you have to climb (so I had to whittle down the last bunch of his health with arrows cause I could no longer climb on him to fight him how you're supposed to) and then in the middle of a climb up a cliff. Argh. Just had to go afk for a few minutes the second time since there was no way around that whatsoever other than teleporting really far. I don't care about immersion, forcing people to stop playing the game and wait is a bad design decision. The only parallel I can think of are those mobile games where you have to either wait 8 hours or pay a microtransaction fee to cancel the wait. At least Nintendo didn't do that to stop the rain!


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Alright, the rain in Zelda BOTW is just flat-out stupid. In the last 20 minutes I've had it start raining in the middle of a fight against one of those big stone guys you have to climb (so I had to whittle down the last bunch of his health with arrows cause I could no longer climb on him to fight him how you're supposed to) and then in the middle of a climb up a cliff. Argh. Just had to go afk for a few minutes the second time since there was no way around that whatsoever other than teleporting really far. I don't care about immersion, forcing people to stop playing the game and wait is a bad design decision. The only parallel I can think of are those mobile games where you have to either wait 8 hours or pay a microtransaction fee to cancel the wait. At least Nintendo didn't do that to stop the rain!


I think it's 5 climbs then jump in the rain, takes some time to get the rhythm but you can make good ground. You should still be able to get up on top of a talus, especially if you've got Revali's Gale. It is annoying that rain puts out bomb arrows though. Also just throw bombs up there and detonate them as their flying past the weak spot. Or if it's somewhere grassy, see if you can get a fire going to get into the air. 

There is a small glitch with the rain though. Since in real life region boundaries tend to be drawn along natural borders like rivers and cliff faces, BotW has a lot of borders on cliff faces. Since weather cycles are based on your region you can get screwed with lots of rain while climbing because you're climbing in and out of the next region, reseting the weather cycle and drawing a lot of rain in that lottery.


----------



## mongey

after a week off returned to hades and beat Bone Hydra on my 3rd go . I had help though. I luckily massed the load out from hell . I abuse the spear special and had a boon for repelling which made mincemeat of both meg and bone hydra 

didn't have much health for my first exploration in elysium so only got a few maps in .seems like the general enemies did get tougher.

last go I used the blood to update my spear special and I don't like what it did . now I need to press attack to re gather and x is a dash . can I roll that back ?


----------



## MFB

Only took 3 days of trying, but I beat the first real boss in _Nioh, _Onryoki. I think that was as tedious as the Father Gascoigne fight in _Bloodborne_. Today was the first day I made real progress on getting his health down, previously I wouldn't even get through first phase and then yesterday I managed to crack into phase two. Hoping the game opens up a bit more now, this may be as tough as Sekiro, which is quite surprising.


----------



## Choop

Finished MGS3! Gonna do Peace Walker soon since it's on the collection I own on PS3, but I've never played it before. Has anyone here played it? It looks kind of like it has shades of MGSV elements.

Oh, trying to put more time into DBFZ also. My new team I'm playing around with is Adult Gohan/Trunks/Frieza, but it's open to adjustment.


----------



## Werecow

I've been playing the AWE DLC for Control. I got to what i think is the last boss encounter and not sure if i can be bothered with it anymore. I loved the base game, but i think the combat has just got a bit old now. It doesn't help that there were no new significant powers introduced in AWE, the enemies were the same old same old, and the main big bad i found a bit boring.
I just exited the game as soon as it was obviously the boss, and not been tempted back yet


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I didn't love the foundation DLC, the boss fights were really frustrating. I didn't know there was a new one but I dunno if/when I'll bother even though I have the season pass. If they hadn't decided to take that ridiculous tactic of making everyone pay full price for the ps5 upgrade, I'd have been much more likely to do so, but I guess they wouldn't have gotten more money from me so it wouldn't really have benefitted them.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I didn't love the foundation DLC, the boss fights were really frustrating. I didn't know there was a new one but I dunno if/when I'll bother even though I have the season pass. If they hadn't decided to take that ridiculous tactic of making everyone pay full price for the ps5 upgrade, I'd have been much more likely to do so, but I guess they wouldn't have gotten more money from me so it wouldn't really have benefitted them.



The new one is an Alan Wake tie-in. I thought the foundation was ok and was expecting to like AWE more, but i've found it a bit boring in comparison. Guess the only interesting bit about it is the extra Alan Wake lore and mystery.


----------



## Leviathus

Choop said:


> Finished MGS3! Gonna do Peace Walker soon since it's on the collection I own on PS3, but I've never played it before. Has anyone here played it? It looks kind of like it has shades of MGSV elements.
> 
> Oh, trying to put more time into DBFZ also. My new team I'm playing around with is Adult Gohan/Trunks/Frieza, but it's open to adjustment.



I played PW like 2 years ago, wasn't my fav but i did enjoy it. Lore wise it's the precursor to V and does share a lot of the gameplay elements (fulton, missions/sideops, basebuilding, weapon development...). Wasn't really into the anime parts and some of the boss fights (which seem to be designed for co-op), cool game though.


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> after a week off returned to hades and beat Bone Hydra on my 3rd go . I had help though. I luckily massed the load out from hell . I abuse the spear special and had a boon for repelling which made mincemeat of both meg and bone hydra
> 
> didn't have much health for my first exploration in elysium so only got a few maps in .seems like the general enemies did get tougher.
> 
> last go I used the blood to update my spear special and I don't like what it did . now I need to press attack to re gather and x is a dash . can I roll that back ?



You should be able to revert back or de-select it in the weapons aspect menu.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing a lot more BOTW, just started mosying around collecting lots of seeds/doing lots of shrines after doing the elephant/bird dungeons and getting towards the end of the gerudo/goron questlines. Eventually went over and finished the Goron questline - the final boss basically just fell over. I literally walked up to him, hit him with the master sword with out dodging/blocking/getting hit a single time until he went into P2, and then hit him with 2 bombs and a few more master sword swings and he was done. Ridiculously easy compared to the last two bosses. The master sword helped, but seriously, there was not even anything to dodge! 

Guess it's time for the lightning boss everyone hates! I'm farming lots of materials for armor upgrades first, though. I did all the upgrades on the abilities, the one for tracking ingredients/critters has been quite helpful. Almost got those 50 frozen keese wings!


----------



## TedEH

I don't think I had picked up the master sword until long after I had done those four bosses. It's both a strength and a weakness that different playthroughs can play out very differently, influencing things like the balance of difficulty.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

For the Yakuza/brawler enthusiasts who can't wait for 7 to drop:



Sega have put a Yakuza brawler with the Streets of Rage 2 engine up on Steam (PC exclusive) for free until Oct 19th.


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> You should be able to revert back or de-select it in the weapons aspect menu.



nope. looks like I'm stuck with it 

it has forced me to use other weapons though . after initially writing it of, f the rail gun isn't bad once you get a coupe of boons on it


----------



## beerandbeards

Ghost of Tsushima Legends DLC came out yesterday. My brother and I played through a few of the story mission. I haven’t played GoT since July but it was pretty easy to get back into the hang of things. Also they take the four elements of combat of Jin, then split it up between the “classes”, although you have all the same skills just each classes excels at one.

there’s some loot drops for better gear that triggers that reward system in your brain. That’s when things get a little more fun mixed with increased enemies and less heals in game.

I think this will be fun for a little while at least until the big titles drop next month (AC Valhalla and Cyberpunk)


----------



## Señor Voorhees

I've been playing a SHIT ton of flight simulator 2020. I'm using an xbone controller so it's not great, but I've been basically doing daily flights between PVD (my old home airport) and Boston in a Daher TBM 930. I've learned a TON about aviation even bullshitting it. It's cool, and I recommend it to others if they're even remotely interested in aviation. (it's on XBOX game pass, so it's free if you have xbox game pass and a PC.)

It's sparked a general interest in aviation and has me respecting pilots, co-pilots, air traffic control, and flight attendants way more than I did before. (even though I highly respected them anyway.) 

Also been playing a bunch of Blood, Brutal Doom (1, 2, and mods), Borderlands3, Fallout76 (thanks game pass,) Astroneer, No Man's Sky, RE7, Deliver us the Moon, and the good ol' Overwatch. I'm definitely not at a loss for stuff to play these days.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Señor Voorhees said:


> I've been playing a SHIT ton of flight simulator 2020. I'm using an xbone controller so it's not great, but I've been basically doing daily flights between PVD (my old home airport) and Boston in a Daher TBM 930. I've learned a TON about aviation even bullshitting it. It's cool, and I recommend it to others if they're even remotely interested in aviation. (it's on XBOX game pass, so it's free if you have xbox game pass and a PC.)
> 
> It's sparked a general interest in aviation and has me respecting pilots, co-pilots, air traffic control, and flight attendants way more than I did before. (even though I highly respected them anyway.)


The folks on the Rooster Teeth podcast have been talking about this for the last little while and it sounds excellent as far as simulators go, especially some of the real world data that it incorporates.

If you're into podcasts then I'd recommend their new one, Blackbox Down. Talks a lot about aviation accidents and other cool related things. If you're looking for some background noise or ways to kill time it could be up your alley.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Crossed off Ys IV: Memoirs Of An Invisible Man. 

Managed to get 100% of the map, monster compendium and items, though I only cared about filling the map. Also managed to cap all character levels and skills, largely due to the secret elite boss being treated as a regular enemy, hence respawns, hence exploitable for multiple killings. 

Adol seems OP here, not just with 2 extra skills over everyone else but every collected memory buffs his stats so he gets substantial upgrades. Then it becomes similar to Lacrimosa of Dana where you have 2 shashers, 2 pierces and 2 strikers. In fact it's pretty much exactly that: proto Ys VIII, without verticality. No jump button and the blocks and dodges assigned to face buttons rather than triggers made it easier for me to get flash guards/dodges so that was certainly fun. And it's great. Looking up gameplay for Dawn Of Ys and Mask Of The Sun (which apparently has the worst of the bumper car mechanics), and I'll take this every single time. Though once again, there is an item that lets you bump into enemies, and also works to break obstacles, but by and large, old school bumper Adol can go in the bin. 


Looks like I'll be focusing on Spiritfarer until Cold Steel IV drops in a few weeks. The game parades about how you bond with your passengers then say goodbye, and it's always a tearjerker when they finally pass on. But then the game threw me a curve ball...


Spoiler



...where one character who seems like the happiest of all passengers, will eat anything you feed him... throws a massive dinner party then suddenly disappears the next day. Gone. No goodbyes, no final hug, no ceremonious departure, nothing. Just the spirit flower left in what will be an empty house for the rest of the game. Once again the game never ceases to break me, since this character seemed to stick around longer than most of the others, for me this hit close to home.


Put spoiler tags because I want everyone to play this game.


----------



## wankerness

So what YS game would you say is the best apart from VIII? I loved that, but older-school scares me.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> So what YS game would you say is the best apart from VIII? I loved that, but older-school scares me.



Memories of Celceta would be your best bet at this stage, at least until Ys IX drops in Feb. I called it the proto Ys VIII and it turns out it was exactly that: they used Celceta as the basis for Dana and did all the tweaks and improvements for a 3D environment. It'll certainly feel primitive at first (largely top down, camera is fixed and can only zoom control), but it's still a good time. 

For PS4, there really is only 3 available at this stage. Ys Origin is more the old school/handheld Zelda top down hack/slash affair, but you play a solo character as opposed to a 3 team party. It's highly regarded along with another game with the same engine Ys Oath Of Felghana, which is considered by Ys fans to be one of the top games of the series. Felghana itself is the third remake of Ys 3, and perhaps the pinnacle of the old school chibi gameplay/aesthetic so I'd reach for that first on Steam.


----------



## wankerness

Played lots more BOTW. Still haven't gone after Ganon, but did a ton of side stuff (ex, got the motorcycle). Nastiest part of the game so far was probably that section of the DLC where you're stuck with 1/2 heart for multiple shrines, culminating in the awful DLC shrine that has lots of moving spike traps and this section at the end where you have to run from a moving spike set. Oh well. I did it first try, I just almost had a heart attack. I saw a lot of youtube comments saying it took them hours.  I mostly just died to things like bats or chus that spawned out of nowhere.

Speaking of which, while I'm mostly adjusted to the weapon breaking thing and it hasn't REALLY bugged me in a long time, there are a couple huge issues I have with it that I hope are addressed in the sequel. One, it's infuriating when your inventory is full of good weapons and you get attacked by a swarm of bats, since it takes just as much durability off a weapon to hit a silver bokoblin as it does to hit a frickin regular bat. I always end up trying to hit things with bombs just to avoid wasting weapon durability, which I don't think is how the game was intended. Two, it's awful when some enemies that spam block will cause you to break your weapon before you can even actually get a solid hit on them, but that at least has been very rare (mostly just the level 4 guardians). IMO, either hitting "trash" enemies that don't really have HP like small chus/bats shouldn't drain durability, or should drain it at a much lower rate, or you should just have some crappy 2 damage weapon that has infinite durability that you can use on things like that. The last would probably be ideal. Sadly, the master sword kind of fulfills that purpose since it's so bad if you're using it on anything other than Ganon forms or the couple other areas where it triggers.

Armor upgrades are INCREDIBLY overpowered in this game, after getting a bunch up to max level that last motorcycle boss guy wasn't much of a threat despite me absorbing tons of his hits with my face (i think he triggered mipha's grace about 5 seconds before he died, and I never bother with healing items before that happens). Thank god armor doesn't have durability!!

Guess now I'll probably try to do the master sword upgrade thing, and maybe do some guardian farming, before I finally go over to hyrule castle. Currently at 92 shrines, so I'm definitely getting there!


----------



## John

Violets are blue.
Roses are red.


----------



## wankerness

Oh, another complaint about BOTW - the way enemies go FLYING when you hit them a couple times with your weapon is infuriating, combat is a big chain of having to sprint after the enemy over and over until they finally die. It's doubly annoying when you're anywhere close to a cliff. And god, the lizalfos that are constantly leaping back 20 yds make things so much worse.


----------



## Leviathus

Been doing some trophy hunting on Dark Souls: remastered with a faith/dex build. Sunlight blade + power within turns the uchigatana into a lightsaber, plunging attack killed the asylum demon in one hit on the start of ng+2, much satisfy. 3 trophies left for whenever i make a new character and the plat's mine.


----------



## Choop

I wanna learn how to play KOF for real .-. I played in a mystery fighting game tournament, and did


Leviathus said:


> Been doing some trophy hunting on Dark Souls: remastered with a faith/dex build. Sunlight blade + power within turns the uchigatana into a lightsaber, plunging attack killed the asylum demon in one hit on the start of ng+2, much satisfy. 3 trophies left for whenever i make a new character and the plat's mine.



I gotta try me that combo.


----------



## Metal Mortician

So my original plans to make a recording PC turned into a gaming PC:

Doom Eternal Ancient Gods Part 1
MTG Arena

Those use up about 90% of my game time.


----------



## Choop

Choop said:


> I wanna learn how to play KOF for real .-. I played in a mystery fighting game tournament, and did



Lol, I realized I messed up my reply earlier and the edit window has passed. I meant to say that I did pretty ok* at KOF for having only messed with it a little bit previously. It's super fun! The skill ceiling in KOF for execution can be high, so it's a tough series to learn since it can be hard to find people to play with consistently. womp womp


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> Lol, I realized I messed up my reply earlier and the edit window has passed. I meant to say that I did pretty ok* at KOF for having only messed with it a little bit previously. It's super fun! The skill ceiling in KOF for execution can be high, so it's a tough series to learn since it can be hard to find people to play with consistently. womp womp



KOF games are nuts. They're multi layered mechanics mean a steep learning curve but they're so fun and rewarding to play. Sort of similar to say Tekken where blink the wrong moment and you're suddenly eating a juggle combo. 

I've been wanting to get back into the series as a whole since the last 2 new games look so great and fluid. Though admittedly, story wise, the game has gone nowhere but jog in place. It's pretty pathetic that Kyo and Iori are still doing the same blood feud since 1995. Of course nobody plays KOF for the stories anymore I guess.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> KOF games are nuts. They're multi layered mechanics mean a steep learning curve but they're so fun and rewarding to play. Sort of similar to say Tekken where blink the wrong moment and you're suddenly eating a juggle combo.
> 
> I've been wanting to get back into the series as a whole since the last 2 new games look so great and fluid. Though admittedly, story wise, the game has gone nowhere but jog in place. It's pretty pathetic that Kyo and Iori are still doing the same blood feud since 1995. Of course nobody plays KOF for the stories anymore I guess.



Lol yeah, fighting game storylines in general tend to be on the silly side, especially as long-standing franchises progress. I know KOF14 is probably more likely to find games for with people, but I'm way way more interested in KOF13, or even one of the older ones like 2002UM. Another game we had played was Guilty Gear: Accent Core, and it was really fun despite having only ever having played Guilty Gear Xrd before.


----------



## MFB

Starting playing through _Infamous: Second Son _since the second boss of Nioh was frustrating me  It's not bad, but the controls feel a little floaty, and for an open world, currently it feels a little empty; but maybe that's just how Seattle is in real life. Combat would be nice with a bit more variation, but it may be because I'm doing a "good" playthrough on my first run. 

Hoping it opens up a bit more as I'm two districts in and I'm still having these feelings


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> Lol yeah, fighting game storylines in general tend to be on the silly side, especially as long-standing franchises progress. I know KOF14 is probably more likely to find games for with people, but I'm way way more interested in KOF13, or even one of the older ones like 2002UM. Another game we had played was Guilty Gear: Accent Core, and it was really fun despite having only ever having played Guilty Gear Xrd before.



For the most part, yeah fighting game storylines are just variations of Enter The Dragon and Bloodsport. If anything they're the best genres when it comes to character exhibition, which what really brings a fighting game to life. That said, Sagat from SF had a big character arc: from proud champion to bloody revenge, to evil henchmen then transcendence and maturity, it's bizarrely rich for a series that regularly retcons and a main character that hasn't grown much but is forgiven for being the originator. Even Ken has more character than Ryu. I really should play Mortal Kombat X and 11. Despite the hilariously woeful overall plot, it's still rich in it's characters and certainly better than whatever was going on in Blazblue. 

I think I lost interest in KOF at around when Neo Wave was released. Back when SNK were releasing fighting games every 5 minutes, it was way too hard to keep up. The Guilty Gear series are always fun, though admittedly Xrd made me walk away from fighting games entirely. Absolutely nothing against the game at all, it was a Cartman blowing the funny fuse moment. Though I still flirt with SamSho and SFVCE but it'll be a long time before I go hard again like I did back in the Capcom Vs SNK 2 / Guilty Gear XX ver.whatever days.


----------



## wankerness

Beat BOTW, which was a bit anticlimactic. Calamity Ganon was actually harder than all the DLC bosses IMO (mainly just cause his damage was far higher against upgraded armor), but man...his second form was about as hard as fighting the Divine Beasts. Oh well.

Zelda's voice acting is SO BAD. They need to get their act together next game!

Did anyone actually use a horse in this game? It seemed like way more trouble than it was worth, especially since they apparently could only hear your whistle from about 5 yards and thus you usually couldn't get them to come to you again unless you went to a stable and resummoned them. I have used the motorcycle a bit, but I find myself usually just running and gliding. 

Not really sure what to do now, maybe I'll go back to Mario 3d all stars and juggle games there. Or play AC: Rogue. Everything I've heard about AC: Valhalla sounds off-putting (back to emphasis on everything I hated about those games pre-Origins, like trailing people in crowds), but I'll probably still end up getting it. Hyrule Warriors 2 comes out at about the same time and I won't know which to get first!


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Did anyone actually use a horse in this game? It seemed like way more trouble than it was worth, especially since they apparently could only hear your whistle from about 5 yards and thus you usually couldn't get them to come to you again unless you went to a stable and resummoned them. I have used the motorcycle a bit, but I find myself usually just running and gliding.


I used the horse A LOT. I got my first horse near the Duelling Peaks Stable on my way from the Great Plateau to Kakariko and still use that ginger bastard 150 hours later. He's got bad stats but I love him. I've got the Royal White Stallion (called Hi Horse), I've got the giant Ganon horse (Terry, like the chocolate), I've got Epona and I've got the bike. But I don't really use any of them except for my original horse. He died once and I felt so bad. I went to the horse shrine and had him resurrected and the damn Horse God made me feel even worse. So now I don't let any harm come to my beloved ponies and take them wherever I can. The roads are pretty good and you only have to steer everyone once in a while. It's like the opposite of FFXV's car.


----------



## gunch

Leviathus said:


> Been doing some trophy hunting on Dark Souls: remastered with a faith/dex build. Sunlight blade + power within turns the uchigatana into a lightsaber, plunging attack killed the asylum demon in one hit on the start of ng+2, much satisfy. 3 trophies left for whenever i make a new character and the plat's mine.



I remember when I did that with the zwei and a pine resin or BKs, much satisfy indeed


----------



## wankerness

Finally caved and bought Skyrim for way more than it was worth for PS4 since the damn thing hasn't been on sale since a year ago (I'm sure it will be 5 dollars on Black Friday shortly, but I had to play it NOW!). Started the game up, and the main quest almost immediately bugged (had to skip to the jarl cause no one would give dialogue options to progress the quest). Game crashed a couple times just randomly out in the middle of nowhere. On escort quests, I find myself having to run around various directions to trigger npcs to continue following instead of dumbly getting stuck on trees or invisible walls. This is all without any mods, in the first ~4 hours of gameplay. Ah, Bethesda, I missed you so! Nintendo had spoiled me, where you're almost never fighting against the game in unintended ways. I was thinking of having my girlfriend try this after getting her to play through a bunch of zelda/mario games, but after paying more attention to what it takes to play this game, I'm having second thoughts. There's SO much stuff that just plain will not work, ever, unless you're used to having to deal with buggy crap and know when to look up on the net when things aren't functioning. Haha.

Been going through things haphazardly like usual, already encountered some of my least favorite things (mainly the voice acting in those daedra quests - not only is it terrible, but they talk SO SLOWLY!!!! And jesus christ, I hate you Barbas and your terrible pathing). But, it was pretty quick that I adjusted to the outdated gameplay. A lot of this stuff was so ahead of its time and has been ripped off so much that it barely feels dated. The UI is even actually pretty good apart from equipping/removing weapons (though the favorites menu, something I don't remember ever using on xbox 360, is a decent placeholder). 

Carrying capacity >>>>> every other stat


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Finally caved and bought Skyrim for way more than it was worth for PS4 since the damn thing hasn't been on sale since a year ago (I'm sure it will be 5 dollars on Black Friday shortly, but I had to play it NOW!). Started the game up, and the main quest almost immediately bugged (had to skip to the jarl cause no one would give dialogue options to progress the quest). Game crashed a couple times just randomly out in the middle of nowhere. On escort quests, I find myself having to run around various directions to trigger npcs to continue following instead of dumbly getting stuck on trees or invisible walls. This is all without any mods, in the first ~4 hours of gameplay. Ah, Bethesda, I missed you so! Nintendo had spoiled me, where you're almost never fighting against the game in unintended ways. I was thinking of having my girlfriend try this after getting her to play through a bunch of zelda/mario games, but after paying more attention to what it takes to play this game, I'm having second thoughts. There's SO much stuff that just plain will not work, ever, unless you're used to having to deal with buggy crap and know when to look up on the net when things aren't functioning. Haha.
> 
> Been going through things haphazardly like usual, already encountered some of my least favorite things (mainly the voice acting in those daedra quests - not only is it terrible, but they talk SO SLOWLY!!!! And jesus christ, I hate you Barbas and your terrible pathing). But, it was pretty quick that I adjusted to the outdated gameplay. A lot of this stuff was so ahead of its time and has been ripped off so much that it barely feels dated. The UI is even actually pretty good apart from equipping/removing weapons (though the favorites menu, something I don't remember ever using on xbox 360, is a decent placeholder).
> 
> Carrying capacity >>>>> every other stat


playing a bethesda game on anything other than pc is a waste of time, especially skyrim or fallout 4. Mods massively improve QoL and add way depth/replayability


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> playing a bethesda game on anything other than pc is a waste of time, especially skyrim or fallout 4. Mods massively improve QoL and add way depth/replayability



Yeah, I've had skyrim for pc for probably 9 years now, I just really want to sit on my couch and avoid carpal tunnel by not using a mouse. 

You can't get ACHIEVEMENT POINTS while using mods, otherwise I'd have gone nuts with them, or at the VERY least would have done the "unofficial patch" that fixes hundreds of bugs. I like them too much and tend to use them as a checklist of things to do in these sprawling open-world games.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Clocked in a few more hours of Spiritfarer. The game was hinting it was ending soon, so I did a far amount of mucking about with side stuff and trying to stock up whatever items, food, etc then I realised I only had one passenger left. All the item farming/grinding in the world is meaningless when you don't have the passengers so I just straight up finished the game. 

I thoroughly enjoyed this game, but I have my complaints. I've said I thought the game was well written but it's also 'over written' to the point of detriment. A lot of superfluous dialogue on a ton of minor and major NPCs; no point talking to the shopkeepers outside buying and selling unless you want to mash through them talking. The animation is great but the developers are so proud of the it that it slows things down a bit. One particular passenger or passengers, one being a giant water buffalo that takes ages to turn around, let alone his hummingbird friend fly around with him just to spark a conversation. I do enjoy watching Stella be so happy with her oven mitts grabbing food out of the oven, but you can only see that for so many times before thinking just get over it. The blacksmith minigame especially can die in a fire. 

Last complaint is the ending. Once you've sent enough passengers to pass on, the game gives you the OK to finish up. Once you finish up, that's it. There is a lot of heavy hints of what's really going on in the game and it doesn't take a genius to figure what's going on. It turns out Thunder Lotus released an official Art Book that goes into full detail about the subtext and the metaphors buried in the game. Looking it up, it does bring all the feels hurt in agony so there's that at least. 

All complaints aside, Spiritfarer is still a fantastic game. It's a beautiful feel-good management sim that's emotionally engaging. Getting to know Stella and her passengers then finally learning to say goodbye. Perhaps without hyperbole my game of the year, and I'll probably won't shut up trying to recommend it to everybody.


----------



## mongey

After a week break more hades. The rail gun had def evolved into my favorite weapon. 

got to the end of 3rd level and got a couple hits away from clearing it. 
Had the Minotaur killed and the other guy almost there and he pulled some combo on me from Nowhere.


----------



## MFB

According to my save data, I'm 60% of the way through _Second Son, _and I have barely done anything. Like, this is the least story driven/linear mission style I have ever played; there's never a reminder that you have a task at hand, ifs literally just "here's your sandbox, go play" like GTA and I really hate that style. No areas are off limits with your powers, and unless you do a good AND evil on your play through, it's quite easy to max those early on.

I'm probably gonna finish it this week and move on, dont see myself going back for a replay/trophy hunting any time soon.


----------



## Mathemagician

I am now addicted to Disgaea 5. 

Having never played this series before but loving the good tactical rpg I figured why not. 

Holy hell. System after system after system. It’s just a game. I don’t “have” to do any of it. But I’m gonna. Ooooooooohhhhhh I’m gonna. 

Haven’t been this into a new (to me) game series since the first time I played Monster Hunter on PSP.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider. Love this series so I'll take more of the same, thank you very much. Cool new powers for this one's protagonist.


----------



## TedEH

I'd gladly play more Dishonored if they made more Dishonored.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I'd gladly play more Dishonored if they made more Dishonored.


I only did one playthrough of D2 as Emily murdering everyone I find so I've got a few more playthroughs when I want to come back to it. I find these games to be the perfect length and to be some of the only games I've ever wanted to go back and replay.


----------



## mongey

ok rail gun is not as flat out awesome as I thought, its awesome with the right boons .

but it really needs the right ones once you hit 3rd level


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> I only did one playthrough of D2 as Emily murdering everyone I find so I've got a few more playthroughs when I want to come back to it. I find these games to be the perfect length and to be some of the only games I've ever wanted to go back and replay.



Probably my favourite games series. I replay them all every so often, but D2 in particular is one of my comfort games. I replay it in different styles of runthroughs. One of the maddest is the so-called Batman run, where you fight face-to-face but completely non-lethally.
I also like Stealth but absolutely no reloading, having to deal with my mistakes.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Well I caved. Since Spiritfarer left a gaping hole in my gaming schedule (and my soul), I pre ordered Trails Of Cold Steel IV at sale price... except I forgot that AU gets it a week later than everyone else. 

I'm already hearing Age Of Ultron levels of issues on the game, but after 3 games and about 12 let's play vids on the entire Trails/Kiseki games, I've neck deep invested in this world so I'll be concentrating on this until I finish it good or bad. Basically my excuse to wait for Yakuza 7 to drop in price months after launch. And there's already a sequel out in Japan for months so I know the story is far from over.


----------



## wankerness

How is Fallout IV? I really did not get into Fallout 3 cause I disliked the janky start-stop combat much more than I did Skyrim's. I could deal with the combat in Outer Worlds, but found it to have too few options. Is Fallout IV's any better?


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> How is Fallout IV? I really did not get into Fallout 3 cause I disliked the janky start-stop combat much more than I did Skyrim's. I could deal with the combat in Outer Worlds, but found it to have too few options. Is Fallout IV's any better?


Not in my experience, though I didn't play FO3 all the way through and haven't tried Outer Worlds. FO4 was meant to have 3 different endings but after beating it once I didn't give a shit to go throughiit all again, mainly because the gameplay is not varied at all. With Skyrim you have the option between using magic, melee weapons, ranged weapons, or some combination of all 3, but FO4 is just "how far away do you wanna be able to shoot a gun from?" From what I've heard melee is broken as fuck in FO4. Also I have a grudge against FO4 because it included a whole base-building/crafting mechanic that I totally got suckered into but ultimately it's a completely useless feature that affects nothing in the game but is just a huge time sink.


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> Not in my experience, though I didn't play FO3 all the way through and haven't tried Outer Worlds. FO4 was meant to have 3 different endings but after beating it once I didn't give a shit to go throughiit all again, mainly because the gameplay is not varied at all. With Skyrim you have the option between using magic, melee weapons, ranged weapons, or some combination of all 3, but FO4 is just "how far away do you wanna be able to shoot a gun from?" From what I've heard melee is broken as fuck in FO4. Also I have a grudge against FO4 because it included a whole base-building/crafting mechanic that I totally got suckered into but ultimately it's a completely useless feature that affects nothing in the game but is just a huge time sink.



I liked the combat and basic exploration more in FO4. But yeh the building mechanic really annoys me. Mainly because you come across an area you can use for building, and it's just an empty hollow area with nothing going on. It feels like you've stumbled across an area of the game they've not finished yet. It's really low effort. In FO3 the areas would have their own unique quest/mystery to solve.

I still find it an ok game for me to play just as a walking around, occasionally shooting stuff type of experience.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Werecow said:


> I liked the combat and basic exploration more in FO4. But yeh the building mechanic really annoys me. Mainly because you come across an area you can use for building, and it's just an empty hollow area with nothing going on. It feels like you've stumbled across an area of the game they've not finished yet. It's really low effort. In FO3 the areas would have their own unique quest/mystery to solve.
> 
> I still find it an ok game for me to play just as a walking around, occasionally shooting stuff type of experience.


Yeah the core exploration was enjoyable and the combat wasn't bad, it just got old after a while. And I just wish that building up a town had more of a point. Aside from defending them from the occasional raid there isn't much else happening.


----------



## Ribboz

I finished "Underrail" a week or so ago. 200 hours in one playthrough. The world is pretty huge and in-depth. Absolutely loved it. 

About a hundred hours into Endless Space 2 now. Really enjoyed the lore and different races. Probably the evilist playthrough I've ever done in a game. 

As Horatio I would charm minor races with my infulence till they loved me. Then assimilate their race. Then genesplice their people's attributes into my people. Creating a more perfect Horatio. Then I would abandon their planets. Their populous would flee to my world, only to have pirates destroy them on the way there. Then if any did arrive on my world, I would convert their people into more Horatio. Jesus christ, saying it out loud sounds absolutely terrible. Haha. This is Horatio though. I almost wanted to lose the game because he's so bad.

It's a really fun 4x game.

I pre-ordered Cyberpunk the day before they delayed it again. The wait is killing me.


----------



## Werecow

Ribboz said:


> I pre-ordered Cyberpunk the day before they delayed it again. The wait is killing me.



I had upgraded my PC heavily to have the best PC i could for it before the big delay. There's been a new line of CPUs and GPUS since then haha, and i'm tempted by a 3080.

https://twitter.com/ZawAndy/status/1321201463545204737?s=20 This kind of shit makes me ashamed to be a gamer though


----------



## Ribboz

Werecow said:


> https://twitter.com/ZawAndy/status/1321201463545204737?s=20 This kind of shit makes me ashamed to be a gamer though


Did you send a death threat? No? Then you have nothing to be ashamed of. Gaming mainstream media has demonized "gamers" to no end. There is nothing wrong with being a gamer.

Egh. I may have overreacted. I get annoyed by the idea that it's gamers faults for the tiny few insane people out there.


----------



## NotDonVito

wankerness said:


> How is Fallout IV? I really did not get into Fallout 3 cause I disliked the janky start-stop combat much more than I did Skyrim's. I could deal with the combat in Outer Worlds, but found it to have too few options. Is Fallout IV's any better?


Fallout 4 on hardcore mode is where it's at. My issue with the other fallout games and elder scrolls is that you can spam quicksaves when you're in a tough situation, which takes all the urgency and challenge out of the game. FO4 hardcore doesn't allow you to quicksave or save from the start menu. You die more easily, but it's balanced because the enemies aren't invincible bullet sponges either.


----------



## TedEH

Ribboz said:


> Gaming mainstream media has demonized "gamers" to no end.


I'm with Warecow on this one. I love games. There's zero shame in playing games, and there's a lot of positive community activity of you look for it. But, I really don't like capital-G Gamers. I say this as a dev, and someone who has been on the receiving end of some of that vitriol - it's not all just people demonizing gamers. Some of that happens too, sure, but there's a lot of just terrible attitudes within a lot of gaming communities - enough that even as a dev I have trouble with, and distance myself from, the association with "gamers".


----------



## Ribboz

TedEH said:


> I'm with Warecow on this one. I love games. There's zero shame in playing games, and there's a lot of positive community activity of you look for it. But, I really don't like capital-G Gamers. I say this as a dev, and someone who has been on the receiving end of some of that vitriol - it's not all just people demonizing gamers. Some of that happens too, sure, but there's a lot of just terrible attitudes within a lot of gaming communities - enough that even as a dev I have trouble with, and distance myself from, the association with "gamers".



The longer you hold onto that negative perspective of Gamers the more you reinforce the false negative stigma's existence. 

For example let me flip it back on myself. I believe gaming mainstream media has demonized gamers. If I let that belief apply to journalists in general then any interaction I have with them will be warped. The belief that they are this way because they're part of that community would be completely unfair. They may even become more entrenched into their group and become the very thing I don't want, from me treating them that way. Do you see what I mean? Treat someone like they're bad and they're more likely to act bad back at you.

Please don't hold Gamers to the same perspective you may hold for the outliers. There will be bad apples everywhere. Being a gamer does not automatically make one fit into the false negative stigmas.



Sorry for the derail. I mentioned Underrail right? If you love classic fallout you may love Underrail. The atmosphere, music, and piecing the history of the world together is extremely enjoyable. 

Oh another I replayed recently was Dishonored 1 and 2. Half way through two right now. I feel D1 is a more satisfying game. There is a clear goal to the story with ending and closure. D2 felt out of no where with Delilah. I was never interested in her story. In the DLC she was more a device to explore Daud's arc. I understand the purpose of her story. She is suppose to be another "Dishonored" person scratching and clawing her way back to what she believes she deserves. So on paper its interesting having both the protagonist and antagonist Dishonored and fighting to reclaim what they had. But it didn't grab me. D2 is fun but not as satisfying as D1. Oh and I'm annoyed that Billie losing her arm and Eye are cannon. We undid that in D2 story. The Death of the Outsider should have been a prequel between 1 and 2. They could have used it to better explore Delilahs escape and not messed with our choice for Billie in the game. I really want a Dishonored 3. I really enjoy the gameplay and world. Their art style ages really well in my opinion.


----------



## mongey

having to make 9 versions of a game is ridiculous


----------



## TedEH

Ribboz said:


> the more you reinforce the false negative stigma's existence.


I don't think it's false. I've been told to die over doing what I thought was a good job at what I do for a living. I've had articles written about the products I've worked on claiming that we're corrupt and evil and everything wrong with the industry. I've been called all kinds of things over bug fixes and minor updates that people didn't like. We have an audience that believes us to be lazy, stupid, and greedy. Add that on top of the normal stresses of just trying to do the job in the first place. It doesn't matter if the source is sometimes journalists, the vitriol is real - Like it or not, even those journalists are a part of this community.

Are there very positive parts of the community? Absolutely. Including the journalism? Of course. Should there be any shame in playing games or making them or taking part in any of the community or tangential activities, etc? Of course not. But lets not deny that there are very vocal and harmful elements in that community as well, and from what I've seen they tend to be the ones very much attached to the "hardcore gamer as an identity" thing.

So sure, nothing wrong with being a gamer as in "person who plays games". But I don't want to be associated with those for whom Gaming is such a serious part of who they are that they're willing to tear people down over entertainment products.


----------



## Ribboz

TedEH said:


> I don't think it's false. I've been told to die over doing what I thought was a good job at what I do for a living. I've had articles written about the products I've worked on claiming that we're corrupt and evil and everything wrong with the industry. I've been called all kinds of things over bug fixes and minor updates that people didn't like. We have an audience that believes us to be lazy, stupid, and greedy. Add that on top of the normal stresses of just trying to do the job in the first place. It doesn't matter if the source is sometimes journalists, the vitriol is real - Like it or not, even those journalists are a part of this community.


I feel for you in what you have experienced. But try to understand the other side. The audience and customers have been lied to so many times over the years. The gaming industry is a massive hype machine/lie machine. It's definitely getting better recently on the transparency side. But big companies promise the world and give us a street that looks nothing like the bullshot trailers they promised us. They also force mobile money grab tactics and psychological manipulative tactics into their games. I could go on and on about the bad things big companies push on customers.

I really do feel for you. I'm trying to make my first game right now. I have a degree in this very subject. Vilifying the very audience we want to reach seems like one of the dumbest moves.



TedEH said:


> But lets not deny that there are very vocal and harmful elements in that community as well, and from what I've seen they tend to be the ones very much attached to the "hardcore gamer as an identity" thing.


The reason I disagree with this is, it is not solely based in gaming. Thus I don't blame the gamer. People tend to fall into communities and form tribal lines. Integrate it in their identity and strengthen their bond with those around them. It will naturally cause friction. This applies to everything. It's frustrating, but not the fault of "Gamers". 

I wonder if this idea of identity being so powerful and desperate to latch onto something is a growing lack of purpose within humanity. But that is a much larger issue.

I'll just end it here. Truely I wish things were better for you. I think there are many negative aspects of the industry that refuse to self reflect and see their own problems. People are imperfect. But demonizing the "gamer" leads to demonizing anyone that games.


----------



## Mathemagician

That’s because to most rational people playing video games is just another hobby. Capital “G” gamers act like it’s a lifestyle or something. And that type of “Gamer” posts shit like this un-ironically.

There is no “other side” to sending death threats. Gamers aren’t a politically protected class. Gamers are people with a hobby. Guitarists don’t send fucking death threats when the newest Gibson LP gets delayed due to production or QC issues. They post pictures and then buy something else in the meantime. 

There is and always will be zero justification for mouth-breathers to act that way. This isn’t food being withheld from a starving person. It’s just typically a male with a mental health issue lashing out.


----------



## Ribboz

Mathemagician said:


> There is no “other side” to sending death threats. Gamers aren’t a politically protected class.


I'm not saying there is an other side to sending death threats. Death threats achieve nothing. Only the mentally ill use these tactics. When I said see the other side it was referring to his lack of seeing the gamers perspective.



Mathemagician said:


> Gamers are people with a hobby.


Exactly. A gamer is just a person who plays games.



Mathemagician said:


> There is and always will be zero justification for mouth-breathers to act that way. This isn’t food being withheld from a starving person. It’s just typically a male with a mental health issue lashing out.


Did you read what I wrote? I tried to explain why people are so emotionally tied to this stuff. The Hype machine drives people to obsession. Then on release we see their lies and betrayal. Then people get upset. This isn't about justification. It's about understanding why people do what they do. And seeing the circumstances within the industry that created and perpetuate this harmful negative stigma.


----------



## BlackMastodon

The bottom line is that internet/social media comments are why we can't have nice things. Back in the good ol' days people had to go to the post office and mail out their hand written death threats after they found out where directors and actors lived after they went to the movies and didn't like what they saw.


----------



## Leviathus

Regret deleting my old Sekiro playthroughs as I guess you have to beat the game to do the boss rush stuff? The "remnants" are totally useless also. Was kinda hyped about the update today but i don't think im gonna play through the whole game again just to do the gauntlet shit. Sekiro just doesn't have the replay value that the other souls games have.


----------



## TedEH

Ribboz said:


> But try to understand the other side.


I do understand the other side. I'm both a dev and a gamer (by the definition of someone who plays a lot of video games). I'm that guy with a collection of retro games, who keeps up with news and hype and all that stuff. I'm also going to work every day trying to deliver some of those products that some of the hype is about.



Ribboz said:


> The gaming industry is a massive hype machine/lie machine.


I'm also not new to this. I've been "in the industry" for almost a decade at this point. In almost every case of someone "lying" to you, it's almost always something unintended or out of people's hands. It's almost never an intentional deception. Deadlines that crept up, estimates that went badly, tasks and features and bugs that crept in at the worst possible times, burnout and creative differences and drama, etc etc etc all get in the way. Games are huge complicated difficult software projects made by passionate people and it's a miracle when they successfully get released at all in the first place. Nobody _wants_ to sell you anything less than great games. Nobody _wants_ to mislead their customers.

Edit:
I want to add here that most of the time that "lying" or whatever other evil-doing you attribute to a game company is very often a decision made at a level far above the heads of most of the people who worked on a given product. If 500 people worked on a game, only a tiny fraction of them have the kinds of decision making power to prompt that kind of response from anyone. Most of the time, the other ~490 people on that team feel the same way you do when something goes bad. The last time I was involved in a "lie" told to consumers, I didn't even learn about it myself until the last second, pretty much just as consumers did.



Ribboz said:


> I have a degree in this very subject.


Hey, me too!



Ribboz said:


> Truely I wish things were better for you.


Honestly, things are great for me. I love my job. I work with great people. (Some of) our audiences are also extremely supportive. None of my comments were meant to suggest otherwise. I have no problem with game dev as an industry, or even the majority of the industries consumers - I just don't like the way that vocal self-proclaimed Gamers act online sometimes.



Mathemagician said:


> That’s because to most rational people playing video games is just another hobby. Capital “G” gamers act like it’s a lifestyle or something. And that type of “Gamer” posts shit like this un-ironically.


^ I think Math gets what I'm saying. If you define "gamer" as any person who plays a video game, then yeah, I obviously have no problem with that. Lots of great people play video games, I'm sure. But that's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the vocal online communities of people who obsess over games. The hardcore GAMERS. The people who whose character and identity is GAMER. The people who buy GAMER branded things and those expensive gaudy chairs so they can flex on their streams, and go to conventions to boo the devs for not meeting expectations, and send people death threats over bug fixes, and write articles about how it's ok to heckle and harass devs because they deserved it for misreading their audience, and harass devs and journalists for any reason at all, etc etc etc etc etc. That's what I want to distance myself from. It's _that kind of gamer_ I don't like.

And you're right to say that this basically just described anything online anywhere. Sure it does - to an extent. I feel like gaming has it pretty bad in that department though. Like guitar forums have lots of trolls and the occasional legitimately bad actor - but for every really malicious comment I see in music communities, or in other art or hobby communities, etc., there's more and worse things happening in the gaming space. I acknowledge it's still a minority though. Say there's hypothetically 2% of people in every guitar forum being a real asshole, there's maybe 5-10% of people in the gaming space being just strait up malicious sometimes.

Sorry for the long post.

In other news, I started playing Obra Dinn. I really like the 1-bit visual thing. The narrative is delivered in a way that's very subtle sometimes... almost too subtle, and a lot of the hints seem to kinda go over my head at times. I'm not far into it yet, but it feels like it needs a lot of focus and attention to small details to really piece together what it wants to get across - which is kind of the core of the gameplay. I think that this will be right up some people's alleys, and for other people it's really won't be their jam. I think I fall somewhere in the middle - but where in the middle, I'm not sure yet.


----------



## Mathemagician

Yeah Ted, I immediately assumed you were talking about the neckbeard/incel type of person. It’s NOT ok to treat a hobby like a physical aspect of who a person is. And being angry that the $75 piece of entertainment didn’t meet ones wildest fantasies is asinine. 

Frankly it often feels like people are desperate for a game they can live in 24/7. And they just keep jumping around angry that “200+ hrs of content is nothing, I ran out of stuff to do in 2 months”. As if that was a valid complaint. 

Head of the FF14 mmo once said when asked about their content pace “There are other games to play” during an interviews. Man makes like the #2 played MMO out there.


----------



## TedEH

As a fun aside -> I remember watching the whole mobile Diablo thing happen, with the booing and the "don't you guys have phones?" and all that - and I was in a mild panick, and getting into arguments at the time about it because I was really worried about the precedent it was setting about how to treat a dev who has made a misstep.

While watching it, I was also working on what was going to be a mobile take of a PC franchise that I suspected none of the core fanbase really wanted. I was basically steeling myself for getting that same kind of response from people when we launched. I was only part wrong. They managed to sidestep the marketing mistakes that led to that kind of push back. But we did have an article written about us that described us as being emblematic of everything that will cause the downfall of gaming - a glimpse into a dystopic future of gaming, so that's a thing. I bring up that example a lot cause it stung and stuck with me.


----------



## Mathemagician

Yeah. For me it was as simple as “Well that’s fucking stupid, guess I’m not the target audience. Fuck mobile games.” 

And then I never gave it a second thought again. $$$ speaks.


----------



## TedEH

Some of those mobile games make stuuuuuuuuuupid amounts of money though. Realistically, I've always thought that the root problem with mobile games isn't _that they're on phones_ because it's very possible to make good mobile games - it's the perceived value of the platform. I've had a great time with _a few_ mobile games, but not very many. Most of the time they end up being rushed, low budget, jammed full of microtransactions, skinner-box gameplay, simplified gameplay, poorly taking advantage of the likelihood of short play spans, etc. I think mobile could actually learn a lot from the switch. But before anyone is going to invest in _good_ mobile games, we'd need to be convinced that people are going to bother playing (and paying for) a good game on the platform in the first place, and the value judgment of the platform is already there and not likely to be defeated soooo........ it's an unfortunate loss given how smartphones are basically ubiquitous now. Such a missed opportunity.


----------



## Mathemagician

Oh don’t get me wrong. I 100% understand the “print money” ability of mobile games and apps. My comment was literally from my own point of view “I don’t play mobile games”. I don’t commute via public transit, I don’t have to share my tv with siblings/family, the screen is small and hurts my eyes + the phone hurts my hand after a while to hold. 

If I was a dev I would have zero issue bringing home bacon by working on mobile games/ports.

Your point stands though, so many expect every app to be free, so the payment model has changed drastically. And I think the worst abusers gave most other games a bad rep by association. You’ve seen those shitty copy paste Chinese mobile mmos that literally play themselves. Or the everything is lootboxes model. However $$$ talks and they don’t need my $ since they’re all doing fine. 

I just wait for the things I do want to play to come out, without sending death threats. 

“Give me the newest version of excel or else!”


----------



## wankerness

What mobile games are actually good? I feel like the "touchscreen only" thing is extremely limiting. I've never wanted to play a game on my cell phone though so I'm not familiar with what's out there besides variants on really old-school junk like Jumper or Angry Birds.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

decided to finally get into Escape from Tarkov since I need a good gun nerd/tactical game.


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> What mobile games are actually good? I feel like the "touchscreen only" thing is extremely limiting. I've never wanted to play a game on my cell phone though so I'm not familiar with what's out there besides variants on really old-school junk like Jumper or Angry Birds.



Yeah that was my thought too -- the controls are the biggest limiting factor for mobile games. I've talked about it with a friend a handful of times, but it's super hard to come up with a good quality game concept for mobile that utilizes its strengths without compromising too much, but also wouldn't just be better released on another platform instead.




KnightBrolaire said:


> decided to finally get into Escape from Tarkov since I need a good gun nerd/tactical game.



Aw dang, how is it?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Choop said:


> Yeah that was my thought too -- the controls are the biggest limiting factor for mobile games. I've talked about it with a friend a handful of times, but it's super hard to come up with a good quality game concept for mobile that utilizes its strengths without compromising too much, but also wouldn't just be better released on another platform instead.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Aw dang, how is it?


I literally just got into to it today. It's very overwhelming unless you do a fair bit of research before hand.


----------



## Jeries

Pikmin 3 Deluxe

Does anyone else have this game? There is a demo on for the switch, but it’s really good. It just came out today, or at least, the physical cartridge just arrived.

It’s like lemmings but a lot more interesting


----------



## StevenC

Jeries said:


> Pikmin 3 Deluxe
> 
> Does anyone else have this game? There is a demo on for the switch, but it’s really good. It just came out today, or at least, the physical cartridge just arrived.
> 
> It’s like lemmings but a lot more interesting


Pikmin is one of my favourite series of all time. Haven't got Deluxe yet, but 3 regular is around here somewhere. If you haven't played 1 and 2 they're definitely worth a look, particularly if you have a Wii around because those versions are superior.


----------



## Jeries

StevenC said:


> Pikmin is one of my favourite series of all time. Haven't got Deluxe yet, but 3 regular is around here somewhere. If you haven't played 1 and 2 they're definitely worth a look, particularly if you have a Wii around because those versions are superior.


I have not played them, but if they are as good as this then I would like to. Lately, Nintendo has been porting and converting a lot of classics with great updates. I’m almost ashamed to say I wasn’t aware of this series existence until this week!

Since you mentioned it, I dont know if you pay mind to NintendoLife?, but sometimes they have good looks into games and that’s what grabbed my attention to try it. I might be wrong, so pardon me for not knowing the series as well as you, but the review did make note of the “deluxe” distinction and at the same time making it clear they felt it was somewhere between Pikmin 3 and Pikmin 4, which is kind of a weird way to put it considering Pikmin 4 doesn’t exist


----------



## StevenC

Jeries said:


> I have not played them, but if they are as good as this then I would like to. Lately, Nintendo has been porting and converting a lot of classics with great updates. I’m almost ashamed to say I wasn’t aware of this series existence until this week!
> 
> Since you mentioned it, I dont know if you pay mind to NintendoLife?, but sometimes they have good looks into games and that’s what grabbed my attention to try it. I might be wrong, so pardon me for not knowing the series as well as you, but the review did make note of the “deluxe” distinction and at the same time making it clear they felt it was somewhere between Pikmin 3 and Pikmin 4, which is kind of a weird way to put it considering Pikmin 4 doesn’t exist


Eh, there's a few extra bits but not that much that's Pikmin 3.5. Pikmin 4 has be talked about for years but never really officially announced or revealed.

All the Pikmin sequels have basically had discussion come out instantly after the the preceding game. I remember reading magazines talking about Pikmin 2 before Pikmin 1 was released here, and Pikmin 3 before the Wii had even come out. Being such a Miyamoto pet project, he tends to get excited about the next release before they have any idea of what it'll even be.


----------



## mongey

had a couple free horus yesterday, which is rare, so I planned to put some time in fall guys. Played a few games and think I'm over it 

concept was cool at the start the but controls are just too flubby for me


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> What mobile games are actually good?



Point-and-click style games work well on phones if they're designed well enough. I played the Hector games on phones, and that worked well. Sword and Sworcery was not bad. The Monkey Island and Grim Fandango remakes. It was kinda gimmicky, but I enjoyed Infinity Blade. Monument Valley was pretty decent although very much a casual kind of deal. I don't think very many people liked Deus Ex: The Fall - but I think it showed potential and _could _have been good. Bladur's Gate kind of works in that format. The Doom / Wolf ports (and modern engine ports) are pretty entertaining - being able to take Brutal Doom with you anywhere is cool.

Alternatively - you can use one of the DOSBox apps and a bluetooth controller to play a lot of classics. Or controller + emulator if that's your kinda thing.


----------



## mongey

thing that kills me with mobile gaming, apart form controls, is do I really need to stare at my phone more than I already do ? 

I play my switch on the train but it way more comfortable to hold and play than a phone


----------



## NotDonVito

I hate to admit it, but I'm becoming a normie phone gamer more and more recently. I'm pretty much all digital on my other platforms(PC and Switch), but damn it's hard to swallow throwing down retail price on digital games, especially on Switch, where most games are actually cheaper to buy physically because there are rarely any good sales. Like I just can't bring myself to spend $60 on a Hyrule Warriors download, when I can just play Genshin for free and try my luck to not roll crap characters/weapons. I also tried cloud gaming for the first time with the Control demo on Switch, and it played flawlessly on my crap Alabama internet, so there's that as well. Unless retail games get significantly cheaper, streaming and F2P are going to take over single player gaming for me, especially once I get a 5G phone.


----------



## TedEH

The thing that gets me about mobile and digital games (or I guess one thing, out of many) is that you don't really _have_ the games you bought. I can go out and buy a physical copy of all kinds of stuff that people used to play - I can pick up old N64 or NES carts and dive right back in if I want - but digital stuff just vanishes as soon as the platform is gone, or as soon as I'm gone, or the services shut down, etc. I avoided buying things on my iPhone at first because I knew I wasn't going to keep that iPhone forever. The few games I _did_ buy are no longer accessible to me. Some of them don't work on newer iOS versions. Some of them were pulled from the store.

I've got some significant value in my Steam account that could theoretically just vanish any day and there'd be nothing I could do about it. If I die - that value just goes away. The next generation can't just take my stuff and keep playing it like we would have before. It's just over.

Which is why I find the whole "preservation" angle for emulation to be a bit backwards. We don't need to worry about preservation of ROMs ripped from physical media because that physical media still exists. We need to be worried about digital licenses and software that ceases to exist when it either changes or gets deleted or outdated or forgotten about etc. In 100 years time, all the carts will still be here, but will the servers that hold your steam and epic and origin and uplay and apple and google and nintendo accounts?


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> In 100 years time, all the carts will still be here, but will the servers that hold your steam and epic and origin and uplay and apple and google and nintendo accounts?



I mean, I'll be dead.


----------



## TedEH

Choop said:


> I mean, I'll be dead.


And so will be all the games you bought. The next generation doesn't get to inherit anything from it. Have kids? Too bad, they have to buy them all again.


----------



## Demiurge

It would be nice to think that future generations could have a stab at the Steam backlog I leave behind.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> And so will be all the games you bought. The next generation doesn't get to inherit anything from it. Have kids? Too bad, they have to buy them all again.



XD I'll have my steam username and password inscribed onto my decrepit computer desk!

Ooo upon my tombstone, too. I bet that'd be a first.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> The thing that gets me about mobile and digital games (or I guess one thing, out of many) is that you don't really _have_ the games you bought. I can go out and buy a physical copy of all kinds of stuff that people used to play - I can pick up old N64 or NES carts and dive right back in if I want - but digital stuff just vanishes as soon as the platform is gone, or as soon as I'm gone, or the services shut down, etc. I avoided buying things on my iPhone at first because I knew I wasn't going to keep that iPhone forever. The few games I _did_ buy are no longer accessible to me. Some of them don't work on newer iOS versions. Some of them were pulled from the store.
> 
> I've got some significant value in my Steam account that could theoretically just vanish any day and there'd be nothing I could do about it. If I die - that value just goes away. The next generation can't just take my stuff and keep playing it like we would have before. It's just over.
> 
> Which is why I find the whole "preservation" angle for emulation to be a bit backwards. We don't need to worry about preservation of ROMs ripped from physical media because that physical media still exists. We need to be worried about digital licenses and software that ceases to exist when it either changes or gets deleted or outdated or forgotten about etc. In 100 years time, all the carts will still be here, but will the servers that hold your steam and epic and origin and uplay and apple and google and nintendo accounts?



Those old carts are not as easy to pick up as you make it sound. At this point, you need to also keep around an outdated CRT television to play them correctly, and if the wiring fails on either your ancient console or your ancient TV you're in trouble. Plus batteries/flash memory dying in old carts, etc. 

I think the only path to true preservation is high quality emulation on modern platforms. NES and SNES and some other very old systems are pretty covered, but many other systems I think are just going to be screwed. Historical relics. I think a more comprehensive service like PSNow, one that actually includes all the licensed crap, would be the path for the future. But, it will probably never happen, especially with things like song licensure and product placement. Same thing happens with old movies. A lot of DVD releases I remember got held up or fully cancelled or had to be edited cause of song rights. Yuck. It's probably the same thing with things like say, any game involving Spider-Man.


----------



## Werecow

The last two years or so i see people talking about a game that's on a big discount, i go to buy it and Steam says i already own it. I think i've run out of older games for me to discover, and i'll never get through my backlog either.


----------



## Mathemagician

Cartridges and other physical media also just degrade over time. It’s not a fail-safe. Some of those cartridges are only expected to last 15 years. So when it’s already 20+ years old you’re just buying them for collectors purposes. 

Digital emulation is key because it can always be updated to run on a modern setup. Hell the official SNES mini I own is just a glorified emulator. And it rules.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Those old carts are not as easy to pick up as you make it sound. At this point, you need to also keep around an outdated CRT television to play them correctly, and if the wiring fails on either your ancient console or your ancient TV you're in trouble. Plus batteries/flash memory dying in old carts, etc.


I mean, not really, unless you're looking for something really obscure. I've got at least three shops within a reasonable distance (one is walkable) that carry that kind of stuff regularly, and the used market is always going. Old CRTs are stupidly easy to get (people literally give them away), and upscalers/converters are getting more common. I've had batteries die in some old gameboy games, but they aren't very difficult to fix. The actual ROM that people care about is still intact even if the battery dies. The real challenge is the price people ask for them. Pricing aside - from a preservation standpoint, those games are still being circulated, traded, played, etc.



wankerness said:


> I think the only path to true preservation is high quality emulation on modern platforms.


I'm not an expert in emulation but I don't think I'd describe that as "true preservation". Emulations tend not to be one-to-one with how the original hardware behaved. The truest preservation IMO would be high quality reproductions in the same form factor.



Mathemagician said:


> Cartridges and other physical media also just degrade over time. It’s not a fail-safe. Some of those cartridges are only expected to last 15 years. So when it’s already 20+ years old you’re just buying them for collectors purposes.


All the game I have work -> NES, Gameboy, Genesis, etc. - they're all fine. I don't think I've heard much in terms of these things actually failing unless they were abused. The exception is optical disks, I guess. Those don't take much to ruin.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I mean, not really, unless you're looking for something really obscure. I've got at least three shops within a reasonable distance (one is walkable) that carry that kind of stuff regularly, and the used market is always going. Old CRTs are stupidly easy to get (people literally give them away), and upscalers/converters are getting more common. I've had batteries die in some old gameboy games, but they aren't very difficult to fix. The actual ROM that people care about is still intact even if the battery dies. The real challenge is the price people ask for them. Pricing aside - from a preservation standpoint, those games are still being circulated, traded, played, etc.



Now? Yes, there's still enough people who haven't upgraded to HD yet, or people that haven't thrown out their old one. But it's going to be like VCRs, where they just keep getting more scarce and eventually end up costing a lot if you want to buy a decent, working one. I'd say in 20 years, it's not going to be very easy/cheap to get a CRT that works well if yours stops.



> I'm not an expert in emulation but I don't think I'd describe that as "true preservation". Emulations tend not to be one-to-one with how the original hardware behaved. The truest preservation IMO would be high quality reproductions in the same form factor.



It's not true preservation, but it's going to be the only we can get except for whatever still works over the years, as things increasingly corrode/fail and the remaining copies out there gradually get thrown away or lost.



> All the game I have work -> NES, Gameboy, Genesis, etc. - they're all fine. I don't think I've heard much in terms of these things actually failing unless they were abused. The exception is optical disks, I guess. Those don't take much to ruin.



I've known SNES and NES cartridges to go bad, but mostly due to people who lived in humid environments and didn't keep them air-conditioned. I have one copy of Zelda: ALTTP that doesn't work at all, but I think all my other stuff is still fine apart from batteries. That said, it's going to be hard over the coming decades with no more copies being produced and all the remaining copies subject to these same things happening.

Disc degradation is a serious and likely imminent problem, on the other hand. I've had multiple blu-rays go bad (mostly old criterion/mill creek releases that were made cheaply). They're just coasters now. Fortunately stuff on discs is a lot easier to illegally back up on the internet!


----------



## Choop

Gonna be a sad day when the CRTs become scarce -- I have a Sony Trinitron Wega for classic games and I'm always tempted to pick up another as a backup, even though I definitely don't have the space for it lol. Not to mention having to eventually move 'em.


----------



## wankerness

I wish they'd just come up with a good hardware emulator for "CRT Mode" or something that you could plug into an HDTV, cause I would love having no reason to own a CRT anymore. The bulk/weight of them is the biggest problem by far.


----------



## TedEH

They do have those devices like the RetroTink etc. I've not tried one, but they seem like they'd do a good job.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally started Trails Of Cold Steel IV yesterday. At this point of the Trails canon, it feels like getting back to a comfy chair by the fireplace for some long book reading, because that's exactly what it felt like. Starting in medias res, and it doesn't waste time throwing you into another POV from it's super large cast that spanned over the course of 9 games. 

Though by the nature of this game and the current point in the plot, I spent most of my 3-4 hour game time   not playing the game at all, since the opening spends a lot of time on expository world building, and not much on the "game" aspect. Granted that this series' greatest strength IS the world building, and I'm already well deeply invested, I can't complain much. And by the time the gameplay kicks in, it's business as usual.


----------



## TedEH

I finally made it to the end of Ni no Kuni last night... the final sequence ends up being one of those multi-phase boss encounter type things with no opportunity to save or heal in between each segment. So of course I get through 2/3 of the fights, about an hour and a half to get there, to have the final boss throw something that just about insta-kills you if you make a mistake and fail to block it. Losing that progress stings enough that I can't decide if I want to even bother finishing the game anymore.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> I finally made it to the end of Ni no Kuni last night... the final sequence ends up being one of those multi-phase boss encounter type things with no opportunity to save or heal in between each segment. So of course I get through 2/3 of the fights, about an hour and a half to get there, to have the final boss throw something that just about insta-kills you if you make a mistake and fail to block it. Losing that progress stings enough that I can't decide if I want to even bother finishing the game anymore.



Ugh that's gross .-. I've had something similar happen on two separate RPG-playing occasions. Once it was Final Fantasy 7 after I had played for something like 2 hours without saving, and an NPC got stuck against another NPC in such a way that they were both blocking where I needed to go, and there was no way out of the zone. There may have been something that I could have done, but I feel like I remember trying everything haha. The other time it was Xenogears, where my game just straight up froze after having not had an opportunity to save for a long time later on in the game. I did eventually return and beat FF7, but to this day I haven't completed Xenogears. .-.


----------



## TedEH

So I went back to it last night and stages 1+2 of the fight are pretty easy, but I got nuked / cheap-shotted in the 3rd stage again. New strategy is to go around and complete some of the side content in the hopes of tilting things back into my favour. Thankfully, the game isn't too grindy to finish this kind of stuff. I've read that there's some places you can farm/grind out levels pretty quickly - there's a particular enemy that, if you can find it, gives you several levels of experience in one shot. Oh well.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Man, I wish the new Xbox would just release. I'm intentionally starving myself of games.

Such a shame there is no launch window killer app though. Seems like a bad decision to have just have Halo leading the 1st party charge and does nothing for the "Xbox has no games" perception. Sony having Spiderman and Demon Souls covers a lot of ground.


----------



## TedEH

I've not really been following the whole new-consoles thing, but wasn't the selling point for Xbox that the new consoles are kinda like PCs where they'll just play anything that's already on the xbox platform?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

ImNotAhab said:


> Man, I wish the new Xbox would just release. I'm intentionally starving myself of games.
> 
> Such a shame there is no launch window killer app though. Seems like a bad decision to have just have Halo leading the 1st party charge and does nothing for the "Xbox has no games" perception. Sony having Spiderman and Demon Souls covers a lot of ground.


I mean the demon souls remake is literally the only reason I'm interested in the ps5.
The gameplay of halo infinite looked like absolute crap compared to previous games, plus it got delayed by over a year (likely due to the huge backlash to the demo) so I don't think it'll even be a launch title.

Spiderman on PS5 is basically just a glorified expansion pack to the first game. The only cool thing they added was Into The Spiderverse's version of Miles as a skin.


----------



## StevenC

ImNotAhab said:


> Man, I wish the new Xbox would just release. I'm intentionally starving myself of games.
> 
> Such a shame there is no launch window killer app though. Seems like a bad decision to have just have Halo leading the 1st party charge and does nothing for the "Xbox has no games" perception. Sony having Spiderman and Demon Souls covers a lot of ground.


Maybe it's just my taste, but there are no exciting games coming or announced for either PS5 or Xbox SX. I'll get an Xbox for Halo and I'll get a PS5 for whatever Kojima game eventually comes, but beyond that I really don't see the point yet. 

At launch I got GameCube for Smash and Luigi's Mansion, DS for Mario and Warioware, 360 for Perfect Dark, Wii for Zelda, Wii U because, and Switch for Zelda.

Then I eventually got a PS3 for Metal Gear, an Xbox One for Metal Gear, and a PS4 for Death Stranding. And a 3DS for Pokémon. 

But these launch titles seem like a bunch of ports and same old same old.


----------



## wankerness

I'm more interested in the higher quality versions of current games, since I'm vehemently anti-PC gaming and they're doing fancier versions of a few games I'm interested in playing/replaying. I haven't actually tried buying a PS5 yet so I have no idea about the process/availability. Probably terrible.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I'm vehemently anti-PC gaming


Curious - what makes you anti-PC gaming? Hopefully that's not a conversation you already had in this thread and I was just too lazy to look for it.


----------



## MFB

I'm not anti-PC gaming like wank is, but I don't do it purely because I already spend roughly 10 hours of my day in a desk chair for work - the last thing I want to do is spend another 2-4 hours at night in one enjoying games 

That and the PC master race/part culture is just pretty off-putting as well


----------



## StevenC

I'll go along with that. I play some games on PC (mostly low intensity exclusives because I don't have a gaming PC), but when I play games I want to just sit on the couch or lie on the floor. And I don't want to have to have two computers or move my PC every time I want to do that.

It's nice having standards for games to optimize towards with consoles, too. As opposed to the ever escalating arms race in the PC world. Conversely, I like to geek out and get hands on and technical with my guitar rig, but with games I want to plug in two things and play.


----------



## MFB

StevenC said:


> It's nice having standards for games to optimize towards with consoles, too. As opposed to the ever escalating arms race in the PC world. Conversely, I like to geek out and get hands on and technical with my guitar rig, but with games I want to plug in two things and play.



I knew there was part I left out with the PC part culture part, and this was it. Frame rates and all that don't mean anything to me, I've played everything at 30FPS up to this point and it's never hurt me; with a console, it's turn it on, and it's guaranteed to always play the game at a certain benchmark.


----------



## StevenC

MFB said:


> I knew there was part I left out with the PC part culture part, and this was it. Frame rates and all that don't mean anything to me, I've played everything at 30FPS up to this point and it's never hurt me; with a console, it's turn it on, and it's guaranteed to always play the game at a certain benchmark.


On the other hand there are so sensible lower limits on these things. Like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask sucked at 20fps in 1998/2001 and they suck at 20fps now, but Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask 3D suck so much less at 30fps and I'm sure they'd be even nicer at 60fps.

But also those game are better than just about every game that runs at 60fps not named Mario something.


----------



## TedEH

MFB said:


> I already spend roughly 10 hours of my day in a desk chair for work - the last thing I want to do is spend another 2-4 hours at night in one


Very fair.



MFB said:


> That and the PC master race/part culture is just pretty off-putting as well


inb4 the whole culture conversation again 



StevenC said:


> when I play games I want to just sit on the couch or lie on the floor


Also fair. Although, a lot of PC games now are controller enabled, especially the games that also target consoles. It's still not for everyone, but I've always liked the flexibility of PC games. I can play on the couch through my TV and a 360 controller, or I can play at my desk with a mouse and keyboard. There's reasons for that not to work for everyone though.



StevenC said:


> It's nice having standards for games to optimize towards with consoles, too. As opposed to the ever escalating arms race in the PC world


That's kind of a double-edged sword though - regardless of where PC and consoles each are in the "race", targets are going to be whatever consoles of the time can do, for better or worse. That might mean we're not taking full advantage of available PC resources, and it might mean that there's little incentive to build for scalability rather than a singular target, and it might mean that new consoles coming out mean older PCs become irrelevant at the same time.



MFB said:


> I've played everything at 30FPS up to this point and it's never hurt me


I remember N64 games that slowed to a crawl at times, and it didn't really bother me at the time. They were simpler times.



MFB said:


> with a console, it's turn it on, and it's guaranteed to always play the game at a certain benchmark


Lol.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Also fair. Although, a lot of PC games now are controller enabled, especially the games that also target consoles. It's still not for everyone, but I've always liked the flexibility of PC games. I can play on the couch through my TV and a 360 controller, or I can play at my desk with a mouse and keyboard. There's reasons for that not to work for everyone though.


I don't know if you watched the original Switch conference from like January 2017, but the bit when Koizumi collapsed on the couch with a Joy Con in each hand is what convinced me to buy a Switch.


----------



## TedEH

I was always a PC guy, but having something that can both play on my TV and then travel with me to work or jams or wherever else was a huuuge selling point. I already really liked the 3ds, but it's basically one of those _and_ a traditional console at the same time. 

Who needs other consoles when you have a PC for all the big flashy fancy games, and a switch for Nintendo exclusives and portability, right? Right? 
Nah, some of the other console exclusives are cool too.


----------



## mongey

I wasn't going to bother with ps5 for while but my launch ps4 is starting to crap out on me . Have changed the HD once already and now it is randomly restarting itself again .May be console shopping in the not too distant future 


Id even consider going back to xbox for this gen . Was an xbox guy though the 360 days ,even though I had a ps3 that got little use . But the BC added to the ps5 is good cause I have a bunch of games unfinished ,and stuff I still play


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I'm not anti-PC gaming like wank is, but I don't do it purely because I already spend roughly 10 hours of my day in a desk chair for work - the last thing I want to do is spend another 2-4 hours at night in one enjoying games
> 
> That and the PC master race/part culture is just pretty off-putting as well



This, pretty much. After about an hour spent PC gaming my right wrist feels like it's going to fall off. And I work in IT, so a day at the office (not that I've had many of those since March) makes it that much more sore to begin with. Plus, my current living arrangements are not at all conducive to having a comfortable layout for my computer desk that would allow me to get a comfortable chair or enough desk space to not be constantly lifting my right arm to reset the mouse position. :/

The constant need to upgrade video cards and deal with failing/underperforming components is a gigantic turnoff. I got a PC about 5 years ago that was upper-middle-class basically, and it could do things like play Witcher 3 fine at 1080p with most of the stuff turned on, but after about a year there were already things coming out that made it run like crap and made the fans roar and I just completely lost interest. Until this most recent console generation, the biggest thing that was better about consoles was that people focused on getting the games to run better on existing hardware instead of focused on getting people to have to pay to upgrade their computer to be able to play it.

I was all about the PC games for 10 or so years. I remember the good ol' days of having to constantly upgrade/downgrade driver versions depending on what game you were playing to minimize number of crashes, and all that fun garbage. Not saying console games don't crash, they absolutely do, but it could be insane with computers and you had way more components/compatibility issues that you'd have to troubleshoot.

I think the last gasps of my PC gaming were around 8 years ago, at that point I still used to try and get FPS games on PC and everything else on console since mouse/keyboard control for FPS games is just infinitely superior, but eventually I even dropped off that (partly cause so few precision-required FPS games are interesting to me anymore - Doom's about it).


----------



## BlackMastodon

Hopefully I don't risk blowing this up, but I'll throw in my 2 cents.

I vuew the whole PC Master Race thing as more of a self-aware joke about the ones that choose to play on PC, but anyone that actually says it non-ironically is the same type of person the is vehemently pro-Sony/Xbox and will bash the other. Vocal minorities and such. 

Last console I owned before this year was the Xbox 360 and that thing did it for me for a very long time. Xbone and PS4 didn't seem appealing so I made the investment for a gaming PC and have ran with that since 2014. I realized when I got a Switch this year that there is absolutely something to be said about couch gaming especially when you can separate the joycons and just starfish on a pile of pillows.


----------



## TedEH

It surprises me to still hear about computers becoming "obsolete in a year" kind of thing - granted, I did just upgrade to a new PC recently, but the one it replaced had lasted about 7 years. (Plus an SSD added because you really do need an SSD now, and I did update the video card shortly before the full PC update, which meant the new system is still using that new card... so it's still kind of just one full upgrade?)

I think one of the key things is whether or not you're trying to keep up with recent games -> if you've always got the latest console, you're probably good for the most part. The flip side is that a PC basically can play everything that _has_ worked on a PC up to whatever the hardware limit is: there's no comparison for backwards compatibility - old DOS game? Do it. Emulators without having to jailbreak something? Do it. GoG and Steam generally have updates/ports of older stuff to modern standards covered (not perfectly, but better than consoles do). The library is huge for PC if you don't need to be on the bleeding edge.

That being said - I just finished that PS3 game I was trying to get through, Ni no Kuni. I can't remember if I posted my thoughts on it, but it's pretty good for the most part. The battle system takes some getting used to, but it worked pretty well. The writing and voice acting is very... juvenile, though. As in, it sometimes gets cringy. Like TV shows for toddler kind of writing. While the presentation is great, the story itself wasn't what I'd hoped it would be. Otherwise pretty standard jrpg quality I think.



BlackMastodon said:


> I vuew the whole PC Master Race thing as more of a self-aware joke about the ones that choose to play on PC, but anyone that actually says it non-ironically is the same type of person the is vehemently pro-Sony/Xbox and will bash the other. Vocal minorities and such.


+1. The whole "gamer culture" thing has been discussed enough, so no need to go there again. I feel like most PC gamers I know tend mostly to think of themselves as suckers to deep discounts that bury them under backlogs of shame and mountains of cheap indie games they'll probably never actually play.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I don't really have a horse in the PC/Console race namely I mostly don't care. I understand that PCs do have the advantage, and I've flirted with it back in the day when my sister and brother in law were building PCs, but I couldn't be bothered and used my money on music gear instead. Frame rate data was something I only cared for in fighting games, and nowhere else.



MFB said:


> That and the PC master race/part culture is just pretty off-putting as well



That meme did start off as an insult after all, but of course meme culture isn't exactly one to control so many took it as a badge of honour, thus losing the joke. Of course Yahtzee long regrets coining the term. Last time I checked, you can call them  dick slurp all stars now.



TedEH said:


> That being said - I just finished that PS3 game I was trying to get through, Ni no Kuni. I can't remember if I posted my thoughts on it, but it's pretty good for the most part. The battle system takes some getting used to, but it worked pretty well. The writing and voice acting is very... juvenile, though. As in, it sometimes gets cringy. Like TV shows for toddler kind of writing. While the presentation is great, the story itself wasn't what I'd hoped it would be. Otherwise pretty standard jrpg quality I think.



I liked Ni No Kuni up until a certain point. Take away the Studio Ghibli prestige and it's the most bog standard pedestrian JRPG that came years too late. Though my biggest gripe is the needlessly overcomplicated battle system. I mean I got used to it too but only because Stockholm Syndrome kicked in and I wanted to cross the game off my list of JRPGs to finish. Perhaps I'm being too harsh on such a light hearted game but the hybrid real time turn based Pokemon esque micro managing got on my nerves.

I do like the sequel more since it brought all my complaints to the bin, put the battle mechanics back to basics and has the most bizarre introduction sequence even by JRPG standards.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

It's not really an either/or situation for PC vs consoles imo. I like and use both.
I mean in terms of customization/scalability and being better for FPS/ strategy games, PC is the way to go.
I actually started on consoles back in the SNES days, stuck with them all the way til X360, then got sick of how games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 ran on consoles, so I switched to PC. They were completely different games on PC and modding them significantly enhanced the replayability of the games.

I still dabble in console games but only for very specific stuff I can't get on PC like Breath of the Wild or the Last of Us. There is no real benefit to consoles other than first party exclusives imo. I can play with a controller on my PC, GOG and Steam have nearly infinite indie titles so there's always new stuff to play, plus you can usually get games for cheaper than console.

As far as driver and hardware issues, I haven't had any issue with that while running a Nvidia card, though I know some people using AMD cards had those issues a few years ago. It's generally a lot less of an issue nowadays ime.

Also I have a lot less issues with wrist pain after lowering my DPI and using my whole arm to move the mouse rather than just my wrist. Also really helped with landing more headshots in FPS games lol


----------



## Choop

Primarily a PC gamer here, and I don't want to go super deep into checking off boxes for and against console gaming vs PC gaming or if there even needs to be a "vs" at all, but I will say that I've had some great experiences playing games on PC over the years that just wouldn't have been possible on any console. I have been playing some console games on the ol' PS3 lately again though, and there really is something to be said for just kicking back and enjoying something that you don't have to configure. 

Speaking of that and of having never completed Xenogears...maybe that'll be the next thing I play on the PS3.


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> Also I have a lot less issues with wrist pain after lowering my DPI and using my whole arm to move the mouse rather than just my wrist. Also really helped with landing more headshots in FPS games lol


Back in my teens, the first thing I'd do before starting a game was increase mouse/look sensitivity because I thought it made me more pr0 and I could look and react faster and thus, be better. Wasn't until my early 20s when I realized how goddamn twitchy I am and that having a lower sensitivity with more room to move the mouse not only made me play better but, like you said, was WAY more comfortable.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> It's not really an either/or situation for PC vs consoles imo. I like and use both.
> I mean in terms of customization/scalability and being better for FPS/ strategy games, PC is the way to go.
> I actually started on consoles back in the SNES days, stuck with them all the way til X360, then got sick of how games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 ran on consoles, so I switched to PC. They were completely different games on PC and modding them significantly enhanced the replayability of the games.
> 
> I still dabble in console games but only for very specific stuff I can't get on PC like Breath of the Wild or the Last of Us. There is no real benefit to consoles other than first party exclusives imo. I can play with a controller on my PC, GOG and Steam have nearly infinite indie titles so there's always new stuff to play, plus you can usually get games for cheaper than console.
> 
> As far as driver and hardware issues, I haven't had any issue with that while running a Nvidia card, though I know some people using AMD cards had those issues a few years ago. It's generally a lot less of an issue nowadays ime.
> 
> Also I have a lot less issues with wrist pain after lowering my DPI and using my whole arm to move the mouse rather than just my wrist. Also really helped with landing more headshots in FPS games lol



God...Oblivion. I played that on PC with the unofficial patch first, found it generally boring but OK, and later got it out of a bargain bin for Xbox 360 cause I wanted to give it another try on the format I preferred. It was basically unplayable. It makes Skyrim look like a Nintendo game in terms of polish/lack of bugs. I don't understand how anyone even made it through that game on console. 

The driver update/downgrade dance I had to do back in the day was with a Radeon card. I still have a bias to this day that I'll only use Nvidia cause my experience with a non-Nvidia card was just so bad.

I have a couple student workers that are very much PC master race types. They're constantly chattering to me about specific models of graphics cards, and I never have any idea what they're talking about. They buy/sell stuff off sketchy websites, they rebuild machines and flip them, etc. I'm glad they like it, but man, I'm just not interested in any of that anymore. Especially the cable management part. Ugh. 

I bought a pretty high-powered computer from my work a few months ago and still haven't even plugged it in. It would probably be able to handle about anything I could throw at it if I bought a new graphics card. But, I just don't think it's possible for me to use it unless I get a new desk with better space/heights for mouse control that would hurt my wrist less, and I don't think it's possible for me to get a new desk unless I get a new apartment!!

PCs are definitely the infinitely superior option when it comes to backwards-compatibility, yes. I guess I just don't care that much most of the time. I generally stick to things available on the current platforms, and buy remasters of things I want to play. I've only hooked up the 360 a couple times since getting the PS4 back in 2017 (I bought it for Horizon Zero Dawn). 

I did look into PS5 preorders a bunch, and yeah, it's pretty much impossible to get one unless you want to camp out on websites through Black Friday. I think that I might wait a bit. I don't particularly want to buy the system if there would be no discount games on it yet! Though I have a few games with free PS5 upgrades, so I dunno. If I see the opportunity to buy one I'll probably take it. I'm curious what will happen with Xbox vs PS5, too. PS4 was vastly better this gen in terms of games I wanted to play, but it was the reverse with PS3 vs 360.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I do like the sequel more since it brought all my complaints to the bin, put the battle mechanics back to basics and has the most bizarre introduction sequence even by JRPG standards.


I had been wondering if the sequel was worth look for - While I didn't dislike the first one, it's (as was said) pretty standard rpg stuff and kinda long for what it is. I don't know that I feel a need for more of the same unless things have changed significantly. Maybe if it goes on sale at some point I'll grab it, but I don't feel a pull towards staying in that franchise/world at the moment.



Choop said:


> if there even needs to be a "vs" at all


There really doesn't.  It's fun conversationally, but it's just entertainment. Play whatever entertains you.


----------



## wankerness

Tales of Vesperia for switch is on sale for 15 again, so I grabbed it. We'll see how much I play before AC:Valhalla comes out next week!

I'm trying to finish up Skyrim. The last two trophies/achievements on it are horrible. Get to level 78??? That's going to take probably 20 hours, minimum, and I'm at 65 now. Then there's maxing out the werewolf skill tree, which requires eating many, many humanoid enemies, which are in short supply and often bug out so the kills don't count, plus the crappy werewolf ability can't be turned on/off at will like the vampire one. Ah well. I got the platinum already, so I might be done with it till I go for a mod run someday.


----------



## Triple-J

So I'm five years late to the party on this but I'm currently playing Arkham Knight and it's ok but is quite a comedown as it's just an average sandbox shooter (it really reminds me of Mercenaries on the PS2/XB) that features a pretty unlikeable version of Batman in it whereas the original was a solid Metroidvania title that I couldn't get enough of.


----------



## TedEH

I remember liking the first Arkham game - but each subsequent entry just kinda kept boiling it down and repeating the same formula so it got old and I stopped keeping up with them.


----------



## wankerness

The first two Arkham games are great. Never played the third (Origins). Arkham Knight is solid apart from the batmobile garbage, which the game forced you into WAY too much. I ended up with a negative view of the game primarily based on that. I seem to remember the fight against the main villain being awful, too. Definitely no boss fights were as fun as say, Mr Freeze in Arkham City.


----------



## Triple-J

wankerness said:


> The first two Arkham games are great. Never played the third (Origins). Arkham Knight is solid apart from the batmobile garbage, which the game forced you into WAY too much. I ended up with a negative view of the game primarily based on that. I seem to remember the fight against the main villain being awful, too. Definitely no boss fights were as fun as say, Mr Freeze in Arkham City.



Everyone warned me about the Batmobile sections and I'm 50/50 as they feel like something from the Armoured Core games(which I like) but they also feel out place and break up the action too much so I can see why people dislike them. 
I'd recommend Origins though as it plays more like the 1st & is the only game in the series where the story has a reason for being packed full of villains plus the DLC is awesome as the 1st is based on an animated series episode about Mr Freeze and the 2nd is loosely based on Batman Begins.


----------



## Leviathus

Been tipsy on dark souls 3 multiplayer this afternoon. Gave out most of my embers, and a few dung pies too lol. Bearing gifts is fun.


----------



## TedEH

I caved and grabbed a used copy of the Mario 3D collection - I've only ever played 64, so the other two are new to me, and so far they seem like decent games. And I think I did good - despite the fact that I kinda hate the whole limite-time-only release thing, I managed to find a copy that was being sold at a reasonable price below new rather than a scalper, so I only feel slightly gross for buying into it.


----------



## MFB

Got around to staring Doom Eternal, and its just as I thought it would be, fixing what wasn't broken. Doomguy immediately feels much faster and more the look sensitivity is off the map, I feel like I should crank it down but then I worry about keeping up. Ammo might as well be nicknamed Jackson Browne causr that shit is always running on empty - and thats with three guns by this point! How is that even possible. With DOOM 2016, I dont recall every running out this quickly, and the lack of pistol as a backup makes it that much more annoying as well. Dash and double jump mechanics introduced so they could add platforming segments isnt too thrilling either; on I mis-timed my in air double jump before a dash? Guess I'll die and do it over, thanks. 

Also, was there some game/media in between 2016 and Eternal that I missed, because there's a bunch of new shit not mentioned in the previous game or in the beginning here, its just glossed right over. How did the Invasion of Earth begin, and subsequently, go off the rails to where they won? Did Doomguy just sit in his aptly named Fortress of Doom, like the most broody Batman in the Justice League watchtower you've ever seen. Did the Khan Maykr lead the invasion, and if so, who is she and why was she never mention in 2016? Same for the suddenly relevant Hell Priests. VEGA is also still around but isnt one of the main missions as the end of DOOM, to literally destroy VEGA's core and make him no more? 

Maybe I'm being overly critical because of how much I loved DOOM 2016, but this does feel like it took a step in the wrong direction to try and go for mass appeal instead of going with what already worked.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I had been wondering if the sequel was worth look for - While I didn't dislike the first one, it's (as was said) pretty standard rpg stuff and kinda long for what it is. I don't know that I feel a need for more of the same unless things have changed significantly. Maybe if it goes on sale at some point I'll grab it, but I don't feel a pull towards staying in that franchise/world at the moment.





I should've just said they did a full overhaul of the battle system. The turn based system is ditched in favour a Tales/Star Ocean esque real time hack and slash, and the familiars are replaced with Pikmin like minions controlled by the AI. So less menu fumbling and more actual combat.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Got around to staring Doom Eternal, and its just as I thought it would be, fixing what wasn't broken.
> 
> Maybe I'm being overly critical because of how much I loved DOOM 2016, but this does feel like it took a step in the wrong direction to try and go for mass appeal instead of going with what already worked.



I don’t see how you could think they went in the “mass appeal” direction with Eternal. I definitely prefer the first, but the difficulty on Eternal is through the roof in comparison and I think that fact alone suggests strongly they went more niche if anything. I really didn’t like the ammo situation, either, but it was clear they just wanted you to be using the chainsaw every CD so I guess it makes sense. I need to play more of it sometime to get into the flow.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I should've just said they did a full overhaul of the battle system.


That really does look significantly better. I officially have more interest in that sequel now.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I don’t see how you could think they went in the “mass appeal” direction with Eternal. I definitely prefer the first, but the difficulty on Eternal is through the roof in comparison and I think that fact alone suggests strongly they went more niche if anything. I really didn’t like the ammo situation, either, but it was clear they just wanted you to be using the chainsaw every CD so I guess it makes sense. I need to play more of it sometime to get into the flow.



If difficulty takes away from mass appeal, then how do you explain From Software games being huge hits for Playstation? It's harder yeah but people wouldn't know that until they played it since demos died around 2005. But these new mechanics, along with the some changes in art direction (like the pickups are now bigger, glowing seems intensified) and even Doomguy seems to be turning into an overly complex background; what with the Night Sentinels protecting the Wraiths, who were betrayed or something, instead of just "this Marine who's really good at killing demons." The fact that I had to read as many Wiki articles as I did just to find that out is shocking.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> If difficulty takes away from mass appeal, then how do you explain From Software games being huge hits for Playstation? It's harder yeah but people wouldn't know that until they played it since demos died around 2005. But these new mechanics, along with the some changes in art direction (like the pickups are now bigger, glowing seems intensified) and even Doomguy seems to be turning into an overly complex background; what with the Night Sentinels protecting the Wraiths, who were betrayed or something, instead of just "this Marine who's really good at killing demons." The fact that I had to read as many Wiki articles as I did just to find that out is shocking.


The Fromsoft games like DS1-3 aren't actually that hard. At least not compared to shit like miyazaki's Ninja Gaiden on xbox, Contra, Ghosts n Goblins or other notoriously hard games. They got the hard game rep because they're extremely vague about the effects of most items and systems within the game moreso than the actual difficulty of gameplay. There are definitely frustrating areas in all the games (Blighttown, Crypts, the fucking prison in DS2, etc) but I mean I beat all the games multiple times solo. They just demand your full attention when fighting unlike something like say Assassin's Creed II where you could just counter spam and murder everyone.


----------



## Mathemagician

KnightBrolaire said:


> The Fromsoft games like DS1-3 aren't actually that hard. At least not compared to shit like miyazaki's Ninja Gaiden on xbox, Contra, Ghosts n Goblins or other notoriously hard games. They got the hard game rep because they're extremely vague about the effects of most items and systems within the game moreso than the actual difficulty of gameplay. There are definitely frustrating areas in all the games (Blighttown, Crypts, the fucking prison in DS2, etc) but I mean I beat all the games multiple times solo. They just demand your full attention when fighting unlike something like say Assassin's Creed II where you could just counter spam and murder everyone.



People just weren’t used to a game where a no-name enemy could kill you in two hits off the bat, and then 20 hours in could still kill you in roughly 3 or 4 hits because you tried to be cute and practice a parry instead of just dodging.


----------



## Leviathus

I was on some of the older hitmans recently and was struggling more than i do with soulsborneiro games. Weird how things change, i remember beating them back in the day and it not being as challenging.


----------



## gabito

I finally got a copy of NieR (Gestalt) for the PS3.

I'm liking it more than Nier Automata, which mostly bored me... The graphics look like a PS2 remaster (think GoW II HD...) for some reason, and combat is somewhat like in GoW II too, but the rest is pretty good so far: cool characters, setting, story, music, and the bosses are very good (again: giant bosses, like in GoW...).

I guess I'll be getting the PS4 remake when it's out.

Anyways, still rocking the PS3. I'm still finding plenty of games worth playing there (having played more than 100 games on it already LOL...). Still a bit disappointed about the PS4 though.


----------



## wankerness

What have you heard about a remake of Nier Gestalt?

I like some things about that game quite a bit, like I think the plot/characters are more involving than Nier: Automata (even though Emil's voiceacting is cringe to the ultimate), but it has some giant issues. For example, the sidequests, which are often like "collect 20 of an extremely rare drop, and receive no reward other than a few exp." The world often feels empty in the wrong way. Also the fact that the game was rushed through before they could finalize some stuff and thus the second playthrough was interesting in concept, but missing most of what they had planned for it (you were supposed to play as Kaine, giving it some actual variety apart from the added cutscenes).

I find it odd that you found it more interesting than Nier: Automata. Did you do all three "playthroughs" on that one? It definitely didn't hit "one of the best games of all time" status for me until I hit the third playthrough and saw where everything had been leading (since the third playthrough is basically the second half of the plot). I absolutely love that game and it's too bad it's brought down by terrible scaling problems (either you turn the difficulty up to hard and are a total glass cannon that dies in 2-3 hits, or you leave the difficulty on normal and everything dies in the blink of an eye if you do any sidequests/weapon upgrades at all). The second playthrough's a bit of a slog, too, but man, that third one is worth everything. The last couple hours of that game basically were just giving me the chills the whole time. It probably has the best game soundtrack of all time, too.


----------



## wankerness

I played through Untitled Goose Game on co-op with the lady, we loved it. I might have to try it on one-player sometime, I'm unclear if it has the same levels/objectives. Some of the objectives seemed like they'd be incredibly annoying if you didn't have a second player to run interference. 

I also had her play Octodad: Dadliest Catch, which was also a big hit. Are there any other games in this vein? Google doesn't seem to give very good suggestions. Like, it suggested Goat Simulator, which I also have (it was free with PS+ at some point), but which has no plot/objectives/polish and is just sandbox lunacy. 

I finished up Skyrim's trophies by getting the last several levels with the alteration/fast travel glitch that gives you two-three levels every time you fast travel across the map, woo. Now it's on to Fallout 4 for about a day until AC: Valhalla comes out!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

As I'm completely bored with or uninterested by most of what this current gen has to offer, and thanks to the THPS remaster, I've gone back to my childhood and pulled out my copy of Def Jam Vendetta. Trying to beat DMX without a gameshark is a test that I'm sure saw the demise of thousands of controllers.

I never got a chance to play FFNY as a kid and the prices for it on the used market mean I never will as an adult either.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Highly debating picking up Baldurs Gate 3. I should prob finish Wasteland 3 before starting any other CRPGs lol


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> What have you heard about a remake of Nier Gestalt?
> 
> I like some things about that game quite a bit, like I think the plot/characters are more involving than Nier: Automata (even though Emil's voiceacting is cringe to the ultimate), but it has some giant issues. For example, the sidequests, which are often like "collect 20 of an extremely rare drop, and receive no reward other than a few exp." The world often feels empty in the wrong way. Also the fact that the game was rushed through before they could finalize some stuff and thus the second playthrough was interesting in concept, but missing most of what they had planned for it (you were supposed to play as Kaine, giving it some actual variety apart from the added cutscenes).
> 
> I find it odd that you found it more interesting than Nier: Automata. Did you do all three "playthroughs" on that one? It definitely didn't hit "one of the best games of all time" status for me until I hit the third playthrough and saw where everything had been leading (since the third playthrough is basically the second half of the plot). I absolutely love that game and it's too bad it's brought down by terrible scaling problems (either you turn the difficulty up to hard and are a total glass cannon that dies in 2-3 hits, or you leave the difficulty on normal and everything dies in the blink of an eye if you do any sidequests/weapon upgrades at all). The second playthrough's a bit of a slog, too, but man, that third one is worth everything. The last couple hours of that game basically were just giving me the chills the whole time. It probably has the best game soundtrack of all time, too.



I think they are remaking the combat to be more Automata-like, but I'm not 100% sure. And, yeah, I find the sidequests to be boring... and also there are not map markers for them (only for the main mission), so I'm skipping most of them. Not a completionist TBH. I don't care.

I hope there are some QOL improvements in that regard (and more...).

I completed all of Automata's playthroughs, even got a platinum for it (I bought a few, not gonna lie... didn't want to do the grindier ones). It's a really good game, but I wasn't 100% into it, and I couldn't "relate" to the characters (if you want to call it that), or even like them. I find the characters in Gestalt to be way more likeable, and that's a big plus for me. Weiss is amazing. Story wise they're maybe on par, but I like Gestalt's story the most. And there's more of Taro's weirdness too, probably. Automata is more of an existentialist / bleak story, while Gestalt is more of a regular friendship / father tries to save daughter / and also a bleak-ish story.

I don't think Gestalt's gameplay (combat) totally sucks, but Automata's way better for sure. And there's a lot of backtracking on Gestalt which is... ugh. But for the budget they had, it's amazing how much the crammed into the game. And it's kind of obvious they had to cut a lot too.

Music is great on both.

Anyway, I hope the remake smooths out some of the rough edges. I don't think they'll fix everything or it'll end up feeling like a totally different game, but some improvements here and there would be good.


----------



## wankerness

I was completely unaware of any of this. I looked it up, and looks like it's slated for April 2021. I'd probably rather have a sequel to Automata, but hey, I'll definitely be buying this immediately if it's any good. 

Speaking of remasters/remakes, I'm really looking forward to them finally releasing the Mass Effect trilogy. I've played through all three of those games multiple times and I'm really looking forward to playing them again. No release date hinted at whatsoever, but hopefully it won't take them too long since they're not doing full-blown remakes. Hopefully when they convert Mass Effect 1 to the new engine they'll make the combat/movement more like 2/3 instead of leaving it as the wallowy, clunky mess of loading elevators it always was, but whatever, I'm used to it and will play it regardless!


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I was completely unaware of any of this. I looked it up, and looks like it's slated for April 2021. I'd probably rather have a sequel to Automata, but hey, I'll definitely be buying this immediately if it's any good.
> 
> Speaking of remasters/remakes, I'm really looking forward to them finally releasing the Mass Effect trilogy. I've played through all three of those games multiple times and I'm really looking forward to playing them again. No release date hinted at whatsoever, but hopefully it won't take them too long since they're not doing full-blown remakes. Hopefully when they convert Mass Effect 1 to the new engine they'll make the combat/movement more like 2/3 instead of leaving it as the wallowy, clunky mess of loading elevators it always was, but whatever, I'm used to it and will play it regardless!



ME 1/2/3 remasters? Nice! Didn't know anything about it. I was thinking about playing the trilogy again for the nth time, but I guess I'll wait. 

Nah, I'll play it anyways. I could play those games forever.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I played through Untitled Goose Game on co-op with the lady, we loved it. I might have to try it on one-player sometime, I'm unclear if it has the same levels/objectives. Some of the objectives seemed like they'd be incredibly annoying if you didn't have a second player to run interference.
> 
> I also had her play Octodad: Dadliest Catch, which was also a big hit. Are there any other games in this vein? Google doesn't seem to give very good suggestions. Like, it suggested Goat Simulator, which I also have (it was free with PS+ at some point), but which has no plot/objectives/polish and is just sandbox lunacy.
> 
> I finished up Skyrim's trophies by getting the last several levels with the alteration/fast travel glitch that gives you two-three levels every time you fast travel across the map, woo. Now it's on to Fallout 4 for about a day until AC: Valhalla comes out!


Untitled Goose Game is the all time best speed running game.


----------



## NotDonVito

NotDonVito said:


> I hate to admit it, but I'm becoming a normie phone gamer more and more recently. I'm pretty much all digital on my other platforms(PC and Switch), but damn it's hard to swallow throwing down retail price on digital games, especially on Switch, where most games are actually cheaper to buy physically because there are rarely any good sales. Like I just can't bring myself to spend $60 on a Hyrule Warriors download, when I can just play Genshin for free and try my luck to not roll crap characters/weapons. I also tried cloud gaming for the first time with the Control demo on Switch, and it played flawlessly on my crap Alabama internet, so there's that as well. Unless retail games get significantly cheaper, streaming and F2P are going to take over single player gaming for me, especially once I get a 5G phone.


Oh man do I regret posting this one. I've been testing Stadia and Game Pass streaming over the weekend. Turns out my crap Alabama internet can't handle it, and my 5G gets throttled after about a full day of playing. Ever played Far Cry 5 in 720p on a phone? I don't recommend it. Back to the old ways for me. Now I just really wanna play Far Cry 5 on a proper platform.


----------



## wankerness

Far Cry 5 was so infuriating how after you completed too many objectives you'd get completely unavoidably "kidnapped" by one of the lieutenants, and playing through their quests would permanently lock out everything on that section of the map. As an open-world game completist, it was infuriating knowing there was content that I now couldn't do unless I started the game over again and went for those missions/objectives before I tripped the boss's "kidnap player" trigger! I liked everything about the game besides that mechanic.


----------



## wankerness

Started AC: Valhalla. Something seems off about the whole feel of the enemies and combat in the world. They feel like mirages, or something. It feels like a weird, floaty step down from AC: Odyssey. I'll probably get used to it eventually. I'm still in Norway!


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Far Cry 5 was so infuriating how after you completed too many objectives you'd get completely unavoidably "kidnapped" by one of the lieutenants, and playing through their quests would permanently lock out everything on that section of the map. As an open-world game completist, it was infuriating knowing there was content that I now couldn't do unless I started the game over again and went for those missions/objectives before I tripped the boss's "kidnap player" trigger! I liked everything about the game besides that mechanic.


That sort of thing annoys me so much that it'll probably stop me from ever getting the game now haha.

I've owned Doom Eternal since launch day and not started it up once yet due to how people have described it.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> That sort of thing annoys me so much that it'll probably stop me from ever getting the game now haha.
> 
> I've owned Doom Eternal since launch day and not started it up once yet due to how people have described it.



Far Cry New Dawn and Far Cry 4 both don't have that problem. I'd say try one of those. They're both good! Far Cry 5 was probably my favorite of the three, it was just too bad about the frickin' forced progression.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Far Cry New Dawn and Far Cry 4 both don't have that problem. I'd say try one of those. They're both good! Far Cry 5 was probably my favorite of the three, it was just too bad about the frickin' forced progression.


I've already got Far Cry 4 in my Steam backlog, so i'll give it a go yeh 

Also got Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon, cuz it just looks crazy in a great way.


----------



## wankerness

Blood Dragon is great. I hate that they didn't port it along with Far Cry 3 to modern consoles. The soundtrack is one of my favorites (it was major synthwave well before synthwave was trendy).


----------



## mongey

blood dragon is indeed awesome

finally got to final level on Hades. didn't make it to the end, got about 12 encounters in.

getting strong AOE effects on dash definitely help me allot in the game . its a big plus to be able to dodge and still do damage


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Blood Dragon is great. I hate that they didn't port it along with Far Cry 3 to modern consoles. The soundtrack is one of my favorites (it was major synthwave well before synthwave was trendy).


i get that you're anti pc gaming, but the pc versions of those games are great ime.


----------



## TedEH

This week I've learned why some people don't like Mario Sunshine. I've made it as far as the 7 shines you need in each level to get to the final mountain level. Between the challenges it took to get there, and how janky that level is on it's own, I just turned it off. It's a bit of a shame, 'cause it feels like there was so much potential there. At some moments you're thinking "this is pretty good, it's pretty much what I expect from a Mario title", then other moments you're swearing at the tv because some of the challenges are poorly designed, counter-intuitive and unfair. 

Here's hoping that Galaxy is better.


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> This week I've learned why some people don't like Mario Sunshine. I've made it as far as the 7 shines you need in each level to get to the final mountain level. Between the challenges it took to get there, and how janky that level is on it's own, I just turned it off. It's a bit of a shame, 'cause it feels like there was so much potential there. At some moments you're thinking "this is pretty good, it's pretty much what I expect from a Mario title", then other moments you're swearing at the tv because some of the challenges are poorly designed, counter-intuitive and unfair.
> 
> Here's hoping that Galaxy is better.



I don’t know how it plays on switch, but Galaxy was an A1 Mario game on the Wii. There’s a reason it got a direct sequel which rarely happens.


----------



## TedEH

I know the switch is capable of controlling well, so it sounds promising. Odyssey was good.

Speaking of switch controls.... does anyone else ever notice joycons having weird reception issues at times? I haven't been able to spot the pattern, but sometimes button presses wont register, or sticks will sort of "stick" for a second - as if the controller has just lost connection and regains it a second later. The only sort of pattern I've caught was that if I rest my hands such that my legs get in the way, that seems to make it worse. Maybe a line-of-sight thing. My best theory is that it's just a weakness of using bluetooth as the connection - since bluetooth seems to be a janky/finicky thing to begin with.


----------



## Choop

Mario Galaxy was fun -- it has puzzles but I remember it being pretty easy. It was a fun game to chill to when I played it, easy to process in small bits. Like I would play it for 10-20 minutes at a time and seems like I always would accomplish something.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> This week I've learned why some people don't like Mario Sunshine. I've made it as far as the 7 shines you need in each level to get to the final mountain level. Between the challenges it took to get there, and how janky that level is on it's own, I just turned it off. It's a bit of a shame, 'cause it feels like there was so much potential there. At some moments you're thinking "this is pretty good, it's pretty much what I expect from a Mario title", then other moments you're swearing at the tv because some of the challenges are poorly designed, counter-intuitive and unfair.
> 
> Here's hoping that Galaxy is better.


I adore Mario Sunshine, but when I play it I get most of the stars ignore the pachinko machine and poison river, and abandon the final stage. Don't really have issues with the rest of it. 

Galaxy is a gem, though. Second best 3D Mario imo. 


TedEH said:


> I know the switch is capable of controlling well, so it sounds promising. Odyssey was good.
> 
> Speaking of switch controls.... does anyone else ever notice joycons having weird reception issues at times? I haven't been able to spot the pattern, but sometimes button presses wont register, or sticks will sort of "stick" for a second - as if the controller has just lost connection and regains it a second later. The only sort of pattern I've caught was that if I rest my hands such that my legs get in the way, that seems to make it worse. Maybe a line-of-sight thing. My best theory is that it's just a weakness of using bluetooth as the connection - since bluetooth seems to be a janky/finicky thing to begin with.


There's a known issue with Joy Con stick drift and Nintendo haven't been addressing it properly. There's currently an ongoing class action.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> i get that you're anti pc gaming, but the pc versions of those games are great ime.



yeah, I have fc3/blood dragon on PC and I think that was where I played them. My last apartment was much more conducive!


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> I adore Mario Sunshine, but when I play it I get most of the stars ignore the pachinko machine and poison river, and abandon the final stage. Don't really have issues with the rest of it.
> 
> Galaxy is a gem, though. Second best 3D Mario imo.
> 
> There's a known issue with Joy Con stick drift and Nintendo haven't been addressing it properly. There's currently an ongoing class action.



that’s something else. What he’s describing sounds like something I occasionally experience if I move the controller behind something that blocks its LOS to the console, or if I tilt it too far forwards.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> that’s something else. What he’s describing sounds like something I occasionally experience if I move the controller behind something that blocks its LOS to the console, or if I tilt it too far forwards.


Yeah, that's an OG suspected irritant for the Joy Con drift back to March 2017.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> There's a known issue with Joy Con stick drift


I'm well aware of the drift, but that's not what I'm experiencing at all. Actually, I have no drift issue at all. Just weird reception hiccups.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah. I get that exact effect when using the pro controller or the joycons. I think it's just interference of some sort. It's very rare if I keep a clear line to the console.


----------



## TedEH

It's pretty lame when it happens during something like a Mario game where subtle timing can make all the difference. I'm tempted to try to get one of those adapters that let you use other types of controllers on the switch, and just use a 360 controller or something. It seems better if I'm close to the console, keep line of sight, etc.. I thought maybe the the dock being farther away from the TV was helping, but I don't know if I'm imagining that. Same with how close the controllers are to my phone. Does it matter? I have no idea. Maybe if I turn bluetooth off on my phone? Pretty lame, cause I otherwise really like the switch, but this kind of thing can kill the experience pretty quick.


----------



## wankerness

It's been pretty rare for me. I have the dock under my TV about 6" and I never have my phone's bluetooth off. My wireless router is about 4 feet to the left of my couch (only mentioned cause it's probably another source of possible interference). I really think it only happens when I move the controller like, down behind my coffee table that's between me and the TV. I dunno if something else in your house might be causing interference.

But yeah. I hated wireless controllers till this generation, when they became unavoidable. Wavebirds were always running out of batteries, wiimotes were always running out of batteries or losing sync to the TV when i had to put them down, xbox 360 were always running out of batteries, etc. I used wired on 360 and gamecube without exception and never touched the wireless ones again. PS4 batteries drain SO much faster than the Switch's pro controller it's ridiculous, and I occasionally (it's happened twice in hundreds of hours of use) have a problem where all my controllers randomly desync and can't resync unless I hard-reset the ps4 with the power button on the unit, unfortunately losing any progress in the game, since I can't just plug a controller in and have the system recognize it. So, that's a pretty big annoyance. But, on the positive for PS4, I've NEVER had what I'd describe as those occasional blips of interference like I get with Switch occasionally. I'd say those happen with switch for me about once every 4 hours.


----------



## TedEH

Part of me kinda wants a switch pro controller at some point. Those work wired, right? Would just need a really long usb cable.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Part of me kinda wants a switch pro controller at some point. Those work wired, right? Would just need a really long usb cable.



I dunno. I've never tried it wired, partly cause the wireless has mostly been fine and partly cause I'm still using the stock USB-C cable which is only about 6 feet long (I'd want at least 12 to avoid any chance of yanking the dock off the shelf). It charges with USB-C, but I dunno if it's like the PS4 where plugging it in only means it stays charged, not that the system treats it as wired. I have a "charging grip" for a second set of joycons, too, which could technically also be left plugged in while I played, but I haven't tried that, either. I think either way the USB-C cord might get in the way for games like BOTW or some of those Mario Galaxy sections where there's heavy use of tilt functions with the controller.


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> Part of me kinda wants a switch pro controller at some point. Those work wired, right? Would just need a really long usb cable.



They def work wired b/c I had the battery die and wanted to play a game so I plugged the controller in and stood in front of the tv for 30 minutes while it partially charged. Then unplugged and was able to play a while with no issues. 

I defend this b/c my time was limited, lol.


----------



## wankerness

I think his question is more "does the system treat it as wired or does it still send game commands via bluetooth." With the PS4 controllers, the latter is definitely the case even if you play with them plugged in for charging (I used to leave them plugged in when doing long sessions in my last apartment).

I got curious and looked it up. You can manually force it to communicate via wired instead of wireless. BUT, it has worse latency! People in this particular thread just guess that the available bandwidth on USB is less than bluetooth. So, you would probably eliminate the interference you're getting, but you might notice lag! Though it sounds like it's probably only noticeable if you're like, a pro fighting game player.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSw...a_did_you_know_this_the_pro_controller_wired/


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Anyone know if any of the Zoids games are any good? I'm feeling nostalgic after watching the anime again.


----------



## StevenC

I highly recommend a Switch Pro controller. I have 3 and never had any problems, but have had various issues with Joy Cons.

Also they charge crazy fast and last forever. Not Wii U Pro controller forever, but I swear I'm recharging my PS4 controller every time I pick it up, and it's so slow.


----------



## wankerness

Yep, I have to have two ps4 controllers and have one charging at all times. Seems like they last about a maximum of 4 hours of use. The switch pro controller can go for days without charging sometimes (I'd guess at least 8 hours of use on average?).


----------



## wankerness

Been playing AC Valhalla for a while. I currently prefer Odyssey, but it's growing on me. A couple things that helped:

1) Jacking the brightness as high as possible. In HDR mode, this is one of the murkiest games I've ever played, and I was struggling to see wtf I was doing. HDR mode also cleverly turns off all the brightness settings. You can turn exposure all the way up and that at least makes it mostly playable, but it's still really dark.

2) Playing male Eivor instead of female. With Odyssey, Kassandra was infinitely superior to the male player character thanks to the voice acting from the guy being an absolute joke, and also thanks to the male model looking a lot worse than the female. In this game, though, the female Eivor is a rageaholic scary lady while male Eivor is a chill guy that looks like he belongs in a Norwegian viking metal band, and the voice acting matches. I'm glad you can switch at will, cause I think I would have enjoyed things a lot less if I'd been locked in with her. Ack.

3) Getting out of Norway - I like the snowy mountain look, but god, trudging around the mountains was boring and the inability to truly progress your character/clan until you're in England made it feel pointless. It's like the hinterlands in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I'm glad I got out of there pretty quickly after getting sick of it instead of trying to be completionist first. Much to my surprise, I like the look of England a lot more.

Things I definitely like less:

1) The nerf to the crow/eagle/hawk vision - your crow can still scout like it could in the previous games, but they turned off its ability to highlight enemies, so it seems near useless much of the time. I only find myself using it to try to locate entrances to buildings/low caves or occasionally the glow of treasure objects. I know they were trying to compensate for it being too easymode on the last two games, and while that is understandable, the neutered form it remains in almost would have been better gone completely.

2) The combat feels clunkier and slower than the last few games, and I'd ALMOST compare it to the clunkfest of Unity. I haven't experimented with anything other than shield/axe and dual-wielding axes, and I feel like I haven't unlocked any good abilities other than harpoon throw, so it will probably improve.

3) Arrows are much more limited than in Odyssey, making archery builds much less viable. Maybe this will improve with upgrades. As far as I can tell, though, you can't craft more arrows, and given you can only hold about 15 of them at a time it becomes a problem when fighting scads of guys that take multiple arrows each to die. Still, not as bad as Origins, where arrows were so scarce as to be only useful in niche situations.

4) They brought back those goddam environmental things like for the songs in Black Flag where you have to trigger an item and then chase it across the level quickly in the right path before it blows away. I hate that! You can't cheat like in black flag and just sit on the spawn point to pick it up after you miss it, either!


----------



## MFB

Playing Doom Eternal more, it hasn't grown on me at all, and this one is just a push to finish and justify the $30 I spent on it. 

Ammo is far too limited with the enemies it will throw at you, especially with the lack of a pistol as even the most basic backup, and it reverting to chainsaw for close quarters is also useless; you can kill one enemy to replenish ammo for other guns, but after that, you're back out of ammo for guns and now your chainsaw as well, when likely the harder enemies are going to be spawning. At least that seems to be how it goes with the waves, it starts as two/three big guys, then maybe an equal amount of smaller fluff enemies, one wave of all mid-level enemies to be annoying, then a big push at the end when you've wasted ammo on the little shits you were previously trying to hit (fuck any FPS with a flying enemy type too). 

Platforming can still fuck off as well, I don't need this "jump off a ledge on to a timed platform, then dash from there to a separate timed platform, turn around, dash to the bar that'll fling you around a corner with no ability to see ahead, oh you missed the bar at the end so do it all again with a flashing screen because you now have low health" bullshit.

The power ups are 100% aimed at you using the mechanics that don't feel reflexive at all. The ice grenade? Barely use it. Flame Belch? I can count the number of times on one hand. There are purple power ups scattered throughout that I honestly have no idea what they do, before the only power up that was purple was quad damage and those weren't readily available; which makes me wonder what it's purpose even is if I can pick it up and not have any idea what it just did for me.

I'm a third of the way through it and it feels like I should be further, no clue what they're gonna stretch out in this plot to keep it going for 8 more missions.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Finished Doom Eternal and I have mixed feelings. There are some great moments and level design. I appreciate the balance they struck in combat even if I didn't enjoy it as much as Doom 2016. 

However, the last couple of levels were not fun and just seemed to me to be a phoned in funnel of grind. Same with the last Boss, it just seemed really lazy next to other parts of the game. I had to push through a slight boredom to get it done.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I myself never even bothered to go back and finish Doom Eternal. I'm maybe at the third or second to last level and have no real intention of finishing it. And pretty much everything MFB said is why. Trying to get enjoyment out of that game was like trying to get blood from a stone after a while.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Yep, I have to have two ps4 controllers and have one charging at all times. Seems like they last about a maximum of 4 hours of use. The switch pro controller can go for days without charging sometimes (I'd guess at least 8 hours of use on average?).


More like 40. Wii U Pro could do 80. I don't know if I ever charged that thing.

Started playing Pikmin 3 Deluxe last night, finally. I forgot how much I love Pikmin, and this is just everything I love but better. Kinda miss controlling them with the C-stick though.


----------



## wankerness

How does the control work on switch? The Wii-u version controlled like a DS game (all tapping stuff on the game pad touchscreeen besides moving your character) and I really didn’t like that.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> How does the control work on switch? The Wii-u version controlled like a DS game (all tapping stuff on the game pad touchscreeen besides moving your character) and I really didn’t like that.


I thought there were a bunch of control schemes for the Wii U version: Wiimote, Gamepad, Pro controller and like a hybrid Wiimote+Gamepad? All the reports I've heard were that the Wii controls from Pikmin 1&2 were the way to play.

It controls fine, just like the Gamecube but there's a lock on with the right trigger and a charge function with X to send all of the selected Pikmin type at like walls or enemies. I'd like the multitasking to be a bit more streamlined and I keep getting muddled on dividing the swarm or accidentally throwing a crew member.


----------



## wankerness

There might have been options on Wii-U, I just chose the default. It kind of made sense, but as I'd played through 1/2 on Gamecube I think that's the control style I'd be most comfortable with. Sounds like that's how Switch works. But, it also sounds like maybe you could do that in the Wii-U version so rebuying it on Switch would be a total waste of money!


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> There might have been options on Wii-U, I just chose the default. It kind of made sense, but as I'd played through 1/2 on Gamecube I think that's the control style I'd be most comfortable with. Sounds like that's how Switch works. But, it also sounds like maybe you could do that in the Wii-U version so rebuying it on Switch would be a total waste of money!


I never got around to playing Pikmin 3 originally, but this has the DLC plus a good chunk of new Olimar and Louie missions.


----------



## wankerness

AC Valhalla has some incredibly annoying bugs with spamming you with ubisoft server errors on the map screen, and the save system randomly deciding that all save data is corrupt unless you exit out to the title screen. Better make sure you are looking at your save game file names, though, cause if the game crashes or you exit the game outright, all those "corrupt data" files will become actually corrupt instead of fixing themselves and you'll lose hours of gameplay!

Good times. This is what I get for buying a game at launch. I fortunately didn't lose any data to this error cause I caught it, but I only caught it after seeing it had been corrupting all my saves for over 5 hours. If that had become permanent, I would have probably rage quit the game for months!


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Spiderman got boring real quick for me so turned to god of war. This game is fantastic and I’m really enjoying it!


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, spiderman was a slog. God of War took a while for me to get into (mostly cause the combat seemed wallowy and uninteresting at first), but it sure got good as you unlocked more abilities and as BOY got more powerful.


----------



## mongey

ok at the point now where I make it to the final Hades fight every run , but just haven't managed to get him yet . getting closer though


----------



## ImNotAhab

wankerness said:


> AC Valhalla has some incredibly annoying bugs with spamming you with ubisoft server errors on the map screen, and the save system randomly deciding that all save data is corrupt unless you exit out to the title screen. Better make sure you are looking at your save game file names, though, cause if the game crashes or you exit the game outright, all those "corrupt data" files will become actually corrupt instead of fixing themselves and you'll lose hours of gameplay!
> 
> Good times. This is what I get for buying a game at launch. I fortunately didn't lose any data to this error cause I caught it, but I only caught it after seeing it had been corrupting all my saves for over 5 hours. If that had become permanent, I would have probably rage quit the game for months!


I really like the AC games but I gave up buying Ubisoft games at launch ages ago. There is always some kind of nonsense going on. They usually do a good job of polishing up the games after a few months though, hence why I usually grab them at xmas.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

wankerness said:


> Yeah, spiderman was a slog. God of War took a while for me to get into (mostly cause the combat seemed wallowy and uninteresting at first), but it sure got good as you unlocked more abilities and as BOY got more powerful.



Agreed, it was a little slow at first but leveling up quick has made it real fun!


----------



## Choop

Getting the WoW itch again lately -- but I don't even really want to play the new expansion or progress haha. Honestly I think I just miss flying around like an idiot and exploring.

Still doing Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. The gameplay during missions is stripped down and easier than something like MGS3, but I still like the game for all of its other aspects. Also looking to get into KOF -- Maybe I had mentioned it previously at one point in this thread. Looking at 2002 UM! That and Guilty Gear XX AC +R, since it's getting rollback netcode treatment.


----------



## MFB

Man, I hate that I slogged through 4 missions of Doom Eternal, and then after the losing me on the initial impressions, mission 5 shows glimpses of what could be and feels like a return to 2016. If it weren't for one little platforming section in the middle that felt quite random and forced, it would have been a great level; no funneling, no multiple combat arenas in a row, and hell enough ammo was found during the combat arenas that I didn't rely on my chainsaw/fists!


----------



## TedEH

I started playing this really strange game called >observer_ (The way the title is written is obnoxious, but it is what it is). So far it's really well pulled off visually and as a narrative-first game, the world and plot feel like they've been well thought out, but it's not mechanically very deep, and I think the voice acting delivery sometimes leaves something to be desired. So far, so good though. It's kind of a nice step away from the Nintendo stuff I've been playing lately.


----------



## wankerness

That's the walking simulator sci-fi starring Rutger Hauer, right? I have had that on my wishlist for years but never went through with it.


----------



## TedEH

That's the one. Just finished it now. There a bit more to it than just walking sim, but maybe not a ton more. As a walking sim, it's great. Most of the sci-fi and horror elements I think are well done - there's lots of style and detail, etc. There's some stealthy section that are.... kinda weak as far as stealth games go. There's some "hidden" minigames that are pretty decent. I don't think I'd want to play 40 hours of this, but it works well as a short experience.


----------



## Werecow

I've got Observer in my backlog and gonna try it soon i think. I just love the cyber/cyberpunk atmosphere in a first person game. I often replay Deus Ex games just to walk around them.


----------



## Mathemagician

Help me decide which I should tackle once my schedule clears up:

PC options:
Fallout New Vegas
Pillars of Eternity

On my PS4:
Divinity Original Sin (cent remember if it’s 1 or 2)

I like my RPG’s with meat on them bones.


----------



## Werecow

Mathemagician said:


> Help me decide which I should tackle once my schedule clears up:
> 
> PC options:
> Fallout New Vegas
> Pillars of Eternity
> 
> On my PS4:
> Divinity Original Sin (cent remember if it’s 1 or 2)
> 
> I like my RPG’s with meat on them bones.



Divinity Original Sin 2 is probably my favourite RPG of all time (and general reviews are one of the best of all time). I love the first one as well.

I also love Fallout New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity 


If i had to pick to play first though it'd definitely be D: OS 2. It's just amazing, longs you like the turn-based combat. I actually didn't like turn-based before playing the first game. I just bought it on a sale because of how many people were enjoying it. It was so good that it's converted me entirely to a turn-based preferring person.


----------



## TedEH

If it was me, between those, I'd go New Vegas first.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

New Vegas is my pick since I wasn’t a fan of Pillars and haven’t played Divinity yet but now that it’s Winter I’m getting the itch to play something.

IMO New Vegas needs two playthroughs, one where you just do the core story and then another with all the DLC. You come back from Old World Blues a little to powerful and absolutely unkillable god after Lonesome Road. Makes the main story a breeze when your skills are maxed out and have all the cool loot from those DLCs.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Help me decide which I should tackle once my schedule clears up:
> 
> PC options:
> Fallout New Vegas
> Pillars of Eternity
> 
> On my PS4:
> Divinity Original Sin (cent remember if it’s 1 or 2)
> 
> I like my RPG’s with meat on them bones.


wild card option: Wasteland 2


----------



## Mathemagician

KnightBrolaire said:


> wild card option: Wasteland 2



How did you know I also had that?! I bought it on console though (while back) so idk how it runs, but good to know it’s well received.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> How did you know I also had that?! I bought it on console though (while back) so idk how it runs, but good to know it’s well received.


I don't know if the console version is any good but I love the pc version. Really scratches that fallout itch but manages to do its own thing too.

Which reminds me, I need to start up Wasteland 3 lol


----------



## Lorcan Ward

The skill wheel is a little clumsy on console in wasteland 2 but apart from that it runs fine.


----------



## wankerness

AC Valhalla is way too big. Weird criticism, but Jesus Christ. Odyssey made a bit more sense being so huge since it was a ton of islands and wide-open ocean. This has cramped little rivers but mostly just tons of land that you have to run around on the hundreds of yards between interest points. I think this is probably going to be a good hundred+ hours to try and get all the stuff on it. 

The mythical questlines are really frickin tedious, too. I hated Jotunheim, especially, with the shapeshifting enemies that become unhittable when they're transforming and the areas that only become visible if you stand in the right place and walk from the right angle. Ugh.

Overall, so far, I'd definitely put this game well under Odyssey and probably about on par with Origins. The gameplay itself is similarly fun to Odyssey, but the hard limits on numbers of arrows and the inability to just craft more of them constantly removes that as a really valid gameplay option, and the melee combat is taken down several notches by your character constantly going into these lengthy unskippable execution animations. The story is WAY too frickin long, and while the characters are possibly better than Odyssey (not saying a lot), the lead is nowhere near as interesting as Bayek was. 

I also hate some of the minigames. Especially the weird platforming sections where you change into bitchy future lady that no one cares about from the last couple games, and the card game which is OK mechanically but takes FOREVER.


----------



## dr_game0ver

I know a lot of peoples who are having the same issue with game that are too big. Especially games with a huge map with nothing on it (Ever played FUEL?).
Just got done playing Sleeping Dogs main game, going thru the DLCs at the moment. Was expecting something different then i realized it was just like Watching Dog without the Hacking. But with better driving.


----------



## Seabeast2000

X Plane 11 or MS Flight Sim 2020?


----------



## Triple-J

So I finished Arkham Knight and while it's well made and the design of Scarecrow is the stuff of nightmares it's way too light on the stealth & detective elements and felt quite dumbed down so it never really hooked me in the way the first game did.

I've now moved onto Journey to the savage planet which is a refreshing change as it's very similar to Metroid Prime (one of my all time favourites) plus it's got this oddball humour to it that's like a mashup of Hitchhiker's guide/Red Dwarf and the corporate satire of Total Recall/Robocop that actually makes me laugh.


----------



## TedEH

I started playing System Shock 2 this weekend - and I never realized how much this game shares with other Looking Glass stuff. It feels like playing Deus Ex, minus the "every conspiracy theory is true" plus the janky animation and combat of Thief. Not sure how I missed this one before, all this stuff is very much my jam.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I started playing System Shock 2 this weekend - and I never realized how much this game shares with other Looking Glass stuff. It feels like playing Deus Ex, minus the "every conspiracy theory is true" plus the janky animation and combat of Thief. Not sure how I missed this one before, all this stuff is very much my jam.



Wow, i actually envy you playing it for the first time. Yeh it's pretty much a Looking Glass game. Even uses the Thief game engine. I replay it every couple years or so.

The atmosphere amazing, helped by what i think is the best and spookiest sound design ever in a game.

A remake of SS1 is being made at the moment by the way, which i'm very much looking forward to. That game is awesome too, but the original has aged badly.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Has anyone played donkey Kong tropical freeze on switch? I’m pretty decent at Platformer‘s but some reviews say this game can be quite frustrating. What’s the level of difficulty on this?


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> A remake of SS1 is being made at the moment by the way, which i'm very much looking forward to. That game is awesome too, but the original has aged badly.


I was able to get into SS1 for a while, but it definitely didn't age well. It's insanely clunky. Part of me worries though that the remake might modernize it a bit toooooo much. I think I tried the demo and I can't remember what my thoughts on it were.


----------



## StevenC

After 4 months of trying, today was the day I finally got a blue rose in Animal Crossing. 


TheShreddinHand said:


> Has anyone played donkey Kong tropical freeze on switch? I’m pretty decent at Platformer‘s but some reviews say this game can be quite frustrating. What’s the level of difficulty on this?


Miyamoto says that when he'd start designing the first level of a new Mario Bros game it always ended up being a 3-3 difficulty level, so he'd have to work back to get 1-1.

Tropical Freeze is like the opposite of that without any of cheap stuff platformer designers put in to make them hard. It's tough, but it's also one of the best platformers ever.


----------



## Mathemagician

TheShreddinHand said:


> Has anyone played donkey Kong tropical freeze on switch? I’m pretty decent at Platformer‘s but some reviews say this game can be quite frustrating. What’s the level of difficulty on this?



Harder than most Mario levels from the get-go. But it’s exceptionally polished and feels tough by design and not “cheap”.


----------



## wankerness

How does it compare to the SNES Donkey Kong Country series? I normally hate platformers and am terrible at them but have gotten 101-103% on those three games multiple times each  At some point I discovered some people say they're hard by platformer standards (I don't think I believe it since I die nonstop in frickin 2d Mario games).


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> How does it compare to the SNES Donkey Kong Country series? I normally hate platformers and am terrible at them but have gotten 101-103% on those three games multiple times each  At some point I discovered some people say they're hard by platformer standards (I don't think I believe it since I die nonstop in frickin 2d Mario games).


As good as or better than the original DKCs. It's the Metroid Prime of 2d platformers.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> As good as or better than the original DKCs. It's the Metroid Prime of 2d platformers.



I meant difficulty-wise! I know it's a modern classic.

Still dumping hours and hours into AC Valhalla with no end in sight. I'm at 85 hours, and based on hidden achievement position/level requirements for missions, I'm probably only halfway through the fricking main quest which is an incredibly slow go thanks to tons of sub-missions every time you make any progress. Like, there are 12 or so regions of England that all have a lengthy questline through them, and there are still like 5 of them left for me and all of them are WAY below my level (I'm at 360, the zones cap out at 340, most of these quests are 160), and I haven't even gone back to Norway yet. This game is WAY TOO BIG. I think I regret buying the season pass. I might end up taking a break instead of grinding through the rest of it since I think it will be a minimum of 40 more hours. The more I play it, the less I like it compared to AC: Odyssey. The location is just so uninteresting compared to ancient greece, the boat feels like a huge waste of time since you're mostly stuck running around on huge landmasses separated by tiny rivers, the combat is fine but the abilities are useless and thus it's mostly just a lot of mashing of parry/dodge/light attack, there are wonky bugs galore (though I think getting stuck standing on barrels/crates and unable to hit the guy standing on the ground whacking away at you 2 inches from you is now sort of an AC feature at this point), and worst of all, the stealth is garbage compared to all previous AC games. Like, you can't even do double-assassinations in a way that makes sense in this game (you have to assassinate one guy and then can hit another guy that's somewhat far away with a ranged attack to insta-kill them but it only works sometimes with no apparent rhyme or reason), so it's impossible to not break stealth on most areas in short order. Like, if there are two guys standing there next to each other with their backs to you, you can only assassinate one of them. It's really annoying. I just gave up even trying to stealth anywhere after getting that achievement for assassinating ten guys in a row. There's no real punishment for breaking stealth, it just would be more fun if it was a viable option.

Plus, in addition to the absolutely horrible aforementioned sidemissions (I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE the "anomaly" puzzle-platforming sections), I encountered a new one that's even more infuriating - STONE STACKING. You literally make a pile of rocks, and have to get it to a certain height. For a while I didn't care, I just did them in 10 seconds without thinking about it, but then you start getting to the high-level ones where you have to stack a bunch of them vertically to hit the limit and the awful physics make the rocks fall down and knock your pile over and have to start all the way over from the beginning with the tediously slow rotation/tilt controls over and over, sometimes with the rocks bugging out and being shorter than they're supposed to be. Like, you can follow video guides, stack things up the same way as them, and randomly have it not be tall enough, only to restart the puzzle, do THE EXACT SAME THING, and have it count the second time. I spent over an hour on one of these things. It is clearly designed to be like the haiku sections in Ghost of Tsushima and be chill or something, but it is anything but. It is one of the worst things I've ever played. Why do I keep subjecting myself to this game?!?!??!

Thinking about getting Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. I've seen reviews that are all over the map. Like, the Kotaku review says basically it's a game for no one, and that you probably won't like it if you loved Hyrule Warriors but also won't like if you want something like Zelda: BOTW, while many other outlets say it's a lot better than Hyrule Warriors (but seem to be operating from the position that Hyrule Warriors wasn't that good, which is wrong). Also, Kotaku makes a ton of specific, detailed complaints that really sound awful (like Zelda's entire playstyle and the maps and endless sidequests) that no one else seems to even mention. I am thinking maybe most of the good reviews are not to be trusted. I'll probably buy it anyway! Unfortunately, it being something with the Zelda name on it, it will be 60 dollars forever.

Other things I want right now but shouldn't spend money on:

Dark Souls Remastered - PS4 - I still haven't played more than about 8 hours of this game and EVERYONE says it's a classic and must be played by any serious fan of action/adventure games but my motivation for playing it either on PC or digging out my xbox 360 are almost nonexistent. Should I spend yet another 20 bucks and maybe never end up playing it?! All reasonable people suggest no! However, I recently paid 40 for Skyrim (it pricedropped to 15 the other day, of course) and played all the way through it so I'm definitely not a reasonable person.

Judgment - PS4 - The lack of Kiryu as the protagonist and hearing about some annoying sidemissions put me off getting this, but then I've mostly only heard positive stuff about it for months now from people who finally got it. I will definitely get it someday, but not sure when I'd get around to playing it. I've also been waiting for it to get cheap - now it hit 20 bucks, so that's probably about my breakpoint. BUT...

Yakuza: Like a Dragon - this sounds great, but it's 60 bucks just for the baseline version and I dunno if I'd have time to play it before it gets cheaper anyway! However, I want to play it more than I want to play Judgment.

Overcooked 2 - I've been playing the first with my ladyfriend and it's a lot of fun but is getting very annoyingly difficult in the ice area and the way each level is locked behind ever-increasing stars that makes you have to keep going back and redoing levels you didn't get 3 stars on is not fun to me. Sounds like 2 has more levels and is quite a bit easier so it might be a good alternative to inevitably hitting a wall with this one! Unfortunately, it's an extravagant 45 dollars for the "complete" version and was recently on sale on both platforms I'd consider so I doubt it will be cheap again anytime soon.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I meant difficulty-wise! I know it's a modern classic.
> 
> Still dumping hours and hours into AC Valhalla with no end in sight. I'm at 85 hours, and based on hidden achievement position/level requirements for missions, I'm probably only halfway through the fricking main quest which is an incredibly slow go thanks to tons of sub-missions every time you make any progress. Like, there are 12 or so regions of England that all have a lengthy questline through them, and there are still like 5 of them left for me and all of them are WAY below my level (I'm at 360, the zones cap out at 340, most of these quests are 160), and I haven't even gone back to Norway yet. This game is WAY TOO BIG. I think I regret buying the season pass. I might end up taking a break instead of grinding through the rest of it since I think it will be a minimum of 40 more hours. The more I play it, the less I like it compared to AC: Odyssey. The location is just so uninteresting compared to ancient greece, the boat feels like a huge waste of time since you're mostly stuck running around on huge landmasses separated by tiny rivers, the combat is fine but the abilities are useless and thus it's mostly just a lot of mashing of parry/dodge/light attack, there are wonky bugs galore (though I think getting stuck standing on barrels/crates and unable to hit the guy standing on the ground whacking away at you 2 inches from you is now sort of an AC feature at this point), and worst of all, the stealth is garbage compared to all previous AC games. Like, you can't even do double-assassinations in a way that makes sense in this game (you have to assassinate one guy and then can hit another guy that's somewhat far away with a ranged attack to insta-kill them but it only works sometimes with no apparent rhyme or reason), so it's impossible to not break stealth on most areas in short order. Like, if there are two guys standing there next to each other with their backs to you, you can only assassinate one of them. It's really annoying. I just gave up even trying to stealth anywhere after getting that achievement for assassinating ten guys in a row. There's no real punishment for breaking stealth, it just would be more fun if it was a viable option.
> 
> Plus, in addition to the absolutely horrible aforementioned sidemissions (I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE the "anomaly" puzzle-platforming sections), I encountered a new one that's even more infuriating - STONE STACKING. You literally make a pile of rocks, and have to get it to a certain height. For a while I didn't care, I just did them in 10 seconds without thinking about it, but then you start getting to the high-level ones where you have to stack a bunch of them vertically to hit the limit and the awful physics make the rocks fall down and knock your pile over and have to start all the way over from the beginning with the tediously slow rotation/tilt controls over and over, sometimes with the rocks bugging out and being shorter than they're supposed to be. Like, you can follow video guides, stack things up the same way as them, and randomly have it not be tall enough, only to restart the puzzle, do THE EXACT SAME THING, and have it count the second time. I spent over an hour on one of these things. It is clearly designed to be like the haiku sections in Ghost of Tsushima and be chill or something, but it is anything but. It is one of the worst things I've ever played. Why do I keep subjecting myself to this game?!?!??!
> 
> Thinking about getting Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. I've seen reviews that are all over the map. Like, the Kotaku review says basically it's a game for no one, and that you probably won't like it if you loved Hyrule Warriors but also won't like if you want something like Zelda: BOTW, while many other outlets say it's a lot better than Hyrule Warriors (but seem to be operating from the position that Hyrule Warriors wasn't that good, which is wrong). Also, Kotaku makes a ton of specific, detailed complaints that really sound awful (like Zelda's entire playstyle and the maps and endless sidequests) that no one else seems to even mention. I am thinking maybe most of the good reviews are not to be trusted. I'll probably buy it anyway! Unfortunately, it being something with the Zelda name on it, it will be 60 dollars forever.
> 
> Other things I want right now but shouldn't spend money on:
> 
> Dark Souls Remastered - PS4 - I still haven't played more than about 8 hours of this game and EVERYONE says it's a classic and must be played by any serious fan of action/adventure games but my motivation for playing it either on PC or digging out my xbox 360 are almost nonexistent. Should I spend yet another 20 bucks and maybe never end up playing it?! All reasonable people suggest no! However, I recently paid 40 for Skyrim (it pricedropped to 15 the other day, of course) and played all the way through it so I'm definitely not a reasonable person.
> 
> Judgment - PS4 - The lack of Kiryu as the protagonist and hearing about some annoying sidemissions put me off getting this, but then I've mostly only heard positive stuff about it for months now from people who finally got it. I will definitely get it someday, but not sure when I'd get around to playing it. I've also been waiting for it to get cheap - now it hit 20 bucks, so that's probably about my breakpoint. BUT...
> 
> Yakuza: Like a Dragon - this sounds great, but it's 60 bucks just for the baseline version and I dunno if I'd have time to play it before it gets cheaper anyway! However, I want to play it more than I want to play Judgment.
> 
> Overcooked 2 - I've been playing the first with my ladyfriend and it's a lot of fun but is getting very annoyingly difficult in the ice area and the way each level is locked behind ever-increasing stars that makes you have to keep going back and redoing levels you didn't get 3 stars on is not fun to me. Sounds like 2 has more levels and is quite a bit easier so it might be a good alternative to inevitably hitting a wall with this one! Unfortunately, it's an extravagant 45 dollars for the "complete" version and was recently on sale on both platforms I'd consider so I doubt it will be cheap again anytime soon.


Oh, my bad. Definitely noticeably harder.


----------



## Ralyks

Picked Ghost of Tsushima back up, but also playing Among Us with friends.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Overcooked 2 - I've been playing the first with my ladyfriend and it's a lot of fun but is getting very annoyingly difficult in the ice area and the way each level is locked behind ever-increasing stars that makes you have to keep going back and redoing levels you didn't get 3 stars on is not fun to me. Sounds like 2 has more levels and is quite a bit easier so it might be a good alternative to inevitably hitting a wall with this one! Unfortunately, it's an extravagant 45 dollars for the "complete" version and was recently on sale on both platforms I'd consider so I doubt it will be cheap again anytime soon.



Overcooked will def test your relationship. The wife and I played the first one a bunch but it eventually turned into a domestic row every game. 

"will you please clean some dishes", "I am cleaning the dishes but your not putting them away "

"just please cook some steak we need 3 " "you cook the steak, I'm doing salad "

and so on 

It doesn't help that she has no dexterity with the controller. " why can't you just pick up a ...... what's wrong with you ! " never goes over well 

the ice pretty much pushed it over the top for us


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> Overcooked will def test your relationship. The wife and I played the first one a bunch but it eventually turned into a domestic row every game.
> 
> "will you please clean some dishes", "I am cleaning the dishes but your not putting them away "
> 
> "just please cook some steak we need 3 " "you cook the steak, I'm doing salad "
> 
> and so on
> 
> It doesn't help that she has no dexterity with the controller. " why can't you just pick up a ...... what's wrong with you ! " never goes over well
> 
> the ice pretty much pushed it over the top for us



Never played this game but that was very fun to read.


----------



## Leviathus

Started a ps3 Demon's Souls playthrough. Started it twice actually cos the first time i forgot to kill myself in the nexus and died in human form in the shrine of storms, permanently fucking up the world tendency lol. Magic is so strong (at least in early game) in this one, i picked royal and grabbed the crescent falchion early and have been one hitting all sorts of foes and melting bosses thus far.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Found Portal 2 for the 360 on clearance at Wal-Mart for $1.50. Talk about an African-American Friday deal.


----------



## wankerness

I was just thinking about that game the other day and really wanted to play the coop campaign. I remember playing about halfway through it with a friend when it was new. I was very sad to find out it hasn't been ported to any current-gen systems, since the orange box was kind of everywhere for a few years. I'm going to buy a second wired 360 controller RIGHT NOW!


----------



## MFB

Finished _Gears of War 4 _today and boy, that sure was not a lot that happened in the almost 8 hours it took me to beat it. It felt incredibly uninspired and just going through the motions, which is a shame because conceptually, Gears made an incredibly smart decision to be a 3rd person, tactical shooter. 

Here, you face a new enemy offshoot that end up just being Locust 2.0, the personalities of the new heroes are the same as the old, and you're in one of two situations: a corridor not shooting someone, or an arena area where you're going to shoot a lot of people - and boy are those people good at soaking up bullets. Its hard to feel like you're doing well against bad guys when you can pump an entire 50 round clip into them and theres not even a flinch while shooting animation baked in. And the enemies just grt bigger as you continue, so its not like its going to get better. Oh, glowing weak points? Yeah, they exist but only for the end death animation, so go crazy pumping assault rifle and shotgun ammo into them knowing it wont blow up any quicker than if you didnt.

At least I got it for free, and with that now out of the way, maybe I'll go back to Room Eternal or start a new play through of Fallen Order.


----------



## wankerness

Ragequit AC valhalla thanks to the fucking stone stacking in hamtunscire, not playing this game again until they nerf that trash. Was at about 95% completion (had completed every single collectible/sidequest in every zone other than Norway and this puzzle), I think, but there was no way I was working on that stacking puzzle with its horrible physics/controls for hours. First bugfix patch did a ton of rebalancing, but unfortunately didn't touch those! Awful, awful, awful minigame.

So now I'm downloading dark souls, for something much easier!

I love Mongey's Overcooked story. Fortunately we never got that mad at each other. Or if she got mad at me, she kept it inside. I just got 2 today, since it was given a black friday discount on the switch store. I look forward to playing it next time she's over.


----------



## wankerness

The hardest part of Dark Souls is your weapon constantly hitting walls.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> The hardest part of Dark Souls is your weapon constantly hitting walls.


spear/rapier gang ftw

also git gud


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Right up deep in the first act of Cold Steel 4 and refuse to play anything else. Plot and pacing is much slower than the first 3 games (slower than usual), but makes sense. There's a lot to build up from the cliff fall to hell that is CS3. 

It's pretty tough to judge these games via gameplay since they're all the same game with a few added tweaks. Judging from the evolution from the Liberl and Crossbell handheld games makes sense, but not really many changes inbetween here even with the jump between PS3 and PS4. Even the structures are blurring in similarity, CS4 is more similar to 2 as 3 was to 1. This series lives and dies on plot alone. 

That said, I appreciate that the game's difficulty has been turned up a notch or two from the previous game. I was disappointed that 3 was too easy and way too many options that exploit the battle mechanics (abusable Brave Orders and CP attack loops) so I was surprised that I died a few times early in the game. Brave Orders are toned down and the game is forcing me to mind my decisions here. It's still exploitable and speed is still the name of the game. I still love the battle system and insist that it's the full evolution of Chrono Trigger's turn based/team up combat. 

Music is awesome as always but I'm suspecting that the Falcom Sound Team staff here were using left over bits and pieces from Ys VIII. It's subtle and nit picky but short phrases here and there felt a little too familiar. Minor quibble since Falcom are still masters of shredding power metal for gaming.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> spear/rapier gang ftw
> 
> also git gud



I will have to look into getting one of those. I'm very very early in the game so I pretty much just have a bunch of trash. I used the zweihander a few times on large enemies (ex that first boar) but mostly have just been using the hand axe cause it's fast. Battle axe seemed too slow. Haven't yet tried any of the long/short swords or the U sword i got off the merchant cause I dumped all my points into strength to use the zweihander 

The pace of the combat is taking a lot of getting used to. I'm so used to mashing attack/dodge and this game punishes you severely for accidentally hitting attack more times than you wanted to attack. I've only died a couple times but I've mostly just been grinding levels.

Parry timing is REALLY easy so far, though, compared to many modern games I've played. I don't know if it works on bosses, but it sure makes some very menacing enemies trivial (ex the black knights).


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I will have to look into getting one of those. I'm very very early in the game so I pretty much just have a bunch of trash. I used the zweihander a few times on large enemies (ex that first boar) but mostly have just been using the hand axe cause it's fast. Battle axe seemed too slow. Haven't yet tried any of the long/short swords or the U sword i got off the merchant cause I dumped all my points into strength to use the zweihander
> 
> The pace of the combat is taking a lot of getting used to. I'm so used to mashing attack/dodge and this game punishes you severely for accidentally hitting attack more times than you wanted to attack. I've only died a couple times but I've mostly just been grinding levels.
> 
> Parry timing is REALLY easy so far, though, compared to many modern games I've played. I don't know if it works on bosses, but it sure makes some very menacing enemies trivial (ex the black knights).


You can get a really good lightning spear in Sen's fortress, and iirc the winged spear or partisan is in the graveyard with the skeleton enemies. You can't kill them permanently unless you have a blessed weapon like the straight sword of Astora (which is in the valley of the drakes and needs faith to use). It's easy enough to kite them and scoop up the items though.
There is a mail breaker or Estoc in Sen's fortress too iirc. you can always look up item drops on the wiki too.

The issue you'll have is your dex is probably way too low to use them effectively.

There are some straight swords with good stab attacks as well.

You can parry some humanoid sized bosses but it's not something you should count on. High agility/endurance and equip load will make your dodges faster and more useful.
For 2H strength builds dodging is paramount.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> You can get a really good lightning spear in Sen's fortress, and iirc the winged spear or partisan is in the graveyard with the skeleton enemies. You can't kill them permanently unless you have a blessed weapon like the straight sword of Astora (which is in the valley of the drakes and needs faith to use). It's easy enough to kite them and scoop up the items though.
> There is a mail breaker or Estoc in Sen's fortress too iirc. you can always look up item drops on the wiki too.
> 
> The issue you'll have is your dex is probably way too low to use them effectively.
> 
> There are some straight swords with good stab attacks as well.
> 
> You can parry some humanoid sized bosses but it's not something you should count on. High agility/endurance and equip load will make your dodges faster and more useful.
> For 2H strength builds dodging is paramount.



Hmm, I ran around through the graveyard collecting stuff and didn't get either of those. I do have a rapier, but haven't experimented with it yet. I have 24/14 str/dex now (and ~14 vit/end). I am currently using the U katana thing upgraded a few times - I use it 2 handed on unblockable enemies and with a shield most of the time. I killed those gargoyle bosses first try in about 20 seconds, but that awful titanite demon thing felt like it took 10 minutes (and several tries thanks to me consistently getting stuck on some of the floor rubble and getting 2-shot after whittling his health down most of the way). I am looking forward to Sen's Fortress so I can get an elemental weapon. The lightning resin stuff sure made the titanite demon's health go down fast but unfortunately consumables don't come back if you f up and I sure did the attempts I used those. >:O


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Hmm, I ran around through the graveyard collecting stuff and didn't get either of those. I do have a rapier, but haven't experimented with it yet. I have 24/14 str/dex now (and ~14 vit/end). I am currently using the U katana thing upgraded a few times - I use it 2 handed on unblockable enemies and with a shield most of the time. I killed those gargoyle bosses first try in about 20 seconds, but that awful titanite demon thing felt like it took 10 minutes (and several tries thanks to me consistently getting stuck on some of the floor rubble and getting 2-shot after whittling his health down most of the way). I am looking forward to Sen's Fortress so I can get an elemental weapon. The lightning resin stuff sure made the titanite demon's health go down fast but unfortunately consumables don't come back if you f up and I sure did the attempts I used those. >:O


Yeah armored and stone enemies don't take as much slash damage.
In general, pyromancy/lightning/ smashy(blunt damage) =good against nearly everything.
Maces, morningstars and greathammers are exceptional for 2H strength builds. Especially Havel's club.

slashy/stabby/bleed/poison =situational

You could also go back to the red drake and get his sword by shooting his tail. Very good earlier game weapon tbh.

Actually Sen's isn't even open until you beat the 2nd bell, so you have to head to Blighttown and that's when shit gets real. Just getting there without the master key is an absolute pain in the ass, as you have to fight , Quelaag, Capra and the Abyssal Dragon. Capra is the most annoying boss up until the 4 kings imo


Also make sure to stock up a ton of poison resistance items before you go.


----------



## Mathemagician

In almost any DS you can two hand R1 a number of bosses with a rapier or mace build. Yes I mean even the first rapier or mace the game throws at you. Just keep upgrading it. Small range means you need to be close but it hits hard enough and fast enough to be worth it. Almost cheesy honestly. Especially Dark Souls 2 with a rapier. Holy cow.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> In almost any DS you can two hand R1 a number boss with a rapier or mace build. Yes I mean even the first rapier or mace the game throws at you. Just keep upgrading it. Small range means you need to be close but it hits hard enough and fast enough to be worth it. Almost cheesy honestly. Especially Dark Souls 2 with a rapier. Holy cow.


yep. I ran mace + spear for my first playthroughs on 1-3. It's my go to setup since it covers a lot of ranges and scenarios, especially if you run elemental damage or such.

Oh look a narrow hallway? spear+greatshield.
wide open with lots of enemies? 2H mace or greatclub


----------



## wankerness

Hmm. I upgraded the morningstar a bunch based on these posts. It sure made those stone knights a joke, just ran up and 2-shot them before they could attack. I died a whole ton trying to clear those groups of stone knights/bush guys in the woods for the armor set, then killed that stupid moth boss in 3 tries without using any ranged attacks or summoning that NPC (cause there was nowhere to get humanity anywhere close, apparently). I am definitely bad at this game. The only things that have prompted rage were that big slash-resistant demon and the groups of bush guys/stone knights that I kept using up all my fireballs on by hitting the trees they were dodging behind.  I am scared of when this game actually gets hard.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Hmm. I upgraded the morningstar a bunch based on these posts. It sure made those stone knights a joke, just ran up and 2-shot them before they could attack. I died a whole ton trying to clear those groups of stone knights/bush guys in the woods for the armor set, then killed that stupid moth boss in 3 tries without using any ranged attacks or summoning that NPC (cause there was nowhere to get humanity anywhere close, apparently). I am definitely bad at this game. The only things that have prompted rage were that big slash-resistant demon and the groups of bush guys/stone knights that I kept using up all my fireballs on by hitting the trees they were dodging behind.  I am scared of when this game actually gets hard.


 DS1 eases you into the difficulty. It's not so much a brutally hard game, it's more that it demands you pay close attention or you'll suffer, especially later in the game. DS2 takes that concept to a different level. It becomes straight bullshit in spots.

Sekiro/bloodborne/Nioh on the other hand throw you into the deep end of difficulty immediately. Those games made me rage so fucking much, even though I loved them.


----------



## MFB

I thought I was hot-shit beating the first boss is Nioh, then I got to the second 

I'll finish it some day, as I have proof I'm not an entirely terrible gamer having beat Bloodborne, but Sekiro was so unlike either that I don't know if I'll ever finish it. It's such a mix of "parry, push the enemy, but don't over extend yourself" that I couldn't figure it out.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

MFB said:


> maybe I'll go back to Room Eternal


Game makes more sense when you think of it as a Tommy Wiseau production.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Hmm. I upgraded the morningstar a bunch based on these posts. It sure made those stone knights a joke, just ran up and 2-shot them before they could attack. I died a whole ton trying to clear those groups of stone knights/bush guys in the woods for the armor set, then killed that stupid moth boss in 3 tries without using any ranged attacks or summoning that NPC (cause there was nowhere to get humanity anywhere close, apparently). I am definitely bad at this game. The only things that have prompted rage were that big slash-resistant demon and the groups of bush guys/stone knights that I kept using up all my fireballs on by hitting the trees they were dodging behind.  I am scared of when this game actually gets hard.



IIRC
Morningstar has spikes and inflicts bleed.

The Mace is a pure strength beat down stick. So will scale even better with strength and hit stone/high defense enemies even harder. Both are still good though. 

For DS games- almost always dodge left. Many enemies are right handed and swing from your left to your right (facing them). So if you dodge to your left, your invincibility frames line up with even smaller active frames of the attack. In other words they swing through your dodge and you’re good.


----------



## Ralyks

Demon Souls on PS5. And ho-lee shit.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> the U katana thing


Uchi gang 4 life.


----------



## wankerness

Alright, i hit the first thing in Dark Souls that's flat-out BS -the CURSES. Got killed by a cloud of dust without knowing about the existence of this effect, got my health permanently halved until I ran all the way back out of the sewers and back to the vendor and farmed 6000 souls. If I get killed by them again, I'd have to do the same thing! Ridiculous. I don't mind dying to stupid things repeatedly, but running back from a bonfire and killing 6 enemies a bunch of times is one thing, a 15 minute detour is entirely another.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Alright, i hit the first thing in Dark Souls that's flat-out BS -the CURSES. Got killed by a cloud of dust without knowing about the existence of this effect, got my health permanently halved until I ran all the way back out of the sewers and back to the vendor and farmed 6000 souls. If I get killed by them again, I'd have to do the same thing! Ridiculous. I don't mind dying to stupid things repeatedly, but running back from a bonfire and killing 6 enemies a bunch of times is one thing, a 15 minute detour is entirely another.


huehueuhue welcome to the sewers. You can mostly avoid the basilisks fyi


----------



## mongey

My first DS play through I found the claymore easiest to use. Good damage and has a good range stab.

Add that all the gear to get your poise as high as possible and your good to go. Poise is pretty OP in DS1


----------



## Choop

mongey said:


> My first DS play through I found the claymore easiest to use. Good damage and has a good range stab.
> 
> Add that all the gear to get your poise as high as possible and your good to go. Poise is pretty OP in DS1



Same here, I had a whole faith/crusader vibe going with my first character using the claymore. It has a good moveset and hits reasonably hard when upgraded. Also sunlight blade ftw!~


----------



## wankerness

Grinded for a while, got some of the cheap items (ex, grass crest shield and drake sword), and fought the gaping dragon. That was by far the easiest boss yet, didn't even get hit even though it took a few minutes. I think I'm going to take a break before blighttown since I've heard so many horror stories. Though it sounds like part of the problem was horrible slowdown in the original incarnations, which is not going to be an issue here.

I haven't gotten the claymore yet, I saw a lot of people talking about it online. I've mostly been using the drake sword since getting it, but I upgraded the morningstar, gargoyle halberd, uchigang and zweihander all to +5 in preparation for it getting outdated since it's not really upgradable.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Grinded for a while, got some of the cheap items (ex, grass crest shield and drake sword), and fought the gaping dragon. That was by far the easiest boss yet, didn't even get hit even though it took a few minutes. I think I'm going to take a break before blighttown since I've heard so many horror stories. Though it sounds like part of the problem was horrible slowdown in the original incarnations, which is not going to be an issue here.
> 
> I haven't gotten the claymore yet, I saw a lot of people talking about it online. I've mostly been using the drake sword since getting it, but I upgraded the morningstar, gargoyle halberd, uchigang and zweihander all to +5 in preparation for it getting outdated since it's not really upgradable.


claymore is pretty early in the game in undead burg


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Alright, i hit the first thing in Dark Souls that's flat-out BS -the CURSES. Got killed by a cloud of dust without knowing about the existence of this effect, got my health permanently halved until I ran all the way back out of the sewers and back to the vendor and farmed 6000 souls. If I get killed by them again, I'd have to do the same thing! Ridiculous. I don't mind dying to stupid things repeatedly, but running back from a bonfire and killing 6 enemies a bunch of times is one thing, a 15 minute detour is entirely another.



Since you made it past you should be fine, but there’s rings and gear that reduce curse build up. 



wankerness said:


> Grinded for a while, got some of the cheap items (ex, grass crest shield and drake sword), and fought the gaping dragon. That was by far the easiest boss yet, didn't even get hit even though it took a few minutes. I think I'm going to take a break before blighttown since I've heard so many horror stories. Though it sounds like part of the problem was horrible slowdown in the original incarnations, which is not going to be an issue here.
> 
> I haven't gotten the claymore yet, I saw a lot of people talking about it online. I've mostly been using the drake sword since getting it, but I upgraded the morningstar, gargoyle halberd, uchigang and zweihander all to +5 in preparation for it getting outdated since it's not really upgradable.



Spoiler:


Spoiler:


Ok seriously Spoiler:
If you go left instead of right when you enter Blightown “correctly” you can walk around the lake of poison and skip the majority of the evil super Mario level. 

If you enter it backwards you get a similar result. 

Also, treasure ahead. 

Man I love DS.


----------



## wankerness

Oh, there was a jump section?! Yeah, definitely not doing that. In general the controls are pretty good, but the jumping is flat-out awful, it was taking me multiple tries to make single jumps to get to places like the crow nest.


----------



## MFB

I think DS1 and 3 are still on sale on PSN, I should look into grabbing them before it ends. And I still need to finish the Old Hunters DLC and my NG+ on Bloodborne, got bored around ...Yarghul the second time I think? Maybe it was Brygenworth, I can't recall.

I ended up doing a NG+ on Jedi: Fallen Order, so Star Wars Souls Lite. Decided to get Dathomir out of the way first since fuck that planet, but unfortunately you can't grt too far in it as you need some skills you get on the other planets pretty quickly. Now that I'm more familiar with the single player style of game it is, it's flowing much better this time around.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Since you made it past you should be fine, but there’s rings and gear that reduce curse build up.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler:
> 
> 
> Spoiler:
> 
> 
> Ok seriously Spoiler:
> If you go left instead of right when you enter Blightown “correctly” you can walk around the lake of poison and skip the majority of the evil super Mario level.
> 
> If you enter it backwards you get a similar result.
> 
> Also, treasure ahead.
> 
> Man I love DS.


real men just yeet themselves off the ledge onto the water wheel and beeline for quelaag


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Oh, there was a jump section?! Yeah, definitely not doing that. In general the controls are pretty good, but the jumping is flat-out awful, it was taking me multiple tries to make single jumps to get to places like the crow nest.



[Spoilers]

It’s less “jumping” and more “falling”. A lot. Lmao. Have fun.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I think DS1 and 3 are still on sale on PSN, I should look into grabbing them before it ends. And I still need to finish the Old Hunters DLC and my NG+ on Bloodborne, got bored around ...Yarghul the second time I think? Maybe it was Brygenworth, I can't recall.
> 
> I ended up doing a NG+ on Jedi: Fallen Order, so Star Wars Souls Lite. Decided to get Dathomir out of the way first since fuck that planet, but unfortunately you can't grt too far in it as you need some skills you get on the other planets pretty quickly. Now that I'm more familiar with the single player style of game it is, it's flowing much better this time around.



The DS1 sale ended yesterday I think, but now DLC for 2 and full version of 3 are on sale? I'm thinking of getting 3 after hearing mostly good things about it (and mostly bad things about 2 being too hard).

Yakuza: Like a Dragon is on sale at Target for 40 dollars already so I just ordered it. I'll see if I get far enough in Dark Souls to want to finish it before starting that, I have a few days!


----------



## HarveyForte

Yakuza 7 and trying to reduce Souls game speed run times.


----------



## wankerness

Beat the Stray Demon, who was a complete asshole that killed me in short order while I barely made a dent in him until I tried the recommended "take off all your armor and run around behind him" strat and switched to the uchikatana and then killed him first try in about 20 seconds.  

Went to Darkroot Basin and had to cheese the fast knight jerk in the tower cause I'm bad, and then killed the hydra very easily. I am afraid I'm not going to be able to put off blight town any longer!


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Beat the Stray Demon, who was a complete asshole that killed me in short order while I barely made a dent in him until I tried the recommended "take off all your armor and run around behind him" strat and switched to the uchikatana and then killed him first try in about 20 seconds.
> 
> Went to Darkroot Basin and had to cheese the fast knight jerk in the tower cause I'm bad, and then killed the hydra very easily. I am afraid I'm not going to be able to put off blight town any longer!


I didn’t find blighttown that bad. 

maybe i was over prepared due to all the bad press about it.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Worst part of Blightown is the framerate.


----------



## Leviathus

@wankerness did you pick master key at the beginning?


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> @wankerness did you pick master key at the beginning?



No, I read that it's a bad idea for a first playthrough because it will get you more confused with where you're supposed to be going. Not sure how true that is!


----------



## Leviathus

Gotcha, i've heard the same sort of things (though i'm not sure i've ever not picked it).


Spoiler



Unfortunately you won't be taking the Blighttown "express route" now...


----------



## Choop

All this DS talk is making me really want to replay the series!

I'm getting into Guilty Gear XX AC +R. I convinced someone at work to get into it so at least I have a sparring partner hah. Not sure who to play! Looking at learning Slayer and then maybe seeing if there is anyone else who appeals to me.


----------



## Wuuthrad

Assassins Creed Valhalla is really fun- I’ve been playing the dice game Orlag for hours.

I’ve been enjoying it so much, I wanted to make a DIY version.

I imagine it would make a great game or drinking game with a friend!

Just found out they’re going to release it next year in the physical realm:

https://screenrant.com/assassins-creed-valhalla-orlog-dice-game-physical-release/


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> I'm getting into Guilty Gear XX AC +R. I convinced someone at work to get into it so at least I have a sparring partner hah. Not sure who to play! Looking at learning Slayer and then maybe seeing if there is anyone else who appeals to me.



I remember Slayer being fun to play. Sure he was broken with normals blessed with the hitboxes of God, and the all the shenanigans' that lead to free biting, but was still fun. Last time I checked, he's still really good on +R. 

Who do you usually main on GG?


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I remember Slayer being fun to play. Sure he was broken with normals blessed with the hitboxes of God, and the all the shenanigans' that lead to free biting, but was still fun. Last time I checked, he's still really good on +R.
> 
> Who do you usually main on GG?



I've only played Xrd really, and played Ramlethal for a while but ultimately just ended up playing Ky lol. I am vanilla. :<


----------



## Mathemagician

My first time into blight town I did it wrong and it was a hell of an experience. That game is so good to just push through one inch at a time on a first play through.

And I can’t play the GG games. ArcSys does a great job adding systems to their games with each iteration but when I go into the tutorial and there are four+ different blocks/pushbacks yeah I’m out. 

I respect the difficulty though.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> I've only played Xrd really, and played Ramlethal for a while but ultimately just ended up playing Ky lol. I am vanilla. :<



Join the vanilla club. I played Sol.  Played him extensively since the X days. 

Going to try to remember stuff from years ago...

Jam is fun for that standard Chun-Li style where you rush in at high speed and lay right into your opponent. Pretty no nonsense speed style character if you want that kind. To some extent, Millia also falls in this category. Conversely Johnny is the more CVS2 kind of Chun-Li game. Godly pokes and can really cash in on one hit confirm, though just get used to Mist Cancelling since that's his key game. 

I remember dabbling with Order Sol from Accent Core onwards. He started off as trash in Slash but he was good fun for rushing right in. Don't let his low ass jump fool you, he's solid. That said Vanilla Sol is exactly to expect. Solid all round game with some cool mixup options after a fireball or a launcher. I remember when they nerfed his Dust Loop that made him a pain in the corner in Slash, but then gave him the Sidewinder, which let him loop for damage anywhere on the screen. 

Eddie/Zato was my sub at one point since he looked unstoppable on paper, even with all the gradual changes, though looked to high margin of error for me on a tournament level. But he's so cool to mess around. Think Sentinel from MVC2 constantly throwing drones. 

Whoever you choose, the roster is a massive variety of styles that'll keep you interested. All are fun in their own way. Hell, I remember being terrible with Zappa, but he was still fun as hell.

EDIT: All the fighting game talk reminded me of the recent Daigo matches on SFV. He's taken up Honda and Fang for potential Guile subs and he makes them look so fun to play.


----------



## MFB

Snagged DS3 Deluxe Edition for $21 and some change on the PS store; probably gonna check out some brick and mortar and see if anyone has DS1 for cheaper than the $40 that Sony wants for it currently.

edit: yup, Target says $20, so they'll get my money sure enough


----------



## TedEH

I made it to the end of System Shock 2. I maintain my previous comment that this is entirely my jam and part of me thinks I should have played this a long time ago. You can sort of see while going through this one that a lot of good ideas originated here - some of which I think are better executed here than in some modern games that have iterated on the same concepts. The ending cutscene.... sweet jebus it's janky and tonally wrong for the game, but I can't find much fault elsewhere unless I'm trying to nitpick.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I made it to the end of System Shock 2. I maintain my previous comment that this is entirely my jam and part of me thinks I should have played this a long time ago. You can sort of see while going through this one that a lot of good ideas originated here - some of which I think are better executed here than in some modern games that have iterated on the same concepts. The ending cutscene.... sweet jebus it's janky and tonally wrong for the game, but I can't find much fault elsewhere unless I'm trying to nitpick.



Haha yeh i spent a lot of years forgetting about that cutscene, because the videos didn't play properly for a long time on modern systems.
One fault the game has is that it's possible to make a character build that makes it almost impossible to do that last section of the game. To me that's just part of the old school charm.
Some people don't like the last section of the game either, like it's this game's Xen. It just feels like a natural progression of the story to me though.

Have you played Prey (2017)? You can tell it's a spiritual successor.

This is reminding me to replay Thief 1 & 2 and SS2 again.


----------



## TedEH

Yeah, I definitely played Prey - it was also mostly my jam but some of the modernizations to the formula kind of detract from the charm and magic of it, IMO. I'd gladly play another Prey, or another Dishonored, or another Thief if they took another crack at that. I was also really into Deus Ex for a while, which I think was at its best with Human Revolution (although, full disclosure, I'm clearly biased on that 'cause my name is in the credits for the directors cut version) - but basically most of the "0451" type games are very much my jam.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> Yeah, I definitely played Prey - it was also mostly my jam but some of the modernizations to the formula kind of detract from the charm and magic of it, IMO. I'd gladly play another Prey, or another Dishonored, or another Thief if they took another crack at that. I was also really into Deus Ex for a while, which I think was at its best with Human Revolution (although, full disclosure, I'm clearly biased on that 'cause my name is in the credits for the directors cut version) - but basically most of the "0451" type games are very much my jam.



They're my favourite genre. I'm a little scared that they're dying out after what happened with Deus Ex MD and Dishonored on hold. Arkane's latest game doesn't really look like an 0451/immersive sim to me either. Pretty disappointing. I hope Cyberpunk wakes the genre up, because from some of the gameplay i've seen it looks like an RPG/immersive sim.

I've played Human Revolution an embarrassing amount of times by the way 
I play through some of these games just to escape in their atmosphere rather than the pure gameplay.


----------



## TedEH

I forget what Arkane's next thing is called, but I only noticed the trailer for it recently, and it still looks cool to me. I don't know what to think of Cyberpunk yet, 'cause I'd like to say it looks like something I'd like but at the same time.... I feel like most marketing that'd made it my way for that one has been all style and politics but not much in terms of mechanical gameplay. I'll have to reserve judgment on that one until I see more.


----------



## StevenC

Finished Mario's Super Picross today and getting the pitch to get my 3DS out and play some for real Picross.


----------



## Wuuthrad

Deus Wax was Prey good wernt it tho? 

lol auto-type im keeping it


----------



## wankerness

Played Dark Souls for a while, got through Blight Town from the depths entrance, killed the spider (was cheap and summoned help so she was really easy), killed the big fire blob thing with the cheap pitfall "strat," and then went back through blight town to get the key to new londo. Guess tomorrow is Sif time!  I got the claymore and have been mostly using that (the upswing second light attack is so OP compared to the zweihander's clunky attacks) and the uchigatana to get rid of the drake sword crutch. I still hit walls a lot, especially with the claymore, but I do not have good timing with spears and don't think I have a good one besides!

I didn't die in blight town more than once (THE FIRST barbarian smashed me right off the cliff), but I sure did have to clear toxin a few times, was whiteknuckled the whole time, and was looking at a guide for where to go! I was relieved I didn't have to jump, but having to slowly creep along ledges is still scary. Especially with this game's serious issues with getting stuck on tiny bumps in the floor that occasionally have to have you roll across them to get unstuck. Getting back across the tree branches from the crimson armor was nervewracking because of that!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Wuuthrad said:


> Deus Wax was Prey good wernt it tho?
> 
> lol auto-type im keeping it


If you read this with a certain accent you can still understand the point you were trying to make.


----------



## wankerness

Played DS all day, did some of the stuff I'd heard about for years like fighting the wolf holding the sword, navigating sen's fortress's silly traps and dealing with the archers in anor londo. Oh, and I had seen that furry tailed snow boss before somewhere.

I ground all morning/afternoon on the pile of blobby spear guys in the painting, so now I'm very overlevelled and hopefully things will be easier for a while! Haven't had any trouble with anything today in terms of dying (well, besides getting invaded in the woods), but sen's fortress was one long period of stress, and that was not close to as bad as the brief archer section in Anor Londo, especially when I got to the top and the right silver knight started hitting like a truck and wouldn't fall off the ledge.  I can't get used to how floaty and sensitive the movement is in this game, it makes the narrow ledges and things ten times more stressful.

I got my discount Yakuza: Like a Dragon in the mail today, was shocked to find it was the steelbook version. I can't wait to start this, but I'm going to at least hit a wall in DS first.


----------



## mongey

That archer section was Probably my least favorite thing in the game


----------



## Leviathus

mongey said:


> That archer section was Probably my least favorite thing in the game


I certainly raged there on my first playthrough. That walkback takes forever if you die.


----------



## SpaceDock

I finished Death Stranding last week, absolutely incredible game btw. Trying to burn through Bloodstained one more time before Cyberpunk drops next week.


----------



## wankerness

Played DS for quite a while more. Beat a few more bosses like Pinwheel (if he counts) and the Gravelord guy, then died to Seath once trying too long to get his tail when I had 42 humanity (been using that queelag's fury sword that scales damage with humanity). Got very upset when I realized I'd have to go back across those fucking invisible bridges in the crystal area. Then, found a new dark room in the library, tried to hit a chest to make sure it wasn't a mimic, accidentally hit big hat logan, so I immediately forcequit the game in the hopes that didn't get saved. I reloaded only to find myself dead, making me permanently lose all that humanity. AWESOME!

Just killed Seath the second time cause I am not an int build anyway, and I didn't want to mess with getting a couple of the other weapons required for the "all weapons" trophy like the one you have to drop onto from the moving staircase in the archives.

That crystal area with the invisible bridges is one of the most horrible areas I've ever played, right up there with Mario 64's Rainbow Ride. I can't believe everyone bitches about Blighttown, Anor Londo archers and Sen's Fortress, considering it's vastly worse. Guess they didn't make it that far!


----------



## Mathemagician

There is a way to tell if the chest is real or fake without hitting it. Think like a detective.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, you can tell the difference from the chain in the front (I think it was?), but when you think the room's empty it's a lot faster to just swing at it!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

[


wankerness said:


> Yeah, you can tell the difference from the chain in the front (I think it was?), but when you think the room's empty it's a lot faster to just swing at it!


also the mimics will subtly move and they're slightly different colors.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Last of us 2 seems to be quite controversial. I loved the first game, what’s your guys take on the sequel? Worth a buy?


----------



## Ralyks

TheShreddinHand said:


> Last of us 2 seems to be quite controversial. I loved the first game, what’s your guys take on the sequel? Worth a buy?



So, I personally loved it and it will probably be a top 5 game of the year for me, but it took a few weeks after beating it and reflecting on it to really appreciate it. Also, and you might find this arguement a lot, the second part of the game took too long, even if in retrospect I get what they were trying to do.


----------



## wankerness

From what I've heard the gameplay's better and it's fun in that regard, but the story's a lot worse than 1 and pisses some people off. Also, it's a misery-fest. I'm definitely passing till it's down in the 15-20 range.

I HOPE I'm getting towards the end of Dark Souls, besides maybe the "DLC," which I might skip (besides the first boss, that I accidentally ran into and had a hard time with but squeaked out a win on the second try). Just beat Four Kings first try, unless you count the first "attempt" where I tried to jump down the tower into the abyss and bashed off a side ledge and instantly died. Woo. Glad I got that chaos furysword! This game seems like it's got a lot of nasty bosses that can be made easy if you're the type who can mindlessly grind for a long time. Unfortunately that doesn't work against gravity.

I'm thinking of getting DS3 since the complete version is on sale right now, and it sounds like they massively improved the physics between 1 and 3. I don't know how much I'm ENJOYING this game, but it's certainly a unique experience. The art design is definitely the star of the show. A lot of the bosses look really, really good even by modern standards just cause they were so immaculately designed. Some of them remind me of the old classic Final Fantasy art.


----------



## Triple-J

Picked up Sleeping Dogs in a digital sale and man I feel dumb for being so late to the party as I've been meaning to check this game out since it 1st appeared on ps3!

The story is familiar crime drama stuff and is basically Hong Kong Donnie Brasco but I'm enjoying the combat a lot as it feels like a mix of the Batman Arkham series (similar control layout) and the Aki WWF/WCW wrestling games (it uses button holds for stronger/alternate attacks) plus there's a lot of 80's action movie type moments that make the game feel really satisfying to play.
Overall I'm enjoying it so far but I tend to hit a wall with sandbox games when I'm about 40% in as I often find them quite repetitive so while I'm enjoying it right now I'm not totally sold on it yet.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TheShreddinHand said:


> Last of us 2 seems to be quite controversial. I loved the first game, what’s your guys take on the sequel? Worth a buy?


not as good as the first game but still good imo. It's just way too long on the second half and the attempts to make you feel empathy for your enemies falls flat . The integration of the second character's story could have been handled so much better as well. The combat is excellent and I loved going back and trying different routes/techniques for fighting the factions but ultimate it's not as in depth as say Splinter Cell or MGS3/MGS5 with the sandbox options for stealth/combat.


----------



## SpaceDock

Triple-J said:


> Picked up Sleeping Dogs in a digital sale and man I feel dumb for being so late to the party as I've been meaning to check this game out since it 1st appeared on ps3!
> 
> The story is familiar crime drama stuff and is basically Hong Kong Donnie Brasco but I'm enjoying the combat a lot as it feels like a mix of the Batman Arkham series (similar control layout) and the Aki WWF/WCW wrestling games (it uses button holds for stronger/alternate attacks) plus there's a lot of 80's action movie type moments that make the game feel really satisfying to play.
> Overall I'm enjoying it so far but I tend to hit a wall with sandbox games when I'm about 40% in as I often find them quite repetitive so while I'm enjoying it right now I'm not totally sold on it yet.



I thought this was a great game as well, not as polished as GTA but I had no major complaints. My favorite part was screaming through town on motorcycles! The driving is so good.


----------



## wankerness

Triple-J said:


> Picked up Sleeping Dogs in a digital sale and man I feel dumb for being so late to the party as I've been meaning to check this game out since it 1st appeared on ps3!
> 
> The story is familiar crime drama stuff and is basically Hong Kong Donnie Brasco but I'm enjoying the combat a lot as it feels like a mix of the Batman Arkham series (similar control layout) and the Aki WWF/WCW wrestling games (it uses button holds for stronger/alternate attacks) plus there's a lot of 80's action movie type moments that make the game feel really satisfying to play.
> Overall I'm enjoying it so far but I tend to hit a wall with sandbox games when I'm about 40% in as I often find them quite repetitive so while I'm enjoying it right now I'm not totally sold on it yet.



I started that game and unfortunately got distracted by something else. I might get back to it someday if new games I want to play stop coming out (dammit Cyberpunk, hold off a few weeks!!). It felt a lot like a slightly more serious Yakuza, with looser combat that felt more GTA-like. If you like that, I might suggest checking out Yakuza 0.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Auditorium HD. Went through some of the downloads on my PS3 and realized I never finished it.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> From what I've heard the gameplay's better and it's fun in that regard, but the story's a lot worse than 1 and pisses some people off. Also, it's a misery-fest. I'm definitely passing till it's down in the 15-20 range.



The gameplay is definitely better, which I also like that it's a reflection of playing as younger protagonists instead of old man Joel. I liked the story, but I guess my problem is more with HOW it was told, if that makes sense. And yeah, it's a misery fest. I personally like that, sometimes you need a break from games that give you optimism and just revel in the misery. I mean, look at some of the music half of this board listens too  But yeah, seriously, if you don't want a game that may or may not make you feel like a piece of crap while still being fun as hell to kill, Fucking, Everyone, then yeah, this isn't for you.


And in a complete 180, my son and I did co-player Sackboy: A Big Adventure today. First time we've co-oped a game. Lucky kid gets Switch and PS5 as his first console experiences


----------



## Quiet Coil

KnightBrolaire said:


> The combat is excellent and I loved going back and trying different routes/techniques for fighting the factions but ultimate it's not as in depth as say Splinter Cell or MGS3/MGS5 with the sandbox options for stealth/combat.



Man I miss Splinter Cell, even the last one sans-Ironside. MGS is great (especially the first one), but I can do without the goofiness.


----------



## wankerness

Did Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls. Heh. Even preparing with a video guide I got killed by getting swiped into the pit twice on phase 3. What a stupid boss. I can only imagine how frustrating this boss would have been if it didn't save your progress each phase. I bet that's how it originally was, and the devs realized it was just too much with how silly the last phase was. 

So, now I guess I just have the DLC and the final boss left? Then it's Yakuza time!! I bet it's going to take me a while to deal with the DLC if I can even handle it (well, if the DLC is anything like the infamous DLC for bloodborne and DS2 where it's vastly, vastly harder than everything else).


----------



## SpaceDock

I absolutely love the Yakuza pc ports, just waiting a while to get Like a Dragon. I have been trying to beat all of my existing catalog before Cyberpunk drops. Then after I get through it hopefully I can pick up AC Valhalla, Watch Dogs 3, Like a Dragon, and some other new releases on sale. I just don’t see any point in buying a new game right before Cyberpunk.


----------



## wankerness

Yakuza 7 is on sale for 35 at best buy/amazon already. Some realllly fast price dropping on it, for some reason. 

I am waiting for reviews on Cyberpunk. I have read very little about it, but as I am not a big fan of the entire Blade Runner aesthetic outside of the actual blade runner movies, and as I haven't really been into FPS games for many years, I dunno if it's for me! It's nice that it doesn't have any BS "preorder bonuses" like so many games do (well, besides physical items), so I don't feel like I'll be missing out if I wait a bit.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> So, now I guess I just have the DLC and the final boss left? Then it's Yakuza time!! I bet it's going to take me a while to deal with the DLC if I can even handle it (well, if the DLC is anything like the infamous DLC for bloodborne and DS2 where it's vastly, vastly harder than everything else).


The Bloodborne DLC is much harder ime. I don't think AotA will give you too much trouble.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished up Auditorium HD last night. That last segment of the Classic track list, holy shit, those patterns were burnt into my brain hours after spending hours trying to get that shit pinpoint accurate.

Then I cleaned up some trophies in PlayStation All-Stars and played a little bit of Battlefield 3.

I think Cyberpunk will be a day one purchase for me. I've been wanting to play something interesting for a while now and I'm really looking forward to another sci-fi rpg.


----------



## MFB

Finished my NG+ of Fallen Order, I'm only ...two trophies away from the Platinum so I might hunt those down just to close it out. I can see some of the faults in it more on the second playthrough and not being blinded by a good Star Wars single player game since KOTOR. Dathomir is a bad planet as a whole, the slide mechanics can fuck off entirely, and the combat has a definite tipping point from "this looks unbalanced but I can make it work" to 'Goku arriving on Namek' level of precision evading and one shotting.

I still need to grab the DS1 remaster before starting DS3 just so the I'm not going backwards mechanically, I know the stories are unrelated. I have this week off so it'll give me a good chance to make some progress.


----------



## wankerness

My biggest problem with that Star Wars game was how if you missed a collectible in some locations it took FOREVER to go back and get it and then run alllll the way back to your ship. I missed one way up in that tree and ugh.


----------



## wankerness

Beat Artorias in DS1, guess the dragon's next. That Greatshield of Artorias thing is massively overpowered if you have a heavy strength build, you can live through practically anything it seems. 

My second PS4 controller died (I keep two working ones at all times since the charge on them lasts for so little time that I have to rotate them during long gaming/streaming sessions). I've owned many consoles over the decades, and never had a controller die on me (besides a gamecube controller where the sticks totally stopped working at some point during the 10 years they were sitting in a box in the basement). Well, I also had one single Xbox 360 controller so I used it exclusively and that one's got an A button that sorta sticks when you try to press it, which isn't a crippling issue but is annoying. But, I've had the left stick on TWO ps4 controllers just up and get too wonky to use. This one, when holding the left stick straight vertical, alternates between detecting the controller is pushed all the way up and partway up, so your character is unpredictably switching between running and walking forwards. It makes anything that requires any precision completely unplayable. Awesome craftsmanship, Sony dudes. So, now I might have to dump 60 dollars on a fourth fuckin controller cause Sony can't make a controller that lasts. I'm really tempted to just not buy one and get a PS5, though considering how much more expensive those controllers are, I sure hope they last a lot longer than these!!

Tomorrow I'm going to borrow a screwdriver/tweezers kit from work to try and attempt the surgery seen online to take out the pieces around the analog stick and clean them to see if that's the problem instead of actual wear, but I figure I'll probably just break something. Oh well, they're both useless as is. Bad controllers!!!


----------



## wankerness

EDIT: Did the delete post option get removed again? Jeez. Forum was lagging so I accidentally double-posted.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> My biggest problem with that Star Wars game was how if you missed a collectible in some locations it took FOREVER to go back and get it and then run alllll the way back to your ship. I missed one way up in that tree and ugh.



Yeah, first time around I got the chests out of the way just so I never had to hunt them down on NG+ or anything to get that trophy; they're in some obscure places too, just like the Force Echoes I'm currently hunting, and it's like "oh run this level backwards and do X/Y/Z as well and you'll see it, it's kind of obvious" but it's really not. The one trophy that's really holding me up is this Empowered Slow kills one, I ran the same area like 10 times in a row farming dudes and somehow still don't have it, so who knows. ES takes a lot of force to get done, so it's not like they weren't totally slowed when I killed them.

edit: apparently there's a specific kill animation that has to be done and that's what triggers the 1-25 kills count for the trophy, so who knows how far I really am then.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. With Cyberpunk being two days away I decided to clean up some trophies in MD, but realized I never did the Breach mode segment of the game, and now I regret ever bothering to start. I already wasn't much of a fan of the main story mode of the game, but to be fair I did play it laid up on painkillers after trowing out my lower back so that might have contributed to my dislike of it. But the breach mode is terrible. I now know why there are so few platinum completions for the game.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Yeah, first time around I got the chests out of the way just so I never had to hunt them down on NG+ or anything to get that trophy; they're in some obscure places too, just like the Force Echoes I'm currently hunting, and it's like "oh run this level backwards and do X/Y/Z as well and you'll see it, it's kind of obvious" but it's really not. The one trophy that's really holding me up is this Empowered Slow kills one, I ran the same area like 10 times in a row farming dudes and somehow still don't have it, so who knows. ES takes a lot of force to get done, so it's not like they weren't totally slowed when I killed them.
> 
> edit: apparently there's a specific kill animation that has to be done and that's what triggers the 1-25 kills count for the trophy, so who knows how far I really am then.



Hmm, I think what I ended up doing with that trophy was going after the little jumping monsters that hang out on the top of the first level since they all died in one hit and had no defensive abilities, so it was a lot easier to make sure to kill them before the slow wore off. I also remember one that I had to go back at the end of the game and farm off the troopers on top of the houses at some point in one of the early levels. Probably the slowed bolt reflect one? I dunno. I think those were the only two I didn't just get during the game. That was a very, very easy platinum compared to most I've done, since it had no surprise horrible tedious one at the end (ex the AC: Syndicate one where they put the decimal point in the wrong place so you have to run over 5,000 objects with the carriage).


----------



## wankerness

Well, I finally beat Dark Souls after not playing it for a couple days. 1-shot the dragon and Manus in the DLC cause the greatshield is OP, and then got killed twice by the infamously easy Manus by trying to parry when he grabbed me and then just losing composure.  Third try I killed him with no damage. Funny how that works!! 

I'm now wondering whether I should play DS2 and then 3, or just skip straight to 3. I bought both of them since 2 was only 10 bucks and some people like it, so hey. I have Bloodborne, too, which I played for a few hours once but didn't really get anywhere.

BUT, first, it's Yakuza time!!!


----------



## gabito

TheShreddinHand said:


> Last of us 2 seems to be quite controversial. I loved the first game, what’s your guys take on the sequel? Worth a buy?



It's a great game. I liked it at least as much as the first game, but it seems that's not the case for everyone.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Tarkov is fucking infuriating. Anytime I actually want to get in fights, I can't find scavs or players, and then when I'm full of loot they all magically appear. I was trying to kill 15 npcs and got shot through hills on 2 separate occasion, which is bullshit.

The quest design is mostly terrible too. Oh hey go to this place, get this item, then take it to another place, stand around for 30 seconds while you hide it, get shot in the face and have to do it all over again.


----------



## gabito

Finished NieR Gestalt a month ago or so. Cool game, I liked the story and characters more than NieR Automata's (which I liked but didn't love, BTW). Everything else is better in Automata, obviously (maybe except for the music? It's very good on both).

Then I went through Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (hey, I still have a huge PS3 backlog!). I'm not very into Platinum Games fighting / combat style games but I like MGS so much that I gave it a go anyways. It's a pretty good game, the story and characters are bonkers, even if Kojima wasn't so involved this time. Had a few laughs and enjoyed it overall.

I'm playing Mass Effect again. It seems it's "Play the full trilogy or nothing" for me. According to my save files, first time was in 2014 (paragon run), then 2016 (renegade run), and now again (whatever run). It was my intention to play a male Shepard for this run, but I was 2 levels away from Level 60 (and it's trophy) in ME1, so I'm using the same imported femshep again for the third time. No big deal, I really like Jennifer Hale's performance.

Cool thing is: even being a relatively straightforward and linear game, I'm still finding side quests, codex entries, and many things I didn't notice the first (and second!) time. Oh, and I finally got all the DLC for ME2 and ME3 from a friend (no way I was going to spend so much money on buying it as they're still full price...), so I finally can play the full games... especially 3.

Side quests for ME1 are a chore / repetitive, and the minigames are still super repetitive and boring, but I greatly enjoy the games overall.

I'm only missing the insanity run trophy from ME2 to get the platinum, but I don't know if I want to suffer so much... I'm not in the mood to struggle through games.

I think I will finally get to do a male Shepard run whenever the remastered versions are out and I get to buy them. Maybe a few years from now, who knows.


----------



## wankerness

ME1's side quests are pretty bad, yeah. Lots of very repetitive and boring drives around on planets with the hilariously boingy low-gravity vehicle physics, too. And god, the elevators! I hated maneuvering the citadel. But, I like the sorta clunky RPG feel to the combat as a contrast to the more gears of war style cover combat of 2/3. And I think the plot in 1 is better than 2's, even if the character work isn't as good.

ME2's DLC is hit and miss. The Shadow Broker is hailed as some of the best DLC ever (I don't really remember what I thought of it as I've only played through it once, as three or four of my playthroughs of the game happened before it even came out), but the other stuff is pretty bad. Especially the "mission" where you just fly a vehicle around in a volcano. Kasumi and Zaeed are not terrible characters, but they feel very tacked-on and don't really interact with the other characters or have follow-up missions.

I only started a ME2 insanity run once. The highest difficulty runs on ME1 and ME3 were far, far easier than I was expecting, but I think I've heard that 2 is harder. I think I only got a couple missions in before I lost interest. Maybe I'll try again on the remaster.

ME3's is all pretty good and some of it is great. The character they chopped out of the main game to turn into DLC is far better integrated into the rest of the story than the crummy DLC characters in 2, and the "party" DLC, Citadel, is immensely satisfying if you're a big fan of the series and I think for some people made up for the controversial ending by being sort of a weird coda that really was effective fan-service. It brings back a ton of characters from the other games and is just a great time.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Well, I finally beat Dark Souls after not playing it for a couple days. 1-shot the dragon and Manus in the DLC cause the greatshield is OP, and then got killed twice by the infamously easy Manus by trying to parry when he grabbed me and then just losing composure.  Third try I killed him with no damage. Funny how that works!!
> 
> I'm now wondering whether I should play DS2 and then 3, or just skip straight to 3. I bought both of them since 2 was only 10 bucks and some people like it, so hey. I have Bloodborne, too, which I played for a few hours once but didn't really get anywhere.
> 
> BUT, first, it's Yakuza time!!!



I actually really liked 2. Like a LOT. I never played the “first” version just the updated/GOTY/Enhanced edition or whatever. 

The core gameplay makes some really nice improvements to 1’s gameplay. And a LOT of the boss and level designs are really cool. 

The game just has no issue letting you get jumped from behind and above at the same time. It’s not unfair, it’s just tough. 

Also the DLC is lengthy enough to be worth getting to and exploring. It is no joke amazing. 

Another point was that the PVP balance was very well done, almost any weapon type could work with the right build if you were just looking for a good time. 

I put a good 3+ playthroughs through DS2.


----------



## Quiet Coil

ME1 is still my favorite, waiting to see what all gets changed in the overhaul.

In unrelated news, anybody see that KOTOR II is coming to iOS (like in a week)?


----------



## wankerness

Too bad it probably won't include the massive fan-created patch necessary to make it a polished game on PC!


----------



## Quiet Coil

wankerness said:


> Too bad it probably won't include the massive fan-created patch necessary to make it a polished game on PC!


Confirmed not to. Only reason I’m vaguely interested is because I’ve played the first one to death on my iPhone.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I actually really liked 2. Like a LOT. I never played the “first” version just the updated/GOTY/Enhanced edition or whatever.
> 
> The core gameplay makes some really nice improvements to 1’s gameplay. And a LOT of the boss and level designs are really cool.
> 
> The game just has no issue letting you get jumped from behind and above at the same time. It’s not unfair, it’s just tough.
> 
> Also the DLC is lengthy enough to be worth getting to and exploring. It is no joke amazing.
> 
> Another point was that the PVP balance was very well done, almost any weapon type could work with the right build if you were just looking for a good time.
> 
> I put a good 3+ playthroughs through DS2.



I just started it. Initial reaction is that I am sure accidentally bringing up the gestures all the time since they switched options with touchpad! Also, while I don't like clicking sticks, jumping is vastly easier than 1 when you have a different button to jump than you do to run.

Yakuza: Like a Dragon sapped all my will to play it when the first 3 hours was almost entirely cutscenes, with very short "run 40 yards" objectives in between and maybe 5 battles that were all over in about 3 turns. Got to the present and quit, pretty much. Ughhhh. I've played 7 Yakuza games and almost never had a problem with cutscene length before! They really went too far!


----------



## StevenC

Started playing Death Stranding again and I'm up in the mountains without Lou. This game gives me crazy stress and anxiety but in a really good way.


----------



## TedEH

I'm actually kinda unsure what to play right now... I've got a lot of a backlog of stuff I haven't played, but not a whole that that strikes me as very exciting at the moment. I've mostly been playing older games again, and part of me wants something more modern, but I also don't feel like spending a bunch of money when I already have a backlog of games so..... I dunno.

I started Oracle of Ages a while back and didn't finish it yet. I started playing Rogue Leader on the gamecube and it's good, but it's arcade-y and mostly just good for short bursts. I managed to get a copy of Thousand Year Door, but I feel like I've played a ton of Mario related stuff this year and could use a change of tone away from that.

Maybe the Watch Dogs 2 copy I got free from Epic...? I dunno.


----------



## wankerness

Jesus christ! DS2 is WAY nastier than 1! I have died about as many times already as I did in all of DS1. Not helped by the horrid "hollowing" mechanic where your max health decreases every time you die, making it harder every time. I died many times to random mobs that are clustered together in huge groups, above you and below you and then with big fast-moving turds that can grand-slam you off a bridge to your doom with no problem. 

Of course, the first BOSS (the giant) was a total joke and I killed him first try without my health going below 75%. But god, the mobs! The mobs!!!

I'm going melee again, though I'm tempted to just start dumping points into int so I can get soul arrows (I only have 1 INT now!!). I have the rapier and the flame longsword - rapier does way more damage, but I usually miss, so mainly using longsword. Got str/dex up to 10/14 and then just started rotating points in vgr/end/adp. 

Here's hoping things get easier later! (yeah right) The hollowing mechanic really bugs me. I can't believe this has a rep for being easier than 1, unless people either always played it second or unless it really gets easier after the beginning.


----------



## TedEH

TedEH said:


> I started playing Rogue Leader on the gamecube and it's good, but it's arcade-y and mostly just good for short bursts.


I'm going to amend my mini-review that the arcade-y-ness of that game means it's occasionally frustrating. You die a lot in what feels like unfair ways. I'm currently stuck on the last standard mission and it's one of those "feels like every mistake is fatal" kinds of situations. It's got so much going for it but the difficulty curve is all over the place and it really drags down the experience. Playing it makes me kinda want to try Squadrons instead.


----------



## wankerness

Rogue Leader's sequel, Rebel Strike, is also good if you're a big fan of the classic Star Wars movies. It has some levels where you run around on foot and/or change vehicles that have some jankiness to them, but levels like the attack on the executor or driving an AT-ST around during the battle of endor more than make it worthwhile. 

I remember those two games were some of the first where I was blown away by the graphics on it, I felt like it looked just like the movies in some of the space levels. Of course if I played them now, it would probably make me wonder what I was thinking. 

Squadrons doesn't sound that appealing to me, as I was always more into games like Rogue Squadron and Dark Forces than I was in the flight sims like X-Wing and Tie Fighter. Also, it sounds like a Battlefront 2 situation where the 1 player is fun but a brief afterthought and the real focus was on multiplayer. I wish they'd gone all in on the 1 player, it's like they were setting it up to fail. Multiplayer games, especially EA ones, always have the player base die out so fast and then are held up as failures because the multiplayer didn't catch on, when they never gave the one-player a chance and probably could have had a pretty successful game if they just did that. As is, I'll probably buy it when it's 15 dollars and enjoy the one player instead of feeling ripped off that I paid 60 bucks for 8 hours.

Played some more Dark Souls 2, beat the pursuer using the cheesy ballista strategy and then beat the incredibly slow dragon guy with the halberd. Now I think I'm going to get massacred by more random enemies (these heide knights are dicks) for a while. This is making me realize even more that I was bad at Dark Souls and was just overlevelled with good gear for too long so I got lazy.  I need to get a good greatshield and the strength to carry it here, too!


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Now I think I'm going to get massacred by more random enemies



You absolutely. Positively. Hecktamunedaly. Will.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I'll probably buy it when it's 15 dollars and enjoy the one player instead of feeling ripped off that I paid 60 bucks for 8 hours.


I'm more or less waiting for the same thing. Some day in the future, the price will have gone down or be steeply discounted enough to fit into that impulse-buy category, then I'll give it a shot.

Right now, Wolf 2: The New Colossus is aaaaaaaaalmost in that category - it's on Steam for $10 right now, but I'm only hesitant because I have so many other games already.

I installed Watch_Dogs 2 yesterday to see if that might be a contender for next-game-to-play. EGS "installed" the game by downloading an installer, launching another launcher, which then downloaded and installed more stuff - so they win the award for dumbest/jankiest install process. I launched the game and it feels..... like a product. I only played for maybe an hour, but it feels like I'm starring in an ad targeted at hip/edgy kids who don't know how computers work but think they're cool anyway. A whole hour and I can already feel the checklist-brainstormed-in-a-board-room design and "how do you do fellow kids" vibes. Hopefully that doesn't persist through the whole experience.


----------



## MFB

I've said it before, and it's a hill I'll die on, any FPS post-2010 that's still requiring you to hold/press a button to pick-up ammo is a bad FPS for that alone. I wanted to like the new Wolfensteins, but the second that mechanic hit I knew I was done for, so I nope'd the fuck out of there.


----------



## TedEH

I find it funny though that in my mind the "walk over it to pick it up" design is the older / more outdated way to do it. What exactly is the modern standard...? When I think modern fps, I tend to think looters -> which is basically holding a button to pick stuff up, except that it's got that extra abstraction of "being inside a container".


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I've said it before, and it's a hill I'll die on, any FPS post-2010 that's still requiring you to hold/press a button to pick-up ammo is a bad FPS for that alone. I wanted to like the new Wolfensteins, but the second that mechanic hit I knew I was done for, so I nope'd the fuck out of there.



Hmm. It's an annoying mechanic, but I guess I got so used to it in Borderlands 1/2 that I didn't even notice that they took it out in Borderlands 3 (you pick up ammo and health automatically, you only need to press a button to loot guns). I think it would matter a LOT more in a faster-paced game, especially multiplayer, where having to stop to pick up ammo might be fatal. I agree that it's more fun and makes more sense to not have to hit a button to loot ammo, since it's one of those deals where there's never any situation where you wouldn't want to pick up the ammo! 

Well, maybe in some really inventory-management style of game like Resident Evil or something where a clip takes up space. What other FPS games make you press a button to loot ammo? I can't even think of whether I had to in Far Cry or Doom 2016 or even some really old games like Goldeneye or whatever. Man, my shooter memory is faded.

But yeah, I get dying on hills for stupid mechanics like that. It's like me with weapons durability and hating BOTW on principal for years!


----------



## MFB

Battle Royales it makes sense to use the mechanic for weapons, since you don't want to unknowingly pick up a new weapon just by walking over it (and I can't think of any game that's done something similar), but for ammo? That's a resource that you can always ditch if you're not using later if you pick up by mistake. Too much sniper ammo? Dump it all at a safe point. Rocket ammo? Useless, dump it. I haven't played any loot shooters since Borderlands 2 since they require friends or half-decent strangers (LOL @ both), and the constant grind didn't really appeal either. Only one I think that would be close in my library is Diablo 3.

But FPS like Call of Duty/Halo/Titanfall/etc, none of them are doing that and because the gameplay is meant to be fast and on your feet, and doing that slows you down (or brings you to a full stop if you're bad) so it's just a 'who saw who first' issue.


----------



## wankerness

Hey, Borderlands 1/3 at least are extremely playable even if you have no friends! 2 is a lot more frustrating single player as most enemies on higher levels will 1-shot you. But, I've put hundreds of hours in all three of them and 2 is the only one I spent any amount of time in co-op mode on (and that was only on one character out of like 6 that I made).

I miss the old days of being able to hold all the weapons at all times. Auto-loot on weapons made sense in that scenario (ex Quake 3, Unreal Tournament). I guess that was pretty tied to the convention of having a computer keyboard and being able to use 1-0 for weapons. Turok 2 for n64 I remember was a big step forward in console land since it had a weapon select wheel. Unfortunately most games went the route of only letting you hold a few weapons at a time so that mechanic became pointless. Halo ruined everything!!! I never liked those games much.


----------



## Xaios

Lately I've been playing Jedi: Fallen Order, and I'm not ashamed to say that, honestly, I suck at it. Easy settings exist for people like me.

Of course, now that Cyberpunk is out, it will consume the whole of my existence for the foreseeable future.


----------



## MFB

Xaios said:


> Lately I've been playing Jedi: Fallen Order, and I'm not ashamed to say that, honestly, I suck at it. Easy settings exist for people like me.
> 
> Of course, now that Cyberpunk is out, it will consume the whole of my existence for the foreseeable future.



To be fair, unless you've played a Souls universe game, it's one of the first accessible games that used the same model for their single player so its jarring. Specific save/spawn points, enemies that respawn when you rest, exp/life/force get tied to the enemy that killed you, fewer levels in favor of useful skills; but luckily they also put in a difficulty level so you can tweak as you see fit.


----------



## MFB

Bit the bullet and bought DS Remastered through the PS Store, nowhere in this god damn state seemed to have a copy between Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy or even fucking Gamestop (those that still exist that is). How the shit is this game only 8GB, is it just like, extremely short, what am I missing?


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Bit the bullet and bought DS Remastered through the PS Store, nowhere in this god damn state seemed to have a copy between Target, Wal-Mart, Best Buy or even fucking Gamestop (those that still exist that is). How the shit is this game only 8GB, is it just like, extremely short, what am I missing?



It was originally crammed on a DVD-9 cause xbox 360. DS2 is barely bigger.


----------



## Xaios

MFB said:


> To be fair, unless you've played a Souls universe game, it's one of the first accessible games that used the same model for their single player so its jarring. Specific save/spawn points, enemies that respawn when you rest, exp/life/force get tied to the enemy that killed you, fewer levels in favor of useful skills; but luckily they also put in a difficulty level so you can tweak as you see fit.


I'm more referring to the combat, namely boss battles. I cut my gaming teeth in twitch shooters years ago (UT, Q3A, Tribes, etc), so I'm surprised by how sluggish my reactions seem to be. My first actual boss battle outside the prologue (when you see the Second Sister at the entrance to the second tomb on Zeffo) was an absolute get-rekt-athon, even on easy mode. Even outside that, it seems like half the time when I dodge, I still get hit. I'm not used to the mushy delayed feeling of moves in modern action games compared to older shooters.


----------



## wankerness

Xaios said:


> I'm more referring to the combat, namely boss battles. I cut my gaming teeth in twitch shooters years ago (UT, Q3A, Tribes, etc), so I'm surprised by how sluggish my reactions seem to be. My first actual boss battle outside the prologue (when you see the Second Sister at the entrance to the second tomb on Zeffo) was an absolute get-rekt-athon, even on easy mode. Even outside that, it seems like half the time when I dodge, I still get hit. I'm not used to the mushy delayed feeling of moves in modern action games compared to older shooters.



Is your TV set to game mode? I had SERIOUS trouble in the similarly tight Ghost of Tsushima with the standoffs/parries until I realized my TV had turned game mode off somehow, and that thus I was playing everything with slight lag. The game got exponentially easier after I turned that back on. Most LEDs have this mode. It might be called something else depending on manufacturer. On the other forum I frequent, I just saw someone freaking out about how impossible and unplayable Sekiro was until someone asked him the same question, at which point he promptly beat several bosses. 

If your TV already has game mode on, guess you're getting old like me! Playing lots of modern action games has kept my reflexes pretty sharp, but I definitely have a much harder time than I did 10 years ago in really frenetic stuff like trying to monitor large raid healing in WoW while also paying attention to what's going on with the fight.


----------



## Xaios

wankerness said:


> Is your TV set to game mode?


Playing on PC. No television involved.


----------



## wankerness

Xaios said:


> Playing on PC. No television involved.



Hmm. Well, I had no issues on the PS4 version, though I think I was playing it on the medium difficulty setting. Maybe you're getting old! Try playing some Starcraft 2 to improve your reaction speed!

Speaking of getting old, parries in Dark Souls 2 are bad, bad news and I very rarely can time them right. I spent much of the afternoon grinding the heide knights until they despawned just to try and get better at the game. Guess I'm just going to be a roller/stabber instead of a parry guy. Took a few tries to kill the Old Dragonslayer, then 1-shot the two-headed thing in the pirate ship and the Ruin Sentinels, partly thanks to summoning NPCs. Hardest enemy in this damn game so far is the heide knight with the spear that guards the entrance to Old Dragonslayer. What the hell was up with that guy?! I think I killed him twice, got killed a few times, and then just started running away from him.

I started a dex build for the rapier but discovered almost everything is weak to the mace and it's a lot easier to hit enemies with, making me wish I'd gone strength instead. So, now I am getting Str up to match my 20 dex and oh well, so far I'm still progressing, slowly but surely. I'll probably hit a wall sooner or later since it sounds like this game has a couple bosses that are way harder than anything in DS1, and I've made a couple serious mistakes that resulted in me losing ~40,000 souls.


----------



## MFB

Boy howdy, the weapon collision detection is REAL on Dark Souls. Every attack with a broadsword in a corridor gets cut short by this got damn geometry, can't do shit. I applaud them for having good detection, but it's now slowly getting in the way of actually _playing the game_. 

I'm moving through Undead Burg right now, in my opinion, there's one group of guys too many between bonfire and boss, and I'm sure that's the point. Like, I get it, your whole thing is limited heals with more enemies so you have to "get good" but when your character movement/mechanics are this slow, bosses are going to take a handful of tries before you start to get there; but now I need to run this dumb gauntlet of hollows just to get there every time? They're not the challenge, just this one big Minotaur dickhead at the end, let me rush by them! Oh wait, there's too many in a too small space so at any point, one group will still continue to chase, womp womp.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Boy howdy, the weapon collision detection is REAL on Dark Souls. Every attack with a broadsword in a corridor gets cut short by this got damn geometry, can't do shit. I applaud them for having good detection, but it's now slowly getting in the way of actually _playing the game_.
> 
> I'm moving through Undead Burg right now, in my opinion, there's one group of guys too many between bonfire and boss, and I'm sure that's the point. Like, I get it, your whole thing is limited heals with more enemies so you have to "get good" but when your character movement/mechanics are this slow, bosses are going to take a handful of tries before you start to get there; but now I need to run this dumb gauntlet of hollows just to get there every time? They're not the challenge, just this one big Minotaur dickhead at the end, let me rush by them! Oh wait, there's too many in a too small space so at any point, one group will still continue to chase, womp womp.


Use a spear or a weapon with a good stab attack in corridors. You're literally making it more difficult for yourself. Not every weapon works in every situation, they all have specific uses, that's why it's good to rotate weapons.


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> Use a spear or a weapon with a good stab attack in corridors. You're literally making it more difficult for yourself. Not every weapon works in every situation, they all have specific uses, that's why it's good to rotate weapons.



Haven't found or had a spear dropped by anyone at this point or else I would  It's not that I want this to be happening, it's just that all my weapons right now are either sword variation, battle axe, or morningstar - all swing, no thrust!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Haven't found or had a spear dropped by anyone at this point or else I would  It's not that I want this to be happening, it's just that all my weapons right now are either sword variation, battle axe, or morningstar - all swing, no thrust!


undead merchant sells a basic spear.
there's a winged spear in the firelink shrine graveyard.


----------



## Choop

MFB said:


> Boy howdy, the weapon collision detection is REAL on Dark Souls. Every attack with a broadsword in a corridor gets cut short by this got damn geometry, can't do shit. I applaud them for having good detection, but it's now slowly getting in the way of actually _playing the game_.
> 
> I'm moving through Undead Burg right now, in my opinion, there's one group of guys too many between bonfire and boss, and I'm sure that's the point. Like, I get it, your whole thing is limited heals with more enemies so you have to "get good" but when your character movement/mechanics are this slow, bosses are going to take a handful of tries before you start to get there; but now I need to run this dumb gauntlet of hollows just to get there every time? They're not the challenge, just this one big Minotaur dickhead at the end, let me rush by them! Oh wait, there's too many in a too small space so at any point, one group will still continue to chase, womp womp.



I would for sure try and get a different weapon -- try to get one with a thrust move or even an overhead swing. I can't remember the movesets for all the weapons right now off the top of my head, but also if you 2h weapons sometimes you'll get a swing that will work better in tight spaces.


----------



## Choop

I assume this is still possible in the remastered version!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Cleaned up some story related trophies in Mankind Divided. Only thing really left to do is the total stealth playthrough and the tablet collecting. Both of which will be more time consuming than they're worth right now cause it's Cyberpunk time now.


----------



## wankerness

Did two more bosses in DSII on the first try (Gargoyles and Lost Sinner), thanks to the overpowered summon npcs. I never used them in DS1. It's nice!


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Hmm. Well, I had no issues on the PS4 version, though I think I was playing it on the medium difficulty setting. Maybe you're getting old! Try playing some Starcraft 2 to improve your reaction speed!
> 
> Speaking of getting old, parries in Dark Souls 2 are bad, bad news and I very rarely can time them right. I spent much of the afternoon grinding the heide knights until they despawned just to try and get better at the game. Guess I'm just going to be a roller/stabber instead of a parry guy. Took a few tries to kill the Old Dragonslayer, then 1-shot the two-headed thing in the pirate ship and the Ruin Sentinels, partly thanks to summoning NPCs. Hardest enemy in this damn game so far is the heide knight with the spear that guards the entrance to Old Dragonslayer. What the hell was up with that guy?! I think I killed him twice, got killed a few times, and then just started running away from him.
> 
> I started a dex build for the rapier but discovered almost everything is weak to the mace and it's a lot easier to hit enemies with, making me wish I'd gone strength instead. So, now I am getting Str up to match my 20 dex and oh well, so far I'm still progressing, slowly but surely. I'll probably hit a wall sooner or later since it sounds like this game has a couple bosses that are way harder than anything in DS1, and I've made a couple serious mistakes that resulted in me losing ~40,000 souls.



With the Rapier Two-hand R1/R2 enemies from behind after dashing around them. You can get so many hits on it’s ridiculous. IIRC it also moves you forward a bit. But yeah the mace is also solid. 

Never parry always dodge, lol. Except in pvp.


----------



## Mathemagician

Choop said:


> I would for sure try and get a different weapon -- try to get one with a thrust move or even an overhead swing. I can't remember the movesets for all the weapons right now off the top of my head, but also if you 2h weapons sometimes you'll get a swing that will work better in tight spaces.



Pretty sure claymore 1-hand R2 is a thrust. Also a lot have overhead swings which also work great in hallways.


----------



## wankerness

I ended up also adjusting after a while in DS and just always sort of looking at the left wall when I’d attack enemies in the hall so the swing would hit the enemy instead of the right wall. Never ended up using a spear since my early good weapons were all small one-handers/big 2h swords and I got used to the play style. I’d say getting the uchi or the drake sword ASAP is the easiest to avoid hitting walls.


----------



## Mathemagician

I have NEVER played with a dex-based katana build. None of the DS or BB. Maybe I should....


----------



## MFB

Made it past the Taurus Demon, I can see why any DS players who then moved to BB and got wrecked were annoyed. It may be that it's the first in the series, but this shit is tedious and slow, and feels like it requires you to cheese bosses instead of just making them slightly easier. 

Even with getting my equip load down to under half encumberment, my movement was just quick enough to get away and up the tower to do the drop attacks; and that was after farming a few levels to up my end/str/vit up a few notches. But literally the method of killing the boss is "go up this ladder, drop attack, repeat" and that's not a good fight, its just A fight. Then after the fight, the fog clears and all the enemies I ran by were suddenly waiting to greet me - the fuck is that?! Not a bonfire in sight either once you get to Undead Parish, just a "fuck you, more enemies to fight dumb dumb." Bloodborne at least drops a lantern for you when the boss is dead.

This is gonna be a long game to get through I think


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Made it past the Taurus Demon, I can see why any DS players who then moved to BB and got wrecked were annoyed. It may be that it's the first in the series, but this shit is tedious and slow, and feels like it requires you to cheese bosses instead of just making them slightly easier.
> 
> Even with getting my equip load down to under half encumberment, my movement was just quick enough to get away and up the tower to do the drop attacks; and that was after farming a few levels to up my end/str/vit up a few notches. But literally the method of killing the boss is "go up this ladder, drop attack, repeat" and that's not a good fight, its just A fight. Then after the fight, the fog clears and all the enemies I ran by were suddenly waiting to greet me - the fuck is that?! Not a bonfire in sight either once you get to Undead Parish, just a "fuck you, more enemies to fight dumb dumb." Bloodborne at least drops a lantern for you when the boss is dead.
> 
> This is gonna be a long game to get through I think



It’s a training fight to teach a mechanic. And IIRC you cross the bridge and go straight to a bonfire. 

However you are right that the game is designed to be very slow and punishing until you know what’s going on. Then you’ll find yourself running past mobs and dodging constantly. Often the smaller bosses are quick making them harder, or the area to fight is tiny making positioning difficult.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm about 6 or so hours into Cyberpunk. Not sure what I think of it yet. It's alot more "wait for this scripted sequence to end before you can continue" than I thought it was gonna be. And being a CDPR game I'm probably not out of the opening tutorial segment of the game just yet. Graphically though it is amazing. I'm playing on a launch era PS4 and it's the best looking game I've played on it. I can't wait to get the PS5 and see what it looks like in 4K.


----------



## Ralyks

Carrion Rocket said:


> I can't wait to get the PS5 and see what it looks like in 4K



It looks pretty excellent on a PS5, although I'm sure the PS5 proper version coming next year will blow it out of the water.

Anyway, aside from Cyberpunk 2077, I'm giving Observer another go with the System Redux version for PS5, and Hauer Rutger phoning it in aside (then again, he did pass during development...), It's a pretty neat Cyberpunk horror game so far.

Also, Immortals Fenyx Rising. Yeah, some of the humor may fall flat, but damn this game is fun.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

So Cyberpunk has crashed on me twice now (CE-34878-0 error on PS4). I'm out of the tutorial section of the game and am now in the main open world area and have been noticing way more bugs. Invisible guns, animations not being animated, npc characters t-posing to assert dominance. I have two days off coming up and I might just wait to play it again then cause I'm only able to get about two or so hours of game time before it seems to fully crash on me.


----------



## wankerness

Sounds like I should wait a few months for them to fix it! Witcher 3 was similar in that regard.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Been playing a lot of Total War Warhammer 2 again the past couple of weeks with the Wood Elf rehaul and been having a lot of fun. 

The occasional stuttering and me realizing my CPU is about 6-7 years old is making me think about upgrading soon, but I think I'll wait for AMD to come around with their new socket type that's rumoured for 2022 just to be future proof. I'd hate to invest a ton of money in a new CPU, motherboard, coolers, and potentially RAM just to have it be the last gen. Right now I have an Intel 4760K that's been serving me well but I need to research what I want next, seems the Ryzen 5000 series are hard to come by lately anyway. Also saw that AMD offers some CPU's that don't have integrated graphics so that might be a cost savings. What's everyone rocking for high powered CPU's these days?


----------



## Leviathus

Been on mgs1 on ps3. At the rex fight rn and i must have 50 continues at this point. Playing on normal and its so fucking frustrating lol, goes to show how easy games are these days compared to 20 years ago.


----------



## cwhitey2

I started playing Dragon Age Inquisition, great game so far!


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> Been on mgs1 on ps3. At the rex fight rn and i must have 50 continues at this point. Playing on normal and its so fucking frustrating lol, goes to show how easy games are these days compared to 20 years ago.



What? That game seemed really easy at the time! As a scrubby nub who couldn't hack it in most of the games I owned, I still beat that thing like 4 times with no trouble I can remember except when I tried doing the torture section on hard. I think maybe I died on the liquid snake fight once or twice too. It's certainly vastly easier than 3, or similar contemporary games like Syphon Filter, mostly thanks to how enemies can't see you unless you're about 3 feet in front of their face and how the radar shows you everything. What's happening?


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> What's happening?


----------



## Mathemagician

Trying the newest wow expansion. I’m so old and out of touch I’m just trying to heal for the first time. We’re all gonna die together. That’s what I know.


----------



## Alberto7

Got Hades for my Nintendo Switch. Boy, is this game fun or what! Love the fighting mechanics; each little add-on/powerup you get really makes a difference, and there a GAZILLION of them. The art is cool and has this suave sort of feel, and the voice acting is some of the best I've heard in a while. The script is a ton of fun. Not to mention that the music is pretty sweet. Simple and kinda brainless, but really entertaining. And cheap too! Got about 30% off due to having accumulated a few points on the Nintendo eShop.


----------



## Leviathus

Okay, finished up mgs with 38 continues. Still pretty bad, guess Mantis was right when he called me a "poor soldier" haha.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Trying the newest wow expansion. I’m so old and out of touch I’m just trying to heal for the first time. We’re all gonna die together. That’s what I know.



I think healing in WoW for a few years created a lot of my general animosity towards humanity. SO many occasions with DPS standing in fires and then raging in chat about not getting heals when they inevitably died when I'd have to move, or something. When I got overgeared and became an asshole I generally just stopped healing anyone that was making my life difficult. It was kind of fun.

I tried raid healing again a couple years ago - my reflexes just weren't there anymore to be able to monitor 25 health bars AND pay attention to who's in all the danger zones AND avoid all mechanics myself AND also be healing more than at least some of the other healers so I don't look bad when people spam healing meters. I mean, I could in Raid Finder mode cause anyone can do that, but in PUGs it was terrible, and I didn't have a guild anymore. God, raid healing is a pain in the ass. People are far less willing to carry bad healers than bad DPS, even though bad DPS make the healers' life far more difficult than bad tanks/healers.  And mythic dungeons are far more difficult since EVERYTHING is on you and there's so much riding on you doing it as fast as possible, with healer mana tending to be the thing determining the pace if the dps/tank are bad, and they do NOT want to let you drink. 

I kinda miss WoW. But, I disliked the last expansion SO much that I dunno if I'll ever play again. The total change to the loot system was idiotic and the rep/artifact grind was worse than it had been since Vanilla. BC, WOTLK, and Legion were all really good. The Draenor one was pretty lame. Cataclysm wasn't great and I didn't play the panda one.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Mario galaxy players, are you using a pro controller or joycons in each hand?


----------



## TedEH

I choose C - handheld mode and using the touch screen.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I think healing in WoW for a few years created a lot of my general animosity towards humanity. SO many occasions with DPS standing in fires and then raging in chat about not getting heals when they inevitably died when I'd have to move, or something. When I got overgeared and became an asshole I generally just stopped healing anyone that was making my life difficult. It was kind of fun.
> 
> I tried raid healing again a couple years ago - my reflexes just weren't there anymore to be able to monitor 25 health bars AND pay attention to who's in all the danger zones AND avoid all mechanics myself AND also be healing more than at least some of the other healers so I don't look bad when people spam healing meters. I mean, I could in Raid Finder mode cause anyone can do that, but in PUGs it was terrible, and I didn't have a guild anymore. God, raid healing is a pain in the ass. People are far less willing to carry bad healers than bad DPS, even though bad DPS make the healers' life far more difficult than bad tanks/healers.  And mythic dungeons are far more difficult since EVERYTHING is on you and there's so much riding on you doing it as fast as possible, with healer mana tending to be the thing determining the pace if the dps/tank are bad, and they do NOT want to let you drink.
> 
> I kinda miss WoW. But, I disliked the last expansion SO much that I dunno if I'll ever play again. The total change to the loot system was idiotic and the rep/artifact grind was worse than it had been since Vanilla. BC, WOTLK, and Legion were all really good. The Draenor one was pretty lame. Cataclysm wasn't great and I didn't play the panda one.



Nah this is PVP only. I couldn’t care less about raiding. Don’t have the time for anything but pugs, and don’t want to devote the 2-3 hours I may play a week to a single dungeon with randoms.

When I can die in pvp like a million times per hour. Lol.

I last played during BC last time I actually raided. Only the last patch of WOTLK (apparently missing one of the best expansions ever) And a tiny bit of the Draenor expansion. But really it was BC. So for me everything is new. SW feels like my old neighborhood changed after going back 10 years later, lol.


----------



## wankerness

DS2, playing it like I did 1 and grinding for huge stretches of time to give myself every advantage possible. The way the enemies stop spawning after ~10 kills is kind of nice for pacing with that. I went for an idiotic split build, and mostly just run around with a greatshield and mace and light armor. I am at the smelter demon now, and everything I've heard suggests I'm going to die a bunch.

I've been switching to Yakuza every few bosses and playing that for a bit before switching back. I'm now past the incredibly long intro phase and it's starting to feel more like what I like these games for: bumming around town, helping random people with stupid problems, etc. The enemies are even more amusing than normal here. I love the RPG style buffs/debuffs and how they're translated to Yakuza language. Ex, enemies give you enrage status by "dancing around like a jackass." It's a good time.

Tried AC: Valhalla again, I just logged out next to the fucking cairn that was giving me trouble to see if they fix it in a patch, they didn't, I quit again. Looks like a bigger patch came out today - I might have to try again!


----------



## Wuuthrad

Cyberpunk 2077 is a great fucking game!
I read the hate online and figured I’d better give it a try and see what all the fuss is.

Seemed like it would be right up my alley- Deus Ex, MGS, and Dark Souls have been some of my favorite games. But my all time favorite was Killer7, what a mindfuck!

And Bugs? Please...

Who remembers Oblivion saves? lol

Anyway this game is right up my alley- like playing a game version of Bladerunner, all glitched out and perverse to a certain degree.

Im on the hardest difficulty and it’s not as punishing as DS 1-3, but it tells a better story, shares a unique customization, and amongst many others, one really nice feature are the Radio Stations- Dark Tekno and Black Metal-ish stations in the car? Come on...!!!

So many crazy things going on Night City- definitely worth checking out.

Im on XBOX 1 and rarely buy new games and I haven’t really had any issues at all.


-edit- 

I recommend taking your time- it’s a devil in the details kind of game. The Shards are really awesome and really help to illustrate the dystopian lore, much of which is nightly relevant to modern times, and particularly topical and relevant to the global dynamics and issues of the present “new world order” so to speak. 

I might even turn off all the hints and figure everything else in my own, like games used to be.


----------



## Wuuthrad

“Bugs”... lol




“Unplayable!”... lmao


----------



## p0ke

Wuuthrad said:


> Cyberpunk 2077
> ...
> Im on XBOX 1 and rarely buy new games and I haven’t really had any issues at all.



The regular Xbox One and not one of the newer versions (Xbox One X etc.) ? If that's really the case, then I might consider it too. I read some reviews about it being basically unplayable on older consoles, so like I wrote in the separate Cyberpunk-thread, I was gonna wait until I can afford a new console (Xbox Series S most likely), but if that's really not the case, I might reconsider.

I bought Dark Souls 1 Remastered myself, because a friend hyped it and then I discovered it was on sale. Don't have much time to play, really, but that's what I'm playing at the moment anyway.


----------



## Wuuthrad

p0ke said:


> The regular Xbox One and not one of the newer versions (Xbox One X etc.) ? If that's really the case, then I might consider it too. I read some reviews about it being basically unplayable on older consoles, so like I wrote in the separate Cyberpunk-thread, I was gonna wait until I can afford a new console (Xbox Series S most likely), but if that's really not the case, I might reconsider.
> 
> I bought Dark Souls 1 Remastered myself, because a friend hyped it and then I discovered it was on sale. Don't have much time to play, really, but that's what I'm playing at the moment anyway.




Yea man the OG XBOX 1S, and after 30 hours, its totally fine so far! I had one gun swap glitch out and spin endlessly, and lol’d

It’s maybe a bit blurry but that’s ok for my eyes- I don’t have a stick up my ass for next gen graphics, I prefer action over looks! 

But even then it looks fantastic to my aging retinas! Especially the cyber hacks omg- like a dream come true being able to remotely short circuit an enemy and then go guns a blazing on the next few! or whatever you like, the player attributes are amazing and get better.

People are trolling the fuck out of this game, I don’t think they even know what the hell they’re talking about.

Most complaints I’ve seen are bandwagon or comparing to GTA or RDR which it isn’t.

Also people complaining about their hairstyles and tattoos and shit! I’m like come on, it’s a FPS RPG video game, shut up and play! Do shit! The customizations and player mods are wicked, Like a Deus Ex on steroids!

I’ve played through DS 1 and the remaster because I’ve loved it so much. But I think Cyber is maybe a better game? If you like cyberpunk genre and dystopian sci-fi adult themes anyway. And DS made me mad, then relieved. Over an over. It was punishing, similar to what I remember about Japanese TV back in the day when I was on tour, brutal and unforgiving- almost like feeling as if it were S&M sim in a video game! But very rigid- always the same way to do everything regardless of build.

But this game makes you feel a lot of different things and also makes you think- it’s very deep! If you take the time to investigate and don’t just “do as your told” which to me is a big failure of games. Of course I’m old and grew up in a time when games were hard and really challenging to figure out WTH was going on. So much death! Lol

I mean RDR2 is really cool but it’s a freaking Cowboy Sim! They made you spend 30 min driving a fucking horse and buggy ffs!

So yeah it’s fine on old gen, and if you buy it you get next gen included so why the hell not?

And ppl complain about NPC AI- I think it’s more realistic actually that you can’t interact with every NPC- just like real life. Most strangers are idiots anyway lol!


----------



## StevenC

Went back to the first area of Death Stranding to get a few more stars. 

It really sucks after spending so much time in the main area. There's no point driving anywhere, then there's just massive unavoidable BT areas between everywhere you want to go. I'm putting up zip lines around to just skip the game play, which kinda sucks. 

I enjoyed setting up a zip line network around the mountains in the main area and building all the roads so I can drive the truck wherever I need to go. But this is just a valley with steep hills on either side that you have to go straight down the middle of and through everything. It makes sense as a tutorial area, but otherwise it's just miserable.


----------



## Wuuthrad

One thing I just realized-

So far at least, there’s no Grinding in CBP2077. You just play! 

Great game design it you ask me.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

At a point in Cyberpunk where if I continue anymore with the main story I'll lockout all side missions until after the main stories completion, so I did some of the companion sidequests and entered a romance with one character (which I've read will affect the outcome of the story) and collected 20 of the 22 Tarot cards (the other two are unlocked in the endgame segment apparently). I've been having fun running around the game world taking down ncpd hustles and doing random gigs that I come across driving around the city. I've reached max street cred, not sure what the level cap is though.

Bug wise, yeah, it's a bit of mess at times. Although, Bethesda games wish they were this playable at launch. And I did kinda have to roll my eyes at the portal reference, but that's a personal gripe.

Sidenote: I'm playing as a female V, and I've gotta say the voice actress is incredible.


----------



## p0ke

Wuuthrad said:


> Yea man the OG XBOX 1S, and after 30 hours, its totally fine so far! I had one gun swap glitch out and spin endlessly, and lol’d
> 
> It’s maybe a bit blurry but that’s ok for my eyes- I don’t have a stick up my ass for next gen graphics, I prefer action over looks!
> 
> But even then it looks fantastic to my aging retinas! Especially the cyber hacks omg- like a dream come true being able to remotely short circuit an enemy and then go guns a blazing on the next few! or whatever you like, the player attributes are amazing and get better.
> 
> People are trolling the fuck out of this game, I don’t think they even know what the hell they’re talking about.
> 
> Most complaints I’ve seen are bandwagon or comparing to GTA or RDR which it isn’t.
> 
> Also people complaining about their hairstyles and tattoos and shit! I’m like come on, it’s a FPS RPG video game, shut up and play! Do shit! The customizations and player mods are wicked, Like a Deus Ex on steroids!
> 
> I’ve played through DS 1 and the remaster because I’ve loved it so much. But I think Cyber is maybe a better game? If you like cyberpunk genre and dystopian sci-fi adult themes anyway. And DS made me mad, then relieved. Over an over. It was punishing, similar to what I remember about Japanese TV back in the day when I was on tour, brutal and unforgiving- almost like feeling as if it were S&M sim in a video game! But very rigid- always the same way to do everything regardless of build.
> 
> But this game makes you feel a lot of different things and also makes you think- it’s very deep! If you take the time to investigate and don’t just “do as your told” which to me is a big failure of games. Of course I’m old and grew up in a time when games were hard and really challenging to figure out WTH was going on. So much death! Lol
> 
> I mean RDR2 is really cool but it’s a freaking Cowboy Sim! They made you spend 30 min driving a fucking horse and buggy ffs!
> 
> So yeah it’s fine on old gen, and if you buy it you get next gen included so why the hell not?
> 
> And ppl complain about NPC AI- I think it’s more realistic actually that you can’t interact with every NPC- just like real life. Most strangers are idiots anyway lol!



Yeah I wasn't comparing DS1 to CP2077  I just mentioned that game because, well, that's what I'm playing at the moment.

Definitely sounds like the "unplayable on previous-gen" is a major exaggeration! I'm obviously not expecting next-gen graphics on a previous-gen console, the framerate is what I'm mostly concerned about, and I don't even care if it drops a bit in intensive parts as long as it's mostly somewhat smooth. I just checked out a comparison video, and while it does indeed run worse on the weakest console, I wouldn't exactly call it unplayable. The characters do look like shit up close though 

The Xbox One S is newer than the og Xbox One that I have (no extra letters after), but AFAIK the specs are the same, the S is just crammed into a tighter case. So hmm, might have to reconsider. And yeah I do know I'll get the next-gen version update too if I buy it now, but the thing is I'm still a bit undecided between Xbox Series S/X and PS5, so I'd hate to buy it again if I end up going the PS route. Also it might go on sale before I get to it. But we'll see!

At the moment the Xbox Series S seems like the most attractive option - It's small enough to directly replace my Xbox One inside the TV-unit (which I'm 99% sure neither the Series X or PS5 would do, I haven't measured yet), it's cheap, I don't need the disc drive... But the most important point is the form factor anyway.
The only reason I'd actually go PS5 is for the platform exclusives or if it suddenly becomes cheaper.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still sitting under a rock playing Cold Steel 4 and purposely ignoring Yakuza Like A Dragon. Cold Steel already sapping 2 months of my life, and I'm still in the first act. I don't need 2 ginormous time sinks to kill me faster. 

4 is certainly feeling a lot longer than the first 3, though I'm sure they were massive epics too when I played them. Those 3-4 months per each game says a lot. Also not helping knowing there's already a sequel released in Japan that ties up all 3 arcs that began in Trails In The Sky for a massive Avengers esque conclusion (it's already being well under way here). And then Falcom announce a brand new game with a brand new engine in the works that focuses on one of the unexplored countries of the Trails world and introduces brand new characters. 

...yeah this series is a full investment.


----------



## wankerness

The "graphical bugs" i saw described/screenshotted on other sites were not "it doesn't look as good on PS4/Xbox1," it was like a vaseline mess that made it look like a PS3 game. It looked like texture rendering was really broken. I assume that was truly a bug and that it's probably fixed and/or wasn't a constant thing, especially if those screenshots above were taken by you, but it was REALLY ugly. Unfortunately almost everything else I've seen about the game from a technical sense only ever talks about the PS5 version, as if anyone has one of those!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Wuuthrad said:


> “Unplayable!”... lmao
> 
> View attachment 87957


Booty so good my man's lost his arm. Or he's just got an "itch" under his robe.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I started playing Ori and the will of the wisps since it’s on GamesPass. Absolutely addicted and reminds me of playing the Abes Oddysey Games.


----------



## Wuuthrad

p0ke said:


> Yeah I wasn't comparing DS1 to CP2077  I just mentioned that game because, well, that's what I'm playing at the moment.
> 
> Definitely sounds like the "unplayable on previous-gen" is a major exaggeration! I'm obviously not expecting next-gen graphics on a previous-gen console, the framerate is what I'm mostly concerned about, and I don't even care if it drops a bit in intensive parts as long as it's mostly somewhat smooth. I just checked out a comparison video, and while it does indeed run worse on the weakest console, I wouldn't exactly call it unplayable. The characters do look like shit up close though
> 
> The Xbox One S is newer than the og Xbox One that I have (no extra letters after), but AFAIK the specs are the same, the S is just crammed into a tighter case. So hmm, might have to reconsider. And yeah I do know I'll get the next-gen version update too if I buy it now, but the thing is I'm still a bit undecided between Xbox Series S/X and PS5, so I'd hate to buy it again if I end up going the PS route. Also it might go on sale before I get to it. But we'll see!
> 
> At the moment the Xbox Series S seems like the most attractive option - It's small enough to directly replace my Xbox One inside the TV-unit (which I'm 99% sure neither the Series X or PS5 would do, I haven't measured yet), it's cheap, I don't need the disc drive... But the most important point is the form factor anyway.
> The only reason I'd actually go PS5 is for the platform exclusives or if it suddenly becomes cheaper.



My comparison of DS and CBP is more of a heads up or warning! Lol

It might just consume your gaming life, it’s really that good. If you get into it of course.

I had a look at the new PS and it looks kind of ridiculous to me, like a small scale architectural draft of some Modern Art Museum, which would be cool for real but as a console? Not feeling it- seems kind of obtuse.

If PS has incredible titles I might consider it, but XBoX form factor is better to me, and I like some Xbox online competitive games. So many quality free or heavily discounted games too with Gold.

I’ll certainly wait to upgrade my console for a good while. I don’t buy into all the newer is better hype really.

Often I don’t play video games at all for months and months, and don’t really mind old games.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’ve given up on trying to grab a PS4 (gift for family). Just going to not mention it then surprise them sometime in the spring.


----------



## wankerness

I haven't even looked into it in a month, it would be a huge waste of my money right now when all the games are $70 and the thing's $500. If I finish the hundreds of hours of games I want to finish, maybe I'll think about it. Right now, though, I mainly just want to play nicer-looking versions of games I already have and play Demon Souls, which are not worth $570 right now.

I am really, really into DS2 now. I like some things about it quite a bit more than 1. I like the airier, outside feeling of it, I like that there are a lot more bonfires, I like the even huger variety of weapons and builds, I like the way enemies despawn if you kill them enough, and I like that the bosses have a get-out-of-jail-free card with the summons. The only thing I DISLIKE is the progressive hollowing mechanic, which I think is idiotic. I get giving like, a 25% health bonus to being hollowed so there's a good reason not to be, but I hate how it goes all the way down to 50% unless you have a ring. It definitely leads you to feel like you must not die on bosses, and then it's not like DS1 where you feel like dying is fine and just might have an annoying runback but you're not really losing anything. It makes you feel like you need to pull out all the stops the first try! So, I've often just summoned 2-3 npcs and rushed bosses and not really experienced them the way they were designed, but it's still satisfying going through the game since the areas are so cool. Well, besides the one with the scads of spitting statues.

I killed a bunch more bosses like the two rat bosses and The Rotten and the Scorpion and the Spider and the whole Iron Keep, just got to Draelic Castle. However, I'm following a guide telling me where things are. I feel like I'd be way too stressed out trying to figure it all out myself. I might try playing Bloodborne without a guide when I get to it, though. Doing DS3 next, I think. We'll see if I actually finish this one, it sounds like the difficulty spikes horribly with the Fume Knight and the DLC.


----------



## Mathemagician

Fume knight isn’t that difficult if you git good at dodging and keep in mind that the entire dungeon has a payoff in that fight. So explore. 

If you’re using a guide I would recommend not using one for the DLC’s at least on your first attempt. But either way it’s great content, and I don’t personally think guides are bad. We’re all adults with demands on our time.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Using guides ruins the main fun of the souls games imo, which is exploring.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I might try playing Bloodborne without a guide when I get to it, though. Doing DS3 next, I think. We'll see if I actually finish this one, it sounds like the difficulty spikes horribly with the Fume Knight and the DLC.



I started with Bloodborne as my first REAL foray into the From series (I got to Genichiro's first fight in the tower and said fuck it) and the map design feels FAR more cohesive than DS1 currently does. There were definitely parts I had to look up because I had never played anything like this type of map design, now I've come to enjoy it, but I do wish even if it was hard to find that there was SOME way to view the map in-game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> I started with Bloodborne as my first REAL foray into the From series (I got to Genichiro's first fight in the tower and said fuck it) and the map design feels FAR more cohesive than DS1 currently does. There were definitely parts I had to look up because I had never played anything like this type of map design, now I've come to enjoy it, but I do wish even if it was hard to find that there was SOME way to view the map in-game.


DS1 has the best level design of all the souls games imo. Everything ties together in a seamless way that the other games don't have. Demon Souls, DS2 and Ds3 are more of a hub style.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished the story mode of Cyberpunk. Despite all the glitches and crashes I really enjoyed the game. I'll clean up what I can of the side missions later after work today. And outside of a couple luck based trophies I may plat this within the week.


----------



## p0ke

Wuuthrad said:


> Often I don’t play video games at all for months and months, and don’t really mind old games.



Same here! I have a job and a family so game time is really scarce, and whenever I would have time to play I prefer to do something else. Well, tbh prefer might not be the right word - I mostly just end up doing other stuff. 

I actually play so little, I couldn't justify paying for the gold membership anymore even. I really did like getting the free games and discounts, but in the end I didn't really play enough to make it feel worth the 10€/month.

I'm also not upgrading anytime soon, there's plenty last-gen games I haven't played yet anyway. The cool thing with upgrading though is that the old controllers and stuff should work, I'm still super annoyed that Xbox360 controllers don't work on the Xbox One  (well, they do work by connecting a wireless receiver to a PC and streaming the xbox to it, but it still requires the PC...)


----------



## gabito

p0ke said:


> Same here! I have a job and a family so game time is really scarce, and whenever I would have time to play I prefer to do something else. Well, tbh prefer might not be the right word - I mostly just end up doing other stuff.
> 
> I actually play so little, I couldn't justify paying for the gold membership anymore even. I really did like getting the free games and discounts, but in the end I didn't really play enough to make it feel worth the 10€/month.
> 
> I'm also not upgrading anytime soon, there's plenty last-gen games I haven't played yet anyway. The cool thing with upgrading though is that the old controllers and stuff should work, I'm still super annoyed that Xbox360 controllers don't work on the Xbox One  (well, they do work by connecting a wireless receiver to a PC and streaming the xbox to it, but it still requires the PC...)



Same. Even though I have a PS4, I'm still playing (and re playing) some PS3 games. Most of my all time favourites are there, so it's not going anywhere.

I just want to have some fun, I don't care if it is a new or old game.

Not in a rush to get the PS5, that'll have to wait 2 or more years. Maybe sooner if the next God Of War is PS5 only (and that's a BIG maybe). Otherwise, the only positive thing I can say about it it's that it runs PS4 games.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> Finished the story mode of Cyberpunk. Despite all the glitches and crashes I really enjoyed the game. I'll clean up what I can of the side missions later after work today. And outside of a couple luck based trophies I may plat this within the week.



How long did it take? Did you just skip the tons and tons of side stuff?


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> Using guides ruins the main fun of the souls games imo, which is exploring.



With how harsh the penalties are for dying more than once in these games if you're far away from a bonfire, exploring was no fun when you'd run around for 40 minutes, beat a ton of difficult enemies, get 40,000 souls, and then miss a bonfire that was behind a hidden wall and get massacred by some surprise BS enemy, and then get killed in one of the many fights on that 40 minute runback, losing all those souls! ARGH! I played the first ~70% of DS1 without a video guide (I was looking at a text one during Blight Town) and that happened a few times. Pissed me off bigtime. I had a lot more fun after I started referring to the guide. Then again, it was kind of fun when I accidentally wandered into the DLC area and had to figure out that guardian without looking up any strats or anything. But, DS1's penalties for dying were much lower than DS2's.

I find myself trying to keep my souls as low as possible at all times. I run back and level up and then spend the remainder on arrows just so there's no stress!

Speaking of stress, I got very upset with DS2 last night when the same guy kept invading me WHEN I WAS HOLLOWED, in the Drangleic castle (not one of those PVP areas). I didn't even know you could get invaded while hollowed. After dying twice, I unplugged my internet like a casual.

I've been watching fightingcowboy's "guide." It's kind of a casual playthrough and he's somewhat engaging, so that's part of the entertainment as well. Except when he starts talking about his weird builds or PVPing.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

wankerness said:


> How long did it take? Did you just skip the tons and tons of side stuff?



If you just do the main storyline you can knock it out in about 12-15 hours depending on play style.

When you beat the main story, the game takes you back to the point of no return so you can complete the remaining side quests and police disturbance calls. As well as do the finale with a different ending.

I did the majority of the sidequests, mainly the companion specific ones. There's the main ending, and two additional ones from that you can choose depending on what side quests you focused on, as well a secret fourth that you can unlock depending on your in game stats, which is what I plan on working towards when I get off work tonight. I'll check my in game play time and get back with it.


----------



## Wuuthrad

Carrion Rocket said:


> If you just do the main storyline you can knock it out in about 12-15 hours depending on play style.
> 
> When you beat the main story, the game takes you back to the point of no return so you can complete the remaining side quests and police disturbance calls. As well as do the finale with a different ending.
> 
> I did the majority of the sidequests, mainly the companion specific ones. There's the main ending, and two additional ones from that you can choose depending on what side quests you focused on, as well a secret fourth that you can unlock depending on your in game stats, which is what I plan on working towards when I get off work tonight. I'll check my in game play time and get back with it.



Just offering my experience fwiw, somewhat different. 

I’m 30 hours in and have like 10 % of the main story, 2 gigs , and almost 10 side jobs accomplished. Many of the missions are far beyond by character’s different levels and mods.

I’m playing on Very High difficulty so each combat scenario is a really difficult tactical exercise. 

I think that’s where this game really excels, at the highest difficulty. You have to really plan out the customizations, which are really fantastic. 

And Shards are really fun to collect an read- I’ve taken a real interest in all the writing they put in the game and have taken time to delve deep into the story, and also just enjoy the City riding around on motorcycles, which are so much better than cars- the music is much louder and you can do crazy jumps, etc.

I read complaints about the driving, but I think it’s a great fusion of Burnout style smash-up demolition and a bit of driving game mechanics.

I’ve also noticed how the game reminds me of so many games past, but improves on them in many ways.
This game is so bizzare and beautifully twisted! 

I’m going to try to upload some screenshots: 

The camera in this game is one of the greatest I’ve ever seen in a game, probably the best.


----------



## p0ke

gabito said:


> Same. Even though I have a PS4, I'm still playing (and re playing) some PS3 games. Most of my all time favourites are there, so it's not going anywhere.
> 
> I just want to have some fun, I don't care if it is a new or old game.
> 
> Not in a rush to get the PS5, that'll have to wait 2 or more years. Maybe sooner if the next God Of War is PS5 only (and that's a BIG maybe). Otherwise, the only positive thing I can say about it it's that it runs PS4 games.



Yep, my favorite games are mostly on the PS1  There's still lots of PS2 games I haven't even gotten to yet, and I've completely missed all Nintendo games since N64. So you could say there's plenty to play  

But I do get the hype still, and I'm eagerly waiting to get to play CP2077 and also that Jedi Fallen Order game (waiting for the price to come down), and once the FFVII remake lands in xbox land, I'll be all over that. 
I waited a long time for Quantum Break and finally managed to score it for something like -70%. But then I didn't end up playing it beyond the first level for various reasons  I really liked the actual gameplay though, so gotta get to that someday. Fallout 4 I think is the latest new game I bought straight away, and even for that I used MS credits I'd gotten from some developer event.


----------



## Choop

Totally get it - I'm still playing PS3 and PS2 titles off and on. Right now I'm still playing through Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker! Almost done, it's a pretty good game, incredible even for a handheld game. The last few extra ops though I really dislike...they're all the vehicle battle ones and essentially I approach them all the same way every time. The vehicles are just bullet (rocket) sponges making the fights take longer than they really should.


----------



## wankerness

Played way more DS2, beat Vendrick first try with a greatsword, man that guy was easy. Scary, though, since it was like a 5 minute fight (I skipped ancient dragon cause everyone hates it) and the guy could supposedly one-shot you. Then I got hit towards the end once and it only took off half my health, making me wonder why I was so nervous. Then tried the last boss area, expecting to get wrecked, and 1-shot the first two guys, nashandra, and got the last one down to about 5% health before getting greedy and burning myself up trying to get the last hits on him. Got him second try. Ouch. Yeah, I overlevelled. Time for all the DLC!


----------



## Leviathus

^did you do the giant memories?


----------



## MFB

Man, what sort of shittery is the Fire Keeper Soul? It says "increase the power of your Estus Flask" but JK, it only does that if you give it to this person and not just consume it; so fuck me right? And unfortunately the game saves when you quit, so when I did that it solidified my choice of consuming it. 

Oh well.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> ^did you do the giant memories?



Yeah, I did all three and then did the dragon one to get the curved dragon greatsword, which is what I ended up using on vendrick/the last three bosses. I think I had to do one of the memories to even get to the third boss in that sequence. I kinda liked them, though having a time limit when there were random items strewn around was annoying.


----------



## Leviathus

Word, the memories are probably one of my favorite parts of the game. Giants go MOOOO.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Man, what sort of shittery is the Fire Keeper Soul? It says "increase the power of your Estus Flask" but JK, it only does that if you give it to this person and not just consume it; so fuck me right? And unfortunately the game saves when you quit, so when I did that it solidified my choice of consuming it.
> 
> Oh well.



I got lucky and didn't do that. Also, there's a part of the game where you get one that didn't (iirc) have a different name, but is required to resurrect a character, so if you use it like a normal estus improver you're screwed!

Man, that game has some inscrutable stuff.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Still playing Cyberpunk. That within the week plat may have been a bit of wishful thinking. Found out there's a bunch of trophies tied into dumping x amount of points into various attributes, luckily I have a manual save from early in the game so I can take care of some of those later on. Plus you need an insane amount of in-game money to get all the purchasable vehicles and I found out about the exploit to get a bunch of it after completing the quest related to it. So I've just been slaughtering gang members and collecting items to sell at drop points after taking care of the various gigs and police dispatches.

And the game crashed on me three times since getting off of work, it's kinda like when I first played Saints Row 2 on the 360 and I could tell when the game was about to freeze. When there's a bunch of pop in, but the game is running a scripted sequence, you're gonna have a bad time. But the version 1.05 patch is downloading now. All 17GB of it.


----------



## Wuuthrad

p0ke said:


> Same here! I have a job and a family so game time is really scarce, and whenever I would have time to play I prefer to do something else. Well, tbh prefer might not be the right word - I mostly just end up doing other stuff.
> 
> I actually play so little, I couldn't justify paying for the gold membership anymore even. I really did like getting the free games and discounts, but in the end I didn't really play enough to make it feel worth the 10€/month.
> 
> I'm also not upgrading anytime soon, there's plenty last-gen games I haven't played yet anyway. The cool thing with upgrading though is that the old controllers and stuff should work, I'm still super annoyed that Xbox360 controllers don't work on the Xbox One  (well, they do work by connecting a wireless receiver to a PC and streaming the xbox to it, but it still requires the PC...)



Wow Gold is 10 per month? Here in US it’s 59.99 per year. Always liked the independent games they offered, and games with gold offered monthly discounts and freebies. But yeah where’s the time?

I’ll go months and months without playing because of life, but have always been a gamer since way back in the day, and have some old school consoles- couple newer ones, and some classics- Nintendo, Atari 2600 and OG Pong! Lol... Halo sent me to the XBOX world, from the days to Tombraider and Golden Eye on PlayStation. Had a gaming laptop for a little while and played Hellgate London quite a bit and Sport sims. But I actually prefer consoles! 

I just heard Sony pulled Cyberpunk from the online store? I wonder if the sore loser Trump trolls had nothing better to do? Or is the Anarcho-Anti Corporate ideology in the game too much for Sony?

I mean the story is based on a dystopian future after a groups takes down the interwebs! Not to mention a bunch of spoilers. So much entertainment borrows from Kurzweill, specifically the “Singularity” book, and it’s done so well in this game!

Strange to think we are so dependent on the web, when half my life there was no Internet at all! I wouldn’t miss it really. Plenty of music to play and books to read.

Buddy of mine worked for Sony for like a decade, and resigned a few years ago. He told me a story how he couldn’t move any further up the corporate ladder because he was American. It was a very closed culture, and he was always flying to Japan on a days notice at wee hours. Hard to raise a family etc.

I remember the console wars in my group of friends, but I never really cared- they’re just entertainment devices and time wasters really. I wonder have you experienced “console wars” where you’re at?

Anyway Cyberpunk is amazing and addictive. I really am surprised by all the hate. I saw a one star review on Amazon that was posting fake pics! Lol... I guess Trolls gonna troll!

One of my rare new purchases. And well worth it.


----------



## MFB

Or maybe its just Sony doesn't want to prop up an inferior running game on their store and risk losing customers who bought it and weren't satisfied? CDPR said as much that everything they has shown was based off the PC version to run the best, and those in console are having to jump through hoops to run ot and have fun it seems.

Its not ALWAYS about identity politics


----------



## Wuuthrad

MFB said:


> Or maybe its just Sony doesn't want to prop up an inferior running game on their store and risk losing customers who bought it and weren't satisfied? CDPR said as much that everything they has shown was based off the PC version to run the best, and those in console are having to jump through hoops to run ot and have fun it seems.
> 
> Its not ALWAYS about identity politics



Sony is an Evil Corp, and people that hate on Cyberpunk game either:

1) Suck at games

2) Need to get their Lard Ass off the couch and get some fucking exercise!

Everything absolutely is Identity Politics, from brushing your teeth down to wiping your butt... or not? Ewww

People are virtually drowning in a self induced dopamine soup! 

Rage Against the (video game) Machine!

Idiots


----------



## MFB

Yes yes, hating on a clearly buggy released game that was skirted around by NOT showing how it runs on the current gen consoles clearly means that those who are hating it are either bad at games (cant be good at a game if it doesn't run properly/at all) or fat (which has no bearing on ones ability to judge a game, and would probably have the opposite effect because then it implies that is all they do.)

Also, neither wiping not brushing your teeth are identity politics, those are basic hygiene.

I dont like to joke about cancer, but those last two posts are so bad, I think I now have it and its terminal.


----------



## Wuuthrad

MFB said:


> Yes yes, hating on a clearly buggy released game that was skirted around by NOT showing how it runs on the current gen consoles clearly means that those who are hating it are either bad at games (cant be good at a game if it doesn't run properly/at all) or fat (which has no bearing on ones ability to judge a game, and would probably have the opposite effect because then it implies that is all they do.)
> 
> Also, neither wiping not brushing your teeth are identity politics, those are basic hygiene.
> 
> I dont like to joke about cancer, but those last two posts are so bad, I think I now have it and its terminal.



lol

You’re not a Circle J3rks fan are you?


----------



## Ralyks

Wuuthrad said:


> Sony is an Evil Corp, and people that hate on Cyberpunk game either:
> 
> 1) Suck at games
> 
> 2) Need to get their Lard Ass off the couch and get some fucking exercise!
> 
> Everything absolutely is Identity Politics, from brushing your teeth down to wiping your butt... or not? Ewww
> 
> People are virtually drowning in a self induced dopamine soup!
> 
> Rage Against the (video game) Machine!
> 
> Idiots



Dude, chill. I like Cyberpunk a lot so far, and even I think it's a fucking mess.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Ugh, spent two hours trying to beat the queen valkyrie in god of war to get the platinum. On one run I literally had the R3 over her head when a projectile of hers killed me. Need to take a break before I rage!


----------



## Wuuthrad

Ralyks said:


> Dude, chill. I like Cyberpunk a lot so far, and even I think it's a fucking mess.




OK - NP I love the game! 

I guess all the haters trolling the game have seeped in as my minds been hacked! lol 

Too caustic sarcasm! Chemical Damage Tongue Mod!


----------



## Wuuthrad

MFB said:


> Yes yes, hating on a clearly buggy released game that was skirted around by NOT showing how it runs on the current gen consoles clearly means that those who are hating it are either bad at games (cant be good at a game if it doesn't run properly/at all) or fat (which has no bearing on ones ability to judge a game, and would probably have the opposite effect because then it implies that is all they do.)
> 
> Also, neither wiping not brushing your teeth are identity politics, those are basic hygiene.
> 
> I dont like to joke about cancer, but those last two posts are so bad, I think I now have it and its terminal.



Hey you need to borrow a tin hat to protect yourself when jumping off that bandwagon? lol


I read some shit like the “game is broken, I got headshot while in cover behind a wall..wawawa I want a refund”

Thousands Of upvotes lmao

-or-

“I finished the game in 12 hours it sucks”

Yea you played on Easy smdh

Thing is most of this trash talk is BS and people do suck at the game!

Now I’m 40 hours in- 20% main jobs , 1% gigs and 5 % side jobs .

The story is incredibly playable and wildly interesting, so fun and diverse leveling up your character by just playing the game, not being handheld through a movie, like many big budget games.

Again, XBOX1 S and only a few graphical glitches, no bugs!

Also There’s definitely politics in this game- it’s controversial and dare I say “progressive” )to say the least)

It’s made by a former Soviet block country ffs!

It’s exactly what the R wing hates, and speaks truth to power in a distorted and dystopian way.

But maybe ppl can’t handle that right now?

-edit-

the only really valid complaint I’ve read is that the game isn’t optimized for console and who’s to blame for that? The console manufacturers really.

Not that I’m scouring message boards or anything to read trash talk about a great game, I’d rather be playing it, but I did do my research, as I rarely buy new releases if ever. And the amount of BS is stunning. 

Don’t believe the hype is a motto I live by!


----------



## TedEH

I didn't think there was any question about _why_ Sony pulled the game from the store - the performance on some of the early revisions of last gen consoles was pretty much universally reported to be bad. It's worth keeping in mind that not all of the last gen consoles perform the same, and people's idea of "acceptable performance" is going to vary a whole lot.



Wuuthrad said:


> the only really valid complaint I’ve read is that the game isn’t optimized for console and who’s to blame for that? The console manufacturers really.


I don't follow - why is the (potentially) poor performance of a single game the fault of the console manufacturer?


----------



## Mathemagician

Literally console manufacturers are not responsible for anything in the game-design process of third party games. Certainly not optimization of someone else’s game. 

I don’t understand why it is hard for anyone to admit that a game that is reportedly running at far below what was promised in media and advertising on the oldest last-gen consoles isn’t acceptable. 

They didn’t deliver a game that “looks just as good but is locked at 30fps 1080p” or something similar. Reports are that there were glaring issues. 

But it was marketed to run on those same consoles. That’s a major issue and I’m glad consumer protection laws exist to prevent this kind of this. One developers “mistake” is another developers “griifting of day-one preorderers”.


----------



## Leviathus

Ran through mgs2. Nothing better than blasting E.E. with the grenade launcher, she's the true villain of the game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

That Cyberpunk platinum ain't happening anytime soon. I found a side quest that's just flat out glitched, progression glitched to be exact. And from what I've read it's glitched on all platforms. And the version 1.07 patch didn't seem to do anything. The start menu still says 1.05 even.


----------



## StevenC

Wuuthrad said:


> the only really valid complaint I’ve read is that the game isn’t optimized for console and who’s to blame for that? The console manufacturers really.


Are you joking?

This game was announced almost a year before the PS4 was _announced_. Then proceeded to take the entire life of the PS4 to make, got delayed and came out after the PS5.

Despite more money than any other game ever and basically all the time in the world, CDPR couldn't make this run right on hardware that was released a year and a half after they announced this game. They deceived people in the marketing of the console versions and didn't let reviewers see it. 

But knowingly released a buggy mess anyway.

How is that Sony or Microsoft's fault?


----------



## Wuuthrad

Re. There’s corporate malfeasance going on behind the scenes- 

The big dogs don’t want an upstart challenging their system of loot box illegal gambling which makes them billions of dollars. 

They’ve ratcheted up a smear campaign to drive CDPR back down “where they belong.” 

Probably shorted the market. It’s a brilliant long con. And gamers lap it up, most gamers suck anyway. 

Who would pile on hate on a video game they tried for less than a day can’t even play, or haven’t even played at all? 

You see the shit EA puts out? This game is nowhere near as crap or buggy as people say.


----------



## MFB

Jesus Christ, the these goal posts are moving so hard you'd think they were never even in the ground to begin with.

Anyway, I made it past the Bell Gargoyles and Moonlight Butterfly in DS1. Looking back I did them in the "wrong" order but it doesn't really make a difference either way. Butterfly is a dumb fight, I think the only mechanic it exists to teach is "ranged weapons exist but you won't really use them" so sure? Bell Gargoyles was cooler, died once on the first time from the 2nds fire, and then once more from being pushed off, and beat it on the third. I got kept thinking that there would be a 3rd one when I got them down to 75% health like how the 2nd jumps in at 50% but I guess not. Drake Sword made quick work of both of them, and you get some neat looking gear from it too. Oswald of Cairn is a terrifying figure to come down to after that fight, thought he was gonna be some fucked up statue boss waiting for me.


----------



## Wuuthrad

Maybe the Game is Broke?

Rolled up to the Sex Shop, sign says OPEN, wouldn’t let me in. Am I not high enough? Wallet not Fat enough?

So I busted out the big stick... Still not open!

Broke I tell you!


----------



## Wuuthrad

MFB said:


> Jesus Christ, the these goal posts are moving so hard you'd think they were never even in the ground to begin with.
> 
> Anyway, I made it past the Bell Gargoyles and Moonlight Butterfly in DS1. Looking back I did them in the "wrong" order but it doesn't really make a difference either way. Butterfly is a dumb fight, I think the only mechanic it exists to teach is "ranged weapons exist but you won't really use them" so sure? Bell Gargoyles was cooler, died once on the first time from the 2nds fire, and then once more from being pushed off, and beat it on the third. I got kept thinking that there would be a 3rd one when I got them down to 75% health like how the 2nd jumps in at 50% but I guess not. Drake Sword made quick work of both of them, and you get some neat looking gear from it too. Oswald of Cairn is a terrifying figure to come down to after that fight, thought he was gonna be some fucked up statue boss waiting for me.



OMG Drake Sword? Git Gud Scrub! lol 

Are you hollow? 

Dark Souls is a con- it makes you think it’s a great game (it is though, really fun i.e. “challenging”) but it forces you to do everything in a mind numbingly repetitive way no matter what your build. 

And the lore is non-existent. Brilliant design though, so very little written in the game in that regard, just let the gaming community make up mountains of BS lore for you! 

(Actually good though- stimulates intrigue and imagination) 

Not to mention the griefers...

If he released that game today I’ll bet it would be canned harder than CBP2077!

Snowflakes and Trolls, Snowflakes and Trolls...


----------



## StevenC

Wuuthrad said:


> Re. There’s corporate malfeasance going on behind the scenes-
> 
> The big dogs don’t want an upstart challenging their system of loot box illegal gambling which makes them billions of dollars.
> 
> They’ve ratcheted up a smear campaign to drive CDPR back down “where they belong.”
> 
> Probably shorted the market. It’s a brilliant long con. And gamers lap it up, most gamers suck anyway.
> 
> Who would pile on hate on a video game they tried for less than a day can’t even play, or haven’t even played at all?
> 
> You see the shit EA puts out? This game is nowhere near as crap or buggy as people say.


Are you stupid or something? Like this has to be a joke. The biggest game of the year was a simple indie game from 2 years ago that console manufacturers are tripping over themselves to get onto their platforms.

With the heights indie developers have managed in the past few years, you'd have to be mad to think there is some conspiracy against smaller studios. Especially when that "small studio" just made the most expensive game ever.


----------



## TedEH

Wuuthrad said:


> Dark Souls is a con-


If you wanted to be entertained, so you bought an entertainment product, and it manages to convince you that you have been entertained.... can that really be called a con? When a game takes something you wouldn't otherwise like and finds a way for you to enjoy it - that's not a trick, that's just good design. It's why people like Borderlands despite being really grindy, or JRPGs despite being really grindy, or really any game that has a grindy element. We only call it "grind" when we aren't enjoying it.


----------



## TedEH

Unrelated: 
I made it to the end of Watch_Dogs 2. The last mission was a bit underwhelming, but I'm not sure I can think of a way to make it a more traditionally "good" ending without leaning into some of the weaker parts of the game. I kind of agree with a lot of the reviews that came out for this one - the core of the game is good, but a lot of the peripheral features/details either drop the ball or feel unnecessary. The characters are cringy but also kind of endearing somehow. The gunplay is bad, but you mostly don't need it. Your characters are built up in such a way to suggest they're non-violent/peaceful protester types, but then the game doesn't punish you (and sometimes encourages you) to murder people (because it is, mechanically speaking, a GTA style / Ubisoft open world game at the end of the day) - and this is the only game I've ever played where doing so made me feel like I was acting against the main characters... well, character. The sneaking bits though, they're pretty good. The drones are pretty good. The open world is sort of under-utilized. It was..... unique...?


----------



## Mathemagician

Dark Soul’s lore is written in the item descriptions. Almost every item from ever NPC or boss is connected to another, or to a part of the world or history. 

And with DS1 and DS3 in particular you can “see” several other parts of the world in the distant background from anywhere else in the “kingdom” which often doesn’t and shouldn’t make sense, because so many paths are “circular”. This really drives home the foreboding idea of “You’re not necessarily dead, but you can’t leave. Good luck.”

I obviously can’t tell if that’s trolling anymore, but DS “story” delivery is one of its selling points for its fans. You always pick up something new that you missed the last time. Sometimes entire quest lines.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

TheShreddinHand said:


> Ugh, spent two hours trying to beat the queen valkyrie in god of war to get the platinum. On one run I literally had the R3 over her head when a projectile of hers killed me. Need to take a break before I rage!



Update! Changed out my runics and some enchantments and then was much more patient. Beat her on the third try last night! Now on to uncharted lost legacy!


----------



## BlackMastodon

StevenC said:


> Are you stupid or something? Like this has to be a joke. The biggest game of the year was a simple indie game from 2 years ago that console manufacturers are tripping over themselves to get onto their platforms.
> 
> With the heights indie developers have managed in the past few years, you'd have to be mad to think there is some conspiracy against smaller studios. Especially when that "small studio" just made the most expensive game ever.


I'm still mostly sure that he's trolling but I really don't have a horse in this race because I don't give a shit about Cyberpunk or Dark Souls. Or Among Us for the matter. It does suck that PS4 Xbone players got a steamy turd and most everyone else has bugs to contend with but at least CDPR is offering refunds instead of twirling their moustaches and evil-laughing in Polish.


----------



## MFB

Man, Capra Demon fight is such a dogshit setup. 

You walk in, and immediately can't see anything from the camera angle, and you find out its a boss with two smaller dog enemies - fine not crazy. Except then you see the size of you "arena" and its basicslly Harry Potters bedroom under the stairs. The dogs distract you while C.D. swings his two machetes (each hits for like a 1/4 of your health) and his leap attack can hit you from anywhere while you try to heal, and you still cant see shit because of all the vines hanging down in front of the camera.

I got to the big rat in the Depths but was entirely out of Estus by that point, and with 14K worth of souls on me, didn't chance it with just Humanity. So Tuesday I'll go back to tackle him and finish the Depths so I can move to Blighttown. 

I also tried fighting Havel at the bottom of the tower, and LOL. That fucked soaks up damage like nothing, I only hit him for 33dmg per hit, and with 1K HP and 99% of his attacks being one shot, it just wasn't happening.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Man, Capra Demon fight is such a dogshit setup.
> 
> You walk in, and immediately can't see anything from the camera angle, and you find out its a boss with two smaller dog enemies - fine not crazy. Except then you see the size of you "arena" and its basicslly Harry Potters bedroom under the stairs. The dogs distract you while C.D. swings his two machetes (each hits for like a 1/4 of your health) and his leap attack can hit you from anywhere while you try to heal, and you still cant see shit because of all the vines hanging down in front of the camera.
> 
> I got to the big rat in the Depths but was entirely out of Estus by that point, and with 14K worth of souls on me, didn't chance it with just Humanity. So Tuesday I'll go back to tackle him and finish the Depths so I can move to Blighttown.
> 
> I also tried fighting Havel at the bottom of the tower, and LOL. That fucked soaks up damage like nothing, I only hit him for 33dmg per hit, and with 1K HP and 99% of his attacks being one shot, it just wasn't happening.


pretty much the only way to beat havel early is to constantly backstab him


----------



## Wuuthrad

Maybe the game is broken? “Cyberpunk Gameplay Sucks” 

https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumC...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

https://www.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumC...urce=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf


----------



## TheBlackBard

Will add that as you get more experienced with the game and learn parrying, parrying/riposting him with the Hornet ring and a heavy hitting weapon does quite a shit-ton of damage, especially if you've got a buff like RTSR or Power Within.


Currently playing other games right now as Cyberpunk has let me down in a big way. Anymore, it's not even about the bugs/glitches/performance, it's more about everything they promised that isn't in the game. I think I'll try out Planescape: Torment. I love Disco Elysium and Torment: Tides of Numenera, and I've heard that Planescape inspired both so yeah, I'll give that a shot.


----------



## Wuuthrad

TheBlackBard said:


> Currently playing other games right now as Cyberpunk has let me down in a big way. Anymore, it's not even about the bugs/glitches/performance, it's more about everything they promised that isn't in the game.




Some tasty Kool-Aid isn’t it!


----------



## Wuuthrad

MFB said:


> Man, Capra Demon fight is such a dogshit setup.
> 
> You walk in, and immediately can't see anything from the camera angle, and you find out its a boss with two smaller dog enemies - fine not crazy. Except then you see the size of you "arena" and its basicslly Harry Potters bedroom under the stairs. The dogs distract you while C.D. swings his two machetes (each hits for like a 1/4 of your health) and his leap attack can hit you from anywhere while you try to heal, and you still cant see shit because of all the vines hanging down in front of the camera.
> 
> I got to the big rat in the Depths but was entirely out of Estus by that point, and with 14K worth of souls on me, didn't chance it with just Humanity. So Tuesday I'll go back to tackle him and finish the Depths so I can move to Blighttown.
> 
> I also tried fighting Havel at the bottom of the tower, and LOL. That fucked soaks up damage like nothing, I only hit him for 33dmg per hit, and with 1K HP and 99% of his attacks being one shot, it just wasn't happening.



The game is really fun in an S&M kind of way! 

Just wait till you get to Ornstein & Smough.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Wuuthrad said:


> Some tasty Kool-Aid isn’t it!


This crusade you're on fascinates me.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Man, Capra Demon fight is such a dogshit setup.
> 
> You walk in, and immediately can't see anything from the camera angle, and you find out its a boss with two smaller dog enemies - fine not crazy. Except then you see the size of you "arena" and its basicslly Harry Potters bedroom under the stairs. The dogs distract you while C.D. swings his two machetes (each hits for like a 1/4 of your health) and his leap attack can hit you from anywhere while you try to heal, and you still cant see shit because of all the vines hanging down in front of the camera.
> 
> I got to the big rat in the Depths but was entirely out of Estus by that point, and with 14K worth of souls on me, didn't chance it with just Humanity. So Tuesday I'll go back to tackle him and finish the Depths so I can move to Blighttown.
> 
> I also tried fighting Havel at the bottom of the tower, and LOL. That fucked soaks up damage like nothing, I only hit him for 33dmg per hit, and with 1K HP and 99% of his attacks being one shot, it just wasn't happening.



Capra Demon killed me more times than just about any other boss in DS1. I killed the dogs and got on top of the stairs like, one time before going off and getting the drake sword, which was a fast 1h that could kill the dogs in a single swing. Killed him first try after that. Once you can kill the dogs, you can just cheese him by leading him up the stairs, jumping over to that ledge, waiting for him to fall down, and then doing a plunging attack on him, repeat till dead.

Havel was an asshole, I died to him so hard a couple times that I just ran away and dealt with him much later, I think from the Darkroot Basin. I ended up cheesing him by causing him to leash repeatedly. Common tactic for me as a noob in these games.

Speaking of noob, I've started on the DLC in DS2, and holy SHIT is this hard. I was going around using bonfire ascetics and redoing some bosses for drops, and was having no issues and loving the game, but then I just started getting DESTROYED by the random mobs in the Brume Tower DLC almost as soon as I started. Those regular axe guys are a nightmare! I had to start 1-handing a greatsword with a greatshield to be able to kill them consistently, but it's still very easy to die to them and those big idiots that flip on the ground with a flaming sword and have greatbows. Then there's even worse sections, like the fucking asshole invader NPC that runs away into the tower as soon as you get his health low (thank god I had one of those seeds that causes monsters to attack invaders). I've died about as much in this tower as I have in the whole game combined. I have been at it for a couple hours and still haven't seen a boss, but I have to be getting close to the end...I hope!!! It's definitely verging on "so hard it's not fun" territory for me.


----------



## MFB

Luckily no boss has killed me more than a handful of times, and usually it's because some of their areas you traverse into thinking it's just another part of the game but then it's just like "nah son, boss time." 

First boss? I forgot you're supposed to run away from to do the plunge at the asylum
Taurus Demon? I didn't know about the ladder for the first few so I was getting ruined in the corridor
Moonlight Butterfly? Didn't have a short bow and couldn't use longbow, had no bolts for crossbow, so got wrecked until I fixed that. 

Dumb shit like that has killed me more than the boss's efforts have, but I'm a good chunk in it seems if I'm almost at Blighttown (like, 1/3 of the way through I think?) so its fine, just really slow compared to how BB was


----------



## mongey

MFB said:


> Man, Capra Demon fight is such a dogshit setup.
> 
> You walk in, and immediately can't see anything from the camera angle, and you find out its a boss with two smaller dog enemies - fine not crazy. Except then you see the size of you "arena" and its basicslly Harry Potters bedroom under the stairs. The dogs distract you while C.D. swings his two machetes (each hits for like a 1/4 of your health) and his leap attack can hit you from anywhere while you try to heal, and you still cant see shit because of all the vines hanging down in front of the camera.
> 
> I got to the big rat in the Depths but was entirely out of Estus by that point, and with 14K worth of souls on me, didn't chance it with just Humanity. So Tuesday I'll go back to tackle him and finish the Depths so I can move to Blighttown.
> 
> I also tried fighting Havel at the bottom of the tower, and LOL. That fucked soaks up damage like nothing, I only hit him for 33dmg per hit, and with 1K HP and 99% of his attacks being one shot, it just wasn't happening.




I found capra demon basically unplayable on hand held switch mode, So I looked up the cheap chuc poison over the wall trick and killed him that way on my first playthrough

havel is a prick . but he's worth it, his ring and armor basically break the game , or make it allot easier , if you are a strength melee build anyay
edit actually I don't think I could wear the whole havel's set, too slow. but wore most of it to up the poise


----------



## Mathemagician

Butterfly can be fought melee, get it to land then run away to avoid the AOE/too through it. Then run up and get 1-2 hits in and repeat. Also will have to roll through the magic arrows, but you can usually get hit and still heal/roll away. Take much longer that way though.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, I know you CAN, as I had to do it on my first two fights, but holy fuck was it slow and tedious. Making sure you dodge every one of the quicker blast shots, the three spear shots, along with rolling through the beam, and avoiding the overhead bomb just for 4-5 hits while it feeds? No thanks.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Yeah, I know you CAN, as I had to do it on my first two fights, but holy fuck was it slow and tedious. Making sure you dodge every one of the quicker blast shots, the three spear shots, along with rolling through the beam, and avoiding the overhead bomb just for 4-5 hits while it feeds? No thanks.



That was what I did! It was good practice for rolling, I guess.

Been playing DS2 all day again. I've been farming more bosses for the NG+ rings, and doing some more of Brume tower (got through the part everyone hates more than anything except the snow area and beat the blue smelter demon using the cheesy magic-enchanted Havel shield block strat, now it's just the last two bosses left). It's funny how most bosses were the same on NG+, but the gargoyles went super saian and were impossible until I stopped trying to use an NPC summon. 

I'm thinking of trying that soul farming thing in Memory of Jeigh, but my magic abilities are crap so probably not going to work too well.


----------



## wankerness

Haha, Fume Knight. Tried him 3 times (using the velstadt helm), second time got him to around 50%, third time I got killed without touching him (apart from the initial free hits), I think I'm going to start DS3 and cool off for a while!


----------



## Mathemagician

Wait until the third DLC. Do it first.


----------



## Amer Alameddine

Picked up Disco Elysium lately, it's a fantastic game if you're into classic RPGs with a rich lore and very well-written characters.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Amer Alameddine said:


> Picked up Disco Elysium lately, it's a fantastic game if you're into classic RPGs with a rich lore and very well-written characters.



Did my first playthrough of it a few months ago and other than Planescape: Torment, I don't know if I've ever cared about the characters in the game more. There's so much to do, so many paths, so many different ways to approach a situation and the best part is, you won't be able to do it all in one playthrough. Disco Elysium and PS: T are probably the two greatest CRPG style games I've ever played. If you haven't played Planescape, get it on GoG. It's like 5 dollars right now.


----------



## Amer Alameddine

TheBlackBard said:


> Did my first playthrough of it a few months ago and other than Planescape: Torment, I don't know if I've ever cared about the characters in the game more. There's so much to do, so many paths, so many different ways to approach a situation and the best part is, you won't be able to do it all in one playthrough. Disco Elysium and PS: T are probably the two greatest CRPG style games I've ever played. If you haven't played Planescape, get it on GoG. It's like 5 dollars right now.



I actually pondered the idea of picking that up, it's quite old and seemed like a game that would've been fun at that time, is it still worth it?


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Wait until the third DLC. Do it first.



Which one's the third DLC? The snow one? I ran through the first area for some items. As far as I could tell, there's one area of there called Frigid Outskirts (I think) where it seemed universally loathed as the worst area in any soulsborne game cause of getting killed by "fuckin Rudolph" and having to run "2 hours" to get to the boss. I think it was maybe the equivalent of the blue smelter demon where it was optional, though?

Regardless, I started DS3, and goddam, this game is exponentially harder than 1/2. Enemies attack FAR faster, are a lot more resistant to cheese, and it's a hell of a lot to react to. I get smoked by regular enemies (Lothric Knights, especially the spear variant, and the Winged Knights) pretty frequently and I'm still in the first area!! The "tutorial boss" also got me down to about 10% health and no estus my first try, it was terrifying. Actual phase changes in boss fights! That's almost unheard of for a Souls game! (I think Fume Knight was the only one in DS1/2 besides the couple of enemies like Smelter Demon or Velstadt where they just make their weapon hit harder in the back 50% of their health bar).

The most difficult part is that you only get 3 estus flasks, which restore about 1/3 of your lifebar (and I don't even have much health cause I stupidly allocated my points towards Faith for the first several levels, not realizing I couldn't get any miracles for quite a while, and this game doesn't let you respec till late!!), and there are no lifegems, so messing up with one enemy out of tons you'll encounter on any path screws you permanently unless you reset the area and try all over again. Also, you can't do like in 2 and farm out the difficult enemies until they despawn to make the runs back less painful. And the parry timing is even harder than in DS1/2. Ugh. I think it might just be too hard for me. It makes DS1/2 look like AC: Odyssey. I'm thinking of trying bloodborne instead since everyone on the net says it's easier than the DS games thanks to vastly easier parry timing and lots of ways to heal. (Well, besides the DLC, which is apparently some of the hardest content ever)


----------



## Leviathus

DS3 is the hardest From game imo. I'm still trying to solo the Ringed City. The parrying is a bitch and having no humanity/lifegems in your pocket is a bitch too, but at least you can move while sippin' estus!


----------



## Mathemagician

I played DS3 after bloodborne so to me DE3 felt way easier than 1 & 2 simply because you are also so much faster. Like way. WAY faster. So it just means this: dodge to the left. Most enemies are right handed so this works to your advantage. 

Once a few other things open up it feels much easier imo. 

However the bosses in DS3 are much better designed and can be difficult. Especially a certain dlc boss who will remain nameless as I never beat him.


----------



## wankerness

Well, after dying a million times in the starting area I killed the boss first try getting hit ONCE. So, that was cool. Undead Settlement feels more like the previous two games in terms of balance, I don't feel like I'm throwing myself at a wall. Guess we'll see how it goes. It doesn't surprise me that this is considered the hardest From game. All topics on the net about which is the hardest seem to feature tons of people saying whichever they played first is hardest and thus 3/4 of the replies saying DS1 is hardest (HA!).

Speaking of, Sekiro GOTY is on sale now, wondering if that's worth it or if I'll just be terrified. From what I heard, you can't level up, so that puts me off bigtime. I think I might only buy that Immortals game (which is also on sale for 40% off already!!).


----------



## MFB

I tried Sekiro and it's punishingly difficult. It's parry or go fuck yourself, essentially a rhythm game as most From fans have dubbed it; if you're good at either DS, prepare to have your teeth kicked in, and if you're decent at Bloodborne, still prepared to get your kicked in because again - it's parry or you're gonna have a bad time.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> I tried Sekiro and it's punishingly difficult. It's parry or go fuck yourself, essentially a rhythm game as most From fans have dubbed it; if you're good at either DS, prepare to have your teeth kicked in, and if you're decent at Bloodborne, still prepared to get your kicked in because again - it's parry or you're gonna have a bad time.



After playing Jedi Fallen Order i bought Sekiro because i wanted more. Sekiro was so much a rhythm game for me that it bored me. It actually took away the immersion of the game and the environment for me. I wasn't even finding it difficult up to the point i just didn't want to play it anymore. All i could think to myself is that i might as well be playing this with drum sticks or a fake guitar instead of "what tactics will i use next?"
I actually gave it up to have another run on Fallen Order, and i've never once wanted to go back to it. No difficulty frustration or rage quitting, just boredom


----------



## TheBlackBard

Amer Alameddine said:


> I actually pondered the idea of picking that up, it's quite old and seemed like a game that would've been fun at that time, is it still worth it?



Imo, yes, because it comes with the original game, plus the enhanced edition. Graphics are dated, granted, but the storytelling and just some of the mechanics in dialogue boxes are second to none.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Hit the level cap in Cyberpunk. Cleaned up some trophies (or at least ones that aren't glitched) and did a few more endings. I'll do a second playthrough later on after another couple patches. I really hope the situation with the game launch turns out like New Vegas, but time will tell on that.


----------



## wankerness

Played a bunch more DS3, I guess I'm kind of adjusting to it. I'll probably find DS2 clunk city when I go back to it. I killed a couple more bosses, both of which were kind of interesting (the big pus-filled tree and the teleporting/cloning wizard guy), the wizard guy seemed overwhelming on the first two tries as soon as he hit phase 2, but I just started beelining him and ignoring the clones and everything turned out (barely) alright. The enemies are still radically easier than they were in the first real area - all those heide knight 2.0s and the huge asshole with the spin attack are far more intimidating at a low level than the only moderately annoying enemies in the next zones (ex, the fat ladies with a big stick that set themselves on fire and hug you, or the guys with the huge pots/lumberjack saws). Been just using a shield and straightsword like a noob - I got a decent spear off a boss, but it does SO much less damage, even after upgrading, that it doesn't seem worth it. Maybe it will be situationally useful like spears were in DS2 for spiders at some point.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Played a bunch more DS3, I guess I'm kind of adjusting to it. I'll probably find DS2 clunk city when I go back to it. I killed a couple more bosses, both of which were kind of interesting (the big pus-filled tree and the teleporting/cloning wizard guy), the wizard guy seemed overwhelming on the first two tries as soon as he hit phase 2, but I just started beelining him and ignoring the clones and everything turned out (barely) alright. The enemies are still radically easier than they were in the first real area - all those heide knight 2.0s and the huge asshole with the spin attack are far more intimidating at a low level than the only moderately annoying enemies in the next zones (ex, the fat ladies with a big stick that set themselves on fire and hug you, or the guys with the huge pots/lumberjack saws). Been just using a shield and straightsword like a noob - I got a decent spear off a boss, but it does SO much less damage, even after upgrading, that it doesn't seem worth it. Maybe it will be situationally useful like spears were in DS2 for spiders at some point.


Pontiff Sullivan was the worst boss for me in DS3. When I beat him, my hands were shaking and I showed my wife. I told her "THIS is what Dark Souls does to me!"

She laughed at me.

Anyway... Cyberpunk was a shitshow. I even found the story to be lackluster. Started playing Witcher 3 again and I now own it on PS4, PC and Xbox (Playing it on xbox). EB games is going to have Borderlands 3 on sale for $9.99 as of midnight so me and my friend from work are going to pick it up and play through than on co op after going through Gears 2 and 3.


----------



## wankerness

God, DS3 is BRUTAL. I went through the smoldering lake and demon ruins, and it was like throwing myself at a wall over and over again, especially those goddam jumping goat demon things that hug you for half your health and then go even more overcharged and kill you almost instantly with bounces that bug the camera out. UGH. I ended up going through some convoluted route specifically to skip them, but it was utterly terrifying since it was almost an hour to get through all that crap and get up to the ballista to deactivate it and they throw some really scary enemies at you a couple times right towards the end when it would take forever to get back there, and ugh. I was shaken by the end!!

The bosses, on the other hand, still are not nearly as bad as the areas/enemies. I took three tries on the old demon king and the big crawling bracelet man, but the latter was definitely an easy boss as long as you don't get unlucky with a ton of skele spawns or getting stuck in his breath, and the former was complete broken bullshit where I kept getting stuck inside his character model and couldn't move until I tried just killing him by backing away and shooting him with arrows and it took one attempt 

Now I got to the boreal area or whatever and I hear it's even worse. Gah. I'm still in this stupid build that does crap damage and is just prepping for when I finally get lightning blade and things come together. I should have just gone the route of maxing vigor and dex or str and had things be far easier. The faith at this point is doing nothing other than giving me some more out-of-combat heals, and a short-lasting dark weapon buff that isn't very useful.

At this point, DS2 is my favorite of the three, BY FAR. 1's far too arcane, has a lot of ugly/boring areas, and is a lot less involved in terms of items/builds/cool extra mechanics like the bonfire ascetics. Plus, as someone willing to boringly grind, I like that 2 lets you clear the enemies out of areas if you're willing to spend the time, so you can wander around in them unmolested. Made things really nice for areas near important NPCs when you didn't want to get swarmed by spiders every time you teleported there, etc.

Also, the hollowing mechanic in 2 is psychologically worse than 3, where it acts like being hollowed is the default and embered is bonus, but I think you actually have far less health comparatively when un-embered than you do in 2 without having died several times!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Just plat'd Cyberpunk. Had to start a whole new character to get the last couple trophies that were glitched on my capped character save. DLC is supposed to come out in late Jan / early Feb, so hopefully the game is stable by then and the content is on time.


----------



## Mathemagician

Carrion Rocket said:


> Just plat'd Cyberpunk. Had to start a whole new character to get the last couple trophies that were glitched on my capped character save. DLC is supposed to come out in late Jan / early Feb, so hopefully the game is stable by then and the content is on time.



Making USE of that holiday time off, huh? Lol. Glad to hear people like it enough to get all the trophies. I look forward to the GOTY edition on sale, lol.


----------



## Lorcan Ward

I finished Ori and the Will of the Wisps. Definitely my favourite game this year. Challenging but equally rewarding and areas had enough diversity so it never felt repetitive, the constant introduction of new mechanics really helped too. For a platformer it had a lot of heart and addresses one of my biggest pet peeves in gaming when the world and characters doesn't change after there is a death or event.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Mathemagician said:


> Making USE of that holiday time off, huh? Lol. Glad to hear people like it enough to get all the trophies. I look forward to the GOTY edition on sale, lol.



If you game journalist your way through the story, it's about a 10 hour playthrough. One of the first things I did in Act 2 was complete a gig that didn't register on my main character save and then clear out the rest of the gigs and scanner hustles in the same area to finally get the trophy for that. And getting the Christmas Tree Attack trophy was about an hour on it's own from just backing out of the prompt constantly trying to get a randomized combination that would work. So I was about 12 hours total playtime on that character. My capped character has atleast 91 hours, though a couple are probably from me being AFC.

There's a lot of interesting lore that could turn into some cool DLC content. One of the them will probably include a new skill 'cause there's one slot on the skill tree screen that's blank and blurs out when you scroll over it. And if you go too far in any direction on the map the game will say "there's nothing here for you… yet". And if you're a fan of the band Refused you'll probably dig the soundtrack aswell since they're the actual musicians behind the ingame band Samurai.


----------



## Mathemagician

I checked and I’m at 63 hours on Disgaea 5 so far and like the 9th “chapter”. 

Back on Witcher 3 trying to beat the story .....aaaaand I’m clearing only side quests again. Man if Cyberpunk can deliver this level of side content I’m going to have a lot of fun with that eventually. But for now Geralt needs my helps clearing monster nests and hunting contracts.


----------



## wankerness

Played DS3 a bunch more, killed a few more bosses (last did Yhorm, with the onion knight wrecking him pretty singlehandedly). However, I tried Aldrich ONCE, and he killed me with a one-shot before I could even get in melee range as I rolled around in futility. If that happens again, I think I might be done with this game. DS2 is WAY more up my alley. I guess I see why people call it the easiest now (though I think 1 was easier). This is just ridiculous BS after ridiculous BS. I died a whole lot trying to kill those giant 1 or 2-shotting Sullyvan rat-gator lightning-spitting things in the sewer by Anor Londo, I died a whole lot trying to get past the lengthy archer/silver knight gauntlet in Anor Londo (I got through it with no deaths on DS1!), etc. Rough stuff! My build's starting to be effective, I have a few element-infused of the same cheesy basic weapon that I just switch between based on enemy. Yeah, I know it's less damage than if you do those expensive 1-minute buffs on regular weapons, but boy do I not want to bother with that.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> I tried Aldrich ONCE, and he killed me with a one-shot before I could even get in melee range as I rolled around in futility.


Lol, the arrow storm thing? (EDIT: or maybe you mean soul spear?) I swear that attack never ends sometimes. That fight can go either way for me in terms of how much i struggle. Cool boss music too. 

Speaking of DS3 i finished up the ringed city on a recent playthrough, only summoned for spear of the church cos why not. Midir took me 10 tries and Gael took me 9, around the same for the demon prince. Fun fights.


----------



## wankerness

I dunno what happened that first Aldrich attempt - it was definitely the arrow rain, but I died INSTANTLY when it touched me, so I can only guess that it got timed identically to him meleeing me or the soul spear or something. I got horribly slaughtered, then went off and did the dungeon stuff and Yhorm, gained a bunch of levels and came back and wore what little magic resist gear I had, got weight down below 30%, followed the advice online of "don't target him, run at him as fast as possible and start whacking his tail with a fire weapon using 2h" and it didn't happen again. Still took me like 6 tries and it was terrifying, though. Based on the wiki, I tried using the silence miracle a few times, which worked, but took way too much energy to reapply every time he teleported and it was dodgy with whether I'd be in range of him for it to work, so the time I beat him I just kamikazeed him and beat him down before he could get me. Kind of a hollow feeling, I was just glad to be done with that asshole. I like the longer slugfests that don't involve the seeming randomness and the battle against the game's camera/lock-on (either you can't hit the boss right when targeting, or you can't really avoid his attacks or see what he's doing if you don't target him).

Still, I died less to him than that double-sullyvan beast room. F that. Plus, at least the fight was quick, I think the (stressful, with all the enemies you have to dodge) run back and then attempts were only taking about 2 minutes each.


----------



## wankerness

Dancer was a joke in comparison to Aldrich, wow. Two shot without much trouble, no summons or anything. Not that I still wasn't in super spaz shaky hands mode by the end, but hey, that's Dark Souls for you. That thing should be in an art museum, or something. The boss design and animations are incredible.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Picked up AC Valhalla, Fenyx Rising and Watch Dogs on sale. Going to give them a go for a while. Hopefully by the time that's done Cyberpunk won't be as big a mess.


----------



## TedEH

I spent the last couple o' weeks playing Mario Galaxy and just made it to the credits today. I had also played Sunshine recently, so in that context Galaxy is a huge step up. The visuals aged well, or at least the Switch version was well updated (I never played the original). There's a lot of good ideas packed in there. Sometimes, the controls aren't the most intuitive and I tended to get confused as to which way I should be running when upside down - it's really not intuitive - but I think it was sort of a baked-in part of the challenge, as if the devs knew this would be the case and mostly designed around the problem.


----------



## MFB

Finished Blighttown, the swamp portion can suck the fattest of dicks. Every time I thought I was done killing poison bugs, another pair comes trotting over to die while I burn through purple moss clumps to prevent poisoning, on top of my Shadow sets increased resistance. So now the way to Sen's Fortress is open so I guess that's where I'm going next.

I checked out the Demon Ruins but promptly noped out as I just fought a flame boss and didnt feel like dealing with another one right after.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still under the Cold Steel 4 rock. Bought Yakuza Like A Dragon at a Boxing Day sale but will refuse to play it (and Persona 5 Royal) simply because I'm too invested in the Trails games right now...

...and finally finished the first act. I should've seen it coming but throwing me into a massive dungeon going through a 3 divided party structure then a 4 tier boss rush (including one with a high energy J-Pop BGM just to show they mean business in true anime style), caught me off guard. Did manage to beat through it all. The last one was a pain since the game was taunting you with rewards if you kill a certain power duo at the same time. Thankfully I got it done by blowing through 3 super moves in a row.

Now in the second act of the game, I'm actually in a little dilemma... I have too many characters. 

In a JRPG, this can be problematic since having too many playable players in the party becomes hard to manage if you want to spend time with them all but only allowed with 4 on the field (plus 3 subs). But at this point, you have 17 players and 10 of them are forced on bench. Granted it's not as bad as Chrono Cross, but in this case, I had 4 straight games to get to know all these characters in both story and gameplay and would like to give them more time...



Spoiler



Especially the old Class VII team from the first 2 games sort of sit in the background while the new Class VII team really take over from the 3rd game onwards. They certainly get more screen time and become even more interesting and more likeable than the original cast here. Hell, the main character was largely absent here in the first act.



...and that's not even the gameplay aspect. Part of the JRPG fun is making builds for each character, analysing their dynamics with each other then assembling a team that can obliterate everything, thus breaking the game.  With this many characters to manage, all happen to be fun to play (even the mage builds whom I often prioritised less in the previous games), I'll probably force myself to grind a bit. I did notice that my in game money funds tend to be much lower in this game than the first 3 as well. That's a lot of clothing, boots, weapons and not-Materia that I'll have to grind out just to be able to afford. 

I suppose I could just play the game properly, but some of these characters just shine when they turn into unstoppable killing machines.


----------



## MFB

Made it through Sen's Fortress in probably the second quickest of any area so far, only to Darkroot Garden since theres really nothing to do/see there. Biggest hurdle was the first set of guards, as I could never lure just one, they always came as a pair; but I managed to finally not only lure them individually, but I killed the first using the arrow trap against it. After that it was smooth sailing.

Summoned Iron Tarkus to help with tbe Golem, somehow got him on the first try even though I barely hit him due to the stone thrower on the other tower. I didnt realize he'd interfere in the fight, just though he only tried to block me. Ended up falling off the side as the "VICTORY ACHIEVED" came up on the screen which was hilarious and then collected my 49.5K in souls after beforr moving to Anor Londo.

Fuck these lightning imps


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Finished Blighttown, the swamp portion can suck the fattest of dicks. Every time I thought I was done killing poison bugs, another pair comes trotting over to die while I burn through purple moss clumps to prevent poisoning, on top of my Shadow sets increased resistance. So now the way to Sen's Fortress is open so I guess that's where I'm going next.
> 
> I checked out the Demon Ruins but promptly noped out as I just fought a flame boss and didnt feel like dealing with another one right after.



Haha, one of my greatest "talents" in Dark Souls is being infinitely patient sitting there with a bow really far from enemies until I am sure they're all dead. That paid off with those stupid mosquitos that would respawn like 8-10 times there.

Speaking of which, I hate that they purposely removed some of the ability to do such cheap tactics in DS3 by making the arrow limit 99 instead of 999. I mean, I definitely GET it, but it has occasionally annoyed me, like when I wasted tons of arrows trying to clear out the rats in the giant pit until realizing they were infinitely respawning. It's hard to snipe out a bunch of huge enemies with only 198 arrows unless you never miss (common in these games, it seems like arrows hit the invisible wall next to your player half the time if you're trying to do things around corners, it's only a little bit better in 3 than 1/2). 

Beat up Dragonslayer first try, limped through Lothric thinking "well, that wasn't that bad" until BAMMO, phase 2! It seems much more doable than Aldrich after 1 attempt, but I guess I'll see what happens when I have time to play again. Could be another bunch of deaths. I do like that the run back involves zero enemy engagement.

I got three different elemental weapons up to +10 and have int/faith at 30 and mostly just hit everything with melee and hide behind a shield. It's still working quite well. It was horrible going for a long time until I did the elemental infusions, though. I definitely would recommend going more of a pure strength/vigor/endurance allotment until you're pretty high level.

Now that my int and faith are at 30, I'm sort of interested to at least try some offensive non-miracle spells, other than the couple I've used for screwing around (fire orb for farming clustered low-hp enemies on a bridge, and flash sweat for getting items out of the lava, nothing else!!). I think I heard hexes got nerfed to oblivion from DS2, which is too bad, Hexer looked pretty fun in that game.


----------



## MFB

Boy, Anor Londo is a small area with not a lot of enemies, but boy do those enemies know how to fuck my shit up. I managed to run the full gauntlet into the main cathedral and get the doors open, so now I can almost get a direct run to the fog gate, but there's some tricky moments of Sentinel dodging or else I'm going into that fight at half health - and I need as much as I can get.

I just did a quick attempt at Ornstein & Smough, this one is gonna be tough. I landed two hits on Ornstein and did some decent damage with my crystal halberd, but it's slower than I'd like so I have to play it smart; and Smough moved much faster than I was hoping for, plus he's got good range with that hammer - also much more than I was expecting. I hate his character design though, quite awful compared to Ornstein, not sure if there's any way to save it either by thickening up the helmet to match the body, or make him top-heavy to keep the imposing idea of "thin/fast/aggressive, stocky/slow/defensive" (I know he's not defensive but you get the meaning).


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Boy, Anor Londo is a small area with not a lot of enemies, but boy do those enemies know how to fuck my shit up. I managed to run the full gauntlet into the main cathedral and get the doors open, so now I can almost get a direct run to the fog gate, but there's some tricky moments of Sentinel dodging or else I'm going into that fight at half health - and I need as much as I can get.
> 
> I just did a quick attempt at Ornstein & Smough, this one is gonna be tough. I landed two hits on Ornstein and did some decent damage with my crystal halberd, but it's slower than I'd like so I have to play it smart; and Smough moved much faster than I was hoping for, plus he's got good range with that hammer - also much more than I was expecting. I hate his character design though, quite awful compared to Ornstein, not sure if there's any way to save it either by thickening up the helmet to match the body, or make him top-heavy to keep the imposing idea of "thin/fast/aggressive, stocky/slow/defensive" (I know he's not defensive but you get the meaning).



SPOILERS FOR ANOR LONDO





You get the armor of whoever you kill last. So if you summon other players, they typically wait for you to smack one first. They assume that’s the one you want dead and will focus them down. It’s on you to run to the other one and try to tank them and keep it away from the one getting burned down.


----------



## MFB

I forgot about that, but I don't play on PSN nor do I have any humanity left at this point so it's been all undead for me for a while now  It IS making the bonfires a bitch though as I have to run all the way back to the first one and then heal, then make sure to dodge every attack before the boss fight.


----------



## Mathemagician

No no. There is closer bonfire. Much closer. Seek the smelting giant.


----------



## MFB

I've gone to the Giant Blacksmith, and I know there's two others that are technically closer (one being by Solaire and all the silver knights, the other at the bottom of the spiral staircase) but I can't kindle either of those as I have no humanity; so that means I'd only get 5 heals on my flask instead of the 10 I get from the one right at the start.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Prodeus. Holy fucking shit. I never thought I'd love an FPS game as much as I do the Doom series, but this game is sitting proudly right beside my love of Doom right now. Loving every minute of this masterpiece so far. Andrew Hulshult does the soundtrack as well. This game also rewards exploration in some very decent ways as well, and also rewards your finding of new weapons by putting you in scenarios made for that weapon so that you can have some fun. Goddamn it, I'm loving it to death.


----------



## wankerness

Ok, twin princes are a son of a bitch and a half. I’m getting nowhere in phase 2, the little guy’s health is usually still at 80-90% once I’ve killed the big one a second time, even though I’ve been hitting him mainly in the back, and by then my estus is all gone. 

i got very frustrated and checked out other areas, and one-shot two other bosses, both with 5+ estus remaining, one without any NPC summon help (the crying dog-dragon thing, and the champion in the “dark” starting area). 
I guess Lothric is just one of the hardest bosses, at least for my particular setup.


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> Ok, twin princes are a son of a bitch and a half. I’m getting nowhere in phase 2, the little guy’s health is usually still at 80-90% once I’ve killed the big one a second time, even though I’ve been hitting him mainly in the back, and by then my estus is all gone.
> 
> i got very frustrated and checked out other areas, and one-shot two other bosses, both with 5+ estus remaining, one without any NPC summon help (the crying dog-dragon thing, and the champion in the “dark” starting area).
> I guess Lothric is just one of the hardest bosses, at least for my particular setup.




Alright, when you say one-shot, do you mean killed them in one hit or you beat them on your first try? Because one shot normally means the first.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> Alright, when you say one-shot, do you mean killed them in one hit or you beat them on your first try? Because one shot normally means the first.



Haha, it definitely equally means the latter with raiding in MMORPGs, which is where I inherited a lot of my gaming language. I guess people always said "1-shot" when they were talking about how they died instantly, but also said it in celebration when we'd kill bosses first try on farm nights. I definitely did not kill these bosses in one hit. After they nerfed FUGS into the ground, I don't think any weapons can do that to any bosses.

I finally beat Twin Princes after about 10 attempts total. After one infuriating attempt where I killed the big melee one FOUR TIMES and still couldn't finish off the little guy, I raged and went and farmed black knight armor/shield for better fire resist (but with a shield with actual poise), got a bleed weapon, farmed up chunks to get it to +9, and then just switched to it in P2 after burning through P1 with a lightning sword. Guess the problem was just that the little guy is extremely lightning resistant so if you aren't using a purely physical weapon he's going to take forever to kill, but then I was having the problem with my attempts where I just used the bleed weapon the whole time where P1 took forever since the big one is physical resistant! So, I took off one piece of armor and just had two swords on for the fight. So, phew. Hopefully this is the biggest roadblock before the DLC, which I might not do.


----------



## MFB

What the shit is up with Crystal weapons being irrepairable? They only repair when they're upgraded or some shit? That seems like a pointless inclusion into the game, make an items that's guaranteed to only get a finite amount of uses based on durability. Especially if you can upgrade a weapon TO crystal, you've now just wasted that weapon.


----------



## Mathemagician

They typically have much higher damage than comparable leveled weapons. Especially early game. But yes I never used a crystal weapon once b/c “eh”.


----------



## MFB

I guess that makes sense if you're using the stock broadsword/longsword/etc... I've just been using the Drake Sword the entire game (never upgraded as I've seen it wasn't worth it due to not scaling) and with the baseline of 200dmg the crystal weapon isn't that much more so I guess it makes more sense now. I just feel dumb immediately having upgraded it a couple times thinking it'd carry me for the rest of the game, when it'll just be reserved for boss fights in that case.


----------



## wankerness

At some point I switched from the drake sword to something that scaled, just to get rid of it and finally have my level-ups increase my damage! I think I had to get the weapon up to like +6 before it did more damage than the drake sword. I ended up using the basic claymore at +10 with a shield for most of the game (I had a lot of strength). Regular mace was pretty badass, too. Even more so in DS2.


----------



## MFB

My strength hit the cap at 25, and I havent bothered with dex as I dont think I've used a single heavy attack on a boss or had a weapon worth using that required me to up it. Hell, I havent even done any two hand weapons, its been Drake sword+spear/shield through my entire build (barring my pre-DS fight which were mace for the first ...two bosses).

Pretty sure I'm closing on the endurance cap soon as its about to hit 30 with vitality


----------



## Mathemagician

In DS2, you can buy the first rapier in Majula and just level it up normal and 2h R1 your way through the entire game. It’s hilarious how good that super fast weapon is.

Anyways, I’ve already dropped WoW because while I really love a lot of the class changes and says they handle abilities/pvp abilities. I’m not going to “practice” at pvp in order to have fun with the group content. I don’t play it for the story. So uninstalled. 

Working through Witcher 3. Hoping for a summer 2021 finish of my first playthrough. Lol.


----------



## MFB

I've made it to the halfway point of Ornstein and Smough, but SuperSmough got me good the first time. Second time I made it there with an asterisk, as me and Orny traded killing blows, but as soon as the cinematic sas over I got the big "YOU DIED" screen 

I'm back in Fireshrine trying to farm to up my non-crystal weapons to new heights so I dont run out of a halberd and forget how to fight with slightly lower damage. My highest weapon is a lightning spear, so I'll reinforce that as much as I can to get whatever physical damage out of it, and accept the lightning will do nothing for the O&S fight.

I also need to get the rites of Kindling as 10 heals isn't cutting it anymore for these new levels. So to the Catacombs I must a go go.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I've made it to the halfway point of Ornstein and Smough, but SuperSmough got me good the first time. Second time I made it there with an asterisk, as me and Orny traded killing blows, but as soon as the cinematic sas over I got the big "YOU DIED" screen
> 
> I'm back in Fireshrine trying to farm to up my non-crystal weapons to new heights so I dont run out of a halberd and forget how to fight with slightly lower damage. My highest weapon is a lightning spear, so I'll reinforce that as much as I can to get whatever physical damage out of it, and accept the lightning will do nothing for the O&S fight.
> 
> I also need to get the rites of Kindling as 10 heals isn't cutting it anymore for these new levels. So to the Catacombs I must a go go.



I beat O&S first try (with an NPC summon) through dumb luck, I think. I just nuked down Ornstein while the NPC was holding aggro, and I think super-smough was at about 25% when the NPC died and I eeked out a win. He hit me once and it took me from full health to like 1 health (and I had been stacking vitality!!). Good times. I'm glad I didn't get stuck. Though, if I ever replay that game, I might do it without the excessive grinding early on so I'm not overpowered. Being able

Played DS3 a while more this morning, killed that dumb boss where you just run past a bunch of NPCs and do a drop attack on his head to instantly kill him. So, I guess I'm down to Nameless King, the last boss, and the DLC. I've gotten into this game since grinding at a high level and thus being moderately sturdy, but god, it's so much harder than the first two. I had to cheese Havel by casting invisibility and just backstabbing him a bunch. That guy was a dick, at least as bad as in 1.

I'll probably start Bloodborne next. I know I played it for a few hours once, but I don't remember anything I did so I'll just start over and see what happens.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, I'm sure a summons would help, and going back for Humanity in Firelink is part of my plan as well while getting the RoK since everyone seems to say "summon Solaire and he'll deal with one of them." I had one fight where I got them both to 50% at the same time and that felt really good, but then the managed to get in like, 4 attacks back to back and killed me in a corner. I just hate that you have to get one down first so the other goes into Super mode, instead of being able to even attempt a "one hit on one, one hit on the other" type of fight.

Bloodborne is so god damn good, I'm kind of itching to replay it from DS, but I want to finish DS and maybe plow through DS3 as well (I might skip two entirely because while people seem to either love or hate it, it seems like it's a pain in the ass).


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Yeah, I'm sure a summons would help, and going back for Humanity in Firelink is part of my plan as well while getting the RoK since everyone seems to say "summon Solaire and he'll deal with one of them." I had one fight where I got them both to 50% at the same time and that felt really good, but then the managed to get in like, 4 attacks back to back and killed me in a corner. I just hate that you have to get one down first so the other goes into Super mode, instead of being able to even attempt a "one hit on one, one hit on the other" type of fight.
> 
> Bloodborne is so god damn good, I'm kind of itching to replay it from DS, but I want to finish DS and maybe plow through DS3 as well (I might skip two entirely because while people seem to either love or hate it, it seems like it's a pain in the ass).



I think you'd have an easier time plowing through 2 than 3, there are far fewer ridiculous BS areas, and the few that there are are easily conquered by steadily clearing out the areas.

I have been thinking about this today. I think 3 is actually less polished than DS2:SOTFS, mainly because of 3's INCREDIBLY buggy camera. I seriously think half the difficulty of some bosses is entirely due to camera/lock-on problems. I know at least half my deaths on twin princes were due to him teleporting somewhere random and the lock-on getting lost and me not being able to get the camera on him before he destroyed me. It was either teleport on your head (you dodge instantly to avoid this, no matter what, because you can't react to it if you wait for it), teleport next to you and hit you with fast melee (you had ~1 second to react to this), or teleport far from you and charge up the huge holy beam of death (you had about 4 seconds to dodge this but had to time it exactly). If it took 3-4 seconds to figure out where the hell he was, it was often already too late!

In addition to that, there have been a LOT of cases in 3 where enemies suddenly fell through the floor/wall/ceiling. Sometimes they'd stay there and I could kill them by hitting them through the ceiling in their polygons that were clipping through (this happened to the fire demon boss, hilariously), or sometimes they'd just disappear and I'd get the souls a little while later.

On the other hand, 3 does feel more cohesive than 2 did, and it does have some positive changes. I think the switch to mana for spells and the ability to assign estus flasks to either health or mana recovery was good. Pyromancy also seems a LOT better, I've actually used it here and there cause it could do respectable damage. But weapons? Eh.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I think you'd have an easier time plowing through 2 than 3, there are far fewer ridiculous BS areas, and the few that there are are easily conquered by steadily clearing out the areas.
> 
> I have been thinking about this today. I think 3 is actually less polished than DS2:SOTFS, mainly because of 3's INCREDIBLY buggy camera. I seriously think half the difficulty of some bosses is entirely due to camera/lock-on problems. I know at least half my deaths on twin princes were due to him teleporting somewhere random and the lock-on getting lost and me not being able to get the camera on him before he destroyed me. It was either teleport on your head (you dodge instantly to avoid this, no matter what, because you can't react to it if you wait for it), teleport next to you and hit you with fast melee (you had ~1 second to react to this), or teleport far from you and charge up the huge holy beam of death (you had about 4 seconds to dodge this but had to time it exactly). If it took 3-4 seconds to figure out where the hell he was, it was often already too late!
> 
> In addition to that, there have been a LOT of cases in 3 where enemies suddenly fell through the floor/wall/ceiling. Sometimes they'd stay there and I could kill them by hitting them through the ceiling in their polygons that were clipping through (this happened to the fire demon boss, hilariously), or sometimes they'd just disappear and I'd get the souls a little while later.
> 
> On the other hand, 3 does feel more cohesive than 2 did, and it does have some positive changes. I think the switch to mana for spells and the ability to assign estus flasks to either health or mana recovery was good. Pyromancy also seems a LOT better, I've actually used it here and there cause it could do respectable damage. But weapons? Eh.


pyromancy has ALWAYS been good. same with magic missiles/lightning spears for more straight sorcerer builds.


----------



## MFB

The one thing I am noticing in DS moreso than Bloodborne is how incredibly easy it is to miss entire areas of the game, and I can't help but wonder if it's intentional or not (I mean, if an area adds nothing to the game, why design it?); as well as if it changes the endgame, either marginally or drastically. I mean, I'm going back for the Rites of Kindling which is in the Catacombs, but at the moment, I've had zero reason to go to the Catacombs until now and if that wasn't there I probably wouldn't bother; BUT, there's also an entire boss down there, one who happens to be mentioned in the god damn opening cinematic, which in any other game WOULD be a big deal.

Either that or I'm just terrible at understanding the order of areas in the From-verse, in which case, oh well!


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> The one thing I am noticing in DS moreso than Bloodborne is how incredibly easy it is to miss entire areas of the game, and I can't help but wonder if it's intentional or not (I mean, if an area adds nothing to the game, why design it?); as well as if it changes the endgame, either marginally or drastically. I mean, I'm going back for the Rites of Kindling which is in the Catacombs, but at the moment, I've had zero reason to go to the Catacombs until now and if that wasn't there I probably wouldn't bother; BUT, there's also an entire boss down there, one who happens to be mentioned in the god damn opening cinematic, which in any other game WOULD be a big deal.
> 
> Either that or I'm just terrible at understanding the order of areas in the From-verse, in which case, oh well!



I'm sure that it's intentionally designed that way, but I only have theories as to why. Maybe so people can get to new game+ as fast as possible by making the final bosses reachable earlier? Maybe to encourage speedy low-level clears that don't force you to deal with every boss and that kind of challenge thing? All three games have some intro linear areas, then four main bosses you can do in whatever order, a final boss that unlocks after you do the four main bosses, and a few totally optional bosses/zones. One of them in 3 is very easily missable since it's behind one of those walls that disappear when you hit them, inside of another optional area!

There are some items in these games that serve no purpose whatsoever except for people who love challenge/punishment (ex, a ring that makes you take double damage, that kind of thing). So, I dunno. I think it's all deliberately added to add replay variety. I don't know enough about the bosses/mechanics and what's optional/non-optional to know if maybe part of it is that some of the optional bosses are not doable in certain specs and all the main ones are, or something like that, to avoid shutting out certain specs from finishing. But, that wouldn't seem like From's MO.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I'm sure that it's intentionally designed that way, but I only have theories as to why. Maybe so people can get to new game+ as fast as possible by making the final bosses reachable earlier? Maybe to encourage speedy low-level clears that don't force you to deal with every boss and that kind of challenge thing? All three games have some intro linear areas, then four main bosses you can do in whatever order, a final boss that unlocks after you do the four main bosses, and a few totally optional bosses/zones. One of them in 3 is very easily missable since it's behind one of those walls that disappear when you hit them, inside of another optional area!
> 
> There are some items in these games that serve no purpose whatsoever except for people who love challenge/punishment (ex, a ring that makes you take double damage, that kind of thing). So, I dunno. I think it's all deliberately added to add replay variety. I don't know enough about the bosses/mechanics and what's optional/non-optional to know if maybe part of it is that some of the optional bosses are not doable in certain specs and all the main ones are, or something like that, to avoid shutting out certain specs from finishing. But, that wouldn't seem like From's MO.



The reason areas & bosses are optional/miss-able and have no impact is because Hidetaka Miyazaki is a fan of NES-era games that challenged the player in more ways than one. Difficulty from the onset to a spiking difficulty curve, hidden areas that you wouldn't normally discover on your first playthrough (unless by accident) that house difficult bosses and/or mechanics, items that work against the player as well as other mechanics of the SoulsBorne games are all lifted directly from NES games like Metal Gear, Castlevania, Metroid, Ghosts and Goblins, Wizardry, Legendary, Dragon Warrior and so on.

From's games are love letters to classic era gaming that take away everything modern gamers got used to like player agency, hand holding tutorials, non-skill based gameplay & low to no consequence for failing/dying. As for a story, when you look at any of the NES games I mentioned, there's also next to no story developed in-game (Dragon Warrior excluded), but they're all rich with lore, exactly like SoulsBorne. All of that is what makes the games so loved among those who play them. Beating any of the SoulsBorne games is a badge of honour. It's also what I think most clones like Lords of the Fallen and Nioh get wrong. Though I will shout out Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight as excellent side-scrolling adaptations of these kinds of difficult games.


----------



## TedEH

Some day I'll try one of these Dark-Souls-esque games. Closest I got was Hollow Knight, and it was enjoyable, but the picture I have in my mind of these games is that it's not quite the same kind of thing.

In the meantime, I've started up Thousand Year Door as my game-to-play-while-on-holiday. There's a lot of charm to this one, so I see why people like it. I maintain that it's not _so brilliant_ as to make all other Paper Mario games bad in comparison. I'm on the side of "Origami King was a good game", and feel no need to compare it to this one since they're just fundamentally different games.

Also, for whatever reason I picked up BotW for an hour or two this morning, just 'cause I could. I dunno what it is, but something about that game makes me want to play it even if there's nothing really left to do.


----------



## wankerness

I realized I didn't have the DLC installed for DS3, and I wanted that +3 souls ring. HOLY SHIT. The ringed city DLC in this makes DS2's Iron Keep, which previously scarred me as being vastly harder than anything in 1/2, look like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Every large enemy is just comically overpowered, takes about 10-15 hits, and will kill you in two hits (with the first stunlocking you to the point you probably won't be able to dodge the second). The little enemies can kill you in 3 hits minimum (1 if they cast the BIG SPELL) and many of them infinitely respawn. I have 27 vigor, guess I need like 40 to take 3 hits in this hellhole. It's horrible!

I think I might just say screw the DLC and play bloodborne! Or go back and try to finish 2, cause I bet Fume Knight is going to seem like a welcome vacation after this game.


----------



## MFB

If you do go immediately to BB, depending on how you play Dark Souls, be prepared for a change in pace as relies more on aggression (and rewards it with the Rally system, which any From game that gets ripped off should also copy) and there's legitimately zero blocking in the game; it's all parry or straight up dodge.

Since I'm playing DS1, and the other DS series build on the mechanics established in this, I do feel somewhat safe as calling BB the best blend of a traditional single player experience with the From Software method of storytelling. Dark Souls feels a bit nonsensical in it's design at times (like rolling off a roof onto a catwalk to a ruined building to return to Undead Asylum), but Bloodborne was always a dedicated path outlined for it's locations or shortcuts that still seem plausible vs. just happened upon.

If it wouldn't ruin me going to DS2 and DS3, I'd replay it between the two


----------



## Mathemagician

It definitely feels like the design choices were changed/iterated on over time. In DS1 everything was purposefully obtuse. Like, the different damage types weren’t clearly labeled, and many paths were definitely hidden on purpose, if you didn’t find a zone you just never found it unless someone told you about it/you read a guide or you explored further on a future playthrough. 

DS3 has some of that too with certain covenants and zones not being an option if you don’t do prerequisites in the right order. That order seemingly by accident in many cases. 

Bloodborne was definitely designed to be aggressive though. They take the lore aspects of “beasts” seriously. I’ve never even tried being a magic build in that game. And the DLC is some of the best from soft content. 

Man BB did cosmic-horror well. So, SO good.


----------



## Ralyks

I was hoping to do a lot of catch up gaming for my vacation from work, but now my son is home with me for almost all of it due to his school being closed because of covid (as mentioned in the covid thread, him and I both tested negative). I had gotten Dying Light, Cloudpunk, Ghostrunner, and Dragon Quest XI S, the season 2 pass of Borderlands 3 in addition to playing some Cyberpunk and trying to finish Ghost of Tsushima.

Anyway, last night I picked up Borderlands 3 again for the first time in a long time, and the first time since getting the PS5 version. The PS5 version runs fantastic. Also, for the love of God does anyone else still play on PlayStation?! The one thing I hate about BL3 is matchmaking. I don't get why they couldn't keep lobby selection from BL2. I pretty much NEVER get matched up with anyone.


----------



## lurè

Finished Cyberpunk. 

Really liked the story and the side quests. According to the internet I got the best ending. 

Solid 8/10


----------



## mongey

MFB said:


> Boy, Anor Londo is a small area with not a lot of enemies, but boy do those enemies know how to fuck my shit up. I managed to run the full gauntlet into the main cathedral and get the doors open, so now I can almost get a direct run to the fog gate, but there's some tricky moments of Sentinel dodging or else I'm going into that fight at half health - and I need as much as I can get.
> 
> I just did a quick attempt at Ornstein & Smough, this one is gonna be tough. I landed two hits on Ornstein and did some decent damage with my crystal halberd, but it's slower than I'd like so I have to play it smart; and Smough moved much faster than I was hoping for, plus he's got good range with that hammer - also much more than I was expecting. I hate his character design though, quite awful compared to Ornstein, not sure if there's any way to save it either by thickening up the helmet to match the body, or make him top-heavy to keep the imposing idea of "thin/fast/aggressive, stocky/slow/defensive" (I know he's not defensive but you get the meaning).



O & S really fucked me up for a long time on my first play through. Even using the summons I couldn’t get them. Ended up beating them in the end on my own. 

def the boss that took me the most tries


----------



## Choop

It's def easier to kill Ornstein first and deal with Super Smough -- Super Ornstein can be a real douchehole, but you do get his armor if you kill him second!


----------



## wankerness

Beat nameless king after a few tries, then died a few times to basic snow DLC enemies (after killing about 30 of them and wasting fifteen minutes getting back to where I died) and lost 200k souls and ragequit. God, the DLC for this game is miserable. I think I might just kill the final boss and be done with the game! It’s not like 2 where I want to see everything, it just seems like masochism.

I played bloodborne for 15 minutes. This game doesn’t have estus equivalent, huh? I hate non-recharging consumables!


----------



## MFB

Nope, its all blood vials for healing and those are consumable only - no recharges. I can go either way with it, but I like the consumables more as then enemies also have a drop for them and you're not limited to only healing at certain locations.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Blood vials are so easy to get in Bloodborne it's virtually a non-issue. If you're even somewhat competent at the game, they'll drop and you won't pay any mind to it. They just go to your extra storage anyways.


----------



## MFB

Had a fight where I got Ornstein down with only 2 heals from my Estus, and Smough was down to the 'E' in Executioner for health, then he landed a direct hit on me with his butt slam and I died. Still had 6 heals in the flask but he took out like, 2/3 of my healty by landing right fucking on me.


----------



## MFB

They're dead. They're finally fucking dead after probably 20 tries. He almost got me with another super slam, but I dodged away with enough health to heal back up and finish in. 

Took them down with two handing a +3 Gravelord Sword


----------



## wankerness

I finally hooked up my PC, maybe I’ll try playing through DS: Prepare to Die edition on there and try NOT powerleveling so I can experience O&S the way everyone else seems to have. One try does not seem to be the norm! Guess I got way too much health.


----------



## MFB

Ive heard you need to mod the hell out of it to be playable on PC, and I hated this game before knowing that. 

That said, I'm level 63 with around 1100 vitality and it still took me that many, so I dont know if its possible to have "too much health." Some fights were much closer but from poor maneuvering or stamina I would get killed, but it's not entirely insane to think if a person knew what they were doing up to this point, that they could get it done in one.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> God, the DLC for this game is miserable.


Ashes of Ariandel is pretty lame, wish they'd just let you skip to the Friede fight. I didn't like the snow DLC in DS2 either. Ringed city's pretty cool though, at least once you get those annoying ass lightning ladies outta the way in the beginning.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Ive heard you need to mod the hell out of it to be playable on PC, and I hated this game before knowing that.
> 
> That said, I'm level 63 with around 1100 vitality and it still took me that many, so I dont know if its possible to have "too much health." Some fights were much closer but from poor maneuvering or stamina I would get killed, but it's not entirely insane to think if a person knew what they were doing up to this point, that they could get it done in one.



I went for a pure brute-force build in that game and had like, 50 of whatever the health stat was and 50 strength by the time i got to them, so they pretty much melted and I got hit by one superpower attack that definitely would have killed me had I had something more normal like 30 vigor (vitality? I forget if it was different first game). I don't remember what the effective health numbers were or anything.


----------



## MFB

Oh well then yeah, you we're like, double both my VIT/STR so that would make sense that they didn't do much to you at the time. I diversified in the beginning between those two and also END so that I could get as many hits in as I could; plus I seemed to get weighed down by like one piece of gear so I said fuck it and got that way up. Now I've been using the same chainmail set that I upgraded since way back when and its worked just fine.

Cleared out Demon Ruins of all its bosses, Solaire did most of the work on the Centipede Demon  I had more trouble just getting to Firesage Demon then he gave me, just stayed close and he finally went down by the fourth try to so. Every other one he would just hit me with two long reaches and an AOE attack that I couldn't heal in time for.


----------



## Mathemagician

Bloodborne has the recovery mechanic. Think of it as grey health from street fighter that regenerates if you don’t get hit. In Bloodborne there is a bit where if you hit the enemy back your regenerate health. Really extends your effective health if you make use of the rally mechanic.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Bloodborne has the recovery mechanic. Think of it as grey health from street fighter that regenerates if you don’t get hit. In Bloodborne there is a bit where if you hit the enemy back your regenerate health. Really extends your effective health if you make use of the rally mechanic.



how much research am I going to have to do to play this game? Does it even attempt to explain things like that and say, how to parry?


----------



## MFB

Theres opening messages like in DS, but not much more than that. Again, parry doesn't exist in the traditional sense as there's one shield in the entire game, but you can do parry moves with your pistol.

And yeah, Rally is the GOAT of From mechanics, wish any game ripping them off also stole that too but alas.


----------



## Mathemagician

Bloodborne equipment:
right hand = melee weapon
Left hand = gun (but think of guns like flintlocks, you get one shot then it takes a second to reload the next bullet) Also ammo is limited in fights but easy enough to refill after a fight. 

“Parrying” in Bloodborne = shoot the enemy during its attack animation to “interrupt” it, then you dash in for a bloody stabbing attack while it’s stunned. 

You can parry from point blank range. 

Bloodborne does a better job explaining things imo but checking against a guide isn’t the end of all surprises either. 

Almost every weapon is viable so it’s hard to fuck up a build if you change your mind. 

Also you can do what I have done every single DS game and that is DODGE LEFT A LOT. You end up behind/to the side of the enemy and can attack them. Seriously replay DS1/2 and just dodge left.


----------



## wankerness

Now I'm split between DLC for DS2 and 3, and starting bloodborne.

DS3: Did the first Ashes of Ariandel boss (the hunter that calls the huge wolf), that wasn't too bad, still don't really like this DLC though. The HUGE swarms of the viking looking dudes are infuriating. At least there are enough bonfires that you usually only have to deal with them once.

Bloodborne: Ran around aimlessly for a while, accidentally ran into Father Gascigoganenr, took a really long time to die to him but seemed like I was tickling him, eventually died after using all my blood vials and he was only at like 50%. Ran around for a while more, upgraded weapon to +1, accidentally ran into Cleric Beast, same deal - took about 5 minutes to get him to 50%, and then finally died. Thought "i think I hate this game if this is how little damage you do relative to boss health pools!!" Ran around for a while more, levelled up vitality a few times and got the saw cleaver to +2, went back and tried Cleric Beast again, killed him in like a minute without ever going under 50% health. WTF. I switched from extended form to short/fast form on the weapon, but other than that I can only guess than the additional +1 on the weapon made all the difference between him going down superfast and him taking next to no damage. Also, I think he maybe he kind of bugged out cause I was able to just run around in circles behind him and only got hit by like two attacks and only had to dodge a couple times. Whatever. It's the first boss!

DS2: Loaded it up and immediately was like WOW, THIS IS SLOW!!! Died to Fume Knight's lone trash mob several times while trying to get re-acclimated to the dodge timings and stuff for this game. Didn't even try Fume Knight after how badly it was going. I rediscovered something really annoying about this game, which are the fricking rolling attacks. (If you dodge roll and hit attack before you're totally stopped moving, you do some useless low-damage attack that never goes even remotely close to your target since it aims at the endpoint of your roll instead of your lock-on target). That was a fantastic removal in DS3.


----------



## MFB

Saw cleaver is a GOAT in Bloodborne, I upgraded mine pretty heavily until I got Ludwig's Blade, and those two carried me until the end.


----------



## gabito

Still playing Mass Effect for the third time (currently playing ME2). And I still think it's a great trilogy, even with its low points.

I greatly enjoy the overall experience.


----------



## Choop

I know I keep bringing up playing games that are old news, but right now I'm doing Zone of the Enders. In some ways I like it, but in many other ways it's just not a very good game at all lol. It could just be that it hasn't aged well. Bright side is that it's prettttty short. Looking to play something totally different next, maybe finally do a real playthrough of Pillars of Eternity.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> I know I keep bringing up playing games that are old news, but right now I'm doing Zone of the Enders. In some ways I like it, but in many other ways it's just not a very good game at all lol. It could just be that it hasn't aged well. Bright side is that it's prettttty short. Looking to play something totally different next, maybe finally do a real playthrough of Pillars of Eternity.



It's funny how short ZOE was in retrospect. Especially how The Second Runner (while still short) is so much better in substantial plot, not as repetitive and vastly improved gameplay. Either way they're both drenched in typical Hideo Kojima insanity and redundant dialogue.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's funny how short ZOE was in retrospect. Especially how The Second Runner (while still short) is so much better in substantial plot, not as repetitive and vastly improved gameplay. Either way they're both drenched in typical Hideo Kojima insanity and redundant dialogue.



That's what I've heard! I'll still be playing it -- I have the HD collection for PS3 with both of 'em on there. I think the first would have been so much better if you were able to disable the English dub...after reading about it some that was a pretty universal criticism haha.


----------



## wankerness

Beat father gascgogine and blood-starved beast in bloodborne, and now am dying repeatedly to the "fall carefully down the rafters or die to gravity when you don't land precisely on the correct beam" boss. Seriously, I fucking hate these areas. The crystal area is BY FAR the worst part of DS1, and while this isn't THAT bad (at least there aren't invisible bridges) this is right up there with that miserable tree area in DS1. Although there, you could get down pretty easily if you chose to ignore items. I'm glad they had less of this in DS2/3!

I'm amused by the % of completion on the bosses in this (based on % of people with trophies) - a ton of people must have bought this game that didn't have the stones for it at all. Less than 50% of people who play the game ever beat the FIRST BOSS! What the heck?! With all the Dark Souls games that's more like the % of people that beat the LAST boss! Maybe it's just cause they gave this away free one month with PS+.


----------



## MFB

Made all the more coincidental as I'm dealing with the Crystal Caves right now in DS1 and feel my heart race every time I have to go over those fucking invisible bridges just to get to the ONE boss of the level. It exists, SOLELY, for Seathe to live in.

Welcome to Bloodborne, IIRC the only thing worth it in the rafter is the Saw Spear and if you have the cleaver it's not really worth it, so maybe just say fuck it? Oh wait, WAIT, do you mean the falling down to get down to Old Yharnam portion? If so, drop some shiny coins to illuminate the path below.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Made all the more coincidental as I'm dealing with the Crystal Caves right now in DS1 and feel my heart race every time I have to go over those fucking invisible bridges just to get to the ONE boss of the level. It exists, SOLELY, for Seathe to live in.
> 
> Welcome to Bloodborne, IIRC the only thing worth it in the rafter is the Saw Spear and if you have the cleaver it's not really worth it, so maybe just say fuck it? Oh wait, WAIT, do you mean the falling down to get down to Old Yharnam portion? If so, drop some shiny coins to illuminate the path below.



Umm, it was the section where you have to drop down a really long way in the chapel to get around to open the gates (and fight a magic werewolf enemy at the bottom). Took me three tries, and made my palms sweat like crazy.

Beat that weird giant werewolf lady boss (Amelia) first try, though I did use the FIRE PAPER. what a badass item name.

I find this game harder to tell where you're supposed to go next than DS2/3. Maybe cause it sends you back to old areas to find newly opened doors without much explanation.

The crystal caves on PS4, at least, did highlight the positives of playing online vs offline - a lot of the invisible bridges were outlined with the orange player messages so you could see where the heck you could step. Still terrifying, though, especially during the stretches between messages. 

Seath was an infuriating boss cause I died three times trying to destroy his tail. Gave up and killed him easily without getting the weapon. Oh well.


----------



## MFB

OK yeah, I had forgotten all about that part but was thinking about any other areas that might have you doing that and it came to mind. Kind of reminds me of Blighttown now that I think about it, but you know, you don't actually have to deal with it for an entire level - just drop down once and kill that guy and you're done.

I've come to accept that with every From game, I'm going to need a rough guide of area/boss order, as I never know if I'm going in the right order. With BB, I truly just sort of stumbled onto each boss. Papa Guac I believe I found before Cleric Beast (I think?) and wasn't sure which was considered the 'true' boss. And then after that I stumbled onto the location of Blood Starved Beast and had done a summon before hand so that cheesed him, and Vicar Amelia is another beast fight so it wasn't that difficult to pick up; but I needed to play it smarter as she dealt more damage than expected, and the second half it increases as well.

Depending on which you find first, the next boss either makes you feel great after the other fights you've done, or it goes to a level of "this is really the next boss I have to beat, c'mon." First try it didn't phase me, but on NG+ it gave me quite a beat down for whatever reason.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So Falcom just dropped a demo for Ys IX today. Purposely going to avoid it since I'm way too deep in another one of their games.


----------



## Nicki

I'm 60+ hours into Witcher 3 and not even halfway through the main story. The game is so much better than Cyberbunk'd. I'm also going to start Borderland's 3 this weekend with a friend from work because it was on sale for boxing day (yay canada!) for $10.

Oddly, I didn't like Borderland 1, 2 or the pre-sequel, but I'm willing to give it another go because I never played those on co-op with anyone so I'm hoping a co-op experience is better than playing it solo.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> I'm 60+ hours into Witcher 3 and not even halfway through the main story. The game is so much better than Cyberbunk'd. I'm also going to start Borderland's 3 this weekend with a friend from work because it was on sale for boxing day (yay canada!) for $10.
> 
> Oddly, I didn't like Borderland 1, 2 or the pre-sequel, but I'm willing to give it another go because I never played those on co-op with anyone so I'm hoping a co-op experience is better than playing it solo.



Borderlands 1 and 3 are more than fine singleplayer - in 1, your character becomes massively overpowered at higher levels and are basically unkillable, and in 3, the damage is a lot less spikey than 2's. 2 can definitely be incredibly frustrating single-player. I barely played the pre-sequel, just ran through the main story once.

Played Bloodborne for a while more yesterday, I really don't like the level structure or the way the lamps work. Like, seriously, just let us warp between lanterns instead of having to teleport back to the hunter's dream and then to where you wanted to go initially, I don't need an extra loading screen!!! I get it with healing, I guess, apparently they wanted to dissuade people from farming from the bonfire like in DS by punishing you with excessive loading if you want the free heal/enemy respawn. But yuck. And yeah, I hate that the levels have one bonfire and then are these massive sprawling things. I guess if I played the game for long enough and memorized everything it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe this changes as you get further in, I don't know! I bought Ludwig's Holy Blade cause people seem to like it online, we'll see how this goes.

I went back to DS3 last night and cleared a bunch of trash in the Ariendal DLC and opened up shortcuts. I was initially shocked by the framerate, coming from Bloodborne - I thought at first I had motion smoothing on my TV! Nope, Bloodborne's framerate is just really bad, I guess. Then I tried Sister Friede today in DS3, and yuck. Got to Phase 3 first try, then the summon NPC died in about 5 seconds, I struggled for a while and ran out of estus and died. Ew. It stressed me out so much I think I need to stop this game for a while! Or maybe I should just suck it up and try the "normal" last boss of the game.


----------



## Steinmetzify

wankerness said:


> Beat father gascgogine and blood-starved beast in bloodborne, and now am dying repeatedly to the "fall carefully down the rafters or die to gravity when you don't land precisely on the correct beam" boss. Seriously, I fucking hate these areas. The crystal area is BY FAR the worst part of DS1, and while this isn't THAT bad (at least there aren't invisible bridges) this is right up there with that miserable tree area in DS1. Although there, you could get down pretty easily if you chose to ignore items. I'm glad they had less of this in DS2/3!
> 
> I'm amused by the % of completion on the bosses in this (based on % of people with trophies) - *a ton of people must have bought this game that didn't have the stones for it at all.* Less than 50% of people who play the game ever beat the FIRST BOSS! What the heck?! With all the Dark Souls games that's more like the % of people that beat the LAST boss! Maybe it's just cause they gave this away free one month with PS+.



I'm that guy. In 40 years of gaming (I'm 46) this was the only game I've ever returned a physical copy of. I play games to relax; this game was 1% away from making me put my foot thru my television. I gave up, returned it and was much happier. Good on you for continuing, I couldn't do it.


----------



## MFB

If you can get Papa G to the transformation stage, there's not much more after that, and truthfully if you can pass that then you can manage with what the rest of the game will throw at you. He's tough as a first boss, and having the environment work against you doesn't help either, but there's nothing overly cheap about his tactics that you can't beat.

To me I find the trophy drop off hilarious, but I'm more proud of what I earned it because of it


----------



## wankerness

WOW, the witch boss in Bloodborne is like, even lower on the difficulty scale than the handful of "gimme" bosses in older Dark Souls games, like the group of mobs given a boss health bar in the church in 2. I think this might be the first time I went an entire boss fight without taking a single hit, much less on my first time trying it.  

The level design continues perplexing me. Spent around an hour, hour and a half in the forest and didn't really find any substantial shortcuts. But, I sure have gained a lot of levels!


----------



## Mathemagician

IMO papa G was one of the few “hard” fights. It’s comes up pretty early when you haven’t leveled your weapons much, and those fucking tombstones are awful. The point of that entire fight is “Lern2ParryScrub”. Because chipping at him with the bloody attack just leaves him standing too long and he can out damage you. Game gets easier after him imo. Note: I did NOT learn to parry my first time through.


----------



## MFB

I could still barely parry by the time I beat Papa G, it was largely learning how to use the tombstones to my advantage and getting luckily with the parries I DID get; something about the timing of his attacks just always threw me, like I'd need to start a hair earlier but never could, so I just dodged everything in game. Even in DS, a game that has a dedicated block vs. parry button, I find parry as a separate input to be stupid - blocking at the correct time IS parrying, yet that doesn't register the same time as if I do the block input. Like, give me a break.


----------



## Nicki

Some recent pickups for me were FFX/X-2 HD remaster so looking forward to playing through FFX again.

FFXII The Zodiac Age. Played FFXII on PS2 when it was first released, but I didn't get into it so it was cheap enough that I'd be willing to give it another go.

The Tomb Raider reboot games were on sale for cheap on Xbox so I grabbed those as well. I've already played the first one back on PS3, but I remember enjoying it so it's worth the $6 I paid for it to play it again, but never played Rise or Shadow so those will be good to go through.

Still need to finish Hellblade though....


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> Some recent pickups for me were FFX/X-2 HD remaster so looking forward to playing through FFX again.
> 
> FFXII The Zodiac Age. Played FFXII on PS2 when it was first released, but I didn't get into it so it was cheap enough that I'd be willing to give it another go.
> 
> The Tomb Raider reboot games were on sale for cheap on Xbox so I grabbed those as well. I've already played the first one back on PS3, but I remember enjoying it so it's worth the $6 I paid for it to play it again, but never played Rise or Shadow so those will be good to go through.
> 
> Still need to finish Hellblade though....



FFX was fun, I played through it a few years ago on PS2, getting everyone's final weapon and stuff. I have the remaster but haven't booted it up. I was pretty amused by the comparison videos in which the characters' facial expressions were completely wooden in the remaster vs the original, though!

Zodiac Age was pretty great, I did all the hunts and got stuck on a couple of the espers or whatever they're called. That game's combat system is cool, and while I see a lot of morons that didn't play the game all the way through saying "it's so easy the game plays it for you," it gets VERY difficult on the harder (optional) fights, partly cause characters do not always go/stay where you want them to.

Rise of the Tomb Raider was awesome, I think it might be better than the first Tomb Raider remake, which I think is a much more fun version of Uncharted (characters are nowhere near as good, though). I played maybe 1/3 through Shadow and lost interest. It wasn't bad, it just had way more emphasis on the puzzles/platforming in the tombs and way less on the combat. Not my thing.

Hellblade. Ugh. I found that game a completely miserable experience. I hated the combat sections, too, since it was so perfunctory. "Whoops, here's the room with the enemies, now they'll all spawn until you beat them all, every level they'll take more hits and maybe have a new ability or two." It felt so inorganic and bad. "Here's the exploration section, here's the enemy section." The game has great graphics and sound, but it's so ugly and miserable (by design) and the combat/puzzles were so not-fun that I was relieved when it was over.



MFB said:


> I could still barely parry by the time I beat Papa G, it was largely learning how to use the tombstones to my advantage and getting luckily with the parries I DID get; something about the timing of his attacks just always threw me, like I'd need to start a hair earlier but never could, so I just dodged everything in game. Even in DS, a game that has a dedicated block vs. parry button, I find parry as a separate input to be stupid - blocking at the correct time IS parrying, yet that doesn't register the same time as if I do the block input. Like, give me a break.



I don't think I parried Papa G a single time when I beat him. So far, I loathe the parry mechanic on this game compared to DS mostly cause you're not sure if timing it right will actually stagger the enemy, which leads to me not ever wanting to get in close enough to actually be able to hit them with a visceral in the .5 seconds they're open to one, since if they AREN'T staggered then you're screwed. I use it on enemies like the smaller brick trolls where it seems to be 100% guaranteed to actually stagger them, so I feel safe being in range of the visceral attack.

That said, the parries are pretty infurating on the DS games, too. I'm not sure what version you're playing if blocking and parrying are the same button, since parrying is done with L2 and blocking is with L1 on 2 and 3 at least (and I thought 1 also), and you basically do a pushing motion with the shield. If you mistime it, you're virtually guaranteed to take a hit to the face, and if you do it too late, you tend to totally drain your stamina bar as well! It's so punishing if you miss that I don't think it's worth doing unless you're a master of it. I always built for blocking, and it served me well, especially on fights that are a nightmare with trying to dodge everything like Nameless King or some of the late bosses in DS1/2.

EDIT: Oh, I misread your post. You just said parries SHOULD be just hitting block at the right time. I guess they thought that wasn't nearly punishing enough!


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Hellblade. Ugh. I found that game a completely miserable experience. I hated the combat sections, too, since it was so perfunctory. "Whoops, here's the room with the enemies, now they'll all spawn until you beat them all, every level they'll take more hits and maybe have a new ability or two." It felt so inorganic and bad. "Here's the exploration section, here's the enemy section." The game has great graphics and sound, but it's so ugly and miserable (by design) and the combat/puzzles were so not-fun that I was relieved when it was over.



I agree. The game is really straightforward. The combat is easy enough when you pay attention and parry properly. What's actually really getting me hooked on the game is the sound design though. I have a 5.1 surround sound setup in my gaming/movie space and just hearing the voices and noises all around you is impressive. Never seen a game developer pay as much attention to detail with the soundscape as Ninja Theory has with Hellblade. I know it's a pretty short game too. I've already beaten the two bosses required to open the door to go find Hella, so I think I'm pretty close to the end.


----------



## wankerness

Damn, Shadow of Yarnham bosses in Bloodborne were scary. I (barely) beat it second try, but the NPC got nuked in about 5 seconds so he really only gave me room to get my bearings. It was incredibly intense and I was down to about 4 blood vials by the end. Ack. Definitely the hardest boss yet. It probably didn't help that I was trying out the Tonitrus for the first time (I got owned by the boss so hard the first try that I went to get the tonitrus for the second try since supposedly two of them were weak to bolt) and was usually flailing around with the mobs just out of range. 

I'm not really sure what I'm going for buildwise since I don't understand this game as well as I did DS2/3. Currently at 30/20 vit/end and then 21/20/11 strength/skill/arcane. Not messing at all with bloodtinge since I don't know the point yet.


----------



## MFB

I don't believe there's a Dexterity equivalent in Bloodborne, or if there is then I clearly forget it (may be skill since it says that increases trick weapon damage, but not 100%), I just put everything into VIT/END/STR like every other game and it worked out fine for me  Arcane I believe is the equivalent to magic, but the weapons I saw for it didn't come until much later and seem to not be worth doing a build for so I said fuck it.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I don't believe there's a Dexterity equivalent in Bloodborne, or if there is then I clearly forget it (may be skill since it says that increases trick weapon damage, but not 100%), I just put everything into VIT/END/STR like every other game and it worked out fine for me  Arcane I believe is the equivalent to magic, but the weapons I saw for it didn't come until much later and seem to not be worth doing a build for so I said fuck it.



Dex in dark souls = skill, more or less. Seems like the same split between big smashy weapons scaling with strength, swords scaling with both, and weirder things like the cane (or katanas, or whatever) scaling primarily with skill.

I read a little bit about arcane - seems like it scales your magic/ele damage, so it's functionally useless this early in the game, but when you can start gemming weapons to change them to ele damage, having really high arcane basically breaks the game. That's kinda what I did in DS3 with going for 30 str/30 int/30 faith (now I'm 40 str/35 dex/40 int/40 faith and do much, MUCH higher amounts of damage with chaos/dark weapons vs purely physical ones). Maybe I should try it here! Seems more severe here, though, like when you change weapons to ele damage they lose ALL scaling from str/skill and all points in those become completely useless, so the ideal build is something like 10/10/99 str/skill/arcane. I probably already locked myself out of that being viable.

Sounds like bloodtinge can be used on some weird gimmick builds that can make some of the hardest bosses in the game trivial, but that it's probably going to make the game extremely difficult for a long time until you can get the weapons/stats required for the build to work. Sounds like the kind of thing I'd have wanted to try. Too bad you can't respec in this game. It's a step backwards from DS2 where you could, and I'm glad DS3 reimplemented it, even if I haven't taken advantage of it myself.

The other thing that really annoys me about this vs Dark Souls 2/3 is that they have the "jump" controls back to the horrible system in Dark Souls 1, where run and jump are the same damn button and it's a hell of a lot harder to time running/jumping than in DS2/3 where jump and run are separate buttons. Plus, it leads to you accidentally jumping when trying to run past enemies and dodge by rolling them, which invariably leads to you getting creamed since jumping makes you a sitting duck.


----------



## wankerness

Did a couple more bosses first try in Bloodborne: the "vacuous spider" (I was VERY CAREFUL with him and killed all the little spiders so it took forever but wasn't very hard, compared to the videos I watched where people didn't kill any little spiders and barely eeked out wins) and darkbeast paarl (I used the charged heavy attack on ludwig's a bunch of times, which seemed to instantly knock him down every time it connected, and he only managed to hit me once between stuns!!). So, the bosses so far aren't nearly as bad as those in DS3, with the possible exception of that Shadow trio. The game's levels, though, are much like DS3 where the trash can just be nightmarish. I especially don't like the big gaggles of respawning screeching hags that are in this area I'm in now. And the dogs! Agh! I do like that continuity from DS: dogs are always so unpredictable and likely to nail you no matter what level you are, so you always have to kill them first. They're meaner here, though, with some of the higher level ones able to take down half your health in the blink of an eye. 

The hunter battles here are very frenetic, with them acting like the most annoying of Dark Souls invasion NPCs - just constant rushing around and flipping and rolling ten times in a row when you try to hit them. So far, I accidentally pissed off Eileen the Crow and thus didn't have to fight the guy that everyone says is mega-hard (Henryk) and instead fought her (pretty easy). But, the group of three hunters in Old Yaarnam caught me off guard. After luring and killing two of them no problem, I pulled the third, only to have him whip out a huge cannon and 1-shot me (instant death, with 30 vitality and nearly full health!). I almost laughed it was so bad. At least they don't respawn.

I think I'm going to play a bunch of Lego games or something when I'm finally done with my run through the DS trilogy and Bloodborne, just to depressurize.


----------



## TheBlackBard

So this is just personal preference, but I always go Saw Spear over Saw Cleaver with the main reason being that weapon is serrated in open/closed mode. The main drawback from the Spear is the charge attack, which I admittedly do not use very much, instead opting for transform attacks. A +5 Saw Spear with flame paper after dropping a beast blood pellet is Vicar Amelia and Blood Starved Beast's worst nightmare.


----------



## Mathemagician

[Minor early game spoiler]

If you take the axe weapon first you can just use it two-handed with the sweep attack to melt literally everything. Enemies, knock down Papa G, beat down cleric beast. It scales with str so it can carry you through the whole game because that heavy sweep attack is just so good.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm, I haven't tried the spear and don't have the axe. I currently have Ludwig's at +8, and the cleaver and Tonitrus at +6. Maybe I should screw around in central yharnam to see what the movesets are like for the Spear and the axe (assuming I can buy it?). I definitely got a lot of mileage out of the Partizan (i think that was it? some basic spear) in DS2 that had a sweep attack, just cause the sweep was so good, even if the weapon itself was far less damaging than some other options.


----------



## MFB

Axe is incredibly slow, I regretted taking it as my first weapon after having to buy the Saw Cleaver. It was so slow I couldn't even come close to beating Papa G with it.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Axe is incredibly slow, I regretted taking it as my first weapon after having to buy the Saw Cleaver. It was so slow I couldn't even come close to beating Papa G with it.



Yeah, I probably wouldn't get along with it then. I use the greatsword mode on ludwig's occasionally but usually just use the shortsword. Fast attacks are good for people that make a lot of mistakes, like me. Plus, I love basically stunlocking enemies by hitting them 7 times in a row with them unable to attack back. With the slow weapons, they're much more likely to retaliate between hits.

I went through a bit of DS1 with a huge-ass sword and pretty quickly settled on the lower-damaging claymore just so it was faster (and had more of a sweep). And DS2 and 3 I pretty much stuck with 1h faster weapons the whole way through.

Except for DS2, where I kept a huge club on hand at all times to chain-pancake invaders with the 2H R2. Best cheese ever.


----------



## wankerness

The One Reborn was kind of scary, got annihilated first try cause I was locked onto him and thus when he puked everywhere i couldn't run away fast enough. Beat him second try, but got hit a bunch and it got ugly. 

Amygdala looked like it was going to be bad news based on all the pages of strategy recommending things like using long weapons to hit her in the head and bait attacks, but I blindly ran in there and spammed R1 at its legs/arms with an unbuffed 1H ludwig's and it just...sorta died. It was weird. Took like a minute. I think I must have gotten very lucky cause the boss guides for this thing made it look like it was bad news, especially P3, but I just killed it so fast it didn't really do much other than jump on my head a couple times and hit me with a couple melee attacks.

The whole area before Amygdala is absolute cancer, though. Gotta love those poison swamps that slow you when you walk and don't have nearly enough safe areas for you to possibly avoid being poisoned during some stretches, even with full poison resist gear! It makes Blighttown look nice. What makes it ten times more annoying are rocks placed all over the place in the water that block you from moving/rolling so you get stuck and poisoned even more. And then there are the rock-throwing giants on both sides of the poison channel that can surprise hit you for over 80% of your health! I definitely died to one throw that seemed to come out of nowhere and raged. Ah well.

Now for the areas that I saw the most warnings about before starting! Apparently there's one BS boss that runs away for a while that then can easily 1-shot you at the very end with a very difficult to see/dodge move, and then a bunch of areas that are made vastly more difficult if you have any insight, since apparently having a bunch of insight (I'm at 42) causes you to get frenzied much, much faster. I am tempted to spend all my insight to make it easier.


----------



## MFB

Where are you off to know, is it Castle Cainhurst? Oh wait, no, you're going to Nightmare of Mensis aren't you!


----------



## Mathemagician

To your point about amygdala boss: BB rewards aggressive play, and this is a great example. Relative to DS, BB weapons feel like they can hit really hard really early and your character is much faster. Between the damage and the rally mechanic you can rush down a lot of bosses. IE one blood pellet on the floor then get in there & melt the beast bosses.

Except one boss. Holy hell how can that much space to move be THAT useless? Lol.



MFB said:


> Where are you off to know, is it Castle Cainhurst? Oh wait, no, you're going to Nightmare of Mensis aren't you!



That whole zone was so well done imo. Idk if that’s a popular opinion or not. But I don’t play enough games to have experienced any of that before.


----------



## MFB

Spoiler



I'm mixed on Nightmare.

On the one hand, it's punishing from the second you arrive. Like, welcome, get frenzied shitstain - you figure it out. Then the enemies you attack turn into the silver worms and are a PITA to deal with, like why? Oh you're running away, well here are rock trolls to get past, then a big fucking spider who straight up crowds the door. Fight through ALL. OF. IT. Once you know it's there it's not nearly as bad, but holy hell is the first time a shock to the system.

It legitimately throws everything in the game at you, but as you play on and unlocked the shortcuts, it's like, well shit now I can legit run past 90% of this entire level which IS good design. 

Micolash is a shit fight, no one can change my mind on that. Not sure how I feel about Mergo's Wet Nurse, since I beat it on the first couple tries, I thought it'd have more patterns or something.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I did the Nightmare of Mensis. The beginning of the level is a nasty slog, with the frenzy line-of-sighting and the goddam sniper yetis. I didn't spend any insight, but I did get the frenzy resist gear from Eileen and the machine gun guy on the watchtower. The spiders didn't give me any trouble, though I cheesed the big one by just doing three plunging attacks and running away each time. Micolash, though, ugh!!! I seriously took about 15 minutes to actually get into the phase 2 area with him, and the first time, I accidentally dodged the 1 shot spell everyone complains about, but then took two tentacles to the face and died. Second time, it took another nearly 10 minutes to get to his phase 2 area, but I just mashed R1 and then shot him repeatedly while my stamina regenned and then R1'd him some more and he was dead. 

I also managed to die to a spiderpig (I really hope this was a south park reference) charging me and 1-shotting me, and to missing a jump into a suspended cage and flying off a cliff. Good times.

Just tried the wet nurse for the first time without reading a guide first, and ack. I started off "hey, this isn't that bad!" and then everything went purple and clones started flying out and hitting me for 2/3 my health and gahhhh

The weapons in this game are very, VERY imbalanced in their scaling. Like, this fricking Ludwig's thing is currently getting 190 +330 damage from my stats (30/31/15 str/skill/arc) and the saw cleaver is getting 171 +189 and as a result hits like a wet noodle in comparison, when they're both upgraded to +9. C/D/D scaling vs B/B/B sure is a radical difference once your stats start getting higher than about 15-20.


----------



## wankerness

Whoops, Spider-Pig was the simpsons. Anyway, beat the wet nurse and it was terrifying and took five minutes (I basically ran in circles during all the duplication phases) and used all my blood vials so I had to farm for a while! Fun times. Then I went to Castle Cainhurst and abruptly got annihilated by the two crawly things outside the front. I think I need a break for a bit, haha.

I've also been playing Lego Harry Potter for a few months co-op. Finished 1-4 a while ago, finished 5-7 the other day. This game is pretty amusing, but bizarrely difficult in certain ways. Like, any platforming sections tend to be a nightmare cause of the horrible perspective afforded by the fixed camera. Some boss enemies are randomly extremely difficult and kill you repeatedly before you can figure out what's going on. Etc. Good thing there's very little punishment for dying! I am now tempted to play some of the other ones, so I snapped up the Marvel collection that's on sale right now, the force awakens which is also on sale, as well as Lego City Underground. I kinda want to play the LOTR and "Complete Saga" star wars ones for 360, but I heard they have friendly fire enabled. That would probably be a disaster! In Harry Potter, we were CONSTANTLY hitting each other since if you're doing spell lock-ons to the environment, they also lock on to the other player, and cancelling them is a way bigger pain than just shooting them. Fortunately it does no damage and just makes them jump.  Anyway, it was a fun co-op game, and I think we might go back to get a dark magic character and do a bunch of unlocking.

Finally, did a bunch more Overcooked 2. This game, by the fourth world, is just nuts. The environmental disruptions on all the levels are super disorienting and it really gets you in panic mode. The score requirements are pretty forgiving compared to the first one, but wow, the levels are often something where we would start up, screw up horribly, formulate a plan, and then restart. I kind of like that!


----------



## MFB

That I believe is everyone's experience with Castle Cainhurst. I remember seeing those thinking, "how hard can they be?" given the point I was at at the time, and they promptly rearranged my guts. For the longest time I just had to sprint past them right into the castle entry and up the stairs. The shortcut you'll unlock is much more accomodating.


----------



## wankerness

Martyr Logarius - This guy killed me hard in P2 on the first attempt, killed me hard in P1 on the second attempt, and then on the third attempt, I figured out how to avoid his huge exploding skulls, did a charge attack/visceral when he started charging up P2, and then did 1 parry on P2 and he was dead. Less than a minute, felt more like 30 seconds!! What the hell! I kind of like how squishy bosses are, but this is a weird balancing act compared to DS. Either the boss wrecks you and you can't hit him for shit, or you beat him down in seconds. This guy seriously felt most like that lava guy in DS1 who if you drag him back to a wall and hit him on the hand once he instantly dies, or else he annihilates you if you don't do that. I guess I'll see what the last bosses are like. I did watch a video of the infamous Orphan of Kos fight once and I remember thinking "I will never even try this" cause it went on forever and seemed completely unforgiving for the entire duration. But, the game proper sure is a lot easier so far than DS2/3, and I'd say DS1 too for lack of utter bullshit environmental stuff like all the Anor Londo stuff with the archers and rafters. Don't get me wrong, it's still rough, but definitely not AS rough.


----------



## MFB

Anor Londo is bullshit


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Anor Londo is bullshit



I was watching some classic DS1 videos yesterday (the GiantDad one and then "the quest to make giantdad") and the latter showed some footage of fighting knights on the rafters in Anor Londo. God how I hated that section. I remember my palms sweating like crazy and just shooting everything with bows from as far aways as humanly possible. I got through it all in one try, but I hated every second of it, and it took a LONG TIME. 

Anyway, Bloodborne, I realized I missed a whole section as I was doing cleanup for the final boss, so I got the key to the upper cathedral (dying a couple times in the process), cleared out the upper cathedral (dying repeatedly to the goddam brain sucker group, it seems like they'd ALWAYS get me with a grab or that spell that freezes you in place for 10 seconds so there's no possible way none of them will grab you), then on subsequent runs through every damn wolf in the room would pull at once which was awful, after tons of swearing and losing about 10 insight I finally just started spamming blue elixirs to stealth kill them and then got through the area. Then, the first boss was a complete laughable joke where I just killed all the little guys, hit him a few times, ran away, hit him a few times, ran away, hit him, he died. 

Second boss, the celestial queen or whatever, I briefly looked at the wiki, saw about 10 pages of notes/strategies, thought "this is going to suck," and then before I could read them or knew what I was doing I hit the summon sign that was outside of her room. I hadn't even seen one of those in several bosses, so I forgot what they looked like and thought it was a note, and I hit X so fast that I didn't see the prompt telling me that was not a note. Anyway, after he was summoned, I figured I guess I was stuck trying her, and ran in expecting to die. Used 2H mode on Ludwig's, hit her in the head a couple times, got a visceral at some point, and she was dead without ever getting me under half health. Dumb luck +summon, I guess. The vast majority of these bosses didn't seem to have summons, and the early ones I tried with summons all featured squishy NPCs that didn't help at all, so I guess this was the first time it felt like DS2 where you could NPC rush most of the bosses. I am guessing the chalice dungeon versions of some of these guys are a nightmare based on the discussion topics, but, first impressions were not very intimidating!

The upper cathedral area, though, wow. I hated that so much.


----------



## Mathemagician

Chalice dungeons 4 juicy rock.


----------



## Leviathus

Got the plat for dark souls 3 today. Died 5 fuggin times to ancient wyvern on NG+2 and gave my controller a hernia in the process lol.


----------



## MFB

Ugh, the upper Cathedral is a fucking nightmare as well. Those god damn wolfs luckily crowd the door and you can clip through the open with a 2H Ludwig thrust, so I would run just enough to draw them out, and then run back and cheese them. Once I found the shortcut and opened the door it made life infinitely better. The Celestial boss is really nothing, not even sure why it's included as it relies on mob techniques, but you can brush through them no problem. Daughter of Ebreitas or whatever reminds me of Seathe now that I'm at him, just a big mass with a few tendrils to hit you with (also similar to the Ceaseless Discharge I suppose).


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> Got the plat for dark souls 3 today. Died 5 fuggin times to ancient wyvern on NG+2 and gave my controller a hernia in the process lol.



Why were you doing it on NG+2? Don't you only need NG+1 for platinum? I didn't really look at the details for things like the "all rings" trophy, I guess.


----------



## Leviathus

All of the +2 rings (except the life ring) only show up in ng+2 and onward.


----------



## wankerness

Oh, I incorrectly figured it only meant you needed the basic versions of everything. That's rough. Yeah, I'm never trying that platinum!


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> I'm never trying that platinum!


I thought the same probably 6 months ago but just kept unlocking achievements until i only had a few left and figured why not. Grinding covenant related items is probably the hardest part of it. I spent the whole evening a few nights ago PVPing at pontiff to get vertebra shackles and it was so frustrating at times, but also funny and fun too. One guy just willingly jumped off the ledge after i gave him some embers.. DUTY FULFILLED! If only they were all that easy. He musta understood my struggle.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm. Beat Ludwig, the Accursed first try, but it was scary and I got some lucky dodges in P2. Then tried Laurence. WOW. That phase 2 is a HUGE nope. Just constantly stunlocked by lava and then punched in the face instantly whenever I finally managed to roll out of the lava. This guy is really bad news!!

I really wish this game was like Dark Souls 2/3 where you could fight the last boss and then do the DLC afterwards as long as you don't go talk to an NPC and say you want to link the fires or whatever. I want to do the proper last game bosses to see them, but then I guess you're locked into NG+ for the DLC, where things would be vastly more difficult.


----------



## Spicypickles

Is there not a switch thread in this here forum? 

I just went through my second run through of BOTW, now I’m getting bored. Thinking about getting the borderlands bundle, that should take up some time. Also thought about getting Skyrim again, just for shiggles (it will be the third system I have it on). 

Any other games I should check out? I have the three Mario bundle, Mario Kart and Mario party, ran through the Lego Harry potters. Looking for more of an adult story based game


----------



## wankerness

I don't really have any "adult" games on Switch besides Dragon's Dogma, which is fun, but better on PC/PS4. Also it's got kind of a janky story. The Hyrule Warriors 2 sequel is a BOTW prequel, storywise, so maybe you could try that? I plan on getting it the first time I see it on sale, unless I get through my backlog first.


----------



## Mathemagician

I have Disgaea 5 on switch. And obviously it’s been hacked because it says I have 92 hours played. But from a guide I checked briefly I’m only like 70% through the story. Holy fuck it has a lot of systems. I spent an hour yesterday just bribing senators.


----------



## Spicypickles

Mathemagician said:


> I have Disgaea 5 on switch. And obviously it’s been hacked because it says I have 92 hours played. But from a guide I checked briefly I’m only like 70% through the story. Holy fuck it has a lot of systems. I spent an hour yesterday just bribing senators.



Nice, what kinda game is it?


----------



## Spicypickles

wankerness said:


> I don't really have any "adult" games on Switch besides Dragon's Dogma, which is fun, but better on PC/PS4. Also it's got kind of a janky story. The Hyrule Warriors 2 sequel is a BOTW prequel, storywise, so maybe you could try that? I plan on getting it the first time I see it on sale, unless I get through my backlog first.



I watched the trailer for the hurdle warriors thing, but it just kinda seems like endless battles, which while fun, I imagine will be grating after a while.


----------



## Mathemagician

Think like Final Fantasy tactics. It’s a turn-based tactical rpg on a grid. The story takes place primarily in a “hub” with lots of text exposition. Then you select the next “level/map” and combat occurs there, which pushes the story forward. The maps are honestly kind of boring truth be told. Think a chessboard and your characters can move a certain # of squares per turn. That’s it. It’s DEF not for people who like to “explore” in games.

Characters are pretty much every single anime trope ever, and it is over the top campy by design (think bad horror movie that makes fun of horror movies).

On top of that, there is a whole “post-game” where the purpose is to be as broken and overpowered as possible.

So every time you clear a map you unlock some new subsystem that adds another layer of “rpg number grinding nonsense” but it’s hilarious.

To increase your stats? You play a small board game like “trouble”.

To unlock new colors, or certain levels? You call a senate of demons and try to bribe them into passing a Bill by handing over items you don’t want, giving them money, or actually fighting them in combat.

To strengthen an item you like? You “teleport inside it” and it randomly generates maps/levels, the further you go the stronger the item gets when you exit. (They’re still boring square chessboards though)

It’s definitely interesting seeing how everything works together, but it is a true JRPG. Grinding and chasing a slightly higher # is the point more so than the story. So I would avoid it if you’re not looking for a time-sink.

The story can be played through honestly without doing any of that stuff and just going from one level to the next, if nonsense anime “save the universe” is your thing. It goes on sale often so I wouldn’t pay full price.

Basically it scratches the same itch as finally fantasy tactics. But isn’t something I play every week. That hour count is since like last august. Hope it helps as I didn’t want to hard-sell what is definitely a niche title (I’ve never played 1-4).


----------



## TedEH

Spicypickles said:


> I watched the trailer for the hurdle warriors thing, but it just kinda seems like endless battles, which while fun, I imagine will be grating after a while.


I've not had much interest in Warriors games in general, so I haven't tried the newest one, but I found the first Hyrule Warriors worked well for mutliplayer. It does get kind of repetitive when playing alone, but the coordination with another person makes each round feel more distinct.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I've not had much interest in Warriors games in general, so I haven't tried the newest one, but I found the first Hyrule Warriors worked well for mutliplayer. It does get kind of repetitive when playing alone, but the coordination with another person makes each round feel more distinct.



i loved hyrule warriors and got really into the adventure mode and unlocking characters/weapons. Multiplayer was brought down bigtime by the switch’s limited processing power, which resulted in far fewer enemies spawning in co-op and thus it being very hard and sometimes impossible to hit score requirements on time if you were on higher level challenges.


----------



## John

TedEH said:


> I've not had much interest in Warriors games in general, so I haven't tried the newest one, but I found the first Hyrule Warriors worked well for mutliplayer. It does get kind of repetitive when playing alone, but the coordination with another person makes each round feel more distinct.



I have the first one and it's a fun game that I liked as a whole, though it does get to be quite grindy. The definitive edition on Switch was less annoying compared to the Wii U version in my opinion (ie- I'm not a fan of "Don't get hit" missions which were made somewhat easier in the version for Switch, though the Cucco mode got annoying in some spots even if I did level it up by quite a bit).


----------



## John

wankerness said:


> i loved hyrule warriors and got really into the adventure mode and unlocking characters/weapons. Multiplayer was brought down bigtime by the switch’s limited processing power, which resulted in far fewer enemies spawning in co-op and thus it being very hard and sometimes impossible to hit score requirements on time if you were on higher level challenges.



I never even got to mess with co-op on the Switch, so that's disappointing to hear. With the higher level missions, some of them get mitigated by quite a bit if you have Link and the Master Sword which is just broken when he's at full health.


They did nerf the older means I recall for power-leveling by quite a bit, (ie- not as much gains on the Master Quest map and no more Rupee glitches). But I think I found a spot liked a lot more on the Termina map on the moon, though that was better suited in my opinion for unlocking sealed skills on weapons since I had no problem getting over 6,000 kills even whilst being somewhat lazy.


----------



## wankerness

Damn, I think I hit a brick wall in Bloodborne with Laurence. It was fun while it lasted! I guess that’s what happens to people that take 1 try on most bosses and proclaim the game easier than all the DS games. I got him to the butt lava phase on my first attempt, and then didn’t even get to phase 2 the subsequent attempts. Just feels impossible for my play style/build/weapon. This is not a game like the DS games where you can easily get another weapon to +10, either! And wow, all the weapons are just so BAD on a quality build besides the whirligig saw, which requires me to farm approximately 20 chunks to get to +9 and 60 insight for +10!

tried chalice dungeons for a bit as a second outlet, cruised through them until I hit Rom again. Wow, that fight sucks with obstacles!


----------



## wankerness

I'm very soured on Bloodborne thanks to Laurence, the giant asshole. I finally beat him, but I had to summon an NPC to consistently get to P3, and used multiple bolt papers in the third phase. Took me ~15 times, which is by far the most I've ever spent on a dark souls boss. Was not fun, was just infuriating. I'd rate this guy as about on the level of Bed of Chaos for fun. If you didn't get chain staggered by the fire the whole fight it would be far less annoying. It kinda reminded me of the blue smelter demon fight, if you couldn't just cheese that fight by using a flame-resistant greatshield like I did.

Also, Chalice Dungeons are horrible. I hate them. They're so damn ugly and murky and repetitive, and nothing is less fun than aimlessly running around in circles not being able to tell where to go. I would rather just farm the same enemies 50 times in an area that doesn't look like that! I'm only just hitting layer 4 (finished the pthumerian labyrinth upper/lower/middle and hintertomb 1/2 and a couple root things), so them becoming frustratingly difficult would just make matters worse.

Farmed up all the materials to get the pizza slicer to +10, and it still does wayyyy less damage than Ludwig's Holy Blade. They made that thing way too overpowered. Ended up just killing Laurence with Ludwig's even after farming that thing!

It's messed up how if you focus on more than one attack stat, all weapons are just flat-out far worse than Ludwig's. If I ever play this again, I'll just have to gimp my damage by going majorly strength and not touching skill so at least there's a big variety of weapons that are good. The Dark Souls games do not have this problem to nearly this extent. There's only a couple weapons that seem designed for quality builds in DS2 (ex, Curved Dragon Greatsword), but you don't feel like you're tickling enemies if you just use one that has huge strength requirements that doesn't scale well with skill.

Stats on boss completion in this game continue to amuse me, it's just SO different from Dark Souls. Here's stats on some of the bosses:

Cleric Beast (easiest/first boss for most, technically optional): 48.8%
Father Gascoigne (first boss you have to kill): 45.8%
Blood-starved Beast: 38.8%
Vicar Amelia: 36.2%
Witch of Hemwick: 34.5%
Shadow of Yarnham: 32.4%
Rom, the Vacuous Spider: 30.9% (this is the halfway point of the base game, and already 70% of players gave up!!)
Darkbeast Paarl: 29.7%
Amygdala: 24.7% (here's about where the big dropoffs stop and most who got there wanted to finish it)
Martyr Logarius: 23.5%
Celestial Emissary: 21.9%
Ebrietas: 20.1%
Final bosses: I dunno, haven't done them yet, looks to be ~15%
DLC:
Ludwig: 14%
Laurence: 9.8%

Jeez. I think they made this game too hard! Even though DS3 I think is probably still the harder of the two, boss statistics there are like:

Iudex Gundyr (first boss): 86.9%
Vordt (first boss after you unlock firelink and the game really starts): 68.6%
Nameless King (arguably hardest boss in the base game, optional as well): 36.3%
Final boss: 29.3%

No stats on the likes of Gael and Sister Friede, though, since dark souls trilogy DLC had no trophies for some reason.


----------



## Mathemagician

100% with you on Ludwig just outclassing everything. Apparently there’s a few skill/blood katanas that people seem to love, but it’s not much for top tier weapons. I’m partial to the MLGS because it looks amazing in this game, along with the pizza cutter the funniest weapon ever. Damage aside obvs.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> 100% with you on Ludwig just outclassing everything. Apparently there’s a few skill/blood katanas that people seem to love, but it’s not much for top tier weapons. I’m partial to the MLGS because it looks amazing in this game, along with the pizza cutter the funniest weapon ever. Damage aside obvs.



I have the MLGS at +10 too (I got arcane up a bit largely just to try it and have it do decent damage), but haven't really learned to use it yet. It doesn't seem like it would be very good on most bosses since it's so slow. I am thinking if I start NG+ I'll probably try it out some more.

Progressing through the research lab now, and hit one of my least favorite dark souls area stereotypes - the rafters! They always stick little monsters on the rafters that run around after you, and with the way weapons work in these games, unless you are a master of positioning you'll probably fly right off the edge and die as soon as you hit the attack button. Ended up just killing them all with executioner's gloves since that's the only ranged attack I have that does any damage. I really miss having a bow!


----------



## wankerness

As suspected, I killed the tainted ones or whatever in 1 attempt, Maria in 2 attempts, shark guys in the well on 1 attempt, and got Orphan of Kos to 30% with 16 bloodvials left on the first attempt (it stressed me out too much to do more attempts for a while, though - wow is that guy disorienting/scary with the screams on all the attacks). Laurence is a special breed of horrible.


----------



## wankerness

Phew, I finished Bloodborne last night. OoK ended up taking 4 or 5 tries, that guy was scary, but nothing close to as frustrating as Laurence, especially considering I didn't have any summons for OoK. It just felt like a really intense slugfest. My hands didn't work properly afterwards, I was so shaky.  Gernham was also a pretty intense boss, but I beat him 2/3 times I fought him (did all 3 endings in a row). Moon Presence was comical how much easier it was than Gernham, I almost died to some huge beam that hit me for almost 90% my health, but otherwise it was just "dodge behind and chop" and she had about half the health of Gernham. The DLC definitely made me massively overleveled for them, but that's OK, I like being overleveled.

I sort of want the platinum trophy for the game, as I'm only missing one, but that one I'm missing is the later chalice dungeon boss and I absolutely hate the chalice dungeons. Plus I read that on the way, you have to fight greatly leveled-up versions of amygdala and ebrietas with half of your maximum health - screw that!!! That sounds a LOT harder than any of the dlc bosses.

This all has me slightly curious about how Dark Souls plays if you run around with <30% weight capacity and don't use a shield. My guess is: much less easy than Bloodborne, since you can't parry much of anything, you have to be up in its face to parry, and what you can parry will usually 2-3 shot you if you miss the timing. Also, I don't remember about DS1, but DS2 was extremely non-conducive to rolling a lot since you had to wait a second at the end of rolls before attacking or you'd go into your stupid roll attack that does no damage and can't hit anything. 

Maybe I'll try it in NG+ on the first one since my character had a ton of hitpoints. Or, maybe I'll play 2 or 3 on PC with some mods!

I can't really even remember what I was playing before I started this Fromsoft thing less than 2 months ago. It took over my mind! I guess I need to do more Yakuza 7, even though it hasn't gotten its claws into me very well. I imagine it will be a different story when I get to a hostess minigame. I never finished AC Valhalla, though I'm on strike with that game until they fix the cairns.


----------



## TedEH

I can't remember if I posted that I started playing Metroid Prime. It's got a lot more of the 2d Metroid dna than I expected, but at about... I'm guessing a third of the way through? It feels a lot more linear that most Metroid games I've tried. I'm not sure if it's because it's actually more linear or because of the hint system that slowly pushes you towards the intended path. I tried to sort of "defy" the hints at one point and take my own path, and ended up with nothing but dead ends.


----------



## wankerness

Metroid Prime was possibly my favorite game of all time for several years. I think that it may be true that it has less freedom to do alternate paths than some other "metroidvania" games, but I guess I never tried playing it in any different orders so I don't know.

If you like it, definitely try out the first sequel. It has some mechanics I disliked, like limited ammo for some beams, but the boss fights are far better. 

I still haven't gotten into 3, I just can't really adjust to wiimote controls.


----------



## TedEH

That's good to hear - I picked up Prime 2 when I got the first one, so I'll probably try that one eventually too.


----------



## wankerness

Man, I went back and killed the Fume knight after finishing up Bloodborne. I died four or five times just adjusting to how incredibly slow the healing is, he kept knocking me out in the middle of my heals when I thought I had time!! But god, playing it with rolling after Bloodborne seemed like playing BB like Neo in the Matrix, everything was SO slow. Then again, I did do the "wear the helmet so he goes into P2 instantly" strategy which I guess is easier to deal with. Next I can either do Alonne, or go do the GANK SQUAD boss, which I bet is exactly the kind of thing I'd be terrible at.


----------



## Ralyks

Well, I was jazzed to download Scott Pilgrim vs The World for PS4 before work and play it tonight, but uhh, the listing agent isn't even on the PS Store. It was there yesterday. Bummed.

Otherwise, having a fun time with Cyberpunk some 25 hours in.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Well, I was jazzed to download Scott Pilgrim vs The World for PS4 before work and play it tonight, but uhh, the listing agent isn't even on the PS Store. It was there yesterday. Bummed.
> 
> Otherwise, having a fun time with Cyberpunk some 25 hours in.



Hmm. I remember watching my roommate at the time playing through that game on 360. I remember hearing at some point that it was one of the great "lost games" due to some kind of rights BS making it so they yanked all sales of it permanently, or something. Guess they cleared something or removed something for this PS4 version?


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Hmm. I remember watching my roommate at the time playing through that game on 360. I remember hearing at some point that it was one of the great "lost games" due to some kind of rights BS making it so they yanked all sales of it permanently, or something. Guess they cleared something or removed something for this PS4 version?



Basically renewing rights. I guess someone brought up the anniversary of the game and whoever has the rights went "Uhh, hey, I'm totally down to do whatever to make this game available again."
And they did. And I downloaded it. And it's still great, and still has one of the best soundtracks in gaming. It's in everything, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, I think Stadia.


----------



## Nicki

Well, I finished Witcher 3's final expansion last night. I've sunk 160+ hours into that game. I will say that the final boss of the expansion was a much better fight than the boss of the main game.

However, I'm moving on to the Tomb Raider reboot/remake games.


----------



## Werecow

I'm playing Horizon Zero Dawn for the first time. Seems ok though a bit basic so far, but i seem to feel that way about any of the _really_ popular 3rd-person games.

There's still a big WTF with the PC port in that it "optimizes shaders" every single time the game starts up still, and that process takes 15-20 minutes on my pretty fast PC, with the CPU at 100% the whole time. I basically start up the game and then go and do something else for a while every time i want to play it


----------



## Triple-J

I bought RE7 & the RE2 remake almost a year ago put them aside and forgot about them but I started playing RE2 over xmas and I'm very impressed.
I'll admit that I've played the OG RE2 inside out on every console I've owned as it was to me what Tomb Raider 1-3, MGS or FF7 seems to be for most other people my age but this has defied my expectations so far as there's so much new stuff it's less a direct remake and more a reimagining that expands upon a few things that I guess the tech couldn't allow back then.


----------



## MFB

I want to like RE7 as the atmosphere is great, but I hate, HATE the concept of an undying enemy. 

Like, if I fight you once, and it's clear you're not going to die, it more just annoys me than anything when I continue to see the enemy. They're patrolling a corridor? Well I found out during the boss fight that I can't kill him, so now I just have to wonder why I should even bother if you're going to keep throwing an unkillable enemy at me. And what's that? There's three more of them? Fucking great, no thanks.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> I want to like RE7 as the atmosphere is great, but I hate, HATE the concept of an undying enemy.
> 
> Like, if I fight you once, and it's clear you're not going to die, it more just annoys me than anything when I continue to see the enemy. They're patrolling a corridor? Well I found out during the boss fight that I can't kill him, so now I just have to wonder why I should even bother if you're going to keep throwing an unkillable enemy at me. And what's that? There's three more of them? Fucking great, no thanks.



I hate that as well. I started playing the RE2 remake last year (having never played the original) and as soon as i found out about Mr X i immediately stopped playing, and i hadn't met him in my game yet 
Not sure if i want to go back to the game, even though i was enjoying it up till then, despite my other mild gaming hate/annoyance which is bullet sponge enemies. When you're putting multiple bullets in humanoid enemy's heads and it doesn't really mess them up, it really annoys me. It just destroys immersion for me.


----------



## gabito

Werecow said:


> I hate that as well. I started playing the RE2 remake last year (having never played the original) and as soon as i found out about Mr X i immediately stopped playing, and i hadn't met him in my game yet
> Not sure if i want to go back to the game, even though i was enjoying it up till then, despite my other mild gaming hate/annoyance which is bullet sponge enemies. When you're putting multiple bullets in humanoid enemy's heads and it doesn't really mess them up, it really annoys me. It just destroys immersion for me.



Same. I only played the first half (Claire), and when I finished it I said "Fuck this, not gonna play it again."

I played the original on PC a long long looooong time ago and didn't remember the annoying Mr X or whatever he's called (maybe he wasn't in the game?).


----------



## Yelir

I'm trying out Star Wars Squadrons on X1. There is a free 3 day trial of the game if you have Gold/Gamepass.

To those of you playing RE7, try it out in PSVR if you can, its a terrifying experience!


----------



## wankerness

I hated the unkillable enemies in RE7, but it was more cause it made me freak out a hell of a lot more if I knew there was no possible way to make areas "safe." It made me stressed out constantly and made me not have fun. It was effective at doing what it was supposed to do!

I thought that game was pretty good, but there's no way I'll ever play it again. The back half kinda just turns into a shooter, too.


----------



## wankerness

Well, I finally finished DS2, apart from "reindeer fuck land," which I am very apprehensive about getting drawn into mostly based on how awful the boss looks (I had enough trouble with one cat, two would be unmanageable). Oh, and the dual pursuer fight, cause it stomped my face in so quickly that the risk vs reward didn't seem worth it (kinda like the dual Sullyvan beast fight in DS3, but that one could be cheesed). I did all the DLC bosses and Darklurker - at this point, I just have the trophies for collecting all the spells left, which I dunno if I'll do since a couple of them require rank 3 in covenants, and the grind in 2 for them is vastly worse than 3 since you need 100 of items/kills instead of 30. Oh, and I missed the trophy for getting all the villagers, since the guy that was in the wharf looked like an enemy in the dark and I sniped him from across the arena before I realized he was an NPC.  Oh well, I'd have to play NG+ through once anyway for a few NG+ boss soul spells.

I think the base game of it is my favorite of the four, even if it's definitely not the most polished, and the gigantic weapon variety and ability to dual wield is cool and DS3 was a big step down in that regard. And VERY unlike DS3/Bloodborne, I was constantly switching weapons because different tools were actually better for different jobs instead of one weapon seeming so obviously the best that there was no reason to switch. Like, for the DLC bosses, I think I used a different weapon on almost every one of them. And you can actually farm/buy the materials needed to upgrade to +5/+10 in a very reasonable amount of time! Well, besides the boss weapons that need petrified bones.

But, wow, it definitely has some jank and some sections that seem designed just plain to piss you off. Like, black gulch is a nightmare, with the little statues everywhere that spam you with poison that builds up in two shots, and the incredibly oppressive pulsing on the soundtrack the whole time. And then there's the gank boss area, where the area is absolutely filled with enemies as well as statues that spam petrify at you (at least that takes so many hits i never came close to being petrified). That and the iron passage were two areas I was VERY glad about the enemy respawn limit of this game, cause if that didn't exist, I would never have even TRIED the bosses since the trash before them was such a nightmare to get through that you'd drain half your estus. I read that the intention of these optional areas seems to have been for players to do them co-op, and that makes some sense, but it sure sucks when you are solo. Speaking of, I did definitely use two summons on the gank squad boss, since that fight is blatantly unfair garbage if you try and solo it unless you want to kite them around the room for 20 minutes.

That said, there's nothing in 2 that I hated as much as the crystal area in DS1, or even the pitch-black tomb area in DS1. Any ideas about replaying DS1 have me thinking about those areas and shuddering. I think pretty much the entire back half of that game sucked. All the good areas are used up after Anor Londo, besides the DLC. Maybe I'll mod the crap out of it on PC and see what happens.

When watching random youtube videos, I came across some guy with long gushing videos praising a few specific games. I watched his one for New Vegas, and now I'm very curious to play that. I played a bit of Fallouts 3/4 and didn't get into them, AT ALL. But, NV seems like the dialogue/quests/progression structure are so infinitely superior that maybe I would get into it, even if the actual combat etc is worse? I think I have the GOTY version for 360 and the base version for PC, I might have to try it.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> When watching random youtube videos, I came across some guy with long gushing videos praising a few specific games. I watched his one for New Vegas, and now I'm very curious to play that. I played a bit of Fallouts 3/4 and didn't get into them, AT ALL. But, NV seems like the dialogue/quests/progression structure are so infinitely superior that maybe I would get into it, even if the actual combat etc is worse? I think I have the GOTY version for 360 and the base version for PC, I might have to try it.



The combat in NV is better than 3. There is an aim down sights option for all guns that's missing in 3. That in itself makes it feel better for me. The realtime combat isn't as good as 4 still though. That's one thing they improved quite a bit in 4.
The quests in NV are great and there are quite a few decent choices to be made. A couple of them are so amusing that i still smile about them years later.

Another thing about NV is that quite a lot of the many DLC are great as well, and quite different/innovative to the main game in some cases. It's worth upgrading to the GOTY on PC if you can get it cheap, if that's where you want to play it.


----------



## Randy

Revisiting Symphony of the Night lately.

"Let us go out this evening for pleasure
The night is still young"


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> The combat in NV is better than 3. There is an aim down sights option for all guns that's missing in 3. That in itself makes it feel better for me. The realtime combat isn't as good as 4 still though. That's one thing they improved quite a bit in 4.
> The quests in NV are great and there are quite a few decent choices to be made. A couple of them are so amusing that i still smile about them years later.
> 
> Another thing about NV is that quite a lot of the many DLC are great as well, and quite different/innovative to the main game in some cases. It's worth upgrading to the GOTY on PC if you can get it cheap, if that's where you want to play it.



Well, that's good to hear! I barely played 4, I think I started building a settlement and was like "I'm not having fun" and that was right when AC: Valhalla came out, so I haven't been back to it. I checked, and yeah, PC is base game only. I prefer console when possible, but if this is anything like say, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I'd be a bit scared of the experience being so buggy that I should just go with PC. 

I bit the bullet and tried the frigid outskirts in DS2. And wow, it really does live up to its reputation. I absolutely hated navigating to the boss, and that was with 3 summons along! It took at least half an hour, and those reindeer were INFURIATING. Not only do they do a ton of damage, but they jump and fly all over the damn place, making you lose your bearings, making the walk take three times as long. When I got to the boss gate, I just dismissed all my followers, saved, and then uploaded it to the cloud because there was NO way I was doing that BS every time I died to the boss. Ended up needing three tries on the boss, meaning I saved probably an hour's worth of swearing and frustration thanks to the "download saved data from cloud" option. 

Actual Lud and Zallen boss ended up being fairly easy, thanks to a combination of using an upgraded rapier to mow them down pretty quickly and Bloodborne teaching me that rolling away from everything and rolling through boss melee attacks and using a weapon 2-handed instead of having a shield is not nearly as scary of a strategy as I thought, especially with how slowly stuff attacks in this game relative to BB. I think I only got hit like 3 times on the kill attempt. So now I've officially killed every boss in DS2! Next up is Sister Friede in DS3, who I don't expect is going to seem similarly easier after BB, and then the whole Ringed City DLC and the regular final boss.

I'm kind of glad Sekiro got yanked from the PS sale, so now I'm not tempted to try it. I do have Nioh GOTY, though...

RE: SOTN, I think that might be the game I've played through the most times. Well, besides Ninja Turtles IV for super nintendo since that only took like 2 hours and I played it with friends a lot. I love it. I think a couple of the mobile games might be even better, though. The second and third GBA ones and all three of the DS ones were completely great and it was really exciting finding what was basically more of one of my favorite games when I picked them up years after their release. I wish they had some way of upgrading those things to TV resolution and releasing them as a pack. I think all of them before the first DS one could practically be straight ports since there's no touch screen mechanics apart from the drawing of boss hexes in the first one.

I loved Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and hope they do another of those. It really nailed almost everything that made those latter 2D castlevania games great (and what was lacking so much in EVERY SINGLE CONSOLE CASTLEVANIA after SOTN, ugh - I suffered through a few hours of that miserable 2D one for 360 and all of castlevania 64/Legacy of Darkness).


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Well, that's good to hear! I barely played 4, I think I started building a settlement and was like "I'm not having fun" and that was right when AC: Valhalla came out, so I haven't been back to it. I checked, and yeah, PC is base game only. I prefer console when possible, but if this is anything like say, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I'd be a bit scared of the experience being so buggy that I should just go with PC.



I really like Fallout 4, but not as an RPG. I happen to like first person exploration/shooting games as well, and i love it as that. I built some cursory defences at Sanctuary and then completely ignored the building element of it. I just realised it was no fun as well. Especially as the overall decisions the game makes on when settlements are attacked seem to stop it happening when you have a really built up settlement (what's the point in having defences if you can never have fun seeing them tested?).


----------



## TedEH

Randy said:


> Revisiting Symphony of the Night lately.


I have a copy of this......... on mobile. (womp womp?)
Maybe it's worth trying to play it eventually with a bluetooth controller and just put up with the tiny screen?


----------



## MFB

Got to the right with the Four Kings, currently not enjoying it. Only a few bosses left in Dark Souls, but it's lost it's allure after having paused for so long.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I have a copy of this......... on mobile. (womp womp?)
> Maybe it's worth trying to play it eventually with a bluetooth controller and just put up with the tiny screen?



I'd say buy it again since it's one of the best games ever, it's on lots of systems, and you will be poisoned against it if you play it in the worst possible conditions!


----------



## TedEH

I had read somewhere that the mobile port is a decent version of the game... as long as you use a controller and not touch controls.


----------



## MFB

Dark Sun Gwyndolin is easily the worst fight of any boss game in the From series I've played. Why, WHY did they think that this would be an interesting fight? It's TERRIBLE. 3 long range variations, one of which has no collision to it so you HAVE to dodge it.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Dark Sun Gwyndolin is easily the worst fight of any boss game in the From series I've played. Why, WHY did they think that this would be an interesting fight? It's TERRIBLE. 3 long range variations, one of which has no collision to it so you HAVE to dodge it.



I didn’t do that boss! Sounds like I didn’t miss out. I guess I need to do it and ancient dragon (ds2) to really do ALL the bosses, even if there are no rewards and they suck.


----------



## MFB

It's literally a boss fight in a corridor, and if you're built for melee (like these games are), then you spend 99% of the fight just catching up to him, only for him to teleport while you get one hit in. Luckily my Grave Lord sword does a shit ton of damage, took like 7 hits total and I managed to get two hits on him before he teleported so it cut it in half.


----------



## wankerness

If I replay DS1, I'm definitely going to do sorcery of some sort.


----------



## TedEH

Finished with Metroid Prime. Didn't 100% it, but I don't feel a need to... was close enough. 70-something%, saw the credits, got what I wanted out of it. Not much to say, 'cause it's a Metroid game. The transition to 3d worked a little better than I had expected it to. Some of the common complaints (the artifact searching in particular) didn't bother me as much as it seems to bother some. I actually found the artifact hints to be pretty obvious... most of the time. Now I'm debating starting the second one right away or just doing something entirely different for a while.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

...still under the Cold Steel 4 rock and the rock is larger than expected. I knew they were going pull out all the stops when it comes to long term payoffs (from even as far back as Trails In The Sky), but I wasn't expecting it to be this weighty. EG: a lot of expository cutscenes, lots of additional playable characters, a ton of talking to NPCs in the life sim sections, all clocking at 9 bloody hours. (semi hyperbole but these games are that slow and long)

The Trails series is perhaps the only series where I will forgive the gameplay playing second fiddle over the story since this game (and the one coming after it) is like the Avengers Endgame of JRPGs. I read that localising one of these games is the equivalent of re-tanslating the Lord Of The Rings trilogy about 15 times over, so no wonder these games take forever to release, let alone play them. 

Still... they need to properly localise the Crossbell saga asap.  One of the more interesting plots in the series, based on a town inspired by Hong Kong and Kashmir. A duology that's while still huge like a typical trails game, it's much smaller in scope since it focuses on only one city (and it's small surrounding areas) and a core cast of only 4 characters. Which is nice, since it's more personal and more time to get invested (which admittedly is a major flaw in the Cold Steel games, as well as FF6).


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Finished with Metroid Prime. Didn't 100% it, but I don't feel a need to... was close enough. 70-something%, saw the credits, got what I wanted out of it. Not much to say, 'cause it's a Metroid game. The transition to 3d worked a little better than I had expected it to. Some of the common complaints (the artifact searching in particular) didn't bother me as much as it seems to bother some. I actually found the artifact hints to be pretty obvious... most of the time. Now I'm debating starting the second one right away or just doing something entirely different for a while.



2's a considerable step up in difficulty, so you probably want to start playing it while you're still used to the controls.

The artifact scanning in that game is not something i've ever heard a complaint about. I'd imagine no one who's played Metroid: Other M would ever complain about scanning vs that game's horrendous first-person detective sections. I remember watching my friend spend over 10 minutes just panning around not moving trying to find what the heck he was supposed to be scanning.


----------



## TedEH

I meant more that I've heard some youtube reviewers get upset that the artifacts are placed in such a way where you can't really search for all of them until late game, which forces you to re-tread almost the whole game - including that it doesn't outright tell you that this is your goal (until the very end) and hopes you stumble upon it on your own without the hints pointing to it.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I meant more that I've heard some youtube reviewers get upset that the artifacts are placed in such a way where you can't really search for all of them until late game, which forces you to re-tread almost the whole game - including that it doesn't outright tell you that this is your goal (until the very end) and hopes you stumble upon it on your own without the hints pointing to it.



Ah. I guess since when I played this game, Youtube didn't exist and I didn't read forums unless I was looking for help, I never heard this complaint. Since the game doesn't give you anything substantial for 100%ing scans (image gallery? snore) I never had any motivation to try. I never really tried doing any completionist stuff like that with anything apart from when doing it unlocked actual bonus levels (ex Blast Corps, Donkey Kong Country) until achievements showed up on Xbox 360.


----------



## TedEH

I actually kind of liked the idea of the scan visor. If you're not in it to 100% everything - it's sort of a self-directed help system. Don't want to scan things? Then don't. Not sure how to take down this boss? Scan it and get the hint.


----------



## Demiurge

I just remembered that a while back I picked up the Prime trilogy for Wii for a not-insane amount of money that I need to crack-open. I always wanted to try the first two with 3's aiming system. IIRC, 2 relies a lot on free-aiming and I was always terrible with the C-stick on the Gamecube controller.


----------



## wankerness

Demiurge said:


> I just remembered that a while back I picked up the Prime trilogy for Wii for a not-insane amount of money that I need to crack-open. I always wanted to try the first two with 3's aiming system. IIRC, 2 relies a lot on free-aiming and I was always terrible with the C-stick on the Gamecube controller.



I wanted a Metroid Prime 3 that let you use the gamecube controller! I really loathe the wiimotes. Mostly because I end up pointing them too far off the TV at some point during the play session and they de-sync or something. Or, I'm too far behind my coffee table and things just don't point how they should. Everything I've played through on Wii all the way was primarily controlled by buttons with some haphazard wiimote shaking or something (ex Mario Galaxy, Zelda Twilight Princess).


----------



## Ralyks

A LOT of Cyberpunk today.

However, I'm curious to go to Skyrim now that someone made an fps mod for it to run 60 fps on PS5.


----------



## MFB

Looking at the list, it looks like I just need to finish off Gravelord Nito and the Bed of Chaos and then I'm free to kill Gwyn himself and be done with DS1. DS3 is downloaded and ready to go, but I feel like I should do DS2 first and that one will wait until it's not $40; haven't been in much of a gaming mood lately to spend $40 on more of what I just completed, between work/potentially changing jobs and states/getting back into reading.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Looking at the list, it looks like I just need to finish off Gravelord Nito and the Bed of Chaos and then I'm free to kill Gwyn himself and be done with DS1. DS3 is downloaded and ready to go, but I feel like I should do DS2 first and that one will wait until it's not $40; haven't been in much of a gaming mood lately to spend $40 on more of what I just completed, between work/potentially changing jobs and states/getting back into reading.


just skip ds2. It's arguably the worst of the souls games


----------



## MFB

So I've heard, but it does feel wrong to just skip the 2nd entry in the franchise if I complete the 1st/3rd; and I would like to complete all the From games at some point, seeing as I know have Bloodborne/DS1 under my belt, and started Sekiro but didn't care for the combat going into it as my first From game (which was a terrible idea).


----------



## Demiurge

wankerness said:


> I wanted a Metroid Prime 3 that let you use the gamecube controller! I really loathe the wiimotes. Mostly because I end up pointing them too far off the TV at some point during the play session and they de-sync or something. Or, I'm too far behind my coffee table and things just don't point how they should. Everything I've played through on Wii all the way was primarily controlled by buttons with some haphazard wiimote shaking or something (ex Mario Galaxy, Zelda Twilight Princess).



I found the Wiimote aiming to be really comfortable after getting used to it. It thought it was funny that the beginning of the game teaches you that you don't need the lock-on function and then at the end of the game it makes the final boss a breeze.


----------



## wankerness

3 is more of a sequel to 1 anyway, in terms of “story”/locations/look/etc. I’d say just play it and then buy 2 when it’s on sale again.

I think 2 is vastly superior to 1 and has a lot of good qualities that were annoyingly not present in Bloodborne and/or DS3. But, I would not advise paying full price for it just to play them in release order!

im doing cleanup on 3 now. The ringed city is a bitch so far, though I’ve gotta say that pyromancer zoey was harder than demon princes by a considerable margin!!

sister Friede was a hell of a boss fight. I went pyromancer for it just to avoid the brunt of the third phase by chucking chaos bed vestments at her whenever she went after the summoned NPC. She was like a way nastier version of Maria from bloodborne, with a big smash dude making the second phase more scary.


----------



## MFB

I also need to do a new playthrough of BB so I can play the DLC that I missed on my first playthrough. Everyone says NOT to do it on NG+ as it's some of the hardest content they've made, so it'd be nice to see what it offers the game.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I also need to do a new playthrough of BB so I can play the DLC that I missed on my first playthrough. Everyone says NOT to do it on NG+ as it's some of the hardest content they've made, so it'd be nice to see what it offers the game.



Yeah. The DLC is definitely great, but unless you're REALLY overlevelled you definitely would not want to tackle it on NG+ for your first try. It's a hell of a lot harder than anything in the base game apart from maybe the upper cathedral ward section with all the brain eaters crammed next to each other! And I've heard the scaling on some of the bosses in NG+ is just broken, with the already-busted Laurence being a 1-shot machine instead of a 2-shot machine.

So far difficulty with these games for me lowest to highest is something like:

BB<DS1~DS2<DS3<DS1 DLC<DS2 DLC<BB DLC<DS3 DLC


----------



## TheBlackBard

Starting a low level Final Fantasy VIII run and plan to at least not hit level 10 by the time I've beaten it.


----------



## wankerness

WOW, Darkeater Midir is probably the nastiest souls boss yet. Though, according to everyone online he's much easier than Gael cause he's much easier to completely learn the moveset of and avoid everything. Regardless, the first three tries I think I spent about 3 minutes taking him down ~5% of his health before he'd eventually kill me with some BS. Since I was a sorcery build I tried what people were calling "pestilent mist cheese" (basically, avoid his attacks the same as melee, but just drop poison clouds under him periodically). And it really was pretty cheesy, since I beat him the first try with that strategy! Granted, I did use all my estus and only lived because of learning to avoid some of his terrible 1-shot attacks and using a fire resist shield on some of the stuff I was too slow to avoid. But, yeah. Glad there was an easy out, cause trying that guy the "right" way with my build/upgraded weapons (all of which were short) was by far the most hopeless I've ever felt against a Souls-boss.

The next boss was a total joke, was far easier than the invader NPCs that are just out in the overworld. Oh well.

Gael was kinda bad news, but also made considerably easier by having a huge shield that could soak up just about everything he did, since rolling with the cape damage follow-ups in P2/3 seemed like a good way to slowly die until you have fought him a ton and get the timing exactly right. It reminded me a lot of the nameless king, only more visually interesting and without the camera insanity with the dragon phase on nameless king. I'm sure if I'd tried to fight it without a huge shield that things would have been a lot rougher. As was, it took two attempts (and all my estus). 

Time to save scum for a couple different endings! Assuming the regular final boss isn't somehow a lot harder than all the DLC bosses!

Unfortunately for my sanity, I ordered Sekiro after seeing a few videos of how spectacular the fights look, and received it today. I am guessing I'm going to be 10 times worse at it than any dark souls game.


----------



## MFB

Be prepared for a severe ass kicking from Sekiro, not because you're bad, but because the combat is even faster than BB and it's parry or get fucked.

I couldn't find the rhythm of the combat which is why I went backwards to DS instead of fighting it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Be prepared for a severe ass kicking from Sekiro, not because you're bad, but because the combat is even faster than BB and it's parry or get fucked.
> 
> I couldn't find the rhythm of the combat which is why I went backwards to DS instead of fighting it.


Sekiro is awesome. I loved it but goddamn was it brutal. Same with Nioh.


----------



## wankerness

I played Sekiro for about half an hour and didn't really know wtf was going on. Items didn't make sense to me, item descriptions were a big wall of text that made my eyes glaze over and made me unsure of when they're actually useful, resurrection was confusing, especially the "chance for keeping your junk" mechanic, enemies seemed like basic samurai game enemies (dudes and dogs) but then monster roosters and little weird pygmy things showed up, etc. I died a couple times to some big scary general guy in the very first area and then ran around for a while and got some more bonfires (they sure are generous with those at least), installed the shuriken attachment, then logged out. I need to read more about this before going back in.

The parrying is a lot better than dark souls and bloodborne, that's for sure. It feels a lot more like parrying in DS3 with katanas, which was a very specific thing that required more precision (fewer frames of leeway) but was actually easier because you knew EXACTLY the timing for it, instead of the weird mushy shield parries where you had to time some point in the middle of the swing with the enemy's attack instead of "press the button when you want it to happen." And unlike Bloodborne, so far there doesn't seem to be any random chance, like there was in that game with the enemies that may or may not get staggered on successful parry timings, so you didn't know if it was safe to rush in until it was too late to rush in (if parry dazed them and you didn't think it would) or you'd been smashed in the face (if the parry didn't daze them). But, yeah, I'm currently just confounded by everything.

Last boss (Soul of Cinder) in DS3 was pretty stupid, it looked like a prototype of a boss or something. I just flailed my way through it. I got owned by a couple big combos that might have killed me if I wasn't so vastly overlevelled by that point, but hey. Done with that game, unless I decide to do NG+ at some point. I think in a lot of ways it's the best of the three souls games, but when I look at a list of the areas, wow did I dislike most of them.


----------



## Ralyks

Watching the credits to Cyberpunk 2077. Bugs be damned, I loved this game. Still have a ton of side missions and 4 other endings to go, but I'll wait on that for now while the game gets patched up and the PS5 version and DLC comes.

On that note, Hitman 3 is sitting on my shelf unopened...


----------



## Guamskyy

Dead by Daylight

After getting laid off from job because of covid, I was doing nearly 8 hours of time on that game when I did play... it nearly became my new job


----------



## wankerness

Played Sekiro for a couple hours, I think maybe I and this combat system just do not jive. The reaction speed required combined with how small the characters are on the screen and how murky the lighting is makes me think I'd need to sit right next to the TV to be good at this game.

Went back to DS3 and am grinding out covenants for that platinum! Only 3 vertebra shackles to go!  And then two more playthroughs!


----------



## Kaura

Started playing Resident Evil 4 once again because I've spent the whole week watching this group of guys trying to beat it and I've literally had to scream out loud out of frustation multiple times because they suck so much at it. Now I have to see if the game is really that much harder than I recall.


----------



## wankerness

Kaura said:


> Started playing Resident Evil 4 once again because I've spent the whole week watching this group of guys trying to beat it and I've literally had to scream out loud out of frustation multiple times because they suck so much at it. Now I have to see if the game is really that much harder than I recall.



I think I have a re-release of that on some platform or another. Maybe xbox 360? Maybe Wii, too. I've been meaning to replay it sometime since it's so loved, and I remember only thinking "eh, that was ok" when I played it way back in the day. What platform were those guys playing on? I can imagine the Gamecube one being much harder now than it was at the time just due to how incredibly dated the controls were. Not sure if they updated them for any of the re-releases.


----------



## wankerness

Started burning through DS3 on NG+, this is the first of these Fromsoft games I've tried NG+ on. I am going through bosses like butter (already cleared smouldering lake and the non-optional areas up through Wollnir), but man, the damage definitely scaled up with some enemies and definitely did with some of the bosses. Those jumpy goat guys still hit REALLY hard even on 40 vitality and ~40 in all the other stats. I'm very apprehensive about some of the later areas, especially in NG++, if the scaling each playthrough is drastic. At least after I get the last three things I need from NPC quests (the axe from Sirris's line this playthrough, the last braille tome since first playthrough i bought dark miracles so she died before i could turn it in, and some gesture from someone that pisses off Sirris next playthrough) I can completely ignore all the other optional NPC crap. Though I think I'll probably still have to go through all the optional areas anyway for the handful of rings in NG++. I know I have to do Nameless King again!  At least I can skip the DLC.

Somewhat pathetically, the only boss I died so far on was deacons of the deep! Oof.

The biggest problem in this game is the lockon system combined with the camera. It's infuriating when a mob ducks behind a corner for a split second so the lockon breaks, and then runs right at you and you can't re-lock-on to it even though it's hitting you in the face, and since you face whatever you're locked onto you take big damage unless you're a master of perfectly facing things manually. Ack. It's really no better than Bloodborne. I haven't played enough of Sekiro to have noticed if it's better there, but I'd imagine it might be purely because (so far) you're mainly only fighting little guys in open areas.


----------



## Kaura

wankerness said:


> I think I have a re-release of that on some platform or another. Maybe xbox 360? Maybe Wii, too. I've been meaning to replay it sometime since it's so loved, and I remember only thinking "eh, that was ok" when I played it way back in the day. What platform were those guys playing on? I can imagine the Gamecube one being much harder now than it was at the time just due to how incredibly dated the controls were. Not sure if they updated them for any of the re-releases.



They played it on PC like I do but they switch between a controller and mouse/keyboard. The funny thing is that they didn't even suck that much when it came to the combat but having to constantly look at the map and still going to the wrong direction and missing items even if they're flashing right before your eyes. 

I think the Wii controls were the best. Aiming might be a tad easier on mouse but Wii felt more fluent.


----------



## wankerness

Kaura said:


> They played it on PC like I do but they switch between a controller and mouse/keyboard. The funny thing is that they didn't even suck that much when it came to the combat but having to constantly look at the map and still going to the wrong direction and missing items even if they're flashing right before your eyes.
> 
> I think the Wii controls were the best. Aiming might be a tad easier on mouse but Wii felt more fluent.



I just looked up a current list of ports out of curiosity, and saw it was funny that the Wii port is still considered the best even though there are multiple out there with vastly improved graphics. Guess it was more than just aiming with the wiimote that they did. I guess that's the system I'll use if I replay it!


----------



## Kaura

wankerness said:


> I just looked up a current list of ports out of curiosity, and saw it was funny that the Wii port is still considered the best even though there are multiple out there with vastly improved graphics. Guess it was more than just aiming with the wiimote that they did. I guess that's the system I'll use if I replay it!



PC version is definitely the best when it comes to graphics. I think just late last year this long fan project of turning all the textures to HD was finally finished so there's that. But I think gameplay-wise it's still most fun on Wii. Back in the day I bought a Wii just to play this game and sold it after I got bored with it.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> The biggest problem in this game is the lockon system combined with the camera.


I don't think i really ever use lock-on when playing dark souls these days. Makes the game harder imo when your movement is relative to whoever you're locked on to, not to mention the camera man goin crazy (looking at you twin princes). You kinda have to lock on for Sekiro though.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> I don't think i really ever use lock-on when playing dark souls these days. Makes the game harder imo when your movement is relative to whoever you're locked on to, not to mention the camera man goin crazy (looking at you twin princes). You kinda have to lock on for Sekiro though.



I've stopped using it on some bosses for sure, but it's very difficult dealing with a lot of small, hard to hit enemies if you don't lock on. Like rats, crystal lizards etc I tend to swing over if I don't lock on unless I'm using a big smashy weapon. Not to mention spells, especially pyromancies, which your character (in my experience, maybe I'm doing something wrong) chucks at the ground right in front of them if you're not locked on. I know you could aim with the binoculars for stuff like soul spear in the previous 2 games, but not sure how it dealt with spells like chaos vestments that basically aim at the ground the enemy's standing on.


----------



## Leviathus

Ahh true.


----------



## BlackMastodon

For the first time since about 2007 I reinstalled WoW. 

I'm gonna try it for free for a bit before committing but after trying to convince me after the release of every expansion, my buddy finally got me to give it a try. Which basically came from "well, what else am I doing?"

I'm expecting it to be wildly different since I played original with some mods and BC and nothing else after.


----------



## TedEH

I started Metroid Prime 2. It's..... so far not quite as tight as the first one is. It feels a bit like a discount version of the first. It's not bad, but it feels a bit less inspired. Maybe it will improve as it goes on.


----------



## possumkiller

Metro 2033 Redux, then Metro 2033 Last Light, then Metro Exodus.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I started Metroid Prime 2. It's..... so far not quite as tight as the first one is. It feels a bit like a discount version of the first. It's not bad, but it feels a bit less inspired. Maybe it will improve as it goes on.



I don't really remember the levels, other than I didn't like the dark/light world mechanic or the limited ammo on the dark/light beams. I just remember the boss fights were really varied and interesting and a LOT better than anything in the first game.


----------



## ResistentialAssultSquadron

I'm about to start playing Earthbound on my new SNES mini.


----------



## Werecow

possumkiller said:


> Metro 2033 Redux, then Metro 2033 Last Light, then Metro Exodus.



Just reading that is really tempting me to replay them all in order.


----------



## wankerness

Well, playthrough 2 of Dark Souls 3 (skipping DLC) only took about 8-10 hours, as opposed to A LOT for playthrough 1. I'm guessing a total NG would take a lot more than that, but things felt a lot smoother, and I made it through a few entire zones killing every enemy without using a bonfire, which radically speeds up how fast you can access things when you're not having to reclear. Especially places like that awful irithyll dungeon/profaned capital stretch. Still died a few times, mostly to outrageous NPC invaders that literally 1-shot me at 40 vitality with an ember (I still don't get how to avoid parries), a couple cases where big enemies smashed me into a wall and I couldn't see ANYTHING until I died thanks to the garbage camera, and once to a good combo from Lothric Princes. Ah well. Good game, and it's fun having tons of almost all stats so I can use weird strategies like "melee the first prince down and then nuke the little guy's remaining health with pyromancies to finish them off." Now to start/finish playthrough 3 for the last rings so I can officially be done with it forever!! Not looking forward to Nameless King +2.


----------



## soliloquy

I picked up Horizon for PS4. 
I must be doing something wrong, but I'm really not feeling this game. About 30 mins in, and it seems like a chore for me to carry on as it's so unnecessary.

Maybe I'm having a hard time connecting with the story line as if I was kicked out from a circle, I wouldn't want to keep fighting to get back in? Something just seems odd.

I may put it on pause and come back to it after a few other games. I do prefer games with a gloom atmosphere, kind of like The Witcher, or God of War, The Last Of Us, Limbo, inside, Arkham series, etc. So far, horizon seems too hopeful and gleeful with a forced narrative of acceptance?


----------



## wankerness

Are you talking about horizon zero dawn? If so, at least play until you’re not a kid anymore and when the world opens up. It’s definitely a post apocalypse game that gets progressively darker as you learn what happened but if you need things to be grimdark then maybe it’s not for you.


----------



## soliloquy

wankerness said:


> Are you talking about horizon zero dawn? If so, at least play until you’re not a kid anymore and when the world opens up. It’s definitely a post apocalypse game that gets progressively darker as you learn what happened but if you need things to be grimdark then maybe it’s not for you.



Yup, zero dawn.
I'm an adult now, fighting those raptor Dino's. 

Still not really feeling it


----------



## Werecow

soliloquy said:


> Maybe I'm having a hard time connecting with the story line as if I was kicked out from a circle, I wouldn't want to keep fighting to get back in? Something just seems odd.



She doesn't start fighting to get back in. The only way for her to find out who her mother was is to enter that challenge, which just so happens to accept her into the tribe as well. That's the sole reason she trained and entered.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Are you talking about horizon zero dawn? If so, at least play until you’re not a kid anymore and when the world opens up. It’s definitely a post apocalypse game that gets progressively darker as you learn what happened but if you need things to be grimdark then maybe it’s not for you.



This.

It's a cool game. Not super dark and violent, but the story and setting kept me interested until the end.

Fighting monsters is cool too, but I fought more against the uncanny valley of the characters' models and expressions. That was really disturbing.


----------



## Mathemagician

BlackMastodon said:


> For the first time since about 2007 I reinstalled WoW.
> 
> I'm gonna try it for free for a bit before committing but after trying to convince me after the release of every expansion, my buddy finally got me to give it a try. Which basically came from "well, what else am I doing?"
> 
> I'm expecting it to be wildly different since I played original with some mods and BC and nothing else after.



I tried that in December I didn’t last a a week. It’s so fucking boring to play the exact same game from 2007.


----------



## wankerness

I think he is playing it with updates that were released since 2007 :/

They've massively upgraded the graphics in the many years since plus every expansion makes system requirements higher and higher for how much crap is going on in the world and how detailed the level design is. Class mechanics only change in increments over the years, unfortunately with a lot of buffs/nerfs in a cycle (Shadow Priest was so fun back in WOTLK, been awful and clunky ever since even when it was doing more damage than any other class in early Cataclysm). Too bad most of the mechanical changes are terrible (IMO). The last expansion's awful randomly rolled loot items is what broke me. Legion was pretty fun though.

EDIT: Holy shit. Bloodborne's Pthumerian Descendent (Layer 5) boss is absolutely the hardest thing I've ever fought in any of these games. Died ~15 times now. I HATE the limited healing items and bullets in this game compared to Dark Souls. Never had to go farm to do further boss attempts in THAT game, unless you were one of those people that had to use resins on every boss. :/


----------



## wankerness

Haha, I finally got the pthumerian descendent by parrying him maybe five times. He went down fast even though it felt like dumb luck. The next boss feels ten times worse (headless bloodletting beast). My god, this is bad. I haven't gotten him under 90% in about 10 attempts, he has SO much health and his hitboxes are horrible and the cramped arena makes it so it's nearly impossible to see what he's doing since he's about 100 feet tall ad the camera sucks. I take back anything I said about this game being easier than Dark Souls, only the base game minus chalice dungeons is!


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I think he is playing it with updates that were released since 2007 :/
> 
> They've massively upgraded the graphics in the many years since plus every expansion makes system requirements higher and higher for how much crap is going on in the world and how detailed the level design is. Class mechanics only change in increments over the years, unfortunately with a lot of buffs/nerfs in a cycle (Shadow Priest was so fun back in WOTLK, been awful and clunky ever since even when it was doing more damage than any other class in early Cataclysm). Too bad most of the mechanical changes are terrible.



I mean at the end of the day for me it’s just the same treadmill. There’s slightly better graphics, new ways to gear up and then there is memorize the dance step “raids” or weekly buff/nerf pvp. Either way I’m not going to “practice” at a video game anymore. 8mm+ subscribers can’t all be wrong, but it def isn’t for me. 

Even FF14 I play only for the story. I have no idea how gearing actually works, don’t care. Meanwhile I have never read quest text in WoW in my life.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I mean at the end of the day for me it’s just the same treadmill. There’s slightly better graphics, new ways to gear up and then there is memorize the dance step “raids” or weekly buff/nerf pvp. Either way I’m not going to “practice” at a video game anymore. 8mm+ subscribers can’t all be wrong, but it def isn’t for me.
> 
> Even FF14 I play only for the story. I have no idea how gearing actually works, don’t care. Meanwhile I have never read quest text in WoW in my life.



if you don’t know how gearing works at all, everything you do in the game is more tedious cause things die half as fast. Anyway, everyone always goes on about how great ffxiv was, but it drove me back to wow for one reason - 2.5 second gcd!!! Everything felt like sludge and you couldn’t really play reactively. Good game apart from that ridiculous decision. I got a character up into the heavensward content and did all the big queue-able story raids before it.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> if you don’t know how gearing works at all, everything you do in the game is more tedious cause things die half as fast. Anyway, everyone always goes on about how great ffxiv was, but it drove me back to wow for one reason - 2.5 second gcd!!! Everything felt like sludge and you couldn’t really play reactively. Good game apart from that ridiculous decision.



I play a tank, so it’s more than enough to run dungeons as I play through the story and buy gear at max level with tomestones. And the 2.5 gcd is great for playing on a controller. No spamming 1 million abilities. A lot of rotations rely on using off-gcd abilities in between the gcd abilities. But it doesn’t matter much to get the extra 5-10 item level since I’m never going to raid, lol.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Mathemagician said:


> I mean at the end of the day for me it’s just the same treadmill. There’s slightly better graphics, new ways to gear up and then there is memorize the dance step “raids” or weekly buff/nerf pvp. Either way I’m not going to “practice” at a video game anymore. 8mm+ subscribers can’t all be wrong, but it def isn’t for me.
> 
> Even FF14 I play only for the story. I have no idea how gearing actually works, don’t care. Meanwhile I have never read quest text in WoW in my life.


I totally get it. The eternal treadmill is why I dropped Diablo after playing one season in D3 and it totally ruined the game for me when I realized what I was doing. I really don't last long in the end game for MMO's, and haven't played one since Guild Wars 2. Figured I'd give it a shot for a month or 2, play with my buddy a bit and see how I feel. 

Agree with you on old mechanics, though, the announcement of WoW Classic did nothing for me but my buddy is playing with the expansions so that's what I'll try.


----------



## wankerness

I absolutely loved WoW for a few years (2007-2010 or so?), when I had a big set of online friends in guilds and was making progress in raids and spending hours hanging out on voice chat with them. After I got a 9-5 job in a different time zone, that all went away, and going back to the game I found it extraordinarily lonely. Aided greatly by the fact that they basically turned the game into a solo experience with all the queues for everything and all the weird cross-server phasing that eliminated server communities. I miss it greatly, but there's no going back to what it was. I'll have to wait for a new MMO that actually has that active of a community and is bold enough to remove all the solo-queue instances and stuff before I can get into one again, probably.

WoW classic's announcement didn't do much for me since I only played vanilla at the tail-end, I hit 58 like the day BC came out and never did any of that classic raiding. I remember levelling being incredibly tedious and the world being full of crappy empty stuff and instances being nonsensical nightmares with level differences of 10+ in some cases (ex, Uldaman) and hours of clearing and having someone run back to the city to replace a group member that left and enemies respawning etc just to get garbage loot. It was bad. I would be all over a version of WoW that was in the late BC/early WOTLK phase, before queues happened. Although I don't think queues were harmful until they did the Raid queuing at some point which effectively destroyed PUGs.

EDIT: Finally platinum'd Bloodborne. Ugh, those chalice dungeons were MISERABLE, and I skipped the ones often labelled worst (amygdala and the flaming dog with half health). The first broken boss took maybe 15 tries, Bloodletting Beast took ~25 tries, and the last boss took ~5. It was ugly. Only the last one, the Queen, felt like a legitimate boss, the first two were hard cause of horrendous camera/arena issues (the first guy is in a cramped little hallway with huge pillars everywhere and his projectiles go through the pillars but break your lock-on, the other guy is just WAY too big for the little cave he's in and he breaks the camera). Ack. "Chalice dungeons: where bosses rejected from the main game go to die" is the refrain I kept seeing on videos/posts about these guys. I feel no sense of satisfaction like I did when I beat the DLC. That stuff is masterful. Chalice dungeons are miserable and remove everything that's best about the game (the awesome level design/boss design).


----------



## possumkiller

Also playing Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc. Never played anything like this before.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I absolutely loved WoW for a few years (2007-2010 or so?), when I had a big set of online friends in guilds and was making progress in raids and spending hours hanging out on voice chat with them. After I got a 9-5 job in a different time zone, that all went away, and going back to the game I found it extraordinarily lonely. Aided greatly by the fact that they basically turned the game into a solo experience with all the queues for everything and all the weird cross-server phasing that eliminated server communities. I miss it greatly, but there's no going back to what it was. I'll have to wait for a new MMO that actually has that active of a community and is bold enough to remove all the solo-queue instances and stuff before I can get into one again, probably.
> 
> WoW classic's announcement didn't do much for me since I only played vanilla at the tail-end, I hit 58 like the day BC came out and never did any of that classic raiding. I remember levelling being incredibly tedious and the world being full of crappy empty stuff and instances being nonsensical nightmares with level differences of 10+ in some cases (ex, Uldaman) and hours of clearing and having someone run back to the city to replace a group member that left and enemies respawning etc just to get garbage loot. It was bad. I would be all over a version of WoW that was in the late BC/early WOTLK phase, before queues happened. Although I don't think queues were harmful until they did the Raid queuing at some point which effectively destroyed PUGs.
> 
> EDIT: Finally platinum'd Bloodborne. Ugh, those chalice dungeons were MISERABLE, and I skipped the ones often labelled worst (amygdala and the flaming dog with half health). The first broken boss took maybe 15 tries, Bloodletting Beast took ~25 tries, and the last boss took ~5. It was ugly. Only the last one, the Queen, felt like a legitimate boss, the first two were hard cause of horrendous camera/arena issues (the first guy is in a cramped little hallway with huge pillars everywhere and his projectiles go through the pillars but break your lock-on, the other guy is just WAY too big for the little cave he's in and he breaks the camera). Ack. "Chalice dungeons: where bosses rejected from the main game go to die" is the refrain I kept seeing on videos/posts about these guys. I feel no sense of satisfaction like I did when I beat the DLC. That stuff is masterful. Chalice dungeons are miserable and remove everything that's best about the game (the awesome level design/boss design).



I would love a WoTLK post instance queue dedicated server. Once Cata came out, the game just started going so downhill that I lost all interest in it.

Anyway. Nier: Automata is just as good the second time around, even if it's not a perfect experience on Xbox.


----------



## Mathemagician

Chess. I decided to finally learn more beyond just what movements are allowed. Oh my god. First game got my ass kicked by a low level AI, lmao. This is gonna be fun.

edit: I need to check out Nier one day. It looks very interesting.


----------



## wankerness

Nier Automata might be my favorite game ever. Even though it has some big problems. If they had released some more balancing patches and fixed the scaling with enemies it could have been near perfect. It's one of those annoying games where higher difficulty just means you get 1-shot by everything instead of enemies getting noticeably more health, etc. I loved it on normal, but thought everything died way too fast by the end of the game. I tried cranking up the difficulty to compensate, but it only resulted in me getting 1-shot by everything, and the enemies barely gaining any health. So, it seems to play best if you don't use any chips, don't upgrade your weapons, or avoid all sidequests to avoid overlevelling by the end or something.

It's especially disappointing with things like the final final boss, where you're trading off between characters for segments of the health bar and it kicks you back to the other character well before the dialogue can even play since the boss's health is so minimal compared to your damage. I had the same thing happen in the first Nier on playthrough 2 - I barely got to hear ANY of the new dialogue for playthrough 2 since it's all tied to boss health and it plays over a much longer period of time than the boss's health bar can last unless you just stand there doing nothing for a while.


----------



## Yelir

ResistentialAssultSquadron said:


> I'm about to start playing Earthbound on my new SNES mini.


Are you new to the game and/or Mother series? I never had the patience for RPGs growing up, but I finished the trilogy and I think they're amazing!


----------



## ResistentialAssultSquadron

I played Earthbound when i was a kid...i never completed the game, but i'm loving it so far and am fully committed to finishing it in the next week...i've never played the 1st snd 3rd in the series, but have a friend that's a total vid game junkie (and awesome drummer). I'm not particularly a fan of jrpgs either, but some of them are in the best-of category of vid games. I'm more into dark souls style rpg games and action/adv/platformers, stuff like that. I rarely give myself time for games, but my brother sent me this SNES mini as a holiday gift. The controllers are just as shitty as i remember from back in the day


----------



## Yelir

ResistentialAssultSquadron said:


> I played Earthbound when i was a kid...i never completed the game, but i'm loving it so far and am fully committed to finishing it in the next week...i've never played the 1st snd 3rd in the series, but have a friend that's a total vid game junkie (and awesome drummer). I'm not particularly a fan of jrpgs either, but some of them are in the best-of category of vid games. I'm more into dark souls style rpg games and action/adv/platformers, stuff like that. I rarely give myself time for games, but my brother sent me this SNES mini as a holiday gift. The controllers are just as shitty as i remember from back in the day


Ah, that's good to hear. The NES and SNES mini systems can be modded pretty easily to add more games from Nintendo and other consoles. Makes it a decent alternative to messing around with Retro Pi hardware. If you have access to other emulation or a Game Boy Advance, you have to play Mother3!

Don't even joke about the SNES controllers, easily top 3 for function and comfort!  Haha


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, the SNES controller tends to be considered a top candidate for best controller ever. Only the newer xbox ones give it a run for its money.

Mother3 doesn't have an english release for GBA, so having a GBA won't help you play it unless you read japanese or buy bootlegs! 

I hadn't even heard of that game or that bizarre backstory. Why would Nintendo not translate the damn thing and release it over here? Even on virtual console? They even stuck the protagonist in Smash Bros! 

I tried playing earthbound twice. I immediately lost interest the first time I went into a battle with a spiteful crow both times. I was not at all interested by that combat system.


----------



## gabito

Just finished ME2, now moving on to ME3 (this time with all the DLC, so it's finally a complete game).

Always played the three games back to back, so it's just a really big game for me.

Still loving it.

And still waiting for the remaster... which I think I'll play with a male Shepard for the first time.


----------



## ResistentialAssultSquadron

Yelir said:


> Ah, that's good to hear. The NES and SNES mini systems can be modded pretty easily to add more games from Nintendo and other consoles. Makes it a decent alternative to messing around with Retro Pi hardware. If you have access to other emulation or a Game Boy Advance, you have to play Mother3!
> 
> Don't even joke about the SNES controllers, easily top 3 for function and comfort!  Haha



Bah! The Switch Pro controller is by far my favorite i've tried. I am going to dwnld more games for the mini when im fin with earthbound...esp to replay chrono trigger. Still balls-deep in earthbound for now. And away i go!


----------



## Yelir

wankerness said:


> Mother3 doesn't have an english release for GBA, so having a GBA won't help you play it unless you read japanese or buy bootlegs!
> 
> I hadn't even heard of that game or that bizarre backstory. Why would Nintendo not translate the damn thing and release it over here? Even on virtual console? They even stuck the protagonist in Smash Bros!


You're right, you need a translated cart or patched rom to play in English. I'm not certain on the entire reason for not releasing here, but it might have to do with a bunch of it's heavy themes and story elements. You play as a disabled person for parts of the story, there is a group of transgender fairies that are pivotal to the story, and other things that may have attributed to that decision.

I'll agree that the combat system is pretty weird, but flexible at the same time with the rolling HP meter when you're in tough battles.

I went so nuts for the game that I read The Notebook, which is roughly based on the brothers of the same names Claus and Lucas from Mother3.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> the SNES controller tends to be considered a top candidate for best controller ever


As someone who frequently is blinded by nostalgia goggles - I think this is definitely just a nostalgia thing for a lot of people. My original snes controllers and the one I got with the mini are both.... ok? Acceptable? Kinda mushy.

IMO xbox controllers basically beat almost anything. I've got a steam controller and it's great for some things and terrible for others. I actually really like the dpad on the new 2DS/3DS, but the control sticks on those are weird. Switch controllers/joycons have kinda weird range on their sticks - they aren't bad but they feel a bit limited compared to a 360 controller.


----------



## Choop

I tend to like the Xbox controllers, but the 360 dpad is total ass.


----------



## BlackMastodon

ResistentialAssultSquadron said:


> Bah! The Switch Pro controller is by far my favorite i've tried.


I mean it's basically an Xbox controller, they even gave it the same analog stick layout after the WiiU Pro controller.

I only used an Xbone controller for PC and think it's by far the best controller. The contoured triggers are so comfy. I didn't think it could get much better than the 360 one but it is the Cadillac of controllers


----------



## StevenC

BlackMastodon said:


> I mean it's basically an Xbox controller, they even gave it the same analog stick layout after the WiiU Pro controller.
> 
> I only used an Xbone controller for PC and think it's by far the best controller. The contoured triggers are so comfy. I didn't think it could get much better than the 360 one but it is the Cadillac of controllers


You mean the same stick layout as the Gamecube. 


Gamecube 
Xbox 1
Switch Pro
Wii U Pro
Everything else
PS4
PS3
PS2
PS1


----------



## Mathemagician

Everyone says GameCube. But it’s so uncomfortable. Every button feels like it’s completely unrelated to each other and they’re on different islands. Wtf. I think it’s just die-hard smash fans.


----------



## TedEH

I've actually been playing a lot of gamecube lately and... I don't understand why people like that controller so much. The sticks are ok, but I find the buttons stick a bit. The triggers feel pretty cheap to me. Maybe it's just worn but the Z button on mine is weird to press (kinda mushy). Most of the buttons are.... just ok? I feel like the 360 was the first controller to really figure out a natural placement for your hands.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> You mean the same stick layout as the Gamecube.
> 
> 
> Gamecube
> Xbox 1
> Switch Pro
> Wii U Pro
> Everything else
> PS4
> PS3
> PS2
> PS1



Gamecube? Wow! The C stick on that thing is horrible and the janky R button is questionable as heck on older controller. It's totally unusable for any kind of control scheme that would require two analog sticks (not intended to, I guess). But, it also was unusable for N64 ports that required quick C button changes! I do like that the R button was analog. Also, the Xbox OG controller was a hugeass thing that made my hands cramp up. Maybe you have bigger hands than me.

I think it's almost inarguable that the Switch Pro controller, the Wii-U pro controller, and the new Xbox controllers are the best. I don't like that PS4 has the left sticks further from your thumb than the D-pad when no game other than old ports use the D pad as primary buttons. It's too bad Xbox has no good exclusives and PS4 has ton, otherwise I'd definitely switch for the controller comfort.

SNES was just such an amazing leap forward from the awful rectangular NES controllers and the basic ergonomics of it are still used today (ex, the YXBA button placement). The D-pad on that thing was actually very good, too, I remember being able to do all kinds of half-circle forward joystick sweeps with it in fighting games that I couldn't do at all on the d-pad of any newer controllers.


----------



## StevenC

Living with a legitimately world class Smash player for years I have been around a lot of Gamecube controllers, and yeah old ones suck but new tight controllers are delightful and I've played plenty of two stick games without a problem. Your right thumb sits perfectly to press all the buttons super easily, unless you have an X/Y-B combo to do. Triggers are a bit foreign but were the best at the time because they were analog and in the right place which no other contemporary controller had.

The main reason the GC controller is the best is because it gets out of the way to let one wrap one's hands around it, where every other comparably good controller makes you stretch uncomfortably to do this or have your fingers straight across the back. 360 was the closest in this category but only the wired version and the D-pad was sucky so it's eliminated on that basis.

Older GC controllers were built a little bit better and have slightly nicer plastic. Much like the SNES/NES Classic controllers relative to their originals.

When I said Xbox 1 I mean Xbox One, sorry about that. Duke sucks. Almost as much as the "put spikes on SNES" controller Sony stuck to for 26 years. 

One thing that separates the Wii U and Switch Pro controllers from other modern competitors is the battery life. My PS4 controller lives on charge, my Xbox controllers eat batteries and my Switch controller goes for days and days. (Also Switch has the best interface for switching controllers and order which means I can have my spare Pro charged and waiting with 0 hassle.)


----------



## TedEH

Is the switch pro controller really as good as xbox controllers? I find the sticks on the joycons feel kinda weird - not terrible, but just... weird? Is the pro controller that big an upgrade?


----------



## Yelir

The Joy Cons are terribly limited and use cheap joysticks, but I can still mop the floor in Street Fighter II using them! The Pro controller really feels like an upgrade to the current systems, if anything it's a bit bulkier for my large palms, and the finish in the plastic barely shows wear. I'm still unbiased towards the GC controller, its form hugs your hands great, well above that feeling is the Wavebird which adds considerable weight and wireless gameplay.

My top picks would be: 1 - SNES, 2 - Sega Saturn (Japanese), 3 - PS2.

I realize we all have different tastes in games, I play a lot of indie/retro/arcade games and these choices reflect that. The D-Pad on any Xbox controllers is just garbage, and for that I can never use them much. If you want to see some newer ideas that I really enjoy, 8bitdo makes cooler SNES inspired controllers with Sony style thumbsticks.


----------



## StevenC

The Switch Pro has real full sized proper sticks unlike the Joy-Cons halfway mini sticks to fit in the smaller packaging. It's better for most things, though I still prefer to play Mario Kart with the Joy-Cons in grip because of the feel of the stick and I don't know why.

Other weird opinion: I prefer the Wii U Pro controller for playing Smash Bros. Also I'm playing Lost Levels at the minute with the controller sticks on the Switch Pro without complaint.

Xbox got the D-pads good enough with the Xbox One and even better with the mid-generation revision. Now they're as good as anything that isn't a Nintendo D-pad. I don't really have any issues with playing on Xbox controllers except the weird placement of the A/B and X/Y buttons.

All Playstation controllers are irredeemable. At least 1 through 4, and they have no good features. The touch pad was cool, but ultimately imprecise and underutilised. I can't imagine the 5 controller is much of an improvement because it still has triggers that your fingers slide off with too little travel, terrible D-pad and the wrong stick location.


----------



## TedEH

I don't play a lot of fighting games, which I think is a lot of where people get picky about dpads, but for some reason I've always liked the dpad on my 2DS (it's the "new" 2DS, I don't know if they're different). It feels precise to me. I guess if we're talking dpads I'd say 2DS > Advance SP > Gameboy micro > most other Nintendo handhelds > everything else > 360 controller. I see why people don't like the 360 dpad though, but I can forgive those controllers for getting most other things right.


----------



## wankerness

Switch joycons are pretty trash, the switch pro controller is in a very different league. They feel like they’re going to breaK. I use the switch pro controller partly cause it’s more comfortable and partly cause I do t want to have to buy more damn joycons when they inevitably stop tracking correctly. They’re very cheap feeling and the reports of permanent drift dwarf that of PlayStation (and I’ve had a few of those die on me).


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Living with a legitimately world class Smash player for years I have been around a lot of Gamecube controllers, and yeah old ones suck but new tight controllers are delightful and I've played plenty of two stick games without a problem. Your right thumb sits perfectly to press all the buttons super easily, unless you have an X/Y-B combo to do. Triggers are a bit foreign but were the best at the time because they were analog and in the right place which no other contemporary controller had.
> 
> The main reason the GC controller is the best is because it gets out of the way to let one wrap one's hands around it, where every other comparably good controller makes you stretch uncomfortably to do this or have your fingers straight across the back. 360 was the closest in this category but only the wired version and the D-pad was sucky so it's eliminated on that basis.
> 
> Older GC controllers were built a little bit better and have slightly nicer plastic. Much like the SNES/NES Classic controllers relative to their originals.
> 
> When I said Xbox 1 I mean Xbox One, sorry about that. Duke sucks. Almost as much as the "put spikes on SNES" controller Sony stuck to for 26 years.
> 
> One thing that separates the Wii U and Switch Pro controllers from other modern competitors is the battery life. My PS4 controller lives on charge, my Xbox controllers eat batteries and my Switch controller goes for days and days. (Also Switch has the best interface for switching controllers and order which means I can have my spare Pro charged and waiting with 0 hassle.)



yeah, battery life on the switch pro controller is nuts. Ps4 lasts like 4-5 hours, that thing’s got to be 12 or more. I’ve never had it give me a low battery warning and sometimes I use it for over a week without charging.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> yeah, battery life on the switch pro controller is nuts. Ps4 lasts like 4-5 hours, that thing’s got to be 12 or more. I’ve never had it give me a low battery warning and sometimes I use it for over a week without charging.


It can do 40 hours on one charge, and when I think about it I routinely get at least 30+ before it tells me to charge. Compare that to 80 hours on the Wii U pro which I had to charge so rarely that I tended to lose the USB mini cable between charges.

Joy Con get about 20 hours each and the Gamepad only managed 3 to 5.

Xbox is usually between 10 and 20. PS4 gets about 4 to 6 in my experience and seems to be the case around the Web, despite being the least sophisticated of all controllers (I guess slightly more than the Wii U pro for a tenth the battery life).


----------



## wankerness

Joycons last wayyyyy less than 20 hours in my experience. More like 4-6. Though I only use them together, not sure if that somehow would make them drain faster.


----------



## BlackMastodon

My Joycons seem o last 10-20 hours, using the little adapter that turns them into a controller. I find it pretty comfortable for casual gaming or RPGs but the Pro controller is more what I'm used to. 

Also my left Joy Con got the permanent drift problem in the analog stick a couple months ago so I had to send it in to get replaced. It wasn't even a year old, and not like I was abusing it daily. I like the Joycons but fuck, for C$100 for the pair they better last along as the system does.


----------



## TedEH

I think I've just been lucky that I've never encountered the joycon drift at all.


----------



## Nicki

TedEH said:


> I think I've just been lucky that I've never encountered the joycon drift at all.


I'd have to play my switch to experience stick drift :\


----------



## wankerness

Well, finally platinum'd dark souls 3. I'm not sure if I want to replay dark souls 1 (missing tons of trophies from that, but it seems like a pretty easy platinum all things considered) or try and platinum 2 (the remaining trophies I need require 100 pvp item turn ins for a couple covenants, which is insane - 30 was bad enough in DS3).

I've adopted some of the cheesiest possible strategies as my baseline, cause I'm not good at this game. In addition to my endless patience for sniping enemies with the bow and arrow that I started doing in 1/2, I've gotten some even cheesier strats specific to this game. For example, I got the storyteller's staff, and I use it every time I see a mimic, because mimics in this game have an insane amount of health for how quickly they can kill you and how much you have to dodge. So I just sit there and wait for a minute while the poison kills them as they sleep! It's great. I also like stealthing in and using it on some particularly annoying enemies and stealthing back out and waiting for them to die. Like, I definitely did that on Havel on NG+ and NG++. Screw that guy! And I definitely got both Gael kills with it, too! What a great item. And then a couple miniboss type enemies I used cheese strats on, like the fire demon in smouldering lake on NG+/++ I just ran past and circled around the room and basement aggroing all the skeletons, who proceeded to give him the beatdown. I love stuff like that. NG++ is fun cause certain bosses/enemies are weirdly strong compared to previous playthroughs (I got WRECKED by the crystal sage in the archives, multiple times, but comfortably killed Nameless King first attempt with over half my estus left). 

Anyway, now I think it's time to go back to Yakuza 7, finally. Either that or try a bit more at Sekiro, but I think that game might just be too hard for me since it's all about twitch reaction speed in combat and I'm not 20 anymore. I also realized I got The Surge at some point (maybe it was a PS+ game in the distant past?). I might try that, though I dunno if it's going to be worth my time.


----------



## SamSam

Right at the end of Trails of Cold Steel 1 now.

I've also fallen way down the shmup hole.

Impulse bought Cotton 2 on the Saturn (not a cheap game by any means) and I'm enjoying a healthy mix of Saturn and Xbox 360 shooters.


----------



## TedEH

I've been getting sort of annoyed at Metroid Prime 2 - the bosses are more interesting than the 1st, but also harder, and almost never close to a save point, so I end up feeling like I've lost progress pretty often. I end up sort of rage-quitting after 2-3 attempts and have to come back to it later. I think when I'm done with this, the next thing I play will need to be a little more modern. I picked up Disco Elysium when it was on sale, so that might be next on the list.


----------



## Nicki

Noticed that I had a bunch of points sitting on my credit card so I redeemed them for copies of Sekiro and FarCry 5.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SamSam said:


> Right at the end of Trails of Cold Steel 1 now.



For the longest time I thought I was the only one here playing this long series. I'm glad I'm no longer alone. 



TedEH said:


> I picked up Disco Elysium when it was on sale, so that might be next on the list.



Let me know how you go with this one. Was planning to play it myself after hearing great things about it (namely the writing), but got sidetracked with a mountain of other stuff.


----------



## SamSam

Bloody_Inferno said:


> For the longest time I thought I was the only one here playing this long series. I'm glad I'm no longer alone.



I wasn't sure I could commit to it, but the discount on it was solid, I'll buy the rest in time!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SamSam said:


> I wasn't sure I could commit to it, but the discount on it was solid, I'll buy the rest in time!



Whereabouts in the end are you up to in CS1 and how are you finding it? Have you played any of Sky/Zero/Azure games yet?

Been deep in CS4 since release and I feel like it's never ending, but I love it.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Let me know how you go with this one. Was planning to play it myself after hearing great things about it (namely the writing), but got sidetracked with a mountain of other stuff.


Seconded. I'll pick it up one day when it's on sale but I am curious to hear about someone's experience.


----------



## wankerness

Went back to DS1 after getting the platinum on DS3 to try and clean up trophies on it. And wow. My early estimates of the game's difficulty were based on its towering reputation vs fact I got through most of it in one try with a guide. This game is definitely not easy. The environmental hazards in this game are vastly worse than pretty much anything in DS2/3. The enemies are laughably stupid and easy to deal with compared to 2/3, but there's just nothing comparable in those to the choochoo train of bullshit that is Sen's Fortress through Anor Londo. And Blighttown, while not "hard" in the same sense (you have to be very careless to die), is a thoroughly miserable experience of trying to puzzle out architecture in pitch black while snipers spam you so fast with poison darts you can't shoot them back.

There's creeping around on the rafters in Bloodborne and DS3 that is bad news, but it's nothing compared to the teeny tiny beams in this game (I actually laughed when I reached that last bridge in Sen's just at how comically narrow it was) that are covered with powerful enemies that will just run right at you, when all of your attacks make you move in one direction or another and thus you will die if you do one, but you'll also die if you block since the attack absorption moves you back. Or like, the lightning spewing serpent placed right behind a ton of swinging axes in sen's that's like, guaranteed to kill you if you didn't snipe it like a coward from a lower area. Gawd.

This all said, as soon as you're INSIDE in anor londo, the enemies are hilariously easy compared to their counterparts in the later games. The silver knights basically act like totem poles and let you beat them down, you can just hit mimics until they die if you have a big weapon, etc. I find it very funny that I had problems with Titanite Demons my first time through - if you apply any strategy learned in DS2/3 to fighting them, you probably won't even come close to getting hit. The bosses are a mixed bag - most of them have been really easy so far even on NG+, but if you get HIT by their telegraphed stuff, woo boy. Iron Golem was terrifying due to his awful arena, but I pretty much just R2'd him to death with a big sword pretty quickly. The only boss that's killed me repeatedly was ceaseless discharge, since on NG+ I got 1 shot by that big aoe thing that he does when you try to kite him back to the door for the 1-hit kill, and then I had to fight him "legit," which is a big ol' fight of hits that take 2-3 estus to recover and tiny windows you can do damage to him.

Online mode helps with this one, cause of the random nice guys out there that do things like put orange soapstones on the safe spots between axe pendulum's in Sen's. 

Oh, the other thing about DS1 that's "hard" is how you can't teleport. It doesn't really increase the difficulty in anything other than mental resolve. Like, I kill Quelaag, and my first reaction isn't "hell yeah," it's "UGHHHH now I have to run ALL THE WAY BACK UP through blighttown, and when I get to firelink, the bonfire isn't going to work, so I have to make it all the way to undead burg without a mistake or it will spawn me at the bottom of blighttown again!!" It's insane. Checkpoints are also far more sadistically doled out. From what I hear it's far better than Demon Souls, where you had to complete the entire level AND the boss with no checkpoint in most cases, and you had to do it first try or you'd lose half your health, but still!

I'm not sure if I want to finish this - looking at guides, I'd have to do a third playthrough because of one boss (Sif) that has three different soul weapons, and another boss that I missed first playthrough (Gwyndoline - the one MFB was complaining about!). If it was just Sif, then I could avoid Sen's and Anor Londo, but noooo. I wish I'd done all my farming for trophy materials on NG. The other big mistake I made, if I want a platinum, was killing Ornstein first on NG, since apparently killing Smough first on anything past NG makes the fight extremely hard.


----------



## MFB

I just beast mode bum rush right through the axes to the lighting serpents and just fuck them up with melee, it never expects it but it works 

Also - fuck Gwyndoline, all my homies hate Gwyndoline. Gotta kill my big tittied anime girlfriend to fight that shit bag? Nah.


----------



## Choop

Started playing Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner despite having some qualms with the first game, and I already like this one much better. The combat is essentially the same but juiced up and more fluid in general. The voice acting is at least somewhat better haha. The presentation even more so feels like you're playing in an anime, which is neat.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I just beast mode bum rush right through the axes to the lighting serpents and just fuck them up with melee, it never expects it but it works
> 
> Also - fuck Gwyndoline, all my homies hate Gwyndoline. Gotta kill my big tittied anime girlfriend to fight that shit bag? Nah.



Oh really? That's stupid. I didn't read about how you trigger the fight, guess that's why it never happened first playthrough.

Got SUPER ORNSTEIN to a sliver of a percent, with 8 estus left, and then he chained 3 hits on me and killed me. I yelled at my TV! I NEVER DO THAT! Goddam. I've had 4 or 5 failed attempts where fucking Solaire actually outright soloed Ornstein before I could kill Smough. I wish the AI in this game would assist you, or something.

The worst thing about it by far is how tedious every attempt is. Change gear, use humanity, kindle, kill three silver knights, slowly whittle down 2 giants, change gear back, summon solaire (~10 minutes), then he instantly attacks ornstein and it's all over. ARGH!! I'm getting tempted to actually try getting help from a player for the first time. Soloing these guys is just ridiculous on NG+.


----------



## MFB

Oh you're coming from that bonfire? I just ran from the start of Anor Londo past the four big guards after baiting them with arrows, and it worked 90% of the time. I also had that fire at a +2 kindle so 15 estus heals, with a +2 flask which certainly helped.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Oh you're coming from that bonfire? I just ran from the start of Anor Londo past the four big guards after baiting them with arrows, and it worked 90% of the time. I also had that fire at a +2 kindle so 15 estus heals, with a +2 flask which certainly helped.



I didn't kill pinwheel yet, so I can't reinforce bonfires.

Using solaire, you actually have to kill every giant in that room or else he goes after them and dies instead of helping with the boss. There's a greatbow silver knight up on solaire's ledge that you can sneak up on from the second bonfire, but have to approach from below (or go up and all the way around) to take out. And those damn turtling giants take FOREVER to kill, so it just seemed easier to deal with a few silver knights that I could reliably kill in 10 seconds without taking damage than 4 of those guys. 

Anyway, THIS HAPPENED AGAIN!!!


----------



## MFB

Bruh, Pinwheel is the fucking easiest of easies, go kill him and get them Rites of Kindling! That fight was the one that forced me to do the same, and it was the little bump I needed to make it happen.

Also, props for trying to fight Superstein instead of Supersmough, I've heard it's basically impossible.


----------



## wankerness

Well, I finally did it by switching to the black knight glaive, getting it upgraded to +5 by the giant that's right there, and then just bumrushing smough and spamming him to death and only stopping to roll out of his buttslams. I killed him when Solaire had Ornstein down to like 5% health, so it was close! Then Solaire was actually alive for all of Phase 2, when the previous times he'd always died almost immediately when it started. So, it ended up going really fast and he was mostly focusing on Solaire so I was never in too much danger. Phew. I would not put this remotely close to the worst of Bloodborne's bosses, but I finally see the kinds of trouble people must have had with this fight. You can't overlevel NG+, really! Well, maybe if I got 99 vitality/Strength (if it even does anything beyond 50).

I forgot Pinwheel did that until I was way far away. I'll probably do it now that I can warp. It seems like the bonfires that you kindled carried over between playthroughs, or something, since some of them give me +10 and others only give +5, and thus I've always had +10 and never really been starved for more. Ornstein and Smough were never an endurance fight for me where I ran out of estus, except the couple tries I did without Solaire, it was more of a "I kill them fast or get wrecked." 

I think this is probably going to be the last huge problem I have with this game, besides making it through the tree and especially crystal cave areas without killing myself IRL. I don't remember any of the later bosses being particularly difficult before the DLC, which I don't think I need to bother with for trophies, and it seems like O&S are the only bosses from this game that regularly get mentioned on lists of nastiest videogame bosses. Well, besides Bed of Chaos, for very different reasons.


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> I just beast mode bum rush right through the axes to the lighting serpents and just fuck them up with melee, it never expects it but it works
> 
> Also - fuck Gwyndoline, all my homies hate Gwyndoline. Gotta kill my big tittied anime girlfriend to fight that shit bag? Nah.



Imagine my surprise when I learned there was a boss you can fight by killing a major story NPC. Without a guide I never in a million years would have figured that out. Also, would have taken me forever to bump into painted world.



wankerness said:


> I didn't kill pinwheel yet, so I can't reinforce bonfires.
> 
> Using solaire, you actually have to kill every giant in that room or else he goes after them and dies instead of helping with the boss. There's a greatbow silver knight up on solaire's ledge that you can sneak up on from the second bonfire, but have to approach from below (or go up and all the way around) to take out. And those damn turtling giants take FOREVER to kill, so it just seemed easier to deal with a few silver knights that I could reliably kill in 10 seconds without taking damage than 4 of those guys.
> 
> Anyway, THIS HAPPENED AGAIN!!!
> 
> View attachment 89593



I know you eventually beat it but RIP for your blood pressure.


----------



## SamSam

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Whereabouts in the end are you up to in CS1 and how are you finding it? Have you played any of Sky/Zero/Azure games yet?
> 
> Been deep in CS4 since release and I feel like it's never ending, but I love it.



Just completed it last night, really enjoyed it and liked the way the story slowly became more serious and then ramped up at the end. I really want to play part 2 now!

I'm going to wait for a sale though. I have Nier and Tokyo Xanadu next and I need to get back on FF7 remake and Ghosts of Tsushima as well.


----------



## wankerness

Ghost of Tsushima was so good. Playing AC Valhalla made me appreciate it so much more. It's basically the best AC game, despite not being an AC game.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, GoT really is the feudal era Japan AC game that we'll never get, and it does it better than Ubi could ever have hoped to. The quality of life mechanics they included instead of having them be a perk that you need to unlock (i.e. collecting resources while on horseback) as well put it above Horizon Zero Dawn as an open world game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SamSam said:


> Just completed it last night, really enjoyed it and liked the way the story slowly became more serious and then ramped up at the end. I really want to play part 2 now!



Awesome!  Yeah, the game is a slooooow burn, but the ramp towards the end is so huge it's great. And it takes some monumental balls to ending a game like that.

I'm assuming Cold Steel 1 is your gateway to the Trails series. I did the same myself, got it for a Christmas bargain sale and got hooked. Reason that I'm mentioning this is that there's a massive caveat that looms over the games. You may notice subtle hints in the background, but by the third game, every gun in Checkhov's Armoury is being fired at your direction. 

You may have already noticed a bunch of cities and factions being mentioned and certain minor characters that look like key players in the story. That's because Trails games share one whole continuity beginning with Trails In The Sky. And while Cold Steel 1 is pretty kind to newcomers, the deeper you go, the more apparent it is to get the full backstory from previous games. 

It's a big investment, but having said that; trying to play 5 100 hour JRPGs before continuing the current story is a ridiculous ask.  Hell, 2 of the games aren't officially available outside fan translations, so I just watched a bunch of story recaps on youtube.  No rush to do this of course, but you'll know when you'll start wanting to know the full picture around the end of CS2.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Welp I played WoW for free this weekend and got a shaman up to lvl 20. Don't think I'll bother with the game beyond some free play when I'm bored. 

They changed so much since BC I can understand why some people are diehard Classic players. Sure there's some qol upgrades with all these expansions but holy shit did they strip down the RPG elements of the game. There's barely any incentive to keep going besides "hey guys, look, end game raids!" 

Back when I was first playing I wanted to hit level 20 because I'd start finding helmets and shoulder armour, then I'd wanna hit 30 so the gear wouldn't look as shitty, then I'd wanna hit 40 so I could get a mount and get the armour upgrade to mail since I was a hunter, etc. 

They completely dumbed down masteries and talent trees, the tutorial guides you along and throws you a mount by lvl 10, I didn't even see different colour options for the mounts but they do have a bunch of different ones, some at a premium cost. 

I remember being a kid and playing and this sense of whimsy every time I'd discover a new area or have to wander around to find quests. Now I see all this space and the game holding your hand through it all (which you can ignore I suppose) and I'm just like "man, this seems like a lot of work for very little payoff." any enjoyment I used to have of the early to mid-game is pretty much gone. 

I gues I'm just getting old, but the silver lining is that I won't be paying a monthly sub and the cost of the latest expansion. 

Anyway, Dishonored is calling my name again and I picked up Nier a little while ago. Time to see what all the fuss is about.


----------



## Mathemagician

BlackMastodon said:


> Welp I played WoW for free this weekend and got a shaman up to lvl 20. Don't think I'll bother with the game beyond some free play when I'm bored.
> 
> They changed so much since BC I can understand why some people are diehard Classic players. Sure there's some qol upgrades with all these expansions but holy shit did they strip down the RPG elements of the game. There's barely any incentive to keep going besides "hey guys, look, end game raids!"
> 
> Back when I was first playing I wanted to hit level 20 because I'd start finding helmets and shoulder armour, then I'd wanna hit 30 so the gear wouldn't look as shitty, then I'd wanna hit 40 so I could get a mount and get the armour upgrade to mail since I was a hunter, etc.
> 
> They completely dumbed down masteries and talent trees, the tutorial guides you along and throws you a mount by lvl 10, I didn't even see different colour options for the mounts but they do have a bunch of different ones, some at a premium cost.
> 
> I remember being a kid and playing and this sense of whimsy every time I'd discover a new area or have to wander around to find quests. Now I see all this space and the game holding your hand through it all (which you can ignore I suppose) and I'm just like "man, this seems like a lot of work for very little payoff." any enjoyment I used to have of the early to mid-game is pretty much gone.
> 
> I gues I'm just getting old, but the silver lining is that I won't be paying a monthly sub and the cost of the latest expansion.
> 
> Anyway, Dishonored is calling my name again and I picked up Nier a little while ago. Time to see what all the fuss is about.



We’re old. We already had our “first MMO” experience. And a lot of people keep hyping up “the next mmo” trying to recapture that magic.

Imo, the time commitment to play a game where I don’t even follow the story is just not there. I can play CoD/Apex/whatever with RL friends for an hour while talking shit. And I would rather do that than “grind gear” alone.

FWIW the classes are definitely way more fun to play at even early levels. They did a great job with “class identity”.

I’m just and old man yelling at at clouds now, if I try to go back, lol.

I do however need to rotate back into Ni Ni No Kuni before I forget what all the buttons do.


----------



## Ralyks

Currently watching my son try to play Minecraft. He's giving it a good effort, I'll give him that.

Recommendation request: As someone playing on a PS5 (thus having PS4 backwards compatibility), what's a good place to start with the Ys series?


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Welp I played WoW for free this weekend and got a shaman up to lvl 20. Don't think I'll bother with the game beyond some free play when I'm bored.
> 
> They changed so much since BC I can understand why some people are diehard Classic players. Sure there's some qol upgrades with all these expansions but holy shit did they strip down the RPG elements of the game. There's barely any incentive to keep going besides "hey guys, look, end game raids!"
> 
> Back when I was first playing I wanted to hit level 20 because I'd start finding helmets and shoulder armour, then I'd wanna hit 30 so the gear wouldn't look as shitty, then I'd wanna hit 40 so I could get a mount and get the armour upgrade to mail since I was a hunter, etc.
> 
> They completely dumbed down masteries and talent trees, the tutorial guides you along and throws you a mount by lvl 10, I didn't even see different colour options for the mounts but they do have a bunch of different ones, some at a premium cost.
> 
> I remember being a kid and playing and this sense of whimsy every time I'd discover a new area or have to wander around to find quests. Now I see all this space and the game holding your hand through it all (which you can ignore I suppose) and I'm just like "man, this seems like a lot of work for very little payoff." any enjoyment I used to have of the early to mid-game is pretty much gone.
> 
> I gues I'm just getting old, but the silver lining is that I won't be paying a monthly sub and the cost of the latest expansion.
> 
> Anyway, Dishonored is calling my name again and I picked up Nier a little while ago. Time to see what all the fuss is about.



Talent trees in WoW are a total joke now. I remember the GOOD OLD DAYS where you had to spend a point every level and some were passive buffs and some were near-useless, etc. Now it's like, they stripped out all of that, gave the good passive skills as something you automatically get for choosing a "spec," and then the good "capper" skills you get at certain level increments automatically with some tiny choices involved. It's very boring. But, on the other hand, you don't get things like people that don't know what they're doing spending points in melee skills on their hunter, like I remember doing in classic.

WoW's leveling zones are honestly a hell of a lot better now than they were in classic. I remember in classic/BC/WOTLK, there were many zones that just plain weren't worth going in cause their quests were too sparse and/or terrible to be worth the time if you were in a hurry. This was especially a problem in classic/BC, where you'd have to bridge the gaps between good zones by just grinding unless you wanted to spend 20 minutes on boats and running past huge scary mobs to get to the other acceptable level-appropriate zone which happened to be on the ass-end of the other continent. It was like, Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Duskwood, Stranglethorn Vale, the Wetlands were pretty good, and pretty much everything else was terrible at those low levels. If you leveled a night elf, you pretty much were stuck trying to run your lowbie character through the wetlands without dying to get to decent leveling areas. Horde characters were miserable if you played in Kalimdor, too. Since Cataclysm, all the zones have actual questlines with ridiculous things that happen in them, and no zones are useless for leveling anymore. It's just the progressive changes since Cataclysm have made it that if you complete ONE zone you're probably already outleveled for the next few zones and there's no point in doing anything unless you're trying for achievements.

Oh, and I agree with mathemagician that the classes are radically more fun to play at low levels. Like, back in BC when I leveled a priest, it was total misery. You had to stack spell damage gear (since spell damage and spell healing used to be different categories of stat) and then bubble yourself and spam smite, which did practically no damage and made everything take an eternity. Or, you could try and heal as a shadow priest in instances, which really did not work at all, and in that case you'd also have to have a set of "healing gear." Combining spell power into a single stat alone made things better, and then they made sure that all classes had viable means of doing enough damage to kill things. Leveling a warrior of ANY class used to be a nightmare in classic, too - you could go prot, and seriously take forever to kill anything (tanks did next to no damage until I think WOTLK, maybe Cata), or you could die almost instantly as an MS warrior or Fury warrior since they had no self-preservation skills until a really high level. And god forbid you want to respec, cause you'd have to fly to a city, and then pay an exponentially increasing amount of gold, which you probably wouldn't even be able to afford until you were max level anyway.



MFB said:


> Yeah, GoT really is the feudal era Japan AC game that we'll never get, and it does it better than Ubi could ever have hoped to. The quality of life mechanics they included instead of having them be a perk that you need to unlock (i.e. collecting resources while on horseback) as well put it above Horizon Zero Dawn as an open world game.



I prefer Horizon Zero Dawn cause the gameplay is a lot more exciting IMO and I really like fighting huge robot dinosaurs, but you're right about that particular QOL change.

One of the best things about GoT is the length of it. It's enough to feel substantial and like you got your money's worth, but not enough to be like "oh my god, really?! I have to do 50 more of these things?!" like you are with the trash collectible minigames in AC: Valhalla.

Also, of course, the visuals are gorgeous. It's probably the best looking game on the system in terms of environmental beauty.


----------



## Choop

Ha I resubbed to WoW just last night out of curiosity to see what has changed about the classes. Mostly I was just bored, but may try and level up a character from scratch to see how the leveling experience is now -- feels strange having the levels squished so hard but with so much content in the game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Recommendation request: As someone playing on a PS5 (thus having PS4 backwards compatibility), what's a good place to start with the Ys series?



Either Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana or Ys Memories of Celceta are fine choices. Celceta is a Vita port and pretty much a proto version of Dana, but it's still perfectly playable if you plan on playing Dana first.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> Ha I resubbed to WoW just last night out of curiosity to see what has changed about the classes. Mostly I was just bored, but may try and level up a character from scratch to see how the leveling experience is now -- feels strange having the levels squished so hard but with so much content in the game.



It's kind of annoying, really. If you're trying to revisit the old areas on a nostalgia trip, you'll probably complete about 3 of them before you're a high enough level to go to outland, upon which you'll probably complete 2 zones before you're high enough for Northrend, etc. Maybe if you didn't use ANY of the level-boosting gear (heirlooms) you could do about 5 of them.

It's annoying having the expansion content take so much more time since at this point the basic leveling areas are more polished than anything in Outland or Northrend. And then, having to go through that damn jade forest on every single character got really old, really quick. The sad thing is there is actually good stuff in the Pandaria expansion as far as zones/quests, but you will never see it if you're trying to level as quickly as possible. I have only leveled one character past 100, but I definitely didn't feel any excitement about having to grind through those new zones on all 10 characters. Especially with how insanely slow the rep grinds were compared to Legion (I think you were getting ~75 rep per quest per faction when it was like ~250 in Legion). After a couple months of daily quests, I think I still hadn't hit exalted with a single faction of the several required for the damn flying mount. That was a big part of why I quit!


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> It's kind of annoying, really. If you're trying to revisit the old areas on a nostalgia trip, you'll probably complete about 3 of them before you're a high enough level to go to outland, upon which you'll probably complete 2 zones before you're high enough for Northrend, etc. Maybe if you didn't use ANY of the level-boosting gear (heirlooms) you could do about 5 of them.
> 
> It's annoying having the expansion content take so much more time since at this point the basic leveling areas are more polished than anything in Outland or Northrend. And then, having to go through that damn jade forest on every single character got really old, really quick. The sad thing is there is actually good stuff in the Pandaria expansion as far as zones/quests, but you will never see it if you're trying to level as quickly as possible. I have only leveled one character past 100, but I definitely didn't feel any excitement about having to grind through those new zones on all 10 characters. Especially with how insanely slow the rep grinds were compared to Legion (I think you were getting ~75 rep per quest per faction when it was like ~250 in Legion). After a couple months of daily quests, I think I still hadn't hit exalted with a single faction of the several required for the damn flying mount. That was a big part of why I quit!



Yeahhhh, Pandaria was a great expansion IMO, but they really padded out the rep grinding to an insane degree. I came into Pandaria a bit late, and was only able to get decent rep when all of the catch up mechanics were implemented and the expansion was almost over with haha. 

I get what you mean about it feeling kind of lonely anymore as well in one of your previous posts...for an MMO there is a weird lack of community feeling. Maybe it's just a matter of landing a good guild, I dunno. All my friends have jumped ship to other servers and faction-changed as well(traitors).

The flight restriction bugs me to no end -- flying is one of the best things about the game (well IMO anyway) and now it's always locked behind a ridiculous achievement, that you have to complete for each new expansion pack's continent. Weak .-.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> The flight restriction bugs me to no end -- flying is one of the best things about the game (well IMO anyway) and now it's always locked behind a ridiculous achievement, that you have to complete for each new expansion pack's continent. Weak .-.



It was a little bit locked ever since the beginning. The amount of gold that you could get quickly back in BC games was like, nonexistant, so I'd guess probably 1% of the playerbase had flying mounts that moved at more than 80%. It was easy to get that 80% mount, but it crawled. The flying mounts were SLOWER than the epic ground mounts until you bought "epic flying" for 5000 gold. It was something. I remember using my ground mount whenever I thought I could get through areas without getting knocked off since it was considerably faster. It was a huge deal when you could finally afford that epic flying. I think today it's 150% for cheap flying and the same 280% for the next level. But it's a LOT more affordable.

IIRC you had to get max level in Northrend before you could unlock flying there and that was it. Maybe the same for cataclysm? I forget. But the stupid huge, time-locked (it wasn't even POSSIBLE to get the achievement until the first big update months into the expansion) achievements required for it definitely were there in WoD and Legion. Not sure about the Panda one.


----------



## Choop

Honestly I don't remember about Pandaria--I want to say it was similar to WotLK and Cata. I remember reading that Blizzard was apprehensive about allowing flying at all in WoD for a number of reasons. Maybe it'd make the areas feel too easy or too small, but w/e flying is rad, lol. Mostly it's just annoying having to grind rep for those achievements that require it, because there's only so much you can get in a day a lot of the time and even then it's very tedious.


----------



## wankerness

Still cranking out Dark Souls trophies, I missed most of the covenants it seems. And damn, Four Kings was a lot harder in NG+ than the first go-round! I had to wear havels and facetank almost everything while sitting on top of them and spamming them with all the good pyromancies I had just to get past the first two, and barely killed the last two with melee flailing before getting overwhelmed (at least 5 spawned total). Ah well. It's good to have a better perspective on the difficulty of these things to give me an idea of what it would have been like if I hadn't grinded for a really long time on the first playthrough. It's kind of an exciting fight, it's just too bad any fun/excitement to be had is so spoiled by the run back if you die.

New Londo is a terrible area, mainly cause of the seemingly arbitrary decision to not put a goddam bonfire in it. I get making you run back from the beginning of the area, I guess, but sticking that huge elevator from firelink first? Sadistic. I got through it as fast as possible and am definitely not coming back here on NG++ if I can avoid having to kill Gwyn a third time.  But gawd, I'm coming up soon on the worst of the worst areas, the tomb and the crystal caves and the tree. And this time I have to successfully cut off Seath's tail! 

The DARKNESS of dark souls 1 is also ridiculous. 2 cranked it up in some areas, but also made torches very useful and encouraged you to use them. 1 is just sort of a morass at times that you just can't see through, and even with light items like the sunlight maggot you can barely see anything. And the primitive, wonky lighting engine just makes things worse, especially in blight town.

In other news, I got my girlfriend to try West of Loathing as a first RPG, seems amusing so far. The combat is very...fast, like enemies typically either kill her or die in 3 hits. I haven't played it myself. Has anyone else gone through it?


----------



## MFB

Man, it makes me feel both incredibly old but also glad to hearing that the Loathing series is still going. I remember taking turns playing Kingdom of Loathing on the PC our Major had during ROTC free-time in high school a year after it came out, that shit was so unlike anything else we had ever seen or played and it was a riot. I ended up ascending probably 2 or three times with the same character, I believe I went for one of the Moxie classes the first time around and had a couple different armor sets that gave you perks like Extra Turns or so on.


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## SamSam

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Awesome!  Yeah, the game is a slooooow burn, but the ramp towards the end is so huge it's great. And it takes some monumental balls to ending a game like that.
> 
> I'm assuming Cold Steel 1 is your gateway to the Trails series. I did the same myself, got it for a Christmas bargain sale and got hooked. Reason that I'm mentioning this is that there's a massive caveat that looms over the games. You may notice subtle hints in the background, but by the third game, every gun in Checkhov's Armoury is being fired at your direction.
> 
> You may have already noticed a bunch of cities and factions being mentioned and certain minor characters that look like key players in the story. That's because Trails games share one whole continuity beginning with Trails In The Sky. And while Cold Steel 1 is pretty kind to newcomers, the deeper you go, the more apparent it is to get the full backstory from previous games.
> 
> It's a big investment, but having said that; trying to play 5 100 hour JRPGs before continuing the current story is a ridiculous ask.  Hell, 2 of the games aren't officially available outside fan translations, so I just watched a bunch of story recaps on youtube.  No rush to do this of course, but you'll know when you'll start wanting to know the full picture around the end of CS2.



Yup started on CS1, I might just order the physical copy of CS2 off of amazon and get back into it.

I had a look at the previous games and might give them a try afterwards. I'll have to look at emulating the vita games


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SamSam said:


> Yup started on CS1, I might just order the physical copy of CS2 off of amazon and get back into it.
> 
> I had a look at the previous games and might give them a try afterwards. I'll have to look at emulating the vita games



The Trails In The Sky trilogy are all available on Steam. The 2 Crossbell games are a bit trickier since they're not released outside Japan. Nihon Falcom are doing a remaster of the 2 games though it may be a long while before localization becomes even a thought at this stage. But there's a highly rated fan translation by a group called The Geofront so it's highly playable.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Man, it makes me feel both incredibly old but also glad to hearing that the Loathing series is still going. I remember taking turns playing Kingdom of Loathing on the PC our Major had during ROTC free-time in high school a year after it came out, that shit was so unlike anything else we had ever seen or played and it was a riot. I ended up ascending probably 2 or three times with the same character, I believe I went for one of the Moxie classes the first time around and had a couple different armor sets that gave you perks like Extra Turns or so on.



I've never heard of that game, interesting that this is a "spinoff" that came out 14 years later!! If Kingdom of Loathing came out a year or two earlier I probably would have done similar, it seems like something that would have been right up my alley in high school.


----------



## wankerness

Well, I finally finished up the platinum on Dark Souls. I burned through the first half of the game yesterday (undead burg through dark sun gwyndolin). I'm getting a bit more efficient at it, but I still occasionally got lost trying to remember where to go, ex missing the downward path next to capra demon's door. After 2.5 playthroughs, I do get more why the map for this game is so revered, but in terms of FUN, I'll take the constant bonfires and immediate warp availability of DS2/3 over this any time! And after doing them three times, I think Sen's Fortress and the rafter section of Anor Londo are by far the hardest sections, mechanically, of any of these games IMO, except for maybe the DS2 optional dlc boss areas. I mean, it's not the same kind of difficulty that you face in 2/3 where you're just constantly attacked by much more menacing enemies than 1's, but it's exactly the kind of thing I hate in videogames - super perilous platforming where even slightly shifting the stick the wrong direction instantly kills you.

Crystal Caverns wasn't as horrible as I remembered. Well, going to get the blue titanite slab was, but after getting the achievements for the weapon types that required it, I'd never have to go back there again, and to just get through the area it's very quick and direct. Still a terrible area, but it's really short and if you don't want the slab it's not difficult.

Duke's Archives was kind of a shitshow, though. Wow, was that a ton of enemies. If you go through it slowly and methodically it's fine, but start rushing at any point and you just get swarmed by those damn crystal guys or sniped by them, and if they get buffed by the casters, ooo boy are you done. And then I had to spend 2-3 hours farming the damn casters for the staff they drop!

The most aggravating thing about this game might be the amount of health titanite demons have. Well, not just health, but resistances. It feels like it takes 10 minutes to kill some of the later ones. And that one on the bridge in Lost Izalith is in such a horrible place that fighting him for 10 minutes there was just too stressful so I ended up just shooting him in the butt with arrows while he sat there every time after the first. :\ That's one good thing about this game, a lot of very bad stuff can be circumvented if you level up a bow. Like the Anor Londo archers!

Now that I'm done with these, and think I'm probably not going to bother with the DS2 faction rewards, I'm kind of at a loss of what to do next. I was looking through my game collection yesterday just going UGH at everything. Doom Eternal (stressed me out, but then again, after playing all these Fromsoft games, maybe it won't feel as bad), AC Valhalla (I am just boycotting this thing until they nerf the hamtunscire cairn), Sekiro (I think my reaction speeds are too slow to git gud at this), The Surge 1/2 (don't know anything about them besides they're "Soulslike"), Tales of Vesperia (on Switch so no trophies!!!), Mario 3d All Stars (might do some more mario galaxy, but didn't sound too appealing), Zelda Skyward Sword (SO TIRING TO PLAY), and then finally settled on Immortals: Fenyx Rising. Booted it up and after about 10 minutes I just couldn't deal with it. The minimap COVERED with icons that I didn't know the meanings of or whether I'd completed them or not just overloaded my brain. Dark Souls's total lack of maps I guess has blown out the section of my brain that was used to these damn Ubisoft thousands of icon maps.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, Duke's Archive is a rude awakening compared to the rest of the areas. It's not that's incredibly difficult, but it just cheeses you in the worst ways possible. I remember losing a lot of souls on the first couple runs through there and just being desperate to find the bonfire, which isn't anywhere nearby really in the beginning. IIRC, I think I just kept having to farm that area so I could level up because I was that close and then didn't have to worry about it again.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Imagine my surprise when I learned there was a boss you can fight by killing a major story NPC. Without a guide I never in a million years would have figured that out. Also, would have taken me forever to bump into painted world.


Looking back through posts here, I just saw this. I got to Gwyndolin by using a ring in the room with the big statue (which just is a regular illusionary wall in DS3) which takes you right to the bonfire for the tomb/covenant, and the fog gate for him is right behind. "Hold With Both Hands" lady is still alive and well even after killing that annoying freak. Now I'm kind of curious to try this alternate method of getting to him. Apparently Anor Londo turns dark, too?

I fought him legit the first time and it was really tedious and annoying. Second time I just got out a bow and arrow, walked up until he teleported, and then shot him from 100% to dead without him attacking. Nice AI, game.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Looking back through posts here, I just saw this. I got to Gwyndolin by using a ring in the room with the big statue (which just is a regular illusionary wall in DS3) which takes you right to the bonfire for the tomb/covenant, and the fog gate for him is right behind. "Hold With Both Hands" lady is still alive and well even after killing that annoying freak. Now I'm kind of curious to try this alternate method of getting to him. Apparently Anor Londo turns dark, too?
> 
> I fought him legit the first time and it was really tedious and annoying. Second time I just got out a bow and arrow, walked up until he teleported, and then shot him from 100% to dead without him attacking. Nice AI, game.



Anor Londo turns dark and you will get aggressively invaded by blue(I think) phantoms who equip a ring and just insta-ported to your world.


----------



## pecado




----------



## TedEH

I finally got to the end of Metroid Prime 2. I can see why some say this is the worst from the trilogy. The backtracking is less satisfying than the first since it seems like it's just there to be there. Lots of metroid games make the backtracking work because it's part of the core look up playing, and it recontextualizes places you've already been, but this game doesn't do much of that. The dark world stuff is an ok idea but maybe not pulled off as well as I'd have likes. It's not a bad game - most of the bosses seemed like an improvement over the first game, for example. But it was kind of a slog by the end.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Various Doom WAD's and mods. Also been playing almost nothing except boomer shooters and isometric RPG's. It says something when the only two games I'm looking forward to are Avowed and Elden Ring.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I finally got to the end of Metroid Prime 2. I can see why some say this is the worst from the trilogy. The backtracking is less satisfying than the first since it seems like it's just there to be there. Lots of metroid games make the backtracking work because it's part of the core look up playing, and it recontextualizes places you've already been, but this game doesn't do much of that. The dark world stuff is an ok idea but maybe not pulled off as well as I'd have likes. It's not a bad game - most of the bosses seemed like an improvement over the first game, for example. But it was kind of a slog by the end.



I never beat the game. I beat what i thought was the final boss, had almost no resources left, got the escape timer, got absolutely merc'd by dark samus thanks to no resources left from the previous boss, looked up that dark samus had a SECOND FORM and the timer continued through it, and just said screw this, it's too hard for me to care! Poor young me. I think I assumed you'd have to redo the first "final boss" too, but looking it up now, it doesn't appear that that is the case. Oh well.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I think I assumed you'd have to redo the first "final boss" too, but looking it up now, it doesn't appear that that is the case. Oh well.


I died on my first attempt of that surprise-final fight too and was ready to just call it there if I had to redo the whole ending sequence but they must have known. Someone knew that was going to be a pain point and had mercy. It restarts you from where the previous boss dies and the timer starts. That small bit of mercy and the fact that once you figure out the pattern it's not a hard boss made it ok. I'm glad I did it, but I'm also glad it's over, if that makes any sense.



TheBlackBard said:


> Various Doom WAD's and mods.


Difficult to argue with Doom. It's a classic for a reason.

I started Disco Elysium. It's..... interesting. Narrative heavy. Politics heavy. It's interesting mechanically in the sense that I can't reaaaally tell what the game is doing behind the scenes, and I have a feeling it would need multiple playthroughs to really understand how different character builds affect the game. The world feels small but deep. Well thought out. It's kinda like if you took all the depth of lore from your Skyrims and your Dragon Ages and jammed it into a Monkey Island game, but with mild RPG elements and "skills" that cleverly play out through the world and through dialogue.

I dig the art style. I dig the writing, mostly. Part of me wishes it was a bit less politics heavy. It has that sort of "everyone in the game has a deep political understanding that it assumes you'll be able to follow" thing going for it - and I feel like that's the one minor failing so far - accounting for people who don't think of the world in those terms. Sometimes I wonder if I missed things I was supposed to do or if the game really is just very open-ended, since it gives very few hints and almost no feedback as to whether or not you're doing the right thing. It feels intentional though. So much about the game is very clever and it gets points in my book for successfully hiding the game-mechanics of the world - it gets to maintain that mystery/vibe that you actually have no idea what could actually happen. I'm something like 10 hours in and have legitimately no idea what to expect from the next bunch of time spent with the game (other than it will involve a lot of dialogue and die rolls).


----------



## wankerness

I've been playing a lot of Immortals: Fenyx Rising. It's kind of between AC: Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, but more platformy than either (tons of jumping/gliding sections). Some of the physics puzzles are kind of interesting and creative, some of the obstacle course/race stuff is really annoying, etc. It suffers from Ubisoft syndrome of TOO MUCH SHIT. BOTW's vaults were great cause they were often like, one or two puzzles and that was it. This thing has probably about the same number of "Vaults" but every one of them has at least 3 puzzle/platforming sequences, and you quickly start to dread every time you find one instead of BOTW where it was fun to try and clear them all. 

It also suffers from Ubisoft syndrome with the frickin map. It has hundreds and hundreds of icons, as per usual with Ubisoft, but you have to scan for points of interest in this really non-console-friendly method of just looking around moving your cursor carefully to focus on things (even through walls, mountains, hundreds of yards away, etc). It's like they wanted to copy the BOTW thing where you could mark points of interest and go there, but couldn't abandon the zillions of icons shit, giving us a sort of "worst of both worlds" approach. Oh well.

It's a hell of a lot better than AC: Valhalla since the gameplay is more focused, the "minigames" are VERY minor and non-annoying, and the map seems to be a lot smaller (albeit still way too big).


----------



## Werecow

I gave Sekiro another whirl. Still came away mainly bored by it. I enjoy a few of the segments, picking stealth routes around, but they don't last long enough before an annoying boss battle comes up. I learn the boss fight, kill them, don't feel any real excitement from doing so or that it was worth the time doing that, and rinse and repeat. The level design mostly feels kinda average and sort of a funnel towards the next boss/mini boss fight, and the normal combat doesn't last long enough. The only enjoyment i get from the game is picking my stealth routes.

The annoying thing is Jedi Fallen Order is one of my favourite games, i got Sekiro for the similarities to that. In Sekiro I'd really like the exploration fighting of the main levels to be both a lot harder and last longer, and the bosses to be less of a "main event" thing. And yeh, i did just try fighting through the levels instead of pure stealth.

Trying to decide if i should just delete the game from my Steam account  I've never been tempted to do that with any game before.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I gave Sekiro another whirl. Still came away mainly bored by it. I enjoy a few of the segments, picking stealth routes around, but they don't last long enough before an annoying boss battle comes up. I learn the boss fight, kill them, don't feel any real excitement from doing so or that it was worth the time doing that, and rinse and repeat. The level design mostly feels kinda average and sort of a funnel towards the next boss/mini boss fight, and the normal combat doesn't last long enough. The only enjoyment i get from the game is picking my stealth routes.
> 
> The annoying thing is Jedi Fallen Order is one of my favourite games, i got Sekiro for the similarities to that. In Sekiro I'd really like the exploration fighting of the main levels to be both a lot harder and last longer, and the bosses to be less of a "main event" thing. And yeh, i did just try fighting through the levels instead of pure stealth.



I'm not sure what game I'd compare the gameplay of Jedi: Fallen Order most directly to, but Sekiro it ain't. I dunno. I would say it's probably at least as much Uncharted/Tomb Raider reboot as it is Dark Souls. The only thing I really found "soulslike" was the way it copied the "bonfire" mechanic from Fromsoft games. I guess the way you can get messed up by regular enemies if you play too sloppily is also kinda like Dark Souls, as is the fact that the unpredictable animal enemies are far more likely to hurt you than any of the "human" enemies!

I think that you might get more out of something like Dark Souls 3 since the levels are more of the main focus, and similar to J:FO you eventually get extremely powerful (though that game is much more of a cakewalk). Sekiro seemed like it mainly just forced you to learn the parry system and play it like a rhythm game no matter what.

Or maybe, if you like the way Jedi Fallen Order makes you run all the way back through the level when you finish it, and then all the way through it and back again if you missed something, you'd like Dark Souls 1!



Werecow said:


> Trying to decide if i should just delete the game from my Steam account  I've never been tempted to do that with any game before.



Why would you do that? That seems very...petty. Just uninstall it!

Regarding Sekiro remorse, I had a friend that was very bad at videogames that mainly played Jrpgs and Yakuza games on easy, that one day I noticed had bought that game. I immediately messaged him and went WHAT WERE YOU THINKING and he was like "it looked like a fun ninja game!!! What the hell is this shit?!" I don't think he ever got out of the first level!


----------



## TedEH

I think Steam lets you hide certain titles. I dunno why you'd want to completely remove your license for a game.


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## wankerness

I'm glad I didn't remove anything from my Steam account. I now have some games that I bought through Steam years ago that Steam then lost licenses for. Since they're still associated with my account, I can still redownload them through steam. If I'd taken more drastic measures, I'd be out in the cold. I'd have to get the EA storefront and buy them through that!


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I'm not sure what game I'd compare the gameplay of Jedi: Fallen Order most directly to, but Sekiro it ain't. I dunno. I would say it's probably at least as much Uncharted/Tomb Raider reboot as it is Dark Souls. The only thing I really found "soulslike" was the way it copied the "bonfire" mechanic from Fromsoft games. I guess the way you can get messed up by regular enemies if you play too sloppily is also kinda like Dark Souls, as is the fact that the unpredictable animal enemies are far more likely to hurt you than any of the "human" enemies!
> 
> I think that you might get more out of something like Dark Souls 3 since the levels are more of the main focus, and similar to J:FO you eventually get extremely powerful (though that game is much more of a cakewalk). Sekiro seemed like it mainly just forced you to learn the parry system and play it like a rhythm game no matter what.
> 
> Or maybe, if you like the way Jedi Fallen Order makes you run all the way back through the level when you finish it, and then all the way through it and back again if you missed something, you'd like Dark Souls 1!
> 
> 
> 
> Why would you do that? That seems very...petty. Just uninstall it!
> 
> Regarding Sekiro remorse, I had a friend that was very bad at videogames that mainly played Jrpgs and Yakuza games on easy, that one day I noticed had bought that game. I immediately messaged him and went WHAT WERE YOU THINKING and he was like "it looked like a fun ninja game!!! What the hell is this shit?!" I don't think he ever got out of the first level!



The parrying in Fallen Order is pretty Sekiro-like. Though in Fallen Order it's a choice to play like that. Sekiro for me is actually a really weird mixture of actually being too easy mainly, and then not enjoying the boss fights (which are hard). I'm not rage quitting them, i've done a few, but i don't get any enjoyment from finishing them (which seems to be the thing people say to look forward to when frustrated with it).

Fallen Order did fighting groups of different enemies way better, which i feel is missing from Sekiro as well. Half of it is the controls and half the sole concentration on parrying like you said. So the game sorta forces you to do some stealth, then becomes too easy for me. Fighting multiple samurai in the castle is an absolute shitshow for example, wrestling with the control/camera system while 3 or 4 overlapping rhythm games are slowly bumping shoulders with each other and jerking/glitching around in front of you, like the AI doesn't know what to do when they collide. It's like the combat/gameplay system just doesn't work at all in some situations, especially where the tight camera FOV is restricted by scenery as well. People say to run away in those situations, but it was really fun fighting groups in Fallen Order.

I just guess i'm really disappointed because lots of people suggest Sekiro to fill the void of Fallen Order (in a pure combat way).


----------



## wankerness

After watching videos of the guardian ape fight in Sekiro, I'm pretty sure I don't even want to try playing it. Parrying perfectly a few times is one thing, doing it for five minutes in a row is entirely another!! And he's not even considered the hardest boss, just the most infamous!


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> After watching videos of the guardian ape fight in Sekiro, I'm pretty sure I don't even want to try playing it. Parrying perfectly a few times is one thing, doing it for five minutes in a row is entirely another!! And he's not even considered the hardest boss, just the most infamous!


I just never stop running around and attack when i can, gotta love that unlimited stamina. Second phase is easier too, that big overhead attack is super easy to parry + do crazy posture damage (with or without the spear attachment).


----------



## StevenC

Played the Bravely Default II demos the past couple of days and now I'm super excited for the end of the month.


----------



## Santuzzo

I am still playing Far Cry 4 (on PS4), probably my favorite game. I suck at gaming and I don't game all that much, like there may be months without any gaming and then I'll sit and play FC4 for 3-4 hours straight on a Friday or Saturday night. So, the games last me forever, I have not finished a single one of the games I have for my PS4...lol.
Just got Division 2 recently as well as Star Wars Squadrons and Call of Duty- Infinite Warfare, but still mostly playing Far Cry 4.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Came out of the fridge just to post about Cold Steel 4, aka the game that never ends from a series that goes on and on my friend. 

I'm pretty sure I'm at the avengers endgame stage. Certainly feels like it, but then a ton of side stuff is still thrown at you just to delay the inevitable. All the Persona style Bonds and Romancing is done and out, which is nice, but really an excuse to overpower the protagonist. And this is where the real jrpg fun starts, trying to find character builds that break the game.  

Funny since I was rather traditionalist in the first 2 games, which probably explains why I had a hard time with the final bosses.  By the third was when I really started paying attention to building. It's handy since this particular game has it's moments where you're forced with a certain party for story purposes, hence you can't keep the characters you don't like on bench for too long, and the difficulty ramps up suddenly on certain bosses. And while here there's way too many characters to keep focus, hence more material grinding to keep up the upkeep, I still find it good fun since there's a ton of possibilities for everyone. Some are more obvious than others, physical dudes were designed to spam their super attacks, some battery characters, speed/evasion tanks, mage spell spams etc. 

I've read in some circles that the building the main character into a mage with 2 key items from bonding that completely busts the game. Which is odd when he's designed like every scruffy haired, katana wielding anime power fantasy ever, the last thing you'd impulsively do is put the sword a way and make him cast spells. I missed one of the items anyway so I'll just stick to speed/evasion tanking for now. 

I'm getting used to the quasi Magic The Gathering style mini game but the Tetris/Puyo Puyo game gets infuriating towards the latter levels. But I guess that's how these kinds of puzzle games hook you in. And every time I lost (especially now) it doesn't really make me want to stop but challenge again and again until I get a win.

I'm going to try to finish this behemoth by the end of the month and it'll be out of the Nihon Falcom train for a while. I've just got the Bloodstained Classic mode update, and that game with Ichibum and his crew won't play it self. That ought to keep me busy before I tackle Ys IX, and well long before the next Trails game is translated and localised, from which I hear, is even bigger than this one...


----------



## Mathemagician

I’ve been playing the new CoD. Haven’t touched the campaign just multiplayer with friends. It still feels great to play. Also zombies is hard AF. Def nothing like Left 4 Dead. Which I honestly wish someone would steal the idea and do something with it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> I’ve been playing the new CoD. Haven’t touched the campaign just multiplayer with friends. It still feels great to play. Also zombies is hard AF. Def nothing like Left 4 Dead. Which I honestly wish someone would steal the idea and do something with it.


Turtle Rock ( guys who made L4D) actually have a modern spiritual successor to L4D that's in alpha right now and is supposed to be coming out this summer. It's called Back 4 Blood.


----------



## BlackMastodon

There's also Vermintide 1 and 2 from Fat Shark if you like a Warhammer flavoured L4D that's good fun. The same dev is working on a Warhammer 40k version called Dark Tide that's releasing sometime this year.


----------



## Mathemagician

KnightBrolaire said:


> Turtle Rock ( guys who made L4D) actually have a modern spiritual successor to L4D that's in alpha right now and is supposed to be coming out this summer. It's called Back 4 Blood.



Well that’s a day 5 purchase. I like to wait a week to see reviews. Pre-ordering is for chumps. 



BlackMastodon said:


> There's also Vermintide 1 and 2 from Fat Shark if you like a Warhammer flavoured L4D that's good fun. The same dev is working on a Warhammer 40k version called Dark Tide that's releasing sometime this year.



Oooooooooh. Are those games good? Cause I’ll check it out if so.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Well that’s a day 5 purchase. I like to wait a week to see reviews. Pre-ordering is for chumps.
> 
> 
> 
> Oooooooooh. Are those games good? Cause I’ll check it out if so.


The Vermintide games are awesome, especially 2. A bit grindy but they have a lot more depth/replayability than L4D2 ever did imo.


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> The Vermintide games are awesome, especially 2. A bit grindy but they have a lot more depth/replayability than L4D2 ever did imo.


+1. L4D got boring after maybe 10 hours for me but Vermintide has some fun progression to keep you going. 

Also hats.


----------



## Mathemagician

I see “hats” and that makes me think TF2 on steam. I mostly play on console. So is it a game that’s way better due to mods/free user made content? 

And I actually loved the L4D series, just needed more people to play with.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> I see “hats” and that makes me think TF2 on steam. I mostly play on console. So is it a game that’s way better due to mods/free user made content?
> 
> And I actually loved the L4D series, just needed more people to play with.


No it's more like L4D with diablo type randomized unique gear and customizability in terms of builds/aesthetic.


----------



## Mathemagician

Speak of the metal devil it’s on sale on PS4 for like $10. $15 for the premium. I’ll give it a shot at that price.


----------



## Empryrean

I'vebeen having a hoot playing Typing of the Dead as I test out a new keyboard I just bought


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I busted out my cd-rom of Typing of the Dead this summer to encourage my girlfriend to up her typing speed. It is still hilarious, and somewhat surprisingly works on Windows 10 just fine.


----------



## mongey

Started control as it was free this month and it’s not bad. Liked the first hour. Like the narrative style and the combat is fun.


----------



## wankerness

Control is a pretty good game with some bullshit boss encounters later on, and one of the worst-optimized engines in existence. It's ridiculous that the game requires absolute top-of-the-line hardware to run smoothly, and even then it really doesn't look that good compared to games that have much lower system requirements. On a PS4 pro, it had framerate crashes all over the place.

The DLC is also a bit much. I'd say stick with the base game, it's a pretty quality experience.

Speaking of games that could be shorter, Immortals: Fenyx Rising's sheer number of puzzles is getting fucking annoying. I'm just starting to leave vaults the second I enter if it's a long string of puzzles instead of a combat one. They're often just sadistic and horrible, and the fact ALL of them have three puzzles of increasing shittiness make it three times as tedious. Just start with the hard one and stop wasting so much of my time! My god. Like, look at videos of things like Task of Heracles or Torment of Ikaros (getting the bonus chest there) or whatever. And the main "story dungeons" are even worse - they easily take multiple hours if you don't look up solutions online, cause they're filled with illogical, complex puzzle after puzzle. If that's what you like, this is the game for you. If not, ugh. I generally like the game, but it's getting worse and worse the further I get into it. The current quest I'm on, I'm just supposed to climb a damn mountain, but it's taken over 3 hours so far cause you keep getting sidetracked by puzzle bullshit and the path is in no way clear if you get turned around. Gah. It's making me long for the comparative brevity of Breath of the Wild (HA!). At least the combat here is far more engaging and fun, and your weapons don't break!


----------



## Ralyks

Control was my game of 2019. I love having the Ultimate Edition for Free in PS5, I'd love to playthrough again and finally play the DLC as well. I'm surprised it you had so much performance issues @wankerness , I think I experienced a drop in framerate literally twice through my entire playthrough on a PS4 Pro.

Anyway, just got to Act III of Ghost of Tsushima and at the 39 hour mark. My only gripe early on was the story was kind of meh, but it actually started to get interest and a bit heavy once you really go into Act II. That said, think I'm gonna try to have this game beat by the time my holiday weekend is over.

Also, after ordering this game and it apparently getting lost in shipment, I finally got a copy of 13 Sentinals: Aegis Rim. I kept hearing hype about it on the Giant Bombcast, and watching some video got me interesting. I blame Atlus making stories with Japanese Anime Teenagers saving the world being interesting, as show by my love of the Persona series. Someone please tell me I made a wise purchase.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> Control was my game of 2019


I don't know much about the game but the marketing hit me as a "this will be very flashy and polished but not have much to say or add to gaming outside of that". The flashiness might be enough to sell me on trying it if it goes on sale though. (Actually it is on sale right now, but too much on the backlog and not enough interest to justify it right now.) Is the game better than you might think that I think it is?

I've been continuing to play Disco Elysium and I'm seeing why this got so much praise when it was newer. I complained before that the game is very political (and it is), but as you get farther in it becomes clear that the game has a lot more to say than just political philosophizing. And some of the story beats hit pretty hard. And the characters are believable and likeable. And the more I play, the more I like the way the dialogue is handled. I'm not at the end of the game yet, but I'd be ready to recommended it already on just what I've seen so far.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> Is the game better than you might think that I think it is?



I mean, I'm not really sure. I personally didn't think it was "flashy", I just thought the gameplay was really enjoyable (especially after you get some of the abilities as you progress), story was interesting, the voice acting performances were pretty good, and the atmosphere was excellent. Also, I'm kinda ADD when it comes to reading lore collectables, but this game I read damn near everything. I say it's worth a shot, especially if it's on sale. The Ultimate Edition seems to pop up for 20 bucks pretty regularly.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Also, after ordering this game and it apparently getting lost in shipment, I finally got a copy of 13 Sentinals: Aegis Rim. I kept hearing hype about it on the Giant Bombcast, and watching some video got me interesting. I blame Atlus making stories with Japanese Anime Teenagers saving the world being interesting, as show by my love of the Persona series. Someone please tell me I made a wise purchase.



I've heard nothing but great thing about 13 Sentinels and it certainly looks like a unique experience. Depends if you like Visual Novels and RTS/Tower Defense style gameplay through the JRPG filter (perhaps mix between Front Mission and Valkyria Chronicles) presented in a slow burn story. 

I might give it a crack myself when time allows.


----------



## TedEH

TedEH said:


> I'm not at the end of the game yet


I don't think I realized how close I was to the end of the game. Very good game, but the ending came a bit abruptly. I knew it was coming, but it just sort of happened. Anti-climactic maybe? It's a very good game that does a lot of things very well - it didn't really feel "challenging" in a game-y way, but the role-playing element is convincing. It's the kind of game that might draw comparisons to watching a movie, but a movie you're very clearly an actor in. I don't know how to describe it properly, but if you're into narrative games or adventure games, I think it's a unique game worth playing.


----------



## Choop

I'm about halfway through Blasphemous; a 2D metroidvania with Dark Souls style death and retrieval stuff, and a really bleak atmosphere. You can tell it was heavily Dark Souls inspired in many elements, but it also borrows a few things from Castlevania. Some of the imagery reminds me of Berserk as well. At first I wasn't sure if I liked it much exactly...thinking that Hollow Knight did this kind of thing way better, but the game picked up and is at least enjoyable enough to complete! It's difficult but not overly so, about as difficult as Castlevania I guess.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Control was my game of 2019. I love having the Ultimate Edition for Free in PS5, I'd love to playthrough again and finally play the DLC as well. I'm surprised it you had so much performance issues @wankerness , I think I experienced a drop in framerate literally twice through my entire playthrough on a PS4 Pro.
> 
> Anyway, just got to Act III of Ghost of Tsushima and at the 39 hour mark. My only gripe early on was the story was kind of meh, but it actually started to get interest and a bit heavy once you really go into Act II. That said, think I'm gonna try to have this game beat by the time my holiday weekend is over.
> 
> Also, after ordering this game and it apparently getting lost in shipment, I finally got a copy of 13 Sentinals: Aegis Rim. I kept hearing hype about it on the Giant Bombcast, and watching some video got me interesting. I blame Atlus making stories with Japanese Anime Teenagers saving the world being interesting, as show by my love of the Persona series. Someone please tell me I made a wise purchase.



My suspicion is you are more forgiving of performance issues. Mine would slow down a bit almost anytime I was in a big firefight and objects in the room started getting destroyed, especially if I was using powers instead of just the gun. Like, dips down to 10-15 FPS in some cases. It was BAD. The 90% of the game you're just wandering around abandoned hallways or fighting one or two dudes at a time it's fine.

Control took me a long time to get into since the characters and plot are SO flat and the plot is so intentionally obfuscated. Like, characters only say vague stuff and you have to dig through log files to figure out anything that's going on. I know a lot of people really LIKE that about it, so it's definitely a matter of preference instead of it actually being a negative quality. And I mean, it's not as bad as Dark Souls or Bloodborne in the "incoherent plot" department (I didn't care there cause I just didn't care about the "plot" and viewed them as pure atmosphere/mechanics sort of games). However, the main character in Control is a complete charisma vacuum that talks mainly in a slow monotone (as does everyone else) and as a result I found it impossible to care about the plot and felt like the voiceacting was Silent Hill 1 level, and there are a LOT of scenes where you have to listen to people talk. The gameplay's the star of the show. I mean, I bothered getting the platinum medal on it so I definitely liked it alright, but I would not have put it as my GOTY.

The one section of the game I hated was that optional boss that you have to fight on moving platforms. If this game had the more standard checkpoint system in modern games instead of the Dark Souls system of kicking you back to the last checkpoint and making all enemies respawn every time you die (not to mention also making you lose currency), it would have been a lot less frustrating. Having to run all the way back and do the first part of that boss repeatedly was infuriating. Though again, it only took like 3-4 attempts, so I guess it was easy by Dark Souls standards and good for steeling my nerves for those games. 

The other bosses I had a lot of trouble with were the


Spoiler



clone of yourself


 and that optional floaty guy. The latter I just fought VERY VERY slowly and carefully and I think it seriously took 10-15 minutes. First one just took a few tries. Good that the game requires some degree of skill, but it could be very annoying if you weren't used to that kind of Dark Souls thing with having to do everything all over again every time you made a mistake. I definitely was not.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> My suspicion is you are more forgiving of performance issues.



Seriously, I heard plenty about the console versions having performance issues, and I literally experienced slowdown twice, MAYBE 3 Times. Trust me, I just sunk 40 hours into Cyberpunk recently, I can tell when there's issues.


----------



## Spicypickles

Just got resident evil 0 and OG resident evil HD remakes for the sexbox. Through 0 already; I played these way back when and loved em, but never finished. I’m basically picking the game up 25 years later.


----------



## SpaceDock

I think I am about half way through The Medium and it’s been great. For fans of silent hill or resident evil. Not much combat which is a real nice change of pace for a creepy horror game.


----------



## Werecow

I just saw a review of Thief 1 & 2 on youtube, and i'm immediately starting a playthrough of 1 (and probably 2 after). It's almost annoying when that happens to me  it happens quite regularly with lots of old games.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> My suspicion is you are more forgiving of performance issues. Mine would slow down a bit almost anytime I was in a big firefight and objects in the room started getting destroyed, especially if I was using powers instead of just the gun. Like, dips down to 10-15 FPS in some cases. It was BAD. The 90% of the game you're just wandering around abandoned hallways or fighting one or two dudes at a time it's fine.
> 
> Control took me a long time to get into since the characters and plot are SO flat and the plot is so intentionally obfuscated. Like, characters only say vague stuff and you have to dig through log files to figure out anything that's going on. I know a lot of people really LIKE that about it, so it's definitely a matter of preference instead of it actually being a negative quality. And I mean, it's not as bad as Dark Souls or Bloodborne in the "incoherent plot" department (I didn't care there cause I just didn't care about the "plot" and viewed them as pure atmosphere/mechanics sort of games). However, the main character in Control is a complete charisma vacuum that talks mainly in a slow monotone (as does everyone else) and as a result I found it impossible to care about the plot and felt like the voiceacting was Silent Hill 1 level, and there are a LOT of scenes where you have to listen to people talk. The gameplay's the star of the show. I mean, I bothered getting the platinum medal on it so I definitely liked it alright, but I would not have put it as my GOTY.
> 
> The one section of the game I hated was that optional boss that you have to fight on moving platforms. If this game had the more standard checkpoint system in modern games instead of the Dark Souls system of kicking you back to the last checkpoint and making all enemies respawn every time you die (not to mention also making you lose currency), it would have been a lot less frustrating. Having to run all the way back and do the first part of that boss repeatedly was infuriating. Though again, it only took like 3-4 attempts, so I guess it was easy by Dark Souls standards and good for steeling my nerves for those games.
> 
> The other bosses I had a lot of trouble with were the
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> clone of yourself
> 
> 
> and that optional floaty guy. The latter I just fought VERY VERY slowly and carefully and I think it seriously took 10-15 minutes. First one just took a few tries. Good that the game requires some degree of skill, but it could be very annoying if you weren't used to that kind of Dark Souls thing with having to do everything all over again every time you made a mistake. I definitely was not.



That optional floaty guy was such a bitch of a fight. It seems ok at first and then the invisible enemies show up. The weird thing about the game is you see people having really bad trouble with a certain boss, but fly through others, and often the reverse is true for other people replying. I had trouble with Mould, but flew through the clock boss at my first attempt.

Overall i loved the game, mainly for the creepy atmostphere and weird lore. The combat was so much better and more varied than Alan Wake too. I tried that game just before Control and couldn't get through it with getting bored at the unchanging simplistic combat.


----------



## wankerness

Oh, I forgot about the clock boss. I remember my first attempt thinking "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE" but then looking up a strat online and easily doing it second attempt. 

Mold I beat first try because I already had the overpowered gun mod you get from throwing things in the furnace and it made it so I could pretty much just blast him in the face until he died. Having to reload would have probably meant trouble for me.


----------



## MFB

Fire up DS1 for the first time in a while since I was bored and figured why not try to wrap it up. Begrudgingly pushed through the Tomb of the Giants which is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever played through to date in the game. It's not until you actually get half way through it do you get some way to actually fucking see your way around; I don't think anyone is ever a +2 Chaos Servant to gain the Sunlight Maggot, or has Cast Light since you need to deal with the Golden Crystal Giant and dickhead Hydra, so the Skull Lantern is really the only way to get around.

The Gravelord Nito fight was a wash, but I guess I cheesed it by being super-over leveled by this point (at least I think I am, 89 going on to fight Bed of Chaos/Gwyn) and I used his own Gravelord Sword +3 against him. Everything I've heard about the BoC fight doesn't really thrill me for it, but if it means being able to finish the game than I'll power through it as the 2nd to last boss.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Fire up DS1 for the first time in a while since I was bored and figured why not try to wrap it up. Begrudgingly pushed through the Tomb of the Giants which is the dumbest fucking thing I've ever played through to date in the game. It's not until you actually get half way through it do you get some way to actually fucking see your way around; I don't think anyone is ever a +2 Chaos Servant to gain the Sunlight Maggot, or has Cast Light since you need to deal with the Golden Crystal Giant and dickhead Hydra, so the Skull Lantern is really the only way to get around.
> 
> The Gravelord Nito fight was a wash, but I guess I cheesed it by being super-over leveled by this point (at least I think I am, 89 going on to fight Bed of Chaos/Gwyn) and I used his own Gravelord Sword +3 against him. Everything I've heard about the BoC fight doesn't really thrill me for it, but if it means being able to finish the game than I'll power through it as the 2nd to last boss.



Just make sure with bed of chaos that you do what everyone does and save/quit every time you get to the next “stage.” I’ve never heard of anyone doing it all in one go without doing that, and it is easily the worst boss run back in the game (which is really saying something with competition like four kings).

i had a skull lantern before I got to tomb of the giants, somehow. Some enemy must drop them? I can imagine that place would sure be terrible without, though. I used the sunlight maggot on playthrough 2 and that was a lot better since those skull dogs and snipers are a nightmare on NG+ without a shield.


----------



## Ralyks

Werecow said:


> That optional floaty guy was such a bitch of a fight.



He was pretty much the last thing I had to do to get the Platinum. That boss was an asshole.

Anyway, saw credits for Ghost of Tsushima. The Platinum seems doable if I wanted to keep going, but I think I'm good for the time being and already promised a friend I'd long it to him. But great game, and definitely one of the more gorgeous games I've ever played. And for a story that seemed meh for the beginning, it definitely got better about halfway through the second act.

Anyway, debating if I want to sink time into a longer game like 13 Sentinels, or a few shorter games like Resident Evil 2 and Uncharted Lost Legacy. Because once Persona 5 Strikers and the PS5 version of Yakuza Like a Dragon come out, I'm probably going to be down those rabbit holes for a while.


----------



## Mathemagician

Demon’s Tilt. “Occult Pinball Action” on switch. It’s the most ridiculous pinball game I’ve ever played. And physics has no business being considered in this game. I killed the warlock and got extra points, then a hammer appeared and smashed my ball (you read that right) multiple times for extra points. Then there are the warp points to teleport your ball to attack the snake head on the third level of the 3-level table.

I wrote all that and still have no idea what’s going on when I play. Best $11 ever.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Just make sure with bed of chaos that you do what everyone does and save/quit every time you get to the next “stage.” I’ve never heard of anyone doing it all in one go without doing that, and it is easily the worst boss run back in the game (which is really saying something with competition like four kings).
> 
> i had a skull lantern before I got to tomb of the giants, somehow. Some enemy must drop them? I can imagine that place would sure be terrible without, though. I used the sunlight maggot on playthrough 2 and that was a lot better since those skull dogs and snipers are a nightmare on NG+ without a shield.



Yeah, the Necromancers in the Catacombs drop them as well, but I believe they're non-respawning enemies so if it doesn't drop then I think you're SOL. I know at one point I had one because I wondered if it would ever be useful, but I think I traded it to Snuggly for something and therefore now HAD to pick up the guaranteed one in TotG. It was a lot of wall hugging to get down to the first bonfire, and then I had to look up and see where that was in relation to Patches and the other lantern and I needed. 

Four Kings isn't a "bad" fight, I actually thought it was pretty unique as it's the same enemy each time but it continuously spawns and can overlap if you don't defeat the previous one quick enough. Only gripe with it was the absolute slog it takes to get from the bonfire back TO the fight if you die (thankfully I beat him under a handful of times).


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I meant the "boss run-back" as in just what happens if you die. I definitely think Four Kings themselves are one of the best bosses. On NG+ it created a lot of panic since I wasn't able to easily kill them before the next spawned like on NG.

Bed of Chaos, on the other hand, is actually a bad boss fight! I was so relieved on NG+ when I got through it with only one death (and that was on Phase 2 instead of the usual 3).


----------



## NotDonVito

Mathemagician said:


> Demon’s Tilt. “Occult Pinball Action” on switch. It’s the most ridiculous pinball game I’ve ever played. And physics has no business being considered in this game. I killed the warlock and got extra points, then a hammer appeared and smashed my ball (you read that right) multiple times for extra points. Then there are the warp points to teleport your ball to attack the snake head on the third level of the 3-level table.
> 
> I wrote all that and still have no idea what’s going on when I play. Best $11 ever.


Nice, been looking for a good pinball game on switch for a while. I moved about 3 months ago and can't find anywhere to play pinball irl, which sucks.


----------



## Werecow

Oh man. I just did the Thieves Guild mission. Every time i replay Thief it's like i've blocked my memory of it out on my previous playthrough to protect my brain.
It's still the most insane maze to find your way through in any game i've ever played. With miles of almost identical looking tunnels, and almost zero help apart from a very realistic but simplistic map (as in it's roughly drawn on paper and doesn't show where you are apart from the general massive section you're in), and a few hints you have to find on the way to get there. Then you have to do 2 different types of huge backtracks during the mission as well.

I've been doing it nearly all night


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Yeah, the Necromancers in the Catacombs drop them as well, but I believe they're non-respawning enemies so if it doesn't drop then I think you're SOL. I know at one point I had one because I wondered if it would ever be useful, but I think I traded it to Snuggly for something and therefore now HAD to pick up the guaranteed one in TotG. It was a lot of wall hugging to get down to the first bonfire, and then I had to look up and see where that was in relation to Patches and the other lantern and I needed.
> 
> Four Kings isn't a "bad" fight, I actually thought it was pretty unique as it's the same enemy each time but it continuously spawns and can overlap if you don't defeat the previous one quick enough. Only gripe with it was the absolute slog it takes to get from the bonfire back TO the fight if you die (thankfully I beat him under a handful of times).




SPOOOOIIIIIIILLLLLLEEEERR:



99% sure there is a bonfire like 3 feet from 4 kings. Like right around the corner. 



NotDonVito said:


> Nice, been looking for a good pinball game on switch for a while. I moved about 3 months ago and can't find anywhere to play pinball irl, which sucks.



Yeah I don’t even know if it has more than 1 board. As far as where it lands on the scale from Arcade-y Nonsense to full-on simulator it falls squarely in the arcade-y nonsense category and for that I love it.


----------



## MFB

Looking at the map online, since I was confusing which spiral staircase you have to fall down from, there is not. 

I'm pretty sure when I had to go my boss-run to them if I died, I did it from the bonfire between Dark Root Basin and the the entry to Valley of the Drakes; so down the elevator, across the bridge and past the gate, through the small ruins and the undead knights/spectres, then I'd hit the fog gate and yeet myself down as fast as I could since the spectres CAN hit through walls/fog gates.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, New Londo is (in)famous for not having a bonfire in it at all, unless you count the one that spawns in the abyss after you beat the 4 kings. If Mathemagician has found one, he should post a video on youtube. He'd get all the clicks! Also, he should update all the wiki pages.


----------



## CaliA

just recently finished Little Nightmares 2
before that I played Deponia


----------



## TedEH

I realized a couple days ago that I had a best buy gift card that I never used so I turned it into a Nintendo eshop card, then used that to grab a couple o titles I wouldn't have bought if they were full price and not a gift card. Main one was Dragon Ball FighterZ, which was also on sale at the time. It's not my usual kind of game both because I don't play a lot of fighting games but also because most of the meat of the game is supposedly its online functionality - and I don't even have the online subscription. A bunch of places on the internet claimed there's nothing here for single players and for full price I think I'd agree, but for a discount and gift-card money, I'm having a pretty decent time with the story mode. For a competative-fighting kind of a game it's surprisingly accessible. The story itself and some of the voice acting is sometimes obnoxious, but it serves it's role as a justification for playing a bunch of AI fighters and tutorializing things so that by the time you're done I imagine you're ready to take a crack at fighting some real people. It also gives me something I can use as a local multiplayer game, since I don't have a ton of those.

As a non-fighting-game-player though, I'm starting to understand why some are picky about dpads. I remembered that I have one of those 8bitdo controllers (NES30) so I tried that with it and it works pretty well, since I don't have a pro controller or any of those fancy adapters or anything.


----------



## Alberto7

I guess it's technically not a game, but it's on Steam, sooo... I've been tinkering with Universe Sandbox 2 for the last few days. As an engineer and frustrated wannabe physicist, this game is dope. It can be both beautiful and all kinds of ridiculous, but it's a real nerdgasm. Highly recommend if you have an interest in space exploration... and a ridiculously overpowered CPU. This sim has a way of showing you just how deficient your CPU really is lol.

Other than that, I've been playing Hades. I love the gameplay, but there's only so many times I can replay the same areas. It can be grueling. Still tons of fun, and I love the characters. Real charming game.

And I've been revisiting Donkey Kong Country 2, this time playing it on Nintendo Switch VC that is bundled with the online service. Honestly, the online service is worth it just for the amount of vintage games that it comes with. DKC2 is such an absolutely fantastic game.


----------



## Choop

Alberto7 said:


> I guess it's technically not a game, but it's on Steam, sooo... I've been tinkering with Universe Sandbox 2 for the last few days. As an engineer and frustrated wannabe physicist, this game is dope. It can be both beautiful and all kinds of ridiculous, but it's a real nerdgasm. Highly recommend if you have an interest in space exploration... and a ridiculously overpowered CPU. This sim has a way of showing you just how deficient your CPU really is lol.



Hah you got me interested in messing around with this thing again -- I have it on Steam but haven't launched it in years. Which CPU are you using right now?


----------



## Alberto7

I use a ThinkPad X1 with an i7 9750H and a GTX1650 4 GB.

For the most part the game runs quite well, but some collision physics can be very demanding. The simulation also creates different particles depending on how far away you view the collision from, as it attempts to be more detailed. And witnessing a Moon-Earth collision at 10% the speed of light from 10,000 km is bound to break things, including the game. 

The simulation also has optimized timings depending on what process you want to focus on. (i.e. if you want to maintain accurate orbits the simulation time will depend on how many objects you are simulating and what properties they have, or if you're terraforming a planet and want to focus more on water cycles and atmospheric events you'll need to run the simulation a lot more slowly.) This is where I think the processor might have a more important impact outside of maintaining good fps. My system's limit to simulate a relatively accurate water cycle on a planet is something like 30 mins/sec... Which means I'd have to leave the sim running for weeks just to correctly terraform a planet just by changing its orbital distance from the host star and adding some water to it. I usually just go ham on it and let it be inaccurate instead of waiting, but it'd be nice if I could do both.

I hope any of that made at least some sense. I've been nerding hardcore.  I love sims; I coded a couple of very simple simulations during my undergrad. It's really fun.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Just make sure with bed of chaos that you do what everyone does and save/quit every time you get to the next “stage.” I’ve never heard of anyone doing it all in one go without doing that, and it is easily the worst boss run back in the game (which is really saying something with competition like four kings).



Circling back to this for one second, why should I do the BoC in stages vs a single play?


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Circling back to this for one second, why should I do the BoC in stages vs a single play?



You'll see when you fight him! You have to do damage to his far left and far right sides, and his very center (third "phase"). Basically the floor starts crumbling every time you do damage to him, and you're put in VERY awkward positions where he can instantly shove you off the ledge to your death before you can get back to the "starting point" of the encounter. The boss doesn't do much other than swipe his huge arms back and forth, shoving you way off to the side (and instantly to your death, in later stages). It's basically a platforming boss. It's easily the most-despised boss in any Soulsborne game. It's not the "hardest" exactly, it's just the most likely to kill even experienced players thanks to pure RNG bullshit since it can just repeatedly do the arm swipes over and over and make it impossible to move anywhere. I lucked out last time and he kept doing the projectile so I had no trouble making the precise ledge-falling required in P3.

If you save/quit, it saves the damage you did to him but resets your position so you don't have to very probably get killed when running that 30 yards.

Considering the boss run-back takes around 5 minutes per shot and goes past one or two VERY angry and large enemies, you will probably want to minimize BS deaths. The fight can still definitely kill you over and over even with doing this.


----------



## MFB

Gotcha

I had read about the crumbling floor part but I didn't realize it was during all attacks, thought it was just after you damage each of the "cores" so then you only deal with the floor while going to the next part - which didn't sound too terrible. But I can see how with each attack, and his range extending as you damage him, that it makes sense to take it in phases. I'm going to try it either way and just play the fight out as it happens, but if that's the strategy that most people employ then it won't shock/disappoint me if I have to as well.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Gotcha
> 
> I had read about the crumbling floor part but I didn't realize it was during all attacks, thought it was just after you damage each of the "cores" so then you only deal with the floor while going to the next part - which didn't sound too terrible. But I can see how with each attack, and his range extending as you damage him, that it makes sense to take it in phases. I'm going to try it either way and just play the fight out as it happens, but if that's the strategy that most people employ then it won't shock/disappoint me if I have to as well.



Well, if he instantly hits you in the hole it will functionally be making you use that strategy, just adding the run-back. It saves process whether you die or save/quit!

The floor like, can't crumble until you break one of his cores, but doesn't actually crumble until you walk close to an edge and trigger it. Since he doesn't really give you any time to get your bearings, and since the floor will crumble on both sides, it can catch you by surprise very easily. 

If you manage to do all 3 phases without save/quit or dying, you can consider yourself Dark Souls master, or something.


----------



## mongey

ok now i have some more powers in Control Im am definitely getting the slow down issues when there's allot going on . 

Its been pretty bad a few times .


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> ok now i have some more powers in Control Im am definitely getting the slow down issues when there's allot going on .
> 
> Its been pretty bad a few times .



Yeah. Using throw a lot in a room with a ton of crap in it causes framerate crashes almost every use. Especially in the mail processing area, or whatever. It was just constant. I mean, I can deal with it, I grew up with playing things on underpowered PCs and an N64, but it's just so glaring in an otherwise somewhat polished game, especially one that does NOT have flashy graphics at all. When you can fight groups of giant robot dinosaurs with explosions going off everywhere in a huge scenic valley with no framerate dip, and then you try to throw a file cabinet in a dark office at some nearly faceless humanoids and the game slows down bigtime, it just looks like bad programming. Even if there are fancy graphical things I don't understand/notice going on in Control that aren't going on in HZD or Last of Us 2 or Doom Eternal or whatever else has superficially better graphics without the performance issues.


----------



## Ralyks

So, 13 Sentinels is like 80% Japanese sci-fi side scrolling graphic novel, 20% JRPG mech tower defense battles. But the story is like everything good about Japanese sci-fi anime rolled into one and the art direction is beautiful too. I'm hoping I can get through this before Persona 5 Strikers and Yakuza Like A Dragon PS5 come out. It also helps that it looks like you can get the Platinum trophy by pretty much playing through the game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still in Cold Steel 4's endgame...



Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm going to try to finish this behemoth by the end of the month...



...yeah that's not gonna happen.  At the final point of no return area and some of the bosses have quite the difficulty spike... actually, I was already well equipped and handled the first pair without issues. I guess I can just go through the gauntlet, but I really wanted to wipe the floor with every subsequent boss, and there's some uber strong orbs that require a ton of grinding to craft. So I'm going full grindilicious.  More than I've spent than the rest of the series. 

Thankfully it's not too bad, albeit time consuming. With my current setup, I have 2 kinds battery characters and another with high item drop rate so I can spam super attacks with no issue and get higher quantities of desired crafting items. That and I have a few podcasts in line to watch. Kinda wish I did this earlier when there was a certain area where the drop rate was more generous. It's funny since the Trails series heavily discourages you from grinding traditionally with much less experience points the more you spend, but with items not so much.


----------



## wankerness

How many hours have you spent on this game?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> How many hours have you spent on this game?



Counter shows I've spent 141 hours since it's release in early November. 

One thing I'm exploiting here is the 'high speed mode'. Basically makes the game play in double speed at any time you want. This is a feature I didn't know I wanted and now I feel it needs to be mandatory in every JRPG ever made. Even in this case where I can skip some of the long winded super moves/combos, post battle banter etc, the high speed mode really helps.


----------



## wankerness

Wow, that’s insane. If the other three are of comparable length, there’s no way I’m ever trying that series! Since I also read the fourth one is absolutely not worth playing if you haven’t played them, since it’s so story-heavy and pays off everything from the first three in a quality fashion.

that fast forward feature was sure nice playing the FF7 rerelease on switch. I think they have it in a few of those square rereleases. Not sure about ffx as I haven’t played the remaster, but it definitely got used constantly by me in ffxii.

I hope it’s in ff8, though unfortunately the most tedious part of that game were the endless GF animations, which required you to mash buttons through the duration for them to do acceptable damage and thus double speed would probably make them do half damage.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I realized a couple days ago that I had a best buy gift card that I never used so I turned it into a Nintendo eshop card, then used that to grab a couple o titles I wouldn't have bought if they were full price and not a gift card. Main one was Dragon Ball FighterZ, which was also on sale at the time. It's not my usual kind of game both because I don't play a lot of fighting games but also because most of the meat of the game is supposedly its online functionality - and I don't even have the online subscription. A bunch of places on the internet claimed there's nothing here for single players and for full price I think I'd agree, but for a discount and gift-card money, I'm having a pretty decent time with the story mode. For a competative-fighting kind of a game it's surprisingly accessible. The story itself and some of the voice acting is sometimes obnoxious, but it serves it's role as a justification for playing a bunch of AI fighters and tutorializing things so that by the time you're done I imagine you're ready to take a crack at fighting some real people. It also gives me something I can use as a local multiplayer game, since I don't have a ton of those.
> 
> As a non-fighting-game-player though, I'm starting to understand why some are picky about dpads. I remembered that I have one of those 8bitdo controllers (NES30) so I tried that with it and it works pretty well, since I don't have a pro controller or any of those fancy adapters or anything.


You need to get a fight stick, D-pads are for platformers.


----------



## TedEH

I've always had a horrible time with arcade sticks, so that sounds like a bad time to me.  (Also not worth the likely investment in a "good" one to play one fighting game, offline, occasionally)


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I've always had a horrible time with arcade sticks, so that sounds like a bad time to me.  (Also not worth the likely investment in a "good" one to play one fighting game, offline, occasionally)


Yeah the Hori one is sort of a standard, and that's pricey and the Switch needs its own version.


----------



## MFB

Don't hate on the FF8 Boost system, shit was unlike anything they were doing back in the day;I do believe the FF8 remastered has the double speed option you can enable, but it's been a while since I've fired it up. I basically got halfway through disc 3, took a pause from binging it, and then forgot where I was supposed to go with the Ragnarok/post Eclipse and am just sort of wandering aimlessly so I stopped.


----------



## StevenC

Haven't played the FF rereleases, but Bravely has 2x and 4x speed and pause for battles which is a life saver. I don't think I've ever not fought on 2x speed, but I don't understand why it wasn't in Octopath at all.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Don't hate on the FF8 Boost system, shit was unlike anything they were doing back in the day;I do believe the FF8 remastered has the double speed option you can enable, but it's been a while since I've fired it up. I basically got halfway through disc 3, took a pause from binging it, and then forgot where I was supposed to go with the Ragnarok/post Eclipse and am just sort of wandering aimlessly so I stopped.



Dude, it was HORRIBLE. Like, for one of the worst examples, the eden animation was seriously over a minute long (looks like 1:16 based on the internet), and you had to just mash square the entire time, except when the red x showed up, at which point you had to quickly stop or the whole damage increase would reset, and ugh. Doing that EVERY TIME YOU SUMMONED was horrible. I can deal with having to do that on like, a combo finisher in Fist of the North Star or Yakuza or whatever, where you have about 5 seconds, but over a minute? Every time? Ugh. It would have been awful even if all you had to do was watch it!

I think I pretty much only used Doomtrain after a while just cause I hated those animations so much. That one was short: a mere 36 seconds of button mashing every single time!!

I just looked around at forum topics - a bunch of people insist Eden was 1:40, or over 3 minutes. Weirdly, no one ever timed these things out and listed them anywhere. I feel like some of the others were also over a minute. But, maybe it just felt like that. 

I see a lot of complaining about Knights of the Round, too. I vaguely remember that from watching my friend beat FFVII in middle school. It was boring as hell. We also found it hilarious how Sephiroth would destroy every planet in the universe, repeatedly. Square had their heads so far up their asses with FFVII and VIII. Glad there's nothing like that in IX or X or XII.


----------



## MFB

That's why Eden was so OP because his animation was forever and you could boost the ever loving Christ out of him  I've got 100% nostalgia goggles on for FF8, so I'll admit I'm a lost cause on it's flaws since it's THE RPG of my childhood (or if not then tied for the title with Legend of Dragoon). 

But anyone who says Eden was 3 minutes is out of their god damn minute.


----------



## wankerness

That was the first or second RPG I ever played (FF6 in a badly fan-translated form on an SNES emulator using keyboard control was either before or after), and I definitely put up with a lot of its most-hated aspects without complaint (ex, I spent hours drawing hundreds of powerful spells like Ultima so my characters all were very overpowered). But, even at the time, I couldn't forgive the horribly long GF animations once Boost got involved. It was tedious and it literally hurt.

I never did finish that game. Got sidetracked getting everyone's ultimate weapon and killing the ultima weapon or whatever was way down that sunken prison area, and then couldn't figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. Now I don't know where my memory card is, and there's no way I'm ever replaying the first 100+ hours. If I ever find the memory card, I'll try and finish it!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Wow, that’s insane. If the other three are of comparable length, there’s no way I’m ever trying that series! Since I also read the fourth one is absolutely not worth playing if you haven’t played them, since it’s so story-heavy and pays off everything from the first three in a quality fashion.



The other 3 are roughly the same length, I think the 3rd one being the longest on main story alone. Ditch the grinding and we're looking at around 130 hours I spent on one playthrough will all side quests. Insanity all around. 

I'll be the first to admit that the Trails series is a hard sell. And I've said before that a series consisting of 100+ hour long JRPGs is takes a lot of investment, perhaps too much, similar to getting into comics really. Hell, I went into Cold Steel 1 cold (no pun intended) and knowing nothing of the series. Also doesn't help that the first part of the game is packed to the rafters with every single anime trope known to man. And to add to that, each game is a sloooooooow burn; the story taking it's sweet time with the pace only picking up by the second act. The third game is also guilty of reminding you that you should at least have some knowledge of the 5 games released before it (2 not even officially translated). So yeah it's not easy to recommend at all. 

That said, the story overall is awesome, and you can't help but feel invested in the world and the characters once you're really in, and all the pay offs that happen in the latter games are well worth it. Hell, the ramp up on the finale of the first game, is so great, I was sold. Also add that the combat mechanics are one of the most fun to play for a traditional turn based style. I've said before it's a much more evolved version of Chrono Trigger's classic style but with a touch of Persona 5 simplicity (less menues and more streamlined control). 



TedEH said:


> I've always had a horrible time with arcade sticks, so that sounds like a bad time to me.  (Also not worth the likely investment in a "good" one to play one fighting game, offline, occasionally)



The anime fighters are pretty easy to get by with normal pads. That said, there's the button style controllers like the Hit Box, where you input the directions like a computer keyboard. Didn't expect these to be good but they're highly regarded and turns out it's easy to pull combos with them. 

Of course that's extra cash for a new peripheral and fighting controllers are pricey. Probably not worth it in your case. 



wankerness said:


> That was the first or second RPG I ever played (FF6 in a badly fan-translated form on an SNES emulator using keyboard control was either before or after), and I definitely put up with a lot of its most-hated aspects without complaint (ex, I spent hours drawing hundreds of powerful spells like Ultima so my characters all were very overpowered). But, even at the time, I couldn't forgive the horribly long GF animations once Boost got involved. It was tedious and it literally hurt.
> 
> Play FFVIII using the Low Level method, learn Card and Card Mod ASAP and you'll never have to worry about time going through GFs ever again.
> I never did finish that game. Got sidetracked getting everyone's ultimate weapon and killing the ultima weapon or whatever was way down that sunken prison area, and then couldn't figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. Now I don't know where my memory card is, and there's no way I'm ever replaying the first 100+ hours. If I ever find the memory card, I'll try and finish it!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I never did finish that game. Got sidetracked getting everyone's ultimate weapon and killing the ultima weapon or whatever was way down that sunken prison area, and then couldn't figure out where the hell I was supposed to go. Now I don't know where my memory card is, and there's no way I'm ever replaying the first 100+ hours. If I ever find the memory card, I'll try and finish it!



Looks like my reply got lost in the multiqute.

Play FFVIII using the Low Level method, learn Card and Card Mod ASAP and you'll never have to worry about time going through GFs ever again.


----------



## Georgeoneal

I am playing now IGI2


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Looks like my reply got lost in the multiqute.
> 
> Play FFVIII using the Low Level method, learn Card and Card Mod ASAP and you'll never have to worry about time going through GFs ever again.



Ugh. Cards. I hated that card game shit and as a result avoided any ability that had the word Card in it. Guess that was a mistake?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Ugh. Cards. I hated that card game shit and as a result avoided any ability that had the word Card in it. Guess that was a mistake?



You actually don't need to play the card game. You get the Card and Card Mod abilities so every enemy you fight you turn into cards, in turn magic spells to junctions. 

FF8 took the levelling system from the SaGa games where the enemies will get also level up based on Squall's level, which was annoying because battles took way too long even if you're well equipped or junctioned. But by Carding enemies, your characters don't get any EXP but your GFs do. Sure this suddenly becomes proto Pokemon but as a result, your party stays low levelled, you have a plethora of cards, in turn spells/stat upgrades which you can use to buff everyone immensely in your favour. You can have 100 Curagas junctioned once you leave Ifrit's cave. 

Definitely wasn't Squenix's intention for players to not level up in a FF game, but exploiting the Low Level method makes the game much faster to play. And if you really want to OP your party... you can learn that dreadful card came too.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Immortals: Fenyx Rising, got the platinum. Good game, if you either play it over a really long period of time or don't try to be a completist at all. The last boss fight is pretty good in particular.

Went back to DS2 to try and grind out the platinum, quickly got VERY frustrated. You need 30 sunlight medals, which you can either get via co-op, or by grinding enemies that drop them at about a 2% chance. However, they are really only farmable efficiently at one location at the VERY start of the game, where you can't light a bonfire or everything gets screwed up. So you have to kill all four of them without dying (hard, cause they two-shot you even at soft-capped vitality/armor and three rush you at once) and then use the feather to respawn at the start and make them respawn. BUT, since you can't light a bonfire, your health/estus steadily deplete until you die. But if you die, your max health steadily depletes. So, it's just a big shitshow of having to rotate human effigies/estus flasks and getting about 1 medal every 20 minutes. Ugh. I might give up on the platinum for this, even though that's THE ONLY difficult grind in the whole thing and the only other things I'm missing are just a couple NG+ boss kills.

Going back to it after playing a lot of DS1 is making me realize more why so many people hate this game. The controls ARE a hell of a lot worse. Your character lurches around unpredictably and is limited by some kind of invisible grid system for turning/moving, your weapon hits behave erratically, aiming with a bow is terrible in comparison to DS1 remastered, enemies swarm you unavoidably, etc.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The anime fighters are pretty easy to get by with normal pads. That said, there's the button style controllers like the Hit Box, where you input the directions like a computer keyboard. Didn't expect these to be good but they're highly regarded and turns out it's easy to pull combos with them.



Chiming in just to announce that I'm putting together a hitbox style controller for the first time here soon. I'll post pics when it's complete! Going to be interesting to learn on.

Also after completing Blasphemous, I've got a weird urge to play a classic Final Fantasy game. Going to do FF1 via Origins on the PS1!~


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Cold Steel 4 rinse repeat...



Bloody_Inferno said:


> ...yeah that's not gonna happen.



There may still be hope in finishing by end of the month after all. After a podcast or 2, got my desired grinding materials and bulldozed my way through the next 4 boss battles. I ended up underestimating some of my equipped items that raise the drop rate so that went down rather quickly. I think there's 2 or 3 more and that's finally it. Though I'm still tempted to build up more just because. To non JRPG players, it's about as exciting as filling up an Excel spreadsheet, but whatever. 

I noticed that some of the DLC packs in this game are the very materials I was farming for; 100 for $1.45. Of course out of principle, I refuse to pay for any DLC that cheats me out of gameplay, even if it's repetitive grinding. The new free costumes are alright though. 

I'll probably give the Bloodstained classic mode a whirl soon as a nice pallet cleanser.


----------



## wankerness

Just went back to Yakuza 7, finally. I unlocked the sujidex so I can track the “sujimon.” I think I love this game.


----------



## Nicki

Played the Tomb Raider reboot with wifey a couple of weeks ago. Still a good game. Mistakes were made but I'm hoping they were fixed in the second and third games.

Playing Borderlands 3 online with a friend from work. Been an alright time. Definitely not as fun as our time going through all of the Halo games on Legendary.

Also been playing the ever loving shit out of Resident Evil VII because holy 9 foot tall vampire lady, Village looks awesome. Gotta say, RE7 lives up to the legacy of only being hard when you don't know what you're doing and playing in a panic. Once you figure it all out and know where your resources are, the game is a breeze. I'm 2 achievements away from 100%'ing the core game. Don't think I'll bother with the DLCs because I never bother with DLCs in any game, even when I buy them.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finally finished Cold Steel 4. Even got the true ending that goes on for what felt like 3 bloody hours. 

By and large, without hyperbole, the longest game I've ever played. Easily the longest I spent of the 4 Trails games. I will return back to the main flaw of the game being way too big and overbloated hurts it and you can easily tell when it collapses under it's own weight. EG: extremely slow pacing, overlong second act syndrome, too many playable characters to rummage through (though managed much better than CS2, and certainly better than Chrono Cross). And of course the obvious gargantuan continuity making this entry completely unplayable to newcomers. Kinda like getting into MCU and starting right at Avengers Endgame. It's no wonder I've stopped watching anime series completely since the Trails series single-handedly satiated that itch. 

That said, I loved every moment of this game. Yeah I didn't play any of of the first 5 games before it; and just watched a bunch of summaries and read wikis and dossiers. Hell, I even listened to audio versions of the fictional books within the game (since they too pull the Checkov's Gun gambit). But CS1 was a fine gateway anyway, and the long term investment was well and truly rewarded in the satisfying finale. And I still stand that it's one of my favorite turn based combat systems in the genre. I sank enough time into it and still not get bored of the awesome music either. 

After this, I'm avoiding Nihon Falcom games for a while. Ys IX has just been released, but I'll wait until prices drop. And the next Trails game will probably take another year or so for localisation. This time going for the Yakuza 0 pacing where story alternates between 3 major characters (2 known mains and a new 3rd character that looks like a literal spoiler alert with legs), so once the release date is announced I'll be all over it and and be declared legally dead again for approx 200 hours. 

Speaking of Yakuza... Ichiban's adventures is looking really good right now...


----------



## wankerness

My only real problem with Yakuza 7 so far is how grindy the leveling feels. It seems to take at least 15-20 battles to level up/level your job up. I guess it's not really worse than the previous games, it's just a little jarring with how used to American games I've been getting.

I guess everyone complained about that with Dragon Quest XI. I didn't notice so much cause I farmed metal slimes for a long time!!


----------



## mongey

plodding along in Control. I know its the jaded old guy inside me talking but ,

Its a good game ., plays well apart from some slowdown but I just feel like I've played it a 100 times before. Still only a few hours in so it may mix it up , but gameplay wise it just isn't bringing anything new so far .just feels like a pallet swap of 1000 other games 

Maybe there just isn't anything new left to bring to a shooter


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> plodding along in Control. I know its the jaded old guy inside me talking but ,
> 
> Its a good game ., plays well apart from some slowdown but I just feel like I've played it a 100 times before. Still only a few hours in so it may mix it up , but gameplay wise it just isn't bringing anything new so far .just feels like a pallet swap of 1000 other games
> 
> Maybe there just isn't anything new left to bring to a shooter



If you feel like that, you're probably leaning too hard on the guns and not using the powers enough. Or you haven't unlocked/leveled them enough. By the end of the game throw does WAY more damage than anything other than like, a headshot from the sniper cannon (whatever it's called).


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> If you feel like that, you're probably leaning too hard on the guns and not using the powers enough. Or you haven't unlocked/leveled them enough. By the end of the game throw does WAY more damage than anything other than like, a headshot from the sniper cannon (whatever it's called).




Maybe. To be fair i only realized end of last play session where and how to level up. So haven’t done much.


----------



## Ralyks

mongey said:


> Maybe. To be fair i only realized end of last play session where and how to level up. So haven’t done much.



Yeah, I had way more fun once I got more abilities. Throwing chunks of your environment around was a fun time.

Anyway, watching the credits to Miles Morales. Short, but excellent in the time I spent with it. Gonna get the Platinum out of the way so I can clear up the hard drive space on the PS5. Then back to 13 Sentinels.


----------



## Werecow

As i predicted, i've moved straight on through to Thief 2 after replaying the first one.


----------



## Nicki

Well, I just completed all the achievements in the core game of RE7. Damn fine game. Looking forward to RE8 now.

Tried Greedfall and Bound by Flame.. Not for me. Too clunky and unpolished. I know people like the developer's games, but they don't feel like modern gameplay experiences to me. They feel more like early PS2 era action RPGs.

Going to give Sunset Overdrive a go and I've got Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order queued up to install on my Xbox.


----------



## Leviathus

Balancing between Battlefield 4 and Oblivion.


----------



## MFB

Still haven't bothered with finishing DS1 since my posts about the BoC, but hey, DS2 was on sale for $10 on PSN so I made sure to grab that for whenever I do finally finish it.

Also picked up Darksiders Remastered for $5, so that'll be a nice change of pace compared to what I've been playing.


----------



## gabito

Finished ME3 for the third time a few weeks ago. This time with all the DLC. It was a looong game this way, but it was cool to play the full game for once. They shouldn't have cut part of the game to sell it as DLC.

Bad Bioware! Bad EA!

Tried to get into Dragon Age: Origins after that, but I uninstalled it after playing a few hours. It didn't click with me. Maybe I'll try it again later, but it felt too old-school-RPGish for me.

Then I tried Zone Of The Enders HD, played a few hours and... nah. Not for me. Only played it because Kojima's name was attached to it, but I'm not into that style of gameplay nor mega super ultra japanese stuff.

Lastly, I installed Far Cry: Blood Dragon. Only played a few hours, it looks really cool (even on my old PS3), the music is great, and I'm liking the general vibe of the game. Might finish it, even if I'm not very good at (or really like) FPS games.


----------



## wankerness

The only DLC in mass effect 3 that was cut was that first bonus character guy (leviathan, maybe it was called?). The other stuff actually was produced much later.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was great, and it's only like 3 hours long. I hate that the Far Cry 3 remaster didn't include it. I might play it on PC again someday.

I've played a lot more Yakuza. I really don't like the management "minigame." It's about on par with the real estate in Yakuza 0 - aka, give me a hostess management minigame again!!! I've played it for a few hours and am at business ranking 57/200, or something. It's really not very fun, and you have to promote your guys so much to be able to reach the requirements for running businesses that have their production output upgraded that you barely make any profit. And actually running businesses is much like the real estate in yakuza - you just hit "start business!" and then wait for it to finish and see how much money you made. It's a LOT faster than that was, at least...you're not time-gated. It's just very grindy. And then the board meetings are pretty rough and don't really explain what the heck you're supposed to do. I failed three of them before I figured out how to "attack."

This game is REALLY grindy, I misjudged earlier. If you're trying to find the 10 enemies required for each enemy-kill quest for the "Poundmates" group, it can take in excess of 50 random battles to even get 10 of them to spawn, and you often won't level during all 50 of those battles cause the EXP from anything lower level than you is incredibly low. I've been playing ~30 hours and am only still level 22. Out of apparently 100, since the game has achievements for getting to levels 30 and 70!


----------



## Mathemagician

I need to finish Yakuza 1. Got it with PSN and it’s amazing but got distracted by life around 70% through. Oh well going to just walk back into it after a year and a half and just mash my way through to the end. It was a really fun story and I need to see how it ends. Also Majima is a hero.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> The only DLC in mass effect 3 that was cut was that first bonus character guy (leviathan, maybe it was called?). The other stuff actually was produced much later.



I think you mean From Ashes. That's where you get the prothean guy, Javik.

That and Leviathan (that's the one were you get to talk to the giant squids responsible for all the galactic mess) aren't very long and seem to be cut from the game. I don't know the specifics, though.

Omega on the other hand is kind of long, and has almost nothing to do with the main story, so yeah, it probably is just your regular DLC. Same for Citadel, which was fun to play.

Javik is a great character, I took him on almost every mission. Besides being powerful, his comments were insightful and funny.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Whilst installing Yakuza 7, I spent a few minutes on Bloodstained's Classic Mode. Pretty much old school NES Castlevania with the Bloodstained pastiche. Stage structured, Lives system, chiptune soundtrack, slow walk speed, and most importantly, janky as hell. The stairways are Castlevania standard, but at least you can jump onto them when the game decides you can and the whip hitbox is thin to the point your jumping skills will make or break whether you hit a bat or candle or not. You can backflip mid jump, back-dodge and slide, which are nice upgrades, but Miriam can still only whip horizontally. So it's like playing Dracula X on SNES (aka neutered Rondo Of Blood), they really should have implemented Castlevania 4's 8 way whip direction. Still, a nice little disctraction. 

Now from one enormous JRPG with a huge continuity to another. Yakuza 7's prologue is just a slight longer than the Cold Steel 4 ending.  Chapter 2 and back in Kamurocho and it still feels like a prologue. I knew about the incredibly slow introduction and buildup so it didn't bother me all that much until I started paying attention to the time.


----------



## p0ke

Still hooked on Dark Souls here. I've reached Gwyn, but wasn't able to defeat him yet because he's fast af and my character hits hard but slow... I'm on level 87, so strength is not the problem - I'm just too slow. For reference, the black knights on the way to him drop after 4 regular hits, or 2-3 if two-handing the sword. Two-handed backstab kills them with one hit if I'm wearing the Hornet Ring.
So now I'm basically running around the world looking for gear that would make the fight easier  I guess the other alternative would be to hit even harder so I could kill him before he kills me. He doesn't actually do much damage when I'm blocking, but because he's so fast, I don't have time to drink Estus when my HP drops.
I also realized that the Remastered version I'm playing contains the original DLC content, so I figured that would be a good place to improve.
Artorias was relatively easy, I almost beat him on my first try. He would've taken maybe 2 more hits, so I rushed it instead of backing of and drinking some Estus... Then I failed miserably about 5-6 times before going in for the kill. I mostly just blocked everything until he did something with slow recovery and then dropped my shield and hit him in the back once -> repeat. The Sanctuary Guardian at the start of the DLC was much harder to beat TBH. And that's where I am at the moment. According to what I've looked into, I wanna defeat the black dragon next and most of all cut his tail to get the Obsidian Greatsword, which seems to be one the best swords in the game. (at the moment I have the Black Knight Sword +5 which is also very good, but the Obsidian + 5 would be a good 150 stronger)


----------



## MFB

What other ring are you using/can you not just shed some of your equipped load to reduce encumberment? I've been upgrading my chainmail armor throughout the game since it has good stats and I keeps me under 50% encumberment, so it's rolls galore.


----------



## Nicki

p0ke said:


> Still hooked on Dark Souls here. I've reached Gwyn, but wasn't able to defeat him yet because he's fast af and my character hits hard but slow... I'm on level 87, so strength is not the problem - I'm just too slow. For reference, the black knights on the way to him drop after 4 regular hits, or 2-3 if two-handing the sword. Two-handed backstab kills them with one hit if I'm wearing the Hornet Ring.
> So now I'm basically running around the world looking for gear that would make the fight easier  I guess the other alternative would be to hit even harder so I could kill him before he kills me. He doesn't actually do much damage when I'm blocking, but because he's so fast, I don't have time to drink Estus when my HP drops.
> I also realized that the Remastered version I'm playing contains the original DLC content, so I figured that would be a good place to improve.
> Artorias was relatively easy, I almost beat him on my first try. He would've taken maybe 2 more hits, so I rushed it instead of backing of and drinking some Estus... Then I failed miserably about 5-6 times before going in for the kill. I mostly just blocked everything until he did something with slow recovery and then dropped my shield and hit him in the back once -> repeat. The Sanctuary Guardian at the start of the DLC was much harder to beat TBH. And that's where I am at the moment. According to what I've looked into, I wanna defeat the black dragon next and most of all cut his tail to get the Obsidian Greatsword, which seems to be one the best swords in the game. (at the moment I have the Black Knight Sword +5 which is also very good, but the Obsidian + 5 would be a good 150 stronger)


Just parry his attacks and riposte. He's extremely easy to parry since he telegraphs his attacks so obviously that it's kind of a running joke among dark souls players.


----------



## wankerness

There are too many NPCs with names like Gwyn, I thought he was talking about that little asshole that flies away every time you get close. Gwyn the last "regular" boss actually chunked me a couple times on NG+, but then when I got out the small leather shield and parried him I downed him in like 20 seconds.  Blocking and turtling like you can on most bosses is not a good strategy for him. It works on practically everything else in the game, especially the hard DLC bosses (even more especially if you have Artorias's greatshield, which IMO is easily one of the most overpowered items in the game), but not very well on Gwyn! Well, besides Ceaseless Discharge, though maybe you can do something nutty with fire resist gear and magic shield and magic barrier to be able to block his hits.

And you definitely want to do the DLC before fighting him, cause when you beat him it kicks you out to NG+ and you can't do the DLC till you clear all the way through the game again.

MORE YAKUZA 7! This game is almost unbelievably buggy. Like, if you get in a fight with an enemy anywhere close to a low fence, 3/4 of the fight will be spent by your characters taking long illogical paths back and forth around the fence (screwing up all chances for hits on knocked-down enemies) since every time you hit the enemy they'll fall onto the other side of the fence, and then your characters are frequently getting stuck and then just teleporting to the enemy a few seconds later, etc. It's kind of funny. It doesn't REALLY interfere with gameplay apart from the aforementioned making it impossible to get hits on knocked-down enemies, but it really isn't a good advertisement for the combat. It's just glitch-city. They maybe should have done an older-school combat system that didn't take into account character positioning, like Dragon Quest XI or something. Also any fight is guaranteed to have numerous instances of your character sidling up, kicking some objects between you and the enemy, but not even coming close to hitting them. It's so bad. The aforementioned things like having the characters give up on pathing and just abruptly teleporting after a few seconds at least shows the developers were keenly aware of the problems and put in that big workaround. I'll be very curious to see the refinement of this engine. Like, the Kiwami 2 to the Yakuza 6. Or the Yakuza 4 to the Yakuza 3.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> And you definitely want to do the DLC before fighting him, cause when you beat him it kicks you out to NG+ and you can't do the DLC till you clear all the way through the game again.



Yeah, I know, that's primarily why I went there. It's an annoying area though - the normal enemies so far have been way tougher than normally, yet they drop a normal amount of souls. So they don't really feel worth fighting


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Yeah, I know, that's primarily why I went there. It's an annoying area though - the normal enemies so far have been way tougher than normally, yet they drop a normal amount of souls. So they don't really feel worth fighting



Yeah, the DLC is pretty nasty. I ended up just running past as much stuff as possible, especially in the first area.


----------



## Mathemagician

p0ke said:


> Still hooked on Dark Souls here. I've reached Gwyn, but wasn't able to defeat him yet because he's fast af and my character hits hard but slow... I'm on level 87, so strength is not the problem - I'm just too slow. For reference, the black knights on the way to him drop after 4 regular hits, or 2-3 if two-handing the sword. Two-handed backstab kills them with one hit if I'm wearing the Hornet Ring.
> So now I'm basically running around the world looking for gear that would make the fight easier  I guess the other alternative would be to hit even harder so I could kill him before he kills me. He doesn't actually do much damage when I'm blocking, but because he's so fast, I don't have time to drink Estus when my HP drops.
> I also realized that the Remastered version I'm playing contains the original DLC content, so I figured that would be a good place to improve.
> Artorias was relatively easy, I almost beat him on my first try. He would've taken maybe 2 more hits, so I rushed it instead of backing of and drinking some Estus... Then I failed miserably about 5-6 times before going in for the kill. I mostly just blocked everything until he did something with slow recovery and then dropped my shield and hit him in the back once -> repeat. The Sanctuary Guardian at the start of the DLC was much harder to beat TBH. And that's where I am at the moment. According to what I've looked into, I wanna defeat the black dragon next and most of all cut his tail to get the Obsidian Greatsword, which seems to be one the best swords in the game. (at the moment I have the Black Knight Sword +5 which is also very good, but the Obsidian + 5 would be a good 150 stronger)





MFB said:


> What other ring are you using/can you not just shed some of your equipped load to reduce encumberment? I've been upgrading my chainmail armor throughout the game since it has good stats and I keeps me under 50% encumberment, so it's rolls galore.



Get nekkid. Run up. Slap him wit cho dick.


----------



## MFB

I mean, it worked for Havel, so...


----------



## wankerness

Gear loads in DS1 are kind of ridiculous. In DS2/3 it's 70% before you fatroll. 50% seems VERY low. On the other hand, poise is way more overpowered so it's easier to make a character that just doesn't NEED to roll.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Yeah, the DLC is pretty nasty. I ended up just running past as much stuff as possible, especially in the first area.



It feels a little unfinished in terms of balancing - it got significantly easier after Artorias. Also Manus was surprisingly easy, took only 3 attempts to kill. Took a bit of a different strategy though, my shield was basically useless so I just put it away and hacked him and used a lot of estus.
Now I've got the dragon left to kill - I got the archer giant guy to shoot it down, but didn't kill it yet because I want to cut the tail, which proved to be pretty damned hard 
I almost defeated it yesterday but then ended up running out of estus circling around for the tail...



wankerness said:


> Gear loads in DS1 are kind of ridiculous. In DS2/3 it's 70% before you fatroll. 50% seems VERY low. On the other hand, poise is way more overpowered so it's easier to make a character that just doesn't NEED to roll.



Yeah, my character's basically like that. I tried to use lighter armor but I feel like I become too fragile if I do it - I'm just too bad at the game to only survive one hit.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Anyone playing the early access of Baldur's Gate 3?


----------



## wankerness

Damn, Yakuza 7 even copied the metal slimes from Dragon Quest in the form of "Invested Vagabonds," annoying enemies that run away quickly and only take one damage from all attacks that don't crit. Unfortunately my team had zero spammy attacks when I encountered them and was only able to kill one, who inexplicably didn't run for about 20 turns. Got ~67k job experience from that one guy compared to the normal ~400 per battle with ~5 enemies. It seems to be the only way to reasonably level up new jobs. God, this game is horrific with the grinding. I think I'm just going to wait till I unlock the overpowered characters in the chapter 10-12 area and then go farm those vagabonds for a while, since as with DQXI, that's really the only way to level that's even remotely time-efficient.

Some of the boss battles have been a nightmare, mainly the two fights against the giant robot vacuum. The first go was the level 40 version, who took over 20 minutes to kill since his defense was SO high and I had no electro attacks. The second go was the quest version, a mere level 25, who only took 10 minutes of attacking his body over and over for almost no damage vs his gigantic health pool. It's completely impractical in midgame to have more than one job cause of the aforementioned unbelievable grind (several hours) required to get even a second job up to the level your stats won't be very negatively impacted by the switch, so these enemies that are only weak to specific odd jobs/abilities are really a pain.

This game is making me like it less the more that I play it! If you stick to the story, it's great. If you go out trying to do sidequest stuff and dungeons before endgame, things can get ugly. I spent a full hour running around in circles catching bugs to get the materials to make a better microphone. Ack!


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> It feels a little unfinished in terms of balancing - it got significantly easier after Artorias. Also Manus was surprisingly easy, took only 3 attempts to kill. Took a bit of a different strategy though, my shield was basically useless so I just put it away and hacked him and used a lot of estus.
> Now I've got the dragon left to kill - I got the archer giant guy to shoot it down, but didn't kill it yet because I want to cut the tail, which proved to be pretty damned hard
> I almost defeated it yesterday but then ended up running out of estus circling around for the tail...
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, my character's basically like that. I tried to use lighter armor but I feel like I become too fragile if I do it - I'm just too bad at the game to only survive one hit.



I've heard Manus is by far the hardest boss in NG+. I didn't do the DLC on NG+ since I was just trying to burn through for the third Sif kill for the platinum, but I believe it based on how radically different a bunch of the regular game bosses felt in NG+. You actually had to pay attention to mechanics!


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> Anyone playing the early access of Baldur's Gate 3?



I bought it on release and it's taking all of my willpower to not play it before full release , but i'm managing it. I've heard great things about it though.

I'd highly recommend holding off till full release. I did the same thing for D: OS2. They're still adding in and adding to cutscenes that affect the story, in addition to extra classes and gameplay elements.

I find it frustrating effectively playing a demo that contains just the first episode of a game. So i wait until i can do the full story in my first sitting. I guess if you want pure gameplay there's a lot of fun to be had even now. But be warned, some of their updates are breaking previous save games (they're upfront about that).


----------



## BlackMastodon

I got D:OS2 last year and played maybe 10 hours before it just felt overwhelmingly tedious. I felt like I was playing 1 player D&D and I wasn't digging it. Plus I got wrecked in a pretty early fight. Might start over with a new class.


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> I got D:OS2 last year and played maybe 10 hours before it just felt overwhelmingly tedious. I felt like I was playing 1 player D&D and I wasn't digging it. Plus I got wrecked in a pretty early fight. Might start over with a new class.


Yeh there's a steep learning curve to it. It can almost seem impossible at first. It became one of my favourite games ever only after persisting with it. I didn't think i'd finish the game in normal difficulty at first, but now i've even completed it in honor mode (top difficulty with perma-death).

It needs a balanced party. My norm is a fighter (one handed with shield), ranger (crossbow), rogue (two handed daggers and full points in thievery), caster with full level in one element, and a spread in others. I also have the fighter do some magic in a different element to my main caster.
I have at least two party members with a point in summoning, because there's a couple of level 1 spells that help massively.
There are a lot of hidden synergies you can have between skills and abilities, both in a single character and spread across the party. It can be quite intricate when you get in to it.

Another thing to remember is that they don't have enemy levelling in their games. If you're really out-levelled you've gone in the wrong direction in the map usually, or missed something. Other than that, having your party spread in tactical positions for the start of combat _really_ helps

Baldur's has D&D 5 rules i think, so it'll be very different.


----------



## BlackMastodon

That's actually super helpful. If I remember correctly you can also switch characters with your "main" so I could realistically drop in the lizardfolk dude who's my fighter as a main and not go through the entire intro of the game again. The guy I rolled is a summoner class but I'll give your suggestions a try. With perm-death and dismissing characters,ddo you have more chances in the game to find new party members? 

The only D&D I've played has been 5e and I enjoy it so I'm looking forward to BG3. Planned on waiting til it released fully anyway but curious if anyone's tried it out and what they thought.


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> That's actually super helpful. If I remember correctly you can also switch characters with your "main" so I could realistically drop in the lizardfolk dude who's my fighter as a main and not go through the entire intro of the game again. The guy I rolled is a summoner class but I'll give your suggestions a try. With perm-death and dismissing characters,ddo you have more chances in the game to find new party members?
> 
> The only D&D I've played has been 5e and I enjoy it so I'm looking forward to BG3. Planned on waiting til it released fully anyway but curious if anyone's tried it out and what they thought.



The perma death mode in it means party death = game over + save deleted, but there is resurrection in the game (mainly scrolls), that of course also relies on one member managing to escape a fight. Obviously if the party members died in a hostile area it can be hard to resurrect them.
There is a general on your ship where you can aquire "faceless" party members, as in they have no backstory/quests etc. So you can always have a full party back, even to just recover the main character party members.
It's not much of a spoiler, but there comes a time in the game where the story party members not currently in your party become unselecatable again (due to story events). So that's a good thing to remember if you're attached to someone and trying outlandish party combinations.
There's a completely free re-spec item/function on your ship after the game gets fully going, so just remember that if you're keeping party members back for certain uses. You don't have to worry about swapping party members in to get through a tough spot.


----------



## Ralyks

Persona 5 Strikers. I'm having such nostalgic feels, it's like seeing a group of friends I haven't seen in forever (seeing how Persona 5 is my second favorite game ever).

Also, soooooo close to getting the Platinum trophy for Spider Man Miles Morales. Just in time for me to delete it and make hard drive space for Yakuza 7 next week.


----------



## mongey

the new update made me put on sf5 and have a tinker .I'm far from an expert in the game, was way more into sf4, but Ryu def seems strong again


----------



## KnightBrolaire

More tarkov. And some Rocksmith/Fallen Order as a palate cleanser for when I inevitably ragequit tarkov.


----------



## jco5055

just been playing Super Mario 3d world, i feel like with my very limited gaming time I just stick to Nintendo since imo they still do it best..though I do need to catch up on some PC stuff for sure


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> the new update made me put on sf5 and have a tinker .I'm far from an expert in the game, was way more into sf4, but Ryu def seems strong again



I'm all for the new Ryu buffs since he really needed them to be more vaible to the harder hitters. I was already happy with them making his low medium kick useable again, but all the extra stuff just turned him into an offensive powerhouse.

Really looking forward to maining him again


----------



## Werecow

I'm enjoying Thief 2 so much that it's had me reflecting on the state of games the last few years and how little of them i'm interested in. I wish this genre and single player games in general were more popular.

I'll probably go on to Thief 3 next  even though it never felt as good as the first two.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I'm enjoying Thief 2 so much that it's had me reflecting on the state of games the last few years and how little of them i'm interested in. I wish this genre and single player games in general were more popular.


There's something unique about Looking Glass- and derivative stuff- that leaves me with a similar feeling. If you haven't played Prey, I'd recommend giving that a shot too at some point.


----------



## Mathemagician

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm all for the new Ryu buffs since he really needed them to be more vaible to the harder hitters. I was already happy with them making his low medium kick useable again, but all the extra stuff just turned him into an offensive powerhouse.
> 
> Really looking forward to maining him again



Is Nash good yet? I didn’t play during seasons 1 & 2, and apparently he’s bad now? I thought his teleporting gimmicks while not being a charge character were cool. I need to start playing more, as they did make Chun Li feel really fun to play when I last tried it.


----------



## Leviathus

Werecow said:


> I'm enjoying Thief 2 so much that it's had me reflecting on the state of games the last few years and how little of them i'm interested in. I wish this genre and single player games in general were more popular.
> 
> I'll probably go on to Thief 3 next  even though it never felt as good as the first two.



Man i gotta get back to my Thief 2 playthrough, think i'm on the bank level. Cool games for sure. Single player games these days really do seem to lack the charm of games from 10-20 years ago.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

jco5055 said:


> just been playing Super Mario 3d world, i feel like with my very limited gaming time I just stick to Nintendo since imo they still do it best..though I do need to catch up on some PC stuff for sure



My son and I just started bowsers fury tonight!


----------



## Werecow

Leviathus said:


> Man i gotta get back to my Thief 2 playthrough, think i'm on the bank level. Cool games for sure. Single player games these days really do seem to lack the charm of games from 10-20 years ago.


I just did the bank level this eve  Really great mission.
I love how older games don't hold your hand as well. Lots of quests in games nowadays are follow the quest marker exercises. Where Thief hands you a roughly drawn, static paper map and just tells you what you have to find. Then you improvise and think in the mission, often by picking up on visual clues, parchments, or overhearing stuff in the level.


----------



## mongey

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm all for the new Ryu buffs since he really needed them to be more vaible to the harder hitters. I was already happy with them making his low medium kick useable again, but all the extra stuff just turned him into an offensive powerhouse.
> 
> Really looking forward to maining him again



yeah it's funny how so a small tweak 1f tweal to low mk makes such a difference. feels so much more right again


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> Is Nash good yet? I didn’t play during seasons 1 & 2, and apparently he’s bad now? I thought his teleporting gimmicks while not being a charge character were cool. I need to start playing more, as they did make Chun Li feel really fun to play when I last tried it.



I don't play nash but form what I read opinion is he's still crap ,maybe even worse .but thats just internet chatter

guile def feels weird now. his sonic boom game is dead. locking opponents up with a boom and poking has been his game since sf2. wtf


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I just did the bank level this eve  Really great mission.
> I love how older games don't hold your hand as well. Lots of quests in games nowadays are follow the quest marker exercises. Where Thief hands you a roughly drawn, static paper map and just tells you what you have to find. Then you improvise and think in the mission, often by picking up on visual clues, parchments, or overhearing stuff in the level.



Sounds like you might like the From Software games! Not even a frickin map or questlog to be found in those things. 

I've never paid attention to Thief, I guess I thought it was the same thing as Hitman. Apparently not!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Speaking of good single player experiences, I just finished Dishonored: Death of the Outsider which completes the series for me. I reay like what they did with this game, gave a lot more background into the lore than Dishonored 2 did but I just really love the formula. Plus killing people by teleporting to the space they occupy and exploding them was very fun.

I keep forgetting that this series was developed by the same studio as Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Haven't played that game in like 10 years but it's clear to see how it was a predecessor to the Dishonored series, minus some of the better stealth features, but I always thoight the combat in that game was great for its time. 

I'm gonna leave it alone for a while, but eventually I'm gonna come back to the series and do a ghost+no kills run on D2 and Death of the Outsider. And I guess I can play through the first one again to complete it on PC since I only played it on 360.

For now I'll try D:OS2 again until Total War Warhammer 3 comes out.


----------



## wankerness

TheShreddinHand said:


> My son and I just started bowsers fury tonight!



How is it on Co-op? How does co-op even work when the levels are just a series of short little mission objectives? I started it on one-player the other day. It's definitely amusing, even though I started getting sick of the crappy bowser fights after a while. I haven't played Super Mario 3D world in a long time (I played the Wii-U one a little bit), but I remembered not liking how it was a series of levels ala the old Mario games, when I got into the series with Mario 64 and thus wanted overworlds and stuff. Bowser's Fury sure solves that problem!

I thought Mario 3D didn't have co-op and instead if you had multiple players you were basically just racing to the exit and getting in each others' way. I'm always on the lookout for good couch co-op games, but I don't want to do anything competitive when my girlfriend and I have many, many years of difference in video game experience.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I've never paid attention to Thief, I guess I thought it was the same thing as Hitman. Apparently not!





BlackMastodon said:


> Speaking of good single player experiences, I just finished Dishonored: Death of the Outsider


Thief has so much more in common with Dishonored than Hitman. I've actually never managed to get into Hitman despite the Thief series being favorites. There was a video put out a while ago, I forget by who, making the argument that Hitman isn't really a stealth game in the same way that a Thief game is.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> Is Nash good yet? I didn’t play during seasons 1 & 2, and apparently he’s bad now? I thought his teleporting gimmicks while not being a charge character were cool. I need to start playing more, as they did make Chun Li feel really fun to play when I last tried it.



From what I read and saw, you can link an EX Boom into stand short, and V-Skill 1 can now suck people in as well as absorb projectiles. Those are the biggest changes, but not sure how it affects him since I'm pretty garbage with Nash. 



mongey said:


> yeah it's funny how so a small tweak 1f tweal to low mk makes such a difference. feels so much more right again



Yeah it felt really weird not being able to poke with a low Forward, especially for Ryu. But adding overhead properties to Tatsu, shorter shoulder throw, making parries GOOD, and a bunch of others, Ryu is basically a gatling gun now; strong offensive game like he did in the Alpha series. 



mongey said:


> guile def feels weird now. his sonic boom game is dead. locking opponents up with a boom and poking has been his game since sf2. wtf



Slightly disappointed with this nerf myself, but in fairness, his Boom game was way too good here.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> Thief has so much more in common with Dishonored than Hitman. I've actually never managed to get into Hitman despite the Thief series being favorites. There was a video put out a while ago, I forget by who, making the argument that Hitman isn't really a stealth game in the same way that a Thief game is.


Oh for sure. I'd say Hitman is as much a stealth game as Assassin's Creed, maybe a bit less because AC uses climbing to vantage points and vertical movement as part of the stealth.

I've seen Thief pop up in Steam sales so I'll likely pick it up some day.


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> Oh for sure. I'd say Hitman is as much a stealth game as Assassin's Creed, maybe a bit less because AC uses climbing to vantage points and vertical movement as part of the stealth.
> 
> I've seen Thief pop up in Steam sales so I'll likely pick it up some day.



Just to be clear, my recent posts were talking about Thief 1 & 2 the rather old games now. There's a reboot Thief from just a few years ago that a lot of fans try to pretend doesn't exist (though i've not tried it yet).

The Dishonored series has definitely been my modern replacement for Thief, though it doesn't quite have the same tense atmosphere because you're often screwed when you're spotted and caught in the original Thief games. Though they do have more immediate replayability due to the completely different playstyles you can choose.

Due to my love of Thief, whenever there's a new game with any similarity i always do a ghost run first


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> There's a reboot Thief from just a few years ago that a lot of fans try to pretend doesn't exist (though i've not tried it yet).


I played it and didn't hate it. There are some things about it that will ruin the experience for picky gamers or hardcore Thief fans - and Dishonored does a better job of modernizing the formula of the older games - but it's not a teeeeerrible game on it's own. If you had never played any of the other games before, you'd probably enjoy it. It does do a handful of things very well, but fails at a bunch of the details (I think mostly from a technical perspective - like having really frequent loading gates etc).

Also losing Stephen Russell as Garrett is super disappointing.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I played it and didn't hate it. There are some things about it that will ruin the experience for picky gamers or hardcore Thief fans - and Dishonored does a better job of modernizing the formula of the older games - but it's not a teeeeerrible game on it's own. If you had never played any of the other games before, you'd probably enjoy it. It does do a handful of things very well, but fails at a bunch of the details (I think mostly from a technical perspective - like having really frequent loading gates etc).
> 
> Also losing Stephen Russell as Garrett is super disappointing.



I got the game free with a graphics card upgrade near release. Haven't brought myself to trying it yet after what i've read about it. Yeh, the change from Stephen Russell is a major thing for me, especially when he was available to do it. For some reason they insisted on the actor doing voice + mocap as well, which seemed ridiculous to me. Just get the best voice and best mocap actors for the part instead. He's amazing in everything he does, but especially Thief.


----------



## TedEH

Having him also play Corvo really solidified the "lol we're a better Thief than Thief now"


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> Having him also play Corvo really solidified the "lol we're a better Thief than Thief now"


That was such an amazing move haha. They even had him do his "it's a looong way down!" line in one of the missions. I really nerded out when that happened.


----------



## wankerness

Well, I finally finished the management section of Yakuza 7. It's really boring. I think it's a slight step up from the management in Yakuza 0, but at least there you got to beat someone up periodically. Here it's just the same grind of having to watch a bunch of price tickers 5 times in a row and then do the annoying board meetings for a minute and upgrading stats in between. It took several hours for very little involving gameplay. The hostess management in Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 2 should be held up as the gold standard for minigames in these things - this does not even come remotely close. Those contained actual addictive gameplay instead of tedious grinding and non-interactive displays. Ah well.

Next I have to do the Mario Kart plotline, which I'm kind of dreading based on the one race I did - the graphics have that weird warped, blurry look that makes it hard to react to anything in your path. Well, hopefully it's as easy as the Taxi racing in Yakuza 5 and not much longer!

I'm only in chapter 10 of the plot, and my dudes are mostly level 40 except for the one who left and just rejoined. I should probably unlock all the characters before continuing to grind things out.

The abilities in this game are really imbalanced. Like, some jobs will have a big laundry list of abilities and one or two of them are SO far beyond all the others that there's no reason to ever use the others. It's amusing finding these imbalanced abilities, though. I just discovered dart throw in the dealer job, which I thought was an AOE ability, but I found when you use it on a single target it will just hit that target with all three darts instead of the normal divided damage, and thus it was doing ~1600 damage a cast on some bosses when most expensive abilities were doing ~400. Ridiculous! I love it.

The positioning in this game remains its biggest problem. The AOE abilities in this game are completely undermined by it, as unless your caster with the AOE spell goes first in your party, the enemies will spread out and you wont' be able to hit them all with it. I had to stack agility items on my character with powerful AOE, and then when I got a certain particularly high agi character late in the game, I was no longer able to use her AOE cause even with agi items jacked up and the other character not having any agi-boosts, he'd usually go first and after his cast the enemies would be too spread out to hit with aoe. And they never group up again in combat, either. It's very bad design. I just respecced her Dealer cause her formerly biggest strength was now useless.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

wankerness said:


> How is it on Co-op? How does co-op even work when the levels are just a series of short little mission objectives? I started it on one-player the other day. It's definitely amusing, even though I started getting sick of the crappy bowser fights after a while. I haven't played Super Mario 3D world in a long time (I played the Wii-U one a little bit), but I remembered not liking how it was a series of levels ala the old Mario games, when I got into the series with Mario 64 and thus wanted overworlds and stuff. Bowser's Fury sure solves that problem!
> 
> I thought Mario 3D didn't have co-op and instead if you had multiple players you were basically just racing to the exit and getting in each others' way. I'm always on the lookout for good couch co-op games, but I don't want to do anything competitive when my girlfriend and I have many, many years of difference in video game experience.



We only played about a half an hour yesterday but so far he’s just flying around whacking guys with the paintbrush and gathering coins or shines for me. Haha. It’s making the game too easy for me but that’s not the point as my son having fun is more important. Haha! The camera stays fixed on Mario though so he can’t really fly to far off. A press of L and R at the same time zooms him back into view.


----------



## mongey

Bloody_Inferno said:


> From what I read and saw, you can link an EX Boom into stand short, and V-Skill 1 can now suck people in as well as absorb projectiles. Those are the biggest changes, but not sure how it affects him since I'm pretty garbage with Nash.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah it felt really weird not being able to poke with a low Forward, especially for Ryu. But adding overhead properties to Tatsu, shorter shoulder throw, making parries GOOD, and a bunch of others, Ryu is basically a gatling gun now; strong offensive game like he did in the Alpha series.
> 
> 
> 
> Slightly disappointed with this nerf myself, but in fairness, his Boom game was way too good here.


Sonic booms were def good. But it’s really all he had. I never got used to sommersult kick in sf5. Seems to trade often when in the past it would hit.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Playing Fenyx. 

It's Ubisoft as Frack but I am enjoying it. A map full of asinine filler is what ImNotAhab be needing.

I don't care that this is a rip off of Zelda BOTW. It's a bit friendlier, if much more shallow. I was one of "those people" that could not get into BOTW due to the weapon degredation.


----------



## SpaceDock

Just finished AC Valhalla, 75 hours! Need to play something different for a while before doing Fenyx Rising that I bought on sale a few months back.


----------



## wankerness

SpaceDock said:


> Just finished AC Valhalla, 75 hours! Need to play something different for a while before doing Fenyx Rising that I bought on sale a few months back.



Did you finish it finish it, or just finish the story? 

How about that hamtunscire cairn, if the former?!?!


----------



## Mathemagician

I just downloaded a One Piece game on the switch Grand Adventure Type R Pirate racing something or other. For $10 I just want to do some exploring and find some hidden secrets. If it has that worth it, lol. Never seen the show.


----------



## SpaceDock

wankerness said:


> Did you finish it finish it, or just finish the story?
> 
> How about that hamtunscire cairn, if the former?!?!



I certainly did not finish the game to 100%, I got the story, all the cultists, all the legendary animals. I did many of the cairns but don’t know if I did that one specifically.

One thing I actually liked about this AC game was that I didn’t need to constantly worry about swapping out to new gear and weapons. I just kept upgrading one set I liked from the first 1/3 of the game. Nice change from the “loot” tropes of lots of games.


----------



## ImNotAhab

SpaceDock said:


> Just finished AC Valhalla, 75 hours! Need to play something different for a while before doing Fenyx Rising that I bought on sale a few months back.



I was in your position. I played Control in between AC Valhalla and Fenyx which was a great game and a wonderful palate cleanser. If you have not checked not out it I recommend it.


----------



## SpaceDock

@ImNotAhab I already played through control twice!  Yes, a great game.


----------



## nightlight

Currently playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Tyranny and Vermintide 2. I got the first two during the Lunar New Year sale on Steam, big fan of RPGs.


----------



## SamSam

My copy of Trails of Cold Steel 2 finally arrived this week! But so did my Mac Mini so I've been preoccupied seeing how many instances of SD 2.0 I can load in ten seconds...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SamSam said:


> My copy of Trails of Cold Steel 2 finally arrived this week!









I forgot to ask if you've been reading the books you've been collecting during the course of the first game? If no, it's worth reading them whenever you come across them. There's some excellent world building at play here. EG: The Imperial Chronicle tabloids can become propaganda that parallels during your gameplay, and some of the storybooks are also Checkhov's Gun foreshadowing as well, like Toval and his relation to the Carnelia books, written by the Trista Pawnshop owner.


----------



## Nicki

Sunset overdrive didn't really capture me at all so I started playing Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for a bit last night until my Xbox kicked me out of my profile due to yesterday's Xbox Live outtage. From what I played, I really dug so I'm probably going to stick with it.


----------



## SamSam

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I forgot to ask if you've been reading the books you've been collecting during the course of the first game? If no, it's worth reading them whenever you come across them. There's some excellent world building at play here. EG: The Imperial Chronicle tabloids can become propaganda that parallels during your gameplay, and some of the storybooks are also Checkhov's Gun foreshadowing as well, like Toval and his relation to the Carnelia books, written by the Trista Pawnshop owner.



I read a few of them as and when. I Read the weekly recommended ones each time though. I finished CS1 on level 78 and I'm somewhat tempted to redo the last day at level 80


----------



## wankerness

I'm really glad I held off buying the FF7 remake - I almost did the last time it was on sale. It's already going to be the free game on PS+! No free PS5 upgrade with the free PS+ version, but who cares. By the time I can get a PS5, it will probably cost 10 dollars, if I really want to replay it. 

Remnant: From the Ashes is the other free game. Apparently it's a "soulslike." Anyone played it?

Still grinding away in Yakuza 7, now working on peoples' weapon upgrades after getting the shop to max level. What a grindy game!!! Now I can get 3 million yen every 5 minutes with the cleared management game, but when you're frequently having to do things like shell out 10 million for a single upgrade mat, it doesn't sound like as much as it once did. Ah well. I'm almost level 50 with most of my guys, so I'm apparently at least not grinding for no reason, as I'm hearing there's an insane difficulty spike at the end of chapter 12 where if you're not level 50 you'll probably have a bad time.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Remnant: From the Ashes is the other free game. Apparently it's a "soulslike." Anyone played it?



Yes. I really enjoy it. The bosses definitely have a SoulsBorne feel to them, but it's definitely its own thing. Think Gears of War and DS mashup and that's Remnant. Lots of fun, especially with people.


----------



## wankerness

wankerness said:


> Still grinding away in Yakuza 7, now working on peoples' weapon upgrades after getting the shop to max level. What a grindy game!!! Now I can get 3 million yen every 5 minutes with the cleared management game, but when you're frequently having to do things like shell out 10 million for a single upgrade mat, it doesn't sound like as much as it once did. Ah well. I'm almost level 50 with most of my guys, so I'm apparently at least not grinding for no reason, as I'm hearing there's an insane difficulty spike at the end of chapter 12 where if you're not level 50 you'll probably have a bad time.



Haha. That chapter 12 boss was a difficulty spike alright. I was level 52 or so on average and a once had a character get knocked out full to zero health in one move when I missed a block. Oof.

Also, it was by far the best boss so far and I'm mad there was no save point anywhere close to before it so I don't have a backup save to be able to replay it.  The plot on this makes the other games seem straightforward, which is saying something, but at least I'm finally seeing some familiar faces.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SamSam said:


> I read a few of them as and when. I Read the weekly recommended ones each time though. I finished CS1 on level 78 and I'm somewhat tempted to redo the last day at level 80



If you're planning to redo the last day at the old schoolhouse, you may as well play around more with quartz builds and see how how many abusable builds you can come up with and see how much DPS you can smack everyone around.  Untouchable Fie/Rean, S Craft spamming Gaius, break Machias by giving him Chrono Burst, any EP boosts, etc.


----------



## p0ke

Finally got around to defeating Gwyn in DS1 yesterday, so now doing NG+. The key was hitting him two handed, two hits staggered him almost every time and then I had time to drink estus or hit him some more. I also wore lighter armor. I skipped the DLC dragon in the end, just couldn't do it. Plus I acquired the Dragon Greatsword from the everlasting dragon, that will be deadly once I have enough strength to wield it.
NG+ started out easy, most enemies still fall with one hit, but the Black Knights are pretty damned deadly this time around and I have absolutely zero chance of killing the red dragon at the moment. It's a good thing that enemies drop more souls now though, so I can level up quicker... I just got to the Undead Parish, so next up is the Bell Gargoyle.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Finally got around to defeating Gwyn in DS1 yesterday, so now doing NG+. The key was hitting him two handed, two hits staggered him almost every time and then I had time to drink estus or hit him some more. I also wore lighter armor. I skipped the DLC dragon in the end, just couldn't do it. Plus I acquired the Dragon Greatsword from the everlasting dragon, that will be deadly once I have enough strength to wield it.
> NG+ started out easy, most enemies still fall with one hit, but the Black Knights are pretty damned deadly this time around and I have absolutely zero chance of killing the red dragon at the moment. It's a good thing that enemies drop more souls now though, so I can level up quicker... I just got to the Undead Parish, so next up is the Bell Gargoyle.



Man, you're going to have trouble using brute-force strats like that in NG+! Unless you grind a whole lot, I guess. And yeah, NG+ isn't too bad for a while. I think the first time I was like "WHOA, wasn't expecting that!!" was when I fought the spider lady down in blighttown and some attack 1-shot me through my 50 vitality and medium armor. 

Yakuza 7's late chapters (12+) are making me want to replay Yakuza 0. I'm guessing that game had lots of connections to Yakuza 5, etc with character cameos that I totally missed. The only one I think I remember was having to babysit a bratty young version of Daigo (who I obviously had no idea of the importance of). It was the first game I played in the series, but now so many of these secondary characters feel like old friends. Plus, everyone still seems to consider it the best game in the franchise! I need to reevaluate it. I absolutely loved Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 5, but maybe it was better!


----------



## BlackMastodon

K so D:OS2 is very satisfying when you're doing well in combat, but fuck me is it brutal. Thought it would have more autosaves so I didn't think about doing 2 fights back to back. Found that fire slug cave after fighting the magisters in the fort, rand out of res scrolls on people that were alive and finished the fight with 3 folks left. Misclicked a few times and my one dude who had another scroll to bring back my fourth walked into fire with less than 10 hp. Had to reload to before the first fight and lost hours of progress. But in the end I'm better for it as I screwed up some level management on my Wayfarer guy. Just learning to quick save every now and again.


----------



## SamSam

Bloody_Inferno said:


> If you're planning to redo the last day at the old schoolhouse, you may as well play around more with quartz builds and see how how many abusable builds you can come up with and see how much DPS you can smack everyone around.  Untouchable Fie/Rean, S Craft spamming Gaius, break Machias by giving him Chrono Burst, any EP boosts, etc.



I'll be honest, pretty much just used as many strength up quartz as I could and went ham. I definitely should try some actual builds


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Man, you're going to have trouble using brute-force strats like that in NG+! Unless you grind a whole lot, I guess. And yeah, NG+ isn't too bad for a while. I think the first time I was like "WHOA, wasn't expecting that!!" was when I fought the spider lady down in blighttown and some attack 1-shot me through my 50 vitality and medium armor.



No problems so far! I just rung both the bells, and I haven't even been hollow basically at all this playthrough. The gargoyles killed me once because I happened to be between them when the second one spawned, but the spider witch was a piece of cake (apart from the attack you mentioned, it dropped my health to 5% but then I had enough time to refill it). I guess it helped on both that my shield has 90% fire resistance and my sword staggers easily when two-handing.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Chapter 4 of Yakuza: Like A Rolling Stone. I had to do some money grinding to buy some strong equipment since I had to remind myself that I'm playing a turn based JRPG as opposed to a traditional Yakuza game (the game isn't subtle in reminding that either). Basically have to bring my Cold Steel mentality here, helped a bit against some of the mobs that are a few levels higher than my party.

So far enjoying the mini games. Got S ranks on easy and medium on Can Quest but can't get past A on hard just yet. The vintage movie theater is fun 'whack a mole' esque game. Getting some S ranks early (a sneaky game of SFV in between helped a bit).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SamSam said:


> I'll be honest, pretty much just used as many strength up quartz as I could and went ham. I definitely should try some actual builds



Attack buffs work well for Gaius and (especially) Laura. Perhaps too well, a super buffed Laura can 1 shot most of the monsters in the final dungeon. Though checking again, I think Gaius is up there with Rean and Fie as Evasion tanks (albeit slower), though high HP also means you can use his CP charge and spam S-Crafts. 

Building the Class VII cast is fun, since depending on play style, you can build a party that works well. Be it just full attack muscle, or start using buffs (Jusis with Orochi MQ) or do full speed mode (Rean, Fie, Alisa and Machias) where you're doing high DPS before the final boss even takes a turn. 

All this CS talk makes me want to revisit Cold Steel 1 (and 2) again, and not abuse the NG+ either. I might just fire up the PS3 for them, but I will miss the Fast Forward option in the PS4 ports.


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> K so D:OS2 is very satisfying when you're doing well in combat, but fuck me is it brutal. Thought it would have more autosaves so I didn't think about doing 2 fights back to back. Found that fire slug cave after fighting the magisters in the fort, rand out of res scrolls on people that were alive and finished the fight with 3 folks left. Misclicked a few times and my one dude who had another scroll to bring back my fourth walked into fire with less than 10 hp. Had to reload to before the first fight and lost hours of progress. But in the end I'm better for it as I screwed up some level management on my Wayfarer guy. Just learning to quick save every now and again.


I got to a point in the game where the combat just suddenly clicked in my head, and it really got me addicted to the game at the same time. I didn't even like turn-based at the time, and it even converted me to preferring that. You still get to a fight every so often where you think it must be impossible. I used to think it was like a Dark Souls of RPG combat.

Another thing the game really requires is a tactical approach to when and how you upgrade your parties gear and skills. I keep the weapons for my DPS characters (rogue and ranger) upgraded every single level-up, but armour for everyone probably every other level unless something turns up with really special qualities. If you let armour get too far behind your current level you'll get wrecked with crowd control debuffs in one turn, due to the armour system.


----------



## Dumple Stilzkin

Vagrant Story ps1. Amazing game.


----------



## Ralyks

Got the Platinum for Miles Morales. Overall, great game, and I'm looking forward to the inevitable third game of the Insomniac Spiderman saga.

Been doing 13 Sentiels bit by bit, great game if you can accept that's it's basically 80% side scrolling graphic novel, 20% JRPG mech tower defense. But the main game momentarily is Persona 5 Strikers. Yeah, the gameplay is pretty fun (especially for a muso game), but just reconnecting with those characters itself is a rewarding experience.

Of course, all of this will be placed.on hold when Yakuza Like a Dragon for PS5 drops in 2 days.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Werecow said:


> I got to a point in the game where the combat just suddenly clicked in my head, and it really got me addicted to the game at the same time. I didn't even like turn-based at the time, and it even converted me to preferring that. You still get to a fight every so often where you think it must be impossible. I used to think it was like a Dark Souls of RPG combat.
> 
> Another thing the game really requires is a tactical approach to when and how you upgrade your parties gear and skills. I keep the weapons for my DPS characters (rogue and ranger) upgraded every single level-up, but armour for everyone probably every other level unless something turns up with really special qualities. If you let armour get too far behind your current level you'll get wrecked with crowd control debuffs in one turn, due to the armour system.


Yep, I'm fully into it now. Played probably qw hours over the weekend and I'm really digging it, aside from a couple bullshit bugs or cases where I don't have everyone in combat and it fucks up a whole turn for me. But I agree, the tactical approach to combat is great, and I'm sure I'll get better at it, but I loved the turn-based tactics of XCOM so this is my bag for sure. 

Took your advice and brought Ifen into my party shortly after restarting, taking him as a wayfarer/hunts an for ranged DPS and swapping out the Red Prince who was a battlemage. Rounded out the team with Beast as my tank with a point in Geomancy, Sabille as a scoundrel, and my main avatar guy as a summoner and pyromancer. Hit level 6 today and got them team pretty well geared up.


----------



## Yelir

@wankerness Have you played the entire series of Yakuza games? I finished up Yakuza 0 recently on Game Pass, but did 60% overall completion/achievements before my trial runs out. I really want to play Judgment when I have the chance but will try to wrap up some shorter games in March.


----------



## wankerness

Yelir said:


> @wankerness Have you played the entire series of Yakuza games? I finished up Yakuza 0 recently on Game Pass, but did 60% overall completion/achievements before my trial runs out. I really want to play Judgment when I have the chance but will try to wrap up some shorter games in March.



I’ve played everything released on ps4, besides Judgment, which I bought during a recent sale and haven’t installed yet. 7 is the only one of the mainline games I haven’t beaten yet. I don’t have a ps3 so I don’t have any of the weird spin-offs like the zombie one.

platinums on these games tend to be incredibly tedious and not worth it. I usually do all the substories and max level everyone and call it a day. But playing through again on ultra-hard or having to learn mahjong is not for me!

7 might be the first I platinum, the only really nasty thing is just beating Amon (he’s the secret last boss in all of these). Well, and finishing the Mario Kart mode will probably be a pain, I crash into walls on sharp turns a lot.


----------



## Ralyks

I still haven't beaten the 3 - 5 collection that they ported to PS4, but I beat 0, Kiwami 1 and 2, and 6. Was gonna go through Judgement, but I'm just gonna wait for the PS5 version that was announced.

Really can't wait to get my PS5 copy of Yakuza 7 tomorrow.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I still haven't beaten the 3 - 5 collection that they ported to PS4, but I beat 0, Kiwami 1 and 2, and 6. Was gonna go through Judgement, but I'm just gonna wait for the PS5 version that was announced.
> 
> Really can't wait to get my PS5 copy of Yakuza 7 tomorrow.



There are some generic tips for 7 that I eventually figured out that made things a lot less annoying, but were infuriating for a long time cause I didn't get it and the game doesn't tell you anything.

1) If using AOEs, WAIT after your first attack, sometimes the enemies will group up again.
2) In business management mode meetings, select the angriest person, and then choose your dude that has the "counter" color first for the shield that the "enemy" has, and then for the color that the "enemy" is. It's not always the same! Also, make sure on the board you prioritize people with the lowest action cost and the highest charisma and that you have one decent person for all three colors.
3) Upgrading the low-level weapons at the Romance workshop eventually results in way, way, way stronger weapons than any of the higher-level weapons you can buy in stores. Don't waste the money on buying better gear like I did (and how most RPGs would work), spend it all on upgrading the base weapons, since none of that is wasted unless you change jobs and never go back. Most of the crafting materials are available from a vendor in the park in the northeast, and then the fancier ones come from the "dungeon" in Sotenbori. You'll get really sick of running it!
4) Farm the heck out of the invested vagabonds in the yokohama dungeon second floor using the handful of multi-hit abilities (the best two come from characters you don't get till chapter 10, but you can get some decent ones for hostess and breaker jobs that are available muchhh earlier).
5) Do all the tests to improve your personality as soon as possible, there's a lot of stuff gated by low personality stats and it's SO slow. I still don't have level 10 on some stats even after ~60 hours played and there are idiotically two early substories that require 10 in stats to progress.

ALSO, if you haven't played 3-5 on PS3 yet, you should maybe prioritize at least 4 and 5 before 7. 4 and 5 had some of the best characters in the series and 6 disregarded them (6 was baddddd in the plot department) and 7 has some great moments if you're familiar with them. But, yeah, that's probably at least 50 hours to burn through those even without all the side stuff.

Unless 7 really pulls something out of its butt in the last chapter (i'm on grind mode now before I finish it), I'm thinking the ranking for the series is something like:

Kiwami 2
0
5
7
Kiwami 1
6 (the gameplay's good and it's focused and has nice graphics, it's just too bad the story is such a titanic failure when it comes to being a conclusion - everyone besides Kiryu is completely wasted)
4 (would be higher than 6 but god some sections are tedious, especially the prison break)
3 (this one is the most disposable in the series by far)

7's grind is INSANE. I was reading about the final millennium tower, and it recommends maxing out multiple jobs per character. I have been the same job on one character for almost the entire game and am still at 53/99 job rank. That's one job, out of 5 per character. And you don't get the job exp booster for Ichiban until chapter 15, so he was at frickin level 32 with no respecs despite his character being level 70. It's ridiculous. And he has 8 jobs! I saw an estimate on the trophy thing saying "the grind section prepping for the millennium tower after finishing the game should take 20-30 hours."


----------



## MFB

LOL @ bed of chaos fight.

It's so fucking dumb, it's more effort to get there than to actually complete it. I think I got it on the fourth, at most fifth, try and my biggest concern was retrieving the souls I lost the first time I went in.

Only rolled myself into a hole once, so not bad all in all.


----------



## MFB

God damn it, I can avoid every silver knight on the way to Gwyn, but the dude is a fucking tank when it comes to taking hits. My Gravelord Sword is +3, hitting for 344, with 40 VIT and I'm lucky to get him down to 2/3 health.

Meanwhile, he can get in there quick slashes no problem, all which kill my visibility from the fire, and if he lands the grab attack that's 50% health that's almost impossible to recover with his speed. 

This feels like the precursor to Martyr Logarius in Booodborne


----------



## mongey

MFB said:


> God damn it, I can avoid every silver knight on the way to Gwyn, but the dude is a fucking tank when it comes to taking hits. My Gravelord Sword is +3, hitting for 344, with 40 VIT and I'm lucky to get him down to 2/3 health.
> 
> Meanwhile, he can get in there quick slashes no problem, all which kill my visibility from the fire, and if he lands the grab attack that's 50% health that's almost impossible to recover with his speed.
> 
> This feels like the precursor to Martyr Logarius in Booodborne



I think both times I beat him I used iron flesh and 2 handed the shite out of him


----------



## Randy Garcia

Currently playing South park the stick of truth! Definitely a classic! Can check it on my twitch if anyone is interested 

Randy626 is my twitch name lol


----------



## Choop

MFB said:


> LOL @ bed of chaos fight.
> 
> Only rolled myself into a hole once, so not bad all in all.



Hahaha, honestly you did well! And as far as Gwyn, he's relatively easy to parry, which can be helped by having the target shield (I think?).


----------



## MFB

Yeah, I was rereading the thread from a couple days ago when someone else was brute-forcing their way through, I'm usually terrible at parrying but I'm going to give it a go; seems to be the only reliable method for taking him down besides two-handing and again, brute-forcing through


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Yeah, I was rereading the thread from a couple days ago when someone else was brute-forcing their way through, I'm usually terrible at parrying but I'm going to give it a go; seems to be the only reliable method for taking him down besides two-handing and again, brute-forcing through



Even being terrible at parrying is a better strat than trying to play it like a tank with how fast he hits. I think I missed half the parries but still beat him easily the first time I tried the parry strat. Use the hornet ring, the strongest weapon you can 1h (I used the black knight greatsword cause my strength was 50 by that point on NG+), and then a puny little shield like the small leather one. His health will be practically gone after just two or three parries.

So you're skipping the DLC? I would say the DLC bosses are way better than the mainline game bosses, and from what I've seen that's a pretty much universal opinion, but it's also much harder, so I dunno. If you beat Gwyn you're locked out of it until you play more than halfway through NG+ so now is the time.

DS2 and 3 let you beat the final base-game boss and then mosey around the DLC or whatever without progressing to NG+, but DS1 you're locked in.


----------



## Nicki

So Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is really awesome. I really like the story telling and voice acting. The combat is right up my alley since it's so SoulsBorne inspired.

@p0ke and @wankerness, you two would probably really dig it.


----------



## MFB

For right now I've just been focused on the main game, I haven't touched any of the DLC; I don't even remember if it's included with the remastered version, but I want to say yes?

Anywho, I had been blocking his attacks at least (my END is on par with my VIT at 40) so I wasn't not trying to defend myself at all thankfully; and I am one-handing the Gravelord Greatsword, so I'll give it a go with Hornet Ring - what secondary ring were y'all running? I'm assuming Wolf, but maybe Steel Protection?


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> So Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is really awesome. I really like the story telling and voice acting. The combat is right up my alley since it's so SoulsBorne inspired.
> 
> @p0ke and @wankerness, you two would probably really dig it.



I played it already. It was pretty good. The sliding and platforming was really bad, but combat with troopers was really fun. It was too short, though, I started it and got the platinum in 2 or 3 days. If they make a sequel that also doesn't get EA'd I'll be first in line.


----------



## p0ke

Nicki said:


> So Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is really awesome. I really like the story telling and voice acting. The combat is right up my alley since it's so SoulsBorne inspired.
> 
> @p0ke and @wankerness, you two would probably really dig it.



I'm waiting for the price to come down. It's been on sale in the xbox store a couple of times but not enough. I don't have much time to play anyway so I'm not in a hurry to pay full price for anything  But I've been waiting to play it since release, because what I've seen looks awesome (+ I'm a huge Star Wars fan)



MFB said:


> For right now I've just been focused on the main game, I haven't touched any of the DLC; I don't even remember if it's included with the remastered version, but I want to say yes?
> 
> Anywho, I had been blocking his attacks at least (my END is on par with my VIT at 40) so I wasn't not trying to defend myself at all thankfully; and I am one-handing the Gravelord Greatsword, so I'll give it a go with Hornet Ring - what secondary ring were y'all running? I'm assuming Wolf, but maybe Steel Protection?



Yep the DLC stuff is included in the Remastered version.

About Gwyn, I defeated him with a Black Knight Sword +5 two handed, and the armor I used was just the Gold Hemmed Black Robe set (the one that Ceaseless Discharge is guarding) because I happened to have that around. The rings I used were some ring of favor and protection (don't remember the exact name or where I found it), because it's a general upgrade to many stats + it breaks if I remove it, and for the second ring I probably had the flame stoneplate ring? Not quite sure.



MFB said:


> LOL @ bed of chaos fight.
> 
> It's so fucking dumb, it's more effort to get there than to actually complete it. I think I got it on the fourth, at most fifth, try and my biggest concern was retrieving the souls I lost the first time I went in.
> 
> Only rolled myself into a hole once, so not bad all in all.



It took me maybe 5 attempts too. I guess the ideal tactic would have been to break one of the orbs -> save and load to get back behind the fog gate -> break the second orb -> save and load again (lol) -> run into the hole.
IMO getting into the hole was the most difficult part, I missed the ledge twice and got killed by the flame attack once while already down there...

Now I just reached Anor Londo on NG+, and damn, the two bosses kick my ass. I even summoned a phantom to help me, but they still hack me to bits after merging. I'll get them next time though, just gotta back off more and let the phantom do its' thing...
I'm on level 100 now and I've been focusing on strength so I can wield my Dragon Greatsword (+4) soon  I can already two-hand it effectively if I wear Havel's Ring, but I wanna reach the point where I can use a shield as well...


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> For right now I've just been focused on the main game, I haven't touched any of the DLC; I don't even remember if it's included with the remastered version, but I want to say yes?
> 
> Anywho, I had been blocking his attacks at least (my END is on par with my VIT at 40) so I wasn't not trying to defend myself at all thankfully; and I am one-handing the Gravelord Greatsword, so I'll give it a go with Hornet Ring - what secondary ring were y'all running? I'm assuming Wolf, but maybe Steel Protection?



I used Havel's ring 95% of the time, so probably that. I dunno. I guess with him since you don't need to roll, the steel protection or wolf ring would make the most sense besides Hornet ring.

The Ring of Favor and Protection is usually the best ring if you don't need Havel's, but I hated not being able to remove it when you only have 2 ring slots (unlike the 4 in later games), since I was often switching out to spell damage situationally and/or the one that makes it so you can walk in lava or the one that makes it so water doesn't slow you down.

I really think you might want to check out the DLC. It's a big step up from all the later areas of the game in terms of level design and boss design. Artorias in particular is usually listed as one of the best bosses of the whole soulsborne series. And man, you're not going to want to go through Anor Londo and all that bullshit again to check it out. Just be aware the first area of it is the nastiest when it comes to enemies.


----------



## wankerness

I got my girlfriend to start BOTW, and she LOVES it. Like, she thinks it's by far the best video game she's ever played (not that she's played that many, but she has gone through all of OoT, WW, Link's Awakening and TP and a fair amount of Skyward Sword/LttP). It's also interesting watching her approach to it vs mine. Like, she just wants to meander around, slowly take out enemy camps, check out interesting geographical things, experiment with cooking junk, and is not at all prioritizing going after what the missions tell you to do, checking what's needed for armor upgrades, or trying to make beelines for the towers and unlocking fairies and everything else I did. I'm thinking my brain has been extensively rewired by too many Ubisoft/Bethesda games to think in terms of mission objective markers and destinations instead of journeys, or something. So, I missed what makes this game so unique among other open world games. It's been pretty eye-opening!!

Are there any other games that are so focused on exploration and so stripped-down in terms of the game telling you where to go/what to do? I'm curious what else is out there. Is it just stuff like No Man's Sky? The only BOTW rip-off I've played was Immortals: Fenyx Rising, and that REALLY missed everything that she likes about BOTW - it tells you to identify icons and to go straight to them. No mystery, no exploration, no nothing, just an open world with lots of puzzles, like if Zelda let you scan a 2000 yard radius for shrines/koroks without moving and then permanently put icons for them all on your map, and didn't have any interesting camps or any of the mild "survival" elements like having to collect cooking ingredients/weapons.


----------



## bostjan

I just finished "Never Again" on Nintendo Switch.

I chose the game, because the visuals reminded me of Silent Hill, which I love and miss playing. I started playing it and geezuz was everything on a sttep learning curve. Starts out atmospheric and just generally offputting (creepy), then suddenly gets cryptic as hell and punishing. I finally made it past the second boss and then suddenly started to realize what the game was actually about (should have known from the name). Pretty heavy stuff. Not sure I can recommend it, but it's overall really well done.

Now onto much lighter tone with Untitled Goose Game...


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I got my girlfriend to start BOTW, and she LOVES it. Like, she thinks it's by far the best video game she's ever played (not that she's played that many, but she has gone through all of OoT, WW, Link's Awakening and TP and a fair amount of Skyward Sword/LttP). It's also interesting watching her approach to it vs mine. Like, she just wants to meander around, slowly take out enemy camps, check out interesting geographical things, experiment with cooking junk, and is not at all prioritizing going after what the missions tell you to do, checking what's needed for armor upgrades, or trying to make beelines for the towers and unlocking fairies and everything else I did. I'm thinking my brain has been extensively rewired by too many Ubisoft/Bethesda games to think in terms of mission objective markers and destinations instead of journeys, or something. So, I missed what makes this game so unique among other open world games. It's been pretty eye-opening!!
> 
> Are there any other games that are so focused on exploration and so stripped-down in terms of the game telling you where to go/what to do? I'm curious what else is out there. Is it just stuff like No Man's Sky? The only BOTW rip-off I've played was Immortals: Fenyx Rising, and that REALLY missed everything that she likes about BOTW - it tells you to identify icons and to go straight to them. No mystery, no exploration, no nothing, just an open world with lots of puzzles, like if Zelda let you scan a 2000 yard radius for shrines/koroks without moving and then permanently put icons for them all on your map, and didn't have any interesting camps or any of the mild "survival" elements like having to collect cooking ingredients/weapons.



To your GF’s credit that’s the right way to play it imo, lol. I got 30 hrs out of it and did barely 3 bosses. But I EXPLORED dat map.


----------



## bostjan

Yeah, I started playing BotW a few years ago and got addicted to it right away. I had to deal with a family tragedy and stopped playing and haven't gone back to it since then, partly out of avoiding the potential for memories to sprout up, but it is, IMO, good enough of a game to warrant getting a Switch.


----------



## TedEH

The way I played BotW it took something like 90 hours before I finally took on the end-game. 



wankerness said:


> Are there any other games that are so focused on exploration and so stripped-down in terms of the game telling you where to go/what to do? I'm curious what else is out there.


This might not be quite what you're looking for, but Disco Elysium (to me) does a thing to narrative adventure games that's comparable to what BotW does to Zelda games. The game is very open in terms of what you can do (or what you're "supposed to" do) - and absolutely doesn't tell you what you're supposed to be doing. You just decide and go do it. Or don't.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> The Ring of Favor and Protection



Ah yeah, that's the one I was referring to before. I never took it of after I got it, still wearing it halfway into NG+ because it breaks if I do. And since I don't remember where it came from... 
For the second ring I'd switch between whatever's needed (lava/water/abyss etc) and steel protection / flame stoneplate / hornet depending on what enemies I'm expecting. In the beginning, before I got others, I used the blue tearstone ring a lot, it saved me many times since it increases defense when hp is low.



wankerness said:


> I really think you might want to check out the DLC. It's a big step up from all the later areas of the game in terms of level design and boss design. Artorias in particular is usually listed as one of the best bosses of the whole soulsborne series. And man, you're not going to want to go through Anor Londo and all that bullshit again to check it out. Just be aware the first area of it is the nastiest when it comes to enemies.



Yep, the DLC areas and bosses were definitely really cool, but the Stone Guardian enemies in the first area just suck so hard, I don't think I'll be going that way on NG+. The first enemy of the DLC is a boss/mini-boss and he's a real dick too.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I got my girlfriend to start BOTW, and she LOVES it. Like, she thinks it's by far the best video game she's ever played (not that she's played that many, but she has gone through all of OoT, WW, Link's Awakening and TP and a fair amount of Skyward Sword/LttP). It's also interesting watching her approach to it vs mine. Like, she just wants to meander around, slowly take out enemy camps, check out interesting geographical things, experiment with cooking junk, and is not at all prioritizing going after what the missions tell you to do, checking what's needed for armor upgrades, or trying to make beelines for the towers and unlocking fairies and everything else I did. I'm thinking my brain has been extensively rewired by too many Ubisoft/Bethesda games to think in terms of mission objective markers and destinations instead of journeys, or something. So, I missed what makes this game so unique among other open world games. It's been pretty eye-opening!!
> 
> Are there any other games that are so focused on exploration and so stripped-down in terms of the game telling you where to go/what to do? I'm curious what else is out there. Is it just stuff like No Man's Sky? The only BOTW rip-off I've played was Immortals: Fenyx Rising, and that REALLY missed everything that she likes about BOTW - it tells you to identify icons and to go straight to them. No mystery, no exploration, no nothing, just an open world with lots of puzzles, like if Zelda let you scan a 2000 yard radius for shrines/koroks without moving and then permanently put icons for them all on your map, and didn't have any interesting camps or any of the mild "survival" elements like having to collect cooking ingredients/weapons.



My first playthrough of Skyrim i did like 50 hours before i saw my first Dragon, or knew what a shout was. I turn off all the quest marker stuff and just head towards what looks interesting on the horizon. Then while heading there i allow myself to get distracted by _everything_ i walk past or near as well. Main quests in Bethesda games are often boring compared to the sides or just the exploration of the world.
I've actually still not gone far along the main quest in the game despite having hundreds of hours in Skyrim now  I'll probably keep it like that, as i can still pick the game up and feel mystery in the world. I've done the same with Fallout 4 as well. They're great games for just walking around, looking at stuff while being kept on your toes by the random events & encounters Bethesda games have. You just have to choose to play them that way.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> The way I played BotW it took something like 90 hours before I finally took on the end-game.
> 
> 
> This might not be quite what you're looking for, but Disco Elysium (to me) does a thing to narrative adventure games that's comparable to what BotW does to Zelda games. The game is very open in terms of what you can do (or what you're "supposed to" do) - and absolutely doesn't tell you what you're supposed to be doing. You just decide and go do it. Or don't.



That game's been on my list for a while. They announced in December that a PS4 release was coming in March, but there hasn't been any follow-up news. I'll hope it shows up on the store randomly some day and I'll get it.

Well, assuming they figure out a good control scheme for it. I think it's a point and click adventure, and my mouse gaming days are over (instantly causes wrist pain).


----------



## StevenC

Playing Bower's Fury and it's fantastic, I'll echo what was said about too many Bowser fights. If it was only every time I unlocked the bell plus once per area when I needed it, I'd be fine but it seems like the game is being constantly interrupted for me to run away from a fight. 



wankerness said:


> I got my girlfriend to start BOTW, and she LOVES it. Like, she thinks it's by far the best video game she's ever played (not that she's played that many, but she has gone through all of OoT, WW, Link's Awakening and TP and a fair amount of Skyward Sword/LttP). It's also interesting watching her approach to it vs mine. Like, she just wants to meander around, slowly take out enemy camps, check out interesting geographical things, experiment with cooking junk, and is not at all prioritizing going after what the missions tell you to do, checking what's needed for armor upgrades, or trying to make beelines for the towers and unlocking fairies and everything else I did. I'm thinking my brain has been extensively rewired by too many Ubisoft/Bethesda games to think in terms of mission objective markers and destinations instead of journeys, or something. So, I missed what makes this game so unique among other open world games. It's been pretty eye-opening!!
> 
> Are there any other games that are so focused on exploration and so stripped-down in terms of the game telling you where to go/what to do? I'm curious what else is out there. Is it just stuff like No Man's Sky? The only BOTW rip-off I've played was Immortals: Fenyx Rising, and that REALLY missed everything that she likes about BOTW - it tells you to identify icons and to go straight to them. No mystery, no exploration, no nothing, just an open world with lots of puzzles, like if Zelda let you scan a 2000 yard radius for shrines/koroks without moving and then permanently put icons for them all on your map, and didn't have any interesting camps or any of the mild "survival" elements like having to collect cooking ingredients/weapons.


I'll be completely unhelpful and say the only game I've ever played that feels like Breath of the Wild is Metal Gear Solid V.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Playing Bower's Fury and it's fantastic, I'll echo what was said about too many Bowser fights. If it was only every time I unlocked the bell plus once per area when I needed it, I'd be fine but it seems like the game is being constantly interrupted for me to run away from a fight.
> 
> 
> I'll be completely unhelpful and say the only game I've ever played that feels like Breath of the Wild is Metal Gear Solid V.



No, that's actually helpful. I've had that game for years (it was free on PS+ one month) but have never played it. I'm curious now! I have only ever played the original MGS and had been avoiding this one cause I know how convoluted and impenetrable the story got with the sequels, and figured I'd have to play 2-4 to have a clue what was going on. But if it doesn't matter, then great! I can skip right to it!


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> My first playthrough of Skyrim i did like 50 hours before i saw my first Dragon, or knew what a shout was. I turn off all the quest marker stuff and just head towards what looks interesting on the horizon. Then while heading there i allow myself to get distracted by _everything_ i walk past or near as well. Main quests in Bethesda games are often boring compared to the sides or just the exploration of the world.
> I've actually still not gone far along the main quest in the game despite having hundreds of hours in Skyrim now  I'll probably keep it like that, as i can still pick the game up and feel mystery in the world. I've done the same with Fallout 4 as well. They're great games for just walking around, looking at stuff while being kept on your toes by the random events & encounters Bethesda games have. You just have to choose to play them that way.



When I first got Skyrim back on 11/11/11 (the only game release date I can remember!!), I definitely played it like that to some extent. However, that game really does shove icons down your throat at all times and reallllly wants you to just teleport everywhere constantly, plus it has a TON of quests that are all just busywork. BOTW has sidequests, but they're very sparse and usually not necessary. It's nothing like all those huge guild questlines or the boring main quest in Skyrim. And the enemies don't do that annoying thing that they do in Skyrim where they level to you, so if you don't optimize for damage of some sort they'll eventually become unkillable unless you're on easy difficulty. BOTW really like, doesn't even punish you for simply running away from all enemies, and in fact kind of encourages it since there's no EXP if you kill them, just the possibility of getting a fancy weapon out of a chest or 100 rupees or something.

Skyrim definitely was a step in that direction, but BOTW really amped up its exploration aspects to the Nth degree and removed a bunch of the "convenience" features that ended up turning the game into the eventual "teleport close to the quest markers" game that it becomes as soon as you've found all the major cities and start questlines. You're right that you really have to try to play it in an exploratory way. And the handful of "high level" zones (mainly just fortresses or whatever that have a bunch of very threatening enemies) can't really be exploited the same way as they can in BOTW through clever uses of game mechanics. You can't throw a cucco at a monster so he hits it and dies from the ensuing swarm of angry cuccos, for example. BOTW does definitely have a lot of monsters that are essentially unkillable until you've gotten some high level weapons and upgraded your armor/health, but they're always in the same place and always the same power so it feels more like you're exploring a dangerous world and eventually are strong enough to take it on. Skyrim tried for that and really bungled it with the way player leveling and enemy leveling worked (there was like a sliding scale where the enemies were unkillable, then too easy, then unkillable again if you didn't level weapons/spells the right way but did level other stuff like speech or pickpocket or whatever).


----------



## TedEH

A friend of mine once described BotW as a "masterclass in exploration and rewards" - talking about everything from how fast travel is discouraged to how every little nook is filled with something that feels worth the time going there.



wankerness said:


> always the same power


I was under the impression that most of the enemies in the game scaled in power as you progressed. I don't remember details though, I haven't played in a while.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> When I first got Skyrim back on 11/11/11 (the only game release date I can remember!!), I definitely played it like that to some extent. However, that game really does shove icons down your throat at all times and reallllly wants you to just teleport everywhere constantly, plus it has a TON of quests that are all just busywork. BOTW has sidequests, but they're very sparse and usually not necessary. It's nothing like all those huge guild questlines or the boring main quest in Skyrim. And the enemies don't do that annoying thing that they do in Skyrim where they level to you, so if you don't optimize for damage of some sort they'll eventually become unkillable unless you're on easy difficulty. BOTW really like, doesn't even punish you for simply running away from all enemies, and in fact kind of encourages it since there's no EXP if you kill them, just the possibility of getting a fancy weapon out of a chest or 100 rupees or something.
> 
> Skyrim definitely was a step in that direction, but BOTW really amped up its exploration aspects to the Nth degree and removed a bunch of the "convenience" features that ended up turning the game into the eventual "teleport close to the quest markers" game that it becomes as soon as you've found all the major cities and start questlines. You're right that you really have to try to play it in an exploratory way. And the handful of "high level" zones (mainly just fortresses or whatever that have a bunch of very threatening enemies) can't really be exploited the same way as they can in BOTW through clever uses of game mechanics. You can't throw a cucco at a monster so he hits it and dies from the ensuing swarm of angry cuccos, for example. BOTW does definitely have a lot of monsters that are essentially unkillable until you've gotten some high level weapons and upgraded your armor/health, but they're always in the same place and always the same power so it feels more like you're exploring a dangerous world and eventually are strong enough to take it on. Skyrim tried for that and really bungled it with the way player leveling and enemy leveling worked (there was like a sliding scale where the enemies were unkillable, then too easy, then unkillable again if you didn't level weapons/spells the right way but did level other stuff like speech or pickpocket or whatever).



Yeh Bethesda games have always handled enemy levelling a bit weirdly. I'd honestly prefer no levelling at all, so that certain regions are extremely dangerous, and you have to build up to them. It'd make them feel more foreboding as well.
Oblivion was a lot worse than Skyrim in the levelling behaviour. You'd eventually get bandits wearing solely Daedric gear, and never see any low level creatures anymore, which completely breaks lore and immersion for me. It was pretty easy to level up in a way that made the game almost impossible for you as well. I used to install a mod to improve those aspects of the game.

It takes a bit of self control, but i never fast travel to get anywhere in these types of games either. You see and experience so much more that way. Occasionally i'll fast travel to sell loot, but i'll fast travel right back to where i was again to continue where i'm going.

I'm a solely PC player so i've not played BOTW, but from what i've read the weapon degradation would drive me mad. It's one of the things that stops me playing a game


----------



## Mathemagician

For me Fallout 3 was like that. After character creation and the initial 1-2 hour “tutorial” area the game just goes “Ok you’re in the wasteland all the best!” I actually really liked the story as well, but man just exploring whatever you stumbled upon was the best part. “Must enter every building and open every drawer and read every computer/book/note”.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I was under the impression that most of the enemies in the game scaled in power as you progressed. I don't remember details though, I haven't played in a while.



Nah, there are like, different levels of all the enemies (ex with the bokoblins I think it was red for wimpy, blue for stronger, then black and later white variants that are even nastier), but they appear in different areas. So, some areas are just clearly not meant to be gone to when you have 4 hearts and un-upgraded armor since the highest level versions of those enemies take in the neighborhood of 50 hits from a crappy sword, and they'll kill you in 1 hit. And I think if you go back to the starting areas it's still a bunch of wimpy little red ones and the occasional blue one no matter what you've done in terms of progression, since it doesn't have a traditional "leveling" system.

The game keeps this a bit organic by putting a lot of those higher level enemies in areas that you can't conceivably reach without upgrading to a second stamina wheel, unless you really want to chain chug stamina elixirs to make it somewhere dangerous. Or areas where you need heat resist or fire resist or freeze resist or whatever to enter.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I'm a solely PC player so i've not played BOTW, but from what i've read the weapon degradation would drive me mad. It's one of the things that stops me playing a game



I hated the weapon degradation so much that I stopped playing the game for YEARS after the first time I got through the initial plateau. I forced myself to just deal with it and be zen as my weapons would break, cause I had the exact same hangup. Now I kinda get it. It's an inelegant system, but when practically every single enemy you fight drops a weapon and you're constantly finding them in chests, etc, the game might have almost felt worse without weapons breaking. It would be like AC: Odyssey or something where you have 100 different of every weapon in your inventory and have no reason to ever equip any of them so you just periodically go to a vendor and sell off skads of useless gear. As is, it sort of aids in the exploration feeling because you're constantly pushed to keep exploring and keep switching out your inventory for new things. With how few slots you have in your inventory, too, it helps to lessen the (already large) amount of time you spend going to the menu to drop your current worst weapon to be able to pick up a new better one.

It's only really silly and immersion-breaking with the master sword, which has some silly recharge mechanic so it basically behaves just as all the other weapons do with breaking all the time. But, I still ended up using it all the time just cause it's like a freebie every 10 minutes.

This all said, I won't be sad if BOTW2 ditches the weapon breaking.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I hated the weapon degradation so much that I stopped playing the game for YEARS after the first time I got through the initial plateau. I forced myself to just deal with it and be zen as my weapons would break, cause I had the exact same hangup. Now I kinda get it. It's an inelegant system, but when practically every single enemy you fight drops a weapon and you're constantly finding them in chests, etc, the game might have almost felt worse without weapons breaking. It would be like AC: Odyssey or something where you have 100 different of every weapon in your inventory and have no reason to ever equip any of them so you just periodically go to a vendor and sell off skads of useless gear. As is, it sort of aids in the exploration feeling because you're constantly pushed to keep exploring and keep switching out your inventory for new things. With how few slots you have in your inventory, too, it helps to lessen the (already large) amount of time you spend going to the menu to drop your current worst weapon to be able to pick up a new better one.
> 
> It's only really silly and immersion-breaking with the master sword, which has some silly recharge mechanic so it basically behaves just as all the other weapons do with breaking all the time. But, I still ended up using it all the time just cause it's like a freebie every 10 minutes.
> 
> This all said, I won't be sad if BOTW2 ditches the weapon breaking.


That kinda reminds me of the first time i played Fallout 3. I was still majorly into Thief at the time, and the first time i tried to steal something in F3 i got the negative karma message and i put the game down for at least a couple years 
One day i just decided to try deal with it and eventually liked the game.

It still amuses me till this day though, as i just put the game down instantly like some gone off food


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> And I think if you go back to the starting areas it's still a bunch of wimpy little red ones and the occasional blue one no matter what you've done in terms of progression, since it doesn't have a traditional "leveling" system.


Traditional levelling, no - and I had to google it to verify I wasn't going crazy - but they do scale along with how many enemies you've already killed. It's subtle, and difficulty is still strongly tied to what area you are in though.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> No, that's actually helpful. I've had that game for years (it was free on PS+ one month) but have never played it. I'm curious now! I have only ever played the original MGS and had been avoiding this one cause I know how convoluted and impenetrable the story got with the sequels, and figured I'd have to play 2-4 to have a clue what was going on. But if it doesn't matter, then great! I can skip right to it!



You don't need any of the rest of the story really, maybe play Ground Zeroes if you can. It's similar to BotW in how it lets you tackle the missions however you want and gives you loads of depth in the game mechanics to express that creativily.



wankerness said:


> Nah, there are like, different levels of all the enemies (ex with the bokoblins I think it was red for wimpy, blue for stronger, then black and later white variants that are even nastier), but they appear in different areas. So, some areas are just clearly not meant to be gone to when you have 4 hearts and un-upgraded armor since the highest level versions of those enemies take in the neighborhood of 50 hits from a crappy sword, and they'll kill you in 1 hit. And I think if you go back to the starting areas it's still a bunch of wimpy little red ones and the occasional blue one no matter what you've done in terms of progression, since it doesn't have a traditional "leveling" system.
> 
> The game keeps this a bit organic by putting a lot of those higher level enemies in areas that you can't conceivably reach without upgrading to a second stamina wheel, unless you really want to chain chug stamina elixirs to make it somewhere dangerous. Or areas where you need heat resist or fire resist or freeze resist or whatever to enter.



Nope, earlier areas get tougher enemies as you progress. If I go back to the Plateau now with after 100+ hours I get blue and white bokoblins; I hardly see red ones anywhere anymore, it scales based on number of enemies of each type killed, basically.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> You don't need any of the rest of the story really, maybe play Ground Zeroes if you can. It's similar to BotW in how it lets you tackle the missions however you want and gives you loads of depth in the game mechanics to express that creativily.
> 
> 
> 
> Nope, earlier areas get tougher enemies as you progress. If I go back to the Plateau now with after 100+ hours I get blue and white bokoblins; I hardly see red ones anywhere anymore, it scales based on number of enemies of each type killed, basically.



Oh, really? I guess I didn't retread much ground in that game. I just looked it up and you're right, it apparently does scale based on number of enemies killed. But like, it's a pooled thing, and different enemies upgrade sequentially (ex first bokoblins upgrade, then lizard men, even if you're only killing lizard men). That's weird.

The only one I noticed was how the stupid random spawn Yiga guys got progressively more annoying to the point where I just wanted to run away from them cause they soaked so much damage, but apparently unlike most monsters, they're tied to story progress!


----------



## TedEH

I had a moment of feeling sad for how games work now... 

I tried out Dragon Ball FighterZ 'cause why not. But a bunch of the characters are locked behind pay walls. But I don't expect to play the game enough for it to be worth paying extra for characters. I think this is the first time I've let myself get caught in that pull of DLC. 'Cause on one hand, I already paid for the game, so not having the "whole thing" feels like I've not maximized the value of the game. But then I know that if I pay for it I'm going to use that extra content maybe once, go "meh, that's cool I guess", and never look at it again. And I know the content already exists on the console - 'cause they appear in some places despite not being able to select them for your own use. 

So I hate that it's designed to grab you that way. And I hate that the game feels incomplete without it. And I hate that it's on the console already. And that so many games do this. And that it would have been just as good a game or better without this. And that whoever made the decision to structure the content this way probably doesn't like it either.

/old man yells at cloud, I guess.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Oh, really? I guess I didn't retread much ground in that game. I just looked it up and you're right, it apparently does scale based on number of enemies killed. But like, it's a pooled thing, and different enemies upgrade sequentially (ex first bokoblins upgrade, then lizard men, even if you're only killing lizard men). That's weird.
> 
> The only one I noticed was how the stupid random spawn Yiga guys got progressively more annoying to the point where I just wanted to run away from them cause they soaked so much damage, but apparently unlike most monsters, they're tied to story progress!


Yeah that first big Yiga guy wrecked me like nobody's business, but then I figured then out and they aren't so bad.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I had a moment of feeling sad for how games work now...
> 
> I tried out Dragon Ball FighterZ 'cause why not. But a bunch of the characters are locked behind pay walls. But I don't expect to play the game enough for it to be worth paying extra for characters. I think this is the first time I've let myself get caught in that pull of DLC. 'Cause on one hand, I already paid for the game, so not having the "whole thing" feels like I've not maximized the value of the game. But then I know that if I pay for it I'm going to use that extra content maybe once, go "meh, that's cool I guess", and never look at it again. And I know the content already exists on the console - 'cause they appear in some places despite not being able to select them for your own use.
> 
> So I hate that it's designed to grab you that way. And I hate that the game feels incomplete without it. And I hate that it's on the console already. And that so many games do this. And that it would have been just as good a game or better without this. And that whoever made the decision to structure the content this way probably doesn't like it either.
> 
> /old man yells at cloud, I guess.



Yeh, i absolutely refuse to give money for anything like that. The more it gets normalised, the more games become designed around paying extra for full content or even normal gameplay. Mobile games are an absolute shitshow for all that now.
I actually don't buy live-service games because of that as well. It's only done so they can monetise it as much as they can get away with. Also, if my internet goes down, or their server, i can't play the game. I just feel like i'm being used with anything like that.
If a game is single-player or has a single-player campaign, we should be able to play it offline.


----------



## MFB

Beat Gwyn, he was a bit disappointing after the rest of the game. Took another half dozen tries between figuring out his parry window, and a couple times where my character swung when he should have been blocking; also why the FUCK, does lock on stop after a parry attack? Seriously, my enemy is still alive, STAY locked on.

I started Darksiders: Warmastered last night and it's simple, dumb, beat em up action so that should hold me over for a bit. Then I'll probably start the Uncharted collection that I bought some time ago. I've only played one and two back when they first launched, so I'm curious if they hold up and how three and four compare to them.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I had a moment of feeling sad for how games work now...
> 
> I tried out Dragon Ball FighterZ 'cause why not. But a bunch of the characters are locked behind pay walls. But I don't expect to play the game enough for it to be worth paying extra for characters. I think this is the first time I've let myself get caught in that pull of DLC. 'Cause on one hand, I already paid for the game, so not having the "whole thing" feels like I've not maximized the value of the game. But then I know that if I pay for it I'm going to use that extra content maybe once, go "meh, that's cool I guess", and never look at it again. And I know the content already exists on the console - 'cause they appear in some places despite not being able to select them for your own use.
> 
> So I hate that it's designed to grab you that way. And I hate that the game feels incomplete without it. And I hate that it's on the console already. And that so many games do this. And that it would have been just as good a game or better without this. And that whoever made the decision to structure the content this way probably doesn't like it either.
> 
> /old man yells at cloud, I guess.



Sadly, this has become the norm of the Fighting Game genre. I don't know if I prefer the older method when Street Fighter 2 was being re-released as new editions with upgrades at full retail price over a period of years, or the current method of releasing Street Fighter 5 with pitiful content only to release the rest of the game with a ton more tweaks at the near price of a full game over a period. 

I love and hate SFV so much. It's a hell of a lot better now since launch. All the old characters available that should've been on vanilla (legacy characters like Sagat, E Honda etc) are in now, and the Champion Edition upgrades and current season pass makes the game much more fulfilling. I hate how it took so damn long to get to it, but was it any different from back in the day when I was buying the SNES versions of SF2, SF2 Turbo, Super SF2 at 120 AU bucks each? 

I still love fighting games, but the gaming MO for them makes it very hard for me to keep playing.


----------



## Mathemagician

In fighting games they release 3-5 characters a year as “seasons”. Typically with some modest rebalancing after the prior year’s season. That’s how a game starts with 15 characters and ends up with 30 a few years later.

Arcsystemworks takes the cake by both releasing a full “new” game every 2 years and adding DLC characters to each version. Guilty Gear & BlazBlue.

It sucks but they need to make money somehow and really after the first version it’s just the hardcore fans buying all the further revisions & dlc characters. When you put 80+ hours into training mode along working on combos it’s still a fairly low $/hr of content. I mean my controller alone was over $200.


----------



## p0ke

MFB said:


> also why the FUCK, does lock on stop after a parry attack? Seriously, my enemy is still alive, STAY locked on.



It's probably because the enemy is "out" for a while, so the lock goes away. It's the same when backstabbing - the enemy falls over and can't be hit or locked onto until they get up again. I'd say that's a bug, a very minor one, but still a bug.
I've been killed by black knights a bunch of times after backstabbing, thinking they were dead and walking away, and then getting backstabbed myself


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I played it already. It was pretty good. The sliding and platforming was really bad, but combat with troopers was really fun. It was too short, though, I started it and got the platinum in 2 or 3 days. If they make a sequel that also doesn't get EA'd I'll be first in line.



Big time agree on the sliding parts. Holy crap is it ever easy to just fall off those stupid things. Every time I see one now, I go "Oh yay, another death slide". The platforming isn't as bad though. Definitely passable. There's been worse.



p0ke said:


> I'm waiting for the price to come down. It's been on sale in the xbox store a couple of times but not enough. I don't have much time to play anyway so I'm not in a hurry to pay full price for anything  But I've been waiting to play it since release, because what I've seen looks awesome (+ I'm a huge Star Wars fan)


You could always sign up for xbox gamepass ultimate for $1 and play it since the EA Play games are now included with it. I'm a huge fan of gamepass ultimate. It's probably the reason my PS4 is now sitting neglected and collecting dust despite having games for it that I still haven't played.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Oh, really? I guess I didn't retread much ground in that game. I just looked it up and you're right, it apparently does scale based on number of enemies killed. But like, it's a pooled thing, and different enemies upgrade sequentially (ex first bokoblins upgrade, then lizard men, even if you're only killing lizard men). That's weird.
> 
> The only one I noticed was how the stupid random spawn Yiga guys got progressively more annoying to the point where I just wanted to run away from them cause they soaked so much damage, but apparently unlike most monsters, they're tied to story progress!


FWIW, I hated BoTW. After I beat it, I never played it again. My gripes were also the weapon degradation, the lack of real dungeons, and even though I know there was a bunch of stuff to find, the map felt incredibly empty. But I get what you're looking for. Being a giant MGS fan myself, MGSV was the biggest let down ever. I don't recommend that one. It's got fun elements for sure, but story-wise it was just a giant turd-bomb. Likely due to the drama that was going on between Kojima and Konami at the time.

As for big open world games like BoTW, I'd recommend Horizon: Zero Dawn. Lordy that game is a masterpiece. Witcher 3 because Witcher 3 and if you happen to have an Xbox, the Fable games would probably be right up your gf's alley if she's digging BoTW.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> It sucks but they need to make money somehow


I'm well aware of that one, hah. I just wish that "somehow" didn't need to mean squeezing people and sketchy gambling mechanics and things like that. A part of me wonders if people would be more willing to just pay full price outright for things if they felt like the products and the companies selling them respected them and their time and their money.

It's one of those "the door is already open" situations though. People have seen the kinds of money that microtransactions and DLC can rake in - and it's mind boggling. Those who make a killing on it won't give that up, and everyone else has to do the best they can to keep up. Games are going to continue to become services and stores in themselves, and I'm going to continue being the grumpy old man who hates it while contributing to it.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Beat Gwyn, he was a bit disappointing after the rest of the game. Took another half dozen tries between figuring out his parry window, and a couple times where my character swung when he should have been blocking; also why the FUCK, does lock on stop after a parry attack? Seriously, my enemy is still alive, STAY locked on.
> 
> I started Darksiders: Warmastered last night and it's simple, dumb, beat em up action so that should hold me over for a bit. Then I'll probably start the Uncharted collection that I bought some time ago. I've only played one and two back when they first launched, so I'm curious if they hold up and how three and four compare to them.



Uncharted 1 is easily the worst and felt pretty dated. Uncharted 2/3 still felt very fresh and I really liked them, though they were about the first games that I played on PS4. I've been thinking about replaying them. Uncharted 4 I was split on. The gameplay is better than 2/3, but I REALLY did not like the brother character and I didn't like that most of the plot hinges on him and as a result just of that I think that I preferred 2/3.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> As for big open world games like BoTW, I'd recommend Horizon: Zero Dawn. Lordy that game is a masterpiece. Witcher 3 because Witcher 3 and if you happen to have an Xbox, the Fable games would probably be right up your gf's alley if she's digging BoTW.



HZD and Witcher 3 both are examples of what I was talking about with AC: they're "open world" games that encourage the player to think of the world map as a distraction that needs to be travelled through en route to mission objectives and markers, instead of a truly open game that the exploration is the point and tons of "pointless" stuff is everywhere. I loved both of them, but they're doing very different things. HZD had the distinction of making me usually want to travel around by foot/mount instead of always fast travelling cause the world was so beautiful and getting around was fun and the combat was enjoyable enough that I didn't want to avoid all fights, but that didn't change the fact that a lot of it was icon hunting on the map. Witcher 3 is so heavily plot-based that it kind of keeps you on rails to continue all the various storylines/sidequests.

I liked both of them more than I liked BOTW, I was just curious for more games that the exploration is the point.


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> I'm well aware of that one, hah. I just wish that "somehow" didn't need to mean squeezing people and sketchy gambling mechanics and things like that. A part of me wonders if people would be more willing to just pay full price outright for things if they felt like the products and the companies selling them respected them and their time and their money.
> 
> It's one of those "the door is already open" situations though. People have seen the kinds of money that microtransactions and DLC can rake in - and it's mind boggling. Those who make a killing on it won't give that up, and everyone else has to do the best they can to keep up. Games are going to continue to become services and stores in themselves, and I'm going to continue being the grumpy old man who hates it while contributing to it.



It’s already been tested. And people are more willing to spend a LOT of money on games they are already playing than they are just to play the game. I like paying for and owning my stuff. More money is generally made via “freemium”. Though fighting games are often straight up “buy it again and buy dlc” but most other genres have tested it. How many MMO’s launch with a (full price) box price and subscription and cash shop, versus a free/discounted buy-in and a combo of the other two?

Bethesda tested $3 “horse armor” and made $1mm. Between that and WoW’s subscriber #’s during peak periods the floodgates opened as you already know.

With inflation games would cost between $90-120 each now. And that would MAYBE be possible if median wages had increased for the last 20 years. But that’s a conversation better left for the politics thread.

No wage inflation = difficult to swallow higher costs. That’s why grocery stores keep prices the same but make the products smaller, “shrink-flation” in basic business school books.

*sigh* I just wanna karate chop the homies.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> Bethesda tested $3 “horse armor” and made $1mm.


I can't go into any details, but I've seen some mind-boggling numbers for microtransactions on some free-to-play titles I've contributed to.



Mathemagician said:


> With inflation games would cost between $90-120 each now. And that would MAYBE be possible if median wages had increased for the last 20 years. But that’s a conversation better left for the politics thread.


I wish it worked that way. I'd gladly eat that extra cost to get rid of all the gross feelings that come with current monetization strategies. I know not everyone is, or can be, in that same boat, but still.


----------



## p0ke

Nicki said:


> You could always sign up for xbox gamepass ultimate for $1 and play it since the EA Play games are now included with it. I'm a huge fan of gamepass ultimate. It's probably the reason my PS4 is now sitting neglected and collecting dust despite having games for it that I still haven't played.



For sure, but for that I feel I'd have to play much more to get the most out of it. Not that it'd matter much for $1, but still. I cancelled my Xbox Live Gold subscription quite recently because I didn't have enough time to play to justify having it.


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> I can't go into any details, but I've seen some mind-boggling numbers for microtransactions on some free-to-play titles I've contributed to.
> 
> 
> I wish it worked that way. I'd gladly eat that extra cost to get rid of all the gross feelings that come with current monetization strategies. I know not everyone is, or can be, in that same boat, but still.



Oh to be clear that $1mm was in like a month or something. And I don’t doubt the micro transaction revenue far outsizes anything from retail sales.




Eyyyyy. Little by little. Not every game can be COD. Sometimes you just gotta sell your game. Nerds will buy it if it’s good.


----------



## TedEH

Doom might have made $450 million, but how much do you want to bet it cost almost that much to make and market it in the first place. If your game only costs a fraction of that to develop, a lot more of that money goes right into your pocket. I don't actually have any guess as to the budget for Doom, but it's also one of the top games to come out in it's time, making it an outlier - and as a dev you can't generally count on your game being that successful. I'd be willing to bet that despite bringing in that much money the return on investment is lower than something like their mobile titles.


----------



## Nicki

p0ke said:


> For sure, but for that I feel I'd have to play much more to get the most out of it. Not that it'd matter much for $1, but still. I cancelled my Xbox Live Gold subscription quite recently because I didn't have enough time to play to justify having it.


Fair enough. I set aside Tuesday nights to play a game my wife likes to watch, Friday nights for co-op with a friend from work and Saturday mornings for a game for me. I sadly have to structure things that way for now because it's the only way I get to play video games.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> HZD and Witcher 3 both are examples of what I was talking about with AC: they're "open world" games that encourage the player to think of the world map as a distraction that needs to be travelled through en route to mission objectives and markers, instead of a truly open game that the exploration is the point and tons of "pointless" stuff is everywhere. I loved both of them, but they're doing very different things. HZD had the distinction of making me usually want to travel around by foot/mount instead of always fast travelling cause the world was so beautiful and getting around was fun and the combat was enjoyable enough that I didn't want to avoid all fights, but that didn't change the fact that a lot of it was icon hunting on the map. Witcher 3 is so heavily plot-based that it kind of keeps you on rails to continue all the various storylines/sidequests.
> 
> I liked both of them more than I liked BOTW, I was just curious for more games that the exploration is the point.


I can see that point with Horizon, but I'd respectfully disagree that Witcher 3 keeps you on rails. You could spend the vast majority of your time hunting down monster beats/lairs, hidden treasures, Witcher diagrams, monster hunts and so on before ever advancing the plot. In the Novigrad region alone it's incredibly easy to ignore the main plot, explore and do side quests and hit LVL 25 before stepping foot in Novigrad city. You don't even need to advance the plot in order to get to Skellige. And then there's Toussaint...

There's just much more to do in W3 than follow the main quest line.

I respect your opinion and if that's how you interpret the game to play, that's totally fine. It's not wrong, it's just very different from how I play it.


----------



## Mathemagician

Nicki said:


> Fair enough. I set aside Tuesday nights to play a game my wife likes to watch, Friday nights for co-op with a friend from work and Saturday mornings for a game for me. I sadly have to structure things that way for now because it's the only way I get to play video games.



Structure is good and gives you something to look forward to.


----------



## p0ke

Nicki said:


> Fair enough. I set aside Tuesday nights to play a game my wife likes to watch, Friday nights for co-op with a friend from work and Saturday mornings for a game for me. I sadly have to structure things that way for now because it's the only way I get to play video games.



Lately I've been staying up playing once my wife's gone to sleep - it's not a very sustainable option though, since she usually goes just before midnight, so then I end up getting to bed at around 2am and then only get about 5 hours of sleep... I'm generally pretty bad at setting aside time for myself, so setting aside time to play games is even harder. I take breaks from work to play during the day sometimes though.
Before I got into DS1 I hadn't played at all for a very long time, maybe since 2015. With all this lockdown bullshit though, I think it might even be healthy to go to a virtual world every once in a while


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Whilst at chapter 4 of Yakuza 7, did a few more grinding. Managed to play a few Mario Kart/Dragon Kart circuits and it's pretty competent. Though the area is surrounded by dudes 7 levels higher than me, but enough grind made it a bit manageable. Also exploited the karaoke games because I'll never stop loving them in Yakuza games. 

I also saw some news about the new Trails game (because I'm still on a massive Trails high). They've overhauled the combat system and it's got a lot more of active real time elements like FFXII, Xenoblade, and, well Yakuza 7 incidentally. Either way it's looking great and I can't wait. 

In fact I'm seriously reconsidering playing Cold Steel 1 again. Or perhaps man up, set up that Steam account I never use on my mac, and start at the very beginning and play Trails In The Sky trilogy once and for all.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> I can see that point with Horizon, but I'd respectfully disagree that Witcher 3 keeps you on rails. You could spend the vast majority of your time hunting down monster beats/lairs, hidden treasures, Witcher diagrams, monster hunts and so on before ever advancing the plot. In the Novigrad region alone it's incredibly easy to ignore the main plot, explore and do side quests and hit LVL 25 before stepping foot in Novigrad city. You don't even need to advance the plot in order to get to Skellige. And then there's Toussaint...
> 
> There's just much more to do in W3 than follow the main quest line.
> 
> I respect your opinion and if that's how you interpret the game to play, that's totally fine. It's not wrong, it's just very different from how I play it.



I think what I'm describing about BOTW vs Witcher 3 is just not making sense to you. Like, what you just described about W3 is exactly what I mean about it "being on rails." You just listed all these different goals you can go for instead of the main quest. They're all targets to go to on the map, or things you're specifically looking for. The open world is kind of an obstacle en route to them. The exploration isn't the point, all the sidequests and tasks are the point.

With BOTW there's shrines and koroks which are vaguely comparable, but the game makes it impossible to know where any of them are (apart from the handful of shrines you hear about from quest givers in towns) and doesn't put icons on the map until you actually discover them, so you're mostly just meandering around the world looking for things that look interesting. Witcher 3, you're mostly clicking on objective markers on your map and then riding your horse straight there (or fast traveling if possible). It just is a very different feel. Mechanically, it's not all that dissimilar. But I'd compare Witcher 3 much more to Skyrim than to BOTW. (It's also a much better game than Skyrim and somewhat better than BOTW, but that's besides the point.)


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I can't go into any details, but I've seen some mind-boggling numbers for microtransactions on some free-to-play titles I've contributed to.
> 
> 
> I wish it worked that way. I'd gladly eat that extra cost to get rid of all the gross feelings that come with current monetization strategies. I know not everyone is, or can be, in that same boat, but still.



In a very limited handful of cases I'd pay over 60 dollars for a game to avoid microtransactions if they had a "premium option." The biggest example would be free to pay games. I wish there was an option to get a "non-F2P version" of Genshin Impact, for example - I am very interested in trying the game, but when it has Gacha mechanics for unlocking characters and microtransactions for more rolls, I just immediately go SCREW THAT. I'd definitely pay 60 bucks to have things have normal "drop rates" and to never have anything like that. As is, I'll probably never try playing it.

I haven't dabbled much in Star Wars: The Old Republic since the initial year of release when it wasn't free to play, but I did log on for a few days at some point just to see what was going on. And I kind of like their model. If you're a paying customer, a lot of things work quite differently and most of the microtransaction-encouragement junk is gone. That said, you're still paying a subscription fee, but eh.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I think what I'm describing about BOTW vs Witcher 3 is just not making sense to you. Like, what you just described about W3 is exactly what I mean about it "being on rails." You just listed all these different goals you can go for instead of the main quest. They're all targets to go to on the map, or things you're specifically looking for. The open world is kind of an obstacle en route to them. The exploration isn't the point, all the sidequests and tasks are the point.
> 
> With BOTW there's shrines and koroks which are vaguely comparable, but the game makes it impossible to know where any of them are (apart from the handful of shrines you hear about from quest givers in towns) and doesn't put icons on the map until you actually discover them, so you're mostly just meandering around the world looking for things that look interesting. Witcher 3, you're mostly clicking on objective markers on your map and then riding your horse straight there (or fast traveling if possible). It just is a very different feel. Mechanically, it's not all that dissimilar. But I'd compare Witcher 3 much more to Skyrim than to BOTW. (It's also a much better game than Skyrim and somewhat better than BOTW, but that's besides the point.)


I see what you're saying. The points of interest already being on the map vs discovering them on your own. This is totally possible in Witcher 3 as all (or at least the vast majority) of the points of interest come from notice boards. Ignoring the notice board gives you the freedom of discovering those points of interest on your own. Again, it's just a different way to play but I think you look at the two games in a much more granular way than I do. To me, they're two coins from the same purse with gameplay and features that are nearly identical. But given the choice between the two, I'd toss a coin to the Witcher every single time.... haha.



Mathemagician said:


> Structure is good and gives you something to look forward to.



It can be good, but it can also become routine and mundane...


----------



## wankerness

Finished the story of Yakuza 7. The second-to-last boss is cheap BS, with the fight taking ~20 minutes and at around 15 minutes in, he starts using an instant kill move on a random party members. First attempt, I didn't know about that, he targeted Ichiban, and bam, instant game over. He's at the end of a dungeon that takes ~45 minutes. When you die in this game, you can either pay a lot of money to restart the battle, or you can restart from the last save point. This last dungeon has no save point, so your options are either replay an hour every time he does this bullshit, or pay a ton (I had 11 million yen, it cost 3.5 million to respawn). Infuriating. Fortunately I was very overlevelled and figured out a strategy to just chain knockdown him (I read online that stops him from doing it - the game just says "try doing damage to him" but that doesn't work unless he falls down!) so it didn't happen again, but yuck. Very sour taste in my mouth after that one.

Now I'm doing more grinding! I haven't tried the final dungeon yet, but from everything I've heard you need level 99 along with more than one job maxed out, so that's probably not going to happen anytime soon...my one guy I've never respecced jobs on and who has had a 1.5 job exp item on since I got him is only at job level 60, and everyone else is more like 45 for their main job and 30 for secondary. You can get people up to job level 30 in about two clears of the Kamurocho dungeon, but after that it slows to a crawl.

Money's also annoying, most of the secondary jobs have items required that either are a comical grind or cost 10 million, and the upgrades themselves start costing multiple millions long before max level. Management gives you 3 million every 5-10 minutes, so it's not that painful at first, but when upgrades get up to 25 million each...

Batting in this game is absolutely terrible. I was fine with the batting cage minigame in every previous one of these, and finished the baseball minigame in Yakuza 6 and the whole questline with batting in Yakuza 5 no sweat, but this is a nightmare. You can't play reactively, since it's almost entirely trick pitches, and the timing alone is difficult since almost all the pitches are weird trick ones with floaty timing, so you have to either memorize the pitch sequence (since it doesn't change for each course) or just look up a chart but still have to work hard on the timing. I got the 1000 points necessary for one item and noped out of there. The other I need from batting is 30,000 (you get ~100 per sloppy clear of a course), NOT HAPPENING EVER. 10 million yen seems like a bargain in comparison. I'm glad they gave an outlet to buy stuff like that in the last city so you don't have to grind at the casino or the batting cage if you don't want to.


----------



## Mathemagician

Watched a YouTube video about how the AI in street fighter 2 absolutely does cheap with instant charge attacks, not getting push backed when they should have been, and being invincible during their normal attacks where a player wouldn’t be. Was awesome having 10 year old me vindicated that the computer cheats.


----------



## Werecow

I keep being tempted to try a Yakuza game, but there are so many of them, and people suggest different ones to play first, so i don't know where to start. Plus i don't think i've got on with any Japanese developed games before


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I keep being tempted to try a Yakuza game, but there are so many of them, and people suggest different ones to play first, so i don't know where to start. Plus i don't think i've got on with any Japanese developed games before



Yakuza 0, easily. I have never seen much of anyone recommend that anyone start with a different one. It's a prequel to the rest of them, the only other one you can start with and understand everything is Kiwami 1, but Kiwami 1 is better with the added character depth from 0. Plus, 0 is a better game. The only other games in the series that are as good in quality all require knowing character background from playing other entries (Kiwami 2, Yakuza 5).

It took me 4 or so hours to get into it, just as a warning. And there are a LOT of cutscenes. But, the series has since become possibly my favorite franchise.

Yakuza 7 is the only other one I could recommend as a series intro, but the fact it's so different from the other 7 of them and also doesn't have the iconic hero of the other 7 makes me hesitant to suggest starting with it, unless you love turn-based RPGs and aren't too keen on beat-em-ups.


----------



## Yelir

Play Yakuza 0 it's so worth it. "Haven't got on with a Japanese developed game"? Surely that's severe understatement as probably 75% of game development is done in the country.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

With all the mainline Yakuza games all easily accessible, there's no reason not to play them in chronological order, so Yakuza 0 is the best place to start. That said by doing so, you'll have to bear the massive system downgrade during 3 and 4. 3-5 were remastered as opposed to the Kiwami remakes of 1-2; 5 still holds up but time hasn't been kind to the 2 before it. 

Judgment is best played after Yakuza 6. It's a standalone and can be played any time but the small references and winks are better experienced after the first few games, even if they ultimately don't pay off by much. Yakuza 7 on the other hand pays off much better.


----------



## wankerness

I'm tempted to replay 6 - it was the third I played, and as a result, I didn't remember much about 6 other than how awful it was in terms of dealing with Haruka (who I'd become very attached to just from playing Kiwami 1 - I can only imagine how disappointed I'd have been if I'd played through 1-5 first!). Like, I completely missed that Joon-Gi (a party member in 7) was a character in 6 until I got to Kamurocho and heard the dialogue from him about Stardust, and then when I finally changed jobs with him and saw the alternate costume, which vaguely rang a bell.


----------



## Werecow

Yelir said:


> Play Yakuza 0 it's so worth it. "Haven't got on with a Japanese developed game"? Surely that's severe understatement as probably 75% of game development is done in the country.


I'm PC only, and never owned or wanted a console, so that's the main reason. Some Japanese devs have just started doing more ports to PC the last few years.
I guess i have trouble with some popular concepts and game mechanics that are in a lot of Japanese games. The closest i've come to liking one is the Resident Evil 2 remake, but i got to Mr X and lost interest. I really dislike unkillable enemies like that, i just find them a chore rather than scary or challenging.
The Pc port quality has stopped me buying a few other games i was interested in as well, for various reasons. So yeh, i genuinely can't recall a single Japanese game i've liked so far


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I'm PC only, and never owned or wanted a console, so that's the main reason. Some Japanese devs have just started doing more ports to PC the last few years.
> I guess i have trouble with some popular concepts and game mechanics that are in a lot of Japanese games. The closest i've come to liking one is the Resident Evil 2 remake, but i got to Mr X and lost interest. I really dislike unkillable enemies like that, i just find them a chore rather than scary or challenging.
> The Pc port quality has stopped me buying a few other games i was interested in as well, for various reasons. So yeh, i genuinely can't recall a single Japanese game i've liked so far



What games do you LIKE? I would be very surprised if none of them were japanese.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> What games do you LIKE? I would be very surprised if none of them were japanese.



RPGs, as long as the combat is complex enough for me. I found Witcher 3 pretty boring for example. My favourites are stuff like the really old Bioware games up to Dragon Age Origins. I love the Divinity games, and looking forward to Baldur's 3.
I'm not keen on the average 3rd-person action game combat in a lot of ARPGs nowadays.

First-person singleplayer games - Mostly stuff with thought involved rather than mainly action. I especially like stealth games... Stuff like Deus Ex, Thief, Dishonored, System Shock, Metro, Prey, Dying Light.

Quite a few RTS games, but single-player ones again, and in the old C&C style.

My tastes seem to be any games in dying or unpopular genres . I'm lucky if i find a couple of brand new games a year to play nowadays. I game a lot, but nearly always old games.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> My tastes seem to be any games in dying or unpopular genres


I had the saddest thought:
My game tastes are also aging and unpopular - just like me!


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I had the saddest thought:
> My game tastes are also aging and unpopular - just like me!


I'm just glad i can replay and still enjoy the games i do like. Some people rarely replay games if at all.
Still, does feel weird sorta being left behind by gaming trends. And a bit upsetting with games like Dishonored 2 and Prey, see them not sell exceedingly well, when i adore them. I hope Arkane still make more of their types of games. And i just want more proper single-player games in general.


----------



## p0ke

Goddamned motherfucking DS1 NG+ 
I basically have no problem with the difficulty - I defeated the double bosses in Anal Londo, and then proceeded to kill Sif and am now going for the Four Kings... But I'm just so damned unlucky all the time. I've gotten through the New Londo ruins, but I didn't remember the route after that- my transient curse ran out and some ghosts smoked me before I could activate another. So then I decided to go through the Valley of Drakes instead of through the ruins. Killed the drakes, no problem, but then as I'm fighting one of the skeleton knight enemies, my controller disconnects. And DS1 is not a game that has pause functionality, so I die. And loose roughly 250k souls that I was basically one enemy away from recovering.
Then I decided to cut the bullshit and enter through the valley of the drakes. I defeat the drakes easily, but then every time, something similar to the skeleton insident happens. Kept getting even more pissed, this time running past the drakes and everything else. Almost got to the Four Kings fog gate, but then the game bugged out in such a way that I got stuck inside a wall, and again, some ghost killed me. Last attempt - I didn't even get past the drakes because I got stuck on ones tail and another burned me... So yeah, maybe it's time to go to bed now


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I hope Arkane still make more of their types of games.


I've got some reasonable hopes for Deathloop.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Werecow said:


> RPGs, as long as the combat is complex enough for me. I found Witcher 3 pretty boring for example. My favourites are stuff like the really old Bioware games up to Dragon Age Origins. I love the Divinity games, and looking forward to Baldur's 3.
> I'm not keen on the average 3rd-person action game combat in a lot of ARPGs nowadays.
> 
> First-person singleplayer games - Mostly stuff with thought involved rather than mainly action. I especially like stealth games... Stuff like Deus Ex, Thief, Dishonored, System Shock, Metro, Prey, Dying Light.
> 
> Quite a few RTS games, but single-player ones again, and in the old C&C style.
> 
> My tastes seem to be any games in dying or unpopular genres . I'm lucky if i find a couple of brand new games a year to play nowadays. I game a lot, but nearly always old games.



Yakuza may be a little _too_ Japanese to jump in fresh. Honestly, if I'm going to recommend you a Japanese developed game, it'd be Dark Souls. It may look exactly like a standard 3rd person ARPG but after a few tries and plenty of dies it's an amazing immersive game.

That said, it's not Japanese, have you played Subnautica? It's a first person survival game where the entire world is submerged underwater. I've heard great things about the game.


----------



## TedEH

Slightly off topic, but I might be finally moving into "the future" and getting a PS4. I found an ad where someone's selling one for $50 "for parts" - and when I asked whats wrong, they said it's a software/update problem. Even if I can't fix it, I'm basically getting it for the value of just the controller, which I can probably sell or use.


----------



## Choop

Gonna finish my play through of Pokemon Red where I got the perfect Nidoran stats. Still playing Xenogears too, talking about Japanese-made games. 

Working on putting together a PC for my living room so my girlfriend can play RDR2, but it's basically going to be a HTPC/Gaming capable setup. Looking forward to getting that thing together, because we've been clinging to using a PS3 as a streaming box for years.


----------



## Nicki

I finished Remnant: From the Ashes this weekend as it's been an off and on game for me since last fall. I'll say that the final boss is another Gwynne (from Dark Souls) situation. Tough as nails until you figure out the strategy, then he's a pushover.


----------



## StevenC

Bowser's Fury is my 2021 game of the year. Just needs to be 10x as big now.


----------



## wankerness

Just had a third PS4 controller's stick die (pressing right is just as likely to trigger a "down" input as "right" in games). Jesus christ. My nintendo 64, xbox 360, PS2, PS1 dual shock, and gamecube controllers all still have sticks that work just fine (well, besides a gamecube controller where all of the buttons just stopped sending signals). PS4, I've been going through these things like crazy. This is horrible. Even worse, it sounds like xbox 1's, PS5s and Switches use the exact same parts for sticks so they have the exact same resilence as PS4 (if not worse). I would pay a premium for a controller that used a different f'in manufacturer. Hilariously, even the 180 dollar Xbox 1 "pro" controller uses the exact same part for the stick, too. This is starting to feel like a scam.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> Just had a third PS4 controller's stick die (pressing right is just as likely to trigger a "down" input as "right" in games). Jesus christ. My nintendo 64, xbox 360, PS2, PS1 dual shock, and gamecube controllers all still have sticks that work just fine (well, besides a gamecube controller where all of the buttons just stopped sending signals). PS4, I've been going through these things like crazy. This is horrible. Even worse, it sounds like xbox 1's, PS5s and Switches use the exact same parts for sticks so they have the exact same resilence as PS4 (if not worse). I would pay a premium for a controller that used a different f'in manufacturer. Hilariously, even the 180 dollar Xbox 1 "pro" controller uses the exact same part for the stick, too. This is starting to feel like a scam.



I feel you. The left stick eventually ends up drifting ime. I need a new ds4 too, but have just been putting it off cos i don't wanna spend (another) 65 bucks on something that's eventually not going to work. You'd think they'd have controller joystick integrity/durability sorted out by now but they wouldn't sell nearly as many i guess, good ol planned obsolescence. I'd love to see some other brand come out with a ds4 clone with better components that i could use on PC.


----------



## Ralyks

Nicki said:


> I finished Remnant: From the Ashes this weekend as it's been an off and on game for me since last fall. I'll say that the final boss is another Gwynne (from Dark Souls) situation. Tough as nails until you figure out the strategy, then he's a pushover.



Actually want to start this, since it was one of the PS Plus games this month. I've been told it's basically FPS Dark Souls.


----------



## wankerness

Been grinding for several hours in Yakuza 7, now have at least 4 jobs on everyone up to level 99 so I should be able to steamroll final form Amon. Tried the regular millennium tower and was able to mow through it with characters at alternate jobs in the ~35 area, but I think the enemies are all level 99 instead of 70-80 in the final version. Should be a good time! The weapon upgrades are now the outrageous thing, but I don't think I need to fully upgrade any of them since I overcompensated with leveling alt jobs. I have several of the ones for my "main" jobs to EX +5 (they go up to EX +9 but the last couple levels are ~20 million yen each). 

Finished the DRAGON CUP and was relieved, but then of course there's one final race. I was delighted by the reveal of who that was, as a big fan of the 0/kiwami/6 side missions. Haven't tried it yet. Other than that, the only remaining trophy is for "play 10 minigames," which I'm surprised I haven't hit yet. Ah well. This will be the first and possibly last Yakuza game I platinum thanks to it not requiring things like learning Mahjong!


----------



## TedEH

There was some talk about Thief so I started playing Thief 2 again. It's occurred to me that for all the praise I give this game, I never actually finished it a long time ago - never completed the boss at the end, and I had always played on normal. So I started a run on expert - 'cause I figure it makes sense to see everything the game has to offer.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> There was some talk about Thief so I started playing Thief 2 again. It's occurred to me that for all the praise I give this game, I never actually finished it a long time ago - never completed the boss at the end, and I had always played on normal. So I started a run on expert - 'cause I figure it makes sense to see everything the game has to offer.



I had a bit of trouble with the last level but i just finished it again a couple days ago. It's still a great game, actually quite a bit better than i was expecting it to be this day and age. This must be something like my 5th playthrough, but i hadn't played it for 5 years or more i think.

I was just about to move on to Thief 3 when i suddenly remembered a fan-made campaign that actually runs as a new game, called Thief2X. It took a bit of research getting it to run on Windows 10 & Steam but got there in the end. So i'm gonna give that a go now before Thief 3.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> Actually want to start this, since it was one of the PS Plus games this month. I've been told it's basically FPS Dark Souls.



Been playing it the past week. It is basically DS with guns. But the boss structure while making sense (killing adds gets them to drop more ammo) there are enough of them that it can be overwhelming if you’re playing solo. 

No way to summon into your game just quick join or pick from a list (like borderlands). 

However I’m REALLY like the atmosphere and overall “story”. It’s sci-fi and it’s different so I’m having a good time. Been wanting to play it since it launched.


----------



## Nicki

Ralyks said:


> Actually want to start this, since it was one of the PS Plus games this month. I've been told it's basically FPS Dark Souls.



Third person. Gears of War and Dark Souls had a baby and this is it.



Mathemagician said:


> Been playing it the past week. It is basically DS with guns. But the boss structure while making sense (killing adds gets them to drop more ammo) there are enough of them that it can be overwhelming if you’re playing solo.
> 
> No way to summon into your game just quick join or pick from a list (like borderlands).
> 
> However I’m REALLY like the atmosphere and overall “story”. It’s sci-fi and it’s different so I’m having a good time. Been wanting to play it since it launched.



Just wait until you get the weapon mods that let you summon minions. Then you become really OP.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Going through Yakuza 7: Like A Virgin, still at a standstill in Chapter 5, but managed to max out bonds with Adachi and Saeko, which granted me a lot of cash. Then did some Part Time Hero quests and collecting cats for even more cash. Grindilicious: this game definitely is one. I'm also playing the game like it's Final Fantasy V, with all the job system business and getting their boons.

And I bit the bullet. I logged into Steam for the first time in 4 years since I started an account and bought the Trails In The Sky trilogy. Won't be starting those for a while though since juggling life and Yakuza 7 is already hard enough.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Going through Yakuza 7: Like A Virgin, still at a standstill in Chapter 5, but managed to max out bonds with Adachi and Saeko, which granted me a lot of cash. Then did some Part Time Hero quests and collecting cats for even more cash. Grindilicious: this game definitely is one. I'm also playing the game like it's Final Fantasy V, with all the job system business and getting their boons.
> 
> And I bit the bullet. I logged into Steam for the first time in 4 years since I started an account and bought the Trails In The Sky trilogy. Won't be starting those for a while though since juggling life and Yakuza 7 is already hard enough.



Make sure you get the foreman job on Kasuga ASAP, it lets you knock down barriers. All you have to do is switch to it and switch back, you don't even have to kill a single enemy as it, and you have the ability permanently. There's a barrier in the extreme southwest of the map where a vendor sells items that give 1.5x job exp when equipped (and they stack!!). They only have them for about half the jobs in the game, but any grind is made VASTLY faster by using those. I really wish I'd been aware of them before about chapter 15.  As far as I know, you can get them as soon as you can get the foreman job, which is pretty early. (Assuming you have the 80k yen or so to buy them)


----------



## Mathemagician

Nicki said:


> Just wait until you get the weapon mods that let you summon minions. Then you become really OP.






That sounds awesome.


----------



## profwoot

Anyone still playing Red Dead Redemption 2? I've been off games for a while, but played through it 4(!) times when it came out for PC and find myself wanting to do so again. It has the best characters and story I've ever experienced, and those are the things I tend to care about most. It scratches the same itch as Witcher 3 while being better in various ways. 

Skyrim might still be my favorite game ever, although I had it modded so heavily my experience by the end probably didn't resemble the stock one. Its only competition would be Kerbal Space Program, although between the million mods and the knowledge/skills required to play it effectively I doubt I'll ever be able to get back into it.

I'll add another voice in favor of Subnautica as well. If you dig open-world exploration games that don't hold your hand it's a great one. I also found it absolutely gripping from the first minute, which is rare.


----------



## wankerness

I might have to check out Subnautica.

RDR2 puts me off cause of the realism that wastes your time, like how getting animal pelts works or the super lengthy animations for everything. Also, I’m really big on rpg elements and I don’t believe that game has things like armor/health upgrades, though I might be mistaken on that front. Plus I need to play the first game still.

I still haven’t decided what to do after Yakuza. Probably ff7 remake, or remnant, with maybe a short break to finish bowser’s fury. If Last of Us 2 goes on sale at some point I am now interested in it after hearing some good reviews from people whose opinions I respect regarding things like how memorable the plot/characters are and how good the dialogue is compared to pap like the FF remake. Thinking back on my experiences with previous naughty dog games, that’s always been true, so it might be worth diving into the muck and dealing with unlikable protagonists. As long as it’s 30 or less, anyway!

I’m also now on the lookout for persona strikers and hyrule warriors 2, though I doubt either is going below 50 anytime soon.


----------



## Nicki

Mathemagician said:


> View attachment 91329
> 
> 
> That sounds awesome.


One mod lets you summon two floating skull heads like the ones on Rhom that shoot at enemies and another lets you summon two of the sewer creatures that swarm you on earth. Basically just pop all 4 for a boss (except the fucking moths) and they'll pretty much down the boss for you with little to no effort required on your end.


----------



## profwoot

RDR2 does have an unusual amount of animation (like, it takes a second or two to rifle through a corpse's pockets or to skin an animal rather than being instantaneous), so one's enjoyment of the game will depend on one's tolerance for that sort of thing. Personally, as a [literal] ADD type, that's why I avoided it and only picked it up on a whim during a big steam sale, as I tend to not go for that sort of thing. Like I kinda hate the GTA games because they make you drive forever to get anywhere (and GTA's save system that makes you repeat the same long-ass drive every time you fail a mission can go eat a bag of dicks). I ended up finding RDR2's animations and other ponderous bits so far and away better than anything else I'd seen in a game that they actually did end up enhancing immersion as intended rather than being annoying. Perhaps there are other games of similar quality though; I only play a couple games a year at most. 

FYI, I never played RDR1 either (it's console exclusive). RDR2 is a prequel so any lack of context was very minimal.


----------



## Ralyks

My PS5 copy of Yakuza: Like a Rainbow in the Dark finally arrived a week late. Looking though the thread for beginner advice(or feel free to just reply here). Waiting for my son to go to bed soon so I can binge it until away too late hour.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> My PS5 copy of Yakuza: Like a Rainbow in the Dark finally arrived a week late. Looking though the thread for beginner advice(or feel free to just reply here). Waiting for my son to go to bed soon so I can binge it until away too late hour.



I had a numbered list of things that are very important that the game doesn’t really tell you a couple pages back. Also that post about the foreman job on the previous page is a big one, if that wasn’t in my list.

if you care about minmaxing, the matriarch dlc job is really good. Devil rocker is kind of crap, but gives lots of level up stat bonuses.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Make sure you get the foreman job on Kasuga ASAP, it lets you knock down barriers. All you have to do is switch to it and switch back, you don't even have to kill a single enemy as it, and you have the ability permanently. There's a barrier in the extreme southwest of the map where a vendor sells items that give 1.5x job exp when equipped (and they stack!!). They only have them for about half the jobs in the game, but any grind is made VASTLY faster by using those. I really wish I'd been aware of them before about chapter 15.  As far as I know, you can get them as soon as you can get the foreman job, which is pretty early. (Assuming you have the 80k yen or so to buy them)



The Foreman job was the first thing I had Kasuga change to since most of the other jobs were magic based, which were better suited to Namba, and Kasuga needs to be a meat shield. Though I might build up the Breaker job next. Also found that secret store sort of by accident, so I'm on the hunt for the other places that need the demolish ability. 

I kept all the other jobs at Lv1 anyway since it's too early to go on heavy grinding, but I do want to be able to steamroll all the Lv23 grunts in the north east side of Yokohama before progressing with the story.


----------



## wankerness

The foreman job isn’t that great. Hero is by far the best he has, especially once you upgrade the base weapon far enough that it becomes electrified. You just need to get it high enough to learn the stronger version of dynamite throw since that one is usable from any job, and for males I think that’s the only universal fire damage skill.

OH, that’s another beginner tip - make sure you have some method of doing electric damage as soon as possible. There are a couple fairly early bosses that are weak to electricity and very resistant to everything else. I think your options are either upgrade kasuga’s hero weapon, build the thundercrack bat (alternate weapon for hero class that gets outclassed pretty quickly but is a lot cheaper than upgrading the basic one to lightning early on), spec enforcer on someone and level it up a ways, or spec fortune teller and level that up a ways (I think its lightning skill is around level 28, as opposed to enforcer which gets one a lot earlier). You also get a super aoe lightning attack from finishing the business management questline, but that is a LONG grind especially if you’re early in the game and don’t have your stats high enough to recruit the really overpowered employees in the city.

in the big grindy end phase I leveled foreman up to 99 on everyone though, since the shared stat bonuses it gives are useful to all classes (MP/HP).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I'm not that far yet, but I do have Adachi as an Enforcer with an electric weapon. I've reverted Kasuga to Hero after a few level grinding with Foreman and a bit of Breaker with some ice damage. Reverted Nanba back to Homeless after buffing him as a Musician just for the meantime. Saeko as Idol with stacked Exp boosts is a lifesaver.

While I'm still far too early in the game (haven't gone to the train station yet) I've levelled enough to get around the Chinatown district without getting mulched by high level grunts. It's also decent place to grind jobs early in the game since there's a cheap cafe across the park to keep HP/MP up.

So yeah, grinding classes like it's FFV.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah. When you get to invested vagabonds it’s very worth getting every job to level 30 for every character so they have all the abilities. Most important two are definitely host for ice spreader (TONS of later-game enemies and some of the hardest bosses are only weak to ice) and fortune teller for the aoe lightning move. Third most important is foreman for the dynamite throw I guess.
For the girls, definitely have one as idol at all times when you’re doing anything difficult, otherwise eri’s really good for dealer (dart throw is extremely overpowered on bosses) or matriarch (once you’re high level and can spam essences, the aoe blade damage is crazy). Both should learn ice throw as hostess and candle burn as night queen. But yeah, eri’s better for damage (cause of her base class stat bonuses) and saeko is for healing (cause her base class just gives healing/mp bonuses).

oh, once you get a certain character in chapter 10 you always need them in your party to kill invested vagabonds with rapid fire - no other class can reliably kill them in one turn and they run away quickly.


----------



## wankerness

I finally finished up Dragon Kart. Last guy was a pain in the ass until I used the basic kart (best handling) and prioritized trying to blow him up over trying to go faster than him!

Worst part is how you get FOUR loading screens every time you lose, instead of a "retry" button!


----------



## TedEH

TedEH said:


> Slightly off topic, but I might be finally moving into "the future" and getting a PS4. I found an ad where someone's selling one for $50 "for parts" - and when I asked whats wrong, they said it's a software/update problem. Even if I can't fix it, I'm basically getting it for the value of just the controller, which I can probably sell or use.



So I have a PS4 now.

I ended up grabbing this yesterday and it's been an interesting fix so far. The ad had been posted by a lady who knew nothing about games or anything vaguely computery, who was selling it on behalf of her son who had said little more than "it won't update". When I looked at it properly, it had clearly been taken apart before. First attempt to boot does what they had suggested: it was stuck in a loop of trying and failing to update. Some googling pointed to an optical drive problem, so out comes the screwdriver. Turns out this kid had disassembled the console (maybe to try to fix something?) and did a horrible job of putting it back together. One of the ribbon cables was upside down (so not actually connected to anything), a power cable was left unplugged entirely, and another cable had broken the connector while putting it back in. Tons of screws just missing. I corrected what I could see, and now it updates and boots - _but _at this point it sounded like a jet engine taking off. So another teardown, cleaned out some huge disgusting dirt buildups that were blocking the heatsink, new thermal paste - now it runs as it should.

The only problem left is that I think the laser is failing - it was able to read DVDs but so far hasn't accepted any BluRay I put in it. I don't know if this will translate to games or if this might now be a digital-only console, but either way, I now I have a working PS4 for dirt cheap. I just had to clean a lot of actual dirt out of it.


----------



## wankerness

WOW, the true final millennium tower in yakuza 7 is ridiculous bullshit. I'd been farming the regular millennium tower for a couple hours prior to respeccing/regearing everyone to optimal and trying it - most enemies in the regular one died in ~3 hits if I targeted weaknesses and hit me for ~300 at the absolute most. I have 5 jobs to 99 on every single character, and still most basic enemies in the "true" version can 1-shot half the party (they hit for ~1500, and that's wimpy caster types - many others just plain kill you instantly) even with the best armor if you don't get every single block perfect. On top of that, their agi is ridiculous, so you're constantly getting hit repeatedly by the same enemies before your healer even has a turn. I don't think this is possible without a lot of luck. The fact that if you die at any point in the several floors means you have to start over from the VERY BEGINNING (it was taking me 45 minutes a floor) makes it all the more sadistic. Jesus christ.

Oh, and every single enemy has so much HP that I go from full mana to 0 mana on my damage dealer characters EVERY BATTLE, and the game lets you carry TEN mana replenishment items at a time (there are ~6 battles between item box access), which you need 3 of to restore a full mana bar for one character. So, I'm really running on empty and having to do crap like drink alcohol that restores mana and risk bad rolls on my drunk characters. It's COMPLETELY impractical to go in there with jobs sub level 99, which eliminates one of the major mana replenishment functions of the regular game (leveling up every few battles).

I haven't died yet, but I'm very tempted to just retreat after the third floor and write this game off, haha.


----------



## wankerness

Well, I beat the final millennium tower and thus platinum'd Yakuza 7. The tuning on the final dungeon is really messed up - the random enemies are FAR more difficult than the bosses. The ultimate champion/ghillie man combo in particular caused at least 4 KOs. Things like the normally just a damage sponge "pornogra-pharoah" were even more threatening than all the bosses. The very first two fights in there featured enemies hitting for my entire health bar if it wasn't blocked, etc. Then frickin Amon did less damage per attack than most random mobs and I only had one KO in the fight, even after he summoned the trio. Jeez. It was terrifying, but yeah, if you can make it past the random enemies you're probably going to be fine.

Did almost the whole thing with a chef/hitman/hero/idol group (the first fight or two I tried doing without a dedicated healer - NOT a good idea). Having megaton throw, ice throw, and lightning strike (foreman, host/hostess, fortune teller) is indispensible for all the regular enemies and sub-bosses - then on Amon I mostly just spammed the physical "essence" moves from everyone cause he's not resistant to physical and they're one of the only type of attacks he can't block and parry. Killed him, then focused down each of the three based on elemental weaknesses. Pretty smooth! Only thing I did that may have saved a wipe was what I read many places, which is "as soon as Amon goes beast form, use Mr Masochist!!" I think I timed it wrong and still didn't die to orbital laser, but maybe it still helped, I dunno.

Oh, and I equipped gear to block status effects so I was only getting 1 guy feared/paralyzed/stunned at any given point, and never the healer or ichiban. 

Good game! BUT, it has some very serious wonkiness with the battle system, almost always as a result of caring too much about positioning. If they work out issues with unpredictability in pathing and object interaction, they'll be in good shape. Object interaction is especially bad in the tower - some fights have so much crap in the room that things bug out even worse than normal and occasionally caused spells to not get cast at the enemy, which is not something I encountered anywhere else in the game. It's also infuriating when you have a character using an elemental weapon, so you attack since the enemy is weak to it, and instead they pick up some object that was on the ground and hit the guy 3 times for "resist" and negligible damage. 

I might start up Judgement, I remembered I bought that the last time it was on sale. It should feel good to beat up fools again. It's too bad it has a different protagonist, but so far they haven't had a playable character I haven't loved besides maybe the cop guy in Yakuza 4 and the baseball guy in 5 so I probably will like him too.


----------



## arasys

Started playing Morrowind on 1st day of the year, I can see myself plaing it for years especially with Tamriel Rebuilt mod. I always play Elder Scrolls without paying attention to main quest till I reach level 50 or so.. Now everything feels squishy with my daedric claymore at hardest difficulty :-/ 
...guess I should take a break because I am about to see cliff racers and dark elves calling everyone outlander, n'wah and s'wit irl.

Having my own Telvanni mushroom tower is very cool though.. no I must resist the urge... 


n'wah!!


----------



## TheShreddinHand

StevenC said:


> Bowser's Fury is my 2021 game of the year. Just needs to be 10x as big now.



So I beat bowser and just started working on more shines. Does he keep reappearing to get the fury block ones I missed? Same cadence of reappearing or how does it work now?


----------



## StevenC

TheShreddinHand said:


> So I beat bowser and just started working on more shines. Does he keep reappearing to get the fury block ones I missed? Same cadence of reappearing or how does it work now?


Yep, he keeps showing up but it will become the final boss fight if you get the giga bell, so don't do that until you've got all the shines. You can just wait him out for a minute or two again, or grab a shine and he'll back off. There are also some other shines you can get when he's out.


----------



## wankerness

Wow, I think I hate the FF7 remake based on the first section. I'm really glad it was free. This combat makes FFXV's seem straightforward - it's just a gigantic mess of buttons, menus that pop up everywhere, wonky command systems that seem to involve having to chain pause the game instead of being able to input commands for multiple characters without unpausing, and the block/dodge seem nearly useless in comparison to other "action RPGs" like say Dark Souls, Nier Automata, etcetcetc. I went through a boatload of potions on the seemingly endless first boss. I'm probably just terrible at it, but it mostly infuriated me with how incredibly early you apparently have to start moving to not get hit by attacks that seem avoidable, and how you apparently are just supposed to soak tons of damage cause the block mostly still causes you to get hurt. I've never been so confused by a combat system before and less motivated to figure out how it's supposed to work. And I played the first few hours of Nioh!! FEELS BAD, MAN!

On top of that, the voice acting/dialogue is _TERRIBLE. _Like, the original (what I've played of it, anyway) had bad dialogue, too, but when you didn't have wooden actors reading it, it kind of added to the wonky charm of the unrealistic character sprites. This just feels like a really bad DTV action movie.

And it's ugly! The graphics are great from a purely technical standpoint, the characters are rendered realistically, but all the environments are so bland and ugly - the art direction is atrocious. Nothing looks lived in, nothing has any personality, it just looks flat. Endless hallways filled with steel crates and pipes and it just reminded me of FFXIII. Or maybe FFXV, with its hideous excuses for cities. YUCK. I'll take something like Mario Odyssey, BOTW, or even Gravity Rush 2 over this any day - at least it feels like artists were involved.

So, yeah, I think I'm going to have to play something else instead. Wow! This really gave me an itch to play the last three Uncharted games again so I can recall what actual quality characters/voice acting are. This makes Yakuza's slightly dodgy english dub that I turned off halfway through the game seem so much better. And god, the characters in that game had SO much more personality. Barrett, Cloud, and Jessie were just unbearable.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Now that makes a grand total of 3 people here in the FF7R hate train. 

Having the staggering system back was a mistake, it just made even some of the normal random fights way too long and tedious. It was bad in XIII and it's just as bad here. 

I'm inclined to defend the setting aesthetics since Midgar is meant to look like rotting dump. To the game's detriment however, all the dungeons look the bloody same. Sure the attention to detail is impeccable but who cares when you're going through sewer tunnels copied and pasted 25 times over, then collapsing to another bunch of sewer tunnels until you get back to where you were in the first place. It's so needlessly padded, which pretty much the whole theme of the remake.

I actually feel bad for anyone who plays this without playing the original, since it leans so heavily on nostalgia pandering.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Now that makes a grand total of 3 people here in the FF7R hate train.
> 
> Having the staggering system back was a mistake, it just made even some of the normal random fights way too long and tedious. It was bad in XIII and it's just as bad here.
> 
> I'm inclined to defend the setting aesthetics since Midgar is meant to look like rotting dump. To the game's detriment however, all the dungeons look the bloody same. Sure the attention to detail is impeccable but who cares when you're going through sewer tunnels copied and pasted 25 times over, then collapsing to another bunch of sewer tunnels until you get back to where you were in the first place. It's so needlessly padded, which pretty much the whole theme of the remake.
> 
> I actually feel bad for anyone who plays this without playing the original, since it leans so heavily on nostalgia pandering.



My biggest issue is the combat when you have any party members. I mean, the aesthetics and everything are bad, but I've loved a lot of games with terrible voiceacting and poor art design as long as the combat is fun. Like, it was only a couple years ago that I played all the way through FF9 and 12 and had a generally positive impression of both, especially 12. Some of the key problems here:

1) no cancelling out of attacks - dodging and blocking seems to be an "all-in" thing, like they were trying to emulate turn-based combat, but everything else plays like an action RPG, so it just pisses you off and makes it feel unresponsive and like you're getting punished for "not playing right" when it seems to be designed that you are taking damage like it's turnbased.
2) ATB gets used up on items - i don't think this even needs an explanation, it's terrible and makes potions almost not worth using. Probably an attempt to compensate for FFXV which leaned too far the other direction (no reason to ever cast cure unless you were out of potions).
3) the aggro system is a nightmare, it seems like the computer focus-fires whoever you are controlling NO MATTER WHAT. Doubly annoying when combined with:
4) the party AI is completely moronic - they spent ATB if you don't babysit them constantly, they miss attacks, they block constantly so ATB doesn't generate fast enough

I'm barely into it, so I'm anticipating it probably gets even worse as your party fills up.

All the problems with dialogue/aesthetics/etc is kinda just petty grievances on top of fundamentally bad combat. I'm tempted to switch it to easy and just play it like a button masher, it would be more fun than getting stunlocked by attacks that have absolutely no indicator of whether they're blockable, dodgeable, both, or neither. Or having to mash attack 56 times to kill a basic dog (only slight exaggeration of my first experience before I discovered punisher mode).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I actually don't mind the quasi active action battles, perhaps it's because I didn't mind it implemented in Xenoblade. I do think FF7R's is better than XV since it at least gives you incentive to use other tools and other characters. The AI is indeed stupid, but again more incentive to play everyone else and not just Cloud, even if it means manically switching between them all.

Seeing the new Trails game incorporating these kind of active battle has me slightly worried for a bit but I guess I'll have to wait for another 4 years for that.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Back to Yakuza: Like You Know, Whatever. Finally started the Business management sim. Though in my hubris, I went in blind not knowing anything and completely blowing the Shareholder meetings. Didn't realise it was another form of Rock/Paper/Scissors mechanics. Going to try again, and knowing how I play these games, I'll probably blast through this minigame before it forces me to stop to move on with the actual plot. 

I really should play Persona 5 Royal since I recently saw a stream of P5 Strikers and it looks fun.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Back to Yakuza: Like You Know, Whatever. Finally started the Business management sim. Though in my hubris, I went in blind not knowing anything and completely blowing the Shareholder meetings. Didn't realise it was another form of Rock/Paper/Scissors mechanics. Going to try again, and knowing how I play these games, I'll probably blast through this minigame before it forces me to stop to move on with the actual plot.
> 
> I really should play Persona 5 Royal since I recently saw a stream of P5 Strikers and it looks fun.



You can't blow through it, it takes HOURS. You definitely should do it as soon as possible because Eri's bond is tied to progression in it, so you either have to keep her in your party, finish the whole questline, or else she'll get behind everyone else in EXP. I bombed the first two or three meetings until I realized that you choose one of your guys after choosing who to call on (or waiting until they get mad and just start talking). This was all in my post about tips! Once you have a board with people with good charisma/low action skill cost you can usually just knock out the 1-2 angry people in the first 5 seconds and then coast through the rest of the meeting, if not knock all the less angry people out and end it early.

I wish it was even remotely close to as fun as the Hostess management in 0/Kiwami 2. That still remains the gold standard for these games (and maybe for ALL games, I can't think of a minigame in any game I liked more than that one). As it stands, it's probably below the gang battle thing from 6/Kiwami 2 and above the business management in 0. The shareholder meetings are the only "fun" part and they only happen after minutes of watching bars (holding R2 to make them go faster) and hitting x to make money totals appear faster, with periodic "employee care."


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> You can't blow through it, it takes HOURS.



Oh I'm aware. But I'm also the guy who pummeled through most of the other subquests in every other Yakuza game before even thinking of advancing the plot. This will be no different. It will take time but then again, I did fully complete the entire Majima Hostess game in 0 with Makoto rotting in the shed. Did the same thing in 5 with the Initial D races, Bear Hunting, Idol quests and whatever Shinada did.

I know that I get Eri as a character through this business sim so playing it now will be mandatory for me since everyone else is already at Lv20+ and I don't want her lagging behind.


----------



## Mathemagician

Remnant just gets harder and more fun the longer you play and unlock traits, gear, etc. rocking a solid mixed set right now with mod generation to spam heals, and then bonus damage on reload and bonus damage on dodge. 

Just being able to drop in for multiplayer is really fun versus hoping to get summoned like in DS.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Remnant just gets harder and more fun the longer you play and unlock traits, gear, etc. rocking a solid mixed set right now with mod generation to spam heals, and then bonus damage on reload and bonus damage on dodge.
> 
> Just being able to drop in for multiplayer is really fun versus hoping to get summoned like in DS.



I started remnant, and only got through the first hour. I really didn't like the flat environments or all the hideous npcs and amount you had to talk to them. Guessing things get better once the game proper starts?

FF7 remake was a bust, so I dunno if I'll continue playing that. I tried doing the Jack the Ripper DLC in AC: Syndicate since I enjoyed that game, but very quickly got infuriated by the controls and quit. I guess I was more forgiving of the constant struggle trying to jump on and off buildings where and when you want to that is that game when I had gear upgrades that made combat trivial. Played one level of Doom 64 and had enough of that. Now I downloaded Judgment (I can't spell that word, I blame the brits for spelling it a way that makes sense). I'm flailing here! The soulsborne quartet ruined me on games full of pointless bullshit and infuriatingly bad controls!


----------



## Mathemagician

What I recommend is to back out and start quick-joining other people’s games. It will get you experience to improve your straits like health, stamina, reload speed, etc. traits are basically stats and you unlock more and more as your play. The “gear score” is the average level of your highest weapon. It’s a weighted average but it skews heavily to your highest gun. So once you get to about Lvl 5 or so you can better take on earth, but the traits are your real bread and butter and you just unlock them by playing. So if you help someone beat a boss or something you may unlock a useful one to buff your stats. Then you’ll be stronger for when you go back to your own game. Also great way to stock up on money and mats since they’re all shared between players - except ammo. Everyone has to play nice with ammo drops. (Or buy ammo crates, they’re cheap af)


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> What I recommend is to back out and start quick-joining other people’s games. It will get you experience to improve your straits like health, stamina, reload speed, etc. traits are basically stats and you unlock more and more as your play. The “gear score” is the average level of your highest weapon. It’s a weighted average but it skews heavily to your highest gun. So once you get to about Lvl 5 or so you can better take on earth, but the traits are your real bread and butter and you just unlock them by playing. So if you help someone beat a boss or something you may unlock a useful one to buff your stats. Then you’ll be stronger for when you go back to your own game. Also great way to stock up on money and mats since they’re all shared between players - except ammo. Everyone has to play nice with ammo drops. (Or buy ammo crates, they’re cheap af)



I was reading about enemy scaling a bit before going in. It sounded weird, like, if you just straight do all your upgrades towards your best gun, things will get a lot harder than if you space your upgrades out evenly. Whatever works, I guess. 

Maybe I'll try what you said wth multiplayer at some point. I never bothered with it at all in DS besides unplugging my connection when some asshole would chain invade me in DS2 since that game you could get invaded even when hollowed.  Sounds like this is co-op only? That will make me much more inclined to experiment.


----------



## p0ke

Continued my NG+ in DS1 today, and I'd say I'm doing pretty well so far.
I defeated the Four Kings, and man were those more difficult on NG+! On normal NG they barely did any damage on me, I took maybe 2-3 estus when not even blocking at all. On NG+ I barely survived one of their magic attacks and just dodged all the sword hits, and at the end I ran out of estus despite coming in with 15. I had a really minimal amount of health and just kept tapping R1 and hoping I'll hit before him.
I've been going in a different order this time, because I wanted to do the 4K first so I could join the darkwraith covenant asap. So now after 4K I went to the Demon Ruins. Ceaseless Discharge also did super much damage but the same cheesy tactic of hiding in a valley and whacking his tentacle after he misses worked... The fire version of the asylum demon was just as easy this time as on normal NG, but then the Centipede Demon. It bugged out maybe 3-4 times straight, the enemy went into a wall and there was nothing to do but quit and reload. After moving to a more open area to fight, I got him right away. Now I'm at Bed of Chaos, have destroyed the orbs, but the branches take me out every time I try to jump in the hole. It just wasn't as aggressive on NG...
Anyway, I'm on level 118 now, so I don't really need to worry much about the normal enemies


----------



## wankerness

Bed of Chaos is just pure RNG with his attack patterns. Some attempts he'd swipe nonstop, but then on NG+ he pretty much just did the AOE and the one-handed slow attacks and it was a joke to make that jump. I have no doubt if I'd tried several times I'd have had many attempts where he was a sweeping machine.

I think the hardest boss on NG+ is that goddam titanite demon in the lost izalith shortcut (unless you just use a bow on him for 10 minutes from hundreds of yards). He must have twice as much health as any boss in the game, and the ground where he is is annoying since it's bumpy and you can get stuck on vines, and there's death on either side of the platform. SUPER tedious. And he respawns!!!


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I was reading about enemy scaling a bit before going in. It sounded weird, like, if you just straight do all your upgrades towards your best gun, things will get a lot harder than if you space your upgrades out evenly. Whatever works, I guess.
> 
> Maybe I'll try what you said wth multiplayer at some point. I never bothered with it at all in DS besides unplugging my connection when some asshole would chain invade me in DS2 since that game you could get invaded even when hollowed.  Sounds like this is co-op only? That will make me much more inclined to experiment.



It’s co-op only. Gear caps out at level 20. So when you first enter a new world it scales the world to your current average gear score. Then you can level stuff and overpower the level. The worlds have a minimum level as well, so you can’t try to stay L1 to make it super easy. Earth is Lvl 5, the next place is like 6, the third one is like 8 or 10, and the last ones are anywhere from 12-16 minimum. So if you enter a L8 world as level 7, it will spawn the world at level 8, but if you upgrade your gear to 10 on average you’ll be about 20% stronger than the enemies there. 

If you’re undergeared you do less damage and take more. You can check this by going to the menu and hitting triangle. Bottom left should show two icons. Red down arrows mean your damage/defense is too low for the area, diamonds mean you’re on-level. And up green arrows mean you’re above the average level for the area. 

If you re-roll your campaign and you are above the minimum level it scales the new one to where you’re at to prevent it getting too easy. 

Hope that helps, I had to look all this stuff up.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

StevenC said:


> Yep, he keeps showing up but it will become the final boss fight if you get the giga bell, so don't do that until you've got all the shines. You can just wait him out for a minute or two again, or grab a shine and he'll back off. There are also some other shines you can get when he's out.



So I was at 47 and he wouldn’t go away. I waited it out for a while then started getting shines and he wouldn’t go away so I grabbed 3 shines to get to 50, grabbed the gigabell and did the fight. Credits rolled and now I just started grabbing some more.


----------



## MFB

Checked the PS Store last night, saw Dishonored Definite Edition was $5 on sale so I said fuck it and grabbed it. I have the original Xbox as well, but never really got too far in it, so I figured this version with the upgraded graphics/framerates etc will make it a bit more enjoyable to play than the nearly decade old version. Not to say the original didn't play well, just that it'll now play that much better.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> Checked the PS Store last night, saw Dishonored Definite Edition was $5 on sale so I said fuck it and grabbed it. I have the original Xbox as well, but never really got too far in it, so I figured this version with the upgraded graphics/framerates etc will make it a bit more enjoyable to play than the nearly decade old version. Not to say the original didn't play well, just that it'll now play that much better.


If you didn't know... The two story DLC make up pretty much an extra game that tells the story from a different angle. Some people like it even more than the main game. It also directly sets up Dishonored 2. So give that a go too if you finish the game and want more.


----------



## TedEH

+1 for the Dishonored DLC being worthwhile. More games should do DLC that well.


----------



## MFB

Just since I've been going through the From series, and those don't say anything outright to the player; how does the DLC interact with the main game? Is it only available after the main story, and like, I select it from the main menu? Or is it part of the game and just becomes integrated into it and I might technically be playing it without realizing it?


----------



## BlackMastodon

Oh shit, I didn't realize until now that I never ayed the DLC for Dishonored 1.

Welp, here we go again.


----------



## TheBlackBard

MFB said:


> Just since I've been going through the From series, and those don't say anything outright to the player; how does the DLC interact with the main game? Is it only available after the main story, and like, I select it from the main menu? Or is it part of the game and just becomes integrated into it and I might technically be playing it without realizing it?




The DLC is accessed from doing certain things in the game. Typically, I can access the DLC in just a few hours (if we're talking DS1), but then again, not everyone does what I do: get OP very quickly by knowing what stats to level, where to farm titanite/large titanite, Firekeeper's Souls locations, other item locations. I beat the minimum amount of bosses to get to the DLC if it's something I want for my playthrough. But the DLC for the main games are a bit transparent, I will say that, at least with DS1, BB, DS3. If you don't have it, certain things won't show up, and if you do, unless you're familiar with the game, you might not realize you're playing the DLC until you're just getting stomped beyond belief by the first enemy.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> Just since I've been going through the From series, and those don't say anything outright to the player; how does the DLC interact with the main game? Is it only available after the main story, and like, I select it from the main menu? Or is it part of the game and just becomes integrated into it and I might technically be playing it without realizing it?


If you mean Dishonored, they are in the "Missions" option on the main menu, then on the next screen... "Downloadable Content" tab. At least on my PC version.
The two DLC are called The Knife Of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. They are two parts of the same story/expansion so play them in that order.
Also, play them after you finish the main game. The DLC are set concurrently with the main game time period, so they will spoil the story if played before.


----------



## TheBlackBard

MFB said:


> Just since I've been going through the *From* series, and those don't say anything outright to the player; how does the DLC interact with the main game? Is it only available after the main story, and like, I select it from the main menu? Or is it part of the game and just becomes integrated into it and I might technically be playing it without realizing it?





Werecow said:


> If you mean Dishonored, they are in the "Missions" option on the main menu, then on the next screen... "Downloadable Content" tab. At least on my PC version.
> The two DLC are called The Knife Of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches. They are two parts of the same story/expansion so play them in that order.
> Also, play them after you finish the main game. The DLC are set concurrently with the main game time period, so they will spoil the story if played before.




Fromsoft did Dishonored?


----------



## Werecow

TheBlackBard said:


> Fromsoft did Dishonored?


No, i just couldn't tell from his wording whether he meant he'd been playing Souls and then asked about Dishonored DLC because of the trouble he'd had from Souls DLC.


----------



## MFB

TheBlackBard said:


> Fromsoft did Dishonored?





Werecow said:


> No, i just couldn't tell from his wording whether he meant he'd been playing Souls and then asked about Dishonored DLC because of the trouble he'd had from Souls DLC.



No, I'm just in such a different mindset from how older first person games are, that I don't remember how DLC used to be incorporated  In Bloodborne, it's accessible after a certain point, and I believe that the same is true for all the DS series, so you don't notice them as 'extrq content's because they're just ...another part of the world to explore. Whereas with something like Horizon Zero Dawn, you have to go out of your way to reach that mission area, and they openly say something acknowledging that; it wasn't as seamless.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Playing Warzone lately, rusty as fuck. No dubs all day.


----------



## Ralyks

Just got to chapter five of Yakuza: Like Callisto To a Star in Heaven, and yeah, this game rules. If I didn't hold out for the PS5 version (which I'm kinda glad I'm did, the virtually non-existent load times are helpful and it looks great), this would have been top 5 for me in 2020. Now, when do I start getting other jobs?


----------



## Wuuthrad




----------



## Bloody_Inferno

More on Yakuza: Like A G6. Got through the business management sim up to rank 36 and decided to stop and actually move on with the actual story. Got Eri just a few levels behind the rest but the thumbtack move works wonders on crowds so she kept up just fine. Though her presence does make the story scenes a little wonky being an optional character. 

Also got the PS3 running and reloaded an NG+ on Cold Steel 1 again. I miss out on the fast forward option but I'm not repaying for the game just for extra QOL conveniences. I've also forgotten how insufferable a majority of the Class VII cast were during their introductions, certainly doesn't help the game's appeal. Still the Persona esque life sim segments are still fun.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Just got to chapter five of Yakuza: Like Callisto To a Star in Heaven, and yeah, this game rules. If I didn't hold out for the PS5 version (which I'm kinda glad I'm did, the virtually non-existent load times are helpful and it looks great), this would have been top 5 for me in 2020. Now, when do I start getting other jobs?



The 9 hour prologue should indicate that this is a very slow burn, even slower than most of the other Yakuza games. The jobs will come around Chapter 4.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Bed of Chaos is just pure RNG with his attack patterns. Some attempts he'd swipe nonstop, but then on NG+ he pretty much just did the AOE and the one-handed slow attacks and it was a joke to make that jump. I have no doubt if I'd tried several times I'd have had many attempts where he was a sweeping machine.



Yeah, it's bullshit. I could take the damage, but it doesn't help if it pulls you off the cliff  Happened maybe a million times on NG+, I got so good at running there that I could've done a speedrun record or something in the end  Luckily the enemies were really easy to skip and then I finally just had better luck running in.



wankerness said:


> I think the hardest boss on NG+ is that goddam titanite demon in the lost izalith shortcut (unless you just use a bow on him for 10 minutes from hundreds of yards). He must have twice as much health as any boss in the game, and the ground where he is is annoying since it's bumpy and you can get stuck on vines, and there's death on either side of the platform. SUPER tedious. And he respawns!!!



Yup, I died there countless times even on normal NG, so I decided not to even go there on NG+. I keep carrying 999 Heavy and Feather arrows, so I could just equip the Hawk Ring and snipe him, but nah... I don't need to go there, so I won't  The titanite demons are a bitch in general on NG+...



MFB said:


> Just since I've been going through the From series, and those don't say anything outright to the player; how does the DLC interact with the main game? Is it only available after the main story, and like, I select it from the main menu? Or is it part of the game and just becomes integrated into it and I might technically be playing it without realizing it?



In DS1 you need to do a bunch of stuff to get to the DLC area, but sure, technically you could be playing it without knowing it's DLC stuff. It's basically a different world that you get warped to, similar to how you get to the painted world.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ok so in Remnant I’ve found that there are multiple potential bosses per world, and you aren’t going to get all the dungeons/bosses in any single run which adds a ton of replay value. And multiple bosses have alternate ways to kill them which provide different drops for more weapons/mods.

Also if you drop into multiplayer and help someone you get copies of whatever item drops if you don’t already own it. So big reason to drop in to random games, along with farming trait levels (stat points).


----------



## Nicki

p0ke said:


> Yeah, it's bullshit. I could take the damage, but it doesn't help if it pulls you off the cliff  Happened maybe a million times on NG+, I got so good at running there that I could've done a speedrun record or something in the end  Luckily the enemies were really easy to skip and then I finally just had better luck running in.


This is not a lie. Bed of Chaos is serious broken shit programming. This PCGamer article explains it perfectly with wireframes of BoC's hitboxes:

https://www.pcgamer.com/dark-souls-...y-player-knows-bed-of-chaos-is-outrageous-bs/

Basically, the tendrils don't matter at all because BoC's hitboxes aren't even aligned to them. On top of that, the hitboxes are massive. So even if you're sure you dodged the tendrils, the invisible hitboxes will still get you no matter what.

Anyway....

I picked up a bunch of Assassin's Creed games including Valhalla because of the Ubisoft Publisher Sale on Xbox. Loaded up Valhalla and I'm stunned by the pure amount of bullshit the Zealots are. I can understand why Ubisoft wanted to include some Dark Souls-esque bosses in the game. I'm totally okay with that. What I'm not okay with in any form is how the AI of these zealots break the game for several reasons:

1. They're level gated behind a level that takes 25 hours of story & side mission grinding to get to yet are on the world map by default in low level areas when you're not ready for them. This should never happen. If you're going to put a level gate on an enemy, put that enemy in a level appropriate area.
2. They require one specific skill in one of 3 skill trees to be unlocked for the player to have any hope of killing them with the combat difficulty set on anything other than easy. This is especially not okay when the whole point of skill trees in RPGs is to allow the player to play the game how they want to. Forcing the player to use any skill to kill bosses is bullshit and broken.
3. They scale in level with the player. This is probably the most egregious of design choices that Ubisoft could have made. They changed Assassin's Creed from a semi-stealth action game to an RPG. The whole point of level grinding in an RPG is to be able to become more powerful than the enemies in the game. If those enemies scale with the player, what's the point of leveling up in the first place? Anyone who has complained that enemies don't scale doesn't understand RPGs well enough to understand this. At the very least, there should be a gameplay option to turn enemy scaling on or off.
4. They don't telegraph their attack chains early enough for the player to react in a _reasonable_ amount of time. I know some will probably disagree with this, but hear me out. Basically there are blockable (no-flash or yellow-flash) or unblockable (red-flash) attacks. Red attacks _are_ telegraphed but the player is only given a VERY small window to dodge, however, the problem is that more often than not the red attack which was telegraphed is chained with another unblockable attack that isn't telegraphed. Unblockable attacks should only ever be a single attack, not an entire attack chain. They should either be used by enemies on their own or be the end of another blockable attack chain. Yellow attacks have the same problem, they're telegraphed but can be blocked or parried, but the issue is the follow up chain attack either being untelegraphed to the attack is too quick to dogde or parry. No flash attacks are the worst. They have the telegraph time of chain attacks which are barely telegraphed and give the player next to no time to dodge or parry. Oh, and parrying no-flash attacks are the ONLY way for the player to stagger bosses and get any sort of decent chain damage in.
5. They are constantly, and I mean C.O.N.S.T.A.N.T.L.Y. healing themselves with infinite heals. It's okay if bosses have a limited number of heals they can do on themselves (because players can heal themselves too, but not infinitely). However, if bosses don't run out of heals, there's a problem. A big one. This heavily unbalances the gameplay against bosses. Imagine if the player had infinite heals that did not consume any kind of resource. How broken and unbalanced would the gameplay be?
6. Bosses have infinite stamina. This is the same balance problem as the infinite heals. If a boss can infinitely spam heavy attacks without getting winded, but the player gets as winded as an asthmatic fat kid who's trying to run a marathon immediately after eating an entire chocolate cake, there's an imbalance problem there that needs to be addressed.
7. Speaking of infinite stamina, they also have infinite stance/poise/whatever after you've parried away their yellow bar and done a stun attack on them (clicking right joystick). Parrying yellow or no flash attacks after you've already done a stun attack will not give you another opportunity for another stun attack to deal massive damage. This defeats the purpose of the combat design and once again unbalances/breaks the gameplay.
8. They cannot be assassinated. I get it, they're bosses and one-shotting a boss takes the challenge away. However, because of all the other bullshit listed above, they should not be immune to an assassination knocking off 1/4 to 1/3 of their health bar to even the odds for the player. There's also a setting in the gameplay options that allows assassination on ALL enemies, but this still does not apply to bosses and is misleading.
9. They interfere with story missions. Since they roam the map constantly, I get how they could mingle into a story mission. However, this circles back to the issue of them being level gated. I was doing a mission where I had to chase a queen who passed herself off as a hand-maiden (sorry, names and places are completely forgettable in this game) which is a low level story mission. I think I was power level 30 at the time. Along comes a level 90 Zealot roaming the area who made me fail the mission over and over again until I cheesed the entire end of the mission by distracting the Zealot with my longship and sneaking WAY THE HELL around him to nab the queen and run away. If the programming were smart enough to despawn the Zealot when a story objective came into the area, I wouldn't have had this problem. I also imagine this is not how the dev team envisioned players actually playing this game.
10. There's no easy way to locate them without a guide or info from people who have already found them. You basically have to wander around the entirety of the map to find them. Normally, when there's targets you need to kill in ANY game, you're given an idea of where to find the target. Not these guys. You don't get to know where they are, nor can you send scouts to search because that mechanic wasn't thought of. This is particularly a STUPID design choice because they are required to kill in order for the player to see the whole story.

The rest of the game is fine I guess... but this is not a game I would recommend to anyone.


----------



## p0ke

Nicki said:


> I picked up a bunch of Assassin's Creed games including Valhalla
> [...]
> The rest of the game is fine I guess... but this is not a game I would recommend to anyone.



That basically sounds like a shitty version of DS  I guess maybe the Zealots are intended to be avoided basically until the end? That'd change the dynamic a bit vs. fighting everything.
Level scaling is bullshit though, no way around that. That's one thing I really like about DS not having - if you're super powerful, you can just go in all guns blazing and kill everything with one hit.
Also bosses should definitely not heal at all, IMO.

I tried a few of the earlier AC games, but never really liked them, so wasn't planning on trying Valhalla either unless I get for free. Those games looked cool, but just felt too much like running on rails IMO (well, at least what I played... ).

I just got to Nito on DS1 NG+, and almost got him on my first attempt. I was being way more strategic than usual, circling around him and casting pyromancy from a bit of a distance and then running in for two handed strikes when he's getting up after his sword hit... But then I ran out of Estus and started being a bit too defensive, he would've taken 1-2 more hits but instead his giant skeletons stabbed me from behind. Oh well, next time, same strategy, but just a tad more aggressive...


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> This is not a lie. Bed of Chaos is serious broken shit programming. This PCGamer article explains it perfectly with wireframes of BoC's hitboxes:
> 
> https://www.pcgamer.com/dark-souls-...y-player-knows-bed-of-chaos-is-outrageous-bs/
> 
> Basically, the tendrils don't matter at all because BoC's hitboxes aren't even aligned to them. On top of that, the hitboxes are massive. So even if you're sure you dodged the tendrils, the invisible hitboxes will still get you no matter what.
> 
> Anyway....
> 
> I picked up a bunch of Assassin's Creed games including Valhalla because of the Ubisoft Publisher Sale on Xbox. Loaded up Valhalla and I'm stunned by the pure amount of bullshit the Zealots are. I can understand why Ubisoft wanted to include some Dark Souls-esque bosses in the game. I'm totally okay with that. What I'm not okay with in any form is how the AI of these zealots break the game for several reasons:
> 
> 1. They're level gated behind a level that takes 25 hours of story & side mission grinding to get to yet are on the world map by default in low level areas when you're not ready for them. This should never happen. If you're going to put a level gate on an enemy, put that enemy in a level appropriate area.
> 2. They require one specific skill in one of 3 skill trees to be unlocked for the player to have any hope of killing them with the combat difficulty set on anything other than easy. This is especially not okay when the whole point of skill trees in RPGs is to allow the player to play the game how they want to. Forcing the player to use any skill to kill bosses is bullshit and broken.
> 3. They scale in level with the player. This is probably the most egregious of design choices that Ubisoft could have made. They changed Assassin's Creed from a semi-stealth action game to an RPG. The whole point of level grinding in an RPG is to be able to become more powerful than the enemies in the game. If those enemies scale with the player, what's the point of leveling up in the first place? Anyone who has complained that enemies don't scale doesn't understand RPGs well enough to understand this. At the very least, there should be a gameplay option to turn enemy scaling on or off.
> 4. They don't telegraph their attack chains early enough for the player to react in a _reasonable_ amount of time. I know some will probably disagree with this, but hear me out. Basically there are blockable (no-flash or yellow-flash) or unblockable (red-flash) attacks. Red attacks _are_ telegraphed but the player is only given a VERY small window to dodge, however, the problem is that more often than not the red attack which was telegraphed is chained with another unblockable attack that isn't telegraphed. Unblockable attacks should only ever be a single attack, not an entire attack chain. They should either be used by enemies on their own or be the end of another blockable attack chain. Yellow attacks have the same problem, they're telegraphed but can be blocked or parried, but the issue is the follow up chain attack either being untelegraphed to the attack is too quick to dogde or parry. No flash attacks are the worst. They have the telegraph time of chain attacks which are barely telegraphed and give the player next to no time to dodge or parry. Oh, and parrying no-flash attacks are the ONLY way for the player to stagger bosses and get any sort of decent chain damage in.
> 5. They are constantly, and I mean C.O.N.S.T.A.N.T.L.Y. healing themselves with infinite heals. It's okay if bosses have a limited number of heals they can do on themselves (because players can heal themselves too, but not infinitely). However, if bosses don't run out of heals, there's a problem. A big one. This heavily unbalances the gameplay against bosses. Imagine if the player had infinite heals that did not consume any kind of resource. How broken and unbalanced would the gameplay be?
> 6. Bosses have infinite stamina. This is the same balance problem as the infinite heals. If a boss can infinitely spam heavy attacks without getting winded, but the player gets as winded as an asthmatic fat kid who's trying to run a marathon immediately after eating an entire chocolate cake, there's an imbalance problem there that needs to be addressed.
> 7. Speaking of infinite stamina, they also have infinite stance/poise/whatever after you've parried away their yellow bar and done a stun attack on them (clicking right joystick). Parrying yellow or no flash attacks after you've already done a stun attack will not give you another opportunity for another stun attack to deal massive damage. This defeats the purpose of the combat design and once again unbalances/breaks the gameplay.
> 8. They cannot be assassinated. I get it, they're bosses and one-shotting a boss takes the challenge away. However, because of all the other bullshit listed above, they should not be immune to an assassination knocking off 1/4 to 1/3 of their health bar to even the odds for the player. There's also a setting in the gameplay options that allows assassination on ALL enemies, but this still does not apply to bosses and is misleading.
> 9. They interfere with story missions. Since they roam the map constantly, I get how they could mingle into a story mission. However, this circles back to the issue of them being level gated. I was doing a mission where I had to chase a queen who passed herself off as a hand-maiden (sorry, names and places are completely forgettable in this game) which is a low level story mission. I think I was power level 30 at the time. Along comes a level 90 Zealot roaming the area who made me fail the mission over and over again until I cheesed the entire end of the mission by distracting the Zealot with my longship and sneaking WAY THE HELL around him to nab the queen and run away. If the programming were smart enough to despawn the Zealot when a story objective came into the area, I wouldn't have had this problem. I also imagine this is not how the dev team envisioned players actually playing this game.
> 10. There's no easy way to locate them without a guide or info from people who have already found them. You basically have to wander around the entirety of the map to find them. Normally, when there's targets you need to kill in ANY game, you're given an idea of where to find the target. Not these guys. You don't get to know where they are, nor can you send scouts to search because that mechanic wasn't thought of. This is particularly a STUPID design choice because they are required to kill in order for the player to see the whole story.
> 
> The rest of the game is fine I guess... but this is not a game I would recommend to anyone.



The Zealots do become easier with levels because the skill tree is absolutely loaded with passive damage increase bonuses. I didn't have that much trouble with them (I didn't start fighting them till close to max level, which I hit LONG before finishing the story since I still have like 4 or 5 regions worth of main quest to go). They're certainly easier than the last fucking cairns. I only remember accidentally running into one early on, maybe I just lucked out.

I agree that the game should not be recommended to anyone, though!!! Odyssey was vastly superior.


----------



## btbg

Nicki said:


> This is not a lie. Bed of Chaos is serious broken shit programming. This PCGamer article explains it perfectly with wireframes of BoC's hitboxes:
> 
> https://www.pcgamer.com/dark-souls-...y-player-knows-bed-of-chaos-is-outrageous-bs/
> 
> Basically, the tendrils don't matter at all because BoC's hitboxes aren't even aligned to them. On top of that, the hitboxes are massive. So even if you're sure you dodged the tendrils, the invisible hitboxes will still get you no matter what.
> 
> Anyway....
> 
> I picked up a bunch of Assassin's Creed games including Valhalla because of the Ubisoft Publisher Sale on Xbox. Loaded up Valhalla and I'm stunned by the pure amount of bullshit the Zealots are. I can understand why Ubisoft wanted to include some Dark Souls-esque bosses in the game. I'm totally okay with that. What I'm not okay with in any form is how the AI of these zealots break the game for several reasons:
> 
> 1. They're level gated behind a level that takes 25 hours of story & side mission grinding to get to yet are on the world map by default in low level areas when you're not ready for them. This should never happen. If you're going to put a level gate on an enemy, put that enemy in a level appropriate area.
> 2. They require one specific skill in one of 3 skill trees to be unlocked for the player to have any hope of killing them with the combat difficulty set on anything other than easy. This is especially not okay when the whole point of skill trees in RPGs is to allow the player to play the game how they want to. Forcing the player to use any skill to kill bosses is bullshit and broken.
> 3. They scale in level with the player. This is probably the most egregious of design choices that Ubisoft could have made. They changed Assassin's Creed from a semi-stealth action game to an RPG. The whole point of level grinding in an RPG is to be able to become more powerful than the enemies in the game. If those enemies scale with the player, what's the point of leveling up in the first place? Anyone who has complained that enemies don't scale doesn't understand RPGs well enough to understand this. At the very least, there should be a gameplay option to turn enemy scaling on or off.
> 4. They don't telegraph their attack chains early enough for the player to react in a _reasonable_ amount of time. I know some will probably disagree with this, but hear me out. Basically there are blockable (no-flash or yellow-flash) or unblockable (red-flash) attacks. Red attacks _are_ telegraphed but the player is only given a VERY small window to dodge, however, the problem is that more often than not the red attack which was telegraphed is chained with another unblockable attack that isn't telegraphed. Unblockable attacks should only ever be a single attack, not an entire attack chain. They should either be used by enemies on their own or be the end of another blockable attack chain. Yellow attacks have the same problem, they're telegraphed but can be blocked or parried, but the issue is the follow up chain attack either being untelegraphed to the attack is too quick to dogde or parry. No flash attacks are the worst. They have the telegraph time of chain attacks which are barely telegraphed and give the player next to no time to dodge or parry. Oh, and parrying no-flash attacks are the ONLY way for the player to stagger bosses and get any sort of decent chain damage in.
> 5. They are constantly, and I mean C.O.N.S.T.A.N.T.L.Y. healing themselves with infinite heals. It's okay if bosses have a limited number of heals they can do on themselves (because players can heal themselves too, but not infinitely). However, if bosses don't run out of heals, there's a problem. A big one. This heavily unbalances the gameplay against bosses. Imagine if the player had infinite heals that did not consume any kind of resource. How broken and unbalanced would the gameplay be?
> 6. Bosses have infinite stamina. This is the same balance problem as the infinite heals. If a boss can infinitely spam heavy attacks without getting winded, but the player gets as winded as an asthmatic fat kid who's trying to run a marathon immediately after eating an entire chocolate cake, there's an imbalance problem there that needs to be addressed.
> 7. Speaking of infinite stamina, they also have infinite stance/poise/whatever after you've parried away their yellow bar and done a stun attack on them (clicking right joystick). Parrying yellow or no flash attacks after you've already done a stun attack will not give you another opportunity for another stun attack to deal massive damage. This defeats the purpose of the combat design and once again unbalances/breaks the gameplay.
> 8. They cannot be assassinated. I get it, they're bosses and one-shotting a boss takes the challenge away. However, because of all the other bullshit listed above, they should not be immune to an assassination knocking off 1/4 to 1/3 of their health bar to even the odds for the player. There's also a setting in the gameplay options that allows assassination on ALL enemies, but this still does not apply to bosses and is misleading.
> 9. They interfere with story missions. Since they roam the map constantly, I get how they could mingle into a story mission. However, this circles back to the issue of them being level gated. I was doing a mission where I had to chase a queen who passed herself off as a hand-maiden (sorry, names and places are completely forgettable in this game) which is a low level story mission. I think I was power level 30 at the time. Along comes a level 90 Zealot roaming the area who made me fail the mission over and over again until I cheesed the entire end of the mission by distracting the Zealot with my longship and sneaking WAY THE HELL around him to nab the queen and run away. If the programming were smart enough to despawn the Zealot when a story objective came into the area, I wouldn't have had this problem. I also imagine this is not how the dev team envisioned players actually playing this game.
> 10. There's no easy way to locate them without a guide or info from people who have already found them. You basically have to wander around the entirety of the map to find them. Normally, when there's targets you need to kill in ANY game, you're given an idea of where to find the target. Not these guys. You don't get to know where they are, nor can you send scouts to search because that mechanic wasn't thought of. This is particularly a STUPID design choice because they are required to kill in order for the player to see the whole story.
> 
> The rest of the game is fine I guess... but this is not a game I would recommend to anyone.



Lol. The game has it's issues I'll admit, but this just sounds like you're horrible at it.


----------



## Nicki

btbg said:


> Lol. The game has it's issues I'll admit, but this just sounds like you're horrible at it.


Wtf? Oh. You're a "git gud scrub" type of asswipe aren't you? Guess you missed the part of this thread where I've mentioned beating DS1 and DS3 so I'm rather used very punishing games.

Just search the AC Valhalla subreddit or Ubisoft forums. The general ensconces is that the Zealots are broken. Maybe do some reading up on the issue before running your jackass shit eating mouth. Go back to the oil patch you redneck fuck.

Enjoy your time on my ignore list.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Just got to chapter five of Yakuza: Like Callisto To a Star in Heaven, and yeah, this game rules. If I didn't hold out for the PS5 version (which I'm kinda glad I'm did, the virtually non-existent load times are helpful and it looks great), this would have been top 5 for me in 2020. Now, when do I start getting other jobs?



Considering you'll probably hit level 90+ before you max out your first job, I dunno how much you want to mess with other jobs apart from when you get to the first underground dungeon that has the vagabonds - you can probably at least get the first shared ability for every job really fast (getting past level 20 would take FOREVER though). For squadmates the other jobs are tied to their bond level so you need to be doing a ton of random battles and then going back to the bar every time you get to -10 (or wherever it tells you to go to Survive bar when you look at their character sheet). You should definitely do that as soon as possible with everyone, otherwise the characters that aren't in your active party will get behind in EXP. When at max bond, they get the same exp out of party as in.


----------



## TedEH

Reporting back to say that Thief 2 is still great. I got as far the "The Party" last night and I wonder if this is where Dishonored got it's party level idea from - but also that level is peak Thief IMO. So many brilliant ideas packed into one giant map. The more I think about it - while I normally say old games don't really need to be remade if they stand on their own, I think Thief 2 would be well served by a fresh coat of paint just to make it look nicer and fix some of the "old pc game" jank like fixing widescreen, etc.

Anyway, don't mind me, back to Yakuza and Dark Souls or whatever the topic normally is.


----------



## Mathemagician

Anyone played Demons Souls on ps5? I’m debating how much time I want to devote to another souls game.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Anyone played Demons Souls on ps5? I’m debating how much time I want to devote to another souls game.



I can't wait to play it

....in 2023 when I can buy a PS5 at cost without having to camp out on twitter


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I can't wait to play it
> 
> ....in 2023 when I can buy a PS5 at cost without having to camp out on twitter



I started camping out on Twitter end of December/early jan. Got one last week finally. I mean, it worked. But I just had to have alerts on from all the Twitter feed bots that instantly announce it.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> Reporting back to say that Thief 2 is still great. I got as far the "The Party" last night and I wonder if this is where Dishonored got it's party level idea from - but also that level is peak Thief IMO. So many brilliant ideas packed into one giant map. The more I think about it - while I normally say old games don't really need to be remade if they stand on their own, I think Thief 2 would be well served by a fresh coat of paint just to make it look nicer and fix some of the "old pc game" jank like fixing widescreen, etc.
> 
> Anyway, don't mind me, back to Yakuza and Dark Souls or whatever the topic normally is.


Have you got NewDark installed? It fixes a lot of the old engine jank. I had 1440p widescreen running fine, though i don't know if ultra-wide is supported.
It updates the engine quite a bit, and even gets EAX audio working if you set it to OpenAL hardware mode in the audio options.

The done thing now is to install T2Fix, which has a bunch of stuff including the NewDark engine update https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149669


----------



## TedEH

Yeh, I've got T2Fix going - ultrawide works fine, and the EAX is (IMO) essential. I basically try to use the quality-of-life stuff but keep the game as vanilla as possible otherwise. (So no texture packs or things like that.)


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> Yeh, I've got T2Fix going - ultrawide works fine, and the EAX is (IMO) essential. I basically try to use the quality-of-life stuff but keep the game as vanilla as possible otherwise. (So no texture packs or things like that.)



I'd forgotten how good real EAX is/was. It's shockinly good in this game. Not just the ambience, i was very accurately tracking guards positions by sound when i was hiding behind a pillar. With just my normal stereo headphones. I don't think there's been a stealth game since where i can do it to that degree.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Considering you'll probably hit level 90+ before you max out your first job, I dunno how much you want to mess with other jobs apart from when you get to the first underground dungeon that has the vagabonds - you can probably at least get the first shared ability for every job really fast (getting past level 20 would take FOREVER though). For squadmates the other jobs are tied to their bond level so you need to be doing a ton of random battles and then going back to the bar every time you get to -10 (or wherever it tells you to go to Survive bar when you look at their character sheet). You should definitely do that as soon as possible with everyone, otherwise the characters that aren't in your active party will get behind in EXP. When at max bond, they get the same exp out of party as in.



I figured most of that. I'm 10 hours in on chapter 5 and just recently got crafting. 10 hours in the other games and I feel like I've made some progress. Here, I can tell at 10 hours I'm still fairly early on. But goddamn I love this game. Kasuga was kinda annoying at first but I'm really starting to dig him. Saeko is probably my second favorite so far.



Mathemagician said:


> I started camping out on Twitter end of December/early jan. Got one last week finally. I mean, it worked. But I just had to have alerts on from all the Twitter feed bots that instantly announce it.



Yeah, I never used Twitter despite having one for years (purely for a wrestling podcast I use to do years ago), but decided to use it solely for the consoles. Got my PS5 in December and Xbox Series X last month thanks to Wario64. But it was pretty annoying getting constant notifications for other shit.

But yeah, Demon Souls was one of the games that came with my PS5. Normally not a Souls guys but it's pretty damn good. I'd probably go through it more if it weren't for Yakuza and Persona 5 Strikers.


----------



## SpaceDock

Kinda weird seeing someone wig out on the zealots. I just avoided them until I was higher level then killed every single one of them prior to beating the main storyline.


----------



## wankerness

SpaceDock said:


> Kinda weird seeing someone wig out on the zealots. I just avoided them until I was higher level then killed every single one of them prior to beating the main storyline.


Yeah, same here, I think I might have killed all of them before I quit that game. I was max level though. Definitely seemed easier than the eventual bounty hunters you’d get in Odyssey after some of the dlc came out.


----------



## Nicki

SpaceDock said:


> Kinda weird seeing someone wig out on the zealots. I just avoided them until I was higher level then killed every single one of them prior to beating the main storyline.


It's just a frustrating part of the game when you have enemies that are level gated interfere with a low level story mission and those same enemies break the normal rules of gameplay that the game itself lays out. So yeah, I could avoid them, but when they insert themselves into a story mission, that's kinda hard.

Some of the Zealots are ridiculously easy. I found one last night with a two handed axe, decided to bump the combat difficulty back up to normal just to see what it was like (I'm power level 140 now and the Zealot was 160) and I took him down easily. My main complaints stem from my fights with Redwalda and Eoforwine. Both of which I beat eventually but I had to lower the difficulty for Eorforwine (and I'm not the only one that seems to find Eoforwine extremely broken).

Cola is another one that breaks the rules of gameplay but not nearly as bad as Eoforwine and Redwalda. He has one yellow attack that doesn't flash the yellow run until just after the attack animation starts which is counter to how all other Zealots and bosses telegraph blockable attacks. I eventually took him down too.

I'm not saying that they can't be beaten, I'm just saying that these bosses seem purposely broken, unbalanced and very poorly thought out. I'm mostly enjoying everything else about the game but these Zealots seem to be the worst that the game has to offer.

... Unless you're commenting on my reply to that Albertan asshole. I just can't stand elitist attitudes like that or when someone decides to personally attack me with things like "sounds like you just suck". That guy can go get fucked by a bull. Offering an insult instead of something constructive to add to the conversation gets on my nerves. Earlier in the thread someone was having trouble with Gwynne from DS1 and basically no said "git gud scrub" and instead offered tips to beat him, myself included.


----------



## wankerness

I think that the point of them is to be level-gated and a serious environmental threat at lower levels. Many AC games have some kind of unbeatable scary guys that roam around that you have no hope of surviving until you're very high level. I think with how broken combat can be in this game with the right setup/weapons, they probably realized they had to make the AI also "cheat" to still make them a serious threat. Kind of an arms race? I don't think anyone ever accused AC games of having an incredible combat system!


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I'd forgotten how good real EAX is/was. It's shockinly good in this game. Not just the ambience, i was very accurately tracking guards positions by sound when i was hiding behind a pillar. With just my normal stereo headphones. I don't think there's been a stealth game since where i can do it to that degree.


I suspect it's more than just EAX. There's some very clever room-based sound propagation happening in that game that I've never seen topped. I dunno the specifics of how EAX works but I assume that you basically feed it a position - but that position is still going to be implementation specific. My guess is that there's some kind of path finding happening to find the closest portal between you and the sound source, and the position is placed at the portal instead of where the sound actually came from, plus some kind of filter for each closed door in the way.

For as good as modern stealthy games can be, it seems like they threw that depth of audio implementation out the window in favour of mostly visual cues and polish, and to me that's a lot of what made Thief special.


----------



## wankerness

My malaise with games resulted in me going back to BOTW to try and find the last handful of shrines (I'm at 109 now) and upgrade the rest of my armor to max (just missing tons of swiftviolet and smotherwing butterflies). Man, the combat in this game is BAD compared to Dark Souls. The lizards are infuriating, especially the high-health variants, as they just chain-jump away from you and when trying to farm for tails the way they're guaranteed to go flying 50 yards and off whatever cliff is anywhere close so you can't recover the tails gets old REAL quick. Especially in the volcano area, where they're all perched on cliffs above lava. And they go flying 50 yards every time you complete a combo, so frequently they go flying into the lava and then just run around down there spitting at you and you can't kill them or the drops are lost, so you have to try and bait them into running up a nearby low ledge (if there is one).

The silver lynels are absolutely brutal, too, if you don't use the very specific strategies found online. Things like dodging are anything but guaranteed to work how you want them to (frequently if you miss the first side-jump the second one is much shorter so you get creamed), and that's fine most of the time, but when you have an enemy that hits for ~20 hearts a swing with fully upgraded armor you have a problem. Also, when an enemy has more health than you have weapon durability, that's an issue - I went through FIVE weapons and the Lynel was still at ~75%. Gah. Maybe you just need to use the weird strategies with chain stasis/arrow stun/jump on it using guardian weapons.

But, man, I am appreciating so much more how "pure" the game feels. There's not much UI or anything else like that to get in the way, the controls for exploration and basic combat all feel really responsive and great, etc. It just breaks down a bit when dealing with enemies with very high health or damage. Here's hoping the sequel compensates for that in some way. Maybe weapon durability scaling with number of shrines, or scaling inversely with total health of the enemy you're attacking, or something.

And give us the damn song of storms, waiting for rain is still the worst!


----------



## TedEH

^ The anticipation for that sequel has me excited in ways most games don't get me excited. It's gonna be an instant buy, sight unseen, and I _never_ do that.


----------



## sighval

I've been completely addicted to Dead Cells for a few months now. It's so smooooth.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> ^ The anticipation for that sequel has me excited in ways most games don't get me excited. It's gonna be an instant buy, sight unseen, and I _never_ do that.



I do that now and then, but I feel like in its case it will be more deserved! I'm definitely going to buy it instantly. And with how hooked my girlfriend is to the first right now, I think she will probably dump me if I don't get the new one instantly. It's kind of funny, since I was such a vocal opponent of it for a long while after my first experience with it.

Games I bought for full cost on release day or preordered in the last generation:

Yakuza Kiwami 2
Yakuza 3-5 collection
AC: Valhalla (*big* mistake)
Mario 3D All Stars
Ghost of Tsushima
Borderlands 3
God of War

I'm probably going to buy that Mass Effect collection on release date, too.

Then of course I ended up paying full cost for a few Nintendo games a few weeks or months after release since they almost never go on sale so there's no point in waiting unless you want to wait 2 years (Mario: Bowser's Fury, Animal Crossing New Horizons). I might eventually cave and get Hyrule Warriors 2 if they continue not discounting it for too much longer. With PS4, if I waited a few weeks, I'd already get a big discount. Ex, Yakuza 7 I think I got one month after release for 20 dollars off. It's weird how aggressive Sony/Xbox are and how Nintendo succeeds without ever discounting anything. Guess it's probably partly cause Xbox/PS4 are competing more directly with PC, where Steam sales have made it seem like games are supposed to cost 6 dollars.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I think maybe I preorded Uncharted: Lost Legacy since it came out like right after I finished the first four and it only cost 40 bucks new!


----------



## MFB

Sight unseen purchases? Shit man, I could list more games that I HAVEN'T done that for then I have. I usually just watch the trailer and if that's good enough with the reputation of the studio that made it then I'm in. 

Horizon Zero Dawn? Trailer is cool, Guerrilla made all the Killzone games which are solid, so sure why not. Bloodborne? Oh fuck, look at this song player HP Lovecraft love letter from the studio no one will shut up about because of DS. Jedi Fallen Order? New single player Star Wars done by Respawn - makers of the best online FPS shooter in the paste decade? Absolutely.


----------



## Nicki

MFB said:


> Sight unseen purchases? Shit man, I could list more games that I HAVEN'T done that for then I have. I usually just watch the trailer and if that's good enough with the reputation of the studio that made it then I'm in.
> 
> Horizon Zero Dawn? Trailer is cool, Guerrilla made all the Killzone games which are solid, so sure why not. Bloodborne? Oh fuck, look at this song player HP Lovecraft love letter from the studio no one will shut up about because of DS. Jedi Fallen Order? New single player Star Wars done by Respawn - makers of the best online FPS shooter in the paste decade? Absolutely.


These are the games in my memory that I've pre-ordered in the past 5 years and I cancelled 2 of those pre-orders because of GamePass.


Resident Evil Village

FFXIV Stormblood xpack (I really miss playing FFXIV)
Mafia Definitive Edition
Dragon Quest XI S Definitive for Xbox (Cancelled because of GamePass)
Nier Replicant (Cancelled because likely to be on GamePass)
Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening remake
Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Dark Souls 3 

The Division 

The Division 2
Since this list dates back to 2016, looks like I average about 2 pre-orders a year. Though I think that stops this year after Village since the new console generation is out and I don't plan on buying a new one until next year. Plus, I have a 120 ish game backlog on my xbox now after going a little crazy due to their sales so I need to work through that. Got lots to keep me busy for a good while.


----------



## MFB

I couldn't tell you the last game I pre-ordered, it probably would have been when the PS4 was launching and it was pretty much a pre-requisite if you wanted a game with it.


----------



## Werecow

The only "normal" pre-orders i can remember doing is Dishonored 2, Prey, Deus Ex HR, Deus Ex MD, and Metro Exodus.
I have also Kickstarted Divinity: Original Sin 2, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and the System Shock remake (which has been a bit of a drama so far).


----------



## TedEH

I'm really cheap though, so I basically never pay full price on release or preorder or anything like that. With the giant steam backlog, and the fact that I almost never own consoles until they're a generation or two behind, there's no pressing need to get things as soon as they're out. BotW wasn't even a day one purchase. I actually can't even think of a list of games I've pre-ordered or bought during it's release window. There would be maybe 5-10 tops if I could remember them all.


----------



## Choop

^ Same here, I find if I'm not intent on playing it right away on purchase then it can wait for a sale, and the backlog is so long that there is no shortage of stuff to occupy my time. I did however recently preorder the new Binding of Isaac: Repentance, because I love that game and I know I'll play the new one on and off.


----------



## Ralyks

So I have jobs in Yakuza now... But seem hesitant to change anything. I made Adachi a Foreman and Saeka an Idol, but that's it's so far. Any advice on the jobs in the beginning?


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So I have jobs in Yakuza now... But seem hesitant to change anything. I made Adachi a Foreman and Saeka an Idol, but that's it's so far. Any advice on the jobs in the beginning?



Respec adachi foreman for a second just to get the wall destructo move, but then go back to Hero in early or endgame, it's by far his best job, especially if you build the thundercrack bat (or have the tons of money necessary to upgrade the base bat to the super-lightning one). When you get to the really good grinding spot at the end of the game you'll want to spec him all kinds of things for all the bonus stats and shared skills, like Enforcer, Foreman, Host, Foreman in particular. Foreman does have one great shared fire skill but I think you get it at like job level 28 and that will take a LONG time to grind out early in the game.

Saeko should definitely be an idol instead of barmaid. I'd definitely respec Nanba to Host at some point as well (it's kind of a caster ice damage spec and a LOT of enemies are weak to ice). It kind of depends on your party makeup, though. You want someone that has fire damage - homeless guy is decent for that, but if you get it high enough level there's a permanent skill that's shared. I forget what level or what it's called. Just go to the jobs tab and look at which skills are shared and make sure you have them learned. It's also very important at some point to go fortuneteller on male characters to get the AOE lightning shared skill and the resurrection spell shared skill, but that will be hard to learn quickly before you get to really good grinding areas and the spec isn't great otherwise.

When you get the two new characters in chapter 10, you want one to stay hitman and the other arguably to go Chef (that would also give you fire damage), or you can leave it as default for another hard-hitting physical character.


----------



## wankerness

Whoops, I was talking about Kasuga and said Adachi. I think Adachi will be your least-used character by far. Foreman's fine for him, either that or Enforcer is good to get an elemental attack. Don't keep him detective like I did for most of the game, it sucks. Foreman has the fire-based dynamite attacks, Enforcer has lightning-based attacks (one that lifts them with prongs in particular is extremely strong, but doesn't work on a few larger bosses). Enforcer's usually what I see people recommend him to be.


----------



## Ralyks

Need to get Kasugas charisma up for Foreman.

More important question, how hard is the Ichiban Confections management/unlocking Eri?


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Need to get Kasugas charisma up for Foreman.
> 
> More important question, how hard is the Ichiban Confections management/unlocking Eri?



It’s not hard but it’s boring and very confusing, I failed the first few meetings just cause I didn’t know wtf was going on and the game doesn’t explain it well. Also, you get her almost immediately, but you have to complete the questline to get her bond up which takes many hours. I’d suggest starting it to get her and then just keep her in your party at all times till you finally finish the questline. Read the tips I posted earlier.
Assigning employees to businesses and the stat caps corresponding to stats still make zero sense to me. I just upgraded everyone until they met the stat requirements and then upgraded the businesses until I wouldn’t be able to meet the stat requirements anymore. Some businesses are a lot worse than others, I’d suggest looking at a guide for which to get.


----------



## wankerness

Well, trails of cold steel 1 went on sale today so I got it. I look forward to starting it and almost immediately losing interest, like usually happens!


----------



## Mathemagician

There’s games I’ve waited so long for a sale + me having time for it that I’ve since gotten them for free. Like I’m officially just going through my backlog now that I have a new system. I just don’t see the point of dropping $70 when I KNOW I won’t play it h til I can pick it up for less than half.

Guess who is getting horizon zero dawn for free next month vs. the already crazy cheap 9.99 it regularly goes on sale for? This guy. Along with god of war, the last of us, and idk like 30 other games.

Pro-tip for the car cinema buffs: Need for Speed Payback is basically a fast & the furious knockoff story wise. The dialogue is grade-A cheesy. I set it to easy and intend on powering through this campy game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Well, trails of cold steel 1 went on sale today so I got it. I look forward to starting it and almost immediately losing interest, like usually happens!



How is your tolerance to anime tropes? Because this game will bombard you relentlessly with each and every single one of them within the first 20 minutes. And that's before you get to the core game that's as slow a boil as holding a cigarette lighter under a swimming pool. The battle system is fun though. 

I did warn that the Trails games are a hard sell. But if you're patient enough the games reap a hell of a reward.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> How is your tolerance to anime tropes? Because this game will bombard you relentlessly with each and every single one of them within the first 20 minutes. And that's before you get to the core game that's as slow a boil as holding a cigarette lighter under a swimming pool. The battle system is fun though.
> 
> I did warn that the Trails games are a hard sell. But if you're patient enough the games reap a hell of a reward.



I dunno. I’m kind of ambivalent towards anime tropes, due to never having watched an anime series and only the big seminal movies like Akira/Ghost in the Shell/ghibli stuff. So, at least I don’t have an existing dislike! Except for some of the eye rolling lasciviousness in Persona 5 I guess, if that’s a trope.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I dunno. I’m kind of ambivalent towards anime tropes, due to never having watched an anime series and only the big seminal movies like Akira/Ghost in the Shell/ghibli stuff. So, at least I don’t have an existing dislike! Except for some of the eye rolling lasciviousness in Persona 5 I guess, if that’s a trope.



Let's just say, I wouldn't put it past you at all if you opt out of rage. I love the series, but I won't sugarcoat it either: the first impression is not good.

The beginning plays like a typical school setting anime series, and all the baggage that comes with it. When I started the game, all it felt like that I'm just binging another series only this time it's interactive. I posted recently that I'm actually replaying it again doing a 'spot the reference' run, and I did say how some of the main characters are insufferable when they're first introduced. Hence why I had to ask, because it will be a long arduous slog before the plot gets going and you're invested.

When you play it, once you get past the first dungeon run and list of life sim tasks, you'll know what you're up against and can decide whether to push through or not.


----------



## wankerness

I started it. I'm very amused by the % of people with trophies. Almost 25% of players didn't even make it through the opening combat sequences (first like, 15 minutes of the game)! Now THAT is a statistic that suggests the game is immediately off-putting!

There are too many damn characters introduced too fast. That's my main problem so far. Persona 5 is easy to keep track of since they introduce characters slowly, one or two every dungeon basically - this just dumps the 7 classmates, the instructor, and then the other people who aren't in the class but seem to be important commentators on you at the same time and they all look the same besides hairstyles. Also, the music is really loud and really repetitive. FFXIII it ain't. Oh well. The combat seems amusing, though I of course will have to figure out a ton of mechanics before it starts making sense.


----------



## p0ke

Mathemagician said:


> There’s games I’ve waited so long for a sale + me having time for it that I’ve since gotten them for free. Like I’m officially just going through my backlog now that I have a new system. I just don’t see the point of dropping $70 when I KNOW I won’t play it h til I can pick it up for less than half.
> 
> Guess who is getting horizon zero dawn for free next month vs. the already crazy cheap 9.99 it regularly goes on sale for? This guy. Along with god of war, the last of us, and idk like 30 other games.



That's what I'm doing too. Also making the most of each game like it's 1999 instead of getting new games constantly and not having time to even try them all  I've been playing DS1 for like what, 2 months now? I haven't checked how many hours but I have a feeling it's a lot by my standards. So after finishing NG+ I think I'm done with that and can proceed to whatever comes on sale next  I also still have Fallout 4 and Quantum Break waiting...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I started it. I'm very amused by the % of people with trophies. Almost 25% of players didn't even make it through the opening combat sequences (first like, 15 minutes of the game)! Now THAT is a statistic that suggests the game is immediately off-putting!
> 
> There are too many damn characters introduced too fast. That's my main problem so far. Persona 5 is easy to keep track of since they introduce characters slowly, one or two every dungeon basically - this just dumps the 7 classmates, the instructor, and then the other people who aren't in the class but seem to be important commentators on you at the same time and they all look the same besides hairstyles. Also, the music is really loud and really repetitive. FFXIII it ain't. Oh well. The combat seems amusing, though I of course will have to figure out a ton of mechanics before it starts making sense.



That entire intro was something I didn't bother mentioning because it's a difficult thing to talk about without delving too much into it. From a gameplay perspective, it trips over itself because it doesn't tutorialise until well after the scene. Persona 5 definitely does the flash forward better since it's brief and much faster paced. Throwing everyone at you all at once also doesn't help especially since the game will introduce you to them individually anyway. The battle music in the intro also doesn't help either. 

The whole anime characters all look the same with only haircuts differentiating them problem is as old as anime itself. Namely because the medium began as one that's done in the lowest budget and quickest timeframe as possible, and hasn't really evolved much. Make everyone bald in any anime and you can't tell the buggers apart (also doesn't help here with everyone wearing the same uniform) Side mouths for instance is an old technique done in low budget anime so animators can cut corners and don't draw jaw movement... but that whole anime aspect is a different topic in itself. 

Funny enough, trying to sell this series is similar to selling Dark Souls in a sense. First impressions are also bad, and so many people give up before or even during Taurus Demon (if not Asylum Demon) before realising you have to push through at least until the Gargoyles before you 'get it'. Cold Steel is obviously a much more different beast. At least it doesn't throw a full glossary at you forcing you to read it from the get go. Every time Machias and Jusis open their mouths is a sneaky piece of small world building that I appreciated once I got past the annoyance.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> That entire intro was something I didn't bother mentioning because it's a difficult thing to talk about without delving too much into it. From a gameplay perspective, it trips over itself because it doesn't tutorialise until well after the scene. Persona 5 definitely does the flash forward better since it's brief and much faster paced. Throwing everyone at you all at once also doesn't help especially since the game will introduce you to them individually anyway. The battle music in the intro also doesn't help either.
> 
> The whole anime characters all look the same with only haircuts differentiating them problem is as old as anime itself. Namely because the medium began as one that's done in the lowest budget and quickest timeframe as possible, and hasn't really evolved much. Make everyone bald in any anime and you can't tell the buggers apart (also doesn't help here with everyone wearing the same uniform) Side mouths for instance is an old technique done in low budget anime so animators can cut corners and don't draw jaw movement... but that whole anime aspect is a different topic in itself.
> 
> Funny enough, trying to sell this series is similar to selling Dark Souls in a sense. First impressions are also bad, and so many people give up before or even during Taurus Demon (if not Asylum Demon) before realising you have to push through at least until the Gargoyles before you 'get it'. Cold Steel is obviously a much more different beast. At least it doesn't throw a full glossary at you forcing you to read it from the get go. Every time Machias and Jusis open their mouths is a sneaky piece of small world building that I appreciated once I got past the annoyance.



I’m in the first “free day” now. I appreciate that it doesn’t seem as harsh as Persona with time limits, where unless you read a guide for who to talk to what day you could easily screw yourself on maxing character relationships, but it still feels overwhelming, yet simultaneously empty (due to graphical limitations of the ps3 mainly I’m sure). There’s still too much junk going on in combat, like twice the status effects I’m used to as well as the tons of effects that seemingly randomly trigger on turns like heals. then there was the stuff in the prologue I didn’t encounter again yet, like link moves and especially some kind of addon moves triggered by hitting a direction during another turn in the one second of cast-time. Oh, and I don’t understand at all why occasionally characters seem to change available spells for a turn or two, it doesn’t seem to be something like a limit break in ff7/8. I’m not sure how much I have to understand to get through it, though (I’m on normal).


Is “you are a high schooler and every woman, especially your teacher, is sex crazed and romanceable” one of those anime tropes you refer to? It was cringey as all hell with many characters in Persona 5 (ex the doctor, fortune teller, and especially TEACHER WHO WORKED AS A SEX WORKER IN HER OFF-TIME DUE TO BLACKMAIL ughhh) and is looking like it might end up being that way here, too! Or maybe it will subvert expectations.

the “world building” as you mentioned is currently just going in one ear and out the other, but I have definitely appreciated the small bits it doles out as opposed to exposition dumps or glossary-required to understand terminology like are the norm for anything made by Squaresoft. It definitely seems better written than most Jrpgs I’ve played.


----------



## Steinmetzify

About time. Been going at this for like an hour a day for two weeks.


----------



## Werecow

I'm having a little break from Thief 3 and playing Dying Light. My first playthrough was cut short early by my old motherboard dying, and i didn't pick it back up again till now.
Really enjoying it so far. The parkour is surprisingly fluid given how complicated some of the scenery is. The city is probably the most explorable i've ever seen with the amount of buildings you can actually go inside. Getting caught outside at night time really is scary with the faster, more alert zombies.


----------



## TedEH

Finished Thief 2. Strongly considering diving into 3 now.
I've been sometimes poking at Mario + Rabbids and it works surprisingly well.


----------



## mongey

its kind of lame, but the highlight of my gaming month has been playing Peggle with my 6 year old on the 360


----------



## Ralyks

Went ahead and just got Eri in one sitting in Yakuza: Like a Prayer. Is she's useful to have in your party? I'm at what appears to be the end of chapter 5.
Also, this game still freaking rules and while I miss Kiryu-san, this is probably turning into my favorite Yakua game, at least alongside 0 and Kiwami 2.

Also playing Marvels Avengers, because the PS5 version came out and I had it in PS4 when it was 20 bucks brand new. It's... Fun, I guess? I'm really not sure yet. It doesn't seem BAD yet.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I’m in the first “free day” now. I appreciate that it doesn’t seem as harsh as Persona with time limits, where unless you read a guide for who to talk to what day you could easily screw yourself on maxing character relationships, but it still feels overwhelming, yet simultaneously empty (due to graphical limitations of the ps3 mainly I’m sure). There’s still too much junk going on in combat, like twice the status effects I’m used to as well as the tons of effects that seemingly randomly trigger on turns like heals. then there was the stuff in the prologue I didn’t encounter again yet, like link moves and especially some kind of addon moves triggered by hitting a direction during another turn in the one second of cast-time. Oh, and I don’t understand at all why occasionally characters seem to change available spells for a turn or two, it doesn’t seem to be something like a limit break in ff7/8. I’m not sure how much I have to understand to get through it, though (I’m on normal).
> 
> Is “you are a high schooler and every woman, especially your teacher, is sex crazed and romanceable” one of those anime tropes you refer to? It was cringey as all hell with many characters in Persona 5 (ex the doctor, fortune teller, and especially TEACHER WHO WORKED AS A SEX WORKER IN HER OFF-TIME DUE TO BLACKMAIL ughhh) and is looking like it might end up being that way here, too! Or maybe it will subvert expectations.
> 
> the “world building” as you mentioned is currently just going in one ear and out the other, but I have definitely appreciated the small bits it doles out as opposed to exposition dumps or glossary-required to understand terminology like are the norm for anything made by Squaresoft. It definitely seems better written than most Jrpgs I’ve played.



When I started, it took me a while to get used to the combat as well since there's so much little things to manage. The Arcus quartz mechanics are more or less the Materia system reimagined, and yes there's a lot of status alignments to look at (it took me a while to tell the difference between speed delays and impede). That said, you can break this system easily.  You'll be using CP moves more than normal attacks (and to some extend magic) early in the game and the S-Crafts are the Limit Break equivalent that drains all your CP. It is nice that each character is highly customisable outside their core skills. 

The teacher thing... yeah that happens a lot in anime, though funnily enough, in most cases it doesn't go beyond that like it did in Persona 5, which is a slightly different take on it. Sara sort of falls in the former category. The bonding system implies that she is one of the characters you can potentially romance, but without wishing to spoil, this game handles that relatively well.

As for the world building, the fact that you didn't pay much attention to any of it is a good thing. Playing the role of a student starting in a new school, who in their point of view is probably as disinterested as the player works well. Exposition texts do exist: in the form of books in the library and ones you collect, again another good form of weaving exposition in the view of a school student who may or many not want to spend time in a library reading. You will need to find and/or buy every book you come across just to get some of the best endgame weapons/accessories, but there's some great snippets when you get down and read some of them. 



Ralyks said:


> Went ahead and just got Eri in one sitting in Yakuza: Like a Prayer. Is she's useful to have in your party? I'm at what appears to be the end of chapter 5.
> Also, this game still freaking rules and while I miss Kiryu-san, this is probably turning into my favorite Yakua game, at least alongside 0 and Kiwami 2.



Eri is excellent especially when you get her early. Her AOE thumbtack scatter ability, along with her high agility/dexterity is awesome for crowd control. She's a harder hitter than Saeko and also works well as a Dealer.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m 10 years late to killing floor. It’s fun. I wish there was a bit of map progression during matches, but on longer runs the mini-quests add variety. Wish I’d tried it sooner, a great drop in an play a few rounds game.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Eri is excellent especially when you get her early. Her AOE thumbtack scatter ability, along with her high agility/dexterity is awesome for crowd control. She's a harder hitter than Saeko and also works well as a Dealer.



Who do you recommend I switch her in for? I was thinking Namba at first, since I have Saeko as an Idol in for healing.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Who do you recommend I switch her in for? I was thinking Namba at first, since I have Saeko as an Idol in for healing.



By the time I got Eri, I had both Adachi and Saeko's bonds maxed out so either would get equal experience when inactive. I kept Adachi on bench in the meantime so Nanba can stay levelled and Saeko keeps everyone alive.


----------



## wankerness

Eri/Saeko/chapter 10 characters are the best. Nanba and Adachi are similarly lame in early/mid-game.

Eri's very good endgame if you have the DLC matriarch job, or Dealer is great too. Clerk's really good early on cause of the AOE (hard to come by at that point). But, Dealer's just overpowered thanks to dart throw's mechanic on bosses. Either one is a good spec. Clerk has the added bonus of her upgraded level weapon ignoring armor, which is a huge benefit on those unbearable HP sponge pirate guys you run into in some dungeons.

She has way higher agility than most of the other characters, besides one of the chapter 10 guys, so she will be one of the best attackers the whole game. You'll eventually find that her and one of the chapter 10 guys' higher agility make a VERY big difference with survivability later on.

I'd recommend, for most of the early game, going Adachi as Enforcer, Eri as dealer or clerk, saeko as idol, and ichiban as hero. There are some early bosses that are weak to electricity and very strong against everything else. Try to get an electric weapon for ichiban through the romance workshop as fast as possible. Nanba's fine, but there's not much need for fire or ice till later on. Plus...well, you'll see.


----------



## Ralyks

Ok, I was gonna all of the job and management DLCs were worth it. I’ll probably grab the job DLC at least.


----------



## profwoot

Jedi Fallen Order was half off so I gave it a shot. The intro is veeeeeery boring. At least with the terrible films you can multitask. I hate games that make you watch these interminable cut scenes but also force you to push a couple keys every so often to avoid getting killed, making sure you can't distract yourself from how awful the writing and production quality are.

The whole intro sequence being an assassin's creed ripoff except with mario-style platforming like it's 1985 is also a bad sign.

I guess I was just remembering how great KOTOR was. I should be making music anyway.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

profwoot said:


> Jedi Fallen Order was half off so I gave it a shot. The intro is veeeeeery boring. At least with the terrible films you can multitask. I hate games that make you watch these interminable cut scenes but also force you to push a couple keys every so often to avoid getting killed, making sure you can't distract yourself from how awful the writing and production quality are.
> 
> The whole intro sequence being an assassin's creed ripoff except with mario-style platforming like it's 1985 is also a bad sign.
> 
> I guess I was just remembering how great KOTOR was. I should be making music anyway.


that whole section is only like 30 minutes...The game really doesn't get going til you get through that.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Ok, I was gonna all of the job and management DLCs were worth it. I’ll probably grab the job DLC at least.



Do not buy the management dlcs. Absolutely not worth it. All it will do is get you to the end of the questline faster, it won't ultimately make any difference, you're still capped at max 3,000,000 yen per meeting. Job one is OK - matriarch is very good. Devil Rocker is kind of worthless.


----------



## wankerness

profwoot said:


> Jedi Fallen Order was half off so I gave it a shot. The intro is veeeeeery boring. At least with the terrible films you can multitask. I hate games that make you watch these interminable cut scenes but also force you to push a couple keys every so often to avoid getting killed, making sure you can't distract yourself from how awful the writing and production quality are.
> 
> The whole intro sequence being an assassin's creed ripoff except with mario-style platforming like it's 1985 is also a bad sign.
> 
> I guess I was just remembering how great KOTOR was. I should be making music anyway.



That game is not very cutscene-heavy compared to a lot of mainstream action games. Intros are usually the worst part.

The platforming is a problem throughout, but I think the combat ends up making up for it. I don't remember hating the platforming nearly as much as the sliding.

If you wanted something like KOTOR, you probably should have gone for another squad-based RPG instead of a Star Wars game! After EA bought that license 10 years ago, there's been almost nothing in terms of Star Wars games, pretty much just stupid multiplayer games.


----------



## Ralyks

So I got a good chunk through chapter 6 of Yakuza this morning before work, which I’m assuming is one long dungeon. I was working with Hero Kasuma, Idol Saeka, default Eri (just got her leveled to be a Dealer but I need to be able to get to Hello Work), and Enforce Adachi. I switched out Adachi for Nanba because it felt like I need him for his offensive magic and just leave Kasuga as the brute force. Also trying to level up his Hero’s Bat as quickly as I can.


----------



## wankerness

I don't remember much in terms of what happened in what chapter anymore, other than you get the two new characters in chapter 10 and the first major farming spot (a multi-level dungeon with set crafting material rewards per floor) unlocks in chapter 12. The low level grinding dungeon unlocks in chapter 7 and the anything-over-50 grinding dungeon unlocks in chapter 15. Also, there's a very hard level check in chapter 12 where you'll probably get destroyed if you're not at least close to level 50 (however, you'll probably get at least 6 or 7 levels from one run through the dungeon that unlocks in chapter 12).

Note that you probably won't be able to reliably kill the "metal slimes" in either grinding dungeon until you have the characters from chapter 10.


----------



## Mathemagician

So the PS5 comes pre-loaded with Astros Playroom. And it is a really fun Spyro/Crash Bandicoot/Mario - LITE style game. Does a good job showing off the system’s new features especially the controller. And good lord is it a fun Retro trip down nostalgia lane. It’s great for $free99


----------



## wankerness

Well, "free" apart from the cost of the system that really doesn't have any "killer app" exclusives yet, unless you haven't played Demon Souls!

At current rates, I'm thinking there's going to be a PS5 pro out before I can get the regular. Maybe I should just wait for that. :/


----------



## Mathemagician

There is that. I haven’t played demons souls but my backlog is just at this point I cannot justify $70 games until I actually play even a portion of what I have lol. 

Having faster load times/less Fran rate issues is nice of course and I’m hoping to see more interesting uses of the controller, but you’re not too far off. 

I’m about to start MGS Phantom Limb, so that’ll be my first MGS since 2 on PS2.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, backlogs are a bitch. I own MGS2-5 in some form and haven't played a single one of them since MGS1 on PS1. 

The news that the PS store is going down for PS3s in july means I better buy one and claim my PS+ copy of MGS4 quick if I ever want to play it in non-streaming form and don't want to buy a disc! I don't really want to buy the system, though, considering any downloaded games on the thing will be bricked if the servers are truly getting turned off thanks to how the security works. It's kind of ridiculous they'd cut off access to downloading anything in the future. Especially considering I know multiple people with PS3s where the disc drive stopped working so downloaded games are their only option.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I don't remember much in terms of what happened in what chapter anymore, other than you get the two new characters in chapter 10 and the first major farming spot (a multi-level dungeon with set crafting material rewards per floor) unlocks in chapter 12. The low level grinding dungeon unlocks in chapter 7 and the anything-over-50 grinding dungeon unlocks in chapter 15. Also, there's a very hard level check in chapter 12 where you'll probably get destroyed if you're not at least close to level 50 (however, you'll probably get at least 6 or 7 levels from one run through the dungeon that unlocks in chapter 12).
> 
> Note that you probably won't be able to reliably kill the "metal slimes" in either grinding dungeon until you have the characters from chapter 10.





Spoiler



Chapter 6 is when you’re kidnapped by Mabuchi and have to escape an underground tunnel. Not sure if you meant this or I have another dungeon to look forward to in chapter 7.


----------



## wankerness

I forget if the one that unlocks in 7 is a version of that you can return to repeatedly, or if it's different. I did the repeatable ones SO many times I don't remember the ones that were part of the story. Did you run into any groups with "invested vagabonds?" They're the key enemy in the repeatable one for getting the first ~20 job levels very quickly.


----------



## Ralyks

Don't believe I saw the vagabonds yet, no.
Also, Quick way to get charisma up? Still need to get Kasuga the foreman job so I can demolish shit.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Also, Quick way to get charisma up?



Start doing the Vocational school exams, it's pretty much the best (and expensive) way to raise your stats. The theatre is pretty good too, and you can always collect manuals that give you stat boosts (play the recycling game enough and you should be able to trade points for a Charisma manual).


----------



## wankerness

If you do all the tests and then just do random crap from your completion list you'll eventually max them out. I never did any grinding on that awful can collector game apart from needing garbage for some quest or another and then getting a vintage guitar for upgrading (though you eventually can find those in safes).

One thing that will get you a fair amount is buying every item off the menu in the restaurants in the starting city (doesn't do anything in sotenbori/kamurocho). Unlike other games in the series, you can buy everything in one visit. Doing that a few times at every restaurant should also get you the trophy for "table talk," and I think the table talk conversations sometimes give you stat boosts too.

I also bought "honk honks" whenever I saw the NPCs for it later in the game when I had tons of money. Those give you big increases (different stats for different NPCs, look it up).

Completing the dragon kart questline also got me enough points there to afford the thing that boosts all stats by 50 without having to do any grinding.


----------



## wankerness

Anyone played Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-reckoning? I just heard about it. Considering how much I loved Dragon's Dogma and how much I like grindy single-player action RPGs if the combat is half-decent, I'm very curious. It's not on sale, though! 

I don't see any posts about the re-release, and only a handful from back in 2013 about the original.


----------



## Leviathus

I saw today's Dark Souls 3's 5th anniversary so i'm gonna make a new character and fuck around on there tonight.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Anyone played Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-reckoning? I just heard about it. Considering how much I loved Dragon's Dogma and how much I like grindy single-player action RPGs if the combat is half-decent, I'm very curious. It's not on sale, though!
> 
> I don't see any posts about the re-release, and only a handful from back in 2013 about the original.



It's a pretty fun game, and grindy if you want it to be. It's one of those open world games you can just wander around levelling, or head straight to the quest.
The original had a big balance problem where the game would become ridiculously easy just if you did side quests, let alone grind. I've heard that's been fixed in the remaster release.

I played the original for a bit, but didn't complete it. It got a bit samey for me, but then i'm not a huge fan of grinding in games. It's one of those games that plays a bit like a single-player MMO. i think it started out dev as an MMO and then switched, so that'd make sense.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> It's a pretty fun game, and grindy if you want it to be. It's one of those open world games you can just wander around levelling, or head straight to the quest.
> The original had a big balance problem where the game would become ridiculously easy just if you did side quests, let alone grind. I've heard that's been fixed in the remaster release.
> 
> I played the original for a bit, but didn't complete it. It got a bit samey for me, but then i'm not a huge fan of grinding in games. It's one of those games that plays a bit like a single-player MMO. i think it started out dev as an MMO and then switched, so that'd make sense.



I think that I enjoy MMOs if I either play them socially or they work one-player, so this should be right up my alley. I happily grinded for hours upon hours in games like Star Wars TOR and WoW, even when playing by myself, it's only the endgame where I lost interest in the first's case. I see the physical version costs 20 instead of 40 for digital, so I just ordered it. Thanks!

I will say, though, that I kind of like it in RPGs where getting powerful actually means getting powerful and early areas become trivial. Sounds like now everything scales? Oh well, whatever, it's 20 bucks, I'll check it out and probably get more than 20 bucks worth of entertainment from it.


----------



## Ralyks

So I think we were somewhere in the middle on the grindable dungeon in Yakuza: Like The Way I Do. Basically, the dungeon you have to get through in chapter 6 becomes replayable in once you get to chapter 7, with rare Sujimon and materials and such.
Anyway, on chapter 7, shit got real, and can I call this my game of 2021? I mean, I waited for the PS5 version which released in 2021, I think it oughta count.


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> Yeah, backlogs are a bitch. I own MGS2-5 in some form and haven't played a single one of them since MGS1 on PS1.
> 
> The news that the PS store is going down for PS3s in july means I better buy one and claim my PS+ copy of MGS4 quick if I ever want to play it in non-streaming form and don't want to buy a disc! I don't really want to buy the system, though, considering any downloaded games on the thing will be bricked if the servers are truly getting turned off thanks to how the security works. It's kind of ridiculous they'd cut off access to downloading anything in the future. Especially considering I know multiple people with PS3s where the disc drive stopped working so downloaded games are their only option.




Daaaaang, I hadn't heard that the PS store servers were finally going down for PS3 in July, good to know. I still use my PS3 every now and then (lately I've been playing Xenogears on it) -- it's kind of amazing that it's still as good as it is...having come out in 2006.


----------



## wankerness

I get taking SOME servers down, like so they're not paying for as many resources, but not at least leaving skeleton servers up so players can download updates slowly and get their games validated is terrible. Functionally will brick the console apart from games that work off the disc without updates. Consoles from two generations ago and on are going to be completely worthless, especially when you hit last gen, considering most games on discs for PS4 aren't even playable until you install them and run online updates. At least with the old systems the entire games were on disc and you didn't need an internet connection.


----------



## BMFan30

I've been playing a bit of The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing for PC lately, which is just an action rpg. But I'm liking all the East European pagan vampire shit in it. The voice acting is pretty good with some decent humor thrown in. 

I recommend putting your favorite Dark Neo Folk records on once you exhaust the game's soundtrack to accompany your gameplay. It's a decent dungeon crawler with 6 playable classes all based around loot & gear.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I get taking SOME servers down, like so they're not paying for as many resources, but not at least leaving skeleton servers up so players can download updates slowly and get their games validated is terrible. Functionally will brick the console apart from games that work off the disc without updates. Consoles from two generations ago and on are going to be completely worthless, especially when you hit last gen, considering most games on discs for PS4 aren't even playable until you install them and run online updates. At least with the old systems the entire games were on disc and you didn't need an internet connection.


I've pretty much given up on any hope that the playstation ecosystem will be consumer friendly in any form. The lack of backwards compatibility from the PS3 onward has been really disgusting. Even the PS5 only supporting "some" PS4 games is terrible. Not even being able to play PS3 digital games on PS4 is a knock against Sony. The whole way they operate in that they really only care about current gen is so incredibly anti-consumer. I'm glad I rarely paid money for digital games outside of Horizon and MediEvil. But hey... I've still got PT on my PS4 so...

I realize that Microsoft could turn heel at any point and take away backwards compatibility, but they've been very gamer & consumer focused since mid-generation of XBone and even now with the XB Series supporting everything as far back as OG Xbox. Hard to see them going back on that. They know they've got Sony's balls in a vice with backwards compatibility, but they'll only continue to hang on to it so long as it's profitable for them to do so. But I'm putting a lot of faith and money into Xbox. My digital catalog alone is 200+ games (I swear Xbox sales are better than Steam sales).


----------



## wankerness

The problem is that Xbox’s catalog of exclusives is utter garbage compared to ps4. I can’t name a single exclusive I have any interest in whatsoever. Killer Instinct I sort of was at one point, but that was it. It’s too bad, cause otherwise I’d have gone Xbox all the way cause I had a 360 and there was tons of backwards-compatibility that appealed to me. Plus, their controllers are better.

ps4, on the other hand, has a lot of games I’d consider all-time favorites that are either exclusives or were released long in advance of other platforms. Xbox has just been disastrous with exclusives ever since probably around the time PS3 released uncharted 2. I still am glad I had a 360 cause of the many hours I got out of games like Mass Effect that never came out on PS3, but MS has been dropping the ball like crazy ever since.


----------



## wankerness

As an illustration of what I mean, here's everything PS4 that I'd rate at 8/10 or higher from last generation with North American PS4/Xbox release dates:

AC Odyssey: same
Bloodborne: No xbox release
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: same
Borderlands 3: same
Child of Light: same
Control: same
Dark Souls 1-3: Same
Days Gone: No xbox release
Doom: Same
Dragon Quest XI: July 2017/December 2020
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen: same
Far Cry New Dawn: same
FFXII: Zodiac Age: July 2017/April 2019
Ghost of Tsushima: No xbox release
God of War: No xbox release
Gravity Rush 1/2: No xbox release
Horizon Zero Dawn: No xbox release
The Last of Us: No xbox release
Nier Automata: March 2017/June 2018
Persona 5: No xbox release
Tomb Raider reboot 1/2: same
Transistor: No xbox release
Uncharted 1-4/spinoff: No xbox release
Witcher 3: same
Yakuza 0: January 2017/February 2020
Yakuza 3-5: Up to February 2020/January 2021
Yakuza Kiwami: August 2017/April 2020
Yakuza Kiwami 2: August 2018/July 2020
Yakuza 6: April 2018/March 2021
Yakuza 7: same
YS VIII: No xbox release

In nearly every case with staggered release dates, apart from the few later Yakuza games I bought on release date, I'd bought it on sharp discount yet also already finished the game long before the Xbox even got the darn thing. It's mainly just the AAA big studio ones that came out at the same time (ex AC games, Tomb Raider, Jedi Fallen Order, Borderlands). Few of which I was all that attached to! And then there are other exclusives I played but didn't like that much but most people seem to freak out about, like Marvel's Spider-Man and the FF7 remake. Or well-regarded ones that I haven't played yet that are languishing in my backlog, like MGSV and Shadow of the Colossus. And a few I still plan on buying, like Last of Us 2.

Ori and the Blind Forest was one previous Xbox exclusive I was interested in, but that came out for Switch now, and would actually run on my computer besides. The sequel I might be interested in pending results of the first. That and Killer Instinct are the only games they have that aren't on PS4 that I can imagine buying. I don't give one solitary F about Halo or Gears of War (after finishing Halo Reach/4 and Gears of War 2/3 back on 360) or Forza (I don't like racing games besides Mario Kart). I would be very happy to have access to my very large number of 360 games, some of which I'm still planning on playing for the first time, though.

Xbox has just really sucked it up in terms of actual games, which are unfortunately what sell me on the system. I would say I hope their Bethesda acquisition would tip the balance back in their favor this generation, but considering how lame everything they've developed since Skyrim is, I am not optimistic. PS5 has nothing immediately on the horizon in terms of exclusives that I'm jazzed about, either, besides the Demon's Souls remake since I never had a PS3, but it will eventually have things like HZD2 and whatever Naughty Dog ends up putting out that I currently don't see any serious competition for coming from Xbox land. It's a shame. I kind of liked switching allegiance every generation. On the other hand, this means I"ll keep all my PS+ games when I move to PS5.

The list of PS4 games not compatible with 5 is a LOT smaller than the list of 360 games not compatible with One, by the way, so that's not really a concern. The only one I even own (and I have about 250 games in my library) is AC: Syndicate. PS3 is definitely out languishing, though. If I was more of a JRPG nut, it would bug me more.


----------



## TedEH

As someone who mostly uses a PC, I have trouble arguing with any of that. PC and a Switch covers most of what I'd ever want to play. I end up with Playstations for the sake of the odd exclusive here or there. But I basically have no XBox. I used to own a 360 but I loaned it away and never saw it again. And there's no draw to get one since there's nothing exclusive to the system that would sell it for me.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Divinity: Original Sin. Why my dumbass never picked this game up is beyond me and I want to clone myself so I can beat the shit out of myself for not sooner. This game is absolutely amazing.


----------



## Werecow

TheBlackBard said:


> Divinity: Original Sin. Why my dumbass never picked this game up is beyond me and I want to clone myself so I can beat the shit out of myself for not sooner. This game is absolutely amazing.


Do you mean the first one? I love that game, but i think i'd have to say the second one is among my top 5 games ever.
I'm looking forward to Baldur's 3, but i _really_ hope they go back to D: OS again afterward.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I get taking SOME servers down, like so they're not paying for as many resources, but not at least leaving skeleton servers up so players can download updates slowly and get their games validated is terrible. Functionally will brick the console apart from games that work off the disc without updates. Consoles from two generations ago and on are going to be completely worthless, especially when you hit last gen, considering most games on discs for PS4 aren't even playable until you install them and run online updates. At least with the old systems the entire games were on disc and you didn't need an internet connection.


That'd drive me crazy. Especially as i still play games from all the way back to the 90's on PC.

I'm guessing this is why there are so many games that get remastered. Sometimes as a PC player they seem a bit unnecesary, but reading your last few posts i can see why.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> As someone who mostly uses a PC, I have trouble arguing with any of that. PC and a Switch covers most of what I'd ever want to play. I end up with Playstations for the sake of the odd exclusive here or there. But I basically have no XBox. I used to own a 360 but I loaned it away and never saw it again. And there's no draw to get one since there's nothing exclusive to the system that would sell it for me.



PC has the tremendous added advantage of only things that depend on online play going defunct, cause there will always be people out there releasing cracks to take out online DRM for games that had their servers taken down, people unofficially releasing patches to get old games working on new OSs, mirrors for updates, etc. Consoles are terrible in comparison. Either the hardware, both system and games, will inevitably die and be unreplaceable (everything Nintendo, everything Sega, PS1/2, OG Xbox) or the servers will be taken down and functionally kill the hardware regardless of its condition (newer systems), and the makers show no interest in ever making the vast majority of the catalogs available again. While I think the number of PC games that are completely unplayable probably are mainly just old Mac games, and as far as I know there might even be good OS 9 and under emulators out there, and nearly everything, even from the floppy disc era, can be found online. They even have to save us from console manufacturers' neglect, though unfortunately it's buggy in many cases (even N64 and PS2 have tons of games that basically aren't worth playing emulated) and always going to be generations behind. Plus you have the hardware problem again, with systems like the DS where you can't really emulate the controls properly.

I'm just going to hope I stop playing video games when I get older so I don't care that I won't be able to re-experience things from my younger years.

I applaud Microsoft's move to make Xbox one games available on Windows if you have the "Play Anywhere" version. I dunno how much of their catalog that applies to, or if they're going to try and apply it to any of the back catalog, but it's at least a consumer-friendly concept. Even if it does make it even more pointless to own the console.


----------



## NotDonVito

Anyone that has a PS3 and a move set I highly recommend getting House of the Dead 4, as it was only released digitally for the PS3. It's not as good as the 90's games, but still a fun exclusive game that you can't get anywhere else other than the arcade version.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> That'd drive me crazy. Especially as i still play games from all the way back to the 90's on PC.
> 
> I'm guessing this is why there are so many games that get remastered. Sometimes as a PC player they seem a bit unnecesary, but reading your last few posts i can see why.



It kind of feels like a cash grab a lot of the time, but when the old version won't work soon, and they usually at least make them run a lot more smoothly, it makes it a bit less painful. It's been nice a bunch of times getting recommended an old game and then hearing it's going to get remastered soon so I don't have to buy any old consoles (ex, I would have bought a PS3 for Yakuza 3/4/5 if they hadn't announced remasters well ahead of time). It's just too bad about the hundreds of games that will never receive one. I'm sure many of them were worth playing!

Kotaku had a decent article on this subject a couple days ago. I guess it got me thinking. https://kotaku.com/so-called-pirates-are-doing-the-work-when-publishers-fa-1846533244


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I still am glad I had a 360 cause of the many hours I got out of games like Mass Effect that never came out on PS3



Wait, are you saying Mass Effect didn't come to PS3 until later, or not at all? Because I got a bundle of all 3 of PS3 digitally for literally 5 bucks.

Anyway, guess now's as good a time as any to start Persona 3 FES on my PS3.... Except for that blasted Yakuza 7 that had me addicted...


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Wait, are you saying Mass Effect didn't come to PS3 until later, or not at all? Because I got a bundle of all 3 of PS3 digitally for literally 5 bucks.
> 
> Anyway, guess now's as good a time as any to start Persona 3 FES on my PS3.... Except for that blasted Yakuza 7 that had me addicted...



As far as I was aware, mass effect 2 for ps3 came out with an edition that only had like, a recap of 1. I know that’s all it was when I tried to get my ps3 owning brother to get it, anyway. 

looking it up, it looks like it came out a year after 2 on the system (five years after it came out on 360!!!).


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> As far as I was aware, mass effect 2 for ps3 came out with an edition that only had like, a recap of 1. I know that’s all it was when I tried to get my ps3 owning brother to get it, anyway.
> 
> looking it up, it looks like it came out a year after 2 on the system (five years after it came out on 360!!!).



Ok, that sounds accurate. I did get all 3 pretty late (although, I also got my PS3 AFTER I got a PS4), though I also remember getting 2 for free well before I got the trilogy for 5 bucks.

Meanwhile, the Legendary Edition will probably be one of my main summer games...


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> As someone who mostly uses a PC, I have trouble arguing with any of that. PC and a Switch covers most of what I'd ever want to play. I end up with Playstations for the sake of the odd exclusive here or there. But I basically have no XBox. I used to own a 360 but I loaned it away and never saw it again. And there's no draw to get one since there's nothing exclusive to the system that would sell it for me.



Microsoft has been more generous in the past few years bringing exclusive titles to PC (which rules for PC gaming!~) but I still think the Xbox series X is a solid pick for someone who doesn't game on PC for whatever reason. I'm with you though, PC and Switch is the most flexible gaming combo.


----------



## wankerness

Apparently the actual mechanic by which downloaded games will stop working on the PS3 is this:

"The PS3 modding community better come up with a way to alter the kernel clock stat. If Sony are starting to shutter services on PS3 eventually this will stop you being able to sync the clock and all those digital games get nuked even if you rush and buy them now.

Basically Sony internal clock requires a validation to reset once the Cmos battery dies. It will die Once this happens all your digital games won’t work without a sign in, if the servers are gone this is impossible"

From a twitter account called "Doesitplay1," embedding tweets doesn't work on this site.

So, your digital game library depends on the life of a CR 2032!

Oof.

And with PS4 even discs require this mechanic, so you have to be online to even play games off discs once that battery dies (tends to last about 3 years apparently). Not as big of a deal with PS4 since everything carries over to PS5, though, and I'm guessing servers should probably be up for several more years.


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> So, your digital game library depends on the life of a CR 2032!



:C I wonder if going on and replacing the CMOS battery now could at least prolong the life of the console for a while? A hack for it may eventually surface hopefully. I'm not HELLA personally invested, but it still would be a shame to just let the console get bricked.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> :C I wonder if going on and replacing the CMOS battery now could at least prolong the life of the console for a while? A hack for it may eventually surface hopefully. I'm not HELLA personally invested, but it still would be a shame to just let the console get bricked.



yeah, it should. Sounds like once the servers are down you’d have to somehow replace it without turning the system off.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I think the number of PC games that are completely unplayable probably are mainly just old Mac games


Oddly, the old games I have the hardest time getting going again are the pre- XP windows games. Stuff that depends on QuickTime, or ancient DirectX versions, etc. Some early PC games had some really janky renderers that don't play well with modern drivers. Running Win95/98 in a VM has gotten more difficult, so anything that requires those is mostly out the window(s? lol) at that point.


----------



## wankerness

What's the VM problem with Win 95/98?

In my work, I've had to support a user that insists on using a DOS program and editing the output in Windows but who isn't savvy enough to deal with DOSBox, so I had to special-order him a computer with an outdated processor that would support 32 bit OSs to get Hyper-V to be able to run 32 bit windows 10. But, I figured that might be limited to Hyper-V and there'd be some other way to get 32 bit machines to run if you were more tech-savvy.

That makes sense that games heavily dependent on ancient video codecs might be janky. Ex Rebel Assault 2, Buried in Time. I'm guessing the fanbase for Rebel Assault 2 is big enough that something exists for that, though.


----------



## Mathemagician

NotDonVito said:


> Anyone that has a PS3 and a move set I highly recommend getting House of the Dead 4, as it was only released digitally for the PS3. It's not as good as the 90's games, but still a fun exclusive game that you can't get anywhere else other than the arcade version.



I would love for a modern/updated something like this to be a “launch” title for whatever the new PSVR ends up being. Really feels like a missed opportunity it hasn’t been done.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> What's the VM problem with Win 95/98?


Two things: Video drivers and the activation servers. Activation was shut down so even if you have a legit key for anything as old as XP you can't activate anymore (not easily), and a bunch of the VM software (VMWare, VirtualBox) have stopped including 3d / direct3d support for older OSs. VirtualBox I believe explicitly took support for Win XP and older _out_ of their drivers a while back. I'm sure it's still possible to do, and you could use older versions of those drivers if you can dig em up online, but it's a ton of effort for some janky Win95 games.


----------



## Werecow

Not having the freedom to run and fix/mod your old games is awful. I even refuse to play live-service games on PC. Having your whole gaming system and library under those conditions would suck.
I'm just glad my taste in games happens to swing more towards PC rather than console.


----------



## NotDonVito

Mathemagician said:


> I would love for a modern/updated something like this to be a “launch” title for whatever the new PSVR ends up being. Really feels like a missed opportunity it hasn’t been done.


Sega is working on remakes for House of the Dead 1+2 so who knows.

Also on the subject of games as a service, I've gotten to where I only buy on GOG if the option is available. Offline installation ftw.


----------



## wankerness

Played Kingdoms of Amalur for a while, encountered some GIANT bugs (game froze for about five minutes once, then unfroze and I was fifty feet in midair; game turned on noclip mode and everything went swirly and I could walk through walls but not open doors). Not too impressed so far.

downloading subnautica now because someone recommended it here a couple weeks ago and they just put it up for free on PS4 (along with a few others, abzu, Rez, thumper, and enter the gungeon being the only I’ve heard of).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Up to Chapter 10 of Yakuza Like A Candle In The Wind. Got the new character and immediately maxed out his bond link just to unlock all his jobs. Of course, like Eri, his starting job just happens to be his best. But I did give him the universal skill you learn from Lv4 Fortuneteller.

Speaking of Eri, I completely forgot about the actress competition that RGG studios held to cast certain characters and I had an inkling with some of the women you give flowers to before it clicked. The 5 women were the finalists and Eri Kamataki ended up winning and became playable. I remembered Eri's name since I stumbled on it on a Netflix movie called The Forest Of Love. I'll have to check it out some time.


----------



## Ralyks

I also got to chapter 10 in Yakuza last night and also getting the new character up. Boy, that story goes places. This game is slowly solidifying itself as my favorite Yakuza game, and probably would have been my game of 2020 if I didn't hold out for the PS5 version.

I really like Eri, but I'm bummed that she falls into the Yuffie/Vincent curse of being a hidden character and not showing up in cutscenes at all. Especially since tyet s a few chapters there where the game I imagine would be a lot harder if you didn't unlock her as soon as you meet her in chapter 5.


----------



## gabito

Hm, that sucks what you're talking about the PS3's servers.

I guess it could be "fixed" by modding it to use some kind of custom firmware or something. I know there are some available out there.

Probably Sony won't care at this point, more so if you can't even connect to their servers.

Anyways, I mostly use the PS3 to play the Metal Gear and God of War games (which I have installed since forever), and some old games in my backlog.


----------



## Mathemagician

Replaying borderlands 3 now that the DLC is on sale 50% off. 

Started over with Zane since I did my first PS4 playthrough with Fl4k. Game is still super fun and the story moves pretty quick if you ignore side missions (which I never do on a first playthrough). 

Game is still super fun. I need to try amara next but I usually do poorly with melee characters in BL...


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> Replaying borderlands 3 now that the DLC is on sale 50% off.
> 
> Started over with Zane since I did my first PS4 playthrough with Fl4k. Game is still super fun and the story moves pretty quick if you ignore side missions (which I never do on a first playthrough).
> 
> Game is still super fun. I need to try amara next but I usually do poorly with melee characters in BL...



I still like to play BL3 (and the PS5 port runs super well), but I hate how multiplayer works in BL3. I miss being able to pick from a list of games to join like in BL2 and Pre-Sequel. I pretty much never get paired up with anyone in 3.


----------



## wankerness

You guys went and did all the loyalty grinding before getting the second new character in chapter 10? Ouch! Oh well, guess it's all that much more exp.


----------



## SpaceDock

Just finished Immortals Phoenix Rising. Highly recommended. 

Going to play through Serious Sam 4 and Hades before Watch Dogs Legion and Yakuza 6. Too many games on sale right now!!


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> I still like to play BL3 (and the PS5 port runs super well), but I hate how multiplayer works in BL3. I miss being able to pick from a list of games to join like in BL2 and Pre-Sequel. I pretty much never get paired up with anyone in 3.



There appears to be a MAJOR matchmaking bug that’s been ongoing for over a year. Game straight up would not let me set it to open to be host nor to join another game. Various answers about what to do until I hard restarted my system. Not sure if it’s fixed permanently or not. Had my game open for a good couple hours while playing and got no one. I’d bet that on top of less players now, a lot of people are dealing with that shitty bug. 



SpaceDock said:


> Just finished Immortals Phoenix Rising. Highly recommended.
> 
> Going to play through Serious Sam 4 and Hades before Watch Dogs Legion and Yakuza 6. Too many games on sale right now!!



Hades is SO good. I bought it at launch on switch because it’s supergiant games and it did not disappoint. Probably my favorite rogue-like.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> You guys went and did all the loyalty grinding before getting the second new character in chapter 10? Ouch! Oh well, guess it's all that much more exp.



Speaking of which, I'm on chapter 11 now. At this point, what do you reckon makes a good party?


Spoiler



I feel like Saeko as an Idol is a lock as my white mage. I like Joon-Gi as a powerhouse so far, but I also just got Zhao and I heard he's pretty strong. I feel like it's one of those two, and then deciding between Namba and Eri. I like Adachi and have been using him as an enforce, but Joon-Gi and Zhao seem like they can do what he does better.


----------



## wankerness

I used Saeko as idol in hard places, or else switched her for Eri or Nanba depending on where I was in the game and whether I wanted physical aoe or spell damage. She makes the gameplay slower since idol’s damage is so bad, and her base damage is considerably worse than Eri’s besides. But, obviously switch her in on hard fights. It is worth getting her to learn the shared job skill ice throw from hostess so she has something with decent damage capability when she’s an idol.

90% of the time I used ichiban as hero and the two new guys in chapter 10 as Hitman and Chef. Gangster is pretty good too, but I found chef a bit more versatile for harder fights. Lots of really heavy attacks in fire, slash, and blunt damage as compared to gangster’s non-elemental stuff, plus many of his best physical attacks are character skills instead of job skills (ex dragonfang decimator). You only really get the essence attacks as gangster that are all that great, and at your point in the game I’m guessing you don’t have the mp to spam them anyway.

In the true final millennium tower I had those three the whole way through. Obviously I had tons of shared job skills, but I never had to switch in nanba, eri or adachi. Eri probably would have been a better idol though since her agi is higher than saeko’s, but whatever.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Chipping away at the NG+ 'spot the reference' run on Cold Steel 1. I completely forgot that you don't learn the 'limit break' equivalent until the first field exercise. That and the loading times are ass, but that's the PS3 by today's standards for you. I guess I could just buy the PS4 port on sale just for the QOL perks (turbo mode) and at least Rean gets to be fully voiced during certain fixed awkward moments where everyone else but the protagonist gets to have audio dialogue (apparently a serious budget cut on the original where NIS America had to get the voice actor back to dub in those missing lines on latter editions). 

Also holy hell this game is slooooow.  Ok I knew that, and that was also why I still semi hesitate to recommend it even to the most die hard JRPG fan, but I'm also now remembering how much of 'not much or nothing that substantial at all' happens in the first act of this game. 

That said, the field music is still one of the best I've heard in any JRPG.


----------



## Choop

I bought Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate last night, my first MK buy since UMK3 on the Genesis. XD


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## wankerness

I got a few of them since the salad days of playing 2/3/UMK3 on SNES and 4 on N64 a whole ton. I liked "Mortal Kombat" on 360, kinda liked MK vs DCU on the same, but was very uninterested by the direction they went with X on PS4. It's like, they tried too hard to make the mechanics like a "real" fighting game with all the depth and fighting modes per character instead of the historical arcadey shallow thing, and also leaned way too hard on the gore being REALISTIC instead of just goofy, and kinda did the same thing with the character designs. I played it for a few hours and uninstalled it. 11 looks like more of the same, only probably worse cause I remember the news stories about game designers having to get therapy for PTSD after being forced to look at tons of actual injury/violence footage for "reference." I want MK to feel like a goofy splatter/kung fu movie like it did in the old days, not something truly horrific. 

Somewhat hilariously, it followed the trend in American society of making things as disgusting and violent as possible but censoring anything remotely sexual. So you go from the hyper-sexualized characters in the 360 one to like, somewhat realistic in X. And then they proudly trumpeted how progressive they were being! Like, if they didn't ALSO try to make it as absolutely gruesome as possible in as realistic a manner as possible for entertainment purposes I could see that being something to be proud of. But, it's like they wanted all kinds of fun/goofiness off the menu.


----------



## Choop

I honestly haven't played it yet so I can't form a real opinion about it other than just having watched footage of it, but MK has had multiple fighting styles per character in a few of the previous games as well, before MKX I mean. 

I liked...Injustice, which was really just basically an MK game with a DC skin lol. Just looking for something super different from my usual Street Fighter/Marvel/etc fighters, and something more current.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> I honestly haven't played it yet so I can't form a real opinion about it other than just having watched footage of it, but MK has had multiple fighting styles per character in a few of the previous games as well, before MKX I mean.
> 
> I liked...Injustice, which was really just basically an MK game with a DC skin lol. Just looking for something super different from my usual Street Fighter/Marvel/etc fighters, and something more current.



I don't remember the gameplay of the 360 one that well cause it was several years ago I played it, I just know I dumped a fair number of hours into it with the KRYPT and stuff and remember having fun, while the new one just felt dry and unpleasant. Maybe it did have different styles? Or weapons, or something. I dunno. I just know I didn't like the whole way that X played. I've never *really* gotten into any fighting games since Killer Instinct Gold, though, apart from the good ol' days of button mashing through Soul Calibur 2 on gamecube. I do have Injustice, some Street Fighter IV variant or another, and Soul Calibur VI, but I haven't touched them. I always loathed Tekken's combat system in the old days (I liked stick sweeps and fancy hit combos instead of the more tactical FORWARD +A or TAP B TWICE sorts of moves you got in most more "modern" fighters).

Oh, I guess I have hundreds of hours total on Smash Bros sequels over the decades too, but that is kind of a different thing.


----------



## NotDonVito

Started playing WoW classic again because I thought people were getting back on before TBC. Nope fucking empty, soloing a priest is more tedious than I remember. Should have waited a few more months.


----------



## wankerness

Leveling a priest in BC was awful. You could either go shadow and be able to kill mobs (and be terrible in instances and never get invites), or you could go holy and do all instances you wanted (but be unable to kill mobs the same level as you without draining an entire mana bar), but respec costs were NOT scaled to level so you could only do it a couple times unless you had a main to funnel tons of gold from. And doing instances was such a huge undertaking back then, before the queue. Oof. I think I got to like level 30-35 as shadow and then did a spec with surge of light and just bubbled/spammed smite on everything with spell damage gear so I could actually heal instances. But it was SLOW. And it was my second level 70 so I could funnel gold/gear to it.

However, healing in raids as holy in BC was the most fun I ever had in that game, especially Serpentshrine Cavern and Black Temple. They absolutely neutered healing mechanics with WOTLK and it's been bad ever since. In BC, you could functionally never run out of mana with enough spirit, smart playing, downranking, and having a shadow priest in your party.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> I liked...Injustice, which was really just basically an MK game with a DC skin lol. Just looking for something super different from my usual Street Fighter/Marvel/etc fighters, and something more current.



Have you tried the recent Samurai Shodown game yet? It's a great fun game that has less focus on combos and more pokes/footsies and smart weapon play. Also the recent KOF games look pretty slick too.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Have you tried the recent Samurai Shodown game yet? It's a great fun game that has less focus on combos and more pokes/footsies and smart weapon play. Also the recent KOF games look pretty slick too.



I haven't played either of them! TBH I'm more interested in getting into older KOF, especially 2002 since it has rollback netcode now on Steam. SamSho could be fun -- I have to process things slowly with fighting games, so I'll at least sit on MK for a little bit and see how I like it. There are some local people here looking to get the SFV scene more active, so I'll probably play as well if for no other reason than to participate. Just started learning on a hitbox style controller as well, so it'd be fun to do Bison stuff with V-trigger in SFV.


----------



## wankerness

Anyone played Ashen? I heard the other day that it was one of the best Dark Souls-inspired games. Now I see it just went on sale for Switch.


----------



## TedEH

I've been continuing through Mario + Rabbids, and got as far as the end of the third world. The good news: The game continues to deliver lots of charm. The bad news: The game is also delivering bugs. I've hit two crashes, a handful of slowdowns that I was sure was _going to_ crash but didn't, and sometimes the visuals glitch out and render random shapes and materials all over the place.


----------



## mlp187

Just finished Planet Alpha. That is a great game for anyone who just likes to take in visuals/atmosphere and have some fun. I didn’t want to stop playing once I finished the opening scene. 

And now, I have finally started Subnautica. I’m about 4 hours in and it is fantastic. I love that I just have to figure it out without any real direction. Plus it’s beautiful. I can’t recommend it enough.


----------



## wankerness

Subnautica kind of paralyzes me, in that I don't even have a vague idea of what I'm supposed to be doing or what I should prioritize in building, and your oxygen supply and especially inventory space are low enough that you can't do much actual exploring (I have the first tank upgrade). I built a pipe that was really long so I don't have to go all the way up to the surface, but of course that only helps in a small area. I should read a "guide" through quickly just to get some direction. Currently I'm just sort of going back to the same areas over and over and scanning parts if I see them.

The draw distance is the biggest obstacle in the PS4 version - like, if you build a pipe anywhere close to the kelp forest, good luck being able to find it again consistently, since things pop in when you get somewhat close to them in a haphazard way. This definitely seems like a game that's probably much better on PC since I'm guessing you can tweak settings around to optimize draw distance at the expense of all else.


----------



## mlp187

@wankerness so true, draw distance is garbage on PS4. I’ve been mauled to death by magically appearing shark-like creatures, and gassed by the neon-farting manatee-like animals who were absent only a second prior.


----------



## TedEH

Sounds like we've arrived at the "free stuff from PS4 store" comments hah. I've been curious about Subnautica but haven't tried it yet. I've heard good things about Abzu as well. They go on the backlog.... I'll get to them some day.

The two from that deal that I know are good already are the Witness and Thumper. If you haven't tried Thumper, I recommend it.


----------



## profwoot

In Subnautica reading a guide can definitely help, but I'd advise strong caution re spoilers. It was a powerful experience to see a [type of creature] for the first time and to figure out [crazy plot point] on my own without knowing anything about the plot or having seen screenshots of everything.

Just do tons of exploring (yeah, upgrading your O2 tank is an early priority), and if you ever feel stuck, go deeper...


----------



## wankerness

profwoot said:


> In Subnautica reading a guide can definitely help, but I'd advise strong caution re spoilers. It was a powerful experience to see a [type of creature] for the first time and to figure out [crazy plot point] on my own without knowing anything about the plot or having seen screenshots of everything.
> 
> Just do tons of exploring (yeah, upgrading your O2 tank is an early priority), and if you ever feel stuck, go deeper...



Well, that's good to know. I thought it was a "survival" game with no plot. I'll screw around a bit more, maybe. The pop-in is TERRIBLE, though, and really undermines my desire to play the game. I was reading about the PC version and apparently it has the same problem, and bandaids to adjust draw distance there tend to absolutely tank performance. Guess it was just a badly optimized game to begin with. 

I just bought Last of Us Part 2, Persona 5 Royal, and Borderlands 3 Season Pass 2 because they were on sale. The backlog continues!!


----------



## Werecow

I'm finally giving Cyberpunk a go, and it's both better and worse than i was expecting.

Better in that there's less bugs, but disappointingly the core game is worse than i was expecting. They had been bigging up how it was a first-person RPG, and how great all the side quests and RPG mechanics were going to be... it seems at least 80-90% of the side quests are just Ubisoft style "clear the area" checkmarks on the map. Barely any talking, no working out puzzles or investigations in the side quests so far. It plays like a Far Cry game taking place in a not very competent Rockstar game world.
There are stealth elements, so at least i can pretend i'm playing Deus Ex sometimes, and i do feel it's worth playing for me. But Jesus did they lie about & over-sell the game the last couple years. I was expecting one of the best RPGs ever and got a grindy Ubisoft action game instead.


----------



## profwoot

wankerness said:


> Well, that's good to know. I thought it was a "survival" game with no plot. I'll screw around a bit more, maybe. The pop-in is TERRIBLE, though, and really undermines my desire to play the game. I was reading about the PC version and apparently it has the same problem, and bandaids to adjust draw distance there tend to absolutely tank performance. Guess it was just a badly optimized game to begin with.
> 
> I just bought Last of Us Part 2, Persona 5 Royal, and Borderlands 3 Season Pass 2 because they were on sale. The backlog continues!!



Yeah the pop-in was always bad on pc too. Not inconvenient gameplay wise, as I recall, but definitely immersion breaking. There's been a publicly available alpha of the sequel for ages so if they're gonna fix it it would presumably happen there first. I'm avoiding it until release so idk if they have.


----------



## wankerness

I dunno if I'd say it's not inconvenient gameplaywise, the problem with it isn't that the draw distance isn't high enough, the problem is what MLP said above about monsters that can kill you suddenly magically appearing on top of you and that kind of thing. Ah well. I screwed around a little, and then looked quickly at a guide that talks about having to build entire bases. That sounds like a LOT of farming!! My current sadness is that I found silver and gold ONCE and then died, losing it, and haven't found any since, and it's required for what I'm trying to build. Ah well. I think I'm going to probably take a break from it for a while since I just got distracted by the new shinies today.

I started Last of Us Part 2. I didn't realize the game almost immediately starts you out alternating between Ellie and Abby. So far, I really dislike Ellie's character, and Abby's a blank slate, so I don't think I'm going to have the problems it seems like so many initially had with the game, where they hated playing as Abby and wanted to stay as Ellie. I guess it's been long enough since playing 1 that I have no attachment to the character and am coming at her as if she's all-new, and she's really developed as kind of an asshole right from the get-go. The gameplay is mostly just following people from point A to point B, but man is the dialogue and everything so much better than most other games.

Speaking of short draw distances and pop-in, I've been watching my lady play a lot of BOTW on Wii-U (she's up to 50 completed shrines and five or so more she hasn't cleared), and I've gone back to it a bit myself (I think I'm up to 106 "regular" shrines, and I haven't done the sword trial yet but did "beat" the game and got the motorcycle) on Switch. I'm just struck so much by how "pure" this game is, and how you actually are motivated to explore regions of the map you haven't been because it's fun and interesting, not because you're trying to check off all the collectibles to get a trophy, like I am in Ubisoft/Bethesda games. It's so brilliant! I'm still finding shrines even though I beat Calamity Ganon months ago (up to 106 base ones now I think?). The combat's still pretty bad and the weapon durability is a REALLY serious problem vs Lynels since you can easily clear out your entire inventory before they die, but man, did they get so much about the basic game right. I just appreciate it more and more as time goes on and I go back to it again. Plus, it's funny watching someone play it who adores the exploration and has absolutely no interest in Divine Beasts and would much rather snipe away at enemies than ever engage them directly. She's turning into an addict, which has never happened to her with any other game. Scary. But yeah, years later, I admit it, I was VERY wrong about this game originally and it is a masterpiece. I still like Nier: Automata and HZD a bit more though. Funny that what are probably my votes for the best three games this generation all came out within a month of each other.


----------



## Ralyks

Still on chapter 11 of Yakuza: Like Father Like Son, feels like I'm doing a bunch of grinding right now, since I've heard chapter 11 is pretty short.

Also downloaded Disco Elysium: The Final Cut after hearing great things about it. Whoever said it was like a table top RPG wasn't kidding. Seems neat so far, definitely like the art style.


----------



## wankerness

After hearing about catastrophic bugs affecting Disco Elysium's PS4 version and even worse ones on PS5, I'm definitely waiting a while for that.


----------



## Nicki

I finished AC Valhalla earlier this week. I don't know if I like that they changed the gameplay of Assassin's Creed into an open world action RPG instead of the more stealth focused gameplay of previous AC games. So it never really felt like an Assassin's Creed game to me. It did get me wanting to go back to the Ezio trilogy since I never finished it when I bought it for Xbox One so I've started up Brotherhood again. Once I finish Brotherhood, I think I'll play Octopath Traveler since it's now on Game Pass. I have it on Switch, I've just never played it and my Switch just sits and collects dust. I don't even know why I have it anymore. I think maybe I'll just put it away and forget it exists.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> I finished AC Valhalla earlier this week. I don't know if I like that they changed the gameplay of Assassin's Creed into an open world action RPG instead of the more stealth focused gameplay of previous AC games. So it never really felt like an Assassin's Creed game to me. It did get me wanting to go back to the Ezio trilogy since I never finished it when I bought it for Xbox One so I've started up Brotherhood again. Once I finish Brotherhood, I think I'll play Octopath Traveler since it's now on Game Pass. I have it on Switch, I've just never played it and my Switch just sits and collects dust. I don't even know why I have it anymore. I think maybe I'll just put it away and forget it exists.



Did you miss the previous two AC games? They're both full-fledged action RPG, though I guess the stealth is even more neutered in this one.

Just sell the switch while they still are worth something! Octopath traveler is great if you skip all the cutscenes.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Did you miss the previous two AC games? They're both full-fledged action RPG, though I guess the stealth is even more neutered in this one.
> 
> Just sell the switch while they still are worth something! Octopath traveler is great if you skip all the cutscenes.


Actually, yes. I did miss the last two. I did pick them up in the Ubisoft publisher sale on Xbox a couple of weeks ago when I got Valhalla. All 3 games for $40... couldn't complain.

I don't think I'll sell the switch... I could.. but it's not like I need any extra cash right now and I'm not planning on buying a new console until next year.


----------



## Ralyks

How hard is the Platinum for Yakuza Like a Dragon compared to past Yakuza games which were, well, painful? I've basically just been in chapter 11 the past half week grinding and debating if I just want to finish the story and go back, or just as much as I can in this one go (it looks like the game is 16 chapters and chapter 11 is actually pretty short, if I'm gathering this right?


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> How hard is the Platinum for Yakuza Like a Dragon compared to past Yakuza games which were, well, painful? I've basically just been in chapter 11 the past half week grinding and debating if I just want to finish the story and go back, or just as much as I can in this one go (it looks like the game is 16 chapters and chapter 11 is actually pretty short, if I'm gathering this right?



The platinum was not _easy_, but it's also the only Yakuza game I didn't look at the trophy list and go "nope, never happening, wouldn't be fun." The big differences are that there's no requirement to replay the game on harder difficulty (or at all), and there's nothing tied to any arcane minigames like Shogi or Mahjong, or even a bunch of much easier ones like the batting cage or karaoke. Most of the minigame trophies are very forgiving this time around. Like, you have to complete some of them, like the Movie Theater and Dragon Kart, but mostly you don't have to do it that many times or with very impressive stats (ex Can Collector).

You should not waste time grinding experience (apart from hitting level 50 in Chapter 12, which is pretty easy with the arena that unlocks there) until Chapter 15, when the game opens up and the big-time XP farms unlock. At that point, get to level 99, start grinding alternate jobs, and then when you need specific rare items from the Chapter 12 arena you can basically go through killing every floor in one round and very rapidly repeating the handful you need. It's mainly floors 11-19 that you'll be doing a lot, and then 20-30 a bunch of times to get all the Tins necessary for upgrading weapons to EX.

To get the platinum, I spent way longer in Chapter 15 than I did in all the other chapters combined. Apart from the grinding necessary to max out bonds, and doing ALL the tests as early as possible/finishing the management minigame for stat increases, it's just a waste of time with the pathetic amounts of XP you get from any enemies other than those high-level Vagabonds. Even grinding the non-final Millennium tower is _extremely_ time inefficient compared to just running from battles and farming vagabonds.

In other news, I've been playing Last of Us 2 a bunch. I really, really don't like Ellie here. She drops F bombs even more than that douchecanoe you play as in Days Gone. EDGY!


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## Ralyks

I didn't hate Ellie as much as some people but I do understand the hate. But you can't convince me to like Abby. Sorry, not happening.


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## wankerness

I didn't mind Abby till the Joel scene, where she seemed as unhinged as Ellie. With her, I mainly dislike the character design. In a world of emaciated people, she looks like a champion weightlifter that is on all kinds of hormones?? She's almost as unrealistic (albeit in a different way) as your average videogame woman from the 00s!

DISCLAIMER: I'm only on chapter 12, maybe something comes out later to explain why she's more muscular than Chyna.


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## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I didn't mind Abby till the Joel scene, where she seemed as unhinged as Ellie. With her, I mainly dislike the character design. In a world of emaciated people, she looks like a champion weightlifter that is on all kinds of hormones?? She's almost as unrealistic (albeit in a different way) as your average videogame woman from the 00s!
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I'm only on chapter 12, maybe something comes out later to explain why she's more muscular than Chyna.



Because that's how Abbys actor is in real life.


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## wankerness

Right, I acknowledged it's a body type that exists, it just doesn't seem like it would in the post-apocalypse where you're scrounging for food instead of able to eat The Rock's Hercules diet and spend all day powerlifting (as opposed to climbing on shit and punching zombies). Seems really out of place in the world. No one else in the world looks like that, female or male. It's a silly character design.

If that character was in, say, GTA or something else that takes place in modern day/the future where society/food supplies haven't collapsed I wouldn't blink.


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## Ralyks

Anyway, are you saying in Yakuza I should just continue on until chattier 15 and then grind?


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## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Anyway, are you saying in Yakuza I should just continue on until chattier 15 and then grind?



yeah, there’s not really any hard level checks till chapter 15 apart from hitting level 50 before the chapter 12 fights. Doing anything too substantial before you unlock the last dungeons would probably run the risk of burning you out on the game before you start the REAL grind.


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## Ralyks

Got it. I got to chapter 12 last night, currently doing the 3 million yen part and I assume the battle arena is coming shortly.

Also, you keep mentioning the Millennium Tower. I figured we we're heading back to Kamurocho at some point, but that's where we're heading?


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## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Got it. I got to chapter 12 last night, currently doing the 3 million yen part and I assume the battle arena is coming shortly.
> 
> Also, you keep mentioning the Millennium Tower. I figured we we're heading back to Kamurocho at some point, but that's where we're heading?



Yeah, there are three full-blown cities in this one! As a series get you should be overjoyed with what happens in chapter 12. I think it might have been the high point of the game (besides the endgame stuff).


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## p0ke

Damn, a whole bunch of games are on sale up to -75% on the xbox store... 
Can't decide what to get! (If anything at all)

I'm mostly eyeing that Star Wars Jedi game, which is down to 25€ (-50%) now, and DS3 at 19€ (-75%). DS3 is obviously a solid deal, but I'd like to play DS2 first and that's not on sale... Then there's also Control for 19€ and a very long list of other stuff.


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## TedEH

p0ke said:


> Damn, a whole bunch of games are on sale up to -75% on the xbox store...
> Can't decide what to get! (If anything at all)


A while back I realized I was buying stuff because they were good deals even if I never intended to play them - and now I have a giant backlog of stuff I've paid for and never gave any attention to. I've eventually resolved to only buy a game if I intend to play it immediately or very soon, and it's stopped me from buying a bunch of things that I know I'm never going to try.

Unrelated, I ended up going through Thief 3 recently. It's a weird one in that it's juuuust different enough to make the transition from 2 kinda jarring, but it still has the soul of the series in it. Still a good game. It still has similar enough guard behaviour, it still has the positional audio - the biggest downside is the movement being tied too much to the character animations for the sake of the 3rd person view.

I then started Thief 4. I played it when it came out and I remember liking it more than the average person at the time did, but I think I was primed to like it regardless of how it turned out. Going in fresh, years later, and I still think it's got a worse reputation than it deserves so far. I'll admit there's some disappointing losses in terms of the Thief DNA. The positional audio in particular is gone. The control of your weapons is kinda taken away. It's definitely a less "free" feeling game - it feels less like you're dropped in a system to figure it out and more like you're playing through a particular intended performance. The levels aren't linear per-se, but the gameplay is. The voice and character of Garrett is gone. So as a Thief game, it's not a great Thief game. But I do think it's a good game if you don't try to think of it as a Thief game. More like a Dishonored clone or something maybe.


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## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Damn, a whole bunch of games are on sale up to -75% on the xbox store...
> Can't decide what to get! (If anything at all)
> 
> I'm mostly eyeing that Star Wars Jedi game, which is down to 25€ (-50%) now, and DS3 at 19€ (-75%). DS3 is obviously a solid deal, but I'd like to play DS2 first and that's not on sale... Then there's also Control for 19€ and a very long list of other stuff.



I would very, very highly recommend getting DS3 now and just playing it instead of waiting for DS2 to go on sale. DS3 is more of a direct sequel to 1 than 2 is, in a lot of ways - there are tons of callbacks in it to 1 and none to 2 (partly cause the series creator worked on 3 but didn't work on 2). I got over a hundred hours out of it, and I'll probably go back and play it again sometime since I played through as the most basic build possible (shield with straight sword) and it really lends itself to alternate builds (I want to try as a caster, since they added "mana estus flasks" instead of requiring you to go to a bonfire to recharge your very limited casts). Great, great game.

The Jedi game is fun, but I got the platinum trophy in one weekend and that was it, and IMO it did not have much replay value cause there aren't alternate builds or anything. 

Control's good, I think both DS3 and Jedi Fallen Order are more enjoyable though. You'd get more bang for your buck with Control than Jedi: FO though, since it's at least twice as long even without DLC.

I started Persona 5 Royal (I finished regular 5 a couple years ago), and wow, I forgot just how long it takes to get going. It's almost 5 hours into the game that you finally get your first day with any "free time"! I figure I'll alternate between this and Last of Us 2 to break up the oppressive mood of the latter, though I think I'm going to finish Last of Us 2 much more quickly.


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## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I started Persona 5 Royal (I finished regular 5 a couple years ago), and wow, I forgot just how long it takes to get going. It's almost 5 hours into the game that you finally get your first day with any "free time"! I figure I'll alternate between this and Last of Us 2 to break up the oppressive mood of the latter, though I think I'm going to finish Last of Us 2 much more quickly.



I still have Royal and Strikers to finish. Kinda ashamed given my undying love of Persona 5.

Got to the battle arena in Yakuza, and the nostalgia was real when


Spoiler



I got to Osaka. Even the jazzy battle music returned!!


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## wankerness

I am glad persona 5 royal went on sale before strikers. Gives me more motivation to replay it, plus by the time I finish, Strikers will probably be down to 30!

I find myself mostly remembering the story, which is rare for a jrpg. I think it makes you pay more attention when you’re having cutscenes trigger every few steps you take and you have to hit x to get past dialogue in all cases other than the fully animated stuff. I am sleeved out all over again by how much everyone leers at Ann, though. And boy do I hate Morgana. I think the voice might be it. But, in general I really like the English voice acting so I don’t think I’m going to go Japanese with it.
Are you playing Yakuza 7 in English or Japanese? I started with English but couldn’t take it after a while, I think I switched to Japanese around chapter 7 and never looked back. The dialogue sounds a lot better when it’s not being spoken in a language I can understand. Plus, I’ve played every other entry in Japanese so it just felt wrong.


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## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Are you playing Yakuza 7 in English or Japanese? I started with English but couldn’t take it after a while, I think I switched to Japanese around chapter 7 and never looked back. The dialogue sounds a lot better when it’s not being spoken in a language I can understand. Plus, I’ve played every other entry in Japanese so it just felt wrong.



I meant to ask you the same. I did the opposite, where I started in Japanese but it was so over the top I switched to English. I may switch back. It feels weird seeing how all the other games were Japanese and I think I played Judgement in Japanese as well (I also try to play Japanese in a lot of those games because I want to learn the language). I may switch back, maybe I just feel more of the voices are so over the top in 7 compared to the more serious (main story) tone of the original games and the voice acting to match the mood.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I meant to ask you the same. I did the opposite, where I started in Japanese but it was so over the top I switched to English. I may switch back. It feels weird seeing how all the other games were Japanese and I think I played Judgement in Japanese as well (I also try to play Japanese in a lot of those games because I want to learn the language). I may switch back, maybe I just feel more of the voices are so over the top in 7 compared to the more serious (main story) tone of the original games and the voice acting to match the mood.



It's not that the english voiceacting is bad, it's that some of the dialogue is extremely cringe and when I didn't have the language barrier to distance me from the cheesiness, the more dramatic scenes had less impact than they did in Japanese. Like, the sappy sidestories, and some of the more dramatic parts of the main plot. So, I'm guessing you may switch back to Japanese at some point!

I don't recall thinking anything of the Japanese voiceacting being weirder than normal, except maybe the random enemies, who aren't dubbed in the English track anyway. Any characters in particular you noticed that with?


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> I would very, very highly recommend getting DS3 now and just playing it instead of waiting for DS2 to go on sale. DS3 is more of a direct sequel to 1 than 2 is, in a lot of ways - there are tons of callbacks in it to 1 and none to 2 (partly cause the series creator worked on 3 but didn't work on 2). I got over a hundred hours out of it, and I'll probably go back and play it again sometime since I played through as the most basic build possible (shield with straight sword) and it really lends itself to alternate builds (I want to try as a caster, since they added "mana estus flasks" instead of requiring you to go to a bonfire to recharge your very limited casts). Great, great game.
> 
> The Jedi game is fun, but I got the platinum trophy in one weekend and that was it, and IMO it did not have much replay value cause there aren't alternate builds or anything.
> 
> Control's good, I think both DS3 and Jedi Fallen Order are more enjoyable though. You'd get more bang for your buck with Control than Jedi: FO though, since it's at least twice as long even without DLC.



Alright, thanks for the tip! I bought DS3 - even just money-wise, it's the biggest saving out of those. Also, Jedi: FO is available in the EA Play thing, which I can get for 3.99/month, so if it is indeed a one weekend game, I might as well get that for one month.
And Control... yeah, it looks cool but it doesn't really look like the kind of thing I'd play. So DS3 was the "safe choice" 



TedEH said:


> A while back I realized I was buying stuff because they were good deals even if I never intended to play them - and now I have a giant backlog of stuff I've paid for and never gave any attention to. I've eventually resolved to only buy a game if I intend to play it immediately or very soon, and it's stopped me from buying a bunch of things that I know I'm never going to try.



I tend to do that with cheap games - for example I bought Resident Evil Code Veronica X for the Xbox a while ago since it was on sale at 4.99... That game's been bothering me though, I used to have it on the PS2 but never finished it for some reason, so now I can at some point... I also bought all the Sonic games at 2.99 at some point.
But for anything over 10€ I usually think it through and only buy what I actually intend to play. I skipped Jedi: FO just now, because even though I've been waiting to play it, I feel like I can wait a bit more to get it even cheaper. DS3 on the other hand - I don't think it'll got much lower than 17.50€ anytime soon. (+ I've just about had enough of DS1 by now, having almost finished NG+)


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## wankerness

I'll buy just about anything I'm interested in if there's a fire sale for it for 20 or less regardless of if I'll play it in the near future, cause otherwise if I get a big urge, I might be waiting months for another sale, and that might make me end spending way more than I should have (ex when I bought Skyrim for 40 recently). I have scads of games that I paid less than 10 dollars for that I might never find time to play (ex Dishonored, Prototype, Infamous), but oh well. It really pales in comparison to the amount I've spent on CDs/DVDs/Blu-rays over the decades.

I try to only pay over 20 if it's something I expect to play in the very near future or really want to get to ASAP (ex Borderlands 3, Yakuza games that aren't Judgment, Last of Us 2, etc). Occasionally they end up languishing in my queue cause too many things were on sale at the same time, but it's rare. Doom Eternal and Fist of the North Star are the only two in that category of "paid over 20 and haven't really played" right now I think. Oh, and Sekiro, but I gave that one the ol' college try.


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## TedEH

I think the urge to _complete_ most games rather than just _try_ them is a pretty recent thing for me. I don't feel too bad about games that I've given at least some attention to, especially if it was cheap. I tend to compare it to movie tickets in terms of value: if I spent $10 on something, I should get at least an hour of entertainment from it. It's not a good comparison, but it's better than nothing.


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## wankerness

Considering movies on disc are generally 10-30 dollars for 2 hours and albums are 10-15 for 1 hour, I find games to be a ridiculous value for money. 

I also generally feel like if I don't at least beat a game I haven't really played it. It's very rare that I start something and don't finish it, unless I didn't like it.


----------



## Mathemagician

Dunno if I posted it earlier but downloaded “Steep” a PSN snowboarding game. It’s basically an X-games free play open world. There’s snowboarding, skiing, wing suits, etc. the controls are “ok” and while it feels amazing to gain speed and really nail a jump the physics are very focused on realism so a flip or two and that’s it in the way of tricks (if you’re a newb at the game like me). It’s really kind of like Need For Speed in that you go through a map at your pace and there’s some story content too but whatever you can just explore for 2 hours off in one direction. 

I like it as a game to chill out to, doubt I’ll ever “beat” it.


----------



## Choop

The Binding of Isaac: Repentance has been released as of a few days ago. It's pretty tough! I haven't read any official rundowns of it yet, but the game feels a little bit sped up, or at least the enemies do. Dodges are harder, and there are a few other changes that make it tougher as well (like the price of items in the devil room, more varied shop inventories, etc). Overall digging it -- will chip away at it for the next however long haha.


----------



## p0ke

Fired up DS3 for the first time, and dude... I expected stuff to be improved from DS1, but this is a whole other level. It doesn't look that much better in still shots compared to the remastered version of DS1, but it's just so much more responsive. Especially the combat - DS1 feels like a turn based rpg compared to this. I especially appreciate the fact that I can move while drinking estus now, that would've saved me hundreds of times in DS1 

The game does look a bit choppy though, but that's probably thanks to the og base model Xbox One I'm playing it on. So the framerate is a tad low. It doesn't seem to fluctuate though, so I guess it'll be fine. DS1 ran smooth most of the time, but on certain bosses it would drop super low and become very unresponsive at critical moments, so I definitely hope that doesn't happen here...


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Fired up DS3 for the first time, and dude... I expected stuff to be improved from DS1, but this is a whole other level. It doesn't look that much better in still shots compared to the remastered version of DS1, but it's just so much more responsive. Especially the combat - DS1 feels like a turn based rpg compared to this. I especially appreciate the fact that I can move while drinking estus now, that would've saved me hundreds of times in DS1
> 
> The game does look a bit choppy though, but that's probably thanks to the og base model Xbox One I'm playing it on. So the framerate is a tad low. It doesn't seem to fluctuate though, so I guess it'll be fine.



I played all the way through DS1 and DS2 immediately before starting it, and initially felt absolutely assaulted by the monsters since they attack SO much faster (but your character is also so much more responsive). As a result, I thought the beginning of DS3 was harder than anything in DS1/DS2. After adjusting to the speed, I sort of get why it's widely considered the easiest of the three. The environmental hazards aren't nearly as awful as things like the Anor Londo rafters in DS1, or the pitch darkness of the tomb of giants. But man, there are still some rough parts. Just wait for the return of some very familiar hated enemies from DS1 about halfway through the game!! And the bosses are much more in-depth than the ones in DS1/2 where they usually had one phase and the strategy was usually just circle around them and poke them. Not that that strategy won't still work on many bosses in DS3 with enough gear/stats.

Did you get the game of the year edition, or whatever they call the version with the DLC? The DLC is really impressive. The big three setpiece bosses are a hell of a lot harder than anything in the base game. They also don't have anything as insanely frustrating as the optional areas in DS2.

Yeah, the moving while drinking estus is a huge QOL improvement. The mana-estus is even bigger, IMO. I found spells completely unusable in DS1 cause you needed like 10 slots full of spells to have a chance of making it between longer bonfires without running out, and DS2 at least had the consumable items to recharge them between bonfires, but DS3? You don't feel like a second-class citizen anymore! For most of my playthrough I had heal equipped, enough attunement to cast it like 3 times, and one mana estus. It greatly increased the amount of time I could go between having to rest at a bonfire.

I am not a framerate zealot, but I know DS3 ran over 30 fps on ps4 pro. I don't think it was the 60 fps of DS1/2, but, it was definitely a higher framerate than Bloodborne. Not sure how it performs on a base system. A quick google suggests it's locked at 30 FPS on PS4 regular. Probably the same on xbox.


----------



## Mathemagician

p0ke said:


> Fired up DS3 for the first time, and dude... I expected stuff to be improved from DS1, but this is a whole other level. It doesn't look that much better in still shots compared to the remastered version of DS1, but it's just so much more responsive. Especially the combat - DS1 feels like a turn based rpg compared to this. I especially appreciate the fact that I can move while drinking estus now, that would've saved me hundreds of times in DS1
> 
> The game does look a bit choppy though, but that's probably thanks to the og base model Xbox One I'm playing it on. So the framerate is a tad low. It doesn't seem to fluctuate though, so I guess it'll be fine. DS1 ran smooth most of the time, but on certain bosses it would drop super low and become very unresponsive at critical moments, so I definitely hope that doesn't happen here...



They made DS3 after Bloodborne and it shows.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

anyone complaining about framerate on the DS series should try them on PC. DS2 and 3 ran like butter on my computer. DS1 (with some mods) ran alright, but you still get the dreaded blighttown slowdown and such. Going back and playing DS1/2 on xbox was painful comparatively.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> anyone complaining about framerate on the DS series should try them on PC. DS2 and 3 ran like butter on my computer. DS1 (with some mods) ran alright, but you still get the dreaded blighttown slowdown and such. Going back and playing DS1/2 on xbox was painful comparatively.



Really? They're that non-optimized on xbox? Ds1/2 never went under 60 fps in my experience on console. Then again, I was on PS4 Pro.

I still haven't booted up DS3 on PC. I have my doubts that it would run better than on PS4 given my graphics card is a few years old and wasn't a top-of-the-line model then. I had no issue with its performance on PS4 Pro (further research suggests it's unlocked and fluctuates between 40 and 50 fps).


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Really? They're that non-optimized on xbox? Ds1/2 never went under 60 fps in my experience on console. Then again, I was on PS4 Pro.
> 
> I still haven't booted up DS3 on PC. I have my doubts that it would run better than on PS4 given my graphics card is a few years old and wasn't a top-of-the-line model then. I had no issue with its performance on PS4 Pro (further research suggests it's unlocked and fluctuates between 40 and 50 fps).


yeah on X360 DS 1/2 were pretty terrible in spots framerate wise. I have a GTX 1080 (which is still a pretty beastly card for 1080p gaming) and had a 770 previous to that. Even with the old 770 they ran better on PC ime. 
DS3 runs like butter on my PC. That one is easily the most optimized imo.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Did you get the game of the year edition, or whatever they call the version with the DLC? The DLC is really impressive. The big three setpiece bosses are a hell of a lot harder than anything in the base game. They also don't have anything as insanely frustrating as the optional areas in DS2.



Nope, I got the normal version. There was the deluxe edition for roughly +10€, but as far as I understood it would've just given a discount on the DLC's, so I figured I'll just wait for the DLC's to go on sales of their own while playing the base game (DLC's are on sale on the xbox store all the time).



wankerness said:


> I am not a framerate zealot, but I know DS3 ran over 30 fps on ps4 pro. I don't think it was the 60 fps of DS1/2, but, it was definitely a higher framerate than Bloodborne. Not sure how it performs on a base system. A quick google suggests it's locked at 30 FPS on PS4 regular. Probably the same on xbox.



Yeah, it feels like it's not even quite 30fps on the base Xbox One. Like I said, it's absolutely not unplayable, but after DS1 it feels a little choppy. Just a little though.



wankerness said:


> The environmental hazards aren't nearly as awful as things like the Anor Londo rafters in DS1, or the pitch darkness of the tomb of giants.



Yeah, damn, I absolutely hated those areas. Anal Londo itself wasn't that bad, apart from the Silver Knight archers at one point (you know which part I mean ), but the tomb of giants just... sucked throughout. On the NG+ I managed to take the shortest possible route through it though, so I spent maybe 1/10 of the time compared to NG there. Also the crystal cave and dukes archives... Annoying AF. The Archives are sort of cool, but fighting the hordes of crystal enemies for hours only to get shot to death by an archer and having to do the whole thing again was just a huge pain the ass.

And regarding the speed, yup, I almost got my ass handed to me on the first enemies in DS3, but then quickly realized I'm also a lot faster now and can just input many attacks quickly in a row. Whereas in DS1 you'd have to press attack and wait until it actually happens, and only then attack again or you might get caught with many attacks "lined up" and can't for example heal or dodge before all the attacks are done. 
By the time I got to the first boss in DS3 I was basically already used to it. That first boss was already pretty cool by the way, just like you described, with multiple phases and all that. It was very satisfying to beat him!



KnightBrolaire said:


> yeah on X360 DS 1/2 were pretty terrible in spots framerate wise. I have a GTX 1080 (which is still a pretty beastly card for 1080p gaming) and had a 770 previous to that. Even with the old 770 they ran better on PC ime.
> DS3 runs like butter on my PC. That one is easily the most optimized imo.



Yeah well, thankfully I'm not running xbox360 anymore  But on the Xbox One, DS1 mostly ran "like butter" with the exception of a few bosses and enemies that used certain effects (the purple fog-like stuff always seemed to slow it down). DS3, not so much. There's no problem playing it, but it just doesn't look as smooth. Oh well, I guess it'll look nice once I upgrade to Series S/X... Whenever that happens. The good part with that is that all the same games and even controllers should work directly, so in that sense the investment wouldn't be that bad.
As for PC, my setup is basically from the stone age and I don't even have a dedicated GPU, so nah, not even gonna try that


----------



## gabito

I'm currently replaying RDR II.

I didn't love it the first time in 2018 or so, but I think I'm liking the experience more this time.

Controls are still shit, though. Having to read what the buttons do for every task, having to keep the buttons pressed for several seconds (but different amounts of time for different tasks...), or having to do a Mortal Kombat fatality equivalent to do some things... that's just bad UI.

Anyways, the rest is cool.

I think R* should decide if they want to go full ARPG-like with their games (as Ubisoft did in the recent Assassin's Creed games), because they have a bunch of RPG-like mechanics there but they serve mostly no purpose. They are just there... you can _almost_ have conversations, you can _almost_ decide what to do in certain situations, you have_ something_ like a progression tree for some things... but not quite. You can play the whole game with your base revolver and horse and nothing would change. You can starve and sleep deprive Arthur forever and just play the game as if nothing happened. Same for clothing, etc.

But yeah, the game is nice.


----------



## p0ke

gabito said:


> I think R* should decide if they want to go full ARPG-like with their games (as Ubisoft did in the recent Assassin's Creed games), because they have a bunch of RPG-like mechanics there but they serve mostly no purpose. They are just there... you can _almost_ have conversations, you can _almost_ decide what to do in certain situations, you have_ something_ like a progression tree for some things... but not quite. You can play the whole game with your base revolver and horse and nothing would change. You can starve and sleep deprive Arthur forever and just play the game as if nothing happened. Same for clothing, etc.



That's kinda how I've felt about the GTA series since San Andreas (yup, also R*). They toned it down a bit after SA, but there's still a lot of stuff you can do that doesn't really affect anything. I guess they can't really go any further into ARPG territory though, or they'll loose many of the more casual gamers. I guess the games could, in theory, have a toggle (that's off by default) to make the RPG-stuff mandatory and actually affect stuff, but that'd be a bitch from a development standpoint. Also removing all that stuff would remove some of the depth, I guess. That said, I'd happily play a spaghetti western style ARPG. Or a modern/realistic themed one like GTA.

... In other news: I checked out the Xbox spring sale again... And I noticed a new Battletoads-game was released last year! And it's on sale for 5€... So I just couldn't resist the urge and bought it for nostalgia's sake. I guess I have to configure my router to block the xbox store all together or something


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> yeah on X360 DS 1/2 were pretty terrible in spots framerate wise. I have a GTX 1080 (which is still a pretty beastly card for 1080p gaming) and had a 770 previous to that. Even with the old 770 they ran better on PC ime.
> DS3 runs like butter on my PC. That one is easily the most optimized imo.



Ah. I thought we were all talking about Xbox One. Yeah, I'm familiar with Xbox 360's woes in blighttown. I really don't like Xbox's naming schemes, makes things annoying to talk about.

I have dark souls for 360, bought it back when it was relatively new, died a few times at the beginning, and never touched it again. I'm slightly curious to try playing it on that system just to see what the original experience was like for most. But, probably not worth the pain.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Ah. I thought we were all talking about Xbox One. Yeah, I'm familiar with Xbox 360's woes in blighttown. I really don't like Xbox's naming schemes, makes things annoying to talk about.
> 
> I have dark souls for 360, bought it back when it was relatively new, died a few times at the beginning, and never touched it again. I'm slightly curious to try playing it on that system just to see what the original experience was like for most. But, probably not worth the pain.



I was talking Xbox One all along, but someone else sidetracked to the 360. 
I have basically the same experience of DS1 on the 360, I didn't have the patience to learn to fight properly so I gave up real quick. I managed to run all the way to Sif once, and I recall basically shitting my pants when I got there  I don't recall it being different from the Remastered version, but afaik the difference would be obvious now if I were to compare. I had the "Prepare to die edition" or whatever it was called, which I guess just included the DLC and latest patch...

But now I'm playing DS3. Got to the first "real" boss today... And it was dissapointingly easy! The normal enemies so far have been more difficult, and also I'm still wearing the base gear apart from my sword and bow.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I was talking Xbox One all along, but someone else sidetracked to the 360.
> I have basically the same experience of DS1 on the 360, I didn't have the patience to learn to fight properly so I gave up real quick. I managed to run all the way to Sif once, and I recall basically shitting my pants when I got there  I don't recall it being different from the Remastered version, but afaik the difference would be obvious now if I were to compare. I had the "Prepare to die edition" or whatever it was called, which I guess just included the DLC and latest patch...
> 
> But now I'm playing DS3. Got to the first "real" boss today... And it was dissapointingly easy! The normal enemies so far have been more difficult, and also I'm still wearing the base gear apart from my sword and bow.



DS3 has a gradual difficulty curve boss-wise, while DS1’s was all over the place. I think, as with DS2 and to some extent 1, the trash tends to be harder than the bosses. But, I think the first boss I got killed repeatedly by was the crystal sage, and a few later ones were considerably nastier.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> DS3 has a gradual difficulty curve boss-wise, while DS1’s was all over the place. I think, as with DS2 and to some extent 1, the trash tends to be harder than the bosses. But, I think the first boss I got killed repeatedly by was the crystal sage, and a few later ones were considerably nastier.



Yeah, seems so. And it's good thing of course - DS1 turned me away at first because of the steep learning curve, this one feels a bit more forgiving.
The normal enemies are really easy one on one, but they gang up and that's when it gets harder. As a result I've been using lots of firebombs to kill many enemies at once. The game is very generous with those too, at some point I had like 40 of them at hand (whereas in DS1 I found maybe 5 during the whole game).

There's also been a few normal enemies that I have a hard time beating 1 on 1, for example quite early on, after passing the dragon at the great wall place (very awesome environment by the way, very Game of Thrones or LoTR feeling place) there was this knight who just won't let me get behind him and just wears my stamina out and then kills me, so instead I lured him into the dragon's flame. I was very surprised about how little damage the flame did to me though - I was expecting immediate death like on the DS1 red dragon, but instead I took maybe 40% damage without my shield up and only like 5% with it.

The new estus system is great by the way - not just the fact that there is a separate mana flask, but being allowed to choose the ratio is great! For example I don't have any spells (yet), so I assigned all to healing for now.


----------



## TedEH

Not so much a game being played but I received the last part I needed and managed to finish the repair on the PS4 I got a while back. It's now reading disks again, so I'm not constrained to digital only. Just a nice feeling to get it running, even if I have no games for it. Maybe the repair _was _the game the whole time.


----------



## Leviathus

Speaking of DS3, the Cinders mod is a must try if you have the game on PC. So many changes... new bosses, items, weapons, armors, npc invasions, etc. And spawning a mimic to fight mimics for you is quite pleasing...


----------



## Ralyks

So after spending a few hours grinding a bit in chapter 12 of Yakuza (seriously, how much can you enhance Ichis legendary bat?!), I finally finished, and goddamn if that chapter was one of my favorite things in gaming in recent memory (And I had the biggest grin on my face at THAT moment). My party is in the mid-late 50s and their jobs around level 25 or so and I maxed everyone's bond link except Eri (I haven't done management in a while). I find myself almost always using a party of Saeko, Joon-gi, and Zhao, and I'll swap in Nanba with either Saeko or Zhao (Joon-gi never leaves my party). Sound about where I should be at chapter 13?


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So after spending a few hours grinding a bit in chapter 12 of Yakuza (seriously, how much can you enhance Ichis legendary bat?!), I finally finished, and goddamn if that chapter was one of my favorite things in gaming in recent memory (And I had the biggest grin on my face at THAT moment). My party is in the mid-late 50s and their jobs around level 25 or so and I maxed everyone's bond link except Eri (I haven't done management in a while). I find myself almost always using a party of Saeko, Joon-gi, and Zhao, and I'll swap in Nanba with either Saeko or Zhao (Joon-gi never leaves my party). Sound about where I should be at chapter 13?



Yeah. I don't think you'll have to grind again till chapter 15. I'd finish the management minigame ASAP, though. That's the easiest way to get several million reasonably quickly until you can quickly farm the non-final millennium tower (you'll need to be at least around level 75-80 in level and probably at least 50-60 in jobs with all of your main characters having all the shared elemental attacks possible (dynamite throw, ice throw, fortune teller lightning move) before that becomes very time-efficient). And those weapons upgrade ridiculously high. I'd say just get them all to EX as fast as possible and call it a day for a while. I had EX weapons for every single class. When I did the true final millennium tower I had EX +5 on my main 4 people's main jobs, but they go up even higher than that. It just gets ridiculously expensive, like 12-15 million per upgrade.

I was working off a chart of upgrades from gamefaqs or something to help with farming. I have to say, the worst material BY FAR to farm for was cockroaches - some weapon requires them, I think devil rocker? I'd turned all my cockroaches in already for some part-time hero quest and farming those things was a BITCH. I ran around in circles in the park for at least two hours just catching bugs. So, don't turn any in for anything else if you haven't already! All the silver/gold bugs can be specifically farmed for later in the game either in the Sotenbori arena or the millennium tower, but cockroaches...nope. I think you can also buy them for a ton in can collector, but F that.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Welp, picked up Monster Hunter Rise for the weekend. I really liked MH: World for PC but skipped Iceborne after a lot of user reviews showed dislike for the updates Capcom made to the combat system. I'm just looking forward to playing games on the couch again, there really is something about planning a hunt with your item and gear load outs that felt kinda like work. Doing it while lounging on the couch will make it seem like I'm having fun.


----------



## wankerness

My main barrier to that series is how dependent it seems to be on multiplayer for it to be enjoyable. Combine that with the switch having the worst NIC I’ve ever encountered (I had to buy an Ethernet adapter to even be able to connect to anyone, even though the thing is 8 feet from my router) and the fact I have no friends that pay for switch online, and yea. Seems like a big waste of money.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> My main barrier to that series is how dependent it seems to be on multiplayer for it to be enjoyable. Combine that with the switch having the worst NIC I’ve ever encountered (I had to buy an Ethernet adapter to even be able to connect to anyone, even though the thing is 8 feet from my router) and the fact I have no friends that pay for switch online, and yea. Seems like a big waste of money.



The series IMO is awesome alone, as it really feels like you vs. a dangerous monster. Especially if you into the game/series blind and just meet a new wall every time a new one comes up.

The fun with friends comes from being able to power through fights and farm monsters quickly once you’re just looking for a specific carve or gem.

But if you treat it like a single player game (and enjoy the mechanics) they’re solid 40-60hr action RPGs. Minimum.


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## BlackMastodon

100% what Mathemagician said. I played MH: World exclusively single player and had a blast, it was definitely the right amount of challenging that way too. 

I was maybe 40 hours in, forgot that I created an open lobby for that play session and just hanging out in the hub after a hubt, figuring out what gear I wanted to farm for or something. Suddenly, a horrible cover of Sound of Silence starts playing through the game audio and I freeze. What the fuck did I just do or press to make David Draimen start singing this abomination to me? I minimize, thinking Firefox somehow opened up, went to YouTube, and found the video to play for me (without ads, somehow). After maybe a minute of running around and feeling like I've been cursed, I see some rando hanging out in front of the quest board and their name on the far side of the UI. They joined my lobby, left their mic open, and were just hanging out and picking a quest to do. I had a laugh, thanked my luck that my PC wasn't infected with The Sickness, and then kicked the little shit from the lobby and set it to private.

And that's how I remembered that Monster Hunter is an online multiplayer game.


----------



## wankerness

I played MH: World for several hours at some point. I remember being very put off by how long the boss fights were, which I guess is just the way the series works so maybe it's not for me. It just drives me nuts when a fight is so long that you can lose 30 minutes of progress by making one mistake at the end. I thought maybe doing it multiplayer made things less of an incredible endurance test. 

I do remember calling for online help on some T-rex that kept running away through trees and killed me after like 30 minutes plus of struggling. I got so mad that I was like "let's try multiplayer and hope I get someone overpowered." I did!


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I played MH: World for several hours at some point. I remember being very put off by how long the boss fights were, which I guess is just the way the series works so maybe it's not for me. It just drives me nuts when a fight is so long that you can lose 30 minutes of progress by making one mistake at the end. I thought maybe doing it multiplayer made things less of an incredible endurance test.
> 
> I do remember calling for online help on some T-rex that kept running away through trees and killed me after like 30 minutes plus of struggling. I got so mad that I was like "let's try multiplayer and hope I get someone overpowered." I did!



So as a scale, in every prior game hunt quests had a 50 minute timer. You had 50 minutes to kill it within 3 deaths, or it was game over. 

In general a new first time monster where you don’t know the patterns or whatever could take you 30-40 minutes if you even beat it at all. 

It was part of the design experience as you have to commit to attacks, so you have to learn the patterns. 

They’d get easier as your gear got better and you memorized your openings. 

After years of not playing I can still time a basic Rathian fireball series and cut its tail. It’s motor memory.

World did away with a lot of that but in general fights are (initially) meant to be a real challenge. 

Which makes sense because if you think about it, it’s basically just boss fights. You fight big monsters to fight bigger monsters. So the gameplay loop is self-feeding.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I played MH: World for several hours at some point. I remember being very put off by how long the boss fights were, which I guess is just the way the series works so maybe it's not for me. It just drives me nuts when a fight is so long that you can lose 30 minutes of progress by making one mistake at the end. I thought maybe doing it multiplayer made things less of an incredible endurance test.
> 
> I do remember calling for online help on some T-rex that kept running away through trees and killed me after like 30 minutes plus of struggling. I got so mad that I was like "let's try multiplayer and hope I get someone overpowered." I did!


My first Anjanath hunt took a good 4 or 5 attempts, that bastard is definitely a jump in difficulty compared to the ones leading up to it.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of Mario + Rabbids. Some of the challenges at the end get kinda.... challenging? ...but otherwise it's got a lot of character and is very accessible to someone who doesn't play a lot of tactics-style games. In that sense, I guess it's not super-deep, but I'm ok with that. It's very consistent, for better or worse - it's rare that I was surprised for any gameplay reasons (but definitely surprised a couple of times for story reasons).


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> So as a scale, in every prior game hunt quests had a 50 minute timer. You had 50 minutes to kill it within 3 deaths, or it was game over.
> 
> In general a new first time monster where you don’t know the patterns or whatever could take you 30-40 minutes if you even beat it at all.
> 
> It was part of the design experience as you have to commit to attacks, so you have to learn the patterns.
> 
> They’d get easier as your gear got better and you memorized your openings.
> 
> After years of not playing I can still time a basic Rathian fireball series and cut its tail. It’s motor memory.
> 
> World did away with a lot of that but in general fights are (initially) meant to be a real challenge.
> 
> Which makes sense because if you think about it, it’s basically just boss fights. You fight big monsters to fight bigger monsters. So the gameplay loop is self-feeding.



i get the big boss fight thing, but like, when I think epic boss fight I think like 5 or 10 minutes tops (ex dark souls games). That’s way too much to repeat if you fail!


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> My first Anjanath hunt took a good 4 or 5 attempts, that bastard is definitely a jump in difficulty compared to the ones leading up to it.



Well, that’s good to know actually. I thought the rest of the game would be that frustrating. I have intended to go back to it at some point, but keep getting distracted by other games!

played a bunch more persona 5 royal, was reminded all over how much I dislike Yusuke!!


----------



## Mathemagician

Basically.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Started it up this morning and played through the tutorial, trying out the Charge Blade this time. In MHW I stuck to Insect Glaive, Gunlance when I needed to be more defensive/tanky, and Longsword on occasion but couldn't really get the hang of it and found I jived with the Insect Glaive the best. 

So far I'm digging it, same fun gameplay with some qol improvements from the Palamute (your dog companion). Also the load times are soooo damn quick. Not sure if the type of SD card in the Switch makes a difference but I'm glad I bought a good one for it. One thing I've noticed so far, at least in the first area I've been in, is that the environment seems much more barren compared to MHW, but they might've had to trim the fat in that aspect to make the game run smoothly on the Switch, otherwise it still looks dammed good.


----------



## Ralyks

Final chapter of Yakuza. Characters are all about level 58, job levels around 29, I'm in the top 10 of management and just figuring out what I should do before going for the end. I did a run in the Kamurocho sewer but it seems like the battle arena is still good for grinding. That said @wankerness , can I not leave the Millennium Tower once I enter like they're making me think, or can I go in there, grind, and leave again to update weapons/do side quests/etc?


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Has anyone played the new Oddworld game Soulstorm yet?


----------



## Ralyks

Lorcan Ward said:


> Has anyone played the new Oddworld game Soulstorm yet?



Downloaded it for PS5, I'll probably get to it this week since I'm off from work. Just been focusing on finishing up Yakuza.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Final chapter of Yakuza. Characters are all about level 58, job levels around 29, I'm in the top 10 of management and just figuring out what I should do before going for the end. I did a run in the Kamurocho sewer but it seems like the battle arena is still good for grinding. That said @wankerness , can I not leave the Millennium Tower once I enter like they're making me think, or can I go in there, grind, and leave again to update weapons/do side quests/etc?



The millennium tower has two entrances, on the front and then another around the back, that go to the two grindable versions. I think the plot entrance is somewhere else entirely? I forget. I don't remember the exact mechanics of what happens when you beat the game, but I think once you do you unlock "premium adventure mode" and are free to continue doing whatever you want until you choose New Game + from the main menu. I definitely finished the story before doing either grindable millennium tower, but I can't remember if that's enforced or if it just wouldn't make any sense considering it only requires like level 50 to beat the game and the grindable ones are much, much nastier. Especially true final, where I was getting nearly one-shot by some of the enemies even at level 99 with 6 jobs to 99 on each character.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> The millennium tower has two entrances, on the front and then another around the back, that go to the two grindable versions. I think the plot entrance is somewhere else entirely? I forget. I don't remember the exact mechanics of what happens when you beat the game, but I think once you do you unlock "premium adventure mode" and are free to continue doing whatever you want until you choose New Game + from the main menu. I definitely finished the story before doing either grindable millennium tower, but I can't remember if that's enforced or if it just wouldn't make any sense considering it only requires like level 50 to beat the game and the grindable ones are much, much nastier. Especially true final, where I was getting nearly one-shot by some of the enemies even at level 99 with 6 jobs to 99 on each character.



Guess that means I'm beating the story tonight and going back to do the other stuff later. Gotta ask, where do you rank Like a Dragon in the series? Because I'm very close to calling it my favorite, although I really didnt get far in 3 and haven't touched 4 and 5, but right now it feels like Like a Dragon, Kiwami 2, and 0 are the pinnacles. And I'm also starting to think, as much as my favorite games last year were FFVII Remake, Persona 5 Golden, Cyberpunk, and Last of Us 2, I'm really thinking Yakuza would have been my game of 2020 if I didn't hold out for the PS5 version.


----------



## TedEH

Just got to the end of the story for Thief 4. It's the second time I've played it, so I knew what to expect going in. This one got lots of flak on release, and some of it was deserved. I do actually like the game mechanically - enough to play it a second time. The full-body awareness was a point against for some, but I find it does a lot for your sense of being a presence in that space. The swoop move is fun. I would have preferred the takedowns not be long animations, but it's not enough to ruin it for me. It does a good job of being a burglar/kleptomaniac sim, with the large city layout and lots of roofs to crawl over, windows to sneak into, taking anything not nailed down, etc. And IMO the visuals are hold up. I think the game _looks_ fantastic. Since the game is "old" now, it runs great on modern hardware. No stability, performance, or compatibility problems at all. Level layouts are sometimes kinda linear, sometimes they dive into big cinematic explosive nonsense territory, but there's some decent stealth game level design mixed in there.

BUT there's a lot of buts to this one. The story and writing is some nonsense. Most characters are underdeveloped caricatures. The loss of Stephen Russell kinda stings. A lot of the potential of the city is hindered by frequent loading zones, even running off an SSD you feel the interruptions. I would have liked some acknowledgement for successfully getting to the end with no kills. The quick save/load mechanism is a bit slow and it's not always obvious when it will work. I mostly never used the upgrade systems and I don't think they really fit this kind of game.

The biggest loss, IMO is the audio implementation - where the old games were all about that positional audio, I couldn't get something similar here to work, and I suspect it's just not implemented. So all the stealth is now about looking for awareness markers instead of being able to infer the state of the game from the soundscape, and it's one of those games that gives away the NPC states with blatant music cues. Loud drama music = you're being chased. As soon as the music changes you know you're safe. Sometimes the mix is ok, but other times it's bad - characters talking to you but you can't hear them, music way too loud, etc. Occasionally you'd have two character patrolling together and shouting the exact same lines of dialogue a second apart from eachother, so it just sounds like a weird bug or echo - not even counting how often you hear the same repeated flavour dialogue.

I don't think it's a bad game, but I think it could have been so much more. There was potential here, and sometimes it hits the mark, but usually it gets as far as "ok".


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Guess that means I'm beating the story tonight and going back to do the other stuff later. Gotta ask, where do you rank Like a Dragon in the series? Because I'm very close to calling it my favorite, although I really didnt get far in 3 and haven't touched 4 and 5, but right now it feels like Like a Dragon, Kiwami 2, and 0 are the pinnacles. And I'm also starting to think, as much as my favorite games last year were FFVII Remake, Persona 5 Golden, Cyberpunk, and Last of Us 2, I'm really thinking Yakuza would have been my game of 2020 if I didn't hold out for the PS5 version.



I dunno. The EXTREME grindiness of 7 combined with the very lackluster main minigame makes me put it under 0 and Kiwami 2, and about tied with 5 (I, however, liked the hunting section and the idol section of 5 and both are pretty divisive). The order of those 4 is probably subject to change. All four are definitely excellent and could be my favorite depending on my mood. I haven't played any of them more than once so I'm not completely confident in my assertions, especially since 0 was the first that I played and thus I remember the least.

It's light-years better than FFVII remake and considerably better than LoU2 from what I've played of those so far, and I like that it's a lot more interactive than Persona 5 royal, and I can't think of what else came out in 2020 that would give it a run for its money. Definitely not AC:Valhalla or Fenyx Rising. It's probably game of the year? The eventual satisfying payoff of finishing the final millennium tower made me look more fondly back on the TONS of grinding, but it definitely was many hours.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm watching the credits to Yakuza. Goddamn this was one of the best games I've played in a long time.


----------



## Nicki

I played through and finished the story campaign in Destiny 2 Beyond Light this weekend. Really glad I didn't pay actual money for it since it's included in Game Pass. Found it really lackluster and completely forgettable. 

Also finished off AC Brotherhood. Never realized how close to the end my save file was. Started AC Revelations too.


----------



## dr_game0ver

AC 2 and it's sequels are so good.


----------



## wankerness

dr_game0ver said:


> AC 2 and it's sequels are so good.



They really did not age well, IMO. The combat is godawful and the climbing around is clunky as heck. Well, that's based on finishing 2 and starting (and quickly abandoning) Brotherhood, but I don't doubt Revelations is equally clunky considering the mainline games didn't get much smoother until Syndicate!

Black Flag seemed like a big upgrade from 2, also, but still the combat was very wooden and clunky. I think Syndicate was where they finally made it feel somewhat fluid (they mostly just ripped off the Batman games I think). Origins is the first where climbing around finally felt pretty fluid.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> They really did not age well, IMO. The combat is godawful and the climbing around is clunky as heck. Well, that's based on finishing 2 and starting (and quickly abandoning) Brotherhood, but I don't doubt Revelations is equally clunky considering the mainline games didn't get much smoother until Syndicate!
> 
> Black Flag seemed like a big upgrade from 2, also, but still the combat was very wooden and clunky. I think Syndicate was where they finally made it feel somewhat fluid (they mostly just ripped off the Batman games I think). Origins is the first where climbing around finally felt pretty fluid.


AC3 was when the combat and climbing finally got smoother imo. AC2 and its offshoots still have the best stories of the early stuff imo. Ezio's whole arc is great.
Black Flag I think was the start of them finally putting everything together into a really cohesive package.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> AC3 was when the combat and climbing finally got smoother imo. AC2 and its offshoots still have the best stories of the early stuff imo. Ezio's whole arc is great.
> Black Flag I think was the start of them finally putting everything together into a really cohesive package.



I still haven't played 3. I have the remake of it that runs on the different engine, but haven't gotten around to it. The setting doesn't really excite me, but I've mostly heard good things about it (lots of articles saying it was rejected at the time, but holds up pretty well). 

That one, Rogue, and Revelations are the only ones I haven't played yet. I only played about 20 minutes of Brotherhood and Unity, though - boy, did I HATE Unity. Boring characters, terrible combat about on par with AC:2, and it immediately starts you off tailing stuff (my least favorite mission type in these things).


----------



## dr_game0ver

3 is very story heavy. I had fun playing it but this is not a game i will be replaying.
Also, Very unpopular opinion: Black flag kinda sucks.


----------



## wankerness

dr_game0ver said:


> 3 is very story heavy. I had fun playing it but this is not a game i will be replaying.
> Also, Very unpopular opinion: Black flag kinda sucks.



I liked Black Flag's core gameplay loop a lot (upgrading your ship, ship battles, buried treasure, etc). The problem with that aspect was that a lot of the "filler" content was really sparse and empty, like lots of the islands were a total waste of time and it wasn't very rewarding digging up most of the treasure on random desert islands. 

I think the story was kind of an unfocused mess (as usual!!) and that the control/combat was pretty bad (though better than 2). Also, I hated tailing missions, and I especially hated the mission where you had to stealth an entire pirate ship into a swamp. Also, I hated chasing pirate shanties (even though I did like GETTING THEM). 

If Black Flag was redone with the current engine, it would be a lot better by default. I like the ship combat and the whole pirate conceit and the setting a lot more than most of the rest of the series. It is just too bad about the story and the non-ship combat. I wish AC: Odyssey had the more in-depth ship combat of Black Flag, cause it's REALLY dumbed down in that entry.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I still haven't played 3. I have the remake of it that runs on the different engine, but haven't gotten around to it. The setting doesn't really excite me, but I've mostly heard good things about it (lots of articles saying it was rejected at the time, but holds up pretty well).
> 
> That one, Rogue, and Revelations are the only ones I haven't played yet. I only played about 20 minutes of Brotherhood and Unity, though - boy, did I HATE Unity. Boring characters, terrible combat about on par with AC:2, and it immediately starts you off tailing stuff (my least favorite mission type in these things).



The combat in AC straight through AC 4 was both wooden and fluid at the same time. It focused more on counter attacking than straight up laying a beat down. That's evident by how fluid counter attacking feels. Enemies would just block, dodge or parry every other attack which is what made combat feel wooden.

Climbing in Revelations was made a bit better, as was movement overall.

AC3 was incredibly boring and just a slog to get through. I seem to remember combat being worse in it as well (though it's been a long time since I've played it). Only reason I finished it was because I wanted to know what happened with Desmond. If you don't care about that story arc, AC3 is completely skip-able.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> The combat in AC straight through AC 4 was both wooden and fluid at the same time. It focused more on counter attacking than straight up laying a beat down. That's evident by how fluid counter attacking feels. Enemies would just block, dodge or parry every other attack which is what made combat feel wooden.
> 
> Climbing in Revelations was made a bit better, as was movement overall.
> 
> AC3 was incredibly boring and just a slog to get through. I seem to remember combat being worse in it as well (though it's been a long time since I've played it). Only reason I finished it was because I wanted to know what happened with Desmond. If you don't care about that story arc, AC3 is completely skip-able.



From what I've seen, the counterattacking mechanics are pretty wooden, too, until Syndicate. If you play an early AC game and then play say, Batman: AA, it actually feels quite a bit more modern than AC or its first several entries despite being the same age as AC2. Everything's just so much more fluid and responsive (apart from maybe character movement).


----------



## wankerness

I played some more Last of Us 2 last night. This game's got some very, very effective stuff in it as you move further in. The flashbacks with Joel, especially the birthday flashback at the dino museum were really great character stuff. And despite the game basically being on rails, it is occasionally REALLY effective at immersion with the combat situations. Like, I just went through the big section of fighting groups of people with dogs in the suburb as you're trying to find Tommy (Chapter 17 or 18 I think?), and it really makes things feel desperate with how little ammo you have, how scrounging around in buildings tends to net you about 3 bullets, and how the AI behaves. It's not like, genius AI, but it's far ahead of most games where things de-aggro if you move out of line of sight, etc, and it makes even the super-annoying dogs in Soulsborne games feel wimpy in comparison to these things. The scent-trail mechanic is a good one, I don't recall that being in any other game I've played. And man, the visceral nature of the sound effects and stuff is SO much better than similar games like Days Gone - the escape in the truck that goes through the zombie crowd at the end of that chapter had me flinching.

Still chipping away at Persona 5 Royal, too. Finished the second dungeon (the museum). I like the "seeds" added to the dungeons for a slight breather (they restore some group SP when you find them).


----------



## Ralyks

Well, I decided since I already have Resident Evil Village pre-ordered, during my week off I'm going to stop being a wimp and finally play through RE7. I'm well past where I original was from... 4 years ago. Kinda proud of myself. Even though I'm on easy and it's daylight outside as I play.

I've also been chipping away at 13 Sentinels. It's a good game to kind of play in little chunks.

I am going to go back and try to at least get near the Platinum for Yakuza, but I want to move to a different RPG for now. I'm definitely using between Dragon Quest IX S, Disco Elysium, Final Fantasy X-2, replaying FF8 or 9, or going back and finishing I Am Setsuna or Persona 5 Royal.


----------



## MFB

Ralyks said:


> Well, I decided since I already have Resident Evil Village pre-ordered, during my week off I'm going to stop being a wimp and finally play through RE7. I'm well past where I original was from... 4 years ago. Kinda proud of myself. Even though I'm on easy and it's daylight outside as I play



Well then you're officially nominated to tell me whether or not RE8 will have recurring enemies, like the family from 7, or if they're their own thing. Personally, I hate the undying family member boss fights, and I'm hoping Village is more like RE4/5, but I can't chance it until I hear otherwise.


----------



## wankerness

I finished RE7, but as someone that has big problems with jump scares, some sections at the beginning were rough going. I think the beginning of that game where you're confronting your wife is one of the most effective bits of horror media of all time. It's incredibly nasty, it's mortifying, it makes you jump, it completely disorients you, etc. Absolutely killer.

I don't like the unkillable enemy thing, but that's more cause it makes me freak out. It's too effective. So, I can't really fault it as a gameplay mechanic - it certainly makes your character feel like a weakling and forces you to run away. I was really on edge for all those stalking segments.

Too bad the game completely degenerates into a boring action shooter in the last third. All those mudmen are only slightly unsettling and you have to fight so many of them and the game starts throwing so much ammo at you that it loses everything that was scary about the first half or 2/3 of the game. The final boss is pretty infamously lame, too.

I'm definitely not preordering this, but I'll look forward to reviews. If it turns out it fixes the problems of 7, I'll get it once there's a GOTY edition out there.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I finished RE7, but as someone that has big problems with jump scares, some sections at the beginning were rough going. I think the beginning of that game where you're confronting your wife is one of the most effective bits of horror media of all time. It's incredibly nasty, it's mortifying, it makes you jump, it completely disorients you, etc. Absolutely killer.
> 
> I don't like the unkillable enemy thing, but that's more cause it makes me freak out. It's too effective. So, I can't really fault it as a gameplay mechanic - it certainly makes your character feel like a weakling and forces you to run away. I was really on edge for all those stalking segments.
> 
> Too bad the game completely degenerates into a boring action shooter in the last third. All those mudmen are only slightly unsettling and you have to fight so many of them and the game starts throwing so much ammo at you that it loses everything that was scary about the first half or 2/3 of the game. The final boss is pretty infamously lame, too.
> 
> I'm definitely not preordering this, but I'll look forward to reviews. If it turns out it fixes the problems of 7, I'll get it once there's a GOTY edition out there.



You basically summed up why I never got anywhere in this game. I like some horror games, but the jump scares between this and games like Outlast can just raise my anxiety too much. This is kind of a "face my dear" deal.


----------



## SpaceDock

I got through Hades in low 20s runs. Real fun game and I put in a handful more challenge runs but not holding my interest. 

Got Yakuza Song of Life and cannot believe this game was 20 bucks. So great but only to chapter 4 right now. Still waiting to get Like a Dragon on sale someday (pc).


----------



## Ralyks

SpaceDock said:


> Got Yakuza Song of Life and cannot believe this game was 20 bucks. So great but only to chapter 4 right now. Still waiting to get Like a Dragon on sale someday (pc).



Song of Life was solid, but right now I'd say middle of the pack with the Yakuza games I've played so far. Recent posts have made my love of Like a Dragon well know and I'm even starting to think it will end up on my all-time list.

Anyway, I just wanted to add a side note: my 5 and 1/2 year old is obsessed with Goat Simulator. Yeah. I also grabbed Overcooked All YoU Can Eat Edition in the hopes that I can teach him to play.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Yeah. I also grabbed Overcooked All YoU Can Eat Edition in the hopes that I can teach him to play.



Good idea, teach him to hate his dad at an early age! The game of domestic strife.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Good idea, teach him to hate his dad at an early age! The game of domestic strife.



Hey, maybe I'll get the hate out of the way now so he likes me when he's a teenager


----------



## Ralyks

Played a lot of RE7 today. I'm at the point where Ethan has to do Lucas's birthday puzzle thing that he forced the dude in the video tape to do with the candle in the cake. I'm hoping I'm almost done because I may just try to finish it tonight.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Played a lot of RE7 today. I'm at the point where Ethan has to do Lucas's birthday puzzle thing that he forced the dude in the video tape to do with the candle in the cake. I'm hoping I'm almost done because I may just try to finish it tonight.



how do you play games like that with a little kid in the house? Do you have a cave you lock yourself in while the wife distracts him? All the dads I know are stuck playing Mario games for several years to avoid scarring their kids since there’s nothing they like more than watching video games be played.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> how do you play games like that with a little kid in the house? Do you have a cave you lock yourself in while the wife distracts him? All the dads I know are stuck playing Mario games for several years to avoid scarring their kids since there’s nothing they like more than watching video games be played.



I'm on vacation from work this week while he's still at early education so I've been being lazy and gaming during the day. He goes to bed at 8 every night so that's also gaming/guitar time, since he's in bed and therefore I'm stuck at home since I can't go out (without going into detail, I have full custody and his mom has seen him maybe twice since he turned 2. He'll be 6 this summer). I rarely play anything when he's home and awake, so I game hard when he's not home or asleep. He'll usually finagle himself into Minecraft, Goat Simulator, or anything involving a car.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> From what I've seen, the counterattacking mechanics are pretty wooden, too, until Syndicate. If you play an early AC game and then play say, Batman: AA, it actually feels quite a bit more modern than AC or its first several entries despite being the same age as AC2. Everything's just so much more fluid and responsive (apart from maybe character movement).


I can understand why you feel that way when you compare it to Arkham Asylum. In the context of itself, I still think that the counter-attacking is the more fluid combat mechanic is the intended way to get through combat in AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations. 

Speaking of the Batman games, if you haven't played ME: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War yet, highly recommend! They have the same combat mechanics as the Batman games and are just overall really awesome.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> Speaking of the Batman games, if you haven't played ME: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War yet, highly recommend! They have the same combat mechanics as the Batman games and are just overall really awesome.



I played most of the way through the first one, never really liked it. It felt too perfunctory and sand-boxy. Like, it felt like playing a bunch of the challenge maps in Arkham City more than it felt like playing Arkham City. There wasn't much of a plot, and I didn't like the dreary look of it, and the movement was kinda wooden. I have Shadow of War GOTY edition lying around somewhere, but haven't gotten around to playing it yet. I am guessing I'll probably like it more.

Chipping away at Last of Us 2, this game seems LONG compared to previous Naughty Dog games. Maybe it's just cause I'm in a hurry to finish it so I can work more on Persona 5 and Subnautica. Anyway, I just hit the point where it does the perspective shift and starts running parallel to the first half. The stadium base for Abby, et al was really cool. I think the designers hit everything out of the park with this game. It's just too bad the characters and setting are all so miserable (yeah, I know it's the point). I absolutely loathe this version of Ellie, especially her last scenes in her half of the game, and will be surprised if I don't end up liking Abby more. I find mean tough assholes to be more appealing when they're sorta unambiguously such, as opposed to Ellie, who comes off as some sort of twisted, deranged tweaker creep. Her "f you, I'm going to do what I want" face that she is constantly making to people that try to talk her down from the ledge reminds me of a bratty child. And god, hearing her drop F bombs in response to EVERYTHING in varying tones of voice gets so old so fast. It's the game equivalent of Uncut Gems!

The gore seems a lot less nasty than it did in those leaked cutscenes from before the game released. It doesn't really linger on it, and most of the worst stuff is totally out of frame (ex what happens to Joel). Same deal with the kill animations, etc. It's certainly a gruesome game, but at least doesn't seem sadistic.


----------



## MFB

I'm probably an hour or so into Shadow of Mordor, and leveled up some of my moves, and I find the combat to be incredibly unsatisfying; it's the same button over and over for the combo, I'd say even a bit shallower than Darksiders combat. Maybe I'm not far enough in yet, but for where I got to, it didn't really do anything for me after all the praise it got.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I'm probably an hour or so into Shadow of Mordor, and leveled up some of my moves, and I find the combat to be incredibly unsatisfying; it's the same button over and over for the combo, I'd say even a bit shallower than Darksiders combat. Maybe I'm not far enough in yet, but for where I got to, it didn't really do anything for me after all the praise it got.



Eh, it's about the same as the Batman AA/AC combat, it starts out just basically like a rhythm game with attack/counter being your only buttons, but as you get more abilities it starts giving you more options. But, still, if you're good enough at reacting and timing you can get through just about everything with the basic options. Also, as you start encountering enemy leaders, you pretty much can't succeed by chopping around with the sword and have to use other tactics.

It always will play more like a rhythm game in brawls than something like a Platinum game, though. It's the nature of the beast. I kinda liked it with the Batman games, and thought it was OK here, the game's just too repetitive.


----------



## Choop

MFB said:


> I'm probably an hour or so into Shadow of Mordor, and leveled up some of my moves, and I find the combat to be incredibly unsatisfying; it's the same button over and over for the combo, I'd say even a bit shallower than Darksiders combat. Maybe I'm not far enough in yet, but for where I got to, it didn't really do anything for me after all the praise it got.



I haven't played Shadow of Mordor, but that's been my problem with the Batman games as well. You can pretty much just mash through all of the simple combat vs thugs and it's boring. Not as bad in Arkham Asylum (which I overall really liked) because it felt like the combat portions were spaced out well and weren't overbearing, but I've tried on a few occasions to get into Arkham City and there seems to be way more tedious thug-fighting across the board in that game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> I'm probably an hour or so into Shadow of Mordor, and leveled up some of my moves, and I find the combat to be incredibly unsatisfying; it's the same button over and over for the combo, I'd say even a bit shallower than Darksiders combat. Maybe I'm not far enough in yet, but for where I got to, it didn't really do anything for me after all the praise it got.


Yeah.. don't judge it by the early game. The combat in the Shadow games is great once you unlock the mid-late game abilities. Shadow of War is way better too (minus the stupid asynchronous base defense shit). The nemesis system alone makes those games infinitely more replayable than other brawler games imo.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> I haven't played Shadow of Mordor, but that's been my problem with the Batman games as well. You can pretty much just mash through all of the simple combat vs thugs and it's boring. Not as bad in Arkham Asylum (which I overall really liked) because it felt like the combat portions were spaced out well and weren't overbearing, but I've tried on a few occasions to get into Arkham City and there seems to be way more tedious thug-fighting across the board in that game.



There is, and it gets worse as you get further into the game and the city gets more infested with thugs that have more health. I guess at the time, though, it was really impressive. I haven't replayed that game, and I got it right on release day for 360. Probably doesn't hold up that well. I mainly remember really liking just traveling around in the city with the grapnel boost, etc, and it felt really cool. Also, some of the boss battles were great, especially Mr. Freeze. And of course the voiceacting was topnotch throughout.

I played Arkham Knight when I first got my PS4, and while the combat doesn't get numbing through the game as much as Arkham City, that one suffered from shoving awful Batmobile sections down your throat constantly and as a result was easily the worst of the three. And then tank combat!!! Like, the boss fight against Deathstroke is a fricking tank battle. What the hell were they thinking? And all the riddler rooms with weird vehicle puzzles? I definitely gave up on that one pretty quickly after completing the main story. I got 100% on AA/AC, more than once in the case of AA (played it on PC, too).

I'm sort of curious to play Arkham Origins, the one that they've apparently tried to bury (there's no re-release of it for PS4), I think I have it on Steam. Maybe one of these days. It will probably feel dated, but I've seen some mentions of it recently looking back on it fondly and saying it seems a lot better after AK was so bad. Especially the Deathstroke fight in that one compared to AK.


----------



## Ralyks

Resident Evil 7 done. It was an enjoyable 8 hours. You're right, most of the scares come pretty early and the final boss was.... Something... Was thinking of getting the DLC but I'll probably just read/YouTube what happens.


----------



## TedEH

It's been a while since I've played Shadow of Mordor (never played War) but I remember liking the combat just because the animations were satisfying. It was less the combat maybe, but just the violence that was enjoyable, if that makes any sense.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Resident Evil 7 done. It was an enjoyable 8 hours. You're right, most of the scares come pretty early and the final boss was.... Something... Was thinking of getting the DLC but I'll probably just read/YouTube what happens.



I got the GOTY edition and still felt no desire to play any of the DLC after finishing. The first one I tried was basically just minigame bullshit, like more of the birthday party stuff, so I quickly quit, especially after the back part of the main game being so bland. I guess the other two are good, now that I look them up, but I made the wrong decision and never want to play the game again as a result!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I got the GOTY edition and still felt no desire to play any of the DLC after finishing. The first one I tried was basically just minigame bullshit, like more of the birthday party stuff, so I quickly quit, especially after the back part of the main game being so bland. I guess the other two are good, now that I look them up, but I made the wrong decision and never want to play the game again as a result!



Bad decision as in chosing The bad ending?
Also the only one I considered checking out was Not A Hero since it had Chris Redfield. And since it looks like he's going to play an important role in RE Village...


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Bad decision as in chosing The bad ending?
> Also the only one I considered checking out was Not A Hero since it had Chris Redfield. And since it looks like he's going to play an important role in RE Village...



No, bad decision as in choosing the bad DLC instead of one of the two "good" ones.


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> There is, and it gets worse as you get further into the game and the city gets more infested with thugs that have more health. I guess at the time, though, it was really impressive. I haven't replayed that game, and I got it right on release day for 360. Probably doesn't hold up that well. I mainly remember really liking just traveling around in the city with the grapnel boost, etc, and it felt really cool. Also, some of the boss battles were great, especially Mr. Freeze. And of course the voiceacting was topnotch throughout.
> 
> I played Arkham Knight when I first got my PS4, and while the combat doesn't get numbing through the game as much as Arkham City, that one suffered from shoving awful Batmobile sections down your throat constantly and as a result was easily the worst of the three. And then tank combat!!! Like, the boss fight against Deathstroke is a fricking tank battle. What the hell were they thinking? And all the riddler rooms with weird vehicle puzzles? I definitely gave up on that one pretty quickly after completing the main story. I got 100% on AA/AC, more than once in the case of AA (played it on PC, too).
> 
> I'm sort of curious to play Arkham Origins, the one that they've apparently tried to bury (there's no re-release of it for PS4), I think I have it on Steam. Maybe one of these days. It will probably feel dated, but I've seen some mentions of it recently looking back on it fondly and saying it seems a lot better after AK was so bad. Especially the Deathstroke fight in that one compared to AK.



It's been a long time at this point since I tried to play Batman AC, but I remember liking everything but the combat vs normal enemies haha. Probably worth trying for again...it's been on my "to-play" backlog for years at this point. Lol I also have Arkham Knight that I got on a crazy sale, and I remember the Batmobile being a serious point of criticism when the game came out. What a weird decision to keep pushing that.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> It's been a long time at this point since I tried to play Batman AC, but I remember liking everything but the combat vs normal enemies haha. Probably worth trying for again...it's been on my "to-play" backlog for years at this point. Lol I also have Arkham Knight that I got on a crazy sale, and I remember the Batmobile being a serious point of criticism when the game came out. What a weird decision to keep pushing that.



Apart from having to deal with those idiots camped out on every single rooftop and alley by the end of the game, the combat actually is pretty good. The "Quick use" on most of your gadgets is a lot of fun. Like, interrupting punches to shoot someone with your zap gun or drop/detonate some plastique is great. Plus, it gets addictive getting your combo meter way over 100 regularly.

I disliked Spiderman for PS4 because of my fond memories of Arkham City. Especially with those miserable "predator"-style sequences in Spider-man. Batman's toolkit in AC was WAY more fun for that kind of thing.


----------



## MFB

Wait, what? I found Spiderman's combat to be a great successor to Batman's and allowed for much more variety and fun; maybe it's because I could still fight in broad daylight vs. needing to hide in the shadows like Batman does, and use gadgets/intimidation vs actually straight up fighting.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Wait, what? I found Spiderman's combat to be a great successor to Batman's and allowed for much more variety and fun; maybe it's because I could still fight in broad daylight vs. needing to hide in the shadows like Batman does, and use gadgets/intimidation vs actually straight up fighting.



In broad daylight, it was fine. I specifically hated the Spider-man stealth takedown missions or whatever. I don't remember how the game was set up anymore, but I know there were spots on the map that would trigger events where you'd have to stealth take-out a bunch of guys. I got frustrated and quit with one that was on some kind of circular base in the water. Batman's gameplay was largely based around this kind of thing and as a result was far less frustrating.

Spider-Man also had a big issue with terrible over-game pacing, with a handful of fun boss fights crammed into corners of the game (especially the double-team fights) and a whole ton of slogs (ex, the very bad Miles/MJ sections). If they'd spaced things out like in Batman: AC, it would have been a lot better. I dunno. It was fantastic travel/combat mechanics that were looking for a better game to hold them. I'm hoping the eventual sequel does a better job of it. Or I hope that the MM game did, I haven't read anything about that cause the possibility of getting a PS5 is still nowhere on my radar.


----------



## TedEH

I started playing Celeste a few days ago, since I've heard a lot of good things and I got it for free. Not done yet, but far enough into it to have some thoughts (just starting chapter 7 of 8).

Mechanically, I think the game has a lot going for it. The platforming is well thought out and the character controls pretty well. It has that "if I die, it feels like it was my own fault" kind of control set. You can tell a lot of care went into the art - the characters, the portraits for dialogue, the world decoration, etc - all well done even if some elements don't always gel very well. Lots of small details that give character like animations in the dialog windows, etc. The audio implementation is pretty good - nothing super exciting or groundbreaking, but it's solid in that "if you don't hear anything wrong, then it's good" kind of way. Soundtrack serves the game well.

I could nitpick about some of the implementation details if I really wanted to. Pixel art bugs me when scales get mixed -> as in there was no effort to conceal that it's just big ol chunky blocks for aesthetic, rather than sticking to a small render target or something like that, and there are different scales of pixelly art mixed with things that aren't pixel art, etc. It sort of feeeeeeeels like a Unity game, if that makes sense - I googled it and it's not Unity, it's XNA, but still. It has that "indie game" feel you get with a lot of Unity-made games.

But the writing.... yeeeeeesh. I kinda hate the characters. It's one of the most hipster-y and on-the-nose game stories I've played in a while - complete with a bearded dude in plaid with ear gauges, and a narrative about being tormented by the literal embodiment of anxiety and depression in the most stereotypical way. And the game _doesn't do metaphor._ There's no metaphor here - it's all literal, and they call it out. "Look! There's my _inner demon_". It kinda feels like you're playing through an angsty teenagers english assignment. I think the concept had potential, but the execution of it is insufferable - and the game didn't mechanically need it. All of the game's mechanics would work just as well with zero story.

We'll see if maybe it can redeem itself in it's final chapters, 'cause I want to like the game, and in a lot of ways I do. But that story makes it a tough sell.


----------



## wankerness

Boy, do I hate the indie game stereotype from the last few years where "IT'S ABOUT DEPRESSION!!!!" becomes the rallying cry for why the game is good. It's become such a cliche for a game to slap that theme on and then hide behind that as a defense if any other shortcomings are pointed out. Well, to be fair, I've only seen defenders of the games hide behind that as a defense, the creators themselves might not be trying to use it as a crutch.

Celeste basically seemed like Super Meat Boy to me. I didn't get into it AT ALL. I have it downloaded, maybe someday I'll try it again. I made the mistake of buying a bunch of small, indie-style games when I first got my Switch and just haven't gotten into any of them (and some I still haven't even booted up, like Stardew Valley and Into the Breach). Like Hollow Knight, Hades, etc I've played for maybe 15 minutes before losing interest. I'm too easily amused by pretty graphics and lazy AAA gameplay loops, I guess. I think the only indie games I've played all the way through this generation were Transistor, Untitled Goose Game, and Octodad. Oh, and I guess Overcooked 1/2 I got close on! And I've played a lot of Towerfall.


----------



## MFB

It pains me how beautiful Hollow Knight is, yet I have zero desire to ever finish it.


----------



## wankerness

I might be able to appreciate it more now I've made it through the soulsborne games. I couldn't deal with the Dark Souls mechanic the first time I played. I got to some boss that killed me a few times, and I quit for good as soon as I got a glitch where my pile of souls or whatever they're called in that game disappeared since I'd died in too cramped of a location or something. I wasn't ready to deal with that much frustration in my games at that point in my life, I guess.

Played a bunch more Last of Us 2, and man, so far Abby is a WAY better character than Ellie. I find her far more relatable than the sullen little monster Ellie turns into. At least Abby is like, civil to the people she cares about, as opposed to Ellie who just lashes out and acts like a dick to everyone at all times. She's afraid of heights, which I can relate to. Plus, she actually helps people! Crankily, but still. I really don't like how you play through the game and then functionally have your character development reset and start over from being a wimp all over again. And I don't like the Shiv mechanic with Abby, though I think maybe it's the same as it was in the first game where you needed to have made them to stealth-kill clickers. :/

Still, the game seems too damn long for how grueling of an experience it is. I'm still only on chapter 31 of 45 and it feels like I've been playing for a long time.

The perspective shift really reminds me of a very big budget, fully developed version of Nier's playthrough 1/2.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Boy, do I hate the indie game stereotype from the last few years where "IT'S ABOUT DEPRESSION!!!!"





wankerness said:


> the creators themselves might not be trying to use it as a crutch


I feel like this game really is trying to make it the focus, despite the actually gameplay systems having nothing to do with it. Like you say, it's comparable to a lot of other games, and I don't think it would have gotten as strong a reception if it hadn't slapped the "it's about depression" label on the box. It's certainly not a _bad game_. It has a lot of redeeming features.



wankerness said:


> Celeste basically seemed like Super Meat Boy to me


Yeah - that's a good comparison. Most of my play time consists of: try a thing. Die. Try a thing. Die. Get a little farther. Die. Try again. Die. Make it to the next screen. Die. Try something. Die. etc etc etc etc etc... you get the idea. I haven't actually played Meat Boy before, but I suspect this game is easier than it was.



wankerness said:


> Into the Breach





wankerness said:


> Hollow Knight


I do like these two games a fair bit, but like so many indies, they're targeted at niches. Hollow Knight hits that "something to be inevitably compared to dark souls but with indie art and also a metroidvania!" thing, 'cause the souls-likes and metroidvanias are popular, and Into the Breach is also riding a trend/niche of rogue-likes. That seems to be the indie thing to do: pick a niche genre or mechanic iterate on it until it's dead. I find both of those categories (rogue-likes and souls-likes) to be really challenging to get into. Games where significant failures are frequent and expected just hit me the wrong way. I fail enough in real life, I don't want to fail in my spare time too.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So SaGa Frontier 1 remastered has just been released. I might pick it up and play it right after I'm done finishing Kasuga Ryu Quest 7.

The SaGa seires are basically Final Fantasy's more quirky hipster sister who'd rather hang in obscurity. And SaGa Frontier was pushing a lot of boundaries on what a JRPG could be back in it's initial release. It's pretty much proto Octopath Traveller with different character narratives. Though I liked SaGa Frontier 2 much better and skipped the last SaGa game (due to the reasons of 'too many games' and 'I straight up forgot'), it'll be fun to play this one.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I do like these two games a fair bit, but like so many indies, they're targeted at niches. Hollow Knight hits that "something to be inevitably compared to dark souls but with indie art and also a metroidvania!" thing, 'cause the souls-likes and metroidvanias are popular, and Into the Breach is also riding a trend/niche of rogue-likes. That seems to be the indie thing to do: pick a niche genre or mechanic iterate on it until it's dead. I find both of those categories (rogue-likes and souls-likes) to be really challenging to get into. Games where significant failures are frequent and expected just hit me the wrong way. I fail enough in real life, I don't want to fail in my spare time too.



To be fair, a lot of these games are made by fans of respective genres and it is nice to see them at times not only do it justice but surpass their influences. We can rag on Eric Barone all we want for aping Harvest Moon, but personally I think Stardew Valley has become much better than both Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons nowadays. Someone in the remake thread was complaining that Undertale is an Earthbound ripoff, but that's an extremely shallow and close minded judgement since the game is far more than just a major influence. Hell, my favorite game of 2020: Spiritfarer (surprisingly not Cold Steel 4), can be brushed off as another life sim trying to take a slice of Animal Crossing's pie, but the presentation and narrative and secondary gameplay loops added a much more enriching experience. 

Though I do like seeing indie developers do something new (Lucas Pope being one example).


----------



## Mathemagician

Bloody_Inferno said:


> To be fair, a lot of these games are made by fans of respective genres and it is nice to see them at times not only do it justice but surpass their influences. We can rag on Eric Barone all we want for aping Harvest Moon, but personally I think Stardew Valley has become much better than both Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons nowadays. Someone in the remake thread was complaining that Undertale is an Earthbound ripoff, but that's an extremely shallow and close minded judgement since the game is far more than just a major influence. Hell, my favorite game of 2020: Spiritfarer (surprisingly not Cold Steel 4), can be brushed off as another life sim trying to take a slice of Animal Crossing's pie, but the presentation and narrative and secondary gameplay loops added a much more enriching experience.
> 
> Though I do like seeing indie developers do something new (Lucas Pope being one example).



“More/New options are always nice”. I agree.


----------



## Nicki

Ralyks said:


> Bad decision as in chosing The bad ending?
> Also the only one I considered checking out was Not A Hero since it had Chris Redfield. And since it looks like he's going to play an important role in RE Village...


100% not worth playing through and 100% nothing to do with Village. It's just basically a clean up of what happens to Lucas.

Honestly if you liked RE7, hunting down all of the trophies/achievements is a worthwhile task. It's not even that hard on Nightmare so long as you unlock the circular saw. It stretches the game out from an 8 - 10 hour game to a 40 hour game.


----------



## Nicki

TedEH said:


> I started playing Celeste a few days ago, since I've heard a lot of good things and I got it for free. Not done yet, but far enough into it to have some thoughts (just starting chapter 7 of 8).
> 
> Mechanically, I think the game has a lot going for it. The platforming is well thought out and the character controls pretty well. It has that "if I die, it feels like it was my own fault" kind of control set. You can tell a lot of care went into the art - the characters, the portraits for dialogue, the world decoration, etc - all well done even if some elements don't always gel very well. Lots of small details that give character like animations in the dialog windows, etc. The audio implementation is pretty good - nothing super exciting or groundbreaking, but it's solid in that "if you don't hear anything wrong, then it's good" kind of way. Soundtrack serves the game well.
> 
> I could nitpick about some of the implementation details if I really wanted to. Pixel art bugs me when scales get mixed -> as in there was no effort to conceal that it's just big ol chunky blocks for aesthetic, rather than sticking to a small render target or something like that, and there are different scales of pixelly art mixed with things that aren't pixel art, etc. It sort of feeeeeeeels like a Unity game, if that makes sense - I googled it and it's not Unity, it's XNA, but still. It has that "indie game" feel you get with a lot of Unity-made games.
> 
> But the writing.... yeeeeeesh. I kinda hate the characters. It's one of the most hipster-y and on-the-nose game stories I've played in a while - complete with a bearded dude in plaid with ear gauges, and a narrative about being tormented by the literal embodiment of anxiety and depression in the most stereotypical way. And the game _doesn't do metaphor._ There's no metaphor here - it's all literal, and they call it out. "Look! There's my _inner demon_". It kinda feels like you're playing through an angsty teenagers english assignment. I think the concept had potential, but the execution of it is insufferable - and the game didn't mechanically need it. All of the game's mechanics would work just as well with zero story.
> 
> We'll see if maybe it can redeem itself in it's final chapters, 'cause I want to like the game, and in a lot of ways I do. But that story makes it a tough sell.


I got to chapter 3 or 4 and was waiting for the game to get good after all the critical and fan praise the game got. It just didn't so I stopped playing it. I played through Super Meat Boy. One murder-room platformer was quite enough for me.

On top of Hollow Knight, I really dug Axiom Verge for it's Metroid vibe.


----------



## TedEH

I'm not saying there's no place for that indie/iterative kind of gaming, or that they're bad games - I do like a lot of those games - and I fit into that category of liking metrdoidvania design when it's used well. I'm just observing that these games don't have as wide an appeal as the more "safe" bigger-budget spaces, and that we see a lot more iteration than innovation. There are bajillions of puzzle platformers, and tons of metroidvanias, and tons of casual farming and crafting sims and buckets of souls- and rogue- likes and lites etc etc etc. And yeah, sometimes that means you get a lot of copy-cat design and games that don't really tread much (or any) new ground. I try to play some indies fairly regularly, and I'm often left feeling like I've basically been through this same process 100 times already. Again - still good games, just not doing anything that hasn't been done before.

Lucas Pope is a good one to bring up - a great illustration of how being in a more innovative space comes with a lot of risk and a narrowing of the appeal of your work. I've not played Papers Please, but I did play Obra Dinn. That one had all of the novelty and innovation you could hope for in an indie game. It was pulled off very well. But the game, IMO, has a very narrow appeal - and I could imagine it not being much fun for wider demographics. There's little action, the whole puzzle of the game is very much at risk of feeling like a chore if you're not into being challenged in that way. I didn't end up solving as much of it as I'd hoped, and I probably won't go back to it. I technically liked the game, just not in a "I want to play this again" kind of way.


----------



## TedEH

Nicki said:


> If you're digging the indie vibe and haven't played Axiom Verge or Hollow Knight yet, those two are absolutely incredible.


I have played Hollow Knight - and it was a bit of a challenge not to get frustrated with it, but I got through it well enough to enjoy it. Does a lot of stuff really well, but it also sometimes treads that line of being frustrating.

Axiom Verge is in the backlog for sure - I have a copy in EGS, just haven't gotten to it yet. From what I understand, it's basically a well-executed Super Metroid clone - which was sort of my point from before: Likely a good game, but also very likely to feel like something I've played a dozen times already.


----------



## Nicki

TedEH said:


> I have played Hollow Knight - and it was a bit of a challenge not to get frustrated with it, but I got through it well enough to enjoy it. Does a lot of stuff really well, but it also sometimes treads that line of being frustrating.
> 
> Axiom Verge is in the backlog for sure - I have a copy in EGS, just haven't gotten to it yet. From what I understand, it's basically a well-executed Super Metroid clone - which was sort of my point from before: Likely a good game, but also very likely to feel like something I've played a dozen times already.



Yeah sorry. Totally missed that Hollow Knight was discussed earlier, hence the edit. 

With Axiom Verge, it definitely will feel like you've played it before since it's so heavily Metroid inspired. It's got more story and dialoge but also more secrets to discover if you end up REALLY digging into it. I think the point is that Nintendo hadn't released a new 2-D Metroid in decades so someone elsetook up that mantle. Then Nintendo eventually released Metroid 2 on 3DS.


----------



## TedEH

Funny enough, I quite liked that the Metroid 2 remake was significantly different than other Metroid titles.

Maybe I'm the odd one out in that I don't just want the same experiences over and over. A lot of games get a bad rep for not being enough like other games, or like earlier titles in the same franchise, etc., but I'm the weirdo always thinking that if I wanted to play the old games, I can just go play the old games. I want to see new stuff. I want to see things take new directions.


----------



## Ralyks

Nicki said:


> 100% not worth playing through and 100% nothing to do with Village. It's just basically a clean up of what happens to Lucas.
> 
> Honestly if you liked RE7, hunting down all of the trophies/achievements is a worthwhile task. It's not even that hard on Nightmare so long as you unlock the circular saw. It stretches the game out from an 8 - 10 hour game to a 40 hour game.



I did want to know what happens to Lucas and Zoe, but ended up just reading about the DLCs and save myself time and money.


----------



## wankerness

The super-high bridge to the hospital section in Last of Us 2 is now the scariest thing I've ever played. And it's not even full of zombies or dark or difficult!! Ugh. That was way too effective for those of us who have vertigo.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> Lucas Pope is a good one to bring up - a great illustration of how being in a more innovative space comes with a lot of risk and a narrowing of the appeal of your work. I've not played Papers Please, but I did play Obra Dinn. That one had all of the novelty and innovation you could hope for in an indie game. It was pulled off very well. But the game, IMO, has a very narrow appeal - and I could imagine it not being much fun for wider demographics. There's little action, the whole puzzle of the game is very much at risk of feeling like a chore if you're not into being challenged in that way. I didn't end up solving as much of it as I'd hoped, and I probably won't go back to it. I technically liked the game, just not in a "I want to play this again" kind of way.



Those are both the strengths and flaws of Obra Dinn It's definitely not for everyone, it's the crossword puzzle of video games. And the nature of deducting puzzles also means that there's absolutely no replay value whatsoever once you're done. 

Papers Please is simple paperwork sim that's almost plays like an IOS app game. But as off putting as that sounds, it's quite an engaging game. It's worth checking out as once you're in the world of bureaucracy, it puts you through some morally tough choices you wouldn't expect. Definitely recommended.


----------



## wankerness

LoU2's biggest failure is in its apparent trying to get you to side with Ellie equally with Abby. Like, Abby's far more appealing since she has a redemption arc going, while Ellie just becomes shittier and shittier as the game goes on. Abby repeatedly spares characters, Ellie kills EVERYONE (occasionally by accident, but still, screw her). And while they bother to make you care about Abby's supporting cast, Ellie is such an asshole to hers that you the player can't care, either. Like, Owen is actually likable. Dina's just sort of annoying, cause you the player treat her as if she's just sort of annoying. Jesse and Tommy are somewhat likable, but not more so than people like Manny in Abby's half. Mel's awful, but she's kind of supposed to be. And then there's no counterpart for the kids in Ellie's half, she's just too busy being an asshole.

Joel's gentler here than he was in the previous game, but again, Ellie is such a huge prick to him half the time you see them together that again, he's practically treated as an antagonist to you the player. And I played the last game so long ago I didn't have any lingering attachment to him from there. Not that I really did in the first place, given the very morally ambiguous ending to that game (still a candidate for all-time best ending). But, yeah, by the end you feel like Ellie is just trying to kill people to evade the guilt she feels at being such a huge bitch to Joel all the time when he was alive. She's an utterly repulsive character. The ending is pretty good/appropriate.

The graphics here are absolutely the best I've ever seen. Maybe Cyberpunk or something outdoes them if you run it on the right system, but sections like riding through the burning village are utterly spectacular and don't have a hint of performance issues. I wish this engine and team of designers/programmers would get deployed in the pursuits of a game that isn't mainly about ugliness. Too bad it sounds like their next project is a frickin remake of LoU1!!!


----------



## MFB

Anybody play (or at least download) the RE8 demo? I've got it going right now, super pumped as I thought demos were pretty much dead by this point.


----------



## Ralyks

MFB said:


> Anybody play (or at least download) the RE8 demo? I've got it going right now, super pumped as I thought demos were pretty much dead by this point.



The one from a few weeks ago or the one that apparently just came out or at least is preloaded? I played the first, have the new one downloaded.

As for Last of Us 2, I see your point on Ellie, but honestly, they could not get me to care about Abby. At all. As for the ending, were totally getting part 3 as a finale.


----------



## MFB

There was one previously? That's news to me, I was referring to the one that was both announced and released today (maybe it was announced before, but Google informed me today).


----------



## Mathemagician

Was that the demo where it just threw you into a creepy AF house? I walked around like twice and noped TF out.


----------



## MFB

That sounds more like the original RE7 demo, back when it was PT. 

So apparently it's locked for another day, or some bullshit? Mine says next demo in 23 hours and 35 mins, and then you can play the trailer, but no demo.


----------



## TedEH

I made it to the "end" of Celeste today. My opinion has not changed. Platforming is still good. The story is still not my cup of tea. I know there's more to the game after the first successful climb up the mountain, but I dislike the characters and world enough that I don't feel motivated to continue. So I call this one done, and move on.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Shadow Man: Remastered. Having a great time revisiting some nostalgia.

Hrot: As a self-proclaimed addict of the boomer shooter genre, this game scratches that itch.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> Shadow Man: Remastered. Having a great time revisiting some nostalgia.
> 
> Hrot: As a self-proclaimed addict of the boomer shooter genre, this game scratches that itch.



what’s the difference with the remastered version? Did they actually redo the visuals? Do the controls feel good?


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> what’s the difference with the remastered version? Did they actually redo the visuals? Do the controls feel good?




The controls feel better, but you may need to adjust the sensitivity on the sticks. They did update visuals, but not to the extent of being a remake. Some stuff that was lost in the original is back, such as cut content, and some areas have been rearranged. There is some polish, but more in the sake of making it more HD rather than a complete overall. I got it for 15 bucks and as a huge fan of the OG games, I'm very happy with my purchase.


----------



## wankerness

I never finished the first one and only have vague memories of creepy post apocalyptic deserts and pig men. I might have to pick it up one of these days. I’m glad it hasn’t been lost in the sands of time like most B-list N64/PSX games (legacy of Kain soul reaver, Turok 2 remasters please?!)


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> I never finished the first one and only have vague memories of creepy post apocalyptic deserts and pig men. I might have to pick it up one of these days. I’m glad it hasn’t been lost in the sands of time like most B-list N64/PSX games (legacy of Kain soul reaver, Turok 2 remasters please?!)




Interestingly, Soul Reaver was taken off of Steam for sale so Square Enix could do some fixes on it, and Nightdive tweeted, asking if they could have a hand in it. And Turok 2 has SOMETHING of a remaster. It's just a little bit of polish.


----------



## StevenC

MFB said:


> That sounds more like the original RE7 demo, back when it was PT.
> 
> So apparently it's locked for another day, or some bullshit? Mine says next demo in 23 hours and 35 mins, and then you can play the trailer, but no demo.


PT was the demo for a cancelled Silent Hill game, not RE7.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> So SaGa Frontier 1 remastered has just been released. I might pick it up and play it right after I'm done finishing Kasuga Ryu Quest 7.
> 
> The SaGa seires are basically Final Fantasy's more quirky hipster sister who'd rather hang in obscurity. And SaGa Frontier was pushing a lot of boundaries on what a JRPG could be back in it's initial release. It's pretty much proto Octopath Traveller with different character narratives. Though I liked SaGa Frontier 2 much better and skipped the last SaGa game (due to the reasons of 'too many games' and 'I straight up forgot'), it'll be fun to play this one.



Bought and installed this game while finishing off Yakuza Like A Dragon Quest VII Fragments of the Forgotten Past. Got way too grindy so I just up finished the story. I liked the legacy boss battles but even they started getting old when they took too long, even with high level characters. Or perhaps because I played it like FFV needing to level up all the jobs to some satisfaction. Still, the ending payoff was excellent and Kasuga Itchybum is a fantastic protagonist. It'll be interesting where his adventures go into the future.

Though I shouldn't complain about grind since the SaGa games are grindier than my co-producer's coffee routine every morning. But I heard there's some nice QOL upgrades that help streamline the multi protagonist free scenario game.

EDIT: Square Enix also announced a Legend Of Mana Remaster. I guess they're taking my money again.


----------



## Ralyks

Played the RE Village demo. It is very much a sequel to RE7 with newer technology. But I'm hoping they were hinting at Ethan's mental state playing a more important part of the story.


----------



## wankerness

After huge backlash, Sony's PS3/Vita servers have been granted a stay of execution indefinitely. Great! Now maybe someday I'll eventually find a working used PS3 so I can play the copy of MGS4 I've had on my account for years from PS+.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Horizon zero dawn is free now. What’s the verdict? I like third person action games but dislike aimlessly wandering around open worlds or at least having to spend an inordinate amount of time going from one objective to another. I’m seeing there might be a good bit of that. Also just how much crafting and inventory time do you have to spend?


----------



## MFB

Fairly early on in HZD, you'll be so over-run with resources that you don't really have to pay much attention to it; just craft as many arrows/traps/etc as you can carry, and feel free to drop as much as you want to free up space since you'll refill it just as quick. For me, as an open world game, it was an 8/10 - I'm pretty 'over' the open world type games, but it had such a unique setting to it and great gameplay that I couldn't help but want to play it.


----------



## wankerness

TheShreddinHand said:


> Horizon zero dawn is free now. What’s the verdict? I like third person action games but dislike aimlessly wandering around open worlds or at least having to spend an inordinate amount of time going from one objective to another. I’m seeing there might be a good bit of that. Also just how much crafting and inventory time do you have to spend?



HZD is the best open world action game IMO. I dunno what your problem is, exactly - you want to be able to fast-travel everywhere? If so, its system for that is pretty robust. But, the world and combat are enjoyable enough I didn't use it constantly, unlike many other games. The world is beautiful, the enemies are actually fun to fight and varied, and you can get a mount that speeds things up. But, you run very fast by default and you can fast travel if the distance is more than you want to run.

Crafting? It's sort of like the far cry games where you get some inventory upgrades and stuff by killing random small animals for skins, and then also get ammo/potion materials from plants. It's VERY fast, you can even craft it while in combat without pausing. But, you do need to make sure you're hitting the button to harvest all the trees you run past so you don't eventually run out of arrows. It was not a frequent problem for me, that's for sure. I spent a ton of time running around in the world, but I only remember truly running out of ammo on one boss, and that was in the DLC.

I think it's a combo of the best stuff from the Ubisoft games and the last Tomb Raider games. The combat is easily the best of any third-person action RPG in a similar style (kind of a combo of the arrows from Tomb Raider, the traps and gadgets from Far Cry, the movement of the later AC games minus all the getting stuck climbing on buildings and short ledges).


----------



## TedEH

I downloaded it last night too, and I definitely plan on giving it a shot at some point. Maybe soon, but maybe not, who knows.

I started playing a bit of the newer Hitman since EGS gave it away free a while back. I haven't played a lot of Hitman games, but so far I like what they've done with it, at least compared with something like Absolution.

I had also picked up a really cheap copy of Wind Waker, so I've been kinda slowly poking at those two when I have time.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> HZD is the best open world action game IMO.



Even over Ghosts of Tsushima?


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Even over Ghosts of Tsushima?



Yes. I liked the plot and weird setting more than Ghost of Tsushima, and I GREATLY prefer the fast and furious bow and arrow/heavy sling action over anything else I've ever played. It feels better to me than gun combat ala Uncharted or Gears of War, and I tend to just prefer ranged combat to melee combat. I kinda like the drawing of the bow and then instant release once it's lined up over gun combat where the bullet shoots as soon as you press the button, where I tend to spray around and miss more often.

Plus, fighting gigantic robot alligators, birds, dinosaurs, worms, and big cats is a lot more entertaining than variants on generic ninja guys.

Ghost of Tsushima has better graphics and the melee combat system puts that in a game like an AC game to shame. It's also fast and furious and once you've learned all the stances, very fun/satisfying. I'd say that game is the second best open-world game I've played.

I'm not saying Ghost of Tsushima had bad characters or anything, it's just kinda dull in that department. HZD's whole scifi setting is pretty compelling, especially once you start getting late into the game and finding out exactly what went down - especially when you get to the old world base. A lot of the most compelling drama is in audio logs, which is normally not something I appreciate, but really worked here IMO, at least on par with the original Bioshock. The characters are not on par with something by Naughty Dog or anything, but I'd still rate the story WAY higher than any other open world actioner.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Got a PS3 Slim on the way as well as a new 2TB drive for it (that I'm hoping works with it). Even with the 1TB I currently have in my super slim there's not a lot of room for the stuff I still haven't downloaded. I've got a bunch of Vita games from PS+ that I just never downloaded cause I never owned one, but I'll be damned if I let them sit in limbo in the off chance they just don't shut down all access to the service on legacy platforms. Plus, I've priced a couple games that a significantly cheaper to buy digitally now than physically (Yakuza: Dead Souls for example) and are huge download files.


----------



## wankerness

I think I'm going to borrow my brother's old PS3 (busted disc drive) and download the couple games I want to try and call it a day. So far, I'm only thinking MGS4. Is Yakuza: Dead Souls actually any good?

I have a PSTV already - I got Persona 4 a while ago, but that's all I've used it for. Not sure if there's any other Vita stuff I actually want to play. Probably not.


----------



## TedEH

I started up that free Horizon copy yesterday and first impression is that it feels like Open World Tomb Raider. Something you could potentially pour a lot of hours into. Art direction feels solid. World building seems solid so far. Sometimes the audio seems a little odd to me, but that's something I'm nitpicky about. I occasionally can't figure out where you can or can't climb things (it lacks the Tomb-Raider-esque white paint / scratches on every navigable surface).

Seems like something I could get into. But I also don't want to forget the other two games I started.


----------



## Drew

Started a new character for the Diablo III Seasn 23 - they revamped the follower system, and now followers can equip pretty much anything, and in many instances share any item abilities from items they equip with you.

DIV probably won't be out till 2022 and is being developed aggressicely, so it's cool they're still tweaking some of the fairly core mechanics of II - I bought this shortly after it came out in 2012, I think (I waited a few weeks until after I sat for the second CFA exam, since I couldn't afford the distraction ) and here we are in 2021 and while it's barely recognizable from its initial release, I've clearly gotten my money's worth.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Thanks for the input on HZD, will give it a shot after I finish up some other games!


----------



## wankerness

Drew said:


> Started a new character for the Diablo III Seasn 23 - they revamped the follower system, and now followers can equip pretty much anything, and in many instances share any item abilities from items they equip with you.
> 
> DIV probably won't be out till 2022 and is being developed aggressicely, so it's cool they're still tweaking some of the fairly core mechanics of II - I bought this shortly after it came out in 2012, I think (I waited a few weeks until after I sat for the second CFA exam, since I couldn't afford the distraction ) and here we are in 2021 and while it's barely recognizable from its initial release, I've clearly gotten my money's worth.



Diablo 3 definitely became a good game over time. I preordered it on PC and suffered through the first iteration for a while back when all drops were total dogshit unless you functionally won the lottery and got something useful for your class, in a ploy by Blizz/Activision to shove everyone over to the real money auction house. Getting good gear was nearly impossible and I was frequently tempted to buy stuff off there. I still managed to level a couple classes to max before they made the game fun, and then I levelled the rest of the classes to max and did a bit of adding inferno levels on a couple characters and generally had a lot of fun. Much later on I got the PS4 version, and had fun with that all over again (the port is remarkably great to play considering it was total point and click movement on PC). I think that's probably the best conversion of such heavily mouse-centric controls I've ever seen on console. I mean, you couldn't really do the same kinds of stutter-step kiting moves as the demon hunter, but by and large the change in the way the movement worked was not a downgrade at all for most classes.

Anyway, I've put a few hundred hours into it total and think they really righted all the wrongs from that initial launch. I am not sure if I'll bother with getting IV right away, but I might if the console versions are as good as 3's.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 (  Seriously Yoko Taro...) has been released today and Square Enix will be taking my money again. I'll check the price before pulling the trigger, since I'm also holding back at Tokyo Xanadu (I'm not paying 100 bucks for a HD port of a PS Vita game).

Also noticed this:



The first of 3 free DLC reasons I'll be replaying Spiritfarer again and looking forward to getting my heart broken again too. I've been very vocal about recommending Spirifarer to everyone and the prudent thing to do is continue to be very vocal about recommending Spirifarer to everyone.


----------



## wankerness

Oh, I didn't realize that Nier was coming out so soon. I will hold off on it since I'm in the throes of Persona 5 Royal and that will probably take another week or two (I'm in the pyramid now). Also, I'm sort of wanting to get the platinum on Last of Us 2 since all that's left is doing NG+ for finishing upgrades, but I'm not sure how much of NG+ I'd have to play and I don't really want to go through the entire game again. Nier will still be there when I'm done!

Spiritfarer's on my list when it gets cheaper.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Also, I'm sort of wanting to get the platinum on Last of Us 2 since all that's left is doing NG+ for finishing upgrades, but I'm not sure how much of NG+ I'd have to play and I don't really want to go through the entire game again.



It's an easy one: Play until you have all the upgrades you need, and then after that just use chapter select if you missed some collectibles, etc. You can even enable some of the visual aids (there's a ton of them) to make it even easier.


----------



## gabito

Still playing RDR2 (2nd time), currently on Saint Denis.

I was having fun until now, just playing one or two hours a day, but I don't know if I'm getting bored of the game, or just burnt out and I don't feel like keep playing it. Maybe I'll stop playing for a few weeks, months or whatever and I'll get back to it later.

I still think the UI is shit. And even if I love GTA V (I played the single player campaign many many times...), I think this type of "R*'s game design" is kind of outdated / tired now.

I just saw that HZD Complete Edition is free now. Great game, I have the base game on disc but never played the DLC so I'll give it a go later. The character face's animations / uncanny valley are the creepiest thing on that game BTW. I also found the voice acting somewhat wooden but still a great game overall, the plot kept me thinking and guessing about what happened to the world.


----------



## TedEH

I've been noticing some animation jank in HZD too, but nothing toooooo bad. Mostly just characters that snap awkwardly into position during cutscenes.

I made the observation that the inclusion of something that almost looks like loot boxes is kinda weird - like they might have planned on having loot box microtransactions at some point and it got cut, but the boxes themselves and the weird currency/token used to get them somehow stayed in the game. As soon as I saw the pattern -> the in-game currency/tokens, the rarity levels, the free "starter pack" style sampler, etc. - a red flag went off and I had to google whether or not the game had microtransactions in it. I was ready to be annoyed, but they're just a weird loot dropping mechanic. Odd.


----------



## Drew

wankerness said:


> Diablo 3 definitely became a good game over time. I preordered it on PC and suffered through the first iteration for a while back when all drops were total dogshit unless you functionally won the lottery and got something useful for your class, in a ploy by Blizz/Activision to shove everyone over to the real money auction house. Getting good gear was nearly impossible and I was frequently tempted to buy stuff off there. I still managed to level a couple classes to max before they made the game fun, and then I levelled the rest of the classes to max and did a bit of adding inferno levels on a couple characters and generally had a lot of fun. Much later on I got the PS4 version, and had fun with that all over again (the port is remarkably great to play considering it was total point and click movement on PC). I think that's probably the best conversion of such heavily mouse-centric controls I've ever seen on console. I mean, you couldn't really do the same kinds of stutter-step kiting moves as the demon hunter, but by and large the change in the way the movement worked was not a downgrade at all for most classes.
> 
> Anyway, I've put a few hundred hours into it total and think they really righted all the wrongs from that initial launch. I am not sure if I'll bother with getting IV right away, but I might if the console versions are as good as 3's.


I played the original as a kid long enough to beat it once, and when I heard III was nearing the end of development I grabbed the expansion pack for II and played that through as well. The fact there eas this big "end game" thing where after beating the game the focus became on leveling characters and getting better gear and everything literally wasn't even on my radar, I just beat it and stopped, lol.

DIII, thanks to its online only format and the more social nature of the game, I definitely started to get further into end-game play, but it helped that I had zero experience with that coming into it. I still get some shit from a few buddies because, when they asked me why I was running a shield on a wizard, I pointed to the % chance to block, and now "block wizards" are a damned near decade old running joke in the clan (either SS or MG, I don't remember if we'd split off by 2012).

I've since gotten a little better (lol)but i guess it was kind of a mercy that back when drops were really shitty, I wasn't really looking for anything in particular and was mostly there for the storyline and progression.

I guess, though, D2 rolled out much the same way where it's final, well-liked form was nothing at all lke it was at release, so there's reason to suspect DIV is going to evolve a lot over time too. I guess my thoguhts are I'll just look forward to playing it through for the story when it comes out, and then expect that a year or two down the road it's going to be a lot cooler than it is on release.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I've been noticing some animation jank in HZD too, but nothing toooooo bad. Mostly just characters that snap awkwardly into position during cutscenes.
> 
> I made the observation that the inclusion of something that almost looks like loot boxes is kinda weird - like they might have planned on having loot box microtransactions at some point and it got cut, but the boxes themselves and the weird currency/token used to get them somehow stayed in the game. As soon as I saw the pattern -> the in-game currency/tokens, the rarity levels, the free "starter pack" style sampler, etc. - a red flag went off and I had to google whether or not the game had microtransactions in it. I was ready to be annoyed, but they're just a weird loot dropping mechanic. Odd.



I don't know if it's a PC specific thing, but i quite often noticed crazy eyes in the cutscenes. Like they were almost vibrating in looking around too quickly.

I love the game universe. But then i love post-apocalypse and post-post-apocalypse situations.
The main problem i had with the game was that i got just over half-way through (i think) when it became way too easy, and everything became almost a formality. I need to start again on a higher difficulty level, but not sure if that will cure the sudden difficulty decrease when higher gear levels & functions become available.


----------



## StevenC

I forgot how bad my internet was for downloading anything but Abzu, The Witness, Subnautica and HZD are flowing down the series of tubes and will hopefully be here tomorrow sometime.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> It's an easy one: Play until you have all the upgrades you need, and then after that just use chapter select if you missed some collectibles, etc. You can even enable some of the visual aids (there's a ton of them) to make it even easier.



I got all the collectibles on playthrough 1, it's just the "get all supplement upgrades" and "get all weapon upgrades" that are left. Doing chapter select doesn't work for that, unfortunately, since choosing a new chapter effectively resets your save so you can't just redo the chapter with the easiest ones to get repeatedly, and it's dependent on collecting a lot more than you can get in a single chapter.


----------



## NotDonVito

I've had a new interest in some older JRPGS recently since I learned that most new releases of these games have speed up modes for grinding field battles and such. Going to play through some final fantasy stuff later, but right now I'm starting out with Phantasy Star 2-4 and Shining Force 1/2 on the genesis compilation game, pretty much auto battling weaker enemies and skipping through the story since I've already beaten most of these games years ago. Yeah I know you can do all this on emulators for free, but I like to kick back and play these kind of games on a TV with controller. I want to play some newer games, but I'm stuck waiting until summer/fall for games like Mario Golf, House of the Dead, Disgaea 6, Samurai Warriors 5, ect..


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I got all the collectibles on playthrough 1, it's just the "get all supplement upgrades" and "get all weapon upgrades" that are left. Doing chapter select doesn't work for that, unfortunately, since choosing a new chapter effectively resets your save so you can't just redo the chapter with the easiest ones to get repeatedly, and it's dependent on collecting a lot more than you can get in a single chapter.



I don't remember exactly, but I think you'll get all the supplements and weapon upgrades way before finishing your 2nd playthrough. And you can always set the difficulty to the easiest one, you'll do everything you need to do in a few hours (and I think the game will give you a lot more supplement and weapon upgrades if you do that).

I think I played the game once on medium / normal difficulty, and then on easy for the second time using the visual aids to find the collectibles easily. I just missed one or two workbenchs that I had to look up on some guide.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I've decided not to buy Nier Replicant ver 3.1415926535 since SaGa Frontier will be taking my attention. And it'll be a wonky one.

The SaGa games were made when Square thought the mechanics in Final Fantasy 2 were a good idea and decide to make a full series of it on the gameboy, even naming it Final Fantasy Legend to the gaijin plebs. The series largely stayed local with FF was getting to see the world and getting famous on it's 7th installment, most likely due to the Mystic Quest deal again: these games were too complex for the western gamers. It was the 90s. But I managed to play Romancing SaGa 3 on the SNES years ago and... yeah I supposed they kinda had a point.  It had open exploration with little to no indication of where to go and what to do, enemies level up with you, the FF2 system was evolved and refined, but still rather complex, new abilities are learned entirely arbitrarily, and it had permadeath (the first game I played with the mechanic). Long story short, this is a JRPG series that does not screw around. 

SaGa Frontier 1 is proto Octopath Traveller but with less hand holding and more middle fingers and kicks to the balls, all at your direction. You have 7 characters to choose from (all very different from each other): then... just go do whatever you want, figure it out yourself. Thankfully the Remaster really does up the ante on the QOL perks. They actually give you objectives and hints on what the hell to do (in a few sentences and key words). They put map pointers in the open world so you know if it's a door you can enter or a badly designed crack or gaping hole. And turns out, when you finish one character, the levels of all your main, and other characters recruited (there's plenty) carry over your next, character choice NG+ style. That was not in the original... and can you imagine the amount of frustration to come out with repetitive grinding only to piss it away when you play the next story. 

The remaster also adds a new character... which apparently was supposed to be in the original, but left out when SaGa suffered the early Square problem of getting their budget cut in favour of feeding Final Fantasy's overbloated gullet and making Cloud and Squall look ever so dreamy during the FMVs (Xenogears I'm looking at you). 

I'm hoping to get this done relatively quickly (banking on the fact that it's not as long as modern games, with some characters being rather short). But it will be a fun and interesting trip through one of Sqaure Enix's malnourished bastard mutant children from the 5th gen. It actually feels weird knowing first hand that it's own sequel SaGa Frontier 2 was comparatively, a completely different game.


----------



## TedEH

I'm a bit surprised that I had heard people say HZD had bad looking animations, 'cause so far I find I'm pretty impressed by how well the game is conveying the intended emotions/expressions. So many games drop the ball hard on that element.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I'm a bit surprised that I had heard people say HZD had bad looking animations, 'cause so far I find I'm pretty impressed by how well the game is conveying the intended emotions/expressions. So many games drop the ball hard on that element.


I've been playing about 4 or 5 hours now and I gotta say I hate all of the conversations. Between bad lipsyncing, bad voice acting and stilted motion capture I just don't want to see them. I know the game is 4 years old now, but this feels no smoother or life like than games from 10 years earlier.

For real, AAA games need to give up on motion capture because they're not getting better with it.

And her hair annoys me in cutscenes too. It looks like they really tried with it, but just didn't put much detail in. Like it blowing in the wind in a cave that doesn't otherwise appear windy, and just generally not knowing what it's supposed to be doing.

Two things related to the engine. Every time I'm in a cutscenes I'm waiting for it to just smoothly go back into gameplay like in Death Stranding, which uses the same engine. Also it's funny how similar this feels to DS to the point where I sometimes try DS controls and get confused instinctively, while DS also feels so similar to MGSV in a lot of ways that this doesn't even slightly.


----------



## TedEH

I don't find the voice acting to be bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I do see what you mean about the lip sync though. 

I do see a lot of jank in the animations, but I don't think it's because of motion capture - I strongly suspect it's a problem of smoothing or blending over different animations. I notice a lot of jumps when going between states, like entering cutscenes, or beginning an interaction with something. If I had to guess, the character movement seems to be using something like root-motion where the movement is sort of driven by the model itself, which could also be a factor.


----------



## Yelir

I replayed Limbo and finally played Inside on the combo pack on X1. Before that I really got immersed in Rez Infinite on PSVR.

Whomever here still cares about retro games, new titles are still coming out. I will try to fire up the NES by end of month!

https://morphcatgames.itch.io/spacegulls


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## TedEH

I'd be down for some retro titles if you can recommend ones doing something interesting or particularly good. Nostalgia aside, some old titles were just.... bad. But some still hold up. I've heard about people making new games for super old platforms (like Planet X2 being made by the 8-Bit Guy), but no idea if that scene is actually fun to get into.


----------



## Yelir

TedEH said:


> I'd be down for some retro titles if you can recommend ones doing something interesting or particularly good. Nostalgia aside, some old titles were just.... bad. But some still hold up. I've heard about people making new games for super old platforms (like Planet X2 being made by the 8-Bit Guy), but no idea if that scene is actually fun to get into.


Do you mean fun to get into as in making the software or just playing as an end user? I know the NES/SNES/GENESIS scene is thriving, an unexpected popular outlet is Game Boy titles as well. There was a game development comp about 6 months ago held to make N64 games. I think the next few years for homebrew will be really exciting.

If you have other questions about gaming stuff I usually delve into all imported games and hardware. There is tons of schlock released (especially for licensed tv/films) but always lots of decent stuff.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Went to find a PS5 after work. Came home empty handed. One sales rep acted like I insulted his family by even inquiring about one.

So I'm just playing through my current backlog. Got NHL 2K10 in the system now. I keep looking on ebay and amazon for games I skipped over and alot of stuff is either priced out of any consideration or was just shovelware. And I'm getting to the point that I'm considering buying Assassin's Creed games. I played an hour of III and about an hour of IV and never returned to either. Neither hooked me.

One game in hindsight I wish I didn't skipout on is Asura's Wrath. The priced on the used market is insane, and I can't get it digitally on the PS3, but I can get it on the xbox marketplace for $20. If anything it'll give me an excuse to turn my 360 on for the first time in about two years.


----------



## TedEH

Yelir said:


> Do you mean fun to get into as in making the software or just playing as an end user?


I meant more as an end user - I've poked around with the Genesis one or twice, but not exactly looking to start another project right now that I'll likely never finish.


----------



## wankerness

I'm surprised by the hate for HZD's graphics. I sure thought i looked spectacular, but I guess I didn't spend time staring at the character models much cause I was just in a hurry to get back out in the world and kill robot dinosaurs. It also was my first game on the system, so I had lowered expectations. I might have to replay it and get the platinum (I was only missing the stupid timed trial areas, I could never get the one where you had to make logs roll on the enemies to work right).

I played the game through on hardest difficulty for playthrough 2 and never felt very challenged until the DLC area. I am guessing the early game on playthrough 1 would be pretty raunchy on hard, though, since you don't already have all your abilities.

Anyway, I'm still chipping away at Persona 5 Royal (60 hours in, on the spaceport). As I first played it a few years ago, I'm having a hard time remembering what was and wasn't in the base game. There's clearly a whole new town that figures prominently, and there's clearly a new confidant/girlfriend gymnast chick, but I can't remember if Akechi was a confidant in the original, I can't remember if the councillor guy was in the original, I feel like the cat was vastly more annoying with telling you you couldn't go out, etc. I will read a comparison once I'm finished.

This is quite a good game, but the occasional long stretches where you can't do anything except watch cutscenes can be utterly infuriating. Seems to happen less in this version, at least, but wow, that stretch from the Hawaii trip on for the next ten days or so really sucks. Or when you get a week where you can't leave your room and can only craft stuff, but you run out of materials after the first day and can't go down the street to buy more. Oh well.

I need to actually play Persona 4. I started it shortly after finishing Persona 5, but was burned out on Persona at the time and thus didn't get very far. Right after finishing this probably won't be a good time, either. I think I might finally play MGS2/3 since I have them on 360.


----------



## TedEH

I kinda wonder if HZD is a bit of a victim of too much hype. I see it praised as "the best open world game, seriously guys" and things like that. So if you're expecting THE BEST GAME EVER and it falls short, then ok sure. It has flaws and it has jank. But it's not a bad game by any stretch. It's not using the most advanced visuals I've ever seen, but the art direction is mostly on-point. It's not the smoothest animation I've ever seen, but it's easily passable. The voice acting isn't going to win any awards, but there's nothing egregiously bad about it given how ridiculous some voice acting in games can be. IMO the biggest point against it so far, for me, has been the open world itself - but that's mostly because I think open worlds don't "click" for me very easily. I'm an old dude who likes simple linear games and doesn't have time to "make my own narrative" and remember why I was in some part of the map in the first place after being distracted by 8 different quests going on at the same time - so while I really enjoy the world building, it worries me that games like this will sort of devolve into waypoint hunting.


----------



## StevenC

My biggest complaint about the graphics is that I can't ever seen anything. The game's lighting is a bit weird so that at night I can't see anything and when it's day time everything is the same colour. I'm using a 4k hdr TV fwiw, and have tried all the visual settings.

It's just a lot of work to know what's going on any of the time. Just did my first Cauldron and it's so frustrating not being able to see what I'm hiding from or what I'm supposed to be looking at.

I don't really know how I feel about this game so far, I just know it's hard to look at.


----------



## TedEH

Yeah I can kinda see that - despite the world looking very good, it would be fair to say the visuals are so busy that it's hard to pick out important details. A lot of times I'm finding myself relying on sound and the focus thingie to tell if anything is around, and often not noticing until it's too late. Half the time I know someone's around because the little yellow awareness circle pops up.

I did just do the first bandit camp mission and I think that's been one of the more fun self-contained bits. Enter area, scope things out, plan a bit, execute the plan, feel like a badass, leave.


----------



## wankerness

I'm really not understanding all these problems you guys are having. I don't remember having any issues with how the game looked. Then again, I didn't play it on a 4K TV, and a lot of games, when run in HDR mode, turn into a real morass without a lot of tweaking of TV settings. Though I guess you can't even do that without a PS4 pro and I know Ted doesn't have one.


----------



## StevenC

I set the TV up to run well with Death Stranding and F1 because that's all I play on PS4 (it's my brother's, mainly for anime fighters). They look fine and I don't have the same issues.

Like if I'm in some area with boar, I'll use Focus to see if anything is nearby and a bunch of stuff I can't see appears, then I'll mark the boar and jump around a bit to see if it's in front of me or on the other side of a hill I can't see because it all blends together. Then I need to get two headshots on a thing I can't see. This is all assuming it's not in any tall grass or other tall not grass shrubbery.

The snow areas aren't as bad because at least there's a contrasting background from some angles, but even then robots can be indistinguishable from rocks or a cliff face. There's just no hope the rest of the time.

Another thing that's either the lighting or just bad art direction is that I never have any idea where I should be shooting on the robots, because I can't see the different parts because they all might as well be the same colour except in extreme cases like a Bellowback. I think videogamedunkey had a video about this at one point about how much more important knowing what you're doing is to immersion and enjoyment than gritty realism. When I see a giant red spot on a boss in a Mario game it doesn't break anything because this is a Mario game. But when HZD is telling me I need to shoot at things I can't see in-game and demonstrating on a well lit and highlighted motionless model, I just get frustrated.

And don't get me started on not telling me what any of the symbols mean.

I'm trying really hard to enjoy this game and was excited to play, but it just keeps getting in the way of itself.


----------



## Ralyks

Which do I start first: NieR: Replicant Ver. way Too Many Fucking Numbers, or Judgement on PS5 (I only played a few hours in to the PS4 version)?


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> Just did my first Cauldron


I juuuuuust did that part now, and quite liked that section. Kinda gave me a Mass Effect vibe - particularly the vaults in Andromeda. I think I'm getting through it pretty slowly - I'm tending to try to knock down any side quests before I move on with the main ones, and I get the impression that different players might have a pretty different path through the game.



wankerness said:


> a lot of games, when run in HDR mode, turn into a real morass without a lot of tweaking of TV settings


I have one screen that can do HDR, but I think it's the most basic form of HDR and it doesn't look good. Any game I've tried with it looked worse than with it off, so I leave it off.



StevenC said:


> I'm trying really hard to enjoy this game





wankerness said:


> I'm really not understanding all these problems you guys are having


In my case, I'm actually enjoying the game quite a bit. It's hitting that exploration-y action-y adventure-y itch pretty well. More than worth the $0 price I paid for it, if anything I think it's good enough to justify me getting a PS4 in the first place given cheap I got it. I'm critical, but that's 'cause I'm a picky asshole, not 'cause I think it's a bad game. But I can be critical while still finding things to enjoy in the game - I mean, I mostly enjoyed Mass Effect Andromeda and the Thief reboot, and those are both very flawed experiences.


----------



## StevenC

Definitely one of the better games I've ever gotten for free. Beyond Good & Evil still takes that crown though.

I'm playing every quest as I get it, basically, so I think we're probably at the same place in the main missions at the minute.

I'm trying to judge the game by itself and not compare it too much with other games, but so far I'm not understanding the hype. Hopefully that changes soon and it clicks.


----------



## TedEH

If I had to guess, I think the hype is basically just that it's a reasonably well implemented open-world, where the open world seems to serve a purpose and opens up as you go along, compared to a lot of titles where "open-world" has ended up meaning "boring objective marker collecting" with no real sense of exploration or progression. That, and the premise is a good hook: who doesn't want to hunt post-apocalyptic robot dinosaurs?

Take the comparison of the typical Ubisoft open-world game. I went through Watch_Dogs 2 a while back, and while it was decent, the open world didn't serve that same purpose. It was just a place to litter missions into at random. Maybe we've finally figured out how to make an open world compelling with titles like BotW and HZD, and it just clicks for some people.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Which do I start first: NieR: Replicant Ver. way Too Many Fucking Numbers, or Judgement on PS5 (I only played a few hours in to the PS4 version)?



Nier. It's good, or at least the 360 one was, especially if you were a big fan of Automata's story. I think Nier's story is a bit better, even if it also has some incredibly cringey stuff (mainly with Emil dialogue). The soundtrack's almost as good as Automata's, meaning it's a candidate for second best game soundtrack of all time. It takes several hours to get going, though. I look forward to replaying it at some point. Too bad it sounds like playthrough FIVE is the one I'm really interested in with the remake!


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> If I had to guess, I think the hype is basically just that it's a reasonably well implemented open-world, where the open world seems to serve a purpose and opens up as you go along, compared to a lot of titles where "open-world" has ended up meaning "boring objective marker collecting" with no real sense of exploration or progression. That, and the premise is a good hook: who doesn't want to hunt post-apocalyptic robot dinosaurs?
> 
> Take the comparison of the typical Ubisoft open-world game. I went through Watch_Dogs 2 a while back, and while it was decent, the open world didn't serve that same purpose. It was just a place to litter missions into at random. Maybe we've finally figured out how to make an open world compelling with titles like BotW and HZD, and it just clicks for some people.



What I liked about the game is mainly the story. I didn't care much about the characters, some are fine, but none is great. Graphics are cool, it looks very good to me. Fighting is OK I guess? Not my thing, but it can be very good once you get it. The world is great, everything's there for a reason. Facial animations are not bad, but often they don't match the dialog... that's a bit disconcerting. I find the face design somewhat into the uncanny valley. And the voice acting is sometimes natural, but I found it mostly Bethesda-like wooden / stilted. I think they definitely would benefit from better direction. It sounds really awkward to me: strange pauses, weird emphasis... I don't know, I'm not even a native english speaker and the delivery sounds really odd sometimes.

(I guess the next paragraph could be spoiler-y so beware...)

But the setting is fantastic. It's kind of a post apocalyptic Terminator / The Matrix thing "the machines will screw us up" but with deeper, more elaborated lore. It's nothing super original, but I love what they did with it.

Anyway, I overall loved the game, I didn't care much about its "imperfections" or things I didn't care or like. It's one of very few games I really liked from this past generation.

In other news, I got really bored or burned out with RDR2 and deleted it... game, save files, everything. Don't want to play that thing ever again. Not a bad game, but the main problem (to me) seems to be that games are sooooo long and filled with stuff to do sometimes that I end up drained and unwilling to keep playing.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> (I guess the next paragraph could be spoiler-y so beware...)


There are [ spoiler ] tags you can use to hide stuff so that those of us still going through the game don't have anything important spoiled.


----------



## wankerness

HZD's biggest plot revelations are probably in the back quarter or so of the game. I think the build-up over time works well. I think the stuff with the villain characters in the modern world is less interesting than the backstory. And boy, did I not really enjoy Cedric Daniels' weird voice being given so much prominence. I'm not a big fan of that guy in general, though.

One thing that puts HZD above many of the other open world games out there is that the side quests are given a bit more effort than the vast majority you see in something like Dragon Age 3 or especially AC games. They usually try to at least have some kind of character stuff going on in them. It doesn't always WORK, but if you've played a bunch of open world action games you'll probably notice it's a step up. Nothing on par with The Witcher 3's bloody butcher sidequest obviously, but then again the Witcher 3 didn't even have anything else on par with that quest.


----------



## wankerness

Persona 5 is a RIDICULOUS slog in some sections. I'd forgotten, it's been a few years! The death march of early October (after the Haru/Spaceport dungeon) is legitimately 2 hours of almost completely non-interactive gameplay. I am looking back more favorably on the extended cutscenes in Yakuza 8 now! I mean, I like the plot, but it's still a LOT.

I'm now 70 hours in and looks like only about 2/3 of the way through it, at best. Though I think that count's pretty inflated cause I'm pretty sure it counted being on the pause screen as time played!

I might have to go play something else to take a breather.


----------



## TedEH

The only Persona game I've played is 3, and I remember that one feeling like a drag at times. The way the timeline thing works out, there's no fast way through the game. Sort of a back and forth between bland high school drama and grindy rpg dungeon crawling. I would guess 5 is kinda similar?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> The only Persona game I've played is 3, and I remember that one feeling like a drag at times. The way the timeline thing works out, there's no fast way through the game. Sort of a back and forth between bland high school drama and grindy rpg dungeon crawling. I would guess 5 is kinda similar?



That's more or less every Persona game: a balancing act between life sim and JRPG gameplay loops. Though of course the series has evolved and improved in quality in every installment since. The high school segments have more variety in side activities and you've got interesting stylish dungeons as opposed to just crawling in one boring monotonous dungeon (but there's one in P5 too). If anything, I've always thought P5 was a best of compilation of all the Persona games before it.


----------



## wankerness

I've only played 5 and a little bit of 4, from what I've heard everything pre-4 is very user-unfriendly, kind of tedious, and weirdly nasty in difficulty besides. I don't know much, though. "The way the timeline thing works out, there's no fast way through the game. Sort of a back and forth between bland high school drama and grindy rpg dungeon crawling." is accurate - there is no "fast way" through the game other than using skip on every single cutscene, which fortunately the game does allow you to do! However, it's not very grindy. If you play it like I do, you tend to clear dungeons in one or two in-game days, and the game's calendar is completely immutable - the same events have deadlines on the same days no matter when you choose to actually clear the dungeons, you just have more "free time" if you do the dungeons all in one long go in one day.

Basically every day is blocked into daytime/evening activity slots. For each slot, you can choose to hang out with people (basically, watch cutscenes that might result in improving "bonds" with other characters, which occasionally gives you bonuses for combat/dungeons/persona creation), go to a dungeon, or do activities to raise your "social stats" (many of these are also basically just watching cutscenes, some of them are more interactive, especially in P5 Royal with darts added). A lot of character bond events are gated behind your social stats being at a certain level.

There's a ton of planning and different ways to play the game, but if you're a completist paranoiac like me, you want to make sure you maximize every unit of time until everything's maxed. The game has the same number of available time slots no matter what, so trying to do dungeons as infrequently as possible and clear them in a single session is always ideal, or else you have a very, very slow-motion countdown to failure if you hit the end of all available timeslots and did a bad job of increasing social stats/bonds with characters. I think you could probably still beat the game without getting all the bonuses from personal bonds, but it would be a lot more difficult.

It's really not as "grindy" in a typical sense as most RPGs. I did ONE long grind session after reading that the spaceport boss was insanely difficult in P5 Royal, but before and after that I pretty much just did beelines for my objectives and killed enemies I happened upon incidently and have been fine. Oh, and grinding becomes an absolute joke once you're around level 50 - my last run through Mementos (the game-long dungeon that's basically only for "sidequests") consisted of just speeding everywhere in a van and running over/insta-killing every single enemy, getting several levels of experience without once having to see a combat screen.


----------



## Ralyks

I think the space station is where I ended up taking a week or two off from the original Persona 5 too. It's my.fsvorite game only behind Final Fantasy VII, but yeah, I had 130 hours by the end. I want to finish Royal this year, but my backlog isn't getting better. In the span of one week alone has been NieR Replicant, Judgement PS5, and soon Returnal, plus I want to go back to 100% Yakuza Like a Dragon at some point.

I really should hook my PSTV back up and go back to Persona 4 Golden. Or they really should make a compilation of all of the games up through 4 Golden (and yes, both versions of Persona 2).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Clocked a few hours on SaGa Frontier 1 and so far so smooth. I was prepared for some tough times, but then again, both Frontier 2 and Unlimited lulled me to a smooth and casual play before it ramped the difficulty curve and relentlessly kicked me in the balls. 

I went through a few searches and the character Red was the most recommended starting character. This was around the time when Square Enix were naming their characters like Red and Blue at one point. Thankfully Red is one of those Super Sentai inspired characters (complete with his own theme song) and his story is (so far) straight forward enough to be a quasi tutorial in how to play the game. Also helps that currently I have one of the 3 races to familarise (the other main gimmick). 

And I'm dying a lot. So I'm quick saving a lot.


----------



## wankerness

Gave in and bought Nier: Replicant cause I'm a Nier Automata fanboy for life. I've been going through it, and it feels more the same as the original than I thought it would. I probably just don't remember what combat in the original felt like, and this is probably actually quite a bit better, but I'm struck so far by how much it just feels like a remaster. I should try playing it again just to see.

I still greatly prefer the weird-looking surfer dad character of the Gestalt version to the little anime boy in shortpants you play as in this version, but at least the gameplay etc seems to be the same.

I'm only an hour or two in, seeing if I get the urge to complete Persona 5 Royal before really getting into it. Just finished the boat dungeon on that, so I'm coming up quickly on the end of the regular version's story and the point at where it becomes totally new. I really like the new characters they added (Councillor and Faith) and think that they integrated them into the main game well, I really hate the darts (gyro aiming/shake controls never are a favorite of mine and PS4 controllers are worse than the switch pro in that regard), I haven't really used the jazz club/temple.


----------



## MFB

MFB said:


> Anybody play (or at least download) the RE8 demo? I've got it going right now, super pumped as I thought demos were pretty much dead by this point.



Circling back to this now, did anyone besides Ralyks get to play the demos when they were available during the stupid fucking windows? I've been crazy busy on my weekends, so I've missed all of them and I think there's no more between now and when the game drops.

Curious what the verdict was on whether or not the enemies were like a return to RE4, or if they kept the Nemesis/Mr. X style for some of the big bads


----------



## Ralyks

I actually missed out on the most recent RE Village demo, but apparently as of tomorrow night, both demos will be up for a week instead of 12 minutes.

Anyway, got Returnal. Where do I begin... It definitely feels like I'm playing a game truly made for the PS5, so that's good. The controls are tight, it's frantic and fast paced, and feels freaking fun. 
The negative? Well, I don't know if you've heard by now, but it's pretty much a AAA run based metroidvania. And you can't save during a run. And a run can take basically between 45 minutes and 2 hours. And the game flat out tells you your only option is to use the PS5's rest mode. One, I have trust issues with the PS5's rest mode (although hopefully the last firmware update fixed some of that), and two, my almost-six year old almost always wakes up before me, can turn on the PS5, and will start a different game that will pretty much wipe out my current run........ So yeah, I think it's going to take some time to get through this one.


----------



## MFB

Got to play the RE8 demo FINALLY, it's definitely a continuation of 7s style which I'm not super crazy about, but the aesthetic of it is fucking slick. The controls feel good, and the RE engine looks beautiful, but something about them trying to do a realistic first person game where you literally cross your arms to 'guard' against a werewolf attack (successfully too) just breaks the suspension of disbelief. I'll wait until it's on greatest hits before I pull the trigger on it, if at all.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I actually missed out on the most recent RE Village demo, but apparently as of tomorrow night, both demos will be up for a week instead of 12 minutes.
> 
> Anyway, got Returnal. Where do I begin... It definitely feels like I'm playing a game truly made for the PS5, so that's good. The controls are tight, it's frantic and fast paced, and feels freaking fun.
> The negative? Well, I don't know if you've heard by now, but it's pretty much a AAA run based metroidvania. And you can't save during a run. And a run can take basically between 45 minutes and 2 hours. And the game flat out tells you your only option is to use the PS5's rest mode. One, I have trust issues with the PS5's rest mode (although hopefully the last firmware update fixed some of that), and two, my almost-six year old almost always wakes up before me, can turn on the PS5, and will start a different game that will pretty much wipe out my current run........ So yeah, I think it's going to take some time to get through this one.



Roguelike with absolutely no save mechanic, not even a Dark Souls-style "autosave every few seconds so if you die or do something else stupid you're completely unable to exit out of the game and reload" or "save and quit anywhere" system, combined with runs that can take upwards of two hours and game code that occasionally causes crashes? How do I sign up to NEVER play this game?!?! Haha.


----------



## TedEH

I started up some Wind Waker a while back and have been picking at it slowly - but I've reached a point where I now have to do a bunch of tedious searching for triforce pieces and I very much think this part is going to the least fun part of the experience.


----------



## MFB

Started playing Subnautica over the weekend, that game has ZERO tutorial, it's more like the start of race where someone fired off a gun and said "Play!"

I really have no clue if there becomes a point to it, but for now it's nice to turn on and just swim around a bit?


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I started up some Wind Waker a while back and have been picking at it slowly - but I've reached a point where I now have to do a bunch of tedious searching for triforce pieces and I very much think this part is going to the least fun part of the experience.


The Wii U version made this significantly less tedious, but yeah that bit sucks.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Roguelike with absolutely no save mechanic, not even a Dark Souls-style "autosave every few seconds so if you die or do something else stupid you're completely unable to exit out of the game and reload" or "save and quit anywhere" system, combined with runs that can take upwards of two hours and game code that occasionally causes crashes? How do I sign up to NEVER play this game?!?! Haha.



See, I haven't experienced a single crash. The game has played flawless for me. And despite those complaints, the gameplay is fun enough that I keep going back. Plus, dying is actually essential to progress the story.

But alas, Resident Evil Village on Friday, and Nier and Judgement PS5 lurking in the background.


----------



## dr_game0ver

So, going thru Armored Core For Answer, done the good story path, the F everything one and doing the F off one (that what they feels like). I'm stuck at that mission where you have to beat all 4 of the ORCA NEXTs and men... I cannot beat more than 3 of them. That's not possible. 2 of them have attack that deal over 10K of damage where i only have 40K of life.
If you haven't played it, imagine the four kings in DS, but 4 of them at the same time. Other than that, pretty good game, having lot of fun playing it.
Also, i have tried the next one, Armored core V and it suffers the traditional PS3 curse, Where simple, nice game lead to "sequels" that are much better looking, but also added complicated mechanics that are making the game unnecessarily long, boring and just not fun at all...

Also also, Subnautica is nice but the progression is very linear and replay value is close to zero.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> See, I haven't experienced a single crash. The game has played flawless for me. And despite those complaints, the gameplay is fun enough that I keep going back. Plus, dying is actually essential to progress the story.
> 
> But alas, Resident Evil Village on Friday, and Nier and Judgement PS5 lurking in the background.



How many hours have you played it? I don't get the impression these crashes are COMMON, but that they do happen, and when you can get 2 hours of progress wiped out by it, that's a problem. Also lots of people complaining that they put it in suspend mode and the app updated overnight, or they absentmindedly clicked on another game and it automatically closed it and wiped them out, or they have a kid in the house who also uses the system, etc. It's just a horrible design. They should definitely copy that constant-autosave Dark Souls style thing. It's not reasonable for a game to disrespect your time that flagrantly. Practically every roguelike has some kind of save and quit option.

Speaking of games disrespecting your time, I'm getting very tired of Persona 5 Royal in this coda section. Like, there were a good 3-4 hours of mostly non-interactive gameplay with dreary music and characters acting like space cases and every day requiring you to have practically the same conversation with each teammate in a row. And then combine that with stretches with an hour's worth of cutscenes and forced events in a row that sometimes don't give you a save point in between any of them! But at least if the game crashes or you force quit in the middle, next time you can just skip them all with the options button.

Ah well. I'm really looking forward to being done with it. Two more trophies left before the platinum! (both plot-related, it looks like). Then it's back to Nier.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Started playing Subnautica over the weekend, that game has ZERO tutorial, it's more like the start of race where someone fired off a gun and said "Play!"
> 
> I really have no clue if there becomes a point to it, but for now it's nice to turn on and just swim around a bit?



From what others told me on here after I asked, it DOES have a point and has some radical revelations. And looking up a guide spoils the experience. I guess you have to start going really deep underwater to start encountering this stuff. I only played it for a few hours before moving on to something else, but I'll probably give it another go. It seems to naturally lead you to start constructing an underwater lab, but it was frustrating to me that it gives you absolutely no guidance as to WHERE you should be building things.


----------



## Ralyks

Looks like I've put 6 hours into Returnal so far (I appreciate the PS5 itself telling me how many hours I've put into a game), and all smooth sailing. Actually, probably the best running game I've played on my PS5 outside of Yakuza (and that was 64 hours of time with not even a hiccup).


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Looks like I've put 6 hours into Returnal so far (I appreciate the PS5 itself telling me how many hours I've put into a game), and all smooth sailing. Actually, probably the best running game I've played on my PS5 outside of Yakuza (and that was 64 hours of time with not even a hiccup).



6 hours isn't very long to proclaim something crash-free. There have been several games I've had crash once every 10 hours or so. Ex, Assassin's Creed games tend to crash occasionally, I had a couple in Soulsborne games (probably about one per full playthrough), a couple in the average Yakuza game, etc. There are very few games I've played all the way through that haven't crashed a single time. Persona 5 and naughty dog ones being the only that come to mind immediately apart from some very low sys-requirement stuff like Transistor or whatever.


----------



## NotDonVito

Played through Mario 3D World full completion, but decided to take a break before going into the Bowser's Fury game and bought a blast from the past, Jedi Knight 2.

Holy fuck what a waste of $5, bad controls, bad level design, instantly deleted it. Then I remembered the only way I had fun with that game back in the day was using the cheat codes, which I think they disabled in the port I'm playing. Poo.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm also holding back at Tokyo Xanadu (I'm not paying 100 bucks for a HD port of a PS Vita game).



Nihon Falcom just threw an 80% off sale. Time to cave in.


----------



## BlackMastodon

dr_game0ver said:


> So, going thru Armored Core For Answer, done the good story path, the F everything one and doing the F off one (that what they feels like). I'm stuck at that mission where you have to beat all 4 of the ORCA NEXTs and men... I cannot beat more than 3 of them. That's not possible. 2 of them have attack that deal over 10K of damage where i only have 40K of life.
> If you haven't played it, imagine the four kings in DS, but 4 of them at the same time. Other than that, pretty good game, having lot of fun playing it.
> Also, i have tried the next one, Armored core V and it suffers the traditional PS3 curse, Where simple, nice game lead to "sequels" that are much better looking, but also added complicated mechanics that are making the game unnecessarily long, boring and just not fun at all...
> 
> Also also, Subnautica is nice but the progression is very linear and replay value is close to zero.


Man I miss the Armored Core games, particularly 4 and For Answer. When I looked up V and saw they went back to slower paced combat I wasn't interested. I was playing the series since AC2 on PS2 so changing from the old slow gameplay to what they did with AC4 on Xbox 360 was a huuuuge difference and improvement to me.

My first time playing it I didn't even realize there were multiple paths/endings, so when I did find out I started going through them and did some of the f*** everyone endings (as you put it perfectly ). And then I also got to the point where you need to fight 4 NEXTs at once and couldn't do it for the life of me. If it weren't for the horrible load times on the 360 I might've kept trying to do it but I think I spent more time loading then actually playing that mission.

I really hope From Software doesn't forget about the AC series and brings back the same gameplay as AC4. I get that the Soulsbourne games have been a huge success and they are probably focusing more on those but damnit I want mecha combat!


----------



## wankerness

NotDonVito said:


> Played through Mario 3D World full completion, but decided to take a break before going into the Bowser's Fury game and bought a blast from the past, Jedi Knight 2.
> 
> Holy fuck what a waste of $5, bad controls, bad level design, instantly deleted it. Then I remembered the only way I had fun with that game back in the day was using the cheat codes, which I think they disabled in the port I'm playing. Poo.



Jedi Knight 2 is still a very good game, ON PC. The console ports did not implement auto-aiming or aim-assist or ANYTHING, and there is not one single successful console shooter that doesn't use that, because controllers are trash for aiming compared to mouse/keyboard. Basically the game is just so bad on console because it expects you to have the same speed/precision as mouse/keyboard but didn't give you the same helper tools as console shooters usually do.

I've heard the Switch version is the most playable since it has gyro-aiming enabled, but the speed of turning is still a problem.


----------



## Ralyks

Yeah I remember loving Jedi Knight 2 on PC back in the day, and got excited when it got ported to PS4. That excitement died within 15 minutes and I haven't touched it since.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

While I waited for Tokyo Xanadu to install I did a quick run on the tutorial for Horizon Zero Dawn, which reminded me that I still have a free copy of God Of Four gathering dust. 

Also jumped back on Spiritfarer and got started on the DLC. It's really weird and melancholy getting back on that boat again.


----------



## TedEH

I've still been poking through Horizon, and I think I might have gone a little deep in the side-quests compared to the main story. As time goes on, I'm liking the dialogue a bit less as far as side-quest characters go, but the actually gameplay loop itself is good enough that it doesn't bug me. I went back to the actual story line yesterday when I realized I'm something like 15 levels above the recommended for it, and I continue to like where they're going with it. The games coolest environments and story-telling moments, I think, tend to be in the main quests, the ruins, the more sci-fi bits.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, HZD is like the vast majority of games where the sidequests are filler to boost your level up higher if you're having trouble. They put a lot more work into them than the likes of most Assassin's Creed games and Nier and whatnot, but they're still definitely inferior to the main quest. As it should be! I usually prefer that over games where the main quest kinda sucks and is nowhere near the most interesting part of the game (ex Skyrim).


----------



## TedEH

I tend to be of the opinion that the best open worlds really thrive on their side-content. That's where BotW shines, it's like 90% side quest. I can tell that at least _some_ effort went into making all the content seem meaningful. There are certainly some filler quests. IMO most of the stuff that gets their own markers (cauldrons, bandit camps, etc) are challenging enough to warrant doing them, and the level boost and rewards make them feel worth doing.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I've still been poking through Horizon, and I think I might have gone a little deep in the side-quests compared to the main story. As time goes on, I'm liking the dialogue a bit less as far as side-quest characters go, but the actually gameplay loop itself is good enough that it doesn't bug me. I went back to the actual story line yesterday when I realized I'm something like 15 levels above the recommended for it, and I continue to like where they're going with it. The games coolest environments and story-telling moments, I think, tend to be in the main quests, the ruins, the more sci-fi bits.



I've restarted it on a higher difficulty now and enjoying it again. Also found an annoying auto-aim function in the options that was on by default. Turning that off has made it more enjoyable for me as well.
I really like the lore and ruined areas too. I sorta wish there were more normal buildings to explore, and that there was more detail and "interest" inside them. I love finding the lore datapad things, but it seems like it'd be a monumental task to find them all, and they're often around buildings that are so ruined that you can't see any details other than the upright walls. The overall art direction and idea for the game universe is great.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Load time are quite fast on PS3. At the price of having the game at 15FPS... My big problem with V so far is the giant circle in the middle of the screen. Like what the hell with that?
When it comes to mecha games... DW Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam on PS3?
Also, i' ve got so many games i have to play on PS 1&2.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I tend to be of the opinion that the best open worlds really thrive on their side-content. That's where BotW shines, it's like 90% side quest. I can tell that at least _some_ effort went into making all the content seem meaningful. There are certainly some filler quests. IMO most of the stuff that gets their own markers (cauldrons, bandit camps, etc) are challenging enough to warrant doing them, and the level boost and rewards make them feel worth doing.



I guess it depends on what you call "sidequests." I think BOTW's sidequests (those marked sidequest in the quest log) are mostly horrible, besides the DLC shrines, the Tarrytown questline, and several of the ones in the "Shrine" quest category. Most of the others are like "GIVE ME 55 RUSHROOMS" or "Climb this building to see why it gets hit by lightning!!" or "get my wife a baked apple so she doesn't divorce me" or "hey slave, go kill two spider robots across that lake!" and the dialogue/"subplot" is even more of an afterthought than in the likes of Skyrim. The exploration and shrines themselves are all what's so good. The main quest absolutely stomps all over everything the game flags as a sidequest, even if the dungeons are sort of a distraction from the exploration.

Kinda like HZD's camps and giraffe towers and things are quite fun, it's the ones that have actual questgivers that are usually lackluster.


----------



## TedEH

Yeh, I guess I sort of read everything in BotW as a side quest, just 'cause of how everything is optional. I just enjoy the loop of exploring and being rewarded for exploring.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Gonna check out Works of Mercy today


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I've restarted it on a higher difficulty now and enjoying it again. Also found an annoying auto-aim function in the options that was on by default. Turning that off has made it more enjoyable for me as well.
> I really like the lore and ruined areas too. I sorta wish there were more normal buildings to explore, and that there was more detail and "interest" inside them. I love finding the lore datapad things, but it seems like it'd be a monumental task to find them all, and they're often around buildings that are so ruined that you can't see any details other than the upright walls. The overall art direction and idea for the game universe is great.



I think at some point towards the end of the game you can buy a map with their locations? I know you can with some of the other collectibles, anyway. I agree that the datapads are great, especially some of the ones you start finding towards the end of the game.

I FINALLY finished Persona 5 royal, only 110 hours! Gah. Now back to Nier, which I'm only about 5 hours in on. I think it's harder than the original, that damn boss in the Aerie came very close to killing me repeatedly. Maybe it's cause upgrade materials for weapons are a huge pain to find.

I also need to do the second playthrough on LoU2 so I can get the platinum and uninstall it. I wish I wasn't a completist on games that they're pretty easy on. I need to free up hard drive space for Code Vein, which I'm very curious to try (I've heard it described as "Anime Dark Souls" many times). The "complete" version was on sale for 20 bucks. And I got Spiritfarer, and Ashen (cel-shaded dark souls!!), and Ys Origin, cause they were all on sale too!


...and surgeon simulator/I am Bread


----------



## StevenC

Having more fun with HZD now, but gosh the intro sucks and the first 10 hours were terrible.

It's better now, but plenty of stuff is still just disappointing. Like climbing stuff is terrible. I just did a main quest that was basically climb a skyscraper. But I didn't have to climb a skyscraper. I had to hold up or over and occasionally press the jump button. And this is all over the game. Want to climb something tall to see if there's a reward? Walk around the base until you find the white markings. Does your map tell you there's a thing on top of something tall? Walk around the base until you find the white markings.

Like, I'll be playing the game and get up somewhere tall only to be 2" short on my jump to get to the top, notice the white climbing ledges, realise I can't get to them and descend the whole way just to go back up the boring way. This makes sense in compact linear dungeons of whatever, but in an open world it just ruins it for me. The Tallnecks are such a boring thing to do because it's not fun. 

Also, the hunter's lodge. Why is that 3 quests long? It's the best thing so far. I wish enemies didn't respawn so soon too. For a quest I'll have to kill my way to the village, kill my way past the village, kill my way back to the village, kill my way across from the village, and finally kill my way back to the village. All while walking through the same enemy areas.

I'm trying not to compare this game to BotW, because it loses massively, but my goodness if it came out 6 months later and they'd played BotW to fix all the stuff that isn't fun but is so frequent this would be a far better game. But instead it came out the same week on far more powerful hardware and has aged so much worse.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> Walk around the base until you find the white markings


I found one spot on the map where there was a trail to follow that didn't seem attached to any quest. I thought this might be a cool exploration reward or something, but the trail led to a tall rock with no climbing surfaces - and the sparkly trail just ended at the base and continued at the peak of the rock with zero indication of whether or not it's possible to get up there. I suspect it's not possible.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Looks like a simultaneous global release on September this year. Certainly pumped for this.


----------



## wankerness

I'm tempted to replay HZD. I definitely liked it a hell of a lot more than I liked BOTW, even though I have gradually come to appreciate BOTW greatly over time. I think the combat is so incredibly better and the setting was so much more appealing to me that it made the difference. Exploration obviously is nowhere close, if that's what you value. Graphics are FAR better on HZD, mainly thanks to it actually taking advantage of the PS4 in a way almost nothing other than Naughty Dog games have, while BOTW was designed to run on the Wii-U/Switch. It's stylish as hell, but the pop-in is as bad as Subnautica and the lighting occasionally just turns into a big hazy mush, etc.

The climbing in HZD is a joke. It's clearly just copying the Uncharted thing, but instead of just holding directionals until your character visibly reaches for the next handhold and hitting jump, it takes out one step of the process, making it even more pointless. The Tomb Raider reboot games went the other way and made platforming slightly more difficult/involved from the Uncharted model. I guess it doesn't bug me, the climbing isn't really supposed to be an obstacle in the game. Kinda like the later Assassins Creed games, where you can climb up more surfaces than you can in BOTW, do it a lot faster, and have no stamina meter. BOTW is a totally different animal in that regard, where the climbing is one of the main game mechanics and also one of the main limiters of progress since so many areas are gated by lack of stamina unless you want to farm a ton of stamina food.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Looks like a simultaneous global release on September this year. Certainly pumped for this.




36 minute video? NO THANKS! What is this, a sequel to Judgement?

I still haven't played more than a couple hours of it. It seemed fine, but 3/4 of the appeal of Yakuza games were the characters and I didn't cozy up to this guy nearly as quickly as I did with other Yakuza protagonists like Saejima, Akiyama and Ichiban.


----------



## TedEH

The HZD climbing kinda feels like the weird traversal in Shadow of Mordor - like there's some kind of pathing thing that takes over and plays it for you.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> 36 minute video? NO THANKS! What is this, a sequel to Judgement?
> 
> I still haven't played more than a couple hours of it. It seemed fine, but 3/4 of the appeal of Yakuza games were the characters and I didn't cozy up to this guy nearly as quickly as I did with other Yakuza protagonists like Saejima, Akiyama and Ichiban.



First 5 minutes is the actual trailer. The rest is more the producers talking about it and some Q&A so you can skip those.

Here's the English trailer.



At this point the Yakuzaverse (and I hate saying that) needs to grow outside the usual suspects. I've made a lot of complaints about Judgment in general, like why it takes so long for Yagami to be accepted as a bona fide protagonist. But this kind of spin off is healthy to keep the sandboxes and games feel alive and authentic. Plus it'll feel better when Ichiban's next adventure comes along after a sojourn into someone else's POV (which was Judgment's strongest asset).

I've said before how Kamurocho is still one of the best sandboxes in gaming. Despite being so damn tiny compared to the large vast majestic worlds of every triple A open world game, it still feels much bigger, which isn't the same as being bigger full of side stuff that feels nothing more than crossing off a checklist. Kamurocho and now Ijincho is full of life. A bunch of multilayerd crazy folk and surroundings that change and evolve over the course of time.

Of course I can be cynical and just say "how convenient RGG studios can easily bust out these games in a year or 2. They can just spare the time designing a new sandbox map, and just use the same house and just reshuffle the furniture a bit."


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> First 5 minutes is the actual trailer. The rest is more the producers talking about it and some Q&A so you can skip those.
> 
> Here's the English trailer.
> 
> 
> 
> At this point the Yakuzaverse (and I hate saying that) needs to grow outside the usual suspects. I've made a lot of complaints about Judgment in general, like why it takes so long for Yagami to be accepted as a bona fide protagonist. But this kind of spin off is healthy to keep the sandboxes and games feel alive and authentic. Plus it'll feel better when Ichiban's next adventure comes along after a sojourn into someone else's POV (which was Judgment's strongest asset).
> 
> I've said before how Kamurocho is still one of the best sandboxes in gaming. Despite being so damn tiny compared to the large vast majestic worlds of every triple A open world game, it still feels much bigger, which isn't the same as being bigger full of side stuff that feels nothing more than crossing off a checklist. Kamurocho and now Ijincho is full of life. A bunch of multilayerd crazy folk and surroundings that change and evolve over the course of time.
> 
> Of course I can be cynical and just say "how convenient RGG studios can easily bust out these games in a year or 2. They can just spare the time designing a new sandbox map, and just use the same house and just reshuffle the furniture a bit."




Right, hence why I listed other characters besides Kiryu and Majima. Though I'd argue Majima is a good example of what's lacking from Judgement guy. Yakuza 0 was my first Yakuza game, and I loved Majima within about 30 minutes of starting to play as him. Kiryu took playing Kiwami 1 to warm up to for me. Akiyama in particular also is instantly magnetic, as is Ichiban. Judgement guy was just...kind of boring. At least in the first two hours. Not as bad as baseball player man in Yakuza 5, but definitely low-tier.


----------



## Ralyks

On the bright side, with Judgement being traditional Yakuza game, they also announced Yakuza will remain a turn based RPG, And I am totally ok with this.

Also, excited to get Resident Evil Village tonight. All the reviews are saying it had a lot of RE4 vibes.


----------



## wankerness

Oh my god, I HATE the room in Nier where you have to get past a bunch of traps but fail instantly if you run. The controls are so loose that it's incredibly hard not to accidentally run for a split-second, instantly failing the puzzle. Ugh. I forgot all about this. Makes me want to play it on PC so I can use the walk/run toggle button.


----------



## Ralyks

Resident Evil Village is pretty neat so far. It definitely keeps the vibe of 7, but much more enemy variety and action that adds elements of 4 to the mix. I’m also getting a feeling this game is going to eventually start tying in story from the rest of the series by the time this is done.


----------



## mongey

fired up the Witcher 3 on my switch and think it may have finally grabbed me after a few false starts. 

does healing always suck in this game though ? Find I’m constantly meditating to heal and save food. That’s fine , but it’s annoying to go through menus just to heal. 


Also my daughter got me Mario 3D / bowsers fury. So been playing that with her a bit. Fun game 

my ps4 is officially on its last legs. Keeps crashing., even watching Netflix. Already replaced the hd once. No one knows when any ps5’s will be available here. So looks like I may be switch only for a while.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Started a throw-away / fuck-around Street Kid playthrough in Cyberpunk 2077 (PS4). It's somehow more buggy than when I played it at launch. And a lot of the bugs I've encountered now that actually effect gameplay are carried over from the Witcher 3.

Plus, the Getting Warmer gig on my capped character save is still bugged too. I can get the game to start the gig and recognize all my actions up to grabbing the coolant from the bathroom, but the game won't let me inject the netrunner with it. I tried for a good twenty minutes trying to get in some convoluted position in the room that would somehow hopefully trigger the prompt for me to use it, but to no avail.

On a side note: I've tried for the past few days to pick up an Xbox One locally and have had no luck. M$ still allegedly make the One S, but I can't seem to find a listing for a new one and the prices on used consoles seem to have gone up with the lack of availability of the new Series S/X.


----------



## wankerness

What do you want an Xbox for if you have a ps4? Just the backwards compatibility? Or halo/gears?


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> fired up the Witcher 3 on my switch and think it may have finally grabbed me after a few false starts.
> 
> does healing always suck in this game though ? Find I’m constantly meditating to heal and save food. That’s fine , but it’s annoying to go through menus just to heal.
> 
> 
> Also my daughter got me Mario 3D / bowsers fury. So been playing that with her a bit. Fun game
> 
> my ps4 is officially on its last legs. Keeps crashing., even watching Netflix. Already replaced the hd once. No one knows when any ps5’s will be available here. So looks like I may be switch only for a while.



Healing in W3 is rough early on. As you get stronger and better gear you find yourself doing it less as you outlevel the areas. And food starts falling out of trees.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Spent about 2 hours in Tokyo Xanadu EX+, and after so much time spent in the Cold Steel games, jumping here is like moving from my old house into the same exact house with the furniture reshuffled a bit.

Tokyo Xanadu is Persona/Cold Steel but replace the turn based combat with Ys style hacky slashy. It's certainly very Cold Steel esque: it's just as damn slow (it took the first hour to finally get to combat) and all the life/school sim sections are near identical. Hell, there's an Adol Easter Egg right in the intro, has some CS2 in game footage and a CS3 promo poster in the electronics store, and even has the exact Towa character, just in case you forgot you're playing a Nihon Falcom game. And if the game wasn't already anime up the butt, every chapter begins with the intro cinematic, giving an anime episodic feel. I suppose since I started watching Demon Slayer now, having an interactive anime experience isn't too far off.

So far so familiar, though controls are a bit on the crap side. A bit on the clunky side and the buttons the actions are assigned feel off and awkward. It's no Ys, that's for sure.


----------



## Nicki

Carrion Rocket said:


> On a side note: I've tried for the past few days to pick up an Xbox One locally and have had no luck. M$ still allegedly make the One S, but I can't seem to find a listing for a new one and the prices on used consoles seem to have gone up with the lack of availability of the new Series S/X.



No. They're discontinued. IMO, the One S isn't worth buying at this stage of the game. If you're going to go with an Xbox One, get a used One X. They can be had for less than half of what they retailed at. I picked up the One X used for $300 CAD and I've seen them go on FB Marketplace for as low as $150 CAD as recently as this month. I also have a One S that I used prior to the One X and have noticed a difference going from the One S to the One X. I've relegated my One S to my 720p screen in the family room and my One X is connected to my expensive 4k TV in my den. However, if you can afford to pick up a Series X when availability isn't an issue, that would be optimal.

Anyway...

My friend and I are about to finish Far Cry 5, I got my RE:VIII deluxe preorder, but I'm playing through RE:Revelations 2 because I've put it off long enough and I love Revelations 1 (even have the original misprinted label version of the 3DS).


----------



## wankerness

Got to the time jump in Nier, and that made a lot more sense with the Gestalt protagonist. The sidequests in this game are SO bad though, especially in part 2. In the first five minutes I've already gotten two "collect 10 of a very rare drop that you need to farm tons of for weapon upgrades and give them to me for almost no reward." I have to look up a trophy guide to this game to find out if there's any point in doing every quest.

I started up Code Vein and it spectacularly crashed in the freaking tutorial. Not a good start!


----------



## TedEH

HZD just pulled that "you think you're at the ending, but not really" move. Even went as far as has a character verbalize the "point of no return" warning that some games give. I could have sworn I was in the last hour or two, but it's still going. I'm ok with this, 'cause the main quest lines have some meat on them. I feel like the side vs story missions in this game kinda feel really distinct from eachother.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of the main HZD story today - definitely a worthwhile game. By the time I got to the end, I had done all the cauldrons, tallnecks, bandit camps, etc., but skipped most of the collectibles. I have a suspicion that the side quests had more of an impact on the ending than I had expected. The open world is not quite up to BotW standard in terms of reward for exploration, but locales mostly felt unique, and missions definitely felt better than your standard Ubisoft fare. I had some early complaints about how busy the visuals are at times, but I got used to it, and I maintain that the art direction was great.

I'm going to hold off on the DLC for a while though, take a break from it, 'cause it does start to feel a bit same-y after a while.


----------



## wankerness

IIRC the sidequests affect who shows up for the end battle, presumably it's like Mass Effect 2 or something where if you don't do enough of them things don't go well for you. Not sure, though, as I did all the sidequests on both playthroughs!

The DLC is quite good and the new boss-type enemies pack a hell of a wallop. I remember I went through ALL the ammo I had stockpiled on the first one. Figured out later you could just shoot them strategically in the weak spots with the most powerful normal arrows and that was more efficient than spamming them with every explosive, but hey. Good DLC either way.

I played some Code Vein, in offline mode this time, and had no issues. It's DEFINITELY a dark souls clone in terms of combat feel and some of the structural stuff, but the map design seems to be much more typical action game (or maybe Dark Souls 2) style and there's quite a bit more story (that I don't care about so far). However, the leveling system and class system seems to be very different from DS apart from having a "souls" equivalent currency and how you level up at bonfires. You like, unlock "classes," and you get the associated bonuses for that class based on which "class mod" you have equipped. I only have a couple of them right now, and I really like the chunk of the heavy melee combat in this game, so I haven't really checked much of the available variety out yet. But, seems like there's a ranged/light melee build, a caster, and melee as the three defaults and then tons of more specialized versions. And you can temporarily equip class mods at any time and learn abilities for them kinda like a job system. Seems pretty good so far! Time to split time between it and FIVE Nier playthroughs  Plus I have to try Ashen at some point, though I don't think I want to play two different soulslikes at the same time.


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> Healing in W3 is rough early on. As you get stronger and better gear you find yourself doing it less as you outlevel the areas. And food starts falling out of trees.


good to know I'm not the problem

I just don't get why you would make healing inaccessible early game . to push you into the side quests I guess


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Still fucking around in Cyberpunk. I'm mostly doing side stuff to level up and build my stealth/tech character so I can just bulldoze my way through the main story missions. 

They have mostly fixed the cop responses in the game. When I first played it you could take a brisk walk and get away from the on foot cops. Now, you better have a vehicle available 'cause they will just spawn in until you're dead. They don't even bother trying to arrest you, it's really similar to GTA V in that regard. But outside of a couple scripted events in the game, I have yet to see the cops interact with any npcs. You can be in a full on gang shootout and they will keep walking.



Nicki said:


> No. They're discontinued. IMO, the One S isn't worth buying at this stage of the game. If you're going to go with an Xbox One, get a used One X. They can be had for less than half of what they retailed at. I picked up the One X used for $300 CAD and I've seen them go on FB Marketplace for as low as $150 CAD as recently as this month.



The One X is the one I'm primarily looking for. I've seen a couple for around $250 USD, and if they work at all, they tend to be just the console by its self. Most of what I've seen that are complete with cables and controller are around go for around $325+.



> However, if you can afford to pick up a Series X when availability isn't an issue, that would be optimal.



Yeah, there's a couple Series S consoles near me, but I'd much rather have the X console of the two. Digital only is cool and all, but it ends up costing more in the long run in my experience. Hopefully the backwards compatibility gets expanded, because from what I've seen only a handful of original xbox games are playable on the Series X. I've got a bunch of games on disc and my og black brick has been dying for a while. I might just have to look for a way to fix it or just outright replace it otherwise.


----------



## TedEH

To be honest, with the whole Xbox thing becoming more about the platform and less about the actual console, I have trouble seeing the point. Games right now, as I understand it, are still targeting the One/X/S and PC all at the same time, so you're not being cut out of anything by not having the latest. The current ("previous"?) gen xboxes have enough of an install base that Series X/S exclusives don't make sense right now, and probably won't for a while because of all the weird hardware shortages. Only reason I see to buy one is if you literally have nothing to game on currently. Got a PC? Xbox is irrelevant. Got a one S or X already? It's a hardware upgrade with no games yet - the equivalent of getting a new video card to flex because nothing will push it yet.


----------



## Matt08642

Finally playing DOOM 5 years later - Fun times!


----------



## Nicki

Carrion Rocket said:


> The One X is the one I'm primarily looking for. I've seen a couple for around $250 USD, and if they work at all, they tend to be just the console by its self. Most of what I've seen that are complete with cables and controller are around go for around $325+.
> 
> Yeah, there's a couple Series S consoles near me, but I'd much rather have the X console of the two. Digital only is cool and all, but it ends up costing more in the long run in my experience. Hopefully the backwards compatibility gets expanded, because from what I've seen only a handful of original xbox games are playable on the Series X. I've got a bunch of games on disc and my og black brick has been dying for a while. I might just have to look for a way to fix it or just outright replace it otherwise.



As long as the console comes with the power cable, it should be fine. For sanitary reasons alone, I would never use a used controller because people that aren't anal about keeping their controllers clean hand off really disgusting controllers. When I got my One X, the guy included a controller, but there was dead skin, cheetoh dust and all kinds of nastiness in it. I didn't even bother cleaning & santizing it until a couple of months ago. Point is, just buy a brand new controller to be free of nastiness, have a warranty and a problem free controller.

As for OG Xbox backwards compatibility, that's odd. I haven't heard of original Xbox games having issues with backwards compatibility but looking at the official list, it looks pretty small. Maybe they limited it to what would be considered "Greatest Hits" that didn't get a re-release for a newer console?



TedEH said:


> To be honest, with the whole Xbox thing becoming more about the platform and less about the actual console, I have trouble seeing the point. Games right now, as I understand it, are still targeting the One/X/S and PC all at the same time, so you're not being cut out of anything by not having the latest. The current ("previous"?) gen xboxes have enough of an install base that Series X/S exclusives don't make sense right now, and probably won't for a while because of all the weird hardware shortages. Only reason I see to buy one is if you literally have nothing to game on currently. Got a PC? Xbox is irrelevant. Got a one S or X already? It's a hardware upgrade with no games yet - the equivalent of getting a new video card to flex because nothing will push it yet.



This is the entire reason I'm holding off buying one until at least mid 2022 even though I have the funds to get a Series X right now. There are quality of life improvements in the Series S/X that make it worth the price of admission for some right now, like sub 20 sec load times on big games like Skyrim & Witcher 3 as well as quick resume, but more or less every news outlet is saying the same thing right now for both PS5 and Xbox - "You're not missing much."


----------



## TedEH

Nicki said:


> For sanitary reasons alone, I would never use a used controller [...] just buy a brand new controller


I agree controllers get nasty, but they also tend to be pricey on their own. For the sake of $50-80, they aren't hard to clean. The most egregious bit of grossness tends to be in the seams where dead skin just kinda piles up. It's pretty easy to disassemble the controller and just scrape that stuff off. I got one once where I think it had been left in some laundry for a while and it had a smell to it... like a weird cologne or something. I ended up using it as a parts donor instead of really using it.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> This is the entire reason I'm holding off buying one until at least mid 2022 even though I have the funds to get a Series X right now. There are quality of life improvements in the Series S/X that make it worth the price of admission for some right now, like sub 20 sec load times on big games like Skyrim & Witcher 3 as well as quick resume, but more or less every news outlet is saying the same thing right now for both PS5 and Xbox - "You're not missing much."



Well, PS5 has two exclusives people actually like so far (Returnal and Demon Souls). Not many, of course. I also really want to play Bugsnax. Does Xbox have anything exclusive in the pipeline at all?


----------



## TedEH

Bugsnax is on other platforms, and Demon's Souls is a remake, isn't it? IMO the Playstation side definitely always sort of "wins" in terms of feeling like there's games worth going there for that you can't get elsewhere. (Whether or not that should count as a win from a consumer standpoint is maybe debatable.)

From what I understand, there's almost no real Xbox exclusives anymore. The only title I can think of that's not also on PC is Halo 5. I vaguely remember an announcement being made that anything coming to the Series consoles would also be available on Windows - because it's coming to "the platform of Xbox" and not "the console of Xbox", if that makes any sense.

I do kinda wish that you didn't need specialized hardware to play all this stuff. Imagine being able to play Nintendo first party stuff natively on a PC, no emulation or anything. They're all just different implementations of the same idea at the end of the day. They're all just computers in boxes.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Well, PS5 has two exclusives people actually like so far (Returnal and Demon Souls). Not many, of course. I also really want to play Bugsnax. Does Xbox have anything exclusive in the pipeline at all?


The only current Series exclusive is The Median, but that one is flying under the radar right now. 

As for pipeline, there's plenty, but none with firm release dates. The big ones seem to be Halo Infinite (obviously), Fable 4, Perfect Dark, STALKER 2 and Hellblade 2.


----------



## TedEH

You can still get it for Windows though, so the whole "exclusive" thing is kinda.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, but if any of them have true "next-gen" graphics like the PS5 games (I would expect that they would!), getting an Xbox would be far cheaper than getting a computer that could handle it at the same level. Especially with graphics card markets right now.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I do kinda wish that you didn't need specialized hardware to play all this stuff. Imagine being able to play Nintendo first party stuff natively on a PC, no emulation or anything. They're all just different implementations of the same idea at the end of the day. They're all just computers in boxes.










Nicki said:


> As for pipeline, there's plenty, but none with firm release dates. The big ones seem to be Halo Infinite (obviously), *Fable 4*, Perfect Dark, STALKER 2 and Hellblade 2.


I don't know if Molyneaux is attached to this one or not, but how the hell are they gonna disappoint people for a 4th time?


----------



## Nicki

BlackMastodon said:


> I don't know if Molyneaux is attached to this one or not, but how the hell are they gonna disappoint people for a 4th time?


He currently doesn't work for any Microsoft affiliated company, so no chance that he's attached to the project.


----------



## StevenC

So I haven't finished HZD but I'm close enough to the end to say that this is a really stupid premise to hinge the story on.



Spoiler



Let's give the dumbass who doomed the planet complete access to and control sf the plan to save the world for some reason so that he can dumbass that up too when we kill off the sort of main protagonist for no other reason than to have this convoluted story make sense



This is why stories in video games don't matter to me. You put 60 hours into a game just to have the story Rey's Parentsed in the final stretch. It's not a compelling world if you have to justify its existence with a series of terrible decisions people wouldn't make.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Bugsnax is on other platforms, and Demon's Souls is a remake, isn't it? IMO the Playstation side definitely always sort of "wins" in terms of feeling like there's games worth going there for that you can't get elsewhere. (Whether or not that should count as a win from a consumer standpoint is maybe debatable.)
> 
> From what I understand, there's almost no real Xbox exclusives anymore. The only title I can think of that's not also on PC is Halo 5. I vaguely remember an announcement being made that anything coming to the Series consoles would also be available on Windows - because it's coming to "the platform of Xbox" and not "the console of Xbox", if that makes any sense.
> 
> I do kinda wish that you didn't need specialized hardware to play all this stuff. Imagine being able to play Nintendo first party stuff natively on a PC, no emulation or anything. They're all just different implementations of the same idea at the end of the day. They're all just computers in boxes.



Yeah, Demon's Souls is a remake, but it's not like a cheap remaster, it's full-blown and has some of the best graphics of any game now. For someone without a PS3 who's never played it, it's a no-brainer to consider the PS5 version the ideal one, and not even contemplate trying out the original version.

I didn't know Bugsnax was on any other platforms. Regardless, I have a free copy of it for PS5 and don't have it for anything else. So, that's what I'll play it on someday! Unless Xbox...whatever the new one is called somehow reverses the PS4/Xbox1 dynamic.


----------



## Mathemagician

BlackMastodon said:


> I don't know if Molyneaux is attached to this one or not, but how the hell are they gonna disappoint people for a 4th time?





Nicki said:


> He currently doesn't work for any Microsoft affiliated company, so no chance that he's attached to the project.



I mean, disappointment from all the lies was a core part of the fable experience.

If he isn’t here to promise that your first character will build a lineage that other character NPC’s in the game will write about in books that are actually in the game. And that your character’s kids who you will play as can read. Only for it to not even have a basic new game + mode, is it really a fable game?


----------



## Ralyks

I'm reeeaallllly liking Resident Evil Village. They hit a great balance of horror, action, and characters in this one. I can easily see this on my year end list.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Finished both bowsers fury and 3d world with my son and just did a quick play through of halo reach cause it was 5 bucks a couple weeks ago. I’m almost done with donkey Kong tropical freeze and was then gonna start HZD. I’m seeing Titanfall 2 for 3 bucks on a sale right now. I’m not gonna play multi player and see the campaign is short but is it worth it? Not so much worried about the price vs. wasting time, LOL!


----------



## Werecow

Is Days Gone a good game? It's about to release on PC and i've got a 17% off offer on it. Looks like my type of game in general, especially after liking HZD.


----------



## Werecow

TheShreddinHand said:


> Finished both bowsers fury and 3d world with my son and just did a quick play through of halo reach cause it was 5 bucks a couple weeks ago. I’m almost done with donkey Kong tropical freeze and was then gonna start HZD. I’m seeing Titanfall 2 for 3 bucks on a sale right now. I’m not gonna play multi player and see the campaign is short but is it worth it? Not so much worried about the price vs. wasting time, LOL!


Titanfall 2 campaign is awesome. One of the best singleplayer campaigns of the last few years for me. I wish there were more first person AAA singleplayer games.


----------



## MFB

Titanfall 2 is in the top 5 FPS of all time because it succeeds in both campaign and multiplayer; it's not super long, but it's so god damn good, if for nothing else than the mechanics of it.


----------



## Ralyks

+1 on the Titanfall 2 campaign being excellent


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> Is Days Gone a good game? It's about to release on PC and i've got a 17% off offer on it. Looks like my type of game in general, especially after liking HZD.



Days Gone is a game that takes at least 10 hours before it gets good, but is quite good after that.

The characters and writing are pretty bad. YMMV. I've heard some (insane) people claim it's better than Last of Us 2 or whatever cause they're offended by LoU2, but when you have a romantic lead saying "i'll marry you as long as you promise to ride me as much as you ride that bike" you know you're dealing with 10 year old writers. Lead character's kind of a grumbly douche, too. 

Main attraction is fighting hordes. It's more like 20-30 hours into the game before they tell you to do it directly, but you can deal with some of the small ones if you're good enough and spec into the right skills more like 10 hours in. It's amazingly fun, like no other game I've played, and it's a damn shame they stuck it so far into the game. If the game had started with that, I think it would have gotten MUCH better reviews. The other big sticking point for the early game is that your bike is constantly going out of gas for a long time - eventually you can pretty much ignore fuel once you've gotten some fuel tank upgrades.


----------



## wankerness

Just finished the first playthrough of Nier Replicant, took about 30 hours (the "speed-run" trophy is 15 hours, apparently if you know what you're doing it should be more like 8).

I'd forgotten just how unbelievably depressing the last 20-30 minutes of Playthrough A of this game is. It's like, CONCEPTUALLY devastating. The whole "black scrawl" thing is one of the weirdest apocalypse scenarios ever, and when you find out exactly what it is and the villain's motivations...oof. Plus, part 2 is sort of like the last gasps of an already post apocalyptic world. Like the last remaining people were rebuilding, but now nope, they're just going to slowly fade away instead.

I did a LOT of the sidequests, but skipped a bunch in part 2 - the fetch quests in part 2 are astoundingly bad. Like, several hours of grinding bad. Plus you get garbage rewards and no plot interest for completing them, so all it does is set you back really far in the achievement for upgrading weapons cause you have to turn in the same extremely rare items that you need for upgrading weapons. I did some of the other tedious stuff, like doing the fishing trophies. And upgrading the phoenix spear to level 4. It was worth it, as I pretty much annihilated all the bosses and got all the speedkill achievements except the ones that required you to skip cutscenes (which is a really annoying aspect of these trophies, especially for the last bosses, since you can't just reload a save and do it again to see the cutscenes).

The game overall is still pretty good. Things really come together at the end of Playthrough A and reveal the full depths of what's going on. Most of the sidequests are truly terrible and a colossal waste of time. The settings and music are a bit too repetitive even compared to Nier Automata, but they're still good, you just are running back and forth between the same locations a LOT.

The biggest advantage of this game to Nier Automata is that your main party members, Kaine and Emil and Grimoire Weiss, are FAR more memorable and endearing than the characters in Nier Automata. I'd argue the plot is also more emotionally involving, especially when you get to the end of the first playthrough.

Starting playthrough 2 now! I'm glad to see they actually got to do what they originally wanted to do with it, making the gameplay much more varied. I expect the next couple playthroughs will only take a few hours since the sidequests are carried over between all playthroughs and I already did most of them. Guess it's playthrough C or D where you do all the grinding for upgrading all the weapons. Yuck.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Days Gone is a game that takes at least 10 hours before it gets good, but is quite good after that.
> 
> The characters and writing are pretty bad. YMMV. I've heard some (insane) people claim it's better than Last of Us 2 or whatever cause they're offended by LoU2, but when you have a romantic lead saying "i'll marry you as long as you promise to ride me as much as you ride that bike" you know you're dealing with 10 year old writers. Lead character's kind of a grumbly douche, too.
> 
> Main attraction is fighting hordes. It's more like 20-30 hours into the game before they tell you to do it directly, but you can deal with some of the small ones if you're good enough and spec into the right skills more like 10 hours in. It's amazingly fun, like no other game I've played, and it's a damn shame they stuck it so far into the game. If the game had started with that, I think it would have gotten MUCH better reviews. The other big sticking point for the early game is that your bike is constantly going out of gas for a long time - eventually you can pretty much ignore fuel once you've gotten some fuel tank upgrades.


Thankyou, just ordered it.
I wanted to go in cold if i could with no spoilers. The characters do seem a bit immature in the trailers, and playthrough videos are too long to make a judgement without also getting spoiled. I love post apocalypse stuff though, so i like the general idea of it.

I just hope the PC port is ok now haha. I usually wait, but 17% off on a game i'd probably buy on release anyway was hard to resist.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> Thankyou, just ordered it.
> I wanted to go in cold if i could with no spoilers. The characters do seem a bit immature in the trailers, and playthrough videos are too long to make a judgement without also getting spoiled. I love post apocalypse stuff though, so i like the general idea of it.
> 
> I just hope the PC port is ok now haha. I usually wait, but 17% off on a game i'd probably buy on release anyway was hard to resist.



i haven’t heard any horror stories about the pc version, it’s probably fine. Again just be ready to commit a lot of time before it really starts clicking. The other people I know who liked it all described the same experience I had. Others I know just couldn’t justify that much of a time investment in something they weren’t enjoying and didn’t get that far. It’s a very slow burn!


----------



## mongey

Werecow said:


> Is Days Gone a good game? It's about to release on PC and i've got a 17% off offer on it. Looks like my type of game in general, especially after liking HZD.


It is feee on pan this month. I played it about half hour and then uninstalled it 

It may get better. But it just felt like another generic open world game
To me , set in a very overdone zombie storyline.


----------



## Mathemagician

TheShreddinHand said:


> Finished both bowsers fury and 3d world with my son and just did a quick play through of halo reach cause it was 5 bucks a couple weeks ago. I’m almost done with donkey Kong tropical freeze and was then gonna start HZD. I’m seeing Titanfall 2 for 3 bucks on a sale right now. I’m not gonna play multi player and see the campaign is short but is it worth it? Not so much worried about the price vs. wasting time, LOL!



The campaign is easily worth $30-40. It’s like a 4-5 hour big budget action movie. And has great characters.


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> It is feee on pan this month. I played it about half hour and then uninstalled it
> 
> It may get better. But it just felt like another generic open world game
> To me , set in a very overdone zombie storyline.



This is exactly what I was talking about. I'm pretty sure no one that played this game for less than 8 hours liked it. The designers really messed up by including tons of great stuff and then sticking it so deep in the game that many will give up before they get there.

I just saw that Mass Effect comes out tonight, so I'm downloading it now! Woo.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I just saw that Mass Effect comes out tonight, so I'm downloading it now! Woo.



Same.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> This is exactly what I was talking about. I'm pretty sure no one that played this game for less than 8 hours liked it. The designers really messed up by including tons of great stuff and then sticking it so deep in the game that many will give up before they get there.
> 
> I just saw that Mass Effect comes out tonight, so I'm downloading it now! Woo.




yeah, I read your post after posting.

Witcher 3 has finally gotten me invested a year after I bought it. took 3 or 4 starts to get into it . so I'm getting all my open world fix there right now 

I might visit days gone later if I get a chance 

gotta say now I've started doing a bunch of side quests in Witcher to level up there are some truly messed up story lies in there.


----------



## MFB

Started a new game on Sekiro, it'd be nice to actually finish it this time. Now that I've played through both Bloodborne AND Dark Souls, I'm finding the middle ground of parrying/pushing enemies moreso than before. Previously I had only played BB, and was all dodge, no parry which does NOT work for what From wants you to do for combat.

Let's see how far I get this time, last time was Genichiro


----------



## Choop

About to go on a trip for a while, but when I get back the Mass Effect Legendary Edition will be on the table!


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Cool, looks like I’ll grab TF2 then!


----------



## Steinmetzify

mongey said:


> yeah, I read your post after posting.
> 
> Witcher 3 has finally gotten me invested a year after I bought it. took 3 or 4 starts to get into it . so I'm getting all my open world fix there right now
> 
> I might visit days gone later if I get a chance
> 
> gotta say now I've started doing a bunch of side quests in Witcher to level up there are some truly messed up story lies in there.



Man that dead baby thing freaked me the fuck out. Awesome game tho, top 2 for me for sure. 

Got back from Texas, updated everything cause my comp has been sitting for 5 weeks. Fired up Warzone and apparently that SBMM that they say isn’t in there definitely is. 

Not playing for 5 weeks must have reset something because the first day I played I got 6 wins, 4 of them in a row. It was like playing battle royale with 8 year olds. 

I’d run around a corner and there’d be a guy just shooting the wall, enjoying the bullet patterns or whatever. I’d run into a building and there’d be 3 guys just sitting there staring at each other. I’d be driving and there’d be a guy just straight running at the 4 wheeler shooting like he was not going to get run over. 

The whole thing was weird as fuck.


----------



## wankerness

Wow, I was stumped by even switching your class in Mass Effect 1!!! This has to be one of the least-intuitive character-creation screens I've ever seen. I bet it used to be like this and I somehow didn't notice.

(You choose "John Shepard, Jane Shepard, or Custom" on the name screen and if you choose one of the first two you're locked to Soldier class and can't change it)


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Wow, I was stumped by even switching your class in Mass Effect 1!!! This has to be one of the least-intuitive character-creation screens I've ever seen. I bet it used to be like this and I somehow didn't notice.
> 
> (You choose "John Shepard, Jane Shepard, or Custom" on the name screen and if you choose one of the first two you're locked to Soldier class and can't change it)



Wooooow. I only played it at launch and must’ve got lucky because I know I gave my female character a different name, so I must have gone custom. In M1 I remember powers being almost OP by endgame but kinda meh early on, is that generally the case in the series?


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Wooooow. I only played it at launch and must’ve got lucky because I know I gave my female character a different name, so I must have gone custom. In M1 I remember powers being almost OP by endgame but kinda meh early on, is that generally the case in the series?



ME1's got a quite different feel to the other games. Early on you're pretty much stuck to spamming gun damage at everything and barely using powers, but they get VERY overpowered by the end depending on what class you choose and which you put points into first. I've played through it 3 or 4 times as different classes - if you choose soldier you're pretty much just shooting stuff and healing/immunity-ing through everything and it's kinda bland unless you only want to shoot stuff. Adept (the "pure caster" class) took a long time to get powerful, thanks to giant cooldowns on everything before you're high level meaning you're mostly just popping things with a pistol with the occasional power for half the game, but eventually ended up being comically overpowered with singularity fields and the like. I'm doing Adept this time, too.

ME2/3, you are encouraged to use powers right away, so all classes kind of have a starting power with a short cooldown. It helped to make the game feel much more different between classes. I think ME2 overcompensated and made the classes/levelling too simple (you barely get any talent points and there are only like 5 abilities per class you can spec into, vs like 10-12 on ME1. ME3 was a midpoint between the two and I think was the best for it. 

Longwinded way of saying your experience was true for ME1 but really isn't for the sequels.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> ME1's got a quite different feel to the other games. Early on you're pretty much stuck to spamming gun damage at everything and barely using powers, but they get VERY overpowered by the end depending on what class you choose and which you put points into first. I've played through it 3 or 4 times as different classes - if you choose soldier you're pretty much just shooting stuff and healing/immunity-ing through everything and it's kinda bland unless you only want to shoot stuff. Adept (the "pure caster" class) took a long time to get powerful, thanks to giant cooldowns on everything before you're high level meaning you're mostly just popping things with a pistol with the occasional power for half the game, but eventually ended up being comically overpowered with singularity fields and the like. I'm doing Adept this time, too.
> 
> ME2/3, you are encouraged to use powers right away, so all classes kind of have a starting power with a short cooldown. It helped to make the game feel much more different between classes. I think ME2 overcompensated and made the classes/levelling too simple (you barely get any talent points and there are only like 5 abilities per class you can spec into, vs like 10-12 on ME1. ME3 was a midpoint between the two and I think was the best for it.
> 
> Longwinded way of saying your experience was true for ME1 but really isn't for the sequels.



Appreciate it homie. That’s exactly what it felt like.


----------



## Ralyks

Installing Mass Effect now, waiting for the kid to go to bed.

And Resident Evil Village remains awesome and might be my current GOTY (I'd say Like a Dragon on PS5, but I guess it still technically counts as 2020...)


----------



## MFB

So far this time around with Sekiro, I'm leaning much more into parrying and looking at the combat as a dance where I need to know when to follow the enemies lead vs. take the lead and go on the attack. Most guys are down in two blows, one for the initial strike and baiting them into attacking, then a double parry before breaking posture into a death blow. It's quite nice.

Before I was just all slash and dodge, because again, coming off Bloodborne it's all I knew (let's be honest, visceral attacks aren't really a parry), but as everyone says, Sekiro is all about the parry. My timing is still a little off on spears because at the moment, they're few and far between and they have a couple different attack types, but it'll get there. I've got the Miriki Counter, as well as the first four Shinobi prosthetics, so I'm making good progress.


----------



## wankerness

Man, Mass Effect 1 is clunk city. I should know, I played it through 3 or 4 times at least back in the day (PC and Xbox 360). But, it's surprising all over again. The movement is SO clunky and wallowy and it makes running around in the citadel feel like sludge. And that feeling is aided greatly by the wonky maps that are built around minimizing slowdown with the very bad engine they had for this game, so you keep getting gated by annoying elevators and slow-opening doors that were designed to hide loading screens.

Also, the combat is pretty damn bad, the way you can only hotkey one power and you have to precisely hit things with your caster abilities that have a 60 second cooldown is NOT cool. It results in things like Warp being very near useless unless you are up in a krogan's face. I'd forgotten that ME2 not only added the ability to bend powers around corners or arc them over cover, which made them wildly more useful, but also had introduced an automatic "lock-on" with them so you could actually hit things with the non-AOE effects. Ah well. I am doing a majority of the sidequests so far but might go to rushing through to get to 2/3 cause those are vastly superior.

Also, I'm not noticing the Mako being any less trash in this version, but maybe it really was worse in the old version. The controls are quite bad thanks to the left stick controlling forward/backward but doing it relative to the current camera position, making turns very difficult, especially when fighting thresher maws. I don't remember having trouble with them on the old versions, but I sure can't kill them here!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I was actually thinking about replaying the Mass Effect games the other day. I never got around to playing 3, so I figured I'd buy the trilogy release and check it out after replaying the first two. Admittedly all my nostalgia is for ME2. ME1 is a fleeting memory. I went through ME1 in about four days. I went through ME2 in two weeks, and the only reason it was only two weeks is because I did the Legion companion quests early and fucked myself.


----------



## Werecow

I've never wanted to play through the Mass Effect games. It started off with me being a huge oldschool Bioware fan, and absolutely loving the KOTOR games. I went into the first Mass Effect on its release right after yet another replay of KOTOR, and instead of an RPG with masses of moves and powers to use, i got what seemed like this dumb sci-fi shooting gallery game 
I've tried several times to get into it over the years, and still can't get over the combat and UI of the game. I just haven't got anything good to say about any aspect of the actual gameplay. People say to play it for the story, but i just can't put up with gameplay i dislike.


----------



## wankerness

Well, Mass Effect 1 sure is short! I'm already on the last mission. They made the trophies/achievements a lot easier, too. I'm only going to miss the platinum on the first runthrough because of the damn codec entries, since I didn't read an achievements list and there's one you can only get at the very beginning of the game with a specific dialogue choice.

I don't hate the gameplay, but it's definitely very clunky. I've adjusted to it and found stuff to like - if you hold down R1 the world freezes and you can move the targeting reticule around, and if you have teammates with offensive powers you can be pretty strategic and nuke/CC things all over the battlefield. I'd forgotten it worked that way - it's nice! It reminds me of Dragon Age 1 on PC.

Big annoyance of the game are the krogans and geth destroyers, that charge right at you and will 2-3 shot you even on normal when you're high level since they hit through your shield. If you're not quick on the draw with biotic powers like throw you're pretty much screwed. If memory serves, this was not an issue as soldier since you're practically unkillable as that class.

I would maybe suggest trying out 2 and reading a plot summary for 1, since the gameplay is such a radical improvement (if I remember right - we'll find out soon!). Not that 2 really does much in the way of continuing the story apart from carrying over characters. But, 3 sure comes back to 1's story with a vengeance.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Well, Mass Effect 1 sure is short! I'm already on the last mission. They made the trophies/achievements a lot easier, too. I'm only going to miss the platinum on the first runthrough because of the damn codec entries, since I didn't read an achievements list and there's one you can only get at the very beginning of the game with a specific dialogue choice.
> 
> I don't hate the gameplay, but it's definitely very clunky. I've adjusted to it and found stuff to like - if you hold down R1 the world freezes and you can move the targeting reticule around, and if you have teammates with offensive powers you can be pretty strategic and nuke/CC things all over the battlefield. I'd forgotten it worked that way - it's nice! It reminds me of Dragon Age 1 on PC.
> 
> Big annoyance of the game are the krogans and geth destroyers, that charge right at you and will 2-3 shot you even on normal when you're high level since they hit through your shield. If you're not quick on the draw with biotic powers like throw you're pretty much screwed. If memory serves, this was not an issue as soldier since you're practically unkillable as that class.
> 
> I would maybe suggest trying out 2 and reading a plot summary for 1, since the gameplay is such a radical improvement (if I remember right - we'll find out soon!). Not that 2 really does much in the way of continuing the story apart from carrying over characters. But, 3 sure comes back to 1's story with a vengeance.



LOL, I only played one or two hours yesterday, just got to the Citadel. It always takes me 30 / 40 hours to finish ME l, and maybe 50 /60 for II and III. But I do absolutely everything each time. First time I played I even read every codec entry... that took some time.

So far ME l is more or less the same than it was before (I just played the complete trilogy 3 or 4 months ago), but it looks way better, and it plays a bit better. The UI is more like II I think? 

It's the first time I play using a male Shepard, and I really like Jennifer Hale's voice acting more. I'm gonna try a few different things this time, I think.

Trophies are easier this time. There are some for "ME Legendary Edition" (those seem to be the most difficult), and then each game has separate, easier trophies. That's cool, I never got the plat for ME II because I never felt like playing through Insanity Mode.

It seems this time you could get in trouble with Galactic Readiness if you play III without playing I and II, but I don't know how that works... As I said, I always do everything anyways, so I always have more than I need.


----------



## Ralyks

Hades got rated for PS4 by the Korean Rating Committee.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy 

Oh and RE Village, still awesome.


----------



## TedEH

I fired up Axiom Verge today. It's pretty much what you would expect it to be. Metroid if it wasn't made by Nintendo. I kinda like the weapons so far. The story is.... ok?


----------



## Mathemagician

I have no further storage in my PS5 (thanks COD) so I’m debating buying a physical copy of ME Trilogy.

Also working through the Borderlands 3 DLC’s slowly since I never did them before. In many cases better writing than the base game for sure so far. Did it get easier to get legendaries? Because I feel like they are much more common at least out of vending machines. I’ve had crazy good luck just checking each vending machine I come across.


----------



## TedEH

All the talk about ME makes me kinda want to play those again - except that I don't want to pay full price for another slightly-different copy of a series that I already have and that don't really have any barriers to getting running.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> LOL, I only played one or two hours yesterday, just got to the Citadel. It always takes me 30 / 40 hours to finish ME l, and maybe 50 /60 for II and III. But I do absolutely everything each time. First time I played I even read every codec entry... that took some time.
> 
> So far ME l is more or less the same than it was before (I just played the complete trilogy 3 or 4 months ago), but it looks way better, and it plays a bit better. The UI is more like II I think?
> 
> It's the first time I play using a male Shepard, and I really like Jennifer Hale's voice acting more. I'm gonna try a few different things this time, I think.
> 
> Trophies are easier this time. There are some for "ME Legendary Edition" (those seem to be the most difficult), and then each game has separate, easier trophies. That's cool, I never got the plat for ME II because I never felt like playing through Insanity Mode.
> 
> It seems this time you could get in trouble with Galactic Readiness if you play III without playing I and II, but I don't know how that works... As I said, I always do everything anyways, so I always have more than I need.



Man...I got the 90% completion award (TONS of sidequests, almost all the exploration of random trash planets and doing all the associated mineral scans/collectibles), got to level 55 by the end, and it still took me less than 20 hours. Maybe cause I skip through most of the dialogue that I can cause I've played it so many times! Only things I really screwed up were the romance, and I forgot how you unlock the advanced class specialization so that was literally the last sidequest I finished and thus was too high of a level to have the remaining skill points to max out that talent.

Jennifer Hale's voiceacting is fantastic in all 3 games. The male Shepard improves A LOT in the sequels, he's very obviously worse than her in the first game and kinda ruins the experience at times. I usually play him as a bad guy in ME2/3 cause the voiceactor is more entertaining that way for sure. I played female Shepard this time as paragon, mostly cause of her voiceacting.

The trophies look fun. As said already, I nearly platinum'd 1 already - they cut all those awful "use power X amount of times" down to 25 from 75 and also made it count if your teammates use them, so I got it already, as opposed to 360 where I had to play through 3 times and use the powers over and over even when they sucked (ex Neural Shock) so that was a nice change. The "play through all 3 games on insanity" trophy thing is cool and I like how it's separate from the three games. I've gone through 1 and 3 on insanity - 3 is a LOT easier on insanity than 2 is, and 1 isn't bad at all if you're doing it on playthrough 2 and are an adept or soldier. 2 was kind of nasty and tedious, with all the enemies gaining like, shield AND barrier and making it all a ton of debuff-sniping. I got made 1/4 through before losing interest on 360.

Worst thing about this remaster: there's a glitch that happened to me 5 or 6 times where the camera like, bugs out and orients itself off to an angle so your character is facing some awkward angle instead of straight forward and the stick starts behaving extremely erratically. I don't recall that ever happening on the old versions. Hopefully it gets patched for my Insanity playthrough that I'll probably do after going through all 3.

I really don't remember what the Mako controls were on Xbox 360 - I think they were probably more "tank" style with reverse/accelerate buttons and turn? This version has weird "you go the direction you point the stick related to the camera" which can be a huge pain in the butt when the camera is rotated to the side and you want to make the vehicle go forward so you hold up on the stick and instead you don't move cause the game is trying to sidestrafe. But, I got used to it by the end. I doubt it's actually worse than the original controls, it's just still weird and bad. And it is actually worse for driving with the zoom-in active cause you can't tell what direction the wheels are facing so you have no idea what you should be pressing on the stick to avoid flying off to the side.

Improvements:

The game's environments definitely look better, especially with lighting effects. It still looks its age, but it is a pretty good fresh coat of paint on it without really changing anything. Some things in this game really still do look pretty good, mostly in-game cutscenes that are much bigger scope than any of the actual gameplay.

I really like that they made it so killing stuff with the Mako still gives you full experience points. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I think you had to like, get big enemies' health low and then get out of the mako quick for the finish blow to avoid getting half the experience from them. Also, I like that they gave it a speedboost, it makes getting up hills slightly less annoying when you don't have to use that nonsensical upwards booster that usually just caused you to do a flying backflip off the mountain.

Things I hated that I forgot/didn't experience in the old game:

-Minimap is terrible, it's just a radar and is distracting and almost worse than not having anything. You have to pause to really see where anything is anyway apart from setting waypoints. The game randomly sets waypoints that don't always actually seem to correspond to objectives, and since it looks identical to how it does if you set one, it's confusing. This is most annoying on Ilos where everything looks the same and paths are hard to see.

-Map design is very bad. It seems things were mostly designed to cut down on visibility as much as possible cause the engine was so badly optimized and slowed down constantly if you could see more than about 10 yards. So, there are lots of narrow corridors that abruptly turn at 90 degree angles to get to another large room, etc. The Citadel is especially terrible to explore since it also has the infamous loading-screen disguising elevators all over the place. It makes the game feel really claustrophobic and small-scale when it shouldn't. Occasionally it breaks out of this mold and feels properly big (ex parts of Virmire, the part where you gravity-walk in the citadel) and it's jarring. ME2/3 did a MUCH better job of making things feel less low-budget.

-Controls are clunky and movement is wooden. That combines with the bad map design to create some real annoyances sometimes. A good example is the climactic citadel battle where you're progressing through trenches that are like 3 feet deep and your character can't jump or vault AT ALL so you have to run all the way down the length of the trench to get to the ramp to get up that 3 feet, then proceed to the next trench, repeat.

-Sidequests are terrible and the environments for them are worse. There are like 4 different base layouts (lab kind of area, mining tunnels, warehouse looking thing, etc) and they get copy-pasted with NO variation whatsoever apart from occasionally the warehouse one has a door walled off or there are a bunch of crates in it that make getting to the door annoying. It's like they had no budget/time left for sidequests.

-That sorry excuse for a minigame that you have to do every single time you hack or open an artifact or whatever is TERRIBLE. You should have gotten to just bypass the lower tier ones automatically at some point, cause it never gets any harder to do, but you are doing it hundreds and hundreds of times over the course of the game and it's terrible. I think it was different on PC, I remembered being surprised when I played the 360 one and it was like this.

-The romance like, gets FORCED on you unless you get lucky or read a guide of exactly how to answer everywhere to avoid triggering some flag, cause there's no "I'M NOT INTERESTED FUCK OFF" dialogue anywhere in the game it seems. I was a dick to Kaidan constantly, outright told Liara I was interested in her, and he still showed up to try and have romantic times with my character before Ilos and Liara was completely locked out as an option. Just like real life, I guess.

-The frickin Mako is still godawful. The handful of really mountainous planets are incredibly frustrating to maneuver in that thing, and you'll do plenty of erratically flying around and bouncing and midair rolling and sliding back down hills right at the top etc. Also, something has to be messed up with the code cause the PS4 Pro started overheating on several planets while I was in the Mako - like the fan would go on full-blast. Especially the planet with all the monkeys.

-Inventory. I was consistently having to spend 5 minutes just going through inventory turning stuff into omnigel cause you pick up WAY too much stuff.

Overall it's a promising universe that they created, and they introduced great characters (and hardly developed any of them), but it's a very dated game that wasn't that great in the first place. I do like how many abilities you get compared to the sequel, and I like that the weapons have unlimited ammo (makes more sense with the "heat" concept - it's nonsensical how they gave limited ammo in 2).


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I have no further storage in my PS5 (thanks COD) so I’m debating buying a physical copy of ME Trilogy.
> 
> Also working through the Borderlands 3 DLC’s slowly since I never did them before. In many cases better writing than the base game for sure so far. Did it get easier to get legendaries? Because I feel like they are much more common at least out of vending machines. I’ve had crazy good luck just checking each vending machine I come across.



You didn't used to be able to get them out of vending machines at all, I don't think. They definitely made it easier. It was always far easier than it was in 2, though - farming in that game was awful. Now the whole thing is just getting Mayhem 10 versions of guns.

I lost interest in that game with the Lovecraft DLC. I really didn't enjoy the setting or the levels. Still haven't checked out the big updates to the base game or the third DLC pack. They're probably good, I just haven't gotten any urge to go back yet.

I'm now on to Mass Effect 2/3 and then trying to platinum them meaning a second playthrough of all of them, so it's going to be a while! Plus I want to finish Nier and am only on Playthrough 2 of 5 there. And I just started Code Vein before ME came out. Gah.


----------



## MFB

Took down some more bosses in Sekiro, I got up through Gyobu the first night I restarted and then tonight I took down: General Tenzen, one of Seven Spears of Ashina, and Flaming Bull or whatever it's called; I'm still pissed I died on that last one, but it got me while I was on the ground rolled backwards instead of sideways, so that'll KO no problem. 

Managed to unlock the path to Senpou Temple too, but that place used to fuck me up before, so I'm playing it in order and waiting. Next up is one of Isshin generals, then the Sword Sage and after that I'm back to where I stopped before - Genichiro.


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> Hades got rated for PS4 by the Korean Rating Committee.
> 
> Oh boy oh boy oh boy
> 
> Oh and RE Village, still awesome.



I really need to go back to hades and beat it. Got to the last battle a bunch of times. 
Newer beaten him.


----------



## Mathemagician

mongey said:


> I really need to go back to hades and beat it. Got to the last battle a bunch of times.
> Newer beaten him.



Shield build, with dots/AOE. Focus on not getting hit. That’s how I got my first kill.


----------



## Jarmake

Lately I've been trying to git gud on Bloodborne. I tried playing it a few times before and have ragequit it just as many times, but this time something just clicked in my head and I've been having a blast playing it.

Already beat Cleric Beast, Father Gascoigne, Vicar Amelia and the Witch of Hemwick.

But damn those freaking hunters. Damn them all to hell!


----------



## Lorcan Ward

TedEH said:


> All the talk about ME makes me kinda want to play those again - except that I don't want to pay full price for another slightly-different copy of a series that I already have and that don't really have any barriers to getting running.



Same. I'd wait a year or two for the price to come down before I'd pick it up. It's not like the Infinity Engine Enhanced Edition Games where they added in so much extra new content, lots of ease of use tweaks and got it working on modern systems. AFAIK there isn't any missing content added back in or new content. As much as I'd love to play 1 + 2 again I'm not in a rush to pick it up.


----------



## MFB

Fucking aye, I forgot how much I hate the Ashina Elite boss before Genichiro. He's the embodiment of the god damn anime sword flick and whoever designed him knows how fucking cheesed this fight is.

Edit: nevermind, beat him on the 2nd try, he just got luck with catching me on the tail end of his hits that first fight. No limits on side stepping bitch.


----------



## wankerness

Lorcan Ward said:


> Same. I'd wait a year or two for the price to come down before I'd pick it up. It's not like the Infinity Engine Enhanced Edition Games where they added in so much extra new content, lots of ease of use tweaks and got it working on modern systems. AFAIK there isn't any missing content added back in or new content. As much as I'd love to play 1 + 2 again I'm not in a rush to pick it up.



If you have them on PC I can’t really recommend this, but they run one hell of a lot better than they did on 360 and look quite a bit better. PC had the higher resolution/framerates so it wouldn't be as dramatic.

I got several hours into ME2 (got the first round of dossiers, and the horizon mission after that). This really was a quantum leap forward in terms of engine, gameplay, production values, etc. It appears that what they did was simplify character models slightly (they look pretty featureless sometimes) but that resulted in environments massively opening up and things just looking vastly better. The gameplay is a LOT faster and I was nearly killed repeatedly during the Garrus recruitment mission. You really have to dive behind cover quickly in this game, while ME1 you are a lot tankier. There were so many QOL upgrades in this game, like the huge overhaul of powers making them more fun to use, or buttons for entering/exiting cover and just faster player movement.

I'd forgotten some of the changes from 1 I DON'T like, though. I don't like how you mostly only get EXP on the "mission complete" screen. ME1 you get EXP every time you kill an enemy and thus you're leveling up all the time. I don't really like how things are segmented more into levels through those screens, either - I get why they did it (most people hated the Mako), but it does make ME1 feel like a more cohesive experience between flying around and the levels at times. Still, it was a gigantic improvement from 1 and really holds up. The only thing I really don't think holds up are those annoyingly gigantic notifications that pop up in the right side of the screen - they should have used the increased resolution of this version to scale those down a lot!!! It's especially annoying after missions where you get 15-20 of them in a row.

Oh, I don't really like the Adept class in this game, either - most of the powers are redundant (there's no reason I can figure to be using lift when you have stasis considering all powers share cooldowns) and the shared CDs on everything make a minimum of powers ideal, and you don't really get anything that's off CD like ammo powers or anything. Ah well. I should have switched classes! I remember liking Infiltrator and Engineer a lot.

Unfortunately my girlfriend came back from out of town so I won't get to spend tons and tons of time on it like I did with ME1 the last couple days!! Guess I'll be taking this one more slowly. I already was, though. Unlike 2, with this one it's actually fun to just talk to your crew members (and there's a point), and I get into scanning crap for materials. People like to trash the planet scanning and I don't blame them for taking it out in 3, but I kinda like it with the sped-up sensor speed (they patched that at some point a year or two into the release IIRC). I also love that they added % completion to exploring systems - I had to use a spreadsheet for completion to do it in ME1!!

EDIT: Somehow, I'd never done this Arrival DLC. I'm guessing this was added really late as a lead-in to ME3 or something? I've done all the other DLC as many times as I've played the game, so I was surprised to see something new.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> Lately I've been trying to git gud on Bloodborne. I tried playing it a few times before and have ragequit it just as many times, but this time something just clicked in my head and I've been having a blast playing it.
> 
> Already beat Cleric Beast, Father Gascoigne, Vicar Amelia and the Witch of Hemwick.
> 
> But damn those freaking hunters. Damn them all to hell!



What hunters are you referring to? You mean the NPC hunter enemies? Did you try doing the Eileen the Crow quest that's infamously hard (i accidentally skipped it!)?

I really, really liked that game. I got it when I first got my PS4 and couldn't even beat the first boss and quickly gave up. After playing through the DS games it made a lot more sense. I legitimately enjoyed most of it. But I sure hated Laurence and the goddam Chalice dungeons.


----------



## MFB

I didn't actually complete Eileens quest, but uh, I somehow managed to get it to the point where I aggro'd her by not doing something and she became hostile; she took a couple tries but I was able to beat her without too much trouble, she's still just another boss.

Managed to get past Genichiro, so I'm now officially further in the game then my initial playthrough. The Tengu warriors can already go fuck themselves, buncha bullshit from them.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I didn't actually complete Eileens quest, but uh, I somehow managed to get it to the point where I aggro'd her by not doing something and she became hostile; she took a couple tries but I was able to beat her without too much trouble, she's still just another boss.
> 
> Managed to get past Genichiro, so I'm now officially further in the game then my initial playthrough. The Tengu warriors can already go fuck themselves, buncha bullshit from them.



I heard that the hard thing with Eileen is some hunter you're supposed to fight with her early in the game that's extraordinarily difficult at that point. I missed that and ended up fighting her much later, she was easy.


----------



## MFB

Oh, yeah she ended up helping me fight someone ...I think it was Henryk, or something, early in the game where you kill Papa G. I've never fought him without her so I'm not sure how bad he is on his own, but since it's early in the game, I imagine other hunters are still a PITA by then.

You might also be thinking of the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst, who Ive never seen or fought, but every one says he's one of toughest in the game. He puts Eileen almost in the ground on his own which is hilarious that you gave him with her storyline. I don't believe she can actually help in the fight though, it's always a 1 on 1 as well.


----------



## p0ke

TedEH said:


> All the talk about ME makes me kinda want to play those again - except that I don't want to pay full price for another slightly-different copy of a series that I already have and that don't really have any barriers to getting running.



Same here. I'll probably buy it when the price comes down to around 20€ though. I never played ME3 at all and ME2 very quickly, so I'm kinda looking forward to finishing the whole story properly. Back when they came out I had a Wasabi 360 on my Xbox 360 (it's a device that plugs between the motherboard and DVD-drive and allows mounting of ripped images from an eSATA HDD), so therefore I had basically every 360 game and because of over saturation I didn't play many of them at all. GTA4/5, RDR and Skyrim mostly stole the show back then.

ME1 on the other hand came out way before the Wasabi and was my only 360 game for a long time, so I played the crap out of it  That was on my first 360, which was the model that had the RRoD problem. I was lucky that the extended warranty was still valid when it happened and I had it repaired, but then it RRoD'd again a couple of years later and I bought the 360S and the Wasabi thingy.


----------



## Jarmake

wankerness said:


> What hunters are you referring to? You mean the NPC hunter enemies? Did you try doing the Eileen the Crow quest that's infamously hard (i accidentally skipped it!)?
> 
> I really, really liked that game. I got it when I first got my PS4 and couldn't even beat the first boss and quickly gave up. After playing through the DS games it made a lot more sense. I legitimately enjoyed most of it. But I sure hated Laurence and the goddam Chalice dungeons.



Yeah, those bastard npc enemies, the one which is in the cemetery after you beat Father G, the one in the tower with the machinegun in old yharnam, the two guys near the grand cathedral and so on...

I haven't done anything with Eileen, but I talked to her a couple of times...


----------



## mongey

All this BB talk is making me want to replay it. Been a long time.


----------



## MFB

It's such a good game, although the movement in Sekiro is making me quite jealous that BB wasn't this fluid. I should finish my NG+ playthrough, but it's got a good chunk of games ahead of it that I should finish for the first time.


----------



## p0ke

I'm still playing Dark Souls 3. I'm at the Cathedral of the Deep - I got to the borreal valley thing but couldn't get through the barrier because I don't have a doll, so then I went back and found a few places I had missed before. The only thing that's annoying me in this game is that you have to warp to the firelink shrine to level up - feels kinda redundant. On the other hand it's convenient that the smith and the merchants and all that are in one place, but still.


----------



## Mathemagician

Jarmake said:


> Yeah, those bastard npc enemies, the one which is in the cemetery after you beat Father G, the one in the tower with the machinegun in old yharnam, the two guys near the grand cathedral and so on...
> 
> I haven't done anything with Eileen, but I talked to her a couple of times...



Sneak up and kick the machine gunner off the roof. EZGG done deal.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I'm still playing Dark Souls 3. I'm at the Cathedral of the Deep - I got to the borreal valley thing but couldn't get through the barrier because I don't have a doll, so then I went back and found a few places I had missed before. The only thing that's annoying me in this game is that you have to warp to the firelink shrine to level up - feels kinda redundant. On the other hand it's convenient that the smith and the merchants and all that are in one place, but still.



The hub in DS3 is much more like a modern game than DS1's wonky one. I guess they did the "must level with the NPC" change to keep you coming back there. DS2 and Bloodborne were the same way. I suspect DS1 might have done it that way if the warp system in that one wasn't so incredibly hobbled (you could only warp directly to like 25% of the bonfires).


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> The hub in DS3 is much more like a modern game than DS1's wonky one. I guess they did the "must level with the NPC" change to keep you coming back there. DS2 and Bloodborne were the same way. I suspect DS1 might have done it that way if the warp system in that one wasn't so incredibly hobbled (you could only warp directly to like 25% of the bonfires).



Yup, the warping in DS1 was pretty useless, really, and also you don't get it until pretty late in the game whereas in DS3 you can't even progress without warping right in the beginning. So yeah, it makes sense in a way but I'd still prefer to level up at any bonfire.


----------



## MFB

DS1 has a hub? Where's it considered?

I pretty much just though of each bonfire as it's own station, but found it out that there wasn't any central point to link them to like The Hunter's Dream in BB. Sekiro has the Dilapitated Temple, and later Kuro's Room or whatever it's actual name is, and I haven't cracked open DS2/3 to see if they have one, but I was under the impression that they were like DS1 where it was just bonfires.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> DS1 has a hub? Where's it considered?
> 
> I pretty much just though of each bonfire as it's own station, but found it out that there wasn't any central point to link them to like The Hunter's Dream in BB. Sekiro has the Dilapitated Temple, and later Kuro's Room or whatever it's actual name is, and I haven't cracked open DS2/3 to see if they have one, but I was under the impression that they were like DS1 where it was just bonfires.



Firelink Shrine, of course - it has all the trainers and is centrally located (multiple zones are directly connected to it). Plus it is the closest thing to a reassuring place, being the only zone with music.

DS2 has the best hub of the four games, it's a little village and the different trainers and NPCs have their own houses, and the teleport bonfire is right next to the trainer and the shard-seller, and it has a nice hypnotic music theme. DS3's is more ugly like 1 but definitely copied the quality-of-life improvements from DS2. Bloodborne's is more minimalist with the little vendor guys and the doll being the only NPCs and everything else just being desks in your house.


----------



## MFB

I figured as much, but it still seems kind of meh compared to the rest, especially given that at one point the fire at Firelink Shrine goes out for quest purposes. I also never used any Pyromancy so I didn't pay attention to that trainer, and I don't know if the Knight offers anything to you does he? I thought he just sad around being sad.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I figured as much, but it still seems kind of meh compared to the rest, especially given that at one point the fire at Firelink Shrine goes out for quest purposes. I also never used any Pyromancy so I didn't pay attention to that trainer, and I don't know if the Knight offers anything to you does he? I thought he just sad around being sad.



I'm guessing you missed Big Hat Logan (the sorcery trainer) and the woman who starts out there that you later save from the tomb of the giants who comes back and sells miracles too? And the two pyromancy trainers, and the guy on the ledge that is easy to die when trying to get to who sells boss armor, and the firekeeper who upgrades your flask except while she's dead, and the handful of other NPCs that come and go (ex Onion Knight's daughter, or Patches if you don't give him the response that makes him try to kill you). Of course, most of them don't show up unless you get them out of a locked cell or happen on them in other levels and talk to them and fully exhaust their dialogue. It's a weird, changing hub. DS1 has some of the most unique map/world design of any game ever, and Demon's Souls and all subsequent Soulsborne games had much more hub-based design. But, Firelink definitely fits into the pattern of the others, it's just odder.

DS2 and 3 copy the way the hub starts out empty until you find NPCs in the world, but it's a bit more straightforward. 3 just has a few NPCs that take forever to free, like the black magic lady.


----------



## Jarmake

Mathemagician said:


> Sneak up and kick the machine gunner off the roof. EZGG done deal.



Well, I tried sneaking on my first try and the son of a diddly was facing me when I got up the ladder. Maybe I will try later again later.


----------



## TedEH

Made it to the end of Axiom Verge. It's very much a Metroid clone for better and worse at the same time. The weapons are all fun. The backtracking in this one isn't toooo bad, but at one point near the end I got lost and had no indication that I had to return to a certain point. I had to basically cover the whole game's map again to figure out what I missed. It was short, but I think if it was too much longer the novelty would wear off. Music was a bit repetitive. Not bad, per-se, but kinda dragged on, and sometimes didn't loop in a pleasant way. Worth playing, and an impressive tribute to what made Super Metroid good, especially since I think it was made by one guy.


----------



## MFB

Jarmake said:


> Well, I tried sneaking on my first try and the son of a diddly was facing me when I got up the ladder. Maybe I will try later again later.



This is the Hunter in Central Yharnam right, or actually I think it's OLD Yharnam? Begins with a D?

If it's who I'm thinking, truthfully, he's not really worth the fuss to kill, as you can go around him pretty easily. He doesn't start shooting until you go down the first set of stairs, and you can bait the Beast Patients up the steps pretty easily. Then you just sprint into the lower portion of the building, and you can see the areas he can shoot through pretty quick. Bait the enemies into coming up the stairs so he loses line of sight on you, and then when you finally get to the bottom courtyard (where there's a good chunk of Beast Patients) - so long as you've already killed the Hunter there, just sprint on through.

Hell, I would just sprint through 90% of that place to get to the ladder behind his tower so you can go down to the lower portion of Old Yharnam and deal with BSB and Paarl/the camera itself.


----------



## Leviathus

I just spam Djura with the repeating pistol or blunderbuss till he falls off the tower, just gotta start shooting asap once you're up the ladder.


----------



## MFB

Leviathus said:


> Just gotta start shooting asap once you're up the ladder.


----------



## Jarmake

Okay, guys... I'll try shooting him down today.


----------



## wankerness

Played a fair amount more of Mass Effect 2. I'd forgotten just how utter garbage all the content associated with the Overlord DLC was. Those Firewalker missions in the floaty paper vehicle are terrible, and the Overlord missions proper are barely better, especially when they make use of the vehicle. The Mako is infinitely preferable to this thing, mainly cause at least you could save the game while in the Mako and it didn't die in ~3 seconds of being fired on. I had more than one instance in these missions of getting through 15 minutes of material, getting blown up right at the end, and having to do it all over again. Argh. The damn thing handles a hell of a lot better than the Mako, at least.

And then the Overlord DLC has a stupid plot that's probably offensive to autistic people everywhere, but the real problem is the dialogue. It constantly blares these hideous metallic screeches in your ears (they're thrown in at the end of practically every voice section to represent angry AI) and it just makes you want to finish it as fast as possible. I'm definitely not doing this on any more characters!!

ME3 had given me the false memory than Mass Effect DLC was all good. Overlord was godawful. I think all of ME3's was at least pretty good, and in some cases great. ME2 I think might have only had the Lair of the Shadow Broker as good add-on content (Arrival totally sucked, too). Zaeed and Kasumi are just kind of boring and barely integrated with the game, but at least their missions aren't painful. I've only played through Shadow Broker like, twice and barely remember it (it came out after I'd already played through the game several times, unlike Overlord and the Kasumi/Zaeed missions, which I had from the beginning).


----------



## p0ke

MFB said:


> DS1 has a hub? Where's it considered?
> 
> I pretty much just though of each bonfire as it's own station, but found it out that there wasn't any central point to link them to like The Hunter's Dream in BB. Sekiro has the Dilapitated Temple, and later Kuro's Room or whatever it's actual name is, and I haven't cracked open DS2/3 to see if they have one, but I was under the impression that they were like DS1 where it was just bonfires.



I didn't really consider the Firelink Shrine a "hub" in DS1, but yeah I guess that's the closest to one there is. I didn't find all the NPC's that could've been there though and on my NG+ I chose the serpent that lives in the abyss over the one at the shrine, so that could've caused it to not really feel like a hub. Anyway, like I said, I would've prefered to be able to level up anywhere instead of having to travel to the hub every time in DS3.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Played a fair amount more of Mass Effect 2. I'd forgotten just how utter garbage all the content associated with the Overlord DLC was. Those Firewalker missions in the floaty paper vehicle are terrible, and the Overlord missions proper are barely better, especially when they make use of the vehicle. The Mako is infinitely preferable to this thing, mainly cause at least you could save the game while in the Mako and it didn't die in ~3 seconds of being fired on. I had more than one instance in these missions of getting through 15 minutes of material, getting blown up right at the end, and having to do it all over again. Argh. The damn thing handles a hell of a lot better than the Mako, at least.
> 
> And then the Overlord DLC has a stupid plot that's probably offensive to autistic people everywhere, but the real problem is the dialogue. It constantly blares these hideous metallic screeches in your ears (they're thrown in at the end of practically every voice section to represent angry AI) and it just makes you want to finish it as fast as possible. I'm definitely not doing this on any more characters!!
> 
> ME3 had given me the false memory than Mass Effect DLC was all good. Overlord was godawful. I think all of ME3's was at least pretty good, and in some cases great. ME2 I think might have only had the Lair of the Shadow Broker as good add-on content (Arrival totally sucked, too). Zaeed and Kasumi are just kind of boring and barely integrated with the game, but at least their missions aren't painful. I've only played through Shadow Broker like, twice and barely remember it (it came out after I'd already played through the game several times, unlike Overlord and the Kasumi/Zaeed missions, which I had from the beginning).



Yeah, Firewalker is shit. Only played it once, I think, maybe twice. Overlord is, um, I don't know... passable?

Zaeed is a cool character, his mission is OK. Kasumi not so cool, her mission meh. But Shepard gets to use a dress (or suit), so haha.

I like Lair of the Shadow Broker, and usually Liara is my Shepard's fuck buddy, so oh hi Liara!

I only played Arrival once, I like it that it explains some stuff that happens on ME3, but yeah, it's not great.

How good are ME2's graphics now? I remember 3 looking WAY better than 1 and better than 2, I wonder if it's still the same now.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Yeah, Firewalker is shit. Only played it once, I think, maybe twice. Overlord is, um, I don't know... passable?
> 
> Zaeed is a cool character, his mission is OK. Kasumi not so cool, her mission meh. But Shepard gets to use a dress (or suit), so haha.
> 
> I like Lair of the Shadow Broker, and usually Liara is my Shepard's fuck buddy, so oh hi Liara!
> 
> I only played Arrival once, I like it that it explains some stuff that happens on ME3, but yeah, it's not great.
> 
> How good are ME2's graphics now? I remember 3 looking WAY better than 1 and better than 2, I wonder if it's still the same now.



2's graphics are a mixed bag. I was struck by how bad some of the character models in 2 look - Jack in particular looks like her face was anti-aliased half-off. The overall engine and world design etc on the other hand holds up WAY better than 1's. I suspect they decreased detail on characters as part of the game's MUCH, MUCH more expansive environments and lack of stuff like elevators disguising load times. That all said, the characters all have so much personality that it doesn't really matter that they all look kind of weird. The game is just a lot more vibrant and alive than the sorta stodgy-feeling/looking 1.

I remember when ME3 first came out everyone was freaking out about how bad the graphics were. The demo, which is the opening of the game, I especially remember youtube videos mocking the terrible animations and stuff much like how Andromeda got made fun of for the super-wonky face animations when it launched. I don't think they're any worse than 2's, but they definitely were made fun of even at the time.

RE: bonus characters, Zaeed is useless since there are already so many characters with the lackluster concussive shot as their only real attack that we definitely don't need him. Kasumi, on the other hand, has both one of the best debuffers (overload) and the best CC (flashbang, which I never even tried using my first few playthroughs and later found out I was an idiot for not using).


----------



## mongey

I am really enjoying Witcher 3. 
Some of the main quests are a bit repetitive and long with multi Layered fetch quests. Go here , bring this back , look for thee people. Do this. come back again. Do something else. 

It’s par for the course with open world , but some them feel a bit extreme.


----------



## TedEH

I remembered yesterday that there's another one of those deals where you can get GamePass for three months for $1, so I grabbed that and started downloading a bunch of stuff that should keep me occupied for a while.

Busted out the VR stuff to try Squadrons - and I think the VR might be what makes that game. Unfortunately, the headset also kinda makes my head hurt after a while, thanks to glasses.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Remember Me. Arkham Asylum and Uncharted gameplay in a Deus Ex type setting. Game has a couple spots were it gets interesting, almost villain protagonist aware, but quickly brushes that aside to tell a story with a twist I saw coming from the beginning. The whole guide over the radio turning out to be the villain trope was played out when BioShock did it and games still think they're clever when they do it over a decade later.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing nothing but Mass Effect 2. This one's a LOT longer than 1. I had over 90% completion on that one and finished NG in 19:45, this one I'm at 32 hours and still haven't even finished all the loyalty missions or started the Shadow Broker DLC! I can't wait for ME3, and I'm eager to play as other classes, but this is really making me think I might not immediately try to play through all 3 again on Insanity. Especially cause you can't really do that with a new character and I don't particularly want to go through 1 again as the same damn character so soon.


----------



## TedEH

Carrion Rocket said:


> Remember Me.


I kinda liked that one. I vaguely remember it wasn't received super well in reviews, but it was a decent time. When I saw some clips of Cyberpunk, I immediately thought of this game.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

TedEH said:


> I kinda liked that one. I vaguely remember it wasn't received super well in reviews, but it was a decent time. When I saw some clips of Cyberpunk, I immediately thought of this game.



Yeah, the whole memory hunter thing made me think of Cyperpunk at times, especially with the Total Recall-esque plot. I remember most of the criticism being levied at Nilin as a character, but considering this game came out during the Woke 1.0 era I'm not surprised that's what most reviewers focused on. And like I said, there's times in the game where it makes you think she's a villain protagonist. But having read up on the development of it, I'm sure they had to condense most of the intended plot.

My main problem with it was the awful camera. There were numerous times I'd be in combat and have to wrestle the camera into an angle at which I could see the enemy I was supposed to be fighting. That and it's a short game that just pads the runtime by throwing waves of enemies at you.


----------



## TedEH

I tried to get into Control - but I think it was a mistake to start it on the Xbox. The performance is just embarrassing. Every time you pause the game stutters for a full second. Fights slow to a crawl like it's old-school Goldeneye or something. I had the game crash on me a couple o times already. I'm debating trying it on PC instead, but I don't know if I want to start my progress over. Maybe it's better if I just play something else for a while and restart on PC later so it'll be fresh again. It's a shame, 'cause I like the premise of it.

Also, there's a really low sub note that plays all the time that just sound grating. Like the note is just too low - it kinda makes my speakers fart out a bit - like I'm worried it's annoying to the neighbours.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I tried to get into Control - but I think it was a mistake to start it on the Xbox.



Yeah, that game doesn't run great on base PS4 and Xbox One. I played on a PS4 Pro and the Ultimate Edition on PS5 and had no issues on either.

Anyway, just here to say I'm pretty sure I'm in the final quarter of Resident Evil Village and it's still my current GOTY. Even if whoever wrote Ethans dialouge should be fired.


----------



## wankerness

Started ME3, still as an adept. Wow, I forgot about what they did with weapon loads and power cool downs. If you only have one weapon on you as an adept, cool downs are a nonissue and you can just spam powers to your heart’s content. It feels so freeing compared to ME2’s 5 second cool downs on many powers. And I’d forgotten about the advanced power versions they added, like throw that splits into two separate targeting orbs. And how now almost everything causes combo explosions! I see now why I remembered this being my favorite of the series. They upped the fun-factor considerably.

Also, they added something which was sorely missing in 2 - some kind of evasion ability!! In that game you could very easily die if you realized you’d mispositioned since all you could do was clunkily get out of cover, turn around, and try to sprint somewhere else before you died. Here, you have a (rather clunky and unpredictable) roll ability to get between cover. It doesn’t work perfectly, but it was needed!!

The graphics are better in some respects, but super-wonky in others. If you don’t laugh at the horrendous animations on Captain Anderson running in the beginning of the game, you’re dead inside.


----------



## BlackMastodon

When ME3 came out and everyone was taking shots at the weak ending and piling on, I felt like everyone ignored the huge improvement in gameplay like you described. It was so fluid and fun to play, I spent like 100 hours in the multiplayer just to get more.


----------



## Mathemagician

Just started Horizon from the PSN free games. Wow, dis a good game.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> Yeah, that game doesn't run great on base PS4 and Xbox One.


It's a One S, but I guess that's the same deal. I don't usually use consoles much, so I forget what the real differences are between the base, S, and X. I wonder if the problem is a slow disk. Quantum Break would barely run if you installed it on a spinning disk, but ran just fine on an SSD. I reinstalled this morning on my PC (10600k + gtx1080) and it runs 100x better. No stutters, the texture quality is better, etc. The game seem interesting enough that I'll probably just restart.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> It's a One S, but I guess that's the same deal. I don't usually use consoles much, so I forget what the real differences are between the base, S, and X. I wonder if the problem is a slow disk. Quantum Break would barely run if you installed it on a spinning disk, but ran just fine on an SSD. I reinstalled this morning on my PC (10600k + gtx1080) and it runs 100x better. No stutters, the texture quality is better, etc. The game seem interesting enough that I'll probably just restart.



Control frequently ran like trash on PS4 Pro, too - it would slow-down BIGTIME in any firefight that had a lot of projectiles flying around. I mean, it was playable and I finished it, but the framerate drops were very distracting. I think they just designed this game as a high-end PC game, where they seem to program for people that have the highest available specs on the market vs programming for fluidity on more realistic hardware. Ironically, I really didn't think the graphics looked particularly good. 

Some guy was in here a couple months ago saying it ran perfectly, but I don't believe him unless he had some kind of super PS4 Pro.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I think they just designed this game as a high-end PC game, where they seem to program for people that have the highest available specs on the market vs programming for fluidity on more realistic hardware.


Yeah, that would make a lot of sense. I have trouble imagining though that they don't _know_ it performs abysmally on consoles. I can only assume someone out there knows what the problem is, but it's too complicated or core to the experience or outside of the hands of the people who know to be able to fix it easily.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> Yeah, that would make a lot of sense. I have trouble imagining though that they don't _know_ it performs abysmally on consoles. I can only assume someone out there knows what the problem is, but it's too complicated or core to the experience or outside of the hands of the people who know to be able to fix it easily.


I'm not sure what that dev's deal is with games running badly. I keep being tempted by Quantum Break, and that still runs terribly on current top of the range PCs, despite it being their previous game. I almost picked it up in the last Steam sale.

Control ran pretty great for me. Though with the limited spaces the game displays, it really should run massively better than it does.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Some guy was in here a couple months ago saying it ran perfectly, but I don't believe him unless he had some kind of super PS4 Pro.



That would be me, and I absolutely stand by that statement.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Crysis 3. Just like the original, it's visually amazing, but complete jank to play. As well as the fact that you can just sprint through the levels and totally ignore most enemies on your way to the objectives.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I keep being tempted by Quantum Break, and that still runs terribly on current top of the range PCs


I had trouble with that one too when I first tried it because it's stuuuuupidly heavy on streaming and I still had a spinning disk. With an ssd I got it to run fine on a 4670k + gtx980. Having an SSD is key for that one, and making sure your machine isn't doing anything else at the time.

What I find interesting is that in the last while, most real performance problems for me have been related to vram and texture streaming. At some point games just started gobbling up as much vram as they could get their hands on, so if you had older cards you were still ok as long as you had gotten the higher-memory versions. On top of that, we now rely on streaming so heavily that some games just don't do well without an SSD - it's rare, but it's starting to happen, and will probably get worse soon.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finally started Tomb Raider 2013.


----------



## TedEH

I have decided that the windows store is the worst. It is far too janky for it's own good. I managed to mess up my PC twice with it, just trying to play some Gamepass games.

I noticed yesterday that explorer would crash and restart in a loop a dozen times before my pc could fully start up. I did a whole ton of troubleshooting and the solution ended up being: Uninstall the Halo Collection, because something about it being installed made explorer crash (I think until the point where the storage service started). Turns out it had been happening for a few days without me noticing since I'd power on the machine and go do something else for a few minutes.

So I fix that and go back to Control.... except I can't. It errors out this morning for who-know-what reason. Not even a crash - it doesn't even launch. This one's even more dumb: When you use Teams, it asks if you want to let your organization control your PC - normally I say no, but at some point I must have accidentally let it - because it had associated my PC with my work (which I didn't want). So I removed that account from my machine. No problem. Except that all my windows apps were installed with that account existing, so now anything installed during that time just doesn't work anymore. I had to re-sign-in to Teams and let it re-instate that account association - then I could play that game. Nevermind that the store account/xbox account and my work account are separate from eachother.

I just wanna play my game maaaaaaan.


----------



## gabito

Just finished ME1 Legacy Edition, even got the plat (that's a first for me in the series) in around 25 hours in total.

It usually took me between 30 or 40 hours to finish the game on my previous PS3 playthroughs, always using an infiltrator. This time on the PS4 I used a vanguard, and I feel like the game was easier and more unbalanced because you can use all the guns without penalties in this version.

I tried to romance space racist Ashley, but fucked that up somehow. Oh well, next time it'll be Liara I think.

The Mako drives a little better this time. And by that I only mean it's a little less bouncy. The rest seems to be the same as it was before.

Anyway, now it's time to play the more fun, with better characters, better dialogue, better graphics, better gameplay, and a story almost completely unrelated to the trilogy's main plot Mass Effect 2.


----------



## Leviathus

Got 2 Warzone wins today which is unheard of for me. The FFAR shreds.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished the single player in tomb raider. I'll finish up the challenges and tombs later. 

I'm trying to clean up my PS+ backlog on my PS3. I might do either Puppeteer or Thief next.


----------



## mongey

We’ll I just did the Witcher 3 mission with the play. 

fuck me. That really should have been left out. For a game with allot of great little side stories , that sucked.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Just finished ME1 Legacy Edition, even got the plat (that's a first for me in the series) in around 25 hours in total.
> 
> It usually took me between 30 or 40 hours to finish the game on my previous PS3 playthroughs, always using an infiltrator. This time on the PS4 I used a vanguard, and I feel like the game was easier and more unbalanced because you can use all the guns without penalties in this version.
> 
> I tried to romance space racist Ashley, but fucked that up somehow. Oh well, next time it'll be Liara I think.
> 
> The Mako drives a little better this time. And by that I only mean it's a little less bouncy. The rest seems to be the same as it was before.
> 
> Anyway, now it's time to play the more fun, with better characters, better dialogue, better graphics, better gameplay, and a story almost completely unrelated to the trilogy's main plot Mass Effect 2.



I burned through 1 quickly, as you know, and only missed one trophy (the codex one, I didn't ask anderson about protheans at the beginning of the game!!). They REALLY nerfed the achievements on this. I got all of them on the 360 version, and it was hell - you had to get 100 of all those "use spell X times" trophies instead of 25, AND you had to cast them yourself - your squadmates didn't count. So, you had to play as a minimum of three classes just to do all of them. Plus, there were achievements for things like getting to level 60 that required two full playthroughs on the same character (and you got a lot less EXP cause of the way you got massively reduced EXP while driving). Very welcome changes! Oh, and here, they moved the insanity achievement to the "Collection" section so you can get the game platinums individually without doing them. Not that insanity on ME1 was hard, at least not as a soldier in NG+.

I got the platinum on 2, also VERY easy compared to the original.

I'm now probably halfway through 3. There are a lot of things here I didn't remember AT ALL, even though I'm pretty sure I played them. Ex, I didn't remember a second of the Leviathan DLC. I didn't even know there WAS an Omega DLC, so it's possible I didn't ever get that one. I definitely remember using Javik all the time and I remember my one playthrough the Citadel DLC, though, so maybe the problem is just the Leviathan DLC isn't very interesting except lorewise. I haven't started the Omega DLC yet, so maybe that will come back to me.

This game, despite having easily the best gameplay, has some very odd downgrades from 2. The biggest one is the goddam quest log. For some reason, they simplified it to ONLY show the quest details and not your progress. So, your quest log fills up with these side collection quests and they just say like "go find X and bring it to guy" but they don't give ANY indicator as to whether you already found X or not. It's nonsensical that they'd take out any quest progress notifiers in the log. But, they did, since they were definitely there in 2!!

I appreciate that you gain EXP during the levels, more like 1, instead of levelling/exp being almost entirely confined to the mission complete screens like in 2. It makes things feel more RPG-like again. I don't really like the mass quantities of weapon upgrades everywhere, but hey, better than 1 where you could get multiple copies of everything.

The actual UI looks ugly and bad to me, for some reason. It reminds me of the UI for the old Games for Windows interface. Ugly and blue and with bad 3D effects on all the window edges. And I don't like the segmented health bars on enemies. Minor quibbles, but I think 2 just looked slicker in that regard.

The levels aren't burned into my brain like 1 and 2's were. I mean, I only played through it 3 or 4 times as compared to at least 5 or 6 for 1/2, but still, I should remember more than I do. The plot is simultaneously a lot better than 2's (it picks up from the first game and really ups the stakes and starts tying a lot of major things from the games together spectacularly, ex curing the genophage), but also full of stupid BS (now Cerberus is a completely different organization with thousands of disposable zombie soldiers? there's a goddam sword ninja assassin complete with superhero mask? Shepard keeps having boring dream sequences where you have to waddle around chasing the kid who died at the beginning of the game?).

3's also got one achievement that I think is probably bugged that's going to necessitate two playthroughs for me to get the platinum - ONE of the power achievements requires you to actually cast the power yourself, and it's the one for setting 100 dudes on fire. Won't work with squad inferno ammo if a teammate casted it, and I'm an Adept, so none of my powers can set guys on fire. On 360, Warp counted (for some reason), but it doesn't here. Boo.

I'm running into problems with the cross-game romance achievements. First in 1, the boring Kaidan like, forced himself on Shepard so that got screwed up. Then he's not in the second game, so you can't get the achievement unless you romance someone else. I never did romance as fem-Shep in 2 before so I didn't know who was even an option or how any played out, so I went with Samara, found out she didn't count for the achievement, and then had to settle on Thane. I told Kaidan to fuck off as soon as I encountered him in 3 to continue with Thane. Then due to plot with Thane I didn't remember in 3, that meant I couldn't get the achievement for continuing a romance into the third game!! So now I'm having to romance the Yeoman Chambers replacement just for an achievement. My character is a cheap hussy.


----------



## TedEH

Got the the end of the Control story - I didn't expect the game to be that short. Oh well.

The good: It's a visual spectacle. My PC can't handle the ray-tracing without becoming a slideshow, but if it worked I imagine it would look glorious. The world-building is fantastic. A lot of people criticized the story, 'cause it's a little nonsensical, but I think it's supposed to be. You're not supposed to "get it", it's supposed to be vague and open to interpretation etc. For every question answered, you have two new questions. You can find reviews that pick the combat apart, but unless you're one of those xXxGamer69xXx youtuber types who micro-analyzes combat mechanics, then the combat is lots of fun. Throwing things is enjoyable. The upgrade path for powers is mostly fun but I wish it gave you those powers with less grinding for ability points. I noticed that the in-world sound came across really well in terms of modelling distance and things like that.

The bad: While the in-world audio was good, the non-diegetic audio was actually pretty terrible - enough to be noticeable and irritating. The sub-bass WOMP sound that plays every time you back out of a menu has way too much low end content, which makes my cheaper speakers fart out, and my home cinema speakers vibrate the house. If you quickly select things in the menu, like just passing the mouse over icons, the sounds stack and sometimes pop and crackle. I had some overall stability problems- while the game was short, it crashed on me three times, each time leaving me paranoid when I resumed.

The ugly: Performance on console was abysmal. Embarrassingly bad. I mentioned it already. It was bad enough that I restarted on PC to get away from it, and I'm not someone who's usually THAT picky about performance.

Overall, I like the game. There's a lot of ambition here, and a lot of technical stuff to gawk at, but the tradeoff is stability and performance problems. I think this is a game that will be a lot of fun to revisit with better hardware in a generation or two - when we have the PS6 and the Xbox.... I can't even think of a good joke, they'll probably just call it XBox again and nobody will know which console is which.


----------



## MFB

Hit a roadblock in Sekiro, stuck between two bosses - one at Hirata Estate (Drunkard Jinzo, he's got too many god damn minions with him), and the other being the god damn Guardian Ape; so now I'm back tracking through the entire map to farm points/sen to buy as many spirit emblems as I can, and pick up some extra skills for the slash after prosthetic tools. 

It's a delicate balancing act trying to farm skill points and not lost them on death


----------



## wankerness

Damn, ME3 DLC had some truly nasty stuff in it. That last boss in the Citadel DLC and the last encounter in the Omega DLC both killed me several times in a row. It would probably be easier as a sentinel, but I'm only on normal! Ouch. Then the mirror match in the arena was also just comically bad - limped through to round 3, but then SIX shepards spawn and annihilate you. Ack. Maybe I'm not any good at this game after all!

I definitely never even heard about the Omega DLC, this was all new stuff to me. The bonus powers available at the end are quite something. I wish I'd done it earlier, since Lash in particular is a gamechanger for an adept since it goes through shields.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> Got the the end of the Control story - I didn't expect the game to be that short. Oh well.
> 
> The good: It's a visual spectacle. My PC can't handle the ray-tracing without becoming a slideshow, but if it worked I imagine it would look glorious. The world-building is fantastic. A lot of people criticized the story, 'cause it's a little nonsensical, but I think it's supposed to be. You're not supposed to "get it", it's supposed to be vague and open to interpretation etc. For every question answered, you have two new questions. You can find reviews that pick the combat apart, but unless you're one of those xXxGamer69xXx youtuber types who micro-analyzes combat mechanics, then the combat is lots of fun. Throwing things is enjoyable. The upgrade path for powers is mostly fun but I wish it gave you those powers with less grinding for ability points. I noticed that the in-world sound came across really well in terms of modelling distance and things like that.
> 
> The bad: While the in-world audio was good, the non-diegetic audio was actually pretty terrible - enough to be noticeable and irritating. The sub-bass WOMP sound that plays every time you back out of a menu has way too much low end content, which makes my cheaper speakers fart out, and my home cinema speakers vibrate the house. If you quickly select things in the menu, like just passing the mouse over icons, the sounds stack and sometimes pop and crackle. I had some overall stability problems- while the game was short, it crashed on me three times, each time leaving me paranoid when I resumed.
> 
> The ugly: Performance on console was abysmal. Embarrassingly bad. I mentioned it already. It was bad enough that I restarted on PC to get away from it, and I'm not someone who's usually THAT picky about performance.
> 
> Overall, I like the game. There's a lot of ambition here, and a lot of technical stuff to gawk at, but the tradeoff is stability and performance problems. I think this is a game that will be a lot of fun to revisit with better hardware in a generation or two - when we have the PS6 and the Xbox.... I can't even think of a good joke, they'll probably just call it XBox again and nobody will know which console is which.


I've set up a couple of custom EQ presets on my soundcard software for games that have overly loud bass frequencies.
When i'm gaming using headphones, i use one as standard, as games often have really loud explosions with a lot of lower frequencies, and then the rest of the game is too quiet if i turn down the master volume for those.


----------



## Leviathus

MFB said:


> It's a delicate balancing act trying to farm skill points and not lost them on death



Worth noting that you wont lose skill points on death, just the progress to the next skill point iirc.


----------



## MFB

Leviathus said:


> Worth noting that you wont lose skill points on death, just the progress to the next skill point iirc.



Yeah, I'm right in between skill points, and then lose half of my progress upon dying when I come upon a new enemy and get overly cocky. 

Last night I was trying to get the Ravens Mist prosthetic tool, and there's an enemy that is the same as the Lone Shinobi fight; ended up dying to him and it cost me about 1200 pts


----------



## Leviathus

Yeah i died so many times to that purple ninja at hirata, probably one of my favorite encounters in the game tho.


----------



## MFB

Fucking hell, this Guardian Ape fight is so fucking LONG. You can barely get any attacks in on him at one time, it's all hit and run, and without the ability to do any sort of stealth deathblow or posture buildup on him by deflection it takes FOREVER. I finally cracked into phase 2, but he still manages to make me use my Resurrection before that point, as well as a couple Gourd heals so I'm fighting on uneven terms.

This is seriously annoying, and knowing I hate to do it again later on isn't helping either.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Fucking hell, this Guardian Ape fight is so fucking LONG. You can barely get any attacks in on him at one time, it's all hit and run, and without the ability to do any sort of stealth deathblow or posture buildup on him by deflection it takes FOREVER. I finally cracked into phase 2, but he still manages to make me use my Resurrection before that point, as well as a couple Gourd heals so I'm fighting on uneven terms.
> 
> This is seriously annoying, and knowing I hate to do it again later on isn't helping either.



Don't you have to fight multiple of them simultaneously later on? Boy, am I glad I abandoned that game quickly. Way too much skill required compared to DS1/2/3/BB.


----------



## mongey

Starting to get a bit of Witcher 3 fatigue. I’m level 20 something now and doing stuff around skellkge and I kind of feel I’m traveling or watching cut scenes more than playing the game.


----------



## Jarmake

I was feeling a bit tired of bloodborne, so I did what any non-self respecting masochist would do and got myself dark souls 3 for pc.

I also had to get a bluetooth dongle, so I could torture myself properly with an xbox 1 controller.

Funnily enough, the game seems to be much easier in the beginning, than bloodborne was.


----------



## Leviathus

Jarmake said:


> I was feeling a bit tired of bloodborne, so I did what any non-self respecting masochist would do and got myself dark souls 3 for pc.
> 
> I also had to get a bluetooth dongle, so I could torture myself properly with an xbox 1 controller.
> 
> Funnily enough, the game seems to be much easier in the beginning, than bloodborne was.



You might want to download the Blue Sentinel mod if you're playing online, there's some weird exploit invaders can use to fuck with your shit that's becoming more of a problem recently apparently. Check the DS3 reddit for the whole explanation.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Don't you have to fight multiple of them simultaneously later on? Boy, am I glad I abandoned that game quickly. Way too much skill required compared to DS1/2/3/BB.



The Guardian Ape 2 fight, is two monkeys - the Guardian Ape from the fight I'm currently in as his Phase 2 version, and Brown Ape who is apparently pretty basic skillset and counterable for easy posture damage/slashes. BUT, it does still mean I need to crack three deathblows in one boss fight which I've currently not have to do, so we'll see when I get there.

It's fucking brutal, the combat at times makes perfect sense to me, and other times when I try to think of it as a rhythm game and that you need to time the parries it seems impossible.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I've set up a couple of custom EQ presets on my soundcard software for games that have overly loud bass frequencies.


I don't know that just an eq would do it in this case, 'cause it's not a matter of the overall balance of the game being off - the games "mix" for the most part is ok - it's just this one sound that happens _sometimes_, and a bad implementation of UI selection sounds - maaaaaaaaaybe if you stuck a compressor on just the sub-bass that would help in one spot, but an eq can't do anything to fix stacked up sound effects and crackling (there's audible artifacts if you play a bunch of UI sounds at once). It's a disappointingly rough edge in what's otherwise a pretty polished presentation.

Speaking of slightly disappointing:
I've starting playing Kingdom Hearts 3. And it's not bad but.... I dunno, something feels off. The story still makes no sense, but I didn't expect it to. The game sort of feels mechanically like it's not much of a step forward for the series at all. Kinda feels like it's trying to play the hits from previous games, but I'm not sure it gets why they worked before, if that makes any sense. There's some details that feel like they cared and put a lot of effort in, but there's other details that feel like they're just there to check some boxes without having a good reason. I don't know if it's maybe a nostalgia glasses thing - I had fond memories of 1, 2 and 358/2, but this is just making me want to go back and play those instead. I'm only pretty early into the game, so maybe it improves.


----------



## MFB

KH3 for me, was just too little, too late. 

I found it incredibly awkward to play after having gone through KH1 while in junior high (pretty sure it was released in '01), KH2 in high school early years, and then the next installment coming out when I'm now legitimately THIRTY years old. It took half my life for that game to come out, which is bonkers, and it plays almost identically to the originals which begs they question: WHY?


----------



## TedEH

Am I remembering it wrong, or did the originals have much better level design? Like the levels served a purpose more than just being a backdrop to follow waypoint markers and fight bad guys. I remember there being a sense of exploration/progression to levels that I'm just not seeing here. But yeah, I'm kinda left with that same sense of "but why?" so far. It's not that it's a baaaaaaad game, it's just not doing anything that seems to justify the time it took to get where they are.


----------



## wankerness

Well, hit a great bug in ME3 where I didn't get an "unmissable" story achievement (the one for freeing Legion/"hacking" the collective). Guess I have to reload my last manual save (from hours before that) and try again!

I really think the Tuchanka/Genophage and Rannoch/Geth War sections of this game are the best story segments of the whole series. I mean, I sort of get people hating the endings (I didn't at the time, we'll see this time), but I don't get people that dismiss the whole game outright. And damn, the graphics in this game are REALLY far beyond 2 in many sections when it comes to environments. Especially the Citadel DLC, very Blade Runner-y look to things. That said, the minor item-acquistion sidequests and crap are really tedious and pointless in this game. And that section where you have to fight the reaper with the charging targeting gun thing was infuriating, I died 6 or 7 times. I remember getting through this game on Insane and thinking it was a breeze besides the one awful thing right at the very end of the game where you have to kill a marauder with a pistol in slow motion no matter what your class spec. Maybe it's just that insane wasn't substantially different from normal, and I only did the hard citadel stuff as a spec other than Adept.

Also, there's some stuff in the game that's not at all transparent. I was quite a ways in before I read online about how to upgrade weapons. I must have known about it at some point, but I didn't remember. The game doesn't tell you how to do that at all unless you happen to go to that section of the ship and interact with the computer that does it! And then I had the same thing happen again recently when I discovered the "Upgrades" computer in Liara's office - would have been nice to know about that much earlier, too! The only one that it gives you a hint about is the bonus powers stuff in the medbay, since at least when you get bonus powers there's a pop-up that tells you to go check out the medbay to learn them.

Having previously only done the Citadel DLC when I was at the end of the game, I was also annoyed to discover that some party members' invites are "locked" behind game progress. First I couldn't get Tali, Zaeed, or Jacob. I finished Rannoch for Tali, and did the dumb little sidequests for Zaeed and Jacob so now they're available, but I still can't invite Miranda or use her in the simulator! Guess I have to try again after the next chunk of story.

So, yeah, I'm getting there with this one. I've done all the DLC besides the final party in the Citadel DLC, and I've done every available sidequest to the point I'm at. I'm going to have to replay a chunk to get the bugged story trophy, and I'll have to start a new character with inferno ammo to quickly get that fire trophy (looks like it would probably be VERY quick since there's an early spot with infinitely respawning enemies), but then I should have the platinum, I think. The "beat the mirror match on normal or higher" trophy seems to be by far the hardest trophy of any of these remasters, and I did that already.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm torn. On one hand, I'm basically in the final quarter of Resident Evil Village and this game is so great, even if it gets stupid at times (in a GOOD way). On the other, I just got my copy of Shin Megami Tensai 3 Nocturne for PS4.


----------



## StevenC

MFB said:


> KH3 for me, was just too little, too late.
> 
> I found it incredibly awkward to play after having gone through KH1 while in junior high (pretty sure it was released in '01), KH2 in high school early years, and then the next installment coming out when I'm now legitimately THIRTY years old. It took half my life for that game to come out, which is bonkers, and it plays almost identically to the originals which begs they question: WHY?





TedEH said:


> Am I remembering it wrong, or did the originals have much better level design? Like the levels served a purpose more than just being a backdrop to follow waypoint markers and fight bad guys. I remember there being a sense of exploration/progression to levels that I'm just not seeing here. But yeah, I'm kinda left with that same sense of "but why?" so far. It's not that it's a baaaaaaad game, it's just not doing anything that seems to justify the time it took to get where they are.



Because it really took all those other Kingdom Hearts games to tell the story they wanted to tell.


----------



## Mathemagician

StevenC said:


> Because it really took all those other Kingdom Hearts games to tell the story they wanted to tell.



It took them 15 years, 3 games and the plot to Final Fantasy 14 to tell that story.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still slogging through Tokyo Xanadu, and a lot slower than I usually do with a Nihon Falcom game.

Got to the point where they introduced the arcade minigames. Not sure if I should be amused as a fanboy or as a cynic. Rean and Alisa from Cold Steel make appearances as quasi spoof versions of themselves. Alisa gets a standard Whack A Mole affair while Rean gets his EXACT SAME fishing game from Cold Steel. At least at this point NH realised that mashing for dear life sucked as a mechanic so it's better here. There's the exact same card game from Cold Steel as well. 

So basically Tokyo Xanadu runs on the same engine as the Cold Steel games. In theory that works for everything. Exploration, menu, level, that Orbal/Materia system, and even your Friend's profile list works out well. So everything... except the combat. That most important part of an action/adventure RPG aspect using a turn based JRPG engine, and as a result Tokyo Xanadu combat trips over itself and falls flat on it's face hard, gets up and falls over again. No wonder the game is clunky as hell and collision detection is dogs balls. These games made the Ys games and didn't even bother ripping off their own property that's better for this kind of game. Ys VIII was released a year later so no real excuse to use a better suited engine than hamfist one unsuitable. 

I suppose the game is compelling enough to push through. But I do have Persona 5R still waiting to be played, and that I know is already the better life sim/supernatural plot so I'll see how long I can plow through before I play that instead. Dammit Hajimari No Kiseki localisation could not come out faster.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> to tell the story they wanted to tell


I'm not even sure there's a real story here. The more I play, the more I feel like even the people making the game couldn't follow what was happening. There are literally cutscenes where a character shows up, tell you their name, Sora goes "I have completely forgotten who you are or why you matter, if you mattered at all", and the generic anime badguy goes "lol, don't worry about it, have some bad guys to fight", something something power of friendship, boss fight, move on to the next level, nothing is explained. 

Amazing. I think part of me is enjoying the game on the basis of how much of a trainwreck the franchise and story have become.


----------



## wankerness

15 years and 3 games? Aren’t there like five other story pieces to kingdom hearts? I thought that anthology had multiple other things included in it. I know that series is infamous for being impossible to keep track of the plot without playing weird spinoffs or watching things.


----------



## MFB

There are a bajillion side spinoffs that were exclusively on handhelds, but I don't recall if the same team did all those; seems odd that they'd have the main team do a bunch of non-main titles and delay the next official entry in the series instead of releasing them along side and play off each other.

Maybe Sony works different than others, but at someone like EA, everything I've seen is that those would be handled by a 3rd party team within their umbrella.


----------



## wankerness

Here's an example of the kind of thing I was seeing before KH3 came out that was showing "all the plot necessary to understand KH3."



I believe all of this crap is in the PS4 collection, though a couple of the handheld games were summarized in movie form since DS controls wouldn't transfer to PS4 very well. This image also came out before the FF14 junk. Speaking of which, now there's Nier content in FF14. Ugh. I should play that game again sometime. I had a character or two almost up to the level cap of the heavensward expansion.

Anyway, my KH experience was getting that collection and only playing up till the Tarzan world in KH1 before getting sick of it. I HATED the combat, mainly cause your teammates were completely hopeless. I mean, it's cause of how old it is and I'm sure it was impressive for the time, but it didn't mean it didn't play terribly today!


----------



## TedEH

I gave up on trying to understand the plot of the games a good while ago and try to just enjoy the games for their mechanical fun and moment-to-moment mini-stories, which.... maybe that's how it's meant to be played? I don't know. I think the games themselves gave up on trying to make sense too, so oh well.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I gave up on trying to understand the plot of the games a good while ago and try to just enjoy the games for their mechanical fun and moment-to-moment mini-stories, which.... maybe that's how it's meant to be played? I don't know. I think the games themselves gave up on trying to make sense too, so oh well.



No, it's not how it's "meant" to be played considering they've put so much effort into continuing all this impenetrable plot through all these games and thought the plot was so important that they included the movie versions of the games they couldn't include playable versions of in that anthology. That's almost definitely the BEST way to play it, though!! I know a few people that liked the mainline games and none of them made any attempt whatsoever to try and puzzle through the overarching plot, they just wanted to have fun hanging out with Disney characters. I approached it the same way. It's kind of like the Metal Gear Solid games, except far more convoluted thanks to more entries and arguably more pointless.


----------



## TedEH

I say that because of the way that in III so far, there's several moments of dialogue that sort of nod at the idea that even the characters _in the story_ can't follow what's happening and that it's not necessarily important to follow along.


----------



## thebeesknees22

daaaang, that unreal 5 demo that just went out.



too bad no one will ever be able to buy a ps5...  lol

I'm going to have to make time to learn unreal...


----------



## MFB

Unreal is such a great engine to work with from what I used during my Senior Year, and I also find it's end products look great. Unity is definitely user friendly, but I just felt like why use it when Unreal is right there with a slightly higher curve to get into if you're already on this path.


----------



## Wc707

Just finished Resident Evil 3 remake on PS4. 
Might as well be called White Girl Beater haha. Poor Jill gets smacked around so much, I feel bad for her internal organs.
Enjoyed the story, but the Nemesis fights were kinda weak compared to the OG. He just doesnt seem like a huge threat when you can toss 1 grenade and it stops him. Wished theyd kept some location paths true to the OG, but oh well.
Gonna try Detroit:Become Human next.


----------



## MFB

Wc707 said:


> Gonna try Detroit:Become Human next.



It's not bad but I think you might want to try this first


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> I gave up on trying to understand the plot of the games a good while ago and try to just enjoy the games for their mechanical fun and moment-to-moment mini-stories, which.... maybe that's how it's meant to be played? I don't know. I think the games themselves gave up on trying to make sense too, so oh well.



This is how I’ve always played them. I loved being able to explore a Disney world and talk to characters from movies, etc. the plots were fun and you always got to “save the day”. The “main story” was some wushu nonsense about hearts, kidneys, and friendship. 

I was only able to work out the basics of the plot due to realizing it mirrored FF14 (same lead creator), as FF14 delivered the plot much more slowly and linearly than the KH series does. 

It was an “ooooooooooOOOOOHHHH” moment when it clicked. Leather robed bad guys kill themselves to travel through time and space. Got it. Only main character can “really” kill them.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> This is how I’ve always played them. I loved being able to explore a Disney world and talk to characters from movies, etc. the plots were fun and you always got to “save the day”. The “main story” was some wushu nonsense about hearts, kidneys, and friendship.
> 
> I was only able to work out the basics of the plot due to realizing it mirrored FF14 (same lead creator), as FF14 delivered the plot much more slowly and linearly than the KH series does.
> 
> It was an “ooooooooooOOOOOHHHH” moment when it clicked. Leather robed bad guys kill themselves to travel through time and space. Got it. Only main character can “really” kill them.


the kh series is way more fun when you just think of it as palette swapped ffx. I had more fun hanging out with donald, customizing the spaceship and fighting bosses (especially sephiroth and the ice titan in kh1) than I did trying to follow the nonsense story.


----------



## TedEH

MFB said:


> Unity is definitely user friendly, but I just felt like why use it when Unreal is right there with a slightly higher curve to get into if you're already on this path.


There's some cases where Unity makes more sense, but the choice is very case specific. Unity has its asset store that a lot of indies/learners rely on, they have a huge community of people posting their solutions and helping people, the build times can be much shorter, I find the barrier to entry if you're learning is much lower, C# over C++ is a bit easier to avoid shooting yourself in the foot if you're not an expert in the language, the licensing terms are different, etc. Neither is "better" because "better" really depends on your experience level and goals.

There are some good reasons that a lot of indies (and some bigger projects) use Unity.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Here's an example of the kind of thing I was seeing before KH3 came out that was showing "all the plot necessary to understand KH3."
> 
> View attachment 93963
> 
> I believe all of this crap is in the PS4 collection, though a couple of the handheld games were summarized in movie form since DS controls wouldn't transfer to PS4 very well. This image also came out before the FF14 junk. Speaking of which, now there's Nier content in FF14. Ugh. I should play that game again sometime. I had a character or two almost up to the level cap of the heavensward expansion.
> 
> Anyway, my KH experience was getting that collection and only playing up till the Tarzan world in KH1 before getting sick of it. I HATED the combat, mainly cause your teammates were completely hopeless. I mean, it's cause of how old it is and I'm sure it was impressive for the time, but it didn't mean it didn't play terribly today!




This is all you need to know about the KH story


----------



## Wc707

MFB said:


> It's not bad but I think you might want to try this first


I hope there's Soup DLC


----------



## wankerness

Wc707 said:


> I hope there's Soup DLC



I would play that game if there was a section where you make sausages to the same music used on the scene on the show for an extended period.


----------



## Wc707

wankerness said:


> I would play that game if there was a section where you make sausages to the same music used on the scene on the show for an extended period.



What if theres an Elaine dance Quick Time Event?


----------



## Mathemagician

KnightBrolaire said:


> the kh series is way more fun when you just think of it as palette swapped ffx. I had more fun hanging out with donald, customizing the spaceship and fighting bosses (especially sephiroth and the ice titan in kh1) than I did trying to follow the nonsense story.



The boss design has always been ambitious. Does it always work? No, camera control is a bit terrible. But do they try to make you feel like an anime hero? Yes they do. And Donald and goofy are awesome.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> And Donald and goofy are awesome.


Mechanically, yes - but in terms of written dialogue, they have the most gratingly juvenile lines sometimes.


----------



## Grindspine

I just finished Catherine Classic on Steam.

The first seven stages are rather fun puzzle platforming with some animated cut scenes that dig into the psychology of human relationships. Then you hit the the eighth stages, are told that it is the last, then it goes to the ninth stage... The ninth stage is a shitshow of random blocks, unavoidable attacks, and the game flips to becoming more luck-based than skill-based.

I would have recommended it, strongly, after the first seven stages, even into the eighth. The lingering ninth stage just made me want to rage quit and hate humanity.


----------



## wankerness

Grindspine said:


> I just finished Catherine Classic on Steam.
> 
> The first seven stages are rather fun puzzle platforming with some animated cut scenes that dig into the psychology of human relationships. Then you hit the the eighth stages, are told that it is the last, then it goes to the ninth stage... The ninth stage is a shitshow of random blocks, unavoidable attacks, and the game flips to becoming more luck-based than skill-based.
> 
> I would have recommended it, strongly, after the first seven stages, even into the eighth. The lingering ninth stage just made me want to rage quit and hate humanity.



I beat Catherine, but I seem to remember watching a video of the last level or two and just copying the guy's path instead of repeatedly failing and getting mad. I'm a cheater 

Well, I beat ME3, only to discover the game had bugged and missed ANOTHER "unmissable" story achievement, so now I have to replay that geth mission a THIRD time so I can replay the stupid follow-up where you go inside the geth collective and shoot blocks with a laser for 20 minutes.  This remaster has some issues.

Also, the last mission (on earth) really sucks. It's probably the least fun part of the game. It's not that it's hard compared to many earlier sections, it's just dreary and VERY repetitive and long.


----------



## Ralyks

Watching the credits to Resident Evil Village. The story gets silly, off the rails, and whoever wrote Ethans dialogue is 14 years old. That said, it’s my current GOTY. Hell of a game.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Watching the credits to Resident Evil Village. The story gets silly, off the rails, and whoever wrote Ethans dialogue is 14 years old. That said, it’s my current GOTY. Hell of a game.



I read some limited discussion on it that said the "puppet" section of the game is by far the scariest thing in RE history. Any commentary on that? I don't really know anything about it.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I read some limited discussion on it that said the "puppet" section of the game is by far the scariest thing in RE history. Any commentary on that? I don't really know anything about it.



Did you get to play P.T.? That’s the vibe I had that whole section.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Did you get to play P.T.? That’s the vibe I had that whole section.



No I did not. I have heard many things about that. If that's the vibe of that part, cool. I think most reviews were from people who had only played the first section and/or were bound by contractual obligation not to have anything that anyone could call a "spoiler," and thus only compared it to RE7/RE4 and never said anything about any puppet sections or anything being scary. I will definitely pick this game up when there's an eventual GOTY edition for 30 bucks or something. Unless they're not doing DLC for it, in which case I'll get it sooner!


----------



## Werecow

I'm playing Days Gone and enjoying it now. Took a bit of effort to get used to completely ignoring the player character though. Almost every interaction he has with any other person he ends up being a dick in some way. The cutscenes can be so bad it's almost like a toxic masculinity story with an apocalypse backdrop. I don't know if the writers are just like that or if there's going to be some point to how over the top it is.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I'm playing Days Gone and enjoying it now. Took a bit of effort to get used to completely ignoring the player character though. Almost every interaction he has with any other person he ends up being a dick in some way. The cutscenes can be so bad it's almost like a toxic masculinity story with an apocalypse backdrop. I don't know if the writers are just like that or if there's going to be some point to how over the top it is.



No, there isn't really. They're just macho dickheads. I mean, the game isn't really sexist other than just suggesting the wife character would go for this moron (and that HORRIBLE line about "ride me as much as your bike"), but they definitely are incredibly bro-tastic and unbearable when left to their own devices. I found the plot moderately entertaining by videogame standards as things progressed. You get more into figuring things out and dealing with scientists and psychos as opposed to just yelling BOOZER a lot.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> This is all you need to know about the KH story




Just to add to the fact that you can't really explain the KH story without tripping over your own words 20 times over...

A large majority of Kingdom Hearts is spent recreating the Disney movies but with several plot points chucked out. Sora, Donald and Goofy are only tangentially involved helping pushing forward a story most players already know. The plot is already incomprehensible but weaving all the Disney stuff not only slows it right the hell down, it's often benched and often forgotten about. 

I haven't bothered with KH3 yet, not just because none of the Final Fantasy characters are present (well all know Disney is the money maker here). Didn't bother with all the handheld stuff either. Maybe I just couldn't be bothered waiting anymore for a series that I wasn't really all too crash hot about in the first place. The first game combat hasn't aged well, and I remember KH2 introducing me to my dislike of QTEs.


----------



## TheBlackBard

I'm finding it harder and harder to care about blockbuster AAA games when stuff like Graven, Amid Evil, Dusk, Prodeus, and Ion Fury are out there, and that's just the FPS games I've been playing. Hrot has been pleasantly surprising as well. As far as RPG's, I find myself going back to Disco Elysium, Planescape: Torment, Torment: Tides and pretty much every contemporary there is of those games, because RPG's these days in terms of choice and actual roleplaying feel pretty damn thin in comparison. Talking about Skyrim and Fallout 4. They each have their own merits, but like with Fallout 4, your dialogue options are: Yes, sarcastic yes, enthusiastic yes, and no... Skyrim? Stormcloaks are racist as fuck apparently, unless you're on their side, because despite their bigotry/nationalism, there is pretty much no downfall to any race choice you pick at the beginning. You might hear some comments from NPC's in the game, but other than the whole Orc quest where you have to prove yourself, unless you're an orc, the whole race thing seems largely inconsequential, whereas in Fallout: New Vegas, even wearing the wrong armor can have people shooting at you.


----------



## wankerness

Skyrim and especially Fallout 3/4 are notoriously bad at making player choices matter or giving the player much agency while trying to pretend that they are. Just about any open-ended RPG looks good in comparison! I have no problem whatsoever with games being kind of "on rails" with choices or lack thereof, as long as the writing's good enough. I think Bioware's excuses for it got worse and worse after Dragon Age 1/Mass Effect 1 (and that the Bioware-adjacent game with the best example of player ability to influence the plot is KOTOR2, unsurprisingly made by the guys who made the best example of the same with Bethesda with New Vegas), and I don't even know what else is considered a AAA RPG besides the disastrous Final Fantasy games of the last couple decades, which are not even attempting to give the player the ability to influence the plot and that's fine.


----------



## gabito

Just finished ME2 Legacy Edition, also got the plat for this one.

Nice, almost exactly as I remembered it... from playing the PS3 version three months ago haha. Graphics looked more or less the same as on the PS3 but sharper and smoother I guess, nothing dramatic like on ME1 LE. Loading times are way shorter than on PS3 too, which I welcome.

Male Shepard voice acting is better in this one, ME1's was pretty bad.

I noticed that it sounds better than the original. Something about background noise / chatter being way more clear and noticeable. Maybe it was just compression, but I could understand most of it, and heard some stuff I never heard before. Also Shepard's footsteps were omnipresent, I don't remember hearing them all the time before.

I don't think I'm going to jump into ME3 right now, I'm kind of tired after a few weeks of only playing ME1 / 2 (and I'm still missing a few side missions from 2). Also it looks kinda grindy to get the plat and @wankerness mentioned some bugs... Maybe in a few months.


----------



## wankerness

If they fix the bugs with the platinum in ME3 it's not too bad, as long as you're fine with playing a sentinel (I think that's the only class you can get all the ability trophies on with one playthrough since I read the one for biotic lifts also requires you to cast it yourself). Also, I think my experience was rare, cause in my cursory search upon noticing I missed them, I didn't see any other posts complaining about trophies not popping.

EDIT: Nevermind, guess sentinels can't set things on fire either!

I got the platinum last night, it only took about an hour to make a new character and then encounter enough enemies with incendiary ammo to kill 100 of them with fire. And then another hour to import my ME3 clear and get to the point where you can use the weapon upgrade system in the Normandy to get one to level 10.  It took about 3 hours to redo those Geth missions repeatedly until I got the achievements, though.

Maybe if you unlocked inferno grenade as a bonus power you could play through as an adept and get everything on one character, though, leaving only the Upgrade Weapon to Level 10 trophy to a second playthrough (and you barely have to get anywhere in that, just finish the first few missions). I didn't look up a guide for bonus powers so I definitely didn't unlock that one or even know it was an option until I'd missed my chance.


----------



## wankerness

Went back and got the platinum for ME1 after starting a renegade soldier. I forgot how funny playing as a renegade is in this game compared to the sequels. It's definitely enhanced by the awful voiceacting from male shepard (it's just a BIG, STUPID, JELLYFISH!), but also missions just play out in more entertaining fashions based on your choices. Like, tricking characters into killing each other or threatening people into doing things immediately instead of running around completing objectives. And the bluntly cruel/insane dialogue is just funnier when voiceacted by this guy instead of the actual good voiceacting from female shepard. I've laughed a lot and I'm only about 4-5 hours in. The only trick is that often the most dickish option is just to abandon quests, and that's obviously not good.

I don't think I'm going to go for the insanity trophies anytime real soon, though, cause I'm pretty overloaded on Mass Effect. I might finish this playthrough, which would hopefully put me around level 50 and thus able to do Insanity with this character on NG+ (it's practically impossible to do it on a first playthrough and I didn't feel like replaying as an adept). I think next I need to go back and finish Nier, where I was about halfway through the second playthrough. Plus, I have to move this month so I have much more important things to be doing!!

In even more important video game news, last night my girlfriend got Marina to move onto her Animal Crossing island to go with Zucker, so we're pretty happy about that.


----------



## Empryrean

Currently getting my ass handed to me in Dragon Ball Fighterz by some pretty cool cats on the reddit discord. Its fun when I get a cool combo in though


----------



## Jarmake

Couldn't keep my hands off bloodborne for long... God damn this game. Currently fighting against blood starved beast and always get to where it has like one hit worth of hp left and it gets me with poison or those incredibly fast attacks. Son of a diddly...

Next time is going to be the one when I slay it.


----------



## TedEH

Oh yeah, I forgot I had gotten into Dragon Ball Fightersz for a short while. I'm not big on fighting games, but that one's pretty fun even for someone who sucks at it.


----------



## Ralyks

Decided to dive into the Shin Megami Tensai 3 remaster, now that Resident Evil Village is finished. It's... Interesting so far. I can see how Persona spun off of this. Right now I think I can see myself sticking with it, especially since it hits some sort of PS2 Nostalgia Nerve in me.
I will say, I'm bummed the whole the visuals were given a nice cost of paint (except the video cutscenes. Still 4:3 and untouched), the audio obviously was ignored because it sounds compressed as hell at times. Shame, sounds like a killer soundtrack.


----------



## MFB

Managed to bunk Drunkard Jinzo at the Hirata Estate, then promptly got smoked by Lady Butterfly. She's fast, and I didn't realize how much posture damage I was getting hit for, so that makes for one easy death.

Still can't crack Guardian Apes fight. Trying to go the entire first round without using resurrection, OR too many healing gourd uses is a nightmare, since his attacks hit you for half health.


----------



## Mathemagician

Jarmake said:


> Couldn't keep my hands off bloodborne for long... God damn this game. Currently fighting against blood starved beast and always get to where it has like one hit worth of hp left and it gets me with poison or those incredibly fast attacks. Son of a diddly...
> 
> Next time is going to be the one when I slay it.



Throw blood potions at the wall. Distracts him completely. If you use fire paper as well it takes like 2 pills to shred him down.


----------



## Jarmake

Mathemagician said:


> Throw blood potions at the wall. Distracts him completely. If you use fire paper as well it takes like 2 pills to shred him down.



Yep, that is my plan... Too bad I don't have any fire papers anymore and I can't buy them yet.


----------



## Werecow

Still playing Days Gone. Wolves and Runners are complete arseholes haha. A wolf takes a very good burst of automatic fire to go down, so if i get a pack of three sneak up on me, i'm usually wrecked. Same thing with the Runners except they can do that while you're riding at full speed as well. I've had to switch my side arm to that Lil Stubby shotgun, just to keep them at bay.


----------



## Leviathus

MFB said:


> Managed to bunk Drunkard Jinzo at the Hirata Estate, then promptly got smoked by Lady Butterfly. She's fast, and I didn't realize how much posture damage I was getting hit for, so that makes for one easy death.
> 
> Still can't crack Guardian Apes fight. Trying to go the entire first round without using resurrection, OR too many healing gourd uses is a nightmare, since his attacks hit you for half health.



I actually started a new Sekiro playthrough cos you've been talkin about it, really diggin it this time around. Haven't played since the free update and being able to replay the bosses just for fun is cool.


----------



## WarMachine

Ralyks said:


> Did you get to play P.T.? That’s the vibe I had that whole section.


Yeah the (spoiler) "cries and laughter" when you are hiding is the icing on the cake. Working on my 3rd playthrough now on Village of Shadows difficulty. Im up to the factory now..


----------



## Mathemagician

Jarmake said:


> Yep, that is my plan... Too bad I don't have any fire papers anymore and I can't buy them yet.



Also for almost every boss in the game: dodge LEFT. They are almost all right handed. This is especially true in the dark souls games.


----------



## MFB

I BEAT THE GOD DAMN APE.
I BEAT HIM, AND I CAN FINALLY MOVE FORWARD IN THIS GAME KNOWING I BEAT HIM, AND DRUNKARD JINZO.

I'm infinitely further than I ever got my first playthrough. But compared to other From games, god DAMN, is the XP system broken. I just beat a boss and he didn't even crack half way to my next skill point, what the ACTUAL fuck is the point? Nor does he give Prayer Bead on death, so I can't increase vitality at the same time as attack since I'm sitting on 3/4 at the moment.


----------



## Wc707

MFB said:


> I BEAT THE GOD DAMN APE.
> I BEAT HIM, AND I CAN FINALLY MOVE FORWARD IN THIS GAME KNOWING I BEAT HIM, AND DRUNKARD JINZO.
> 
> I'm infinitely further than I ever got my first playthrough. But compared to other From games, god DAMN, is the XP system broken. I just beat a boss and he didn't even crack half way to my next skill point, what the ACTUAL fuck is the point? Nor does he give Prayer Bead on death, so I can't increase vitality at the same time as attack since I'm sitting on 3/4 at the moment.


The ape fight was frustrating but fun. The final 3 phase boss just painful. God took me like a week straight of trying for an hour everyday. I will never play that game again haha. Bloodborne master race!


----------



## MFB

I do believe Bloodborne to be the pinnacle of From games at the moment. It still has parrying as a mechanic, albeit not nearly as deliberate as Sekiro, or functional like you'd see in Dark Souls; but because it's based so much around dodge instead of parry, it's my favorite combat because that's how I always play.


----------



## Wc707

MFB said:


> I do believe Bloodborne to be the pinnacle of From games at the moment. It still has parrying as a mechanic, albeit not nearly as deliberate as Sekiro, or functional like you'd see in Dark Souls; but because it's based so much around dodge instead of parry, it's my favorite combat because that's how I always play.


I would agree. Sekiro just felt like such a much harder learning curve than the others to me. Bloodborne just feels easy, maybe it's the mechanics and controls.


----------



## Jarmake

Mathemagician said:


> Also for almost every boss in the game: dodge LEFT. They are almost all right handed. This is especially true in the dark souls games.



Dodging straight forward into the blood starved beast seems to be the most effective move... You'll get straight behind it and then pokey pokey stabby stabby in it's bum!


----------



## Jarmake

And now the blood starved arsehole is no more...


----------



## Choop

Have so many games I want to start playing that it is difficult to decide, but I did finally sit down and really start playing Pillars of Eternity. So far it is super fun. The hardest part is deciding on a character because so many classes seem great, but I did end up going with a Ranger on this one.


----------



## mongey

Need a break from Witcher 3. 

going to try again with divinity original sin 2. Really didn’t get into it first time Round. But going to start again from scratch and give it another go.


----------



## MFB

Son of a God damn fucking bitch, I'm already at Guardian Ape 2 (Electric Boogaloo)!

And there's a god damn mini boss you have to beat, to unlock the tunnel TO the GA2 fight. I will never understand how they though of the placement for some of these fights, the pacing is so fucking off.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of kingdom hearts 3..... and it certainly was a video game. I have so many mixed feelings about it.

Everything about it is impressive and disappointing at the same time. Combat is impressively flashy, but disappointingly easy - they technically have the mechanics of the first game, but you get all your powers up front, and and abundance of points means you never have to make any real choices in terms of how to build your move set. The art looks impressive and adapts to each world, but is disappointingly inconsistent - the very first world looks terrible and sets the wrong precedent for the rest of the game. Each world is impressive in scale and detail, just to do nothing with them - the pirates world in particular builds up this whole port town with lots of NPCs and little hidden corners to explore and it could have been a great setting to tell a story in... but you do nothing but sprint through it once to collect crabs (for nonsensical video-game-y reasons) and then never return.

The story is obviously a hot mess, which is fine, I expected that - but even the delivery seems worse than I remember. The dialog is paced awkwardly - with huge spaces between lines that read like a localization mistake. You'll have someone say "So what I think is that-" ..... full second of pause ..... "No, I disagree." .... another full second of pause .... "Why did you cut me off?" ..... wait for it ..... *anime gasp noise* "What?" Then you have to listen to several minutes of Let It Go just because Disney is paying the bills, then you spam the attack button for hours, then you win.

But some of the game is so well polished.... the animations are great. Some of the art direction is great. It's like a really highly polished mess.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> And now the blood starved arsehole is no more...



I thought at first you were talking about the headless bloodletting beast, the version before Queen Yarnham in the last chalice dungeon. No other boss in any From game I've played has made me madder than that guy...

I used blood pellets on the bloodstarved beast so he was a lot easier than if I hadn't used that trick  Still got hairy in phase 2.


----------



## MFB

You can also just use a Bell Summons and have Alfred do like, 90% of the work distracting him while you hit him from the back with some fire paper.


----------



## mongey

blah, Just cant get into divinity 2 . Not sure what it is , I generally like turn based .

The while vibe and story just don't get me

back to Witcher I guess


----------



## Jarmake

MFB said:


> You can also just use a Bell Summons and have Alfred do like, 90% of the work distracting him while you hit him from the back with some fire paper.



But if you have beaten Vicar Amelia before facing the blood-starved butthead you can't summon Alfred...


----------



## MFB

Really?

Interesting, I honestly had no idea. Seems weird that a Bell Summons would be locked by beating what's considered the next boss, but From's decisions are over my head 90% of the time anyways.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Really?
> 
> Interesting, I honestly had no idea. Seems weird that a Bell Summons would be locked by beating what's considered the next boss, but From's decisions are over my head 90% of the time anyways.



that happens a lot in those games. I made one of the dlc bosses a lot harder in ds3 by doing the dlcs in the wrong order. The summonable npc for the last boss of the first dlc is also himself the last boss of the second dlc, and once you’ve gotten to him he obviously no longer wants to help you with some other boss.  Or like, in DS1 you could summon invaders for help (ex on queelag) but only if you’d been invaded by them before and beaten them.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> that happens a lot in those games. I made one of the dlc bosses a lot harder in ds3 by doing the dlcs in the wrong order. The summonable npc for the last boss of the first dlc is also himself the last boss of the second dlc, and once you’ve gotten to him he obviously no longer wants to help you with some other boss.  Or like, in DS1 you could summon invaders for help (ex on queelag) but only if you’d been invaded by them before and beaten them.



Yeah and I feel like DS3 really took that to the extreme, for example with Sigmayer, if you missed him somewhere he won't be there to help with the giant boss. I read a guide a little bit, so I knew to make sure I found him everywhere, and thanks to him the boss was super easy.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Yeah and I feel like DS3 really took that to the extreme, for example with Sigmayer, if you missed him somewhere he won't be there to help with the giant boss. I read a guide a little bit, so I knew to make sure I found him everywhere, and thanks to him the boss was super easy.



Oh yeah, good call with Siegmeyer. I have always done his questline so I've never tried that boss without him except once when he got killed instantly.  I definitely was following a guide the first playthrough for NPC quests like that. Most DS3 bosses, though, aren't substantially easier with a summon IMO. I think the only boss where the summon really made a big difference for me (apart from the aforementioned Frieda) was Abyss Watchers. Oh, and maybe Pontiff Sulyvahn. And champion gundyr on NG+, that guy was a hell of a lot scarier on playthrough 2 and swordmaster helped.

DS2 seemed like every boss had multiple summons and almost none of them had any pre-reqs to summon other than not be hollow. But, 1/3 you could definitely screw yourself if you needed help and hadn't properly unlocked them.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Most DS3 bosses, though, aren't substantially easier with a summon IMO. I think the only boss where the summon really made a big difference for me (apart from the aforementioned Frieda) was Abyss Watchers. Oh, and maybe Pontiff Sulyvahn. And champion gundyr on NG+, that guy was a hell of a lot scarier on playthrough 2 and swordmaster helped.



I wouldn't know, I've been using summons throughout, just in case  But like I've said multiple times, in DS3 the bosses are the easy part, it's the normal enemies that get me when they gang up...

Ah, one boss I tried both ways was the Old Demon King. I basically died right away alone, then came back with the summon and sniped the boss from far away with arrows


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I wouldn't know, I've been using summons throughout, just in case  But like I've said multiple times, in DS3 the bosses are the easy part, it's the normal enemies that get me when they gang up...
> 
> Ah, one boss I tried both ways was the Old Demon King. I basically died right away alone, then came back with the summon and sniped the boss from far away with arrows



Old Demon King massacred me on first playthrough so I used the arrow strategy (not really cheesing IMO, it's not like you're out of the boss arena exploiting). Second playthrough he didn't seem hard at all and I just fought him like a normal boss, no arrows involved. Not sure if I was just underlevelled the first time or if I got better at the game.

The boss that I have cheesed every time is that miniboss flaming demon in the smoldering lake. That guy annihilated me in seconds every single time I tried to fight him head-on. Did a really cheesy "snipe with arrows" thing the first time, and he eventually went through the wall and fell through the floor and died. Second and third times, I kited him around the room and all the skeletons/mimic beat him to death!


----------



## MFB

You mean the one in DS1 that drops the Orange Ring so you can FINALLY walk on Lava?

I used a summons that distracted him and just got a couple got hits on his ass and he went down, it was shockingly easy.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> The boss that I have cheesed every time is that miniboss flaming demon in the smoldering lake. That guy annihilated me in seconds every single time I tried to fight him head-on. Did a really cheesy "snipe with arrows" thing the first time, and he eventually went through the wall and fell through the floor and died. Second and third times, I kited him around the room and all the skeletons/mimic beat him to death!



You mean the sandworm or whatever? I found a spot where the spears from the machine at the top hit it, and then just waited until it died.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> You mean the one in DS1 that drops the Orange Ring so you can FINALLY walk on Lava?
> 
> I used a summons that distracted him and just got a couple got hits on his ass and he went down, it was shockingly easy.



No, it's DS3. Looking at the wiki, it's this guy, his Catacombs appearance where he's a lot more dangerous and you don't get Siegmeyer, unlike his first appearance:

https://darksouls.fandom.com/wiki/Demon_(Dark_Souls_III)



p0ke said:


> You mean the sandworm or whatever? I found a spot where the spears from the machine at the top hit it, and then just waited until it died.



Yeah, I think that's what you're supposed to do with the sandworm. I'd always just hang out behind the rock next to him and wait for him to die. There's probably a way to "man mode" it but I really think you're supposed to kill it with the area ballista.

This reminds me, probably the hardest single part of DS3 is trying to fight two of the Sulyvahn beasts right in front of one of the covenants. It was possible to pull them with a bow one at a time and the other wouldn't aggro if you could kill the first fast enough without moving from the back wall, though.

https://darksouls.fandom.com/wiki/Sulyvahn's_Beast


----------



## Ralyks

I beat Ratchet and Clank 2015. I mean, apparently I was at the end anyway wherever I left off, but I wanted to be ready for the next one in a week or two.
I’m trying to figure out what I want to focus on. Right now it’s felt like Shin Megami Tensai 3, but I’m still determining if it’s worth that much time to commit to. And also, I plan on doing the hard mode play through of FFVII Remake when the PS5 version drops shortly.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Looking at the wiki, it's this guy, his Catacombs appearance where he's a lot more dangerous and you don't get Siegmeyer, unlike his first appearance:
> 
> https://darksouls.fandom.com/wiki/Demon_(Dark_Souls_III)



Oh yeah, that was a tough fight. Even cheesing it was difficult because sometimes he'd punch through the wall. I think I ended up just normally defeating him though, after a million attempts and using 10 estus 



wankerness said:


> This reminds me, probably the hardest single part of DS3 is trying to fight two of the Sulyvahn beasts right in front of one of the covenants. It was possible to pull them with a bow one at a time and the other wouldn't aggro if you could kill the first fast enough without moving from the back wall, though.
> 
> https://darksouls.fandom.com/wiki/Sulyvahn's_Beast



Yeah, I haven't gotten that far yet but even the one on the bridge to Irithyll was hard AF. I hope by the time I reach those two, I'll have enough HP to survive the eating attack, otherwise I won't stand a chance against two of them...


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Oh yeah, that was a tough fight. Even cheesing it was difficult because sometimes he'd punch through the wall. I think I ended up just normally defeating him though, after a million attempts and using 10 estus
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I haven't gotten that far yet but even the one on the bridge to Irithyll was hard AF. I hope by the time I reach those two, I'll have enough HP to survive the eating attack, otherwise I won't stand a chance against two of them...



I dunno. When I fought them on NG+ the eating attack was an instakill even with a lot of armor and vitality at the softcap. I just had to kill them really fast, before I messed up dodging one of them.


----------



## NotDonVito

Ok I need you all to level with me here, since there are a lot of Dark Souls ARPG nerds in here; is Dragon's Dogma worth sticking it out? Because my initial impression of the game is kind of meh. Maybe I just suck, but I keep getting my ass kicked by everything, can't find any equipment, don't really like the lack of a targeting system, the game world seems like it's just a road with forts and caves, ect..


----------



## wankerness

NotDonVito said:


> Ok I need you all to level with me here, since there are a lot of Dark Souls ARPG nerds in here; is Dragon's Dogma worth sticking it out? Because my initial impression of the game is kind of meh. Maybe I just suck, but I keep getting my ass kicked by everything, can't find any equipment, don't really like the lack of a targeting system, the game world seems like it's just a road with forts and caves, ect..



I LOVED Dragons Dogma and played the living shit out of it. Like 100+ hours, easily. I bought it on Switch and played all the way through it and got another character to 200 on it, too. Switch version is definitely inferior (lower detail/lighting effects, lower framerate) but I just had to be able to play it on the go.

The base game is pretty drab. The "Expansion" content is where things really pick up in a big way. I'd compare it roughly to everything before Bitterblack Isle being WoW Classic, and Bitterblack Isle being a full-blown expansion pack. All the gear is so radically better than anything in the base game, all the environments are just flush with nasty boss fights everywhere, it's just really fun and a blast to grind through repeatedly, and there's no reason to ever return to the base game's world other than to use a particular vendor that can duplicate any item.

The big drawback with getting into that game is that some of the systems are extremely impenetrable without reading. Basically your current class dictates stat leveling bonuses, so if you don't pick the "right" class, you end up massively underpowered at max level. Basically, unless you want to be a caster, switch to Assassin as soon as possible and level that all the way to 100 cause upon switching back to whatever other physical damage class you want to play as, you'll have vastly more attack power than if you'd just levelled as the class you were planning on eventually being. You then gain reduced stat bonuses based on class from 100-200, so if you truly want to min-max you're stuck with Assassin all the way to 200. If you want to be a caster, you can stick with Mage and Sorcerer all the way to 200, though leveling as Fighter at the very beginning is recommended for big HP gains that you won't get from the caster classes.

However, also be aware that Assassin is not quite as fun as some of the other classes, IMO. It is still fun, though. Ones I'd highly recommend are Assassin with gear/abilities geared towards climbing on enemies and stabbing them, Strider with gear (ring that improves the skill is most important) towards helm splitter ability (you do backflips and do insane damage to enemies with daggers), and either Mage or Sorcerer (Mage has faster casts and can heal, Sorcerer has bigger, much more spectacular damage spells but they take forever to cast and you can't heal).

Also, be aware that the pawns you can get online are INCREDIBLY overpowered compared to the random ones you can summon in the game world or the average one you can find on the online hub. I'd suggest doing searches for highly rated ones and get a team where you have one with the archery AOE abilities and one with the Mage healing or Sorcerer damage abilities depending on what you want. Fighter/warrior pawns aren't spectacular.

The combat is loose and frenetic and I think it's easily one of the most fun systems I've ever encountered in an RPG. I even loved playing as a caster with their insane like 10 second cast times where I'd frequently get knocked over by the dragon/ogre just before the cast went off. Once your character is max level you can safely keep respeccing to different vocations and leveling up the different jobs without impacting your stats at all.

So yeah, long way of saying you should stick with it. The base game is kinda meh, but if you know what you're doing you can get through to Bitterblack pretty quick, and then quickly start grinding on the overpowered enemies of the first wing of the dungeon and keep working your way up. I REALLY hope to see a sequel to this game.


----------



## mongey

so I'm at the end of act 2 in Witcher 3 where you have to enlist all the helpers, shit what a grind. maybe its stuff I was supposed to do before, but getting over being everyone's gopher


----------



## Lorcan Ward

Dragon’s Dogma is one of the best and one of the worst RPGs I’ve played. If they made a second one and integrated more ease of use changes and better quality writing it would have a lot of potential. I loved the combat but it has the most incoherent story I’ve ever come across in any media. 

has anyone played Necromunda - Hired Gun?


----------



## Emperor Guillotine

I'm not much of a gamer, but I'm currently piecing together a little palm-sized Raspberry Pi 4 build for retro/vintage gaming that I can hook up to my projector or take with me on the road. Got the SD card loaded up with some cleaned-up ROMs, and the last few parts that I ordered will arrive today according to the postal tracking.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Lorcan Ward said:


> Dragon’s Dogma is one of the best and one of the worst RPGs I’ve played. If they made a second one and integrated more ease of use changes and better quality writing it would have a lot of potential. I loved the combat but it has the most incoherent story I’ve ever come across in any media.
> 
> has anyone played Necromunda - Hired Gun?


Haven't tried it myself but heard it's pretty buggy. I'm waiting for Dark tide to come out to get my 40k fix. And then Total War Warhammer 3 for my og Warhammer fix.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Waiting on Hired Gun mainly due to the optimization. I've been reading that a lot of high end rigs are struggling to keep a steady framerate and that it has quite a few stutters. For what it's worth, I've heard that it mitigates it some using DX11 instead of DX12.


----------



## Leviathus

Been trying the Sekiro gauntlets of strength...



Spoiler



Inner Ish is no joke. I think i have more attempts already than my first conquering of regular sword saint. The AOE move he has in phase 1 now will rip you to shreds if you're not in the right spot to avoid. Think i've seen phase 3 once so far lol. Luckily, you can unlock his boss fight once you reach him in the gauntlet instead of having to grind through the 4 or 5 bosses beforehand every time. The first gauntlet with 2 bosses and Inner Genichiro was like a tutorial compared to the second, took like 5-6 tries i think. Gonna get the shura ending on NG+ for the other gauntlet and some new threads i think, diggin this free update stuff.


----------



## MFB

I haven't played Sekiro since my last post about it, but I just beat Headless Ape on my 2nd try. This one was SO MUCH easier than Guardian Apes fight, holy shit, laughably so.


----------



## Ralyks

I forgot I had Judgement on PS5. So it's been a bunch of that. But, as I mentioned in the general forum, I was laid off this week, so I guess I'll have plenty of gaming time for the interim. Maybe actually finish Shin Megami Tensai 3 in that time, or go back to Yakuza 7 for the Platinum.


----------



## mongey

Ralyks said:


> I forgot I had Judgement on PS5. So it's been a bunch of that. But, as I mentioned in the general forum, I was laid off this week, so I guess I'll have plenty of gaming time for the interim. Maybe actually finish Shin Megami Tensai 3 in that time, or go back to Yakuza 7 for the Platinum.



damn dude that sucks. Hope it works out.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still on Tokyo Xanadu. I may have slowly warmed up to the game's battle engine or Stockholm syndrome...

And also just saw the new teaser for the new Trails game, new battle engine in full display. Looking less traditional turn based and more of that hybrid style of Xenoblade, FFXV/7R. Going hybrid has always been like setting up a house of cards as they put a ton of concepts in but never properly execute them (Ni No Kuni 1 has to be the worst example of such) but they're getting better. The new Trails game also apparently will have a 'classic mode' but I don't want it turning out like the FF7R style. Still I'm looking forward to it. I'm way too deep to turn back now.

They've also showed some returning characters from Sky, Crossbell and Cold Steel. I've become a lot less hyped over this sort of thing in recent years, but seeing a character I've spent seeing grow up and go through a character arc over 4 extremely long games (and 1 game still pending), now sporting a new design, is something I'm really pumped up for.


----------



## TedEH

I've started playing some MGS on the original Playstation. It's..... interesting, but also hasn't aged as well as I had hoped. I've never played any of these games, but I figure I should probably like them, since I tend to be into stealth games.


----------



## wankerness

I remember thinking the MGS1 graphics looked great even though the characters didn't have eyeballs and their arms weren't connected to their bodies. I remember thinking it looked way "grittier" and the movement/etc was more realistic than the N64 games at the time, even if the character textures had that ugly pixellated look that was endemic to PS1. I last played it in probably about 2001. I'm scared to go back to it today. Hopefully they rerelease the gamecube version at some point. But they probably never will, cause Konami is the worst major developer currently and would rather release utter trash and/or pachinko machines.

I would imagine some of the stuff that was bad even at the time is archaic today, like the wonky running and shooting ability that might as well not exist for how hard it is to use.


----------



## TedEH

I find the visuals are fine, it's mostly the way it has that old-school type of difficulty where you have to just _know_ what to do, and it doesn't help you along at all. The boss fights feel pretty brutal to me, even after you've figured out what you're supposed to do.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I find the visuals are fine, it's mostly the way it has that old-school type of difficulty where you have to just _know_ what to do, and it doesn't help you along at all. The boss fights feel pretty brutal to me, even after you've figured out what you're supposed to do.



Hmm. I never had any problem with that game, and that was in my videogame infancy (didn't get a game system at all till ~1998). What boss fights in particular are you having problems with? I played through that game 5 or 6 times but can't think of many off the top of my head that gave me issues. Unless you're trying to fight Sniper Wolf


Spoiler



without the sniper rifle and/or diazepam


 or Psycho Mantis


Spoiler



with your controller in port 1


 (THAT one I don't think I ever would have figured out without reading it beforehand). Oh, and I think that tank boss that you had to land a grenade on the roof of the tank was a bit finicky sometimes since the aiming wasn't great with those things.

The one part I remember dying on repeatedly was the frickin torture session on hard difficulty without submitting. That was a *lot* of button pressing.


----------



## Choop

If you need help, I think you can usually codec call the colonel or maybe some of the other contacts to get hints. Not sure how specific they will get, though.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> What boss fights in particular are you having problems with?


In short, all of them.  Currently my save is right before Psycho Mantis since I haven't beat it yet (although I know the trick).



Spoiler



The tank boss at the beginning seems to come down to luck with not getting run over by the treads while you try to land grenades using the same stick you move with. When I finally won, I felt like I cheesed my way through the fight.

Then you get to the cyborg ninja dude, and he's pretty relentless. Tons of phases, the callouts to what you're supposed to do aren't really clear, he has TONS of health while you have almost none, so even after you figure out what you're supposed to do, you have to do it almost perfectly 'cause you die in 2 hits compared to his like 40-50 hits or whatever it is.

I got to the Mantis fight, and I already knew about the controller thing, but he's equally relentless - I only tried it a few times and haven't been able to dodge the random junk that gets thrown at you, because once again you have to land a bajillion hits with only a slim margin for error.



It feels like the game basically expects you to just git gud, since the movement is slow and you don't have much health, while you're almost always pitted against very lethal opponents. Maybe it's intentional, since that's sort of in the spirit of stealth games, but still. The design of these kinds of games have come a long way.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> If you need help, I think you can usually codec call the colonel or maybe some of the other contacts to get hints. Not sure how specific they will get, though.



my memory was that the tips got VERY specific to the point of fourth-wall breaking. I didn’t really ever use them though, since I had a quick and dirty walkthrough in a game informer magazine or something 

Speaking of fourth wall breaking, I just remembered that part where a character tells you to get the frequency to call another character from “the back of the jewel case.” Lo and behold, there it was on the back of the game’s case, an image of you in a radio call with that character with the frequency displayed! That probably doesn’t work so well with emulators or psnow or whatever people play it with now.


----------



## TedEH

Lucky I have a physical copy - jewel case included.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> my memory was that the tips got VERY specific to the point of fourth-wall breaking. I didn’t really ever use them though, since I had a quick and dirty walkthrough in a game informer magazine or something
> 
> Speaking of fourth wall breaking, I just remembered that part where a character tells you to get the frequency to call another character from “the back of the jewel case.” Lo and behold, there it was on the back of the game’s case, an image of you in a radio call with that character with the frequency displayed! That probably doesn’t work so well with emulators or psnow or whatever people play it with now.



The sheer volume of 4th wall breaking stuff in those games. The Psycho Mantis fight, the Otacon rants, the “idol” videos from MGS2, man the dev did not care about messing with his audience.


----------



## TedEH

I have a suspicion I'll end up picking up 2 + 3 when I'm done with this one. I feel like MGS2 is one of those games that had enough cultural impact that I probably know a bunch of things from the game despite never having played it.


----------



## Leviathus

TedEH said:


> I have a suspicion I'll end up picking up 2 + 3 when I'm done with this one. I feel like MGS2 is one of those games that had enough cultural impact that I probably know a bunch of things from the game despite never having played it.



Like how if you look up at the sky in first person on the top of strut A the birds poop on your face?


----------



## Randy

Leviathus said:


> Like how if you look up at the sky in first person on the top of strut A the birds poop on your face?



Didn't know that but I did spend a lot of time staring up that knocked out guard's ass.


----------



## p0ke

I got to the point is DS3 where I'm helping Anri defeat Aldricht... Goddamn that fight sucks. If I had my normal 10x estus I'd probably make it, but 5 is just not enough. I have to attack very aggressively too, otherwise Anri dies as soon as the boss does the arrow rain spell. I've gotten really close a couple of times, so I guess I just gotta keep trying...

Regarding MGS: I don't recall it being that difficult TBH. I mean almost every boss took multiple attempts, and especially in the beginning when you don't have much health you can't make many mistakes, but I don't remember anything being annoyingly difficult. That said, it's been nearly 20 years since I played it


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I got to the point is DS3 where I'm helping Anri defeat Aldricht... Goddamn that fight sucks. If I had my normal 10x estus I'd probably make it, but 5 is just not enough. I have to attack very aggressively too, otherwise Anri dies as soon as the boss does the arrow rain spell. I've gotten really close a couple of times, so I guess I just gotta keep trying...
> 
> Regarding MGS: I don't recall it being that difficult TBH. I mean almost every boss took multiple attempts, and especially in the beginning when you don't have much health you can't make many mistakes, but I don't remember anything being annoyingly difficult. That said, it's been nearly 20 years since I played it



you think that’s bad, wait until you fight him WITHOUT Anri right after!!

Aldrich was the first boss to really frustrate me. Probably took about 5-10 attempts. Next difficulty spike is Lothric Princes, though depending on what kind of weapon you’re using they might not be as bad as they were for me with my stubby little lothric knight straight sword. Those guys killed me the most besides the big three DLC bosses.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> you think that’s bad, wait until you fight him WITHOUT Anri right after!!
> 
> Aldrich was the first boss to really frustrate me. Probably took about 5-10 attempts. Next difficulty spike is Lothric Princes, though depending on what kind of weapon you’re using they might not be as bad as they were for me with my stubby little lothric knight straight sword. Those guys killed me the most besides the big three DLC bosses.



Ouch... I'm just using a Raw Broadsword +6 (I think) which is really short too, so time to die, I guess  I've been planning on trying something different for a while, but because I've upgraded the Broadsword a lot, I don't just want to drop it... I have all kinds of greatswords and the Black Knight Sword which I used throughout DS1, so I guess I should just go ahead and start upgrading one of those... The broadsword is good for quick concecutive attacks (and quick dispatching of normal enemies), but I'm more of a one hard hit kind of player, really.


----------



## Mathemagician

For DS3 I rocked the Black Knight Sword. It’s a GS with regular sword requirements.


----------



## Leviathus

I love when the black knight before taurus demon drops the BKS in ds1, ez mode activated.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Leviathus said:


> I love when the black knight before taurus demon drops the BKS in ds1, ez mode activated.



For shits and giggles, sometimes I'll go down to Blighttown as the first stop and get the Great Club, get enough souls to bring it to +5, put on Gold Pine Resin or Red Tearstone Ring and one shot Taurus. Also with the Gargoyles, I'll do the same thing but use Gold Pine Resin along with RTSR, and even with Solaire being summoned providing a 20 percent boost to the first Gargoyle's health, it's still pretty much two hits and done for the first one. The second one? Dodging his fire and hitting him essentially takes them out in three hits, although with how much freedom the first game gives you, I'm certain there's a way to get one shots on both of them. Boosting stats plus weapon level early will make you a powerhouse.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Ouch... I'm just using a Raw Broadsword +6 (I think) which is really short too, so time to die, I guess  I've been planning on trying something different for a while, but because I've upgraded the Broadsword a lot, I don't just want to drop it... I have all kinds of greatswords and the Black Knight Sword which I used throughout DS1, so I guess I should just go ahead and start upgrading one of those... The broadsword is good for quick concecutive attacks (and quick dispatching of normal enemies), but I'm more of a one hard hit kind of player, really.



I used three different enchanted lothric knight straightswords (Dark, Chaos, and Lightning, mainly used the first unless enemies were weak to lightning) almost entirely through NG++ on DS3 - that weapon has something weird with the stat scaling such that if you level stats equally (I think I had like 40 str/40 dex/30 int/30 faith) it is easily one of the most powerful weapons in the game, plus it's very fast and easy to use with a shield like a coward.

If you want 2H, the lothric knight greatsword is really, really good if you can get one to drop. Also the aforementioned black knight sword. A few 2H boss weapons in this game are really damn good and well worth the upgrades, too (Like, Vordt's Hammer, Wolfknight Greatsword and Hollowslayer Greatsword). But, I barely dabbled with them. The famous most OP weapon in the game is apparently the sellsword's twinblades with a sharp enchant and high dex. I didn't use them myself cause I had turned into a "turtle" style of player thanks to DS2's ridiculous onslaught of damage. But I think I read that mathematically they're by far the highest DPS possible in the game.

I used the Claymore through the vast majority of DS1, but ended up using Artorias's greatshield on the hard bosses like in the DLC and just swinging it 1H.


----------



## Jarmake

Aaaand Shadow of Yharnam is no more. On the first try I died when the last one began summoning the big ass snakes... I left the katana wielding for the last and that was a big mistake on my part. When I came back second time I killed him first, the flamethrower one second and left the one with the great balls of fire last and it was easy enough.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> I used three different enchanted lothric knight straightswords (Dark, Chaos, and Lightning, mainly used the first unless enemies were weak to lightning) almost entirely through NG++ on DS3 - that weapon has something weird with the stat scaling such that if you level stats equally (I think I had like 40 str/40 dex/30 int/30 faith) it is easily one of the most powerful weapons in the game, plus it's very fast and easy to use with a shield like a coward.
> 
> If you want 2H, the lothric knight greatsword is really, really good if you can get one to drop. Also the aforementioned black knight sword. A few 2H boss weapons in this game are really damn good and well worth the upgrades, too (Like, Vordt's Hammer, Wolfknight Greatsword and Hollowslayer Greatsword). But, I barely dabbled with them. The famous most OP weapon in the game is apparently the sellsword's twinblades with a sharp enchant and high dex. I didn't use them myself cause I had turned into a "turtle" style of player thanks to DS2's ridiculous onslaught of damage. But I think I read that mathematically they're by far the highest DPS possible in the game.
> 
> I used the Claymore through the vast majority of DS1, but ended up using Artorias's greatshield on the hard bosses like in the DLC and just swinging it 1H.



Yeah the Black Knight Sword (+10) was pretty damned good in DS1! I got it early in the game, I think the knight in Darkroot Basin dropped it and for a long time I couldn't use it because of the strength requirement, but then at some point I had enough strength to use it with one hand. And then I just dropped my shield for extra heavy attacks.

I prefer heavy swords in general because of the staggering effect, that conveniently gives a chance to take a sip of estus or attack some more...


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Yeah the Black Knight Sword (+10) was pretty damned good in DS1! I got it early in the game, I think the knight in Darkroot Basin dropped it and for a long time I couldn't use it because of the strength requirement, but then at some point I had enough strength to use it with one hand. And then I just dropped my shield for extra heavy attacks.
> 
> I prefer heavy swords in general because of the staggering effect, that conveniently gives a chance to take a sip of estus or attack some more...



I haven't used the black knight sword in DS1. I did use the black knight greatsword a bit since it's the ultimate "pancake" weapon (it makes the Zwiehander seem wimpy), and I used the black knight halberd a LOT on my last playthrough. It's got a good moveset for actually hitting enemies in a reasonable fashion, unlike a lot of the greatswords with their big wind-ups.

DS2 has the best weapon variety of the series. I usually used some curved dragon greatsword in it, but I always carried around a great club for annoying invaders cause you could just chain-pancake them with it. I also used the rapier/frozen rapier on some enemies, and the mace on a lot of others (since it was so good against armor), and the partizan on a bunch more cause the moveset was so damn good for dealing with little guys that you needed to keep away from when they died. You could custom-dual wield weapons in it, though, which was awesome. DS3 really dumbed down that ability. DS2, for all the shit it gets, did do some things really right.


----------



## TedEH

For all my complaining about the MGS bosses, I went back to it a few hours after my last post and beat Mantis in two attempts.
Now currently at:


Spoiler



The part where you fight Sniper Wolf for the second time. Why am I using spoiler tags for a 20+ year old game?


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> For all my complaining about the MGS bosses, I went back to it a few hours after my last post and beat Mantis in two attempts.
> Now currently at:
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> The part where you fight Sniper Wolf for the second time. Why am I using spoiler tags for a 20+ year old game?



I only used them on my post and only on the strats cause if you weren't at the bosses I didn't want to give away the "tricks!"

I distinctly remember the last several bosses in that game seeming easier than what came before. Though I do remember one playthrough where I lost the climactic fist fight a couple times and repeatedly failed the railshooter section.


----------



## MFB

I ended up making it to the Great Shinobi fight in Sekiro, so I think it's after this that Ashina Castle changes to dusk instead of day. Looks like all the bosses get infinitely harder from here on out, although I'm not quite sure how as the majority of them already knock out half my health bar in one hit so there's not much room for error. Luckily, I'm at the point where XP/Sen are useless to me, so dying doesn't mean much besides, "enjoy fighting the boss from the beginning again."


----------



## Werecow

I just killed my first horde in Days Gone. It turned out to be pretty hilarious as well. I spent about 15 minutes meticulously sneaking around the army camp they were in, laying all my proximity bombs in a path i could get them to chase me in, then worked out another path i could lead them past the explosives already in the camp. When i was just about ready to go, a deer ran through the camp and the whole damn horde ran off over the horizon after it, away from my bombs .
I waited in a bush around 5 minutes for them to return, only to see the deer run past the outside of the fence on the opposite side of the base they had left from, with the horde still sprinting after it .
They eventually returned, but set just one of the proximity bombs off and came after me. I had to lead them off in a path to run over all the remaining bombs, and then past all the explosive barrels before my stamina ran out. Was a pretty close thing, but just managed it with zero ammo left in my main gun.

The sight of them chasing after the deer, twice in a row, was one of the funniest things i've ever seen in a game.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I distinctly remember the last several bosses in that game seeming easier than what came before. Though I do remember one playthrough where I lost the climactic fist fight a couple times and repeatedly failed the railshooter section.


The more I play this, it feels less like a stealth game, and more like a series of boss fights and set pieces strung together with short sneaky bits.


----------



## MFB

That sounds very similar to Sekiro 

On that note, fuck Great Shinobi Owl - all my homies hate GSO


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> The more I play this, it feels less like a stealth game, and more like a series of boss fights and set pieces strung together with short sneaky bits.



It always felt more cinematic like an action movie to me, with stealth elements thrown in. The first game's alert timer is easily the most forgiving. None of them are especially bad, but every game onward makes the guards be on alert for longer, with different levels of alert status also.


----------



## TedEH

Part of me is hoping the next games will be a little bit modern-ed up, if you get what I mean. Not in the core of what the game is, but just in the "we've figured out how to make games properly" kind of way - character movement that's responsive, boss fights that don't feel like you're cheesing your way through them, difficulty curves a little more thought out., etc. Like this first game has that sense of "lets throw every good idea we have into the mix and see what happens", and I hope the series refines itself from that point forward.


----------



## MFB

From what I recall, they do, but they also push the needle to the other side and in my opinion, by MGS5 the fun is not there. I felt more like I was playing a stealth simulator of what would happen in the real world if I tried to do this vs. a video game where the intent is to have fun. In that sense, I miss the experiments/tests/risks/etc they were willing to take in the first one.


----------



## wankerness

Odd, almost everything I’ve heard is that 5 is the most fun entry in the series just cause of the ridiculous amount of freedom afforded by the engine. I still have only played 1 myself, though.


----------



## Choop

Haven't played 5 yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I played Peace Walker and liked it -- 5 looks like it borrowed some elements from that game.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I have a suspicion I'll end up picking up 2 + 3 when I'm done with this one. I feel like MGS2 is one of those games that had enough cultural impact that I probably know a bunch of things from the game despite never having played it.



Played all of the MGS games for the first time in 2017 or so on the PS3. Loved them all, except for MGS V which has probably the best gameplay, but I didn't like the story or characters at all. I didn't like Peace Walker either (it's similar to MGS V). But the rest were GREAT.

I don't know if I can pick just one, but MGS 3 is probably my favorite. This series of games is one of those that I know I will play again every few years.


----------



## TedEH

I can definitely see why the series used to get a lot of attention. There's a lot of character. If I'd had a playstation back in th' day, I'd have probably really liked these.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Odd, almost everything I’ve heard is that 5 is the most fun entry in the series just cause of the ridiculous amount of freedom afforded by the engine. I still have only played 1 myself, though.



You do have a bunch of freedom, but it's so much so that it feels like you can ignore most of the mission and just fuck around like it's a traditional sandbox, open-world game. Plus the way the enemies then start to scale up to your own advancements, it's just like, "OK great, at what point is everyone going to just like COD Juggernauts?" I also wasn't crazy about the way you received missions, and the whole recruitment aspect of it; too much micromanagement for my tastes, and I say that as someone who thinks AC:B is the best entry in the franchise.


----------



## wankerness

Wow, a 10 gigabyte patch for Mass Effect came out today that does things like "reduced amount of fog on Ilium in ME2" and "improved eye animations for male characters in ME1" and "reduced amount of credits that carry over from ME1 to 2." TOTALLY WORTH IT. Boy am I glad I don't have bandwidth caps right now. When I saw the monstrous size of the update I was hoping it included ME3's multiplayer or the missing ME1 DLC or something. Nope, just minor bug fixes and balance junk.

Seems to have fixed the bug where you couldn't get Spectre gear in ME1 except right at the beginning of the game or right at the end, but I'm already past where that negatively affected me.  Doesn't seem to have fixed the ME3 ability achievements.

I'm packing up all my stuff for a move at the end of the month, and just took down my stereo system and am running the PS4 through TV speakers for the first time in a long time. WOW, does it sound bad. I've gotten so spoiled over the last couple years. Hopefully wherever I end up moving has room for the 5.1 system again. Even just 2 cheap ~$75 stereo speakers through the receiver sound massively better.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> I'm packing up all my stuff for a move at the end of the month, and just took down my stereo system and am running the PS4 through TV speakers for the first time in a long time. WOW, does it sound bad. I've gotten so spoiled over the last couple years. Hopefully wherever I end up moving has room for the 5.1 system again. Even just 2 cheap ~$75 stereo speakers through the receiver sound massively better.



Same whenever I have to use the tv speakers. I have a Harman/Kardon 5.1 amp and 5 big speakers (well the center speaker isn't that big tbh) so in comparison the tv itself sounds like a walkie talkie or something 

In DS3 I finally managed to defeat Aldrich with Anri. I changed to the Sellsword Dual Blades, which I sharpened and improved as much as I could, and with those he was actually pretty easy. I also improved the Black Knight Sword, and that became my main weapon now. And I'm trying to kill the actual Aldrich with it now... I've gotten really close (less than 10% left close), but he always gets me with the stupid arrow rain attack which becomes tracking after he sets himself on fire.


----------



## Choop

Guess I'm going to be playing Guilty Gear -Strive- when it launches this weekend! Excited about it -- I'm also testing the waters trying out livestreaming here soon, so that'll likely be one of the titles that I do for that. Anybody else going to play it? If so, who are you looking at playing?

Probably going to try to play Ram, and not just because she is considered great lol. Will also probably play with Ky a bit since that is who I always ended up using in previous GG games.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> Guess I'm going to be playing Guilty Gear -Strive- when it launches this weekend! Excited about it -- I'm also testing the waters trying out livestreaming here soon, so that'll likely be one of the titles that I do for that. Anybody else going to play it? If so, who are you looking at playing?
> 
> Probably going to try to play Ram, and not just because she is considered great lol. Will also probably play with Ky a bit since that is who I always ended up using in previous GG games.



I want to get back into Guilty Gear again, and I hear this is a reboot of sorts for the series so I'm keen.

I've been a Sol player forever so no surprises if I just use him again. I'm such a sucker for protagonists.  i might pick up Zato-1 as another choice, though I'm thinking I-no would be a good fresh start.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I want to get back into Guilty Gear again, and I hear this is a reboot of sorts for the series so I'm keen.
> 
> I've been a Sol player forever so no surprises if I just use him again. I'm such a sucker for protagonists.  i might pick up Zato-1 as another choice, though I'm thinking I-no would be a good fresh start.



Heck yeah! I was watching Sajam play on stream yesterday, and he was making Sol look hella good. It's hard to pick since everybody seems pretty cool, and from what I've seen everyone has access to big damage combos. The biggest controversial opinion about the game is that it seems a little slower than previous GG games, but that isn't necessarily a con for me personally.

Are you possibly going to be on PC if you get it? If so we should play. My steam account is "chacoop" and username right now is Choopyplz. If you need a profile # code or whatever it is, I could get that later, too!


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Same whenever I have to use the tv speakers. I have a Harman/Kardon 5.1 amp and 5 big speakers (well the center speaker isn't that big tbh) so in comparison the tv itself sounds like a walkie talkie or something
> 
> In DS3 I finally managed to defeat Aldrich with Anri. I changed to the Sellsword Dual Blades, which I sharpened and improved as much as I could, and with those he was actually pretty easy. I also improved the Black Knight Sword, and that became my main weapon now. And I'm trying to kill the actual Aldrich with it now... I've gotten really close (less than 10% left close), but he always gets me with the stupid arrow rain attack which becomes tracking after he sets himself on fire.



Aldrich is a jerk. First time I beat him was after a lot of failures. I think I went 2H and just went all out trying to smack him in the tail, and rushing to him as fast as possible so he only did the arrow rain a couple times. I think it was also the first or second time that I tried fighting him without using lock-on - that really did help to hit him in the tail.


----------



## Mathemagician

Same rule from Bloodborne applies to DS3 imo, rushdown every boss. Like just get in their fucking face, dodge towards them, etc. I know it’s not a specific tip, but if you’re being a bit careful/defensive I would try just getting up in there more.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Aldrich is a jerk. First time I beat him was after a lot of failures. I think I went 2H and just went all out trying to smack him in the tail, and rushing to him as fast as possible so he only did the arrow rain a couple times. I think it was also the first or second time that I tried fighting him without using lock-on - that really did help to hit him in the tail.



I got him now. Killing him alone actually took less attempts than helping Anri. I also think I ended up making some kind of speed run record, as the fight took less than a minute  Then I proceeded to the Dancer of the Borreal Valley and defeated her in a couple of attempts as well.
I'm starting to suffer a bit from the same as I did in DS1: the framerate drops super low, but it doesn't slow the bosses down, so I just have to be super calm, press one thing at a time and wait for it to happen to avoid queieing up stuff I don't want to do when the time comes.



Mathemagician said:


> Same rule from Bloodborne applies to DS3 imo, rushdown every boss. Like just get in their fucking face, dodge towards them, etc. I know it’s not a specific tip, but if you’re being a bit careful/defensive I would try just getting up in there more.



It depends on the boss, but yeah, that mostly works. Especially Aldrich, as he won't do his ranged attacks when you're close and they're the most deadly.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Same rule from Bloodborne applies to DS3 imo, rushdown every boss. Like just get in their fucking face, dodge towards them, etc. I know it’s not a specific tip, but if you’re being a bit careful/defensive I would try just getting up in there more.



Eh, turtling still works on most bosses in the regular game. I think Crystal Sage and Aldrich were the only two I had to fully go all out on to beat. Lothric Princes is kind of in the middle (shields didn't work too well on them with how lockon gets broken by the teleport).


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Odd, almost everything I’ve heard is that 5 is the most fun entry in the series just cause of the ridiculous amount of freedom afforded by the engine. I still have only played 1 myself, though.


MGSV is the most fun entry in the series because of the ridiculous amount of freedom afforded by the engine. 

It and BotW are the only games on that same level of "here's an engine, go mess around and when you're done there's a game to complete too".


----------



## TedEH

Finished MGS1 today. I maintain that parts of the early game have that old-school "git gud or do something else" kind of difficulty to them - but a lot of the rest of the game feels a bit ahead of it's time.

I say that because when I think about it, there's some proto- immersive sim stuff happening here. A lot of the scenarios are setup to let you solve them in whatever way you like, and I think the reason I didn't get along with the early game is that it hadn't yet given you all of the tools and the time to get used to how to use them. I imagine a second playthrough would be much easier for that reason.

I recently learned that 2+3 are available on the xbone, for cheaper than any other copies I could find either for the originals or collections. Probably won't go for it quite yet, but the series has my attention enough that I'll probably come back to it. Maybe once my gamepass trial thingie runs out.


----------



## Ralyks

Thought the PS5 upgrade for Final Fantasy VII: Remake came out tomorrow. Nope, it's out now and downloading as we speak.

Otherwise, more Judgement.


----------



## wankerness

Fromsoft finally released a trailer for Elden Ring, and it looks incredible. WAY more Dark Souls in appearance than Sekiro, but the monster designs are a whole different kind of weird.


----------



## Leviathus

OoOOhHHhHhHhHhh. And it comes out on Jan 21st. Much excite.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Fromsoft finally released a trailer for Elden Ring, and it looks incredible. WAY more Dark Souls in appearance than Sekiro, but the monster designs are a whole different kind of weird.




Wait this is a Fromsoft game? I thought it was another dev making a game that looked like a fromsoft game. From like a random clip a year ago.


----------



## Leviathus

Mathemagician said:


> Wait this is a Fromsoft game? I thought it was another dev making a game that looked like a fromsoft game. From like a random clip a year ago.



Maybe you're thinking of Mortal Shell?


----------



## Mathemagician

That may be it. I’m not really keeping up with games anymore. I’m occasionally playing through free PSN games. 
Glad to see Fromsoft is already almost launching their next IP, excited for it. 

Makes sense as they really didn’t seem keen on more dark souls as much as making nee games from scratch from interviews around the time of BB’s launch.


----------



## MFB

Hmm, I'm torn on Elden Ring

On the one hand, 2020/2021 has been the year of FromSoft for me as I completed DS1/BB/currently working through the nightmare that is Sekiro with DS2/3 on the backburner; but this looks so similar to DS whereas the one thing I've loved going between all the series is the vastly different worlds they've created each time, and it looks like mechanically it will also be closer to DS than BB/Sekiro which I'm not crazy about. I love the more breakneck speed of the latter two, even if one gets to be a rhythm battle vs. an actual parry fight, but BB is entirely dodge based with the ability for the riposte if you're good enough which is right up my alley.

We'll see as they release more, but for now it's not a 'must have'


----------



## wankerness

I don't really see how you can come to the conclusion that the gameplay is slower than Seikiro/BB with how fast the cuts are in that video - you can't tell much of anything other than enemy/player designs and that some of the gameplay takes place on horseback. Plus, have you played DS3? Enemies attack a LOT faster than in 1/2. You can still block with a shield if you want to play that way, but if you want to dodge/etc like a real man, it's way more bloodborne speed required.


----------



## MFB

I haven't gotten to DS3 yet, I'm working through them chronologically even if they aren't connected. Again, I'm making the assumption based on what they showed but I'm more than happy to be proven wrong and have it be faster paced.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I haven't gotten to DS3 yet, I'm working through them chronologically even if they aren't connected. Again, I'm making the assumption based on what they showed but I'm more than happy to be proven wrong and have it be faster paced.



Ah, so you're doing DS2 after Sekiro? Cool. In some ways that was my favorite of the three. Having played through NG+ on DS1/3 made me realize its mechanical shortcomings a bit, so I dunno if I still think that, but it's got a ton of great things about it and it's very unfairly maligned. I think I enjoy the experience more than 1, since the weapon/combat variety is so much better and the environments are more varied and you can warp everywhere immediately. As with 1, many of the most memorable bosses are in the DLC. Unfortunately a lot of the DLC is hard as nails. Way nastier than anything other than BB's later dungeons and the DS3 DLC.


----------



## Ralyks

So speaking of almost Souls games, they surprise dropped the PS5 and Xbox Series version of Jedi Fallen Order today, and it is on EA Play. Looks like my save transfered over, but not my trophies, so looks like I have a reason to do New Game +. The next few. Upgrade sure is pretty, and the load times are much better.

Also, grabbed Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. Holy shit. THIS is a next gen game. A visual marvel that truly feels like playing a Pixar movie, and the action feels non stop. If you manage to get a PS5, get this. I played about 2 hours so far and it's phenomenal.


----------



## MFB

I FINALLY cracked Great Shinobi's fight and can move on.

Thank.
GOD.


----------



## MFB

WHY THE FUCK IS THERE ANOTHER BOSS FIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NEXT AREA, IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING GREAT SHINOBI?!

Honestly, the boss design in this game is fucking MIND BOGGLING. It's boss, after boss, after BOSS, to the point where bosses aren't rewarding because you kill them so often and all you feel is relief you don't have to fight them again instead of accomplishment.


----------



## Leviathus

:: insert Corrupted Monk laugh ::


----------



## p0ke

I got to the Lothric Princes in DS3... Didn't seem that bad at first, but then I died  The second time I went in, I managed to get to the second phase, but that was just out of my league for now. So I decided to go explore other places and come back with a higher level.
The Consumed King was super disappointing! I thought he was gonna be tough since his area is a major PITA, but instead I defeated him on my first attempt. I spent all my estus, but still. So now I'm at Archdragon Peak, getting my ass handed to me by fire breathing serpent people...

About Elden Ring: It just seems like another Souls game to me. Which I absolutely don't mind, but I'm not exactly first in line to get it. Besides, I probably don't want to play it on my shitty og Xbox One anyway (if it even gets released on last gen consoles).


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> they surprise dropped the PS5 and Xbox Series version of Jedi Fallen Order today


I started playing this one recently - and it was another case where I stuck with PC 'cause of reports that the One S version performed pretty bad. I've no complaints about the PC performance so far, although I can definitely "feel" when the level streaming kicks in.

I immediately started the game by going to the "wrong" planet thinking that maybe it would be open enough to progress in any way I want to (otherwise why would they give you the option?). Instead I got my ass handed to me just to reach a dead-end and backtrack to where the game clearly wanted me to go. I guess I got a few extra skills points in the process but oh well. I'm not sure how I feel about the save points + enemies respawning, but maybe that's a part of these kinds of games that I'm just not used to?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TedEH said:


> I started playing this one recently - and it was another case where I stuck with PC 'cause of reports that the One S version performed pretty bad. I've no complaints about the PC performance so far, although I can definitely "feel" when the level streaming kicks in.
> 
> I immediately started the game by going to the "wrong" planet thinking that maybe it would be open enough to progress in any way I want to (otherwise why would they give you the option?). Instead I got my ass handed to me just to reach a dead-end and backtrack to where the game clearly wanted me to go. I guess I got a few extra skills points in the process but oh well. I'm not sure how I feel about the save points + enemies respawning, but maybe that's a part of these kinds of games that I'm just not used to?


they tried to copy dark soul"s bonfire setup but it's a really weird design choice for a star wars game, especially with enemies respawning. At least it makes sense within the DS universe.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I got to the Lothric Princes in DS3... Didn't seem that bad at first, but then I died  The second time I went in, I managed to get to the second phase, but that was just out of my league for now. So I decided to go explore other places and come back with a higher level.
> The Consumed King was super disappointing! I thought he was gonna be tough since his area is a major PITA, but instead I defeated him on my first attempt. I spent all my estus, but still. So now I'm at Archdragon Peak, getting my ass handed to me by fire breathing serpent people...
> 
> About Elden Ring: It just seems like another Souls game to me. Which I absolutely don't mind, but I'm not exactly first in line to get it. Besides, I probably don't want to play it on my shitty og Xbox One anyway (if it even gets released on last gen consoles).



Lothric Princes killed me in phase two every time cause my weapon wasn’t doing much damage to the little guy (it was enchanted and he was resistant to the element the big guy is weak to, plus it was a short sword and thus half the swings were not reaching him). I remember one attempt where I “killed” the big guy three times in p2 and the little guy still had health!!

I think if you’re using a longish weapon that’s not elemental enchanted that it’s a lot easier. On ng+ I just toasted the little guy with pyromancy as soon as I got the big guy’s health down, but didn’t have the stats for that on NG. I don’t even remember how I ended up beating them. Probably just used a non-enchanted sword. I tried it once with a bleed weapon but my stats weren’t optimized for it so I was barely tickling them.

Hardest boss in the base game is generally considered to be the nameless king in archdragon peak, but the first boss is not too hard. Nasty trash mobs there though. Especially Havel, who can be summoned and is also hanging out on a ledge guarding a slab and some spell (I think?).

have you already done dragonslayer armor and champion gundyr? The latter is in another secret area past where you killed the consumed king. He’s a pretty cool boss. Way less frustrating than twin princes.

If you’re a heavy strength build you can get the shield from dragonslayer armor and basically cheese nameless king, but if you’re not a big strength build you’re going to have to get very good at dodge timings!


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> have you already done dragonslayer armor and champion gundyr? The latter is in another secret area past where you killed the consumed king. He’s a pretty cool boss. Way less frustrating than twin princes.
> 
> If you’re a heavy strength build you can get the shield from dragonslayer armor and basically cheese nameless king, but if you’re not a big strength build you’re going to have to get very good at dodge timings!



Yeah, I have killed Dragonslayer Armour. I think it's not even possible to get to the princes without defeating him? 
That was also a first attempt kill for me, though I have to admit I probably wouldn't have stood a chance without summoning Eygon. He did just enough to draw him away from me so I could drink some estus before continuing to hit him.
I haven't found Gundyr yet, so I guess that might be my next target. Archdragon Peak seems a little too tough for me at the moment.

I'm using the Black Knight Sword (+5) now, and the sheer length of it definitely helps. Also when two-handing it, it generally staggers enemies after a few hits, which is obviously super convenient.
I also changed armor, I'm now basically cosplaying the Dancer of the Borreal Valley  It's not the best armor ever, but it's lighter than I had before so my rolls are fast.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Yeah, I have killed Dragonslayer Armour. I think it's not even possible to get to the princes without defeating him?
> That was also a first attempt kill for me, though I have to admit I probably wouldn't have stood a chance without summoning Eygon. He did just enough to draw him away from me so I could drink some estus before continuing to hit him.
> I haven't found Gundyr yet, so I guess that might be my next target. Archdragon Peak seems a little too tough for me at the moment.
> 
> I'm using the Black Knight Sword (+5) now, and the sheer length of it definitely helps. Also when two-handing it, it generally staggers enemies after a few hits, which is obviously super convenient.
> I also changed armor, I'm now basically cosplaying the Dancer of the Borreal Valley  It's not the best armor ever, but it's lighter than I had before so my rolls are fast.



Archdragon Peak is probably the last thing you want to do before the DLC, Nameless King is definitely nastier than the base game’s final boss. If you have the DLC you could probably handle the first two bosses of the Painted World DLC before him, too. Though the trash at the beginning of that DLC is a nightmare. Definitely do the Ringed City dlc second, not least because the summon for the hardest boss gets disabled if you do the dlc out of order.

you should definitely get the dlc if you didn’t, though. I think the two final bosses are almost universally considered among the best fromsoft has ever designed. The third really hard (and optional) one seems more divisive, but is most definitely very memorable.


----------



## MFB

Another nightmare successfully defeated, even if that is Bloodbornes line. True Monk is dead, and I'm farming through Fountainhead Palace to get another skill point and get closer to finishing then all.

Phase 1 and 2 were fine, especially since 2 can be defeated with one deathblow immediately, but phase 3 gets a little hyperactive and closes the gap WAY too quickly to where you can't heal or recover posture correctly. They also patched it so phase 1 can't be cheesed, so anyone who was thinking I could, think again


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> If you have the DLC ...



Nope, I don't have the DLC's yet, but I think those'll be my next purchase... Unless something like DS2 goes on sale 

Pfft, just defeated Gundyr. What a whimp!


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I started playing this one recently - and it was another case where I stuck with PC 'cause of reports that the One S version performed pretty bad. I've no complaints about the PC performance so far, although I can definitely "feel" when the level streaming kicks in.
> 
> I immediately started the game by going to the "wrong" planet thinking that maybe it would be open enough to progress in any way I want to (otherwise why would they give you the option?). Instead I got my ass handed to me just to reach a dead-end and backtrack to where the game clearly wanted me to go. I guess I got a few extra skills points in the process but oh well. I'm not sure how I feel about the save points + enemies respawning, but maybe that's a part of these kinds of games that I'm just not used to?


I go to Dathomir first just to get the double bladed light saber early. It helps a lot. There's a definite difficulty spike on that planet though, and the game has metroidvania elements where you'll come up to lots of closed off sections or secrets unless you've learnt a skill.
The respawning is weird. it's a bit immersion breaking for me, but i managed to ignore it mostly and really enjoyed the game.


----------



## Leviathus

Beat the shura gauntlet on Sekiro and first tried the last boss. After like 200+ hours on this game today i finally realized that the Tengu of Ashina is Isshin, can't believe i never put that together until now. Kind of a bummer there's no reward for the final ridiculous Mortal Journey gauntlet of like 17 bosses, not sure if i'll ever seriously attempt it.


----------



## MFB

Fought my way through to the Demon of Hatred, Ashina at Night is an absolute bitch. Idols are so far between and all the normal enemies do a shit ton of damage for not being any type of boss.

Took down the mini boss at the Courtyard before the bridge, I didn't realize he had armor so I looked up why my attacks were doing so little posture damage. That took off 3/4 of the health right there. Managed to complete the Ashina skill tree that the Tengu gives you, haven't used Ashina Cross yet though, didn't realize it used emblems. Might grind out for the last two to complete ALL trees, but it would require a good amount of grinding through Palace which gives like, 10K exp each.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I go to Dathomir first just to get the double bladed light saber early. It helps a lot. There's a definite difficulty spike on that planet though


That's exactly what I did, but not because I knew that was there - just because I thought the game was offering me the opportunity to sequence break. The double seems like it was worth the trouble even if it was a pain - even just for that extra light in dark spots.


----------



## p0ke

Got through Archdragon peak, but as expected, the boss is tough. Fighting the first dragon boss in the area was kinda disappointing, I thought the actual fight would start after the plunge attack, but instead he just died 
I managed to acquire a phantom to help with the princes, but I still keep dying. One time I got to the point where the little guy had 25% hp left, but then the phantom died and that was it.
At the Unnamed King, killing his dragon is relatively easy and after that my shield is essentially able to block all his attacks, but whenever I attack him he also does major damage to me. So I guess patience is key, I tend to get greedy and when I try to get one more hit in, he kills me...

So yeah, now I'm stuck at two different boss fights.


----------



## wankerness

If you do nameless king with a shield, it’s a very long war of attrition. As mentioned before, I always used the Lothric knight straight sword, and even with how fast that weapon is and how much I had his attack patterns down, it was rarely a good idea to hit him more than once. I’d usually be almost out of estus by the end just from the chip damage, and that’s even with the major lightning resist on the dragonslayer great shield. He’s so relentless that a lot of times I’d have to just let my guard down and let stamina regen during attack openings, too.

the fight can be sped up a lot by using a 2h (or twin blades) and rolling through everything perfectly, but easier said than done, and it’s a long fight either way.


----------



## Jarmake

Was leveling up my guy in anticipation of the fight to the death with Rom, the vacuous spider and accidentally stumbled upon Darkbeast Paarl on my adventures. Well... I beat it's electrified ass on the first encounter. So easy.

Now I got some new gear from the friendly encounter with Djura and also found Tonitrus.


----------



## Mathemagician

Funny part is that two-handing Tonitrus absolutely melts Rom.


----------



## MFB

Mathemagician said:


> Funny part is that two-handing Tonitrus absolutely melts Rom.



I think I ended up using lightning paper on my cleaver/LHB since it was already like, +3 on either by that point, and was far more durable. I wanted to like the Tonitrus, but it just wasn't up to snuff when I needed it to be.

He took me a couple more tried than I would've liked, since he starts spamming the bomb attacks towards the end and the spider quantity gets to be a bit overwhelming.


----------



## p0ke

Oh yes, I finally defeated the princes. It was just a matter of finding the right balance between hitting them hard in the back and letting the phantom take his share of the damage. I killed the bigger guy twice before the little guy was out of health, and the phantom died at the exact same moment.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Amid Evil. As a fan of Heretic/Hexen, this game and Graven are satiating my lust for old school FPS fantasy games.


----------



## Ralyks

With all of this SoulsBourne talk, anyone see the Final Fantasy one showed at E3?


----------



## Mathemagician

TheBlackBard said:


> Amid Evil. As a fan of Heretic/Hexen, this game and Graven are satiating my lust for old school FPS fantasy games.



Tell me more about these games.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Mathemagician said:


> Tell me more about these games.




So if you've ever played Doom/Doom II, Hexen/Heretic were fantasy versions of that. Instead of guns, you got stuff like axes, staffs, magical crossbows, you were in fantasy locations with epic style music. Like Doom, each weapon had situations it excelled in more than others, so in ways, most of the weapons you got were never truly obsolete. Recently, there has been a boomer shooter revival (think 90's shooters but still being made today, and often with the intention of trying to hit that retro look) that take inspiration from games like Doom, Quake, Hexen/Heretic, Blood, and things like that. If you grew up in the 90's and you're not happy with the way FPS games went with COD and BF (though I do love the modern renditions of Doom and Wolfenstein) and you prefer a simpler, yet fast paced feel like the games of yesteryear, these are the games for you. 

Just to name a few: 

Dusk-Inspired by Doom but feels like it was also inspired by the Evil Dead movies due to setting in some ways. Backwoods setting for the first episode, not quite sure about the others, haven't gotten there yet, but so far, I'm enjoying it.

Amid Evil-Fantasy game in the vein of Hexen/Heretic mentioned in previous post. Fantastical setting, and not the kind you'd see in a game like Skyrim. FAR more fantastical than that. You almost feel like it's an 80's Sword and Sorcery style movie coming in the form of a video game. Difficulty and world selection not unlike Quake, in which you go into a portal. Handsomely rewards exploration.

Hrot-Eastern European style setting with good music. Heavily inspired by Quake in terms of the being a brown boomer shooter (uses lots of brown, and feels grimy). Good tight controls, great atmosphere, reasonable difficulty, and each weapon excels in different situations, thereby never making any weapon truly obsolete. That is a great design choice.

Prodeus-The ONLY game that touches or comes close to my love for Doom, mainly due to how rewarding it feels to get new weapons. Tight gameplay, the sci-fi aspects of Doom are certainly there, while providing more mobility than the OG games, but not so much as Doom: Eternal.

Ion Fury-Same engine as Duke Nukem 3D. Awesome level design, snarky main character. Shelley is a more PC version of Duke, but she's not afraid to let her enemies have some cold-hearted catchphrases. Has lots of pop culture references from the 90's. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND PLAYING.

Shrine-Free game that I THINK was built in the GZDoom engine, but don't quote me on that. Think Doom with more Lovecraftian elements, but on a different wavelength than Quake. Not too much to say about it, since I haven't played much of it, but it can get overwhelming fast.

Graven-More along the lines of Amid Evil. Grimdark setting, first person fantasy game. Now it's in Early Access on Steam and it does have mixed reviews, but a lot of the complaints are people saying it has no content and that the spells suck. Let me make something clear. You can clear this as is in just a few hours, but again, it's in EA, so that's to be expected. Also, people bitching about the spells clearly didn't pay attention in the game. The spells are mainly use for auxiliary effects and as tools for progression rather than fighting, although they can assist in some ways. Spells are not meant for causing damage and it literally says that with the first spell you get.

These are just a few that I enjoy playing, and a lot of these do not have modern style graphics, so if that's what you're looking for, look elsewhere. Still very tight gameplay, good level design, and a lot of these reward your exploration by giving you weapons you might not find until the next level or later. What started my love for these style games all over again is the fact that The Ultimate Doom collection is the first game I bought when I got my gaming PC last year. Beat all the games, discovered the modding community, and then started downloading map packs for the games, and some mods and add-ons that help to somewhat modernize the experience without taking the charm of the game away. I decided I wanted more, and started playing all my favorite boomer shooters on the PC, and then luckily, I was right in the middle of a boomer shooter revival, hence all these games. If this is the kind of game you like, you are spoiled for choice these days. Some of these do function better with source ports, such as Quake for example. The Steam versions of the Quake series for some reason do not have the soundtracks in the game, but if you use DarkPlaces to boot Quake, then it does, and it also adds the ability to set framerate and such. It's a hell of a rabbit hole, and one that I'm not coming out of for awhile. These kinds of games, modern indie retro games, rogue-lites/rogues, and classic style RPG's are mainly what I play, and THAT is whole ass other discussion.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Ralyks said:


> With all of this SoulsBourne talk, anyone see the Final Fantasy one showed at E3?



Guy who clearly shops at Topman: "CHAOS..."


----------



## TedEH

TheBlackBard said:


> Ion Fury [...] VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND PLAYING.


Lol @ having to change their name - Ion Maiden was such a better name. I gatta try this one at some point.



TheBlackBard said:


> these do not have modern style graphics


I find that "retro-style graphics" tend to send me into weird nerd rants. For all of my appreciation of old games, I'm not a fan of some of the ways modern games do "pixel art". Intentionally low-res and blocky textures in an otherwise hi-resolution world just sort of don't look good to me. The best implementations of those kinds of visuals are, IMO, the ones that stick to actually small frame buffers to draw onto (which seems rare for some reason) or that adhere to their pixel snapping properly so that it loooooks like they used a small frame buffer. Old games looked the way they did because of the limitations they were working within - not just because it was cool to be blocky. When a game has those blocky elements but also has elements that demonstrate those old limitations aren't really there, it completely breaks the effect for me.


----------



## Ralyks

Speaking of SoulsBourne FF, they indeed announced Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, but I'd say it's more in the style Nioh (which makes sense). And apparently there's already a demo on PS5. I donwloaded it, I'll check it out tomorrow.


----------



## Jarmake

Mathemagician said:


> Funny part is that two-handing Tonitrus absolutely melts Rom.



I already tried beating Rom with it, but it was such a weak ass weapon the way it came to me, so I'm going to have to upgrade it.

Or maybe I'll just use bolt or fire paper to my hunter axe, which is at like +7 right now.


----------



## TedEH

Anyone watching any of the E3 stuff going on?

Things I am excited for so far:
- Starfield - just because I really _want_ to like Skyrim but the setting doesn't do it for me. Put it in space and you have my attention.
- Psychonauts 2 - Been waiting for that one for a while.

.... And that's about it so far, really. I'm back in that pattern of most modern games just not grabbing my attention. So many things turning into a "service" kinda kills any excitement too. Oh well.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm a bit peeved the Final Fantasy Pixel collection isn't coming to consoles. That's something I've been waiting for, and consider literally every other mainline non-MMO title (ok, and all of the XIII games) are on modern consoles, why not just complete the damn thing.
Otherwise E3 has felt like Microsoft just going off on finally having Xbox exclusives.


----------



## TedEH

I hadn't heard about the pixel collection until now. I'm hearing in my head now "do you guys not have phones?"


----------



## wankerness

I have no interest in playing games on my phone. The screen's too small and I don't like pure touchscreen interfaces.


----------



## Ralyks

Yeah, I don't play any games on my phone. At all. I do enough shit on my phone as it is, adding on to that with gaming would make it worse.


----------



## MFB

I watched like, 5 trailers from E3, and so far honestly nothing has caught my eye for anything new


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> I have no interest in playing games on my phone. The screen's too small and I don't like pure touchscreen interfaces.



Same here. I might reconsider if I traveled a lot, but since I'm basically always at home these days... Nah, no thanks.


----------



## Ralyks

I think the pandemic did a number on E3 this year. Development is taking longer and probably will until towards the end of the year. Plus it feels like the Microsoft show.
Oh and also with Square, kinda was hoping for more FFXVI, And maybe even a small update or at least mention of FFVIIR Part Deux.


----------



## Mathemagician

At this point I wait for the event to end and for various YouTube summaries highlighting the “big reveals” to come out. Or wait for a buddy to show me something that looks unique. I’m not tuning in to hear about sequel after sequel. Just link me the 3 minute gameplay clip later.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I've browsed through a couple articles about it, but haven't really read anything except about FF Origin. I looked up the game after the post on the last page about "FF Dark Souls" and all the reactions I was seeing were more "looks like a shitty 2006 western action RPG" instead of anything about DS.  Character design in it and the trailer were laughably awful.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Thanks for the recommendations on Titanfall 2’s campaign. It was real enjoyable! Love the movement/shooting/fluidity of it. Kinda how I would think Spartans and master chief in halo should control. I started HZD but hasn’t really clicked yet. Will give it some more time.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> Lol @ having to change their name - Ion Maiden was such a better name. I gatta try this one at some point.
> 
> 
> I find that "retro-style graphics" tend to send me into weird nerd rants. For all of my appreciation of old games, I'm not a fan of some of the ways modern games do "pixel art". Intentionally low-res and blocky textures in an otherwise hi-resolution world just sort of don't look good to me. The best implementations of those kinds of visuals are, IMO, the ones that stick to actually small frame buffers to draw onto (which seems rare for some reason) or that adhere to their pixel snapping properly so that it loooooks like they used a small frame buffer. Old games looked the way they did because of the limitations they were working within - not just because it was cool to be blocky. When a game has those blocky elements but also has elements that demonstrate those old limitations aren't really there, it completely breaks the effect for me.


What i don't like about them is that when those graphics were state of the art, they were never actually that blocky. They were played on CRT monitors, and they smooth and round off pixels in a really attractive way.
Lots of the pixel art games i see are so rough and sharp looking it's obnoxious. If they're claiming to look retro, they actually aren't, unless they include some sort of light antialiasing or CRT shader like a few console emulators actually have.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I've browsed through a couple articles about it, but haven't really read anything except about FF Origin. I looked up the game after the post on the last page about "FF Dark Souls" and all the reactions I was seeing were more "looks like a shitty 2006 western action RPG" instead of anything about DS.  Character design in it and the trailer were laughably awful.



I'd give you a better idea of it, but someone fucked up and it says the demo is "corrupted" and won't play. Supposedly they're trying to fix it. Goddammit Square.


----------



## TheBlackBard

What I've seen that's interested me so far:

Elden Ring, Amid Evil expansion, Salt and Sacrifice, Evil Dead The Game, and Gloomwood. I'm somewhat excited by Final Fantasy 1-6 getting ported to PC, though.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> What i don't like about them is that when those graphics were state of the art, they were never actually that blocky.


In my case, a lot of my early gaming was on PC and emulators, with decent monitors that didn't smooth things too much, so blocky is OK. It's when you see blocky mixed with not-blocky or scaling that older games could never do, or sharp UI on top of pixelly worlds, etc. that gets to me.


----------



## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> Lol @ having to change their name - Ion Maiden was such a better name. I gatta try this one at some point.
> 
> 
> I find that "retro-style graphics" tend to send me into weird nerd rants. For all of my appreciation of old games, I'm not a fan of some of the ways modern games do "pixel art". Intentionally low-res and blocky textures in an otherwise hi-resolution world just sort of don't look good to me. The best implementations of those kinds of visuals are, IMO, the ones that stick to actually small frame buffers to draw onto (which seems rare for some reason) or that adhere to their pixel snapping properly so that it loooooks like they used a small frame buffer. Old games looked the way they did because of the limitations they were working within - not just because it was cool to be blocky. When a game has those blocky elements but also has elements that demonstrate those old limitations aren't really there, it completely breaks the effect for me.




Well I think that you're a game dev, too, right? Not that anyone who isn't couldn't have the same gripes, but you're more likely to notice them. Me myself, I only register that they look more similar to the games of yesteryear and haven't thought enough to take the other stuff into account.


----------



## TedEH

TheBlackBard said:


> Well I think that you're a game dev, too, right? Not that anyone who isn't couldn't have the same gripes, but you're more likely to notice them.


Weirdly - I've had the conversation with a few other dev people and I seem to be in the minority in that crowd who cares. One guy I spoke to didn't even really understand what I was talking about, which kinda surprised me. I tried to say "hey, why fake it when you can just literally use a small frame buffer" and I just got a bunch of weird looks like I was making up words or saying something crazy....


----------



## NotDonVito

TedEH said:


> Weirdly - I've had the conversation with a few other dev people and I seem to be in the minority in that crowd who cares. One guy I spoke to didn't even really understand what I was talking about, which kinda surprised me. I tried to say "hey, why fake it when you can just literally use a small frame buffer" and I just got a bunch of weird looks like I was making up words or saying something crazy....


I have no idea what you're talking about on a technical level, but somehow totally understand what you're saying without having words to convey it.


----------



## wankerness

Retro style graphics do tend to bug me, too. I really liked how Octopath Traveler looked, but I've seen some indie games that were way too forced and "blocky," as you say. Something like Octopath Traveler looked more like they had actually just fully devoted art design resources to making the best-looking version of that style that they could, while all too often it seems like an excuse for laziness in the visual department under pretense of appealing to nostalgia or something.

On the same note, most new 8-bit music is really annoying. Disasterpeace is an exception.


----------



## Mathemagician

With Octopath Square rarely gets graphics wrong. And they’ve made 8/16/32 but RPGS longer than some of us have been alive. So that’s an advantage they have. 

Except those ugly FUGLY low-budget graphics they throw on the second or third version of a remaster where everything is “chibi” and looks shitty AF. Fuck I hate that so much. (See rings of fate on the DS).


----------



## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> Weirdly - I've had the conversation with a few other dev people and I seem to be in the minority in that crowd who cares. One guy I spoke to didn't even really understand what I was talking about, which kinda surprised me. I tried to say "hey, why fake it when you can just literally use a small frame buffer" and I just got a bunch of weird looks like I was making up words or saying something crazy....



Well it became a bit more clear when you were talking, I think about the UI being a bit different from the rest of the graphics. Amid Evil is guilty of that, but the game is so good that I guess it's just not a thing that bothers me. I do understand your viewpoint, though. Cheers!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> On the same note, most new 8-bit music is really annoying. Disasterpeace is an exception.



I'd add Anamanaguchi as well. Unless you count that as 16 bit since what comes to mind is the kick-ass Scott Pilgrim game OST.


----------



## Choop

Got a fresh new fightstick today, a Razer Atrox, coming from a Mad Catz TE:S. I like this thing a lot so far! All set for GGStrive.


----------



## Jarmake

So... Last night I said nighty night to Rom. Then I beat the electric hunter from cathedral ward and then went for Eileen the Crow in grand cathedral. After handing her ass back to her I went to my first chalice dungeon and got on the third level before quitting for the night.

The first two dungeon level bosses were very easy and now I'm afraid there will be hell to pay when I get to the third one...


----------



## StevenC

Shit

Advance Wars, Warioware, Monkeyball and Metroid DREAD??!?!?!?!?!

It's like all my Xmases have come at once and they're all 2002.


----------



## TedEH

I'm unsurprised that a lot of the coolest news (to me) to come out was from Nintendo. New 2d Metroid has me excited. I wish there was more Zelda stuff though. I don't want to be patient waiting for BotW2


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I'm unsurprised that a lot of the coolest news (to me) to come out was from Nintendo. New 2d Metroid has be excited. I wish there was more Zelda stuff though. I don't want to be patient waiting for BotW2


I really wanted Oracle Remakes


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> So... Last night I said nighty night to Rom. Then I beat the electric hunter from cathedral ward and then went for Eileen the Crow in grand cathedral. After handing her ass back to her I went to my first chalice dungeon and got on the third level before quitting for the night.
> 
> The first two dungeon level bosses were very easy and now I'm afraid there will be hell to pay when I get to the third one...


The chalice dungeons are awful. I did maybe 10 of them before getting really bored of it all, since they're all such mazes and they're all so dark and dreary and repetitive. I didn't get to any that were actually hard in those first 10 or so, but I mostly was doing them towards the end of the game. Depth 4 is where things start getting *really* hard, I guess, with people particularly freaking out about Rom and Amygdala in powered-up forms when you're dealing with a 50% health debuff. I skipped those by using a false depth code to skip straight to the Great Pthumeru Ihyll chalice for the "final boss" and the headless bloodletting beast in that modified dungeon (it was in a much smaller room than it is if you progress there legitimately) was BY FAR the hardest thing in the whole game for me - WAY harder than anything in the DLC, including things like Orphan of Kos and the double sharks in the well or even Laurence. I had to have died at least 25 times. He was such a pushover in one of the Depth 2 dungeons! Same with the Pthumerian Descendent. The guy was a complete asshole in the Depth 5 version. I only beat him by getting a bunch of parries off really fast before he could kill me. He took a mere 10-15 attempts!


----------



## Mathemagician

Just do chalice dungeons for the trophy. And for Blood Rocks.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Just do chalice dungeons for the trophy. And for Blood Rocks.



you don’t get anything worthwhile from them until layer 4 or 5 apart from materials to make the higher level chalices, which is the worst part of the grind imo. They are so repetitive and dull! Maybe if you spaced it out through the game it would be better.

or you can just get a bunch of false depth codes and skip right to worthwhile ones!


----------



## MFB

I got the blood rocks I needed from my regular playthrough between the Brain, and buying one for 20 insight (which I got for free from a bunch of Madman's skulls)


----------



## Jarmake

I think I'll just play the main quest through and all the non-dungeon bosses and be done with it. I can always return to the dungeons later if I feel like grinding my ass off.

At first I was thinking of trying for the platinum trophy, but after playing for a while it seems like it's just too damn big of a hassle to pull off.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> I think I'll just play the main quest through and all the non-dungeon bosses and be done with it. I can always return to the dungeons later if I feel like grinding my ass off.
> 
> At first I was thinking of trying for the platinum trophy, but after playing for a while it seems like it's just too damn big of a hassle to pull off.



I got it in one playthrough (with save-scumming on the last boss since you need all 3 endings). But, yeah, it's easier if you look up a list of where weapons are ahead of time. Getting the beast claw out of some random high-level chalice dungeon was probably the most annoying bit apart from the Queen Yarnham trophy.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of Fallen Order this morning. I'd argue it's the best Star Wars thing to come out in a while. Presentation is what you would hope for from a big budget title. Set pieces are great. Visuals are consistently good. The characters actually have some character and hit that "I can believe this is a person" threshold. Star Wars vibe is nailed, included the odd in-joke.

I didn't even bother trying on the XBox, I went strait to PC with this one - and while it was _usually_ stable, I had a couple of instances where the game slowed to a crawl for a short while for reasons that weren't clear. My best guess is some kinda weird bug where physics get confused or something - usually the performance problem would go away when I ran into another area, and you'd hear an out-of-place collision sound, I guess as the area you were previously in got unloaded, then everything would work ok again. It was weird.

Like I normally do, I avoided reviews until _after_ playing the game and I feel like people wanted this game to be other games. Soooo many comparisons. "It's like Dark Souls! It's like Sekiro! It's like Metroid!" Nah, it's not really. It takes elements/influence from them all but I feel like this game's design goals are different enough that they make for unfair direct comparisons. Yeah, you backtrack and you have big maps with artificially gated progression - but I hesitate to call this a Metroidvania because your path through the game is pretty linear and called out - it's not about remembering where you've been and exploring with a new skillset. Yeah, you can parry and dodge etc, but the combat feels, to me, like it's trying to be a modernized Jedi Knight game rather than a FromSoftware type thing. If you're expecting one of those kinds of things, you might be disappointed or nitpicky.

Otherwise, good game. Would play again.


----------



## MFB

Officially at the last boss of Sekiro, this is a fucking nightmare in every way imaginable.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Officially at the last boss of Sekiro, this is a fucking nightmare in every way imaginable.



man, your posts are really making me not want to try this game again! Do you actually enjoy it at all?


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> man, your posts are really making me not want to try this game again! Do you actually enjoy it at all?



Looking back at the game as a whole, it is well made and I know mechanically speaking it plays as it should, it's just that difficulty wise? It's is an absolute soul crusher.

There is no joy when I beat a boss compared to Bloodborne or Dark Souls, only relief knowing I never have to fight them again. And that stems from the fact that combat is entirely parry based, and you truly can't play it any other way, which is frustrating and limiting compared to their other franchises. All the parts that aren't a boss fight are fun, the environments are incredibly satisfying compared to the gloomy nature of the others, but pacing/difficulty brings it down at every turn.

Playing this makes me want to replay Bloodborne, or Dark Souls, whereas if I think about replaying this it's just dread.


----------



## MFB

Took down the Demon of Hatred on my first try today after getting back from being out, god damn does that feel good to know. I cracked his 3rd phase yesterday and almost had him on my last try of the night, but honestly, any fight with three deathblows is a fucking struggle (hence why the last fight is giving me so much grieve with four!).

I think I only have one other optional boss left in the game, but I'd have to double check, it may be two (and I think they're both Headless), so that'd be one more achievement under my belt.


----------



## mongey

finished main story of Witcher 3. turns out I go the bad ending cause I as too rude to Ciri or something, ungrateful little shit 

Started the first dlc but need a break. a bit burnt out .but enjoyed date game . def the first 50+ hour game I have finished in a long time.


Played a good whack of VF5 over the weekend. Have played it a little over the years but never really got into it. been fun hitting it online.


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> finished main story of Witcher 3. turns out I go the bad ending cause I as too rude to Ciri or something, ungrateful little shit
> 
> Started the first dlc but need a break. a bit burnt out .but enjoyed date game . def the first 50+ hour game I have finished in a long time.
> 
> 
> Played a good whack of VF5 over the weekend. Have played it a little over the years but never really got into it. been fun hitting it online.



Which bad ending? IIRC there are 4 levels of bad depending on a bunch of specific choices through the game, things like letting her make her own decisions vs being Mr. Controlling Dad. I think the "second-best" ending is the best one dramatically.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Which bad ending? IIRC there are 4 levels of bad depending on a bunch of specific choices through the game, things like letting her make her own decisions vs being Mr. Controlling Dad. I think the "second-best" ending is the best one dramatically.



the one where she disappears and last scene is Geralt is having an emotional
Breakdown after you kill the witch.


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> the one where she disappears and last scene is Geralt is having an emotional
> Breakdown after you kill the witch.



Whoa, that's a bad one alright. I got the one where she leaves to become queen or whatever but you have a last little patrol through the snow. it was one of the best videogame endings i've ever seen tbh, right up there with Last of Us 1. I know there's another one where she just comes back and lives with you and you are witchers together forever that I know most people like the most that I think is the rank 2 ending (aka, you made a couple "wrong" decisions) as compared to the one I got, which I think I only had made one "wrong" decision for.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Whoa, that's a bad one alright. I got the one where she leaves to become queen or whatever but you have a last little patrol through the snow. it was one of the best videogame endings i've ever seen tbh, right up there with Last of Us 1. I know there's another one where she just comes back and lives with you and you are witchers together forever that I know most people like the most that I think is the rank 2 ending (aka, you made a couple "wrong" decisions) as compared to the one I got, which I think I only had made one "wrong" decision for.



yeah. I knew she was pissed I took the money, but I actually needed it


----------



## Ralyks

Thinking I'm around 1/2 way to 2/3 of the way through Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. This continues to be an excellent game, and very much the best example of "you're playing a Pixar game". And the lack of load times make the action feel nonstop. The pacing is a bit more intense than I expected from a Ratchet and Clank game.

I also picked up Shin Megami Tensai 3 after a few weeks down. There's something about it's totally PS2ness that's drawing me into that game. I'm just still figuring out if I want to commit 50 - 60 hours for just the story.


----------



## Werecow

I'm near the end of the story of Days Gone i think, and i don't want it to end. I'm already considering starting it all over again after it's finished.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I'm near the end of the story of Days Gone i think, and i don't want it to end. I'm already considering starting it all over again after it's finished.



see, great game if you can stick it out through the first bunch! The second half of the world that unlocks about 20 hours in is particularly good. I really liked going around and trying to clear out all the hordes.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> see, great game if you can stick it out through the first bunch! The second half of the world that unlocks about 20 hours in is particularly good. I really liked going around and trying to clear out all the hordes.


It's been a really weird experience. I've never been annoyed by a main character so much, but then manage to thoroughly enjoy it.
I really love post apocalypse and/or zombie stuff. I think if it had been any other setting in an action game i wouldn't have been able to stick it out. Because i'm on PC only, true single-player AAA zombie games are actually incredibly rare, if non-existant, so that helped a lot as well.


----------



## wankerness

Finally finished ME1 on insanity. It's been a long time since with this whole "moving" thing I only get an hour or so of gaming a day. It's still tedious! And wow, the exp required to hit level 60 in this game is RIDICULOUS. Like, it's about the same amount to go from 1-58 as it is to go from 59-60. I didn't even come close, with two full playthroughs, doing a majority of the side stuff in each. And I was 59 before I even started Ilos.

Fortunately they nerfed the level required to get the maximum ME2 starting bonus so carrying my level 59 character over still started me at level 5! Glad they did that. I think I'm going to try ME2 as a boring ol' Sentinel, since it's one of two classes I've never played through the game as, and a lot of people say it's one of the easiest for Insanity (other than maybe Soldier, Infiltrator, and Engineer, all of which I've played already). I've already died to random shitty robots and I'm on the first proper level! Ugh. ME1 was an absolute joke on insanity, all it really does is make it take a lot longer to kill dudes and make it so you occasionally have to hide from snipers and use CC on charging destroyers/krogans, but 2 is pretty threatening. Also obnoxious, cause it adds armor/shields to practically everything.


----------



## p0ke

Blah, still stuck on the Nameless King here... I'm getting pretty good though, I got to about 50% of his health last time so I'm confident I'll get him soon... But the fight takes ages  
Took me like 20 minutes to get to 50%.
Also half the time I don't even get to the second phase because the camera goes nuts and the dragon wipes me out...


----------



## Lorcan Ward

wankerness said:


> ME1 was an absolute joke on insanity, all it really does is make it take a lot longer to kill dudes and make it so you occasionally have to hide from snipers and use CC on charging destroyers/krogans, but 2 is pretty threatening. Also obnoxious, cause it adds armor/shields to practically everything.



This is the problem I have with difficulty levels in games. Having to press X ten times instead of five isn’t making it more difficult. It’s just dragging out gameplay.


----------



## wankerness

Lorcan Ward said:


> This is the problem I have with difficulty levels in games. Having to press X ten times instead of five isn’t making it more difficult. It’s just dragging out gameplay.



People always say this ("increasing enemy hp is ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY!!!! It's not actually harder!!!!"), but I don't really get it. If something's hard, it IS harder to do it without messing up for a longer period of time. Like, if you're running around 1-shotting enemies in dark souls, it's vastly easier than if you have to hit them 5 times. Sure, you're sort of just hitting attack 5 times instead of 1, but you're also having to time things better and pay attention to what the enemy now is able to do during the subsequent 4 swings when previously they'd have been down before you had to worry about it.

Like, typically any sort of damage boost in a game makes things easier - giving enemies more HP is the opposite of that, so how is that not making it harder?

ME1's definitely harder on insanity than on easy, but it's more boring since the enemies still aren't very threatening. But, on easy you can just plug krogans long before they get close to you, and you don't have to worry about CC cause you can easily kill them through their heal, and you don't have to spend so much time on each one since they don't heal tons of HP as soon as you knock them down so a group of them is no big deal. Seems like that IS making it more difficult in a variety of ways by not really doing anything other than increasing HP?

But then there's the "bullet sponge" argument with crap like Destiny where you're repeating the same thing for 30 minutes. Or MMO raids, or whatever. People again like to say "it's not hard!! It's just more HP!" But, it IS hard! Keeping a group of people from losing attention or screwing up is vastly harder for 30 minutes than it is for 2. It's legitimately a lot harder to beat the content. What it really is is tedious and annoying.

Sorry, longwinded rant. I just have seen that "ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY, IT ISN'T HARDER, SO PLEASE REMOVE SOME HP!!!!" thing spammed like crazy on game forums for decades now and it always rang false for me. What is NON-artificial difficulty? Just specific things like changing AI on each difficulty setting ala Unreal Tournament giving bots progressively faster reaction times each difficulty notch, etc? Or just boosting all damage from enemies so you do the same thing as on easy but die horribly if you mess up instead of surviving a couple hits? Is that "artificial," too?


----------



## mongey

encountering allot of rage quiters on VF5 . I'm used of SF where you get the odd one , but I m getting way more in this

Also higher ranked people who wont rematch if they lose to you, or even if they just beat you in a close match. I always rematch no matter what. I just want to play


----------



## Ralyks

At the point of no return in Ratchet and Clank, but I also one 3 trophies left before the platinum. One I can’t get after I beat the game and get challenge mode, and one involves a weapon I should have been leveling up for like half the game before I can use the ability to get the trophy. This game still rules and is highly recommended if you get a PS5. That said, probably gonna trade it in once I Platinum it for…. Maybe Scarlet Nexus.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> People always say this ("increasing enemy hp is ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY!!!! It's not actually harder!!!!"), but I don't really get it. If something's hard, it IS harder to do it without messing up for a longer period of time. Like, if you're running around 1-shotting enemies in dark souls, it's vastly easier than if you have to hit them 5 times. Sure, you're sort of just hitting attack 5 times instead of 1, but you're also having to time things better and pay attention to what the enemy now is able to do during the subsequent 4 swings when previously they'd have been down before you had to worry about it.
> 
> Like, typically any sort of damage boost in a game makes things easier - giving enemies more HP is the opposite of that, so how is that not making it harder?
> 
> ME1's definitely harder on insanity than on easy, but it's more boring since the enemies still aren't very threatening. But, on easy you can just plug krogans long before they get close to you, and you don't have to worry about CC cause you can easily kill them through their heal, and you don't have to spend so much time on each one since they don't heal tons of HP as soon as you knock them down so a group of them is no big deal. Seems like that IS making it more difficult in a variety of ways by not really doing anything other than increasing HP?
> 
> But then there's the "bullet sponge" argument with crap like Destiny where you're repeating the same thing for 30 minutes. Or MMO raids, or whatever. People again like to say "it's not hard!! It's just more HP!" But, it IS hard! Keeping a group of people from losing attention or screwing up is vastly harder for 30 minutes than it is for 2. It's legitimately a lot harder to beat the content. What it really is is tedious and annoying.
> 
> Sorry, longwinded rant. I just have seen that "ARTIFICIAL DIFFICULTY, IT ISN'T HARDER, SO PLEASE REMOVE SOME HP!!!!" thing spammed like crazy on game forums for decades now and it always rang false for me. What is NON-artificial difficulty? Just specific things like changing AI on each difficulty setting ala Unreal Tournament giving bots progressively faster reaction times each difficulty notch, etc? Or just boosting all damage from enemies so you do the same thing as on easy but die horribly if you mess up instead of surviving a couple hits? Is that "artificial," too?


Go play Halo 1.

Play it on Normal and its a decent FPS, but the AI is a bit dumb and it's hard to die. 

Now play it on Heroic and it's maybe the best FPS ever. You've got a variety of playstyles available to you, all the guns are good, you feel like a super soldier fighting aliens, but you can die if you make mistakes.

Now play it on Legendary and the game has been ruined because there is one strategy and everything will kill you if you make a single mistake. The game is not fun on this setting in single player and is really only playable in coop.

It's possible to make enemies smarter or more complicated. Giving them more health is just lazy.


----------



## Choop

mongey said:


> encountering allot of rage quiters on VF5 . I'm used of SF where you get the odd one , but I m getting way more in this
> 
> Also higher ranked people who wont rematch if they lose to you, or even if they just beat you in a close match. I always rematch no matter what. I just want to play



I'm the same way, about just wanting to play I mean. People take online too seriously sometimes -- I always just look at it as a solid means of practice. I get plenty frustrated at the way people play Street Fighter for example, but you gotta learn how to fight all play styles to excel.



StevenC said:


> Go play Halo 1.
> 
> Play it on Normal and its a decent FPS, but the AI is a bit dumb and it's hard to die.
> 
> Now play it on Heroic and it's maybe the best FPS ever. You've got a variety of playstyles available to you, all the guns are good, you feel like a super soldier fighting aliens, but you can die if you make mistakes.
> 
> Now play it on Legendary and the game has been ruined because there is one strategy and everything will kill you if you make a single mistake. The game is not fun on this setting in single player and is really only playable in coop.
> 
> It's possible to make enemies smarter or more complicated. Giving them more health is just lazy.



I think I read somewhere that Heroic was considered by Bungie to be the true difficulty intended for the game, if it were to have only mode available I guess. Changing the difficulty in games is tricky, because it can mean different things depending on the game...IMO a truly great game wouldn't need difficulty options (like Dark Souls or a lot of classic games). I think the issue is that the developers always intend for a game to be played in a certain way, and difficulty options can often feel tacked on.

I did the exact thing a year ago playing Halo 1, where I started with Legendary, moved to Normal...read up on it and settled on Heroic and thoroughly enjoyed the game on Heroic.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> It's possible to make enemies smarter or more complicated. Giving them more health is just lazy.


I'm sure lots of devs would love to hear this ideal, non-lazy, solution. Re-writing your AI and behaviours for every difficulty level isn't necessarily viable, and added complexity doesn't necessarily/automatically mean increased difficulty.

I'm not an AI expert by any stretch - the best I can come up with is the idea of rubber-banding your tactics based on how well a player is doing to try to keep them "in the right zone". Have enemy accuracy drop as player health drops so that you're more likely to hit that zone of "that almost killed me, but I pulled through" kind of challenge. If you're breezing through an area without ever getting hit, start spawning more enemies or something. That kind of thing is a huge pain to balance though. And someone ultimately is going to still hate it and call you lazy because you "couldn't be bothered to implement real difficulty levels", or be upset that there isn't a strictly defined and "fair" challenge for people to "git gud" and compete over.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I'm sure lots of devs would love to hear this ideal, non-lazy, solution. Re-writing your AI and behaviours for every difficulty level isn't necessarily viable, and added complexity doesn't necessarily/automatically mean increased difficulty.
> 
> I'm not an AI expert by any stretch - the best I can come up with is the idea of rubber-banding your tactics based on how well a player is doing to try to keep them "in the right zone". Have enemy accuracy drop as player health drops so that you're more likely to hit that zone of "that almost killed me, but I pulled through" kind of challenge. If you're breezing through an area without ever getting hit, start spawning more enemies or something. That kind of thing is a huge pain to balance though. And someone ultimately is going to still hate it and call you lazy because you "couldn't be bothered to implement real difficulty levels", or be upset that there isn't a strictly defined and "fair" challenge for people to "git gud" and compete over.


OK, but it can and has been done. There are games with useful difficulty settings. The point is you should start by making a fun and challenging game with one setting, then if you have the time and money rebalance for different accessibility levels. 

Taking a game on difficulty A and making difficulty B by doubling all the enemy health will always be the lazy solution and make a less good experience. It turns fantastic games like Halo into boring games.

For more examples, look at the adaptive difficulty in recent Kojima games. MGSV and Death Stranding both pay attention to how you're tackling areas and adjust accordingly. If you snipe guys, the next place will have hard hats. This makes you change how you play and experience more of the options available.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> encountering allot of rage quiters on VF5 . I'm used of SF where you get the odd one , but I m getting way more in this
> 
> Also higher ranked people who wont rematch if they lose to you, or even if they just beat you in a close match. I always rematch no matter what. I just want to play





Choop said:


> I'm the same way, about just wanting to play I mean. People take online too seriously sometimes -- I always just look at it as a solid means of practice. I get plenty frustrated at the way people play Street Fighter for example, but you gotta learn how to fight all play styles to excel.



Those guys have completely missed the point of getting good at fighting games. They only care about their top ranks and don't realise they learn more and get better from losing that you do at winning. Especially in a subgenre where learning the mechanics is like learning a brand new language then learning each game is like learning a dialect of said language. And THEN applying it to practice. Virtua Fighter 5 is already a tough learning curve. 

I remember years ago when my friends and I were getting better at CVS2, Third Strike and Guilty Gear XX Reload/Slash and when we entered the tournament we were up for some stiff competition. I managed to get second place at Guilty Gear, and was considered a threat to the top players in 3S since I had good practice and a lot of losing in the arcades. I made friends with the top players and even did some casual matches. And I was clearly the worst player of the lot. I guess I was lucky in the tournament since I didn't crack under pressure as hard as they did. The biggest eye opener was when I went to Japan and went up against dudes at the now defunct Club Sega Akihabara. Those guys were absolutely savage. Hell, even in a not so popular arcade, I got my ass handed to me by the locals. 

Seriously, these rank and stat hungry players need to understand that losing is part of hardening up and learning how to git gud.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Go play Halo 1.
> 
> Play it on Normal and its a decent FPS, but the AI is a bit dumb and it's hard to die.
> 
> Now play it on Heroic and it's maybe the best FPS ever. You've got a variety of playstyles available to you, all the guns are good, you feel like a super soldier fighting aliens, but you can die if you make mistakes.
> 
> Now play it on Legendary and the game has been ruined because there is one strategy and everything will kill you if you make a single mistake. The game is not fun on this setting in single player and is really only playable in coop.
> 
> It's possible to make enemies smarter or more complicated. Giving them more health is just lazy.



How were the difficulty settings different, though? Is it just the enemies did more damage/had more health and thus different weapons/strategies had to be employed? Or did they truly behave differently?

I used to play/mod a FPS game that bungie made before Halo called Marathon Infinity. It came packaged with an official physics editor, an enemy editor, and a level editor. The enemy editor was interesting since it showed all the parameters available to tweak, but didn't get into how things were truly programmed. All enemies had the same sliding "Intelligence" scale that could be cranked from 1-100. I can't remember specifically anymore, but if you had intelligence at 0 they'd basically just sit there and let you kill them, and if you had it at 100 they'd be running around firing while moving, basically.

Of course, ANY enemy with the same intelligence and attacks (ex melee, ranged, or both and the attack range of each) would behave identically, but it makes me think they probably had some much more complex version of that on Halo.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> doubling all the enemy health will always be the lazy solution


I'm not saying there aren't better solutions out there, I'm saying it's not fair to call it lazy. Health scaling _can_ be the appropriate way to do difficulty in some games, or for certain groups of players. We don't know the reason this solution was picked. Maybe they _didn't _have the time and resources to do it differently. Maybe they tried other approaches and it didn't work out. It's not a fair comparison to say "well, x game did this, so every other game should be able to do it, otherwise they're lazy". Design doesn't just directly translate from one title to another. Halo is not MGSV.

Edit:
Sorry for the tangent and just being contrarian, my brain just lights on fire as soon as someone says "it's not the way I want it, therefor devs were lazy".


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> How were the difficulty settings different, though? Is it just the enemies did more damage/had more health and thus different weapons/strategies had to be employed? Or did they truly behave differently?
> 
> I used to play/mod a FPS game that bungie made before Halo called Marathon Infinity. It came packaged with an official physics editor, an enemy editor, and a level editor. The enemy editor was interesting since it showed all the parameters available to tweak, but didn't get into how things were truly programmed. All enemies had the same sliding "Intelligence" scale that could be cranked from 1-100. I can't remember specifically anymore, but if you had intelligence at 0 they'd basically just sit there and let you kill them, and if you had it at 100 they'd be running around firing while moving, basically.
> 
> Of course, ANY enemy with the same intelligence and attacks (ex melee, ranged, or both and the attack range of each) would behave identically, but it makes me think they probably had some much more complex version of that on Halo.


Yes, the enemies had different tactics on easy, normal and Heroic. Health and damage was a bit different, but not actually significant just allowed you to sprint through the level on easy. Different enemy ranks world appear and also had different strategies. 

The difference between Heroic and Legendary was everything went up a class (lots of invisible sword guys and fuel rod canons round blind corners), everything did loads of damage, everybody had loads of health, and only two weapons were viable as a result. Also hit boxes for tiny.

All the things that made Halo fun became impractical. The Needler for example is one of the most fun guns in the game, but it's basically impossible to get a kill with it on Legendary because of the mechanics of how it works.

Easy and Normal were great if you'd never played an FPS before because the enemies can still kill you (technically) but you'd have to make obvious mistakes to get killed. Heroic is great because you have to actually be good at the game to get through, but you can just about play however you want if you know what you're doing.

Legendary has a bunch of cheap kills and way too much health. The only way to play because of all this health is to use 1 gun that destroys shields in one hit, then immediately swap to the pistol for a headshot. Then hope you keep finding ammo for those two usable guns.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I'm not saying there aren't better solutions out there, I'm saying it's not fair to call it lazy. Health scaling _can_ be the appropriate way to do difficulty in some games, or for certain groups of players. We don't know the reason this solution was picked. Maybe they _didn't _have the time and resources to do it differently. Maybe they tried other approaches and it didn't work out. It's not a fair comparison to say "well, x game did this, so every other game should be able to do it, otherwise they're lazy". Design doesn't just directly translate from one title to another. Halo is not MGSV.
> 
> Edit:
> Sorry for the tangent and just being contrarian, my brain just lights on fire as soon as someone says "it's not the way I want it, therefor devs were lazy".


I disagree fundamentally. 

If you make a game that is good, then tack on something half baked that is bad it doesn't count as a feature. A bad hard mode isn't a selling point. Maybe it's not laziness in every situation, but it's bad design and decision making.

Health scaling is great when it's downwards for accessibility. There are all sorts of justifications for this. Scaling up however negs the question of why the choices were made. Make the game as you see fit and if it's too easy, fix it. If it's still too easy and you then need to scale health way up to the point of making it not fun to get any challenge out of it, then you didn't make the game right. 

I'm not a game developer so maybe I'm being reductive, but I don't think so.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Yes, the enemies had different tactics on easy, normal and Heroic. Health and damage was a bit different, but not actually significant just allowed you to sprint through the level on easy. Different enemy ranks world appear and also had different strategies.
> 
> The difference between Heroic and Legendary was everything went up a class (lots of invisible sword guys and fuel rod canons round blind corners), everything did loads of damage, everybody had loads of health, and only two weapons were viable as a result. Also hit boxes for tiny.
> 
> All the things that made Halo fun became impractical. The Needler for example is one of the most fun guns in the game, but it's basically impossible to get a kill with it on Legendary because of the mechanics of how it works.
> 
> Easy and Normal were great if you'd never played an FPS before because the enemies can still kill you (technically) but you'd have to make obvious mistakes to get killed. Heroic is great because you have to actually be good at the game to get through, but you can just about play however you want if you know what you're doing.
> 
> Legendary has a bunch of cheap kills and way too much health. The only way to play because of all this health is to use 1 gun that destroys shields in one hit, then immediately swap to the pistol for a headshot. Then hope you keep finding ammo for those two usable guns.



I think I remember hearing almost this exact stuff in some Dunkey video or another, maybe the one about difficulty. The "best shooter ever on heroic, legendary is terrible and only one weapon works" sounds familiar. Interesting about the enemy ranks. That sounds kind of like Dark Souls 2 on NG+ - they added more/different enemies and generally changed things up a lot more than simple stupid "everything has more health and hits harder each difficulty level" like in 1/3. Though unfortunately it ALSO did that so after a couple cycles NG+ levels things just get annoying since your damage/health stop scaling pretty quickly into NG+1 if you didn't already softcap it in NG.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I think I remember hearing almost this exact stuff in some Dunkey video or another, maybe the one about difficulty. The "best shooter ever on heroic, legendary is terrible and only one weapon works" sounds familiar. Interesting about the enemy ranks. That sounds kind of like Dark Souls 2 on NG+ - they added more/different enemies and generally changed things up a lot more than simple stupid "everything has more health and hits harder each difficulty level" like in 1/3. Though unfortunately it ALSO did that so after a couple cycles NG+ levels things just get annoying since your damage/health stop scaling pretty quickly into NG+1 if you didn't already softcap it in NG.


Yes, Dunkey mentions it in that video. But it's also just one of the best known things about Halo. Legendary still serves a purpose for coop in my opinion if you're both really good.

I'd say the game that annoys me most with health buffs is Breath of the Wild because they do the MGSV adaptive thing but less well. So now I show up to the first enemy camp and even with the best weapons and armour it just takes time to kill things. Same reason I don't play Master Mode.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> I'm not a game developer so maybe I'm being reductive, but I don't think so.


I would call it very reductive. There's so much going on in the process that you can't always "just fix it". Games are a giant heaping pile of compromises by the time it gets in the consumers hands. The question of _which _compromises to make is a very difficult one to answer, and is basically being directly addressed weekly, if not daily, on most large projects.

I'm not denying that this type of difficulty scaling is the wrong approach for this one game - I am denying that it's this way because of laziness. The type of scaling you're suggesting is the kind of thing that would need to be core to how a lot of the game is implemented in order for it to really work. Maybe the right call would be not to have difficulty scaling at all, but then you could equally call people lazy for not even putting the simplest form of scaling in. No matter what you do, someone is going to call you lazy.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Yes, Dunkey mentions it in that video. But it's also just one of the best known things about Halo. Legendary still serves a purpose for coop in my opinion if you're both really good.
> 
> I'd say the game that annoys me most with health buffs is Breath of the Wild because they do the MGSV adaptive thing but less well. So now I show up to the first enemy camp and even with the best weapons and armour it just takes time to kill things. Same reason I don't play Master Mode.



Yeah, BOTW is absolutely horrible with that. Mostly cause enemy health scales to a ludicrous degree, but weapon damage/durability do not. So you quickly start encountering silver enemies everywhere that cause multiple weapons to break just to take their health from 100 to 0 even if you don't get a single hit blocked. And it's not like they drop more weapons than the low level enemies, either! It encourages you to avoid as much combat as possible just to keep this from happening since the enemy scaling is at least partially dependent on # of kills.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I would call it very reductive. There's so much going on in the process that you can't always "just fix it". Games are a giant heaping pile of compromises by the time it gets in the consumers hands. The question of _which _compromises to make is a very difficult one to answer, and is basically being directly addressed weekly, if not daily, on most large projects.
> 
> I'm not denying that this type of difficulty scaling is the wrong approach for this one game - I am denying that it's this way because of laziness. The type of scaling you're suggesting is the kind of thing that would need to be core to how a lot of the game is implemented in order for it to really work. Maybe the right call would be not to have difficulty scaling at all, but then you could equally call people lazy for not even putting the simplest form of scaling in. No matter what you do, someone is going to call you lazy.


Nope, it's better to make a good game with one mode than one with a bunch of half baked bad options.

It's the same in all creative endeavours. If you don't have a vision for what you're making, you're unlikely to make something good. Making the thing you want to make results in better products than trying to please everyone.

Seems like a fairly simple flow chart:

Make a game
Is it fun?
Make it fun
Is it challenging? 
Make it challenging 
Is it still fun? If no you made a mistake


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Nope, it's better to make a good game with one mode than one with a bunch of half baked bad options.



Yeah, but now it's the hip thing in game "journalism" to bitch that games without difficulty options are "ableist" and a direct assault on the rights of people with physical disabilities or just incontrovertible badness. If anyone anywhere can get stuck on a game somewhere, then the developer needed to add even easier options. I think only a couple AAA titles actually live up to these sorts of standards (ex, Last of Us 2, which basically contains an entire menu worth of "cheat" options on top of regular things like separate enemy health/damage sliders). If every game had hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at developing this kind of thing it would be great. But, they don't. I kinda like the separate enemy damage/health slider idea, that lets people customize things quite simply and it's probably better than the blanket nerfs/buffs to both that come with typical difficulty settings. Like, I'd have LOVED that kind of thing on Nier Automata, where the enemies had FAR too little health even on hard difficulty, but did way too much damage on hard difficulty, too, so you were practically killing bosses in 15 seconds but would die in 1-2 hits on them as well. Not my idea of fun. Jacking enemy health up AT LEAST 200%, if not more, and leaving enemy damage somewhere closer to normal would have been the way I'd have liked to experience that game. Unfortunately, impossible with the included difficulty settings.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> Seems like a fairly simple flow chart


In an ideal world, sure. But I'm not describing how it _should_ be, I'm describing how it is. Games ARE compromises. That's not an opinion, it's how it works. I'm literally in the process of those kinds of planning meetings as we speak.

If you're an indie dev with no constraints, no budget, no time limits, nobody to report to, no other team members to contend with, etc. - then yeah, what you've put forward is a great process. That's a perfectly good solo-dev workflow. In any other circumstance, you can't ignore your constraints.

On some level you're right - the result sometimes is something that isn't very good. It has nothing to do with being lazy though.


----------



## Choop

I'm sure a lot of it is just how important having difficulty options is to the developer, and how much they are willing to invest in alternative means of varying the difficulty. Not really lazy, just more a matter of priority. It does seem sometimes though that the decisions made to make difficulty modes harder or easier seem trivial or like an afterthought.


----------



## p0ke

p0ke said:


> Blah, still stuck on the Nameless King here... I'm getting pretty good though, I got to about 50% of his health last time so I'm confident I'll get him soon... But the fight takes ages
> Took me like 20 minutes to get to 50%.
> Also half the time I don't even get to the second phase because the camera goes nuts and the dragon wipes me out...



Motherf*****! I almost had him just now, maybe 5% left and I even had some estus left, but then I accidentally backed into a corner and he impaled me 

Edit: YEAAAAH! I got him now. Bow and arrows, keep backing off, dodge all his attacks. And most of all: patience.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Motherf*****! I almost had him just now, maybe 5% left and I even had some estus left, but then I accidentally backed into a corner and he impaled me
> 
> Edit: YEAAAAH! I got him now. Bow and arrows, keep backing off, dodge all his attacks. And most of all: patience.



Time to buy the DLC!!! It gets WAY harder on NG+ and you're locked out of it on NG if you beat the last flame dude, so now is the time!

I'm curious what the experience is on the Ringed City DLC without any kind of walkthrough. There were a couple big mechanics for "trash mobs" in the first half of it that probably would have confounded me for hours.


----------



## p0ke

Regarding difficulty: that Nameless King battle was possibly the toughest thing I've ever played, but it became more fun for every attempt since I improved my strategy and got further and further all the time.
The battle was just so epic, and I'll definitely have fond memories of it even though it was a bit of a bitch 

The main difficulty was definitely his health bar. I mean, my arrows did like 180 damage each, and he's got something like 7200 I think. So that makes 40 arrows (which would take like 5 minutes to just fire without distractions, because you gotta wait for stamina to regenerate etc), plus having to stay alert and dodge attacks in a bunch of different ways, and be super fast to heal when you fail to dodge... In the end I even had to go into the menu to use an ember because I ran out of estus.
Oh and then there's the first phase before that too  Which was not super hard, but still harder than some other boss fights in their entirety.

... Also, realistically thinking, killing a god riding a dragon shouldn't be easy, right 

I've played Halo 1 on Legendary too. That was back when it was still Xbox exclusive. I got to the part where the Flood enemies appear, then I gave up.
I recall the difficulty ramping up in every way, including the enemies using different strategies like some providing covering fire while others sneak up behind you. Plus the obvious things like more enemies, more damage, more hp, less stuff to collect...



wankerness said:


> Time to buy the DLC!!!



Yup, I definitely will. I actually went into the final boss fight before but didn't fight properly because I didn't want to beat him yet  Seemed pretty easy really, pretty much like Gwyn in DS1 but slower.

I think I'll buy the DLC's separately since they're 15€ each (unless they happen to go on some summer sale...). So is the Painted World one the first one? I don't wanna mess up the phantoms


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Regarding difficulty: that Nameless King battle was possibly the toughest thing I've ever played, but it became more fun for every attempt since I improved my strategy and got further and further all the time.
> The battle was just so epic, and I'll definitely have fond memories of it even though it was a bit of a bitch
> 
> The main difficulty was definitely his health bar. I mean, my arrows did like 180 damage each, and he's got something like 7200 I think. So that makes 40 arrows (which would take like 5 minutes to just fire without distractions, because you gotta wait for stamina to regenerate etc), plus having to stay alert and dodge attacks in a bunch of different ways, and be super fast to heal when you fail to dodge... In the end I even had to go into the menu to use an ember because I ran out of estus.
> Oh and then there's the first phase before that too  Which was not super hard, but still harder than some other boss fights in their entirety.
> 
> ... Also, realistically thinking, killing a god riding a dragon shouldn't be easy, right
> 
> I've played Halo 1 on Legendary too. That was back when it was still Xbox exclusive. I got to the part where the Flood enemies appear, then I gave up.
> I recall the difficulty ramping up in every way, including the enemies using different strategies like some providing covering fire while others sneak up behind you. Plus the obvious things like more enemies, more damage, more hp, less stuff to collect...
> 
> 
> 
> Yup, I definitely will. I actually went into the final boss fight before but didn't fight properly because I didn't want to beat him yet  Seemed pretty easy really, pretty much like Gwyn in DS1 but slower.
> 
> I think I'll buy the DLC's separately since they're 15€ each (unless they happen to go on some summer sale...). So is the Painted World one the first one? I don't wanna mess up the phantoms



Yeah, Painted World is the first - you need to make sure you actually beat that final boss before progressing too far in the Ringed City or else the helper NPC disappears. And she is infamously hard (but really fun, IMO - I had a much easier time with her than the two last bosses of Ringed City). Ringed City is better DLC overall I think, but Painted World's last fight is GREAT and the back half of the content is all gold. It just is pretty rough at the beginning - I definitely got VERY frustrated at some stuff in the first area.

Last boss proper is kind of like Gwyn, you're right, but he has different phases that he rotates between, so it's much more varied than Gwyn. I think he's probably easier than Gwyn if you beat Gwyn without parrying, but he can't be killed in 15 seconds with no threat like beating Gwyn with parrying. You can get lulled into complacency with his first phase. I first tried him when I was massively overlevelled, and he still shocked me at one point with how hard he started hitting. But, Nameless King is pretty universally considered the hardest boss in the base game so it shouldn't be too bad. I can't imagine fighting him with arrows, I'm surprised it only took 40! That was like a 10 minute fight even with a sword.

EDIT: Just found this while packing up boxes in the basement. Good time in gaming history - excited previews for Zelda 64, MGS just getting released, xenogears just getting released, etc. This was the guide to MGS that I had access to when I first played it. Ah, the days before laptops, wifi, and smart phones.


----------



## mongey

Choop said:


> I'm the same way, about just wanting to play I mean. People take online too seriously sometimes -- I always just look at it as a solid means of practice. I get plenty frustrated at the way people play Street Fighter for example, but you gotta learn how to fight all play styles to excel.
> 
> 
> 
> .



oh I get salty as hell when I lose and I feel I should win, especially when I lose to something cheap that I know I should have been able to deal with, but that's part of the fun 

If it gets so serious you can't take your own loss, and you feel like you need to deprive the other person of the win for your own fragile ego , then your a bit sad really


----------



## Ralyks

Platinumed Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. That was a great time.
Did some more Shin Megami Tensai 3 and Judgement after.... Guess I'm just getting some more gaming time in while I still look for a new job.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Dammit, Legend Of Mana HD is out. Still chipping away at Tokyo Xanadu but looks like I'll be giving Square Enix more of my money again.


----------



## wankerness

Wow, I think I hate ME2 on Insanity. Trying to do that Kasumi boss mission (infinitely respawning enemies with gunship boss) with a low level character is a nightmare, considering you can have ZERO offensive powers at that point and every single enemy in every single wave is buffed and your squad can only have Kasumi in it and no third person. Horrible. Died after over 15 minutes of fighting twice in a row and gave up. This game's insanity SUCKS. It seems to adhere to the rules of stupid difficulty scaling - everything has at least double the health and LESS ammo drops, despite you needing twice as much of it.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

For the other one or two people who played the Trails series:



Bloody_Inferno said:


> The 2 Crossbell games are a bit trickier since they're not released outside Japan. Nihon Falcom are doing a remaster of the 2 games though it may be a long while before localization becomes even a thought at this stage. But there's a highly rated fan translation by a group called The Geofront so it's highly playable.



So the Geofront have partnered with NIS America and have been declared the official translators of the localisation of Trails From Zero / Trails To Azure (the Crossbell games). Both will be released later 2022 early 2023 respectively. 

This is another great passionate fan success story and The Geofront deserve it. They worked their asses off translating 2 super long games that are widely considered highlights in the series. Plus I finally get to play them.  Sure I have to wait a year but it's a massive achievement. 

Also Hajimari is getting localised by 2023. Again a long wait, but considering how massive the dialogues in these games are, it's fair to wait that long to translate and dub enough script to match the Lord Of The Rings trilogy 12 times over.


----------



## Choop

Started toying around with streaming after finally getting fiber internet installed. Still don't have a solid streaming structure yet...but so far I've streamed Street Fighter IV/V and The Binding of Isaac. Practically no viewers for SF lol, but I did get like 3 the other day on Isaac, so that's sort of promising for being so new at it. Does anybody else here stream themselves playing stuff, and what do you do?


----------



## wankerness

wankerness said:


> Wow, I think I hate ME2 on Insanity. Trying to do that Kasumi boss mission (infinitely respawning enemies with gunship boss) with a low level character is a nightmare, considering you can have ZERO offensive powers at that point and every single enemy in every single wave is buffed and your squad can only have Kasumi in it and no third person. Horrible. Died after over 15 minutes of fighting twice in a row and gave up. This game's insanity SUCKS. It seems to adhere to the rules of stupid difficulty scaling - everything has at least double the health and LESS ammo drops, despite you needing twice as much of it.



Eventually limped through it by leaving one enemy alive and just FFing the boss so no more enemies would spawn. It was still very close! Now on to Mordin's recruitment mission, which I often hear is the hardest part of Insanity apart from Horizon, the Shadowbroker DLC, and the end of the game. Ugh. The way skill trees work in this game, I'm not going to have any offensive powers for another 10 levels or so (everyone says you need to max out tech armor and cooldown decreases first), and unlike ME1 you can't really level from exploration cause you get a pitiful amount of exp from exploration/side missions and zero from killing enemies. Jeez! At least now I have the locust, so things should be easier than they would be otherwise until I can unlock assault rifles at the midpoint of the game.


----------



## Nicki

I managed to snag myself a Series X and have been playing a whole whack-tonne of RE Village. It's not nearly as terror inducing as RE:VII was, but it's still a fun time. I've already finished the game on Casual and Normal twice each, unlocked infinite ammo for 3 of the strongest guns in the game and am going through on Village of Shadows difficulty. I've also been streaming my VoS run over on Twitch for anyone interested.

After Resi 8, I'm probably going to move on to The Evil Within 2.

Also been playing Saints Row IV co op with my co op partner every Friday night but we're about to finish that one tonight. We were going to move on to DnD: Dark Alliance but have decided to skip it due to all the bad reviews. Instead, we're going to play through Far Cry New Dawn after Far Cry 5 left us on such a cliff hanger.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Nameless King is pretty universally considered the hardest boss in the base game so it shouldn't be too bad. I can't imagine fighting him with arrows, I'm surprised it only took 40! That was like a 10 minute fight even with a sword.



Yup. My bow is a longbow+8, so it is definitely quite powerful. Also the damage might've been less than 180, but anyway, a shitload of arrows. I just figured that stategy take less dodging = less precise reflex dodges = less fatigue.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Yup. My bow is a longbow+8, so it is definitely quite powerful. Also the damage might've been less than 180, but anyway, a shitload of arrows. I just figured that stategy take less dodging = less precise reflex dodges = less fatigue.



Oof, longbow. That would make it harder since it draws slowly. You should get the black bow of pharis- does as much damage but shoots a lot faster due to it being short. I think it drops off that group of giant tree/slime monsters that try to crush you in the swamp. I dunno what they’re called, the really giant guys hanging out in the water off the path.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Oof, longbow. That would make it harder since it draws slowly. You should get the black bow of pharis- does as much damage but shoots a lot faster due to it being short. I think it drops off that group of giant tree/slime monsters that try to crush you in the swamp. I dunno what they’re called, the really giant guys hanging out in the water off the path.



Yeah, it's kinda slow but covers a pretty good distance. I mostly use it to snipe enemies from far away, which allows me to pull them in one at a time instead of trying to fight them all at once.
I avoided those tree enemies instead of fighting before, so I didn't get that pharis bow yet. I guess now at level 89 it'll be a breeze though, so maybe I should just go and fetch it...


----------



## wankerness

Ammo continues to be infuriating in ME2 on insanity - all the enemies have at least double the functional health, and you can't risk getting anywhere close to them, but the only way to get ammo back in many cases is to get the drops from the enemies you kill, yet they die right next to several more enemies so you die near-instantly if you try to run up there to get the ammo back!

This really bugged me even on normal, but it's fatal here - the annoying way you get staggered backwards out of cover and stunned every time you take damage is infuriating, cause it can easily result in your instant, unavoidable death on insanity. Taking damage is punishment enough, making all damage leave you WIDE open for a lot more damage is just stupid.

I died a few times during the "turn the fans on" section of Mordin's recruitment and got furious, then realized I could just run past the scads of missile launcher guys. Got through the Garrus and Grunt recruitment missions without dying but with a lot of trouble and completely running out of ammo a couple times. It's all VERY slow going. But hey, only a few more levels before I can actually start having offensive powers and my class isn't a liability!  Unlocking assault rifles at the midpoint of the game should also help quite a bit, both with damage and with having a lot more ammo before running out.


----------



## TedEH

I played through Luigi's Mansion (the original one) this week. Not much to say about it, since it's been around for a while at this point - short, with a simple premise, use a vacuum on ghosts. The simplicity works well for this one.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Did a brief play of Legend Of Mana. On the plus side, the HD soundtrack is beautiful and the pre rendered art looks gorgeous. On the other hand the art becomes a detriment to the pixel sprites that stick out like dogs balls and I forgotten how utterly janky the combat system was. Though Mana fans shouldn't be coy, every Mana game before this had always been a janky mess.


----------



## MFB

2:09PM, July 26th, 2021

I have officially beaten the last boss of Sekiro, ending the nightmare that it was


----------



## MFB

Turns out I have Stockholm Syndrome, as I immediately started a NG+ of Sekiro and have officially made it to the fight with Genichiro already.

What have I become?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Turns out I have Stockholm Syndrome, as I immediately started a NG+ of Sekiro and have officially made it to the fight with Genichiro already.
> 
> What have I become?


you have ascended to the plane of güd.


----------



## MFB

Well, I'm back up to Guardian Ape II and this time around it's legit. I cant for the life of me split up Guardian from Brown, and that means there's no opening when one is stunned to hit the other.

This is proving trickier than I thought it'd be after defeating every other boss on the 1st try until now.


----------



## mongey

Had a bit of time On squadrons as it was free. It’s ok I guess. Got old pretty quick. Some cool Star Wars references in the story mode but feels like hour on hour of the same thing to me.

gave divinity 2 one more try. And nope. Just can’t get into it. Think my biggest put off is the dialogue. I generally enjoy turn based and I’m usually fine with lengthy dialog when the story is good. But this one just doesn’t get me going. Deleted it from my switch for the third time. 


Thinking of doing a new replay of the first dark souls On a build I never use. Maybe archery based.


----------



## wankerness

Archery makes some nasty stuff in DS games far easier. So many enemies are dumb enough to be taken from 100-0 with arrows no problem, plus it makes engaging mobs far safer since “social pulling” is not a thing with the stupid AI. Stuff like anor londo (both of them) and those giants in ds2/ds3 are made radically easier if you leveled a good bow and have decent dex (or poison arrows and patience). That was always something I prioritized in those games, cause I’m bad. They did nerf it a lot in DS3 by making it so you could only have 99 arrows on you instead of 999, but they’d come out of your storage every time you got to a bonfire so it wasn’t that bad.

never really used it on any bosses besides old demon king in NG, though.


----------



## TedEH

mongey said:


> Had a bit of time On squadrons as it was free. It’s ok I guess. Got old pretty quick. Some cool Star Wars references in the story mode but feels like hour on hour of the same thing to me.


Did you try with VR? IMO the VR really makes that game. Or if you were a fan of the old xwing/tie fighter games.


----------



## TedEH

I forget if I mentioned it already but I started up Ion Fury, since it was cheap in the Steam sale. Feels like Duke 3d, modernized - both in gameplay and the engine itself. It's a better successor to Duke so far than actual successors to Duke have been.


----------



## mongey

TedEH said:


> Did you try with VR? IMO the VR really makes that game. Or if you were a fan of the old xwing/tie fighter games.


I did read that. No I don't have VR. Its def what it needs.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I forget if I mentioned it already but I started up Ion Fury, since it was cheap in the Steam sale. Feels like Duke 3d, modernized - both in gameplay and the engine itself. It's a better successor to Duke so far than actual successors to Duke have been.



I've bought Detroit: Become Human and Subnautica in the sale so far. I keep looking at Ion Fury and really can't tell if i'd like it so far. I played Duke 3D back in the day, but i don't really go for retro for the sake of being retro games.


----------



## Ralyks

More Judgement, plus the Yuffie DLC for FFVII Remake.

But I must ask, has anyone played Doki Doki Literature Club? Because I'm really debating getting it when it comes to PS5 this week and want to know is it really as fucked up as it's made out to be.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> I keep looking at Ion Fury and really can't tell if i'd like it so far. I played Duke 3D back in the day, but i don't really go for retro for the sake of being retro games.


IMO it plays much better than Duke ever did. It's a little more Doom than Duke, maybe. I tried to get into Duke 3d, but I found it was a bit too punishing for it's own good - this game isn't what I'd call easy, but it's got a reasonable amount of tolerance for error. I've tried a couple of those "retro/boomer" shooters recently, and so far this is the first one to impress me and keep my attention for a good while. A lot of those kinds of games are indie games, and have that kinda half-baked indie feel - but this has a lot of polish. Rather than thinking "retro for the sake of retro", think old tech pushed to more modern limits. I think I'm half way through it.



Ralyks said:


> But I must ask, has anyone played Doki Doki Literature Club? Because I'm really debating getting it when it comes to PS5 this week and want to know is it really as fucked up as it's made out to be.


I did play this, but I think I'm not the target audience. It was one of those cases where a friend goes "hey man, you should totally play this *cough* normal game *cough* *nudge nudge wink wink* and put it on for me to play through. They know I'm not into dating sims / "graphic novels" or anime, so I knew something was up. It does some clever things, but honestly it doesn't do that much. If you _know_ there's a twist coming, which you do because of your phrasing, it loses all it's steam. It's got some clever moments, but feels trope-y to me. If you're an anime fan, into that kinda trope-y stuff, or just really sensitive, maybe it would work for you. At this point though, the twist has been spoiled 100x over by the internet, and if you've ever seen a decent horror movie, you've seen much worse already.


----------



## wankerness

I played through Duke Nukem 3D both on PC and N64 back in the day, I don't recall it being so "punishing" but I was probably on a lower difficulty setting. Old shooters had idiotic difficulty scaling. I think some of the later levels were incredibly confusing, sometimes with some really arbitrary and strange puzzles. Especially the fourth episode on PC (I think it was some kind of expansion? it had levels like Duke Burger and Babe Land iirc). 

Ion Fury's screenshots really look identical to Duke Nukem 3D apart from the weapons looking a bit more detailed. Interesting. Did you ever play some of the Duke Nukem-adjacent games like Shadow Warrior (the original) or Blood? I remember enjoying Shadow Warrior quite a bit despite the humor that probably dated horribly and mostly revolved around asian stereotypes. There was more weapon variety than Duke Nukem, partly cause they actually made melee viable with the sword and there were also (clumsily rendered) vehicles that you could drive around and squish enemies with.


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Turns out I have Stockholm Syndrome, as I immediately started a NG+ of Sekiro and have officially made it to the fight with Genichiro already.
> 
> What have I become?



The very thing you swore to destroy.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Ion Fury's screenshots really look identical to Duke Nukem 3D apart from the weapons looking a bit more detailed.


It should, since it's the same engine.



wankerness said:


> I don't recall it being so "punishing"


I mean punishing in the sense that the game really wants you to play it on it's terms, and like you say, the difficulty is kinda all over the place. I didn't play it as much as Doom when I was younger, but when I try to get into it now, the deaths feel cheap.

I think I have Shadow Warrior somewhere but never actually played it. Same with Blood. I was always more into the Doom- related stuff rather than Duke- related stuff.


----------



## thebeesknees22

I'm on my 3rd run of the FF7 remake. This time on Hard mode. I've made it to chapter 7 so far. It makes me sad as I play it since I will never be able to buy a PS5 to play the rest of the remake games lol


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I did play this, but I think I'm not the target audience. It was one of those cases where a friend goes "hey man, you should totally play this *cough* normal game *cough* *nudge nudge wink wink* and put it on for me to play through. They know I'm not into dating sims / "graphic novels" or anime, so I knew something was up. It does some clever things, but honestly it doesn't do that much. If you _know_ there's a twist coming, which you do because of your phrasing, it loses all it's steam. It's got some clever moments, but feels trope-y to me. If you're an anime fan, into that kinda trope-y stuff, or just really sensitive, maybe it would work for you. At this point though, the twist has been spoiled 100x over by the internet, and if you've ever seen a decent horror movie, you've seen much worse already.



I do like anime, but I'm also REALLY picky about it, and if it weren't a game (and didn't show up on Honest Game Trailers), I might not even know about it. I only vaguely know the twists and have seen one or two "gruesome" scenes, but not the overall extent. And I dunno, I'm drawn to things that break the fourth wall, which I heard this game does quite a bit.


----------



## TedEH

Technically, that game does all the things it says on the box, so to speak, but it just didn't work very well for me. It's also a game that works best if it's not spoiled ahead of time. Ideally you would have gone in not knowing the game had anything going on at all. I've got friends who really liked it.


----------



## Boofchuck

I've started this game called Blasphemous on the Switch and I really love it.


----------



## Choop

Boofchuck said:


> I've started this game called Blasphemous on the Switch and I really love it.




Blasphemous is a cool game; I enjoyed it quite a bit. The gameplay overall is good but the art is what really makes it, IMO, with its dark and quasi-religious themes.


----------



## Nicki

I'm all over the place these days.

I've just finished my Village of Shadows run in Resident Evil Village. I have some story achievements to clean up and then I want to have a crack at the mercenaries achievements because I 1000 gamerscore'd RE7 and I want to try to do the same thing with Village. I never liked Mercenaries modes in any of the previous entries so not sure how it's going to go.

Now that I'm wrapping up Village, I'm trying to find my next game. I tried both Outriders and Octopath Traveler last night and I just wasn't vibing with either of them. I would normally love a game like Octopath since I'm a fan of NES/SNES era turn based JRPGs, but Octopath just isn't clicking with me right now. As for Outriders, I just found it boring and the number of times I saw a loading screen annoyed the hell out of me. I'm also slowly making my way through the Devil May Cry HD collection, then plan on replaying 4 and moving on to 5 but again, I'm just not staying interested in playing them them for longer than 40 minutes at a time. I should probably just forget it all and finish Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice instead, but I think more than anything I just want to stick with the survival horror genre and play The Evil Within 2 despite the first one's story being a complete mess...


----------



## Boofchuck

Choop said:


> Blasphemous is a cool game; I enjoyed it quite a bit. The gameplay overall is good but the art is what really makes it, IMO, with its dark and quasi-religious themes.


Exactly, I think the pixel art is great and the game is just metal AF.


----------



## Mathemagician

thebeesknees22 said:


> I'm on my 3rd run of the FF7 remake. This time on Hard mode. I've made it to chapter 7 so far. It makes me sad as I play it since I will never be able to buy a PS5 to play the rest of the remake games lol



I believe in you, 2022 will be your year. Or do what I did and make a Twitter and follow a bunch of accounts that report when different retailers are restocking. That’s how my friends and I all got ours.


----------



## thebeesknees22

lol I refuse to make a twitter account. If I do then I'll end up going down that dark road of becoming an influencer. Next I'll be taking instagram pics of me travelling all over and tweeting my opinion on every little thing, and then I'll end up getting a ton of plastic surgery, fake boobs, fake lips... fake butt ....and I'll start shilling peoples' products. 

I can't do it. I just can't. A ps5 isn't worth it.


----------



## Mathemagician

thebeesknees22 said:


> lol I refuse to make a twitter account. If I do then I'll end up going down that dark road of becoming an influencer. Next I'll be taking instagram pics of me travelling all over and tweeting my opinion on every little thing, and then I'll end up getting a ton of plastic surgery, fake boobs, fake lips... fake butt ....and I'll start shilling peoples' products.
> 
> I can't do it. I just can't. A ps5 isn't worth it.



Boring answer: Being a musician is being an influencer and shilling products. From ones own music to fans, to gear, to their streaming channels. Given that being an influencer is a 24/7 job trying to create content and manage an image I’m guessing you’re just Twitter-averse like I was/am and just “don’t wanna”.

Fun answer: That’s cool bby. U do U. Luckily “PS5 Upgrades” to multiplayer PS4 games don’t prevent cross-play. So it’s all good. And there may be some cool bundles/larger HDD’s in the future. 1TB is small.


----------



## StevenC

Been playing Mario Golf the past few days. First time I've played anything in almost two months. Needed something without any story that would disappoint me and trivialise the whole setting/premise.

Anyway, it's a solid golf game. Playing with motion controls because that's the point for me. Mechanically sound but I haven't figured out putting yet. The courses aren't amazing though and there seems to be a bunch of reskinning going on, with several holes being reused across just with whatever gimmick. Hopefully there is more content to come, would be perfect if they would just add the Wii Sports, Resort, and some NES Golf holes, because those are all classics.

Anyway, maybe the campaign mode adds more, but I've just been playing standard golf mode, not even the Rush mode.


----------



## TedEH

Boring response: Not everyone who's a musician is a professional at it. Besides, this is a gaming thread, not a music thread.


----------



## Kaura

I finally picked up GTA III for the first time in my life. Unlike with VC and SA, I don't think I'm coming back to this game after finishing it... It's just so rough compared to the other two 3D-era titles.


----------



## Ralyks

Mathemagician said:


> I believe in you, 2022 will be your year. Or do what I did and make a Twitter and follow a bunch of accounts that report when different retailers are restocking. That’s how my friends and I all got ours.



Yup, that's how I got my PS5, and later, my Xbox Series X. Then just deleted Twitter. Then reactivated it again just so when I get an in stock alert, I send it to my friends. Then I'll delete it again. Screw Twitter, but thanks Twitter for helping me get consoles.


----------



## NotDonVito

StevenC said:


> Been playing Mario Golf the past few days. First time I've played anything in almost two months. Needed something without any story that would disappoint me and trivialise the whole setting/premise.
> 
> Anyway, it's a solid golf game. Playing with motion controls because that's the point for me. Mechanically sound but I haven't figured out putting yet. The courses aren't amazing though and there seems to be a bunch of reskinning going on, with several holes being reused across just with whatever gimmick. Hopefully there is more content to come, would be perfect if they would just add the Wii Sports, Resort, and some NES Golf holes, because those are all classics.
> 
> Anyway, maybe the campaign mode adds more, but I've just been playing standard golf mode, not even the Rush mode.


The motion controls are fun but frustrating as hell. A friend and I played multiplayer(standard golf) over the weekend using motion controls, and I think he ended one course 46+. I can't figure out how to shoot straight, every shot has like 2x diagonal spin. Putting and even long chip in shots from the green are super easy for me, but my drive ends up going out of bounds or rough half the time.


----------



## Choop

Character crisis in Guilty Gear Strive, same as when I played Xrd. >< Started with Ram, and even though she is quite good, I'm kinda just not feeling it with her so much. Looking to try Nagoriyuki, but honestly I may just be super vanilla and play Ky again.


----------



## Kaura

GTA III done. Damn that last mission was tough even though I got it on my second try. 

Now back to good old Vice City.


----------



## Ralyks

Welp, gave in and downloaded Doki Dokie Literature Club Plus. I had $25 credit in the PS Store and it was 14 bucks, so at least I didn't really pay. Guess we'll see how this goes...


----------



## Ralyks

And to follow up on that, what the FUCK is this game?!?


----------



## wankerness

I'm tempted to get it now, after starting to read what sounded like spoilers and quickly stopping myself from reading more.

Phase 1 of the move is over, so I have a week or two to waste time on videogames again! Hooray.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of Ion Fury. By the time I got to the end, I feel like the novelty of the engine had worn off, but not got old - and the game is still good. The visuals and the old-school engine might be the hook, but there's some good design in here too. It's got a lot of that classic creativity from the constraints of the time. In particular, the level design is on point, and the boss fights feel like they actually build on the gameplay.

If you're vaguely interested in the bunch of retro shooters that are getting popular, but don't know which ones are worth it, this is a good one.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished a playthrough of Doki Doki. I... The fuck... Think I'm going to Platinum it and then never speak of it again.
Also, it may end up on my year end list (yes, I know this was out in 2017, but I'll count the Plus and being on consoles for the first time). Ok, that will be the last time I speak of it.


----------



## Nicki

Since I had yesterday off thanks to Canada day, I finished my playthrough of Devil May Cry. I'm not going to lie, for as much as I loved this game when I was 13, I really hate it now. The unfriendly camera, the at-times-unfair combat masked as a "challenge" & the god-awful story and VA. If this game came out in today's day and age, even with DMC5 graphics, I think it would flop and the franchise would never continue.... So I spun up DMC2 and holy crap. Again, as much as I enjoyed this game when I was younger it's such a bad game. The enemy AI is just so braindead. I really don't know why I'm punishing myself by playing through these PS2 games when I'm only doing it to refresh my memory on "the story so far" so I can get to DMC5 and have a better memory on what's happening (I know, they're all really self-contained things and there's no continuous story from one game to the next, it's more background context I'm after). I should probably just stop trying to play the PS2 games since I'm not enjoying them and just move straight to DMC4.

I also decided to start Psychonauts since I never played it before. Definite nostalglic feels of Mario 64, DK64, Banjo and the like with that weird late 90s to early 2000s cartoon vibe. I dig it.


----------



## Choop

Nicki said:


> Since I had yesterday off thanks to Canada day, I finished my playthrough of Devil May Cry. I'm not going to lie, for as much as I loved this game when I was 13, I really hate it now. The unfriendly camera, the at-times-unfair combat masked as a "challenge" & the god-awful story and VA. If this game came out in today's day and age, even with DMC5 graphics, I think it would flop and the franchise would never continue.... So I spun up DMC2 and holy crap. Again, as much as I enjoyed this game when I was younger it's such a bad game. The enemy AI is just so braindead. I really don't know why I'm punishing myself by playing through these PS2 games when I'm only doing it to refresh my memory on "the story so far" so I can get to DMC5 and have a better memory on what's happening (I know, they're all really self-contained things and there's no continuous story from one game to the next, it's more background context I'm after). I should probably just stop trying to play the PS2 games since I'm not enjoying them and just move straight to DMC4.
> 
> I also decided to start Psychonauts since I never played it before. Definite nostalglic feels of Mario 64, DK64, Banjo and the like with that weird late 90s to early 2000s cartoon vibe. I dig it.



I love Psychonauts! It's kind of janky at times to play, but the style, humor and voice acting are all great. Psychonauts 2 is supposed to be released this year afaik. Talk about a long overdue sequel.


----------



## gabito

Got the plat for ME3 LE. It was an easy one, I only needed a second playthrough to get a level 10 gun.

So that's a plat for each game in the (remastered) trilogy. Not planning to go for the insanity trophies, etc. Fuck that.

I also just finished Detroit: Become Human... B movie level script, full of cliches, really nice graphics and performance capture, some really good acting, some OK acting, awkward controls, and some unexpected and or confusing "difficulty" spikes. So, a typical David Cage game.

Didn't hate it, didn't love it. I may play it again some time in the future, taking some different (probably more violent) decisions.


----------



## Nicki

Choop said:


> I love Psychonauts! It's kind of janky at times to play, but the style, humor and voice acting are all great. Psychonauts 2 is supposed to be released this year afaik. Talk about a long overdue sequel.


August 25th, 2021 is the release date. I saw the announcement at Xbox's E3 presentation so I figured I should give the first one a go. There's a lot of charm to the game and even right now, its such a low-pressure game to play so it'll definitely be a nice casual game to play through.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Got the plat for ME3 LE. It was an easy one, I only needed a second playthrough to get a level 10 gun.
> 
> So that's a plat for each game in the (remastered) trilogy. Not planning to go for the insanity trophies, etc. Fuck that.



Heh. It’s definitely tedious. ME1’s main obstacle is you need to do it on NG+ for it to go smoothly, and I wanted to do it as a different class, so essentially I had to do two full playthroughs all over again just for the insanity trophy. That’s not a problem with the sequels, though. I have been limping through ME2. I’m now around level 15 or something and it’s finally getting easier, but Mordin’s recruitment and horizon were incredibly brutal and I’m still occasionally going for entire long firefights without a single enemy dropping any ammo so I’m stuck chipping away at them slowly with warp/overload. Have tended to only die once or sometimes not at all on missions since Horizon, though. I expect the collector ship will be the next part that’s bad news.

me3’s insanity shocked me with how easy it was back in the day, I dunno if they amped it up in this collection. I heard the trophies were bugged and you could cheat and just reload the last auto save after getting the first trophy to get the next two without playing the other two games. I’m not doing that cause I actually want to play them.


----------



## TedEH

The excitement for Psychonauts 2 is real.


----------



## wankerness

Psychonauts is a game my video-game-crazy friends demanded I play many, many years ago, and I own it on multiple systems, but have never so much as started it up. See also: Beyond Good and Evil, Grim Fandango.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Psychonauts is a game my video-game-crazy friends demanded I play many, many years ago, and I own it on multiple systems, but have never so much as started it up. See also: Beyond Good and Evil, Grim Fandango.


Beyond Good and Evil is also on the list of older generation games that I have yet to play, but have owned for a while.


----------



## TedEH

I'm with your video-game-crazy friends. Do it. Of those three, BG&E is the one you can skip if you don't want. Psychonauts is a pretty standard game except that it ooozes with character. Grim Fandango has some adventure-game jank to it, but the narrative hits like a ton of bricks.


----------



## Ralyks

I'm starting to regret trying to Platinum Doki Doki, mostly because of just looking at all the collectibles and Jesus, how you get some of them is crazy.

Add me to the list for Beyond Good and Rvil and Psyconauts. I have the former on my PS3 and the latter on my PS5, have started both of them, really like them.... But never got further than an hour or two in.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Psychonauts is a game my video-game-crazy friends demanded I play many, many years ago, and I own it on multiple systems, but have never so much as started it up. See also: Beyond Good and Evil, Grim Fandango.



I played Beyond Good and Evil (remastered for PS3) a few years ago. It was meh. Maybe it was great when it was released? I don't know.

I played Grim Fandango in 2001 or so, and I loved the game. Story was really original for the time, it was funny, maybe a bit short (I think they went over budget and had to rush the ending), and it looked cool. I played the remaster not so long ago and the story and characters are still good, but some puzzles are 100% bullshit. But that's a Tim Schafer thing, every adventure game by him (ie: Broken Age) has a few of those.

Anyway, you'll probably need a guide to finish it (I know I needed it).


----------



## Werecow

gabito said:


> I played Beyond Good and Evil (remastered for PS3) a few years ago. It was meh. Maybe it was great when it was released? I don't know.
> 
> I played Grim Fandango in 2001 or so, and I loved the game. Story was really original for the time, it was funny, maybe a bit short (I think they went over budget and had to rush the ending), and it looked cool. I played the remaster not so long ago and the story and characters are still good, but some puzzles are 100% bullshit. But that's a Tim Schafer thing, every adventure game by him (ie: Broken Age) has a few of those.
> 
> Anyway, you'll probably need a guide to finish it (I know I needed it).


I think Grim Fandango was the game that finally put me off point and click games. I don't like using guides, and as you say, puzzles in a lot of them are bullshit. I've not wanted to play one since.


----------



## mongey

More vf5. I’m leveled up to a point now where the it matches me with higher level players who actually Know the game. Damn they can punish you. 1 mistake you can lose half your bar easy. 

Really liking it though. Feels more of a mind and patience battle than sf5


----------



## StevenC

I played BG&E a few years ago on Xbox One. It's really good and the story is excellent, but it's very short.

I remember a lot of comparisons to Wind Waker when it was new, and I suppose there are similarities, but Wind Waker is an 10/10 and this is probably an 8/10.

Definitely worth playing.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Nicki said:


> Since I had yesterday off thanks to Canada day, I finished my playthrough of Devil May Cry. I'm not going to lie, for as much as I loved this game when I was 13, I really hate it now. The unfriendly camera, the at-times-unfair combat masked as a "challenge" & the god-awful story and VA. If this game came out in today's day and age, even with DMC5 graphics, I think it would flop and the franchise would never continue.... So I spun up DMC2 and holy crap. Again, as much as I enjoyed this game when I was younger it's such a bad game. The enemy AI is just so braindead. I really don't know why I'm punishing myself by playing through these PS2 games when I'm only doing it to refresh my memory on "the story so far" so I can get to DMC5 and have a better memory on what's happening (I know, they're all really self-contained things and there's no continuous story from one game to the next, it's more background context I'm after). I should probably just stop trying to play the PS2 games since I'm not enjoying them and just move straight to DMC4.
> 
> I also decided to start Psychonauts since I never played it before. Definite nostalglic feels of Mario 64, DK64, Banjo and the like with that weird late 90s to early 2000s cartoon vibe. I dig it.


DMC2 was easily the worst one, and really just a bad game to the point where Capcom seems fine with erasing it from the canon. I haven't played all the way through the first one yet but DMC3 was the best one in my opinion, even if the later ones have improved gameplay. I think it holds up really well as a challenging "old" school beat 'em up. I won't touch Ninja Theory's DMC because that's not my Dante.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> DMC2 was easily the worst one, and really just a bad game to the point where Capcom seems fine with erasing it from the canon. I haven't played all the way through the first one yet but DMC3 was the best one in my opinion, even if the later ones have improved gameplay. I think it holds up really well as a challenging "old" school beat 'em up. I won't touch Ninja Theory's DMC because that's not my Dante.


You're missing out. Ninja Theory's dmc is a fucking awesome game.


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> You're missing out. Ninja Theory's dmc is a fucking awesome game.


I've been told multiple time and I think I wouldn't even mind if it wasn't called or tied to DMC. It just seemed so out of place and edgelord (even by DMC standards) that it turns me off from it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> I've been told multiple time and I think I wouldn't even mind if it wasn't called or tied to DMC. It just seemed so out of place and edgelord (even by DMC standards) that it turns me off from it.


ehh it's about as edgy as the old DMC games were when they came out tbh.


----------



## Ralyks

KnightBrolaire said:


> ehh it's about as edgy as the old DMC games were when they came out tbh.



This. And yeah, DMC was pretty damn fun.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

finally giving Spiderman a shot.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> finally giving Spiderman a shot.



the base mechanics are incredibly good, but I didn’t like the story/boss structure or the sections where you have to stealth around as other characters, and I didn’t have fun trying to fill in the map, unlike most open world games. It mostly made me want to go back a mid play arkham asylum/city instead (though I bet those aged terribly).

plugged away some more at ME2, hit the next difficulty spike, which is the ambush in the derelict collector ship. I must have died five or six times in the first 10 seconds, it was ridiculous. Eventually limped through it, and then hit another much more mild spike with the Tali recruitment mission where you have to fight through the field and fight the colossus. Man, this game is HARD. The usually frequent auto saves are the only reason I don’t want to call this easily above DS difficulty. 

I think I’m going to skip all those trash vehicle missions, if damage scales in those like it does in the regular game they’d probably be impossible. That thing is like paper even on normal.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> the base mechanics are incredibly good, but I didn’t like the story/boss structure or the sections where you have to stealth around as other characters, and I didn’t have fun trying to fill in the map, unlike most open world games. It mostly made me want to go back a mid play arkham asylum/city instead (though I bet those aged terribly).
> 
> plugged away some more at ME2, hit the next difficulty spike, which is the ambush in the derelict collector ship. I must have died five or six times in the first 10 seconds, it was ridiculous. Eventually limped through it, and then hit another much more mild spike with the Tali recruitment mission where you have to fight through the field and fight the colossus. Man, this game is HARD. The usually frequent auto saves are the only reason I don’t want to call this easily above DS difficulty.
> 
> I think I’m going to skip all those trash vehicle missions, if damage scales in those like it does in the regular game they’d probably be impossible. That thing is like paper even on normal.


I'm just playing it for the combat and traversal mechanics tbh. I have very fond memories of spiderman 64 and the raimi spiderman games on ps2, so it'll be fun to see a more modern version of those mechanics. Anyone know if the Beenox Spiderman games are any good?
I'll probably pick up the infamous games too since I've never played those.


----------



## MFB

I havent played Infamous 1/2, but man, Infamous Second Son was a snorefest and a half; the game really doesn't feel like it ever ramps up, and I don't even recall how it ends and I'm 99% sure I finished it.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

MFB said:


> I havent played Infamous 1/2, but man, Infamous Second Son was a snorefest and a half; the game really doesn't feel like it ever ramps up, and I don't even recall how it ends and I'm 99% sure I finished it.



Play thr first 2. Infamous Second Son is nowhere near as good. Certainly reeks of next gen launch title flaws of sacrificing a lot of gameplay and story that made the originals so good over visual aesthetics and forced motion controls.


----------



## Ralyks

Second Son was alright, but First Light was more enjoyable.


----------



## Kaura

Went through Vice City faster than I thought, then on the other hand I used cheats because otherwise the game is such a choir.

I've been listening to Katamari Damacy OST for the past couple of days and to my surprise the game actually had a rerelease on Steam so I bought it. What a weird but cute game.


----------



## Ralyks

So I had to put Daifu for Waifu, err, Doki Doki Literature Club down for a couple of days, one, I was getting sucked into it way too much, and two


Spoiler



I'd rather not watch Yuris corpse decay over the course of a simulated weekend without being able to skip just to get one of the collectables at night. Same with Monikas never ending talking towards the end. I'll save that for the daytime when it's less, y'know, creepy out


----------



## MFB

Fired up the XB for the first time in a long time and played some Halo CE. The remaster in the MCC looks fine, but Jesus Christ, what utter dogshit controls. No sprint in any of them before three, and left bumper is used for flash light of all things with D pad being used for reload/swap weapon/jump.

Yes, that's right. JUMP is on the D-pad, along with reload and swap weapon. You also can't remap the buttons individually, it's either use one of their preset controller layouts, or you don't change it at all. What utter fucking bollocks.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

MFB said:


> Fired up the XB for the first time in a long time and played some Halo CE. The remaster in the MCC looks fine, but Jesus Christ, what utter dogshit controls. No sprint in any of them before three, and left bumper is used for flash light of all things with D pad being used for reload/swap weapon/jump.
> 
> Yes, that's right. JUMP is on the D-pad, along with reload and swap weapon. You also can't remap the buttons individually, it's either use one of their preset controller layouts, or you don't change it at all. What utter fucking bollocks.



That has has to be a control scheme exclusive to the MCC then 'cause that's certainly not the layout on the OG release. Left bumper for the flashlight I can see since the original xbox controllers didn't have bumpers and the black and white buttons never migrated to the 360, but the rest of that layout sounds fucked.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Carrion Rocket said:


> That has has to be a control scheme exclusive to the MCC then 'cause that's certainly not the layout on the OG release. Left bumper for the flashlight I can see since the original xbox controllers didn't have bumpers and the black and white buttons never migrated to the 360, but the rest of that layout sounds fucked.


The black and white buttons effectively became the bumpers, but yeah that's absolutely not how it was in the original. Halo 3 introduced Bumper Jumper as a control but it is funny seeing how much things have changed in the genre, like the sprint MFB mentioned. It was a perk in Reach but that was the first time it was there. Played through Reach last winter and damn did I feel its age. Still my favourite Halo game by far but the voice acting and plot weren't as good as I remember when it first released. Gameplay still felt great even though there weren't those QOL upgrades that we have now in modern FPSes.


----------



## TedEH

I've been playing The Last Guardian since it went on sale recently. I was a big fan of Ico/SotC, so I've been wanting to try this one for a while. I think it fits into that collection pretty well - in the sense that it's not mechanically deep, but captures a vibe really well. The music is good, the narrative is good, the sense of adventure and mystery is good, the weird architecture is there, the visuals are good, the monster's behaviour is convincing while still serving the game most of the time, etc. On the negative side, the gameplay is kinda thin at times, it's sometimes pretty unclear what you're supposed to do (although I usually figure it out in a reasonable amount of time), and the performance is pretty unfortunate. I wonder if it would run a lot better if I had a newer PS4, but it's still disappointing that it gets into slideshow territory at times.


----------



## TedEH

I just saw the new Switch announcement and it's..... kinda underwhelming?


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I just saw the new Switch announcement and it's..... kinda underwhelming?



For those who also need to look it up, they apparently bumped the screen from 6.2" to 7.0" and doubled the storage to 64 gigs (still tiny). Oh, and they added a better rear kickstand thing. No performance upgrades whatsoever. So, definitely the one to get if you don't have a switch yet, but looks like no reason whatsoever to upgrade unless you are really looking for ways to spend money.

I think that's kind of good news, everyone was thinking they were going to announce an effective "Switch Pro" with 4k output, beefier hardware, etc in advance of BOTW2 that would probably result in the game running badly on the original switch since it would be programmed with that in mind. Guess they still could do that!


----------



## Demiurge

I was holding-out to buy a Switch until there was a "pro" version and a new Metroid Prime game... but at this juncture I guess I've gotta take what I can get.


----------



## wankerness

By the time there's a new metroid prime there probably WILL be a new Switch. Since that probably won't be for another 10 years!


----------



## Choop

That is pretty disappointing about the switch...I assume the silicon shortage probably affected development of any new chips for the time being. Just having a DLSS-capable chip would be such a game changer for the switch, it's such an incredible technology. Last I saw Xbox Series consoles are already dedicated to utilizing the AMD comparable technology, FidelityFX (which more or less does the same thing as DLSS, in a different kind of way and to different levels of effectiveness). It'd be a good way to prolong the life of the switch in the future without necessarily having to develop something that couldn't run on a regular switch.


----------



## TedEH

The revision seems like it would make a lot of sense for newcomers, but it's a disappointing upgrade for existing customers. I'm also a little leary of OLED still - anything OLED I've had before experienced burn-in at least a little bit.

I'm kinda on the fence though - am I glad that this means that new games will target the existing Switch still and I don't need to upgrade to play them? Or am I disappointed that it means new titles are still constrained to the same weak hardware? I guess we'll see.


----------



## Choop

Personally as a non-switch-owner right now, if I were looking to buy I'd be more into just picking up a cheap used older switch since I'd be playing docked mostly anyway, though I guess for people buying new the slight hardware upgrade is cool.

Yeah it's tricky with OLED -- I had been reading a lot about OLED displays when the LG OLED tv's started to catch on for use as L-A-R-G-E monitors, and there are some measures you have to take to reduce the chance of burn in. It's hard for games and desktop PC use since they usually have static elements like a HUD that don't move...are there options to control the visibility of HUD stuff on switch games?


----------



## TedEH

I had the thought that since the new screen is relatively low density, maybe that means there's a lot of physical space for whatever burn-in reduction might be available for a panel like that. Maybe. I have no idea how display panels really work.


----------



## wankerness

OLEDs, even newer ones that supposedly "fixed" that problem (ex some androids), definitely suffer from burn-in. It will probably last a couple years assuming you're not constantly playing the same game that whole time, but yeah. At least the picture will look a lot nicer for that year or two.



Choop said:


> Yeah it's tricky with OLED -- I had been reading a lot about OLED displays when the LG OLED tv's started to catch on for use as L-A-R-G-E monitors, and there are some measures you have to take to reduce the chance of burn in. It's hard for games and desktop PC use since they usually have static elements like a HUD that don't move...are there options to control the visibility of HUD stuff on switch games?



Not any more than on any other console system. If I had to guess, you can change HUD transparency/position on probably 20% of games.

It's more annoying than on other systems mainly cause you encounter a lot of ports where the HUD stuff is nearly unreadable in handheld mode since they pretty much just copied the same HUD from the other versions and called it a day.


----------



## p0ke

Just bought the first DLC for DS3. I ended up buying it as a code through a 3rd party store, so it only cost 8.50€. I think it's actually the first DLC I've ever bought separately. Anyway, here we go again


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I just saw the new Switch announcement and it's..... kinda underwhelming?





wankerness said:


> For those who also need to look it up, they apparently bumped the screen from 6.2" to 7.0" and doubled the storage to 64 gigs (still tiny). Oh, and they added a better rear kickstand thing. No performance upgrades whatsoever. So, definitely the one to get if you don't have a switch yet, but looks like no reason whatsoever to upgrade unless you are really looking for ways to spend money.
> 
> I think that's kind of good news, everyone was thinking they were going to announce an effective "Switch Pro" with 4k output, beefier hardware, etc in advance of BOTW2 that would probably result in the game running badly on the original switch since it would be programmed with that in mind. Guess they still could do that!


It also has a LAN port now. So.... Yeah. 

I'm kinda pleased that I don't have to upgrade my Switch at all and can save $500. A Pro version with better hardware would be really cool for some but I really don't want to shell out for an upgrade


----------



## gabito

Playing Assassin's Creed Odissey, got the Deluxe Edition (which includes all DLC and extra stuff I guess) on sale. Damn, this game is huge. I skipped all the AC games after Rogue, so this the the first "modern" AC I'll play.

Just played 15 hours or so, it's been fun so far. Fun, repetitive, and shallow as these AC games tend to be. It's a nice "almost a clone of The Witcher 3 but not quite" game. Combat is different to the previous games. Better, but still not good I guess. Controls are floaty, even more so if you compare them to more polished games like RDR2, HZD, and even The Witcher 3. Kassandra is funny. Voice acting is strange. I don't care about naval combat and try to avoid it if possible, had enough of that in AC4. The map es immense.

I also have Origins and Valhalla installed, but for some reason I picked up this one to play first (not that I care much about the Templars vs. Assassins thing since Ezio's games, or that Ubisoft cares much about continuity in these games). I'll probably end up doing the main story missions and a few side quests here and there until I get bored. That could take 60 hours, though...


----------



## TedEH

Finished the Last Guardian last night. Felt like a short experience, but at the same time, I don't know that it needed to drag out any farther. Visuals were good but the performance on an old PS4 is disappointing (I'm starting to see a pattern any time I try to play something on a console). The narrative is good, but the gameplay can be a bit thin. 

There was the occasional moment where I had no idea what I was supposed to do, and resorted to googling it to continue, just to go "well, that was dumb". At one point you get "commands" you can issue to the beast in the game, but they're vague and not explained and I'm not sure you need to use most of them. One is clearly "jump", and one is a "sit/stay" command... I think? Then there's an "attack" command that I never used, and I have no idea what the last one does. Since the character doesn't speak English and they don't translate, you can only guess.

Some reviewers were annoyed that the beast sometimes doesn't listen, which is true - it's got kind of a mind of it's own - but I think I more or less figured out how to get the desired result pretty quickly most of the time. Maybe I'm in a good position to intuit how the creature "works", but it's abstracted in such a way as to be convincingly "alive", and I think they did a great job of that, but I can also understand why that would be frustrating.

I like the game. I got what I wanted from it. It's got that team-Ico feel, which includes all the jank that comes with it.


----------



## Nicki

BlackMastodon said:


> DMC2 was easily the worst one, and really just a bad game to the point where Capcom seems fine with erasing it from the canon. I haven't played all the way through the first one yet but DMC3 was the best one in my opinion, even if the later ones have improved gameplay. I think it holds up really well as a challenging "old" school beat 'em up. I won't touch Ninja Theory's DMC because that's not my Dante.


The problem is that as I was playing DMC1, it just felt really boring and frustrating to play and I couldn't help but keep asking myself "How did I think this was a good game 20 years ago?" I never liked DMC3, probably because I play the very original PS2 release and not the special edition that toned down the difficulty. I actually did stop trying to enjoy the PS2 games and uninstalled it from my Xbox. I give up. I probably won't like playing those PS2 era DMC games again. They're just bad, in my opinion. I remember playing Ninja Theory's DMC and thinking it was fun. I understood the context that it was a reboot and things would be different so it didn't bother me that it wasn't the same Dante. I'm going to give DMC4 a go next, and even though I know it's more of the same, at least there's more modern-era quality of life gameplay. That will be after I finish Psychonauts.

I also want to start Infinite Undiscovery since it's been in my backlog for far too long. I just know I need a walkthrough for that game and most of them online are incomplete. I could pay for the official strategy guide, but finding one in decent condition for not much more than MSRP is challenging.


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> It also has a LAN port now. So.... Yeah.
> 
> I'm kinda pleased that I don't have to upgrade my Switch at all and can save $500. A Pro version with better hardware would be really cool for some but I really don't want to shell out for an upgrade



Yeah, the LAN port is helpful. I had to get a lan adapter cause the wifi card in those things is absolute trash. I'd constantly get dropped from sessions and no one could connect to me despite my switch being 10 feet from the router. Both 2g and 5g were unusable with the Switch's wifi. The PS4 was fine in a room on the other side of the house.


----------



## Ralyks

Got everything in Doki Doki Literature Club Plus…. And the achievement for getting 100% is glitched. Thus glitching the Platinum. Looks like they fixed it on steam but not consoles yet. Goddammit. Guess that explains why both trophies are 0.0% on PlayStation.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Playing Assassin's Creed Odissey, got the Deluxe Edition (which includes all DLC and extra stuff I guess) on sale. Damn, this game is huge. I skipped all the AC games after Rogue, so this the the first "modern" AC I'll play.
> 
> Just played 15 hours or so, it's been fun so far. Fun, repetitive, and shallow as these AC games tend to be. It's a nice "almost a clone of The Witcher 3 but not quite" game. Combat is different to the previous games. Better, but still not good I guess. Controls are floaty, even more so if you compare them to more polished games like RDR2, HZD, and even The Witcher 3. Kassandra is funny. Voice acting is strange. I don't care about naval combat and try to avoid it if possible, had enough of that in AC4. The map es immense.
> 
> I also have Origins and Valhalla installed, but for some reason I picked up this one to play first (not that I care much about the Templars vs. Assassins thing since Ezio's games, or that Ubisoft cares much about continuity in these games). I'll probably end up doing the main story missions and a few side quests here and there until I get bored. That could take 60 hours, though...



Odyssey is my favorite of the three, mostly due to setting, partly due to the likable protagonist as long as you don't select the male player character (the male voice actor is terrible compared to the woman). Origins has the best story/characters by far, but I didn't like the gameplay as much cause I played Odyssey primarily as an archer and Origins has very harshly limited ammo so it's non-viable. Plus, I'm an ancient greece nerd and not really so much when it comes to ancient egypt - deserts are dull! 

Odyssey also has that great "Spartan Kick" move that you can use when you're a lowbie to kick powerful enemies off cliffs to instantly kill them even if you couldn't make a dent on them with your weapons.

Valhalla gets a bit too into just "run around chopping guys with axes" and too far away from stealth though, IMO. Not that you can't just do that in Odyssey if you build for it, but Valhalla seems more unfriendly to a stealth playthrough and archery is again non-viable as a primary attack mode thanks to the removal of crafting arrows. The setting also sucks bigtime, with a bunch of tiny narrow rivers connecting massive landmasses and thus the boats and travel feeling really clunky and repetitive compared to Odyssey's mix of small islands, seas, and big landmasses. Valhalla also has a lot of horrible, infuriating side mission types like rock stacking and tattoo chasing that aren't in the previous two games.


----------



## MFB

If Odyssey came out first and was basically the one to shift to full RPG mechanics, with the Greek settings, I would've been so onboard; however, it coming out so quickly on the heels of Origins, with a very similar feel and just SO much more stuff to slog through for what was just fetch quests, it bummed me out how little I felt for it given the setting.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> If Odyssey came out first and was basically the one to shift to full RPG mechanics, with the Greek settings, I would've been so onboard; however, it coming out so quickly on the heels of Origins, with a very similar feel and just SO much more stuff to slog through for what was just fetch quests, it bummed me out how little I felt for it given the setting.



Odyssey might also have been my favorite because I played it before Origins, then! Though I did go on a tear through AC2, AC: Black Flag, AC:Origins and AC:Syndicate all pretty close to each other after Odyssey and liked them varying amounts instead of declining amounts.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Odyssey is my favorite of the three, mostly due to setting, partly due to the likable protagonist as long as you don't select the male player character (the male voice actor is terrible compared to the woman). Origins has the best story/characters by far, but I didn't like the gameplay as much cause I played Odyssey primarily as an archer and Origins has very harshly limited ammo so it's non-viable. Plus, I'm an ancient greece nerd and not really so much when it comes to ancient egypt - deserts are dull!
> 
> Odyssey also has that great "Spartan Kick" move that you can use when you're a lowbie to kick powerful enemies off cliffs to instantly kill them even if you couldn't make a dent on them with your weapons.
> 
> Valhalla gets a bit too into just "run around chopping guys with axes" and too far away from stealth though, IMO. Not that you can't just do that in Odyssey if you build for it, but Valhalla seems more unfriendly to a stealth playthrough and archery is again non-viable as a primary attack mode thanks to the removal of crafting arrows. The setting also sucks bigtime, with a bunch of tiny narrow rivers connecting massive landmasses and thus the boats and travel feeling really clunky and repetitive compared to Odyssey's mix of small islands, seas, and big landmasses. Valhalla also has a lot of horrible, infuriating side mission types like rock stacking and tattoo chasing that aren't in the previous two games.



Yeah, Kassandra is cool. 

I have the three games installed on my PS4, so to decide which one to play first I played one hour of each and I liked Kassandra more than Bayek and female Evior.

So... that was my dumb reason to play Odyssey first. Also Odissey happens before Origins chronologically, so there's that too (as if that matters).

I'll eventually play all the games, though. When? I don't know, they are incredibly huge games.


----------



## Jarmake

After grinding for a while to get better I decided to go to Yahar'Gul, the unseen village... And was unpleasantly intoduced to some lovely ladies, so I became the Hunter of old hairy bell-ringing grandmothers. And those bastards were always hiding in the dark corners of the earth, bringing some annoying red colored dumbasses to the arenas.

There was some things with multiple sets of eyes and I can't even imagine the bill after visiting optician, so I spared them the expenses and gave them the old trusty axe.

After a while I arrived to an arena, which just screamed "boss battle!" and right I was. There was The One Reborn with it's bell ringing ladies. The introduction video showed me the bell ringers, so I thought I'd kill her first. It turns out there was six of them, so I gave them the axe and went to town with the one reborn.

And damn, how big the guy was. And damn,how easy he was. I just applied some bolt paper to my axe and swinged it time after time, sometimes jumping away when it got stomp happy and vomited. It took like a minute to kill it. This was one of the more boring enemies thus far and went to the low end of the list with the Witch of Hemwick.

The three hunters at the chapel were much harder than the main boss of the area.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Yeah, Kassandra is cool.
> 
> I have the three games installed on my PS4, so to decide which one to play first I played one hour of each and I liked Kassandra more than Bayek and female Evior.
> 
> So... that was my dumb reason to play Odyssey first. Also Odissey happens before Origins chronologically, so there's that too (as if that matters).
> 
> I'll eventually play all the games, though. When? I don't know, they are incredibly huge games.



If you eventually play Valhalla (and you should wait a long time, since it's the worst of the three by far), you should try playing as male Eivor. The female one is harder core and scarier, with that nasty hissing voice. He seems more like a chill metal dude. 

As opposed to Odyssey, where the male voice actor is just comically petulant-sounding but Kassandra's very likable.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished Yuffies DLC for FFVII Remake. Back to Scarlet Nexus. This game is doooope.


----------



## Jarmake

God damn I hate Micolash, Host of the Nightmare. He is so damn annoying with all the bantering and the second phase... yesterday I tried killing him and he just cast a call beyond over and over again, no matter how much I hit him. These boss battles are quite puzzling... Sometimes they're very reasonable and use all of their movesets and sometimes they just annihilate you with one or two shot -moves.


----------



## MFB

Jarmake said:


> God damn I hate Micolash, Host of the Nightmare. He is so damn annoying with all the bantering and the second phase... yesterday I tried killing him and he just cast a call beyond over and over again, no matter how much I hit him. These boss battles are quite puzzling... Sometimes they're very reasonable and use all of their movesets and sometimes they just annihilate you with one or two shot -moves.



Call From Beyond, I can't remember off hand, is that the big tentacle arm that crosses the gap between you, or is the big fountain of "fuck you" that he shoots out from above him like some wannabe DBZ fighter?

I think the former, since you as a Hunter can use it, but I might be wrong. If it is, it's all about just side stepping it, nothing more; if it's the other one, you can roll INTO it to dodge vs trying to go further out from him.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Call From Beyond, I can't remember off hand, is that the big tentacle arm that crosses the gap between you, or is the big fountain of "fuck you" that he shoots out from above him like some wannabe DBZ fighter?
> 
> I think the former, since you as a Hunter can use it, but I might be wrong. If it is, it's all about just side stepping it, nothing more; if it's the other one, you can roll INTO it to dodge vs trying to go further out from him.



You can use both of those as a hunter. Call from Beyond just takes like 20 bullets a shot. It's the nova thing that shoots out a ton of projectiles and insta-kills you if your positioning is bad. It's very hard to tell how to avoid it. Spamming dodge only barely saved me from it, I think I got lucky.


----------



## Jarmake

Yep, it is the big fountain of fuck you. I manage to dodge it most of the time, but the guy just spammed it time after time, with no time in between. Like it was glitching hard. 

Maybe tonight it's time to put that arsehole to the rest...


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> Yep, it is the big fountain of fuck you. I manage to dodge it most of the time, but the guy just spammed it time after time, with no time in between. Like it was glitching hard.
> 
> Maybe tonight it's time to put that arsehole to the rest...



My main problem with that fight is how damn long it takes to get to P2 unless you've died so many times that you figure out the optimal route (or look it up). I fortunately only took two tries, but it took me like 10 minutes to find the creep to get to P2 both times.


----------



## Ralyks

They finally patched Doki Doki Literature Club Plus. I got my platinum. It's finally over.... Unless I feel like double dipping trophy's and playing the PS4 version.

Anyone else see the Persona announcements, are like me and praying they put P3FES and P4G on modern consoles, and shocked they acknowledged the first Persona and both parts of the second Persona do indeed exist?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Anyone else see the Persona announcements, are like me and praying they put P3FES and P4G on modern consoles, and shocked they acknowledged the first Persona and both parts of the second Persona do indeed exist?



It'd be nice to have both Persona 2s back in the spotlight. Granted that they've shown their age and feel much different to P3 onward, those were great sleepers in their time.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Getting towards the end of Tokyo Xanadu and the fangs of Stockholm Syndrome have sank right in. Despite being clunky and janky, I'm enjoying the combat and getting better at it. All the characters are different and unique enough to keep things interesting. Suppose I should just get Ys IX right after it, or just finish my recent Legend of Mana playthrough. 

Like all the life sim/JRPG hybrids, the life sim stuff keeps me invested. And while this shares the same DNA as Cold Steel, it fixes a few of the latter's problems. The biggest issue with CS is the entire Class VII members are just orbital moons circling around Rean, thus suffer both individually and as a collective. The EX version of Tokyo Xanadu addresses this issue by adding additional short episodes and shoving the protagonist aside and spending more time allowing the other playable cast to breathe and interact with each other. Some of them ain't much but it's always a welcome change of pace.


----------



## Leviathus

Got around to collecting all the trophies for Dark Souls 2. Think i'm officially Souls'd out until Elden Ring releases.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> Got around to collecting all the trophies for Dark Souls 2. Think i'm officially Souls'd out until Elden Ring releases.



How did you get those goddam sunlight medals? I tried farming the falconers that rush you at the start of NG+, but quickly got frustrated and quit cause my build wasn't good for dealing with them, and you can't respec or save anywhere without breaking the efficient farming location, and the drop rate is like .1% and you need 30 of them. I read most reports online suggested ~10 hours of farming. Ugh.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> How did you get those goddam sunlight medals? I tried farming the falconers that rush you at the start of NG+, but quickly got frustrated and quit cause my build wasn't good for dealing with them, and you can't respec or save anywhere without breaking the efficient farming location, and the drop rate is like .1% and you need 30 of them. I read most reports online suggested ~10 hours of farming. Ugh.



Threw down my summon sign at kings gate bonfire once i got there and did some jolly co-op. I think it's probably the most popular area for summoning cos of the multiple boss fights that take place in the throne room. Only thing that sucks is having to deal with invasions, so eventually i just began stripping naked in front of every invader and going for the fist fight, some of whom obliged me and did the same haha. The bell keeper rank 2 sorcery might've been more annoying, climbing the ladder time after time to see if the mad warrior red phantom spawned.


----------



## Choop

Man. I think I'm going to opt in to try and grab a Steam Deck today. 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/15/22578783/valve-steam-deck-gaming-handheld-pc

What a cool and versatile piece of gear. Aside from just having a cool way to chip at the Steam backlog, this would be awesome to bring for local fighting game meet ups that are starting to open back up!


----------



## TedEH

Interesting timing given the reaction to the newest Switch, and given how much this new device apes the Switch design. My gut reaction was to wonder how well this will do versus the other PC portables - GPD Win and the like.

Also very surprised the touch pad thingies came back - I thought people hated those.

Also very surprised that there's enough of an audience for this. I always thought of Steam as being a platform for people who already have PCs, making a portable a bit redundant - the steam link was already kind of a flop and it let you DIY the same thing with your phone and a controller.

To add to the list of things that surprise me, nobody is talking about the storage size -> IMO if the draw is full-sized games, the storage is going to run out REALLY quickly. You'd be able to take, what, two games with you?


----------



## Choop

I think it will do well against other PC portable offerings considering the specs and capabilities, and the advantage of it over streaming stuff like Steam Link is that you don't have to worry about latency. And yeah, the storage capacity is lame especially considering the price gaps. The only one that makes any real sense is the 512gb version, and even that is small considering the size of new titles. You can add a microSD card for extra storage, but I wouldn't want to run any games off of one that would need to load quickly. It'd be kind of cool for simpler games though possibly or roms. What would have been really great is to allow for the option to switch out NVMEs so you could just install your own 1 or 2 TB NVME drive. I don't know if that is a possibility (leaning hard towards "no").


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> Threw down my summon sign at kings gate bonfire once i got there and did some jolly co-op. I think it's probably the most popular area for summoning cos of the multiple boss fights that take place in the throne room. Only thing that sucks is having to deal with invasions, so eventually i just began stripping naked in front of every invader and going for the fist fight, some of whom obliged me and did the same haha. The bell keeper rank 2 sorcery might've been more annoying, climbing the ladder time after time to see if the mad warrior red phantom spawned.



Ah, coop. I hate the way the online system works in those games so I didn't really even consider that an option. I'm not going to get to that area again anytime soon I don't think so hopefully I'm not some super-high level at that point so I can't be summoned. However, I powerlevelled a lot less in DS2 than I did 1/3 so maybe I'll be close enough to normal to still see people.

The bell keeper one only took me an hour or two, it was just boring.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> To add to the list of things that surprise me, nobody is talking about the storage size -> IMO if the draw is full-sized games, the storage is going to run out REALLY quickly. You'd be able to take, what, two games with you?


The Steam Dock definitely isn't my type of thing, but the storage is up to 512GB, and it has a high speed Micro-SD slot. So you could have as many 512GB Micro-SD cards as you want, filled with games as well. Long's you have fast cards, i'd imagine they'd run a lot of types of game well enough. If they're smart they'll let you easily backup and restore game files to and from SD as well.


----------



## Choop

The ability for it to use FSR is also a cool way to squeeze more performance out of it in the future when docked. It'd honestly be a cool way to get into PC gaming on more of a budget since gaming hardware has been so hard to get ahold of.


----------



## wankerness

Got a PS5 invite from Sony for today, guess we'll see if it works. I'm still not sold on the idea that I need one yet, but hey, if I can get one for retail price, might as well. I can probably make my money back if I decide I don't want it.

EDIT: Got one! $601 with an extra controller and tax. Good compared to scalper prices! 2-3 days shipping, allegedly, though I don't know if that is just the speed after they acquire stock or if that's actually how many days I can expect before I get it.

I am not sure if I'm going to buy any games for it, though. Demon's Souls remains the only one I really want to play besides Bugsnax (which I already got through PS+), and it's still 70 dollars. No thanks! I do have a ton of games with free PS5 upgrades, and some other backlog games I might as well play on the PS5 for faster loadtimes, I guess!


----------



## TedEH

Been slowly chipping away at Oracle of Ages still. Dunno why it's taking me so long to get through it, it's not a bad game. I also started up Wolfenstein 2 while I still have Gamepass. Finally, a title that _doesn't_ struggle on the xbox one s.


----------



## Crungy

I feel like I've been playing the same games for years... GTA online, Fallout 3/NV/4/76, Oblivion, Skyrim and recently started Morrowind since I've never played it. Fallout 76 is the newest game I've played and I started it last year.

Whenever Starfield comes out I'll get an XBOX Series X if it sounds decent. If it sounds like Cyberpunk or FO76 in its early days I'll wait or pass. Then the long wait for ES6.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

I still want to play Assassins Creed Origins, I played AC Odyssey last year clocking in +100 hours but had to use lower graphics because my computer can't handle hi-res textures (2GB VRAM). AC Origins is performing like crap so I'm waiting until I can buy a better computer to play it on max settings since the visuals are a big part of the game IMO. I have actually bought all the mainline AC games on Steam with the frequent sales, and there's a few of them that I haven't played yet. The soundtracks in these games are a blast too..


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> Ah, coop. I hate the way the online system works in those games so I didn't really even consider that an option. I'm not going to get to that area again anytime soon I don't think so hopefully I'm not some super-high level at that point so I can't be summoned. However, I powerlevelled a lot less in DS2 than I did 1/3 so maybe I'll be close enough to normal to still see people.
> 
> The bell keeper one only took me an hour or two, it was just boring.


If you're already waist deep in NG+ or +2 it might be worth starting a new playthrough just to get all the miracles. Once my soul memory got too high summon signs virtually became extinct.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Got a PS5 invite from Sony for today, guess we'll see if it works. I'm still not sold on the idea that I need one yet, but hey, if I can get one for retail price, might as well. I can probably make my money back if I decide I don't want it.
> 
> EDIT: Got one! $601 with an extra controller and tax. Good compared to scalper prices! 2-3 days shipping, allegedly, though I don't know if that is just the speed after they acquire stock or if that's actually how many days I can expect before I get it.
> 
> I am not sure if I'm going to buy any games for it, though. Demon's Souls remains the only one I really want to play besides Bugsnax (which I already got through PS+), and it's still 70 dollars. No thanks! I do have a ton of games with free PS5 upgrades, and some other backlog games I might as well play on the PS5 for faster loadtimes, I guess!



First, welcome to the club. Second, so far, most of the games that have PS5 upgrades have been worth it in their native PS5 version.

That said, have an external HDD and set it so PS4 games automatically go there. If you already have one for PS4 games, just plug it in the back and you're good to go. But man, they need to do that internal storage expansion update soon...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Posting this here since Spiritfarer was my game of last year and I'll never shut up about recommending it to everyone and their cat.


----------



## wankerness

Just got the PS5. I did buy Demon's Souls. I look forward to immediately getting way too angry at it and giving up due to the whole "must complete entire level and kill boss without dying" thing it sounds like it has. Then again, it also seems to be generally considered much easier mechanically than the games that came after, apart from the "the game gets way harder if you die" thing, which sounds like total BS and like it's going to make me save scum.

So the PS5 can just read the same external hard drive as I have been using on the PS4? Unfortunately I tend to offload games there cause they load SO much slower off the spinning external hard drive than they do off the built-in SSD. Is it the same deal there, or does it have some kind of super-caching thing that it doesn't matter if a game's on internal vs external storage?

Seems like these are the games I have with PS5 versions included:
Borderlands 3
AC Valhalla
Immortals: Fenyx Rising
Jedi Fallen Order
Doom Eternal
Subnautica
Yakuza: Like a Dragon

And then these will have them, or maybe I have them? I don't remember what "version" of Control I bought. And I think you have to pay for upgrades for some of these if you got them via PS+ like I did (ex FF7).

Control
Witcher 3 (not out yet?)
FF7 Remake
Destiny 2
Ghost of Tsushima (foggy on this, it's not on lists of free upgrades but I seem to have read that it has one, or maybe it costs to upgrade)


----------



## thebeesknees22

I'm through chapter 14 on FF7 remake: Hard mode. 

so far so good. I could not beat the hell house in chapter 9. damned tonberries... I'll have to circle back later


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Just got the PS5. I did buy Demon's Souls. I look forward to immediately getting way too angry at it and giving up due to the whole "must complete entire level and kill boss without dying" thing it sounds like it has. Then again, it also seems to be generally considered much easier mechanically than the games that came after, apart from the "the game gets way harder if you die" thing, which sounds like total BS and like it's going to make me save scum.
> 
> So the PS5 can just read the same external hard drive as I have been using on the PS4? Unfortunately I tend to offload games there cause they load SO much slower off the spinning external hard drive than they do off the built-in SSD. Is it the same deal there, or does it have some kind of super-caching thing that it doesn't matter if a game's on internal vs external storage?
> 
> Seems like these are the games I have with PS5 versions included:
> Borderlands 3
> AC Valhalla
> Immortals: Fenyx Rising
> Jedi Fallen Order
> Doom Eternal
> Subnautica
> Yakuza: Like a Dragon
> 
> And then these will have them, or maybe I have them? I don't remember what "version" of Control I bought. And I think you have to pay for upgrades for some of these if you got them via PS+ like I did (ex FF7).
> 
> Control
> Witcher 3 (not out yet?)
> FF7 Remake
> Destiny 2
> Ghost of Tsushima (foggy on this, it's not on lists of free upgrades but I seem to have read that it has one, or maybe it costs to upgrade)



Ok, let's see..

External hard drive: Yup, just plug in the external you were using on your PS4 and you're good.

Control: Have to have the "Ultimate Edition". If you've been grabbing PS5 games off of PS Plus leading up to now, the Ultimate Edition was a PS5 free game on release date.

FFVII Remake: Correct, you can't upgrade the PS Plus version, which they noted when it came out.

Destiny 2: Yes, and it's gorgeous at 4K/60 and plays awesome.

Witcher 3: Not yet, but it will get a free upgrade in the fall. I imagine around the same time Cyberpunk gets it's native nezt-gen ports, which will also be free.

Ghost of Tsushima: So it's not a native PS5 version, but it got a patch where it runs 1800/60, and looks and plays amazing. It got me to plow through 25 hours straight on the game. There's going to be a PS5 native "Directors Cut" coming I believe next month. It's 30 bucks to upgrade from the PS4 version, but you get 4k/60, some QOL updates, an actual Japanese lip sync (only reason I didn't play it in Japanese originally was because of the lack of this), plus the whole new island expansion.

As for PS4 games on an external vs the internal drive, I'm not sure. I've just put everything PS4 on the external right away because of the size of the internal drive. The update to expand the internal storage should be coming soon.


----------



## Ralyks

Gotta ask, has anyone played Omori? Saw video of it, and it seems like the next logical step for me in the "games that look innocent but are actually fucked in the head" genre after Doki Doki Literature Club.


----------



## Choop

Started playing Guilty Gear Strive online on Saturday and have been going hard at it ever since. Playing Ky, he's fun! Also I can see why Sol is considered busted right now -- he is QUITE stronk. I finally beat a couple last night after having been dunked on by Sol players for the previous 3 days, but every fight is still so dangerous against Sol. It feels like he can convert off of anything and then you just have to watch your health bar melt. Ram is also pretty tough (largely considered S tier with Sol, or at least very close) but Sol has definitely proven to be a lot harder to fight for me anyway.


----------



## wankerness

Played some Demon's Souls, the total lack of bonfires thing really does make me feel more stressed while playing it than I get in Dark Souls games (except those occasional segments where you have to go a longass way between bonfires). I didn't die besides the first boss that 1-shots you ala Asylum Demon at the start of Dark Souls, but it was stressful! That first Phalanx boss took me a good 15 minutes of running around doing hit and run attacks - NOT a good boss for use with single-target magic spells!!! But man, magic is OP so far. Vastly moreso than in DS1, since you actually have a mana bar ala DS3 instead of the hard limits that made it completely non-viable at low levels in DS1/2.

Tried a few of the free games for PS5, and unsurprisingly I didn't like any of them one bit (Bugsnax, Maquette, Maneater). Ah well. I guess this may be a super-charged PS4 Pro for me for a while, besides Demon's Souls, and maybe I'll see if I can resume Borderlands 3 and AC:Valhalla with the PS5 versions (no way am I restarting either from the beginning). I don't see anything on the upcoming calendar I want to buy before Horizon's sequel. And I'm absolutely not touching Returnal since it sounds like a vastly more frustrating version of exactly my problem with Demon's Souls!!

I DO have the PS5 version of Control, apparently, but that's not a game I feel like replaying anytime soon. I am sort of curious to see how it runs, though. I bet it's a HUGE improvement.


----------



## TedEH

Can remember if I mentioned I've started playing Wolfenstein 2. I had started it up through the weird stream-to-your-phone thing just to see what would happen if I tried to play a game on my xbox while I was at a different address. I was surprised that it worked as well as it did. I mean... not _well _well, but better than unplayable. Since I had started anyway, I continued the save file and it's pretty decent. I feel like it lacks the novelty that the first game had and feels a bit same-y/generic as far as gameplay goes, but it's not a bad time. The story gets kinda zany/nonsensical, sometimes kinda edgy, but that's pretty standard for the series now I think. I had originally picked the easiest difficulty to compensate for the streaming thing and because I think of this as being a mouse-and-keyboard game, but I think I might have been better off with something higher 'cause it's pretty easy this way.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Choop said:


> Started playing Guilty Gear Strive online on Saturday and have been going hard at it ever since. Playing Ky, he's fun! Also I can see why Sol is considered busted right now -- he is QUITE stronk. I finally beat a couple last night after having been dunked on by Sol players for the previous 3 days, but every fight is still so dangerous against Sol. It feels like he can convert off of anything and then you just have to watch your health bar melt. Ram is also pretty tough (largely considered S tier with Sol, or at least very close) but Sol has definitely proven to be a lot harder to fight for me anyway.



Absolutely love the animations and overall direction in that game. Same studio from DragonBall Fighterz I believe.


----------



## Choop

CovertSovietBear said:


> Absolutely love the animations and overall direction in that game. Same studio from DragonBall Fighterz I believe.



Yup! It's Arcsys; they are constantly knocking it out of the park in the visuals department, and tend to have solid games overall.


----------



## wankerness

Trying to finish up the mass effect trilogy before focusing on Demon's Souls. I'm about 80% of the way through 3 on insanity, skipping the DLC, since all that's left is the third insanity trophy. I'm playing as a vanguard for the first time. I started with the charge/shotgun build and was dying CONSTANTLY, but then switched to a defensive build with SMGs and it's been pretty easy going since. Squad cryo ammo, incendiary ammo on myself, and all three of us with SMGs = everything dies in seconds. Then I have Liara with the singularity with the 2-3 second cooldown, and reave as a bonus power, so I can set off biotic explosions every 2-3 seconds with no danger to myself. Pretty much only use charge to recharge shields. It's the coward's way out, but boy is it fun melting things. 

Insanity in this game is much easier than ME2 in terms of enemies not all having multiple defenses that need to be stripped and thus there actually being some variety to possible playstyles. But, you sure die almost instantly if you get out in the open. Vanguard has a HUGE defensive advantage due to charge being on a 2 second cooldown and instantly refilling your shield, but you can die between casts of it pretty easily, and if you're far away from any enemies you can get caught defenseless. I got mowed down by turrets probably 30 or so times so far. The hardest part so far is when you get put between 3 Geth Primes at the end of the Rannoch segment, I died probably 6 or 7 times trying to get through that section, since biotics can't deal too well with shields and Geth Primes have very serious shields on top of spamming turrets and drones and extremely nasty gunfire. 

It was infuriating for a few hours, with me just constantly dying and not being able to make a dent in enemies, until the fully upgraded squad cryo with damage bonuses and upgraded incendiary ammo with explosions got specced out in addition to charge. I should have skipped all the early points in nova since I almost never use it unless I'm just trying to finish off a single enemy. It sure does a lot of damage, but it's VERY high risk.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Not specifically game related, but I upgraded our fiber internet package from 100 up/down to 250 up/down in our new house, along with a new, much beefier WiFi 6 router. I also realized a bit ago that my PC's wireless card only supported 2.4 GHz, so I also upgraded that to a dual band WiFi 6 capable card. 

I'm now downloading games on Steam at around 30 MB/s, and it is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge upgrade. Holy shit. 

Speaking of new games, I picked up Surving Mars last week because I've always been curious about it an like colony sim/survival games like Frostpunk. 
My buddy also gifted my Hades for my birthday so I'm pumped to start that.


----------



## StevenC

Skyward Sword HD. About 18 hours in, so I'm nearly done with the tutorial.

For real though, up to the Sand Sea. I remember why I liked this game so much the first time I played it. Some of the best dungeons and items in a Zelda ever, plus tweaks to the controls and other QoL improvements finally make the game as replayable as any other of the other 3D games.

Also it looks so good. My only complaint is that they didn't make Skyloft a seamless part of the rest of the sky, but that would have been a lot of work for a HD port.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Skyward Sword HD. About 18 hours in, so I'm nearly done with the tutorial.
> 
> For real though, up to the Sand Sea. I remember why I liked this game so much the first time I played it. Some of the best dungeons and items in a Zelda ever, plus tweaks to the controls and other QoL improvements finally make the game as replayable as any other of the other 3D games.
> 
> Also it looks so good. My only complaint is that they didn't make Skyloft a seamless part of the rest of the sky, but that would have been a lot of work for a HD port.



I'd like to play this version, but I started the Wii version about 6 months ago and got a few dungeons in. Not sure if I want to pay 60 more bucks and start over, since some of it was already kind of a chore. I'm curious as to how some of the motion stuff translates if you play NON-motion mode, since I hated it and was bad at being sure that I was hitting things at the right angle on the first try.

I was struck by how beautiful the character/level designs were, and how good the music was. It would REALLY benefit from HD. Maybe even moreso than Wind Waker did, and that game looks fantastic on Wii-U.

I'll probably wait for it to go on sale.

...for $40. In 2023 at the earliest.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I'd like to play this version, but I started the Wii version about 6 months ago and got a few dungeons in. Not sure if I want to pay 60 more bucks and start over, since some of it was already kind of a chore. I'm curious as to how some of the motion stuff translates if you play NON-motion mode, since I hated it and was bad at being sure that I was hitting things at the right angle on the first try.
> 
> I was struck by how beautiful the character/level designs were, and how good the music was. It would REALLY benefit from HD. Maybe even moreso than Wind Waker did, and that game looks fantastic on Wii-U.
> 
> I'll probably wait for it to go on sale.
> 
> ...for $40. In 2023 at the earliest.


Yeah, I have been using motion controls because they work now. Apparently the stick control is fine, but it means you lose the camera control some of the time. Which isn't a big deal in a game that didn't have camera control to begin with.

I'd say this is definitely the best way to play, if only for the removal of most of Fi's interruptions, skippable dialogue and cutscenes. I started replaying a year or two ago on Wii and got so sick of it that I think I stopped playing around the first dungeon, which is a really good dungeon.

60FPS for basically the whole game too. It's gorgeous.


----------



## TedEH

I've been debating whether or not I wanted to grab that one. But I've got enough Zelda games for a while. And enough of a backlog in general. And I've beaten it already on the Wii. I'll probably join those waiting for discounts/used copies.


----------



## mongey

been paying mario 3d world with my daughter . got it a while ago and never really played it much .

Its good . some clever level design in there ,and the mechanic where the other player goes into a bubble when off the screen is good for playing with little kids


----------



## Jarmake

BlackMastodon said:


> Not specifically game related, but I upgraded our fiber internet package from 100 up/down to 250 up/down in our new house, along with a new, much beefier WiFi 6 router. I also realized a bit ago that my PC's wireless card only supported 2.4 GHz, so I also upgraded that to a dual band WiFi 6 capable card.
> 
> I'm now downloading games on Steam at around 30 MB/s, and it is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge upgrade. Holy shit.
> 
> Speaking of new games, I picked up Surving Mars last week because I've always been curious about it an like colony sim/survival games like Frostpunk.
> My buddy also gifted my Hades for my birthday so I'm pumped to start that.




I did the same(ish) thing in the spring. I had 100M 4G connection and was pretty happy with it... Then the thing I had been waiting for happened and they installed fiber in my area and the price of joining in was quite low, so I got myself the slowest one possible. So it's 400M now and holy shit, what a difference. I've got cable from the router to my old gaming pc and 5Ghz wifi for everything else and damn it's fast.

Almost like the time when my family first got from 56k dial up modem to 2M adsl... It felt blazing fast.


----------



## wankerness

I finished ME3 on insanity and thus am totally done with Legendary editions unless I decide someday to replay it all again for fun. I had a much easier time on the last couple missions on Insanity than I did on normal just thanks to this overpowered vanguard build. Adept did not do so well with the "defend the missile trucks" section, that's for sure.

The PS5 is not getting much love from me. I was planning on using the PS5 to finish up AC Valhalla, but found out doing so resets all trophies, and after all the time I wasted doing 100% completion on most of the zones, I think I need to finish everything but the DLC on the PS4.

I was planning on checking out the new Borderlands 3 stuff (I last played the tentacles DLC but have both season passes), but found out the process for shifting save files to PS5 is very convoluted and would require me to install BOTH versions.

I was sort of curious to see some more Control DLC, but found out that saves are even more convoluted to switch than the previous two games and many people just gave up.

I wanted to play through the rest of Nier: Replicant, but using the button extension on the PS4 was making it much easier on the hands, and that extension obviously doesn't fit on the PS5 controller.

Fortunately I only played ONE level of Doom Eternal on PS4, so I guess I'll check that out sometime!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I wanted to play through the rest of Nier: Replicant, but using the button extension on the PS4 was making it much easier on the hands, and that extension obviously doesn't fit on the PS5 controller.



pretty sure you can use a DS4 for PS4 games on PS5


----------



## p0ke

Hah... Now I'm super happy I didn't pay full price for DS2 before - I just bought it at -70% -> 10€. So now I know what I'm playing after DS3


----------



## p0ke

Jarmake said:


> I did the same(ish) thing in the spring. I had 100M 4G connection and was pretty happy with it... Then the thing I had been waiting for happened and they installed fiber in my area and the price of joining in was quite low, so I got myself the slowest one possible. So it's 400M now and holy shit, what a difference. I've got cable from the router to my old gaming pc and 5Ghz wifi for everything else and damn it's fast.
> 
> Almost like the time when my family first got from 56k dial up modem to 2M adsl... It felt blazing fast.



Still running 100M 4G here. Our house has fiber installed, but I'd have to pay the 7-8k€ connection fee to use it (because the previous owners didn't pay it ~10 years ago when it was installed).
+ The monthly price is nearly triple the 4G price. So I can't really justify doing it yet.

I also remember going from 56K -> 1M. Also the reason we did the change was that it was cheaper already in 1998 (ish).


----------



## Jarmake

p0ke said:


> Still running 100M 4G here. Our house has fiber installed, but I'd have to pay the 7-8k€ connection fee to use it (because the previous owners didn't pay it ~10 years ago when it was installed).
> + The monthly price is nearly triple the 4G price. So I can't really justify doing it yet.
> 
> I also remember going from 56K -> 1M. Also the reason we did the change was that it was cheaper already in 1998 (ish).



Yeah.

When we first moved in our current house I wanted to connect to the fiber, but it was a few thousand euros too, so I never did it. Last year DNA contacted us and said that they're doing work in my area, so if I want to connect to it they'll do it for 400 euros. Ofcourse I did it and here we are. 400M connection is something like 30 euros per month and I'll gladly pay it to get rid of the 4G connection.

And I can upgrade our speed to 1G if I want.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I also just found out that you can convert coax connections to Ethernet?? I dunno how exactly that works but I'm curious what the speeds are.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> pretty sure you can use a DS4 for PS4 games on PS5



really? If so, I guess I can retire the PS4 entirely! Maybe it’s even worth reselling considering ps4 pros seem to be out of production.


----------



## TedEH

Just got to the end of Wolf 2. For some reason I was expecting it to be a bit longer. I think I basically said it already, but it's a pretty good generic shooter where all the mechanical novelty has run out since the last game. It's got some "stealth mechanics" but I don't find they work very well. The narrative is kinda all over the place. Sometimes funny, sometimes pointed, sometimes edgy for the sake of edgy, sometimes nonsensical, and a bunch of narrative paths don't actually get resolved which is kinda disappointing. The end credits song is as bad as people say it is. There's definitely some cool/fun set pieces though.

It's not a baaaad game, I enjoyed playing it. It's just got some weirdness to it.

I also had some weird texture problems where I got speckled rainbow textures, but no crashed or anything.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> really? If so, I guess I can retire the PS4 entirely! Maybe it’s even worth reselling considering ps4 pros seem to be out of production.



Yeah, I ended up selling my PS4 Pro. I was gonna keep it as an entertainment center in my bedroom, and but it ended up sitting there, so I sold it. Besides, my PS3 still holds residence in my bedroom if I want to play a game in bed.

But yes. You can use a DualShock 4 on your PS5 for PS4 games.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Fired up the PS4 for a couple sessions in THPS1+2

I was going to play some more of my PS3 PS+ backlog, but apparently my super slim PS3 was junked by the storm last month. Atleast I think it was. It was plugged into the same surge protector the rest of my systems were, but for some reason it's the only one that I'm having electrical issue with. I'm assuming it's just the power supply. I thought it was the HDD at first, but I put it in my regular slim and it booted up fine. Granted, it didn't recognize it, but it did work.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> The PS5 is not getting much love from me. I was planning on using the PS5 to finish up AC Valhalla, but found out doing so resets all trophies, and after all the time I wasted doing 100% completion on most of the zones, I think I need to finish everything but the DLC on the PS4.



I find it weird how selective they are withcarrying over trophies. Like, Spider-Man Remastered and FFVII Remake, as soon as I ported my saves from the PS4 versions to the PS5, it gave me all of the trophies I had from both games on the PS4 to the PS5 versions right as I loaded the game up. And I had the Platinum for Spider-Man already, so, well, I get another Platinum by booting up the game  Actually, I started the PS4 versions of Doki Doki Literature Club last night because even though I got the Platinum on the PS5 version, I know the game way too well enough that I think I can Platinum it again in a fraction of the time. Plus, I just like that game way too much...

But yeah, the save transfer thing for Borderlands, a bunch of games with PS5 ports are the same way. Don't get why Sony didn't do the Smart Delivery system Microsoft has going on the Xbox side.


----------



## StevenC

Getting through Skyward Sword. Up to the 6th dungeon and the game is still holding up. Helps that the 3rd, 4th and 5th dungeons are some of my favourites in all of Zelda.

Since getting the bow I keep trying to hop and take it out in combat. BotW really sped these games up.


----------



## p0ke

Jarmake said:


> Yeah.
> 
> When we first moved in our current house I wanted to connect to the fiber, but it was a few thousand euros too, so I never did it. Last year DNA contacted us and said that they're doing work in my area, so if I want to connect to it they'll do it for 400 euros. Ofcourse I did it and here we are. 400M connection is something like 30 euros per month and I'll gladly pay it to get rid of the 4G connection.
> 
> And I can upgrade our speed to 1G if I want.



Yup, future proofing is kinda why I'm still constantly considering fiber. Here they're already advertising 10G connections and even more should be possible once the operators' equipment supports it. 
But for now 4G is enough, we only have one TV and it's not even 4K. And I'm only paying 9,90 per month for it.


----------



## Jarmake

YES!

Micolash, the yodeler of the shitty dream is dead. Freaking finally.

He was the most annoying one of all the bosses I've beaten so far. I guess there's only Mergo's wet nurse, Gehrman the first hunter and the Moon presence (and I've got to hunt those ubilical cords down before it) left of the mandatory bosses.

I am going to kick Mergo's wet nurses ass next, hunt down the two umbilical cords and start slaying all those optional bosses, before going to the dlc area. And after the dlc I am going to beat Gehrman and the moon presence... 

Well, that's the plan anyway. But I suspect there's a lot of dying coming my way before it's done.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> YES!
> 
> Micolash, the yodeler of the shitty dream is dead. Freaking finally.
> 
> He was the most annoying one of all the bosses I've beaten so far. I guess there's only Mergo's wet nurse, Gehrman the first hunter and the Moon presence (and I've got to hunt those ubilical cords down before it) left of the mandatory bosses.
> 
> I am going to kick Mergo's wet nurses ass next, hunt down the two umbilical cords and start slaying all those optional bosses, before going to the dlc area. And after the dlc I am going to beat Gehrman and the moon presence...
> 
> Well, that's the plan anyway. But I suspect there's a lot of dying coming my way before it's done.



Does this mean you skipped the optional bosses? Ex Celestial Emissary and Ebrietas?

You should definitely do all regular bosses other than Gehrman/Moon Presence BEFORE the DLC since they're much lower in difficulty and the DLC will kick your ass if you're not pretty powered up. I think Ebrietas is often considered the hardest non-DLC boss. I dunno, I killed her first shot without really getting a good idea of how the fight worked, but I had done some grinding on those pigs and was pretty overpowered.

I didn't realize Cleric Beast, Witches of Hemwick, Amygdala, Bloodstarved Beast, Martyr Logarius, and Darkbeast Paarl were optional till right now. I knew Laurence was in the DLC, and Ebrietas/Celestial Emissary, but that was it! Martyr Logarius felt very important just as far as how "epic" the fight seemed, but I guess you can just skip him. Crazy.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Does this mean you skipped the optional bosses? Ex Celestial Emissary and Ebrietas?
> 
> You should definitely do all regular bosses other than Gehrman/Moon Presence BEFORE the DLC since they're much lower in difficulty and the DLC will kick your ass if you're not pretty powered up. I think Ebrietas is often considered the hardest non-DLC boss. I dunno, I killed her first shot without really getting a good idea of how the fight worked, but I had done some grinding on those pigs and was pretty overpowered.
> 
> I didn't realize Cleric Beast, Witches of Hemwick, Amygdala, Bloodstarved Beast, Martyr Logarius, and Darkbeast Paarl were optional till right now. I knew Laurence was in the DLC, and Ebrietas/Celestial Emissary, but that was it! Martyr Logarius felt very important just as far as how "epic" the fight seemed, but I guess you can just skip him. Crazy.



All of those fights were mandatory as far as I could tell, lol. Like I’m sure the way to skip them is “obvious” upon replays to others but personally I’m so bad at messing around to figure out order skips in these games. 

Plus some bosses are kind of easy and are worth doing as just exp piñatas. I would not have guessed that many were skippable.


----------



## wankerness

Trying to finish AC: Valhalla, I'm over a hundred hours in, and it just WON'T END. I am really starting to hate this game. Everything's just such an unbelievable slog. Every mission's like "GO TALK TO THIS GUY, 1500 YDS FROM ANY FAST TRAVEL POINT!" you get there, they're gone, someone else says "I think I saw him 1500 Yds away from some other fast travel point!" Watch loading screen for ~1 minute, run through more bland copy/paste woods for a few minutes, repeat repeat repeat. EVERY territory has a painfully long and boring questline, and I'm not even back to Norway again! 

AC: Odyssey felt short and effortless, partly cause the areas were so much more vibrant, partly cause the boat was actually kinda fun, partly cause it didn't just flagrantly waste your time constantly by forcing you to travel long distances manually. 

I did finish the cairn from hell. Hopefully there's not more in Norway.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Trying to finish AC: Valhalla, I'm over a hundred hours in, and it just WON'T END. I am really starting to hate this game. Everything's just such an unbelievable slog. Every mission's like "GO TALK TO THIS GUY, 1500 YDS FROM ANY FAST TRAVEL POINT!" you get there, they're gone, someone else says "I think I saw him 1500 Yds away from some other fast travel point!" Watch loading screen for ~1 minute, run through more bland copy/paste woods for a few minutes, repeat repeat repeat. EVERY territory has a painfully long and boring questline, and I'm not even back to Norway again!
> 
> AC: Odyssey felt short and effortless, partly cause the areas were so much more vibrant, partly cause the boat was actually kinda fun, partly cause it didn't just flagrantly waste your time constantly by forcing you to travel long distances manually.
> 
> I did finish the cairn from hell. Hopefully there's not more in Norway.



You're right, it never ends. I don't know, it sometimes feels more like a MMORPG than a single player game.

It never ends.

I stopped playing it a few days ago, though 

And I plan never to return to it. In fact, I don't think I'm ever playing a Ubisoft (or Bethesda) game again. I've had enough AAA open world super big budget cookie cutter games for a lifetime. That's not to say that those are bad games, though, just not for me.

I'm not an old grumpy man by any means (well, I am, but I'm not one of those people who lives in the past), but I'm not really finding new games I like since who knows when... I only *liked* maybe 3 or 4 games on the PS4, and then I find myself playing those games again and again, and also remasters / remakes I already played on the PS3 / PS2 / etc. That's why I bought Mass Effect LE on release day.

That said, I spent 10 (or 5?) dollars buying the Batman Arkham games remasters for the PS4, great games.

I hope we don't have to wait a lot for the next God of War and Horizon: Forbidden West, I really liked GoW and HZD. In fact, GoW was the reason I bought a PS4 a few years ago.


----------



## TedEH

Maybe I'm a bit biased, but I feel like some Bethesda games at least try to build an interesting world. I tend to prefer Ubi's games on a mechanical level, but the last few games from the I tried were open worlds as just giant boring maps to jam objective markers everywhere and "stories" that made zero narrative sense. Those big AAA open worldy games though can't really do much new without taking an unacceptable amount of risk so....... I don't expect much to change soon.

Dunno why I picked this one in particular, but I never finished Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, so I'm taking another crack at that one. Seems like a decent game that I just wasn't in the right mood for before. 

Slightly sad though - I was gonna use the gameboy micro I have to play it, but one of the shoulder buttons broke and I've been having a rough time trying to fix it because of how tightly put together this thing is. I got it moooostly working but managed to accidentally cause a weird clicky sound in the dpad that shouldn't be there when you let go - I think the domes are sitting in the wrong spot. I also think I might have accidentally got some contact cleaner under the screen 'cause there's a little blotchy spot. It's a shame, cause I like this little thing, and they're kinda expensive because they're not super common.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> You're right, it never ends. I don't know, it sometimes feels more like a MMORPG than a single player game.
> 
> It never ends.
> 
> I stopped playing it a few days ago, though
> 
> And I plan never to return to it. In fact, I don't think I'm ever playing a Ubisoft (or Bethesda) game again. I've had enough AAA open world super big budget cookie cutter games for a lifetime. That's not to say that those are bad games, though, just not for me.
> 
> I'm not an old grumpy man by any means (well, I am, but I'm not one of those people who lives in the past), but I'm not really finding new games I like since who knows when... I only *liked* maybe 3 or 4 games on the PS4, and then I find myself playing those games again and again, and also remasters / remakes I already played on the PS3 / PS2 / etc. That's why I bought Mass Effect LE on release day.
> 
> That said, I spent 10 (or 5?) dollars buying the Batman Arkham games remasters for the PS4, great games.
> 
> I hope we don't have to wait a lot for the next God of War and Horizon: Forbidden West, I really liked GoW and HZD. In fact, GoW was the reason I bought a PS4 a few years ago.



I played and enjoyed several Ubisoft games, particularly the Far Cry games, but AC: Valhalla and Immortals: Fenyx Rising really turned me against them. I don't know if they're actually worse than their previous games, or if I just hit a limit with games that take 50+ hours (100+ with AC Valhalla!!) to finish thanks to repetitive maps that are big for the sake of big. I would MUCH rather have a tighter, more curated game experience. Like God of War, or the Fromsoft games. I don't remember at all how long HZD was, but that one's gameplay/combat was so fun that running around didn't feel like a boring chore, unlike AC: Valhalla where all you do is fight the same handful of enemies over and over without any real variance in combat/tactics apart from some guys being easier if you bother hitting parry or dodge instead of just mashing R1. Not to mention the story for HZD was actually somewhat interesting, as opposed to the garbage fire that is AC: Valhalla with its tons of plotlines with helping some regional lord to power or whatever that never have any payoff relative to the main boring plot of your old buddy who loses his arm and goes nuts.

I finished the main plot last night eventually, and it was SUCH a goddam slog. Especially the last section, where you go to Valhalla, and have to play the same section repeatedly, because it's Valhalla and everything just resets!!! Ugh. And then the bullshit with the "modern day" plot and having to play as the mean woman with the staff who was in the previous couple games. UGH.

Now I have to do some completionist clean-up to get the platinum (I might give up - I REALLY don't want to play that horrible card game and win against every opponent, the matches are SO boring and take several minutes each, and the fishing's pretty crappy and I don't know how many more I need to catch everything), and then maybe I'll upgrade it to the PS5 version and at least check out the DLC, since I foolishly bought the season pass before playing the game. The last DLC in Odyssey actually had the best content in the game, so I'll certainly give it a chance.

EDIT: Noticed your Batman thing. I remember loving Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, but I think that Arkham City might be one of the earliest examples of the "big for the sake of big" style of open world. Like, mainly just with the stupid Riddler trophies. There are a lot of little sub-story things where you investigate a few crime scenes and then have a run-in with some classic batman villain which are fine, but the riddler trophies are just a ridiculous waste of time since there are like, hundreds of them and they're EVERYWHERE and getting them all takes forever and doesn't have much payoff. I haven't actually replayed the game, but just thinking back on it makes me think I might lose interest with it. I have played AA a few times and that one holds up and didn't have nearly as much filler content.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I played and enjoyed several Ubisoft games, particularly the Far Cry games, but AC: Valhalla and Immortals: Fenyx Rising really turned me against them. I don't know if they're actually worse than their previous games, or if I just hit a limit with games that take 50+ hours (100+ with AC Valhalla!!) to finish thanks to repetitive maps that are big for the sake of big. I would MUCH rather have a tighter, more curated game experience. Like God of War, or the Fromsoft games. I don't remember at all how long HZD was, but that one's gameplay/combat was so fun that running around didn't feel like a boring chore, unlike AC: Valhalla where all you do is fight the same handful of enemies over and over without any real variance in combat/tactics apart from some guys being easier if you bother hitting parry or dodge instead of just mashing R1. Not to mention the story for HZD was actually somewhat interesting, as opposed to the garbage fire that is AC: Valhalla with its tons of plotlines with helping some regional lord to power or whatever that never have any payoff relative to the main boring plot of your old buddy who loses his arm and goes nuts.
> 
> I finished the main plot last night eventually, and it was SUCH a goddam slog. Especially the last section, where you go to Valhalla, and have to play the same section repeatedly, because it's Valhalla and everything just resets!!! Ugh. And then the bullshit with the "modern day" plot and having to play as the mean woman with the staff who was in the previous couple games. UGH.
> 
> Now I have to do some completionist clean-up to get the platinum (I might give up - I REALLY don't want to play that horrible card game and win against every opponent, the matches are SO boring and take several minutes each, and the fishing's pretty crappy and I don't know how many more I need to catch everything), and then maybe I'll upgrade it to the PS5 version and at least check out the DLC, since I foolishly bought the season pass before playing the game. The last DLC in Odyssey actually had the best content in the game, so I'll certainly give it a chance.
> 
> EDIT: Noticed your Batman thing. I remember loving Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, but I think that Arkham City might be one of the earliest examples of the "big for the sake of big" style of open world. Like, mainly just with the stupid Riddler trophies. There are a lot of little sub-story things where you investigate a few crime scenes and then have a run-in with some classic batman villain which are fine, but the riddler trophies are just a ridiculous waste of time since there are like, hundreds of them and they're EVERYWHERE and getting them all takes forever and doesn't have much payoff. I haven't actually replayed the game, but just thinking back on it makes me think I might lose interest with it. I have played AA a few times and that one holds up and didn't have nearly as much filler content.



I agree on everything.

I'd rather play God of War (or any other short-ish more focused game of my liking) several times rather than a single playthrough of Valhalla. But... lesson learned, no more Ubisoft games for me. HZD was big IIRC, but the gameplay and story really hooked me.

About the Arkham games: you're right about the ridiculous amount of riddler thropies in Arkham City (I remember that's exactly what I thought back then when I played the game in 2013 or so: "282 of these things, what the fuck?!"). There's no reason to have so many bullshit collectibles. Arkham Asylum is a smaller game, but there's a fair amount of them too IIRC. But I ended up playing the games at least two or three times, so I collected more and more thropies until I got them all.

Also gameplay is really good, acting is great, I like the settings and general atmosphere, and I don't really remember much about the stories, so it's always fun to play those games again.


----------



## Jarmake

wankerness said:


> Does this mean you skipped the optional bosses? Ex Celestial Emissary and Ebrietas?
> 
> You should definitely do all regular bosses other than Gehrman/Moon Presence BEFORE the DLC since they're much lower in difficulty and the DLC will kick your ass if you're not pretty powered up. I think Ebrietas is often considered the hardest non-DLC boss. I dunno, I killed her first shot without really getting a good idea of how the fight worked, but I had done some grinding on those pigs and was pretty overpowered.
> 
> I didn't realize Cleric Beast, Witches of Hemwick, Amygdala, Bloodstarved Beast, Martyr Logarius, and Darkbeast Paarl were optional till right now. I knew Laurence was in the DLC, and Ebrietas/Celestial Emissary, but that was it! Martyr Logarius felt very important just as far as how "epic" the fight seemed, but I guess you can just skip him. Crazy.



Yeah, I haven't yet killed Martyr Logarius, Amygdala, the Celestial Emissary or Ebrietas, nor any of the DLC bosses.

Today I found my way to Mergo's wet nurse, but didn't fight it yet, since my kids got home and started watching... I'm very glad the shadows of yharnam -guys aren't as powerful as they were as a boss battle!


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Not to mention the story for HZD was actually somewhat interesting, as opposed to the garbage fire that is AC: Valhalla


Damn, that's a serious burn.


----------



## Mathemagician

I need to just sit down and start on the main story quests for Horizon. I liked the game a lot. But I’m barely out of the tutorial area and I want to “explore” everything but like…I don’t want to commit that much time. 

I got to get better at just playing the story.


----------



## TedEH

IMO that one is worthwhile doing the actual story. I've heard a bunch of people end up losing interest because they just explore and collect all the things, but IMO a lot of the meat of the game is along the main quest.


----------



## StevenC

Mathemagician said:


> I need to just sit down and start on the main story quests for Horizon.


No you don't.


----------



## Mathemagician

StevenC said:


> No you don't.



I can’t tell if you’re just encouraging my neediness to do side quests. Or if you just hate that game, lol.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I need to just sit down and start on the main story quests for Horizon. I liked the game a lot. But I’m barely out of the tutorial area and I want to “explore” everything but like…I don’t want to commit that much time.
> 
> I got to get better at just playing the story.



The main story has bad characters (especially Cedric Daniels and most of the tribesmen you encounter) and hackneyed situations, but the actual whole setup and world is pretty cool and I really like how they introduce the apocalypse backstory in the back third of the plot. Compared to other open-world games, it's a very distant second in the plot department to The Witcher 3, but it's a lot better than pretty much any mainline ubisoft game or Ghost of Tsushima or whatever.

I think as far as "side quests" go they're worth doing to level up, and the DLC has got some great stuff in it, but overall most of the satisfaction from the game will come from the main plot and from just fighting the various monsters in the overworld. I don't recall if the main plot makes you fight every type of monster or not, ex those incredibly annoying giant worms or the huge birds.

I definitely get the impression StevenC hates that game's plot.


----------



## StevenC

Mathemagician said:


> I can’t tell if you’re just encouraging my neediness to do side quests. Or if you just hate that game, lol.


I hate that game.

Also the story is a piece of garbage. The ending is just so lame. The setup for the scenario has you wondering what happened for the whole game then in the last two minutes there's an audio log that makes Aloy say "I don't like where this is going" at the same time I said exactly the same thing. They had a world they wanted to make a game in, and instead of doing that they made the whole story about how the world got that way. So it essentially undoes all your investment in the world because it is so unearned.

The game is OK for gameplay and stuff. The best sidequest chain is like 3 missions long. The collection and upgrades are tedious. I played the whole thing because I'd heard so many good reviews and was waiting for the good bit. But before I got to it the story ended and I hated the whole game.


----------



## Ralyks

Got the Platinum for the PS4 version of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, so I have 100%ed both the PS4 and PS5 versions and have confirmed I am a sad, sad man.

Then I went right back to Scarlet Nexus.


----------



## TedEH

TedEH said:


> Slightly sad though - I was gonna use the gameboy micro I have to play it, but one of the shoulder buttons broke and I've been having a rough time trying to fix it because of how tightly put together this thing is. I got it moooostly working but managed to accidentally cause a weird clicky sound in the dpad that shouldn't be there when you let go - I think the domes are sitting in the wrong spot. I also think I might have accidentally got some contact cleaner under the screen 'cause there's a little blotchy spot. It's a shame, cause I like this little thing, and they're kinda expensive because they're not super common.


Slight update if anyone cares for some reason: I came back to this and I think I have it working again. The shoulder buttons are doing what they should (I think the microswitches were dirty), I moved the domes back where they belong, and reassembled more carefully. The screen does have some funky stuff going on, but you can only really see it when the screen is on, fully white, and viewed at an angle soooo not the end of the world. If it ends up bothering me enough, maybe I can find a replacement panel online or something - at this point I'm confident enough with the teardown that I think it would work out ok.


----------



## Choop

Doing Halo 3 currently on Heroic. I didn't like it much at first, especially after having played the MCC version of Halo 2, but it has definitely improved. I think it's just the first little string of missions that aren't all that fun when you are in the bunker base and have to do some backtracking. The Brutes are a bit more annoying to fight in this one since they're often wearing helmets and armor, but the Flood appear to be a bit easier to deal with at least as far as I've gotten.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Ralyks said:


> Got the Platinum for the PS4 version of Doki Doki Literature Club Plus, so I have 100%ed both the PS4 and PS5 versions and have confirmed I am a sad, sad man.


You may be sad, but at least you've got +2 platinums. Alternatively I have no platinums on any of my PlayStations even for games I've played since 2015 :0


----------



## TedEH

TedEH said:


> Slight update if anyone cares for some reason


New update: I impulse purchased a replacement lcd for that same gameboy from aliexpress. We'll see what happens.


----------



## Ralyks

CovertSovietBear said:


> You may be sad, but at least you've got +2 platinums. Alternatively I have no platinums on any of my PlayStations even for games I've played since 2015 :0



I have 21 Platinums, so bury myself further. I'm a single dad to a 6 years old so once he's in bed, it's guitar or game time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, Scarlet Nexus is still damn good. Think I'm getting close to ending my playthrough with Yuito.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Ralyks said:


> I have 21 Platinums, so bury myself further. I'm a single dad to a 6 years old so once he's in bed, it's guitar or game time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Anyway, Scarlet Nexus is still damn good. Think I'm getting close to ending my playthrough with Yuito.


Just looked up Scarlet Nexus, I've got no context but it looks damn good. Looks like Megaman X Command Mission which I had on the GameCube? May have to buy it now...


----------



## Ralyks

CovertSovietBear said:


> Just looked up Scarlet Nexus, I've got no context but it looks damn good. Looks like Megaman X Command Mission which I had on the GameCube? May have to buy it now...



Noooo, definitely not like Command Mission. This is an action RPG rather than turn based. Although now I want to go back and play that game.
I'd say it's much closer to NieR:Automata, but flashier. I'm 20 hours in and I'm definitely enjoying myself. That said, it's an anime-ass anime presentation and story, so be aware going in.
And don't worry about context. I think Honest Game Trailers said it best "it's like a game based on an anime, Only you don't have to watch 600 episodes to figure out what's going on". That said, there is an anime on Funimation


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Ralyks said:


> I'd say it's much closer to NieR:Automata, but flashier. I'm 20 hours in and I'm definitely enjoying myself. That said, it's an anime-ass anime
> That said, there is an anime on Funimation


Say no more captain 
I had Command Mission somewhere but the box has DBZ Budokai 2 in it, not sure where that got dumped when I moved. Super fun too


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished Tokyo Xanadu. Normal ending, true ending and the after story ending, because doing the Wayne's World style ending wasn't enough here. But unlike Cold Steel 4, TX adds more gameplay, extra dungeons and even an extra playable character (albeit sucks), but it's still substantial content so it's worth the extra 12 or so hours of playtime. Also turns out that NG+ adds another 4-6 dungeons but I can't be assed. 

My opinion on this being "like Persona and Ys but not as good as either" remains unchanged, but it's charming enough to get over all the flaws and see through the very end. Granted that if I played this before Ys VIII or Trials of Mana, my opinion would've been different. 

Though turns out all I play is Nihon Falcom games of late. Tokyo Xanadu made me itch for Ys IX Monstrum Nox, so I started that. I do appreciate the game going full meta right off the bad and the main character is interrogated on being on too many shipwrecks.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Finished Spiderman yesterday, and I quite enjoyed it. The story was great and the combat/webslinging was easily the most enjoyable part. I had more fun just cruising around the city visiting landmarks and clearing thug bases than I did doing some of the other "activities" (like the godawful pigeon chases). 
I probably won't bother with the Miles Morales sequel tbh as I already have a backlog of games to get through.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Noooo, definitely not like Command Mission. This is an action RPG rather than turn based. Although now I want to go back and play that game.
> I'd say it's much closer to NieR:Automata, but flashier. I'm 20 hours in and I'm definitely enjoying myself. That said, it's an anime-ass anime presentation and story, so be aware going in.
> And don't worry about context. I think Honest Game Trailers said it best "it's like a game based on an anime, Only you don't have to watch 600 episodes to figure out what's going on". That said, there is an anime on Funimation



Hmm, that game looks/sounds cool. I'll have to wait for it to get cheaper, though.

Finally platinum'd AC:Valhalla so I could convert it over to PS5 and play the DLC without resetting trophy progress. The only really noticeable differences seemed to be framerate and radically faster loadtimes, but as that game had some of the worst loadtimes of any game I've played recently when playing the PS4 version off USB, that is a big selling point. Now it's like 5 seconds to teleport anywhere instead of 60+. The game still pisses me off. The cairns are the worst part, but the tattoo chasing is awful, too. The trophies for getting all the fish and especially beating all the Orlog players were a grind, since I hadn't done the latter AT ALL when clearing out zones, and the former can be very tedious since some of the fish are "rare spawns" and zones don't respawn fish if you scare them all away unless you like completely leave the region, rest for days, and come back. And it's way too big, with way too boring and repetitive of a map compared to the last two AC games. And the story is terrible compared to Origins (and way too long and unmemorable compared to Odyssey's, even). I will say that using Thor's hammer is pretty fun, though!! And overall, it's definitely less obnoxious than Immortals: Fenyx Rising with that game's endless goddam vaults - it's like if this game had consisted entirely of the awful platforming "anomalies." I do like the art style and enemies on that one more, though.

I am getting a bit tempted by Returnal being on sale for 50, but I have to resist cause I know I'd just hate the roguelike mechanic, especially considering how deliberately and slowly I like to play soulslikes and knowing just how much I'd have to redo on death every time. Ugh.

I'm also interested in YS IX, but waiting for it to go on sale. Guess I'll continue with AC: Valhalla DLC for a bit before going back for round 2 of Demon's Souls.


----------



## gabito

Replaying Batman Arkham City for the nth time (this time on PS4) and having lots of fun. It shows its age a bit, but it's still a great game.

Should have started by (re)playing Arkham Asylum first, but I enjoy playing this one more.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished the Yuito playthrough of Scarlet Nexus. Really enjoyed it. Probably gonna wait a day or two before I start the Kasane playthrough. Kinda itching to go back to Shin Megami Tensai III.


----------



## SpaceDock

I am 50 hours deep in Yakuza LaD and it is easily the best Yakuza to date.


----------



## Ralyks

SpaceDock said:


> I am 50 hours deep in Yakuza LaD and it is easily the best Yakuza to date.



Like a Dragon may seriously go down on my all time list. I still want to eventually Platinum it. And I'm actually pretty damn happy that Yakuza is taking the JRPG route going forward.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Hades is good. Perfect bite sized gameplay for when I only have like an hour to kill. 

Between Hades and Monster Hunter Rise I'm seeing a trend in only playing games where I can pick it up for an hour and then leave it for a while.


----------



## wankerness

Played some more AC:Valhallaruids, hit a cairn that was horrible on a similar level to the Hamtunscire one, quit the game.

Played some more Demon's Souls, beat the Tower Knight. I died twice - once on the last run through dragon fire where you hit a group of archers and a blue-eyed knight all clustered together that I wasn't ready for, and then once to the boss since I didn't know about the cling ring on the first try so I got 1-shot by his shield attack since I had a piddly 10 vitality and was in soul form! The guy's mechanics are super-simple but without the button extension I had on PS4 it's VERY hard to play with the camera unlocked since you can't control the right stick and be able to roll without some stupid crab-claw grip. Then I went and got the crescent falchion (some OP magic sword that you can get early) and also spent ~15 minutes shooting down the red dragon with soul spears for a lot of souls. I'm playing the game on easy-mode (Royalty class, with that sword) but it still is pretty scary. The dogs in this game seem even more annoying than in the Dark Souls games, which is saying something. And god, those awful skeletons that spam roll everywhere are terrifying.


----------



## p0ke

Almost done with the first DLC in DS3, only the final boss left. She's pretty tough though. The first two phases are just about up to par with the normal bosses in the game but the third one is hard. While the phantom is alive everything goes fine and I can get some backstabs and two handed hits in, but he generally dies before the boss gets to 50% and then I have a very hard time getting any hits in. I've been annoyingly close a few times though.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Almost done with the first DLC in DS3, only the final boss left. She's pretty tough though. The first two phases are just about up to par with the normal bosses in the game but the third one is hard. While the phantom is alive everything goes fine and I can get some backstabs and two handed hits in, but he generally dies before the boss gets to 50% and then I have a very hard time getting any hits in. I've been annoyingly close a few times though.



Are you using the phantom for help? I ended up killing the other guy as fast as possible and then just nuking her with chaos fireballs as fast as possible before the phantom died, and then there was very little of her health left that I had to deal with by the time I was alone against her (though my build was a weird one that prioritized int and faith since I was using enchanted weapons, wouldn't work too well with low int).

EDIT: Oh, for some reason I read your post as you talking about the big guy that you fight at the same time in the first couple phases. Yeah, you have to burn down the big guy really fast to have a chance of the phantom being alive long enough for you to wail on Frieda. It was kinda luck-based, I think. Sometimes he'd die nearly instantly, other times he'd hang on for minutes. Seemed to depend on what attacks Frieda chose to use and if the big guy also decided to go after him.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

played the ZOE2 remake and man has that game aged terribly. Awful VO work/dialogue/camera, but the mecha designs are still awesome and the gameplay is still kind of fun, if repetitive.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Are you using the phantom for help? I ended up killing the other guy as fast as possible and then just nuking her with chaos fireballs as fast as possible before the phantom died, and then there was very little of her health left that I had to deal with by the time I was alone against her (though my build was a weird one that prioritized int and faith since I was using enchanted weapons, wouldn't work too well with low int).
> 
> EDIT: Oh, for some reason I read your post as you talking about the big guy that you fight at the same time in the first couple phases. Yeah, you have to burn down the big guy really fast to have a chance of the phantom being alive long enough for you to wail on Frieda. It was kinda luck-based, I think. Sometimes he'd die nearly instantly, other times he'd hang on for minutes. Seemed to depend on what attacks Frieda chose to use and if the big guy also decided to go after him.



Yeah, it's very luck based for sure... 
I'm basically trying to do what you described (except hitting hard with a two handed sword) but her health hasn't gone low enough yet. The big guy is a piece of cake by the way, as long as I have the phantom with me. A few more attempts and I'll have her, I'm absolutely sure.
The phantom is kinda interesting, as he spawns at the start of the second phase. It's great that way though, as he's most helpful at that point.

I'm starting to have too many games to play now: I just bought the remastered Mafia trilogy. I never originally finished the first game when it came out and somehow missed the other two, so I'm really looking forward to getting into those.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

KnightBrolaire said:


> ZOE2 Awful dialogue



It's Hideo Kojima. He's always always written awful dialogue in every single one of his games.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's Hideo Kojima. He's always always written awful dialogue in every single one of his games.


Yeah but I tolerate it in the MGS series largely because the voice actors are pretty good. The ones in ZOE2 are atrocious. La Blue girl has better english VO work


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Seemed to depend on what attacks Frieda chose to use and if the big guy also decided to go after him.



Got her now - I killed the big guy so quickly, the phantom survived until the end of the fight. It actually killed the boss for me  because I was just backing of to heal when it happened.

Now I think I'll play some different games (Mafia mainly) before getting into the second DLC and DS2.


----------



## Jarmake

Played some bloodborne today. I decided to check out the upper cathedral ward. There was some mean wolves there and some coc...brain suckers, which, as always, are a pain in the arse. But I got a key to the oprhanage and the make contact gesture, so it's alright.

Went right into the celestial emissary hall, saw one testiclehead that wasn't moving and planted my ass straight next to it... Then I pulled out my trusty +10 hunter axe and did some r2 pirouettes with it. Four of them to be exact. Killed all the testicle mobs and also the emissary. It did transform to it's second phase, but a testiclehead is a testiclehead and I gave the scrotum a shave with the axe and never took a single hit myself.

Next up is Ebrietas, I believe... We'll see how that one goes later


----------



## MFB

Man, I don't think any area first scared the piss out of me as much as the upper cathedral area where you have those first three lycans. The one in the corridor who's eyes you don't notice until it's too late, then the fog in the main area obscures visibility for the other two (or three?), it's was a straight up sensory attack.

On the other hand though, you can door block them at the corridor and R2 thrust with LHS/Hunter's Axe transformed mode to kill them pretty quickly


----------



## Jarmake

The falling chandelier and the following darkness with those werewolves... And that goddamn constant slurping sound of the suckers paired with the ominous music! It was quite intense indeed.


----------



## TedEH

I'm realizing now that I'm getting close to my gamepass trial expiring and I had meant to try out Nier Automata while it's available - those who have played it, do you think it's worthwhile trying to get through that one within about a week and a half to two weeks?


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Man, I don't think any area first scared the piss out of me as much as the upper cathedral area where you have those first three lycans. The one in the corridor who's eyes you don't notice until it's too late, then the fog in the main area obscures visibility for the other two (or three?), it's was a straight up sensory attack.
> 
> On the other hand though, you can door block them at the corridor and R2 thrust with LHS/Hunter's Axe transformed mode to kill them pretty quickly



Yeah, I definitely farmed them for chunks for a while using the door cheese with ludwig's sword. It was not at all predictable how many would pull at once and if you got all three you were pretty screwed if you didn't cheese it like that.

The upper cathedral was possibly my least favorite area cause somehow I kept managing to get hit by the brainsuckers' attack. It seemed like it should be so easy to avoid, and yet I died a few times to it. Infuriating. And then I became scared of them, and all those gross noises they made in the dark....ew.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I'm realizing now that I'm getting close to my gamepass trial expiring and I had meant to try out Nier Automata while it's available - those who have played it, do you think it's worthwhile trying to get through that one within about a week and a half to two weeks?



Depends how much time you have to devote to it. If you can spend about 20 hours on it, go for it. The game's brilliance is absolutely dependent on actually finishing the first three "playthroughs" and getting the first five endings, considering half the plot is in playthrough 3 and all of the game's climaxes are there. If you would only get through the first playthrough (~7-10 hours depending on how many sidequests you do) or even worse, stop during playthrough two (very repetitive by design, about 5 hours) you would probably be left thinking it was vaguely interesting plot/music-wise and slick gameplay-wise but nothing special. Playthrough 3 is another like 6 hours and ending D/E are after it and very quick.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Got her now - I killed the big guy so quickly, the phantom survived until the end of the fight. It actually killed the boss for me  because I was just backing of to heal when it happened.
> 
> Now I think I'll play some different games (Mafia mainly) before getting into the second DLC and DS2.



The only warning I'd give you is that DLC2 is harder than DLC1 so if you wait too long you'll get rusty!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Depends how much time you have to devote to it. If you can spend about 20 hours on it, go for it. The game's brilliance is absolutely dependent on actually finishing the first three "playthroughs" and getting the first five endings, considering half the plot is in playthrough 3 and all of the game's climaxes are there. If you would only get through the first playthrough (~7-10 hours depending on how many sidequests you do) or even worse, stop during playthrough two (very repetitive by design, about 5 hours) you would probably be left thinking it was vaguely interesting plot/music-wise and slick gameplay-wise but nothing special. Playthrough 3 is another like 6 hours and ending D/E are after it and very quick.


This makes it sound like maybe I should wait on this one until I have some serious time to dedicate to it. I'm not normally one to do a lot of "replays" of a game, and adding a time pressure probably doesn't sound like a fun way to play.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> This makes it sound like maybe I should wait on this one until I have some serious time to dedicate to it. I'm not normally one to do a lot of "replays" of a game, and adding a time pressure probably doesn't sound like a fun way to play.



The fact they called them "Playthroughs" was a big mistake in terms of getting people to do them. I'd expect a lot of people just thought the game was over when they hit the end of playthrough 1 and thought anything else would be the same thing again. It's definitely not what you're expecting. Playthrough 3 was probably the most blown-away I've ever been by a game. But yeah, you definitely need to get through all three of them to experience the game.

In other news, I beat the big flame spider in Demon's Souls. I need to unlock the magic trainer and figure out where to get items that recharge my mana. My strats tend to involve putting on the magic regen ring, blowing bosses down to like 30% and then having to run around in circles for several minutes waiting to get the mana back to actually finish them off. Yuck. I think that's the next place I'm going (3-1).


----------



## TedEH

Not gonna lie, I've never been a fan of "multiple playthrough" games - like for all the praise Undertale got, and sure, it's a good game, and the repeats are clever, etc., but I don't really want to spend that much time repeating a lot of the same things again. It's clever, it's all the positive things people say about it, but it's also grindy and a huge time-sink.


----------



## Choop

wankerness said:


> The fact they called them "Playthroughs" was a big mistake in terms of getting people to do them. I'd expect a lot of people just thought the game was over when they hit the end of playthrough 1 and thought anything else would be the same thing again. It's definitely not what you're expecting. Playthrough 3 was probably the most blown-away I've ever been by a game. But yeah, you definitely need to get through all three of them to experience the game.
> 
> In other news, I beat the big flame spider in Demon's Souls. I need to unlock the magic trainer and figure out where to get items that recharge my mana. My strats tend to involve putting on the magic regen ring, blowing bosses down to like 30% and then having to run around in circles for several minutes waiting to get the mana back to actually finish them off. Yuck. I think that's the next place I'm going (3-1).



It'll probably get easier from 3-1 and onward, and there are a bunch of weapons that benefit magic users. Something like this could be useful:

https://www.looper.com/296032/the-best-weapons-in-demons-souls-for-magic-users/

It's been forever since I played this game on the PS3 though -- I wish I could offer more specific help haha.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Up to chapter 4 of Ys IX Molesting Nonce. There's something adorable about a long running series that's a few innovations behind trying to catch up to all the usual triple A tropes but at it's own leisurely pace. Then again, I can say this with every Nihon Falcom game. I love the Trails games and all, but even I will admit it looks like it's trying really hard to catch up with the Persona series like a kid huffing, puffing and lagging behind his older smug brother. 

This is the first Ys game set in an open world and a ton of verticality. And the plot will give you all the skills of traveling about. Hookshooting, wall running, gliding, and I'll be damned it's fun doing so in this series. It didn't take too long to get back in the usual Ys rhythm, 3 characters (so far) in rock/paper/scissors switching style, all the fun hack and slash the Mana games wish they copied earlier (currently neglecting Legend Of Mana since the combat sucks a fat one). It's the natural next step after VIII Lacrimosa, right down to the tower defense segments. Shame the main setting within a large prison city, where everything is a variation of greyish brown brick buildings and castles. Graphics are another thing Nihon Falcom are a gen or two behind, but I can't rag on it too much. The graphics engine looks similar to the upcoming Trails game so I may as well get used to it. 

I'd still recommend Ys VIII, and Memories Of Celeceta as gateway games to the series. Hell, even Oath Of Felghana or Ys Origin if you don't mind a classic arcade esque style. That's games of the series with 3 different gameplay mechanics.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Not gonna lie, I've never been a fan of "multiple playthrough" games - like for all the praise Undertale got, and sure, it's a good game, and the repeats are clever, etc., but I don't really want to spend that much time repeating a lot of the same things again. It's clever, it's all the positive things people say about it, but it's also grindy and a huge time-sink.



the point is that playthrough 3 has absolutely no repeated content, but the game itself calling it “playthrough 3” certainly makes everyone think that’s what it will be.


----------



## SamSam

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'd still recommend Ys VIII, and Memories Of Celeceta as gateway games to the series. Hell, even Oath Of Felghana or Ys Origin if you don't mind a classic arcade esque style. That's games of the series with 3 different gameplay mechanics.



Currently contemplating Ys while it's got a good discount on the switch eshop.

But I'm about 35 hours or so into trails 2 and don't want to lose momentum again!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> playthrough 3 has absolutely no repeated content


This definitely sells it better than calling it another playthrough.


----------



## Mathemagician

Waiting another year or so to replay BB on a new file. Has there been a full PS5 update? I’ll pay money for it IDC.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Waiting another year or so to replay BB on a new file. Has there been a full PS5 update? I’ll pay money for it IDC.



No, there's been no movement on that front that's been publicly announced. Only Sekiro has a big framerate increase on PS5 so far. There's been rumors of a full "remastered" PS5 version of BB ala something like DS Remastered (just bundling the DLC and adding a few small QOL things and upping the framerate) but they're still just rumors. I don't expect we'll get anything before Elden Ring comes out.


----------



## wankerness

SamSam said:


> Currently contemplating Ys while it's got a good discount on the switch eshop.
> 
> But I'm about 35 hours or so into trails 2 and don't want to lose momentum again!



YS VIII is a blast and I'd very highly recommend it. Lightning-paced action RPG with some great rockin' soundtrack very reminiscent of old mega man or F-zero or something. It's very arcadey and pretty easy but a ton of fun. I'd like to play IX but the look of it is so drab in comparison to VIII that I think I'm going to keep waiting for bigger discounts.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Having a blast with it so far, no real complaints. Got both bad endings, and now I'm heading for the good ending, although the QoL thing here is that you don't have to do multiple playthroughs to get the good ending once you've already gotten the bad, you just spawn from your last save point. Wish more games did that.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

SamSam said:


> Currently contemplating Ys while it's got a good discount on the switch eshop.
> 
> But I'm about 35 hours or so into trails 2 and don't want to lose momentum again!



Since you're deep in the trails games, you'll feel right at home at home with Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana. With the exception of the combat, it almost feels like you're in the same universe. Same aesthetic, same music style, even the character name intros are the same. Celceta is more or less a proto version if you want to ease into the series better. 

But, yeah best to do it after Cold Steel 2. Whereabouts are you up to?


----------



## Jarmake

Ebrietas, daughter of the cosmos was very easy. Not quite as easy as Celestial emissary was, but got on the second try, almost without taking any damage.

Oh well. Maybe Amygdala is my next...


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> Ebrietas, daughter of the cosmos was very easy. Not quite as easy as Celestial emissary was, but got on the second try, almost without taking any damage.
> 
> Oh well. Maybe Amygdala is my next...



Guessing you're pretty over-levelled! That boss is infamously hard below a certain level, but I steamrolled it also cause I'd been farming piggies/shadows for a while first and was using the disgustingly overpowered Ludwig with a quality build. 

Beat the witch that teleports around and clones in Demon's Souls, and finally unlocked the spell guy so now I have a couple more spells (Soul Ray, some fire spray thing). Thanks for posting that link a couple pages ago - I would never have even tried the dagger I got from the guy without reading that article (it restores mana every time you stab something, and it restores a LOT - I REALLY wish they had weapons like this in subsequent DS games, it singlehandedly makes primarily casting completely viable even at a lowish level, while in DS1/2 you're constantly running out of spells and being screwed unless you buy tons of expensive consumables. Casting in this game is vastly better than DS1/2, and I even like it more than DS3 (which was a gigantic improvement over 1/2 thanks to the mana estus flasks).

I really hate some of these level designs, they're just so repetitive visually and confusing layout-wise and the oppressive darkness just makes it that much harder to tell where you're going vs where you've been. The jail in DS3 seems very simple and straightforward now that I've done 3-1 in this game.


----------



## SamSam

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Since you're deep in the trails games, you'll feel right at home at home with Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana. With the exception of the combat, it almost feels like you're in the same universe. Same aesthetic, same music style, even the character name intros are the same. Celceta is more or less a proto version if you want to ease into the series better.
> 
> But, yeah best to do it after Cold Steel 2. Whereabouts are you up to?



I did gone air (i think?) And ive beaten 4 cryptids so far


----------



## TedEH

I finished off Mario+Luigi Superstar this morning. It took me a while to finally dig in and finish it, I think because the story is.... well, it's a Mario story, so it's not _bad_ but it's not going to be the deepest and most compelling narrative ever. Mechanically, it's a pretty simple RPG - which similarly is _not bad_ but doesn't have much in terms of hooks. There's a lot of creativity in the game, lots of character, expressive art and writing, lots of beans jokes, the difficulty curve strikes me as well balanced right up until the final boss, a pretty regular drip of new abilities and character progression, etc. So it's what I'd call a good game that just lacks the kinds of hooks that makes something stand out as a classic. I like this game's implementation of the action commands as far as timing goes, but I wish the timing was called out differently 'cause it's difficult to really tell what the timing window is or if you've even hit it.


----------



## Jarmake

wankerness said:


> Guessing you're pretty over-levelled! That boss is infamously hard below a certain level, but I steamrolled it also cause I'd been farming piggies/shadows for a while first and was using the disgustingly overpowered Ludwig with a quality build.



Might be I am... I am on level 91 or something like that.

I just beat Amygdala. I was nervous going into nightmare frontier... I absolutely got my ass handed back to me last time I was there by the rock throwing bungholes and the silver beasts, but this time I didn't die once and I killed the boss on the first try. I had to laugh out loud when Amygdala ripped it's arms off and tried to pummel me with them! That takes some serious dedication on his/her part! 

Hmm... I am sensing a certain someone with a scythe and some nifty levitating skills in the near future... Last time I tried take on him I didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. Maybe this time I'll loosen his limbs with my axe.


----------



## wankerness

Martyr Logarius wasn't that bad for me. I think it took me like 5 tries, but I did it before doing a bunch of the optional bosses so I was actually level-appropriate. Seemed like a boss where the fight made sense and I was making progress every time, as opposed to some of the nastier bosses where I would often die in about 10 seconds after attempts where I'd almost beat them (ex First Vicar Laurence, Headless Bloodletting Beast). 

You have the DLC, right?? The DLC is the best content, but it is a big step up in difficulty. I one-shot a couple of the things most widely hated thanks to having grinded beforehand (Ludwig, the two sharks in the well) and didn't take more than an hour or so on the infamous Orphan, but Laurence was like bashing my head against a wall for days. And man, some of the trash is bad news, especially the hunters.


----------



## wankerness

I messed up big in Demon's Souls and bought fireball without realizing the soul you buy it with has to be saved to buy firestorm when you unlock that vendor! It never would have happened if I'd unlocked that vendor before beating Dragon God. I'm so annoyed I want to restart the game. But, I'm probably 15-20 hours in at this point.

Beat some more bosses - Dragon God, leechmonger, and Flamelurker I think were the names? Dragon God was a stupid boss and reminded me of the Scarecrow sections of Arkham Asylum. Flamelurker was pretty terrifying, but was weak to magic so I narrowly beat him before he smashed me. Leechmonger was a joke and I didn't have to even go down into his pit to kill him. Oh, and there was some boss with a bird on his head, too! The bosses in this game are frustrating mainly cause of the bonfire placement. It's funny to think of Dark Souls as being easier, but the bonfire placement in it absolutely makes things a hell of a lot nicer when it comes to boss attempts. Here I feel like if I don't one-shot the boss I'm screwed. Dragon God was the first I recall where the bonfire was right next to the boss with no trash.

World Tendency is also stupid since it makes "body form" something you can never use until you've maxed out white tendency and done the events, and that makes it so one of your rings is always taken up by cling ring instead of something that would be more fun/interesting. I really hate it. It does make me appreciate Dark Souls 2 a lot more, though. I remember being annoyed by how every death made your health bar get shorter, but here it's like ONE DEATH = MAXIMUM HOLLOW FROM DS2 + YOU CAN'T GO HUMAN UNLESS YOU'RE SURE YOU WON'T DIE!


----------



## Jarmake

wankerness said:


> Martyr Logarius wasn't that bad for me. I think it took me like 5 tries, but I did it before doing a bunch of the optional bosses so I was actually level-appropriate. Seemed like a boss where the fight made sense and I was making progress every time, as opposed to some of the nastier bosses where I would often die in about 10 seconds after attempts where I'd almost beat them (ex First Vicar Laurence, Headless Bloodletting Beast).
> 
> You have the DLC, right?? The DLC is the best content, but it is a big step up in difficulty. I one-shot a couple of the things most widely hated thanks to having grinded beforehand (Ludwig, the two sharks in the well) and didn't take more than an hour or so on the infamous Orphan, but Laurence was like bashing my head against a wall for days. And man, some of the trash is bad news, especially the hunters.



Yeah, I've got the dlc. Going to start it after Logarius, since there is only Gehrman and Moon Presence after it...


Aaaand Ding Dong the Martyr is dead!


----------



## Ralyks

So going back to the multiple playthrough thing, I'm a ways through the Kasane playthrough of Scarlet Nexus, and it does have some similarities to the Yuitos story, but then diverges pretty big time at key points. It's definitely interesting seeing all the events from both sides, similar to 2B and 9S's playthroughs in NieR, but to a different degree. It definitely made me think of Kasane isn't THAT much of a bitch  and for the parts where it's similar, well, I'm NG+ing Kasane's story so for now I can plow through early parts of the game easily.


----------



## Choop

Decided to finally start playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I found the combat to be exhausting at first (I guess it still can be after having played it for a while haha), but overall the game has grown on me and feels much better once I unlocked some abilities.


----------



## MFB

Choop said:


> Decided to finally start playing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. I found the combat to be exhausting at first (I guess it still can be after having played it for a while haha), but overall the game has grown on me and feels much better once I unlocked some abilities.



Sekiro is probably, and maybe even reluctantly, my 2nd favorite FromSoft game behind Bloodborne. Is it infuriating than the combat is such a departure from the Dark Souls/Bloodborne nature of attack/parry/dodge or attack/dodge and relies entirely on parry/counter-attack? Yes. Does it take a bit for it to open up and feel like there's more bosses than non-boss enemies? For sure.

But mechanically, _it works. _The environment is also beautiful as well, I just wish it wasn't so punishing and defeating when you die (even with the resurrection function) that you could at times feel joy when beating an enemy instead of just relief you don't have to fight him (and die) again.


----------



## Jarmake

Sekiro seems to be (as are all the from software games) very dividing game. Some praise it to high heavens and it can do no bad and some say it's just infuriating and too big of a step away from ds/bb.

Maybe I'll have to play it one day and see for myself.


----------



## Choop

MFB said:


> Sekiro is probably, and maybe even reluctantly, my 2nd favorite FromSoft game behind Bloodborne. Is it infuriating than the combat is such a departure from the Dark Souls/Bloodborne nature of attack/parry/dodge or attack/dodge and relies entirely on parry/counter-attack? Yes. Does it take a bit for it to open up and feel like there's more bosses than non-boss enemies? For sure.
> 
> But mechanically, _it works. _The environment is also beautiful as well, I just wish it wasn't so punishing and defeating when you die (even with the resurrection function) that you could at times feel joy when beating an enemy instead of just relief you don't have to fight him (and die) again.



I definitely didn't like the combat at first. Having to learn the timings for parries is tough, especially when some enemies have an obnoxious wind up to their attacks. Also the spear dudes were just absolutely destroying me until I realized I could get the Mikiri Counter, and even though it's technically an optional skill it feels like it is more or less a mandatory thing lol. 

I like the way the game employs stealth, but then you can also get into situations where you have to play very aggressively and be on your toes -- it's exciting! It really is beautiful, too, and the movement feels great. I'm invested to finish it at this point.


----------



## wankerness

When I finish up demons souls I plan on trying Sekiro again, especially considering its supposedly much higher performance on PS5. I really didn’t like what little I played so far, though.

Beat MANEATER last night, and PENETRATOR. The bosses in this game sure do have silly names. The squidhead guy on the tiny staircase before maneater was serious BS.


----------



## wankerness

Did the old monk boss in demons souls. This boss got reused in DS2 and 3 (mirror knight and some dude in dlc1). Basically if you’re online, you have to fight an enemy player who’s big and has magic missiles spawning over them as the boss. They can’t heal, so that makes it somewhat easy. I still got wrecked by the first few people (gotta love the ones that cast firestorm right out of the gate, which as far as I can tell is unavoidable), and then got someone even worse than me for #4 who walked into spells and clumsily tried to chop me with a 1h to no avail. Then I tried being summoned as the boss, and got someone even worse as my first opponent, someone who rapidly died to 1h r1 spam!!! Poor guy. So now I’m done with pvp in this game. I guess it’s the first soulsborne ive ever killed someone in. Probably because it’s new and popular enough that it’s not only populated by wackos who take things way too seriously who abuse latency to chain backstabs on you till you die and then mash taunting emotes.


----------



## TedEH

Turns out I might have to keep gamepass around for work purposes, so.... I guess Nier is what's next.


----------



## Nicki

TedEH said:


> Turns out I might have to keep gamepass around for work purposes, so.... I guess Nier is what's next.


Nier is a masterpiece. You on console or PC?


----------



## TedEH

I could do either one, but I had started on the Xbox just so that I have an excuse to not sit at the same desk all day.



Nicki said:


> Nier is a masterpiece.


I got a couple hours in yesterday and.... I'm assuming the masterpiece part comes later, 'cause it seems pretty generic so far. Some of the UI is a little overwhelming. I'm expecting at some point there's going to be a twist or things are going to get really meta or something to justify everyone's praise. I've avoiding too much talk/spoilers about the game so far so.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Guess I'll find out.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I could do either one, but I had started on the Xbox just so that I have an excuse to not sit at the same desk all day.
> 
> 
> I got a couple hours in yesterday and.... I'm assuming the masterpiece part comes later, 'cause it seems pretty generic so far. Some of the UI is a little overwhelming. I'm expecting at some point there's going to be a twist or things are going to get really meta or something to justify everyone's praise. I've avoiding too much talk/spoilers about the game so far so.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Guess I'll find out.



It's KIND of generic gameplay-wise - it's mostly a very slick hack and slash action RPG, but the camera will occasionally change into a sidescroller and sometimes it becomes more of a bullet-hell shooter and your little laser companion sometimes becomes your primary attack, plus the occasional vehicle sections. However, the setting, etc are anything but, especially as you start uncovering other characters. The plot gets more and more nutty, playthrough 2 starts fleshing out the "other side" of the story, and the full scope of things really starts coming into view in playthrough 3. Ending 5 is the big meta thing everyone freaks out about, but I liked playthrough 3 the most.

Also, it has what I'd consider the best videogame soundtrack of all time by a large margin, so that certainly helps things.


----------



## TedEH

Not gonna lie, my brain is still wrestling with the expectation of multiple "playthroughs", and I'm kinda hoping each run is relatively short on it's own. I'm not the type to immediately play a game again after completing it, and I'm expecting I'm going to have to fight the urge to just put it down at the end of the first run, and to not get frustrated through the beginning of the second run... etc etc.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Not gonna lie, my brain is still wrestling with the expectation of multiple "playthroughs", and I'm kinda hoping each run is relatively short on it's own. I'm not the type to immediately play a game again after completing it, and I'm expecting I'm going to have to fight the urge to just put it down at the end of the first run, and to not get frustrated through the beginning of the second run... etc etc.



They are short. Like I posted last time, it's something like 10-12 hours for playthrough 1, 6 for 2, 8 for 3 as long as you aren't trying to be a completist - 20-30 hours is pretty short by today's standards. That's all it should take unless you try to grind out all the weapons and their upgrades to see the hidden boss (not required for playthrough 1-3/endings 1-5). Which I did, cause I loved the music and atmosphere and feel to the combat. It's very, very slick and the relatively low budget kind of enhances the experience (the "open world" is a lot smaller than the typical open world game and you revisit areas a lot and the travel time is never very long, the enemies are oddly minimalist in design, etc).


----------



## wankerness

Getting towards the end of NG on Demon's Souls, I think. Last night I fought "old warrior," which is kind of an interesting attempt at a gimmick boss (big blind guy with a huge sword, wanders around until you hit him upon which he'll come after you in a hurry), and "Storm King," a big flying manta ray. The latter can only be fought by picking up storm ruler, a big sword that sends a blast of air forward after you charge it up. It's the same sword and effect as used with the Yhorm fight in DS3! I think that boss is much more interesting, cause this one pretty much consists of you hiding out in cover while it sprays crystals at you, popping out to snipe him a couple times, repeat, but it's amusing that Yhorm is kind of a direct sequel thanks to the same damn weapon being used. The sword also seems to be much more useful here, since it does damage to enemies, as opposed to the DS3 version where it only works on that boss. Not to mention the graphics and sound here are incredible.

Trophies on Demon's Souls are annoying since they require nearly 3 playthroughs, minimum, since you need all spells and all miracles and there are a few souls that you get one of that have THREE options. I think I'll probably do NG+ on this magic guy and then do another NG with a new character for the miracles, and probably try out some kind of strength build. One very annoying thing is a couple key items for builds also share the same soul required (ex, Lava Bow is the same soul as two spells and 1 miracle). They did a little bit of this BS in Dark Souls 1/2/3 with things like Sif's soul having 3 options, but IIRC only a couple souls had more than two uses and none had four.

I bought Judgment for PS5 since it's on sale and I barely started the PS4 version. Ah well. I've gotten big discounts on some Yakuza games and the studio has enough goodwill from me for me to be OK with getting ripped off this one time by a non-free upgrade for something I already own.

Also bought Dying Light after reading a bunch of people raving about it. Maybe I'll check it out sometime.


----------



## TedEH

Final update for the busted Gameboy Micro screen, since I posted a bunch about it a while back: Screen is fixed. The replacement panel is.... good enough. It's bright, it looks the tiniest bit fuzzier but is still sharp enough that I can't complain - the downside is that it seems to be a different kind of panel, so the viewing angles are terrible and the blacks aren't quite uniform, but these aren't that big a deal I guess. It's like going from an IPS to a TN panel. It's not like you'd play a gameboy at an angle anyway.





I'm mostly glad that it's functioning again, and I won't have to take the thing apart again 'cause jeebus it's a pain to reassemble.


----------



## Ralyks

Finally finished both playthroughs of Scarlet Nexus. I'd say considering I put 50 hours in and pre-ordered the OST on vinyl, I'd say I really liked this game, and it will end up on the year end list. There is more end game content, but I think I'm ready to move on to something else.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Ralyks said:


> Finally finished both playthroughs of Scarlet Nexus. I'd say considering I put 50 hours in and pre-ordered the OST on vinyl, I'd say I really liked this game, and it will end up on the year end list. There is more end game content, but I think I'm ready to move on to something else.



I just bought Scarlet Nexus :0
I'm gonna finish Mass Effect Legendary Edition, I'm 60hrs deep while trying not to perform every side mission.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Demon's Souls, started NG+, might take a break for a while. I have to beat the game a second time and do some save scumming to finish the spell/miracle trophies, and then kill a bunch of NPCs to get pure black character tendency. Think I'm done with everything otherwise. Oh, and I have to get summoned into a game and help defeat a boss, and also start a new character to do the achievement to kill the tower knight without touching any archers (it seemed like a bad idea as a caster build who'd never fought the boss before). 

I heard a lot of warnings that NG+ was vastly more of a difficulty jump than in any previous Souls game, but I guess I haven't hit that point yet (I only rekilled Phalanx so far, so there's plenty of time)! Should be bad news! I did some PVP for a bit to get world tendency out of black in some areas before starting NG+ cause I heard that would make world 4 nearly impossible. Somewhat hilariously R1d a few big melee boys down in a row with my crappy 1h sword, barely doing anything defensive. I guess this is what Souls pvp is like when a game is still popular enough that the players aren't all good.

I would rank this at the bottom of Soulsborne games, apart from Sekiro, which I haven't played more than an hour or two of. It's still a good game, but I don't enjoy some of the level designs and I think Dark Souls really introduced some quality of live improvements with things like non-limited inventory space, bonfires placed at least somewhat close to the bosses, and removing the ridiculous halving of your health if you lose body form (not to mention the whole world tendency thing which is ridiculously punitive considering how hard it is to reverse it). Then again, Demons Souls doesn't have the Dark Souls problem where the back section of the game clearly had far less development time, nor does it have anything near as heinous as the Anor Londo rafters/archers sections, the entirety of Sen's Fortress, or the bad levels like the tree where you have to fall down VERY CAREFULLY. Though maybe I'll feel differently on NG+!


----------



## TheBlackBard

Not really playing, but checking out all the Realms Deep announcements.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Everybody is here Souls this and Souls that... Common, no love for my boy Nioh?


----------



## BlackMastodon

Ngl, as soon as I see somethings Souls or Yakuza related in this thread I skip right past that post.


----------



## TheBlackBard

dr_game0ver said:


> Everybody is here Souls this and Souls that... Common, no love for my boy Nioh?




You mean the bastard child of Souls? Man, as much as I love FromSoft, and I love THEIR Souls games, I don't know that I like the way they shaped the landscape for action RPG's. Salt and Sanctuary is the only Soulslike game that I love that wasn't done by From.


----------



## TheBlackBard

BlackMastodon said:


> Ngl, as soon as I see somethings Souls or Yakuza related in this thread I skip right past that post.



I agree with this sentiment. Not enough CRPG/boomer shooter convo.


----------



## TedEH

BlackMastodon said:


> Ngl, as soon as I see somethings Souls or Yakuza related in this thread I skip right past that post.


I skip a lot of posts that get into the ongoing details of a game I've not played, unless it's present as a sort of review. But seeing some much talk about them makes me think there must be something there that people like. I assume lots of people skip my posts pretty often.


----------



## dr_game0ver

My problem with that it is ok to make games with cheap as F difficulty. Most of the souls like i have played (The Surge, Lords of the Fallen, Remnant...) just don't get the formula DS got right. The right balance of difficulty, exploration, variété of enemy...


----------



## TedEH

Are you asking if it's ok for games to be easy.....? I'm confused. Of course it's ok to have games that are easy. Some people _want_ easy games. Dark Souls doesn't stop existing when other people make comparable games.


----------



## MFB

dr_game0ver said:


> Everybody is here Souls this and Souls that... Common, no love for my boy Nioh?



Nioh is even harder than Sekiro, which I consider the toughest game I've ever BEATEN. Nioh? I'm at the second boss, and just feel utterly defeated even trying.



BlackMastodon said:


> Ngl, as soon as I see somethings Souls or Yakuza related in this thread I skip right past that post.



Yakuza stuff means nothing to me, so I'm right there with you. I've unfortunately become part of the problem by playing the Souls/From Soft franchises


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Nioh is even harder than Sekiro, which I consider the toughest game I've ever BEATEN. Nioh? I'm at the second boss, and just feel utterly defeated even trying.
> 
> 
> 
> Yakuza stuff means nothing to me, so I'm right there with you. I've unfortunately become part of the problem by playing the Souls/From Soft franchises


yeah... never play nioh 2 then. It's even harder. Personally I love how brutally difficult they are but they're very much an acquired taste


----------



## spudmunkey

I'm at the point in my life where I simply don't have the time/patience for anything above the lowest difficulty settings. To me, it'd be like watching a movie dubbed in languages I don't speak, and not being able to progress to the next scene until I've learned a new language enough to pass a test and move to the next one. Could I see how some may enjoy that? Sure. That's sooooooo not me, though. Ha!


----------



## StevenC

I'm playing Celeste again and it's so good. Such a sense of satisfaction every time I beat a room, and such a sense of defeat every time I can't get the strawberry.

Nearly finished Skyward Sword and it still kicks ass. Loads of good dungeons, the BEETLE and Fi just lets me play now.


----------



## wankerness

dr_game0ver said:


> Everybody is here Souls this and Souls that... Common, no love for my boy Nioh?



As soon as I got to the weapon tutorial area in that game and saw how complicated it was I was like SCREW THIS. Maybe I'll try it again someday.


----------



## Ralyks

dr_game0ver said:


> Everybody is here Souls this and Souls that... Common, no love for my boy Nioh?



I did enjoy the little the I spent with Nioh, and I do plan on buying the remastered collection once they officially release the PS5 patch that lets you expand storage. I'm hoping the collection is on a sale by then.

So, Hades. So far, it's beautiful, it controls like butter, it's challenging but fair, and it have the excellent quality of voice acting and storytelling I feel Supergiant games have established for themselves, Which itself is impressive for a run based game.

That said, it's a run based game. Which I didn't really think about when I got it. I just knew this game was reviewing perfect scores and winning game of the year awards left and right, and I'm a big fan of Supergiant (also, trading in Scarlet Nexus completely paid for Hades). But.... I tend to have my interest in run based games spike very early, then I fall off them. Two examples of this are Dead Cells and Returnal. I own both and they are both GREAT games, but it's hard for me to do that cycle enough times where I just need to back away from it. I know dying is part of the stories, but... I dunno, blame my attention span.


----------



## wankerness

spudmunkey said:


> I'm at the point in my life where I simply don't have the time/patience for anything above the lowest difficulty settings. To me, it'd be like watching a movie dubbed in languages I don't speak, and not being able to progress to the next scene until I've learned a new language enough to pass a test and move to the next one. Could I see how some may enjoy that? Sure. That's sooooooo not me, though. Ha!



I *hate* being frustrated (I rage quit and involuntarily yell profanity like no one's business when it comes to cheap deaths or cairns in AC:V) and like the dark souls games a lot. I dunno. I think it's the fact they're one of the purest expressions of gameplay vs having to watch tons of cutscenes, pay attention to bad plots, listen to hamhanded dialogue constantly, do shitty QTEs or levels where your character walks around advancing the plot instead of doing gameplay, and all the other stuff that plagues most modern games. Well, purest expressions of gameplay I LIKE, there are certainly games with even less distraction from the gameplay when it comes to indie platformers and puzzlers and the like. 

I like action RPGs a lot but I'm losing any interest in the super-repetitive western ones like Borderlands or AC or whatever. Even ones with MUCH higher quality of writing like RDR or FO:NV are not grabbing my attention. I've started a few games since playing the DS trilogy and BB and just immediately lost interest in repetitive gameplay loops that don't have interesting settings or mechanics or any challenge (that trifecta of too dull/too easy/too repetitive usually kills it, unless I really like the settings or aesthetics or IP or something like with Borderlands 3 or something, though I still haven't played the third or subsequent DLCs on that). I am basically just treading water waiting for HZD2 to come out and the DS games have been giving me the most satisfying experience since coronavirus started.

Some other games I've been meaning to play/finish:

Doom Eternal: Strikes me as too hard and fast-paced for my level of sucking at games, even on easy. Got through the first level by the skin of my teeth and had to take a break. Never went back to it.
Titanfall 2: I have heard nothing but good things about this but just have never started it
Zelda Skyward Sword: I got a few dungeons in and lost interest, partly due to being in a living situation for the last couple months where my Wii-U is not accessible
Judgment: Need to play it, just haven't started. It has many of those things I hate about Western AAA games (tons of cutscenes, constant dialogue, QTEs) but the writing and voiceacting in these things is just so far beyond anything to come out of the USA that I can't help but love them.
AC: Valhalla DLC 1/2 (2 just came out, apparently in france or something): I hit a cairn in Ireland with a non-level bottom and a high height requirement and ragequit. I hate these goddam things.
Hades: Played it for five minutes once, never continued, guess I just dont like the concept of roguelikes even though I know this one's intentionally easy for losers like me that don't like being frustrated and losing progress

CRPGs and Boomer Shooters can DIAF. I hate competitive multiplayer (or generally any multiplayer, for that matter) as it heavily favors the young and the people that like the games enough to practice many, many hours to get good at them. I haven't liked a competitive online shooter since UT2K4, back when they were FUN. Halo and CS were the death-knell of it for me, really, with their very repetitive weapons and "realistic" weapon carrying capacities being ripped off by practically every successful game that came after. And my carpal tunnel situation means anything requiring keyboard/mouse is OUT. Indie games tend to bore me cause I'm all about atmosphere and complexity and it's very hard to deliver both of those with a tiny programming team and a tiny budget. 

I still need to get Disco Elysium, though it sounds like the console version is very non-ideal due to it being a point and click. 

If the PS5 version of cyberpunk is miraculously fixed like a No Mans Sky sort of situation, I'd check it out. As is it sounds CONCEPTUALLY uninteresting and repetitive. Too bad, since I loved Witcher 3.


----------



## Mathemagician

I played the demo for NIOH 1 prior to its launch and I just remember that 1) stances matter, and 2) I would fuller have to over-level to enjoy it. Holy crap it was tough. Felt like a ninja gaiden game. (I am bad at those high enemy-damage games). 

Never ended up playing the full game.


----------



## MFB

@wankerness please, PLEASE give TF2 a chance. The campaign is one of the most regarded in the past 10 years, and the only reason people don't talk about it more is because EA set it up for failure by launching so close to it's flagship series Battlefield.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I still need to get Disco Elysium, though it sounds like the console version is very non-ideal due to it being a point and click.



I have it on PS5, don't really mind how it controls. It would probably be a little better with a mouse to make selections, but otherwise it's fine.


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> I *hate* being frustrated (I rage quit and involuntarily yell profanity like no one's business when it comes to cheap deaths or cairns in AC:V) and like the dark souls games a lot. I dunno. I think it's the fact they're one of the purest expressions of gameplay vs having to watch tons of cutscenes, pay attention to bad plots, listen to hamhanded dialogue constantly, do shitty QTEs or levels where your character walks around advancing the plot instead of doing gameplay, and all the other stuff that plagues most modern games. Well, purest expressions of gameplay I LIKE, there are certainly games with even less distraction from the gameplay when it comes to indie platformers and puzzlers and the like.
> 
> I like action RPGs a lot but I'm losing any interest in the super-repetitive western ones like Borderlands or AC or whatever. Even ones with MUCH higher quality of writing like RDR or FO:NV are not grabbing my attention. I've started a few games since playing the DS trilogy and BB and just immediately lost interest in repetitive gameplay loops that don't have interesting settings or mechanics or any challenge (that trifecta of too dull/too easy/too repetitive usually kills it, unless I really like the settings or aesthetics or IP or something like with Borderlands 3 or something, though I still haven't played the third or subsequent DLCs on that). I am basically just treading water waiting for HZD2 to come out and the DS games have been giving me the most satisfying experience since coronavirus started.
> 
> Some other games I've been meaning to play/finish:
> 
> Doom Eternal: Strikes me as too hard and fast-paced for my level of sucking at games, even on easy. Got through the first level by the skin of my teeth and had to take a break. Never went back to it.
> Titanfall 2: I have heard nothing but good things about this but just have never started it
> Zelda Skyward Sword: I got a few dungeons in and lost interest, partly due to being in a living situation for the last couple months where my Wii-U is not accessible
> Judgment: Need to play it, just haven't started. It has many of those things I hate about Western AAA games (tons of cutscenes, constant dialogue, QTEs) but the writing and voiceacting in these things is just so far beyond anything to come out of the USA that I can't help but love them.
> AC: Valhalla DLC 1/2 (2 just came out, apparently in france or something): I hit a cairn in Ireland with a non-level bottom and a high height requirement and ragequit. I hate these goddam things.
> Hades: Played it for five minutes once, never continued, guess I just dont like the concept of roguelikes even though I know this one's intentionally easy for losers like me that don't like being frustrated and losing progress
> 
> CRPGs and Boomer Shooters can DIAF. I hate competitive multiplayer (or generally any multiplayer, for that matter) as it heavily favors the young and the people that like the games enough to practice many, many hours to get good at them. I haven't liked a competitive online shooter since UT2K4, back when they were FUN. Halo and CS were the death-knell of it for me, really, with their very repetitive weapons and "realistic" weapon carrying capacities being ripped off by practically every successful game that came after. And my carpal tunnel situation means anything requiring keyboard/mouse is OUT. Indie games tend to bore me cause I'm all about atmosphere and complexity and it's very hard to deliver both of those with a tiny programming team and a tiny budget.
> 
> I still need to get Disco Elysium, though it sounds like the console version is very non-ideal due to it being a point and click.
> 
> If the PS5 version of cyberpunk is miraculously fixed like a No Mans Sky sort of situation, I'd check it out. As is it sounds CONCEPTUALLY uninteresting and repetitive. Too bad, since I loved Witcher 3.


 
The fact that you brought up Halo and CS tells me we're clearly talking about two VERY different things when it comes to boomer shooters. I'm talking about games like Ion Fury, Prodeus, Hrot, Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Heretic/Hexen, Amid Evil, Dusk. All those are VERY different from what you mentioned.

Also, Disco Elysium is amazing, Planescape: Torment is amazing, Pillars of Eternity is amazing, Divinity: OS 1 and 2 are amazing.

So no, none of those should die in a fire. Also, why so aggressive about those two genres?


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## TedEH

Out of all the listed games up there, I'd say go for Disco Elysium regardless of the platform. It's not a game that lives or dies by its controls, IMO so it should be fine. As I remember it, anyway.


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## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> Out of all the listed games up there, I'd say go for Disco Elysium regardless of the platform. It's not a game that lives or dies by its controls, IMO so it should be fine. As I remember it, anyway.




This is correct. Disco Elysium's storytelling is outright amazing, and it's not meant to be played as a pass checks all the time kind of game. Failures can be every bit as rewarding. The controls are but a minor speedbump, especially in a game that doesn't require you to be quick with them.


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## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> The fact that you brought up Halo and CS tells me we're clearly talking about two VERY different things when it comes to boomer shooters. I'm talking about games like Ion Fury, Prodeus, Hrot, Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Heretic/Hexen, Amid Evil, Dusk. All those are VERY different from what you mentioned.
> 
> Also, Disco Elysium is amazing, Planescape: Torment is amazing, Pillars of Eternity is amazing, Divinity: OS 1 and 2 are amazing.
> 
> So no, none of those should die in a fire. Also, why so aggressive about those two genres?



Ah, all the older guys I know that play video games pretty much play officially licensed sports games and military shooters and nothing else so I figured that was what you were talking about. I have no problem with vintage shooters, I certainly played the hell out of the few that got ported to Mac. Final Doom and Quake 1 especially. Never heard of the first few!

diaf was something we casually threw around about things we didn’t care about in chat back in the day, it’s just an old habit to use that term without really meaning it. Crpgs don’t make me mad, I just don’t have any interest cause I can’t play them without my wrists seizing up quickly. I didn’t enjoy what little I played of divinitys, either.

I’ll pick up disco Elysium for ps5 the next time it goes on sale. Glad to hear some have played it. The initial release was really buggy and unfortunately that was the state most reviews describe.


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## TheBlackBard

Okay so other than the familiar ones you've already heard of, I firmly recommend every other shooter on that list. They're all based around the idea of OG shooters, while some do have modern applications and such. I'm the biggest fan of Doom you'll ever talk to, but Prodeus does do quite a bit to compete with my love for it. That said I can play any of the games I listed and have a great time with them. Dusk's first episode is like if you took Doom and put it in a cultish Evil Dead style setting in the middle of the sticks. Highly recommend it. Amid Evil is a throwback to Hexen/Heretic and the fantasy world it resides in is truly fantastical in that unlike games like Skyrim and such, it doesn't feel like a world that could be found on Earth and what I mean by that is that at least Skyrim is based around castles and small villages in terms of architecture. Amid Evil is something different entirely, and both Dusk AND Amid Evil reward you immensely for exploration, sometimes getting OP weapons you may not get until much later in the game.


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## Jarmake

Got frustrated with Mergo's wet nurse... It's the from software curse, where sometimes the enemies just get the perfect attack combos on you before you can even react to them. Again and again. Damn.

Well, started the old hunters dlc to soothe my aching mental wounds caused by the wet nurse and I've got to say I have been enjoying it thus far. I really like the fact that there is so much hunters around... They're so much more satisfying to fight when compared to the run of the mill enemies!

I found Ludwig, the accursed / Ludwig, the holy blade and went in blind. Got to the holy blade phase and died almost instantly to his moonlight sword attacks. I realised I was way too passive for the second phase and tried again. Hugged his legs from behind and opened a can of whoopass on him. And down he went. I went to the decapitated horses head and got myself the moonlight sword.

After Ludwig I headed up some stairs I found earlier and was ambushed by a red eyed hunter. The attacks on that guy were quite impressive and dealt a lot of damage, but he wasn't a big deal against my +10 axe. Found a whirlygig saw, which I remember reading about. I suppose it should be a great weapon after upgrading a bunch, but I'm not sure if I'll do anything with it on this playthrough, since I've already got so many weapons.

I've actually been a bit surprised how easy this dlc has been so far. I remember reading people saying how damn hard it is and so on, but it hasn't shown any real hard challenges yet. I'm sure it will get harder and I am going to have to eat my words about it, but for now I am just going to enjoy the nightmare version of Yharnam.


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## p0ke

wankerness said:


> I hate competitive multiplayer (or generally any multiplayer, for that matter) as it heavily favors the young and the people that like the games enough to practice many, many hours to get good at them. I haven't liked a competitive online shooter since UT2K4, back when they were FUN.



Glad to hear I'm not the only one! I used to play UT99 online a fair bit, I was even in a clan for a while (one that only played mega sized maps, where it feels like you're the size of a mouse), and when I moved from Sweden to Finland I played Wolfenstein Enemy Territory with my old friends a lot. We had a dedicated server though so it was more like a LAN event, really.
But after that, nah. I tried playing some games online and even thought Titanfall 1 was really cool back when the Xbox One was brand new, but I always ended up getting my ass handed to me by kids who's lives revolve around getting good at the game. And I feel like the Battlefield games etc are even worse at that.
I'd rather just play a good story driven single player game instead.


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## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> @wankerness please, PLEASE give TF2 a chance. The campaign is one of the most regarded in the past 10 years, and the only reason people don't talk about it more is because EA set it up for failure by launching so close to it's flagship series Battlefield.



Seconding the TF2 campaign. Just wait for it to go on sale for <$10 if you’re really worried. But for the $20 it goes for now I would still 100% recommend it. You can tell the Devs really went for broke creating this.


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## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Seconding the TF2 campaign. Just wait for it to go on sale for <$10 if you’re really worried. But for the $20 it goes for now I would still 100% recommend it. You can tell the Devs really went for broke creating this.


also there's been a slight resurgence in the multiplayer community


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## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Seconding the TF2 campaign. Just wait for it to go on sale for <$10 if you’re really worried. But for the $20 it goes for now I would still 100% recommend it. You can tell the Devs really went for broke creating this.



It was actually one of the first games I bought in 2017, I’ve just never gotten around to playing it. I have a few others in that boat, too. I’ll try it when I finally stop demons souls!


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## TedEH

IMO not all the new-boomer-shooter games are great. There was (is?) a bandwagon, lots of titles jumped on it, results are very mixed. I'm one of those kinds of people who installs Doom on every device I can get my hands on, and you'd think that means all those titles are "my jam", but an aesthetic doesn't make a good game, unfortunately. Some of these new titles really nail what was good about the classics, but certainly not all of them. The one that stands out to me (in a bad way) is Project Warlock. I feel like I _should have_ liked this game, but it just missed the mark on a lot of levels, at least for my taste.


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## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> IMO not all the new-boomer-shooter games are great. There was (is?) a bandwagon, lots of titles jumped on it, results are very mixed. I'm one of those kinds of people who installs Doom on every device I can get my hands on, and you'd think that means all those titles are "my jam", but an aesthetic doesn't make a good game, unfortunately. Some of these new titles really nail what was good about the classics, but certainly not all of them. The one that stands out to me (in a bad way) is Project Warlock. I feel like I _should have_ liked this game, but it just missed the mark on a lot of levels, at least for my taste.



To be fair, that isn't even one of the better ones. It's not bad, just not great. All the ones I listed, though, ARE, and there are several more to come that I'm interested in, with Selaco being at the top of that list. For what it's worth, I have Doom on one platform and most of these titles ARE my jam. Even Project Warlock and Shrine speaks to me in a way that most modern shooters simply never could.


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## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> IMO not all the new-boomer-shooter games are great. There was (is?) a bandwagon, lots of titles jumped on it, results are very mixed. I'm one of those kinds of people who installs Doom on every device I can get my hands on, and you'd think that means all those titles are "my jam", but an aesthetic doesn't make a good game, unfortunately. Some of these new titles really nail what was good about the classics, but certainly not all of them. The one that stands out to me (in a bad way) is Project Warlock. I feel like I _should have_ liked this game, but it just missed the mark on a lot of levels, at least for my taste.



I downloaded a game on steam called “Toxxik” I think it was called. Was one of those super-fast shooters inspired by 90’s games. It was pretty fun but too taxing on my crummy laptop at the time and frankly I don’t think it ever really picked up an audience.


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## wankerness

Finally at the end of Demon's Souls, 2 trophies to go, just trying to finish up the Mephistopheles questline (an NPC that tasks you with killing basically everyone in the nexus, this game's equivalent of firelink shrine). This is kind of amusing, but it's really annoying. Basically, after you kill everyone she demands, you can no longer attune/learn spells. I saved it for right before the end of the game, but unfortunately the last NPC she wants me to kill is hanging out at the final boss door, so I'm not convinced I'll be able to kill him as he has like 3x the HP of the actual final boss and hits like a truck. Other than that, I just need to kill the last two bosses and then kill the maiden (flamekeeper equivalent) for the "other ending." I'm a bit worried about King Allant as he was the only difficult boss in NG, but I think you can just cheese him with poison cloud and the thief ring and patience.

NG+ was way, way, way faster than NG, as I didn't bother with any of the "tendency events," and thus I was constantly staying in body form to avoid enemies being able to 1-shot me. Plus, bosses are easier when you're not trying to do weird strategies for trophies (apart from the maiden in the swamp who's insanely harder if you fight her the intended way). Still died repeatedly in a few sections (those giant trolls in the swamp are horrible). I died at least 10 times trying to kill the NPC biorr in the nexus, but at least there's no penalty for dying there. The only boss that killed me was maneater; the enemies in this game are much harder than the bosses, kind of like the base game of DS1 and DS2 but even more exaggerated. I guess that was their concession to the brutal level design where you have to finish the whole level and kill the boss without dying since there's almost never any way to get quickly back to the boss. But, I think a ton of the difficulty for this game occurs when you die and then have half the health, making it so you get 1-shot by enemies, as opposed to if you stay in body form and thus nothing can 1-shot you other than gravity. Still, a game that gets radically harder if you die is a stupid design and I'm glad they made it a lot less punitive in DS2/3 (and 1, obviously, where there's absolutely no stat penalty to being "hollow"). My limited understanding of Sekiro is that it also gets harder if you die (with you losing your "extra lives" for subsequent attempts?). Ugh.

Titanfall 2 is next! Unfortunately my videogame time also gets cut down massively for the next few days, but hey.


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## wankerness

Finished Demon's Souls platinum, started Titanfall 2. The tutorial thing gives you 2 minutes, but says you should be able to do it in 25 seconds??!? First attempt: 1:30. I don't think my reflexes are fast enough to play this game!!


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## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Finished Demon's Souls platinum, started Titanfall 2. The tutorial thing gives you 2 minutes, but says you should be able to do it in 25 seconds??!? First attempt: 1:30. I don't think my reflexes are fast enough to play this game!!



I think you get a trophy for it but that’s it. I never got anywhere close (just watched someone do it online). Thankfully it’s not required to play through the story.


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## MFB

wankerness said:


> Finished Demon's Souls platinum, started Titanfall 2. The tutorial thing gives you 2 minutes, but says you should be able to do it in 25 seconds??!? First attempt: 1:30. I don't think my reflexes are fast enough to play this game!!



Man, don't sweat The Gauntlet, it's ludicrous the speed some people will run through that thing at. Someone recently set a new world record at just under 9 seconds, and it requires INSANE precious and timing to do.

Just have fun with the game.


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## TedEH

Got ending A in Nier Automata today.



Spoiler



Then accidentally got ending G right away. I hadn't expected the beginning of the next run to be from a different perspective. I was fully expecting to still be playing 2B, and basically do a repeat of the last handful of hours with some minor differences. I'm less worried about it keeping my attention now. The first run was alright on it's own, but nothing too special. I'd be mildly disappointed if that was it, but seeing the perspective change makes me think there's a lot of potential left.


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## wankerness

MFB said:


> Man, don't sweat The Gauntlet, it's ludicrous the speed some people will run through that thing at. Someone recently set a new world record at just under 9 seconds, and it requires INSANE precious and timing to do.
> 
> Just have fun with the game.



Yeah, I can't see that being possible with a controller vs mouse and keyboard. I still feel like I haven't been able to precisely aim in anything that doesn't have gyro aiming on console since the N64 turok days. It's all about the snap-to-target with L2 in these sorts of games, compensating for how hard it is to aim "from the hip" with dual shock style controllers.

I played a few hours of Titanfall 2. The scope is impressive. I was not feeling it AT ALL for a bit at the beginning, but then things started getting impressive with stuff like the trip through the plant that fabricates structures/planetary surfaces, and then time travel got introduced and it really got my attention. I just regrouped with allies at some base that was being overrun by bots, and now will take a break for a while.

I don't like platforming in these sorts of games, especially not when wall-jumping is involved, but this is definitely the best iteration of it I've experienced, and the stakes are about as high as in Uncharted (aka if you mess up a jump at least half of the time you'll start AT THAT VERY JUMP one second later with no punishment at all other than the annoyance of having messed up).

If the campaign is only like ten hours I don't expect to spend more than a couple more days with it, but I'm pretty impressed with it. The only thing that feels samey with other shooters are most of the guns, but they still have a satisfying feel. It feels like the Anti-Halo in some ways, like, it still locks you to two weapons plus a grenade, but it has the whole mech thing along with it and the mechanics are designed for maximum fun (even if I don't personally like fps platforming in concept).


----------



## Choop

Sekiro update: Beat Genichiro for the first time. A little bit frustrating having to learn a phase 3 set of new attacks, but overall I thought the fight was super fun and interesting. The real boss fights in this game are rad as hell! Mostly I just get annoyed at the minibosses more than anything.


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## Ralyks

Sigh.... I was able to download a 10 hour trial of Madden 22 through EA Play, and then I was told I can get my physical copy the night before release at 9 pm tomorrow night. Why do I do this to myself?


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## KnightBrolaire

Replaying God of War 3 and remembering how much I fucking hate certain puzzle sections in these games. Also fuck the labyrinth fights. I was raging at the "let's throw 4 minotaur at them at once" section and the one where spikes pop up in a section of the arena/occasionally the whole arena.


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## TheBlackBard

Bethesda's update on Steam just launched for Quake. Goodbye everyone else, at least till Cultic comes out.


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## dr_game0ver

I just discoverd the Oblivion soundtrack can be purchase on steam. It is on sale for 4.99€. Or you can buy the game for 4.49€, install it, go to the game file and copy/paste the music (MP3 files)...


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## Mathemagician

KnightBrolaire said:


> Replaying God of War 3 and remembering how much I fucking hate certain puzzle sections in these games. Also fuck the labyrinth fights. I was raging at the "let's throw 4 minotaur at them at once" section and the one where spikes pop up in a section of the arena/occasionally the whole arena.



Set the game to easy. We’re here for a good time not a long time.


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## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Set the game to easy. We’re here for a good time not a long time.


neverrrrrrr


----------



## MFB

Choop said:


> Sekiro update: Beat Genichiro for the first time. A little bit frustrating having to learn a phase 3 set of new attacks, but overall I thought the fight was super fun and interesting. The real boss fights in this game are rad as hell! Mostly I just get annoyed at the minibosses more than anything.



Yup, and unfortunately you're going to run in to as just as many MINI bosses as you will full fledged bosses, which is quite infuriating. Lighting reversal is SO god damn satisfying later in the game, it's just a bit disappointing you don't see it as much as you'd expect given it has a full mechanic devoted to avoiding it.



Mathemagician said:


> Set the game to easy. We’re here for a good time not a long time.



Good god man, you've played From Soft games, and not that I'm saying he needs expert mode but Easy? For GOW?! It's like DOOM 2016 where it's best on hard mode, for reals.


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## CovertSovietBear

KnightBrolaire said:


> Replaying God of War 3 and remembering how much I fucking hate certain puzzle sections in these games. Also fuck the labyrinth fights. I was raging at the "let's throw 4 minotaur at them at once" section and the one where spikes pop up in a section of the arena/occasionally the whole arena.


Poseidon on Titan mode took me 3hrs. Reminds me of why I don't do hardest difficulty anymore but a lot of rage inducing moments for sure.


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## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Yup, and unfortunately you're going to run in to as just as many MINI bosses as you will full fledged bosses, which is quite infuriating. Lighting reversal is SO god damn satisfying later in the game, it's just a bit disappointing you don't see it as much as you'd expect given it has a full mechanic devoted to avoiding it.
> 
> 
> 
> Good god man, you've played From Soft games, and not that I'm saying he needs expert mode but Easy? For GOW?! It's like DOOM 2016 where it's best on hard mode, for reals.



Fromsoft games are run through the design wringer (generally) to be hard but fair. Most games just amp up enemy damage and health and reduce the damage you deal. I’m not into bullet sponges. 

Also I’ve never played any Doom. Maybe I should?


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## MFB

Mathemagician said:


> Also I’ve never played any Doom. Maybe I should?



At least play 2016, it's honestly probably in the top 3 FPS of my life along with Titanfall 2 and any of the first 4 Halo games (1-3 and Reach, not 4/5/ODST you heathens)


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## Mathemagician

Damn that’s high praise. Ok will check it out when it’s on sale.


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## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> Fromsoft games are run through the design wringer (generally) to be hard but fair. Most games just amp up enemy damage and health and reduce the damage you deal. I’m not into bullet sponges.
> 
> Also I’ve never played any Doom. Maybe I should?


Doom = Gud.
(modern ) Wolfenstein 1/2 = Gud.


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## MFB

Personally I found new Wolfenstein to be meh at best. People praise it left and right when they came out, but I just felt it to be quite clunky compared to others; and as always, modern shooters requiring you to pick up ammo with a button? Fuck right off.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I haven't been an FPS guy for years, but Doom 2016 is a mad great time. Really harkens back to the classic Romero/Carmack frantic run and gun shooters in the 90s. 

Wolfenstein New Order was good. Had enough self awareness to have it stand out from the rest. Then it got dumber with the sequels.


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## Carrion Rocket

Doom 2016 is what Doom 3 should have been.


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## Jarmake

Today I beat Mergo's wet nurse. Fricking finally! She seemed quite much easier than before, but it might have something to do with the fact that I've been leveling up a bit.

Next will be either Laurence, the first vicar (heard bad things about this one) or maybe living failures?


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## Werecow

MFB said:


> Personally I found new Wolfenstein to be meh at best. People praise it left and right when they came out, but I just felt it to be quite clunky compared to others; and as always, modern shooters requiring you to pick up ammo with a button? Fuck right off.


It pisses me off when i've 498/500 ammo and i can't avoid picking up a big box of ammo simply because i have no other choice than to run over it. I love picking up ammo with a button.


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## TheBlackBard

Carrion Rocket said:


> Prodeus is what Doom 3 should have been.




Fixed.


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## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> Today I beat Mergo's wet nurse. Fricking finally! She seemed quite much easier than before, but it might have something to do with the fact that I've been leveling up a bit.
> 
> Next will be either Laurence, the first vicar (heard bad things about this one) or maybe living failures?



Mergo is a stupid boss. I have seen people beat it with a zergier, more complex strat, but I was bad at that, so I had to basically run around in circles every time she went into the phase 2 where she like, teleports/makes clones, and keep running until she'd return to phase 1. Took forever since that strat left very little time for actually damaging her, but only took a couple tries.

Laurence is an asshole boss. If you're specc'd right and get lucky you can beat him down fast enough that things don't become bad. But basically he just hits REALLY hard and you have to really be on the ball with dodging, and it's made very hard by the camera angles and the room. I often see recommendations to fight him unlocked, but I don't think that was what worked for me. I didn't have the button extension for my controller at that point, so I couldn't really control the right stick while also being able to dodge.

Then phase 2 he starts farting lava everywhere and depending on where he goes you can get boxed in and be totally screwed. I eventually got lucky and managed to nuke him down before he really moved much.

I definitely had to summon the NPC on him. Didn't help THAT much, though, since he hits SO hard that the NPC can sometimes get trucked long before you get him to P2, and then you're just stuck fighting him with a buffed healthbar by yourself.

Living Failures is by far the easiest boss of the DLC. Orphan (the "last" boss, though Laurence is optional and requires getting an item and backtracking and thus might be considered the last one instead) is the other boss that's always listed on "hardest videogame bosses ever" lists. I had the overpowered sword with a quality build and thus didn't really struggle. It was a terrifying fight since he hits SO hard and the sound design is so alarming and he's really fast, but as long as you can make most of the dodges and get a couple parries off he goes down really fast. I found him far easier than Laurence, but a lot of people have the opposite experience. Might partly depend what weapon you're using. I was almost always using the sword in 1H mode which is very fast and thus well suited for playing more defensively.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> It pisses me off when i've 498/500 ammo and i can't avoid picking up a big box of ammo simply because i have no other choice than to run over it. I love picking up ammo with a button.



For the handful of games where ammo is a big issue, sure, but cmon! When you're playing something like Borderlands and blasting 20 enemies at a time and ammo is flying everywhere and can be of any type and is a little tiny icon that you can't process in battle, all it's doing is making you have to mash the pickup button nonstop during firefights when you shouldn't have to. Going back to BL1/2 was annoying after 3 made it auto-pickup.

I guess I remember being bothered by what you describe back in the day with the original versions of Doom/Quake where you'd need 1 shotgun shell, there'd be like 1 box in the whole level, and you'd accidentally run over it and functionally lose 19 ammo. 

Speaking of Quake, they just ported it to Steam and all consoles, with soundtrack intact!!! I'm hyped. I've heard there are auto-aim options in the PC version, so that has me hoping it will be playable on PS4, unlike some things like Jedi Knight 2 where there is no aim assist and thus it's impossible to aim on PS and need the switch version for Gyro aiming.

EDIT: I see Scarlet Nexus is on sale. I saw a lot of people raging in a discussion topic saying "i wish someone had warned me that it's so visual-novel heavy, there's so much looking at static images while people talk!!!" Is this an accurate criticism, or are these people over-reacting? I don't have much interest in plot, just gameplay.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> EDIT: I see Scarlet Nexus is on sale. I saw a lot of people raging in a discussion topic saying "i wish someone had warned me that it's so visual-novel heavy, there's so much looking at static images while people talk!!!" Is this an accurate criticism, or are these people over-reacting? I don't have much interest in plot, just gameplay.



A majority of the cutscenes are done in a graphic novel fashion, yes. I didn’t really feel like it took away from the game though. I put about 55 hours into it and really enjoyed myself, and plan on watching the anime soon. I’d say it’s worth the sales price, yes.



Downloaded the Directors Cut of Ghost of Tsushima. Good lord as though this game wasn’t gorgeous as it was. Also, heads up to anyone who has played the original and plans on trying the Directors Cut: it does indeed double up your trophies upon loading your transferred save. And speaking of that, thank god they just put “transfer PS4 save” in the menu of the PS5 version instead of having to go to the PS4 version, upload, then go to the PS5 version, Download. This should be the obvious way moving forward.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Titanfall 2, that was a short game. I get why people like it, but it's not really for me. The scope is by far the most impressive thing, it looks like REALLY high production values were involved, especially in the last few missions when you're in the midst of an aerial warzone or fighting a whole bunch of titans on a battlefield. I guess my apathy comes from not liking FPS platforming nor really liking the mechanic with the cores charging on the Titan, it made combat seem like you were just treading water in between when you could use your super weapon. I might try the sequel, if one ever materializes. It was really slick and definitely was at least trying to put an emphasis on fun over simple scripting and graphics like many of its AAA fps ilk.

Played through the first episode of Quake on PS4, it was alright. The aiming is janky. If you're sitting just right, you can use gyro aiming as a fine tuning mechanism, but I didn't mess around for long enough to find the right balance of sensitivity on the right stick vs sensitivity on the motion controls and instead just turned off gyro and jacked the right stick sensitivity way up. Regardless, it still was occasionally kicking my ass with how fast you have to turn around and react to things - I can't believe I made it through this game with keyboard aiming way back in the day.

Got the DLC on ghost of tsushima and the ps5 upgrade, played a tiny bit, had to relearn the combat system all over again (mainly just remembering what stance countered what enemy type - I haven't even attempted to relearn the items or other triggered abilities yet). It was funny how my first reaction on booting it up was "wow, I thought THESE graphics were good?!?!" Demons Souls spoiled me!!! I definitely like the 60 fps thing and the super fast loading on PS5 but it didn't seem to look too different, based on what little memory I have of it. I'll probably focus on this now that I'm done with Titanfall.

I also got out my Sekiro disc and am tempted to try it again. I think I need to have a week or so I can dedicate a lot of hours to it, though, since it isn't something you can just pick up now and then and be able to do anything in. I'll probably already have to start over.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

wankerness said:


> Finished Titanfall 2, that was a short game. I get why people like it, but it's not really for me. The scope is by far the most impressive thing, it looks like REALLY high production values were involved, especially in the last few missions when you're in the midst of an aerial warzone or fighting a whole bunch of titans on a battlefield.


I loved the part where you stop the fold weapon (time travel mission). The whole game is pretty high production and the mechanics and feel are what made it the most enjoyable. Multiplayer is also well done but the lobbies have been pretty empty for a while, takes a few minutes to find a match. With Apex Legends out I'm not sure what the fate of the series is, maybe well get a trilogy or continuation.


----------



## TedEH

Got Nier:A ending B, and a chunk through the third run. Understanding now why some people say "playthroughs" is kinda the wrong term. I've got nooooo idea at this point what to expect from the remaining endings.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> Got Nier:A ending B, and a chunk through the third run. Understanding now why some people say "playthroughs" is kinda the wrong term. I've got nooooo idea at this point what to expect from the remaining endings.



No. You have NO idea 

So I put some time into 12 Minutes last night. It’s a neat concept and it gets pretty dark, but it can get confusing as hell, and the voice acting seems weird, especially given the star-filled cast.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> No. You have NO idea


The impression I got was that I'm reasonably close to the end.... but this comment makes me unsure of that now. 



Spoiler



At this point, I've got endings ABDG, and I started trying to just do another playthrough but I think what I'm _supposed _to do is maybe use the scene skip to go complete that fight between 9S and A2 again but with the other option. I've done a decent job so far of avoiding spoilers - supposedly there's some kind of inciting event that starts E, but I have no idea what that is. Maybe something to do with that debug menu that's popped up? I fully expect that menu to become meaningful at some point.


----------



## Choop

My girlfriend walked in the room while I was fighting Guardian Ape in Sekiro yesterday, and I just blurted out, "THE MONKEY IS F***ING ME!" 

Technically an ape...but unfortunately I didn't make that distinction under stress, lol. I also downed Great Shinobi Owl last night as well, so I think I'm relatively close to finishing the game.


----------



## Jarmake

I just dealed with the living failures. I tried killing off Laurence, the first vicar, but after getting it to like two hits to death and dying myself I decided to take a scenic route through the lecture hall. What a lovely place it was, indeed!

The living failures were... Well, failures. So damn easy, got it on the first try. Slow guys just wandering around, trying to hit me with meteor showers. Meh. I was positively surprised to see that Lady Maria of the astral clocktower was straight next to those bigheaded dummies. She promptly handed my ass to me and I was so happy. This seems like a challenging fight for sure!

Only 5 bosses to beat... Lady Maria, Laurence, the orphan of Kos, Gehrman and the moon moon... Eh... Moon presence.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> The impression I got was that I'm reasonably close to the end.... but this comment makes me unsure of that now.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> At this point, I've got endings ABDG, and I started trying to just do another playthrough but I think what I'm _supposed _to do is maybe use the scene skip to go complete that fight between 9S and A2 again but with the other option. I've done a decent job so far of avoiding spoilers - supposedly there's some kind of inciting event that starts E, but I have no idea what that is. Maybe something to do with that debug menu that's popped up? I fully expect that menu to become meaningful at some point.



I think you're right that you're supposed to do what you said and make the other choice to get ending C instead of D. E I think is triggered by a different dialogue choice around the same place.

I was going through getting all the endings but unfortunately locked myself out of ending Y (which requires dying to a specific move that the super secret boss uses - I just beat the boss cause I didn't read an ending guide first) and quit cause you get ONE CHANCE at it per playthrough and getting to him requires having upgraded every single weapon in the game to max. I will maybe do that again someday, but probably not. I love the game, but that was a LOT of grinding.


----------



## TedEH

As much as I'm enjoying the game, I dunno that I'm so hooked that I'm willing to grind for extra endings once I get past E, unless they're very easy/quick to do. Besides, there's some stuff coming up soon that I want to get to - namely Psychonauts 2 and Metroid.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> As much as I'm enjoying the game, I dunno that I'm so hooked that I'm willing to grind for extra endings once I get past E, unless they're very easy/quick to do. Besides, there's some stuff coming up soon that I want to get to - namely Psychonauts 2 and Metroid.



i think if you get endings A through E you’re good, unless you want to grind out all the weapons to do the secret boss. Every ending after E is triggered by some kind of failure at various points in the game. Some are pretty amusing, but you can often get the same satisfaction from reading them as doing them. It’s mainly just kind of fun to end up with some of them accidentally through failing or killing some npc you shouldn’t.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing a bunch of the Ghost of Tsushima expansion. I'm not sure if I've just forgotten how to play this game or if the enemy types in the expansion are nastier, but in particular there are these guys that change weapons rapidly and it doesn't seem like your normal stance counters work on them even if you're switching them to correspond to their weapons. I usually end up shooting them with arrows instead of getting chunked by them. I'm getting back into the general gameplay loop feel. I'm amused by some of the bonus crap - there was one puzzle that rewarded me with "yarnham" gear that looks like Eileen the Crow from Bloodborne.

Also, I did one of the "duels" so far (some pirate guy), and got my ass handed to me repeatedly. Like, I think it took about 10 tries. I mean, this isn't a fromsoft game, so you INSTANTLY get to try again after dying, but I was still pretty surprised by how quick you had to be on the parries, how quickly he'd drain your health, how long you had to keep it up for, etc. I guess it's good practice for Sekiro. Probably several orders of magnitude easier, but hey.


----------



## TedEH

Turns out I was only about an hour out from ending E. For some reason, I had expected the final ending to be more involved - kinda like how A+B were very distinct from C+D. Oh well. Pretty good game though. A lot of the mechanical bits of the game took a while to kinda really "get it", like the chips and maybe the combat as a whole, but once you figured them out, it flows pretty well. It needed the extended time after A+B to really get good at those. The hacking bits are fun. The twists are fun. The combat gets fun after a while. Ending E kinda feels like a troll more than a real ending. I've got some questions I feel never got answers, but maybe it's covered by more of the extra endings or sidequests or something. I had a good time with it, but I think I'm done with it.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Turns out I was only about an hour out from ending E. For some reason, I had expected the final ending to be more involved - kinda like how A+B were very distinct from C+D. Oh well. Pretty good game though. A lot of the mechanical bits of the game took a while to kinda really "get it", like the chips and maybe the combat as a whole, but once you figured them out, it flows pretty well. It needed the extended time after A+B to really get good at those. The hacking bits are fun. The twists are fun. The combat gets fun after a while. Ending E kinda feels like a troll more than a real ending. I've got some questions I feel never got answers, but maybe it's covered by more of the extra endings or sidequests or something. I had a good time with it, but I think I'm done with it.



I wasn't that impressed with Ending E, but I know a lot of people that think it's truly brilliant and had like some kind of weird art orgasm over it. Like, specifically the way that when you die and ask for help, any help you get is a direct representation of someone else who deleted their save file to contribute to the effort. It might feel more meaningful if you were doing something other than shooting the credits.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> It might feel more meaningful if you were doing something other than shooting the credits.





Spoiler



IMO the segment where your hacking slowly backs out to reveal that you're _inside the menu_ felt more impactful than shooting the credits. Even the first Smash let you shoot credits, so there's not much novelty there. When I got the credits for C, I was prepared for, and wanted to spend a bit more time with the characters and the systems of the game to lead up to some kind of big finale. Then the delete-your-save prompt comes up and I was hoping that it was going to be a fake-out or a twist that plays some meta game about YOU as the player being a character in the narrative or something, but no - it just strait up deletes your save for no real benefit other than to make a point of it. I guess just to hammer home the theme of making sacrifices for nothing? I opted not to delete the save.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I wasn't that impressed with Ending E, but I know a lot of people that think it's truly brilliant and had like some kind of weird art orgasm over it. Like, specifically the way that when you die and ask for help, any help you get is a direct representation of someone else who deleted their save file to contribute to the effort. It might feel more meaningful if you were doing something other than shooting the credits.



I didn't choose to delete my save either.

Honestly, Nier Automata isn't as clever as it thinks it is. There's some big ambitions, took a hard swing on them but doesn't really hit them. Pushing themes of existentialism and doesn't really follow through. 

I get it though. Perhaps being an oddball gaming experience is enough. Considering this series began as a run of the mill medieval dragon riding hack slash game most people ignored, it's a small miracle this title became popular let alone having Square Enix allowing an eccentric auteur run loose developing whatever he wants.


----------



## TedEH

I can appreciate the ambition though. IMO, a game doesn't have to hit everything it swings at to be a "good game". I'd rather a game that takes some swings at topics that might not land for everyone, than a game that takes no risks, if we're talking games that live or die by their narrative content.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I didn't choose to delete my save either.
> 
> Honestly, Nier Automata isn't as clever as it thinks it is. There's some big ambitions, took a hard swing on them but doesn't really hit them. Pushing themes of existentialism and doesn't really follow through.
> 
> I get it though. Perhaps being an oddball gaming experience is enough. Considering this series began as a run of the mill medieval dragon riding hack slash game most people ignored, it's a small miracle this title became popular let alone having Square Enix allowing an eccentric auteur run loose developing whatever he wants.


I couldn't believe that the whole series spun off from one of the obscure endings of Drakengard that sounded like a fever dream. 

As far as Dynasty Warriors hack n slash "murder literally a thousand people on this battlefield" games go, I really liked it at the time, but I was also an angsty 13 year old and it was a different, weird story.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I can appreciate the ambition though. IMO, a game doesn't have to hit everything it swings at to be a "good game". I'd rather a game that takes some swings at topics that might not land for everyone, than a game that takes no risks, if we're talking games that live or die by their narrative content.



I agree that I like things to at least try to be ambitious rather than just be another Ubisoft game. I think the first Nier actually is more successful in the narrative department. I haven't made it through all the playthroughs on the remake version yet, but the first two playthroughs are definitely a bit more focused and the characters are stronger. Nier Automata is the more polished experience and is more ambitious, though. And the playthroughs are less repetitive, the sidequests are less painful, and the combat's much better.


----------



## StevenC

I finally got to the top of the mountain in Celeste with only 3752 deaths. What a great game. Now time to play all the post story stuff.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Who's played Detroit Become Human? Apparently I didn't get any of the popular endings and all my choices had me in the <5% range. My Markus ending was at 1%!

Spoilers: 
They all lived to the end. Kara and the child were stopped and killed the at Canadian border crossing, I had Markus detonate the dirty bomb (for peace) and Connor was ultimately reset. I knew Connor had some deviant options but never digressed too far from the path, now thinking I should've made him make some of those choices.


----------



## TedEH

CovertSovietBear said:


> Spoilers


We have some [ spoiler ] tags you can use for these.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

TedEH said:


> We have some [ spoiler ] tags you can use for these.


I was unaware of this technology


----------



## Choop

Finished Sekiro! Fun game, but man the last two bosses gave me fits and I'm relieved to have completed it hah.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Ghost of Sekiro DLC for the most part, though one quest requires having completed Legends mode, which I don't know if I want to do. It's pretty good. I still don't think the characters or plot in this game are at all interesting, but the gameplay's good and the open world stuff is nice. Pretty good length, I was OK with having paid 30 for the PS5 upgrade and the DLC.

Started Hades on Switch. Died a LOT to the first boss until I switched to the Bow, then killed her first try, and on that first successful kill, I managed to kill the second boss the same run!!! Then pretty much hit a wall quickly in the third world. I think I need to grind out the other weapons and start getting the permanent weapon upgrades, or something.

I then got the PS5 version since my girlfriend wanted to play the switch and started over since I'd only really made a couple hours of progress. It looks a bit better, but not really much different (of course). I like the controller more than the janky little switchcons that I was using for mobile mode, though! Went straight for the double-dash upgrade and the second life upgrade and started with the bow, have already killed the second boss (with spear this time; using a setup that was basically stack doom with the special attack on it aka just using it like a bow), but have vastly less nectar and thus only have two accessories, and not the one I was using on Switch that seemed to be the best (the backstab damage one from Nyx). Oh well. I definitely like the gameplay, it's just going to be a matter of whether my character can start improving enough to overcome the annoyance of replaying things over and over. I don't mind that so much if I breeze through it. But, currently, certain enemies really can mess with me on the lower levels with the wrong setup (ex a ton of those skulls ruin my day with the bow, the stupid giant medusa head/slamming pillar guy combo miniboss really is annoying with other setups, a mass group of casters is bad news with a shield, etc).

I don't really like the idea of roguelikes in general, though I've never played one for more than five minutes (binding of isaac), and it bugs me run success is largely determined by whether you can get the appropriate god powers before you hit anything difficult (ex, if you get "Doom on attack/special" and "weakness on attack/special" and "doom ticks more if target is weak" then you're basically going to do 3x more damage than any other setup I've found so far). Also, I am guessing I'm going to get very sick of having to go through the first two bosses over and over again to try the third boss. But hey, that's the game for you. I just am focusing on the linear progression aspects (unlocking all the weapons, upgrading at the mirror) and trying to ignore the non-progressive aspects (the whole idea of the roguelike) as much as possible.


----------



## TedEH

I took a quick crack at Prodeus about a week ago. I forget who had recommended it, but yeah, it definitely fits into the category of games that understand what was good about Doom. Maybe a bit too much at times. It really wants to be old Doom and new Doom at the same time.

I've started playing Psychonauts 2. Maybe 10hrs-ish in, but taking my time at it. I think it's..... about what I expected, I guess. Every comment I can think of ends with "for better and/or worse". They took the "just give them more of what they had before" route, IMO, for better or worse. They went very safe in terms of their "handling" of themes so far, again for better or worse. A lot of the Double Fine character is there, which is what I wanted, so I'm happy with that. There's occasional moments where I feel like the writing is trying actively to be an anti-Ubisoft-style and anti-Blizzard-type force, and I can't blame them for it, I guess. It feels like a very 2021 game... for better or worse.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a good time. The movement and combat is very old-school-platformer and takes some time to get used to. Bosses are very creative. Set pieces are a spectacle. The voice acting is pretty good. Jack Black is in it, so that's a win. It's yet to have that Milkman-Conspiracy level of "magic" to it yet though. The original had some "oh shit, that's clever" moments, whereas all those cool things are already established here, and new introductions feel video-game-y.

There's lots of time left in this one though, so we'll see where it goes.


----------



## TheBlackBard

@TedEH It was very likely me who recommended it.  I will never not gush about that game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Up to the final chapter of Ys IX: Monster's Ball, mostly tidying up side quests, clearing the map and hopefully finish up soon. 

At some point in the game, you'll be traveling outside the city into large landscapes and ruins. Essentially turning into a typical Ys game, just much bigger thanks to the open world gameplay. Still fun hacking and slashing and still extremely satisfying when you pull off a perfect dodge/block. I seem to play better here than in Ys VIII and not accidentally rip out random ultimate attacks this time around. 

There's also an interesting twist early on, similar to Ys VIII. But without wishing to spoil, in this circumstance, the game becomes a dungeon crawl and you cannot level up or equip any items aside from your starting weapon. So in these sections the difficulty spikes up and becomes obstacle/trap puzzle based so you're forced to survive on your skill and wits. Not as difficult as I initially thought but even with the healing items liberally scattered around, I died a fair bit from instant death traps. The game surprisingly has the audacity to give you the option of skipping these dungeon sections after death, to which I replied with 2 middle fingers. No game, you will not take any gameplay away from me. 

Per Nihon Falcom MO, the music still rules. I might have to grab the OST some time. 

I should preface that I still have second thoughts on Ys IX Monstrum Nox being a gateway to the series, even when it has extremely strong arguments for me to recommend to players. Namely because Ys VIII Lacrimosa of Dana was my gateway (after a few casual flirts with some SNES titles), and it's cheaper than what this game is being sold right now. Story reasons, it also helps having a general idea of Adol's adventures and exploits (either play the previous games or read the wikis on the unavailable games like Ys V) since this entry does take liberties in slyly poking fun at them.


----------



## wankerness

Wow, Theseus and the Minotaur are a brick wall in Hades. Fought them for like 3 minutes before dying and only took off about 15% of their health in that time. And I was pretty upgraded and went through all the minibosses/trash in elysium like a knife through butter! Guess it's time to grind keys to get all the weapons so I can start upgrading them.


----------



## TedEH

I got to a point in Psychonauts 2 where it's giving me one of those "point of no return" hints, and I'm less than 15 hours in. Thats..... shorter than I expected, and mildly disappointing, since I feel like I haven't had enough time to really explore the characters and mechanics fully. I'm hoping it's a point of no return for this _segment_ rather than the beginning of the end of the whole game.


----------



## gabito

Currently playing South Park: The Stick of Truth.

I don't know about funny (I like the series, but I'm not a super fan or something) but it's a good, fun game.


----------



## wankerness

Man, I suck at Hades. Tried Theseus a couple more times (I can only even get there with the bow consistently - I got the Chiron upgrade for it). I can sometimes kill the minotaur, and once got Theseus to 50% after that, but then he goes nuts at 50% and starts spamming AOE god powers and ugh. I guess I need to start unlocking more mirror upgrades. This game is as grindy as Yakuza 7!


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of Psychonauts 2 last night. In a very broad sense, it's a good game - I've no regrets in terms of backing it or playing it, but I have mixed feelings about some bits of the final product. For something that I spent more money on than the average game, and waiting a significant time for, I think that makes it worthy of nitpicks and a long-winded "review", even if it's great to just have a new game in the series at all - and I am grateful for that.

I wrote far too much, so I jammed it into a spoiler tag just to take up less space. Not really spoiling anything, but now anyone who doesn't care can skip it more easily.



Spoiler



The world established by the first game had a lot going for it, and they kept most of what worked. If anything, I feel like it does most of the kinds of things a good sequel should do: streamline and tighten what worked, a fresh coat of paint, etc. So in that regard, there's a lot to praise in this one. The visuals are _much_ improved. The music is well done and fitting. Presentation values here are fantastic - in terms of "camera" work, art direction, voice acting (for the most part) etc etc. The overworld-type area is well put together, even if you're not given a ton of incentive to explore it. It's just a nice space to exist in, if that's not an odd comment to make.

Mechanically, the game is pretty tight. Movement is good, the platforming is good and generally fair. Combat is kinda clunky at times, but works well enough and isn't really the focus of the game. The powers you get are generally satisfying to use.

Story pacing is a bit of a mixed bag though, where I feel like a lot of the meat of the story happens toward the ending. I kept getting what I thought was "you're approaching the endgame" signals from the game to realize there was a lot more story to go. I mean, realistically, I think the way it's paced out makes a lot of sense - the first half of the game is very exploratory and open, then you get sort of funelled into a second half that's a lot more linear. Steam claims I played for 20 hours, and I think I covered most of what the game has to offer in that time. Like the first, you can go back and revisit previous levels, but unless you're the type to 100% everything, there's no real compelling reason to return to previous levels unless you weren't very diligent in your first visit in terms of collecting things you need for upgrades.

Collecting things is another area where I've mixed feelings. Placement of collectables feels "fair" but the levels are also pretty linear, so you can generally pick up most of what's in a level in a single pass with very minimal backtracking. I tend to think of collectables as being an incentive for exploration, but there's not very far you can go off the path in most levels, and most "secrets" aren't very hard to find.

Being that this is primarily a story-driven game - the story is, once again, something I've mixed feelings about. I generally enjoyed the main arc, especially towards the end where they start throwing in some twists and drilling into what's really going on in the main plot line. The Double-Fine style of charm and believable dialogue is here, and there's lot to appreciate there. BUT - and of course there's a but - the part I find _didn't _land is one of the big selling points for the game, and something that a lot of other people seem to have really enjoyed - and that's the game's take on mental health. Your first launch presents you with that mental health warning, as has been highly publicized at this point, which primed me to expect a deeper or darker exploration of mental health concepts than the previous game, but that's not what I found. To me, the game felt like it was playing things very safe. The first game may not have been very "PC", but it felt to me like it was trying to explore things pretty freely, and wasn't afraid to get weird or dark with it. The first game was risky, this one is not. Rather than really addressing or discussing mental health issues, they basically bring them up by going "see! This person has self-doubt! That purple blob is doubt! Go blast it with your magic brain fire!", and everything is magically solved with love and friendship and acceptance. There's a reasonably prominent theme of consent, especially in earlier parts of the game, which are again played off very PG - somewhere between a kids show and "corporate sensitivity training: the game". It doesn't ruin the story, but it just didn't stick the landing for me.

I mentioned it in a previous comment - that the game feels like it's trying to be the anti-ubi and anti-blizzard, and that feeling continued throughout the whole playthrough. I'm not calling it a fault per-se, 'because in a lot of ways we probably need some of that. But it's very of-the-times, and I think I'll need to come back to this title in a few years to see it through another lens.

I like the game enough that I'm willing to write up a long paragraph about it that nobody will likely read - but I think most of it's best ideas came from the first game. The best characters and mechanics were the ones established already. The first game was rough in a lot of ways, but it's high points were great enough to make it a classic - this second game doesn't have anything that come across to me in that same way. None of it is bad, but none of it is Milkman Conspiracy good, if you get what I mean. Is that just me being a grumpy old man with nostalgia glasses who can't appreciate a good thing that's right in front of him? It might be!


It's a good game.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I wrote far too much, so I jammed it into a spoiler tag just to take up less space. Not really spoiling anything, but now anyone who doesn't care can skip it more easily.





Spoiler



This is a brilliant idea and a policy everyone in this thread should adopt. Just title of the game then everything else in spoiler tags. Not that it will stop me reading most of it anyway.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

StevenC said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> This is a brilliant idea and a policy everyone in this thread should adopt. Just title of the game then everything else in spoiler tags. Not that it will stop me reading most of it anyway.


More of an incentive rather than a detractor


----------



## Choop

Back on the Guilty Gear Strive train, I got some Silent Sanwa V2 buttons for my fightstick and I love them. Much quieter and the feel is very very close to regular Sanwas (so, excellent). Looking to finally play Red Dead Redemption 2 next, but I'm thinking to hold off until I pull a monitor upgrade. Hermmm .-.

There are so many game options to play in my backlog right now. It's almost October, so I'm thinking it might be fun to do like a Horror Month run of spooky games.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Choop said:


> Back on the Guilty Gear Strive train, I got some Silent Sanwa V2 buttons for my fightstick and I love them.


How easy is it to transition to this type of fighting game from say, Mortal Kombat X/11?


----------



## Mathemagician

Waiting for the cross play for Warframe. I want to play on my couch but with all my stuff. It’s a good (quasi) Diablo style time killer.


----------



## Choop

CovertSovietBear said:


> How easy is it to transition to this type of fighting game from say, Mortal Kombat X/11?



Pretty different, but I guess if you play fighting games at all you would have the basic idea down. Guilty Gear has air dashing and a move canceling system, but Strive is great because none of the moves are difficult to execute. Hold back to block!~ I haven't really played MK at all since UMK3, despite buying MK11 fully intending to learn and just havent yet. Dohhhh...


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Man, I suck at Hades. Tried Theseus a couple more times (I can only even get there with the bow consistently - I got the Chiron upgrade for it). I can sometimes kill the minotaur, and once got Theseus to 50% after that, but then he goes nuts at 50% and starts spamming AOE god powers and ugh. I guess I need to start unlocking more mirror upgrades. This game is as grindy as Yakuza 7!



yeah he can be a prick . I find having a leveled up AOE dash attack helps allot as I can dash around him and chip away a bit while he is going ham .

I probably make it to the hades boss fight 7 times out of 10, the times I don't I mess up that fight and thesues gets me 

Its funny allot of people love the bow, its my last choice , I never do good with it


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Choop said:


> Pretty different, but I guess if you play fighting games at all you would have the basic idea down. Guilty Gear has air dashing and a move canceling system, but Strive is great because none of the moves are difficult to execute. Hold back to block!~ I haven't really played MK at all since UMK3, despite buying MK11 fully intending to learn and just havent yet. Dohhhh...


I'd play GGS just for the animation at this point ha. MK11 is rather slow and footsie based, balanced and less emphasis on combos, better meter utilization. I still play w/ friends but online isn't fun anymore. MKX is the opposite where it's a quick game w/ tons of combo potential, true 50/50 strings and setups and I still play it as servers are plenty full, at least on PSN.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Man, I suck at Hades. Tried Theseus a couple more times (I can only even get there with the bow consistently - I got the Chiron upgrade for it). I can sometimes kill the minotaur, and once got Theseus to 50% after that, but then he goes nuts at 50% and starts spamming AOE god powers and ugh. I guess I need to start unlocking more mirror upgrades. This game is as grindy as Yakuza 7!



My first win was with a shield dash build so it’s a damaging quick shield dash, I had poison damage, and lightning AOE damage. I was able to block/reflect almost everything and keep chipping health even when I couldn’t get off a good direct hit. Made hades a bit easier too. 

After that I’ve had some good spear runs. Apparently the bow is one of better/best weapons. But I haven’t played since launch if there’s been balances patches.


----------



## wankerness

I found facerolling dash attack with the right buffs with both the shield and the fists worked pretty well on Theseus. I’d never previously gotten past the stupid alternate first bosses with those weapons, but got all the way to hades with both. Unfortunately it’s dependent on getting lucky with what weapon upgrades you get from the hammer and making sure you get the dash reflect before things get hard, but using a different god trinket thing for getting the right buffs. 

I got to hades twice, took down 3/4 of his health bar with the shield before going through all my lives. Then I thought I beat him with the fists, but nope, he got a full heal and went into overdrive and I ran out of lives when his second form was half health. Ugh.

I’m kinda getting sick of it, it’s so damn grindy and repetitive. But, the core gameplay is fun and the style is great. I just played it too much the last few days.

started hollow knight, f this game. I hate the combat. It feels so limited and annoying. And you’re constantly getting hit by an enemy or obstacle which causes you to get knocked back and land on spikes. It’s just way too frustrating to me. I’ll go back to dark souls, bloodborne, etc happily, THIS game is the real sadistic one.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> I found facerolling dash attack with the right buffs with both the shield and the fists worked pretty well on Theseus. I’d never previously gotten past the stupid alternate first bosses with those weapons, but got all the way to hades with both. Unfortunately it’s dependent on getting lucky with what weapon upgrades you get from the hammer and making sure you get the dash reflect before things get hard, but using a different god trinket thing for getting the right buffs.
> 
> I got to hades twice, took down 3/4 of his health bar with the shield before going through all my lives. Then I thought I beat him with the fists, but nope, he got a full heal and went into overdrive and I ran out of lives when his second form was half health. Ugh.
> 
> I’m kinda getting sick of it, it’s so damn grindy and repetitive. But, the core gameplay is fun and the style is great. I just played it too much the last few days.
> 
> started hollow knight, f this game. I hate the combat. It feels so limited and annoying. And you’re constantly getting hit by an enemy or obstacle which causes you to get knocked back and land on spikes. It’s just way too frustrating to me. I’ll go back to dark souls, bloodborne, etc happily, THIS game is the real sadistic one.



hollow knight is great. But it is a abusive relationship. I think I un installed it 4 times in the process of finishing it. 
But every time I was stuck , when I accepted it was my fault, I eventually got past it. 

truly an abusive relationship.


----------



## wankerness

My issue with Hollow Knight is entirely just the forced limitations on attack abilities. It feels like the old-school NES megaman or castlevania games where 3/4 of the difficulty came from the fact you could only aim straight ahead and then it sends flying enemies cascading around the screen at you so there's this precise dance of having to jump at them and hit attack while holding back the way you jumped from or else the enemy touches you and you go flying with the damage recoil. Ugh. 

I thought you got a dash evade move or something in this, but I sure didn't have one at the beginning. Got to the first boss that rapidly smashes up and down on the screen, got smashed since it's not easy to weave between that with a standard walk/jump moveset while doing any damage, and just quit in annoyance cause I didn't want to contend with DS bonfire mechanics while also being enraged. Rgh.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I thought you got a dash evade move or something in this


If I remember right, you do get one, but not right away.


----------



## MFB

So, I got to a decent point in HW where I had some moves and power-ups. You do get an items that prevents you from ...stutter/staggering or whatever you want to call it after an attack, so that when you're hit - you take damage and that's it, end of story. Without that equipped, typically you would get hit and be staggered, potentially onto an environmental hazard. But you don't get it right away, and I think it's an item I had to purchase if I recall correctly, or if not purchase than beat someone for it; I don't think it was even an item that you'd find in a chest (don't think HW did chest mechanics) or this equivalent.

And there is a dash attack, but I think that might have even been tied to an upgrade with your weapon? If not then it was just another accessory. It's been years since I played so I forget what mechanics it did and didn't incorporate for skills vs. accessories vs. items.

Maybe I should go back and re-try it now that I'm more familiar with the 'no lore, just play' type games but it's still disappointing when the art is that fantastic to have nothing to go off o


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> So, I got to a decent point in HW where I had some moves and power-ups. You do get an items that prevents you from ...stutter/staggering or whatever you want to call it after an attack, so that when you're hit - you take damage and that's it, end of story. Without that equipped, typically you would get hit and be staggered, potentially onto an environmental hazard. But you don't get it right away, and I think it's an item I had to purchase if I recall correctly, or if not purchase than beat someone for it; I don't think it was even an item that you'd find in a chest (don't think HW did chest mechanics) or this equivalent.



What is HW? Are you talking about Hollow Knight, or something else? Context suggests the former, but the abbreviation suggests something else! Hot Wheels?


----------



## MFB

It actually is Hot Wheels, Turbo Racing to be specific on PSX.

OF COURSE ITS HOLLOW KNIGHT!


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> My issue with Hollow Knight is entirely just the forced limitations on attack abilities. It feels like the old-school NES megaman or castlevania games where 3/4 of the difficulty came from the fact you could only aim straight ahead and then it sends flying enemies cascading around the screen at you so there's this precise dance of having to jump at them and hit attack while holding back the way you jumped from or else the enemy touches you and you go flying with the damage recoil. Ugh.
> 
> I thought you got a dash evade move or something in this, but I sure didn't have one at the beginning. Got to the first boss that rapidly smashes up and down on the screen, got smashed since it's not easy to weave between that with a standard walk/jump moveset while doing any damage, and just quit in annoyance cause I didn't want to contend with DS bonfire mechanics while also being enraged. Rgh.



From memory , and it’s been a while , you get the dash not too far into the game. And it is a weapon upgrade.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> It actually is Hot Wheels, Turbo Racing to be specific on PSX.
> 
> OF COURSE ITS HOLLOW KNIGHT!



Hey man, if you'd only said HW it once I'd have assumed it was a typo, but you said it twice!!

Finished the base game in Quake and did one of the stupid nightmare achievements (beat first level with no shots fired), I think I've had enough of this for a while! It has multiple expansions included, but I don't have any nostalgic attachment to them. I don't think the 1P on this game is really that good, I just played through it so many times as a kid that it was fun to revisit it.


----------



## TedEH

So I played Twelve Minutes and...... and uh..... whaaaaaaat the crap. To talk about it too much is to spoil it, so I won't say much - but if you liked Doki Doki Literature Club because it had some dark-ish twists, you might like this one if you want something in the same vein but slightly more mature (in a certain sense), minus the awkward anime school girls, and plus a time loop. So it's Doki Doki Fvcked Up Groundhog Family Day staring Ray from Star Wars (but you'd only know if you read the credits because her voice is pretty generic).


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> So I played Twelve Minutes and...... and uh..... whaaaaaaat the crap. To talk about it too much is to spoil it, so I won't say much - but if you liked Doki Doki Literature Club because it had some dark-ish twists, you might like this one if you want something in the same vein but slightly more mature (in a certain sense), minus the awkward anime school girls, and plus a time loop. So it's Doki Doki Fvcked Up Groundhog Family Day staring Ray from Star Wars (but you'd only know if you read the credits because her voice is pretty generic).



I fell off 12 Minutes pretty quickly. It had some good twists but it felt like the game wanted to actively piss me off. I get why people compare it to Doki Doki Literature Club, although DDLC has turned out to be one of my favorite games ever, whilst 12 Minute feels like it was a neat concept that needed more time (which is saying something considering it took forever to come out to begin with).

I haven't really been gaming so much the last week and change, but I've been picking Judgement back up before Lost Judgement comes out. I doubt it happens though and I may just wait until the holidays to get it.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> I fell off 12 Minutes pretty quickly


I can understand why a lot about the game could turn people off. I've got a surprising amount of patience for time loop mechanics for some reason, so a lot of the common frustrations didn't bug me much. Did you get very far into the narrative / know how it plays out?


----------



## alinas

I've been addicted to the drift hunters lately.


----------



## Ralyks

TedEH said:


> I can understand why a lot about the game could turn people off. I've got a surprising amount of patience for time loop mechanics for some reason, so a lot of the common frustrations didn't bug me much. Did you get very far into the narrative / know how it plays out?



I basically watched how it played out on a YouTube video. Again, it was a really good concept, basically the execution needed a lot of work, as well as maybe some kinks in the story.


----------



## gunch

I keep telling myself I'll do it but I really want to tackle my secret shame "haven't played" games:

Super Metroid, Zero Mission, Fusion, maybe 1 and 2 (gameboy) 
Oracles of Seasons/Ages, Majora's Mask, TP and SS, BOTW 
CV: SotN

Been wanting to 100% Yoshi's Island too


----------



## CovertSovietBear

gunch said:


> I keep telling myself I'll do it but I really want to tackle my secret shame "haven't played" games:
> 
> Super Metroid, Zero Mission, Fusion, maybe 1 and 2 (gameboy)
> Oracles of Seasons/Ages, Majora's Mask, TP and SS, BOTW
> CV: SotN
> 
> Been wanting to 100% Yoshi's Island too


I'm playing through Fusion right now. The battery on my old Advance SP still holds up for days on end w/o recharge. Are you going to emulate or play on real hardware?


----------



## gunch

CovertSovietBear said:


> I'm playing through Fusion right now. The battery on my old Advance SP still holds up for days on end w/o recharge. Are you going to emulate or play on real hardware?



bnes and vba


----------



## mongey

grabbed Rygar om the switch, Its one of my top 5 arcade games from back in the day .maybe top 3 

I'm def sentimental , but I think its still fun today. Gets hard and you cant continue


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

mongey said:


> grabbed Rygar om the switch, Its one of my top 5 arcade games from back in the day .maybe top 3
> 
> I'm def sentimental , but I think its still fun today. Gets hard and you cant continue



Is that the NES port or Arcade ver?


----------



## mongey

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Is that the NES port or Arcade ver?


arcade.

its got the English and Japanese versions


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished and crossed off Ys IX Mumpty Numpty off the list. As fun and pleasant as an Ys game can be, perhaps the most fun I've had in the series, and that last still shot of the ending is fantastic. 

While Ys IX is actually newcomer friendly, I still insist that Ys VIII is the better choice as a gateway to the series. Not just from a simplified gameplay perspective (Ys IX is practically a superhero game), but story wise, it's more rewarding to know a bit of the lore. Granted that the Ys story isn't all that sophisticated to begin with, and there's some deep callbacks in IX that most people won't catch without playing the previous titles or a quick trip to the wikia. But Monstrum Nox does take a lot of callbacks from VIII so it's worth it. Besides, Lacrimosa of Dana is a fantastic game as well. 

If anything, as the game is set as the latest in the messy timeline, Ys IX also works as a retrospective for the red headed Adol. It looks back at it's history and how the series has grown over 34 years as well as looks forward to where else it could go.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

...and with Ys leaving a massive void, Lost Judgment still weeks away and a good long year before the next Trails game comes out forcing me back under a rock, now is a good time to stop neglecting Persona 5 Royal and give it a go. 

Already of to a good start with new content, but then like slipping into a pair of nice warm comfy slippers it's back to the usual JRPG/Life sim routine. It's good to be back in LeBlanc cafe again.


----------



## Mathemagician

Is Y’s the game series from SNES that was a side-scrolling RPG where you could park your guy on an early level and level up by stabbing upwards into the air to just kill birds for easy xp? 

I think I rented that game as a kid.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> Is Y’s the game series from SNES that was a side-scrolling RPG where you could park your guy on an early level and level up by stabbing upwards into the air to just kill birds for easy xp?
> 
> I think I rented that game as a kid.



Yes, that was Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys on SNES and was the only side scrolling game in the series. I played a bit of it myself... it wasn't very good.

Thankfully it was remade into Ys The Oath in Felghana, which the general consensus, became one of the best in the series.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ...and with Ys leaving a massive void, Lost Judgment still weeks away and a good long year before the next Trails game comes out forcing me back under a rock, now is a good time to stop neglecting Persona 5 Royal and give it a go.
> 
> Already of to a good start with new content, but then like slipping into a pair of nice warm comfy slippers it's back to the usual JRPG/Life sim routine. It's good to be back in LeBlanc cafe again.



It got too long by the end, by the last 20 hours I just wanted it to be over. The original game suffers from that a bit too IMO, but the Royal version's substantially longer. I do like most of the changes (ex making guns actually powerful, the councilor confidant, most of the stuff with Kasumi, some of the additional activities, the fact you have more free time) and the new content is all good, it's just there was arguably already too much content and now there's much more!

If it was my first playthrough of the game I might have been more forgiving of the length.


----------



## Jarmake

Been hacking and slashing in bloodborne again... I took a little break from it, didn't have the time to spare.

So, I got my ass swiftly handed to me by Lady Maria of the astral clock tower for a few tries. Then I got the hang of her and kicked her cute butt to oblivion. Well, next was fishing hamlet, of course, but after killing a couple of those fishy things and stumbling into a giant shark-ish (?) thing I decided to back down and went to see Laurence, the first vicar again. This time I didn't succumb to it's lava attacks and after a couple of tries the fire was extinguished for good. Good riddance, that god damn shrieking bunghole was getting on my nerves after listening to it for a while.

So, the only ones left now are the orphan of Kos, Gehrman and Moon Presence. I am quite sure that after I have beaten the orphan of Kos the last ones will be quite easy... I've heard horror stories of the orphan and I guess it isn't going to be an easy fight.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> Been hacking and slashing in bloodborne again... I took a little break from it, didn't have the time to spare.
> 
> So, I got my ass swiftly handed to me by Lady Maria of the astral clock tower for a few tries. Then I got the hang of her and kicked her cute butt to oblivion. Well, next was fishing hamlet, of course, but after killing a couple of those fishy things and stumbling into a giant shark-ish (?) thing I decided to back down and went to see Laurence, the first vicar again. This time I didn't succumb to it's lava attacks and after a couple of tries the fire was extinguished for good. Good riddance, that god damn shrieking bunghole was getting on my nerves after listening to it for a while.
> 
> So, the only ones left now are the orphan of Kos, Gehrman and Moon Presence. I am quite sure that after I have beaten the orphan of Kos the last ones will be quite easy... I've heard horror stories of the orphan and I guess it isn't going to be an easy fight.



Orphan is VERY stressful, but you can parry him, so if you stack the parry damage gems and get a couple of them off he's basically done for. I had wayyyyy less trouble with him than Laurence.

Gehrman is tough compared to all the other bosses in the base game, but now you're incredibly overlevelled so it probably won't be bad. Moon Presence is infamously easy.


----------



## MFB

I think Gehrman took me roughly a dozen tries or so, since I believe he has three phases IIRC (I might also be thinking of Sekiro here), when other bosses were just two? You can get the hang of his moveset pretty easily, it's just playing it properly for the entire fight that becomes tricky.

I was TERRIFIED when I had to go from him right into Moon Presence's fight and then I beat MP on the first try and was just laughing from hysteria at the transition from one to the other.


----------



## wankerness

I think Gehrman had 3 phases, but they were a bit timed (like, he'd start the phase at 60%, but he'd stay in phase 2 for x seconds no matter what before going to 3 even if you hit the next trigger %), so if you did enough damage he wouldn't even do all three. Which is very possible if you went through the DLC first.


----------



## MFB

Gotcha, it's one of those things where the some of the games are blending together since I played all three franchises back to back with each other on PS4, so I'm like "Pssh, it's obviously right" and then I think about it for two more seconds and remember I'm wrong 

I'm do for a replay/finishing my NG+ as I never did the Old Hunter's DLC, but unfortunately the one thing I hate with FromSoft is how I'll need a tutorial just to how to even trigger the DLC portions since I just know I won't find them organically.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Gotcha, it's one of those things where the some of the games are blending together since I played all three franchises back to back with each other on PS4, so I'm like "Pssh, it's obviously right" and then I think about it for two more seconds and remember I'm wrong
> 
> I'm do for a replay/finishing my NG+ as I never did the Old Hunter's DLC, but unfortunately the one thing I hate with FromSoft is how I'll need a tutorial just to how to even trigger the DLC portions since I just know I won't find them organically.



The other thing that would bug me about fromsoft games if I finished one before dlc came out and then got the dlc is how ng+ tends to be radically more difficult and the dlc is already much harder than the base game, so I’d feel like I’d have to just restart the whole game to be able to handle the dlc. I dunno if that’s the case with BB, but it sure was with the dark souls games!

I think the BB dlc is the high point of all of those games, so it’s definitely worth it either way you try to do it.


----------



## MFB

Everyone says that the BB DLC is NOT to be played for the first time on NG+, so I'm putting myself at an obvious disadvantage if I do given how hard it will be; I just don't know if I want to do a new build that'll end up the same way as my other one just to do that and save myself some frustration.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Everyone says that the BB DLC is NOT to be played for the first time on NG+, so I'm putting myself at an obvious disadvantage if I do given how hard it will be; I just don't know if I want to do a new build that'll end up the same way as my other one just to do that and save myself some frustration.



IIRC you have to make it quite a ways into the game to access the DLC area, so you'd probably be replaying most of the game either way unless you have a save in NG+ that's a ways in. Regardless, it's going to be tuned the way Gehrman is tuned on NG+ so it would probably be expecting you to be a much higher level than if you had just started NG+. I dunno if you did a bunch of level grinding in NG, maybe if you did you'd be OK going there as soon as possible in NG+?


----------



## MFB

Wait, maybe I'm mistaken here - is NG+ technically considered the THIRD playthrough or second? I think I've been going about it wrong, and it's the new-game of your second run correct? If so, then I'm not there, I'm just on vanilla NG which I think people have said is still doable but others still advise not beating the game at all first.

I think you only have to get to Vicar Amelia and then it's accessible, albeit level gated until your strong enough to actually play through it.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Wait, maybe I'm mistaken here - is NG+ technically considered the THIRD playthrough or second? I think I've been going about it wrong, and it's the new-game of your second run correct? If so, then I'm not there, I'm just on vanilla NG which I think people have said is still doable but others still advise not beating the game at all first.
> 
> I think you only have to get to Vicar Amelia and then it's accessible, albeit level gated until your strong enough to actually play through it.



NG+ is the second playthrough. NG is the first playthrough starting at level 1 or whatever. Then after that it says NG+(+number of playthrough beyond first) ex the third playthrough is NG+2.


----------



## MFB

Alright, just making sure we were on the same page as I looked online again and some people use NG+ as the 3rd playthrough, as it's implied that your original playthrough is just ...not counted as it's the base playthrough? 

So by that definition, New Game would then be a continuation, then NG+, NG++, etc... I don't agree with it, but it did throw a wrench into my though process so I wanted to be safe.

In that case, then yes, I'd already be on the tough side of things and I'd need to probably grind a bit to make it through. Maybe I'll give it a shot regardless just to see where I stand. I don't even know chronologically speaking where it falls in line with the game, but since it sort of stands alone as it's own area it should be fine for me to just tack on at the end before Gehrman once I'm over-leveled for him.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Alright, just making sure we were on the same page as I looked online again and *some people use NG+ as the 3rd playthrough*, as it's implied that your original playthrough is just ...not counted as it's the base playthrough?
> 
> So by that definition, New Game would then be a continuation, then NG+, NG++, etc... I don't agree with it, but it did throw a wrench into my though process so I wanted to be safe.
> 
> In that case, then yes, I'd already be on the tough side of things and I'd need to probably grind a bit to make it through. Maybe I'll give it a shot regardless just to see where I stand. I don't even know chronologically speaking where it falls in line with the game, but since it sort of stands alone as it's own area it should be fine for me to just tack on at the end before Gehrman once I'm over-leveled for him.



Those people either typoed or are at odds with the whole soulsborne community - it's always NG+ for second playthrough and then +2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or NG+ and then NG++, NG+++, etc. I think all of those games cap out at 6. You can keep doing more playthroughs, but enemy health/damage stops increasing. I've never gone past +2, and only did that with DS1/3 for trophies. Depending on how much grinding you do, you might not notice a substantial difference on each subsequent playthrough after NG+. But, given how almost all stats in those games have softcaps that you can hit on the first playthrough or two, eventually the scaling catches up to you and it actually just keeps getting harder.


----------



## Mathemagician

Jarmake said:


> Been hacking and slashing in bloodborne again... I took a little break from it, didn't have the time to spare.
> 
> So, I got my ass swiftly handed to me by Lady Maria of the astral clock tower for a few tries. Then I got the hang of her and kicked her cute butt to oblivion. Well, next was fishing hamlet, of course, but after killing a couple of those fishy things and stumbling into a giant shark-ish (?) thing I decided to back down and went to see Laurence, the first vicar again. This time I didn't succumb to it's lava attacks and after a couple of tries the fire was extinguished for good. Good riddance, that god damn shrieking bunghole was getting on my nerves after listening to it for a while.
> 
> So, the only ones left now are the orphan of Kos, Gehrman and Moon Presence. I am quite sure that after I have beaten the orphan of Kos the last ones will be quite easy... I've heard horror stories of the orphan and I guess it isn't going to be an easy fight.



I’m sure there’s a strategy to him. But man, that fight is fucking rough imo. Hardest boss that I can recall, including DLC.

I did the DLC on my first playthrough but I typically overlevel in these games.


----------



## Jarmake

Mathemagician said:


> I’m sure there’s a strategy to him. But man, that fight is fucking rough imo. Hardest boss that I can recall, including DLC.
> 
> I did the DLC on my first playthrough but I typically overlevel in these games.



Yep, this is my first playthrough too. I do like to level up, I must admit...  i am currently at level 113.


----------



## Mathemagician

Jarmake said:


> Yep, this is my first playthrough too. I do like to level up, I must admit...  i am currently at level 113.



IIRC you could probably poke around the DLC at Lvl 120 or so. 

Wouldn’t hurt to see what happens.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> IIRC you could probably poke around the DLC at Lvl 120 or so.
> 
> Wouldn’t hurt to see what happens.



he already did all but one of the bosses! Though it sounds like he didn’t fight the sharks in the well yet either. 

recommended level for the dlc is 70-90, 120 makes it “easy” (and that’s about what I was at cause I farmed pigs for a while).


----------



## TheBlackBard

Just to break up the Souls convo a little bit, started playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, and it never takes long for me to remember just how much and why I love this game. Playing on Hard mode, but it's currently pretty trivial, as I have a Strider with Bastion and Fortitude. Currently using the Rusted Bow +3 which has trivialized every fucking encounter so far given that it inflicts torpor and poison. That's not even talking about the fact that I've got a healthy amount of throwblasts which is a one shot for lots of early enemies, and there's also the matter of me having the aneled stilettos which douse my enemies in oil. Just so happens that my pawn mage specializes in flame attacks and imbuing my weapons with flame. When she's not doing that, she's healing. This is so fucking broken.


----------



## Jarmake

Mathemagician said:


> IIRC you could probably poke around the DLC at Lvl 120 or so.
> 
> Wouldn’t hurt to see what happens.



Yeah, thanks for the tip... Maybe I'll try it out one day


----------



## Choop

TheBlackBard said:


> Just to break up the Souls convo a little bit, started playing Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, and it never takes long for me to remember just how much and why I love this game. Playing on Hard mode, but it's currently pretty trivial, as I have a Strider with Bastion and Fortitude. Currently using the Rusted Bow +3 which has trivialized every fucking encounter so far given that it inflicts torpor and poison. That's not even talking about the fact that I've got a healthy amount of throwblasts which is a one shot for lots of early enemies, and there's also the matter of me having the aneled stilettos which douse my enemies in oil. Just so happens that my pawn mage specializes in flame attacks and imbuing my weapons with flame. When she's not doing that, she's healing. This is so fucking broken.



So weird, just yesterday someone at work was telling me about this game and that I should play it. I think I even own it on Steam, lol. It looks great!

I'm powering through Xenogears atm, though. Roughly 1/2 the way through! Kind of wish that I had emulated it...I'm playing on the PS3 digital version, but to have the option to use save states would have been handy for this game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> I'm powering through Xenogears atm, though. Roughly 1/2 the way through! Kind of wish that I had emulated it...I'm playing on the PS3 digital version, but to have the option to use save states would have been handy for this game.



Been meaning to replay this myself. Probably a healthier thing to do than constantly beg Sqenix for a remake or at least a re-release that will only happen once apes rule the earth.


----------



## wankerness

Dragon's Dogma has possibly the most fun combat system I've ever encountered in an ARPG. The game's janky as hell in the story/graphics department and has some really egregious problems with the leveling system (you get stat bonuses based on your chosen class at time of level up, and often to have a good character at a high level of a certain class you can't have leveled it AS THAT CLASS), and all the "pre-expansion" content is pretty drab and dull, but man, once you hit bitterblack isle it's utterly fantastic. I played it for hundreds of hours and levelled a couple characters on a couple platforms. I REALLY hope a sequel comes out someday.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Currently sitting at 75hrs for my 2nd Mass Effect Andromeda run and completing every single possible mission before the main plot missions, which I think I'm already at the point of no return mission. It wouldn't be hard to platinum yet some of those trophies are ridiculous, "keep the nomad airborne for x amount of seconds" ughh


----------



## rokket2005

I've been blazing through some stuff the last month or two. Finished the Trails in the Sky trilogy in about a month and a half, beat Ys IX in a few weeks, now I'm playing Disgaea 1 before I head into Disgaea 6. Really wanting to get to Nier Automata and Persona 5 before the end of the year too but SMT V is probably going to take a chunk too.


----------



## wankerness

I'm finally going through Judgment after buying the overpriced PS5 upgrade. I sort of like some things about it, but it definitely feels like a second-rate Yakuza at this point, mostly just cause I'm not really vibing with the protagonist or his combat styles. Also, some of the heavily-touted features that are unique to it are things I hate (ex tailing missions like Assassins Creed, "look around for evidence in 1st person" like Metroid Other M). I've never liked chase sequences, but those are in at least half the other Yakuza games, so whatever. It's certainly not BAD, but at this point (about 10 hours in, doing as much side content as possible so I'm only on chapter 3) I'd say it's near the bottom of my list, ahead of Yakuza 3 and maybe 4/6 only. I need to replay 0 and 6 now that I have so much experience with the series.

One unique thing I like is the "friendship" system with building relationships around town. It's not that different from substories in the other games, but it's different enough and it's kind of cool building up the level of all of them. 

The main problem with the combat just seems to be that you have what the game insists is "AOE attack style" with the crane kicks or whatever, but the way enemies surround you means you almost never hit more than one enemy with the attacks anyway, and the other combat style that's specialized for 1 v 1 does more reliable damage, so you might as well just use it and focus everyone down. Maybe it will improve with a bunch more skills. But, currently, this "AOE" fighting style is a joke compared to say, the breakdance stance from Yakuza 0, which truly did feel like it was suited for AOE. The game also constantly pops up and yells at you when you don't use the wall attacks, which seem to miss 3/4 of the time (yes, I know you have to aim them)

Main problem with the protagonist is just I don't care nearly as much as I did with Kiryu or even say, Akayama. He's just kind of dull. I like some of the side characters like Saito more than him.


----------



## Ralyks

Im trying to play Judgement as well. I really do enjoy it. But Yakuza Like a Dragon was such so great for me that I just want to play more of that now, really. I also still need to clear the 3 - 5 remasters…


----------



## TedEH

I've started up the Fractured But Whole this week. It's about what I expected. I always forget just how much South Park is obsessed with farts.


----------



## gabito

CovertSovietBear said:


> Currently sitting at 75hrs for my 2nd Mass Effect Andromeda run and completing every single possible mission before the main plot missions, which I think I'm already at the point of no return mission. It wouldn't be hard to platinum yet some of those trophies are ridiculous, "keep the nomad airborne for x amount of seconds" ughh



I know most people hated it, but I really liked Andromeda. It's a shame we won't get a sequel (or sequels).

I was about to start a second playthrough but then ME Legendary Edition was released and... well.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

gabito said:


> I know most people hated it, but I really liked Andromeda. It's a shame we won't get a sequel (or sequels).
> 
> I was about to start a second playthrough but then ME Legendary Edition was released and... well.


Well! The reason I'm on my 2nd Andromeda playthrough is because I bought and beat ME Legendary Edition as I played Andromeda first, trilogy 2nd. With Andromeda beat I'll be going back and try to do all side missions for those games


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Im trying to play Judgement as well. I really do enjoy it. But Yakuza Like a Dragon was such so great for me that I just want to play more of that now, really. I also still need to clear the 3 - 5 remasters…



You need to finish the ultimate hardcore millennium tower, or whatever it's called, in Like a Dragon. That was a very stressful hour or two.

5 might be my favorite in the series. 3 and 4 are kind of a slog at times. I like the extensive "cool beach dad Kiryu" section of 3, but the gameplay's pretty bland. 4 has a good story but the gameplay can be frustrating and boring, too, especially the prison break segment. 5 was where things really got polished and good. I think it still has the largest scope of any of these games. I think you already played them on PS3, if I remember right?


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> I know most people hated it, but I really liked Andromeda. It's a shame we won't get a sequel (or sequels).
> 
> I was about to start a second playthrough but then ME Legendary Edition was released and... well.



I enjoyed it alright, but the plot and characters really do suck compared to the first three games. I couldn't have cared less about the protagonist and her weird face and anything related to her family. I liked the Krogan companion. The gameplay was weird in that it played the best from your character's perspective but massively dumbed down the tactical nature of it by forcing your squadmates to only work in self-guided AI mode. For those that played ME3 on insanity, it was a huge drop in complexity.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Nioh is free on the Epic game store.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

wankerness said:


> I enjoyed it alright, but the plot and characters really do suck compared to the first three games. I couldn't have cared less about the protagonist and her weird face and anything related to her family. I liked the Krogan companion. The gameplay was weird in that it played the best from your character's perspective but massively dumbed down the tactical nature of it by forcing your squadmates to only work in self-guided AI mode. For those that played ME3 on insanity, it was a huge drop in complexity.


ME3 Insanity run is up for me next then


----------



## Leviathus

Started Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory on ps3. I beat the first 2 games back in the day but i think i only got like halfway through this one. Fun so far, the guards faces when you grab them are too funny...


----------



## wankerness

CovertSovietBear said:


> ME3 Insanity run is up for me next then



Make sure you choose an easy class like Soldier (max Adrenaline Rush as fast as possible), Engineer (Drone, Incinerate and overload, once beefed up, make you extremely good vs all types of enemies) or maybe Sentinel (more survivability) or Infiltrator (stealth +damage boost on stealth +good sniper rifle +headshot = you can kill anything) or it will probably be a while before things stop making you angry. Vanguard was pure pain till somewhere around level 40, then became easy. Adept is too squishy and doesn't do well against shields, so it's probably a bad choice for insanity.

Also *definitely* import an ME2 character from a cleared run so you start at level 30 instead of level 1 but can still re-assign class (which you can't do if you import an ME3 clear).


----------



## CovertSovietBear

wankerness said:


> Make sure you choose an easy class like Soldier (max Adrenaline Rush as fast as possible), Engineer (Drone, Incinerate and overload, once beefed up, make you extremely good vs all types of enemies) or maybe Sentinel (more survivability) or Infiltrator (stealth +damage boost on stealth +good sniper rifle +headshot = you can kill anything) or it will probably be a while before things stop making you angry. Vanguard was pure pain till somewhere around level 40, then became easy. Adept is too squishy and doesn't do well against shields, so it's probably a bad choice for insanity.
> 
> Also *definitely* import an ME2 character from a cleared run so you start at level 30 instead of level 1 but can still re-assign class (which you can't do if you import an ME3 clear).


For sure importing my ME2 character, I'm not good at stealth so Engineer sounds like a good starting point especially with the drone. Still mad that Garrus died in my ME2 playthrough and can't use him.


----------



## wankerness

CovertSovietBear said:


> For sure importing my ME2 character, I'm not good at stealth so Engineer sounds like a good starting point especially with the drone. Still mad that Garrus died in my ME2 playthrough and can't use him.



Yeah, Engineer is REALLY good in ME3. Get the AOE overload, the heavy incinerate, flamethrower turret, and the drone that explodes when killed and shoots rockets. Just put 1 point in AI hacking, that alone can make things radically easier. Assault Drone's good too. Also go for weight reduction as fast as possible (tech mastery, I think?). ME3 as most classes is all about getting your power recharge speed at about 150% minimum and then you can basically always have them off cooldown. Means you can only carry a couple weapons, but that's OK, especially as a class like engineer where most of your damage can come from powers/drone/turret. 

For squadmates, you could go a few directions. Probably use Liara and get her super-fast singularity recharge for CC, and then use someone beefier with a squad ammo power for the other slot.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

wankerness said:


> Yeah, Engineer is REALLY good in ME3. Get the AOE overload, the heavy incinerate, flamethrower turret, and the drone that explodes when killed and shoots rockets. Just put 1 point in AI hacking, that alone can make things radically easier. Assault Drone's good too. Also go for weight reduction as fast as possible (tech mastery, I think?). ME3 as most classes is all about getting your power recharge speed at about 150% minimum and then you can basically always have them off cooldown. Means you can only carry a couple weapons, but that's OK, especially as a class like engineer where most of your damage can come from powers/drone/turret.
> 
> For squadmates, you could go a few directions. Probably use Liara and get her super-fast singularity recharge for CC, and then use someone beefier with a squad ammo power for the other slot.


Ya I'll have to do some Googleing to get familiar with the game again. Liara's singularity is a must, even used it in Andromeda extensively, helps out tremendously with priming/detonating combos.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> You need to finish the ultimate hardcore millennium tower, or whatever it's called, in Like a Dragon. That was a very stressful hour or two.
> 
> 5 might be my favorite in the series. 3 and 4 are kind of a slog at times. I like the extensive "cool beach dad Kiryu" section of 3, but the gameplay's pretty bland. 4 has a good story but the gameplay can be frustrating and boring, too, especially the prison break segment. 5 was where things really got polished and good. I think it still has the largest scope of any of these games. I think you already played them on PS3, if I remember right?



I have 4 and 5 on PS3 from when they were free on PS Plus, but I only dabbled with them. I’m of the group of people that really got into the series with Yakuza 0. I’ll get around to playing more of the Remastered collection at some point.

I really want to do the True Millennium Tower and platinum Like a Dragon. It really may be amongst my favorite games of all time. But my characters are all average around mid-level 60, no one has really mastered a class, and I only have like 2 EX weapons. From what Ives gather, you have to basically do ALL of the grinding to even have a chance at not getting constantly one-hitted in the True tower. The fact I didn’t trade the game back in feels like I’m going to do it, but it’s going to be down the road.


----------



## gabito

They (finally!) released a trailer with some footage from God of War Ragnarok. Just some cinematics and bits of gameplay.

It looks like more of the same... which is exactly what I wanted anyway.

No news about the release date, though.

It seems there's also an Alan Wake remake wich will be available for (almost) all platforms. I always wanted to play it, and the price looks fair for a ten years old game.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I have 4 and 5 on PS3 from when they were free on PS Plus, but I only dabbled with them. I’m of the group of people that really got into the series with Yakuza 0. I’ll get around to playing more of the Remastered collection at some point.
> 
> I really want to do the True Millennium Tower and platinum Like a Dragon. It really may be amongst my favorite games of all time. But my characters are all average around mid-level 60, no one has really mastered a class, and I only have like 2 EX weapons. From what Ives gather, you have to basically do ALL of the grinding to even have a chance at not getting constantly one-hitted in the True tower. The fact I didn’t trade the game back in feels like I’m going to do it, but it’s going to be down the road.



You only need EX weapons for the classes you intend to go in there with, but I ground out max level on 5-6 jobs for every character (all the ones with the most useful bonuses), had EX+4 of all the main class weapons, and still was coming perilously close to getting 1 shot from the first fight in there (which has one of the hardest hitting enemies in the whole tower, to be fair, but is also a good wake-up call for the difficulty level). Make sure you have tons of MP restore items for your Idol, who's going to be spamming big heals pretty much nonstop on many fights. I sure killed hundreds of those vagabonds and ran away from every other fight in the dungeon. I think the setup I ended up using was Hero/Chef/Assassin/Idol for everything, but they all had all the bonus abilities from every class (I think those are all unlocked by level 30, so like one run through killing 3 invested vagabonds with the +job exp boost items) and made HEAVY use of the host ice throw and fortune teller lightning and the flame grenade or whatever the fire shared skill was. Chef's the only one that was really negotiable in that setup, I think, I think a lot of people use him as Gangster instead, but the blowtorch and one of the plate throws really came in handy for me.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> I've been blazing through some stuff the last month or two. Finished the Trails in the Sky trilogy in about a month and a half, beat Ys IX in a few weeks, now I'm playing Disgaea 1 before I head into Disgaea 6. Really wanting to get to Nier Automata and Persona 5 before the end of the year too but SMT V is probably going to take a chunk too.



I'm glad more people here are playing the Trails games. I still need to play the Sky trilogy properly, have them on Steam but can't get them to run. 

Funny since the upcoming Trails/Kiseki game just revealed a character from the Sky arc all grown up. And it's got me really pumped for it... only to wait for 3 or 4 years to be localised.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Any news on Metroid Prime 4? Been waiting since 2017 and no news since the redevelopment besides the announcement of Metroid Dread


----------



## rokket2005

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm glad more people here are playing the Trails games. I still need to play the Sky trilogy properly, have them on Steam but can't get them to run.
> 
> Funny since the upcoming Trails/Kiseki game just revealed a character from the Sky arc all grown up. And it's got me really pumped for it... only to wait for 3 or 4 years to be localised.



That's too bad you're having trouble running them on pc, especially since they're psp and vita games. I guess I did have a lot of prblems with P4 Golden though which is a vita game, led me to dropping it for the time being too which I wasn't happy about. I had a few crashes in FC and SC and times where I had to resort to dropping the resolution when turning in bracer quests, but I'm pretty sure I isolated it to the game using certain text characters that would render weird for some reason. Also picking Celeste's name in SC isn't possible with a controller so you have to use the mouse but it's whatever.
I've also been seeing a ton of Kuro stuff the past few days, but it doesn't really bother me that much. I was about half done with 3rd when they announced nis localizing crossbell, so I was maybe only a few days away from buying them and the fan translation before they pulled them from their site. You can still find them, but I was going to buy the switch versions when they came out anyway and it's not like i'll be short on things to play in the meantime. Totally top 10 games as a whole for me though, I'd been a Falcom fan since I played Ys origin like maybe 8-9 years ago but never heard about Trails until cs3 and how I couldnt/shouldnt actually play it without playing 7 other games first. Falcom really does need to rethink their localization practices though. It straight up sucks that they don't let localizers even see scripts until the games are released in Japan.


----------



## SpaceDock

TedEH said:


> I got to a point in Psychonauts 2 where it's giving me one of those "point of no return" hints, and I'm less than 15 hours in. Thats..... shorter than I expected, and mildly disappointing, since I feel like I haven't had enough time to really explore the characters and mechanics fully. I'm hoping it's a point of no return for this _segment_ rather than the beginning of the end of the whole game.



I just beat this tonight and there were three places in the game iirc that gave that type of message. Really good game but still only took me about 12 hours even with trying to do all the side missions, gather all the card and stuff. 

I also absolutely destroyed the Myst remake in only 6 hours. Can’t believe I ever figured out some of those puzzles when I was a kid, it seemed like an unbeatable infinite game back then.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I'm seeing all my friends grab and play Tales Of Arise, and I'm tempted to grab it despite the retail launch price, but at the same time, holding back since Berseria is still fresh in my mind. The Tales series have been around as far back as the SNES but didn't really get any triple A hype until now. I shouldn't be surprise granted the popularity of Genshin Impact, that's a game I probably should be into, but all the loot boxes and microtransactions are on the off putting side. 



rokket2005 said:


> That's too bad you're having trouble running them on pc, especially since they're psp and vita games. I guess I did have a lot of prblems with P4 Golden though which is a vita game, led me to dropping it for the time being too which I wasn't happy about. I had a few crashes in FC and SC and times where I had to resort to dropping the resolution when turning in bracer quests, but I'm pretty sure I isolated it to the game using certain text characters that would render weird for some reason. Also picking Celeste's name in SC isn't possible with a controller so you have to use the mouse but it's whatever.
> I've also been seeing a ton of Kuro stuff the past few days, but it doesn't really bother me that much. I was about half done with 3rd when they announced nis localizing crossbell, so I was maybe only a few days away from buying them and the fan translation before they pulled them from their site. You can still find them, but I was going to buy the switch versions when they came out anyway and it's not like i'll be short on things to play in the meantime. Totally top 10 games as a whole for me though, I'd been a Falcom fan since I played Ys origin like maybe 8-9 years ago but never heard about Trails until cs3 and how I couldnt/shouldnt actually play it without playing 7 other games first. Falcom really does need to rethink their localization practices though. It straight up sucks that they don't let localizers even see scripts until the games are released in Japan.



Yeah I haven't had a PC for years, and I can't get Steam to run on my Mac properly. Since the Sky games are old enough, I probably should just get one of my brother in law's laptops.  It kinda sucks how I was forced to spoil the Liberl and Crossbell by the tail end of Cold Steel 2. 

Despite being around nearly as long as consoles have existed, Nihon Falcom aren't as big of a company as their competitors. The change of the localisation team from XSeed to NIS America was a rough decade at best: it took 11 years for Sky SC to be translated, and NIS had a rough start with Ys VIII's notorious original translation, and I wasn't keen on Tokyo Xanadu either. They are getting better though. I'm happy to wait another 12-14 months for the Crossbell games, since that's an amazing story for the Geofront. They worked painstakingly just for the love of the games, and now they're the official localisers for them. And because the average Trails dialogue and text capacity is as long as Marcel Proust's À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu being read 5 times over, it's a miracle for these localisations to be made official at all. Trails int Reverie... that was going to take ages anyway.


----------



## StevenC

CovertSovietBear said:


> Any news on Metroid Prime 4? Been waiting since 2017 and no news since the redevelopment besides the announcement of Metroid Dread


No news yet, unfortunately. It's presumably going to be announced at E3 next year for the October or December release.


----------



## rokket2005

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Yeah I haven't had a PC for years, and I can't get Steam to run on my Mac properly. Since the Sky games are old enough, I probably should just get one of my brother in law's laptops.


 Or spring for a Steam Deck! I don't know what the waitlist is if you jump in now, but I went for the middle option when it dropped and I think I have a January ship date.


Bloody_Inferno said:


> Despite being around nearly as long as consoles have existed, Nihon Falcom aren't as big of a company as their competitors. The change of the localisation team from XSeed to NIS America was a rough decade at best: it took 11 years for Sky SC to be translated, and NIS had a rough start with Ys VIII's notorious original translation, and I wasn't keen on Tokyo Xanadu either. They are getting better though. I'm happy to wait another 12-14 months for the Crossbell games, since that's an amazing story for the Geofront. They worked painstakingly just for the love of the games, and now they're the official localisers for them. And because the average Trails dialogue and text capacity is as long as Marcel Proust's À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu being read 5 times over, it's a miracle for these localisations to be made official at all. Trails int Reverie... that was going to take ages anyway.



Yeah, I like the work Xseed did on the Sky games, and I hate that apparently them and Falcom had some sort of falling out cause I believe they still have the rights to them as far as publishing, but they don't have an inhouse port team so they'll never be released on modern systems. I love NISA though. All the disgaea games and the Prinny collections they're putting out now are awesome since I completely missed them on the ps2. I picked up TX+ a few weeks ago but it's deep in the backlog somewhere at this point. I think it was Aksys that localized that actually though, and while I haven't played anything they've published they seem to focus a lot more on fighting games and visual novels as well as stuff way deeper weeb shit than my Xenoblade 2/K-on!/Cowboy Bebop weeb roots go.


----------



## mongey

grabbed the new Wario game to play with my 6 year old. Its pretty insane.


----------



## Mathemagician

Picked up Code Vein for like $10 on PSN. It was marketed as “anime dark souls” and it kind of is. But it’s easy AF so like not really? It’s not bad if you like anime though. Plots moving along pretty quickly. And it being easy means I’m not really getting stuck anywhere. 

Also picked up tales of berseria cheaply. But I have vesperia on switch which I haven’t played and idk which on to do first. Any advice from the JRPG Skwad in here?


----------



## rokket2005

^Are you a jrpg fan? The only way I would recommend the Tales games is if you are, definitely not the series to get into them imo. As a huge jrpg guy I think the Tales games are super mid. I haven't played Berseria, but I didn't care for Vesperia or Symphonia which seem to be the two most lauded games in the series. I think my favorite things about Vesperia was that your dog smokes a pipe and the hot girl in your party can get a KOS-MOS costume. There was also an pretty on the nose joke about Yuri, which also happens to be the main characters name.

I guess if you prefer playing on switch vs. whatever you have Berseria on would be how I would decide.


----------



## Mathemagician

rokket2005 said:


> ^Are you a jrpg fan? The only way I would recommend the Tales games is if you are, definitely not the series to get into them imo. As a huge jrpg guy I think the Tales games are super mid. I haven't played Berseria, but I didn't care for Vesperia or Symphonia which seem to be the two most lauded games in the series. I think my favorite things about Vesperia was that your dog smokes a pipe and the hot girl in your party can get a KOS-MOS costume. There was also an pretty on the nose joke about Yuri, which also happens to be the main characters name.
> 
> I guess if you prefer playing on switch vs. whatever you have Berseria on would be how I would decide.



I’m old so up through PS2 that was all I played. I’ve played enough now that a lot of the tropes can get a bit tiresome but I still love a good long “save the world/heroes journey” storyline.

In that case I may just start with Vesperia since it’s older, in case they’ve added QOL changes to the series in later games.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> I’m old so up through PS2 that was all I played. I’ve played enough now that a lot of the tropes can get a bit tiresome but I still love a good long “save the world/heroes journey” storyline.
> 
> In that case I may just start with Vesperia since it’s older, in case they’ve added QOL changes to the series in later games.



Vesperia is good place to start. They're both good games, but if you're new to the Tales series, Vesperia would be the better choice, purely for the simplified (ie user friendly) 2D combat engine alone.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Picked up Code Vein for like $10 on PSN. It was marketed as “anime dark souls” and it kind of is. But it’s easy AF so like not really? It’s not bad if you like anime though. Plots moving along pretty quickly. And it being easy means I’m not really getting stuck anywhere.
> 
> Also picked up tales of berseria cheaply. But I have vesperia on switch which I haven’t played and idk which on to do first. Any advice from the JRPG Skwad in here?



I started Code Vein and while it's definitely not Dark Souls level of difficulty, I wouldn't say "Easy AF." Certainly it's a lot harder than say, Jedi: Fallen Order on normal, especially when you start hitting bosses. The combat felt pretty good, it did a decent job of ripping off the slow, heavy feeling of Dark Souls.

I have heard mixed reviews of it. I barely played it so far. One of the biggest DS fans I'm aware of, who's played a huge number of clones, says it's one of the worst of all the clones (even counting crap on steam workshop) just due to the horribly boring level design, especially later on. I didn't have a problem with it yet, but it sort of put me off it! It does have a very impressive character creation tool, though, I'll give it that.

The only DS ripoff that's high on my list of things I want to play is Ashen, I've mostly only heard great things about it. I've had it for a while, just been playing other stuff first.

Judgment is long as hell. I'm starting to hit some of the big grinds and thinking I'm not going to even attempt to platinum this one. It's a lot more like Yakuza 0 and some of the older games where you have to do EVERYTHING (beat it on very hard and also get 100% on the completion list, which is hundreds of hours of work and requires really learning how to play Mahjong and Shogi and old janky arcade games).

My favorite parts of the game so far are the "chase the pervert" section with a guy in neon spandex named "Ass Catchem" and then the girlfriend plotline that results from the whole pervert plotline, where you meet this asshole in a top-hat and cane who talks as if he's from England and challenges you to duels. Loved it. I still don't like the main character and would enjoy everything more if I was practically any other protagonist from the series, but hey.

I really don't like the drone racing, though. The biggest problem is every race is incredibly long. 3 laps on tracks that start getting long very quickly, and FIVE races for every "cup." I like that they cut this down bigtime on Yakuza 7 with the mario kart. The drone racing is less fun and much more time consuming and you're expected to grind out 100+ upgrade parts!


----------



## Ralyks

Yeah, I'm only on chapter 3 of Judgement and it's feeling long. But I have Deathloop waiting for me, and I've heard only extremely positive things.

Firmware update for PS5 coming tomorrow that lets you finally expand the internal storage, so I went and ordered a 2 TB M2 stick and a separate heatsink.


----------



## Choop

Ralyks said:


> Firmware update for PS5 coming tomorrow that lets you finally expand the internal storage, so I went and ordered a 2 TB M2 stick and a separate heatsink.



That's awesome! Good move, it's so nice that you can just swap it with a regular M2 drive vs having to use the proprietary drives that the Xbox Series X requires.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Yeah, I'm only on chapter 3 of Judgement and it's feeling long. But I have Deathloop waiting for me, and I've heard only extremely positive things.
> 
> Firmware update for PS5 coming tomorrow that lets you finally expand the internal storage, so I went and ordered a 2 TB M2 stick and a separate heatsink.



From what I read, you might have trouble getting it in there if you have a separate heatsink. 

The Xbox one has the big disadvantage of having to get a proprietary one, but installation is a lot easier. Not that the PS5 one is that rough (no worse than replacing the average laptop battery), but it's still involving screwdrivers and having to snap together the system again and there are a bunch of warnings about external heatsinks not fitting.

I'll probably get one in another year or so when there are enough ps5 games to be worth filling up a hard drive for simultaneously!!


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> From what I read, you might have trouble getting it in there if you have a separate heatsink.



The one I got had a video including installation with the heat sink. Trust me, I looked into it before putting the money down. It's mostly because anything I play off my eternal hard drive seems prone to crashing, so this will make it easier to have stuff internal and just keep what I'm not actively playing in the external.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Playing Pyschonauts. Never played the original but I am really enjoying it. Some great design and humour.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> The one I got had a video including installation with the heat sink. Trust me, I looked into it before putting the money down. It's mostly because anything I play off my eternal hard drive seems prone to crashing, so this will make it easier to have stuff internal and just keep what I'm not actively playing in the external.



If it works, let me know what you got. I'm sure I'll upgrade mine at some point.


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> grabbed the new Wario game to play with my 6 year old. Its pretty insane.



I might need to get that. I was regularly playing the gamecube one at friends' houses as recently as 2020. If this one is a worthy successor to that, I'd love to retire the gamecube (since only one controller still works).


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> If it works, let me know what you got. I'm sure I'll upgrade mine at some point.






I figured 2 TB would do. Then got a separate heat sink kit. Suppose to arrive before the weekend.


----------



## Mathemagician

Do the memory heat sinks require thermal paste?


----------



## Choop

Mathemagician said:


> Do the memory heat sinks require thermal paste?



They usually use a thermal pad, kind of the same idea just less messy.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I might need to get that. I was regularly playing the gamecube one at friends' houses as recently as 2020. If this one is a worthy successor to that, I'd love to retire the gamecube (since only one controller still works).


The easy solution here is to this: 1 Controller Jump Forever

As a side note, I haven't got it yet but the demo is great and I've played every Warioware to death.


----------



## Ralyks

Choop said:


> They usually use a thermal pad, kind of the same idea just less messy.



This. You stick a pad on each side, put the whole thing in a separate chasm, and you're good to go. Looked pretty easy. I'll report back when I install it into my PS5. It sounds like it's significantly cheaper to get a drive and separate heat sink than to get one with the heat sink already in. That and ones with heat sinks already in are sold out freaking everywhere.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> I might need to get that. I was regularly playing the gamecube one at friends' houses as recently as 2020. If this one is a worthy successor to that, I'd love to retire the gamecube (since only one controller still works).



This is my first wario game so nit sure how it compares

the one disappointment is there aren't many modes for more than 2 people . 3 of us have been paling mario 3d worlds together allot , so we were hoping there would be more for 3


----------



## p0ke

Mostly been playing Forza Motorsport 6 recently. I'm playing with all assists turned off except tire wear and racing line showing me where to brake. It's so damned satisfying to put the pedal to the metal and let the wheels spin - the controller vibrates so hard it sounds almost like an extra middle speaker


----------



## wankerness

mongey said:


> This is my first wario game so nit sure how it compares
> 
> the one disappointment is there aren't many modes for more than 2 people . 3 of us have been paling mario 3d worlds together allot , so we were hoping there would be more for 3



That's good for me, actually. I mostly only play videogames with my girlfriend and the gamecube one is not very fun with less than 3 (but great with that many).


----------



## KnightBrolaire

prob gonna pick up deathloop tomorrow. I usually love Arkane's games.


----------



## Ralyks

KnightBrolaire said:


> prob gonna pick up deathloop tomorrow. I usually love Arkane's games.



I got maybe 2 hours in but it's excellent so far.


----------



## wankerness

I saw some comments from people that got a ways in complaining that Deathloop gets too repetitive (unsurprising considering the concept of course), but that has me wanting to wait a few weeks for a consensus from people other than "game reviewers" that may or may not have finished the game before jumping on it.

Speaking of repetitive, I think Judgment's officially the worst game in the Yakuza series for me, by far. Ugh. It's down to a couple really terrible design decisions and the removal of some mitigating factors that existed in most previous games.

1) "Gang Alerts" - about every 20 minutes, you get hit with a series of the same text messages from some guy going "oh no, the gangs are out on the streets! do something!" upon which "alert level" rises to 100% and you get absolutely spammed with random encounters. Like, you can rarely make it more than a block without having to fight dudes. Until the meter goes down to 0, the game is infuriating unless you really want to fight tons of guys. This takes approximately 20 minutes if you wait for it or only fight the random enemies. You can speed it up by fighting the same damn minibosses, and as the game progresses, more minibosses spawn and each one takes off less of the meter (they start out making it decrease by 50%, but then it goes to about 33%, and later about 25%). So, basically, every 20 minutes you get spammed with encounters unless you fight all the minibosses to end the event. It completely derails any progress with anything. You can craft expensive temporary items to get "stealth," which works kind of how the encounter-decreasing items did in previous games, only they're temporary and very expensive to craft and require random materials from different stores every time you make one, but that's the only way to really avoid the event.

And to make matters radically worse, the minibosses can all inflict "Mortal Wound" on you.

2) "Mortal Wounds" - this is a permanent, stacking debuff that reduces your maximum health. I don't know how far it can go, but I've definitely gotten down to ~30% of my max health. It's inflicted by bosses, mainly, but all these frequently spawning minibosses can do it. There are TWO ways to get rid of this. One is by going to a doctor down in the sewers and paying 20,000 yen. This is expensive, and he's far away from any fast travel points so it takes a few minutes. Option two is by using a medkit. These are sold by the doctor, and the cheapest one is 40,000 yen. Also ridiculously expensive! The debuff is NOT cleared by anything else. Not sleep, not getting to the next chapter, not anything. It's infuriating.

So basically every 20 minutes you're forced to fight the same damn bosses over and over or else be mobbed by enemies non-stop. It makes the "Majima Everywhere" from Kiwami 1 seem incredibly benign in comparison. At least he didn't stack debuffs on you that could only be removed by spending 20k yen and making a long detour! And he came to you, you didn't have to run around the city to multiple locations to get him to go away.

If they removed these from the sequel and also back off a bit on all the tailing, I'm sure the sequel will be fine. But, I'm definitely not preordering it!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I saw some comments from people that got a ways in complaining that Deathloop gets too repetitive


I'm always a bit skeptical of people saying games are too repetitive when a core part of the experience is known to be a time loop. Kinda like how people reacted to Majora's Mask at first, but with time it's now a very highly regarded title. I've got too much of a backlog to jump into it right now, but I definitely want to give this game a try at some point. Maybe it'll come to gamepass eventually or something.

Also, aren't roguelikes really popular right now? Aren't those all about repetition? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I'm always a bit skeptical of people saying games are too repetitive when a core part of the experience is known to be a time loop. Kinda like how people reacted to Majora's Mask at first, but with time it's now a very highly regarded title. I've got too much of a backlog to jump into it right now, but I definitely want to give this game a try at some point. Maybe it'll come to gamepass eventually or something.
> 
> Also, aren't roguelikes really popular right now? Aren't those all about repetition? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



Yes. The people who said that all prefaced it with "i don't know if this was avoidable with the concept, but i personally didn't like it."


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> If they removed these from the sequel and also back off a bit on all the tailing, I'm sure the sequel will be fine. But, I'm definitely not preordering it!



The reviews for Lost Judgement seem okish at best, definitely not as good as the original. And yeah, I'm kinda with you on the game being low on the Yakuza list. I'll see it through, but more out of necessity at this point.


----------



## bostjan

TedEH said:


> Also, aren't roguelikes really popular right now? Aren't those all about repetition? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



I thought the whole point of rouguelikes was that the game was different every time you played it.

I used to spend a fair amount of time, as a youth, playing Dragon Crystal on Sega. Every item (including weapons and armor) had a different effect, every map was different, and, I want to say that some enemies had different special attacks and stats each time you restarted the game. Even though the graphics were reused, the randomization made the game much more exciting to replay after you finished it.

But whatever, people like repetition. Just look at popular music or TV shows or even movies.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> The reviews for Lost Judgement seem okish at best, definitely not as good as the original. And yeah, I'm kinda with you on the game being low on the Yakuza list. I'll see it through, but more out of necessity at this point.



Oh, I didn't realize it was out already. I just skimmed through a bunch of reviews. They mostly don't seem to have played the original, or didn't play it enough to encounter the same issues I had with it, so there's no mention of whether you still have mortal wounds or there are still constant infuriating "gang takeovers" that you can't do anything to mitigate or decrease the frequency of. Most of the reviews are just whining about it badly handling a story about sexual assault, which, eh, a lot of these things have some very non-Western plot elements that would not fly in a Western game, so I don't really care. Most praise the combat and say it's better than the first (which is good to hear, cause Crane stance is totally pointless in the first one). However, this excerpt from a review has me going "not touching this till it's less than 20 bucks."



> Lost Judgment introduces two new mechanics to the series: stealth and parkour. Both are poorly implemented and tedious. Stealth is rudimentary and linear – go to this hiding spot, throw a coin to lure guards away, rinse and repeat. Parkour is somewhat engaging, but the game frequently forces you into investigation mode to find the handholds you need to get around an area. This kills the pacing, especially during the climax of the game where I was constantly stopped so I could search around for where to climb.



Sounds horrible! Sounds like they doubled down on tailing and first person view for clues, too. Sounds like they removed Mortal Wounds based on the one post I could find about the topic, which was based on a demo of the first 15 minutes so I can't be sure it's true of the whole game. I can't find any info about whether there's an equivalent to the Keihan Gang.

Found this post on Reddit, which I wholeheartedly agree with every single point on. Except Bowling. I was not a fan of the bowling in 0.



> *Judgement is the weakest Yakuza game.*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No Karaoke
> 
> 
> No Bowling
> 
> 
> No Cabaret Club
> 
> 
> Friendships equate to raising a pointless bar to raise a pointless number to do pointless side cases that give zero good rewards.
> 
> 
> Only 41 real side cases, many of them so short that they can be finished in under 5 minutes.
> 
> 
> Crane Style is useless.
> 
> 
> EX Gauge charges so slow unless you're constantly drunk. (admittedly it does fine with 8 units)
> 
> 
> Most fights come down to spamming EX Mode.
> 
> 
> Keihin Gang is the worst mechanic in Yakuza ever, requiring players to use a stealth extract every 15 minutes to even get around the city in a bearable amount of time without being stopped to beat up thugs that give literal zero XP, and fighting the leaders gives awful rewards too. Not doing them makes Kim bitch at you for no reason.
> 
> 
> VR Dice is awful.
> 
> 
> All the Detective stuff is pointless since you basically fight your way through everything. Imagine if you could avoid fights by doing good detective work, rather than making the detective mechanics irrelevant.
> 
> 
> Tailing is terrible, as is chasing.
> 
> 
> The Mole's identity is straight up given to you, instead of working it out. This is true of all the plot points.
> 
> 
> No weapons or armor system.
> 
> 
> Mortal Wounds are fundamentally flawed because you can only go to the medic to heal them, or use a medkit. They should have healed at the end of the battle, rather than being semi-permanent.
> 
> 
> Drone Racing and everything involving the drone and camera is pointless gimmick.




I didn't know EX mode made you invincible. I guess that's certainly a way around being vulnerable on the minibosses.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Played the Predator: Hunting Grounds free PSN game for this month and it's fun for 5 minutes and then it gets predictable and boring, it helps if you can play with a full squad of your friends. You can take the Predator down quickly if you have everyone cluster, so a rogue random can drag your team down. Gimmicky from start to end, textures look alright and it feels like a worse version of Ark.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Been cleaning up some trophies in Vice City. I'm doing a bunch of the collectables, side jobs, and non-story asset missions. I forgot how much a pain in the ass that Malibu Club bank job mission is. I tried to beat it about a dozen times before the game soft locked on me and I just walked away for the sake of my sanity. Had to do that previously on the ambulance side mission when at level 11 the game stuck a ped in the world geometry meaning I just had to cancel the job. Did the all stunt jumps, found all the hidden packages, and leveled out on the vigilante, ambulance (finally), fire truck, and pizza boy side jobs. I'm grinding away at the criminal ranking currently. I read up on a rubber band technique to raise it while I'm asleep or at work.


----------



## wankerness

Jesus Christ, Amon in Judgment is a nightmare compared to Amon in any previous Yakuza game. The guy destroys me on easy! They gave him a weird mechanic where he changes colors and you have to be the same color as him to not get annihilated by the fireballs in the room, but you only do damage to him if you're the opposite color, so you have to be switching stances at exactly the right seconds to hit him a couple times then quick switch back before you get destroyed by fireballs. On top of this, he STEALS YOUR PHONE so you can't pause or heal in the fight unless somehow you manage to get him out of first phase without getting hit by that attack. Oof. This guy's vastly harder than all the previous incarnations I've fought of this guy (4,5,6, Kiwami 1/2).


----------



## MFB

Started playing Dark Souls 2, this game is cheap as FUCK with it's enemy placement and overload. I'm at the god damn Forest of Giants and I've continued to die at each segment because it's just overload with bullshit enemies.

Make it through the entire arena of hollows? Well, here's a knight who's going to stab through your shield and kill you for all your health. Enjoy! Hope you didn't want the 3K souls you were carrying because you won't make it back to them either.


----------



## Ralyks

Just following up on installing the M2 SSD into my PS5: it was easy, took a couple of minutes, and no noticable differences between games on the M2 and on the internal drive. So yeah. I recommend it.

Oh, and Deathloop is still awesome.


----------



## Choop

MFB said:


> Started playing Dark Souls 2, this game is cheap as FUCK with it's enemy placement and overload. I'm at the god damn Forest of Giants and I've continued to die at each segment because it's just overload with bullshit enemies.
> 
> Make it through the entire arena of hollows? Well, here's a knight who's going to stab through your shield and kill you for all your health. Enjoy! Hope you didn't want the 3K souls you were carrying because you won't make it back to them either.



Yeahhh, I really think the Forest of Giants is a brutal introduction to that game. It gets easier and better, but like weapon choices are so limited early on.


----------



## Crungy

I'm starting Elite Dangerous after work, does anyone here paly that?


----------



## MFB

Choop said:


> Yeahhh, I really think the Forest of Giants is a brutal introduction to that game. It gets easier and better, but like weapon choices are so limited early on.



Had to look this one up, because why the Christ they changed it I don't know, but I've got healing hot keys figured out. Apparently now in DS2, down on DPad SCROLLS through healing items instead of actually using them. Now you have to hit Square to USE the item.

So that in conjunction with getting the shortsword instead of using the broken straight swords, allows for a thrust attack to avoid clipping in corridors. It also does more damage than any of the others with a higher durability.

I got slightly further but the intro is just brutal


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Had to look this one up, because why the Christ they changed it I don't know, but I've got healing hot keys figured out. Apparently now in DS2, down on DPad SCROLLS through healing items instead of actually using them. Now you have to hit Square to USE the item.
> 
> So that in conjunction with getting the shortsword instead of using the broken straight swords, allows for a thrust attack to avoid clipping in corridors. It also does more damage than any of the others with a higher durability.
> 
> I got slightly further but the intro is just brutal


DS2 is easily the most bullshit game in the series. There are areas later in the game that will make you chuck your controller


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Started playing Dark Souls 2, this game is cheap as FUCK with it's enemy placement and overload. I'm at the god damn Forest of Giants and I've continued to die at each segment because it's just overload with bullshit enemies.
> 
> Make it through the entire arena of hollows? Well, here's a knight who's going to stab through your shield and kill you for all your health. Enjoy! Hope you didn't want the 3K souls you were carrying because you won't make it back to them either.



Are you playing the original version (only available on PC or old systems) or the Scholar of the First Sin version? The latter is considered considerably harder, I guess. I got through it, but definitely was overwhelmed by enemy swarms and took a while to get the "feel" of it. I ended up loving it and think it's at least as good as DS1 despite some undeniable problems (ex, movement and swing accuracy are wonkier than 1).

The biggest difference from DS1 difficulty-wise is that it likes to hit you with crowds of enemies. I'd advise getting both a rapier and a mace ASAP since a bunch of enemies are weak to one damage type and strong to the other.


----------



## Mathemagician

You can two-handed R1 your way through every boss in DS2. And that mace will smack through almost any regular mob. Also lots of enemies can be pulled with a bow, that helps a ton especially in FoG.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Are you playing the original version (only available on PC or old systems) or the Scholar of the First Sin version? The latter is considered considerably harder, I guess. I got through it, but definitely was overwhelmed by enemy swarms and took a while to get the "feel" of it. I ended up loving it and think it's at least as good as DS1 despite some undeniable problems (ex, movement and swing accuracy are wonkier than 1).
> 
> The biggest difference from DS1 difficulty-wise is that it likes to hit you with crowds of enemies. I'd advise getting both a rapier and a mace ASAP since a bunch of enemies are weak to one damage type and strong to the other.



Fuck, I'm playing through Sins of The First Scholar so of course I picked the harder version without knowing it.

I do like the aspect of bonfires restoring durability, but it seems like every other area is a step back. Even a premise as basic as leveling up was changed and now instead of doing it at any bonfire, it's through one person at the beginning of the game.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Fuck, I'm playing through Sins of The First Scholar so of course I picked the harder version without knowing it.
> 
> I do like the aspect of bonfires restoring durability, but it seems like every other area is a step back. Even a premise as basic as leveling up was changed and now instead of doing it at any bonfire, it's through one person at the beginning of the game.



Yeah, but, you can warp anywhere from anywhere immediately instead of DS1's ridiculous traversal times pre-anor londo (and its arbitrary choosing of which bonfires you could actually warp to) so having to level up at the NPC isn't a big deal. Plus, you played Bloodborne! It was the same there!

Besides the giant QOL improvement that was being able to warp anywhere (DS3 and bloodborne used this, too, though Bloodborne went a step backwards by making you warp to the hub world before warping to your ultimate destination every time), the entire system of gear and weapons is a huge step forward from DS1. DS2 has all kinds of cool dual wielding setups you can do, and has the best weapon variety besides. 3 was actually a step backwards.

Also, some caster builds are OP as heck, especially hex builds.

Biggest thing with 2 was just that it took me a long time to figure out how to approach it. I was getting chunked by enemies non-stop for the first few levels and was struggling horribly with things like the Pursuer, but then once things "clicked" it was pretty smooth sailing till I got to the DLC areas. I didn't massively grind levels in it, either, unlike 1 and 3 and Bloodborne. Though there were a couple areas where I killed enemies till they stopped respawning.

I was basically a quality build, but a strength build would have worked equally well apart from arrows doing less damage. Second the advice above about getting a bow and leveling it, there are a few parts that it REALLY comes in handy. Especially if you start doing "side" stuff like the bullshit 2 giant room beneath the poison-spitting statue area.

EDIT: oh yeah, another big qol thing that inexplicably got rolled back in ds3 was the ability to climb faster on ladders! Why did they remove that!!


----------



## MFB

You know, I totally forgot that Bloodborne was leveled up via The Doll in Hunter's Dream, I guess it's just that I'm still viewing them as separate franchises so when they start to incorporate styles from later series I think, "I like this mechanic sure, but not in this context," because now it's not what I know/expect. 

I expect a slower play from DS and to be more of a middle ground of combat/defending vs the other two relying heavily on one or the other. But currently DS2 feels like, "Oh you thought you could play Dark Souls? You ignorant slut!"


----------



## wankerness

One of the key things in DS2 you might have already looked up is that you need to level adaptability up a bunch if you’re big on rolling. 110 agility is the point at which the rolls are on par with ds1’s in terms of “invincibility frames.” I definitely aimed for that early on and it made a big difference. If you’re doing a shield build and don’t depend on rolls then you probably don’t need to bother.


----------



## StevenC

Literally the only thing I know about Dark Souls is that you should never ever ever use a shield.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

StevenC said:


> Literally the only thing I know about Dark Souls is that you should never ever ever use a shield.


Nah, shields are super useful in the DS series. Especially with certain bosses in DS2.


----------



## StevenC

KnightBrolaire said:


> Nah, shields are super useful in the DS series. Especially with certain bosses in DS2.


This contradicts everything hbomberguy has told me


----------



## KnightBrolaire

StevenC said:


> This contradicts everything hbomberguy has told me


I've played the hell out of the series and shields are overwhelmingly useful. There aren't always opportunities or enough space to dodge around, but there's basically always space to hide behind a shield. Turtle strats ARE relatively useless in dueling (unless you're really good at parrying) but otherwise they have a ton of utility.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> This contradicts everything hbomberguy has told me


 
Basically shields are the easymode build in all of the DS games. It’s very rare that bosses are easier with rolling and 2h (there are exceptions, especially in 3 with a few bosses that seem designed to punish turtlers). However, the game is a lot slower and you get to ignore a lot of enemy mechanics. So yes, the “git gud” crowd insists you should never use them. Bloodborne basically is like DS if you didn’t have even the option of a shield, but that game has a rally mechanic where doing damage heals recent damage which is not in any other DS game and makes the aggressive play style much easier.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Crungy said:


> I'm starting Elite Dangerous after work, does anyone here paly that?


I'm sorry sir but this is actually the Dark Souls and Yakuza thread, contrary to what the title says.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> I'm sorry sir but this is actually the Dark Souls and Yakuza thread, contrary to what the title says.


you forgot bloodborne, Sekiro, Nier, YS and Tales too


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> I'm sorry sir but this is actually the Dark Souls and Yakuza thread, contrary to what the title says.



Hey, it's not our fault no one has anything to say about any other games!

I finished up Judgment yesterday. Worst Yakuza game I've played, and does NOT make me at all optimistic about the future of the series unless they abandon the Judgment franchise and make a new one, or relent on their "Yakuza is now always Turn-based, only Judgment will have real-time combat." Had to switch difficulty to easy to kill Amon, that was a pretty good fight, if infuriating. But yeah. I don't like this character and I dislike everything that made him unique to Yakuza protagonists and I would rather have an all-new character that doesn't have a job that revolves around tailing people and getting mortally wounded by everything until he goes to the doctor!!

Now I'm thinking about replaying Yakuza 0, or doing some more AC Valhalla DLC, or going back to NG+ in Dark Souls 2. Or playing Sekiro! Or maybe playing Disco Elysium as I just now remembered I have it installed.


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> you forgot bloodborne, Sekiro, Nier, YS and Tales too



I scroll past everything that has Yakuza in it as they're a series I have zero interest in, I'm just here for the FromSoft posts basically


----------



## StevenC

Bayonetta 



Spoiler



I've been replaying Bayonetta to try and manifest some news about Bayo 3. 

It's amazing how much you can forget about a game. I'm not saying I was great at it before, but the spacing, timing and sheer number of combos I had in my head before makes getting back into it pretty unsatisfying without studying and learning everything again. Especially since it gets taught to you pretty naturally from just playing the game the first time.


----------



## Crungy

BlackMastodon said:


> I'm sorry sir but this is actually the Dark Souls and Yakuza thread, contrary to what the title says.



I noticed that after I posted and however many pages before this one. Maaaaaaybe I should try one of them lmao

And speaking of Elite Dangerous I have it about an hour and decided it's not for me. I like that it's super in depth and the huge scale of things but it kind of seems like a work simulator set in space.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Bayonetta
> 
> I've been replaying Bayonetta to try and manifest some news about Bayo 3.
> 
> It's amazing how much you can forget about a game. I'm not saying I was great at it before, but the spacing, timing and sheer number of combos I had in my head before makes getting back into it pretty unsatisfying without studying and learning everything again. Especially since it gets taught to you pretty naturally from just playing the game the first time.



I played through that game quickly, kinda liked it, then got Bayonetta 2 and zoned out during the ENDLESS opening cutscene. I quit, then tried to pick it up about 2 years later and didn't know what the hell I was doing. I feel like I need to go through Bayonetta 1 just to play Bayonetta 2 now!!


----------



## wankerness

Crungy said:


> I noticed that after I posted and however many pages before this one. Maaaaaaybe I should try one of them lmao
> 
> And speaking of Elite Dangerous I have it about an hour and decided it's not for me. I like that it's super in depth and the huge scale of things but it kind of seems like a work simulator set in space.



Dark Souls 3 or Yakuza 0 are the definite most "accessible" games in either series!! Neither one is for all tastes though, that's for sure. 

I tend to "nope" out of anything if Simulator is in the title or description. Elite Dangerous is a "1:1 space flight simulator." Does that mean most of your time is just spent doing nothing while you fly between systems for hours?


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I played through that game quickly, kinda liked it, then got Bayonetta 2 and zoned out during the ENDLESS opening cutscene. I quit, then tried to pick it up about 2 years later and didn't know what the hell I was doing. I feel like I need to go through Bayonetta 1 just to play Bayonetta 2 now!!


The opening cutscene for 2 isn't that long, not any longer than 1 at least. They walk down the street then an airplane crashes into the shop, right?

I definitely feel like Bayo 2 is better and also easier, but not just because I played it after playing 1. Bayo 1 also has that awful brown/grey colouring that every 360/PS3 game had and it's a bit hard to look at as a result. 2 just has better levels, more variety, less repetition and fewer bad bits. 1 just seems a little bit more unforgiving for a game you're supposed to be able to play without getting hit once. But it also doesn't just assume you've played the first one, while still being a game you're supposed to play over and over so the teaching doesn't get in the way.

Maybe I should stop playing Bayo 1 and just find my Bayo 2 cartridge.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> The opening cutscene for 2 isn't that long, not any longer than 1 at least. They walk down the street then an airplane crashes into the shop, right?
> 
> I definitely feel like Bayo 2 is better and also easier, but not just because I played it after playing 1. Bayo 1 also has that awful brown/grey colouring that every 360/PS3 game had and it's a bit hard to look at as a result. 2 just has better levels, more variety, less repetition and fewer bad bits. 1 just seems a little bit more unforgiving for a game you're supposed to be able to play without getting hit once. But it also doesn't just assume you've played the first one, while still being a game you're supposed to play over and over so the teaching doesn't get in the way.
> 
> Maybe I should stop playing Bayo 1 and just find my Bayo 2 cartridge.



Yeah, that's what happens in the cutscene, but it takes FOREVER. Like, ten minutes. The dialogue is so bad and everything happens so slowly. I was bored out of my gourd and a friend had started watching me cause he wanted to see ridiculousness and the return on investment was way too low. Also, that was before I had a pro controller on wii-u and that huge gamepad is not at all comfortable for button-mashing.

I have heard 2 is better than 1. That's good to know it doesn't sound like it expects you to be fluent in the combat system already. A lot of games DO make that assumption (ex, Doom Eternal!!!).


----------



## BlackMastodon

Crungy said:


> I noticed that after I posted and however many pages before this one. Maaaaaaybe I should try one of them lmao
> 
> And speaking of Elite Dangerous I have it about an hour and decided it's not for me. I like that it's super in depth and the huge scale of things but it kind of seems like a work simulator set in space.


I was really curious about Elite Dangerous a few years back but someone told me to stay away for that exact reason. The scale and "realism" of it sounds really cool but I ain't got that kinda time to invest. The only simulator type games I like are colony simulators like Frostpunk. I got Surviving Mars earlier this year, we'll see how that one is. 

I still miss the Armored Core series. Lousy From Soft, wanting to make money on an incredibly successful IP...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

KnightBrolaire said:


> you forgot bloodborne, Sekiro, Nier, YS and Tales too



Tales is barely talked about here, and that's considering Arise just came out. Ys... me, and maybe 2 others are the only ones who care, certainly not popular at the extent of Yakuza or Soulsbourne games.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Tales is barely talked about here, and that's considering Arise just came out. Ys... me, and maybe 2 others are the only ones who care, certainly not popular at the extent of Yakuza or Soulsbourne games.


How did I miss that there's a new Tales game? Time to fire up the ol' Tales machine, I mean Playstation.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Yeah, that's what happens in the cutscene, but it takes FOREVER. Like, ten minutes. The dialogue is so bad and everything happens so slowly. I was bored out of my gourd and a friend had started watching me cause he wanted to see ridiculousness and the return on investment was way too low. Also, that was before I had a pro controller on wii-u and that huge gamepad is not at all comfortable for button-mashing.
> 
> I have heard 2 is better than 1. That's good to know it doesn't sound like it expects you to be fluent in the combat system already. A lot of games DO make that assumption (ex, Doom Eternal!!!).


Huh, I never noticed it was that long. Everything in that game just seems so much less stilted to me than in 1, so maybe it's that. I've picked up where I left off in Bayo 2 doing the Witch Trials and it's way easier to pick up than where I left off in Bayo 1 doing a Hard playthrough and trying to Platinum Normal.


----------



## wankerness

Went back to Yakuza 0 to do the last substories, almost exactly 3 years since I last played it. WOW, the graphics look terrible compared to PS5 judgment. Blurry, muddy, etc. I'll probably adjust. Just finished up the last two as Majima and then fought his version of Amon, who was ludicrously cheap and I couldn't damage him until I got him stuck in a loop where he'd try to combo me into the wall, I'd block the whole combo (building up heat), then I'd do the heat move where I'd knife him into the wall, and repeated that for his last 5 or 6 health bars. VERY cheap, but, I couldn't even get a hit on him with the other three stances and the counter move was not at all reliable, so hey, whatever works!!

Now to finish up Kiryu's stories, I missed 5 of them apparently. I remember when I played through this game I was like "who is this boring scowly guy, just let me play as Majima the whole time!!" And then after playing Yakuza 1 right afterwards, he became one of my favorite videogame characters ever. I will have to replay this whole game sometime. I think it had a bunch of references to the earlier games in the series, all of which were lost on me. 

In Nier Replicant, I'm logging on once a day to plant/harvest flowers, because you have to do the stupid planting minigame for a quest and a trophy. Unfortunately it runs off a real-world timer of 24 hours to bloom, and then another 24 hours to be harvested for seeds, and there's a low chance that the plants will even crossbreed, and you need to successfully do it at least 4 times for each color combination (out of 4 combos necessary). Considering the game itself takes about 8 hours to beat, this means you have to basically stop playing the game for days to do this quest. Very, very dumb design!!


----------



## CovertSovietBear

wankerness said:


> WOW, the graphics look terrible compared to PS5 judgment. Blurry, muddy, etc. I'll probably adjust.


Had that feeling when I tried to go back and play Battlefield 3 on my PS3 and almost threw up


----------



## StevenC

I succeeded in playing enough Bayonetta this week to make them reveal 3


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Just went through the new update of Spiritfarer, this time it's a bit more substantial. New passenger means new quests and recipes. The big update is that you now get 3 save files instead of just one, something that normally should be there by default but whatever. I guess I can re experience crying floods of tears again.

Was getting really into it, but then it crashed. Oh well back to Persona 5 Royal... or at least unless I lose control and buy Actraiser Renaissance right damn now.


----------



## wankerness

I bought the castlevania advance collection and have been playing the third one for hours. I love this game and I think this will be my third or fourth time through. Too bad the other two don’t stack up, but they’re still good. I hope they do another one of these but for the three Nintendo DS games, though they’d have to do some adjusting for the first one especially (where you had to draw complex hexes on bosses to kill them).


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ... or at least unless I lose control and buy Actraiser Renaissance right damn now.



...and I did lose control and bought the game. And it's still just as fun as the original. Load times are ass and the town building sim gets confusing at times, but switching between old school platform hack/slash and being a cherub shooting demons down while minions worship you is still awesome.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ...and I did lose control and bought the game. And it's still just as fun as the original. Load times are ass and the town building sim gets confusing at times, but switching between old school platform hack/slash and being a cherub shooting demons down while minions worship you is still awesome.



load times are ass? What system did you get it for? I saw it on the ps store, I was surprised cause I thought it was a switch thing.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Had a series x in my cart on Walmart’s site yesterday but just spun and spun and wouldn’t let me checkout. Oh well. Will be playing the halo infinite tech preview this weekend.


----------



## TedEH

Just went through Fractured But Whole. It was.... well, it's South Park, so you pretty much know what it is. The last game isn't very fresh in my mind, so I can't make a direct comparison, but this one works pretty well on it's own. I vaguely remember feeling like the first game kinda overstayed it's welcome, but this one didn't really "get old" by the end.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

The long weekend at Melbourne got me into a massive gaming binge between Actraiser Renaissance and Persona 5 Royal. Did all the extra DLC in Spiritfarer quickly, and admittedly I wasn't as invested with the new passenger as the last one. 

Though Actraiser being the new kid in town, literally since it came out of nowhere with no release hype or ceremony, I played that the most. It's like meeting an old flame many years later, hit it off, hook up and partied like a house on fire. But she's clearly had some work done to look like the youth of today, and while you're already balls deep in the fun, you can't help but think about them and maybe what she did weren't exactly good life decisions. 

I've already complained about the load times (on PS4), especially when you're switching between menus on the God sim sections, but I've got a lot of annoyances, once again in the God sim sections. Now I did notice a few tutorials during the hack slash sections and you can easily ignore them, but the God sims are merciless with them. To be fair, when I first played Actraiser years ago (without the manual), I had no idea what to do then, so I'll look the other way. The biggest issue I have is the baggage that comes along with add-ons for the sake of modernity. I do like that the lands have been given a unique aesthetic so it's not as monotonous as the original. But the close up views of the people as well as giving the little cherub you control a personality adds A TON of dialogue that constantly interrupts you, like riding the toothchipper from The Simpsons. You're getting carried away shooting down demons and dragons then cutscene abruptly shows up to introduce a sidequest or whatever. It's incredibly annoying since there's much more focus on the God sim this time around. And it also doesn't help that the sidequests tend to trigger arbitrarily. I actually got soft locked in the 3rd land by some plague forcing me to try to clear a subsequent land or 2 just to get an item the bequeath these ungrateful minion sods. I've heard complaints that while an average time to clear these on the original is 45 mins, Renaissance takes 2 bloody hours. 

The other new gimmick is the addition of Heroes per land. While, I do like adding new characters to break the monotony (albeit they're all anime as balls), that cowboy carries it's fair share of sad songs. And the heroes need something to do, so they bring in obligatory tower defense sidequest since more games need tower defense mini games apparently. I'm actually for the concept here in principle (it's a God sim, and variety is nice), but the execution is so poorly done. It feels like if DOTA was implemented in Warcraft 1 but handles like an Etch a sketch. 

That's a lot of complaints now I've typed it out and read them, but there has to be a draw since I played this for 2 days straight and at one point forgot I was supposed to eat dinner. The graphics aren't bad for a SNES remake, and I did say I like the new aesthetic. The music was already great, and having Yuzo Koshiro come back and rearrange them with 16 new tracks is awesome. And I still enjoyed all the platform hack/slash sections. They're all done up nicely whilst still scratching the nostalgic itch. 

I guess Actraiser Renaissance is as good as a remake that Squenix can give without all bugbears that show up in modern remakes. And bless them for even trying to hamfist all those annoyances here too.


----------



## wankerness

Does anyone have Diablo II for console? I liked Diablo 3 and I'd be curious to play it as I never played the original, but I've heard that it kinda controls like crap on console. That is surprising to me, cause I think Diablo 3 actually controlled better on console than PC unless you were trying to play a demon hunter or mage doing the stutter step playstyle. But, PC mouse/keyboard is not an option for me anymore.

Been playing a LOT of Aria of Sorrow. It makes me want to replay the DS castlevanias cause they're a much more advanced experience, but it's still really fun. At least, it is if you're someone that likes zoning out and killing the same monsters sometimes hundreds of times to fill up your monster index! This port has some decently large issues, though. One is something that seems like it was a good idea, but was implemented terribly. Every time you hit an enemy, you see the in-game "Monster Index" name in the bottom right just like the original, but you ALSO see this ugly, modern overlay on the right side of the screen. It refreshes every time you hit the enemy, so if you hit the same enemy three times quickly, you'll see three of these overlays on the right side of the screen, and it occasionally will cover up the enemy you're attacking if they're too close to the right side of the screen. You can turn this feature off, but it does track whether you have the monster's soul or not, which the original game did not show unless you paused and looked up the monster in the index. So, that sucks. I'm guessing they'll probably patch it at some point to be smaller. It seems like they could have easily just fit it in the black bars to the right of the screen (it's windowboxed since the original was not 16x9). 

Apart from it being bland and ugly, this overlay occasionally has some funny typos. Ex, Mudmen show up properly on the in-game pop-up info as Mudman, but the overlay says MADMAN. Also, it sort of inexplicably opens up this overlay at times and does auto-saves and a countdown to emulation resume. It does have gamefreeze slots so that's nice, I guess. I haven't played any of the other three games yet, so I'll be curious if it does anything as invasive as in this. I'm guessing probably not.


----------



## gabito

Finished South Park: The Stick of Truth a few weeks ago.

I'm not really knowledgeable about the show (I barely saw a few episodes, and also saw the movie like 20 years ago), but I know enough about it and its characters to enjoy it and understand what's going on. I liked it. It was a good fit for me: no too difficult, fun / funny, old school-ish (I don't think I ever played a turn based RPG of this type), and not too long. Finished the main mission, a few sidequests, and that was it.

Last few days I've been playing games from my PS3 backlog (I still have a lot of those) to see if can find anything I like, but nothing grabbed me: Alien Isolation seems like a really good game, I REALLY like the setting / feel, the "period authentic" machinery, etc. But it's too tense of a game for me... I think I prefer to watch somebody else playing it on Youtube, or just watch the first movie again.

Also played Mafia II for a good while, but it was... meh. It shows its age enough for me not to like it or want to keep playing it. Maybe it's a good game, but I've played enough games about "drive or walk to mission, watch cutscene, drive to this other place, kill guys, repeat". I'd rather play GTA V for nth time.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, meh...

Rain: oh, that one sucked.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, I know it's really outdated compared to the PS4 / PC / etc. versions but I already have it, so whatever. I only played two or three hours and I'm really liking it. Never played this kind of game, so we'll see...


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, I know it's really outdated compared to the PS4 / PC / etc. versions but I already have it, so whatever. I only played two or three hours and I'm really liking it. Never played this kind of game, so we'll see...



I don't know how far they updated the 360/PS3 versions, but I know that they are at least new enough to not have the major things that were wrong with the game on PC release (ex the horrendous loot drop rates and the real money auction house synergy). I think you'd mainly just be missing out on the expansion (maybe) and the seasonal stuff, but the base game is still great and should give you hundreds of hours if you get into it.


----------



## WarMachine

Diablo 3 on ps3/4/Xbox 1 is amazing. I owned both for ps3 and 4 and the only real jump you see is in fps. I absolutely over it. I've easily beat it at least 5-6 times.


----------



## Choop

gabito said:


> Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, meh...



Gosh, I have the first one on PS3 and have tried to get into it several times but I just cannot. I could complain and nitpick on it, but ultimately it just feels extremely mediocre. Alternatively, I went and played SotN for the first time like a year ago and thought it was incredible.~

Just got a new phone; a Galaxy S20+ (coming from an S5 yikes)! Do you guys do mobile games at all? I know I could run emulators on this thing, but just wondering if anyone plays any made-for-mobile games or ports.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

The big problem with the Lords of Shadow games is that they've sacrificed a lot of the Castlevania identity and tried as hard to be like God Of War.

Lords of Shadow 2 could've taken it to places more interesting similar to the Aria/Dawn of Sorrow games, but falls far too flat.


----------



## Crungy

I just started playing Aria of Sorrow recently, I'm not too far into it but I like it quite a bit. It doesn't really feel like a Castelvania game to me but I like it!


----------



## wankerness

Crungy said:


> I just started playing Aria of Sorrow recently, I'm not too far into it but I like it quite a bit. It doesn't really feel like a Castelvania game to me but I like it!



Why doesn't it feel like Castlevania to you? It has a lot of enemies straight from Symphony of the Night and the same kind of music as SOTN and stuff. I guess it takes place in the future (largely irrelevant) and there's a ton of emphasis on acquiring enemy souls, but hey. I love that system. I guess if you're comparing it to the NES/SNES castlevanias which were all about the whip, it lacks, but then so did SOTN unless you played as Richter!

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night really merged the Dawn/Aria of Sorrow monster souls thing with the SOTN deeper equipment stuff to great effect. That game is just as good as Dawn of Sorrow/SOTN (my two favorite of the Castlevania series).

I'm playing Circle of the Moon now. It's clunk city compared to Aria of Sorrow, especially at the beginning before you get all your special moves, and the graphics are massively worse than Harmony of Dissonance/Aria of the Moon, but it's got its own charm. The DSS thing starts out being terrible and useless, but if I remember right, it becomes incredibly overpowered as you progress in the game and get more action cards. The difficulty's definitely higher, mainly due to it controlling about like the NES ones with enemies that are slightly below you presenting a huge threat cause you can't aim downwards, and enemy projectiles always managing to hit you just right so you miss your jump, go flying backwards with the damage recoil, and fall down several platforms in the most infuriating fashion. I've beaten three bosses, and am mostly just trying to puzzle around the very large/confusing map (compared to Aria of Sorrow's much, much improved level layout that's a lot more like SOTN).


----------



## Crungy

I don't think it lacks, it's just a feel/visuals thing comparing to NES/Gameboy/SNES/Genesis Castelvania games. Definitely the whip part, but the overall vibe of the game and dialogue makes it feel very different for me.

SOTN and Rondo of Blood are the other ones I really want/need to play.


----------



## wankerness

I could not deal with Rondo of Blood, maybe I'll try it again someday. It was a lot like Dracula X. Very straightforward and linear, very difficult.

The dialogue on Aria of Sorrow is definitely a change, it is very casual and modern-sounding and is occasionally trying to be funny.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> One of the key things in DS2 you might have already looked up is that you need to level adaptability up a bunch if you’re big on rolling. 110 agility is the point at which the rolls are on par with ds1’s in terms of “invincibility frames.” I definitely aimed for that early on and it made a big difference. If you’re doing a shield build and don’t depend on rolls then you probably don’t need to bother.



The game gets much more fun imo once you get to 110 adaptability. Then it’s dodge-roll city. 



KnightBrolaire said:


> I've played the hell out of the series and shields are overwhelmingly useful. There aren't always opportunities or enough space to dodge around, but there's basically always space to hide behind a shield. Turtle strats ARE relatively useless in dueling (unless you're really good at parrying) but otherwise they have a ton of utility.



Some shields don’t parry though, they just boop. So a player wouldn’t really want the big ones that are good in PVE for pvp anyways.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> The game gets much more fun imo once you get to 110 adaptability. Then it’s dodge-roll city.



110 adaptability would be an interesting build!!! 

I just looked it up, I guess you only need 105 agi, and then 111 is the next breakpoint but it seems like most recommend leaving it at 105.

I think assuming you put no points in attunement beyond the starting ones you need something like 25 adp to hit the recommended 105 agility level (agi scales off of ADP and ATN). That's another benefit of caster builds, you can get to the Agi cap with considerably less ADP. This agi/adp stat split is definitely confusing and something you'd probably never figure out through regular gameplay without very extensive testing and studying of stats.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> The game gets much more fun imo once you get to 110 adaptability. Then it’s dodge-roll city.
> 
> 
> 
> Some shields don’t parry though, they just boop. So a player wouldn’t really want the big ones that are good in PVE for pvp anyways.


there are greatshields that can parry, or you quick switch to a different weapon/empty hand to parry faster


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> 110 adaptability would be an interesting build!!!
> 
> I just looked it up, I guess you only need 105 agi, and then 111 is the next breakpoint but it seems like most recommend leaving it at 105.
> 
> I think assuming you put no points in attunement beyond the starting ones you need something like 25 adp to hit the recommended 105 agility level (agi scales off of ADP and ATN). That's another benefit of caster builds, you can get to the Agi cap with considerably less ADP. This agi/adp stat split is definitely confusing and something you'd probably never figure out through regular gameplay without very extensive testing and studying of stats.



Yeah I meant 111 agility. It’s been years since I played and forgot adaptability/agility were separate things.


----------



## rokket2005

Why use shields when you can dual wield greatswords?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Crungy said:


> I don't think it lacks, it's just a feel/visuals thing comparing to NES/Gameboy/SNES/Genesis Castelvania games. Definitely the whip part, but the overall vibe of the game and dialogue makes it feel very different for me.
> 
> SOTN and Rondo of Blood are the other ones I really want/need to play.



That's fair enough.

Since you haven't played SOTN, I can see why Aria feels so different from the old school Castlevania games. SOTN was the seachange that started the Metroidvania genre, leaving the old linear stage layout to free and open exploration. Also the first to focus on a protagonist that's not a Belmont (Bloodlines not withstanding) so that changes the gameplay significantly. 

Admittedly I was skeptical when SOTN first came out, since it looked so different from what I was used to. But now it's my favorite game of the franchise, with Aria and Dawn (in that order) coming close behind. 

You can ease yourself in with Rondo first, since it still follows the same gameplay of classic vania, namely Dracula's Curse. Then play SOTN next.


----------



## Mathemagician

rokket2005 said:


> Why use shields when you can dual wield greatswords?



Dual wield greatshields. Like the summon.


----------



## WarMachine

Mathemagician said:


> Dual wield greatshields. Like the summon.


Why dual wield shields when u can dual wield crissaegrim's.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

real ogs just run a 2h dragon bone/havel's club and empty hand or poison mist


----------



## Mathemagician

My favorite “bullshit” pvp move was to drop a big toxic cloud, then avelyn my opponent through it while their vision was blocked. Sometimes it was about sending a message.


----------



## wankerness

Castlevania Circle of the Moon is full of straight-up bullshit. This game is hard as nails compared to the two follow-ups. Like, the amount of healing items in this game almost seems like it's a middle-finger to the player. I'm about 70% through the game, have killed two of the hard optional bosses, and I haven't gotten one single healing item the whole time that restored more than 20 hp. For reference, your character has over 300 HP by about 3 hours of gameplay, and these potions are RARE drops from a few specific monsters. You'd need to chug like 10 of them to even come close to them being helpful! So basically, you just can't heal in this game until really late when you get a healing spell (assuming you farm the right cards and figure out the combo out of hundreds).

To top it off, the damage and enemies in this game are absolutely brutal compared to any other post-SOTN castlevanias, even the considerably-more-difficult-than-the-others Order of Ecclesia. You have clunky controls and can't aim up or down or at an angle, yet you're a tiny character on a huge screen and you're constantly getting swarmed by fast flying enemies or enemies that shoot projectiles from various corners of the screen, and your evasion abilities are crap, you don't even have a backdash like in most of the other SOTN and on games. And on top of their damage dealt to you, enemies tend to be far more "spongey" than those in other games, like Aria of Sorrow.

Also, you can lock yourself in difficult areas, giving yourself no ability to escape other than getting through and beating the boss, since there are no warp items like the library card in SOTN. I accidentally locked myself into the poison waterway when I was about 30 levels too low and didn't have the water purification item and had to end up abusing gamefreeze to get through and take out the boss despite doing miserable damage and dying in about 2 hits. It took about 10 minutes, not even counting the numerous rewinds. Barf.

So yeah, this is the post-2000 castlevania game for you if you like challenge! Even the old NES ones at least had healing items that restored more than 5% of your health bar.


----------



## p0ke

I just bought Death's Door for a couple of bucks. Pretty cool game! It's sort of like a mixture of old school Zelda and Dark Souls. 
So far I mainly just wish it had a bit more story to it, but otherwise I'm hooked.


----------



## Ralyks

So I watched playthroughs of all the Danganronpa games, plus the anime, and now I'm questioning if any of us are real or not.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Ralyks said:


> So I watched playthroughs of all the Danganronpa games, plus the anime, and now I'm questioning if any of us are real or not.


Not even a page into my google search and I'm confronted by this:


They had me in the first half.


----------



## Ralyks

CovertSovietBear said:


> Not even a page into my google search and I'm confronted by this:
> View attachment 98243
> 
> They had me in the first half.



Boy, is that merely scratching the surface...


----------



## p0ke

I guess I'm just way too tired, but I had a good laugh with Death's Door today. The game's been sort of kid friendly so far, but then the first real boss starts their dialogue with the words "You little shit!"  
For whatever reason I thought that was really funny.


----------



## wankerness

Now I'm trying to do the arena in castlevania: circle of the moon. This is INSANE. I read online that it only becomes "somewhat easy" at level 70 - I'm only level 38 and I've grinded out a lot of cards and done both the optional zones/bosses! So yeah, it's nuts the amount of monsters in some of these rooms and how much damage you have to do to them to kill them, plus all your spells are disabled so you can't use any damage boost or damage absorption moves. Hooray for game freeze!! The infamous room with 7 minotaurs has taken me about an hour so far and I've only managed to kill one of them.



There's a video with a dude doing it flawlessly (that room starts at 6:11), but he's clearly a MUCH higher level than me so he's doing about twice the damage I do.  This game is so nasty. I'm looking forward to finishing it so I can go on to the much easier Harmony of Dissonance. Plus, in that one you don't constantly have to double tap to start running!! I REALLY want to replay the DS games now, too. I dunno if I should wait to see if another collection gets released or just play my illicit copies on my R4 on the DS. I'm surprised that they aren't available on Wii-U, since that had DS games for virtual console and the NES/SNES/GBA Castlevanias all got released for it.

Still working on Nier: Replicant's incredibly boring farming simulator by booting it up every two days and harvesting seeds/replanting. Also doing Yakuza 0's teltel club side missions to get to Amon on Kiryu. It's very annoying that you need to get all 7 different girls but can't differentiate them apart from the three possible clothing colors unless you memorize their voices without going through the entire minigame and finding out who you got in the subsequent meet-up scene. I've met the scary Maria at least 5 times. Once I finally get the last chick, then I have to practice the hell out of the last dance battle cause that guy's a jerk and I've only once come within a thousand points of him!!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Spent more time on Actraiser Renaissance. Finally got out of the soft lock and cleared thr 3rd land. All I had to do was clear the 4th and 5th land to cure that damn plague.  it's probably a good thing since the 3rd land unlocks a full screen meteor spell that clears any enemies and turns bosses into chumps in 3 to 4 hits.

The quests to kill X no of monsters got annoying fast. I'm fine with revisit the dungeons to brave the clunky controls and a dodge manoeuvre I never use. But killing some monsters that only appear once without respawn that forces me to withdraw from said dungeon and jump back in again is a massive Richard Relocation. Also not having a monster glossary didn't help since I often forget which monsters to kill. This sucked especially on a certain tree monster seed bugs, which I had no idea existed until I looked it up.


----------



## wankerness

Finished Circle of the Moon, that last Dracula fight is absolutely nuts in difficulty, reminds me of the infamous Dracula X final boss fight when it comes to pure sadism. At least there's no platforming. Instead, Dracula is only attackable when he's a little flying eyeball surrounded by bats that go every direction (and he's usually flying way out of attack range), and then the rest of the time he spams giant attacks that you have to avoid and you can't do any damage to him.

Started and finished Harmony of Dissonance. I see now, playing these games back to back to back, why everyone complains about the music. It does sound more like NES quality here, but it's still kinda catchy. The graphics are much, much better than Circle of the Moon and the gameplay's faster paced, though your character is a bit less maneuverable than late game in Circle of the Moon.

Now I have to do the alternate game modes on the three games to finish up trophies, but I don't know if I'm going to bother. Magician mode on Circle of the Moon (your character has all the cards from the start and your physical stats suck), Maxim mode on Harmony of Dissonance (you play as a faster dude with a sword, but can't level up or get any item upgrades and thus are really squishy, kinda like Richter mode on SOTN), and whatever the alternate character mode is on Aria of Sorrow (I think it's another Richter-mode deal but I have never started it).

I started Dracula X, and DAMN, this game controls like utter dogshit. You walk SO slowly in it, and the whip attack animation is so fast and un-responsive that timing it to actually hit things like medusa heads is a huge pain in the ass. I got through the first level and said screw it. I beat this game on emulator about 20 years ago, but I don't know if I'm going to bother again!

Started Ashen, which is an indie game and trying to be an "open world Dark Souls." It has an interesting aesthetic where everything looks kind of like claymation or something, like all NPCs are faceless and everything is a slick, intentionally low-detail model. My biggest problem so far is that the weapon variety seems to be trash (all 1h and 2h weapons I've tried seem to handle the same, they just have different damage stats). You have what amounts to a permanent summon with you so far, which certainly makes things a lot less frustrating since at low levels at least the guy does more damage than you do and takes at least as much punishment. Leveling up seems confusing so far, like it seems like you get permanent stam/hp boosts from completing sidequests but then there's some whole system of buying upgrades for "souls." And unfortunately it uses the same Dark Souls mechanic of "bonfires" (rocks here) and you lose everything when you die unless you successfully get back to your body and pick it up, but sometimes it's a really long way. I lost all my currency from my first 2 hours of progress after encountering a spot where three giant spiders came out of the ground.


----------



## p0ke

Can't recommended Death's Door enough, really good game, I just wish it was longer! I just beat the main story and am now doing some extra post-game quests.


Spoiler



The final boss drops a key to a bell tower, and ringing the bell makes the sun set. During the night there's a new extra quest for some stone tablets of knowledge including some extra bosses and so on. Also enemies are stronger but fewer during the night. By ringing the bell again the sun comes up and everything is back to normal.


----------



## Ralyks

So I grabbed Hot Wheels Unleashed because I figured my son would like it’s, well…. It’s fun as hell. Really good looking too.


----------



## TedEH

I've been hesitating to get into anything too much lately 'cause I intend to play Dread as soon as that comes out, but I've been kinda picking at some things off and on in the meantime. I made it through ch 1 of Deltarune, which was ok, I guess. IMO the novelty of the battle systems has worn off a good bit since Undertale, and I'm not seeing much here yet that Undertale didn't already do better - so the selling point here I guess is the character writing, which has it's good and bad points.

And it is generally good character writing for what it is, but I think now that I'm in my 30s, the tropes of everyone in the world being these shy sensitive cutesy anime stereotypes that really just want friendship has gotten _reaaaaally_ old. Where Undertale could be read as a subversion of typical RPGs, this game so far feels like you're just playing the game that Undertale was riffing on. It's not a bad game, but I think it lacks the hooks of its predecessor.

I've also been very occasionally poking at Prey: Mooncrash, which is another one where I get the sense that it's "a good game", but I'm the wrong target audience. For whatever reason I just don't respond well to roguelike mechanics. It kinda just makes me want to replay the base game.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Severance: Blade of Darkness is coming into steam.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Oh fuck, Legion TD came out as a stand alone game on Steam. After Wintermaul, this was my next favourite custom game in Warcraft 3. So far the Steam reviews seem positive so I think I may give it a whirl.


----------



## cwhitey2

I have been playing Diablo II Resurrected. I bought for nostalgia purposes and it's also my favorite game of all time, so it's nice playing it with updated graphics. 


Anyone else buy it for ps4?


----------



## wankerness

cwhitey2 said:


> I have been playing Diablo II Resurrected. I bought for nostalgia purposes and it's also my favorite game of all time, so it's nice playing it with updated graphics.
> 
> 
> Anyone else buy it for ps4?



I asked about it the other day, no one responded! How is it? Is it worth playing on console? I heard that the console controls were not good compared to D3, like you actually feel crippled.


----------



## Drew

I'd be playing DII on PC if I grabbed it, which I haven't yet. I doubt I have the time, but, as someone who never got into the end game of that one (I played it through, beat it, and left it at that, shortly before the release od DIII - I didn't realize that running bosses and leveling up characters was such a big part of the meta gameplay until DIII which was much more explicitly focused on that, especially in later patches), is it worth the effort to pick it up and replay? 

I dug the fact there was still SOME randomized dungeon deign in that one, which I really missed in DIII.


----------



## Mathemagician

About to pick up D2 on switch. Hope it’s good. 

Also working my way through Code Vein on PS4 I think I’m a handful of bosses away from the ending. It’s honestly easy AF, even as I’m purposefully not leveling to give myself a challenge. Boss fights are fun/challenging. Level design is “kinda boring/kinda ok”. Like the graphics/looks are fine, it’s the actual map layout/design that’s mostly uninspired. Still a fun souls-like if you grab it cheap. I hope there’s a sequel. 

Now, what’s the neatest class in D2?


----------



## cwhitey2

wankerness said:


> I asked about it the other day, no one responded! How is it? Is it worth playing on console? I heard that the console controls were not good compared to D3, like you actually feel crippled.


I actually thought the controls were better, BUT I also havent played 3 in years 

The game play is basically the same. I thought I wouldn't like it for consoles since I grew up playing it on PC (the best way honestly), but I haven't played it in so long on PC that I can barely remember the 'feel' of the game play hahah

Overall if you're a D2 fan, get the game.


----------



## wankerness

cwhitey2 said:


> I actually thought the controls were better, BUT I also havent played 3 in years
> 
> The game play is basically the same. I thought I wouldn't like it for consoles since I grew up playing it on PC (the best way honestly), but I haven't played it in so long on PC that I can barely remember the 'feel' of the game play hahah
> 
> Overall if you're a D2 fan, get the game.



ive never played d2, only d3. Does it feel dated? Can you respec?


----------



## cwhitey2

wankerness said:


> ive never played d2, only d3. Does it feel dated? Can you respec?


It doesn't feel dated to me and yes you can respec. The grapfics might seem "classic" if you have never played D2 before.


----------



## wankerness

cwhitey2 said:


> It doesn't feel dated to me and yes you can respec. The grapfics might seem "classic" if you have never played D2 before.



Hmm, I'll pick it up when it goes on sale. I remember hearing that you couldn't respec in original D2, so that's a good feature. Sounds like you only get a couple per character and then have to grind out tokens for a while on hardest difficulty to do it again, but oh well. 

Been playing a bunch more Ashen, I like it but don't love it. The "coop" thing that dominates all gameplay is kind of nice to give it a different feel from Dark Souls, and I like how the NPCs level up based on you doing their quests, but unfortunately the AI is really terrible. I'm used to old games with trash AI where you'd frequently realize they were stuck on a tiny ledge on the floor so you have to loop back and walk them some other direction and try again, so it's manageable for me, but it's occasionally very annoying. Especially in dungeons when you're getting jumped on by monsters that kill you unless your partner can pull them off, and your partner is 10 feet away running into a wall.

The dungeons in this game are what is really difficult/frustrating, largely because of the unpredictability of the friendly AI and how dependent you are on them to stay alive and stay with you. The difficulty really is very high if you try playing "solo," and the dungeons are very long and have a boss at the end ala Demon's Souls. So, you have to completely reclear the entire dungeon if you die on the boss, and you have to get back to your body every try of course or you lose all your "souls." I have beaten 3/5 bosses so far, and the third dungeon was really bad news (though at least it had a checkpoint towards the end). The other problem with dungeons that is also kind of unique is that they're pitch black most of the time, so you have to hold a lantern, but you can only hold your lantern in your offhand, so you can't block or use a 2H weapon. It makes things very annoying when monsters jump off a ledge on you and pancake you cause you couldn't block (and pressing block while holding the lantern makes you slowly put it on the floor, obnoxiously). It's fast to switch to the shield from the lantern, but you have to make sure you're fast on the draw, and of course then it's also pitch black again unless you're standing really close to your teammate. Again, though, at least it's a somewhat original mechanic vs Dark Souls - it's like the Tomb of the Giants or DS2's blighttown equivalent for all the dungeons, but there's a much moodier look to things thanks to the stylized graphics and it's not as cruel with trying to get you to fall off ledges as those areas in Dark Souls.

Overall, I definitely recommend this game if you're looking for a quick little indie game. The combat and weapon variety is pretty flat and repetitive, as are most of the monsters, but it's short and it was not a AAA game so I don't mind it. Some of the other mechanics are interesting and unique from Dark Souls as well, like the ability to teleport to the location of thrown spears.


----------



## StevenC

Since it appears my copy of Metroid DREAD won't be here until Monday, I've been playing Super Metroid:



Spoiler



It's really good.



I've never got round to playing this before. I've played the Prime games, Other M and Seamus Returns, but not 1, 3 or 4. I've tried playing Metroid 1 before but it hasn't aged super well and I don't know where our copy of Zero Mission is. 

So anyway this game's great. Takes a bit to get used to the controls, but also you can almost completely customise the controls which is great. Using Select for items may have been more intuitive on a SNES pad but I'm using my Pro controller on Switch so it's a hassle.

I just got the grappling hook and honestly I've never seen a game stand up to the hype so much before. Everything people talk about is here and fantastic. It feels so creepy all the time and it's just fun to play and get good at. Compared to other SNES greats I didn't enjoy as much as modern games, this has a timeless feel to it. 

It's amazing how good a job Retro did translating this style of game into 3D, it feels so coherent to me. 

I don't know how long a play through takes, but I'm tempted to download Zero Mission or Fusion on my Wii U to get up to date for DREAD.


----------



## rokket2005

My copy of Dread won't be here until Tuesday, which is fine cause I probably wasn't going to start it this weekend anyway. I went back to SM earlier this year after they announced Dread and played through it and I agree it's great. I never played it as a kid, but it's been my best friends favorite game forever I just never got into it. Knowing the game now though it's more fun to watch SM randomizer and SMZ3 combo rando.

Finished Disgaea 1 earlier this week and I like it a lot. I had only played D5 in the series prior and the characters and story of D1 are better, but it's not really the type of game you play for either of those things, you play it to grind in the item world for 600 hours, which is definitely something that the new mechanics in the newer games has over the earlier Disgaea games. 

Started up Nier : Automata too and am like 15 hours in in 3 days. The Lappy jebait in the Bayo 3 trailer made me really want to go back to Astral Chain, and this is really scratching the same Platinum itch and I think I like the open world approach more here than the chapter based setup of AC. I'll have to pick up Metal Gear Revengeance whenever that pops up for the $3-4 that it usually goes on sale for.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Since it appears my copy of Metroid DREAD won't be here until Monday, I've been playing Super Metroid:
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> It's really good.
> 
> 
> 
> I've never got round to playing this before. I've played the Prime games, Other M and Seamus Returns, but not 1, 3 or 4. I've tried playing Metroid 1 before but it hasn't aged super well and I don't know where our copy of Zero Mission is.
> 
> So anyway this game's great. Takes a bit to get used to the controls, but also you can almost completely customise the controls which is great. Using Select for items may have been more intuitive on a SNES pad but I'm using my Pro controller on Switch so it's a hassle.
> 
> I just got the grappling hook and honestly I've never seen a game stand up to the hype so much before. Everything people talk about is here and fantastic. It feels so creepy all the time and it's just fun to play and get good at. Compared to other SNES greats I didn't enjoy as much as modern games, this has a timeless feel to it.
> 
> It's amazing how good a job Retro did translating this style of game into 3D, it feels so coherent to me.
> 
> I don't know how long a play through takes, but I'm tempted to download Zero Mission or Fusion on my Wii U to get up to date for DREAD.



Super Metroid is a treasure that aged surprisingly well, still holds up, and became the standard to every Metroid game and Metroidvania game after it. It's up there with Terranigma on games I often replay every few years. 

Back in the day I didn't like the control layout and changed to common Y shoot, B jump since Megaman X came out the same month. But those games just blistered my index finger by curling it for rapid mashing. Playing it recently via default settings is surprisingly more comfy for me now.


----------



## wankerness

Wait, what? You pressed Y with your index finger??? And I thought I had joint problems from video games...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Wait, what? You pressed Y with your index finger??? And I thought I had joint problems from video games...



No. To clarify: Y = Shoot, B = Jump, A = Dash. Index curled over the A button.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished Actraiser Renaissance: cleared all the lands from disasters, got all the scrolls from all Acts, and did the boss rush and killed the final boss. Credits roll. 

...then the game throws an extra land next door for you to harvest worshippers. Suspicious lack of Act 1 side scrolling stage, but you get to use all your heroes for the tower defense battles now. I guess that's alright, but you can only call a max of 3 of them anyway so, they're still a big fat meh. 

I guess the new land was a means of extra content. The original was similar in length but padded with old school difficulty (aka hard as balls). Obviously the tower defense sections extended the gameplay, but for me are the absolute nadir of Renaissance. They uninteresting but you have to go through them so it's also frustrating, especially late game.


----------



## Mathemagician

Bloody_Inferno said:


> No. To clarify: Y = Shoot, B = Jump, A = Dash. Index curled over the A button.



Gotta use your thumb for that dash/jump, tip of thumb on Y/B & bottom of thumb on A.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Gotta use your thumb for that dash/jump, tip of thumb on Y/B & bottom of thumb on A.



yeah, that’s what I’ve always done, index finger never comes off shoulder buttons except for idiotic speed mashing qte stuff (ex torture in metal gear solid). I’ve never messed with the “claw grip” to be able to use both sticks while using face buttons, either. My joints hurt enough as is!!


----------



## StevenC

Super Metroid



Spoiler



Just got the plasma beam, so I think I'm nearly at the end. Really good game. Takes some effort to learn the timing on things like the wall jump and the space jump, but otherwise not a super high difficulty level so far. I think I've only missed a few items so far. Looking forward to seeing what Ridley's up to with that metroid.

I am undecided whether or not to save the animals, as a long time AGDQ fan.



Haven't really found any call to use different button mappings, and everything is reachable with my thumb across the buttons. Would be nice if I could put item selection on a different button altogether, like ZR, but that wasn't available on the old game so it is what it is.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Fuckin Warzone.

I don’t even know why I bother anymore since it’s so dogshit busted but at this point I have very little time for games, so being able to jump on for a match or two is ok.

God I never realized how many cowards play this game; mid game is just everyone sitting in a building waiting for the circle to move and even if you get lucky and surprise a motherfucker there’s guaranteed to be another guy SITTING IN THE SAME GAT DAMNED BUILDING just waiting to 3rd party you.

I lose this game all the time and I don’t even care because I can’t just sit and wait for people to come to me, I gotta run and gun otherwise what’s the point? The people that straight make it their mission to not even get into fights just amaze me. WTF are you playing this game for? Why aren’t you playing Super Mario Kart or something?!

I’m stoked for Vanguard to come out since they’re changing the Warzone map and all the little ‘tactical waiters’ won’t have all their favorite buildings to camp in. Also stoked they’re changing the Ghost perk to only work if you’re ACTUALLY MOVING. No more avoiding those UAVs if you’re just sitting in a fuckin corner with your gun out, shaking from the anticipation of getting your 1 kill for the game.

I have a super weird schedule anymore so I can’t usually match up with my boys, so I gotta run solos. Solos are just straight pain.


----------



## StevenC

Super Metroid


Spoiler



Well that was excellent. 10/10 would recommend, probably the best thing on SNES. And that ending where the Metroid you saved in II comes to save you. Beautiful.

I didn't save the animals. Time was like 7:27 and 80% of items, doesn't seem terrible.





steinmetzify said:


> Why aren’t you playing Super Mario Kart or something?!


Because Mario Kart is the most aggressive game in the world.


----------



## philkilla

StevenC said:


> Super Metroid
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Just got the plasma beam, so I think I'm nearly at the end. Really good game. Takes some effort to learn the timing on things like the wall jump and the space jump, but otherwise not a super high difficulty level so far. I think I've only missed a few items so far. Looking forward to seeing what Ridley's up to with that metroid.
> 
> I am undecided whether or not to save the animals, as a long time AGDQ fan.
> 
> 
> 
> Haven't really found any call to use different button mappings, and everything is reachable with my thumb across the buttons. Would be nice if I could put item selection on a different button altogether, like ZR, but that wasn't available on the old game so it is what it is.




One of the greatest games of all time.


----------



## Steinmetzify

To reiterate, the times I’ve died to a camping biatch is ridiculous. 

Be a man, come out of the window and fight. Do you honestly feel good about yourself, like you’re ‘doing tactical things’?! I’ve spectated these fools, they go like 1-0 and spend their entire game living in a corner. Damn…


----------



## BlackMastodon

steinmetzify said:


> To reiterate, the times I’ve died to a camping biatch is ridiculous.
> 
> Be a man, come out of the window and fight. Do you honestly feel good about yourself, like you’re ‘doing tactical things’?! I’ve spectated these fools, they go like 1-0 and spend their entire game living in a corner. Damn…


----------



## Ralyks

Far Cry 6 is pretty good. So far.


----------



## wankerness

I haven't found any confirmation anywhere that it doesn't have any kind of horrible forced progression mechanics like kidnapping in Far Cry 5 where you'd get permanently locked out of tons of sidequests unavoidably once you'd hit a certain "warning level" in a region. That threat alone is putting me off buying it. Also, does it have companions ala 5/New Dawn? I liked them a lot in 5. I mean like, humans, not just the dog.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Past the mid year exam period of Persona 5R, and I've forgotten how much money becomes paramount the moment the fortune teller is in the picture. I don't mind the 5K yen price to boost stats, but that 100k sting to trigger her confidant hurt a fair bit. 

Thankfully my playstyle this time around is to get the palaces out as early as possible and do one big Mementos grind (with 4 or so requests) for cash. I want to get this done ASAP for Strikers.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

getting my ass kicked by one specific level in orcs must die 2. Absolute nightmare with 4 doors enemies can come through and metric shitloads of tanky boiz.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Past the mid year exam period of Persona 5R, and I've forgotten how much money becomes paramount the moment the fortune teller is in the picture. I don't mind the 5K yen price to boost stats, but that 100k sting to trigger her confidant hurt a fair bit.
> 
> Thankfully my playstyle this time around is to get the palaces out as early as possible and do one big Mementos grind (with 4 or so requests) for cash. I want to get this done ASAP for Strikers.



Huh. I never noticed the money thing, at all, cause there was never any point in the game where I came close to running out. Now you have me wondering how it was that I even made money. I did do a fair amount of "grinding" in Mementos, and by grinding, I mean just holding down the turbo button and running over hundreds of monsters without having to engage them in combat.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Ralyks said:


> Far Cry 6 is pretty good. So far.


I want a Far Cry Blood Dragon sequel. Another iteration would be nice but so would a full game.


----------



## ImNotAhab

So I tried Avengers since it's on gamepass and man I really did not like it. I found that it handles very poorly, it feels heavy but not impactful. It is also boring as hell but I am not a MMO/Destiny guy so the grind is not my jam.
Looks great though, I will give it that. I really did like Kamala too. The story and beats were great, it's just let down by the actual gameplay.


----------



## TedEH

Surprised I'm not seeing anything about Dread. Got it at launch. Maybe half way through. Happy with it so far.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

TedEH said:


> Surprised I'm not seeing anything about Dread. Got it at launch. Maybe half way through. Happy with it so far.


Seen a playthrough, new mechanics seem subtle and integrated, not sure about how it sits thematically (Prime 2 was my favorite title) but it seems to align with the events in Fusion. 
Too bad I don't have a Switch


----------



## wankerness

Metroid Dread doesn't look at all appealing to me; I don't like the emphasis on "being scared" that they seem to have placed on the game. I'm a Metroid Prime 1 diehard. I like the desolate feel of that, I like the exploration and look of it, etc. Being under threat of constantly dying and having stuff jump out at me is not what I want from the series. I also haven't really liked any of the others I've dabbled in that much, though I have played all the way through Super Metroid a couple times and MP2 most of the way. I have the 3DS one and a (defective) copy of Zero Mission, I think, but haven't played either for more than an hour.

If you're too cheap for a switch but have a beefy pc (which would be weird since a Switch would cost 1/3 the amount of a good graphics card), evidently the emulated version of Metroid: Dread looks better and runs more smoothly than the Switch version. It's very weird to me how good the Nintendo emulators are. Seems like the Switch one must be better than the PS2 ones out there, let alone PS3.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

There's an official Switch emulator? Or are we talking through other means, because I've played through Super Metroid, Zero Mission and Fusion on PC before. Haven't played the Prime trilogy emulated due to lack of ISOs that don't stall while loading.


----------



## Ralyks

So a Reddit email popped up saying Blue Point games is working on a Bloodbourne PS5 Remaster, and a sequel.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> So a Reddit email popped up saying Blue Point games is working on a Bloodbourne PS5 Remaster, and a sequel.



Why yes. I DO need to rebuy and play through BB again.


----------



## MFB

Picked this up on sale for $6, it seems unsettling for so little going on, and horror-esque in daylight? Yes please.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So a Reddit email popped up saying Blue Point games is working on a Bloodbourne PS5 Remaster, and a sequel.



remaster? Hell yes. Sequel? Doesn’t sound very believable that From would let someone else do that. I am skeptical of that news.


CovertSovietBear said:


> There's an official Switch emulator? Or are we talking through other means, because I've played through Super Metroid, Zero Mission and Fusion on PC before. Haven't played the Prime trilogy emulated due to lack of ISOs that don't stall while loading.



OFFICIAL? Hell no. Nintendo would never release an emulator. No one has as far as I know. I really don’t understand your question tbph. It’s just as illegal as every other emulator, but it apparently works really well, and even better than on a switch in some cases.


----------



## wankerness

Finally going through the back part of playthrough 2 of Nier: Replicant. This is THE most depressing game I've ever played. Just completely bleak, nihilistic, no faith in humanity whatsoever, constant twisting of the knife through playthrough 2. Nier: Automata seems like Sesame Street in comparison.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

wankerness said:


> It’s just as illegal as every other emulator.


There's the answer I was looking for


----------



## Mathemagician

So I checked out genshin impact. Dunno if it’s come up yet in this thread. It’s basically a VERY high budget mobile-game MMO. You get characters and weapons through lootboxes. However there is a voice-acted (very)anime save-the-world story in there. No idea I’m if going to keep playing it, but yeah is this what all free games are now? Just the fifa card packs slapped onto whatever shell the game is?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Finally going through the back part of playthrough 2 of Nier: Replicant. This is THE most depressing game I've ever played. Just completely bleak, nihilistic, no faith in humanity whatsoever, constant twisting of the knife through playthrough 2. Nier: Automata seems like Sesame Street in comparison.



Makes sense. Despite the themes of Automata, it's the most humane of Yoko Taro's work. Ending E was apparently inspired by a Coca Cola commercial that tried to bring people together. Turns out somewhere during developing that game, Taro grew a heart.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Surprised I'm not seeing anything about Dread. Got it at launch. Maybe half way through. Happy with it so far.


I got caught up in a Samus Returns playthrough over the weekend, which I'll finish off before starting DREAD today.


wankerness said:


> It's very weird to me how good the Nintendo emulators are.


One word: Melee


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Finally going through the back part of playthrough 2 of Nier: Replicant. This is THE most depressing game I've ever played. Just completely bleak, nihilistic, no faith in humanity whatsoever, constant twisting of the knife through playthrough 2. Nier: Automata seems like Sesame Street in comparison.



Well, now I need to go back to Replicant...


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Metroid Dread doesn't look at all appealing to me; I don't like the emphasis on "being scared" that they seem to have placed on the game. I'm a Metroid Prime 1 diehard. I like the desolate feel of that, I like the exploration and look of it, etc. Being under threat of constantly dying and having stuff jump out at me is not what I want from the series.


IMO it's more just a general environmental atmosphere than it is a mechanical horror-type tension. All the standard Metroid-y exploring and getting new items and re-exploring and boss fights then getting a bit lost and going in circles and then finding a new power then repeat, etc., is all there. The bits you're probably referring to aren't a constant. If anything, I'd think it's more mechanically like "normal Metroid game with occasional stealth segments". Alien Isolation it is not. Not by a long shot.



StevenC said:


> I got caught up in a Samus Returns


This is, IMO, the closest comparison to this game so far, and if you like one, you're likely to enjoy the other. In a way, Dread is to Super as Samus Returns is to Metroid 2. I haven't played Fusion, so I can't comment on that one, but I can say that Dread feels directly comparable to Samus Returns. If you told me it was a sequel to that, I'd believe you.


----------



## Crungy

Ralyks said:


> Far Cry 6 is pretty good. So far.



I'm interested in 6 but on the fence. It sounds like (and seen in videos) enemies tend to be bullet sponges. 

I really liked 5, it was my introduction to the series. I tried 3 and it was okay but the story and characters are so godawful I wanted them all to die. Tried to get into New Dawn but it just felt like a weird rehash of 5 and I couldn't get into it.

I wish Ubisoft would make a game that used that engine but got away from the FC formula. The driving and combat was enjoyable in FC5, so changing up the format for a different type of FPS game could be great.


----------



## bostjan

MFB said:


> Picked this up on sale for $6, it seems unsettling for so little going on, and horror-esque in daylight? Yes please.



Oooh, looks like Silent Hill with a hint of Last of Us.


----------



## wankerness

Crungy said:


> I'm interested in 6 but on the fence. It sounds like (and seen in videos) enemies tend to be bullet sponges.
> 
> I really liked 5, it was my introduction to the series. I tried 3 and it was okay but the story and characters are so godawful I wanted them all to die. Tried to get into New Dawn but it just felt like a weird rehash of 5 and I couldn't get into it.
> 
> I wish Ubisoft would make a game that used that engine but got away from the FC formula. The driving and combat was enjoyable in FC5, so changing up the format for a different type of FPS game could be great.



Ubisoft has been making "weird rehashes" of all their mainline Farcry games. I think they're better in some regards, they're shorter and thus have way less bloat, and release for 40 instead of 60 dollars. Far Cry 5 is redone as New Dawn and removes the awful kidnapping mechanic but streamlines a lot of other stuff and puts it in the post-apocalypse; Far Cry 4 is redone as Primal which sets it in stoneage times and has you playing as a caveman; and Far Cry 3 was redone as Blood Dragon which set it in some weird 80s version of the future with tons of neon lights and great synthwave. It's criminal that they ported Far Cry 3 but not Blood Dragon for modern consoles, I think Blood Dragon is the most beloved of all those games.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> It's criminal that they ported Far Cry 3 but not Blood Dragon for modern consoles, I think Blood Dragon is the most beloved of all those games.



So of I am reading correctly, a port of Blood Dragon is suppose to be part of the season pass for 6. Which I'm all about. Blood Dragon rules.


----------



## StevenC

Ubisoft is one of those companies that can come out of nowhere with a 10/10 game of the year candidate like Rayman Legends or Mario+Rabbids. But instead they make annual garbage like AC, Just Dance and Far Cry.


----------



## TedEH

That's a lot of praise for those two Ubi titles. I mean, I don't doubt they're pretty good, but GotY candidates?


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So of I am reading correctly, a port of Blood Dragon is suppose to be part of the season pass for 6. Which I'm all about. Blood Dragon rules.



Hmm. That poses a conundrum. FC4 and 5 had absolute garbage DLC (for the most part - 4 had one good DLC with the Yeti one and two not worth buying, 5 had none and the three bad ones were practically challenge maps) that absolutely did not justify the price tag. I would be hesitant to get any season pass for this based on their Far Cry track record, but I sure do want to go through Blood Dragon again! Though I suppose I could always (gag) hook up my computer.

It's kind of weird. Assassins Creed DLC is consistently pretty good, definitely isn't lazy, and I have no qualms buying those season passes if I like the base game. But Far Cry definitely has not been the same.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> That's a lot of praise for those two Ubi titles. I mean, I don't doubt they're pretty good, but GotY candidates?


In 2013 the other good games were Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3 and Last of Us. So yeah, Rayman Legends was the best game that year. 

2017 though was one of the best years for video games ever, so Mario+Rabbids wasn't the best. Nothing could compete with Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey that year, but it was definitely good enough to be the best game I'd play a lot of years.


----------



## Crungy

I did finish a new to me game called Donut County the other day. It's fairly short but fun the writing was pretty good. I'd recommend it if you liked Katamari Damacy.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> In 2013 the other good games were Mario 3D World, Pikmin 3 and Last of Us. So yeah, Rayman Legends was the best game that year.



GTA V, AC: Black Flag, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Zelda Between Worlds, Dead Space 3 and the previously discussed Blood Dragon are other games I played through and liked that year. Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite I liked enough to play through more than once. It's kinda lackluster, yes. I think Last of Us would probably be the best candidate of available options, even though the actual gameplay in it is pretty lackluster. Metal Gear Revengeance and Saints Row 4 and Gone Home and Papers Please are others I've been meaning to play someday.


----------



## rokket2005

^I wouldn't say that Mario plus Rabbids or Rayman were 10/10 but certainly better than the standard trash ubi puts out. Looking back through 2013 games that aren't a ton that stand out that I played and really liked that year. Bioshock Infinite was pretty good, SMT IV was aggravating as hell but I still put like ~150 hours into probably.


----------



## TedEH

Mario+Rabbids must have done well enough to warrant a sequel at least. I thought it was good, but not mind blowing. And kinda jarring to see Mario starring in something so buggy (it's the only game I've ever played on switch that crashed frequently, had graphical problems, etc).


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> GTA V, AC: Black Flag, Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Zelda Between Worlds, Dead Space 3 and the previously discussed Blood Dragon are other games I played through and liked that year. Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite I liked enough to play through more than once. It's kinda lackluster, yes. I think Last of Us would probably be the best candidate of available options, even though the actual gameplay in it is pretty lackluster. Metal Gear Revengeance and Saints Row 4 and Gone Home and Papers Please are others I've been meaning to play someday.


Link Between Worlds is really good too, forgot that was 2013. GTAV was pretty good, Black Flag was the best AC by far but I don't think I'd ever want to play it again. The others are kinda whatever to me. I'll take that one Black Betty level in Legends over anything Last of Us had to offer. Revengance is good, but like, I'd rather be playing Bayonetta or Wonderful 101 (which also came out in 2013 and is better than any of these other games too).



TedEH said:


> Mario+Rabbids must have done well enough to warrant a sequel at least. I thought it was good, but not mind blowing. And kinda jarring to see Mario starring in something so buggy (it's the only game I've ever played on switch that crashed frequently, had graphical problems, etc).


That's strange, I played that game a lot and it didn't crash once. I didn't notice any issues with it at all, which I was expecting because, you know, Ubisoft.


----------



## rokket2005

TBH I spent most of 2013 playing Don't Starve.


----------



## TedEH

In Rabbids, I'd experienced I think 2-3 complete title crashes back to the Switch home screen by the time I reached the end of the main story, and about half way through I started getting graphical glitches where random geometry would just pop up and flicker and sometimes cover up parts of the boards making it hard to see and play. Kinda looked like what you see when a video card is failing, or if a dev made a math mistake and all your vertex data is wrong. I was legit worried my Switch could be dying before I googled it and saw I wasn't the only one seeing it.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> In Rabbids, I'd experienced I think 2-3 complete title crashes back to the Switch home screen by the time I reached the end of the main story, and about half way through I started getting graphical glitches where random geometry would just pop up and flicker and sometimes cover up parts of the boards making it hard to see and play. Kinda looked like what you see when a video card is failing, or if a dev made a math mistake and all your vertex data is wrong. I was legit worried my Switch could be dying before I googled it and saw I wasn't the only one seeing it.


Wow, I didn't know that was a thing at all. I guess I got lucky.

I'm very excited about the sequel.

Finished Samus Returns and it's so good, except the end falls flat on atmosphere from Return of Samus. But hopefully DREAD manages to get a more coherent vibe going when I start playing tomorrow. Don't know if I want to dig out my SP/DS and cartridges for Zero Mission and Fusion or if I'll just buy them on Wii U yet. Worried I'm becoming one of those Metroidvania people who gets angry that Silksong hasn't got a release date yet.


----------



## Ralyks

Crungy said:


> I did finish a new to me game called Donut County the other day. It's fairly short but fun the writing was pretty good. I'd recommend it if you liked Katamari Damacy.



That game was really fun, and surprisingly funny. My 6 year old loves it too.



wankerness said:


> I would be hesitant to get any season pass for this based on their Far Cry track record



Honestly, the main reason I got the edition with the season pass is the other DLC where you play as the villains from the previous 3 mainline Far Cry games.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> So of I am reading correctly, a port of Blood Dragon is suppose to be part of the season pass for 6. Which I'm all about. Blood Dragon rules.



Can I play more for just Blood dragon? I’ve never played a far cry but wanted to play that bad when it came out.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Can I play more for just Blood dragon? I’ve never played a far cry but wanted to play that bad when it came out.



if I remember right far cry 3’s rerelease was initially a season pass thing but they eventually released it separately for like 20 bucks.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> if I remember right far cry 3’s rerelease was initially a season pass thing but they eventually released it separately for like 20 bucks.



Correct. And usually on sale for a fraction of that even.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Huh. I never noticed the money thing, at all, cause there was never any point in the game where I came close to running out. Now you have me wondering how it was that I even made money. I did do a fair amount of "grinding" in Mementos, and by grinding, I mean just holding down the turbo button and running over hundreds of monsters without having to engage them in combat.



It's not as bad as I initially moaned about. I was spending a lot of money playing Persona Pokemon and trying to fuse better ones, and that is what eats up a lot of cash depending on what part of the game you're at. All the buffs the fortune teller gives, the Teacher/maid services and all the food stat boosts eat up money quickly. 

Thankfully Royal has the Kichijoji shop that trades a ton of cash for dirty laundry. I didn't bother to do any washing, and the pile I gained was an easy 150k yen. I also started playing the stingy game and only withdrew cheap low level Personas for confidant building and killing them off for items or fusion once done.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's not as bad as I initially moaned about. I was spending a lot of money playing Persona Pokemon and trying to fuse better ones, and that is what eats up a lot of cash depending on what part of the game you're at. All the buffs the fortune teller gives, the Teacher/maid services and all the food stat boosts eat up money quickly.
> 
> Thankfully Royal has the Kichijoji shop that trades a ton of cash for dirty laundry. I didn't bother to do any washing, and the pile I gained was an easy 150k yen. I also started playing the stingy game and only withdrew cheap low level Personas for confidant building and killing them off for items or fusion once done.



Ah. Yeah, I guess I remember summoning high level personas when you have that ability to get ones higher level than you was pretty expensive. I didn't do it till towards the end of the game! I made a couple OP ones and would re-summon those as necessary, and then just did the fusions to increase the bond with the velvet room, and that was about it.


----------



## StevenC

Metroid DREAD



Spoiler



So far: Wow!

I've played a few hours today. Just got the Varia suit. This is probably the first game where I'm sad to get the Varia suit.

Game plays great, feels a bit smoother than Samus Returns but that might just be the controller over 3DS. Combat is great and the one real boss I've had was good fun. Feels less space-ninja than Samus Returns, while still also feeling consistent with how athletic Samus otherwise is spin jumping around the galaxy.

The map is so good which I'm starting to think is the most important part of making me enjoy a Metroid game. I don't know if any of the backtracking I've done so far has been what I'm supposed to do at any given moment, but the game really doesn't get in the way of letting you do it in the way Super is a bit obtuse about what you're supposed to do next. 

If the Metroidvania thing is "see lock, find key, remember lock" this is probably the smoothest I've experienced. Samus Returns was good about it, but that's a very linear game (by nature of being Metroid II). Some people might call it too handholding in that regard, but I think what I want to do next seems to line up fairly efficiently with getting to the next part of the game.

Now, the dread. The EMMI bits are great. A lot of suspense, makes you want to get away when you need to get away and is a great of teaching how to manoeuvre. You have to think about how you're going to encounter them and they all seem to behave a bit differently. The first trailer made it look like the whole game was running from EMMIs but it's not, and it's mostly standard Metroid fare.

Also, this game looks so good! It runs well, too. Literally the only complaint I have is that the loading screens masked by elevators are relatively long and uninteresting visually. Where Prime was able to distract you with them, this makes it a bit more obvious.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

StevenC said:


> Metroid DREAD
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> So far: Wow!
> 
> I've played a few hours today. Just got the Varia suit. This is probably the first game where I'm sad to get the Varia suit.
> 
> Game plays great, feels a bit smoother than Samus Returns but that might just be the controller over 3DS. Combat is great and the one real boss I've had was good fun. Feels less space-ninja than Samus Returns, while still also feeling consistent with how athletic Samus otherwise is spin jumping around the galaxy.
> 
> The map is so good which I'm starting to think is the most important part of making me enjoy a Metroid game. I don't know if any of the backtracking I've done so far has been what I'm supposed to do at any given moment, but the game really doesn't get in the way of letting you do it in the way Super is a bit obtuse about what you're supposed to do next.
> 
> If the Metroidvania thing is "see lock, find key, remember lock" this is probably the smoothest I've experienced. Samus Returns was good about it, but that's a very linear game (by nature of being Metroid II). Some people might call it too handholding in that regard, but I think what I want to do next seems to line up fairly efficiently with getting to the next part of the game.
> 
> Now, the dread. The EMMI bits are great. A lot of suspense, makes you want to get away when you need to get away and is a great of teaching how to manoeuvre. You have to think about how you're going to encounter them and they all seem to behave a bit differently. The first trailer made it look like the whole game was running from EMMIs but it's not, and it's mostly standard Metroid fare.
> 
> Also, this game looks so good! It runs well, too. Literally the only complaint I have is that the loading screens masked by elevators are relatively long and uninteresting visually. Where Prime was able to distract you with them, this makes it a bit more obvious.


Depending on your expectations going in, non linear games can suck too. Prime 1 comes to mind with the Chozo artifact quest at the end. Prime 2 handled it much better, yet also enjoyed Fusion and that was definitely linear.


----------



## StevenC

CovertSovietBear said:


> Depending on your expectations going, non linear games can suck too. Prime 1 comes to mind with the Chozo artifact quest at the end. Prime 2 handled it much better, yet also enjoyed Fusion and that was definitely linear.


Yeah, I don't care much about linearity in games. A good game is a good game. To me it really depends on play conditioning and how replayable it's supposed to be. This game feels like it's telling you from the first screen that you will visit a place, find the path blocked and have to come back, and then shows you items you can't reach then gives you a power up that doesn't help you reach it yet, but does help you with a different powerup. This to me feels like telling the player very clearly that you not only need to back track but that there are bonuses to it as well. Whereas the closest Super gets is the Crateria map room leading you to a brick wall, I don't know if I'd have figured out how to get through it without knowledge of the Metroid tropes. Then it's got the nonsense around with the energy tank behind the charge beam. And then at the end a fake wall that looks like every other wall and no precedent for fake walls in the game.

Having played Super and Samus Returns over the past week maybe I'm just in a heightened state of shooting every block and exhausting every way forward out of interest. On the other hand, I don't really ever want to play Super Metroid again because it's got so much unintuitive "just remember this from 2 hours ago" nonsense in it that feels like padding. Whereas Samus Returns you get a new upgrade, teleport to the first area and run through the game so far to the little icons to get your rewards.

I don't think either of those games do it perfectly, Super being too obtuse and SR being too telegraphed. But this is a better balance. Super you get a dot in the square where the item is that doesn't change after you get the item. SR you get a circle in a bit too specific a place because the map is a bit more detailed, but it disappears when you get the item. DREAD, you have to get into the general area before it tells you there's something and it gives you a very large box to check that covers more than one map square equivalent.

In Super you look at the map and you remember how many slog rooms you have to navigate to the place with the thing. Not so much here despite a bigger and more complicated map so far. Though that could be down to better movement and combat for my modern taste.


----------



## TedEH

Agreed with everything you said, although re: linearity,
(mild spoilers, but more about design expectations than actual content)


Spoiler



I think Dread is a lot more linear than other Metroid games I've played, just not in a blatant way. I've reached what I think is the final stretch of the game (I have most of the powers, etc)., and what I've noticed is that the backtracking teeeeeechnically happens, but the sort of 'golden path' through the game is guided, and you can see those pushes in the right direction if you know what to look for. Almost every time you discover a new purple transportation zone, for example, it's because the next thing you're intended to do is near whatever is on the other end of it. In some cases, you do need to backtrack, but it's through an area that has been re-contextualized and then sealed off so that there's only one way to go. Other times, just before you get a new power, you're gated into an area so that the only escape back to the greater map is to get the powerup and use it to escape. I never came across an instance where I was able to explore off the path very far without making some kind of progress since powerup gates are plentiful and tightly placed. An argument could be made that it's not really "backtracking" so much as just "very circular". It's true that the game never blatantly tells you what to do, and you CAN go off the intended path, and maybe there are multiple paths to completion, and maybe I just got really lucky. It checks the boxes. But at the same time, this is no Prime 1 or Super level of backtracking and getting lost and needing to really explore to figure out what to do next. The combination of the map giving you a lot of detail, and the pathways through the world being pretty tightly designed means you can almost always just go "ok, where are there blocks that match the thing I just discovered, or a big chunk of empty map I haven't explored but have access to", and the next place you're supposed to be is probably staring you in the face.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Agreed with everything you said, although re: linearity,
> (mild spoilers, but more about design expectations than actual content)
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I think Dread is a lot more linear than other Metroid games I've played, just not in a blatant way. I've reached what I think is the final stretch of the game (I have most of the powers, etc)., and what I've noticed is that the backtracking teeeeeechnically happens, but the sort of 'golden path' through the game is guided, and you can see those pushes in the right direction if you know what to look for. Almost every time you discover a new purple transportation zone, for example, it's because the next thing you're intended to do is near whatever is on the other end of it. In some cases, you do need to backtrack, but it's through an area that has been re-contextualized and then sealed off so that there's only one way to go. Other times, just before you get a new power, you're gated into an area so that the only escape back to the greater map is to get the powerup and use it to escape. I never came across an instance where I was able to explore off the path very far without making some kind of progress since powerup gates are plentiful and tightly placed. An argument could be made that it's not really "backtracking" so much as just "very circular". It's true that the game never blatantly tells you what to do, and you CAN go off the intended path, and maybe there are multiple paths to completion, and maybe I just got really lucky. It checks the boxes. But at the same time, this is no Prime 1 or Super level of backtracking and getting lost and needing to really explore to figure out what to do next. The combination of the map giving you a lot of detail, and the pathways through the world being pretty tightly designed means you can almost always just go "ok, where are there blocks that match the thing I just discovered, or a big chunk of empty map I haven't explored but have access to", and the next place you're supposed to be is probably staring you in the face.


Yes, I agree.



Spoiler



As soon as I went back into the game after getting the Varia suit it blocks my path around the first area, forcing me back to the second area, then guiding me right to the boss, then spitting me out of the boss to an area where I can only use a new teleporter to the third area.

So I ate my words pretty quickly on that one.


----------



## Jarmake

I am back in business with Bloodborne. It took a few tries (or a couple more...) to end the Orphan of Kos' misery, but I did it eventually. What an angry guy... As a bonus he looked like an old shriveled lady who has been in the sun a bit too much. Not to say that I am a beautiful person myself! Oh well... 

There are now 2 left. Gehrman and Moon Presence. I went after Gehrman immediately after the orphan. Didn't surrender to him, so he got angry and started poking me with a scythe. I almost had him on the first try, he had like one little stabby stab with my +10 Ludwig's holy blade left in him, but that old son of a diddly pulled an old fashioned at me and he was a bit faster than my tired sideways roll, so I died like a lamb that I am.

I quit the game for tonight after that, but I am sure I will kick his old gray hairy monkeybutt to the next nightmare tomorrow... He seemed a LOT easier than like anything in the old hunters dlc. Well, maybe not the living failures, but anyway.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Jarmake said:


> I am back in business with Bloodborne. It took a few tries (or a couple more...) to end the Orphan of Kos' misery, but I did it eventually. What an angry guy... As a bonus he looked like an old shriveled lady who has been in the sun a bit too much. Not to say that I am a beautiful person myself! Oh well...
> 
> There are now 2 left. Gehrman and Moon Presence. I went after Gehrman immediately after the orphan. Didn't surrender to him, so he got angry and started poking me with a scythe. I almost had him on the first try, he had like one little stabby stab with my +10 Ludwig's holy blade left in him, but that old son of a diddly pulled an old fashioned at me and he was a bit faster than my tired sideways roll, so I died like a lamb that I am.
> 
> I quit the game for tonight after that, but I am sure I will kick his old gray hairy monkeybutt to the next nightmare tomorrow... He seemed a LOT easier than like anything in the old hunters dlc. Well, maybe not the living failures, but anyway.


I quit the game after my first encounter with the wolf/dog thing at the very beginning. Very fun


----------



## wankerness

It's utterly hilarious to me how many people I've seen with that exact experience. "I thought you were supposed to fight the wolf at the beginning! everyone told me the game was hard so I thought the fact killing him was incredibly tedious and difficult was just how the game was!! So I died to him a couple times and quit instead of running past him and starting the game!"

He's basically the starting boss in Dark Souls or Demon's Souls, the game doesn't expect you to be able to kill it. It's possible, sure, but even less worth it in Bloodborne than those two games. (It's very worth it in Demon's Souls ftr)


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Oh, didn't die to him a couple times, straight up died once and didn't try again.


----------



## wankerness

CovertSovietBear said:


> Oh, didn't die to him a couple times, straight up died once and didn't try again.



Yeah, I guess it isn't clear you're supposed to run past it if you go in with the mindset thinking the game is super difficult and/or are used to playing games where there's no such thing as enemies you can't easily defeat at level 1 with no weapon. 

Of course Gehrman seemed easier than the old hunters dlc bosses. He IS slightly easier, but mainly, you're massively overlevelled for him at this point. If you went through the whole game without doing any grinding on the shadow/pig area or anything you'd get more the "tuned" difficulty for him. But yeah, if you do the old hunter's dlc you'll be probably 20 or more levels higher than you would have been without.


----------



## p0ke

Finally got to start Jedi: Fallen Order. Really liking this so far! I sort of expected it to be nearly unplayable on my OG Xbox One, but it actually runs pretty smooth. I can see where it would benefit from a next-gen console, but it still looks pretty good imo and the framerate hasn't really dropped in any noticeable way so far.
Some of the platforming has been a bit tedious, but I like that the game doesn't punish too much for failing those. I haven't really gotten into the rhythm of the fighting yet, but it's definitely pretty cool at best.


----------



## rokket2005

Are you talking about the Werewolf in the clinic? Obvs you're supposed to die once to go to the dream and get your gear, but I went back and killed him no problem.


----------



## TedEH

Finished Metroid Dread. It's good. It's sometimes difficult. Never felt unfair though. Had all the things I expected from it. Had some pretty badass moments.



Spoiler



Including some actual mild spoilers, not just using the tags for space.

I never played Fusion, but I stick by my previous assessment that this feels like a Metroid Return-esque take on Super. It hits all the Metroid "formula" - the revisiting previous areas, the constant slow drip of new powers, the boss fights, the ending escape sequence, etc. 

I'm glad I have a pro controller, cause the controls are pretty responsive, and IMO you really need to make use of it. Easy to learn, but maybe hard to master. I've heard some people say they'd have preferred if the aiming was done with the right stick, but I was ok with the arrangement they used. I was kinda surprised that a lot of available buttons seemed to go unused, and I'm sure there must have been some way to make good use of them, since some of the hold-down-to-charge powers are a bit awkward to use. I like the slide, but I wish it wasn't the same button as morph ball. I was also expecting the spider ball the whole time and it never happened. Oh well.

I think some people didn't like the parry and....... I'm ok with it. I was ok with it in Returns, and I'm ok with it here too.

I liked the EMMI sections - they definitely felt fresh for a Metroid game, and they certainly succeeded at delivering a sense of tension. Especially a segment near the end where this particular one can _always_ hear you, so any movement at all attracts the thing, forcing you to either hide or run. It's not "horror", as I interpreted it, so much as just high-tension. Some people called them stealth sections, which.... kinda yes, but kinda no. I like stealth games. I also liked these segments. I didn't really stealth through them all the time though. Sometimes I'd just sprint right through. I died a lot in these sections, and it took foreeeeever to get the timing down to stun the EMMI, which was the intent. I only managed it maybe 4-5 times. Dying in those sections didn't feel bad though since they were relatively short, and you were always returned to the entrance doors. Usually I'd die a bunch, take a new approach that was more appropriate for that particular robot, get through, repeat each time I encounter a new one.

I already spoke about how the golden path of the game felt very linear to me. From what I understand, you caaaaaan sequence break, and you can do a significant about of exploring off the main path, but there's pretty much never a moment where you get really lost. The next thing to do is usually pretty clear, and often not far from where the previous sequence left you.

I liked the boss fights, although I kinda wish there were more unique ones instead of re-using the Chozo metal bird dudes. The whole game generally stayed feeling fresh for the most part, except for that element.

Not a whole lot of story (and I don't know the narrative from Fusion to really have context for it anyway), but it's as unnecessary as you'd expect. Everything presented made as much sense to me as it needed to. I'm sure I missed some references. Samus was voiced but only in some key spots, and it worked, I think. One point in particular, in the ending, there was a voiced yell during a struggle with the boss that struck me as badass. I feel bad for the voice actor though, it sounded strained, but it was exactly what the scene needed.

So..... I have no real complaint other than I wish I had paced myself a bit instead of binge-playing over the weekend, 'cause being done already made it feel short, but that's mostly on me.


----------



## Jarmake

CovertSovietBear said:


> I quit the game after my first encounter with the wolf/dog thing at the very beginning. Very fun



Well, you're supposed to die in the beginning. Then you get to hunter's dream, obtain a couple of weapons, get back to the clinic where the wolf is and kill it very easily. Then the real game begins and you have to get good to survive.


----------



## Quiet Coil

p0ke said:


> Finally got to start Jedi: Fallen Order. Really liking this so far! I sort of expected it to be nearly unplayable on my OG Xbox One, but it actually runs pretty smooth. I can see where it would benefit from a next-gen console, but it still looks pretty good imo and the framerate hasn't really dropped in any noticeable way so far.
> Some of the platforming has been a bit tedious, but I like that the game doesn't punish too much for failing those. I haven't really gotten into the rhythm of the fighting yet, but it's definitely pretty cool at best.



Been playing it “with” my family on my PS4 Pro and I second everything you said. My wife’s been helping me find secrets and the kids take random turns walking around aimlessly and slashing walls. Good times


----------



## Mathemagician

Jarmake said:


> I am back in business with Bloodborne. It took a few tries (or a couple more...) to end the Orphan of Kos' misery, but I did it eventually. What an angry guy... As a bonus he looked like an old shriveled lady who has been in the sun a bit too much. Not to say that I am a beautiful person myself! Oh well...
> 
> There are now 2 left. Gehrman and Moon Presence. I went after Gehrman immediately after the orphan. Didn't surrender to him, so he got angry and started poking me with a scythe. I almost had him on the first try, he had like one little stabby stab with my +10 Ludwig's holy blade left in him, but that old son of a diddly pulled an old fashioned at me and he was a bit faster than my tired sideways roll, so I died like a lamb that I am.
> 
> I quit the game for tonight after that, but I am sure I will kick his old gray hairy monkeybutt to the next nightmare tomorrow... He seemed a LOT easier than like anything in the old hunters dlc. Well, maybe not the living failures, but anyway.



Gherman is legit an easy end boss. Not too fast or too strong. Just if he catches you off guard some of his hits can clean you up. 



wankerness said:


> It's utterly hilarious to me how many people I've seen with that exact experience. "I thought you were supposed to fight the wolf at the beginning! everyone told me the game was hard so I thought the fact killing him was incredibly tedious and difficult was just how the game was!! So I died to him a couple times and quit instead of running past him and starting the game!"
> 
> He's basically the starting boss in Dark Souls or Demon's Souls, the game doesn't expect you to be able to kill it. It's possible, sure, but even less worth it in Bloodborne than those two games. (It's very worth it in Demon's Souls ftr)



You’re not supposed to kill the first bosses in the DS games? 

And yeah the first enemy in BB is something that is hilarious in retrospect but fucking weird the first time it happens to you.


----------



## gabito

Played Yakuza 4 for around 15 hours (until you get to the city with the second character whose name I can't remember), ended up abandoning it. Never played a Yakuza game before but I was interested and had this game from a sale long ago. I liked the cheesy story / characters, but I wasn't hooked at all with the gameplay, I was mostly annoyed by the random encounters, and didn't care at all about the mini games and such... Not saying I felt it was a bad game, just not for me.

Still playing sporadic sessions of Diablo 3. It seems it's a wonderful mindless time waster for when I don't want to think at all and just smash monsters and stuff.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Gherman is legit an easy end boss. Not too fast or too strong. Just if he catches you off guard some of his hits can clean you up.
> 
> 
> 
> You’re not supposed to kill the first bosses in the DS games?



I am talking about the VERY beginning of dark souls, when you get the asylum demon coming after you and the game seems like it's teaching you about what happens when you die since you basically have a feather to tickle him with at that point and you haven't levelled yet so you die in 1-2 hits. Demon's Souls does the exact same thing with a huge miniboss enemy that you don't see again till in that level with all the flying rays. Both encounters seem to be more "hey, you're going to die in this game" than "here's a boss for you to kill" cause the actual first bosses in both games are vastly easier.



gabito said:


> Played Yakuza 4 for around 15 hours (until you get to the city with the second character whose name I can't remember), ended up abandoning it. Never played a Yakuza game before but I was interested and had this game from a sale long ago. I liked the cheesy story / characters, but I wasn't hooked at all with the gameplay, I was mostly annoyed by the random encounters, and didn't care at all about the mini games and such... Not saying I felt it was a bad game, just not for me.
> 
> Still playing sporadic sessions of Diablo 3. It seems it's a wonderful mindless time waster for when I don't want to think at all and just smash monsters and stuff.



Yakuza 4 is a VERY weird entry point. That one is the second most dated of all of the currently available games, and the combat is pretty bad. Plus the plot will be pretty impenetrable without having played the previous entries since it's dumping multiple protagonists on you that you're supposed to be familiar with already. I'd say you should have tried starting with 0 to really give it a fair try (or like a dragon but that's an rpg instead of a beat em up). But, the combat's kind of similar with all of the old ones and 4 and 5 have more characters and thus more combat variety in that way. The mechanics just are simpler and the enemies are much more frustrating with their AI routines. 

It took me weeks to get into 0, I also thought the combat/random encounters were boring as hell and didn't know or care about any of the characters. Then I picked it up again after taking a break for a few weeks and suddenly everything clicked and I've loved the series since. Doubt it will happen to you starting with 4, but hey.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I started in Yakuza 4 way back when. Though granted I thought it was fine until 5 and in turn 0 really sunk it's fangs into me.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Yakuza 4 is a VERY weird entry point. That one is the second most dated of all of the currently available games, and the combat is pretty bad. Plus the plot will be pretty impenetrable without having played the previous entries since it's dumping multiple protagonists on you that you're supposed to be familiar with already. I'd say you should have tried starting with 0 to really give it a fair try (or like a dragon but that's an rpg instead of a beat em up). But, the combat's kind of similar with all of the old ones and 4 and 5 have more characters and thus more combat variety in that way. The mechanics just are simpler and the enemies are much more frustrating with their AI routines.



It's the one I had, I wasn't so intensely interested to buy another one just in case I was missing something. I watched the recaps in the game before playing to more or less "get" what was going on (I don't think I did though).

From what I understand the gameplay is more or less the same in all the games (brawling, mini games, etc.), and that's what I didn't like. I don't care about janky animation, weird or bad graphics, I still play old games on the PS3 all the time (I mean, I regularly replay MGS 1 / 2 / 3 / 4...).

I'd be willing to watch a Yakuza movie or movies though, or a Let's Play, or something. I didn't _hate_ the game, just didn't like it enough to keep playing, or to buy another one from the series.



wankerness said:


> It took me weeks to get into 0, I also thought the combat/random encounters were boring as hell and didn't know or care about any of the characters. Then I picked it up again after taking a break for a few weeks and suddenly everything clicked and I've loved the series since. Doubt it will happen to you starting with 4, but hey.



There's no way in hell I'd be playing a game I don't like for weeks LOL. I'm usually very patient and don't jump to conclusions, but that's too much. I'd rather replay some other game, or try a new one.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

gabito said:


> I'd be willing to watch a Yakuza movie or movies though



There's the Takeshi Miike tie in to the first game:



Far from the same but at least it exists.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> There's no way in hell I'd be playing a game I don't like for weeks LOL. I'm usually very patient and don't jump to conclusions, but that's too much. I'd rather replay some other game, or try a new one.



I mean I played it for two days, and then three weeks later went back to it and was like "oh, now I get it." Probably took about 8 hours of actual gameplay, maybe a bit more.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I mean I played it for two days, and then three weeks later went back to it and was like "oh, now I get it." Probably took about 8 hours of actual gameplay, maybe a bit more.



Ah, I see. It seemed a little masochistic haha.

I know that people who like Yakuza games seem to LOVE Yakuza games and I felt like the game was its own thing, kind of different to most games I've played, but I think I'll pass this time. There's plenty of other games, no need to play the ones I don't enjoy.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Ah, I see. It seemed a little masochistic haha.
> 
> I know that people who like Yakuza games seem to LOVE Yakuza games and I felt like the game was its own thing, kind of different to most games I've played, but I think I'll pass this time. There's plenty of other games, no need to play the ones I don't enjoy.



Yeah, they're definitely an acquired taste. If you ever get the urge to check one out again I'd suggest trying 0 instead of continuing with 4, or Like a Dragon. 0's regularly on sale for like 5 bucks and like a dragon probably will be eventually. But, if you have a big backlog, not much reason.

I downloaded FFXIV for PS5. It is kind of funny how dated it looks now, when I remember being very impressed by the graphics last I played (when Heavensward was the current expansion, so, several years ago). I am going to have to mess with it a bunch more to figure out if it's worth playing on console. The display is identical to PC, you just have radically different ways of maneuvering menus and hotbars, so I'm not sure if I'll get used to it before getting frustrated. I haven't looked into hooking a mouse and keyboard up to the PS5; I don't really have a good surface to use them on, but it might be preferable! The game sure runs amazingly and loadtimes are almost non-existent.

Oh, and I'm going through playthrough C on nier replicant. This actually is pretty pointless. It adds cutscenes here and there from Playthrough B, but by and large is identical. B is a gigantic shift in tone, giving backstories and voices to all the enemies and basically making you the villain of the story, but C just sort of adds a few scenes here and there so far. The "Louise" boss added a very short final phase. I'm about 2/3 through it. Repeat playthroughs go FAST cause you skip the whole first half of the game with them. However, I need to upgrade 33 weapons to full, which means I have to grind for many hours. I've gotten some of the bad ones out of the way (15 black pearls, all the eagle eggs), but now it's time for SUBDUED BRACELETS from the goddam flying shades that only spawn in one place in the desert and have abysmal drop rates and are far away from save points.

The backstory on the wolf shade kills me every time. It makes me hate those disgusting humans. And man, the wolf's final flashback!!! So goddam depressing. Poor guy.


----------



## Jarmake

I didn't have the time to play yesterday, but today was the day that I got through Bloodborne.

This time Gehrman came surprisingly hard on me. I don't know what changed, but this time he really tried to kick my ass and succeeded a couple of times too! These games are a bit mysterious like that... One day you'll breeze through the enemies and other days you'll get your ass kicked by the same guys. Well, I ended his long night anyway.

Next up was Moon Presence. What a pushover! What the hell? It was maybe the easiest one of the whole lot (maybe the only one that was as easy was Celestial Emissary!). I just had to hug it's xenomorph-y butt and wail on it with my fiery axe. The battle was over in a minute and I went through a transformation... Roll credits. Next thing I know I woke up in the hospital bed!

Now it's time to lay Bloodborne and my lady with the elk antler -hat to rest (for now!) and focus on other games. Monster Hunter World and Dark Souls 3... Here I come!


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Finished Metroid Dread. It's good. It's sometimes difficult. Never felt unfair though. Had all the things I expected from it. Had some pretty badass moments.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Including some actual mild spoilers, not just using the tags for space.
> 
> I never played Fusion, but I stick by my previous assessment that this feels like a Metroid Return-esque take on Super. It hits all the Metroid "formula" - the revisiting previous areas, the constant slow drip of new powers, the boss fights, the ending escape sequence, etc.
> 
> I'm glad I have a pro controller, cause the controls are pretty responsive, and IMO you really need to make use of it. Easy to learn, but maybe hard to master. I've heard some people say they'd have preferred if the aiming was done with the right stick, but I was ok with the arrangement they used. I was kinda surprised that a lot of available buttons seemed to go unused, and I'm sure there must have been some way to make good use of them, since some of the hold-down-to-charge powers are a bit awkward to use. I like the slide, but I wish it wasn't the same button as morph ball. I was also expecting the spider ball the whole time and it never happened. Oh well.
> 
> I think some people didn't like the parry and....... I'm ok with it. I was ok with it in Returns, and I'm ok with it here too.
> 
> I liked the EMMI sections - they definitely felt fresh for a Metroid game, and they certainly succeeded at delivering a sense of tension. Especially a segment near the end where this particular one can _always_ hear you, so any movement at all attracts the thing, forcing you to either hide or run. It's not "horror", as I interpreted it, so much as just high-tension. Some people called them stealth sections, which.... kinda yes, but kinda no. I like stealth games. I also liked these segments. I didn't really stealth through them all the time though. Sometimes I'd just sprint right through. I died a lot in these sections, and it took foreeeeever to get the timing down to stun the EMMI, which was the intent. I only managed it maybe 4-5 times. Dying in those sections didn't feel bad though since they were relatively short, and you were always returned to the entrance doors. Usually I'd die a bunch, take a new approach that was more appropriate for that particular robot, get through, repeat each time I encounter a new one.
> 
> I already spoke about how the golden path of the game felt very linear to me. From what I understand, you caaaaaan sequence break, and you can do a significant about of exploring off the main path, but there's pretty much never a moment where you get really lost. The next thing to do is usually pretty clear, and often not far from where the previous sequence left you.
> 
> I liked the boss fights, although I kinda wish there were more unique ones instead of re-using the Chozo metal bird dudes. The whole game generally stayed feeling fresh for the most part, except for that element.
> 
> Not a whole lot of story (and I don't know the narrative from Fusion to really have context for it anyway), but it's as unnecessary as you'd expect. Everything presented made as much sense to me as it needed to. I'm sure I missed some references. Samus was voiced but only in some key spots, and it worked, I think. One point in particular, in the ending, there was a voiced yell during a struggle with the boss that struck me as badass. I feel bad for the voice actor though, it sounded strained, but it was exactly what the scene needed.
> 
> So..... I have no real complaint other than I wish I had paced myself a bit instead of binge-playing over the weekend, 'cause being done already made it feel short, but that's mostly on me.





Spoiler



I'm not finished yet, but my current feeling as that it really has as much non-linearity is it needs. You tackle every area from every angle the same way you do in Super, just now there's more power and space available to give clues as to where to go.

I just got the Gravity Suit and am going through a frozen area that was cold before. I had checked it out already so was able to grab the one or two items that I couldn't before, but now there's a bunch of places I couldn't get to then and can't get to now that make me want to come back after. Really the only sequence breaks I can remember from Super are if you're good at wall jumping instead of using the Space Jump. You could do the same in Samus Returns with bomb jumps, but they've heavily nerfed that here.

I'm definitely enjoying the game more now and that one Varia Suit to Kraid bit feels like an isolated occurrence. I don't know, people have typed a lot of words about how Super directs you in the right way by having doors you can open that lead to doors you can't being good design, but this feels like it's just cut some of the intermediate rooms in places.

All that said, the beams and missiles are dumb. First the super missile and plasma beam doors shouldn't be the same colour. Then the super missile and ice missile are just upgrades to missiles as opposed to another resource and it doesn't ever feel like they're more powerful and you get them so quickly. It feels like there are too many key items in quick succession that supersede each other and make the last one redundant. Like the Spin Booster to Space Jump and now all I can see is Screw Attack blocks.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Jumping in the 4th Palace in Persona 5 Royal. It's my second favorite dungeon in the game just behind the 6th, and that says a lot when the dungeon setting, design and music are some of the best and most stylish I've ever seen in a JRPG. It's nice and fun playing it again with all the new subtle changes. 

I adore the music here, but that said...



On the 2:48 mark, I can't help but feel that the drums come in a beat too late, and it becomes obvious when it abruptly jumps back to the refrain in 3:06 with a snare fill cut short. I noticed this back when I was playing the original and blaring the OST in my car and thought, it could be an editing oversight on Shoji Meguro's end. Still a great track and suits the palace beautifully.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Then the super missile and ice missile are just upgrades to missiles as opposed to another resource and it doesn't ever feel like they're more powerful and you get them so quickly.





Spoiler



I did appreciate that the ice missile could did actually freeze enemies, then the melee attack can generally shatter anything frozen. It made a few enemies a little easier to deal with than without it, I found.


----------



## Alberto7

Still playing through Metroid Dread, so I won't really engage any conversation with spoilers yet, but holy fuck do I love this game. It keeps getting better. It's a lot larger of a map than I was expecting.

It's also a lot more difficult than any other Metroid I've played, and it feels refreshing as hell. I like that the combat is pretty dynamic, with room for either strategizing your moves or just relying on fast reflexes, or a healthy combination of both (more my style). I like how I'd initially struggle to remember where all of Samus's moves are mapped to in the controller, and now it's all second nature stuff I do as I move around. I like a game that not only makes me think quickly, but it slowly TEACHES me to do so by sheer repetition alone. I feel it's really balanced in the difficulty department.

Also, the art direction so far is GORGEOUS. This looks better than any other Metroid I've played so far, albeit sometimes a little too polished. I can imagine what a fully 3D rendering of ZDR would look like, and I love it.

The game did start off a little slow though, and I was a little bit skeptical in the beginning, given that the last 10 years of Metroid have been... disappointing. We either got a subpar game, or a remake that, while good, had very little sense of mystery for me, given I'd already played the original (as well as AM2R).

I am really enjoying this. It's one of those rare games that I think about upon waking up and my first thought is "man I can't wait to go play some more later today!"


----------



## p0ke

Jarmake said:


> These games are a bit mysterious like that... One day you'll breeze through the enemies and other days you'll get your ass kicked by the same guys.



That's FromSoftware for you, I guess! I've had similar experiences in the Dark Souls games many times. Sometimes it feels like even the basic enemies change strategies just to fuck with you


----------



## wankerness

Alberto7 said:


> Still playing through Metroid Dread, so I won't really engage any conversation with spoilers yet, but holy fuck do I love this game. It keeps getting better. It's a lot larger of a map than I was expecting.
> 
> It's also a lot more difficult than any other Metroid I've played, and it feels refreshing as hell. I like that the combat is pretty dynamic, with room for either strategizing your moves or just relying on fast reflexes, or a healthy combination of both (more my style). I like how I'd initially struggle to remember where all of Samus's moves are mapped to in the controller, and now it's all second nature stuff I do as I move around. I like a game that not only makes me think quickly, but it slowly TEACHES me to do so by sheer repetition alone. I feel it's really balanced in the difficulty department.
> 
> Also, the art direction so far is GORGEOUS. This looks better than any other Metroid I've played so far, albeit sometimes a little too polished. I can imagine what a fully 3D rendering of ZDR would look like, and I love it.
> 
> The game did start off a little slow though, and I was a little bit skeptical in the beginning, given that the last 10 years of Metroid have been... disappointing. We either got a subpar game, or a remake that, while good, had very little sense of mystery for me, given I'd already played the original (as well as AM2R).
> 
> I am really enjoying this. It's one of those rare games that I think about upon waking up and my first thought is "man I can't wait to go play some more later today!"





I saw this post today - I don't put much stock in it apart from the aside about "being expected to use both sticks at the same time as B/Y." Is there any accuracy to any of this? That and the "insta-death attacks you can't react to without multiple attempts" and "mandatory QTEs" are all off-putting. But, I know the guy's probably just raging.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Yeah, they're definitely an acquired taste. If you ever get the urge to check one out again I'd suggest trying 0 instead of continuing with 4, or Like a Dragon. 0's regularly on sale for like 5 bucks and like a dragon probably will be eventually. But, if you have a big backlog, not much reason.
> 
> I downloaded FFXIV for PS5. It is kind of funny how dated it looks now, when I remember being very impressed by the graphics last I played (when Heavensward was the current expansion, so, several years ago). I am going to have to mess with it a bunch more to figure out if it's worth playing on console. The display is identical to PC, you just have radically different ways of maneuvering menus and hotbars, so I'm not sure if I'll get used to it before getting frustrated. I haven't looked into hooking a mouse and keyboard up to the PS5; I don't really have a good surface to use them on, but it might be preferable! The game sure runs amazingly and loadtimes are almost non-existent.
> 
> Oh, and I'm going through playthrough C on nier replicant. This actually is pretty pointless. It adds cutscenes here and there from Playthrough B, but by and large is identical. B is a gigantic shift in tone, giving backstories and voices to all the enemies and basically making you the villain of the story, but C just sort of adds a few scenes here and there so far. The "Louise" boss added a very short final phase. I'm about 2/3 through it. Repeat playthroughs go FAST cause you skip the whole first half of the game with them. However, I need to upgrade 33 weapons to full, which means I have to grind for many hours. I've gotten some of the bad ones out of the way (15 black pearls, all the eagle eggs), but now it's time for SUBDUED BRACELETS from the goddam flying shades that only spawn in one place in the desert and have abysmal drop rates and are far away from save points.
> 
> The backstory on the wolf shade kills me every time. It makes me hate those disgusting humans. And man, the wolf's final flashback!!! So goddam depressing. Poor guy.



For 14 if you haven’t played on console before be sure to turn on one of the buried cross bar settings where L2+R2 and separately R2+L2 each bring up an extra 8-button menu while held, then when you let go it returns to your normal L2 or R2. That gives you 16x2 buttons within easy reach. Also healing on console is hard AF.


----------



## Alberto7

wankerness said:


> View attachment 98932
> 
> I saw this post today - I don't put much stock in it apart from the aside about "being expected to use both sticks at the same time as B/Y." Is there any accuracy to any of this? That and the "insta-death attacks you can't react to without multiple attempts" and "mandatory QTEs" are all off-putting. But, I know the guy's probably just raging.



 the guy is definitely raging hard. 

It is true about the insta-death attacks that are almost impossible to react to, but these are only really dealt by the EMMI, and the whole point is to learn to avoid them anyway.

And I have no idea what a QTE is.

I JUST finished the game, and I do feel a pretty good sense of accomplishment. Still digesting the whole thing, but overall I think it's safe to say that I enjoyed this game a lot more than average.


----------



## TedEH

QTE = Quick-Time Event, means having to press a button at the right time to advance. Talking about the parry move.
I'm pretty sure you never use the right stick for anything in that game, so that's either an exaggeration or a fabrication.

I'm not generally good at "hard games", and I didn't find the game that hard. Challenging, yes. Demanding of some patience, yes. But it's also very forgiving - the checkpoints are generous, and once you figure out a bosses patterns it's a little twitchy but still much easier than something like Hollow Knight. All of the attacks are pretty generously telegraphed so if you have the hang the of the controls and are paying attention you can avoid pretty much everything. There's even a loading-screen tip that outright says there aren't any un-avoidable attacks in the game.

Bosses for me generally went like:
Attempt 1, die right away.
Attempt 2, figure out the first pattern, die on the second.
Attempt 3, figure out the second pattern and either win, or figure out the next pattern.
Repeat until win.

You know, standard vaguely-challenging metroidvania boss stuff.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> View attachment 98932
> 
> I saw this post today - I don't put much stock in it apart from the aside about "being expected to use both sticks at the same time as B/Y." Is there any accuracy to any of this? That and the "insta-death attacks you can't react to without multiple attempts" and "mandatory QTEs" are all off-putting. But, I know the guy's probably just raging.


The right stick is used only for the camo ability that requires absolutely no fast thinking or reaction ever. Has literally no functionality against a boss.

The shoulder buttons are: L free aim; ZL morph ball/slide; R missile mode; ZR grapple hook. You never have to use R buttons at the same time or switch between them quickly enough to need two fingers. I can really only think of one or two very niche times where you need to go from free aim to slide/morph ball, and I'm pretty sure even those are avoidable.

With regards QTEs and instadeaths, this is the EMMIs. If they catch you, there is one melee counter QTE or you're dead and get booted to when you entered the EMMI zone. It's difficult to react to on purpose because you're not supposed to get caught, and the game outright says it's too difficult to counter, don't get caught.

Every other boss QTE is entirely optional and the game is entirely beatable without them, and you have to enter into them intentionally. Otherwise you can just dodge the GTE initiating attack, and every attack is telegraphed and dodgeable. Also every QTE is one button and its the same button because its the melee counter button and all of these attacks are flagged the same way.

All Metroid bosses have been bullet sponges, they're just bigger and more elaborate in Dread and SR because they're more modern. I had way less ammo left after every Super Metroid boss than these bosses because you have to spam missiles like crazy to beat bosses. Ridley takes 30 Super Missiles and there is a max of 50.

_Echoing_ what Ted said. You get to a boss or an EMMI; you die a couple of times figuring out the map or patterns; then you die a couple of times until you get through, but I haven't once died and thought it was cheating me. The game has loading screen hints specific to how you died like "no attack is unavoidable, watch out for the patterns, Flash Shift is a mobility option". With EMMIs you typically are encountering a new area and have to react to a new environment while sprinting looking for an exit, or you have to stealth your way through it. The former means you'll probably die a time or two, the latter is just sort of less fun and rarely the best option.

Altogether, that seems like a bad faith criticism of the game or very unfamiliar with the genre. All the criticisms in that post applies to bits that don't happen in the section of game the poster claims to be at, and the game is very clear about that.


----------



## rokket2005

wankerness said:


> View attachment 98932
> 
> I saw this post today - I don't put much stock in it apart from the aside about "being expected to use both sticks at the same time as B/Y." Is there any accuracy to any of this? That and the "insta-death attacks you can't react to without multiple attempts" and "mandatory QTEs" are all off-putting. But, I know the guy's probably just raging.



If nothing else, I find it absolutely hilarious that he lists off all those complaints about the game while having a Punch-Out avatar.


----------



## Alberto7

I second exactly what TedEH and StevenC said.
(And thanks Ted for the QTE explanation!)

I REALLY hope this game sells well so that Nintendo is encouraged to put more money into this franchise.
I always rave about how Zelda is my favorite videogame franchise, but then I remember Metroid and I just couldn't choose between the two.

Also, (heavy spoilers)



Spoiler



I love that now asking "Y can'T MetRoId cRawL" is a totally valid question.[\SPOILER]


----------



## StevenC

Alberto7 said:


> I second exactly what TedEH and StevenC said.
> (And thanks Ted for the QTE explanation!)
> 
> I REALLY hope this game sells well so that Nintendo is encouraged to put more money into this franchise.
> I always rave about how Zelda is my favorite videogame franchise, but then I remember Metroid and I just couldn't choose between the two.
> 
> Also, (heavy spoilers)
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I love that now asking "Y can'T MetRoId cRawL" is a totally valid question.[\SPOILER]





Spoiler



Wait are people asking this? Its because its easier to animate a ball on the NES than crawling. Isn't this like super famous video game trivia? I know it's a meme, but is it serious now?


----------



## Alberto7

StevenC said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Wait are people asking this? Its because its easier to animate a ball on the NES than crawling. Isn't this like super famous video game trivia? I know it's a meme, but is it serious now?





Spoiler



oh not at all, I was just being silly  that's just part 2 of that meme I guess. I'm seeing it pop up everywhere, so I don't feel as special anymore for having thought of it


----------



## StevenC

Alberto7 said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> oh not at all, I was just being silly  that's just part 2 of that meme I guess. I'm seeing it pop up everywhere, so I don't feel as special anymore for having thought of it


Thank goodness


----------



## StevenC

Metroid Dread 



Spoiler



So I've been going through the game and getting the last few collectable and some of these puzzles are impossible. I don't know how gud I have to git for the Shinespark stuff. I'll admit that having it share the same button as jumping makes sense until you start building puzzles that need you to make two jumps before charging it. Ferenia I'm looking at you.


----------



## Alberto7

Don't watch this if you haven't finished the story, but omg this edit is so good.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/co..._her/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share



StevenC said:


> Metroid Dread
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> So I've been going through the game and getting the last few collectable and some of these puzzles are impossible. I don't know how gud I have to git for the Shinespark stuff. I'll admit that having it share the same button as jumping makes sense until you start building puzzles that need you to make two jumps before charging it. Ferenia I'm looking at you.



There's a lot of good tips on how to do those shinespark challenges on the Metroid subreddit, but it's spoiler central over there.


----------



## StevenC

Alberto7 said:


> Don't watch this if you haven't finished the story, but omg this edit is so good.
> 
> https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/co..._her/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
> 
> 
> 
> There's a lot of good tips on how to do those shinespark challenges on the Metroid subreddit, but it's spoiler central over there.


Yeah, I've found a few guides for the ones that I can't figure out. But even then the Ferenia one where you have to run from the next room, double jump, shoot the blocks, cross bomb across the pitfall blocks, bomb, then Shinespark. That's a joke.


----------



## possumkiller

I got Battlefield 4, V, and I on a crazy steam sale and I am playing I right now. This is my first experience with any of the Battlefield games. Apart from some pretty cringey cheese stories and dialogue, it seems ok. I was in the military and was an ammosexual gun lover for a long time so the only real nitpick I have is it seems like there are way too many full auto small arms for the period. And the tank seems to drive way faster than it should. As far as I've read, those early British tanks moved about walking speed. 

I have been looking at getting Arma 3 with the Prairie Fire mod for some Vietnam style action.


----------



## wankerness

FINALLY grinded out everything in Nier: Replicant (fully upgrading 33 weapons), so I can burn through the last playthroughs without any more frickin farming. I have 66 hours on the game now. I'd wager 30 of those were just killing the same enemies over and over. Flying shades, caster shades on the roof of the last temple, big robots, minibosses, flying robots, little shades in the underground lab, those armored guys before seafront, running to the beach hundreds of times for pearls, etc. There's a LOT of padding in this game. I think the first two playthroughs are kind of a masterpiece, but I'm not at all impressed with playthrough 3. We'll see how the next two go! I'm very intrigued by what little I know of the final playthrough. Sounds like maybe it should have been #3 instead of #5 though.

Nier: Automata had a fair amount of grinding, but MASSIVELY alleviated this problem by putting all the rare materials on vendors. There was still the hassle of having to reset Emil over and over until he showed the stock you wanted, but it was infinitely preferable to 20 hours of grinding specific monsters in some dungeon somewhere.


----------



## wankerness

EDIT: Double post. Why can't you delete posts anymore?


----------



## CovertSovietBear

possumkiller said:


> I got Battlefield 4, V, and I on a crazy steam sale and I am playing I right now. This is my first experience with any of the Battlefield games.


I've been playing Battlefield 4 for a while and to me it's the best in the series. Feels better than any other installment, as BF1 and BFV end up feeling like Battlefront 2 and not like a Battlefield. Haven't hopped on my PC version of BF4 lately but I know PS4 servers are very much still alive, albeit with less game modes playable. If you're starting off on Battlefield then Rush is a great game mode to play.


----------



## MFB

Turned on my PS4 for the first time in a bit, and thought, "Let's get back to Dark Souls 2" and boy did I immediately regret it; honestly, my biggest kick is the shitty as Hollowing mechanism on death, like what torture is that shit?


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Turned on my PS4 for the first time in a bit, and thought, "Let's get back to Dark Souls 2" and boy did I immediately regret it; honestly, my biggest kick is the shitty as Hollowing mechanism on death, like what torture is that shit?



It made more sense after playing demon souls. In that game, if you die, you immediately get set to 50% health, and it’s a lot harder to become “unhollowed,” plus the game has a bunch of other weird mechanics with world tendency that severely mess up your game if you die while unhollowed. Ds2 has what, 5% decreasing health per death? And tons of the items that undo hollowing. Plus you get the cling ring pretty early on, which sets the minimum health to 75% instead of 50, and you have four ring slots so it’s not much of a sacrifice to have it on.

basically DS2’s hollowing is nastier than 1’s, but nothing close to demon’s souls. I think they probably just reintroduced it thinking dark souls 1 had made things too easy.

ds3 weirdly is more punitive than 2 (33% more health in human form always, so you lose as much health with one death as you would with like five deaths in ds2), but by the display treating it as bonus health if you’re in human form instead of missing health if you’re hollowed, it psychologically doesn’t feel as bad as in ds2.


----------



## StevenC

Metroid Dread but actual spoilers



Spoiler



I'm on the last boss (well apparent last boss, there's always another _real_ last boss) and damn, I don't know what to think. Like the first phase is so easy that basically everyone should go into the second stage with full health and ammo once you understand the pattern. Then the second phase where he gets wings is a bit crazy with that bullet attack. But the third phase is just madness when he's shooting the big cannon while you're also avoiding freaking solar flares! I only got one chance at the third phase when I was playing yesterday, but damn if it didn't seem brutal.



Also, I should correct myself from earlier, there are bosses that require QTEs to beat but again it's only the one button melee counter and then shooting loads of missiles.


----------



## TedEH

My plan was to play Prime 3, but I get disc read errors. I think there's a scratch near the outside of the disk that's deep enough to interfere with reading. I tried to clean it, even tried the toothpaste thing, it didn't help. Get fewer errors, but it still happens. I tried using the homebrew stuff to rip the disc in case I can get that to work and it also fails when it gets towards the end of the disc. I think a local place has a resurfacing machine, so I might go visit them and see if they can do anything with it.


----------



## wankerness

Finished endings C and D in Nier: Replicant (fortunately you can just reload your save before the last bosses and get the other ending) and started playthrough E. I've avoided spoilers on exactly what Playthrough E is pretty dutifully, so I don't actually know what's going to happen, I didn't realize it would reset all the way to the beginning of the game. But, I am kind of burned out on it so I might take a break for a few days.

There are a few more things I've noticed repeatedly in this game now I haven't mentioned - 

One is that this version changed all the bosses in Playthrough B and on to have like, 90% damage reduction until you go through all the dialogue that occurs in the fight. This is a *great* change for playthrough B, since I distinctly recall on the Xbox version's playthrough B I was killing bosses in ~5 seconds unless I just stood there and thus was missing almost all of the new dialogue. But, it gets annoying when you're having to do the series of last boss fights 4 or 5 times and have to listen to all the dialogue every time.

Another is that it really bugs me that all the "speed kill" trophies require you to skip all the cutscenes - it makes it so if you're interested in the plot, you either have to reload saves and replay bosses, or skip all the cutscenes and watch them on youtube.

Finally, a big and petty problem I have is that what's possibly my favorite piece of music in the entire game, the boss version of Song of the Ancients, is about 5 minutes long and is ONLY played in the first half of a boss fight, which lasts about 30 seconds tops if you're attacking with anything other than a level 1 1h sword. Like, I tried not attacking at all and just running around in circles to see if the whole piece would play through, and my teammates beat the boss well before it finished with their little chip damage. Oh well. I guess it's also praise since the music in the game is so damn good. This music makes a reappearance in the climax of Nier: Automata, but the boss arrangement from Nier 1 is a bit better than that one. 



I'm amused that the comments are all about how they played this at the Tokyo olympics. What?! I wonder what the context was there.

Anyway, my recommendation with Nier: Replicant for maximum enjoyment is to completely ignore trophies, it makes the game much better when you're not grinding for hours (since you probably only care about upgrading one or two weapons) or feeling a need to skip cutscenes and then rewatch them for the speed kill trophies.


----------



## /wrists

Feels bad I literally only play League.


----------



## BlackMastodon

evade said:


> Feels bad I literally only play League.


You poor soul!


----------



## Alberto7

StevenC said:


> Metroid Dread but actual spoilers
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I'm on the last boss (well apparent last boss, there's always another _real_ last boss) and damn, I don't know what to think. Like the first phase is so easy that basically everyone should go into the second stage with full health and ammo once you understand the pattern. Then the second phase where he gets wings is a bit crazy with that bullet attack. But the third phase is just madness when he's shooting the big cannon while you're also avoiding freaking solar flares! I only got one chance at the third phase when I was playing yesterday, but damn if it didn't seem brutal.
> 
> 
> 
> Also, I should correct myself from earlier, there are bosses that require QTEs to beat but again it's only the one button melee counter and then shooting loads of missiles.





Spoiler



Yeah, even the first phase took me quite a few tries to understand the pattern. It's a really fun fight, I thought. Also, for the third phase, I tried using a power bomb to destroy the thing, and it worked! Got health and ammo back, too. I thought it had to be destructible, cause it felt waaaaayy out of the difficulty curve for this game, and if I could destroy the black projectiles in the first phase, I could surely destroy this one too.



And yeah, there are just a few required QTEs, but they're simple/challenging enough, and I found they were actually really fun.


----------



## StevenC

Alberto7 said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, even the first phase took me quite a few tries to understand the pattern. It's a really fun fight, I thought. Also, for the third phase, I tried using a power bomb to destroy the thing, and it worked! Got health and ammo back, too. I thought it had to be destructible, cause it felt waaaaayy out of the difficulty curve for this game, and if I could destroy the black projectiles in the first phase, I could surely destroy this one too.
> 
> 
> 
> And yeah, there are just a few required QTEs, but they're simple/challenging enough, and I found they were actually really fun.


You're a genius!


----------



## CanserDYI

So just finished Last of Us part II, and my god....I've never played such a game of loss, difficult choices to make, and left me feeling like a festering wound that would never heal. Its absolutely brutal, stomach churning moment after moment, you feel the weight and pain in every step. 

Probably one of the best most thought out, thought provoking, games I've ever played. Absolutely a masterpiece.


----------



## Jarmake

CanserDYI said:


> So just finished Last of Us part II, and my god....I've never played such a game of loss, difficult choices to make, and left me feeling like a festering wound that would never heal. Its absolutely brutal, stomach churning moment after moment, you feel the weight and pain in every step.
> 
> Probably one of the best most thought out, thought provoking, games I've ever played. Absolutely a masterpiece.



I am on my way to the hospital with Abby... I just fear that the end of the game is near already and have been postponing the inevitable.


----------



## CanserDYI

Jarmake said:


> I am on my way to the hospital with Abby... I just fear that the end of the game is near already and have been postponing the inevitable.


Nope. Nope. Nope. You've got A LOOOOOONG way to go.


----------



## wankerness

The Last of Us 2 has some very valid criticism to be made of what it's saying and how it says it. I'm talking about valid criticism, not "omg there are YUCKY GAYS, the SJWs are AT IT AGAIN!!!" that plagued all the online reactions for a long time. I think it's very good and far better than the first from a gameplay perspective, and I got involved in the characters (at least Abby and the outcasts), but I definitely think almost everything in this video is also true.


----------



## StevenC

Metroid Dread actual spoilers



Spoiler



Finished the game today and it's so good. Got 88% of items because I refuse to get good enough at all those Shinespark puzzles. Final boss was cool, ending was cool, the 3 minute sprint was cool, the Metroid Samus was cool. Sad we didn't have a real confrontation with Quiet Robe X, not really sure I got the mechanics of that bit exactly.

Overall I think this has been my favourite 2D Metroid so far. I might prefer a more modern but faithful remake of Super, but it's more a taste thing and just preferring the modern feel and controls available. The Metroid you saved in II coming back to save you is still powerful to me, and while this game had a generally more interesting story I don't think it quite had anything as cool as that or Fusion. Again, I'd say Samus Returns loses points over Return of Samus for the ending and having to fight your way out of the planet you've supposedly just killed your way through, and I don't think the Ridley fight at the end was that good either. That climb out is really a highlight of the series to me and the pinnacle of _Metroid atmosphere _in my opinion.

Also, kind of disappointed that they used a more Fusion inspired suit through the game, or at least until you get the Gravity Suit. Would have been cool to use this game to tell the story of the suit regenerating, instead of that happening off screen then getting this weird version of the Power Suit. I would happily have believed this was just the next stage from the Fusion suit or whatever, but it's not a big deal and see why they did it. As with most Metroid games the coolest suit isn't the one you finish with, just seems weird and a waste to have it in all the material but so little of the actual game.

Dread was definitely a worthy installment in the series to me, lived up to the hype I had for it (and I was really hyped, I was basically dying in hospital when this was announced), maybe not worth the 20 year wait or the 15 year wait but no game could.



Now I'm going to look through this artbook.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


>




That's a cool video, I think he has a similar video about RDR II. Anyway, I think most AAA games I've played for several years now seem to have pretty outdated game design. It's becoming very boring and repetitive. Or I'm just old, burned out, and bored in general, who knows...

Not to say I didn't like any of them: I liked TLoU II the same or even more than TLoU I. But I couldn't quite stand RDR II's gameplay (or even its story at some points), even having finished GTA V 4 or 5 times and having liked most of R*'s games in general. At least they're not Ubisoft games...

If anything, I thought that TLoU II was too long. The rest (LGTB+ stuff, human conflict, revenge, etc.) is all cool to me. They're game people in a story trying to live their lives, surviving, finding ammo and stuff in weird places, and solving some stupid puzzles.

That said, as for new games I'm only interested in playing the upcoming Horizon Zero I Can't Remember How It's Called and God of War Ragnarok. Probably only because I already like the previous games and I want to know what happens next. The rest, I don't care. I'm not buying a PS5 (IF I buy one someday) until the next GoW (if there's a next GoW), or the next GTA (same). So, probably never.


----------



## wankerness

Jakey does really good videos, it's too bad they're so infrequent. Darn youtubers with real lives. 

I'm also excited about HZD2 and God of War Ragnarok. I'm disappointed that the supply shortages have shifted them to be more cross-platform so people can actually play them, though I suppose it remains to be seen if they're like Cyberpunk where it's bad on last gen or if they're like something like Judgment where it's basically just a slight visual upgrade with improved load times on current gen. Hopefully it's a third category where it's like the difference between playing the same game on PC on low settings vs ultra (runs smoothly in both cases but very obvious difference).

Speaking of upcoming things I'm excited about, finally an Animal Crossings update!!


----------



## StevenC

gabito said:


> At least they're not Ubisoft games...
> [...]
> I'm only interested in playing the upcoming Horizon Zero I Can't Remember How It's Called


Does not compute


----------



## gabito

StevenC said:


> Does not compute



Haha, you're right. I really liked the story and setting though. I was really curious about what happened to that world and the people in it. Can't say the same about most of AC games I've played.

Most of the game's characters were pretty dull, though. On the other hand AC has some interesting characters.

And combat is or can be better / more interesting / more varied than AC's.

Anyway: yeah, most open world games are pretty much the same.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Does not compute



HZD's open world is about 1/2 as big and repetitive as the last couple ACs. Plus there are things like actual enemy variety instead of "guy with shield" and "guy with bow and arrow." And your weapons have FAR more variety than AC's general "either stab them or use a bow and arrow that either shoots slowly or quickly." I guess AC also has traps, but I've never seen anyone use them. HZD has all the different things like the grenade launcher and tripwires etc in addition to the focus on the bow. (And melee but that sucks)


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Speaking of upcoming things I'm excited about, finally an Animal Crossings update!!


I'm super hyped for this and have been doing loads of stuff on my island in anticipation. Though I'm really annoyed about the whole DLC/Expansion Pass nonsense.


gabito said:


> Haha, you're right. I really liked the story and setting though. I was really curious about what happened to that world and the people in it. Can't say the same about most of AC games I've played.
> 
> Most of the game's characters were pretty dull, though. On the other hand AC has some interesting characters.
> 
> And combat is or can be better / more interesting / more varied than AC's.
> 
> Anyway: yeah, most open world games are pretty much the same.


To be honest I think I hated every character in that game and the combat was just so dull on Normal and not fun on Hard. 

The world was kinda interesting until the story got in the way of making it interesting with the "twist" ending. Feels like they wrote two separate stories and ran out of time to connect them.


----------



## wankerness

The Animal Crossing DLC tied to the Nintendo Online upgrade thing looked stupid, so I'm just going to continue paying for the cheap nintendo online for SNES games and buy the DLC outright so it's not tied to a subscription. If they release a bunch more N64 games (ex, Blast Corps, Space Station Silicon Valley, and Body Harvest) I'll think about upgrading. But, the only games I'd want to play on it right now I have on other platforms anyway (Mario 64, Star Fox 64 and Zelda OoT).


----------



## StevenC

Yeah, I'm the same. I have an N64, I have those games on Wii, I have those games on 3DS, I have 3D All Stars, there are literally 0 good Megadrive games.

If they announced that it would include other DLC like for MK8D, Splatoon 3, BOTW2 or whatever it'd be interesting. But as it stands out seems mind boggling.


----------



## wankerness

I saw some speculate it could have "rotating" DLC, but that seems even worse. Why would you want to pay for a service that would make it so you could only play those extra Animal Crossing features for x months and then you'd only get temp access to extra Zelda content or whatever? Or if it was just like a "you get all first-party DLC free as long as you stay subscribed" then maybe it would make some kind of financial sense from a buyer perspective, but seems like it would be a big loss to nintendo. I dunno. I am just going to buy DLC I want and they can keep their premium subscription until they have actual depth to their N64 options. The biggest attraction would obviously be Goldeneye with multiplayer enabled, but we all know that will never happen. The world is a sad place.


----------



## Alberto7

The only reason I'd ever get the expansion pack thing for the Nintendo Online service is to have my girlfriend play Ocarina of Time. She loved Breath of the Wild (her first Zelda ever), and she owns and loves her Switch, but she isn't computer savvy at all and refuses to touch anything emulator-related, even when I offer to set it all up for her. She already showed a lot of interest in playing more of the Zelda franchise, so I better suck it up if I want her to play the damn thing


----------



## Alberto7

StevenC said:


> Metroid Dread actual spoilers
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Finished the game today and it's so good. Got 88% of items because I refuse to get good enough at all those Shinespark puzzles. Final boss was cool, ending was cool, the 3 minute sprint was cool, the Metroid Samus was cool. Sad we didn't have a real confrontation with Quiet Robe X, not really sure I got the mechanics of that bit exactly.
> 
> Overall I think this has been my favourite 2D Metroid so far. I might prefer a more modern but faithful remake of Super, but it's more a taste thing and just preferring the modern feel and controls available. The Metroid you saved in II coming back to save you is still powerful to me, and while this game had a generally more interesting story I don't think it quite had anything as cool as that or Fusion. Again, I'd say Samus Returns loses points over Return of Samus for the ending and having to fight your way out of the planet you've supposedly just killed your way through, and I don't think the Ridley fight at the end was that good either. That climb out is really a highlight of the series to me and the pinnacle of _Metroid atmosphere _in my opinion.
> 
> Also, kind of disappointed that they used a more Fusion inspired suit through the game, or at least until you get the Gravity Suit. Would have been cool to use this game to tell the story of the suit regenerating, instead of that happening off screen then getting this weird version of the Power Suit. I would happily have believed this was just the next stage from the Fusion suit or whatever, but it's not a big deal and see why they did it. As with most Metroid games the coolest suit isn't the one you finish with, just seems weird and a waste to have it in all the material but so little of the actual game.
> 
> Dread was definitely a worthy installment in the series to me, lived up to the hype I had for it (and I was really hyped, I was basically dying in hospital when this was announced), maybe not worth the 20 year wait or the 15 year wait but no game could.
> 
> 
> 
> Now I'm going to look through this artbook.



Seeing people enjoy this game doesn't get old for me. Dread has sat really well with me after hoping all these years for a proper Metroid release.


----------



## wankerness

Alberto7 said:


> The only reason I'd ever get the expansion pack thing for the Nintendo Online service is to have my girlfriend play Ocarina of Time. She loved Breath of the Wild (her first Zelda ever), and she owns and loves her Switch, but she isn't computer savvy at all and refuses to touch anything emulator-related, even when I offer to set it all up for her. She already showed a lot of interest in playing more of the Zelda franchise, so I better suck it up if I want her to play the damn thing



ha, I got mine to play it as her second Zelda after wind Waker HD by hooking up my old n64 straight to an hdtv with no converters since she’s not at all picky about graphics being a non-gamer. She limped through with the crappy old controller, only got stuck on that one spot in a fire temple where you have to run up a narrow winding staircase really fast (and ghost hunting). Wind Waker HD really spoiled her with the gyro aiming (also a great feature in twilight princess hd and BOTW). BOTW was her fifth one! Corona lockdown/remote work/school was kind of fun in some ways.

get a wii-U or 3DS if you don’t have an n64, it’s arguably more playable on those than the original hardware anyway.


----------



## TedEH

Alberto7 said:


> The only reason I'd ever get the expansion pack thing for the Nintendo Online service is to have my girlfriend play Ocarina of Time


You could probably find an original or grab the 3ds version for about the same as what the subscription would run you for the time you'd play the game.


----------



## StevenC

Alberto7 said:


> The only reason I'd ever get the expansion pack thing for the Nintendo Online service is to have my girlfriend play Ocarina of Time. She loved Breath of the Wild (her first Zelda ever), and she owns and loves her Switch, but she isn't computer savvy at all and refuses to touch anything emulator-related, even when I offer to set it all up for her. She already showed a lot of interest in playing more of the Zelda franchise, so I better suck it up if I want her to play the damn thing



I second getting a 3DS or Wii U to play those games, though I'm still holding out for OoT and MM 3D HD Collection and WW and TP HD Collection.



Alberto7 said:


> Seeing people enjoy this game doesn't get old for me. Dread has sat really well with me after hoping all these years for a proper Metroid release.



I totally stole your move and it totally worked! I've been reading Metroid wikis all night since refamiliarising myself with what has gone down.


----------



## CanserDYI

wankerness said:


> The Last of Us 2 has some very valid criticism to be made of what it's saying and how it says it. I'm talking about valid criticism, not "omg there are YUCKY GAYS, the SJWs are AT IT AGAIN!!!" that plagued all the online reactions for a long time. I think it's very good and far better than the first from a gameplay perspective, and I got involved in the characters (at least Abby and the outcasts), but I definitely think almost everything in this video is also true.



Yeah man, I loved Abby's character. Honestly, I'm a father and this game series hit me hard on many, many, many brutal levels. I'm not sure if I'm easily entertained or what, but this one, this one really really got me.


----------



## DudeManBrother

PGA 2K21 was free this month from PS+ so I played a little. I haven’t played a golf title since Tiger was on the covers, but it wasn’t too hard to get in the swing of things. 

Mortal Kombat XL was the other free game, but I haven’t tried that yet. I used to destroy on the old Sega so I’m looking forward to checking it out at some point.


----------



## MFB

In MKX, Smoke is IMO the best of the Ninja characters


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Prob gonna start up New World. Never been very into MMOs but my friends won't shut up about it.


----------



## Jarmake

CanserDYI said:


> Nope. Nope. Nope. You've got A LOOOOOONG way to go.



Oh, I see. Somehow I was getting the vibe that I was nearing the end. Well, onwards!


----------



## wankerness

Beat ending E in Nier: Replicant, and then accidentally overwrote my recovered save by clicking too fast while trying to do the speed run on the new file, so since I missed the new weapon and scene that you get if you go back to Kaine's house on your recovered file, I had to recover my 2 day old save file from the cloud, backtrack and do ending D again, run through the first section of the game and do E all over again. God, I hate that I decided to do the platinum on this game!!!

Ending E is quite something, it ties the game to Nier: Automata in interesting ways (you end up in some locations from it and the UI even switches over to Automata's at some point, plus robots and cyborgs) and explains some of the backstory of the game's world a bit more clearly through the dialogue of some weird characters that bear a strong resemblance to some from Automata. Though I then did watch a video about the full story (ex, exactly what project gestalt is and what Devola and Popola were doing and what the grimoires were) which pulled from Drakengard 3 and the book that accompanied Nier's release in Japan and wow, I did not catch anything about the "chlorination" or "maso" or all that stuff AT ALL. Playing as Kaine is kind of fun, it's too bad you can't play as her for the whole game. That was what I thought the last "playthrough" would be, but this really isn't a playthrough at all, just a weird buried playable epilogue to the game that's about 45 minutes long. I like that they got the voice actors back for it. Kaine definitely sounds older, but that works in its favor.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still trudging through Persona 5 Royal. Smashed through all the summer vacation in onto the Sept second term and gearing up for my next Memetos grind. Got 10 requests all lined up for a beating and want to get rid of them before the Hawaii school trip section. 

Even despite that I've got 2 of 5 stats maxed, 4 confidants maxed out, with a majority up to level 7-8 ish, I still feel antsy and think I'm falling far behind. This usually happens every time I play a Persona game, the Cold Steel series feels much more relaxed in comparison. I do feel I'm doing better than P5 Vanilla since I grinded enough cash and throwing it all at the fortune teller (really helps with the Sun, Moon and Fortune confidants). Being cheap with using low level Personas during the social moments is also beneficial in a more 'gotta catch 'em all' sense since I can fuse them into other low level Personas I missed out on. 

The darts game can suck a fat one though, even if the rewards are great.


----------



## gabito

They just announced this:



The remastered games look more or less like those Telltale adventure games. I think it's cool: not "modern" like RDR2 or GTA V (which would be a massive undertaking... or just impossible) but still stylized and fresh.

I might buy the games, but I'll wait until there are few gameplay reviews. There are some aspects about the games' old gameplay which could be difficult for me to tolerate now.


----------



## wankerness

They'd have to radically revamp the controls to make them fun, I think. Especially the plane/helicopter stuff was terrible even at the time.

RE: Persona 5 darts, I just saved that stuff till I had an upgrade or two to make it extremely easy, and then you can get 2 baton levels per person easily each round. Only Akechi requires more than two visits. Also you can get lucky and the random person that shows up can be someone else that needs it. I think I only had to play darts like 8 times. If anything, in Persona 5 Royal, you have too MUCH free time. By the last couple months everyone's confidant level was maxed so I had nothing to do other than going to the jazz club for puny stat boosts. I remember on Persona 5 original, I had to reload a save a couple weeks from the end to do things exactly perfectly to get everyone's level maxed before the game ended.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

gabito said:


> They just announced this:
> 
> 
> 
> The remastered games look more or less like those Telltale adventure games. I think it's cool: not "modern" like RDR2 or GTA V (which would be a massive undertaking... or just impossible) but still stylized and fresh.
> 
> I might buy the games, but I'll wait until there are few gameplay reviews. There are some aspects about the games' old gameplay which could be difficult for me to tolerate now.




The studio behind that remake is the one that infamously fucked up that San Andreas remake years ago, War Drum Studios, so waiting for reviews will be the smart choice.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> The studio behind that remake is the one that infamously fucked up that San Andreas remake years ago, War Drum Studios, so waiting for reviews will be the smart choice.



Wow, I hadn't heard of that. So they made a mobile version, ported that to Xbox 360 and PS3 with tons of bugs, and called it a day? Nice.


----------



## Woodland Burl

I play too many games to mention them all. On a regular basis, I play FFXIV and PUBG on PS4.
Aside from that, I'm currently in Far Cry 6 and Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance.


----------



## wankerness

What class do you play on PS4 in FFXIV? Do you use the controller?

I kind of want to check out the race/class combos from one of the prior expansions (specifically the FFXII rabbit people and the dancer class), but they idiotically made it so if you pay for the upcoming expansion, you don't get access to previous expansions until the day the new one releases. Unless, of course, you want to buy them separately and then spend the same cost for the new expansion on top of that, even though they're all free with it.


----------



## Woodland Burl

I think you can buy the previous expansions as a bundle. But in any case it aint long until the upcoming. It's in November I believe, so that may be the cheapest option without too much of a wait. But I've been in the game since the original release so I've bought them one at a time as they were released, so take my words with a slight grain of salt, in case I'm wrong. 

I mainly play Dragoon, and yes, I use controller. I started my FFXIV journey on pc, but midways in the second expansion I switched to PS4 and never looked back. They have done an amazing job with the console version. If you connect a usb keyboard to the console the only drawback compared to PC is the very few times you have to aim something on the ground (which is almost never, unless you play Black Mage, and even then, not a huge problem).


----------



## wankerness

Woodland Burl said:


> I think you can buy the previous expansions as a bundle. But in any case it aint long until the upcoming. It's in November I believe, so that may be the cheapest option without too much of a wait. But I've been in the game since the original release so I've bought them one at a time as they were released, so take my words with a slight grain of salt, in case I'm wrong.
> 
> I mainly play Dragoon, and yes, I use controller. I started my FFXIV journey on pc, but midways in the second expansion I switched to PS4 and never looked back. They have done an amazing job with the console version. If you connect a usb keyboard to the console the only drawback compared to PC is the very few times you have to aim something on the ground (which is almost never, unless you play Black Mage, and even then, not a huge problem).



Yeah, you can buy the previous expansions in a bundle for 40 dollars. Or, you can buy the new expansion for 60 dollars, and it includes them all, but won't let you access their content until the newest expansion actually drops. So if you don't have the middle expansions and want to play them before mid november, you have to pay an extra 40 dollars (well, extra assuming you plan on buying the new expansion). I think I'll probably just wait. It just annoys me I paid for the 20 dollar trial and I basically won't be using the free 30 days cause I can't start the class I want to level until November. I've been screwing around a bit with a new white mage just to try and re-familiarize myself with the world, but I'm not very interested in the class/character. I do have a level 60 character, but I don't want to start up on that immediately cause my memory of how to play isn't good and learning a totally new control style might be easier with a new character. I need to do some research on servers - it seems every server I had a character on when I played on PC a few years ago now always has queues to log in. I'd rather be on a deserted server!


----------



## TedEH

I previously mentioned I was trying to fix / resurface the Metroid Prime 3 disc I've got.... well that failed. As much as I'm not a fan of..... some of the more questionable ways to get your hands on a copy of something..... I spent several days doing everything I could to get my legit copy to work, and after all of that I still want to play the game and don't own any platform I could get a digital copy on so....

I'm playing it in Dolphin, which lets me use a mouse, which works both really well and really poorly at the same time depending on context. I've also noticed I can crank up a bunch of rendering things, but doing so has some consequences - Adding anti-aliasing causes some artifacts on outline effects, and upping the resolution sometimes makes the scan and lock on features go kinda wonky, so I'm leaving it basically as stock-looking as possible. I guess, other than the mouse, I'm getting something close to the "original" experience that way.

This one is a lot more different than the other than I expected though. I mean, it's clearly a Prime game, but it feels pretty different. Particularly how much narrative stuff is there now, other characters, etc. I'm used to Metroid games being almost kinda quiet and lonely vibes, but this one is not. Almost kinda feels out-of-character, and I'm not sure how to feel about it.


----------



## wankerness

I've started Metroid Prime 3 a couple times and always quickly lose interest. I didn't like there being people standing around that I had to talk to. I'm so used to the loneliness of these games that it was off-putting. I also never played long enough to really adjust to the wii control, I'm guessing the emulator might actually play better.

Too bad you don't live in Wisconsin (just kidding), I somehow ended up with two copies!


----------



## BlackMastodon

I just heard in a podcast that next month is the 20th anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved. It's crazy that it's already been around that long, I have so many fond memories of playing split screen with friends for days.


----------



## StevenC

BlackMastodon said:


> I just heard in a podcast that next month is the 20th anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved. It's crazy that it's already been around that long, I have so many fond memories of playing split screen with friends for days.


Hopefully we'll get Halo CE Anniversary Edition Anniversary Edition that looks less bad.


----------



## wankerness

Man, I never got on the Halo train. I remember having some fun with some mode in 2 that was just hammers for weapons, but even that still felt like a boring version of perfect dark or goldeneye or timesplitters or Turok or whatever. Well-tuned mechanics, and running people over was a lot of fun, but the weapons and ability to only hold two were so boring. As soon as that perfect dark remaster came out for Xbox my friends and I jumped ship and never played a halo game multiplayer again.

I have fonder memories of Bungie’s earlier Marathon trilogy than any Halo game!


----------



## Leviathus

I used to hate Halo multiplayer back in the day, but only because my older brother would always whoop my ass on there and always wanted to play.


----------



## BlackMastodon

My friends and I made our own gametype for H:CE called derby, where we only played on Sidewinder or Blood Gulch and the only way you were allowed to kill each other was running over them with a vehicle or grenades, which you had infinite. Great fun until someone inevitably went for the rocket launcher and threw the whole thing into chaos.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

BlackMastodon said:


> My friends and I made our own gametype for H:CE called derby, where we only played on Sidewinder or Blood Gulch and the only way you were allowed to kill each other was running over them with a vehicle or grenades, which you had infinite. Great fun until someone inevitably went for the rocket launcher and threw the whole thing into chaos.



I played alot of Halo PC back in the day and that's pretty much what every Race match would devolve into. 

I always found Halos deathmatch gameplay to be the weakest aspect of it's multiplayer.


----------



## wankerness

Finally got the platinum on Nier Replicant so I can stop it. Overall, no one should ever try to platinum this game since it will involve clearing through the back half of the game like 8 times and also have probably 30 hours or more of just grinding for rare drops. Nier: Automata's total dismissal of the trophy system (you could just BUY THEM off a vendor in game for a fairly inconsequential amount of in-game currency, I've never seen that on any other game before or since) sure seems like a reaction against the grindiness of this one. Which is weird, cause this game's newer. Though I guess most of the trophies are the same as PS3/Xbox except for the new content. I think total time across playthroughs was 80 hours, but that didn't count the save-scumming, which probably accounted for another couple hours of grinding for spawn point items at least.

Still, a very good game. I would highly recommend at least doing a first and second playthrough for anyone interested in ambitious, plot-driven action RPGs, and for those who loved Automata, I would highly recommend gritting your teeth and finishing a *third* playthrough and choosing the "delete your save" option and then gritting your teeth and going through the start of a FOURTH playthrough to get to the weirdo playable epilogue. Unfortunately, in this game's case, "playthrough" actually means "playthrough," unlike Automata where you're mostly getting new content on Playthrough B and entirely getting new content on Playthrough C. Playthrough 2's tonal shift with the new scenes and dialogue is immense, though.

It's rougher around the edges than Automata for sure, but in some ways the plot is better, and I like the characters more. And on its own merits, it was a damn good game for something obviously produced without anywhere close to the resources of a Final Fantasy title.

Now to figure out what to do. I might screw around in FFXIV a bit more, but I might just wait for the expansion. I've thought about RE8 cause it's now 40 bucks, but I might wait to see if it hits 30 on black friday first. I've also thought about replaying Witcher 3 and, of course, Nier Automata.


----------



## Woodland Burl

RE8 is excellent. Though I should add that I'm not a big fan of the earlier REs. Urban zombies just aren't my thing. But I loved the fairytale vibes here. It's not nearly as scary as RE7 is generally regarded, that could be a pro or con depending on your taste.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> They'd have to radically revamp the controls to make them fun, I think. Especially the plane/helicopter stuff was terrible even at the time.



I recall the shooting controls being pretty shitty as well, at least in GTA3. It's a pretty obvious fix though, I'm asuming they'll add the cover system from the newer games along with proper manual aiming.

Update: looks like I guessed right. From the official website:



> Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition debuts new GTAV-inspired modern controls


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Now up to the early October in Persona 5 Royal where the game is beginning to divert hard from the original. 



wankerness said:


> RE: Persona 5 darts, I just saved that stuff till I had an upgrade or two to make it extremely easy, and then you can get 2 baton levels per person easily each round. Only Akechi requires more than two visits. Also you can get lucky and the random person that shows up can be someone else that needs it. I think I only had to play darts like 8 times. If anything, in Persona 5 Royal, you have too MUCH free time. By the last couple months everyone's confidant level was maxed so I had nothing to do other than going to the jazz club for puny stat boosts. I remember on Persona 5 original, I had to reload a save a couple weeks from the end to do things exactly perfectly to get everyone's level maxed before the game ended.



I'm getting that impression, which works out fine. I've maxed out all 5 traits, a good chunk of confidants done with stone's throw away from others, and 2 mill yen in my pocket, so I'll probably do the same and mess about with stuff that wasn't in the original (I noticed the twins are calling to do social stuff now for example). 

I've also already bought all the Dart/Billiard enhancer so I'll probably complain a little less over the minigames. 

I will say that the red alarm mechanic is fun, since it's exploitable to fill the compendium. Whenever the twins start staying the guillotine is about to malfunction, I'll just fuse 2 low level Personas and get an awesome one by accident.


----------



## wankerness

Billiards is a weird one, it's odd that it's not a minigame like darts, it just a thing you chose to do ONLY after reading skill books, and then it makes technical combos more powerful. I think if you choose to do it without having read a new book first it doesn't do anything?


----------



## wankerness

Started up Nier Automata again, I had forgotten how different the combat feels. I don't think I like the way your character hits the target into the air and starts chopping them in mid-air during basic combos, but it's been long enough that I can't remember if that was specific to certain weapons or not. I also forgot how "dodges" worked and was initially like "what the hell, you can't evade in this game?!" since they don't trigger unless something's actively attacking you at the time that you press it. It's kind of cool and feels more like you're doing some kind of precision Matrix shit, but I enjoyed spamming roll everywhere in Nier: Replicant and dodges were as OP there as they are in Dark Souls. I also discovered that if you have it on hard difficulty, lock-on doesn't work. Switched back to normal in a big hurry. Now THAT is a stupid "feature." I'm not messing with a fast-paced 3D action game that uses face buttons with no lockon until I have a button attachment for the PS5 controller! I'm sad that I had so little time with that thing before getting a PS5, it was a really great device. 

Ordered RE8 from Gamefly since it's only 25 there right now, much better than 40 on PSN! I am glad to hear it's less scary. I do NOT do well with jump scares in games and tense atmosphere. I could really appreciate the beginning of RE7, but it was deeply stressful. I'll be happier with a goofy RE4 style action game.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Billiards is a weird one, it's odd that it's not a minigame like darts, it just a thing you chose to do ONLY after reading skill books, and then it makes technical combos more powerful. I think if you choose to do it without having read a new book first it doesn't do anything?



The book availabilities are only triggered when you play the minigames at least once. At least that was what happened with the Darts, DVDs and Retro Games. The Dart set was too expensive when I first played the minigame, but now I'm drowning in cash so it became an easy purchase.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The book availabilities are only triggered when you play the minigames at least once. At least that was what happened with the Darts, DVDs and Retro Games. The Dart set was too expensive when I first played the minigame, but now I'm drowning in cash so it became an easy purchase.



Yeah, looking at a guide it appears that is the case. I must have played billiards once without it then!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I started a new GTA III playthrough on PS4. I had progressed so far on my old save that it made the firefighter side mission and some rampages a pain in the ass to try and complete. 100%ing that game has to be done in a certain sequence cause once the gangs turn hostile towards you it's a pain in the ass to do anything in their areas of control. In Vice City the only gang still hostile towards Tommy after the story ends are the Haitians, but at least their guns never level up. I can't imagine trying to do taxi fares or ambulance rescues in their territory if they had combat shotguns or mini-14s. San Andreas is easy as well, but it's not required to 100% the game (thank god) in order to get the platinum, whereas with 3 and Vice City it is.

EDIT: Never mind, they have already delisted the emulate versions. I don't know if they're removed from the servers yet, but I'm glad I redownloaded them when I did.


----------



## wankerness

Beat the second to last boss in Ashen, and then the next area started infuriating me more than any game I can remember. The AI is SO awful in this game. 8 tries in a row, different positionings attempted, etc and every single time my companion would jump off a cliff and die in the same spot right at the beginning of a huge pitch-black area, making it completely impossible to progress.

Don't build a game off co-op being required if you aren't going to properly program your AI or allow it to respawn after it dies to environmental hazards! Absolutely terrible game if you don't have a friend to play with on the last sections.

Played a few hours of Disco Elysium and did not get into it at all. I'll probably give it a few more hours just cause everyone seems to love this game. But for me, I did not enjoy lots of walking back and forth and listening to tons and tons of dialogue between every mundane task. Maybe it improves later?? I just finished autopsying the hanging corpse and learning about race theory from the racist guy that talks your ear off.


----------



## Xaios

Bought Psychonauts 2 on Steam sale last night. I'm only a couple hours in so far, but I'm certainly enjoying it.

I loved the original and actually tried to go through and replay it before starting on 2, but it doesn't play nice with my computer and the _constant_ stream of CTDs was just too much for me to deal with.


----------



## Ralyks

Cooking Companions... The fuck...


----------



## p0ke

BlackMastodon said:


> I just heard in a podcast that next month is the 20th anniversary of Halo: Combat Evolved. It's crazy that it's already been around that long, I have so many fond memories of playing split screen with friends for days.



Holy crap, can it really be 20 years old already... I guess so, I would've been 12 when it came out. It was the first game I played on LAN, we carried two TV's into our living room, with their backs against each other, then a friend brought his xbox, we borrowed all the controllers from everyone we could think of and then played 4vs4. It was pretty awesome, even though the 1/4 of a 24" TV was tiny af  It's a bit hard to imagine these days, as even my computer monitors are 27".

The co-op campaign was the best part of it though...


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Played a few hours of Disco Elysium and did not get into it at all. I'll probably give it a few more hours just cause everyone seems to love this game. But for me, I did not enjoy lots of walking back and forth and listening to tons and tons of dialogue between every mundane task. Maybe it improves later?? I just finished autopsying the hanging corpse and learning about race theory from the racist guy that talks your ear off.


I think if you got that far and didn't like it, the rest of the game likely also won't be to your taste. I'm on the side of "it's pretty great", but I also recognize that kind of game isn't universally appealing.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I think if you got that far and didn't like it, the rest of the game likely also won't be to your taste. I'm on the side of "it's pretty great", but I also recognize that kind of game isn't universally appealing.



Now that I think about it, I've never actually played a point-and-click game apart from old Lucasarts demos when I was a little kid. And the first chapter of Walking Dead several years ago, which was pretty good, but not good enough that I ever bothered with the rest of the chapters. So maybe the genre isn't for me!


----------



## Ralyks

Guardians of the Galaxy is pretty fun so far. And the soundtrack is one of the best 80s licensed soundtracks this side of Vice City.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Spent two hours at Gamestop picking up a PS5 after the restock. Came with Ghosts and NBA. I'm keeping Ghosts and selling/trading NBA. PS4-PS5 data transfer could've been easier if I was able to wire both consoles together instead of having to send data over my network, even with a wired connection. Now I need a good 4k 120hz frame monitor to game on.


----------



## Choop

Finished Xenogears today -- what a trip! Probably not my favorite square RPG, but it's definitely good, and I love the aesthetic of it all.


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> Now that I think about it, I've never actually played a point-and-click game apart from old Lucasarts demos when I was a little kid. And the first chapter of Walking Dead several years ago, which was pretty good, but not good enough that I ever bothered with the rest of the chapters. So maybe the genre isn't for me!




CRPG's definitely aren't for everyone, and Disco Elysium isn't the game to start. It's in my top 10 of all time, but compared to a lot of games, games like this are still very much niche. Hell, most people don't believe that Fallout used to be to not be first person and as such only act as though Fallout 3 and up exist.

And Walking Dead really isn't the same thing. DE and the like has a lot more involvement when it comes to actually designing a character's build and such.


----------



## wankerness

Went back to ds2, a game with little to no plot/dialogue!! I just started going through on NG+. It’s a lot harder!! Lots of new enemies spawn, and bosses have enough HP that you can’t burst them down in seconds like on NG. The ruin sentinels took a few tries. Even the boss version of pursuer killed me a couple times! And lost sinner scared the crap out of me when two red phantoms spawned at 50%. Ew. NPC summons seem to actively make bosses harder since their damage and resilience don’t make up for the bosses’ massively increased health pools and defense. This is especially a problem if playing as a caster, though I just got a third copy of dark orb so I’ve mostly been fine alternating between that and my brittle silverblack spear. Good thing bonfires are so common here compared to Demon Souls!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished my 100% run of GTA III. I can only imagine how that game with modern controls will work out. There's a couple of missions that will become pathetically easy unless they apply some modern Rockstar design/logic and really restrict how you play them out.


----------



## Choop

Since I am free from JPRG-land for now, I started played Hell Let Loose on PC. So far, it's been an absolute blast (sometimes literally (I got blown up often)). It feels kind of like a marriage of Battlefield and Red Orchestra where all servers are 50v50 players. Will continue playing it for a while and see if it gets stale, but I think it's a really good game. There is some jank with the terrain and controls at times, but it gives me the feeling of being a real part of a unit in WWII combat that no other game quite has.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Choop said:


> Since I am free from JPRG-land for now, I started played Hell Let Loose on PC. So far, it's been an absolute blast (sometimes literally (I got blown up often)). It feels kind of like a marriage of Battlefield and Red Orchestra where all servers are 50v50 players. Will continue playing it for a while and see if it gets stale, but I think it's a really good game. There is some jank with the terrain and controls at times, but it gives me the feeling of being a real part of a unit in WWII combat that no other game quite has.


I didn't like Hell Let Loose, at least on PS5 and after a few games. Felt clunky but I liked the adaptive triggers.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> CRPG's definitely aren't for everyone, and Disco Elysium isn't the game to start. It's in my top 10 of all time, but compared to a lot of games, games like this are still very much niche. Hell, most people don't believe that Fallout used to be to not be first person and as such only act as though Fallout 3 and up exist.
> 
> And Walking Dead really isn't the same thing. DE and the like has a lot more involvement when it comes to actually designing a character's build and such.



I'm old enough I remember reading lists of "top PC games of all time" that had Fallout 2 near the top. This was, of course, well before Fallout 3 came out! I always wanted to play it back in the 90s, but never did, and at this point I'm sure I wouldn't be able to adjust to its dated nature. I have no doubt that it's vastly superior to the subsequent non-NV games.

Yeah, I know Walking Dead's a different kind of thing, but it's still basically point and click and I'm so inexperienced with the genre that it's all I can really think of. I mainly just know about their loose mechanics from playing them at the school Win 3.1 computer lab in grade school in short bursts and on the aforementioned Lucasarts demo discs I used to get with my Star Wars games. There was always good stuff on those things: Afterlife, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, etc. I don't remember if that Indiana Jones game ever was on one or if it even got ported to Mac, but I know I played it a bit at some point.

I've had Grim Fandango for PC on burned cd-roms ever since my friend tried to push it on me in 2001 or so. Never once actually put one in a drive! I think I also bought it for PS4 cause it was like 1.99 and I thought "i should play that game." I probably won't. 

Just beat the Gargoyles in DS2 on NG+. I had to completely change my spell loadout to magic damage instead of dark damage and even then it got really hairy, with 4 of them up at one point and the fight taking about 5 minutes. I guess NG+ is cool for making me notice boss mechanics instead of just circle strafing and R1ing everything to death in 30 seconds, but this particular fight is pretty bad news when you can't kill them faster than they spawn. My vague memory is that they're one of the hardest bosses in the base game, though, so things will probably mostly be easier from here on out. Besides that terrible giant rat boss with the little rats that annihilate you in the first 5 seconds most attempts.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I've had Grim Fandango for PC on burned cd-roms ever since my friend tried to push it on me in 2001 or so. Never once actually put one in a drive! I think I also bought it for PS4 cause it was like 1.99 and I thought "i should play that game." I probably won't.


I wouldn't group this in with the CRPG category. It's much more of it's own thing. If you know you don't like Lucasarts Point-And-Click games, skip it, but otherwise that's a fantastic game once you get past the old-adventure-game jank. I don't replay games often, but I'll replay that one pretty often. And it's worth it every time.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still in P5R and will try to get this fast out to get ready for Strikers. 

90 hours in and now in the first half of palace 6, which is by and large my favorite dungeon in the game. I forgot how long the latter dungeons were but they're so much fun. It's also a little easier to get through than vanilla due to more than just 1 battle music (Take Over is great, though I still love Last Surprise), and the quality of life improvements I didn't initially notice like gun ammo and the free DLC Personas. 

Joker's now at Lv60 and most confidants are either maxed (including Strength) or either one or 2 stars away (Priestess, Death, Star, Devil, Tower, Councillor, Justice) with a few to work on (namely Hermit, Hanged and Empress). I really wanted to get Strength out of the way as early as possible since their fusion requirements are (still) a pain in the ass, but I also noticed the fusions are a lot more intuitive (you don't have to have the Personas in your inventory to do the advanced fusions). And at these levels and 3.5 million yen to throw around, Persona Pokemon gets interesting and all the good game breakers are a stone's throw away. EG: the new Trumpeter has some pretty sweet tricks. 

Speaking of the DLC Personas aka the ones from previous games; they're pretty fun, though the ridiculously high levels made parts of the early game trival. I used a Lv65 Thanatos right off the bat (just to raise the Death confidant early), which made the first palace a breeze (in addition to the new gun ammo perks). Experimenting with Kaguya and Izanagi no Okami next since they show some promise as heavy hitters.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Still in P5R and will try to get this fast out to get ready for Strikers.
> 
> 90 hours in and now in the first half of palace 6, which is by and large my favorite dungeon in the game. I forgot how long the latter dungeons were but they're so much fun. It's also a little easier to get through than vanilla due to more than just 1 battle music (Take Over is great, though I still love Last Surprise), and the quality of life improvements I didn't initially notice like gun ammo and the free DLC Personas.
> 
> Joker's now at Lv60 and most confidants are either maxed (including Strength) or either one or 2 stars away (Priestess, Death, Star, Devil, Tower, Councillor, Justice) with a few to work on (namely Hermit, Hanged and Empress). I really wanted to get Strength out of the way as early as possible since their fusion requirements are (still) a pain in the ass, but I also noticed the fusions are a lot more intuitive (you don't have to have the Personas in your inventory to do the advanced fusions). And at these levels and 3.5 million yen to throw around, Persona Pokemon gets interesting and all the good game breakers are a stone's throw away. EG: the new Trumpeter has some pretty sweet tricks.
> 
> Speaking of the DLC Personas aka the ones from previous games; they're pretty fun, though the ridiculously high levels made parts of the early game trival. I used a Lv65 Thanatos right off the bat (just to raise the Death confidant early), which made the first palace a breeze (in addition to the new gun ammo perks). Experimenting with Kaguya and Izanagi no Okami next since they show some promise as heavy hitters.



Kaguya is stupid overpowered if you do fusions to give it the right absorbs and stuff and only keep shining arrows as an attack. It will destroy practically everything in the game. I think I used that and the physical attack one with a similar multi-hit attack and giant defense (Yoshitsune) most of the time towards the end to breeze through things. Oh, and then I had Maria as a get out of jail free card with the healing.

I didn't use any personas that were higher than my level until closer to the end of the game, the game is already rendered pretty easy by the massive buff to guns. I almost never used them in the original version cause their damage was so miserable that it just wasn't worth it except to knock down things.

EDIT: Been playing a bunch more Dark Souls 2. I really love this game, even if it's jankier than the other two. It's also easier when I have 99 human effigies left over from my first playthrough and thus never have to worry about the max health decrease from dying repeatedly. Cleared through the tower and the forest, then realized I was doing things out of order and went back to Heide's tower and easily took out those two bosses via circle strafing without getting hit. Slowly putzed through No-Man's Wharf, which is an endurance test (there's a LOT of enemies here and no checkpoint in the middle other than opening the shortcut), and then killed that boss without getting hit. Then went back to where I had been, Doors of Pharos, and tried the Royal Rat Vanguard. Weirdly, the part that killed me over and over as a melee build (the initial rush of the five rats that can stack the insta-kill debuff on you) was a joke, they all died instantly to darkstorm, but the boss itself massacred me. I guess caster builds don't do well against fast, huge melee enemies that don't allow you to put distance between yourself and it, and require a ton of strength and a stable greatshield to block. Guess I need to up my rolling game and slowly chip away at him! 

The worst thing so far was the shaded woods zone with all the invisible melee dudes. This wasn't bad as melee on NG, but you can't lock onto them and thus can't hit them with spells without a TON of luck so it ended up being extremely frustrating and slow as a caster. It didn't help that the forest afterwards has those lion guys that are super-resistant to magic, too.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Played Remnant on the PS headset with the 3D audio and it was nifty. Paired with haptic feedback and triggers I think it's an interesting experience that seems more of a linear progression than with VR


----------



## CanserDYI

Playing Bioshock: Infinite on my kids switch....not bad. Really enjoying it actually.


----------



## TedEH

CanserDYI said:


> Playing Bioshock: Infinite on my kids switch....not bad. Really enjoying it actually.


I remember that one getting torn apart by FPS and Bioshock die-hards, but the game was fine, honestly. I prefer it over 2.


----------



## wankerness

I think that game was generally positively received at the time, people just were disappointed it didn’t blow their minds like the first one. Issues are more often with things like the ludicrous volume of gore (after it was pushed really hard towards the mainstream with an emphasis on the disney princess style companion) or the comically misguided subplot that “both sides”s the white supremacists and the “freedom fighters” in some icky ways.

I played through it on both pc on release and ps4 a couple years ago and still generally think it holds up as an impressively designed shooter with a stupid plot. I never thought the first was all that great so it wasn’t a letdown to me! I think I like 2 and 3 more than 1 tbph.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> disappointed it didn’t blow their minds like the first one


IMO any time someone set the expectation of "this will blow my mind", they're setting themselves up to be disappointed. It's really unfortunate that people like to do this with sequels.



wankerness said:


> stupid plot


In some fairness, most games have stupid plots. Bad takes, poor analogies, unfair or biased framing, plot holes, ridiculous caricatures, historical inaccuracy, etc etc etc. I mean.... that's basically entertainment in a nutshell.  I didn't find that one game particularly egregious.

I remember the first one being a pretty big step forward in terms of presentation for shooters at the time. In retrospect, it's not as impressive as a lot of what came after, but I can appreciate that it felt novel at the time.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> In some fairness, most games have stupid plots. Bad takes, poor analogies, unfair or biased framing, plot holes, ridiculous caricatures, historical inaccuracy, etc etc etc. I mean.... that's basically entertainment in a nutshell.  I didn't find that one game particularly egregious.
> 
> I remember the first one being a pretty big step forward in terms of presentation for shooters at the time. In retrospect, it's not as impressive as a lot of what came after, but I can appreciate that it felt novel at the time.



That game's plot got a hell of a lot more scrutiny than most cause it was pushing the plot angle so hard. Bioshock had gotten a reputation as some kind of super-intelligent shooter based on the stupid "would you kindly" twist and all the libertarian criticism from the first one, and Infinity really went into outer space pushing crazy plot developments on the player. Yes, the presentation is excellent and I think the look of the city is incredible, but it bit off a lot more than it could chew.

With something from the same era like Far Cry 3 or something, very few people were expecting anything other than stupidity, hence why those games mostly just got a sentence or two dismissing their plots and Bioshock Infinite got entire essays about how stupid it was.

Again, I don't really have a problem with it cause I never thought Bioshock was anything that special. My biggest problem with that game was the annoying integration of music with gameplay where it sounds like a piano gets dropped on the ground every time you kill something.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Now that I have the hardware, I'm finally playing RDR2, RE2R and RE3R all maxed out. Then I want to replay the entire Assassins Creed series and play all the new ones too. Also interested in Outer Wilds DLC and Subnautica, apparently people really like that game.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> My biggest problem with that game was the annoying integration of music with gameplay where it sounds like a piano gets dropped on the ground every time you kill something.


I never noticed this and now I want to replay the game with this in mind. 

I think the key takeaway is that framing and expectations have a huge impact on how people take in a game. Whatever gets the hype also gets the scrutiny.

I'm guilty of it myself. If someone sells a game to me as "wow, look how deep a take on mental health this is" or some other praise about "realism" or "depth" or claims to truly represent some part of the human experience, part of me is going to go "oh really?" and it's going to be hard for me to go in without trying to poke holes in that. I'm just an ass that way. And it can ruin a game that's otherwise fine.

It happened when playing Celeste, as an example. It's a perfectly good game, mechanically. Maybe even a Very Good(tm) game. But so much focus and praise was heaped on the narrative value of the characters that I couldn't not focus on that. And in focusing on that element, I found the characters insufferable. If I had been primed to focus on the mechanics of the game instead of the characters maybe I wouldn't have cared. I find the same happens with Undertale - it's a good game mechanically that does some clever stuff, but the characters feel like they're written by someone with a high-school level understanding of what character depth is. But to a lot of people, positivity and a good message / "vibes" = "good writing", and I won't tell them they're wrong to have their own criteria to judge a story, but that's just not how I take in media.


----------



## wankerness

AwakenTheSkies said:


> Now that I have the hardware, I'm finally playing RDR2, RE2R and RE3R all maxed out. Then I want to replay the entire Assassins Creed series and play all the new ones too. Also interested in Outer Wilds DLC and Subnautica, apparently people really like that game.



What system do you have? Subnautica is pretty janky still on PS5 with a lot of pop-in, etc. Outer Wilds is also pretty bad on console in my limited experience (haven't tried that one on PS5, but did on PS4 pro). If you have a powerful PC you'll probably have a better time. I dunno if the RE games are available on PC!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

saw the Elden Ring gameplay preview and I'm hyped. literally just dark souls but more open world


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

wankerness said:


> What system do you have? Subnautica is pretty janky still on PS5 with a lot of pop-in, etc. Outer Wilds is also pretty bad on console in my limited experience (haven't tried that one on PS5, but did on PS4 pro). If you have a powerful PC you'll probably have a better time. I dunno if the RE games are available on PC!



It's a PC. Red Devil RX 6700 XT + Ryzen 5 5600X + 32GB DDR4 3200MHz, I just recently got it. I played through Outer Wilds on my older PC which was a R9 380 2GB + i3 8100 and it was okay, but I couldn't crank any of the graphics settings. The DLC came out just in time for my new PC. RE2 and RE3 Remakes are on Steam. I'm excited for Subnautica, to me it's a completely new game to discover, I'm just waiting for a sale. I'm pretty hyped for the GTA Trilogy coming out Nov 11 as well, I know I shouldn't buy them at full price but those games were my childhood so I'm probably going to buy them as soon as they come out..


----------



## Mathemagician

Re: Bioshock I’d echo the sentiment on expectations for sequels. It’s always going to be easiest for a “first” game in a series to break expectations because no matter how positive reviews are the player has no expectations. You go into it hoping you have a good time and end up impressed. Then they just assume the next game will “blow their mind” and get upset when it’s “just” a great game. 

For example - Cyber Punk had so much hype it was never going to live up to, simply because fans of the studio WANTED it to change their lives. Prior games were good, so this one would be magic right? 

I’ve never played it, but I’m sure I’d enjoy the story on easy mode (or whatever) once for ~$40.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> change their lives


I want to say I know that's hyperbolic, but at the same time, I know for some people it isn't. And that's not fantastic.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Re: Bioshock I’d echo the sentiment on expectations for sequels. It’s always going to be easiest for a “first” game in a series to break expectations because no matter how positive reviews are the player has no expectations. You go into it hoping you have a good time and end up impressed. Then they just assume the next game will “blow their mind” and get upset when it’s “just” a great game.
> 
> For example - Cyber Punk had so much hype it was never going to live up to, simply because fans of the studio WANTED it to change their lives. Prior games were good, so this one would be magic right?
> 
> I’ve never played it, but I’m sure I’d enjoy the story on easy mode (or whatever) once for ~$40.



Cyberpunk and Bioshock Infinite are not comparable, IMO, cause one arrived as a super-buggy, nigh-unplayable mess on half the consoles it was designed for and had to be patched a ton and STILL isn't "ready" on last gen, while Bioshock Infinite actually was stable on launch and didn't have to be patched at all that I remember. It was basically just people didn't like the plot and thought it was a letdown compared to the first.

Been playing more Dark Souls 2, burned through several more zones, just got through the miserable "the gutter" and hit the super-oppressive "black gulch." On the other progression path, I got to Iron Keep, and then sidetracked to do this underground stuff after finding the ladder guy. I really don't like those two dark, poison-statue zones! At least things are going one hell of a lot more smoothly than the first time I played this game. I haven't had to permanently clear any zone of monsters yet, while I did that a few times on NG to make things less stressful.


----------



## TedEH

I still want to give Cyberpunk a try at some point. One day it'll go on some kind of deep sale, and I'll cave and it'll probably be fine.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I still want to give Cyberpunk a try at some point. One day it'll go on some kind of deep sale, and I'll cave and it'll probably be fine.



Yeah, I'm holding out for either $20 or some kind of big DLC to come out that gets rave reviews, in which case I'll go up to 30 or 40. It just doesn't sound like in the current state it's in I'd get much out of it, but I'd like to at least experience the world. The gameplay systems all just don't sound fun to me, though. Just not my kind of game, I don't think.


----------



## Ralyks

Cyberpunk worked mostly fine for me on PS5. I'm waiting for the native PS5 version to do another playthrough.


----------



## StevenC

Part of me deep inside feels warm every time Cyberpunk is mentioned in a negative way.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Part of me deep inside feels warm every time Cyberpunk is mentioned in a negative way.



You know, we had our little argument about this a while back. But in their hubris, CD Projekt Red tried to promise the biggest game in the world at the expense of their employees wellbeing, only to crash and burn with an incomplete product on launch... we're on the same side.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Cyberpunk and Bioshock Infinite are not comparable, IMO, cause one arrived as a super-buggy, nigh-unplayable mess on half the consoles it was designed for and had to be patched a ton and STILL isn't "ready" on last gen, while Bioshock Infinite actually was stable on launch and didn't have to be patched at all that I remember. It was basically just people didn't like the plot and thought it was a letdown compared to the first.
> 
> Been playing more Dark Souls 2, burned through several more zones, just got through the miserable "the gutter" and hit the super-oppressive "black gulch." On the other progression path, I got to Iron Keep, and then sidetracked to do this underground stuff after finding the ladder guy. I really don't like those two dark, poison-statue zones! At least things are going one hell of a lot more smoothly than the first time I played this game. I haven't had to permanently clear any zone of monsters yet, while I did that a few times on NG to make things less stressful.



(DS2 Spoiler) 

Gutter has multiple paths/extra bonfires. Just FYI. 



Ralyks said:


> Cyberpunk worked mostly fine for me on PS5. I'm waiting for the native PS5 version to do another playthrough.



This is what I’m waiting for a Native PS5 update. And ideally some juicy DLC too. Gimme dat content I’ll never finish!


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> (DS2 Spoiler)
> 
> Gutter has multiple paths/extra bonfires. Just FYI.



Gutter sucks. I definitely missed the first bonfire in it cause if you fall off the wrong ledge you can't get back up to it, and then I looked around for items for a bit but didn't remember anything really important being in there so I just got out as fast as possible. Kind of the same deal with black gulch, I couldn't remember what the point is of those giants under the level that you have to fall down to so I just killed everything on the upper level and the boss as quickly and carefully as possible and got out!

Iron Keep was the hardest zone yet as a caster, those Alonne knights are EVERYWHERE and will absolutely get in your face and hit faster than you can cast, so you have to either snipe them with arrows or burn them down as they're running out you. They really weren't that bad on NG as a shield/1h mace build. I died a few times, and then just resorted to every time going through that secret passage up behind the grate where you can snipe out the whole big upper level with arrows with no chance of reprisal. Tedious, but safe! I had to look up the location of the bonfire closest to old iron king, that ladder was hard to see. He killed me a couple times due to the huge difference in his possible attack patterns and the fact you instantly die if you lose track of your position and roll into the lava!

One of the hardest parts of this game is figuring out where to go next. The progression's wonky, even on a repeat playthrough (partly cause I used a lot of walkthroughs on playthrough 1 cause I was so scared of the game, and thus didn't have to figure anything out that time and thus didn't memorize it very well). On NG I killed that npc that sells miracles without knowing what I was doing, and I guess she dropped the key to turn the gate in the basement in Majula. I left her alive this time and didn't realize you had to talk to her till she moves back to Majula, and then she opens that gate for you herself! But, that was nothing compared to trying to figure out where to go after getting the 4 great souls. I knew that door in shaded woods went to DLC, but I did not remember at all that it also went to Drangleic Castle, and that it also just automatically unlocks once you have 4 great souls but is locked beforehand. So, I had to look up where to go next. Ah well.

Drangleic was also horrible as a caster, I had to rush through that big room with all the statues that come alive and the ruin sentinels locked behind the doors cause killing any of them is vastly more dangerous and slow than it was just chunking them all with a 2H mace. Going up the stairs, etc and then the twin dragonslayer boss was all easy, though. Can't wait to try the PVP boss; I'll probably have to do it offline like on playthrough 1. Since I did so much grinding on playthrough 1 I'm a very high soul level (230) and I've been on online mode for all of NG+ so far and have gotten invaded a grand total of once, by some idiot who did nothing other than try to stab me with that spear that does equipment damage that was easily killed just by spamming dark orb at him for a while since he was so bad at rolling and trying so hard to break my equipment rather than just kill me. 

Anyway, I finally watched that Elden Ring gameplay. I'm kind of ambivalent. I mean, the gameplay/enemies look incredible and I absolutely want more DS3, but the open world thing does NOT appeal to me with this particular subgenre. A big part of the appeal of the DS/BB games for me is that there's so little filler and it's so relentless. Having to run through empty fields between encounters doesn't sound appealing at this point, even though I actually like some newer Ubisoft games. I guess with those you can save anywhere and they autosave all the time, while this game clearly has bonfire equivalents and thus if you go exploring for a while and then get killed it looks like you'd be doing a LOT of travel again to get where you were. 

I guess it also just sort of looked in that preview like it was pretty standard DS3 areas and bosses but spread out. The spell effects, etc looked crazy. I'm definitely going to preorder it and play the crap out of it, but I guess the open world thing itself doesn't excite me in this particular case.


----------



## Mathemagician

I think I confused the gutter and black gulch. I’m talking about the one with poison statues along the wall and a giant chasm on the right you can easily roll off before fighting the meaty pile of bodies at the end. 

(Spoilies)
That place has secret bonfires. And I believe the area you mentioned below the path is for shortcuts.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I think I confused the gutter and black gulch. I’m talking about the one with poison statues along the wall and a giant chasm on the right you can easily roll off before fighting the meaty pile of bodies at the end.
> 
> (Spoilies)
> That place has secret bonfires. And I believe the area you mentioned below the path is for shortcuts.



Yeah, that's black gulch. I'd forgotten The Gutter had poison statues, but it definitely does in a few places. Black Gulch just has a zillion of them. I did find the bonfire close to the boss entrance, but yeah, I think there was at least one area you had to get to by falling off the ledge back by where the worms came out. I remember fighting two giants in one room via running into a safe area and sniping them with poison arrows for a long time on NG. I'll do that again eventually, I just think maybe there was no point to that area until you get to Vendrick and thus need all those giant souls from the memories and assorted giants to lower his defense or whatever the mechanic was. They're still all in my inventory from NG, so I don't know if I even need to do that a second time.

The Gutter is the really dark, crappy place with the wooden structures and the breakaway floors. It's the closest equivalent this game has to the valley of defilement/blighttown.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Started playing Legion TD 2 last night and it's still as fun as I remember during the Warcraft 3 days. Bee. Way too long since I've played a good tower defence, especially one that isn't on mobile.


----------



## Mathemagician

So this Lost Ark pc game is looking good. It’s checking a lot of boxes for me.


----------



## wankerness

DS2 Executioner's Chariot is SERIOUS bullshit on NG+ as a caster. I've gotten killed over 15 times on this already, that's more than any boss on NG except maybe Fume Knight. This was after just easily 1-shotting both bosses in Drangleic Castle. The skeletons are way too resilient and they don't get very affected by the chariot running them over, so I'm constantly getting destroyed by them since they get resurrected almost instantly if I don't manage to kill the Necro fast enough. If I manage to get to the necromancer and kill him, the skeletons still have most of their health due to the chariot not doing much damage to them and then they still manage to get me in the corner and destroy me well before the chariot can come around again.

Then on the rare occasions I kill the first necro/skeles, there's FIVE skeletons that all swarm you as soon as you start running to the next. All skeles and casters take 3+ hits each and the skeles attack way too fast to deal with them unless you're far away, and if you use a 1H melee weapon they can parry and riposte you, which will also get you run over by the chariot since you're frozen in place. It's completely insane. I've gotten to P2 once, where I was out of Estus, chipped him down to 50% and then got hit with breath once and died (i only have 5 at the boss since the trash and especially the havel clone right before him were insane). I'm actually save scumming this too, since on NG+ you have to deal with FOUR red phantoms on each runback. It's bizarre that this is by far the hardest part of the game so far, since I don't remember it being hard at all on NG (and the trash not being red phantoms there certainly helped with runs back). I think the skeletons died instantly from the chariot running over, plus I was like 1-shotting them with a mace with a strength build. Just goes to show how a little HP scaling can make a huge difference in strategy/difficulty! I might just give up since you don't get anything important from beating it.


----------



## ElRay

Neptune's Pride has sucked-up far too much of my time lately. Picture Olde School Table-Top Diplomacy (with the behind the scenes alliances/treachery) + Resource/Research Management all happening realtime over the course of days to weeks. It's the only game I've gotten up early for to launch a sneak attack, knowing that an opponent checks-in "before breakfast" and "before bedtime" and pretty much ignores the game between those times.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of Metroid Prime 3.



Spoiler



Good game, but didn't quite make the same impression that the first Prime did. I've heard a lot of people say they like 1 and 3 more than 2, but I think 1 and 2 rank higher for me. My disc was scratched so I played in Dolphin instead. While it works really well with some enhancements that way, there's some jank that comes with it. Anti-aliasing breaks outlines, and higher resolutions sometimes make the scan visor go wonky, so a lot of the time I shut those things off and played it vanilla.

The good:
- I like the pointer controls, whether it's a real wii controller or a mouse.
- Some of the new powers are pretty good.
- The "hypermode" thing feels good to use.
- The visuals still stand up, especially when you upscale with Dolphin.

The bad:
- The game overstayed its welcome, like most Prime games tend to - mostly because of the late-game fetch quest. At several points I thought "alright, cool, I think the endgame is coming, and I'm satisfied with how this went" to discover there was a lot more backtracking to do. The game also doesn't tell you that you don't _need_ all the end-game power cell thingies, so I got all of them.
- Hypermode, while fun, felt kinda half-baked, and it replaced a lot of series staples. 
- Waggly wii controller stuff. Dolphin didn't handle this stuff very well either.
- Cheesy side characters.
- Lots of weird spoken dialogue.
- Doesn't have that lonely Metroid vibe.
- No escape sequence at the end.
- The end game planet is called Phaaze. What a terrible name. If they had spun it as a bit of a joke, like a character went "yeah, it's on the nose, but I didn't pick the name" or something, I could live with it, but it was played strait, and just felt like the most lazy generic on-the-nose sci-fi name.

I'm glad I played it, but I'm not sad that it's over. If I feel the urge to replay one of the Prime games, I'll probably just go back to the first one.


----------



## wankerness

Got to Vendrick and the Dragon Aerie in DS2, had to take a break. Started up RE8, got to the first save point and quit. I'm really not digging it so far, but I assume things will improve as I get out of deserted villages and don't have to deal with garbage weapons vs hordes of werewolves!


----------



## StevenC

ElRay said:


> Neptune's Pride has sucked-up far too much of my time lately. Picture Olde School Table-Top Diplomacy (with the behind the scenes alliances/treachery) + Resource/Research Management all happening realtime over the course of days to weeks. It's the only game I've gotten up early for to launch a sneak attack, knowing that an opponent checks-in "before breakfast" and "before bedtime" and pretty much ignores the game between those times.


This is the most obsessed I've ever been with a game and it consumed my whole life for like a month in university. But I haven't been able to convince people to play again and even then have been thinking about it non stop.


----------



## mmr007

Aliens Fireteam Elite....sure is repetitive though and you cannot play the game without suffering a 20GB software update download each login.


----------



## ElRay

StevenC said:


> This is the most obsessed I've ever been with a game and it consumed my whole life for like a month in university. But I haven't been able to convince people to play again and even then have been thinking about it non stop.


I'm waiting for a turn-based game to start: https://np.ironhelmet.com/game/6156257587888128 There's 3 of 6 players in it now. Turn-based are definitely easier to avoid becoming all-consuming. It's odd when things get tense for everybody in the game - I had one game that started as one turn (8-hours) per IRL-day and then we completed three Game-days in one IRL-evening.


----------



## wankerness

I didn't realize the DS2 DLC was specifically designed to punish casters, with most enemies and bosses being highly magic-resistant. Glad I read that before trying it out. Guess it's time to respec! Thank god this isn't like Demon's Souls/DS1 where you can't respec.

Tried Vendrick for a bit, he 1-shot me when I was 100% health after I hit him a few times. Whoops. Guess I'll try him again once I'm back to being a beefy strength build with tons of armor.

I guess I forgot that this game's Bonfire Ascetics mechanic stacks with NG+ levels, so some of the stuff that was giving me trouble was stuff I'd used a bonfire ascetic on in NG when I was going around trying to get some of the NG+ rings without actually playing NG+. Thus making the chariot boss and Vendrick, among others that I didn't have trouble with, equivalent to NG++ instead of NG+ like most of the content. I love how complicated this game is, but kind of hate it too. I had to look up how to actually unlock the DLC today since I had no memory; all three of them have keys in ludicrously obscure locations that I don't see anyone ever happening upon by accident.

Been playing Nier Automata here and there; it's weird how drab it feels to me. I think that game benefitted from being one of the first games I played on the system. I still utterly love the soundtrack and the character/enemy design, but the world seems kind of empty and ugly, and I really don't like the way lock-on works compared to Nier Replicant. I dunno. Maybe I need to play more to get back fully invested in it again.


----------



## rokket2005

I started up Crosscode the other night, going to try to get through it before SMT V gets here.
So far it's pretty cool. I think whoever did the music used the same midi instruments that Mitsuda did on Chrono Trigger. The combat feels pretty good, melee attacking feels like Hawks moveset from Seiken Densetsu 3, the ball throwing is similar to something else too but I can't think of what at the moment. I'm only through the first real dungeon so far but some of the puzzles are kind of challenging already, a little Zelda-ish even. The characters and story so far are likeable enough, but the circuit system, basically a ffx sphere grid, is what's really got me hooked so far.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Getting ready to preload Battlefield 2042 on my PS5 tonight - taking Friday off when it's out


----------



## chopeth

DS2


----------



## Ralyks

Finally opened Back 4 Blood after having it for a week sealed. Yup, it's a Left 4 Dead-ass Left 4 Dead game. It's fun so far, and controls great, but I feel like I'm going to be done with it quickly if I don't have any friends that also get it.


----------



## TedEH

I started up Forza Horizon 5 because I've got some friends who worked on it. Probably won't stick with it though - racing games aren't my jam, and games that are 90% HYPE DIALOGUE while you're playing aren't really my jam either. Seems to be pretty much what I was expecting though. Looooooooooong load times though - maybe because I installed on a spinning drive 'cause the game is yuuuuge.

In more "I'm actually going to play this" news, I started up Spirit Tracks, on my mission to eventually play every Zelda game. Not very far in, but I have a feeling it'll be better than Phantom Hourglass. That doesn't say much though, I find these DS titles don't quite have the hooks of the other more proper Zelda games.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Finally opened Back 4 Blood after having it for a week sealed. Yup, it's a Left 4 Dead-ass Left 4 Dead game. It's fun so far, and controls great, but I feel like I'm going to be done with it quickly if I don't have any friends that also get it.



The big news story was that after just a few days L4D2 had more players than B4B. I guess a lot of people must have tried it out and thought "this reminds me of L4D2 only worse" and gone back to that one. I've seen a lot of complaints about the card thing.


----------



## Jarmake

Just started Dark Souls 3. Killed the crystal lizard and Iundex Gundyr too, then had to quit. There's a freaking dragon... Damn.


----------



## wankerness

The beginning of DS3 annihilated me, I was NOT able to adjust to the huge increase in speed from DS1/2 for a while. I got killed tons of times in the first major zone, I couldn't deal with things like the knight with the greatshield. After playing through it a couple times I think it's the easiest of the three games. But man, it took some time to adjust and it sure didn't seem like the easiest game that first playthrough.

I finally grinded out all the sunlight medals on ds2, so now I will have the platinum as soon as I start playthrough 3 and make it to drangleic to buy the last spells. I will probably try doing some of the DLC on playthrough 2 first. I did some cheap grinding last night with ascetics on the memory of jeigh (it's over 500k souls per ~3 minute run, and you get an ascetic every time, so you can do it forever) to get about 15 more levels so I can try using the crypt greatsword. Probably need to grind out some more vitality first, though, to be able to equip it without fatrolling.


----------



## rokket2005

I've been avoiding all of the Elden Ring stuff until the game was actually close to release but I watched Iron Pineapple's vid on it today and it looks pretty sweet. A souls game with actual jumping? Plus power stancing is back from DS2. Whoever said dual wielding greatswords in ds2 sucked can eat me, power stance those bitches and murder. Plus a goat/horse thing that can double jump? I'll have to decide if I want to get it on pc or ps5 though, hopefully the pc version isn't a fucking mess that the community needs to fix before it's playable.


----------



## wankerness

rokket2005 said:


> I've been avoiding all of the Elden Ring stuff until the game was actually close to release but I watched Iron Pineapple's vid on it today and it looks pretty sweet. A souls game with actual jumping? Plus power stancing is back from DS2. Whoever said dual wielding greatswords in ds2 sucked can eat me, power stance those bitches and murder. Plus a goat/horse thing that can double jump? I'll have to decide if I want to get it on pc or ps5 though, hopefully the pc version isn't a fucking mess that the community needs to fix before it's playable.



I watched that vid too, it lays all my fears about bland open worlds to rest completely. I like that you can’t be invaded unless you’re in co-op mode too.

I like how they said this would be the easiest soulsborne but that vet there was like “this boss was really hard and killed me a lot, I hope that isn’t intended as the first true boss!!”


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Well it looks like I won't be getting the GTA Trilogy after all. I saw same gameplay and didn't like what I saw. Makes me think though, I could try to get my hands on a PS2 and an original copy of San Andreas. That could be cool.

I bought Outer Wilds DLC yesterday. It was a big change of pace. I was becoming a bit brain dead from playing Red Dead Redemption 2, where you can autopilot it without putting too much thought into the game. But this brought me back into the puzzles.


----------



## p0ke

I'm still playing Jedi Fallen Order - haven't gotten much time in because my wife's been sleeping on the sofa with some reality tv crap in the background every goddamned evening instead of going to bed  
I really like the exploration part of it, returning to places with new abilities is great. Lightsaber duels are not fun at all though, maybe I'm just really bad at it  I always end up using the same strategy - slow down the enemy, hit as hard as possible once or twice, wait for the force to replenish, repeat. Maybe get a couple of hits in when dodging their unblockable attacks, but usually I'm too far away after jumping.


----------



## wankerness

Those GTA remasters look OK from a graphics/gameplay perspective, but man, the missing songs!! Like, here's a list of just what Vice City is losing:

Emotion 98.3
“Wow” - Kate Bush
“Missing You” - Jon Waite

Fever 105
“Wanna Be Startin Something” - Michael Jackson

Flash FM
“Billie Jean” - Michael Jackson
“Steppin Out” - Joe Jackson
“One Thing Leads to Another” - The Fixx
“Running With the Night” - Lionel Ritchie

Radio Espantoso
“A Gozar Con Mi Combo” - Cachao
“Anunga Nunga” - Irakere

V-Rock
“Cum On Feel The Noize” - Quiet Riot
“She Sells Sanctuary” - The Cult
“Bark at the Moon” - Ozzy Osbourne
“Working for the Weekend” - Loverboy
“God Blessed Video” - Alcatrazz

Wave 103
“Cars” - Gary Numan
“Poison Arrow” - ABC
“Obsession” - Animotion

Wildstyle
“Pump Me Up” - Trouble Funk
“Rockit” - Herbie Hancock
“Looking for the Perfect Beat” - Afrika Bambataa
“Get It Girl” - 2 Live Crew
“The Smurf” - Tyrone Brunson

I didn't play this game a LOT, but I played it a bunch - Billie Jean, Cars and Steppin Out were like, the defining songs of the game for me. Ah well. I probably wasn't going to buy this anyway.

SA isn't missing much of anything, though I never played that game so maybe others would feel differently.

"Loopzilla" - George Clinton
Hot Pants - I'm Coming, I'm Coming, I'm Coming - Bobby Byrd
Rock Me Again and Again - Lyn Collins
Soul Power 74 - Maceo & the Macks
I Know You Got Soul - Bobby Byrd


----------



## profwoot

p0ke said:


> I'm still playing Jedi Fallen Order - haven't gotten much time in because my wife's been sleeping on the sofa with some reality tv crap in the background every goddamned evening instead of going to bed
> I really like the exploration part of it, returning to places with new abilities is great. Lightsaber duels are not fun at all though, maybe I'm just really bad at it  I always end up using the same strategy - slow down the enemy, hit as hard as possible once or twice, wait for the force to replenish, repeat. Maybe get a couple of hits in when dodging their unblockable attacks, but usually I'm too far away after jumping.



This is interesting to hear. previously in the thread i described how i hated the first 30 minutes of this game and this makes me want to give it another shot. Also a shame to hear the fighting doesn't get better than my initial impression after the few in the intro.


----------



## TedEH

There's definitely more than one viable strategy in that one. I got through the game with not too much problem, and almost never used the slow down in combat. It's not an "easy" game, but it's not impenetrable.


----------



## Werecow

I never used slow down in Fallen Order either. Parrying is fun and super effective in it. Just don't try to parry the unblockable attacks obviously.


----------



## Mathemagician

Almost all DS2 is to punish casters. I didn’t play at launch when throwing bolts of lightning was viable, before they allegedly nerfed casting. So I didn’t even bother with casting in DS2.


----------



## p0ke

Werecow said:


> I never used slow down in Fallen Order either. Parrying is fun and super effective in it. Just don't try to parry the unblockable attacks obviously.



Sure, I'm just always super bad at parrying in all games. But that's definitely the obvious way to go, better just use slow when you need some space to take a stim etc.



profwoot said:


> This is interesting to hear. previously in the thread i described how i hated the first 30 minutes of this game and this makes me want to give it another shot. Also a shame to hear the fighting doesn't get better than my initial impression after the few in the intro.



It definitely got a lot better after the introduction. Regarding the fighting, I think it's all good apart from the times when you fight another lightsaber wielding enemy. But like I said, it's probably mostly because I suck at it


----------



## Carrion Rocket

wankerness said:


> Those GTA remasters look OK from a graphics/gameplay perspective, but man, the missing songs!!



Unless they renewed some rights, San Andreas used to be missing more songs when they re-released it a while back. Even the emulated PS2 versions had a patch to remove them.

I was watching some livestreams from some Australians and I couldn't get past the look of them. They just look like modded versions of the original PC ports made to run on a mobile device. And a lot of people have started to call Rockstar out on it after the whole cease-and-desist and dmca crusade they've been on recently.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Almost all DS2 is to punish casters. I didn’t play at launch when throwing bolts of lightning was viable, before they allegedly nerfed casting. So I didn’t even bother with casting in DS2.



Nah, casting is really, really overpowered in most of the base game, at least if you're a sorcerer or especially hexer. They nerfed the crap out of lightning only. Almost every enemy and especially invader is trivialized if you just get a sunset staff and attune a bunch of dark orbs. Maybe you're getting confused with DS3, where they nerfed EVERYTHING, probably partly in response to this game. I just blew through the first whole chunk of the game again last night on NG++ as a hexer (about 15 bosses and 10 zones? Beginning of the game through all four great souls to drangleic, skipping a couple optional things like the wharf and the rat areas) and died about three times and only got out melee weapons for smashing statues or dealing with trivial enemies like exploding hollows. I did use a lot of arrows, though, especially in iron keep, which just has a ludicrous amount of nasty enemies and sniping them from far away is by far the safest option - dark orb's range is pretty puny in comparison to a bow.

On NG+ I got hung up on a few bosses that were not good with pure dark orb spam - one was Executioner's Chariot (I read that Yearn works wonders on the skeletons, as soon as I attuned that it became a joke), another was the royal rat vanguard where you fight a GIANT swarm of rats (I attuned all the aoe fire spells and just ran around the room spamming them till everything died). But, pretty much everything else was fine. The bosses in the DLC all have extremely high magic resistance compared to everything in the base game is why casting is so non-viable, as do a bunch of the trash mobs. Like, my dark orb normally hits for ~500, but on those awful floaty twirly fire guys in brume tower, it was hitting for ~50.

I don't know if casting is very viable at low levels, on NG I played as a quality build (which was a LOT harder than as a caster, mainly thanks to invaders all being a pain in the ass if you didn't resort to great club pancake chains). Even on NG+ it took some time to get up to 30/30 faith/int and to collect more copies of dark orb before I could really just spam it all the time and be super effective. I also definitely needed to keep the repair spell attuned and I'd occasionally use herbs to get casts back, since if you're depending primarily on dark orbs you'll regularly be going through over 100 of them between bonfires and each copy of it only gives you like 25 of them. But, yeah, it's definitely a lot easier than melee and does a hell of a lot of damage and is kind of braindead TBH. I'm going to make a new character on PC and go through as a regular strength build again and see if it still seems a lot harder than caster.

But, yeah, finally got the platinum, so I'll probably take a break from this game for a while. Might try playing more RE8, might try Sekiro, might even go back to Witcher 3 cause I've been getting urges to replay it.


----------



## rokket2005

Lightning Spear went from like 10 casts to 2 iirc, Great Resonant Soul got super nerfed but overall hex casters were still viable.


----------



## Mathemagician

Huh guess I may need to replay it. For rats since I was melee I always “lol-greatsword swing” that fight in a corner. Cheez-fest if melee.


----------



## wankerness

rokket2005 said:


> Lightning Spear went from like 10 casts to 2 iirc, Great Resonant Soul got super nerfed but overall hex casters were still viable.



I think that a few of the lightning spells got nerfed cause they were way too good, I saw some old posts saying things like late-game bosses would die in 5 casts of sunlight spear or whatever. I think the game had a lot of enemies that were weak to lightning and they hadn't intended the imbalance between just using gold pine resin to make a boss slightly easier and using high-level lightning spells to devastate them in seconds. But yeah, lightning spells are so limited in cast number to be useless if you tried to go full-lightning-caster, even with a hexer's hood and 40 attunement it was something like 5/3/3 max casts for lighting spear/greater lightning spear/sunlight spear, while with a hexer I was getting 26 casts of dark orb per stack and it did as much damage as lightning spear against most enemies anyway.

I never used GRS cause I didn't want to use any spell that drained souls, but I read that was similar in that it did as much damage as soul spear but you could get it WAY earlier in the game and thus it was totally imbalanced, they nerfed it to bring it more in-line with other spells that were available early in the game.

Hexers and sorcerers are clearly balanced around powerfully scaling spammable longrange spells that you can use as your primary attack, pyros seem to be balanced more around having to melee some, and it seems like the dev's intention with faith builds was to make them primarily lightning-weapon based with spells as a supplement.

Yeah, the rat swarm boss was a total joke as a melee build and thus it was very surprising on NG+ when I died to it a few times and had a really hard time when I was trying to use single-target spells or spears. As soon as I switched to AOE it became almost as easy as it was with a claymore or whatever it was I had been using on NG at that point.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

It sucks that they removed so much music from the games, GTA IV as well. I'm feeling really pessimistic about Rockstar games in the future. But it is what it is, have to be happy to have experienced it before things went bad I guess. I haven't played Vice City itself too much, I never got along with it. But it was my introduction to GTA games. Back in Ukraine, had to be like 2004 or 2005. My friend had a copy of Vice City and all the cars were modded to be real life models, blew my mind as a kid. I was very dissapointed when I got GTA SA on the PS2 and none of the cars were real hahah.


----------



## rokket2005

Fuck Rockstar. They're sitting on billions of dollars, they've put out 1 game in the last 8 years, and you could buy these GTA games in a collection for $20 15 years ago. They very easily could've done a great job porting these games and spent whatever they needed to to get the rights to reuse the music that was in the original games, but they're a garbage company who knows people will line up to eat this shit so why put in any effort.


----------



## Leviathus

Speaking of games that've been out for a decade.. the Skyrim anniversary edition update broke my unmodded Skyrim:SE so now when you load any save it goes to a black screen that you have to restart the whole PC to get out of.  Luckily i'm not the only one so i'm sure they'll patch it soon, just funny and appropriate.


----------



## wankerness

The PC launch of the gta remastered trilogy has been comical. Quoting from Kotaku:

"Something has gone very, very wrong since yesterday’s launch of GTA Trilogy on PC. As of last night, all mention of a PC version has been removed from Rockstar’s own site, and the Rockstar Games Launcher app has gone completely offline. Anyone who bought the remastered collection before it vanished is currently unable to play.

It has been at least 18 hours since the sudden disappearance of the PC’s GTA Trilogy, and Kotaku can confirm that the Launcher is not working. Which means all Rockstar PC games, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA Online, are currently impossible to play.

For whatever reasons, Rockstar chose to remove all versions of GTAs III, Vice City, and San Andreas from alternative PC stores—including Steam—ahead of this launch, meaning its bespoke software is now the only way to buy and play the games. Or indeed, the only way to not play it."

Rockstar's official comment - "Offline for maintenance, it will return when it's fixed." Ouch at anyone who paid money for this!!

the graphical “upgrades” are sometimes hilarious with how awful they are, too.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> The PC launch of the gta remastered trilogy has been comical. Quoting from Kotaku:
> 
> "Something has gone very, very wrong since yesterday’s launch of GTA Trilogy on PC. As of last night, all mention of a PC version has been removed from Rockstar’s own site, and the Rockstar Games Launcher app has gone completely offline. Anyone who bought the remastered collection before it vanished is currently unable to play.
> 
> It has been at least 18 hours since the sudden disappearance of the PC’s GTA Trilogy, and Kotaku can confirm that the Launcher is not working. Which means all Rockstar PC games, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA Online, are currently impossible to play.
> 
> For whatever reasons, Rockstar chose to remove all versions of GTAs III, Vice City, and San Andreas from alternative PC stores—including Steam—ahead of this launch, meaning its bespoke software is now the only way to buy and play the games. Or indeed, the only way to not play it."
> 
> Rockstar's official comment - "Offline for maintenance, it will return when it's fixed." Ouch at anyone who paid money for this!!
> 
> the graphical “upgrades” are sometimes hilarious with how awful they are, too.



Can't even play the _single player_ of RDR2 on PC. The game is always online. I own GTA5 & RDR 2. The launcher is so bad that i've got a pirate version of GTA5. I'll try to get a pirate version of RDR2 now i think. It's horrendous.

As for the trilogy, the new versions are buggy as hell and have performance issues as well, on top of them taking the old versions off sale from all stores (thankfully i already own them). So the trilogy is just a massive cash-grab. And yep, now they've taken the new versions down as well.

Rockstar are slime. What's sort of funny is that they aren't even competent at being slime.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Werecow said:


> Can't even play the _single player_ of RDR2 on PC. The game is always online. I own GTA5 & RDR 2. The launcher is so bad that i've got a pirate version of GTA5. I'll try to get a pirate version of RDR2 now i think. It's horrendous.
> 
> As for the trilogy, the new versions are buggy as hell and have performance issues as well, on top of them taking the old versions off sale from all stores (thankfully i already own them). So the trilogy is just a massive cash-grab. And yep, now they've taken the new versions down as well.
> 
> Rockstar are slime. What's sort of funny is that they're even incompetent at being slime.



Really? I have been playing RDR2 on PC all day with no problems..


----------



## Werecow

AwakenTheSkies said:


> Really? I have been playing RDR2 on PC all day with no problems..


It depends on how long ago it has authed. GTA5 lasts about a week if i block it on my firewall. Not sure about RDR2 yet. The talk about RDR2 tempted me into continuing today, and no joy at all in it even starting up.


----------



## StevenC

It's always reassuring that no matter how badly Nintendo screws something up or how anticonsumer their latest idea is, the likes of Rockstar and Bethesda are always ready to one up them.


----------



## gabito

Still playing Diablo III, and I've still got a long way to go.

I don't care at all about GTA's music. I've played them all, some I've finished (GTA IV and San Andreas), some I didn't (GTA III and Vice City), and I've finished GTA V at least five times. But... TBH I don't think I can remember much about the music. I fact in GTA V I started turning the radio off every time I got into a car... I think I even disabled the music, I don't know.

I do care about the controls, though. Graphics are OK, but if the controls are somewhat good I'm in. Anyway, I'm not buying the trilogy until it's patched and only when there's a good sale. In any case I still got the PS2's originals...

All right, back to Diablo III


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finally got around to starting Far Cry 3.


----------



## Jarmake

Carrion Rocket said:


> Finally got around to starting Far Cry 3.



Far Cry 3 is the best of the bunch. Haven't played 6 yet, though...


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Phew. Well now I'm glad I didn't buy the Trilogy. 60€ too, yikes!



Carrion Rocket said:


> Finally got around to starting Far Cry 3.



Enjoy! I played it on the Xbox 360 when it came out. I liked the map so much that it was one of the first games that I 100%ed.


----------



## p0ke

AwakenTheSkies said:


> Enjoy! I played it on the Xbox 360 when it came out. I liked the map so much that it was one of the first games that I 100%ed.



It was one of the best Xbox 360 games IMO. It's also the latest FC-game I've played, so I guess I should check the later ones out at some point...I wouldn't be surprised if they went with the same formula but made it worse though.


----------



## TedEH

I think I'm finally gonna try to play New Vegas. Realizing today that it doesn't get along very well with modern PCs though. Neither of my monitors is 60hz and it's causing all kinds of jank.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

TedEH said:


> I think I'm finally gonna try to play New Vegas. Realizing today that it doesn't get along very well with modern PCs though. Neither of my monitors is 60hz and it's causing all kinds of jank.



I'm not sure about the monitor, I have a 144hz but I think you can set it to work at 60Hz. It shouldn't be a problem. New Vegas is a very special game for me because it was the first game of it's kind that I played. Around 2012-2013. Also strangely it was the time that I started smoking cigarettes. I started playing it on the Xbox 360 too! It was so huge. It felt underwhelming graphically, I wasn't impressed with the game. But at the same it had this mystery feeling to it and I was overwhelmed at having this new world full of things to explore. It was the first game that made me start caring about lore haha. I had so much fun slowly learning all about it. Then I started with Skyrim & The Elder Scrolls...


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> It was one of the best Xbox 360 games IMO. It's also the latest FC-game I've played, so I guess I should check the later ones out at some point...I wouldn't be surprised if they went with the same formula but made it worse though.



the thing with the far cry games is that they do get better, but they don’t get better enough that people don’t still hold onto the idea that the first one they played was the best just cause it was the only one they hadn’t gotten sick of yet.

3 is very simplistic and repetitive compared to 4 and 5 (which is saying something with how repetitive they get), and the story has one of the worst heroes ever and totally wastes it’s one interesting villain and also has a goddam Skrillex musical interlude, but it was cool when it was new. I tried replaying it several years later after playing 4 and 5 and it just felt really lacking.


----------



## TedEH

AwakenTheSkies said:


> I have a 144hz but I think you can set it to work at 60Hz


This one is kinda funky - it's 75hz instead of 60, and does weird things if you try to run it at 60 instead, but the game has no option for this and just forces 60. The end result is that the monitor runs as if it's taking in a 4k signal and sticks the 1080 picture in the middle scaled down. If I instead run the game "at 4k", the monitor accepts that, and scales down correctly, but now I'm over-drawing for no reason (native is 2560x1080). I have a second monitor that it works fine on, but it's just not in a convenient spot.


----------



## wankerness

After getting the platinum in ds2’s ng++, I nuked my save and restored the ng+ one from the cloud to try and clear out all the bosses. Well, besides ancient dragon (which sounds awful) and darklurker (which I did on ng and don’t feel like doing again). 

Died about ten times to Vendrick thanks to some of his attacks 1-shotting through 42 vit!! I kept following him when he’d get too close to the wall, would get stuck between him and the wall while circling him, get pancaked, repeat. As soon as I actually lured him away from the wall every time he’d hug it, it was fine. It was just pathetic how easy he is, yet he has so much damn health, and if you make the wrong mistake you can instantly die.

then I went to try and clear out the snow DLC cause I can’t really remember it. Got to Aava, and died at least ten times. It was shocking how hard it hit and how fast the attacks are. I’d remembered it being pretty easy, I didn’t remember the rapid 180 degree swipes that happened whenever you tried to circle the boss. After I figured out the tell for that move and respec’d to a melee build I finally chipped him down with a rapier, but it took forever and was terrifying. I am not optimistic about my chances with fume knight and the dragon boss considering I think i handily destroyed Aava first try on NG.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I think I'm finally gonna try to play New Vegas. Realizing today that it doesn't get along very well with modern PCs though. Neither of my monitors is 60hz and it's causing all kinds of jank.



Might want to check out http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/53635/ and http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/34832/ (but look at the pinned Win10 fix for that stutter remover or it'll cause crashes in itself).
They're both mods for New Vegas script extender (which needs to be installed for them), and they make playthroughs _so_ much better on modern systems. Both in less crashes and a lot smoother feeling moving around the world.


----------



## p0ke

TedEH said:


> I think I'm finally gonna try to play New Vegas. Realizing today that it doesn't get along very well with modern PCs though. Neither of my monitors is 60hz and it's causing all kinds of jank.



I never really got into New Vegas. It was just lacking something that Fallout 3 had, I can't really describe it but for whatever reason it just didn't feel as immersive. I tried really hard too.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

p0ke said:


> I never really got into New Vegas. It was just lacking something that Fallout 3 had, I can't really describe it but for whatever reason it just didn't feel as immersive. I tried really hard too.



The exact opposite happened to me. I played FO3 after New Vegas and I was so dissapointed. I finished the game so fast, I was super shocked when I was at the end (without the DLC expansion). The world and dialogues didn't feel as in depth to me. But surprisingly I love Fallout 4, even though many hardcore Fallout fans hate it. It's one of my most played games. The gameplay, the shooting, the world, the survival mode, it really hooks me and makes it easy to spend hours and hours playing.


----------



## p0ke

AwakenTheSkies said:


> The exact opposite happened to me. I played FO3 after New Vegas and I was so dissapointed. I finished the game so fast, I was super shocked when I was at the end (without the DLC expansion). The world and dialogues didn't feel as in depth to me. But surprisingly I love Fallout 4, even though many hardcore Fallout fans hate it. It's one of my most played games. The gameplay, the shooting, the world, the survival mode, it really hooks me and makes it easy to spend hours and hours playing.



Oh well, at least we can agree on Fallout 4 - I love that game too. 
I think in New Vegas I might've had some kind of Fallout-fatigue, since I started it almost immediately after 100%ing Fallout 3 and all the DLC...


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> Might want to check out http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/53635/ and http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/34832/


I tried to setup something through those mod managers/script extender thingie, but I couldn't get any of it working. It's super unintuitive and I'm not a fan of pilling up random homebrew'd junk on my machine anyway. I see a lot of supposed stutter remover mods, but I don't find the original game stutters.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It just acts funky with resolution/refresh for me, which isn't the end of the world.

I am kinda curious about Fallout 4, mostly because I expect it modernizes a lot of the old jank - and as much as it was reviewed poorly on release, I can easily imagine that being a mix of launch-window roughness that comes standard with just about any game nowadays, plus the internet's hate-boner for Bethesda. I've heard plenty of people say the game is fine, once you get past those things.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I tried to setup something through those mod managers/script extender thingie, but I couldn't get any of it working. It's super unintuitive and I'm not a fan of pilling up random homebrew'd junk on my machine anyway. I see a lot of supposed stutter remover mods, but I don't find the original game stutters.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It just acts funky with resolution/refresh for me, which isn't the end of the world.
> 
> I am kinda curious about Fallout 4, mostly because I expect it modernizes a lot of the old jank - and as much as it was reviewed poorly on release, I can easily imagine that being a mix of launch-window roughness that comes standard with just about any game nowadays, plus the internet's hate-boner for Bethesda. I've heard plenty of people say the game is fine, once you get past those things.



Fallout 4 is good. As in "It's Fallout 3, but new, and with a few new features."

It ended up boring me, but just because of my general tiredness of Bethesda games.


----------



## p0ke

TedEH said:


> I am kinda curious about Fallout 4, mostly because I expect it modernizes a lot of the old jank - and as much as it was reviewed poorly on release, I can easily imagine that being a mix of launch-window roughness that comes standard with just about any game nowadays, plus the internet's hate-boner for Bethesda. I've heard plenty of people say the game is fine, once you get past those things.



It's excellent IMO. It can be very repetitive depending on what you do, and I never liked the base building crap, but that seems to be completely optional. 
I sort of liked the fact that power armors are now basically tanks instead of equipment, but because of that I ended up not using them pretty much at all...


----------



## Adieu

AwakenTheSkies said:


> The exact opposite happened to me. I played FO3 after New Vegas and I was so dissapointed. I finished the game so fast, I was super shocked when I was at the end (without the DLC expansion). The world and dialogues didn't feel as in depth to me. But surprisingly I love Fallout 4, even though many hardcore Fallout fans hate it. It's one of my most played games. The gameplay, the shooting, the world, the survival mode, it really hooks me and makes it easy to spend hours and hours playing.



Main question: does it massively reward you for sociopathic behavior like the *genuine* articles?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Yeah, Far Cry 3 is a typical Ubisoft open world game. I've done all the outposts and radio towers on the North Island. Done most of the wanted posters and all the hunts so far. I'm at the point where I have more skill points that I do skills to unlock. I know enough about the story to know that Vaas isn't the real boss of the game, and even if I didn't know that Citra is his sister, it's super fucking obvious when you first meet her.


----------



## rokket2005

I think I'm pretty close to the end of Crosscode and it's really good. The puzzles/platforming/exploration is actually challenging, the boss fights are fun, and the writing is pretty good too. I kinda feel bad that I just want to finish it though because my copy of SMT V came on friday despite amazon saying it was probably going to be delayed, and all I see on twitter is other people talking about how awesome smt is.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Adieu said:


> Main question: does it massively reward you for sociopathic behavior like the *genuine* articles?



No, FO4 is very limited in that aspect. You basically can't be a real bad guy. There's the voiced protagonist which limits the dialogue options and many characters are "essential" NPC which means that you can't kill them because they are relevant to the story. You can be sarcastic or really mean to NPCs and there's some "bad" choices. Also there's the DLC where you can become a raider overlord but that's about it. For me it's fine though, I like the game for the gameplay and ambience. 

I haven't seen many games that get morality right anyway. Many games now offer good and evil choices where the obvious easy option is the good one. It's not like in real life where making the morally right choice can have really bad consequences for you or destroy your relationship with someone you care about.

One game that was morally interesting was DayZ, back when it came out anyway. It's multiplayer survival and if you are killed you lose everything and start over. Having encounters with other players could be interesting, because you either shoot them and kill them or try approaching them, be friendly and risk being killed yourself, having to start over. Which led to most people just shooting everyone on sight.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

AwakenTheSkies said:


> No, FO4 is very limited in that aspect. You basically can't be a real bad guy. There's the voiced protagonist which limits the dialogue options and many characters are "essential" NPC which means that you can't kill them because they are relevant to the story. You can be sarcastic or really mean to NPCs and there's some "bad" choices. Also there's the DLC where you can become a raider overlord but that's about it. For me it's fine though, I like the game for the gameplay and ambience.
> 
> I haven't seen many games that get morality right anyway. Many games now offer good and evil choices where the obvious easy option is the good one. It's not like in real life where making the morally right choice can have really bad consequences for you or destroy your relationship with someone you care about.
> 
> One game that was morally interesting was DayZ, back when it came out anyway. It's multiplayer survival and if you are killed you lose everything and start over. Having encounters with other players could be interesting, because you either shoot them and kill them or try approaching them, be friendly and risk being killed yourself, having to start over. Which led to most people just shooting everyone on sight.


Witcher is one series I think nails the whole morality thing. They rarely give you easy choices, or blatantly good/bad ones. 

As someone who played Rust for a pile of years, it's hard to play morally "good' when everyone else plays like a murderous shitgoblin screaming the n word


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

KnightBrolaire said:


> Witcher is one series I think nails the whole morality thing. They rarely give you easy choices, or blatantly good/bad ones.
> 
> As someone who played Rust for a pile of years, it's hard to play morally "good' when everyone else plays like a murderous shitgoblin screaming the n word



True. I played Rust for a few hours in 2014 as well but never stuck with it. I guess what made it morally interesting for me is that some people were okay to approach. Made some online friends playing like that back then. Some other players wanted to fight, others would play friendly with you then kill you when you had your guard down. Every encounter was a gamble and people could get really creative hahaha


----------



## Adieu

Well that's not Fallout then


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> Witcher is one series I think nails the whole morality thing. They rarely give you easy choices, or blatantly good/bad ones.



From everything I've heard, FO:NV actually has good morality choices and things play out quite differently based on what you choose, and things like allying with groups actually create interesting consequences, plus there's more obvious pros and cons to every group instead of one being "the evil choice" and one being "the good choice."

As opposed to FO3 where your choices are more like "nuke all the civilians/don't nuke the civilians" and groups matter about as much as the stormcloaks vs the imperials in Skyrim (aka almost not at all, you have a couple subquests that are different). I've played FO3 a bit and found it very uninteresting, same with FO4. I need to hook up my 360 and try NV some more. I had just started it when I had to pack up my 360 for a move, and it's still in storage!

I really liked this video despite not having played the game myself


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> From everything I've heard, FO:NV actually has good morality choices and things play out quite differently based on what you choose, and things like allying with groups actually create interesting consequences, plus there's more obvious pros and cons to every group instead of one being "the evil choice" and one being "the good choice."
> 
> As opposed to FO3 where your choices are more like "nuke all the civilians/don't nuke the civilians" and groups matter about as much as the stormcloaks vs the imperials in Skyrim (aka almost not at all, you have a couple subquests that are different). I've played FO3 a bit and found it very uninteresting, same with FO4. I need to hook up my 360 and try NV some more. I had just started it when I had to pack up my 360 for a move, and it's still in storage!
> 
> I really liked this video despite not having played the game myself



New Vegas' morality system is definitely more nuanced than fallout 3. It's my personal favorite of the modern fallouts due to the weapon/ammo modding and the actually branching stories. Plus it has some of the best side quests in the series imo. 
Wasteland 2 and Kenshi are other games that don't have overt morality systems, but let you do all kinds of stuff (whether good or bad).


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Played God of War on PS5 and I'm liking the new combat system. 
Rather than button mash, it's button mash followed by parry or block. Looks and runs great.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ok so minor Genshin Impact (console, but it’s mobile/pc as well) update. It plays kind of like the newest legend of Zelda with a massive open world. It’s fun to explore lots of little items everywhere. Story wise it’s a neat very anime story about ancient gods and a changing world (no spoilers). I really like the somewhat cell shaded (?) art style.

However it IS a mobile “gambling your money for items/characters” game. That’s 100% what it’s designed to do. You can beat it with just the “free” story characters. But it clearly wants you to dump money.

So like it’s fine if you just want a game you can explore a bunch in a big world. But the underlying mechanic is multiple currencies to get players (whales) to spend lots of money. It is what it is.

Meanwhile Back 4 Blood - I can’t tell whether I like the game or not. Am I bad at this, or are cards a major nuisance to try to use right for a casual player? Sometimes I think it’s awesome, other times my team gets wiped by crazy enemy spawns.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> Genshin Impact


I maintain that mobile as a platform had so much potential before monetization ruined it. I don't even want to try Genshin Impact, just on principle - despite the fact that I've no doubt that there's probably a pretty good game buried under everything. Makes me want to replay BotW instead.


----------



## Mathemagician

There is 100% a good game under here. I was fucking shocked honestly. I came up with cell phones and monetization ruined the idea of making a good game they’re all skinner boxes fishing for whales. This game is actually “good” if simple in terms of rpg mechanics. 

But bro it’s random draws to “hope” you get a character. Then more draws for good weapons. Then you need more draws to “fully” power up that one character or weapon. 

Is it “needed”? No. Not at all. If it was I would have dropped it ASAP. I don’t intend on spending much more than I would for a game on sale ($10-15) so in real terms that means I won’t see any good characters or weapons ever. Period. 

But jumping off a mountain in the sky and gliding down over enemies is just so neat, lol.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Fallout 4 has the same issue that Skyrim does. It's a game of a different genre trick or treating poorly as an RPG. When I want to play open world first person shooters, Fallout 4 falls into my mind as a suggestion. When I want to play open world hack and slashers, Skyrim is a game that falls into my mind as a suggestion. There's just enough nuance in 3 for me to consider it scratching a modern RPG itch, while New Vegas sits comfortably in the RPG realm for me.

Fallout 4's dialogue choices: Yes, enthusiastic yes, sarcastic yes, no. I'll let you all guess which ones let you progress to give you the illusion that you've got a choice. Hint: One of these isn't like the other that has a negative meaning.

Either way, in terms of actual choice, decision making, and such, they still don't hold even a barely lit candle to games like Planescape: Torment, Disco Elysium, Pillars of Eternity, or even Torment: Tides of Numenera. Once I started playing games like that, it totally ruined most of the dialogue that even NV presented. Some will say that the writing of Tides of Numenera doesn't really live up to how good Planescape's was, and for me, that's fine, because it's still way better than most of the shit that gets released AAA wise. Speaking of AAA, the next time someone thinks it's a great idea to provide a very sexualized, over promised, poorly run, run of the mill gaming message about capitalism where comparatively it's the beverage equivalent of Hint where it tastes like someone left a bottle of water sitting next to a strawberry, please oh fucking please, envision a printer that has pissed you off ala Office Space, and focus your immediate rage on that person. What a goddamn shitshow in SO MANY WAYS. It's almost like CDPR was an individual surfing, having a blast, making lots of people happy, then saw a pier with a sign that said, "this is where amazing reputations go to die" and thought, "first time for everything, YOLO, I've got fuck you money" all at once and took a nosedive.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m literally waiting until I have a decent laptop to play games like that, as I cannot fucking read it from across the room on my couch when I play on console. Not to mention click to move works so much better for non-action rpgs like that. One day. One day.


----------



## TedEH

TheBlackBard said:


> Fallout 4 has the same issue that Skyrim does. It's a game of a different genre trick or treating poorly as an RPG.


I found Skyrim to be pretty fitting of an "RPG" label, a lot more than any Fallout game I've played. I say that because it very much feels like the kind of game you have to sort of play in your head as much as on the console/PC/whatever. If you don't decide how you want to go about it - if you don't find a rewarding role to play - the game is kinda surface level. I mean, there's a lot of breadth, there's 8 million things to do, but you have to decide for yourself why you care about doing any of it. Any sense of depth in that game comes from your willingness to play a role, since the game isn't going to do it for you.

Unless by RPG you really mean things like stats and experience and levels and traits and rigidly defined progression systems. In which case, 90% of shooters are RPGs now.


----------



## Choop

Skyrim still has a lot of RPG stuff in it -- what I liked best about that game was just exploring and seeing all that was put into the world. It's been a while since I played it, but I don't remember really caring about interactions with the NPCs much at all, so in that sense I guess it may lack some depth in my experience.


----------



## TedEH

It absolutely lacks depth, IMO. Skyrim is not a game of depth, it's entirely a game of breadth. It does a thousand things, but few of them particularly well.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, Skyrim definitely has a player "character" that has less personality than Doom Guy. However, that kind of perversely makes it more of a true RPG than all those games where your character can have one of two or three rigidly defined personalities where the game gives you a couple dialogue choices and then tries to make your character very defined by these dialogue choices while also shoving tons of cutscenes of your character blabbing down your throat (ex something like Assassin's Creed Odyssey or Mass Effect Andromeda). Instead, in Skyrim, you basically don't have dialogue at all and you're defined by what you the player decide to do or not, and you can do a whole lot of bad stuff (even if the unmodded game does have all those silly "can't be killed" npcs). I think Ted's absolutely right that you really have to sort of create your character's personality/backstory in your head cause what the game gives you is pathetic.

Alternatively, you can just treat the game as an amusement park that you walk through and just do whatever quests you happen across, in which case you don't really have the choice to do anything other than decide on a build (mage/warrior/rogue) and then just choose stormcloaks vs empire, which has practically no effect on actual gameplay. Plus you can join all kinds of different guilds with very oppositional views and no one seems to notice/care that you're the leader of the DARK BROTHERHOOD but also the benevolent archmage or whatever. You can even be a frickin werewolf and no one cares other than the vampires, who just say "hey you should be a vampire instead." It seems like the game's totally open-ended to the point of incoherence if you play it like a completionist or an achievement hunter. Like me!


----------



## StevenC

I don't know about you guys, but when I play NBA 2K MyPlayer 90% of the fun is imagining the media circus and storylines around playing basketball.


----------



## wankerness

I have no idea if that's sarcasm, partly cause I have never played an NBA 2K game :O And if it is sarcasm, I don't know if it's insulting Skyrim, or people who try to get immersed in Skyrim, or NBA 2k, or all three!

Played a bunch more Dark Souls 2 DLC on NG+. Farmed loyce knight souls all the way up to 50 for the armor set and soul, which was frustrating and resulted in quite a few deaths, cause those guys like to gank you and have a ludicrous amount of health and have a penchant for running in out of the corner of the screen and poking you with a greathammer for 60% of your health. I had to just use a large club and chain pancake them while running away from any others that happened to come after me, which was often, cause the 4 helper knights have astoundingly bad AI and almost never seem to draw aggro. Then beat Burnt Ivory King on the second attempt that I actually got to phase 2, he's a joke if you use a Havel shield with a lighter weapon like a coward.

Went through most of the sunken king DLC, I loathe the map design in the first area, I don't like verticality in these games since they're so about bottomless pits and the jumping is so bad. Plus it's confusing with the switch placement and effects. I ended up just clearing out everything from the first area and not finding another bonfire until that one deep inside the next area. This time around I slowly and deliberately killed all those invisible knights instead of trying to rush to destroy the statues that make them easy to kill, and that ended up being a lot easier.

Took a few attempts on Elana, who I 1-shot on NG thanks to getting lucky and having her spawn skeletons and not velstadt. Of course today she summoned velstadt at least once every attempt besides the last one. The skeletons are actually worse on NG+, though, unless you spam alluring skulls, which I did! Ended up nuking her down to 50% before her first spawn with the frozen rapier and then spamming alluring skulls and clearing out the skeles with dark orb while my phantom tanked the boss, and it was all very easy.

Started attempts on Sinh, who is absolutely horrible. I don't really remember how this fight went on NG, I think I died a few times but don't remember how I did it at all. But basically, I've tried going after him with the roaring halberd, but the thing breaks when he's at literally 80% health, even while i'm using a bracing ring +2 (the strongest anti-durability damage item in the game), thanks to the INSANE durability damage this guy does to weapons. I read you can counteract this by hitting him in the head, but I don't see how you're supposed to do that given standing in front of him is a death sentence and you can't lock onto his head besides. I started trying to cast repair before the break happened, but openings for that are not easy to come by, and they only give me another 5 or so hits on the boss before the weapon breaks anyway, and then I'm stuck spamming dark orb again for about half the damage. It's straight bullshit.

On top of that, you very rarely can actually hit him, cause he spends almost all his time flying around or landing on the extreme opposite end of the arena, which he'll fly away from by the time you get there, unless you sprint the whole way there and get lucky and don't have to dodge fire, in which case you'll have no stamina to hit him before he flies anyway. After about 5 minutes I was usually getting him down to 50% (while using the tank NPC) but then I'd usually mess up and get hit with one of his two extremely difficult to dodge charge maneuvers that hit like a truck and can't be blocked. Seems doable and I expect to kill him in far fewer attempts than the similar Darkeater Midir from DS3's DLC, but I really hate the fight. He should definitely not fly so much.


----------



## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> I found Skyrim to be pretty fitting of an "RPG" label, a lot more than any Fallout game I've played. I say that because it very much feels like the kind of game you have to sort of play in your head as much as on the console/PC/whatever. If you don't decide how you want to go about it - if you don't find a rewarding role to play - the game is kinda surface level. I mean, there's a lot of breadth, there's 8 million things to do, but you have to decide for yourself why you care about doing any of it. Any sense of depth in that game comes from your willingness to play a role, since the game isn't going to do it for you.
> 
> Unless by RPG you really mean things like stats and experience and levels and traits and rigidly defined progression systems. In which case, 90% of shooters are RPGs now.




I personally don't, because not a lot of what you do matters. As far as it feeling more like an RPG than any Fallout, I guess you've only played 4 and 76. Hell, in New Vegas, wearing even the wrong armor could get you attacked by a faction you were previously getting along with just fine. Once your association is found out, you can make enemies quick. With Skyrim, it's "hey the Imperials are taking over the Nord land, and we don't love immigrants, especially high elves. Oh you're a high elf? Well, forget we said anything beyond the Stormcloak's bigotry which has been made a big deal of. Join our cause to get rid of high elves and other forms of immigration!" That's insulting as hell.

RPG to me isn't just about stats and such, it's a lot of things combined. Hell, Morrowind felt way more of an RPG than Skyrim simply for the fact that the whole "do whatever, play how you want" was actually reinforced. Want to be an asshole that never sees your mission through because you killed a few wrong NPC's? You can do that. Some characters would outright lock you out of conversations or even refuse to do business with you if you killed one of their friends, and a lot of times, there'd be no way of knowing that you'd killed the wrong person until it was brought up. Skyrim gives you side quests, and three general areas of playstyles, but they still want you to do it their way which means that some NPC's are off limits for dying, you get a poor choice of nationalists or bloodthirsty medieval cops who'd rather execute you for WHAT reason again, neither of which do you any favors. As a matter of fact, for the game's fixation on race, I think the only time it actually matters is when you have to be an orc to avoid doing a side quest to gain access to an orc stronghold. The writing is dogshit, it doesn't give you a lot to work with. Side quests do not an RPG make. @KnightBrolaire had it right with the Witcher. As a matter of fact, despite playing a fixed character, I'd put The Witcher as probably the best modern AAA RPG simply for the fact that not only do you have meaningful choices in your sidequests, whatever you choose could/would affect how the main quest plays out. New Vegas was the same, especially considering your interactions with factions and such. Skyrim is a fun game, it's a great game, and it tickles a certain itch I get that most other games just can't scratch, but it's still a medieval style FPS with Todd Howard who wants you to believe it's a fully fledged RPG. I'm hoping Obsidian's game Avowed looks to achieve everything that Bethesda wants people to think that Skyrim is.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> I'm hoping Obsidian's game Avowed looks to achieve everything that Bethesda wants people to think that Skyrim is.



I thought The Outer Worlds was a bland waste of time and it didn't feel immersive, nor did it feel more like an RPG than the likes of Mass Effect. This is the first I've heard of Avowed. I'm not real optimistic with how boring Outer Worlds was. I mean, I liked some of the writing and settings a bit, but it was all so low-rent and the worlds felt so tiny and constrained. Not to mention, the combat was incredibly boring. Skyrim's combat is certainly terrible, especially if you're a "warrior," but at least there's a lot of variety of methods you can use and you feel like there's a little bit more weight to things.

I am hopeful they either have a lot more of a budget this time to fully flesh out the environments and make it more than what felt like a short/linear game, or that it at least improves the gameplay substantially.


----------



## TheBlackBard

The Outer Worlds was okay. But not more than that. I don't know if my expectations were too high or what, but for how it was advertised "Fallout in space," it didn't feel that way, the choices themselves were lacking (either stop making this sleazeball money by stopping his workers from working themselves to death OR they can go join this other group where they aren't depending on work and instead have their own little community). I did chuckle a few times in some parts. Combat was better than Fallout 3/NV, but not better than 4.

I think with Avowed, given that it's a bit of new ground for Obsidian, might feel fresher. It's also set in the universe of Pillars of Eternity, so there's already established lore. I just HOPE they give us the same kind of dialogue they did with the first game.


----------



## TedEH

TheBlackBard said:


> As far as it feeling more like an RPG than any Fallout, I guess you've only played 4 and 76


I've never played those ones at all. I played 3, and I'm going through NV right now. Played Outer Worlds, if that counts, since it's kinda Fallout-ish. I don't think we disagree entirely, maybe just a different picture of what it means to play a role in a game.

From a design perspective, I think the idea of "your actions matter" and "you can do as you please" can end up working against eachother - which is what I think Skyrim's biggest failing was. It was so open that nothing mattered. It was too sandbox-y for me. Which, for some people, is a great way to enable the playing of a role, but for others not as much. ...as exemplified by the hundreds of hours some have poured into that title, I guess.

Doesn't really matter to me if a game lives up to any specific definition of "role playing", as long as it sets out to accomplish _something_, and achieves the core of it.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I have no idea if that's sarcasm, partly cause I have never played an NBA 2K game :O And if it is sarcasm, I don't know if it's insulting Skyrim, or people who try to get immersed in Skyrim, or NBA 2k, or all three!
> 
> Played a bunch more Dark Souls 2 DLC on NG+. Farmed loyce knight souls all the way up to 50 for the armor set and soul, which was frustrating and resulted in quite a few deaths, cause those guys like to gank you and have a ludicrous amount of health and have a penchant for running in out of the corner of the screen and poking you with a greathammer for 60% of your health. I had to just use a large club and chain pancake them while running away from any others that happened to come after me, which was often, cause the 4 helper knights have astoundingly bad AI and almost never seem to draw aggro. Then beat Burnt Ivory King on the second attempt that I actually got to phase 2, he's a joke if you use a Havel shield with a lighter weapon like a coward.
> 
> Went through most of the sunken king DLC, I loathe the map design in the first area, I don't like verticality in these games since they're so about bottomless pits and the jumping is so bad. Plus it's confusing with the switch placement and effects. I ended up just clearing out everything from the first area and not finding another bonfire until that one deep inside the next area. This time around I slowly and deliberately killed all those invisible knights instead of trying to rush to destroy the statues that make them easy to kill, and that ended up being a lot easier.
> 
> Took a few attempts on Elana, who I 1-shot on NG thanks to getting lucky and having her spawn skeletons and not velstadt. Of course today she summoned velstadt at least once every attempt besides the last one. The skeletons are actually worse on NG+, though, unless you spam alluring skulls, which I did! Ended up nuking her down to 50% before her first spawn with the frozen rapier and then spamming alluring skulls and clearing out the skeles with dark orb while my phantom tanked the boss, and it was all very easy.
> 
> Started attempts on Sinh, who is absolutely horrible. I don't really remember how this fight went on NG, I think I died a few times but don't remember how I did it at all. But basically, I've tried going after him with the roaring halberd, but the thing breaks when he's at literally 80% health, even while i'm using a bracing ring +2 (the strongest anti-durability damage item in the game), thanks to the INSANE durability damage this guy does to weapons. I read you can counteract this by hitting him in the head, but I don't see how you're supposed to do that given standing in front of him is a death sentence and you can't lock onto his head besides. I started trying to cast repair before the break happened, but openings for that are not easy to come by, and they only give me another 5 or so hits on the boss before the weapon breaks anyway, and then I'm stuck spamming dark orb again for about half the damage. It's straight bullshit.
> 
> On top of that, you very rarely can actually hit him, cause he spends almost all his time flying around or landing on the extreme opposite end of the arena, which he'll fly away from by the time you get there, unless you sprint the whole way there and get lucky and don't have to dodge fire, in which case you'll have no stamina to hit him before he flies anyway. After about 5 minutes I was usually getting him down to 50% (while using the tank NPC) but then I'd usually mess up and get hit with one of his two extremely difficult to dodge charge maneuvers that hit like a truck and can't be blocked. Seems doable and I expect to kill him in far fewer attempts than the similar Darkeater Midir from DS3's DLC, but I really hate the fight. He should definitely not fly so much.


It's very genuine. NBA 2K single player requires online for the story mode, but they shut down the servers every two years to force people onto the new games. So I play offline single player and have to make up my own interviews and story. 

Honestly it's way better too because while the writing is stiff and generic in these games, the story just adds so many unskippable, repetitive, boring cutscenes.


----------



## rokket2005

Speaking of RPGs, I got the Bible a few days ago.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> Speaking of RPGs, I got the Bible a few days ago.



I love how you've got the book opened to Trails In The Sky. 

And I still need to get myself a Switch and play Xenoblade 2. Though I promised myself only buy one when my second solo album is done...


----------



## Empryrean

I'm replaying Hollow Knight ... I can't believe this game is $15


----------



## rokket2005

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I love how you've got the book opened to Trails In The Sky.
> 
> And I still need to get myself a Switch and play Xenoblade 2. Though I promised myself only buy one when my second solo album is done...


Xenoblade 2 is my favorite game of all time. For probably 20 years it was FF6, but then one day, probably a year after I finished XC2 for the first time I realized that I just liked it more. Sky SC and Sky the 3rd are top 5 games for me too.


----------



## StevenC

I got Game Pass, so am playing Sea of Thieves and Gears 5 with some friends. Also have Hollow Knight and Oris downloaded to play.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Far Cry 3. I already didn't like Ubisoft open world games from my two previous (and admittedly brief) forays into the Assassin's Creed series. But if FC3 is a top shelf experience in that regard, it must be on a shelf in a short girls house.

I did get all three Dead Space games in the mail yesterday so I'll be starting on those after work tomorrow.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> Finished Far Cry 3. I already didn't like Ubisoft open world games from my two previous (and admittedly brief) forays into the Assassin's Creed series. But if FC3 is a top shelf experience in that regard, it must be on a shelf in a short girls house.
> 
> I did get all three Dead Space games in the mail yesterday so I'll be starting on those after work tomorrow.



Oof, and right before a full remake of 1 is coming out! Well, next year, anyway. I haven't played 1, but 2 is great and I actually like the much-lambasted 3. Just look up a good crafted weapon or two and don't concern yourself again with the awful crafting/micro-transactions system.


----------



## Choop

Played a bunch of Hell Let Loose last night; that game is so rad. I think it does a very good job of balancing sim/realism without making it tedious to play. Somebody on here mentioned they didn't like it much on PS5 -- I'm not sure how it is setup on console, but I imagine the controls could be a bit cumbersome with a controller. The experience feels very natural on mouse/KB. I think you could probably use a mouse/kb on PS5, but yeah, you deal with the player base probably still largely using controllers so the experience is still different (kind of like people trying to play FF14 on console vs PC).


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Choop said:


> Played a bunch of Hell Let Loose last night; that game is so rad. I think it does a very good job of balancing sim/realism without making it tedious to play. Somebody on here mentioned they didn't like it much on PS5 -- I'm not sure how it is setup on console, but I imagine the controls could be a bit cumbersome with a controller. The experience feels very natural on mouse/KB. I think you could probably use a mouse/kb on PS5, but yeah, you deal with the player base probably still largely using controllers so the experience is still different (kind of like people trying to play FF14 on console vs PC).


Ya I played it on PS5 and the game felt clunky. Granted I was tired that night and didn't give the game a better look which I should have done.


----------



## Choop

CovertSovietBear said:


> Ya I played it on PS5 and the game felt clunky. Granted I was tired that night and didn't give the game a better look which I should have done.



Could just be not your thing too, which is totally fair.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

halo infinite multiplayer


----------



## Blytheryn

Halo infinite here too. Loving it. Got the special edition series X last night and it’s a blast.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Carrion Rocket said:


> Finished Far Cry 3. I already didn't like Ubisoft open world games from my two previous (and admittedly brief) forays into the Assassin's Creed series. But if FC3 is a top shelf experience in that regard, it must be on a shelf in a short girls house.
> 
> I did get all three Dead Space games in the mail yesterday so I'll be starting on those after work tomorrow.



It was really cool in it's time. Like GTA but FPS, on a tropical island with animals. Also with weapon customization. And the graphics looked really good. I guess now it's not as impressive because it's almost 10 years old and there's many games using the same formula.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

I just finished RDR2 a few days ago and now I'm starting AC Origins. 

RDR2 has been a bit slow. Maybe I didn't enjoy it as much because I knew everything that was going to happen already? I watched the whole story on YT when the game released. The first RDR never released on PC so I didn't expect this one to ever be on PC either. Anyway RDR2 is a very good looking game with good story and characters, but I wasn't satisfied with the gameplay. Actually sometimes I got frustrated..

Anyway AC Origins is looking a lot more promising, I know nothing about it. And I really liked Odyssey.


----------



## wankerness

Finally getting towards the end of Dark Souls 2 NG+. Switched to an ultra greatsword on Sinh and killed him second try, after dying over and over and over when trying spells and other melee weapons. Felt for a little bit like I was totally awesome or something, he didn't hit me till he was less than half health, upon which I self-destructed and kept getting hit and barely squeaked through. But man, the whole fight took less time than half the attempts where I barely got him down to 50%. Feels pretty easily repeatable, assuming luck is somewhat in my favor. Of course, it requires summoning the tank phantom.

Ran through most of the Iron Keep DLC including that asshole phantom that runs away through tons of monsters (I love using the seed of the giant tree which causes the monsters to turn on him and kill him for you), got to Fume Knight, promptly got 2-shot by him a couple times using the strat I did last time - wear the Velstadt helm to push him into P2 instantly, take off all other armor, use attack-boosting rings and then just use the red iron twinblade 2h and roll through everything. Got him to about 15% the first attempt, and then just kept screwing things up early on, mainly due to the difficulty of dodging that orb explosion thing he does that hits for over 50% of your health. Then I put on resistance rings, some light armor with high dark/fire resist, used great magic barrier at the start of the fight, and tried again with slow stamina regen, and easily beat him first try since all of his attacks were hitting me for 1/6 my health instead of 1/2!! Having basically all the items in-game sure gives you a lot of options for cheesing things. Having the hollow skin helm from my previous clear was a BIG one, that thing negates curse and there are a lot of curse-fog areas in this dlc.

Got to Alonne, and had completely forgotten about the insanely tedious boss run to him. It's two full rooms of knights and those fire-breathing salamanders. You can technically run past everything if you do things JUST RIGHT, but it takes 5-10 minutes to clear through the knights. Fortunately he's a total pushover if you use a greatshield, the only attacks that you have to dodge are his jump and the thing where he stabs you with magic and then goes into super-damage mode. If you dodge all those, it's just a block/poke fight! Two tries.

Tried getting to the blue smelter demon once, remembered the boss run was terrible, but not just how terrible it was. What a nightmare. I used 7 of my estus and that was with running past the last couple mobs, upon which I realized I hadn't dismissed the two phantoms I had helping with trash so I was screwed anyway due to his health being massively buffed, and he promptly stabbed me in the face before I could heal up. I'll probably bother with this guy, but definitely not the gank squad "boss" in the sunken king dlc since there's no reward whatsoever if you've already done it, and probably not the dual tiger boss cause it has the worst section of the entire game as the boss run and they'll probably be insanely difficult on NG+ besides.

I think this game is vastly superior to DS1, which I guess is kind of reflected by the fact my save file has 180 hours on it!! The quality of life changes alone make it a massively better experience, the weapon/build variety is much greater, you're given a lot more room to experiment with the addition of respecs and how fast you can level and how common crafting materials are, and I just like a lot of the zones better than DS1's. There's something to be said for the sheer dread instilled in you knowing you have to go all the way back up through blighttown to get to safety with DS1's metroid-style map, but after a couple playthroughs it's mostly just tedious as hell. The locations of keys are pretty arcane and the fragrant branch of yore gating mechanic is sort of annoying, but I tend to explore enough that I never had a problem being unable to get where I was supposed to be going.

Plus nothing in 2 is even close to as stressful to me, someone with extreme vertigo, as Anor Londo's rafters. There's nothing as oppressively dark as Tomb of the Giants that can't be overcome with the game's Torch system. And there's no poison swamp, an infuriating standby of Miyazaki games! Just an area with a bunch of poison clouds that don't slow you! DS2 might have a lot of "filler" bosses according to critics, but I don't think DS1 has that many "good" bosses either - DS2's worst boss is still better than fighting CEASELESS DISCHARGE or Bed of Chaos. DS3 and BB definitely trounce both games in this department.



AwakenTheSkies said:


> Anyway AC Origins is looking a lot more promising, I know nothing about it. And I really liked Odyssey.



I played Origins after Odyssey, too. It has the benefit of a much more interesting and likable protagonist plus his wife is a really memorable character - the story is just a lot better even if it fumbles things at the end. However, I primarily played Odyssey as an archer build - it was totally viable once you had a ton of crafting materials and the right armor set to use arrows as your main attacks. Origins does not even remotely allow for this since you can only hold like 20 arrows at a time and you can't craft more. If you're playing a stealth build, it's probably superior, since your assassinations actually kill people instead of doing an amount of "assassination damage" based on your gear that may or may not kill them. Melee, it's about equivalent, I guess.

I love the Dunkey video about it (I love how he harps on the Feather thing) and can kind of agree with him that the series is awful. But, I enjoyed it anyway.


----------



## TheShreddinHand

Yup, playing infinite and horizon 5 over here!


----------



## wheresthefbomb

Really don't get into new games much. Pillars of Eternity was okay, but once I figured out the combat system my party could auto attack everything to death on the hardest setting while I ripped fat bowls. I got close to the end but never actually finished due to the lack of engagement.

Playing through some of the user-generated Neverwinter Nights campaigns currently. It's a lot like playing fanfiction, which means sometimes it's great and sometimes you roll your eyes. On Aielund Saga right now, the writing is pretty one dimensional but the combat is refreshingly difficult from the official campaigns.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Oof, and right before a full remake of 1 is coming out! Well, next year, anyway. I haven't played 1, but 2 is great and I actually like the much-lambasted 3. Just look up a good crafted weapon or two and don't concern yourself again with the awful crafting/micro-transactions system.



I thought FC1 was great until you found out that the bad guys are doing biological experiments on the island and all of a sudden you're fighting weird monkey monsters instead of mercenaries  After that I just quit. I wouldn't mind giving the full remake a try though.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

AwakenTheSkies said:


> It was really cool in it's time. Like GTA but FPS, on a tropical island with animals. Also with weapon customization. And the graphics looked really good. I guess now it's not as impressive because it's almost 10 years old and there's many games using the same formula.



I think if I hadn't of played Shadow of Mordor years ago I'd have probably have enjoyed FC3 more. SoM did the Ubisoft formula so much better than any other game, imo. And while I agree that the environment of FC3 is amazing, the story falls off a cliff after you take out Vaas and thus tanks the experience. That infiltration mission where you have to steal the privateer outfit almost made me quit playing all together.

I did play through Blood Dragon and that was quite enjoyable. Killing off the main villain in a cutscene was pathetic, though.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I thought FC1 was great until you found out that the bad guys are doing biological experiments on the island and all of a sudden you're fighting weird monkey monsters instead of mercenaries  After that I just quit. I wouldn't mind giving the full remake a try though.



That post was about the Dead Space trilogy! Is there a farcry 1 remake coming too? I've heard a lot of people say that game was cool until the aliens showed up and it got frustrating. Never had any motivation to play it, myself.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> That post was about the Dead Space trilogy! Is there a farcry 1 remake coming too? I've heard a lot of people say that game was cool until the aliens showed up and it got frustrating. Never had any motivation to play it, myself.



 My bad! The descriptions could've matched Far Cry too though. I don't know if a remake is actually coming but there's been rumors about it over the years.


----------



## Ralyks

Chapter 8 of Guardians of the Galaxy. Does "Never Gonna Give You Up" playing after you do a huddle attack constitute getting Rick rolled?


----------



## StevenC

Has anyone played Lumines and does anyone know how to stop?


----------



## Blytheryn

I just bought the NERF MA40 Halo blaster because I love it so much, and wanted the in game skin.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Been playing a lot of halo and I like everything except the ttk. The ttk is a bit too high with some of the pickup weapons e.g the heatwave, commando, pulse carbine, shotty.
The disruptor pistol has quickly become one of my favorites though. It melts shields and has minimal bloom. Really good for 1v1s


----------



## TheShreddinHand

KnightBrolaire said:


> Been playing a lot of halo and I like everything except the ttk. The ttk is a bit too high with some of the pickup weapons e.g the heatwave, commando, pulse carbine, shotty.
> The disruptor pistol has quickly become one of my favorites though. It melts shields and has minimal bloom. Really good for 1v1s



Agreed and the AR is too powerful.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TheShreddinHand said:


> Agreed and the AR is too powerful.


yeah the ar and magnum are pretty good, so it kind of negates the need to grab most pickup weapons. Magnum is basically dmr level in reach right now imo


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished Dead Space. 

Pretty good, but it did get to the point of parody at times. There were a couple parts where I thought of that Randy Marsh "I'm so startled" clip from the giant guinea pig episode of South Park. Which I guess is pretty ironic since both came out the same month.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> Finished Dead Space.
> 
> Pretty good, but it did get to the point of parody at times. There were a couple parts where I thought of that Randy Marsh "I'm so startled" clip from the giant guinea pig episode of South Park. Which I guess is pretty ironic since both came out the same month.



I haven't played 1, but I think it was more "horror" than 2. 2 is a combination horror/action game. The camera is way too claustrophobic for my liking, but the combat's really fun and the weapons are great. 3 is pretty much straight action, no horror. So, maybe you'll like the sequels more??


----------



## CovertSovietBear

StevenC said:


> Has anyone played Lumines and does anyone know how to stop?


Lumines? Like the one on the PSP? I have it somewhere


----------



## StevenC

CovertSovietBear said:


> Lumines? Like the one on the PSP? I have it somewhere


Yes, it got Remastered and released on modern consoles recently. I've been holding off getting it on my Switch, but then it was on Game Pass so now I'm addicted.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

wankerness said:


> I haven't played 1, but I think it was more "horror" than 2. 2 is a combination horror/action game. The camera is way too claustrophobic for my liking, but the combat's really fun and the weapons are great. 3 is pretty much straight action, no horror. So, maybe you'll like the sequels more??



To be fair, when Dead Space 1 did straight horror it was excellent. But there were too many times they did the late 2000s jump scare tactics, hence the Randy Marsh reference. And there was a really cool sequence that they ruined by doing the rule of three with. The sound design was pretty good in aiding to the experience, but the foley work got really repetitive. You hear the same pipe clanging sound effect so much in that game.

I was fine with the camera. Having your health bar be on Isaac's back and all the menus be holograms that would project from the suit was a really sleek design choice. Granted, that means that you have to be super tight on the player character. But I would have liked an Uncharted style option of being able to switch shoulder perspective. There were a couple times coming around a corner I'd basically be giving myself up for a free hit.


----------



## rokket2005

I finished Crosscode on Friday and it's really good. I did have a few crashes and really bad framerates in busy fights towards the end though which was really frustrating. The worst one was beating phase 1 of the final boss for the first time after like an hour and then it crashed in the cutscene going to phase two. I actually closed the game and watched the end on youtube cause I was so pissed, especially since phase 1 took like 10-15 minutes to beat, but I figured I was already at like 50 hours in the game and I feel shitty when I don't finish games that I've been having fun with. Otherwise great game though.

Also after I beat Crosscode I started up SMT V, and somehow between late afternoon on Friday and Sunday night I put 25 hours into that, so I guess that's going well.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> I was fine with the camera. Having your health bar be on Isaac's back and all the menus be holograms that would project from the suit was a really sleek design choice. Granted, that means that you have to be super tight on the player character. But I would have liked an Uncharted style option of being able to switch shoulder perspective. There were a couple times coming around a corner I'd basically be giving myself up for a free hit.



Oh yeah, I forgot about that health bar/menu as part of the character's suit in 2. I didn't know they'd introduced that with 1. It was pretty slick and immersive compared to most videogame interfaces, like a much cooler version of Fallout 3, but I still felt like your character was covering too much of the screen at times. Anyway, 2 is great, partly cause the weapons and the "body part targeting" systems are so satisfying. It's great pulling spike arms off enemies and impaling them with them. It's a very slick experience, maybe 1 was more janky?

Since I have problems I finally hooked up my PC and...started playing through DS2:SOTFS and DS3 on PC. I had forgotten about things about PC gaming that I take for granted won't happen on console. Ex, every once in a while your system hiccups (probably windows checked for updates or something) which causes a delay in your character reactions from button presses. Ugh. The games run almost exactly as well as they do on my PS5, but the fact that they're subject to the whims of Windows 10 resource management unpredictability is a big problem occasionally. I have a pretty cheap controller, which probably doesn't help (some generic wired xbox 1 knockoff from Spectra - it has vibration and the xbox button layout and everything communicates properly, but the extra trigger buttons on the back feel cheap and don't reliably stay pressed if you bind a function that requires them to be held, like running). Also, the games seem slightly more janky, like DS2 is even weirder with the blurriness and in 3 I had one awesome incident where I fought to the end of anor londo, hit the wall to get to darkmoon tomb, and promptly fell through the floor and died. I guess I can't say for sure that can't happen on console, though.

Also, PC gamers are garbage people even compared to console people and try to hack you and mess up your file in DS2/3. Like, in 2 hours of playing DS2 I got invaded by some jackass that started leaving items everywhere and then tried to break my gear. I fortunately had read about the exploits where you can drop hacked items that cause a host's save file to get corrupted if they pick them up. Fortunately you get banned by fromsoft if you install any of the mods that are intended to block these things from occurring. Truly stupid. I'm going to burn through on regular and then maybe try out some mods and just leave my internet off.


----------



## NotDonVito

StevenC said:


> Has anyone played Lumines and does anyone know how to stop?


No joke I had to uninstall that game cause I was playing it way too much.


----------



## Choop

Hell Let Loose last night -- first time as a part of a tank crew. Like most things in the game, it requires careful teamwork to be effective at it (I failed miserably). I want to do tank stuff more though, because it'd be cool to git good at and it's also crazy how a good armor team can influence the outcome of a battle.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Do you have friends to play with @Choop or do you squad up with randos? Sounds fun if the other people know how to play the game well.


----------



## Choop

CovertSovietBear said:


> Do you have friends to play with @Choop or do you squad up with randos? Sounds fun if the other people know how to play the game well.



I have one friend who plays haha, but otherwise I'm usually squadding with randos. It's kind of fun just playing with strangers and working with what you have, though I guess it really isn't the most efficient way to play if you expect to do well often lol. I'm also by no means good at the game in general. It'd be fun to learn how to do artillery at some point, too. Like it seems boring in a way, but at the same time it's hugely beneficial to the team and it's a unique way to play.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Choop said:


> I have one friend who plays haha, but otherwise I'm usually squadding with randos. It's kind of fun just playing with strangers and working with what you have, though I guess it really isn't the most efficient way to play if you expect to do well often lol. I'm also by no means good at the game in general. It'd be fun to learn how to do artillery at some point, too. Like it seems boring in a way, but at the same time it's hugely beneficial to the team and it's a unique way to play.


Nice! As long as it's fun then I wouldn't call it boring. 
I find myself goofing off on new games if the friends I'm playing with don't know what they're doing either haha. Had that experience on Apex and had more fun when the randos I was paired with showed me how to properly play


----------



## TheBlackBard

Going to play through Sleeping Dogs again (I love the shit out of that game, highly underrated), Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (played through it before, but it's an excellent game), and Middle Earth: Shadow of War (have gotten part way through it, many improvements were made). As a Tolkien nut, it does irk me a tad that the Middle Earth games take quite a few liberties, but due to gameplay, mechanics, environments, and at least some basis in that universe makes them worth the play.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Did a mad rush through Persona 5 Royal, now up to Christmas Eve, all Confidants maxed, 90% on the Persona Pokemon compendium. I had to look up how to fuse Satan since all the extra DLC Personas ruined my rhythm somewhat. Aiming to get this done soon. 

By this point I'm not even fighting standard encounters anymore. Yoshitsune is still great, but Izanagi No Okami gives it a run for it's money. Charged Myriad Truths stacked with Almighty boots easily kills the flu season Reaper. Certainly helping to move the game faster.


----------



## MFB

I'm about 1/3 of the way through The Last of Us, I think the last thing that happened was getting to Philly? I haven't played for about a week, but that sounds right.

I picked up Part 2 for $20 on sale, along with Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, and then Guardians of the Galaxy was on sale too. Still might grab Miles Morales and Hitman 3 as they're like 50-70% off, but I have a big enough backlog at the moment.


----------



## BenjaminW

I decided to say fuck it and decided to buy the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack so I could get both the N64 Virtual Console and the Animal Crossing DLC. So far, I've beaten Star Fox 64 (which was the whole reason I bought the expansion pack in the first place) 3 times and am not sure what I wanna do next on there.

I'm thinking about getting all 120 stars again on Super Mario 64 which I already did on 3D All Stars, or beating Ocarina of Time.


----------



## Jarmake

I've been slowly inching my way towards the end on tlou part2. Killed a big thing that was very persistent on killing my sorry ass. It even split up and tried to have ménage à trois with me, but in the end I was victorious and it passed on to greener fields.

Now I'm on an island, getting rid of some scars. I love how abrupt and brutal the combat is in this game. Kill or be killed, one way or another, someone is going to bleed or explode to death.


----------



## WarMachine

BenjaminW said:


> I decided to say fuck it and decided to buy the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack so I could get both the N64 Virtual Console and the Animal Crossing DLC. So far, I've beaten Star Fox 64 (which was the whole reason I bought the expansion pack in the first place) 3 times and am not sure what I wanna do next on there.
> 
> I'm thinking about getting all 120 stars again on Super Mario 64 which I already did on 3D All Stars, or beating Ocarina of Time.


If you're looking for good switch games, Metroid Dread, Link's Awakening Remastered (if you don't mind the cartoonist, plastic look) and Smash Bros. Ultimate are good picks.


----------



## WarMachine

I need something new lol. Or to wipe the dust off of something great lying around. I beat RE Village for about the 10th time, started playing Darksiders 2 and got to the Judicator's Tomb before stopping, and I started playing through Castlevania Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate again up to the clock tower with Alucard where you have to use the hourglass to slow down time on the electric panels. Like I said, I need to get stuck into an old game. I think another Chrono Trigger playthrough may be in order...


----------



## wankerness

I got guardians of the galaxy for PS4/5 cause I saw it in a Black Friday bin for 25. I also got dark souls remastered for switch cause I heard it’s the only version that didn’t turn the whole game shiny and plastic and I’m curious what it’s “supposed” to look like. And it is on sale for the first time in a year!


----------



## Ralyks

Said fuck it and got the GTA Trilogy. Haven't ran into any bugs so far, and honestly, these games are still fun as hell. Also, confession: I never beat GTA3. When I played on PS2 back in the day. That fucking mission towards the end where you have to drive through the entire map destroying cappuccino stands for reasons within like 10 minutes. Maybe the added GPS will help this time.

Oh and I think I'm approaching the end of Guardians of the Galaxy. It has been a fun time, but I don't think I'm going to go back and 100% it. Shin Megami Tensai V coming out has made me want to play more of SMT 3 Nocturnal Remastered.


----------



## StevenC

WarMachine said:


> If you're looking for good switch games, Metroid Dread, Link's Awakening Remastered (if you don't mind the cartoonist, plastic look) and Smash Bros. Ultimate are good picks.


This, except Smash Ultimate.


----------



## WarMachine

StevenC said:


> This, except Smash Ultimate.


Lol I liked it for a little bit at least lol. This is a good one if you've got kids that like to play it. I haven't for awhile but my son had me playing this with him every day for a while.


----------



## StevenC

WarMachine said:


> Lol I liked it for a little bit at least lol. This is a good one if you've got kids that like to play it. I haven't for awhile but my son had me playing this with him every day for a while.


Yeah, Ultimate is just not a very fun Smash Bros game. Particularly at high levels.


----------



## gabito

Jarmake said:


> I've been slowly inching my way towards the end on tlou part2. Killed a big thing that was very persistent on killing my sorry ass. It even split up and tried to have ménage à trois with me, but in the end I was victorious and it passed on to greener fields.
> 
> Now I'm on an island, getting rid of some scars. I love how abrupt and brutal the combat is in this game. Kill or be killed, one way or another, someone is going to bleed or explode to death.



That "rat king" thing can be a nightmare sometimes. At that point in the game you think you have it all figured out, but this boss of sorts forces you to take a different approach. I wasn't 100% on board with having to fight a Residen Evil-ish thing in TLoU but whatever, it's still a great game.

Just finished Diablo 3 two weeks ago. It was really fun to play, story is as dumb as they come, characters are non-existent. Not interested enough to keep playing the post game stuff, but it was a good experience overall. I may buy Diablo II's remaster later, I don't know.

I felt like replaying TLoU for the nth time, and now I have finished NG+ on HARD (which is the same difficulty level I got to finish the game on the PS3 version, so I now have the same trophies for both...).

But it wasn't enough, so after all these years I gathered enough courage to give survivor mode a go. So, let's see how far I can get without Joel's magical ears this time...


----------



## Ralyks

So. Last night I hung out with a couple of friends at their house for no-kids night and got really, really stoned. I decided to download Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! for them on their Switch, because I've been dying to see someone react to it with no prior knowledge of the game. About 15 minutes into the second half, one of them looked at me and yelled "I THOUGHT WE WERE FRIENDS!!". At the end of it, they told me they much closer to be than ever (and we've all known each other 20 years) because we're bonded through a common trauma. If that's not an impactful game, I know know what is. Plus, I got to laugh my ass off because I know the game inside out and got to react to them accordingly. And we were stoned.


----------



## Brutal08

Halo masterchief compilation: i just bough on steam, I only played the first one on xbox when it came out but i was always interested in the halo lore now i am halfway through Reach and im having a blast! I have good memories of playing combat evolved with my brother while blasting Augury's Concealed a the time, I always think of this album when i think of Halo


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Finally playing Subnautica! So far the experience has been joyful, exciting and at the same time frustrating sometimes. I've been getting stuck with the story progression. Also I've bought Sleeping Dogs for 3€ on the Steam sale, looking forward to that as well.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

fucking around in Gundam Versus whenever I get sick of fiesta mode in halo infinite. Gundam Versus just makes me want another Virtual On game, which was one of my favorite games back when arcades were still a thing (besides MK/tekken).


----------



## Choop

Brutal08 said:


> Halo masterchief compilation: i just bough on steam, I only played the first one on xbox when it came out but i was always interested in the halo lore now i am halfway through Reach and im having a blast! I have good memories of playing combat evolved with my brother while blasting Augury's Concealed a the time, I always think of this album when i think of Halo



I was playing through those a while back too -- had never played Halo 3 before and found it to be pretty fun! It has more emphasis on vehicle combat which I thought were some of the best parts of the game.


----------



## wankerness

Playing through DS1/2/3 -

DS1 - Switch - I'm doing it without getting impatient and doing the souls glitch this time, and it sure is a lot harder when you're not overlevelled (unsurprisingly!). There aren't good, fast grinding zones in this game, unlike 2/3 - closest thing is farming those NPC cleric/warrior/sorcerer/thief guys in the forest repeatedly, but it's slow to find them. The boss difficulty has been funny. I died repeatedly to GAPING DRAGON, which I'd never died to before, cause he kept spamming this move I don't remember him having where he flies across the room and lands on you and kills you instantly, and it's extremely difficult to dodge if you don't have a button extension on your controller to enable adjusting the camera without taking your thumbs off the dodge/run button. Yet, I killed the Mk II asylum demon before I even got to gaping dragon, with a piddly little +1 Broadsword, taking about 10 minutes. Similarly, I killed Sif just fine, yet am getting repeatedly wasted by trash in Sen's Fortress. Ah well. I have to take a break on this game till I get a new controller, anyway, since the stick is finally going on my Switch pro controller and having it unpredictably lurch left all the time is not going to work for running across those tiny bridges in there with precision timing. It doesn't help that almost no one plays this game on switch, so there are no helpful red markers left between the axes to show you where to stand like on PS4, all there are are sparse trolling messages like "try jumping" or "illusory wall ahead" where there isn't anything. I HATE Sen's Fortress. Like, it's vastly worse than anything in 2/3. DS1 is definitely the hardest of the series as far as levels go; though the bosses are mostly easier than 3/BB. I've been using the black knight sword and I hate it (it's like a really slow claymore with less moveset variety), but it does so much more damage than anything else I have that it doesn't make sense to do anything else until I can upgrade past +10.

Also, this game is unplayable on handheld mode in some areas. Even with Brightness set to 10, it's just way too dark to see anything in many of the zones (ex Blighttown). Maybe if you had a new LED Switch it would work.

DS2 - PC - I'd forgotten how frustrating NG can be. Mainly just getting dealing with some of the trash mobs (particularly the goddam Heide Knights - I died to the sword variety of them about 15 times just trying to learn a dependable strategy for killing them) is very hard when you're a low level. After getting adaptability/agi up most of the way and then finally starting to beef out other stats, things are a lot easier. Especially with a Mace, which does comical amounts of damage to most of the early bosses.

DS3 - PC - Tried to get through this with a dex build, which I ended up playing mostly the same as my str build (just using a sellsword twinblade instead of a lothric straight sword). It was pretty smooth sailing for a while, but I was getting chunked by a few mobs that never gave me trouble before thanks to not being able to use a decent shield (ex Pontiff knights and those giant snake guys with the axe on a chain). I skipped Nameless King cause I didn't trust my ability to roll through all his bullshit, and went through the Painted World DLC - died like 5 times to Gravetender/Wolf thanks to a wimpy lil' shield and not doing enough damage to kill him before the wolf came out, but bizarrely didn't die once on Sister Friede (used the summon, obviously, and pretty much chained backstabs on her in phase 3). Then I hit an absolute brick wall with the back half of the Ringed City DLC - almost every mob was just destroying me. Had to switch to the Uchigatana to kick over those little turtle monk guys since Sellswords deactivate kick, and was getting annihilated by the ring knights since they hit so damn hard and had poise to ignore anything I did with either dex sword. Plus those giant blackhole head guys can't be plunge-attacked with any little dex weapons, which is really stupid, making them vastly more difficult since you have to fully engage them. I died over and over to the stupid giant summoner on the bridge, who I'd never had trouble with before, cause again he wasn't staggered AT ALL and just kept spamming summons while I tried to kill him. Respecced to 45 strength instead of 45 dex, got out a greatshield and greataxe, and then started steamrolling everything. Like, ring knights now stagger like crazy and died in 2 backstabs instead of 4 while taking off a tiny amount of stamina when I block them. Dumb how it's so inflexible when it comes to builds, but hey. I guess this is the last DLC, and if they gave you a means to respec, I guess they can be inflexible like that. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to poison Midir and Gael again cause I'm bad.

One of these days I'll get to Guardians of the Galaxy!!!

I see there's a big sale on PS network right now. Some games I'm eyeing are Rage 2 (looks stupid, but the kind of stupid I might enjoy), Kingdom Come: Deliverance (I think this might just bore and frustrate me, but I know a lot of people that LOVE it), Bayonetta (I played this on 360 several years ago but don't really remember it), and Doom 1/2 (I last played these on Xbox 360, too). I'm glad to hear you can now get Final Doom as an add-on within Doom 2, I haven't played that since PC many years ago.


----------



## CanserDYI

Dude why didnt anyone tell me Breath of the Wild was so fucking amazing? 

The fuck guys?


----------



## CanserDYI

StevenC said:


> Yeah, Ultimate is just not a very fun Smash Bros game. Particularly at high levels.


What dont you like about it? My son and I play a ton and love it, but purely just messing around though, as I havent played it very seriously. What dont you like about it?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

CanserDYI said:


> Dude why didnt anyone tell me Breath of the Wild was so fucking amazing?
> 
> The fuck guys?


have you been living under a rock?


----------



## CanserDYI

KnightBrolaire said:


> have you been living under a rock?


A gaming rock, yes, apparently. lol.


----------



## StevenC

CanserDYI said:


> What dont you like about it? My son and I play a ton and love it, but purely just messing around though, as I havent played it very seriously. What dont you like about it?


My brother is one of the best Smash Bros players in the world, so my opinion is very much about the competitive game. Its fine casually because items and 4 players cover up a lot of things. 

It's not really fun to watch or play at high levels because there's no incentive to engage your opponent. You'll see a lot of match time spent with characters sitting at opposite ends of the stage throwing projectiles hoping the other one makes a mistake before moving in to actually fight. Melee and 4 were a lot better in this regard and you'll see most matches start with characters moving towards each other, instead of away.

It's just kinda slow overall from this. Additionally ledge play sucks because a lot of characters have good ways to prevent you coming back on stage. That leads to both players very close to the edge waiting for the other to blink, while neither has any incentive to blink.

Just super unexciting to watch compared to older games.


----------



## TedEH

CanserDYI said:


> Dude why didnt anyone tell me Breath of the Wild was so fucking amazing?


Mostly 'cause if you declare something amazing, someone will jump in to counter it. But yeah, it's pretty amazing. Some people don't like the weapon durability thing, and some people don't like the music implementation, and some people don't like the openness of it, and there's little performance hitches here and there, etc. etc, but if none of those bother you, it does so many things very right.

I don't replay many games, but a part of me has been wanting to replay that one lately. Mostly because I remember it as a really relaxing experience to get lost in for a while.


----------



## CanserDYI

TedEH said:


> Mostly 'cause if you declare something amazing, someone will jump in to counter it. But yeah, it's pretty amazing. Some people don't like the weapon durability thing, and some people don't like the music implementation, and some people don't like the openness of it, and there's little performance hitches here and there, etc. etc, but if none of those bother you, it does so many things very right.
> 
> I don't replay many games, but a part of me has been wanting to replay that one lately. Mostly because I remember it as a really relaxing experience to get lost in for a while.


I personally think the weapon degredation, paired with weapons around every corner, really forces you to get creative with your weapons. I personally love it and hope for more like this, also, I also like the stamina wheel. I think these two game features really make this game more of a puzzle than an action game, and as a fan of resi evil, I am a fan of puzzle games masked as action games


----------



## wankerness

The problem with the weapon degradation in BOTW doesn't really rear its head until you've progressed far enough that most of the monsters you're encountering take a TON of hits from any weapon to kill (when most enemies are silver or black). It's also infuriating when you fight them on a cliff and they have a ton of HP and every end of a combo sends the enemy flying several yards back (and often off the cliff) over and over till they die. Especially if you're farming monster parts from lizards or something.

It's a great game and I'll be buying the second the day it's available. But it's definitely not flawless.


----------



## TedEH

I'm on a similar page. No game is flawless. I'll be buying the sequel without a second thought for sure.


----------



## bostjan

I love the weapon degradation mechanic in Diablo. I hated it in Call of the Wild. It seemed like weapons broke too quickly, sometimes comically so and sometimes frustratingly so.

Great mechanic, unbalanced execution, IMO of course.

Everything else about the game was nearly flawless, so that's probably why so many people complained specifically about that one aspect of it.


----------



## CanserDYI

Im only 2 divine beasts down and I suppose havent run to the frustrating part, there have been frustrating experiences sure, but I haven't yelled at the game mechanic yet.


----------



## wankerness

CanserDYI said:


> Im only 2 divine beasts down and I suppose havent run to the frustrating part, there have been frustrating experiences sure, but I haven't yelled at the game mechanic yet.



You probably won't hit the tipping point where all the enemies in the world start taking multiple weapons to kill if you're playing the game beelining for the divine beasts. If you were moseying around doing all the shrines and DLC before heading to the "main quest" then you might get to it before finishing the divine beasts and Ganon. I'd done all the DLC apart from Trial of the Sword and cleared all the divine beasts and the vast majority of the shrines before it really started getting bad. The weapon degradation is most annoying at the VERY beginning of the game where you can't reliably get decent weapons (that was where it made me quit the game the first time I tried it), and then again very late in the game where you "spend" more weapons than you "earn." There's a sweet spot for a long, long time where it's fine and if anything you probably have too MANY weapons. Make sure that you prioritize getting all the korok seed upgrades for melee weapon slots, too.

Though there are still the less common infuriating mechanics independent of weapon degradation. A big one being trying to farm flame lizard tails. You hit them three times, they get blasted off the cliff/ledge into the lava where they just sit there spamming you with projectiles and where you can't loot their bodies when they die. Usually the AI won't make them run back out of the lava again. Another being when you have to climb a cliff and it starts raining and there's literally nothing you can do except give up and either go do something else or sit there and wait for the rain to be over (or hope the cliff is low enough that you can use the gale ability to fly to the top of it).


----------



## TedEH

I have a feeling that people's feelings towards the weapon degradation is going to really hinge on how you play the game. I never found that I got to any point where I was lacking in weapons, and I got as far as completing all of the shrines. I never ended up getting the DLC though. (Maybe I should?) But I'm also not someone who does much "farming" in games unless I feel like I have to in order to progress. I never went after any particular resource that required me to grind through enemies, which is a pattern I could imagine would eat through weapons pretty quick. I also know it's possible to re-do some of the shrines to get the weapons from them - you can repeat the combat challenges and keep getting new weapons that way.


----------



## gabito

Just finished TLoU on SURVIVOR.

It's not that hard, TBH (I know having played the game several times helps...). Died quite a few times, but mostly trying to figure out how to make my way through some encounters.

I tend to kill everything and everybody every time I play the game, and that was not so easy to do with what I had available most of the time in this playthrough.

I think I ended up silently sneaking through around 50% of the encounters. The rest I killed everything I could, or somebody saw or heard me and I probably fought back and escaped barely alive... or just frantically ran looking for an exit.

The bloaters were surprisingly easy to kill, though.

Anyway, it was interesting to play the game in a different way than I'm used to.


----------



## TedEH

I've gotten about 48hrs into New Vegas and.... I think this might be one of the buggiest games I've played in a long time.

Something is janked with the saves, so every time I launch the game, I have to start a new game, _then_ load a save. For some reason it freezes any time I try to load from the main menu. Sometimes, cinematics that are supposed to trigger when you enter rooms just don't start, so you have to either reload, or use the debug console to give yourself control back to move around. Sometimes there's quests that point you at objectives you can't do yet, and offer no hint as to why you can't do them yet - and one of them is on a critical path. I had the companion characters just disappear at one point and re-appear in another location later. Two or three crashes to desktop. Once, the VO audio just stopped playing until I relaunched the game. Physics are tied to frame rate (which is a rookie mistake as far as game dev goes), meaning you have to limit to 60hz if you have a faster monitor.

But on the good side, there's a ridiculous amount of content, even if the beginning of the game takes some time to ramp up to it (I found the intro was paced really slowly). It feels like there was a reasonable amount of ambition in the narrative/quest structure for the critical parts of the game, even if there's also a lot of filler. The game seems to scale up in resolution easily enough (refresh rate aside). I tried on an ultrawide, and on a 4k screen, and both scaled up without breaking the UI or performing poorly (aside from the refresh/physics thing).

I'm not through yet, but easily far enough to decide that the title as a whole is a mixed bag. Very mixed.


----------



## gabito

I think there's some kind of community mega patch I installed when I played New Vegas which made it way less buggy (probably Yukichigai's Unofficial Patch, I don't really remember).

I played and finished it around 5 years ago on a crappy laptop and I don't remember having any problems besides being bored (no, I didn't like it).


----------



## TedEH

I won't claim it's the most exciting game either, but this far in I can at least say I feel invested enough to see it through to an ending.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> I won't claim it's the most exciting game either, but this far in I can at least say I feel invested enough to see it through to an ending.



I liked New Vegas, but yeah it is definitely buggy and I was honestly ready to be done with the game around 80% in lol. There really is just SO much content, and the faction-based choice system for the story didn't really make me care much for any one faction (kinda similar to Skyrim in that way). One of the DLC's does an H.P. Lovecraft thing that at first it seems neat, but that one in particular got very tedious for me. I do think overall the game is more interesting than Fallout 3, though I think I enjoyed that one well enough, too.

Probably going to start something classic/retro to play alongside HLL and Red Dead 2, maybe Castlevania or an old Final Fantasy. I'd like to start streaming again with a real format/schedule in mind, and break it up between casual stuff and something more competitive. The problem is nothing I will play will be a big viewership draw .-. though I have had some good interactions with people while streaming Street Fighter.~


----------



## TedEH

Choop said:


> the faction-based choice system for the story didn't really make me care much for any one faction


I'm kinda in that boat right now. I've reached the point where I have to start picking sides - every time I complete a quest, a new one pops up going "the opposite faction has noticed, be careful or they'll turn on you". But I know a lot of people tend toward trying to just be be good to _everyone_ as much as possible, but this game doesn't seem to want that to be an option. It's also really hard to tell what the point of no return is for a faction. As in, I don't really want to "support" House, but I get the impression you have to do a lot of those quest lines (which the game reads as support) in order to open a lot of doors, get close enough to betray him, do the Yes Man version of things, etc.. The ambition is there, for sure, but I'm suspicious it's not going to stick the landing.


----------



## Choop

Hah I was the same way, honestly I don't even remember which ending I did...maybe it was the Yes Man one -- I remember reading a lot about it and considering it, but I'd have to review them to see which exact ending I got. Through most of the game I generally supported the New California Republic over the other factions, but just barely because they were also douchey and just generally boring lol.


----------



## TedEH

It seems like the Legion is the one propped up to look like "the bad guys" most of the time, so I haven't done much of anything on their side of things. I think I've visited that camp once.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

gabito said:


> Just finished TLoU on SURVIVOR.
> 
> It's not that hard, TBH (I know having played the game several times helps...). Died quite a few times, but mostly trying to figure out how to make my way through some encounters.
> 
> I tend to kill everything and everybody every time I play the game, and that was not so easy to do with what I had available most of the time in this playthrough.
> 
> I think I ended up silently sneaking through around 50% of the encounters. The rest I killed everything I could, or somebody saw or heard me and I probably fought back and escaped barely alive... or just frantically ran looking for an exit.
> 
> The bloaters were surprisingly easy to kill, though.
> 
> Anyway, it was interesting to play the game in a different way than I'm used to.


The intro to that game hits me in the feels every time


----------



## KnightBrolaire

StevenC said:


> My brother is one of the best Smash Bros players in the world, so my opinion is very much about the competitive game. Its fine casually because items and 4 players cover up a lot of things.
> 
> It's not really fun to watch or play at high levels because there's no incentive to engage your opponent. You'll see a lot of match time spent with characters sitting at opposite ends of the stage throwing projectiles hoping the other one makes a mistake before moving in to actually fight. Melee and 4 were a lot better in this regard and you'll see most matches start with characters moving towards each other, instead of away.
> 
> It's just kinda slow overall from this. Additionally ledge play sucks because a lot of characters have good ways to prevent you coming back on stage. That leads to both players very close to the edge waiting for the other to blink, while neither has any incentive to blink.
> 
> Just super unexciting to watch compared to older games.


Melee was the pinnacle of Smash. I keep hoping they'll get the feel of melee in subsequent smash games, and they never quite do. Ultimate is still miles better than the last couple of games imo.


----------



## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> I'm on a similar page. No game is flawless. I'll be buying the sequel without a second thought for sure.



I guess that kinda depends on one's own perception. There are some games that I'm enjoying so much that even if there are flaws, I don't take the time to acknowledge them to ruin the fun I'm having, so they might as well just not even be there if they don't become a hindrance.


----------



## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> I've gotten about 48hrs into New Vegas and.... I think this might be one of the buggiest games I've played in a long time.
> 
> Something is janked with the saves, so every time I launch the game, I have to start a new game, _then_ load a save. For some reason it freezes any time I try to load from the main menu. Sometimes, cinematics that are supposed to trigger when you enter rooms just don't start, so you have to either reload, or use the debug console to give yourself control back to move around. Sometimes there's quests that point you at objectives you can't do yet, and offer no hint as to why you can't do them yet - and one of them is on a critical path. I had the companion characters just disappear at one point and re-appear in another location later. Two or three crashes to desktop. Once, the VO audio just stopped playing until I relaunched the game. Physics are tied to frame rate (which is a rookie mistake as far as game dev goes), meaning you have to limit to 60hz if you have a faster monitor.
> 
> But on the good side, there's a ridiculous amount of content, even if the beginning of the game takes some time to ramp up to it (I found the intro was paced really slowly). It feels like there was a reasonable amount of ambition in the narrative/quest structure for the critical parts of the game, even if there's also a lot of filler. The game seems to scale up in resolution easily enough (refresh rate aside). I tried on an ultrawide, and on a 4k screen, and both scaled up without breaking the UI or performing poorly (aside from the refresh/physics thing).
> 
> I'm not through yet, but easily far enough to decide that the title as a whole is a mixed bag. Very mixed.



New Vegas, buggy? Surely not. OTOH, there are mods to help combat that.


----------



## StevenC

KnightBrolaire said:


> Melee was the pinnacle of Smash. I keep hoping they'll get the feel of melee in subsequent smash games, and they never quite do. Ultimate is still miles better than the last couple of games imo.


Nah, for competitive Smash: Melee then 4 then 64 then Brawl. Ultimate is the worst of all and its only redeeming factor is that it doesn't have random tripping. Ultimate is very clearly Sakurai's vision of the fun party game he's been trying to make for decades and I don't know anyone who prefers Ultimate to 4. Having grown up with Melee, Ultimate is the least fun one.


----------



## StevenC

CanserDYI said:


> Im only 2 divine beasts down and I suppose havent run to the frustrating part, there have been frustrating experiences sure, but I haven't yelled at the game mechanic yet.


So honestly, I would just ignore wankerness about BotW. We've had a few discussions over the years about the game and I just don't understand their problems. There are basically always weapons available, the enemies that will use up whole weapons will drop good weapons, there are durability buffed versions that you can stock instead, there are plenty of weapon slots, there are infinite bombs, there are bows. If there's a real issue in the game's weapons it's that it doesn't give you arrows at nearly the same rate as older Zeldas compared to how fun triple shot bows can be. I've never run out of weapons or been worried about running out of them. Then the game gives you enough strategy options that you probably don't ever need weapons anyway.

I didn't find the game frustrating at any point and I have 120-150 hours in it with all the shrines and DLC done. I still go back and play it.

But wankerness and I seem to have a diametrically opposed views on what is fun and what is frustrating in open world games so...


----------



## TedEH

I know people have said there's lots of mods for NV, but I found that process to be just as janky. I admittedly didn't try very hard for very long, but I didn't manage to get any of that working - or at least I can't tell what's working or not. I thiiiiiiink I managed to install the script extender thingie, but I gave up at one point. I can't remember exactly why.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

StevenC said:


> Nah, for competitive Smash: Melee then 4 then 64 then Brawl. Ultimate is the worst of all and its only redeeming factor is that it doesn't have random tripping. Ultimate is very clearly Sakurai's vision of the fun party game he's been trying to make for decades and I don't know anyone who prefers Ultimate to 4. Having grown up with Melee, Ultimate is the least fun one.


Really? I hated brawl and 4. Brawl sucked because everything felt slow, the maps were tiny and it always turned into a shit show when the ultimate orb appeared.
Ultimate feels faster to me than 4 did, and slightly more in line with melee  
Then again I'm a pretty casual player in smash anymore.


----------



## StevenC

KnightBrolaire said:


> Really? I hated brawl and 4. Brawl sucked because everything felt slow, the maps were tiny and it always turned into a shit show when the ultimate orb appeared.
> Ultimate feels faster to me than 4 did, and slightly more in line with melee
> Then again I'm a pretty casual player in smash anymore.


Yeah, Ultimate and 4 aren't really significantly different in speed but Ultimate has way more camping. Brawl, 4 and Ultimate are all 3 stocks compared to 4 stocks in Melee.

The other problem with Ultimate is that there seems to be less variety of play within each character, ie in Melee and 4 you can tell the best Fox or Bayo players apart without reading who's playing because of how they specifically play the same character. Ultimate is a game between characters, but 4 and Melee are games between players.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I know people have said there's lots of mods for NV, but I found that process to be just as janky. I admittedly didn't try very hard for very long, but I didn't manage to get any of that working - or at least I can't tell what's working or not. I thiiiiiiink I managed to install the script extender thingie, but I gave up at one point. I can't remember exactly why.



I used Nexus Mod Manager, some huge fix-a-lot-of-stuff patch, and not much more IIRC.


----------



## TedEH

I suspect I'm approaching the end of NV - I've reached the point where some of the factions story lines have been cut off for doing too much of the House Always Wins quests. I guess that leaves me with Yes Man vs House for the ending.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I suspect I'm approaching the end of NV - I've reached the point where some of the factions story lines have been cut off for doing too much of the House Always Wins quests. I guess that leaves me with Yes Man vs House for the ending.


The DLC includes some great, very original stuff that's quite different to the main game.


----------



## bulb

Returnal, Hades and God of War. Having a grand ol time.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Werecow said:


> The DLC includes some great, very original stuff that's quite different to the main game.



True. I think my favourite was Old World Blues, because of how different it was from all the others. And it had the new bluesy radio station! Which I loved to listen to.

Weird about the bugs in NV. I have never experienced anything too bad. I have been playing on PC vanilla the last few years and used to play it on the Xbox 360 as well. A few years back I used to play with a lot of mods and I did break the game a few times though.

There's one particularly interesting mod made by one of the main developers, the JSawyer mod. It's just one file but it completely rebalances the whole game, making it really hardcore and more realistic. I never played this mod but maybe I should play it soon..


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I have a feeling that people's feelings towards the weapon degradation is going to really hinge on how you play the game. I never found that I got to any point where I was lacking in weapons, and I got as far as completing all of the shrines. I never ended up getting the DLC though. (Maybe I should?) But I'm also not someone who does much "farming" in games unless I feel like I have to in order to progress. I never went after any particular resource that required me to grind through enemies, which is a pattern I could imagine would eat through weapons pretty quick. I also know it's possible to re-do some of the shrines to get the weapons from them - you can repeat the combat challenges and keep getting new weapons that way.



Yeah, I upgraded all the armors to max and that was where all the grinding happened that made all the enemies in the world superpowered. The barbarian set was the biggest killer in terms of "grinding." Farming the ancient armor upgrades was easy cause the armor itself makes it so your weapons work a lot better vs the things you're grinding, plus those robots all drop multiple weapons that are super-effective against them, but no such deal for the Lynels.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end (an end?) of New Vegas.



Spoiler



I easily did enough side content that the end game was kinda easy. By the time I reached the ending, I had maxed a bunch of stats, so I could one-shot anyone hostile, and every conversation could be "won" by just picking the right options. What I think was supposed to be the "final boss" was "won" by just picking [speech] over and over. I did the Yes Man ending. I skipped most of the Great Khan stuff. Ended up getting the two implants that make you tougher and regen health. Did enough of the bombers stuff that their plane makes an appearance at the end. I'd completed all the Kings stuff and had the dog, plus the Arcade guy as companions. Steam claims that was about 55hrs.

I maintain that the game, to me, comes across as an ambitious and mostly good but janky mess. At certain times the open-endedness of it made me wonder what I was supposed to be doing. So many bugs. Not a single day did I play and not come across something that made me go "oh come on, really?" And that's coming from someone who does this for a living. More than that - plot twist, and I guess for disclosure/fairness - my name is in the credits for something Fallout related (none of the mainline games, otherwise I think it would be illegal for me to "review" them), so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with what goes into these.

The good:
- It, IMO, delivers on the promise of being very open.
- It has some strong moments of little mini-stories embedded in the world. Skyrim does that too sometimes. It's sometimes (often?) better than the main content. Like Vault 11 - I don't think there's a proper quest for it, but it's a whole little self contained story wrapped in a little dungeon crawl kinda thing. Those are the best parts.
- There's a decent amount of imagination on display.
- The important characters feel properly fleshed out, and the factions had a lot of thought put into them. It's a narrative-driven game and it shows. If you care more about narrative engagement than things like combat mechanics, this is a game for you.
- It scaled to 4k pretty easily - even the UI didn't break.
- The game doesn't decide who is good or bad for you.
- I like the lockpicking mini-game.
- You don't need to craft to beat the game. That's a win in my book.
- You can have a dog.

The not-good:
- The bugs. My god the bugs. Crashes, janky animations, things getting stuck, t-poses, cutscenes failing to start, the physics being tied to framerate thing, corrupted saves, VO not playing, and on and on. And look, I appreciate that it's an older game running on a modern machine, but I don't think that's what went wrong. Lots of old games run _fine. _These aren't OS-related problems. New versions of Windows don't cause t-poses and cutscenes not starting. This is the kind of stuff that, in my experience, happens when a compromise was made between ambition and polish.
- The game is very brown. There's a small handful of areas with some great environmental art, and the strip has some variety, but 90% of the game is brown. Brown environments, brown clothing, brown rundown vaults, brown UI, brown everything. It looks like mud. I know it's aiming for a "gritty" art direction, but IMO they took it too far.
- Some of the quests are just generic game-y follow-the-waypoint quests.
- I don't like the way stealth works in these games.
- Inventory limits are always kinda lame. I spent a lot of time shuffling inventory around and deciding what to leave behind. Some people might like this.... I don't.

The it-is-what-it-is:
- The quests are kind well written, but mechanically are standard Bethesda-style fare. So the combat might be "meh" if you care about that.
- There's lots of VO, which is good, but there's lots of voice actor re-use, and line repetition. You'll walk into a room to hear one person say something, then another voice repeat exactly the same line before the first guy has finished saying it.
- While I was able to get the game to accept 4k really easily, that made the warts really visible - which is a bit unfair to judge maybe. LOD pop-in is pretty bad when you play this way. Sometimes textures are jarringly washed out compared to the resolution everything is drawn at. Not the game's fault, but it means that scaling up is a mixed bag.

I think it's safe to say I'm Fallout-'d out for a while. I'd still like to try the other Fallouts I've not played - which is most of them - just.... not right now hah.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Since I'm near the end of the third term in Persona 5 Royal, I grabbed both Lost Judgment and Persona 5 Strikers on sale. I'll most likely jump straight into strikers once I'm done with Royal.

And for something completely different. 



All those Chrono Cross Remaster/remake/revisionism rumours reached boiling point and this trailer drops. Mostly fueled by the composer ans story writer of both Chrono Cross and Another Eden. So basically a crossover of both properties on a free to play gatcha mobile game-


----------



## TedEH

Do you not have phones?

I kid.

Something about that trailer just kinda strikes me the wrong way. It's got that "who cares about the details, we've got giant eyes and waifu side-boob in a generic fantasy settings so people will buy it anyway" vibe.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> Do you not have phones?
> 
> I kid.



I know you jest. That said, mobile phone game is one thing, free to play games with gatcha/lootbox mechanics to lure players in and constantly forking cash for small rewards is another... except not really, since most if not all phone games use gatcha mechanics. 

Admittedly I was being facetious with my post and gif use namely...



TedEH said:


> Something about that trailer just kinda strikes me the wrong way. It's got that "who cares about the details, we've got giant eyes and waifu side-boob in a generic fantasy settings so people will buy it anyway" vibe.



The trailer is anime as balls so I get it rubs you wrongly. Having said that, it rubs 'me' wrongly since it's a shot for shot remake of the Chrono Cross intro FMV. This collab is taking the Force Awakens/Ghostbusters Afterlife gambit pandering to the nostalgia crowd who've waited decades for a new game in the Chrono series, or at least a Chrono Trigger remake. I've given up on any new Chrono related anything years ago, but this is just sparking speculations that a Chrono Cross remaster is happening. Not that it matters much, but I'll believe it when I'll see it.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The trailer is anime as balls so I get it rubs you wrongly


I don't hate anime. I just strongly dislike what I've come to start calling "boob anime" - the "it's ok to sexualize this character because she's actually 4000 years old despite the 8 year old body" kind of anime. The "we didn't put much thought into the sense of weight behind this weapon swing animation so the movement is uncanny/unrealistic, but we made sure the boob jiggle was just right" kind of anime. The trope-y kawai waifu nonsense kind of anime that's so laser targeted at horny weebs as to land squarely in cringe territory for anyone who doesn't themselves partake in that kind of thing.

Anime can be good, it's not like it's some niche thing nobody knows about - it just needs to grow up IMO.



Bloody_Inferno said:


> Having said that, it rubs 'me' wrongly since it's a shot for shot remake of the Chrono Cross intro FMV


I hadn't realized that, so I watched the original intro just now.... and I maintain my original reaction. The original was much more tasteful: the animations were old and janky in their own right, but they weren't just cell shaded giant eyes and side-boob for no reason, there was some attention to weight of movements, the focus was clearly on the setting and hinting at the story that was taking place, etc. - whereas the focus of the new one says to me "we glowed up your waifus".

I am clearly not the target audience.


----------



## wankerness

Got through most of DS2 on PC and only have the Iron King dlc left, got through Sen's Fortress on DS1 and hit Anor Londo and started to think about the rafters and the archers and had to stop again. DS2 is just a big series of "oh boy, I got to this zone?! I love this zone!!!" with some "meh" ones thrown in, DS1 is a bunch of "oh god, I hate this zone!!" with some "this one is alright" thrown in. DS1 is just pain after pain - Blighttown, Sen's Fortress, first half of Anor Londo, Tomb of Giants, and New Londo (to a slightly lesser degree, though I hate the lack of bonfires and the transient curse mechanic) are all thoroughly miserable. However, once you're through Sen's Fortress and Anor Londo and then can warp things feel a hell of a lot better. DS2's worst zones (The Gutter or Black Gulch) don't come close to being as painful and they're also much shorter. Also, I'm struck by how much slower and clunkier combat is in 1 compared to 2, I'd initially thought they were almost identical. But nope, 1 is slower than 2 and 3 is vastly faster than both. 2 also seems considerably easier to do backstabs in. Still, I'm getting into 1 a bit. I do really like that endurance is tied to equip load instead of a separate stat like in 2/3 where you feel like you're wasting your stat points every time you go for it. I guess it really is pointless in 3 since armor in that game really is practically worthless, you get like 10% damage reduction from wearing heavy armor vs light, while in DS1 and 2 if you're in a heavy set that's upgraded you actually get tanky.


----------



## MFB

Played a couple more hours of TLOU, made it up through the parts with Henry/Sam; had a feeling it'd go that way, and was bummed to see I was right - especially since I just finished a show with the guy who played Henry.

Made it to Jackson County, pretty sure I'm still only at the half way mark or so, this one feels like it takes a while to get through any area


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Played a couple more hours of TLOU, made it up through the parts with Henry/Sam; had a feeling it'd go that way, and was bummed to see I was right - especially since I just finished a show with the guy who played Henry.
> 
> Made it to Jackson County, pretty sure I'm still only at the half way mark or so, this one feels like it takes a while to get through any area



I dunno about "a while," that whole game took less than 20 hours and I wasn't rushing through it by any means. My main memory of it was loving the section after the Jackson one, and then thinking the ending was legitimately great, like best videogame ending plotwise I'd ever seen. But, as far as the gameplay itself is concerned, I think 2 is quite a bit better. Far less ladder carrying, far better combat.


----------



## TedEH

I picked up a few things during the black friday / cyber monday deals, which has me now diving into Deathloop. First impression is that I like it. It's feels very much like an Arkane game, in a good way. I picked up a 4k monitor not too long ago, so I've been trying everything at 4k - aaaaand my poor gtx1080 struggles with this one. 4k gets me 20-40 fps on low/med. 1440p gets me back to 60 on high settings, which is pretty good for an "old" video card. I did run into a progression blocking bug though.... there was a cutscene that failed to start and control locked me until I quit and restarted the mission, which was lame. Hopefully that's not a regular occurrence.


----------



## gabito

MFB said:


> Played a couple more hours of TLOU, made it up through the parts with Henry/Sam; had a feeling it'd go that way, and was bummed to see I was right - especially since I just finished a show with the guy who played Henry.
> 
> Made it to Jackson County, pretty sure I'm still only at the half way mark or so, this one feels like it takes a while to get through any area



Yeah, you're halfway there. I think some chapters are way longer than the others, though (Pittsburgh comes to mind).

First time I played the game I did on hard difficulty, it took me like 30 hours or so to finish it IIRC. I didn't have a clue about what I had to do or how to play a stealth-ish game, so there was some trial and error involved. I also explored and read absolutely everything.

Last time on survivor it took less than 15 hours to finish it, cutscenes included. So YMMV...


----------



## Ralyks

Watching the end credits to Guardians of the Galaxy. Damn good game. Think I'm going to try to go back to Shin Megami Tensei 3 now.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> Anime can be good, it's not like it's some niche thing nobody knows about - it just needs to grow up IMO.



Or maybe it should  just die already...

No disagreement in growing up. There's certainly a large part of the medium that need to get over the whole wafiu, side boob, baths hentai shtick. Though that will be a while since most of that schtick is stuck deep within Japan's culture. To be expected when a country was nuked twice into submission and got W Edwards Deming to teach them how to live a life of conformity.... but I digress. 

I used to post this article whenever someone has a misconception on anime. Granted that it's now over 20 years old, and I'm out of touch on what the state of the medium is at the moment, but with even my favorite anime games showing signs of said above, it hasn't grown all that much. It's all fueled by fanservice, and always have been and a majority of their target audience is mostly embraced being isolated shut ins.

But I'm done beating that dead horse. Hayao Miyazaki was right.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Though that will be a while since most of that schtick is stuck deep within Japan's culture.


I honestly don't even think it's a "Japanese" thing anymore. IMO the immaturity is mostly, or at least in part, a product of being Very Online. It's about the schtick being very meme-able, about being carried on a medium that's very good at enabling, about some cross-over with the gaming space that has it's own maturity problems, etc.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I honestly don't even think it's a "Japanese" thing anymore. IMO the immaturity is mostly, or at least in part, a product of being Very Online. It's about the schtick being very meme-able, about being carried on a medium that's very good at enabling, about some cross-over with the gaming space that has it's own maturity problems, etc.



It still is Japanese rooted, and of course it's online presence is making it a world wide issue. 

Once again there's a facetious tone in my post, but admittedly I'm rather weary of trying to demystify all the misconceptions of anime like I've done in the past. It certainly doesn't help that the fanbase continue to perpetuate it. 4Chan began as an anime site before it blew up into internet hell. The term Weeabo/Weeb came to be to give anime fans who took it too far an insulting label. Which most people don't realise, is more or less parallel to the the Japanese negative connotation of the word Otaku, which means Obsession. Even the non Japanese developed anime are perpetuation the stereotypes. People forget Doki Doki Literature Club and all it's authenticity is a Western developed title. HuniePop is everything I hate about anime, made by another Western developer. 

There's plenty of mature anime out there, it is a medium, not a genre after all. But of course most of the fanbase giving said medium a bad name certainly doesn't help.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> First impression is that I like it. It's feels very much like an Arkane game, in a good way.



I'm a massive Arkane fan, so glad to hear that. I bought it on release, but held back on playing it after reports of stuttering problems. Hopefully they've been fixed though.


In other news, i've been playing Dragon's Dogma. Was enjoying it for a while, and was expecting it to be the first Japanese game i want to complete. But it's suddenly got really stale for me, and i've not picked it up for a week. I'm playing as a Sorcerer, and the game really feels like it's holding me back in the amount of skills you can have enabled at once. Also, the skills that you need to use to survive certain types of encounters as a Sorcerer start getting samey. It's either call down flaming meteorites so that they all die in two seconds, or run around in circles for ages and hope your pawns clear them.
Travelling to quests while facing the same time consuming fights over and over, only for the quest to finish with two sentences said by an NPC got a bit old/annoying as well.

I started Sekiro again just for something to do, beat a load of bosses, and then again randomly didn't want to pick it up at the start of a new area i'd not been to.

Not sure what my deal is with Japanese games. Maybe it's because they're so console-orientated (which i don't easily get on with either).
I've now gone back to Dishonored 2 and Divinity: Original Sin 2, and really anjoying them. Even though i've played them both umpteen times.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Werecow said:


> I'm a massive Arkane fan, so glad to hear that. I bought it on release, but held back on playing it after reports of stuttering problems. Hopefully they've been fixed though.
> 
> 
> In other news, i've been playing Dragon's Dogma. Was enjoying it for a while, and was expecting it to be the first Japanese game i want to complete. But it's suddenly got really stale for me, and i've not picked it up for a week. I'm playing as a Sorcerer, and the game really feels like it's holding me back in the amount of skills you can have enabled at once. Also, the skills that you need to use to survive certain types of encounters as a Sorcerer start getting samey. It's either call down flaming meteorites so that they all die in two seconds, or run around in circles for ages and hope your pawns clear them.
> Travelling to quests while facing the same time consuming fights over and over, only for the quest to finish with two sentences said by an NPC got a bit old/annoying as well.
> 
> I started Sekiro again just for something to do, beat a load of bosses, and then again randomly didn't want to pick it up at the start of a new area i'd not been to.
> 
> Not sure what my deal is with Japanese games. Maybe it's because they're so console-orientated (which i don't easily get on with either).
> I've now gone back to Dishonored 2 and Divinity: Original Sin 2, and really anjoying them. Even though i've played them both umpteen times.


Dragon's Dogma is way more fun as a melee based character or a ranger tbh.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> There's plenty of mature anime out there, it is a medium, not a genre after all. But of course most of the fanbase giving said medium a bad name certainly doesn't help.


The parallel with games is there for sure. There's a whole ocean of content out there, but the worst elements tend to hang out on the popular beaches and shout obscenities at anyone who just wants to go for a swim. In much the same way that the average lower-case-g gamer isn't the "insult your mom on xbox" capital-G gamer, but it's hard to ignore that said group still exists and is very loud. Of course, you can't saaaaay in some circles that the Gamer identity is dead, lest that vocal minority have a shit fit over it.



Werecow said:


> stuttering problems


I've had zero stuttering problems so far, as long as I don't push the visuals past what my PC can handle.


----------



## Ralyks

Ok, I said I was.gonna go back to SMT3, but now I can't decide. Help me out SSO, Which do I focus on getting out of the way next:

Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD
Death Stranding: Directors Cut
Deathloop
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Dragon Quest XI S
NieR Replicant


----------



## wankerness

Dragons Dogma doesn’t get really good till you get to Bitterblack Isle. Sorcerer is definitely really boring compared to some other classes like the ones that can climb on enemies. I mostly used the huge ice spike thing and the tornado. I thought you could use 6 skills if you weren’t assigning to a pawn? Maybe I’m thinking of passives.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> Which do I focus on getting out of the way next


I vote Deathloop just 'cause that's where I'm at now. And it seems pretty good so far.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Ok, I said I was.gonna go back to SMT3, but now I can't decide. Help me out SSO, Which do I focus on getting out of the way next:
> 
> Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD
> Death Stranding: Directors Cut
> Deathloop
> 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
> Dragon Quest XI S
> NieR Replicant



Which of these have you already played? I vote the one that you haven't, which I'm guessing might only be Deathloop and 13 Sentinels. Nier Replicant's the only one I've played, besides Dragon Quest XI the normal version. It's great, but you have to devote a LOT of time to it just to see the ending content (have to collect all weapons but at least not fully upgrade them like in Automata, and play through the second half of it a minimum of 3 times with an extra time through the final boss section). I'm guessing probably around 40 hours if you don't get bogged down doing all the collection sidequests (no point other than OCD) or trying to get the platinum (adds another probably 40 hours of farming, some literal and time-gated).

If the Dragon Quest XI S version is like Persona Royal and makes it way longer, then you definitely don't want to start doing THAT when you have other games you want to get to since it's probably like 100 hours!


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> Dragon's Dogma is way more fun as a melee based character or a ranger tbh.



I still enjoyed it as a Sorcerer, but it was definitely not showing off most of the mechanics. Battles as say, an Assassin would involve switching to first person and shooting things with arrows when they took off, and running up to monsters and climbing up onto their weak points and stabbing them repeatedly when they were on land. Strider was probably my favorite variant of the "Rogue" type - the helmsplitter move if you had the ring that upranked it was insanely powerful. Warriors and fighters were more boring, but it was still fun and chaotic running around on the ground while giant ogres are trying to stomp you and hitting them with huge weapons. And then Magick Archer was incredibly OP if you'd levelled it right - it was like a version of the Ranger where your attacks would all lock on instead of having to be manually aimed, and had cartoony effects.

Mage you pretty much sit in the back and try to cast wimpy offensive spells and heals and "cleanses," it's very much a support class since your offensive spells are all capped at low levels. Sorcerer you try to cast massively powerful spells that absolutely wreck opponents, but many of them have cast times in excess of 10 seconds (if you have the rings that upgrade the good ones to "Grand" status), and thus fights tend to be just running around looking for openings and then praying the monster doesn't change direction and charge you and knock you down right before the cast goes off, like happens at least half the time. However, whenever you get off one of those ice spikes It was fun, but a very different kind of fun. I think I usually just cast the tornado one (Maelstrom) at the beginning of fights since it was insanely huge and would kill ALL the weak enemies and toss everything around the screen, and then would focus on nailing the boss with Grand Gicel since if you got off a fully charged one it was virtually guaranteed to stagger them and do a ton of damage. I think the third spell I used was usually the lightning one cause it had by far the fastest cast time and was good for needling opponents sometimes.

I ended up levelling as most of the classes once I'd hit max level to unlock all their passives so I could mix and match the best of those on whatever "main" class I was playing as. Every class is viable at max level to some degree as soon as you've unlocked a few skills and gotten some decent gear, which will not be a problem as soon as you hit bitterblack isle. It's like a whole huge dungeon of boss rush stuff and tons of awesome gear, while most of the rest of the game has extremely wimpy gear and bland environments. I played the game for probably at least 100 hours, and I'd say a good 80 of those were spent having a blast on Bitterblack Isle. The rest of the game is pretty bad IMO. I'm hoping the sequel is going to be a lot more in that vein, since the "Dark Arisen" stuff is seriously in the running for best action RPG I've ever played. They just need to figure out some different way to do the offensive spells. I dunno how they balance it, cause a lot of the fun of the class is how insanely gigantic and powerful spells are compared to virtually any other RPG, but if you cut the cast time down at all then they'd be way too good and you'd never have a reason to use any other class.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

With the closure of the PS3 servers a week away I decided to log into my GTA Online account for the first time in over six years. And after about thirty minutes I remember why I abandoned it six years ago. I honestly wonder how I played it long enough to get to level 58. And I'm guessing the heist updates made it grindier xp wise. I played for about 12 hours straight and gained four levels in that time.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Which of these have you already played?



I've started all of them. I'm a few hours into Deathloop, NieR, and Dragon Quest, and slightly even more time into SMT3 and 13 Sentinels. Death Stranding I was going to start fresh with the PS5 version. I don't mind length, I just want a good story right now.
Also, thank you for reminding me I still have Persona 5 Royal and Strikers. Maybe 7 - 10 hours into each of those.


----------



## Jarmake

I just finished the last of us part 2. Damn it was good. I like how Abby went in with hatred in her mind, not caring about anybody else and found her humanity along the way, and how Ellie got consumed by her vendetta against Abby and when she finally came to her senses it was way too late and she'd lost everything she cared for in her life.

It was bloody, it was fucking brutal and I loved it.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I've started all of them. I'm a few hours into Deathloop, NieR, and Dragon Quest, and slightly even more time into SMT3 and 13 Sentinels. Death Stranding I was going to start fresh with the PS5 version. I don't mind length, I just want a good story right now.
> Also, thank you for reminding me I still have Persona 5 Royal and Strikers. Maybe 7 - 10 hours into each of those.



I meant "which have you FINISHED before" since most of them are re-releases! Ex, did you already finish Dragon Quest XI vanilla, have you played through Nier on PS3/Xbox, etc. I'd say play Nier if you haven't played an older version yet.

Getting pretty close to the end in Dark Souls on Switch. This game has some serious issues if you're on Switch, mainly related to the absolute garbage online support on Switch. Like, there are practically no useful orange soapstones anywhere, just extremely sparse pointless ones like "enemy ahead" before a monster or something, not even mimics. This manifested itself most strikingly in the Crystal Caves, where there was not one single solitary orange soapstone on any of the invisible bridges apart from the two non-user ones that are on there by default. As a result, I had to creep along the bridges super-carefully, shooting arrows at the ground to tell where the ground was, and it was miserable. Every other platform, those things are lit up with messages the whole way so you can practically run through unless you're going for the blue titanite slab.

Additionally, this dearth of players that pay for Switch's garbage online service paradoxically makes it so you will get invaded within about 20 seconds of going un-hollow since they have no one else to invade. I just gave up on the game being playable if you didn't want to PVP while unhollowed, and had to play offline any time I wanted to go un-hollow for summoning NPCs. Fortunately this game's NPCs are generally very bad - I died a couple times to O&S summoning Solaire, until I just said "screw it" and went after them solo with a 2H greatsword with <25% equip load and beat them first try without having to flask more than twice. 

This game, much more than the sequels, does have an instant "iwin" button as far as gear that trivializes the game, here in the form of Greatshield of Artorias. I finally bothered getting it just before I started the DLC, and as a result, I killed Artorias himself first try without having to use Estus a single time cause literally none of his attacks could hurt me or do more than about 50% stamina damage against that shield. I guess it helps that my endurance is at 35, but still! I did grind about 5 levels on those shield guys in Painted World, but other than that, I've just been playing the game normally and not trying to grind for anything or power-level anything. Now that my str and dex are both to 35, I'm finally using the Claymore since it finally outdamages the Black Knight sword. Too bad the game's almost over! I might try NG+, but more likely I will just never replay it on this system since the online is so underpopulated.

Crystal Caves with no online community and then Tomb of Giants were the most miserable experiences. ToG probably would have been fine if I'd had the greatshield first, but those awful dog enemies that can flurry for your entire health-bar and stamina bar with a wimpy shield made it the most frustrating zone, even more than Anor Londo and Sen's Fortress. I even had to do it in two sessions, the first limping through with the skull lantern, and then getting too fed up with those dogs destroying me while holding the lantern in the offhand so I had to go to demon ruins for the sunlight maggot.

The main reason I was curious about this version, the "original" graphics vs the polished, shiny Remastered graphics, didn't make that big of a difference. The lighting is so much worse that the occasionally better-looking effects on things didn't really make up for it. It's fine, but I didn't prefer it over the other platforms.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I meant "which have you FINISHED before" since most of them are re-releases! Ex, did you already finish Dragon Quest XI vanilla, have you played through Nier on PS3/Xbox, etc. I'd say play Nier if you haven't played an older version yet.



Didn't finish any of them. Maybe got a few hours into Vanilla Dragon Quest, never played the original Nier, I got a good distance into Death Stranding but I'm probably going to start fresh on that. Only one I beat the original of was Persona 5.
I ended up playing 13 Sentinels last night, but spent most of my time refreshing myself on the story. I feel like that's a game I can pick up and play an episode or two and put it down, rinse and repeat. I may go with Nier.


----------



## wankerness

Dragon Quest XI was great. The second "half" of the plot is maybe a bit redundant, but the characters are so damn endearing apart from your personality-less main character that I had no issue going through some of the same events again. The S version is probably a lot better since it's missing the main weakness of the original, which is the godawful soundtrack. I mean, the music will still be really repetitive and suck, but at least it won't sound like it's coming from a 1993 synthesizer. I'd recommend that after you get through Ending E of Nier.


----------



## John

Chipping away through the Skyward Sword HD version.
I've beaten the game on the old Wii console before, so it's not an entirely novel experience. But even then the controls (both joycon and button-only) are still taking some acclimation. Current feelings towards that are it's a tradeoff for better in some ways, worse in others.


----------



## Ralyks

They announced Persona 4 Arena Ultimax and I think I finally found a fighting game to invest time into.


----------



## Empryrean

Ralyks said:


> They announced Persona 4 Arena Ultimax and I think I finally found a fighting game to invest time into.


I could have sworn ultimax came out already... didn't it??


in other news. I beat Hollow Knight and got pretty far in the boss rush mode, still need to beat some of them...goodness its hard


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Empryrean said:


> I could have sworn ultimax came out already... didn't it??



It did. The announcement was for a Switch port. 



Ralyks said:


> They announced Persona 4 Arena Ultimax and I think I finally found a fighting game to invest time into.



If you don't mind frantic anime fighters (lots of air dashing, intricate cancel mechanics and visual novel story telling) then you'll be fine. Of course it's a direct sequel to Persona 4 (4 Golden) and the other fighting game after it, so unless you're up to date with Yu and his Inaba travels, you might get lost.


----------



## Empryrean

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It did. The announcement was for a Switch port.


oh thank goodness. I thought I might have time traveled 
I'll probs pick it up on switch just for fun, it'll be cool to explode people on-the-go with Chie(I think it was chie that had the broke ez mode 100% combos)


----------



## wankerness

Now that I'm at the tail end of all four of my Dark Souls runs (just Manus and Gwyn left on DS1, just Lud/Zallen on DS2 NG+, just Iron King DLC on DS2, just Gael/Midir on DS3), I'm looking to break the cycle and do something else for a couple months until Elden Ring comes out. I just bought Far Cry 6 Gold Edition and FFXIV's expansion! I'm starting a new character on FFXIV with the idea of eventually going Dancer at 60. Going to start as a Pugilist/Monk, I guess, cause I heard Monk was one of the classes most smoothly playable on controller this side of the Dancer. I only played to about level 10 during my trial since all the new races/classes were locked out until the release of Endwalker, which was stupid, so I basically haven't gotten acclimated to it on console at all yet. Might end up switching to PC if I feel like hurting my wrists. Far Cry 6 I'll check out tonight, I think. Hopefully it grabs me more than RE8, which lost me completely after less than an hour. I really did like FC5 a ton other than the forced progression mechanic. I'm hoping it has the followers like in that game, cause they were my favorite part and I didn't like how they dumbed them down in New Dawn. Worst case scenario, even if I don't like it and bounce off as hard as I did with RE8, at least I'll get Blood Dragon eventually as part of the Gold edition and get to replay that!

Also, Mortal Shell is one of the PS+ free games this month, guess it's widely considered the best straightforward Dark Souls clone? I'd never heard of it. I've installed it already!


----------



## p0ke

I just beat Jedi Fallen Order. I did finally get better at the saber dual stuff by the end, but those were still pretty much a pain in the ass imo. The exploring is super cool though, and I hope there'll be more Star Wars games like this.


----------



## Werecow

p0ke said:


> I just beat Jedi Fallen Order. I did finally get better at the saber dual stuff by the end, but those were still pretty much a pain in the ass imo. The exploring is super cool though, and I hope there'll be more Star Wars games like this.



They've already been at work on the sequel for some time.

Your next task is to master Sekiro


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished Persona 5 Royal: went through all of the new third term, beat the final boss, reloaded an old save to get the bad ending, then finished with the true ending. 

I loved P5 Vanilla and the Persona series in general are great for those who are tired of the usual JRPG tropes (even if this was chock full of them especially towards the end). But Royal made a great game to sheer excellence, maybe one of the best in the genre. The new characters and the whole Jan-Feb arc are great additions, one in particular was compelling enough for me to check out the bad ending. 

Now after spending 140 hours with the Phantom Thieves, I decided to... continue spending more hours with the Phantom Thieves on Persona 5 Strikers. Despite the massive gameplay shake up, it still feels right at home. And Musou/Dynasty Warriors style hack/slash games are my simple wind down comfort/food kind of gaming so it's dead easy to get into.


----------



## p0ke

Werecow said:


> Your next task is to master Sekiro



It's certainly on my to play list, but I'm waiting until I can get it for ~15€.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Picked up Maneater . Prob gonna give that a spin today.


----------



## wankerness

I thought I'd like Maneater, but I got sick of it as soon as I hit the first "boss fight."

Started Far Cry 6, I like the look of it and the feel of the shooting, the upgrade system and gear stuff still doesn't make sense to me and I am having trouble figuring out how to "level" to get to the harder areas, but I'm sure I'll get into it eventually.

Started Mortal Shell, it's like Dark Souls if you couldn't heal and your shield was on a 5 second cooldown! Ugh. I got infuriated at it quickly since you get swarmed by enemies and can only block one of their attacks and can't heal damage you take and your stamina regenerates super slowly, plus you can't recover your "souls" when you die. From what I hear, the game gets way, way easier and is ultimately a lot easier than Dark Souls, but the beginning put me off so hard I dunno if I'll go back since I didn't spend money on it.


----------



## LostTheTone

p0ke said:


> It's certainly on my to play list, but I'm waiting until I can get it for ~15€.



You're certainly wise to wait for a sale - I don't want to shout down Sekiro too much but it's definitely a "love it or hate it" game. And if you were struggling with duels in Fallen Order then I think you might break a controller in half trying to do Sekiro boss battles.

I quit the bloody game two different times for the same reasons: combat built around "Don't dodge, parry! Except some things can't be parried!", and the complete lack of any way to improve my character except by beating more boss battles. When you're new at Dark Souls, and losing to the gargoyles, there's a lot of scope to stat up, get new weapons, improve weapons, learn about miracles/sorceries and use resins to boost your chances. In Sekiro it's "git good" or nothing, an invitation I politely decline. And that's as someone who used to speedrun DS and DS2 (but not SotFS because it's garbage).

Jedi Fallen Order wasn't the most challenging game I've ever played, and I was a little disappointed about the lack of customization, but it was a really fun experience all the same. I did find myself slightly annoyed by the "supposed to lose" fights against Lady Vader though, because I was convinced I could beat her if I had a couple of tries.

By contrast I found Sekiro to just be miserable. You might want to check out Nioh though, Nioh is effing great. Not quite as creative or polished, but it's a game that gives you a lot of tools to use which I find makes it rewarding.


----------



## p0ke

LostTheTone said:


> You're certainly wise to wait for a sale - I don't want to shout down Sekiro too much but it's definitely a "love it or hate it" game. And if you were struggling with duels in Fallen Order then I think you might break a controller in half trying to do Sekiro boss battles.
> 
> I quit the bloody game two different times for the same reasons: combat built around "Don't dodge, parry! Except some things can't be parried!", and the complete lack of any way to improve my character except by beating more boss battles. When you're new at Dark Souls, and losing to the gargoyles, there's a lot of scope to stat up, get new weapons, improve weapons, learn about miracles/sorceries and use resins to boost your chances. In Sekiro it's "git good" or nothing, an invitation I politely decline. And that's as someone who used to speedrun DS and DS2 (but not SotFS because it's garbage).



I'm waiting for every game to go on sale these days TBH. I don't have much time to play and I've already got a bunch of games waiting, so there's no point in buying stuff at full price. I waited almost two years to get Jedi Fallen Order for example, and yeah, it's a great game, but I don't regret waiting for it.

So I'll buy Sekiro when it's cheap, and then we'll see what happens.



LostTheTone said:


> Jedi Fallen Order wasn't the most challenging game I've ever played, and I was a little disappointed about the lack of customization, but it was a really fun experience all the same. I did find myself slightly annoyed by the "supposed to lose" fights against Lady Vader though, because I was convinced I could beat her if I had a couple of tries.



Yeah, the customization was definitely quite redundant. I basically had all the skills at the end of the game, so it kinda felt like it might as well just have given you them as you progressed, and the clothing/ship/robot/lightsaber customization was basically just adding color to stuff. Maybe they originally intended the stuff to be a bit deeper but had to scrap it? For example different ponchos could've easily been made to provide better defence in different environments, or enemies could have a harder time noticing you if you're camouflaged correctly etc...

By the way, one reason I had a hard time with the duels was that I hadn't explored and found more stims! I beat the game with only 2 stims, now I've kept exploring and I think I have 7... I would've probably won every duel on the first attempt if I had had that amount straight away. But like I said, I got a lot better by the end, and I beat the final boss on the second or third attempt. Parrying took some getting used to, as I was more used to a more roll around and stab in the back kind of strategy  But I imagine I'll be better at the DS games too after this!



Spoiler: Regarding the ending



I thought the end of the game, when Vader arrived, was super awesome. I felt like it could've been a survival horror game of its' own, and it was genuinely scary af.
Imagine if the sequel was like that - you're doing your typical questing across the galaxy, but at the same time Vader is chasing you and then sometimes when you'd land on a planet, you'd feel a disturbance in the force and if he is actually there, his theme music would play super quiet in the background and intensify as he got closer, and then you'd end up running away like in this game. Kinda like Nemesis in Resident Evil 3.


----------



## LostTheTone

p0ke said:


> I'm waiting for every game to go on sale these days TBH. I don't have much time to play and I've already got a bunch of games waiting, so there's no point in buying stuff at full price. I waited almost two years to get Jedi Fallen Order for example, and yeah, it's a great game, but I don't regret waiting for it.
> 
> So I'll buy Sekiro when it's cheap, and then we'll see what happens.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, the customization was definitely quite redundant. I basically had all the skills at the end of the game, so it kinda felt like it might as well just have given you them as you progressed, and the clothing/ship/robot/lightsaber customization was basically just adding color to stuff. Maybe they originally intended the stuff to be a bit deeper but had to scrap it? For example different ponchos could've easily been made to provide better defence in different environments, or enemies could have a harder time noticing you if you're camouflaged correctly etc...
> 
> By the way, one reason I had a hard time with the duels was that I hadn't explored and found more stims! I beat the game with only 2 stims, now I've kept exploring and I think I have 7... I would've probably won every duel on the first attempt if I had had that amount straight away. But like I said, I got a lot better by the end, and I beat the final boss on the second or third attempt. Parrying took some getting used to, as I was more used to a more roll around and stab in the back kind of strategy  But I imagine I'll be better at the DS games too after this!
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: Regarding the ending
> 
> 
> 
> I thought the end of the game, when Vader arrived, was super awesome. I felt like it could've been a survival horror game of its' own, and it was genuinely scary af.
> Imagine if the sequel was like that - you're doing your typical questing across the galaxy, but at the same time Vader is chasing you and then sometimes when you'd land on a planet, you'd feel a disturbance in the force and if he is actually there, his theme music would play super quiet in the background and intensify as he got closer, and then you'd end up running away like in this game. Kinda like Nemesis in Resident Evil 3.



Yeah, agreed on all fronts man. I am not a young man any more and I just don't have infinite hours for new games. And I have spent too long playing games that are "nearly great" but with serious flaws which most good games are at release today. Cyberpunk was saved by pandering to my cyborg lesbian fantasies, but if it needs lesbian cyborgs to save it then its a game with problems.

Good for you for getting so far in JFO on so little healing!


----------



## p0ke

LostTheTone said:


> Cyberpunk



I'm not even waiting to play that yet  Don't get me wrong, I was kinda hyped about it, and still am, but I've heard it runs so bad on previous gen hardware (I'm still running the OG Xbox One) that I'm not even gonna try it before I upgrade. The next-gen version should be out by then as well, so I'll get to play it the way it was intended (hopefully)...

The main thing I'm waiting on is the second DS3 DLC - I was stupid and bought the normal edition when both that and the deluxe edition were on sale, as I thought I wouldn't even finish that anytime soon... Then I managed to get the first DLC cheap after almost finishing the main normal quest, but now the second DLC is nowhere to be seen. And then I'm yet to start DS2 (thankfully I have the deluxe edition of that).


----------



## gabito

Playing Marvel's Spider-Man. Fun, very good looking game. Swinging around fake Manhattan is a lot of fun. Expected more from the combat, though. I feel like combat from the Arkham games is better, snappier, I don't know exactly why. In this game enemies tend to mob you, and there's lots and lots of them... like A LOT.

Also, the game throws at you like a million things to do very early on... and then adds more, and then some more, AND MORE. Kinda Ubisoft-ish, even if the side missions are OK, and the collectables easy to find. I prefer Rockstar's games (ie: GTA V, RDR2) in that regard: not so much side content nor a map filled with icons, but a long main mission and that's pretty much it. That said, as far as open world games go I'm enjoying this game way more than RDR2...


----------



## Wc707

Dark souls 3. Stuck on Sister Feet, Gael, Soul of Cinder, and Nameless King.
Took a break to play Final Fantasy XV.


----------



## wankerness

Wc707 said:


> Dark souls 3. Stuck on Sister Feet, Gael, Soul of Cinder, and Nameless King.
> Took a break to play Final Fantasy XV.



FYI you can basically cheese Nameless King by using the Dragon Armour's greatshield (the really heavy one with lightning resist) and any fast-ish weapon like the lothric knight sword. Just lock onto the King in P1 instead of the dragon to block all his crap, and then in P2 just be careful to never get greedy. You'll still have to heal periodically from the chip damage but there's only one or two attacks you actually need to dodge.

Sister Feet is very doable if you have the summon, but the summon stops being available if you get a ways into the second DLC before beating her (since it's Gael!!). She's very, very bad news if you try solo, especially phase 3! I never seriously attempted to do it, I had enough trouble with her in Phase 1 (since you can't summon on that). She's basically Maria from Bloodborne but you're stuck moving at DS3 speed, so it is kind of ridiculous how infrequently you have time to hit her, especially considering the ludicrous damage she does.

You can KIND of cheese Gael by getting the storyteller staff off those caster guys that turn into birds on the road of sacrifice. If you poison him with that and just evade, you don't have to open yourself to many of his attacks. Poisoning him takes a couple direct hits with the cloud, though, and I think you have to manage to do it 3 times.

You beat Midir?!?! He's harder than all of those besides MAYBE Gael and Friede IMO.

FFXV has a really half-assed battle system and the plot's a total trainwreck that frequently makes no sense unless you watched animes or read books or something (the info doesn't exist in the game). But, it's not terrible. I played it for a while. It's kind of fun just driving around doing sidequests. Even though the driving is weird and on rails.


----------



## zodiactone

Oregon Trail…but I died.


----------



## Wc707

wankerness said:


> FYI you can basically cheese Nameless King by using the Dragon Armour's greatshield (the really heavy one with lightning resist) and any fast-ish weapon like the lothric knight sword. Just lock onto the King in P1 instead of the dragon to block all his crap, and then in P2 just be careful to never get greedy. You'll still have to heal periodically from the chip damage but there's only one or two attacks you actually need to dodge.
> 
> Sister Feet is very doable if you have the summon, but the summon stops being available if you get a ways into the second DLC before beating her (since it's Gael!!). She's very, very bad news if you try solo, especially phase 3! I never seriously attempted to do it, I had enough trouble with her in Phase 1 (since you can't summon on that). She's basically Maria from Bloodborne but you're stuck moving at DS3 speed, so it is kind of ridiculous how infrequently you have time to hit her, especially considering the ludicrous damage she does.
> 
> You can KIND of cheese Gael by getting the storyteller staff off those caster guys that turn into birds on the road of sacrifice. If you poison him with that and just evade, you don't have to open yourself to many of his attacks. Poisoning him takes a couple direct hits with the cloud, though, and I think you have to manage to do it 3 times.
> 
> You beat Midir?!?! He's harder than all of those besides MAYBE Gael and Friede IMO.
> 
> FFXV has a really half-assed battle system and the plot's a total trainwreck that frequently makes no sense unless you watched animes or read books or something (the info doesn't exist in the game). But, it's not terrible. I played it for a while. It's kind of fun just driving around doing sidequests. Even though the driving is weird and on rails.




Thanks for the tips!
Yeah I kinds switched between them all because i got tired of dying. I got to Sister Feets 3rd phase solo and kept dying. Her attacks are filthy.
Funny you compare Sister Feet with Maria cause I looooved her fight and Bloodborne is the best Fromsoft imo.

Gael I didn't spend too much time on. More on Soul of Cinder, Feet, and Nameless kind.

I needed a break from DS3 so that's why I did ff15 [kinda mindless and relaxing].
Yeah the plots a fucking wreck, but I enjoy the characters and whatnot. I got the Royal Edition super cheap [which has extra dungeons, cutscenes, weapons armor, etc] and it's better than base game. Vanilla was a horrible mess. The Royal Edition makes F15 tolerable and fun.


----------



## TedEH

As I've been going through Deathloop - I've noticed this is another one of those rare games that manages to make failure states not feel awful, _aaaand_ does the kind of immersive-sim without encouraging cheesing the mechanics or save scumming, etc. Improvising when your plan didn't quite work out is still viable, and doesn't kill the fun. I feel like that's worth calling out for anyone on the fence about trying this one.


----------



## wankerness

Oh, the Royal version? FFXV's versions are also a mess. I bought some kind of GOTY version that I think had implemented some changes like making the infamous late-game chapter that attempts to be survival horror a lot shorter, but then they released the "Royal" version afterwards - I think it just added one or two more DLC chapters than the ones that came with what I had (none of which I ever actually played, cause they were segregated in other menus instead of put in the game chronologically - EPISODE PROMPTO, EPISODE GLADIUS, etc), but I would have had to pay for the game all over again and also play through the whole game all over again. Actually I think maybe I have access to it from PS+ since I have a PS5, but I can't see myself playing through all that again anytime in the forseeable future. I'd rather play through FF7, FF7 remake, or replaying FF8/9/X/X2/XII/XIII before I'd go for that one! Does the Royal version actually integrate that stuff into the plot, or do you still have to launch it separately? I did think the game suffered a lot from making you play as only one character the whole time, and also from having by far the least interesting variety of characters in any Final Fantasy game I've ever played (I started at 6). Instead of the usual collection of 6+ weirdos of both genders and often multiple species, you get...four twerpy guys in black leather that all look like fashion models. I mean, at least some of their personalities are actually varied, but it's still pathetic.

I dunno if Bloodborne is the best fromsoft game. I still haven't given Sekiro a serious chance. I've played through every Dark Souls game in its entirety a minimum of 3 times and the Demons Souls remake twice, while I only played through all of Bloodborne once, but I definitely really liked it and first impressions compared to first impressions of the DS games was that it was the best thanks to atmosphere and the bosses being particularly memorable. Plus, it FORCED you to play actively instead of hiding behind a shield like I almost always resort to doing in DS games.


----------



## TheBlackBard

I think I want to get an Xbox One or something just so I can have some backwards compatibility with games I used to play all the time like Black or Lost Odyssey. Especially Lost Odyssey, that was the best Final Fantasy game since X.


----------



## p0ke

Wc707 said:


> Nameless King



Definitely toughest boss so far! You can read about my endeavors with him a few pages back 
I haven't played Ringed City yet though. 



TheBlackBard said:


> Especially Lost Odyssey, that was the best Final Fantasy game since X.



Ah, I should finish that one someday as well. I played on the 360 back when it came out but for whatever reason I quit at the start of disc 4.


----------



## Wc707

wankerness said:


> Oh, the Royal version? FFXV's versions are also a mess. I bought some kind of GOTY version that I think had implemented some changes like making the infamous late-game chapter that attempts to be survival horror a lot shorter, but then they released the "Royal" version afterwards - I think it just added one or two more DLC chapters than the ones that came with what I had (none of which I ever actually played, cause they were segregated in other menus instead of put in the game chronologically - EPISODE PROMPTO, EPISODE GLADIUS, etc), but I would have had to pay for the game all over again and also play through the whole game all over again. Actually I think maybe I have access to it from PS+ since I have a PS5, but I can't see myself playing through all that again anytime in the forseeable future. I'd rather play through FF7, FF7 remake, or replaying FF8/9/X/X2/XII/XIII before I'd go for that one! Does the Royal version actually integrate that stuff into the plot, or do you still have to launch it separately? I did think the game suffered a lot from making you play as only one character the whole time, and also from having by far the least interesting variety of characters in any Final Fantasy game I've ever played (I started at 6). Instead of the usual collection of 6+ weirdos of both genders and often multiple species, you get...four twerpy guys in black leather that all look like fashion models. I mean, at least some of their personalities are actually varied, but it's still pathetic.
> 
> I dunno if Bloodborne is the best fromsoft game. I still haven't given Sekiro a serious chance. I've played through every Dark Souls game in its entirety a minimum of 3 times and the Demons Souls remake twice, while I only played through all of Bloodborne once, but I definitely really liked it and first impressions compared to first impressions of the DS games was that it was the best thanks to atmosphere and the bosses being particularly memorable. Plus, it FORCED you to play actively instead of hiding behind a shield like I almost always resort to doing in DS games.




You still have to break from the game to play the episodes, so that kinda ruins the immersion. They're actually way better than the vanilla game anyway. 

+1 for FF7 and FF7R. Great games. 
I have played and beat Sekiro: it's a souls game but I'd say it's a lot more challenging. You really have to master the parry mechanic cause that's the holy grail of the game and it's what nets toy the most damage. It is definitely worth a shot.

Bloodborne, and Sekiro for that matter, are great because they force you to get up in your enemies' business instead of hide so it's a different thrill.


----------



## Wc707

p0ke said:


> Definitely toughest boss so far! You can read about my endeavors with him a few pages back
> I haven't played Ringed City yet though



I did see your struggles and I sympathize!
The Ringed City is pretty good, definitely recommend.


----------



## MFB

Wc707 said:


> You still have to break from the game to play the episodes, so that kinda ruins the immersion. They're actually way better than the vanilla game anyway.
> 
> +1 for FF7 and FF7R. Great games.
> I have played and beat Sekiro: it's a souls game but I'd say it's a lot more challenging. You really have to master the parry mechanic cause that's the holy grail of the game and it's what nets toy the most damage. It is definitely worth a shot.
> 
> Bloodborne, and Sekiro for that matter, are great because they force you to get up in your enemies' business instead of hide so it's a different thrill.



Yup

BB was my first FS and the one I'll die on the hill of saying it's the best of their franchises. It rewards aggression enough to make you play that way, but not enough that it's the only play style; if you want to hang back and go for the riposte/visceral attacks and slower, you can. 

Sekiro is an angry, second place for me, and my struggle with it is well documented in this thread  It's so unlike any other FS game that you want to try and play it like the previous entries, but it's not possible at all. You HAVE to parry, and you have to use the prosthetic tools, there's just no two ways around it. My biggest issue with it more than anything was the sheer amount of bosses compared to normal enemies, some times you'd face several bosses back to back and it felt like "why? what does this add to the story having these three difficult enemies so closely aligned?"


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Yup
> 
> BB was my first FS and the one I'll die on the hill of saying it's the best of their franchises. It rewards aggression enough to make you play that way, but not enough that it's the only play style; if you want to hang back and go for the riposte/visceral attacks and slower, you can.
> 
> Sekiro is an angry, second place for me, and my struggle with it is well documented in this thread  It's so unlike any other FS game that you want to try and play it like the previous entries, but it's not possible at all. You HAVE to parry, and you have to use the prosthetic tools, there's just no two ways around it. My biggest issue with it more than anything was the sheer amount of bosses compared to normal enemies, some times you'd face several bosses back to back and it felt like "why? what does this add to the story having these three difficult enemies so closely aligned?"



You still haven't played DS3, right? Might be worth a shot. It's definitely a much more polished experience than 1/2 at least, and the controls are a lot more fluid and fast than the first two as well. Difficulty is about on par with Bloodborne, lower than DS 1/2 except for the DLC bosses that get ridiculous. Nowhere close to Sekiro on the difficulty scale since you can outlevel things or respec for boss vulnerabilities while Sekiro is "GIT GUD: THE GAME". Bloodborne has DS3's base game beat in terms of environment, though. The descent into hell is really something special in BB.

The Ringed City dlc is insanely frustrating in its first stretch if you don't look up how to deal with certain things like the angels and summoners. Gael is widely considered the best boss Fromsoft has made yet, though. I like it a lot but dislike that it's so nasty for certain specs compared to the rest of the game. Go strength or go home on that DLC.


----------



## Ralyks

So I did go back to Nier Replicant, but at the same time, I realized in my bedroom is still my PS3, and I remember a while ago I purchased Persona 3 FES digitally yet never downloaded it. After spending a half hour trying to figure out how to get online with my PS3 (since it’s not really supported anymore so you have to go through some convoluted process on the website for a temporary password), I went and downloaded it and played maybe 15 minutes. I think I might play Nier when I’m not in my room and chip away at P3FES when I’m settling down at night or feel like just hiding in my room. Who knows, maybe I’ll also start up my PSTV and go back to Persona 4 Golden.


----------



## Wc707

MFB said:


> Yup
> 
> BB was my first FS and the one I'll die on the hill of saying it's the best of their franchises. It rewards aggression enough to make you play that way, but not enough that it's the only play style; if you want to hang back and go for the riposte/visceral attacks and slower, you can.
> 
> Sekiro is an angry, second place for me, and my struggle with it is well documented in this thread  It's so unlike any other FS game that you want to try and play it like the previous entries, but it's not possible at all. You HAVE to parry, and you have to use the prosthetic tools, there's just no two ways around it. My biggest issue with it more than anything was the sheer amount of bosses compared to normal enemies, some times you'd face several bosses back to back and it felt like "why? what does this add to the story having these three difficult enemies so closely aligned?"



Ugh I agree.. it felt like back to back to back boss fights over playing an actual game sometimes. God it took me a week to beat all 3 phases of the final boss [Genichiro, Sword saint].

Then they throw in a random fucking Souls boss in a game that can't be played like a Souls game [demon of hatred]. 

I loved the headless ape fight, though.


----------



## MFB

Oh man, I struggled more with Demon of Hatred than I did S.S. at the end, and I have absolutely fucking no idea why  Maybe because he was three phases, and they're LONG phases, but holy shit was that a relief to be done with. 

I remember beating the game and being out of my seat level of excited, and then my sadistic ass IMMEDIATELY started NG+ just to beast mode up to Guardian Ape in one run. I stopped at Headless's fight because it's hard as shit and I didn't care THAT much, but it felt good to stomp on them after the fact.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> You still haven't played DS3, right? Might be worth a shot. It's definitely a much more polished experience than 1/2 at least, and the controls are a lot more fluid and fast than the first two as well. Difficulty is about on par with Bloodborne, lower than DS 1/2 except for the DLC bosses that get ridiculous. Nowhere close to Sekiro on the difficulty scale since you can outlevel things or respec for boss vulnerabilities while Sekiro is "GIT GUD: THE GAME". Bloodborne has DS3's base game beat in terms of environment, though. The descent into hell is really something special in BB.
> 
> The Ringed City dlc is insanely frustrating in its first stretch if you don't look up how to deal with certain things like the angels and summoners. Gael is widely considered the best boss Fromsoft has made yet, though. I like it a lot but dislike that it's so nasty for certain specs compared to the rest of the game. Go strength or go home on that DLC.



I haven't since I had started DS2 and hated it, knowing it was the stepchild of series (although I think you said you enjoyed it for reasons most disliked?) and didn't want to start 3 until I had completed that. I know it makes no difference lore wise or anything, it's just my game OCD.


----------



## StevenC

Has anyone started the story in Halo Infinite yet? Just downloaded it today but haven't given it a go.


----------



## p0ke

MFB said:


> didn't want to start 3 until I had completed that. I know it makes no difference lore wise or anything, it's just my game OCD.



That's how I intended to do as well, but then DS3 went on sale for like -80% and scrapped that plan. In the beginning I had a hard time with it because it's so much faster and more responsive than DS1, but once I got used to it it turned out to be a fair bit easier. DS1 feels like it's turn based or something compared to DS3.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I haven't since I had started DS2 and hated it, knowing it was the stepchild of series (although I think you said you enjoyed it for reasons most disliked?) and didn't want to start 3 until I had completed that. I know it makes no difference lore wise or anything, it's just my game OCD.



I dunno how far you got in DS2, but I enjoy it the most cause the zones are mostly fun, you cruise through zones and there's a ton of graphical variety between them, and it's not full of bullshit narrow platforming or pitch black like DS1. I like the huge quality of life improvements like additional healing items, being able to "unhollow" anywhere instead of only while resting at bonfires, bows being much more easily aimed and you being able to move with the string drawn, being able to "sprint" up ladders, and most importantly being able to warp from any bonfire to any other bonfire immediately at the start of the game. The worst part of it is early on if you're on a regular new game, the heide knights in the tower of flame are serious assholes. The other thing I don't like is that you can be invaded by other players even if you're hollow - I WOULD just play offline, except the soapstone messaging community in DS2 is *by far *the most active and amusing of the three games. If it really bugs you, you can burn a human effigy at a bonfire to turn off invasions for that zone.

Things I occasionally dislike are the sheer volume of enemies - if you don't have a bow to carefully pull things, you're going to have a really bad time in some places like huntsman's copse and iron keep, and then the "your health decreases every time you die" mechanic. I used the ring of binding first playthrough to mitigate that (it's early on in a chest in heide's tower), but on later playthroughs I've always just unhollowed every 4-5 deaths so it never got bad. You get more than enough human effigies that you can pop them fairly regularly, unless you're REALLY dying a lot.

The only thing I really like about it that many complain is that if you're having trouble with a zone, you CAN just kill the monsters in it ~12 times and they stop respawning until the next NG cycle (or until you use a bonfire ascetic or join the covenant of champions). I did that a few places my first playthrough. It's good for grinding, too, since if the monsters stop respawning you know you've been at it for too long!


----------



## gabito

Just finished Marvel's Spider Man on the PS4. It was surprisingly... short? Addictive? Or, I don't kow, maybe I got obsessed with it and played non-stop for almost three days and now I'm only one trophy away from the platinum trophy. Weird... most of the trophies came from simply playing the game and by doing what was available on the map, or buying / upgrading stuff. I only looked up maybe 2 or 3 hidden trophies which were non story related.

I'm still surprised by how good looking this game is, and that's for a open world game on a standard PS4. Performance is pretty good too.

Anyway, I've yet to play the DLC, which is probably more of the same.


----------



## Jarmake

Started playing It takes two with my wife and I've enjoyed it this far. We really liked the way out and unraveled 2 and this one seems to be same style stuff. (And it's from the makers of the way out too.)

Tried mortal shell and wasn't very impressed with the beginning. I'm going to have to play it on, but the combat with it's hardening and stuff seems a bit clunky. And the environment (at least in the beginning tutorial area) is so grey and drab. Meh. Well, time will tell if it's any good.


----------



## rokket2005

I finished Shin Megami Tensei V the other night and I liked it, but the story is just kind of "there." The gameplay is fun, but I don't think I'm going to bother getting all the endings or doing a NG+ run atm. The ending I got seemed very anticlimactic, and I was like, "well, I guess it's over."

I kept track of all the games I played this year in an effort to play more games, and as I think I'm probably not going to beat another game this year I finished with 14 compared to I think 6 last year. I also played probably 200 hours less of Smash this year despite my girls being added which no doubt helped me get to more games.

Here was my list in the order I played them followed by my ranking of them from 1st to 12th since I grouped the Trails in the Sky games together as they should be. It'd be interesting to see other peoples lists if they do something similar. I don't think I played any bad games this year either, it's just based off my relative enjoyment.


Dragon Quest XIS 6
Nexomon : Extinction 10
Bloodborne 4
Trails in the Sky FC 1
Trails in the Sky SC 1
Trails in the Sky the 3rd 1
Prinny: Can I really be the Hero? 11
YS IX : Monstrum Nox 2
Axiom Verge 12
Disgaea 1 Complete 9
Nier : Automata 5
Metroid Dread 8
Crosscode 3
Shin Megami Tensei V 7


----------



## Blytheryn

StevenC said:


> Has anyone started the story in Halo Infinite yet? Just downloaded it today but haven't given it a go.



I have. It’s good and a lot of fun!


----------



## TedEH

It hadn't occurred to me to list or rank the games I've played over the year.... I'd have to read back through this whole thread to try to remember everything I played though. Maaaan I feel like I've played a lot of games, and time is a bit of a blur still.
In the spirit of the year coming to and end though - some GOTY contenders for me have been: (In terms of what I played, not release dates)
- Metroid Dread
- Ion Fury
- What I've played of Deathloop so far
- Disco Elysium
- Horizon Zero Dawn

Honorable mention for New Vegas for it's ambition and the things it does pull off, but it's far too much of a janky mess to compare favourably to any of the above.


----------



## wankerness

rokket2005 said:


> YS IX : Monstrum Nox 2



Wow, you really liked Ys IX! I thought about buying it last week as it's finally on sale (for $40), but I went with Far Cry 6 instead cause I'm an idiot and was buying a bunch of other cheap stuff at the same time (Doom 1/2/3, Bayonetta, Rage 2) so I'd have felt too wasteful also dropping money on Returnal/Ys IX like I thought about. I'll get it when it hits 50% off! I really liked VIII, but that's still the only entry I've played in the series.

I have almost no idea what I played this year vs last year. Everything's a blur since March 2020. I suppose I could go through this thread and check. I think it's mostly just been replaying dark souls games. I've recently been playing Zelda: A Link Between Worlds again, and getting into that - the dungeons in the dark world actually get quite complicated! Way more so than Link's Awakening, anyway. I like this entry, but it's kind of open-ended to the point of being confusing/overwhelming. The other Zelda games mostly funnel you towards specific dungeons every time you get a new item, but in this one you can get almost all the items immediately since a vendor sells them (I think it's pretty much just been the bracelets for picking up big rocks that I got from a dungeon), and thus the game hides the paths to get into the dungeons quite a bit more. Still, this is definitely a top-tier Zelda game, maybe the high point of the 2D ones. Well, more like 2.5D in this case, with the way you can go into the walls.

My girlfriend is totally addicted to Stardew Valley still, she's about halfway through the second year and has completed most of the bundles and stuff. I see how it could be addictive. It has SO many systems to level and progress through. Some stuff seems devilishly hard, like the skull cave in the desert. We were surprised early on when the game started dropping things like aliens and ghosts into it. I'd thought it was just a farming simulator like Harvest Moon. Weird, weird game.


----------



## Ralyks

Yeah I’m struggling to come up with a 2021 list. I’d say this is what I played the most this year:

Yakuza: Like a Dragon (I’m calling this my GOTY, easy)
Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! (Might actually be 2nd for GOTY)
Resident Evil Village (This makes top 3 too)
Persona 5 Strikers
Scarlett Nexus
Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD Remaster
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Marvels Guardians of the Galaxy
Hades
Ratchet and Clack: Rift Apart

I played plenty more, but I’d say those 10 got the most play from me this year.


----------



## rokket2005

wankerness said:


> Wow, you really liked Ys IX! I thought about buying it last week as it's finally on sale (for $40), but I went with Far Cry 6 instead


Oof. If you get games physically I recommend getting Falcom stuff when you can cause they go out of stock and NISA generally doesn't do reprints of them. YS VIII got a reprint earlier this year, but Switch versions were going for over $100 used.
I like VIII more than IX, but they both have some great twists in the story with great characters. VIII's music is better and it has the advantage of being all over an island rather than 85% inside a single city. Stardew is great too. It was the 2nd game I played after I got my switch, put about 70 hours into it then decided I had to move on to other games, plus I think SMO was coming out right about then too.


Also, if Nintendo shadow drops Hollow Knight Silksong during the Indie showcase tomorrow I'm totally beating that before the end of the year.


----------



## Wc707

wankerness said:


> Wow, you really liked Ys IX! I thought about buying it last week as it's finally on sale (for $40), but I went with Far Cry 6 instead cause I'm an idiot and was buying a bunch of other cheap stuff at the same time (Doom 1/2/3, Bayonetta, Rage 2) so I'd have felt too wasteful also dropping money on Returnal/Ys IX like I thought about. I'll get it when it hits 50% off! I really liked VIII, but that's still the only entry I've played in the series.
> 
> I have almost no idea what I played this year vs last year. Everything's a blur since March 2020. I suppose I could go through this thread and check. I think it's mostly just been replaying dark souls games. I've recently been playing Zelda: A Link Between Worlds again, and getting into that - the dungeons in the dark world actually get quite complicated! Way more so than Link's Awakening, anyway. I like this entry, but it's kind of open-ended to the point of being confusing/overwhelming. The other Zelda games mostly funnel you towards specific dungeons every time you get a new item, but in this one you can get almost all the items immediately since a vendor sells them (I think it's pretty much just been the bracelets for picking up big rocks that I got from a dungeon), and thus the game hides the paths to get into the dungeons quite a bit more. Still, this is definitely a top-tier Zelda game, maybe the high point of the 2D ones. Well, more like 2.5D in this case, with the way you can go into the walls.
> 
> My girlfriend is totally addicted to Stardew Valley still, she's about halfway through the second year and has completed most of the bundles and stuff. I see how it could be addictive. It has SO many systems to level and progress through. Some stuff seems devilishly hard, like the skull cave in the desert. We were surprised early on when the game started dropping things like aliens and ghosts into it. I'd thought it was just a farming simulator like Harvest Moon. Weird, weird game.


I've heard of Stardew Valley. Is it worth a try?


----------



## CanserDYI

Wc707 said:


> I've heard of Stardew Valley. Is it worth a try?


Is air worth breathing?

EDIT: I have like 200 plus hours on that game and I'm a casual player.


----------



## wankerness

rokket2005 said:


> Oof. If you get games physically I recommend getting Falcom stuff when you can cause they go out of stock and NISA generally doesn't do reprints of them. YS VIII got a reprint earlier this year, but Switch versions were going for over $100 used.
> I like VIII more than IX, but they both have some great twists in the story with great characters. VIII's music is better and it has the advantage of being all over an island rather than 85% inside a single city. Stardew is great too. It was the 2nd game I played after I got my switch, put about 70 hours into it then decided I had to move on to other games, plus I think SMO was coming out right about then too.
> 
> 
> Also, if Nintendo shadow drops Hollow Knight Silksong during the Indie showcase tomorrow I'm totally beating that before the end of the year.



I was planning on just getting it for Playstation digitally. I go with phyi


Wc707 said:


> I've heard of Stardew Valley. Is it worth a try?



Depends on what kind of games you like. It's a 16 bit farming simulator, but it has a ton of weirdness. Like, you'll fight monsters in a mine to gather crafting resources, you'll plant crops, you'll build relationships with town people, etc. It's definitely a good game with a ton of polish and a ton of fans. It probably isn't what I'd recommend to someone that mainly plays like, DOTA or COD or other violent action games though. If you like any retro RPGs or have ever liked any sort of life/farming simulator games definitely check it out.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> I like VIII more than IX, but they both have some great twists in the story with great characters. VIII's music is better and it has the advantage of being all over an island rather than 85% inside a single city.



Agreed. Ys IX rocks. Also agreed that it's a few steps behind VIII in the setting and music department, which VIII still has the edge of being top of the series, but when IX is on all 4 cylinders, it's still pretty damn great. Thematically IX is meant to be a downer anyway. 

Which reminds me, I still need to get Ys Origin since that kind of arcade hack and slash would make a great pick up and play kind of game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Maneater is good stupid fun. I just like cruising around terrorizing humans and seeing how long i can fight the hunters before i die. Made it to infamy level 8 before i hit the 3rd grotto.


----------



## Ralyks

Wc707 said:


> I've heard of Stardew Valley. Is it worth a try?



Absolutely.


----------



## Yelir

KnightBrolaire said:


> Maneater is good stupid fun. I just like cruising around terrorizing humans and seeing how long i can fight the hunters before i die. Made it to infamy level 8 before i hit the 3rd grotto.


Which specific system are you playing on? I have a base X1 and the game is always crashing, I got to the second area before I gave up on it.

Apparently a bunch of the early Yakuza games are leaving Game Pass soon, sad I didn't get to continue my streak but I have a Xbox backlog of about +25 games.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> You still haven't played DS3, right? Might be worth a shot. It's definitely a much more polished experience than 1/2 at least, and the controls are a lot more fluid and fast than the first two as well. Difficulty is about on par with Bloodborne, lower than DS 1/2 except for the DLC bosses that get ridiculous. Nowhere close to Sekiro on the difficulty scale since you can outlevel things or respec for boss vulnerabilities while Sekiro is "GIT GUD: THE GAME". Bloodborne has DS3's base game beat in terms of environment, though. The descent into hell is really something special in BB.
> 
> The Ringed City dlc is insanely frustrating in its first stretch if you don't look up how to deal with certain things like the angels and summoners. Gael is widely considered the best boss Fromsoft has made yet, though. I like it a lot but dislike that it's so nasty for certain specs compared to the rest of the game. Go strength or go home on that DLC.



Invisible rooftop boss is the worst in any souls game. My only gripe with 3. 



MFB said:


> I haven't since I had started DS2 and hated it, knowing it was the stepchild of series (although I think you said you enjoyed it for reasons most disliked?) and didn't want to start 3 until I had completed that. I know it makes no difference lore wise or anything, it's just my game OCD.



Two had some really good ideas and locations. Like enough that I really enjoyed it personally. Majula is home. 



StevenC said:


> Has anyone started the story in Halo Infinite yet? Just downloaded it today but haven't given it a go.



Lol no one I know with it even seems aware it has a story mode. I don’t have an Xbox to try it either.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Yelir said:


> Which specific system are you playing on? I have a base X1 and the game is always crashing, I got to the second area before I gave up on it.
> 
> Apparently a bunch of the early Yakuza games are leaving Game Pass soon, sad I didn't get to continue my streak but I have a Xbox backlog of about +25 games.


I have it on PC.


----------



## CanserDYI

wankerness said:


> Depends on what kind of games you like. It's a 16 bit farming simulator, but it has a ton of weirdness. Like, you'll fight monsters in a mine to gather crafting resources, you'll plant crops, you'll build relationships with town people, etc. It's definitely a good game with a ton of polish and a ton of fans. It probably isn't what I'd recommend to someone that mainly plays like, DOTA or COD or other violent action games though. If you like any retro RPGs or have ever liked any sort of life/farming simulator games definitely check it out.


To me, it was like the nostalgic feel you get playing old Pokemon games if youre a millennial, plus the chill relax factor of old harvest moon, and i LOVE the art/music. The opening theme for the title page, oh my god, that is nostalgia without being old? How is that even possible, I'm sure there is a word for that, a feeling of nostalgia/memory/recognition without ever hearing the tune?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

New mid way of the second Jail in Persona 5 Strikers and it's reached the point of the game where it turns into a typical Persona game and mucks you around a bit. 

Granted that Strikers is much more simplified than it's predecessor, so I'm really not making it a major complaint. The Persona-mon collecting is much more streamlined, hence much easier to manage, and the fact that leaving a Jail at any time becomes inconsequential makes things much easier, albeit adding more loading screens in between metaverses. The Phan requests are nothing more than small fetch quests, kills and Persona builds so whatever. 

On the other hand, constantly trying to manage the Scooby Doo gang at optimum levels to catch up with Joker and Oracle, or learn attacks at their pace becomes a bit of an imbuggerance. You'll have to constantly switch team members in and out to keep them fit, but there's very little incentive to use anyone else outside Joker himself unless you just want to try a different flavor of hack down a legion of enemies. Speaking combat...

I have to give props to Omega Force for translating Persona 5's turn based mechanics into Musou/Warriors format since most of it works. That said a few thing still get lost in translation. Large area attack upgrades don't really add more to the base attack and stat alignments are useless on bosses and most larger enemies so I'm mostly aiming for passive and healing skills. Any of the stylish elements in the original be aesthetic or mechanic gets lost in the midst of the hack and slash chaos, though it's still satisfying to land a Baton Pass and end a fight with an All Out Attack. 

I guess most of my bugbears come from the similar issues I've had with the Dynasty Warriors games, namely the Warriors Orochi series where you're similarly switching team members in and out during combat. Still, the summer vacation road trip with the Phantom Thieves is still a good time all around.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> New mid way of the second Jail in Persona 5 Strikers and it's reached the point of the game where it turns into a typical Persona game and mucks you around a bit.
> 
> Granted that Strikers is much more simplified than it's predecessor, so I'm really not making it a major complaint. The Persona-mon collecting is much more streamlined, hence much easier to manage, and the fact that leaving a Jail at any time becomes inconsequential makes things much easier, albeit adding more loading screens in between metaverses. The Phan requests are nothing more than small fetch quests, kills and Persona builds so whatever.
> 
> On the other hand, constantly trying to manage the Scooby Doo gang at optimum levels to catch up with Joker and Oracle, or learn attacks at their pace becomes a bit of an imbuggerance. You'll have to constantly switch team members in and out to keep them fit, but there's very little incentive to use anyone else outside Joker himself unless you just want to try a different flavor of hack down a legion of enemies. Speaking combat...
> 
> I have to give props to Omega Force for translating Persona 5's turn based mechanics into Musou/Warriors format since most of it works. That said a few thing still get lost in translation. Large area attack upgrades don't really add more to the base attack and stat alignments are useless on bosses and most larger enemies so I'm mostly aiming for passive and healing skills. Any of the stylish elements in the original be aesthetic or mechanic gets lost in the midst of the hack and slash chaos, though it's still satisfying to land a Baton Pass and end a fight with an All Out Attack.
> 
> I guess most of my bugbears come from the similar issues I've had with the Dynasty Warriors games, namely the Warriors Orochi series where you're similarly switching team members in and out during combat. Still, the summer vacation road trip with the Phantom Thieves is still a good time all around.



I LOVED Hyrule Warriors 1 for Switch despite its many flaws, I played it for probably close to 100 hours and even in that time didn't finish everything and unlock every weapon or anything. However, I then got Dynasty Warriors 8 and absolutely hated it and only played through the first scenario. How would you compare this to Hyrule Warriors? Is it that kind of fun/cartoony? Are the boss enemies gigantic HP sponges that take 10+ minutes to chip away at that can kill you in 1-2 hits like Dynasty Warriors 8?? You say you have to switch team members - is it like Hyrule Warriors where you have to send team members to different areas of the map via commands, and you have to take control over them sequentially since the AI is just unbelievably incompetent? Is the map better than Hyrule Warriors??

SIDENOTE: They need to frickin discount Hyrule Warriors 2 already. Every store I go to has 10+ copies of it sitting there unsold at 60 bucks. My local best buy has upwards of 25 of them. They're never going to sell it at 60!



Mathemagician said:


> Invisible rooftop boss is the worst in any souls game. My only gripe with 3.



What are you referring to? The summoner guy that spawns all the archers on the top of the wall in the DS3 dlc, or something else? When I think rooftops in DS3 I think of the Anor Londo Mk 2 and the annoying part in the library with gargoyles and that trio of NPCs. However, none of this stuff is invisible. I'm probably missing something obvious!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> SIDENOTE: They need to frickin discount Hyrule Warriors 2 already. Every store I go to has 10+ copies of it sitting there unsold at 60 bucks. My local best buy has upwards of 25 of them. They're never going to sell it at 60!


+1. I think I'd buy it at a pretty steep discount, but I'm not interested enough in it to pay full price right now.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> +1. I think I'd buy it at a pretty steep discount, but I'm not interested enough in it to pay full price right now.



It got universally weaker reviews than the first one and a fair number of outright negative ones. I'd still like to try it, but it sounds like way too much of a risk for $60. Especially considering it's been out for over a year now! I know Nintendo first party stuff rarely gets discounted for a lot longer than that, but this isn't first party.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Decided to give League of Legends another shot after like 6+ years of hating it and its fanbase. Hopefully it's slightly less toxic than it used to be in the past.


----------



## Ralyks

So I am playing more Nier, but I saw Nickelodeon All Star Brawl on sale and said fuck it and grabbed it. Is it fun? Yes. It's faults? I don't like that you can't change the control scheme, because jumping with the triangle button and not being able to press up to jump is going to take getting use to. Also, I really hope them teasing voice acting comes to fruition, because it badly needs it.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> What are you referring to? The summoner guy that spawns all the archers on the top of the wall in the DS3 dlc, or something else? When I think rooftops in DS3 I think of the Anor Londo Mk 2 and the annoying part in the library with gargoyles and that trio of NPCs. However, none of this stuff is invisible. I'm probably missing something obvious!



I wondered about this too, I assumed it was DLC content since I didn't recognize it. 
I thought Anal Londo was pretty tame in DS3 compared to DS1 (which was a huge pain in the ass the first time).


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I wondered about this too, I assumed it was DLC content since I didn't recognize it.
> I thought Anal Londo was pretty tame in DS3 compared to DS1 (which was a huge pain in the ass the first time).



Anor Londo in DS3 is considerably easier since there's no awful walk across the rafters, and the pathways are less narrow on the spires. Additionally, there's more ground beneath the spires so it's not impossible to survive a knock-off from the archers depending on where they hit you. That said, the actual enemies themselves are faster and harder to deal with than the super-wooden silver knights in DS1 that are mainly only threatening cause of how easily they can knock you to your death. Plus there's considerably more of them and the archers are positioned both down and up the pathways, so if you're not smart with positioning you can end up getting gank-squadded.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> That said, the actual enemies themselves are faster and harder to deal with than the super-wooden silver knights in DS1 that are mainly only threatening cause of how easily they can knock you to your death. Plus there's considerably more of them and the archers are positioned both down and up the pathways, so if you're not smart with positioning you can end up getting gank-squadded.



Yeah, that's true. I did get killed a bunch of times, and I think I ended up just running past the enemies all the way to the next bonfire the first time around, but it still felt "fair" compared to the dragonslayer arrow snipers in DS1. I lost count on how many times I fell of the rafters when fighting some other enemy while trying to avoid the arrows...


----------



## wankerness

I have NEVER tried fighting those two infamous silver knight archers "legit" in DS1. I always shoot at least one of them with poison arrows and wait for them to die before going up the exposed railing. The one on the right often keeps hitting me through the fence so I just give up and very, very carefully fight him on the ledge, but I can't imagine trying that with the left one still shooting me in the ass. And yeah, it doesn't feel very fair that they basically are wearing magnetized boots on that tiny ledge and won't fall off no matter what they do to you, while if you swing a weapon at them with a wide arc it will ricochet off the wall and send you flying to your death!


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

I finally completed Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eye a few days ago. What an experience! This game will stick with me forever, it's so special. A great part of that is the soundtrack, I can't stop listening to it.

I also finished Subnautica, not sure if I mentioned that previously. Really good too!

And I might be done playing videogames for a while, time to make some music!


----------



## StevenC

Halo Infinite campaign is like really really good so far


----------



## Ralyks

So I just discovered that yes, Far Cry Blood Dragon is part of the Far Cry 6 season pass. I know because I'm downloading it now. Awesome.


----------



## WarMachine

Installing FF7 remake through Epic Games now. _*Please*_ tell me i'm gonna love this lol.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of Deathloop's story today. The short version is that it's basically Majora's Dishonored, and that's my jam. It's not a super difficult game once you get the hang of certain ways you can play, but I'm alright with that. I'm not a snob about difficulty at all.



Spoiler



The good:
- Time loops are cool.
- I generally like the way the main cast is written.
- Most of the guns are fun to use.
- Most of the powers are fun to use.
- Lots of exploration, environmental stories, etc.
- Good use was made of the content so that the few places you visit didn't get stale.
- The game did not overstay it's welcome, which is a fancy way to say it didn't bother me that the game wasn't too long.
- Decent learning / power curve where you start off feeling fragile, and end feeling very empowered.
- The stealth mechanics basically work the way you would hope. More forgiving than something like Dishonored though.
- I suspect the dialogue was a challenge to implement, given the time loop, but I think they mostly pulled it off.
- Still runs really well on my gtx1080, as long as I don't crank the resolution up. 1440p/60 no problem though.
- I heard about some stability issues, but I never ran into any.

The less-good:
- This is one of those games where once you find a strategy that works for you, you're not given much reason to switch it up.
- When the credits rolled, I didn't really feel like I understood the beginning and end of the plot very well. Lots of unanswered questions.
- There's only really 4 maps in the whole game, unless you count alternate-time versions of the same maps, those maps are used well, but I wish there was more.
- Once you've completed the core of the game, the ending is short.... like 10 minutes short. No final level or anything.
- The AI isn't going to win any awards. They're pretty dumb most of the time. Although props for them running for cover if they've been attacked but don't know from where yet.
- There's a delivery service mechanic that looks like it'll be handed out to you in the course of the story, but it's not. You can completely miss it.
- By the time you get about half way through the game, you're swimming in infused powerups but have no real need for them once you've found ones you like.
- The four character trinket slots feels very limiting, since you'll have so many things that could be useful, but you'd have to sacrifice something you've already gotten used to using.
- There's not much sense of character progression - unless you pick trinkets for it, you never get more health, power, etc., and all the guns are basically the same.
- The game kinda runs out of interesting guns to chase down pretty quickly. There's only a tiny number of truly unique weapons, and the rest feel disposable.

I do think the good vastly outweighs the bad though. It's an enjoyable time. Not as out-there as I think I expected from the original trailers, but I'm not disappointed with it.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> Major's Dishonored


----------



## CanserDYI

Someone recommend me a game in the realm and reach of the BioShock series?

I became a huge fan of this series and now that I'm done with all of them and the DLC, feeling a bit of a void.

Don't say fallout.


----------



## Werecow

CanserDYI said:


> Someone recommend me a game in the realm and reach of the BioShock series?
> 
> I became a huge fan of this series and now that I'm done with all of them and the DLC, feeling a bit of a void.
> 
> Don't say fallout.


Depends what you liked most about it, but... System Shock 2, Prey (2017), Dishonored series, Deus Ex series, Metro series (maybe), Singularity (2010).
If you don't mind going further back, the old Thief games are excellent, but depends how much shooting/guns you want.


----------



## rokket2005

wankerness said:


> SIDENOTE: They need to frickin discount Hyrule Warriors 2 already. Every store I go to has 10+ copies of it sitting there unsold at 60 bucks. My local best buy has upwards of 25 of them. They're never going to sell it at 60!


Gamestop has Age of Calamity for $34 today, I'm sure Amazon will match it at some point but you'll probably have to be quick on amazon when they drop it cause they'll go out of stock when they match other stores or only match it for a small amount of time.


----------



## CanserDYI

Werecow said:


> Depends what you liked most about it, but... System Shock 2, Prey (2017), Dishonored series, Deus Ex series, Metro series (maybe), Singularity (2010).
> If you don't mind going further back, the old Thief games are excellent, but depends how much shooting/guns you want.


I really enjoyed the art style, the weapon system, the plot being very thought provoking. I played it in like 2008 and played it again in 2021 and my feelings were all still there 13 years later.


----------



## TheBlackBard

CanserDYI said:


> I really enjoyed the art style, the weapon system, the plot being very thought provoking. I played it in like 2008 and played it again in 2021 and my feelings were all still there 13 years later.



Something like Dishonored or Prey (2017) although Prey is closer to System Shock with resource management, but it shares similar physics and mechanics with Bioshock and Dishonored. I honestly wouldn't recommend the old System Shock games for that kind of gameplay. They're amazing, don't get me wrong, but not for you're wanting. Thief has already been said, I wouldn't recommend Metro either. That's a really solid FPS series, but again, not the same vibe or feel mechanically.


----------



## CanserDYI

Was there a different Prey that we are referencing the newer version or something? is that why I keep seeing Prey (2017)?


----------



## Jarmake

CanserDYI said:


> Was there a different Prey that we are referencing the newer version or something? is that why I keep seeing Prey (2017)?



There was the original prey in 2006. The 2017 one is a reboot.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Jarmake said:


> There was the original prey in 2006. The 2017 one is a reboot.



The one in 2017 doesn't have anything to do with the original, it just happens to be called Prey.

https://www.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/j2un63/prey_2017_has_nothing_to_do_with_prey_2006_and/


----------



## MFB

Finished _Last of Us_ yesterday



Spoiler



Ending is pretty anticlimactic, there's no real boss it just sort of ... ended? I could have sworn there was a choice that was supposed to be made at the end but I guess not. Makes since considering there's a sequel with Ellie, but the fact that Joel just undoes everything he travelled for and dooms mankind for one kid he can't let go. It basically goes against everything I believe, so that's not much fun.



Gonna wait to play the sequel, I need something fun at the moment. I have _Guardians of the Galaxy _that I picked up on sale, as well as _Witcher 3_ or _Little Nightmares_.


----------



## TedEH

CanserDYI said:


> Someone recommend me a game in the realm and reach of the BioShock series?





CanserDYI said:


> Don't say fallout.


Outer Worlds? I kid - neither of those is really Bioshock-like, IMO.



Werecow said:


> System Shock 2, Prey (2017), Dishonored series, Deus Ex series


+1 to all of these. Just google "0451 games" and play everything that comes up from a well-enough known studio. Bonus points if you can find ol' Ted's name in the Human Revolution: Directors Cut credits.


----------



## Jarmake

TheBlackBard said:


> The one in 2017 doesn't have anything to do with the original, it just happens to be called Prey.
> 
> https://www.reddit.com/r/prey/comments/j2un63/prey_2017_has_nothing_to_do_with_prey_2006_and/



I always assumed it was a reboot. Both are shoot em ups and aliens and shit... Oh well, live and learn.


----------



## Werecow

Jarmake said:


> I always assumed it was a reboot. Both are shoot em ups and aliens and shit... Oh well, live and learn.


2017 isn't a shoot 'em up. It's more like a survival horror RPG crossed with an immersive sim. Quite a lot like System Shock.
That's one of the reasons people were confused with them using the name Prey, because the new one has no resemblence to the style of the old one.


----------



## WarMachine

MFB said:


> Finished _Last of Us_ yesterday
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Ending is pretty anticlimactic, there's no real boss it just sort of ... ended? I could have sworn there was a choice that was supposed to be made at the end but I guess not. Makes since considering there's a sequel with Ellie, but the fact that Joel just undoes everything he travelled for and dooms mankind for one kid he can't let go. It basically goes against everything I believe, so that's not much fun.
> 
> 
> 
> Gonna wait to play the sequel, I need something fun at the moment. I have _Guardians of the Galaxy _that I picked up on sale, as well as _Witcher 3_ or _Little Nightmares_.


If you haven't tried out The Evil Within 1 and 2 give those a go. I always liked those better than Last of Us. More of the mind-trip Hellraiser style that sets it apart IMO.


----------



## WarMachine

So I downloaded Final Fantasy 7 Remake Integrade on my PC Friday night. Played it literally all night till about 3pm the next day. Put in like 13 hours straight lmao. I don't game like I used to or get the opportunity to, but when I get ahold of something I like I won't put it down lol. I'm up to the Don Corneo section at Wall Market. Just got finished with the Hell House fight and running the Trio side missions now. I fucking love this remake. Chrono Trigger and FF7 are what got me into RPG's as a kid and they are my top 2 favorites of the genre. But man this is wicked. I think they did a great job with the difficulty being up there considering it's an Action RPG. It just sucks that once you leave Midgar it's over. I just hope the next part doesn't take another fucking year or 2 to release to PC.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I LOVED Hyrule Warriors 1 for Switch despite its many flaws, I played it for probably close to 100 hours and even in that time didn't finish everything and unlock every weapon or anything. However, I then got Dynasty Warriors 8 and absolutely hated it and only played through the first scenario. How would you compare this to Hyrule Warriors? Is it that kind of fun/cartoony? Are the boss enemies gigantic HP sponges that take 10+ minutes to chip away at that can kill you in 1-2 hits like Dynasty Warriors 8?? You say you have to switch team members - is it like Hyrule Warriors where you have to send team members to different areas of the map via commands, and you have to take control over them sequentially since the AI is just unbelievably incompetent? Is the map better than Hyrule Warriors??



Combat wise, all these games share a fundamental gameplay loop, similar control layout and combat mechanics. That's more or less it. 

Persona Strikers, despite the new combat engine and most life sim and Persona-mon mechanics being extremely streamlined, is still a Persona (5) game at heart. Bosses are your typical damage sponges but makes sense when they all have multiple fighting stages. You have Joker and 3 active party members on the field (and can switch around combat via Baton Pass), while everyone else stays on bench unless you swap them in outside combat. 

Dynasty Warriors 8 is funny enough, my favorite of the mainline series. That said, every single one of them has a wonky difficulty curve. It's either too easy or too hard, it's like they're expecting you to start on Easy and by the time you've grinded enough you jack up the difficulty just to get an optimum balance. Still I say 8 being my favorite is because of the 50+ character roster, they were wise enough to streamline the choices and play them by factions. 5 was notorious for giving too many characters individual stories with overlapping scenarios, so it got quickly redundant. Then again, redundancy is the name of the Musou games since they have a bad tendency of releasing the same game over and over again. 

I've only played Hyrule Warriors for a good 20 minutes so I can't comment on the smaller details.


----------



## Mathemagician

DS3 Spoilers





I was talking about the dragon rider whose is basically invisible the whole fight, flies around the whole time and is nearly impossible to hit due to the atrocious camera for that fight due to his movement being above your character. 

That’s the most bullshit fight ever, because you can’t even play the game to target the enemy correctly.


----------



## TedEH

I'm starting up Persona 5 since I've heard a bunch of good things, and I had grabbed it on discount a while back. I'm remembering now just how jank some of the dialogue/localization is in these games. I dunno if it's just strange voice casting or what, but it's got that "voiced like it's a kids show written by a non-native English speaker" vibe all over it. I can live with it if the rest of the game is good. Not far enough in to see what the actual mechanics are like, but I've played P3, so I feel like I have a vaaaaague idea what to expect.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> DS3 Spoilers
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I was talking about the dragon rider whose is basically invisible the whole fight, flies around the whole time and is nearly impossible to hit due to the atrocious camera for that fight due to his movement being above your character.
> 
> That’s the most bullshit fight ever, because you can’t even play the game to target the enemy correctly.



Huh? You mean the nameless king in the dragon aerie? I never have a problem with that guy as long as I lock on to HIM instead of the dragon, though I always fight him with a shield and thus am backpedaling most of the time. The bosses where the camera is the biggest problem for me are the ones like Lothric Princes or Oceiros where they teleport/skid around and break the lockon constantly and you have to be really fast manually adjusting the camera to avoid getting nailed. 

But yeah, the lock-on in 3 is pretty bad news in general on bosses. DS2 has BY FAR the best lock-on camera of the three games. Hopefully they can get back to that level of stability with Elden Ring.


----------



## Mathemagician

Princes was easy- just go absolutely unga bunga from the drop and dps them down. They can’t hurt your if their dead. 

Going to have to look up the other ones. I didn’t play the DLC for 3.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Dynasty Warriors 8 is funny enough, my favorite of the mainline series. That said, every single one of them has a wonky difficulty curve. It's either too easy or too hard, it's like they're expecting you to start on Easy and by the time you've grinded enough you jack up the difficulty just to get an optimum balance.
> 
> I've only played Hyrule Warriors for a good 20 minutes so I can't comment on the smaller details.



Oh. I started on one of the higher difficulty settings cause I assumed it was like a normal game where the difficulty settings are all intended as starting places, not some kind of "start at easy and do the others as you level up"!! I'll have to try it again sometime. Guess that was my problem!

Hyrule Warriors is really, really fun cause the characters are so varied and it's all so cartoony. I really liked several of the characters and most of them felt really different. Twilight Midna was the most fun, I think. You'd have to play it for quite a while to really get a feel, I think.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Princes was easy- just go absolutely unga bunga from the drop and dps them down. They can’t hurt your if their dead.
> 
> Going to have to look up the other ones. I didn’t play the DLC for 3.



Princes are hard mainly cause of when they teleport across the arena and charge up that thing that 1-shots you, when the camera is pointing in the exact opposite direction of where they end up so you have to spend that crucial 1 second figuring out where the hell they are so you can time the dodge. Similarly the big guy will frequently teleport and basically land on top of you and it's either easy to dodge if your camera happened to be pointing where he ended up, or pretty much pure luck if it didn't since you can't tell which attack is coming and you have less than a second to react. Most of their difficulty is down to camera problems, basically. I can only do it very consistently using the PS4 controller with the button extension so I can be adjusting the camera 100% of the time. I mean, I've still beaten them 5 times and only the first time involved dying more than a couple times, but it still is a fight with a lot of possible BS thanks to the camera.

Oceiros is in the base game, it's the creepy talking dragon guy with the invisible baby that he squishes. Sidenote, I recently saw the videos where they dug up the original assets for that fight, where he actually was holding a visible baby that visibly went squish. I see why they cut that out on release!

You should really get the DLC. It's not quite at the level of the DS2 DLC, but it definitely has the most memorable boss fights of the game. Even though I hate Midir and think the gravetender sucks.


----------



## MFB

WarMachine said:


> If you haven't tried out The Evil Within 1 and 2 give those a go. I always liked those better than Last of Us. More of the mind-trip Hellraiser style that sets it apart IMO.



I played Evil Within 1 when it first came out, I don't think I finished it but it was OK; more enjoyed the atmosphere than the gamplay itself. First person horror (pretty sure it's a 1st person survival?) doesn't do it for me, just makes it actually harder to believe - same reason RE8's demo didn't do much for me. I'm blocking werewolf claws with my bare arms? No thanks, that's past my suspension of disbelief.

I fired up Guardians of the Galaxy and made it up through Chapter 4, gameplay is fun and the character's work well in pairing of single enemy focus vs. crowd control. Curious to see where it goes compared to the movies, so far it seems post-_Endgame _by context so it seems safe to say I won't see Yondu unless it's in a flashback section. It also makes me sad that IRL Star-Lord is Chris Pratt compared to what the game version is.


----------



## CanserDYI

MFB said:


> Finished _Last of Us_ yesterday
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Ending is pretty anticlimactic, there's no real boss it just sort of ... ended? I could have sworn there was a choice that was supposed to be made at the end but I guess not. Makes since considering there's a sequel with Ellie, but the fact that Joel just undoes everything he travelled for and dooms mankind for one kid he can't let go. It basically goes against everything I believe, so that's not much fun.
> 
> 
> 
> Gonna wait to play the sequel, I need something fun at the moment. I have _Guardians of the Galaxy _that I picked up on sale, as well as _Witcher 3_ or _Little Nightmares_.


I personally loved the LoU2, I think you'll enjoy it more than the first, I personally found it to be much more satisfying and gut wrenching than the first.


----------



## CanserDYI

What's the consensus on RE8? RE7 is one of my favorite games ever made, definitely the best in the series in MY opinion, and would hate to see RE8 ruin what they built up.


----------



## Ralyks

CanserDYI said:


> What's the consensus on RE8? RE7 is one of my favorite games ever made, definitely the best in the series in MY opinion, and would hate to see RE8 ruin what they built up.



If Village isn't my game of the year, it's top 3. I had a blast with it. And without going into detail, it ties into the whole series in an interesting way, as well as explain RE7's place in the story.

So after starting Persona 3 FES, I indeed set up my PS TV again and started playing Persona 4 Golden. I forgot I got 21 hours in. I put another hour in last night to reacquaint myself. Yup, I want to play through this game.


----------



## CanserDYI

Ralyks said:


> If Village isn't my game of the year, it's top 3. I had a blast with it. And without going into detail, it ties into the whole series in an interesting way, as well as explain RE7's place in the story.
> 
> So after starting Persona 3 FES, I indeed set up my PS TV again and started playing Persona 4 Golden. I forgot I got 21 hours in. I put another hour in last night to reacquaint myself. Yup, I want to play through this game.


Exactly what I wanted to hear, cheers.


----------



## WarMachine

CanserDYI said:


> Exactly what I wanted to hear, cheers.


The only negative i'd say RE8 has is the game length. I breezed through it the 1st playthrough, so grinding after that for the extras was almost like a speedrun. Still a great game and like Ralyks said, it does a great job of explaining RE7 and making both games canon.


----------



## CanserDYI

WarMachine said:


> The only negative i'd say RE8 has is the game length. I breezed through it the 1st playthrough, so grinding after that for the extras was almost like a speedrun. Still a great game and like Ralyks said, it does a great job of explaining RE7 and making both games canon.


Nooooot what I wanted to hear lol. But still will give it a shot.


----------



## WarMachine

CanserDYI said:


> Nooooot what I wanted to hear lol. But still will give it a shot.


Not to take away from the fun, it's definitely worth the buy man for sure. I just felt like it was short. But i run through games like a madman lol.


----------



## Mathemagician

CanserDYI said:


> What's the consensus on RE8? RE7 is one of my favorite games ever made, definitely the best in the series in MY opinion, and would hate to see RE8 ruin what they built up.



Wait are all the resident evils connected? I just assumed they were like alternate universes/reboots and just used the same character names a lot.


----------



## WarMachine

All of them up to RE7 are connected. Technically 7 was as well but with very little to no explanation, until RE8 came into play. That did a great job tying 7/8 together into the series.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Bought an Xbox Series S yesterday and am playing a few Xbox backwards compatible games, the first one being Lost Odyssey. Played it a long time ago when it first came out and walked away with the impression that it's a better Final Fantasy game than the last few entries have been. Never have played it since, was waiting for a PC port at least, but that's clearly not going to happen. Also bought Red Dead Redemption since I also loved playing that on the 360. I plan on using the Xbox for AAA titles if any arise, and using my PC for games that just aren't on console or that I would feel better playing on PC such as first person shooters and CRPG's. Neither of those handle well for me on console. But yeah, been playing Lost Odyssey since yesterday and I'm thinking that's what's going to be in my plans for most of Christmas time off, and New Year's time off.


----------



## Ralyks

Saw Tales of Arise on PS5 for 30 bucks. Couldn't resist. Otherwise, still full steam ahead on Persona 4 Golden.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Princes are hard mainly cause of when they teleport across the arena and charge up that thing that 1-shots you, when the camera is pointing in the exact opposite direction of where they end up so you have to spend that crucial 1 second figuring out where the hell they are so you can time the dodge. Similarly the big guy will frequently teleport and basically land on top of you and it's either easy to dodge if your camera happened to be pointing where he ended up, or pretty much pure luck if it didn't since you can't tell which attack is coming and you have less than a second to react. Most of their difficulty is down to camera problems, basically. I can only do it very consistently using the PS4 controller with the button extension so I can be adjusting the camera 100% of the time. I mean, I've still beaten them 5 times and only the first time involved dying more than a couple times, but it still is a fight with a lot of possible BS thanks to the camera.
> 
> Oceiros is in the base game, it's the creepy talking dragon guy with the invisible baby that he squishes. Sidenote, I recently saw the videos where they dug up the original assets for that fight, where he actually was holding a visible baby that visibly went squish. I see why they cut that out on release!
> 
> You should really get the DLC. It's not quite at the level of the DS2 DLC, but it definitely has the most memorable boss fights of the game. Even though I hate Midir and think the gravetender sucks.



I haven't fought Midir yet since I'm still waiting for a sale on the second DLC, but out of the rest of those the princes were definitely the hardest for me. Took maybe 50 attempts to beat. Oceiros on the other hand was very disappointing - I was expecting him to be tough af since his area was a major pain in the ass, but I defeated him on my first attempt. 

And the gravetender took a couple of attempts, but in the end he was relatively easy IMO.

Aldricht took a lot of attempts, but it helped a bit that you get to practice the fight an unlimited amount of times together with the NPC.

The Nameless King is easily the hardest so far though, I think he took more than 100 attempts. The first part of the fight wasn't bad though, I nailed that on my first attempt, and the last times I fought him, I didn't even take a single hit there. But the second section was tough because he keeps chaining his attacks in such a way that there's no time to heal... In the end I just stayed at the right distance where he just walks towards you and kept shooting him with arrows. I maxed out all my arrows and when I beat him I had like 4-5 left  And the battle took maybe 30 minutes.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> So after starting Persona 3 FES, I indeed set up my PS TV again and started playing Persona 4 Golden. I forgot I got 21 hours in. I put another hour in last night to reacquaint myself. Yup, I want to play through this game.



It's worth sitting though either of them, if not for story alone, since both have aged considerably. Hell, looking back at Persona 1, the first person navigation makes the game nigh unplayable. If anything P4 Golden certainly has a strong cast (arguably stronger than P5), and P3 FES has one of the more darker nihilistic stories not just by SMT standards but in any JRPG. 

There's talk on one or both of them getting reissued or remastered for current consoles, but it nothing more than rumors at this stage.



TedEH said:


> I'm starting up Persona 5 since I've heard a bunch of good things, and I had grabbed it on discount a while back. I'm remembering now just how jank some of the dialogue/localization is in these games. I dunno if it's just strange voice casting or what, but it's got that "voiced like it's a kids show written by a non-native English speaker" vibe all over it. I can live with it if the rest of the game is good. Not far enough in to see what the actual mechanics are like, but I've played P3, so I feel like I have a vaaaaague idea what to expect.



Which version are you playing? Vanilla or Royal?


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Which version are you playing? Vanilla or Royal?


It's the vanilla one - I don't know what Royal adds, but I was probably just assuming at the time that I wasn't invested enough in the franchise to want to do any DLC-style stuff or end-game content, etc.- especially enough to want to pay extra for it. I won't pirate a game, but I'll gladly buy the cheapest version, hah. Having played 3, if this one runs quite as long, I'm sure I'll have gotten enough out of it regardless of which version it was.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> It's the vanilla one - I don't know what Royal adds, but I was probably just assuming at the time that I wasn't invested enough in the franchise to want to do any DLC-style stuff or end-game content, etc.- especially enough to want to pay extra for it. I won't pirate a game, but I'll gladly buy the cheapest version, hah. Having played 3, if this one runs quite as long, I'm sure I'll have gotten enough out of it regardless of which version it was.



The royal addition jacks a bunch of extra plot into the game throughout and is like 15 hours longer than an already VERY long game, but it also makes a few huge gameplay improvements. Depending on what’s on sale they’re often the same price.


----------



## TedEH

At the time I grabbed it, Royal was about 3x the price. Vanilla was something like $5-10, but Royal was still in the 30+ range, and I didn't realize the difference at the time. I figured it was sort of like a "ultimate edition" situation where it's the base game and some cosmetic nonsense and some packaged in DLC content or something. I'm still ok with my choice, I guess. These are long enough games, that I don't know that I need to sink an extra 15 hours in, hah.


----------



## wankerness

Looks like persona 5 strikers is free next month for PS+, I guess putting off buying it has paid off!


----------



## wankerness

Got this Kena game for ps5. It is decent, but the camera and lock on are really serious problems considering how unforgiving it is (most mini bosses spawn a ton of adds, getting hit by anything takes off 25% or so of your health, and you have no healing abilities unless there’s a healing item in the arena, which doesn’t respawn). This game is way harder than anything I’ve played by fromsoft!! I’m tempted to turn the difficulty down. 
The cutesy Disney aesthetic is really misleading!!


----------



## gabito

Bought Cyberpunk 2077 on sale and I'm a few hours into it. So far it looks and runs pretty well (this is on a base PS4), so no complaints from me... well, I have one but it's not directed against this game only but almost every game this past generation: much of the text is SO FUCKING TINY. I have good eyes, and I'm not so far from the TV, but I struggle to read a lot of the information from the tutorials and such. You can make the subtitles bigger, but the rest of the text's size is fixed.

Anyway, the game looks as good as most PS4's open world games I've played (ie: Assassin's Creed Origins / Valhalla / Watch Dogs: Legion / whatever). It's not God of War or TLoU Part II, but it's fine. And I haven't encountered any major bugs so far (I know it's been patched several times now).

I'm not too keen on the first person view camera (I don't like first person view at all on any game), and the shooting mechanics kind of work? Anyway, I can manage.

I don't think this is going to be as interesting as, say, The Witcher 3, but at least it's not as shallow as Ubisoft's games.


----------



## wankerness

Ff7 remake is now free for ps5 through some convoluted series of clicks, so maybe I’ll try it again for the spectacle. I played some more Kena, it’s pretty good, but make sure you turn the camera sensitivity up a LOT from the default. Combat is kinda like Horizon Zero Dawn but with a huge emphasis on blocking and parrying over dodging, which I’m still adjusting to. The difficulty on this game is quite bizarre. Easy is much too easy, but normal feels like hard on most other games. Hard is just an untuned mess. I don’t even want to try the fourth difficulty (not that you can play it till a second playthrough). 
It has the same annoyance that I had with Jedi Fallen Order in that all the collectibles in the environment are purely cosmetic and pointless and barely do anything visually to your character! Like, you complete some super nasty combat challenge that takes three tries, and get a tiny hat the little dust mites that follow you around can where if you buy it at the store.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Been playing more of Lost Odyssey and... I think I'm fine doing enough mental gymnastics to consider this the last true turned based RPG, and probably the best one since 2001. I don't know why the fuck devs thought they had to abandon that formula for a more action oriented approach considering Final Fantasy was doing just fine on its own with that style, but yeah, mentally, I disown everything after X. Granted Lost Odyssey isn't a FF title, it was worked on by the person who helped make FF possible in the first place and is way more of a FF game than anything that's been released since X.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

Avernum 6

This is an older release, but Spiderweb Software is still doing great stuff in the realm of turn-based RPGs.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Got this Kena game for ps5. It is decent, but the camera and lock on are really serious problems considering how unforgiving it is (most mini bosses spawn a ton of adds, getting hit by anything takes off 25% or so of your health, and you have no healing abilities unless there’s a healing item in the arena, which doesn’t respawn). This game is way harder than anything I’ve played by fromsoft!! I’m tempted to turn the difficulty down.
> The cutesy Disney aesthetic is really misleading!!



So one, I'm really enjoying Kena and it might sneak in to my top 10 just barely. That said, I read your post and at the time was confused because it didn't seem too difficult. Tonight, I got about an hour and 8 - 10 deaths later and finally understood what you meant.


----------



## CanserDYI

Okay semi irked here. I picked up Gone Home since I was recommended it being an 0451 game and in the bioshock universe. I love small little indie games like this, and genuinely would have LOVED it if it was just a random pick up, but I feel semi irked because I played through it in like 2 hours, and got to the end of the game without really ANY bioshock reference or themes or any of the feel I got from those games. 

The fact that the first locked door to the file cabinet was 0451 code, I feel like that's really all that made this part of that world, and that upset me a bit. 

Again, Gone Home was interesting, I couldnt put it down for the 2 hours I had it, but I would be lying if I said I didnt feel mislead into buying it. It was very interesting, love the Riot Grrl themes, and the lovely story and it was very interesting, but the end came SO abruptly, and at the end I felt underwhelmed.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

CanserDYI said:


> Okay semi irked here. I picked up Gone Home since I was recommended it being an 0451 game and in the bioshock universe. I love small little indie games like this, and genuinely would have LOVED it if it was just a random pick up, but I feel semi irked because I played through it in like 2 hours, and got to the end of the game without really ANY bioshock reference or themes or any of the feel I got from those games.
> 
> The fact that the first locked door to the file cabinet was 0451 code, I feel like that's really all that made this part of that world, and that upset me a bit.
> 
> Again, Gone Home was interesting, I couldnt put it down for the 2 hours I had it, but I would be lying if I said I didnt feel mislead into buying it. It was very interesting, love the Riot Grrl themes, and the lovely story and it was very interesting, but the end came SO abruptly, and at the end I felt underwhelmed.


who the hell told you that Gone Home was related to Bioshock?
Gone Home is an overrated walking simulator imo. If you want an actually good walking simulator, play Firewatch.


----------



## CanserDYI

KnightBrolaire said:


> who the hell told you that Gone Home was related to Bioshock?
> It's a milquetoast lipstick lesbian walking simulator. If you want an actually good walking simulator, play Firewatch.


Pretty much every single Bioshock related page I've read or Youtube video talking about the franchise has mentioned Gone Home in some way, and Googling Gone Home Bioshock, there are quite a few articles saying they are the same universe and recommending I play it. I knew it wasn't going to be Bioshock, but I figured they mixed in some lore or some shit, but nope, it was just because 0451 was the door code, it seems.

EDIT: @TedEH can you give your opinion on this topic? I remember you saying something about checking out other 0451 games.


----------



## TedEH

I had no idea that game was associated with Bioshock at all. I remember playing it a long time ago, having high expectations because I like some of the walking sim games, and being disappointed with it, both because of the length, but also I don't remember the message resonating very much with me at all. Firewatch is a great recommendation though - just don't hype yourself up for the ending if you're the type to be bothered by anticlimactic endings.

Keep in mind anyone can slap 0451 onto/into a game, especially since the number got called out by a bunch of youtubers and became "a thing", but when I think/say 0451 games, as far as saying "I like 0451 games", I'm mostly talking about immersive-sim influenced titles that descend from the System Shock and Thief teams / Looking Glass. But at this point, tons of people have jammed that number into their games as a tribute or something, without being associated with those genres or the original devs anymore.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So one, I'm really enjoying Kena and it might sneak in to my top 10 just barely. That said, I read your post and at the time was confused because it didn't seem too difficult. Tonight, I got about an hour and 8 - 10 deaths later and finally understood what you meant.



yeah, the first “real” boss (corrupted Taro) was truly nasty. I am 2/3 through it now (beat the second “real” boss, now on the way to the third and final one). It’s a pretty hard game IMO. I kinda wish there was a setting between normal and easy since easy is laughably easy (Taro for example did roughly 1/3 the damage and had roughly 1/2 the hp on easy vs normal, I had to reload my save and do it again on normal it was so unfulfilling). That said, things get a bit easier when you get bombs, and when I realized you could trigger heals with L1 instead of having to use a rot ability. I also jacked the camera sensitivity wayyyy up and that helped. Lock on is still not very good, though.

some of the chest challenges are insane, there was one I couldn’t come close to beating even on the easy difficulty setting.

it’s definitely a good game, I’d highly recommend it. I like that it’s short, too. 10-12 hours I read is average.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> I had no idea that game was associated with Bioshock at all. I remember playing it a long time ago, having high expectations because I like some of the walking sim games, and being disappointed with it, both because of the length, but also I don't remember the message resonating very much with me at all. Firewatch is a great recommendation though - just don't hype yourself up for the ending if you're the type to be bothered by anticlimactic endings.
> 
> Keep in mind anyone can slap 0451 onto/into a game, especially since the number got called out by a bunch of youtubers and became "a thing", but when I think/say 0451 games, as far as saying "I like 0451 games", I'm mostly talking about immersive-sim influenced titles that descend from the System Shock and Thief teams / Looking Glass. But at this point, tons of people have jammed that number into their games as a tribute or something, without being associated with those genres or the original devs anymore.


I still don't know why a significant amount of people think Bioshock is an immersive sim. To me it was a shoot 'em up in a very nice environment, blighted by awful gun combat/mechanics, and no choice in having to engage in that (when an immersive sim would give so many other options). Immersive sim is my favourite genre, and i didn't enjoy Bioshock at all. I completed it, but it was a massive boring slog for me.

Edit: This has tempted me into yet another playthrough of System Shock 2. Damn.


----------



## CanserDYI

Thinking about picking up system shock 2, is it wise to play without the first?


----------



## TedEH

You can play System Shock 2 without playing the first for sure. Be prepared for the game being old and come with old-game jank, but it's worth it, IMO.

Immersive Sim is one of those titles that I take as pretty loose - otherwise you risk getting stuck playing the same game over and over again. I still count the Bioshocks as being at least related because of the influence from System Shock.


----------



## CanserDYI

TedEH said:


> You can play System Shock 2 without playing the first for sure. Be prepared for the game being old and come with old-game jank, but it's worth it, IMO.
> 
> Immersive Sim is one of those titles that I take as pretty loose - otherwise you risk getting stuck playing the same game over and over again. I still count the Bioshocks as being at least related because of the influence from System Shock.


Oh I'm only about 20 minutes in the game and already feel the influences that this brought Bioshock. I love this shit lol


----------



## Empryrean

I used to think I was quite good at fighting games but lately I've been trying blazblue and its hard.. :/


----------



## Werecow

Every time i replay System Shock 2 i'm stunned by just how good the sound design is and the atmosphere it creates. The sound on any Looking Glass related game still beats any modern game i play. I definitely have the music turned off on SS2 though. The ambient noise is so good.


----------



## bulb

Picked up inscryption yesterday and played it for 5 hours straight. What a sick and unique game!


----------



## MFB

I finished _Guardians of the Galaxy_ last night, got what I wanted out of it for what I paid, no more no less. I was very surprised to see that at some point a statement was put out saying there'd be no DLC, and at the same time no micro-transactions either; so I guess I'll bite my tongue since it seems like if one door were to open, then both would, and I can live without it being extended if that's the price to pay. And they didn't get shoe-horned into doing a multiplayer for it either! Which is also quite impressive.

It's say it's a solid 7/10, maybe even an 8/10 although it does get a little repetitive towards the end gameplay wise.

From here I'm moving on to _Spider-man: Miles Morales _that I also got on sale


----------



## CanserDYI

Found this odd, IIRC when I bought Miles Morales for my son like a month ago, Gamestop had it on sale for 39.99 for PS4 version which comes with PS5 digital download for free. The PS5 version of the game was 59.99...


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> I finished _Guardians of the Galaxy_ last night, got what I wanted out of it for what I paid, no more no less. I was very surprised to see that at some point a statement was put out saying there'd be no DLC, and at the same time no micro-transactions either; so I guess I'll bite my tongue since it seems like if one door were to open, then both would, and I can live without it being extended if that's the price to pay. And they didn't get shoe-horned into doing a multiplayer for it either! Which is also quite impressive.
> 
> It's say it's a solid 7/10, maybe even an 8/10 although it does get a little repetitive towards the end gameplay wise.
> 
> From here I'm moving on to _Spider-man: Miles Morales _that I also got on sale


What did you think of the combat in Guardians? I was looking forward to the game when it was announced, but when i saw the first gameplay reveal the combat turned me off completely.


----------



## MFB

Werecow said:


> What did you think of the combat in Guardians? I was looking forward to the game when it was announced, but when i saw the first gameplay reveal the combat turned me off completely.



For being a game where you have up to 5 characters at once participating in combat, I think they came up with the best system they could to make use of each character. 

Honestly, the end result is that the team mechanic works very similarly to Overwatch's GOATS meta - except instead of a 2/2/2 stack between Tank/DPS/Support, it's a 2/2/1 with Groot being your support for crowd control.

Gamora/Drax seem most intended as what would be the Tanks, with Rocket/Quill being more focused on keeping constant pressure vs high damage big attacks. It's very easy to navigate using what ability and when depending on how many enemies you've got, although at the same time it's very easy to fall into the same attack patterns (because you know they'll work) and ignore some of the other ones that are just as valid and potentially more beneficial.


----------



## TedEH

Werecow said:


> The sound on any Looking Glass related game still beats any modern game i play.


I'm still waiting for a game that integrates positional audio as well as Thief 2 did - not on a technical / realism level per-se, but just in terms of how key it was to the core loop of the game, and how well it conveyed valuable information to the player without being one of those "oh there's the music stinger, something must have happened" moments.


----------



## dr_game0ver

Battlefield 4 had excellent audio design. On multi, you could easily locate other players just with a good pair of headphones.


----------



## TedEH

I never got into Battlefield, but that sounds like a selling point to me.


----------



## MFB

Modern Warfare 2 got lambasted in the early days, but they eventually got their audio sorted out and it made people FURIOUS when I would hear them with my headset. I mean absolutely livid. They weren't anything special either, just some Astros that anyone could go out and buy, but the amount of times they'd think I was cheating was staggering.

I think any FPS worth it's salt these days needs to have solid 3D/doppler audio as many use it to their advantage in competitive modes


----------



## MFB

Oh right, the original reason I came to this thread

Started up _SM:MM_ tonight, definitely scratches the itch after seeing NWH in theaters, and a good continuation of the franchise. I was curious as to how they'd explain suddenly playing as Miles and it was pretty immediate and kept it simple stupid. The extra powers Miles has over Pete (camoflague, electro shock) offer some extra abilities during combat which is cool. Suits are OK, seem to be either very on the mark or like, "why would I ever want to wear that?"


----------



## TheBlackBard

A lot of people I know who play Quake: Champions rely a lot on footsteps to hear where their enemies are.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Been replaying GTA V since the PS3 servers went down a few weeks back. I'm trying to do a 100% playthrough, but since the Social Club doesn't connect anymore I honestly have no idea what I have and haven't done.


----------



## rokket2005

I picked up Oxenfree cause it was on sale and played through it in one go this weekend. A decent little visual novel type game. I think I got the second or third best ending, but I don't think I'm going to spend the 3-4 hours to play through it again in the near future. It was a nice break in a way from playing though 50-70 hour games though.


----------



## TedEH

I remember that one getting a lot of praise when it came out. It's good for an indie game, but wasn't mind blowing, IMO.


----------



## rokket2005

Yeah, it was fine for what it was. I thought I was promised aliens, but I probably just misread the supernatural part in the games blurb. If it had more than just picking speech bubbles and tuning a radio as gameplay it would've been better.


----------



## gabito

Finished Cyberpunk 2077 on my base PS4. Game's fine: didn't love it, didn't hate it.

I don't think I ran into many serious glitches: one crash, and some strange texture and geometry issues here and there. Streaming sucks, though: if you run or use a vehicle (that is: if you move faster than walking) geometry won't load properly and you can end up running into a half loaded wall. You'll also find lots of NPC showing low res textures for a few seconds...

The city is big and it looks good, the main characters and NPCs look good, most of the pedestrians look like shit and their animations are terrible, vehicles are hit or miss.

The music is VERY good.

I'm not sure why, but generally speaking the game reminded me a bit of playing Fallout 3 / New Vegas, but with better voice acting and story (I mean: there's a story) and obviously a different (pre apocalyptic? post apocalyptic lite?) setting. Gameplay is Fallout-ish, I think? There's a lot of loot and junk to pick up and sell. I didn't even care about what I was picking up, to be honest... Just picked stuff up, equiped it, dismantled it, or sold it. Also some of Deus Ex's gameplay is in there. I tried to be stealthy, but the mechanics aren't very good and I ended up grabbing a few really powerful guns and blowing up everyone's heads and / or limbs.

I didn't really like the story, but someone else may like it. I didn't care about the characters either. I don't think there are any likable characters in this game (maybe Goro Takemura? Delamain, who isn't even a person? I don't know...) which could be fine (think TLoU II), but I usually need at least one of those things to be good... There's almost nothing charismatic, charming, or interesting about most of the characters or the story itself. Lore can be interesting, though: I spent a few hours reading about the Blackwall and what not.

Didn't play many side missions, there might be some interesting stuff there, but after finishing the main quest I got REALLY stuck into a building when trying to get somewhere, didn't want to load an older save, and after a few minutes said "Fuck it, I'm off to replay The Witcher 3" or its spanish equivalent.

Anyway, besides the bugs - which you may or may not run into- it was a so so game for me. I think other people may like it more than I did, and those who believed all of CDPR's promises and boarded the hype train might really hate it...


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> Streaming sucks


I'm starting to think the old wisdom that you can just install all your games on a big, cheap, spinning drive isn't ringing true anymore. I've come across some titles that struggle on spinning disks, even in weird ways that affect frame rate for some reason, and I've got reason to suspect most devs are working on reasonably fast SSDs most of the time - not just because they want to match new consoles, but because long build times on large projects can be costly.

I got some gift cards for xmas, I'm tempted to dump it into a steam wallet and grab some things - including Cyberpunk. I feel less bad buying it with "free money".


----------



## wankerness

I dunno, I didn't think anyone was installing games on spinning drives for years unless they really liked long loading times. I know it's been about 10 years since I first started moving games to my SSD on my PC whenever I actually wanted to play them since there was such a radical difference in loadtimes, and that was before M2s became standard and made it even more obvious. Did the same thing with PS4 pro and now the PS5.


----------



## Werecow

Yeh, the time of playing from an HDD is years gone for me. The last time i tried it was when Deus Ex Mankind Divided released, and the load times were painful. I'd literally start it loading and make a cup of tea while it was doing it. I got my first SSD a couple weeks later and the load time was about 8 seconds instead of a couple minutes or more.
Then i discovered the SSD made more open world games feel a lot smoother, and less stuttery in the ones that suffered from that. Less popup, and even less bugs as well with assets loading in late. I've not installed a game to a HDD since.


----------



## TedEH

I thought I posted this already, but apparently I forgot to hit the post button. Oops. 

For some, or for me at least, SSDs have always been past the other side of that line of feeling worth the upgrade. I'd be spending a bunch of money to probably end up with _less_ storage space, and not know what to do with the old drives that still work perfectly well. If building from new now, I'd not use any spinning drives, but loading times don't bother me enough for it to matter. On my work PC, I'm onboard for the fasted SSD I can get my hands on, cause time is money, but at home, I can live with a few seconds here and there. Besides, if you play a lot of old games like I do, it makes almost no difference. If you're not one to keep up with hardware, or one to mostly play games as soon as they come out, then it's only really recently that games are getting legit performance issues because of the drive - by which I don't mean load times.


----------



## spudmunkey

Eh, for me, the SSD isn't about gaming performance, but yeah, for larger titles, loading times are way better...but the SSD makes *everything* feel snappier, from the PC start-up, to opening a browser, etc...everything.


----------



## wankerness

I dunno, even some old stuff like World of Warcraft or whatever was radically sped up with the SSD. Mainly only really tiny, really old things like zDoom or Quake or Age of Empires II or whatever loaded fast enough that they were really unaffected by being on spinning drives. I guess the dividing line for me would probably have been somewhere around 2011 where a majority of games started having enough crap to load that it really started mattering (ex Skyrim, Mass Effect, etc).


----------



## TedEH

Loading times, yes, but general running performance not really. That's all I meant. You're not going to lose fps in most games because of a slow harddrive (generally, although it can happen). You'll see longer loading times, more texture pop-in, maybe slower lod changes, maybe occasional loading screens pop up where streaming can't keep up if it's an open world kind of deal (I think Horizon does this). That's all I mean. It's mostly quality-of-life moreso than what I'd think of as "performance". It's not no difference, but it's not a deal breaker to me.

Modern games are starting to push that barrier though - because of sooooo much stuff getting streamed in during gameplay. I've only ever encountered one game that was unplayable without an SSD: Quantum Break. I dunno what they did, but even just camera movements would hit the disk so much that the game would stutter. Streaming in piles of textures maybe? But then they load/unload as soon as they're outside your fov? I'm not a graphics expert, but it strikes me as weird. Maybe something being pre-calculated and cached to disk to compensate for vram or something until it goes off screen, I dunno.

I've definitely started installing more modern games on SSD when I can, but space is limited, sooooo..... the old drives are still fine mostly.


----------



## gabito

Loading times are always significantly sped up when using SSD. Difference is night and day, I updated a very old (2013) laptop with an SSD and some more RAM for home use and now it runs almost as it was a new-ish laptop.

Regarding loading times for games: it's OK, I can (usually) wait. But until recently spinning drives weren't an issue regarding general game performance. Streaming on Cyberpunk 2077 is really bad, though. But I suspect it may have something to do with the rough state of the game overall, not only the hardware it's stored on. Games similar in scope (ie: RDR II) have long loading times, but once loaded the game performs well. They probably could perform even better running on an SSD, but they are OK on spinning drives.

I could be multiple issues, though: I remember Rage on PS3 having some serious streaming issues, and also an issue where GTA V would have significantly less texture and geometry pop-in if you used the disc version. The PSN version was fully stored and streamed from the spinning drive, while the disc version installed a portion of the game on it and streamed from both the blu-ray and the hard drive at the same time, which it seems was better streaming-wise.

Loading times are still atrocious for any GTA V version (on an HDD), though Both RDR II and GTA V take way longer to load on my PS4 than - say- Cyberpunk 2077, Marvel's Spider-Man, The Witcher 3, Asssassin's Creed Whatever, etc.


----------



## wankerness

That doesn't surprise me about GTAV. That was one unwieldy game and they have had no motivation to overhaul/improve it when people apparently keep spending millions on virtual currency for their online version regardless of how little content they release for it. It's just funny that the graphics are so outdated and it still takes longer to load than Cyberpunk!

I never finished that game. I think I got maybe 2/3 through it on xbox 360. Maybe I'll continue it if I ever get a new xbox.


----------



## gabito

Oh, I never play online but I love the game. I've finished it maybe 5 or more times... at least 3 on the PS3. I could've used the time I waited for the game to load to read a book, record an EP... or maybe a full album.

I didn't like RDR II as much, but the loading times are pretty bad too.


----------



## TedEH

Didn't we have a "dumb buying/selling/classifieds" thread of some kind? I can't find it if there was one, so it goes here since it's vaguely gaming related.

I recently got a good deal for a Wii U for just change 'cause it was "broken" (it needed to be cleaned), so now I have a good GBA/virtual console machine, and I tried to respond to an ad for a pro controller to go with it-
The immediate response was:

"are you ok with etransfer?"
"I was prepared with cash, but sure"
Immediately sends an email address with no other context.
"Did you expect me to just send you money out of the blue without working out any details?"
"I bought an iPad and sent them the money before hand"
"I have cash, or I can start the etransfer process maybe and then give you the password when I arrive or something"
She sends me a photo of the iPad as if that proves that sending money to strangers on the internet is a good idea.

Lol nevermind.


----------



## Mathemagician

Bought lego Harry potter for like $1.99 on PSN. I’m a wizard!


----------



## Choop

Still playing HLL -- I feel like a veteran or something at this point lol. Not 100% gaming related, but I'm interested in possibly moving up to an ultrawide monitor, does anyone here use one? For fighting games I will have to play at 16:9 with the black bars, but for certain games it seems like it'd be a fun way to experience them.


----------



## TedEH

Still making it slowly through Persona V.... it's still very much what I'm expecting from it. Kinda long. Writing is somewhere between juvenile and just poorly localized, and I can't tell which it is, or both. I like what these games do mechanically though - the social links thing is pretty unique compared to other games I normally play, and I think the combat is a lot more interesting than just grinding out levels in a lot of jRPGs. Combat kinda feels, most of the time, like mini-puzzles to work out how to get into the hold-up state. Not difficult puzzles, mind, and it can get redundant / grindy in it's own way, but IMO that beats hitting the attack button over and over again until you win.

I'm still on vacation for a little while longer though, and it's tempting to put the game aside and pick up something else in parallel just so it doesn't feel like I squandered my vacation on a Persona game.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Still making it slowly through Persona V.... it's still very much what I'm expecting from it. Kinda long. Writing is somewhere between juvenile and just poorly localized, and I can't tell which it is, or both. I like what these games do mechanically though - the social links thing is pretty unique compared to other games I normally play, and I think the combat is a lot more interesting than just grinding out levels in a lot of jRPGs. Combat kinda feels, most of the time, like mini-puzzles to work out how to get into the hold-up state. Not difficult puzzles, mind, and it can get redundant / grindy in it's own way, but IMO that beats hitting the attack button over and over again until you win.
> 
> I'm still on vacation for a little while longer though, and it's tempting to put the game aside and pick up something else in parallel just so it doesn't feel like I squandered my vacation on a Persona game.



The writing is juvenile cause the characters are juvenile. I think it's very well localized and written, it's just cringey cause you're dealing with immature idiot characters like Ryuji. The only thing I had a problem with is how leery it gets with Ann all the time (particularly everything with artist boy trying to get her to pose naked and how we're just supposed to like him after all that).

The combat I would describe less as "puzzles" and more "trial and error" as you get later in the game and enemies have fewer weaknesses and hitting them becomes more important. It's kind of annoying.



Mathemagician said:


> Bought lego Harry potter for like $1.99 on PSN. I’m a wizard!



That game is great, especially if you have someone to play with. My girlfriend and I played through the whole thing during lockdown. It's a lot of fun. It doesn't have the frustration of the earlier lego games (ex LOTR) or the overly complex systems and cutscenes of later ones that make them less fun in short bursts (ex DC Supervillains).


----------



## CanserDYI

Mathemagician said:


> Bought lego Harry potter for like $1.99 on PSN. I’m a wizard!


That game is actually super super fun, my son and I play it often. Bought it on switch and PS4 lol


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I think it's very well localized and written, it's just cringey cause you're dealing with immature idiot characters like Ryuji.


Meh, it doesn't read that way to me. When I say the writing is juvenile, I don't mean the main characters, I mean _all_ of the writing. Like the plot was dreamed up as an edgy high-school student's english assignment.

I mean, I can tell that's what they're going for, but it's got that layer of awkward-anime-localization over the whole thing. The unnecessary *gasp* noises, the wild swings in tone, the repeating things as if one of the characters didn't hear you the first time or using exposition to say something all the characters should have been able to see with their own eyes, the adult characters all expositing like they're in a kids TV show even when they're alone, the characters that deliberately speak in monotone because they're trying to convey "maturity" but it lands closer to robotic than mature sounding, all of the women using high-pitched hyper-feminine voices except when they need to be "strong women" types, pretty much everyone speaking mostly in absolutes in places where you'd expect there to be some nuance in real life, the over-reliance on romanticizing being an outcast to drive pretty much all the character development, the edgy screaming to signify soul searching, the bad guys needing to be painted cartoonishly villainous to justify the plot, how they mostly tell instead of show in a medium that's built much better for show-don't-tell.

Granted some of that is just what the story is, rather than a localization problem per-se, but localization is where the delivery could have been smoothed over.

But I like the game part. 

It's a bad anime wrapped in a good video game, IMO. The game part of it has enough polish to it to compensate for how the story is riding the line of so-bad-it's-almost-good-again. Cause yeh, no, that story is written-by-a-high-school-kid level of terrible. It's good for schlock, but it's schlock. I can enjoy it, but only if I'm accepting it as the schlock that it is. Much like a lot of anime, I guess.  It's brain-off, game-on, time sink kind of material.

I remember when it came out, there was a lot of credit given to the game for having a lot of "juice" - aka. having a lot of UI polish and flashy things and tight direction to the visuals, etc. - and I do think it has that going for it. A lot of the presentation is very busy and bombastic and loud, but it's pulled off in a way that doesn't sacrifice much in the way of usability or readability.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> It's a bad anime wrapped in a good video game, IMO.



I'm actually surprised you're giving Persona 5 a go at all. Since a large chunk of the game is anime as balls.

Being a mash up of that, and all the baggage that comes with anime, as well as a 100 hour long JRPG mixed with high school life sims in the Japanese sense is certainly something I didn't expect you to actually play.


----------



## TedEH

Yeh, it's definitely on the other side of that anime-as-balls line that I try not to cross most of the time. If I didn't have any familiarity with the series ahead of time, and if it hadn't come highly recommended by some friends and coworkers, I probably wouldn't have gone for it. I think there's an undeniable overlap though between anime and gaming, as much as I may not like it, so I've more or less accepted that I can't outright avoid it. I remember when I played 3, it took two or three attempts to finish it, 'cause I'd exceed my limit of how much anime-as-balls I could take, have to put it down, and come back later, just to forget any of what was going on. This time, I knew what to expect going on - so I was prepared to not take it very seriously.

Besides, how can I maintain my general distaste for anime without sampling some now and again?  I can at least say I gave it a "fair" shake.

But I can appreciate what the title is doing well at the same time. The impression I get is that there's a lot of "hidden" moving pieces, and I like the mechanical parts of what makes up some jRPGs. So far, the Mementos + Pallace structure I think is a big improvement over the tower thingie in 3. Having targets you can pick off between doing other things makes it feel less like a grind, and more like you're exploring for a reason.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> the repeating things as if one of the characters didn't hear you the first time or using exposition to say something all the characters should have been able to see with their own eyes



This is worth noting since I've complained about this on this very thread but with a completely different game.

There's a Japanese term for this: Aizuchi. Basically interjections out of politeness to confirm that you're paying attention, and have their own echo questions, repeating the last statement verbatim to acknowledge a subject or key point. The closest English equivalent is for you to talk to me about a School Castle, and I respond with 'A School Castle, you say?' The 'you say' makes my response more inquisitive and more interested in what you're on about. 

Translating Aizuchi from Japanese to English has never been an easy transition. Hideo Kojima is the biggest user of using Aizuchi, and I complained a lot about his badly written dialogue when Snake constantly repeats the last statement in the form of a question. But it turns out it's just Aizuchi and it doesn't really work as well with a Western audience without some understanding.


----------



## gabito

Bloody_Inferno said:


> This is worth noting since I've complained about this on this very thread but with a completely different game.
> 
> There's a Japanese term for this: Aizuchi. Basically interjections out of politeness to confirm that you're paying attention, and have their own echo questions, repeating the last statement verbatim to acknowledge a subject or key point. The closest English equivalent is for you to talk to me about a School Castle, and I respond with 'A School Castle, you say?' The 'you say' makes my response more inquisitive and more interested in what you're on about.
> 
> Translating Aizuchi from Japanese to English has never been an easy transition. Hideo Kojima is the biggest user of using Aizuchi, and I complained a lot about his badly written dialogue when Snake constantly repeats the last statement in the form of a question. But it turns out it's just Aizuchi and it doesn't really work as well with a Western audience without some understanding.



Metal Gear?


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> There's a Japanese term for this: Aizuchi


That makes a lot of sense. Stuff like that is why I try to "read" things in localized content for what it looks like the intention was, rather than taking a scene verbatim. Makes me kinda miss the office a bit, cause we had a localization team that shared our floor and there was a good bit of stuff like this to learn from them.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> There's a Japanese term for this: Aizuchi. Basically interjections out of politeness to confirm that you're paying attention, and have their own echo questions, repeating the last statement verbatim to acknowledge a subject or key point. The closest English equivalent is for you to talk to me about a School Castle, and I respond with 'A School Castle, you say?' The 'you say' makes my response more inquisitive and more interested in what you're on about.



This is interesting. I've definitely noticed it over the decades with dialogue in Japanese movies, but I don't watch any Anime and only watch a bit of Japanese cinema so I never fully registered it as a "trope." Good to know! I like knowing explanations for cultural differences and having things like footnotes explaining why something is the way it is instead of having it totally re-dubbed into something more in-line with what we expect to hear in Western media.


----------



## Werecow

I completed Sekiro. Still kinda don't like it, but don't hate it as much as the first time i tried playing it. I guess that's my review of it  What a weird relationship i have with this game.

I did find out i don't want to play an actual Dark Souls though. People say the optional Demon Of Hatred boss is more a DS or BB boss, and it stood out like a sore thumb for me. He was really irritating in a bad way, and didn't bother with him.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> the characters that deliberately speak in monotone because they're trying to convey "maturity" but it lands closer to robotic than mature sounding, all of the women using high-pitched hyper-feminine voices except when they need to be "strong women" types, pretty much everyone speaking mostly in absolutes in places where you'd expect there to be some nuance in real life, the over-reliance on romanticizing being an outcast to drive pretty much all the character development, the edgy screaming to signify soul searching



This is another point that's certainly more nuanced in Japanese language and culture, though this time I don't know if there's a specific term for it. 

The Japanese tend to listen to pitch and tone for emotional cues, and it's often over emphasised. Hell, it's pretty much taught in their customer service. Whenever you walk in a restaurant or a retail store and you're greeted with "Irasshai Mase" it's done in an overtly high pitch to show a jolly greeting... even if they themselves aren't personally into it, it's done impulsively. A personal experience was a time I spoke to some of my Japanese friends over dinner. I spoke about subjects be it jokes or serious, but done in a consistent monotonous voice and volume. They found it rather humorous and surprising that I was throwing jokes with a straight voice. Going back to Aizuchi, me going 'MMM' and 'MMHMM' to acknowledge every sentence of a Japanese speaker is a sign of politeness, but if I did it to one of you guys, you could easily label me as obnoxious. 

The use of pitch is common in their media, and again being cultural centric, doesn't always transition well in the West. The biggest worst example being the character Vanille from FFXIII. It was apparently the English voice director's decision to make the character be as authentic and close to the Japanese original, which ironically resulted in the most forced and mechanical voice acting in the games, says a lot since most of the cast (especially Lightning) are pretty drab already. It was almost like one of those embarrassing weaboo kind of trying to sound authentically Japanese from learning anime dialogue... but in English. 

There's still a few language barriers to break down when bringing Japan's media to the rest of the world. And to be fair, it's been leaps and bounds beyond what it used to be. Even if trying to authenticate what an Izekaya is rather than, just call it a pub or bar (which is more than just that), it's still better than the strict time constraints and Draconian censorship that early translators have to go through that resulted in 'You Spoony Bard'.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> This is worth noting since I've complained about this on this very thread but with a completely different game.
> 
> There's a Japanese term for this: Aizuchi. Basically interjections out of politeness to confirm that you're paying attention, and have their own echo questions, repeating the last statement verbatim to acknowledge a subject or key point. The closest English equivalent is for you to talk to me about a School Castle, and I respond with 'A School Castle, you say?' The 'you say' makes my response more inquisitive and more interested in what you're on about.
> 
> Translating Aizuchi from Japanese to English has never been an easy transition. Hideo Kojima is the biggest user of using Aizuchi, and I complained a lot about his badly written dialogue when Snake constantly repeats the last statement in the form of a question. But it turns out it's just Aizuchi and it doesn't really work as well with a Western audience without some understanding.


We don't have this in English?


----------



## narad

StevenC said:


> We don't have this in English?



Hmmm, not in English, you say?


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> The Japanese tend to listen to pitch and tone for emotional cues, and it's often over emphasised.


I mean, we do have that in English, even if it's not quiiiiite the same. Best example I can think of is "customer service voice". Or some people's "phone voice". I can't stand some people's phone voice.

My point was never to suggest there's no cultural differences that make localization a challenge, but there's a range of how well this is done. Localization is not strictly translation - it's changing the script, it's part of the voice casting, it's supposed to be smoothing over those culture differences that wouldn't make sense to the target audience, as much as is possible. That monotone voicing I had in mind was for Yusuke - the casting and direction for that character end up leaning hard into that "I am smart and mature, thus I don't emote much when I speak" stereotype. Even if that was a cultural difference, the localization process offered an opportunity to smooth over that difference via the voice direction. Given that all the lines had to be re-recorded in English, that was an active choice. Same with choosing to include awkward gasp noises every time the script says "...".

IMO that's a big contributor to something being "anime-as-balls". Localization _can_ go a long way, and I sometimes suspect there's deliberate choices made to keep those awkward cultural differences as long as enough of the core message is intact - because it's going to appeal to weebs, for lack of a better way to put it.

Take as another example the insistence on keeping honorifics. A western audience doesn't gain much from slapping "senpai" on the end of a name, and it's not unheard of to change a script dramatically enough to eliminate the need for them. I've seen some games where they've used those to signify that a character changed their view of someone, but it's rarely core enough to anything that you couldn't work around it easily enough. So why keep it there? Option a) you don't have the budget to fix it in loc, or b) you want to appeal to people who like it. Could be a bit of both. I'm sure someone is going to jump in with "it's a game set in Japan, it makes sense there" - but that's just like, your opinion, man. Also, that's just option b. Nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't really make sense that everyone's speaking English either, but something something suspension of disbelief, something something it's just a video game, etc etc etc.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I mean, we do have that in English, even if it's not quiiiiite the same. Best example I can think of is "customer service voice". Or some people's "phone voice". I can't stand some people's phone voice.
> 
> My point was never to suggest there's no cultural differences that make localization a challenge, but there's a range of how well this is done. Localization is not strictly translation - it's changing the script, it's part of the voice casting, it's supposed to be smoothing over those culture differences that wouldn't make sense to the target audience, as much as is possible. That monotone voicing I had in mind was for Yusuke - the casting and direction for that character end up leaning hard into that "I am smart and mature, thus I don't emote much when I speak" stereotype. Even if that was a cultural difference, the localization process offered an opportunity to smooth over that difference via the voice direction. Given that all the lines had to be re-recorded in English, that was an active choice. Same with choosing to include awkward gasp noises every time the script says "...".
> 
> IMO that's a big contributor to something being "anime-as-balls". Localization _can_ go a long way, and I sometimes suspect there's deliberate choices made to keep those awkward cultural differences as long as enough of the core message is intact - because it's going to appeal to weebs, for lack of a better way to put it.
> 
> Take as another example the insistence on keeping honorifics. A western audience doesn't gain much from slapping "senpai" on the end of a name, and it's not unheard of to change a script dramatically enough to eliminate the need for them. I've seen some games where they've used those to signify that a character changed their view of someone, but it's rarely core enough to anything that you couldn't work around it easily enough. So why keep it there? Option a) you don't have the budget to fix it in loc, or b) you want to appeal to people who like it. Could be a bit of both. I'm sure someone is going to jump in with "it's a game set in Japan, it makes sense there" - but that's just like, your opinion, man. Also, that's just option b. Nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't appeal to me. It doesn't really make sense that everyone's speaking English either, but something something suspension of disbelief, something something it's just a video game, etc etc etc.



Persona 5 is partly a Japanese tourism advertisement (ex all the real hangout spots where you basically just get tourism blurbs), so of course it's trying to include bits of Japanese speaking patterns/culture that aren't Western normative like "senpai" etc. You kinda seem to have a vendetta against anything remotely Japanese. It seems almost, in addition to complaints about the voice acting tenor, like you wish the whole thing was transplanted to a western country and everything was re-animated if you choose the English dialogue to remove the "redundant" lines! Like, I get hating Anime, but it's starting to sound like you hate everything "different" about the country and their culture, not just things that are specifically anime tropes.

Complaining about them not completely removing anything Japanese just cause the dialogue's in English in the english dub just seems ridiculous if the setting's still Japan and the game is trying so hard to be a "life simulator" when it's not being a monster-fighting RPG. Basically everything about it - settings, school uniforms, the way characters treat one another and their elders, some of the places you can visit in off-time, etc would have to be changed to make it fully "localized" by your apparent definition. If you were talking something that's fully fantasy and has no basis in the real world like Nier or Final Fantasy or whatever then I'd find it more understandable.

So yeah, it is definitely partly "option B," they left it in cause people like it, but it's also an unsaid option C where the game's set in Japan and they're trying to convey Japanese culture. They could remove it, sure, but it would destroy part of what they were trying to do.

I don't really like Persona 5 all that much despite having played through it twice, I just find your arguments to be increasingly weird and seeming more like problems with anything Japanese! Not saying "racist" or anything, just that it is not reading as purely a problem with anime anymore.


----------



## TedEH

Oooookay, you took that to a weird place. I've said a bunch of times that I _do_ like the game, despite the anime-as-balls nature of it. I wasn't in any way suggesting they should scrub the Japanese culture from the game, I was just trying to illustrate a point that localization is more than translation and involves a lot of creative choice. There's nothing wrong with your option C. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I personally would have said that B vs C is a distinction with no difference, but to each their own.

If there was anything I wish they would have changed it's that one character's monotonous tone of voice, and maybe toning down the awkward gasp noises, but outside of that it's just a recognition that I'm not the target audience, and I don't see how that's a problem or why you'd stretch (almost) as far as calling me racist for it.

Edit:
I do also want to put forward the idea that "Japanese culture" is not encapsulated within anime. Anime is certainly a part of that culture, but not being an anime fan doesn't mean I dislike Japan. There's a lot more to a country or a culture than their cartoon tropes.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> Oooookay, you took that to a weird place. I've said a bunch of times that I _do_ like the game, despite the anime-as-balls nature of it. I wasn't in any way suggesting they should scrub the Japanese culture from the game, I was just trying to illustrate a point that localization is more than translation and involves a lot of creative choice. There's nothing wrong with your option C. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I personally would have said that B vs C is a distinction with no difference, but to each their own.
> 
> If there was anything I wish they would have changed it's that one character's monotonous tone of voice, and maybe toning down the awkward gasp noises, but outside of that it's just a recognition that I'm not the target audience, and I don't see how that's a problem or why you'd stretch (almost) as far as calling me racist for it.
> 
> Edit:
> I do also want to put forward the idea that "Japanese culture" is not encapsulated within anime. Anime is certainly a part of that culture, but not being an anime fan doesn't mean I dislike Japan. There's a lot more to a country or a culture than their cartoon tropes.



Cartoon tropes?


----------



## TedEH

Is anime not a cartoon? Edit: Or did I miss the "you say?"


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> Is anime not a cartoon? Edit: Or did I miss the "you say?"



Just joking. 

I'm not super into japanese games or anime / manga: I did play a few games, read some manga, saw a few movies and series, but not that much. I like some stuff, but most I don't care about. So when I played the Metal Gear series a few years ago I had the same, um... cultural clash? The repeated "Metal gear?", "Solid Snake?", "Metal Gear?", "Big Boss?", "Metal Gear?" questions really confused / irked me and I ended up doing some research until I understood that it was just a cultural thing and not bad writing (which there's some, but I love it anyway).

I also learnt what Master Roshi's nose bleeding meant by watching Dragon Ball, so _you live you learn, big in Japan,_ or whatever they say in these situations.


----------



## TedEH

Which reminds me that I meant to play Metal Gear Solid 2 at some point.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> Which reminds me that I meant to play Metal Gear Solid 2 at some point.



You should. Well, it's not like it's mandatory or I'm giving you an order, but really... I don't like to hype things, but it's a very good game. I liked MGS3 the most, though.

To put some context into this: I played the whole series from MGS to MGS V for the first time in 2017 (well into my thirties) and I LOVED it up to MGS IV, so it's not nostalgia speaking in this case. I didn't like MGS V because the story sucks, but it has the best gameplay by far. It's the only one I have not replayed.


----------



## StevenC

Oh, this I can comment on:

V
PW
3
2
1
4
PO


----------



## MFB

I found V/PW to be boring as balls, and I quite frankly hated the "chapters" approach as it made the game feel incredibly disconnected/non-cohesive compared to as if each chapter started when the other ended; ya know, like every other game.

quick edit: just realized I mixed up PW with Ground Zeroes, but comment on V still stands


----------



## wankerness

What a convoluted series. I've never even heard of Portable Ops. And Revengeance is a sequel to it?

Where does the PS1 game that was like, all VR missions stand?! The bottom, right? I remember thinking about buying that way back in the day, but I never did.

I think I'll continue not playing any of them (besides 1, which I played 3-4 times through back before 2001), but owning all of the mainline entries (2,3,4,5, PW) !! Apparently IV is never going to work on any system other than PS3 thanks to it using some eccentricities of that controller? Unless they make a PS5 port? Which Konami will never do because it would be too much work compared to making NFTs and Pachinko machines and lazy ports of 8-32 bit games? Yuck. I have it in my PS library but can't access it, due to not owning a PS3.

I did get the disc version of the HD collection for Xbox after they yanked the original version due to lapsing licenses which will never be renewed cause Konami. If I ever get a reason to buy an Xbox Series X (ex, that Bethesda game turns out to be awesome), I'll get around to playing my small collection of 360 games that are currently languishing due to the insane disc/spinning HD load times and my brittle old controllers.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

I love Metal Gear! My first was MGS2 on the PS2. Also played Portable Ops and Peace Walker on the PSP. I love MGSV as well, but I think it had the potential to be a lot better than it turned out. MGR:Revengeance is a beast of a game & everyone loves it's soundtrack (the boss themes).



wankerness said:


> Apparently IV is never going to work on any system other than PS3 thanks to it using some eccentricities of that controller?



I think it's not the controller, but the PS3 processor that was weird. And that game was developed for the PS3 excusively.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, while PS3 did have the Six Axxess controller, MGS4 wasn't a game that made use of it, and I think the thing was dead when it released. 

But convoluted is for sure the best word to describe that series


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> I do also want to put forward the idea that "Japanese culture" is not encapsulated within anime. Anime is certainly a part of that culture, but not being an anime fan doesn't mean I dislike Japan. There's a lot more to a country or a culture than their cartoon tropes.



Not liking anime meaning you don't like Japan is a ludicrous thought yes. If anything, all my responses you were meant to de mystify any misconceptions of the medium. Granted that I've barely scratched the surface and anime itself is heavily trope driven. 

If anything you've shown you like a lot of Nintendo's catalogue, who are as Japanese as it gets. 

I'll put it this way, I love these kind of anime games, but I'll also be the last guy in the world to have recommended Persona 5 or any other similar game to you. But if I was going to sincerely recommended you a Japanese game, that's all about show don't tell, emersive world, and not a single drop if anime in it's DNA, I'd just tell you to play Dark Souls.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Oh, this I can comment on:
> 
> V
> PW
> 3
> 2
> 1
> 4
> PO



No Revengeance. This list is false.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'd just tell you to play Dark Souls


It's on the list for sure. I'll get to it some day.

And I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating just for the sake of defending myself a bit - I don't hate anime as a whole. I just have a strong aversion to the weird / horny / trope-y stuff that at some point, thanks to the internet, became the face of the medium.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

oh we ranking MGS games? 
1. 3
2. 1
3. V 
4. IV /revengeance
5. 2 
6. PW 
7. PO

Snake Eater is still hands down my favorite of the series.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> No Revengeance. This list is false.


Revengeance is above Portable Ops because I have no reason to ever replay it when Bayonetta exists. Also it's a Metal Gear Rising game, not a Solid game. Same reason Metal Gear, Solid Snake, Acid 1&2 aren't there.


----------



## narad

TedEH said:


> And I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating just for the sake of defending myself a bit - I don't hate anime as a whole. I just have a strong aversion to the weird / horny / trope-y stuff that at some point, thanks to the internet, became the face of the medium.



Same here. You can imagine what my life in Japan is like lol


----------



## KnightBrolaire

apparently sony is making a PS5 remake of the Last of Us. Seems excessive


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

narad said:


> Same here. You can imagine what my life in Japan is like lol



Could be worse, with all the conformism, xenophobia and all that jazz...



TedEH said:


> And I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating just for the sake of defending myself a bit - I don't hate anime as a whole. I just have a strong aversion to the weird / horny / trope-y stuff that at some point, thanks to the internet, became the face of the medium.



You may as well have a deeper understanding of anime to properly hate it right? 

In all seriousness, the whole weird/horny side of anime is still a portion of it's wide range, but it is a loud one, where even some of the serious genres and subgenres will put them in. Also doesn't help with the general anime fanbase: the ones that founded 4chan, birthed the term weaboo, and often forgot that the term Otaku means obsession and is not a badge of honour to the Japanese public. So yeah, anime, regardless of it's form, will always carry a cloud of stigma.


----------



## Leviathus

Gonna start snowing soon, might fire up some MGS1 now that y'all mentioned it.


----------



## TedEH

Bloody_Inferno said:


> and often forgot that the term Otaku means obsession and is not a badge of honour to the Japanese public


To continue the tangent, just 'cause I'm curious, and I know we have some people on the forum who are from, or have been to, Japan -
Would I right if I said that I got the impression this happens with a lot of the concepts/terms we import from over there? I mean that in the sense that we take a word or a concept, and either change it's meaning or miss the point or overuse it.

An example might be how we use the word cosplay- the first time I ran into that word, it was described as a practice that was less about the clothing and more about embodying the character, the role-playing element, or at least that's how I understood it. We already had the language to describe dressing up or wearing costumes - and now for some reason we just use that word for any costume, unless it's Halloween.

Am I reading that right?


----------



## narad

TedEH said:


> To continue the tangent, just 'cause I'm curious, and I know we have some people on the forum who are from, or have been to, Japan -
> Would I right if I said that I got the impression this happens with a lot of the concepts/terms we import from over there? I mean that in the sense that we take a word or a concept, and either change it's meaning or miss the point or overuse it.
> 
> An example might be how we use the word cosplay- the first time I ran into that word, it was described as a practice that was less about the clothing and more about embodying the character, the role-playing element, or at least that's how I understood it. We already had the language to describe dressing up or wearing costumes - and now for some reason we just use that word for any costume, unless it's Halloween.
> 
> Am I reading that right?



Mmm, I'm sure it happens to some things, but even with "otaku" I'm not sure there's much drift. I mean, a lot of the people I hang out with here, a lot of the people who would probably be considered "cool", will describe themselves as otaku too. It's true the Japanese public is not keen on otaku per se, or otaku is considered a bit of alternative culture, but it's also much bigger in Japan than a typical alternative culture is in America or other western country. To the point - what's "cool" to the Japanese public is getting a steady job at a company straight out of school, that you stay at your entire life with no particular aspirations for anything adventurous, get married at 25 and create a stable environment for raising kids.

It would be kind of like saying, "Metalheads aren't considered cool by yuppie culture." It's true, but part of being in an alternative culture is not thinking the mainstream lifestyle is particularly cool. There's a little bit of a cultural drift to compare Japan and the west in this regard, because Japan is a place where like 80%+ of people are striving for a "yuppie"-ish mainstream lifestyle.

Related, but one thing I do find funny is over-stating the differences in maybe core concepts like that between the west and Japan (or India, some other places). A good example is this sort of thing:







If "ikigai" means "a reason for being", then just put that phrase in the center of this image, ya twat!


----------



## Ralyks

Speaking of anime, Tales of Arise has it's hooks in me. Took down the first lord and currently doing whatever's next. Really dig it.


----------



## wankerness

narad said:


> Same here. You can imagine what my life in Japan is like lol



Based on my slightly more than a WEEK in Japan (did a whirlwind tour of the main districts in Tokyo, a couple districts in Osaka, and then some of the touristy stuff in Kamakuras and Kyoto) that "horniness" was mostly only really on display in places like Akihabara and Shinjuku, and then a little bit in that huge tunnel in Dotonbori. But, yeah, you definitely don't get things like "Maid Cafes" or all the sexualized anime murals that are pretty common in some of those areas around here, plus just wandering around not even going into any hostess clubs I did see some old businessmen out on dates with hostesses and whatnot (from what I understand, that's usually more about companionship instead of any actual prostitution, though my friend who lived there was telling me we should totally go to a soapland, so I guess those are somewhere too). I guess it's kind of good that they have a channel for that stuff instead of trying to keep it all *totally *underground like in the US.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> apparently sony is making a PS5 remake of the Last of Us. Seems excessive



I haven't played that in a while, but I'm guessing it probably has something to do with it starting to look its age and the ease of remaking a like 10 hour game that's practically on rails when they already probably have assets that can get used for it in the form of the vastly superior LoU2 models of many of the same characters/monsters. Thus, they probably figure it's going to be a pretty low-effort thing that will probably sell pretty well, plus it will cash in on the upcoming HBO show. 

The gameplay's also pretty clunky compared to 2, but I don't think they will mess with that much apart from maybe the combat.

What I'm looking forward to is this damn Bloodborne remake that has been consistently hinted at for several months! Release it already!!! I want to replay the game, but I don't want to if there's going to be a remake shortly. If it's a year away, then I just will, I guess.


----------



## MFB

I just played TLOU1 on PS4, and that remaster looks fine for what it is; honestly, milking TLOU is as bad as the continued milking of GTA5 that's been released on THREE generations of consoles.


----------



## Ralyks

Actually, last I heard a Directors Cut of TLoU2 is in the works, which, I mean, would you be surprised if they made a PS5 port? I wouldn't be.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> Actually, last I heard a Directors Cut of TLoU2 is in the works, which, I mean, would you be surprised if they made a PS5 port? I wouldn't be.


gamespot reported that Sony was doing a TLOU remake for ps5. I haven't heard anything about TLOU2 getting a director's cut . It would make sense since they did it with Ghost of Tsushima though.


----------



## Werecow

I'm playing Sekiro NG+ now. Is this how you get in to Fromsoftware games? Almost masochistically?

I'm still playing, even though in NG+, bosses are harder but standard enemies are easier, which is kinda the opposite i'd want it.


----------



## MFB

Werecow said:


> I'm playing Sekiro NG+ now. Is this how you get in to Fromsoftware games? Almost masochistically?
> 
> I'm still playing, even though in NG+, bosses are harder but standard enemies are easier, which is kinda the opposite i'd want it.



I finished Sekiro, only to IMMEDIATELY proceed to launch NG+ so I could cheese my way through as many enemies as I could and feel superior; made it all the way up to Headless and then couldn't get past him so I said screw it and haven't touched it since.


----------



## wankerness

I started up Sekiro again, I noticed that I last played it January 2021! I was at Hirata estate, I got smashed by that first Shinobi hunter and got shook after one try and then moved on to something easier. Playing it again today, the parry system seems a little less scary than it did before I played countless hours of dark souls and at least occasionally had to parry things, but it's hard to adjust to how tiny the number of iframes are in your dodge compared to in Dark Souls where it's like 4 times longer with your rolls. The game REALLY wants you to parry everything! Plus, I don't like stealth, though I will admit the way this game uses it is far less frustrating than many other games of its ilk since the AI is as dumb as Dark Souls so you have to run out of sight for like 5 seconds and they'll all reset, plus the instant kills are a lot easier than having to contend with the punishment you receive if you miss a parry.

The Mikuri counters, though, seem at this point like I'm just getting lucky with them when they work - they're very hard to prepare for and time!! Kinda like the parries in Bloodborne on a couple very late game bosses (Orphan and one of the last dungeon dudes) where I was basically just mashing the parry button at certain points hoping I'd get lucky and if I did the boss would die and if I didn't I was screwed. The stupid hunter dies in 5 seconds if you get two Mikuri counters in a row, and utterly destroys you if you try to do pretty much anything else. I suspect when I start getting to later bosses I will have to actually learn how to do it consistently.

Beat the first few little bosses and then the horse guy. Of course I looked up the basic strats. Horse guy was kind of fun, though I hate the "enemy knocks you down, then can do more damage to you that you can't possibly avoid" mechanic. Dark Souls tended to make you invincible while you were lying on the ground.

The big thing I really have a problem with in this game is the dragonrot plague or whatever. I loathe mechanics that punish you for dying repeatedly - it makes it so it's not fun to learn a boss since you're potentially not just losing currency and "souls," but also you're doing damage to NPCs in the world that's a pain in the ass to reverse. Stupid. Makes me want to just save scum for boss attempts. DS1 and 3 had the right idea with absolutely no penalty for increasing # of attempts other than the annoyance of the run back.

The big thing I really like, if I ever get good at it, is the combat system. The fluidity and satisfaction of killing a bunch of dudes in a row by breaking posture with the parries is like no other game I've played. It's really damn good. I just think I wish it was in an easier game!


----------



## Leviathus

You'll definitely need mikiri throughout the whole game, basically anytime there's a thrust, though you can also parry thrusts. And don't worry about dragonrot. It wont take away your skill points just the progress to the next one and lower your unseen aid chances of course. The NPC's never die and there's plenty of droplets to be found as well. Kind of a pointless mechanic really, agreed it's kinda stupid.

Gachiin's sugar/spiritfall can be ur best friend too, especially for sneak deathblows on minibosses or anyone else really.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> You'll definitely need mikiri throughout the whole game, basically anytime there's a thrust, though you can also parry thrusts. And don't worry about dragonrot. It wont take away your skill points just the progress to the next one and lower your unseen aid chances of course. The NPC's never die and there's plenty of droplets to be found as well. Kind of a pointless mechanic really, agreed it's kinda stupid.
> 
> Gachiin's sugar/spiritfall can be ur best friend too, especially for sneak deathblows on minibosses or anyone else really.



I'm starting to be able to do the mikiri counter. Currently I'm just trying really hard to unlearn some fromsoft stuff, like I really like to get hit, try to dodge away and heal, and then somehow dodge back TOWARDS them and get killed. Ugh. Switching to a PS4 controller instead of the PS5 one has made a GIGANTIC difference in playability since I have those paddle things, a lot of this game is infinitely easier if you have circle bound to a back paddle so you can actually use the right stick at all times. Like, I beat that stupid bull fight first try no problem mainly cause it was easy to keep the camera on him, when if I'd been depending on lock-on it would have been a mess. Plus you pretty much always want to have circle held down to run anyway, it's just no good having to decide between running or controlling the camera. I really hope they release one of these for PS5 soon, but in the meantime, I guess I'm glad there's not a PS5 version of this game.

I feel like I've been playing for ages, and I haven't died THAT much, yet I've only gotten one boss trophy, which makes me think I've only fought one actual boss and just a ton of minibosses. Last "boss" was this little asshole who just walked around with his sword sheathed and then would do a really fast double attack. Destroyed me a couple times until I just did not do anything at all other than parry him, at which point he died in sub-15 seconds. Ugh. It's also such a reflex from most games to want to follow up with an attack as soon as you block, dodge, or parry, but again, this game often punishes you for doing just that.

I love that there's no stamina bar. That would have made this unplayable. It also helps that you can basically spam the parry button as fast as possible with no real consequence instead of Dark Souls where if you mistime the one press of the parry button you get smashed.


----------



## Leviathus

You're pretty close to the next "real" boss i think, keep climbing the castle. 

Did you find the 3 story pagoda in Hirata also? There's a semi hidden path where you need to break some bamboo and consecutive wall jump up. Worth going up there.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> though I hate the "enemy knocks you down, then can do more damage to you that you can't possibly avoid" mechanic.



Just in case you don't know, the dodge button rolls you out earlier of being knocked down, but yeh a couple of bosses take advantage of you being down.

The Mikiri has different timing depending on who you're fighting, it can be annoying but incredibly satisfying. The real bitch is when a boss has swipe (which isn't mikiriable, but jump it and kick their heads) and a lunge. You have to watch and learn their body language to be able to tell what to do, or get owned.

I've just started New Game+ 3 today. Looks like i might be hooked on a game i initially really disliked.


----------



## wankerness

Well, I played for a while more, so I guess I did another "real" boss, Lady Butterfly, and another fake one, the big drunk guy that was a joke and took 1 try. She took like 4 tries and the whole thing felt really frantic and like I had no control over the fight, but, only took 4 tries, so whatever. I tried using the "just get in her face and parry her and attack her as fast as possible, also hit her with shurikens when she jumps" strategy instead of some cheese one, so I guess that was good for me trying to improve. I'm still pretty bad at this, though. Some random enemies can still wreck me. And I sure failed over and over on that stupid idiotic grapple to a cliff ledge hang jump in Senpou Temple until I figured out you could just climb up the cliff and jump down from the other side. Seems like next up is this Dark Souls joke miniboss in the armor suit, but I have had enough for today!


----------



## TedEH

I started up Cyberpunk, 'cause I was curious, and I needed a break from just P5. Got through just the intro sequence up until you meet Silverhand. I like the direction it's going so far.

Kinda buggy, for sure, but I've not encountered anything unforgivable yet, given that I'm going in expecting a janky mess. If there's anything that bugs me it's that the walk/run speed seems janky - the run button sometimes doesn't work, but it still drains your stamina while you move like molasses. There's also what feeeeeels like a zone around characters you're supposed to be following where your walk speed will slow down to match, I think? - and it feels bad to enter and exit that zone, if that's what that is, 'cause your movement speed just jumps around. The other stand-out negative so far is that the mini-map pathing to your objective seems to be just as lost as I am sometimes - you can follow that line and it just leads you in circles sometimes, getting you no closer to your objective, so you have to just figure it out.

I like the aesthetic though. Bad map pathing aside, I think they've succeeded at making the world feel big and full so far, at least at first glance. I call that a positive, if you don't mind getting lost in a space. There's more narrative up front that I expected, and I'm cool with that. Kinda feels like Deus Ex, but trading the yellow filter for lens flares and the gravelly voices for more colourful characters. If it keeps up this level of presentation and I don't run into anything game breaking, then this is potentially my jam. And, being an audio guy, to my ears, the sound implementation seems pretty solid so far, in terms of how the VO ducking and panning etc seem to be doing their job well - I've yet to run into a case of not being able to hear or understand a character that's talking, or have the music badly clash with dialogue or something, and the weapons sound fine to me.

My early impression is that this is another case of a game that struggles because of too much ambition packed into something they might not have been prepared to pull off. The intro definitely hints at that ambition - it feels like it's going for big story, big visuals, big polish, big im-sim mechanics, etc. So, I can understand where the disappointment could set in given the potential for jank here. For all I know it'll fall apart once I get deeper into it, but starting from a place of expecting the worst, I've got no major complaints yet.


----------



## Choop

I'll eventually play Cyberpunk. The initial controversy over it for a variety of reasons made me hesitant since it definitely had the vibe of being an overhyped mess. Maybe it still is kind of an overhyped mess haha, but I've seen enough stuff on it to make it seem legitimately fun as long as your expectations aren't set way too high. It was on sale over the holiday for like $30, and it seems like it'd be worth that fo sho.


----------



## Werecow

Completely separate from the bugs, my disappointment with Cyberpunk came with how CDPR were talking about the game right up till 2 or 3 months before release. How it was emphasised as an RPG, how the factions would work and influence the game, how your back story would influence everything, how in-depth the world was (even how each NPC had their own life), the list of stuff they said would be in the game till very close to release goes on and on. It was all a lie and/or cut because the execs got fed up with developing it. It ends up playing more like a Far Cry game. There is quite a bit of fun to be had in that, but they promised so much more.
It could have been one of the best games ever made if they just carried on with making what they said they were making. As a Deus Ex fan and an RPG fan, it appeared i was going to get something i liked even more than those games, but i definitely prefer Deus Ex.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Choop said:


> I'll eventually play Cyberpunk. The initial controversy over it for a variety of reasons made me hesitant since it definitely had the vibe of being an overhyped mess. Maybe it still is kind of an overhyped mess haha, but I've seen enough stuff on it to make it seem legitimately fun as long as your expectations aren't set way too high. It was on sale over the holiday for like $30, and it seems like it'd be worth that fo sho.


It's not worth 30$ imo. Go watch crowbcat's vid on cyberpunk. It's an hour of buggy ass gameplay juxtaposed with all the ridiculous shit CDPR promised and never delivered. I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out where the hell the money and 6+ years of development actually went.


----------



## Choop

I dunno, I didn't anticipate anything leading up to the release of the game, so I personally don't feel invested in it in that way -- or that I got "duped" or whatever, ya know? I watched a pretty long review of it by Tim Rogers, and I know it's not what it was supposed to be or that it is even an amazing game, but it looks like it could be worth $30. Glitches don't necessarily offend me, either, or else I'd have never completed a Bethesda game.


----------



## TedEH

I'm in a similar boat where I don't feel duped at all 'cause I didn't follow the hype and mostly know the game from it's controversies rather that from any promises that were made. I dunno what those promises are, even now. I'm letting the title speak for itself, as much as I can.



KnightBrolaire said:


> I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out where the hell the money and 6+ years of development actually went.


I dunno what the budget is, but looking at this with a dev's eyes, I can see lots of things here that, for lack of a better way to put it, look expensive, even putting aside the rendering, which looks like a lot of work was put into it, despite how janky the animations are sometimes. i can promise you can't tell how much a game cost to make by playing it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Choop said:


> I dunno, I didn't anticipate anything leading up to the release of the game, so I personally don't feel invested in it in that way -- or that I got "duped" or whatever, ya know? I watched a pretty long review of it by Tim Rogers, and I know it's not what it was supposed to be or that it is even an amazing game, but it looks like it could be worth $30. Glitches don't necessarily offend me, either, or else I'd have never completed a Bethesda game.


on a sliding scale of jank, cyberpunk is much worse than any bethesda game I've played


----------



## wankerness

Tim Rogers is awesome, I watched all of his cyberpunk review videos, even the unlisted ones. And that multiple-hour Doom one a few times!

I still have no desire to try cyberpunk until they fully upgrade it for ps5.

just got to genichiro on sekiro, this should be fun. I’m getting better at the mikiri thing but from what I saw on this guy you have split seconds to react to whether he stabs, sweeps, or lightnings so I’ll probably die a lot.


----------



## Ralyks

I loved Cyberpunk and will be doing a playthrough as a female V when the PS5 upgrade comes. Maybe even be a filthy Corpo.


----------



## gabito

Choop said:


> I dunno, I didn't anticipate anything leading up to the release of the game, so I personally don't feel invested in it in that way -- or that I got "duped" or whatever, ya know? I watched a pretty long review of it by Tim Rogers, and I know it's not what it was supposed to be or that it is even an amazing game, but it looks like it could be worth $30. Glitches don't necessarily offend me, either, or else I'd have never completed a Bethesda game.



It's an OK game that some people may like a lot. 

Some other people may not like it that much (or even hate it).



TedEH said:


> I'm in a similar boat where I don't feel duped at all 'cause I didn't follow the hype and mostly know the game from it's controversies rather that from any promises that were made. I dunno what those promises are, even now. I'm letting the title speak for itself, as much as I can.
> 
> 
> I dunno what the budget is, but looking at this with a dev's eyes, I can see lots of things here that, for lack of a better way to put it, look expensive, even putting aside the rendering, which looks like a lot of work was put into it, despite how janky the animations are sometimes. i can promise you can't tell how much a game cost to make by playing it.



I read somewhere that the budget was something like $300 million or so.


----------



## wankerness

Played a bunch more Sekiro. Beat Genichiro in about 10 tries, killed him the second time I got to the lightning phase.I felt like I got decent at phases 1 and 2 but I pretty much panicked through the lightning phase and got lucky, I think. Fortunately he has no armor so he seemed to die much faster than his first two health bars.

Only other "real" boss I fought was the 4 monkeys, which was an amusing gimmick boss, certainly vastly better than frickin Micolash from BB or especially Bed of Chaos when it comes to this kind of thing. 

Fought a bunch more minibosses. Did one of the dark wizard things and one of the headless things - I HATE bosses that are totally dependent on consumable items that you don't get back if you die. I lucked out and killed them both in two attempts and am now mostly out of confetti. Ah well. Hopefully I don't need it again for a while.

The two snake eyes bosses were pretty easy, the two centipede bosses were totally trivialized by the umbrella upgrade, and I forget what other minibosses I dealt with, there are so many in this game!! The only ones I've really liked so far were the bull, the armored guy that yells ROBERT!!!!, and the spear guy that forced me to learn how to mikiri counter. I didn't like the encounters with the snake so far, though making it eat the monkey was kind of funny. At least it's less frustrating than Dragon God from Demon's Souls.

The pause in this game is huge. I'm surprised they let you pause to choose healing items, though of course the animation still plays out in real-time. It's kind of nice. That's one area where I feel like they really took mercy on players compared to the DS games, where it was just pure panic if you suddenly got a debuff from something you didn't have a cure potion for on your quickbar and you'd have to rapidly scroll through all your items and use it before you died. 

The other big "nerf" being the fact that you don't die instantly from missing jumps, though with the huge emphasis on platforming here that would have just been sadistic. I'm hoping Elden Ring either copies that (fall off a cliff, it teleports you back to the previous ledge and does a bunch of damage) or has a lot less platforming!

I'll probably take a break for a while since my girlfriend's back in town tomorrow and I feel embarrassed playing frustrating games when she's around.


----------



## Choop

Genichiro was my favorite boss in that game -- it feels like a real duel when you are fighting him, and the difficulty seemed just right, at least IMO.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> I still have no desire to try cyberpunk until they fully upgrade it for ps5.



Same here, waiting for the promised next-gen upgrade and well, I also need to get a next-gen console 

Regarding next-gen: I decided that I'm buying the Xbox Series X instead of S. That Unreal Engine Matrix thing had my opinion changed - they say it runs on the Series S, but given that the consoles are in their infancy and something barely runs on it now doesn't bode well for the future IMO. I got the feeling that if I buy the Series S now, it'll be maybe 5 years before it can't handle most new games and I'll be forced to buy the Series X anyway. I don't mind playing at lower resolution etc, and maybe that won't happen, but I'm not taking the risk.

... but the problem is that the Series X isn't in stock anywhere. I'm particularly waiting for phone operators to get it, as over here they sell all devices completely interest free, so then I'll have up to 3 years time to pay for it how I want.


----------



## Choop

I think you have the right idea -- the Series X would definitely be worth getting over the S if you're capable of finding one/affording one. The comparison between the series S and X is awkward, because I think people still assume it's just the X with a different shell and no disc drive, but it really is more of an in between current and last gen Xbox console in terms of performance.


----------



## TedEH

Personally Series-X vs -S to me would be a question of future-proofing. By the time the next big thing comes out, I expect support for the S will be gone long before it is for the X, the same way you can buy games "for XBox One consoles" that run like molasses on the original and one-S models. Gahd I hate the naming of these things.


----------



## MFB

Choop said:


> Genichiro was my favorite boss in that game -- it feels like a real duel when you are fighting him, and the difficulty seemed just right, at least IMO.



I do enjoy the Genichiro fight, but I think for bosses, I've got to give it to Owl Shinobi; fight like another level up from him and was your legit equal.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Up to what looks like the final dungeon of Persona 5 Soccer Team.

It's getting rather grindier towards the end. Anyone who plans to do all completionist with the Personamon will have to spend time on post game muckabouts.

There's also a ton of poorly explained mechanics. I've already mentioned the master skills that require you to spend time with each character raising arbitrarily raise set EXP, and Omega Force do make the effort to design each character to play differently, but again, Joker is the guy you'll be spending most time with, and this is a Warriors/Musou engine so there's little variety of nuances besides hack, slash and button mash. The term used for your dashing is also the exact same term as environmental cling attacks so that one quest where you think you have to kill stuff by dashing into them isn't what you think it is. 

There's also an option to choose the resolution to prioritse Frame Rate or Graphics. Being a chaotic Musou game where it's hard enough to tell what the hell is going on, Frame Rate is the no brainer option, and Graphics being only viable for PS5 or PS4 Pro.

I probably shouldn't preface this, since it's a direct sequel, but Strikers is a game purely for the P5 fans. The Phantom Thieves are all fully developed, so their little Mobile Knobjockey Removalist Service feels like a hydra of BFFs, and all the interpersonal conflict has already been resolved in the previous game. There are some surprises here and there, one character who I thought was introduced too late in the first game to get invested had won me over with some new traits and a rather on the nose meta gag at the endgame uttered in just one line. Again, this is for the people who invested 100+ hours with the Thieves and wanted to spend extra time with them. I should note that Strikers and Royal were developed at the same time, so any plot that happened in Royal is barely if not at all mentioned here. Not a real dealbreaker though.

Touching on a subject on how Japanese games trying to sell Japan to the world, Strikers are doing this at the same level as the Yakuza games. A lot of the dialogue is banging on local cuisine and tourist hotspots. These scenes will be on the nose from the view of a cultural outsider. To be fair, they're still kids on vacation, and Osaka fresh takoyaki is pretty awesome.


----------



## ArtDecade

Cricket 22. Bowling is easier and more fun than it has been in the past.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I do enjoy the Genichiro fight, but I think for bosses, I've got to give it to Owl Shinobi; fight like another level up from him and was your legit equal.



Haha, I read through your posts on this game today. It sure didn't seem like you liked that boss when you beat it! I liked the description you gave at the end of the whole game about it being a terrible ordeal and that you were relieved when it was over and that you wouldn't have to do it again. And a LOT of complaining about the sheer number of boss fights. From what I heard about the last boss being multiple bosses in a row that you have to fight EVERY ATTEMPT that's going to infuriate me, too. We'll see if I surrender! I feel a great need to beat this game to say I did it, but I also am never feeling like I did in the other 5 soulsborne games where I felt like I was often getting safe victories over bosses and really improving at the game. Instead, every major fight is like Darkeater Midir or Lud and Zallen NG+ where it initially seems like I suck too much to do it and then it almost seems like dumb luck when I finally eke out a win. 

Based on post order, it sounds like you did Guardian Ape at the point in the game where I'm at now (only done Butterfly, Genichiro and Screen Monkeys for progression bosses), but the walkthrough I've been following suggests doing him considerably later. I'm guessing maybe that was a big part of your problem there? 

Weirdly almost everything I've read suggests the dual-Ape fight is easier than the single one. Sounded like you had the same experience!


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Haha, I read through your posts on this game today. It sure didn't seem like you liked that boss when you beat it! I liked the description you gave at the end of the whole game about it being a terrible ordeal and that you were relieved when it was over and that you wouldn't have to do it again. And a LOT of complaining about the sheer number of boss fights. From what I heard about the last boss being multiple bosses in a row that you have to fight EVERY ATTEMPT that's going to infuriate me, too. We'll see if I surrender! I feel a great need to beat this game to say I did it, but I also am never feeling like I did in the other 5 soulsborne games where I felt like I was often getting safe victories over bosses and really improving at the game. Instead, every major fight is like Darkeater Midir or Lud and Zallen NG+ where it initially seems like I suck too much to do it and then it almost seems like dumb luck when I finally eke out a win.
> 
> Based on post order, it sounds like you did Guardian Ape at the point in the game where I'm at now (only done Butterfly, Genichiro and Screen Monkeys for progression bosses), but the walkthrough I've been following suggests doing him considerably later. I'm guessing maybe that was a big part of your problem there?
> 
> Weirdly almost everything I've read suggests the dual-Ape fight is easier than the single one. Sounded like you had the same experience!


The Guardian Ape was one of the bosses that made me put the game down for a week or so, but i love it now. I even fight it face to face, parrying like a sword fight. It's so satisfying doing that. Holy hell it was frustrating at first though.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I should note that Strikers and Royal were developed at the same time, so any plot that happened in Royal is barely if not at all mentioned here. Not a real dealbreaker though.
> 
> Touching on a subject on how Japanese games trying to sell Japan to the world, Strikers are doing this at the same level as the Yakuza games. A lot of the dialogue is banging on local cuisine and tourist hotspots. These scenes will be on the nose from the view of a cultural outsider. To be fair, they're still kids on vacation, and Osaka fresh takoyaki is pretty awesome.



Oh, that's unfortunate. I was sort of hoping it took place concurrently to Royal since I really liked both counselor man and kasumi (yeah, I know they couldn't be in a sequel).

I got Osaka fresh Takoyaki when I was over there from some random guy with a foodcart. It was alright, the flavor isn't my favorite. I had to try it after all the focus on it in Yakuza 0!! My friend I was with got REALLY mad at the street vendor cause he was talking in a really exaggeratedly slow fashion (in Japanese) to us like that would make us able to understand the language and like we were total idiots (my friend was completely fluent, and I was too stupid to be helped by that, so it pissed one of us off and I didn't even notice). Great story.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Honestly and truly, I bought the Series S mainly because I don't think I NEED an X. Sure it can do 8K at 60 FPS or whatever, but... I don't even do on my PC what I do with my Series S which is 1440p. Not only that, many of the games I play are backwards compatible. I primarily bought my S so I can play Lost Odyssey again and the thing I'm buying next will be Elden Ring. I'm honestly not fussed about the difference in tech and with my interest primarily in old school style FPS games and CRPG's, that's not likely to change.


----------



## p0ke

TedEH said:


> Personally Series-X vs -S to me would be a question of future-proofing. By the time the next big thing comes out, I expect support for the S will be gone long before it is for the X, the same way you can buy games "for XBox One consoles" that run like molasses on the original and one-S models. Gahd I hate the naming of these things.



Yeah, that's what I was saying, and why I've made the decision to get the Series X once it becomes available.
On the Playstation side I think the choice would be different. AFAIK the cheaper PS5 model simply doesn't have a disc drive but the rest of the hardware is the same, so if I went there I would probably get the cheaper model. But I'm staying with Xbox thanks to the huge games library I've accumulated. I believe the old controllers also work this time around, which is great.

Like I've mentioned many times in this thread, I'm still running the OG Xbox One and that still runs all games, but in many cases you just notice that stuff could look better / run smoother / load quicker etc.
For example Jedi Fallen Order. It's perfectly playable and even looks pretty good much of the time, but quite often when moving from an area to another it just completely freezes (even the background ambience goes away) until the next area is loaded. There is a progress indicator in a corner, but it still feels like the game has crashed or something, and then it just resumes without warning when it's done.

The console is already 8 years old (I got it before it was even released in Finland thanks to being affiliated with Microsoft at the time), so I'm surprised it runs anything recent anymore tbh! My TV is also only 1080p, so maybe stuff will run worse when I upgrade to 4k.

And yeah, the naming is terrible. And it's even worse when retailers mess it up. For example I've seen "Xbox One Series S" for sale  I wonder which console that actually was...



TheBlackBard said:


> Honestly and truly, I bought the Series S mainly because I don't think I NEED an X. Sure it can do 8K at 60 FPS or whatever, but... I don't even do on my PC what I do with my Series S which is 1440p. Not only that, many of the games I play are backwards compatible. I primarily bought my S so I can play Lost Odyssey again and the thing I'm buying next will be Elden Ring. I'm honestly not fussed about the difference in tech and with my interest primarily in old school style FPS games and CRPG's, that's not likely to change.



Those were pretty much my initial thoughts too, but then I took the future proofing aspect into consideration. I don't *need* it either, at least not yet, but like I said, I have a feeling the Series S will drop out at some point and then you'll need to buy the Series X anyway.


----------



## rokket2005

I started playing Okami about a week ago after hearing for years how it's the best Zelda game. The first four hours or so were such a slog though I really wasnt sure if I wanted to keep at it. Then I got to the first actual dungeon and it was awesome. Still kinda so-so on it, but I'll probably keep going.

In the meantime my pro controller needed to charge last night so I fired up The Last Guardian since I've had that on my PS5 for like 9 months. I played Shadow of the Colossus on PS2 and thought it was cool but after about three hours into Last Guardian I'm totally not into it. Everything but the gameplay seems fine, but the gameplay is just a slow clunky puzzle platformer. It's Sony through and through as less of a game and trying to be some sort of cinematic experience, but there's nothing for me to really grab on to or keep me engaged or invested.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> I started playing Okami about a week ago after hearing for years how it's the best Zelda game. The first four hours or so were such a slog though I really wasnt sure if I wanted to keep at it. Then I got to the first actual dungeon and it was awesome. Still kinda so-so on it, but I'll probably keep going.



Okami is definitely incredibly slow, where the slog is something even fans of the game hate admitting. Hell, I've seen the term 'languid' used to describe it, which is just a pretentious way of saying slow. 

Despite that, other flaws and how it's much longer than the average Zelda game, Okami is still worth seeing through to the end.


----------



## wankerness

rokket2005 said:


> I started playing Okami about a week ago after hearing for years how it's the best Zelda game. The first four hours or so were such a slog though I really wasnt sure if I wanted to keep at it. Then I got to the first actual dungeon and it was awesome. Still kinda so-so on it, but I'll probably keep going.
> 
> In the meantime my pro controller needed to charge last night so I fired up The Last Guardian since I've had that on my PS5 for like 9 months. I played Shadow of the Colossus on PS2 and thought it was cool but after about three hours into Last Guardian I'm totally not into it. Everything but the gameplay seems fine, but the gameplay is just a slow clunky puzzle platformer. It's Sony through and through as less of a game and trying to be some sort of cinematic experience, but there's nothing for me to really grab on to or keep me engaged or invested.



The best thing about The Last Guardian is the dunkey video.



I still need to play the Shadow of the Colossus remake. I've never even played the original! I bought a hacked PS2 about 15 years ago from the singer of Novembers Doom mainly with the intent to play that game and MGS2, but I never played either!! I think I only ever ended up using that thing for FFX and part of X2.


----------



## TedEH

rokket2005 said:


> I started playing Okami about a week ago after hearing for years how it's the best Zelda game.


I find that to be a weird comparison. Okami is a good game, but it's not, in my mind, anything like a good Zelda game. If you think Okami is slow, I've poked around with the DS sequel Okamiden - and it's.... slower.

Last Guardian I think is also kinda slow. I do like "slow" games, but they require a certain state of mind to really get into, I think. All the Ico- descendents are like that, I think.


----------



## rokket2005

I like what most other people would consider slow games too. Trails in the Sky FC is always levied with a warning about being incredibly slow, but the slow part of it is full of world building and character development. After three hours of last guardian I know it's an Isekai, and that's about it. Okami dropped twenty minutes of Lore at the very start, and I was probably just not in the right mood for it right off the bat.

I also hate Dunkey. He's the reason why there are still asshats on Twitter that after four years still think shitting on XC2 is a funny character trait.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Haha, I read through your posts on this game today. It sure didn't seem like you liked that boss when you beat it! I liked the description you gave at the end of the whole game about it being a terrible ordeal and that you were relieved when it was over and that you wouldn't have to do it again. And a LOT of complaining about the sheer number of boss fights. From what I heard about the last boss being multiple bosses in a row that you have to fight EVERY ATTEMPT that's going to infuriate me, too. We'll see if I surrender!
> 
> Based on post order, it sounds like you did Guardian Ape at the point in the game where I'm at now (only done Butterfly, Genichiro and Screen Monkeys for progression bosses), but the walkthrough I've been following suggests doing him considerably later. I'm guessing maybe that was a big part of your problem there?
> 
> Weirdly almost everything I've read suggests the dual-Ape fight is easier than the single one. Sounded like you had the same experience!



Don't get me wrong, Sekiro as a game entirely infuriated me, but at the end of the day - I rank it as the #2 FS game I've played (2 DS, BB, Sekiro) and I respect it because it does work stupidly well mechanically, it's just paced horribly. If there was a version that stripped it off the smaller bosses like Snake Eyes, Centipede, etc... that threw it off, it'd give MUCH more weight to the full-fledged bosses you encounter and make the game better in my mind.

I'd have to look back, but I think I did as many other bosses as I could before fighting Guardian, and faced him because if I wanted to keep playing I basically HAD to. He more screwed me with Phase 2 of his fight when the timing gets tricky for obvious reasons that you'll see. Dual Ape was easier because you'll learn the mechanics from Guardian, so it's just basically how you manage both of them separately. Looking back on it now, it's a lateral move from the Ormstein and Smough fight.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> I like what most other people would consider slow games too. Trails in the Sky FC is always levied with a warning about being incredibly slow, but the slow part of it is full of world building and character development.



Okami also feels padded at times. Once you set in a land, listen to their plight, go to the dungeon, kill the giant malevolent being and pure the land of evil, and the you forth and do the same thing next door. And the sacred brush mechanic does kill the pace especially in a quasi open world with hack and slash combat. It's a different kind of slow compared to the Trails games, where the points made in addition to dialogue and turn based JRPG combat are consistently at the speed of a dying man's crawl. 

Also I do think the Zelda comparison is an unfair and insubstantial one. If anything, it reminds me more of a 3D bigger budget Shinto version of Soul Blazer. 

I probably should just accept using the word languid to describe these games, since I love them.


----------



## wankerness

rokket2005 said:


> I also hate Dunkey. He's the reason why there are still asshats on Twitter that after four years still think shitting on XC2 is a funny character trait.



Dunkey's great. I'm sure he has spawned legions of unfunny imitators, but fortunately I haven't seen them! Twitter is cancer! I sometimes disagree with his hatred of games, but I like that he's really passionate about some games (like, many Mario games) and that can be infectious when he does his sincere ones that aren't "in character." I agree with him on some games being worth playing for being funny, ex that video he did about videogame voice acting a couple weeks ago where he was highlighting things on both ends of the scale (I like seeing Mortal Kombat 4 cutscene clips!). I also like when he'll randomly make a video totally non-ironically singing the praises of some old art film or something (ex, the Playtime vid he did last year) - that is very unusual for such a popular youtuber. And at least his hate videos are sometimes funny. I love that Last Guardian one, or especially the Assassins Creed ones. I like AC and have played through several of them, but I still can't get enough of just how much he hates them. And the BOTW and Dark Souls 1/3 and Sekiro vids are among the hardest I've ever laughed at Youtube, and they're just plain silly.

Played a bit of Sekiro last night, died a couple times to Lady O'Ren of the Water or whatever she's called before beating her. She's frustrating cause she will float off and get stuck on a ledge somewhere and engaging her when she's in a tiny cramped area is very lethal, but she'll very quickly regenerate ALL her posture if you don't stay aggressive the whole time, so it's a frustrating fight if you can't keep her out in the open. It also was repeatedly calling attention to one of my big shortcomings with the gameplay, which is that I'm almost always hitting the left stick reflexively from years of Dark Souls "circle around the boss." However, if you try to do that jump counter off someone's head and are hitting anything on the left stick at the time of the first jump, you just jump away from the boss and don't get the counter. As soon as I had an attempt where I did most of those successfully she died easily. One of these days I'll get to be decent at this...

Next up is Corrupted Monk #1!! I am not looking forward to it, but I think it's the second one that gives everyone nightmares, so whatever.


----------



## MFB

Corrupted Monk wasn't bad, just watch that reach, it's longer than you'd think


----------



## beerandbeards

Finally got my hands on a PS5. Started Guardians of the Galaxy which is pretty fun so far. Found this little fun authentic gem in the game


----------



## MFB

I saw the white V, but I didn't catch the Boogie name badge of the amp; double the authenticity!


----------



## Choop

Hah it looks like it is running into a distortion/fuzz pedal too.


----------



## beerandbeards

Choop said:


> Hah it looks like it is running into a distortion/fuzz pedal too.


Looks like a Boss-like pedal but can’t make out the name on it


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> Played a bit of Sekiro last night, died a couple times to Lady O'Ren of the Water or whatever she's called before beating her. She's frustrating cause she will float off and get stuck on a ledge somewhere and engaging her when she's in a tiny cramped area is very lethal, but she'll very quickly regenerate ALL her posture if you don't stay aggressive the whole time, so it's a frustrating fight if you can't keep her out in the open. It also was repeatedly calling attention to one of my big shortcomings with the gameplay, which is that I'm almost always hitting the left stick reflexively from years of Dark Souls "circle around the boss." However, if you try to do that jump counter off someone's head and are hitting anything on the left stick at the time of the first jump, you just jump away from the boss and don't get the counter. As soon as I had an attempt where I did most of those successfully she died easily. One of these days I'll get to be decent at this...
> 
> Next up is Corrupted Monk #1!! I am not looking forward to it, but I think it's the second one that gives everyone nightmares, so whatever.



Lady O'Rin is one of my favorite minibosses in the game i think. She coulda been a cool main boss imo if they fleshed her out a little more. A cool encounter nonetheless.


----------



## Crungy

Without having to sift through a bunch of pages, does anyone here play Outward? I read a little about it and I'm kind of sold on it but not sure if it is actually good.


----------



## TedEH

A little farther into my journey through Cyberpunk and my slightly-updated take is that I still generally like it, but there are parts of the game that still feel kinda amateur.

It's sort of like attention was focused in some of the wrong places. Like there was so much ambition, so much attention to _certain_ details, that some things get lost in the scope of it - like time to control for the quality of some of those details. 

An example: I realized I was carrying around a whole ton of useless junk in the consumables page because I tend to play these games by picking up anything not bolted down - so I'm carrying a whole gun shop and liquor store and snack bar's worth of junk made up of all these dozens of little "clever" in-universe products with their own unique names and assets and descriptions, and I'd be willing to bet if it's not in the game, someone somewhere has a document with how all the brands have background stories and connect together in some way and blah blah - but I'm never going to use any of these consumables because there's an over-abundance of healing items _everywhere_ on an easy-access button. I think I have something like 150x of those one-shot health items. These would all be great details in a setting where those consumables mattered, but so far they don't.

The one thing that actively bugs me in the game so far is that there's too much going on all the time, and the game constantly interrupts you with new jobs and alerts and things, sometimes failing them for reasons you're unaware of because you weren't focused on that job right now. Like you can stand still, and someone will inevitably call you within maybe 30 seconds to throw more gigs at you that you don't care about right now, and it's overwhelming. I can tune it out, sure, but that's just me, and it's still frustrating. Anyone else who really wants to focus would probably really hate that constant interruption.

It all reads to me like someone somewhere made a scope decision that features took precedence over polish and iteration in some places. On any game dev project I've seen, you get to a point where you go "ok, we know we have x time left, and y things planned - and we know that by virtue of how games get made, something like a third of this isn't going to make it in on time no matter what we do - so what do we cut?". And at that point you could say "well, we really wanted to introduce all these brands and have x number of unique consumables and art and stuff, but we also need to make sure that when you open containers, nearby physics objects don't gain sentience and try to get as far away as possible, so lets cut all the unique assets since healing items are everywhere anyway, and instead have that team go move things around in the world so that items aren't sitting on top of openable containers". Except that this conversation either didn't happen, or went entirely the wrong way.

I mean, it's not thaaaaaaaat bad. It's not "I regret spending a $20 gift card on this" bad. I actually find most of the jank amusing more than frustrating, and games are for entertainment, so it's all good to me. I wonder if this was what results when you realize you over-promised publicly and have shot yourself in the foot by knowing the more you cut the more you're going to get roasted for it.

Ya know....
I almost kinda like the game for being an interesting case to look at and speculate about.  Something worthy of several paragraphs of "I'm not mad, but I'm a bit confused".


----------



## wankerness

That "you get called with new quests while you're working on something else" thing would absolutely infuriate me, especially combined with the "you will randomly fail things for no apparent reason." I'm one of those completists that has to do all the sidequests (well, within reason, I didn't do the procedurally generated ones in Skyrim). That would feel like the game was just trying to upset me.

I played an hour or two of "It Takes Two" last night with the lady. This is a strictly co-op platformer and it's pretty impressive. I haven't played Little Big Planet, but I'd imagine it's somewhat similar setting-wise - you play as two dolls that are in a weird, warped, giant version of the real world, so you do things like traverse series of vacuum cleaner tubes, swing around between nails, and fight giant, sentient toolboxes. It's pretty graphically snazzy and the gameplay is pretty tight. It's also more complex than most couch co-op sorts of games I've played, more on the Portal end of things than the Overcooked as far as tasks required of you (not saying Overcooked is easy by any stretch of the imagination). There's virtually no penalty for dying, but it still feels like you're overcoming something with some of the puzzles (which it doesn't immediately start throwing hints at you for) and the bosses (especially the toolbox so far, who just is raining nail flurries and saw blades and drilling holes out of the floor etc). The big problem so far is there's way too much dialogue between. We want gameplay, not long cutscenes about divorce with unfunny books talking at us!!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Tremendously late to the party here but I started Breath of the Wild. First new Zelda experience for me since Major's Mask. I'm only a few hours in so I'm hoping moving around the map gets easier once I get Epona or whatever horse/horses there are in the game. I also keep fucking up the controls because I've played a shitload of Monster Hunter Rise the past few weeks and am not used to it yet. 

It's cool so far. I dig the exploration and survival-lite parts of it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Tremendously late to the party here but I started Breath of the Wild. First new Zelda experience for me since Major's Mask. I'm only a few hours in so I'm hoping moving around the map gets easier once I get Epona or whatever horse/horses there are in the game. I also keep fucking up the controls because I've played a shitload of Monster Hunter Rise the past few weeks and am not used to it yet.
> 
> It's cool so far. I dig the exploration and survival-lite parts of it.


you can get horses at stables or catch them in rhe wild fyi


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Tremendously late to the party here but I started Breath of the Wild. First new Zelda experience for me since Major's Mask. I'm only a few hours in so I'm hoping moving around the map gets easier once I get Epona or whatever horse/horses there are in the game. I also keep fucking up the controls because I've played a shitload of Monster Hunter Rise the past few weeks and am not used to it yet.
> 
> It's cool so far. I dig the exploration and survival-lite parts of it.



I didn't use the horses much, I mostly did a lot of strategic "fast travel to high location and glider close to where I want to get" stuff. I also got two full stamina rings before I started dumping any orbs into hearts so that helped with mobility a lot. 

I always felt like I had to babysit the horses, since your whistle isn't like OOT where Epona shows up no matter where she was, you have to be pretty close to them for it to do anything. So I'd always end up having to go look for them which wasted more time than I saved from using them in the first place. They're situational at best IMO.


----------



## WarMachine

wankerness said:


> I didn't use the horses much, I mostly did a lot of strategic "fast travel to high location and glider close to where I want to get" stuff. I also got two full stamina rings before I started dumping any orbs into hearts so that helped with mobility a lot.
> 
> I always felt like I had to babysit the horses, since your whistle isn't like OOT where Epona shows up no matter where she was, you have to be pretty close to them for it to do anything. So I'd always end up having to go look for them which wasted more time than I saved from using them in the first place. They're situational at best IMO.


Combine that with the shield surfing and Revali's Gale and a majority of the time you don't need Epona.


----------



## wankerness

I don't even remember Epona being in the game. But, yeah, Revali's Gale is huge, you should do the air temple as soon as you possibly can. It helps SO much with exploration, especially early when your stamina is too crappy to climb stuff.

Been playing Sekiro tonight - took a day off, came back and beat corrupted monk #1 on the first try and guardian ape on the third try. Died to first phase once, then wrecked it 2nd and 3rd attempts by using oil and the flame vent. However, I did the second phase like a pathetic coward after failing miserably the first time. It felt more like a dark souls boss. Pretty much ran around in circles and then would rush in and stab him periodically since I got sick of him doing some random number of slashes and the chain occasionally being like 8 hits that would stagger me to death if I missed any parry. I saw there's an easy strategy involving parrying the slashes and then using the spear, but, I didn't ever try it cause I was burning all my ammo on the first phase. So, killed him in like 10 minutes like a coward. He deserved it.

Then, did a few more headless (the underwater one was kind of fun), killed the stupid snake, and then did the dual ape fight. It was kinda hard, but Ornstein and Smough taught me well about just circling around while waiting for the one you want to hit to present an opening, so it only took a couple tries, too. Actually fought the headless ape "legit" with this fight, with the parrying to make him do the overhead slam which opens him for big damage. Pretty fun, to be honest, unlike the regular guardian ape, which felt like an endurance test. So far Genichiro has given me BY FAR the most trouble, so I suspect I'm going to struggle a lot against the last few human enemies.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I don't even remember Epona being in the game. But, yeah, Revali's Gale is huge, you should do the air temple as soon as you possibly can. It helps SO much with exploration, especially early when your stamina is too crappy to climb stuff.
> 
> Been playing Sekiro tonight - took a day off, came back and beat corrupted monk #1 on the first try and guardian ape on the third try. Died to first phase once, then wrecked it 2nd and 3rd attempts by using oil and the flame vent. However, I did the second phase like a pathetic coward after failing miserably the first time. It felt more like a dark souls boss. Pretty much ran around in circles and then would rush in and stab him periodically since I got sick of him doing some random number of slashes and the chain occasionally being like 8 hits that would stagger me to death if I missed any parry. I saw there's an easy strategy involving parrying the slashes and then using the spear, but, I didn't ever try it cause I was burning all my ammo on the first phase. So, killed him in like 10 minutes like a coward. He deserved it.
> 
> Then, did a few more headless (the underwater one was kind of fun), killed the stupid snake, and then did the dual ape fight. It was kinda hard, but Ornstein and Smough taught me well about just circling around while waiting for the one you want to hit to present an opening, so it only took a couple tries, too. Actually fought the headless ape "legit" with this fight, with the parrying to make him do the overhead slam which opens him for big damage. Pretty fun, to be honest, unlike the regular guardian ape, which felt like an endurance test. So far Genichiro has given me BY FAR the most trouble, so I suspect I'm going to struggle a lot against the last few human enemies.


You must be a natural at Sekiro. You've breezed past bosses that cause lots of people to take days or weeks break from the game in frustration (including me ). I had to pretty much full on train for about a week, maybe 6 or 7 hours worth of gameplay, to beat the ape the first time.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> You must be a natural at Sekiro. You've breezed past bosses that cause lots of people to take days or weeks break from the game in frustration (including me ). I had to pretty much full on train for about a week, maybe 6 or 7 hours worth of gameplay, to beat the ape the first time.



I don't think so, as I said I really took the coward's way out on Guardian Ape. Then, I died just as much to this stupid asshole miniboss purple ninja that kept buffing his attack power and getting me stuck on railings as I did to the ape! Killed his counterpart without a sneak attack and no gourd uses, though. Now I got to the first "final boss," did one attempt, got through Emma and P1 of him alright and with 5 gourds remaining, but got absolutely demolished by nearly everything in his P2 when the fire and clouds of slashes start going all over the place. I barely scratched him. Ah well. I'll try again tomorrow evening!


----------



## CanserDYI

Went through some old game catalogues recently from the 90s. I was extremely shocked to see/remember games back then still being 49.99 to 69.99. I didn't really buy my games back then, my maw and paw did, and they always said it was expensive, but holy shit dude.

Please someone help me understand how the dollar inflated so much but video games really never changed all that much? Seems like they're so expensive now, but, in all reality looks like we get WAYYYYY more game for our dollar these days, not just in graphical fidelity and storylines, but literally only about 10-15 percent increase in price over almost 30 years.

Actually now that I'm thinking about it more it makes even littler sense here...the computing needing to process these more intense games and the knowledge and skilled "laborers" needed to program them has got to cost more now than ever am I correct in that? How did that not Drive up the cost of games like crazy?


----------



## wankerness

The chips needed to manufacture game cartridges were radically more expensive than it is to press a Blu-ray, plus way fewer people were buying games so they had to be expensive to turn a profit! It makes sense that the first really consistently cheap games were in the ps1 era when they were just cds.


----------



## wankerness

Tried Emma/Ishiin two more times this morning, died horribly to emma first try, and beat them handily second try, still had 4 gourds, didn't have to use any consumables besides rice that I popped at the start of P3 for safety, only rezzed on on phases 1 and 2 (mainly out of laziness on P2, figured rezzing right before the deathblow was better than wasting a gourd). Didn't do anything too cheesy, never used any gadgets, just whacked emma with ichimonji double a couple times, did P2 with no special moves, used mortal draw twice on P3. I limped through P1 and 2, but brought out the A game for 3! This game is incredible for making you feel like a master swordsman when you're in the zone. Like, I love the dark souls games, but the combat in this is so much more frenetic and good at making you feel like a badass when you pull off tons of parries/dodges. DS it's mostly a bunch of big windups that you either hit dodge (with a MUCH more forgiving window) or hold down block (functionally no timing required) instead of this where it's really rapidfire. I do NOT love difficulty, I usually play games on their easy settings just to get through them, but I have to say I really get why this game was nasty - the tone would be completely different if messing up a timing resulted in you losing 1/10 your health bar instead of the more general 1/3-2/3. Everything gets you really amped up.

I doubt I'll be physically able to play this game in another several years since I'm closing in on middle age and response times decline with age, but hey. Love it right now. Now to reload my cloud save and go for the non-evil endings!


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Tried Emma/Ishiin two more times this morning, died horribly to emma first try, and beat them handily second try, still had 4 gourds, didn't have to use any consumables besides rice that I popped at the start of P3 for safety, only rezzed on on phases 1 and 2 (mainly out of laziness on P2, figured rezzing right before the deathblow was better than wasting a gourd). Didn't do anything too cheesy, never used any gadgets, just whacked emma with ichimonji double a couple times, did P2 with no special moves, used mortal draw twice on P3. I limped through P1 and 2, but brought out the A game for 3! This game is incredible for making you feel like a master swordsman when you're in the zone. Like, I love the dark souls games, but the combat in this is so much more frenetic and good at making you feel like a badass when you pull off tons of parries/dodges. DS it's mostly a bunch of big windups that you either hit dodge (with a MUCH more forgiving window) or hold down block (functionally no timing required) instead of this where it's really rapidfire. I do NOT love difficulty, I usually play games on their easy settings just to get through them, but I have to say I really get why this game was nasty - the tone would be completely different if messing up a timing resulted in you losing 1/10 your health bar instead of the more general 1/3-2/3. Everything gets you really amped up.
> 
> I doubt I'll be physically able to play this game in another several years since I'm closing in on middle age and response times decline with age, but hey. Love it right now. Now to reload my cloud save and go for the non-evil endings!


It's the only Fromsoft game i've played, after barely playing any other 3rd person melee games like this. I picked a hell of a one to learn, considering i've got no instincts with how to go about things haha. I was even stubborn enough to just fight everything purely with individually timed parries as well. There's just something about the parry combat that feels amazing, like you're completely dominating your opponent even when you're on the defensive. I'm a big stealth game player as well, so i really like that aspect of the game. I love tearing through areas taking out an enemy every few seconds without anyone knowing i was there.
I'm actually sad that i have zero interest in Dark Souls or Elden Ring's combat after becoming addicted to Sekiro.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> It's the only Fromsoft game i've played, after barely playing any other 3rd person melee games like this. I picked a hell of a one to learn, considering i've got no instincts with how to go about things haha. I was even stubborn enough to just fight everything purely with individually timed parries as well. There's just something about the parry combat that feels amazing, like you're completely dominating your opponent even when you're on the defensive. I'm a big stealth game player as well, so i really like that aspect of the game. I love tearing through areas taking out an enemy every few seconds without anyone knowing i was there.
> I'm actually sad that i have zero interest in Dark Souls or Elden Ring's combat after becoming addicted to Sekiro.



The only problem with pure parries is a lot of enemies hit hard enough that you take posture damage and get staggered even if you parry everything. I definitely dodged A LOT on the last form of that Ishiin guy to avoid getting set on fire.

You've never played a Dark Souls game? It might at least be worth checking out Elden Ring when it comes out, or DS3 if you want to save money. The combat's definitely better in Sekiro from a pure mechanics perspective, but it does lack the huge variety of approaches you can take in DS games. I like build variety and being able to do spells or huge greatsword or little pokey rapier depending on the situation and stats etc.

I tried Owl like 5 times - this guy is a serious asshole compared to the Emma/Ishiin thing. I kept getting him close to the end of his first healthbar and then getting killed. A lot of the difficulty for me is getting any hits on him without accidentally touching the edge of one of his anti-healing clouds, at which point you're screwed for like 30 seconds and have to be really careful if you don't have a rez up. Thus, the first phase just kept dragging on and on until I'd eventually get hit with the move where he stomps on your face and 1-shots you. Will try again this evening!


----------



## StevenC

CanserDYI said:


> Went through some old game catalogues recently from the 90s. I was extremely shocked to see/remember games back then still being 49.99 to 69.99. I didn't really buy my games back then, my maw and paw did, and they always said it was expensive, but holy shit dude.
> 
> Please someone help me understand how the dollar inflated so much but video games really never changed all that much? Seems like they're so expensive now, but, in all reality looks like we get WAYYYYY more game for our dollar these days, not just in graphical fidelity and storylines, but literally only about 10-15 percent increase in price over almost 30 years.
> 
> Actually now that I'm thinking about it more it makes even littler sense here...the computing needing to process these more intense games and the knowledge and skilled "laborers" needed to program them has got to cost more now than ever am I correct in that? How did that not Drive up the cost of games like crazy?


As wankerness said, games used to cost more to manufacture and then got cheaper when the medium switched to discs. My memory is around the PS2/GC/Xbox era that games were £30 to £40 on those systems, nowadays buying games for PS5/NS/XS are in the £40 to £50 for physical games.

Video game development costs have inflated massively, its one of the reasons the Wii wasn't a HD system, but at the same time every game is made as cheaply as possible and with aggressive monetisation. Modern games also have drastically different margins considering large percentages of sales are digital and don't require printing and distribution. And finally take into account that the games that are large and massively supported often aren't that way at launch, so can gamble on success to actually finish or flesh out the games.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> The only problem with pure parries is a lot of enemies hit hard enough that you take posture damage and get staggered even if you parry everything. I definitely dodged A LOT on the last form of that Ishiin guy to avoid getting set on fire.
> 
> You've never played a Dark Souls game? It might at least be worth checking out Elden Ring when it comes out, or DS3 if you want to save money. The combat's definitely better in Sekiro from a pure mechanics perspective, but it does lack the huge variety of approaches you can take in DS games. I like build variety and being able to do spells or huge greatsword or little pokey rapier depending on the situation and stats etc.
> 
> I tried Owl like 5 times - this guy is a serious asshole compared to the Emma/Ishiin thing. I kept getting him close to the end of his first healthbar and then getting killed. A lot of the difficulty for me is getting any hits on him without accidentally touching the edge of one of his anti-healing clouds, at which point you're screwed for like 30 seconds and have to be really careful if you don't have a rez up. Thus, the first phase just kept dragging on and on until I'd eventually get hit with the move where he stomps on your face and 1-shots you. Will try again this evening!



Nope, no DS games or even hardly any melee games. I guess what sums me up best is that if i'm playing a D&D-like game i'm always a Wizard. I'm usually annoyed if an enemy gets within arms reach of me haha. I played Jedi Fallen Order though, and that's what got me wanting more purely parrying combat.

The fight with Owl was really satisfying. Really felt like the pure Sekiro combat system, without too much bullshit. There's actually an alternate fight with him hidden in the game, that a lot of people think is the hardest fight in the game, but i found the final boss of the good endings FAR harder. It's interesting how people have such varying amounts of trouble with different bosses. I had to leave lady butterfly till pretty late in the game, i loved the Owl fights, but i nearly just gave up trying with the final boss in the game.

I've only got the ending you've just been doing to go in the game. I've been doing a whole playthrough in NG+ for each ending. I'm not sure i'm in the mood for facing up to Isshin at the moment though


----------



## MFB

Werecow said:


> I've only got the ending you've just been doing to go in the game. I've been doing a whole playthrough in NG+ for each ending. I'm not sure i'm in the mood for facing up to Isshin at the moment though



Which one is considered the "good" ending again? Isn't there 2 that are good, one neutral, and then a bad ending?

I think I got the most common ending there was, the other "good" one requires some obscene amount of specifics to get.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> Which one is considered the "good" ending again? Isn't there 2 that are good, one neutral, and then a bad ending?
> 
> I think I got the most common ending there was, the other "good" one requires some obscene amount of specifics to get.


Yeh there's definitely the bad ending that shortens the game by quite a way. The other endings are sort of a rising scale on how happy the ending is, while doing the "right thing".

Edit: I think the "best" ending is canon. It's called Return. Setting up a potential sequel if they want to do it.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> Nope, no DS games or even hardly any melee games. I guess what sums me up best is that if i'm playing a D&D-like game i'm always a Wizard. I'm usually annoyed if an enemy gets within arms reach of me haha. I played Jedi Fallen Order though, and that's what got me wanting more purely parrying combat.
> 
> The fight with Owl was really satisfying. Really felt like the pure Sekiro combat system, without too much bullshit. There's actually an alternate fight with him hidden in the game, that a lot of people think is the hardest fight in the game, but i found the final boss of the good endings FAR harder. It's interesting how people have such varying amounts of trouble with different bosses. I had to leave lady butterfly till pretty late in the game, i loved the Owl fights, but i nearly just gave up trying with the final boss in the game.
> 
> I've only got the ending you've just been doing to go in the game. I've been doing a whole playthrough in NG+ for each ending. I'm not sure i'm in the mood for facing up to Isshin at the moment though



DS games have varying degrees of caster viability - once you are a little ways into 1 and 2 you can do it quite effectively, 3 I haven’t really tried. Demons Souls, caster is the easiest way to play the game! I’d suggest that one maybe. You still have a sword for backup and to help regain mana, but you’ll mostly be able to use spells especially on bosses.


----------



## beerandbeards

Just finished Guardians of the Galaxy. Very fun game, decent story, I think it held true to the essence of GotG. Combat can feel a little clunky but I’d give it an 8/10 overall. 

soundtrack is killer btw


----------



## wankerness

wankerness said:


> I tried Owl like 5 times - this guy is a serious asshole compared to the Emma/Ishiin thing. I kept getting him close to the end of his first healthbar and then getting killed. A lot of the difficulty for me is getting any hits on him without accidentally touching the edge of one of his anti-healing clouds, at which point you're screwed for like 30 seconds and have to be really careful if you don't have a rez up. Thus, the first phase just kept dragging on and on until I'd eventually get hit with the move where he stomps on your face and 1-shots you. Will try again this evening!



...and I tried again this evening and beat him first try without having to resurrect and 5 gourd uses remaining (I did use rice at the start of P2). WTF. I guess I just have to be mentally prepared for it somehow. 

And then I promptly had to rez AND used 7 gourds on the goddam 3.0 version of Drunkard.

AND NOW I HAVE TO FIGHT A MUCH HARDER VERSION OF OWL WTF


----------



## MFB

Hehehe, welcome to Sekiro, where every boss is proceeded by ANOTHER BOSS


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Hehehe, welcome to Sekiro, where every boss is proceeded by ANOTHER BOSS



This guy is a gigantic asshole. This is my biggest wall yet in this game by a mile. Died on him for about 2 hours, got to phase 2 like 3 times. Biggest problem is the goddam firecrackers - every suggestion I read online of how to deal with them either wouldn't consistently work unless he stayed in a convenient position (ex dodging at him/to the side) or I just never could react fast enough (jump/dodge straight backwards). Plus, he has that infuriating 100-0 instakill move he can do from across the room after the shuriken that would occasionally hit me - unblockable instakills when you're at full health have no place in bosses when they're that quick.

Second biggest problem is the goddam camera - you lose lockon all the time thanks to pillars blocking the camera. It results in Phase 2 feeling like twin princes in DS3, where you have to manually be spinning the camera around nonstop to miss the odds of getting hit incredibly hard before you can lock on to him and react. Worse here since if he does the non-mikiri charge move it will instantly kill you at full health. 

Time to take a breather till tomorrow!!!

I might go to the fountainhead palace or whatever and come back later, if I can do that without screwing up the endings. The stupid endings are even more convoluted than DS3.


----------



## MFB

Which fight is that, I don't recall anything of the sort after fighting Owl? Unless it's the Owl Father fight which is supposedly the hardest fight in the game.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Which fight is that, I don't recall anything of the sort after fighting Owl? Unless it's the Owl Father fight which is supposedly the hardest fight in the game.



I'm on Owl Father now. I beat regular Owl pretty quickly, maybe 30 minutes of attempts, a long break, and then first try this evening. I've seen mixed opinions on Owl Father being hardest. Sounds like some think Demon of Hatred or Sword Saint are harder - seems about even split between the three, with a few people saying true corrupted monk. But, sounds like those two are more up my alley since you can run around avoiding like a madman for a long time and they're less reaction-time based.

Seems like there's no "easy way" to this guy, either, unlike some of the others (I saw a total cheese strat for regular owl where you could consistently get him stuck in a corner and take him 100-0 with no chance of reprisal, for example). I haven't felt a need to resort to anything like that on any other boss, but with this guy I'm starting to wish there was one!


----------



## MFB

Demon of Hate is bar none, the most tedious of all the bosses I fought in the game; the one I thought would prevent me from completing it, no question. The fact that I managed to beat him, and the game, still astounds me.

Fuck that three phase piece of shit


----------



## Leviathus

Owl Father took me the most tries on my first playthrough, though i think DoH is the hardest overall. All this Sekiro talk's got me thinking of reinstalling, but i think i'm From'd out til Dark Souls 4 comes out next month.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Demon of Hate is bar none, the most tedious of all the bosses I fought in the game; the one I thought would prevent me from completing it, no question. The fact that I managed to beat him, and the game, still astounds me.
> 
> Fuck that three phase piece of shit



Did you skip Owl Father? If not, where would you rank him? Your earlier post made it sound like you heard he was the hardest, but hadn't actually fought him.

I just booted it up again today and decided to check out Fountainhead Palace and come back to Owl Father after I have a couple more upgrades. In about an hour, I killed True Corrupted Monk first try (barely) and the bull first try (got hit ONCE). Owl Father is so far above the level of these things it's ridiculous!!! Either that or he's just the Rock to my Scissors.

The platinum on this game seems easy to get if you actually finish the game, but I'd have to finish a NG+ with the bad ending (I reloaded my save after getting it here, and will get the three "good" endings on NG). At least that suggests to me that I won't have to do Owl Father again!! I had very little problem on the final boss chain for the bad ending at least.


----------



## MFB

I haven't fought him, whatever you need to do to trigger the fight (is it just returning to Hirata Estate after Lady Butterfly's fight?) I clearly didn't meet the criteria; which is most of my playthrough on FS games 

I've just HEARD stories of his difficulty but never fought him


----------



## Werecow

With Owl Father's firecrackers, watch at the end of his combo, he'll do this body movement where he sort of brings up his elbow and shows you his forearm. Jump straight back away from him immediately on seeing that movement, as it precedes him throwing them.
You need to spend a lot of concentration managing your position to him so that you don't get backed up to a pillar or corner by the combo that usually leads to that. Can still sometimes jump away from it if you are backed up though. That worked for me the vast majority of the time.

The big tactic that gets him for me, is when he does his unblockable swipe, jump straight up with no movement onto his head. If you do it right, you'll land back next to him. He'll usually then build up an ichimonji. You can get one (or even two if you want to take a risk) normal swipes with the sword, and then dodge sideways at the last second his actual ichimonji. Then immediately do your sword thrust as he's recovering from the ichimonji. The thrust needs to be immediate or he'll mikiri you, but it's not hard to do once you get used to that move. Beware though, if you don't dodge the ichimonji at the very last moment, he'll cancel it and go into this backhand swipe thing, but you can block that if it happens and you realise you messed up the timing (it feels bad-ass as well).

Another good thing to drill into your head is when the red Kanjis come up. When he's close up, it means swipe (and jump for the above move). Every other range = Mikiri.


----------



## Blytheryn

Witcher III, Blasphemous, and ranking up in Halo Infinite.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> With Owl Father's firecrackers, watch at the end of his combo, he'll do this body movement where he sort of brings up his elbow and shows you his forearm. Jump straight back away from him immediately on seeing that movement, as it precedes him throwing them.
> You need to spend a lot of concentration managing your position to him so that you don't get backed up to a pillar or corner by the combo that usually leads to that. Can still sometimes jump away from it if you are backed up though. That worked for me the vast majority of the time.
> 
> The big tactic that gets him for me, is when he does his unblockable swipe, jump straight up with no movement onto his head. If you do it right, you'll land back next to him. He'll usually then build up an ichimonji. You can get one (or even two if you want to take a risk) normal swipes with the sword, and then dodge sideways at the last second his actual ichimonji. Then immediately do your sword thrust as he's recovering from the ichimonji. The thrust needs to be immediate or he'll mikiri you, but it's not hard to do once you get used to that move. Beware though, if you don't dodge the ichimonji at the very last moment, he'll cancel it and go into this backhand swipe thing, but you can block that if it happens and you realise you messed up the timing (it feels bad-ass as well).



I think I get all the fundamentals and am TRYING to do this stuff, it's just so relentless and positioning is so important with it that I fail a lot. The hardest thing I have to do is consistently jump backwards. I guess I have some kind of reflex to always be holding directions either forward or sideways, and having to unlearn that to avoid the firecrackers is tough. I'll try him again after I beat everything else and thus have higher attack power. I saw some burndown strats that required it to be closer to 14 (was at 9 when I was dying over and over, now 10 already from the monk).

Also - I've been trying to do that thing where you last second dodge the ichimonji so he doesn't flip/sideswipe instead. I do it maybe 1/3 of the time - I just kind of mash buttons in this game and that makes it hard. I guess I have to just be slower and more deliberate on this guy since button mashing doesn't work on him and it does on practically everything else so far. Got to get back into DS mode, where double pressing buttons results in you double-rolling and losing all your stamina or over-committing to attacks!


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I think I get all the fundamentals and am TRYING to do this stuff, it's just so relentless and positioning is so important with it that I fail a lot. The hardest thing I have to do is consistently jump backwards. I guess I have some kind of reflex to always be holding directions either forward or sideways, and having to unlearn that to avoid the firecrackers is tough. I'll try him again after I beat everything else and thus have higher attack power. I saw some burndown strats that required it to be closer to 14 (was at 9 when I was dying over and over, now 10 already from the monk).
> 
> Also - I've been trying to do that thing where you last second dodge the ichimonji so he doesn't flip/sideswipe instead. I do it maybe 1/3 of the time - I just kind of mash buttons in this game and that makes it hard. I guess I have to just be slower and more deliberate on this guy since button mashing doesn't work on him and it does on practically everything else so far. Got to get back into DS mode, where double pressing buttons results in you double-rolling and losing all your stamina or over-committing to attacks!


Yeh it's one of those fights that suddenly clicks after practice. I had to really simplify the tactics through my head, like that Kanji range thing, so i could concentrate more on my placement in the arena.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I haven't fought him, whatever you need to do to trigger the fight (is it just returning to Hirata Estate after Lady Butterfly's fight?) I clearly didn't meet the criteria; which is most of my playthrough on FS games
> 
> I've just HEARD stories of his difficulty but never fought him



I don't exactly know what the criteria are altogether, but I know one thing I saw stressed in walkthroughs was you had to do one particular eavesdrop on Emma right before (or after, but before resting) the Shinobi Owl fight or you were screwed, unless maybe you then got some other eavesdrop on Kuro (dunno, I got the first one). It's realllllly obtuse and finicky and I don't get how anyone figured this out without a guide. Kinda like a bunch of the DS3 chains!!


----------



## wankerness

Alright, Demon of Hatred I cheesed just to see how easy it was, felt bad, erased my save and tried doing it legit, and got him to about 1/3 of his last health bar first attempt. This guy is infinitely easier than frickin Owl Father. For me, anyway. It feels a LOT like a boss like DS3's Demon Princes, only you only have to deal with one of him instead of two. It's simultaneously easier with this game's combat because you can run incredibly fast and have no stamina, and harder, cause you have even fewer iframes than the dodges in Bloodborne and thus have to be PERFECT on the handful of moves you need to dodge instead of the jump/grapple. I'd actually say it's fun apart from when you get hit with burn status. At least you can pause and cure it from the inventory screen.

EDIT: Wow, then had like 4 attempts where I died in phase 2 horribly to failing to grapple the bomb, or to getting charged cause I can't figure out how to avoid that. And then had another attempt where he was seriously 1 hit from death on last phase and chain stomped me into the ground. The main obstacle here is the tiny number of spirit emblems you can hold, cause either you can annihilate him in phase 3 if you don't use the umbrella at all for first two phases, or you can easily get to phase 3 every time but then not be able to hit him 3 times with the whistle. Ah well. This boss is very doable, just can be cheap.

EDIT 2: Finally got him, but phase 3 is a crapshoot thanks to the double charge (still never jump out of the way of that) or when he punches you into the flamewall and it's completely unavoidable instadeath. I'm glad I farmed gold for an hour or two and thus had ~60 divine confettis for these attempts!!!

Now time to try owl again with a few more attack power, or just go straight to sword saint cause he looks easier.


----------



## wankerness

FINALLY killed Owl after another whole hour of attempts, most short-lived. I felt like I just got lucky. I HATE this boss. He took me more than 3 times as long as any other boss. I think I died around 50-60 times altogether, though a lot of the time if I screwed up right away I'd just suicide, so who knows, it could have been fewer if I'd always tried to the bitter end.

Killed Sword Saint after less than an hour of attempts altogether. I died far more times to P1 (Genichiro) than I did to his infamous phase 2, again partly cause if he knocked me out or hit me immediately half the time I'd just get mad and suicide because I wanted to preserve everything for the rest of the fight. I just used the "get in his face" strategy, and used umbrella every time he charged up some big swirly thing, and was still completely out of healing items by the end besides one divine something. I'd say it was a good final boss, but I hate the arena and having to skip the cutscenes every damn time. I think if the fight didn't start with Genichiro I'd like it a lot more.

Now I've gotten all 4 endings (thanks save scumming), so I just need to complete a NG+ with the bad ending, save scum again, go to fountainhead for some lapis lazulis, and then grind a metric fuckton of XP for all the abilities. Ew. I think I might take a couple days off. It's a very good game, but it's also very punishing in occasionally stupid ways (I HATE pretty much the entire grab mechanic in this game), and it's probably too nasty for my slow Dark Souls-honed reflexes. I'd say overall the earlier bosses are the much more fun ones. I could jive with the complexity of the system until Father Owl just started infuriating me and making me feel my reflexes were too far gone. Sword Saint I could handle, and did his third phase really well the first time I got to it, but having to go through Genichiro and his first phase every damn time sucked most of the joy out of it. Demon of Hatred might have been the most fun of the "hard" bosses.

Best boss overall is the Divine Dragon, that one was a lot of fun. I don't remember the beginning of the game cause I started it just over a year ago, beat the ogre, died to a miniboss, and instantly put the game down for a year. So, that kind of has me curious to start NG+. 

I'm just glad I can say I beat it before Elden Ring comes out!! If I finish the platinum reasonably quick maybe I'll go back to Far Cry 6 (I find the upgrade system really complex and unengaging which is putting me off playing) or start Guardians of the Galaxy.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished Persona 5 Summer Vacation. Did a few post game mucking around, namely to get Metatron, but then realised most extras were just the same boss fights and the final boss but higher difficulty, and getting the last Persona, Lucifer requires another 10 more levels of grinding. So bugnuts to that. 

As stated, Strikers is a 'for the fans' kind of game. You're willing to go through the new simplified gameplay and it's flaws just to hang out with the Scooby Doo gang again. And while the original P5 story's villains are of the immature mustache twirling Saturday morning kind, Strikers addresses this and make the effort to have more sympathetic kind of villains. Not saying much, but it's something. Royal also addresses the same issue, but that involves story related spoilers that I'll just flat out refuse to reveal. Consider it as a satisfying 40 hour dessert after a hearty 100+ hour meal. 

After that, I've started playing Lost Judgment... so back to the streets of Kamurocho again. Though I've only played for a few minutes, the game is tutorialised up the ass, with new photo taking, parkour and sneak infiltration mechanics. So Judgment, but more of it. If you didn't like Yagami and his adventures of interactive J-Drama, then you might not like this so much. That said, since the mainline Yakuza games will be turn based from now on (for hilariously amazing reasons), it's nice to be back in traditional beat em up battles again.


----------



## SamSam

Progressing well through my first run of Dark Souls 2. Just beaten the Smelter Demon who has been the toughest boss so far. I'm quite enjoying the game although many of the bosses seem rather unremarkable. 

Since getting through the first two areas, which were a bit of a slog, this game has grown on me quite a bit


----------



## TedEH

I had a random drop of old games show up at my place - an old high school friend is moving and decided to do some cleaning/purging of stuff in the process, so their whole game collection ended up with me. A ps1, ps2, nes, og xbox, 360, and an old 360 I had lent them a long time ago, and about ~120 titles collected for those. The ps2 is missing power cables, and the og xbox is missing _all_ cables. The nes seems to be pretty finicky, but that's pretty normal for them I guess. The 360 I loaned out is still in surprisingly good shape, which is nice, since the rest of the consoles have that dreaded smokers gunk all through them. It was a lot more than I was expecting it to be, and sorting through it kinda feels like digging through someone elses childhood.


----------



## thebeesknees22

Interesting. Microsoft just bought blizzard for almost $70...billion. I don't play any blizzard games, but that's interesting anywho. 

https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/18/...zzard-xbox-acquisition-call-of-duty-overwatch


----------



## wankerness

SamSam said:


> Progressing well through my first run of Dark Souls 2. Just beaten the Smelter Demon who has been the toughest boss so far. I'm quite enjoying the game although many of the bosses seem rather unremarkable.
> 
> Since getting through the first two areas, which were a bit of a slog, this game has grown on me quite a bit



It remains my favorite DS game after playing through all of them repeatedly, at least if you have the SOTFS edition (I did buy the original for Xbox 360 and am curious to check it out sometime - from what I've seen some zones are nearly identical but others are almost devoid of enemies or have very different types). While the first couple areas are kind of tedious/hard on a first playthrough and Black Gulch and some of the optional DLC areas are pretty miserable, I like MOST of the zones, and nothing's nearly as bad as Tomb of the Giants or Sen's Fortress. And the poison swamp is far more mild than its equivalents in Demon's Souls, DS1 and DS3! You don't even get your movement slowed!

The bosses are sometimes lackluster, but there's way more of them than in DS1, so it balances out. The non-optional DLC bosses are all fantastic, and some of the other ones are pretty good too (ex Demon of Song). And I like fighting Ornstein and Smough separately even if it trivializes them!


----------



## wankerness

thebeesknees22 said:


> Interesting. Microsoft just bought blizzard for almost $70...billion. I don't play any blizzard games, but that's interesting anywho.
> 
> https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/18/...zzard-xbox-acquisition-call-of-duty-overwatch



Oh jeez, I thought you meant they acquired Blizzard from Activision. No, they bought the whole damn company!! This is probably due partly to the ongoing PR disaster with all the rapes and harassment being badly covered up by their CEO who is basically Satan. Hopefully this results in him finally losing his job, unfortunately it will not result in him not continuing to be unbelievably rich. I bet it will help to obfuscate the fact they're still keeping most of their awful leadership, though, which might be part of their motivation for selling.

I can't imagine this means that Activision games will be MS-exclusive going forwards. I'd say I don't care, but they've published a couple bangers that they didn't develop (ex, Sekiro) so we wouldn't just be losing COD, which I couldn't care less about. Blizzard, I would like to someday play Diablo 2's remake, but I haven't really cared about anything new they've produced since Diablo 3.


----------



## thebeesknees22

yeah i assume the sell was due to the PR and terrible people running the show. 

I'd pretty much guarantee that CEO is out. Buyouts almost always end in restructuring and changing of leadership. (which is a good thing in this case)

yeah they bought all of activision. I only paid attention to the blizzard part since i have old buddies that are there.lol


----------



## wankerness

Unfortunately it sounds like Kotick has a 375 million profit from the sale alone and hundreds of millions more in his contract if he gets fired. Something really bad needs to happen to that guy.


----------



## Ralyks

I think I'm mostly just hoping a new Tony Hawk isn't Xbox exclusive, provided they learned from 1+2 Remastered. Otherwise, meh, I guess I'll miss Overwatch 2? I dunno, I have a Series X but the PS5 gets way more play time.

Also, most 10 hours into Tales of Arise. Some repetitive banter aside, I'm really enjoying it.


----------



## RevDrucifer

I haven’t played much for games lately but after hearing that people weren’t having a nightmare of a time with Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles anymore, I decided to order it. While I waited for it to show up, I remember I have PS Now and downloaded God Of War, which I’ve never played any of. 

Love the graphics in God Of War, I haven’t gotten very far into it yet and I was really anxious to play Cyberpunk. I’ve gotten equally as far in both games so far. Hahahah, there’s definitely still some glitches going on in Cyberpunk for me, mostly with the audio not catching up, or both character dialogues start playing at the same time. Had a few times where I was waiting for a door to open or an exit to present itself and I had to walk in and out of the area several times before it happened. Still seems like a fun game. Driving fucking sucks in it though (I’m spoiled by GTA V’s driving mechanics). 

Really, I’m just killing time until GTA VI comes out. Hopefully by then I can get my hands on a PS5. I’ve never had a game suck me in and provide as much entertainment as GTA V and, as guilty as I feel saying this, I’ve got over 275 actual days of play time on GTA Online.


----------



## wankerness

RevDrucifer said:


> Really, I’m just killing time until GTA VI comes out. Hopefully by then I can get my hands on a PS5. I’ve never had a game suck me in and provide as much entertainment as GTA V and, as guilty as I feel saying this, I’ve got over 275 actual days of play time on GTA Online.



By the time GTA VI comes out you'll be stressing about getting a PS7.


----------



## Crungy

Seriously! Or the next Fallout game. Pretty sure I'll get to enjoy the next Elder scrolls game once I get a new Xbox. Hoping that one doesn't require the X but I wouldn't be surprised if it did... Not looking forward to dropping 1k on a console.


----------



## SamSam

wankerness said:


> It remains my favorite DS game after playing through all of them repeatedly, at least if you have the SOTFS edition (I did buy the original for Xbox 360 and am curious to check it out sometime - from what I've seen some zones are nearly identical but others are almost devoid of enemies or have very different types). While the first couple areas are kind of tedious/hard on a first playthrough and Black Gulch and some of the optional DLC areas are pretty miserable, I like MOST of the zones, and nothing's nearly as bad as Tomb of the Giants or Sen's Fortress. And the poison swamp is far more mild than its equivalents in Demon's Souls, DS1 and DS3! You don't even get your movement slowed!
> 
> The bosses are sometimes lackluster, but there's way more of them than in DS1, so it balances out. The non-optional DLC bosses are all fantastic, and some of the other ones are pretty good too (ex Demon of Song). And I like fighting Ornstein and Smough separately even if it trivializes them!



I actually quite liked Sean's fortress! Tomb panther giants not so much.

I completed DS1 and the dlc and bloodborne as well. DS I've cleared most of the main game (up to nameless king) and the first dlc.

I'm now deciding whether to tackle fume now or go onto the section after the primal bonfires.


----------



## wankerness

Crungy said:


> Seriously! Or the next Fallout game. Pretty sure I'll get to enjoy the next Elder scrolls game once I get a new Xbox. Hoping that one doesn't require the X but I wouldn't be surprised if it did... Not looking forward to dropping 1k on a console.



1k???? You can get those things for like 500 pretty regularly if you are patient and don't want to buy from a scalper. Just get a twitter account and follow the series x stock alerts and turn on notifications. I followed the account for a bit, had the opportunity to buy one, and then realized there was not one single exclusive on it or Xbox One yet that I wanted to play.  If that Bethesda thing ends up being good maybe that will be the event that finally gets me to buy one.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Would be nice if Microsoft had Obsidian lend Bethesda some quality fucking writers. I don't know, maybe also get Bethesda to give Obsidian the Fallout franchise back since Bethesda has been sodomizing the shit out of it since they had it.


----------



## wankerness

SamSam said:


> I actually quite liked Sean's fortress! Tomb panther giants not so much.
> 
> I completed DS1 and the dlc and bloodborne as well. DS I've cleared most of the main game (up to nameless king) and the first dlc.
> 
> I'm now deciding whether to tackle fume now or go onto the section after the primal bonfires.



I would suggest going to the sections of the base game after the primal bonfires instead of doing Fume Knight. There's a LOT of the base game left after that, it's not like DS1 where you get the souls for the lordvessel and then it's final boss time. I'd save the DLC for when you get to the giant memories section of the base game, since it's a HUGE step up in difficulty and you'll want to be higher level. Though if you managed to get all the way to Fume Knight you might be good enough, since that whole Brume Tower area is pretty brutal. Make sure you get all the smelter wedges and explore all the areas, there's some great stuff. I especially like the hilarious troll NPC that you'll get invaded by if you go to a certain tower. He's even funnier in the snow DLC. 

The only thing to be careful of is not going into the final boss fight till you've done all the giant memories and fought Vendrick, you can get locked out of the true final boss if you go too early. Not that he's a very good boss. The final bosses are in the Throne of Want, which is in a door that won't initially open that's close to the first bonfire in Drangleic Castle. You'll clear a lot of other zones first, like Shrine of Amana, Aldia's Keep, Dragon Aerie, etc. The key to the snow DLC is in the same room that opens in Shaded Woods on the way to Drangleic Castle, if I remember right.


----------



## RevDrucifer

wankerness said:


> By the time GTA VI comes out you'll be stressing about getting a PS7.



It’s been over 7 years since GTAV, which is crazy to think about in itself, but no doubt GTAVI is going to be a tall order to be comparable/better than V.


----------



## StevenC

RevDrucifer said:


> It’s been over 7 years since GTAV, which is crazy to think about in itself, but no doubt GTAVI is going to be a tall order to be comparable/better than V.


It'll be 10 next year


----------



## Crungy

wankerness said:


> 1k???? You can get those things for like 500 pretty regularly if you are patient and don't want to buy from a scalper. Just get a twitter account and follow the series x stock alerts and turn on notifications. I followed the account for a bit, had the opportunity to buy one, and then realized there was not one single exclusive on it or Xbox One yet that I wanted to play.  If that Bethesda thing ends up being good maybe that will be the event that finally gets me to buy one.



I remember seeing them for 500 at first but recently had looked at Walmart (or Amazon? I forget) and they were 1k. I will watch Twitter!

I agree as of now there's not much of a point to buy one. I'm holding out for ES or possibly Avowed if that materializes and sounds decent.


----------



## wankerness

RevDrucifer said:


> It’s been over 7 years since GTAV, which is crazy to think about in itself, but no doubt GTAVI is going to be a tall order to be comparable/better than V.



It's still not even announced that they're working on it (though everyone just assumes they have to be), and they just released the first story-based GTA Online DLC like a month ago. I don't think they're in any rush as long as they can make millions from GTA Online without having to do much of any work compared to what went into RDR2, which I suspect they made vastly less money off of than GTA Online.


----------



## wankerness

Crungy said:


> I remember seeing them for 500 at first but recently had looked at Walmart (or Amazon? I forget) and they were 1k. I will watch Twitter!
> 
> I agree as of now there's not much of a point to buy one. I'm holding out for ES or possibly Avowed if that materializes and sounds decent.



Another thing that no one seems to be talking about with Microsoft is that so far their track record of buying studios and said studios never producing anything good again is as bad as EA's. None of these big acquisitions they've done since the 360 days has really done anything other than drum up interest in potential future games. RARE for example hasn't put out anything good since about 2000 (unless you're very generous and say Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts was good, or maybe Sea of Thieves). It seems like they're more interested in eliminating these studios from making games for the competition than they are in them making good exclusives. Sony's an evil corporation, too, but at least they've cultivated some other developers that actually make quality stuff, and a lot of their exclusives are really good. So far Series X is the same as Xbox One - all they have is Gears, Halo, and Forza.


----------



## Alberto7

Me and my girlfriend got COVID over the holidays, so we had nothing to do. I was watching The Witcher season 2. My girlfriend caught me watching an episode halfway through the season and just sat next to me for the whole episode. Didn't say a peep until it ended. Then she goes "... can we watch more? That was kinda cool."

Fast-forward a month, and we've played all of the Witcher 3 plus both expansions, we've rewatched the entire show, and we're both reading the books. It's been rough doing that and also making time to play guitar. 

We're currently trying to complete as many sidequests as we can on the game before starting NG+. Tons of sidequests I didn't do on my first playthrough.
This game is just as great, if not better, every time I play it.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Another thing that no one seems to be talking about with Microsoft is that so far their track record of buying studios and said studios never producing anything good again is as bad as EA's. None of these big acquisitions they've done since the 360 days has really done anything other than drum up interest in potential future games. RARE for example hasn't put out anything good since about 2000 (unless you're very generous and say Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts was good, or maybe Sea of Thieves). It seems like they're more interested in eliminating these studios from making games for the competition than they are in them making good exclusives. Sony's an evil corporation, too, but at least they've cultivated some other developers that actually make quality stuff, and a lot of their exclusives are really good. So far Series X is the same as Xbox One - all they have is Gears, Halo, and Forza.


Sea of Thieves is really good, also Viva Piñata and Diddy Kong Racing DS. Lots of people like Psychonauts 2, and then I guess we'll see what Hellblade II is like.

They haven't really bought anything other than Rare long enough ago to say "never producing anything good again". They bought all those smaller developers in 2018 and 2019 that haven't really released anything yet, Bethesda in 2021 and now Activision.


----------



## RevDrucifer

wankerness said:


> It's still not even announced that they're working on it (though everyone just assumes they have to be), and they just released the first story-based GTA Online DLC like a month ago. I don't think they're in any rush as long as they can make millions from GTA Online without having to do much of any work compared to what went into RDR2, which I suspect they made vastly less money off of than GTA Online.



RDR2 deserved to make less money. Man that game was a letdown. I dug the story, but after GTAV:O, the slow launch of the online portion…well, RDR2 Online was the Quad Cortex of video games, with less hype. 

While they’re definitively still making money off of it, I doubt their resting on their laurels and just cashing shark card checks. Sales have surely dwindled considerably because you can find it used everywhere, Gamestop had about 10 copies of it the other day in the used section. I think that’s why they ended up splitting GTAO off and making it available separately from the story, which even then, why buy that for $20 when you can get the whole game used for $15?

I stopped paying attention to new DLC’s about 2-3 years ago and I’m definitely not the only one. The people I used to play that game with have all moved on and coming up on 8 years, that’s a whole new generation of players coming and going. If they wait too long, the newer generation of players will have no memory of how big of a hit GTAV was as where if they put something out within the next couple years, they’ll have people buying it just because GTAV was that good.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Sea of Thieves is really good, also Viva Piñata and Diddy Kong Racing DS. Lots of people like Psychonauts 2, and then I guess we'll see what Hellblade II is like.
> 
> They haven't really bought anything other than Rare long enough ago to say "never producing anything good again". They bought all those smaller developers in 2018 and 2019 that haven't really released anything yet, Bethesda in 2021 and now Activision.



Ports of their old, good games don't count, IMO. I definitely played the 360 remaster of the N64 Perfect Dark a LOT. But, I still count that as a game they made in 1998 cause fundamentally it was the same game in HD with a stabilized framerate.

The "so far" is doing a lot of work in my statement. It's just that they're still riding high on these future promises and we haven't gotten anything concrete yet besides a few promises of upcoming games that may or may not be good (ex Starfield, Hellblade II). Besides apparently Sea of Thieves. I dunno. I've heard mixed things. Sounded like it was a decent game ruined by the online community (like, it was functionally unplayable for a long time if you were a new player cause you'd just get stomped instantly as soon as you logged in).

Psychonauts 2 came out on playstation, so I don't count it as an exclusive (unlike games that are PC/Xbox only). I know it has Xbox studios listed as a developer.


----------



## mlp187

Shadow Man remastered is finally out on consoles. Just bought it, will be playing tonight.


----------



## TedEH

At this point, the MS / XBox umbrella owns so much stuff that I doubt they're really spending that much time meddling - I mean, they've got so many heavy hitting franchises that it would be insane to mess with. Doom? Elder Scrolls? Minecraft? Forza Horizon is a recent MS release and it was well received. If I had any guess, its that they don't care much about _what_ gets made, they just want to get as much as they can into their camp to drive people into gamepass and the xbox ecosystem.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Ports of their old, good games don't count, IMO. I definitely played the 360 remaster of the N64 Perfect Dark a LOT. But, I still count that as a game they made in 1998 cause fundamentally it was the same game in HD with a stabilized framerate.
> 
> The "so far" is doing a lot of work in my statement. It's just that they're still riding high on these future promises and we haven't gotten anything concrete yet besides a few promises of upcoming games that may or may not be good (ex Starfield, Hellblade II). Besides apparently Sea of Thieves. I dunno. I've heard mixed things. Sounded like it was a decent game ruined by the online community (like, it was functionally unplayable for a long time if you were a new player cause you'd just get stomped instantly as soon as you logged in).
> 
> Psychonauts 2 came out on playstation, so I don't count it as an exclusive (unlike games that are PC/Xbox only). I know it has Xbox studios listed as a developer.


I forgot DKR DS was a remake.

That's not my experience with Sea of Thieves. It's obviously much better to begin with friends because you have to operate each part of the ship individually, but it's really easy to get into. I only started in like November and never had an issue with avoiding unfriendly people. Apparently it was a bit bare at launch, but it's had loads of free content updates since.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> At this point, the MS / XBox umbrella owns so much stuff that I doubt they're really spending that much time meddling - I mean, they've got so many heavy hitting franchises that it would be insane to mess with. Doom? Elder Scrolls? Minecraft? Forza Horizon is a recent MS release and it was well received. If I had any guess, its that they don't care much about _what_ gets made, they just want to get as much as they can into their camp to drive people into gamepass and the xbox ecosystem.



My paranoid concern is that they're pulling a Disney and buying up companies not so they can have their current pace of content under their umbrella necessarily, but so those companies aren't helping their opposition. Like, 20th century fox studios is effectively dead now and we have that much less competition to Disney's main films, it didn't increase Disney's output. Just, no one is going to make any Xmen movies or whatever anymore unless Disney wants to commit THEIR resources to it, so there's no more competition, but there's also no more Xmen movies. The equivalent would be that no more COD games get produced until Microsoft decides they want to make a full one, and that it could be years before that happens.

Again, I do not give one single shit about anything Activision's produced in the last 10 years besides Guitar Hero (which is now defunct) and Sekiro, and From did almost all the work on that and is independent of Activision. But, it doesn't bode well for the future considering Microsoft has vastly, vastly more purchasing power than Sony and apparently no one in this country cares about antitrust laws anymore thanks to our effective oligarchy. If they buy up Ubisoft and EA, and COD and Overwatch actually stop being on PS, it's really going to be bad for any hope of competition. I know COD games make up something insane portion of the gaming market, like they sell more copies than everything else combined for Switch does in a given year or something similarly nutty.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> My paranoid concern is that they're pulling a Disney and buying up companies not so they can have their current pace of content under their umbrella necessarily, but so those companies aren't helping their opposition.


Six of one or half a dozen of the other, I guess.



wankerness said:


> The equivalent would be that no more COD games get produced until Microsoft decides they want to make a full one, and that it could be years before that happens.


I have my suspicions that the companies MS own still more or less operate independently in that regard - as in it's less "MS decides to make a full one" and more "it was in the roadmap already, they just need to get MS to sign the budget".... for now at least.



wankerness said:


> But, it doesn't bode well for the future


I'm definitely on THAT same page.


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> My paranoid concern is that they're pulling a Disney and buying up companies not so they can have their current pace of content under their umbrella necessarily, but so those companies aren't helping their opposition. Like, 20th century fox studios is effectively dead now and we have that much less competition to Disney's main films, it didn't increase Disney's output. Just, no one is going to make any Xmen movies or whatever anymore unless Disney wants to commit THEIR resources to it, so there's no more competition, but there's also no more Xmen movies. The equivalent would be that no more COD games get produced until Microsoft decides they want to make a full one, and that it could be years before that happens.
> 
> Again, I do not give one single shit about anything Activision's produced in the last 10 years besides Guitar Hero (which is now defunct) and Sekiro, and From did almost all the work on that and is independent of Activision. But, it doesn't bode well for the future considering Microsoft has vastly, vastly more purchasing power than Sony and apparently no one in this country cares about antitrust laws anymore thanks to our effective oligarchy. If they buy up Ubisoft and EA, and COD and Overwatch actually stop being on PS, it's really going to be bad for any hope of competition. I know COD games make up something insane portion of the gaming market, like they sell more copies than everything else combined for Switch does in a given year or something similarly nutty.




Except Disney WILL be making X-Men movies.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> Except Disney WILL be making X-Men movies.



I know, I meant to imply that in my post by saying the equivalent of what Disney did to the X-men franchise would be if MS took COD and sat on it for years until THEY want a new one. If Disney hadn't bought them out, there'd probably be another few of them already, while since they did, we have to wait until Disney wants to make one that will fit with their Marvel house style. It's not a parallel series anymore. They own the IP, the original studio effectively is gone and is no longer doing work making additional movies. All is swept aside for the Disney juggernaut.

The POSITIVE of this could be that maybe MS would go "we don't need so much COD anymore" and thus sub-studios like Raven could actually do something else for the first time in ten years. The COD machine is disgusting, how they have multiple studios making them.


----------



## TedEH

If I was worried about anything along those lines it would be that being part of the MS ecosystem means you have less incentive to make one-off or iterative games and keep putting products out, but instead have lots of incentive to transition into an as-a-service model that puts out a singular "free" gamepass-exclusive title that just evolves over time instead of making new games, since you don't need the regular releases to keep money coming in anymore.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I know, I meant to imply that in my post by saying the equivalent of what Disney did to the X-men franchise would be if MS took COD and sat on it for years until THEY want a new one. If Disney hadn't bought them out, there'd probably be another few of them already, while since they did, we have to wait until Disney wants to make one that will fit with their Marvel house style. It's not a parallel series anymore. They own the IP, the original studio effectively is gone and is no longer doing work making additional movies. All is swept aside for the Disney juggernaut.
> 
> The POSITIVE of this could be that maybe MS would go "we don't need so much COD anymore" and thus sub-studios like Raven could actually do something else for the first time in ten years. The COD machine is disgusting, how they have multiple studios making them.


I'd love it if Raven started making singleplayer games again. I still replay Jedi Knight 2 and Singularity most years.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> If I was worried about anything along those lines it would be that being part of the MS ecosystem means you have less incentive to make one-off or iterative games and keep putting products out, but instead have lots of incentive to transition into an as-a-service model that puts out a singular "free" gamepass-exclusive title that just evolves over time instead of making new games, since you don't need the regular releases to keep money coming in anymore.



Yeah, I would imagine that COD is going to amp up the micro-transactions, bigtime. Especially if gamepass goes multiplatform.


----------



## Ralyks

Let's not forget they obtained King in all of this. So yeah, microtransactions out the wazoo.


----------



## wankerness

Been going through Sekiro on NG+, I'm having the experience that the actual bosses seem a lot easier and the minibosses seem a lot harder. Killed lady butterfly handily first try only using the gourd twice, had to try three times on that purple ninja asshole that hangs out in the tunnel by Ashina reservoir. Killed Genichiro second try with almost no issue (first try I wasn't dodging his combo enders and thus was constantly getting staggered and doing nothing to him), died three times to a headless and gave up. I don't think they even give you anything on NG+ besides maybe money, which is completely useless if you have all the upgrades. Gah. I'm now to the valley, so time for Snake part 2 and those annoying gun bosses and then Ape. This game's pretty short compared to the DS games, I guess most of the length of a first playthrough comes from all the failing on bosses.

My girlfriend's finally repaired the boat and unlocked the island on Stardew Valley and got married to that dirtbag Shane, so I'm thinking at some point she's going to run out of things to do in this game. Is there anything else in this vein? I haven't really heard anything good about any Harvest Moon games since about 2002. Animal Crossing is the only other thing she's put this kind of time into. Maybe I'll get her to go back and finish BOTW.


----------



## gabito

Re playing The Witcher 3, doing everything I didn't do the first time and then some. Man, this game is huge. Getting all the Gwent cards took a few weeks, and then there's the witcher contracts, secondary missions, treasure hunts, fist fights, horse races...

Not that everything there's to do in the game is super fun, but it's a lot anyway. Might go for the platinum trophy, but I'll do it next time because I started this playthrough on normal difficulty and I'm not going to start again now.


----------



## wankerness

Witcher 3 on Deathmarch, especially at the beginning of the game, is like having ten root canals simultaneously. Fights take like 5x longer due to everything having monstrous HP increases and you generally die in one hit to everything (unless you chain cast that shield spell, in which case 2 hits) at which point you have to start the whole thing over. It makes Dark Souls seem like Lego Star Wars. I was actually kind of glad it was so horrible, it eliminated me from having any desire to get the platinum on the game, so I could also skip some other tedious trophies. I never liked Gwent at all, though, so that was the big other one I didn't want to do.

Oh yeah, I got one of those back-paddle DIY kits for PS5 yesterday. The installation was a huge pain in the ass, I'm surprised the controller still works. Doesn't seem to work for the R3/L3 clicks, unfortunately, unless you want to solder, but it does what I needed it to do, which is bind circle to a back paddle so I can properly play games where manual camera movement while using face buttons. I guess I'll have to reverse the mod if my sticks start drifting and I want to try and get a warranty repair! Hopefully Sony releases an official one that has no modding required sooner rather than later.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> Oh jeez, I thought you meant they acquired Blizzard from Activision. No, they bought the whole damn company!! This is probably due partly to the ongoing PR disaster with all the rapes and harassment being badly covered up by their CEO who is basically Satan. Hopefully this results in him finally losing his job, unfortunately it will not result in him not continuing to be unbelievably rich. I bet it will help to obfuscate the fact they're still keeping most of their awful leadership, though, which might be part of their motivation for selling.
> 
> I can't imagine this means that Activision games will be MS-exclusive going forwards. I'd say I don't care, but they've published a couple bangers that they didn't develop (ex, Sekiro) so we wouldn't just be losing COD, which I couldn't care less about. Blizzard, I would like to someday play Diablo 2's remake, but I haven't really cared about anything new they've produced since Diablo 3.



I’m betting on exclusive preorder content, getting DLC 3-6 months before it lands on competing platforms, etc. literally what Sony did with CoD style content. 



wankerness said:


> Unfortunately it sounds like Kotick has a 375 million profit from the sale alone and hundreds of millions more in his contract if he gets fired. Something really bad needs to happen to that guy.



Nothing ever will. He was making $20mm+ bonuses a decade ago. He will always be fine. This was just a fun hobby for him at this point. 



Crungy said:


> I remember seeing them for 500 at first but recently had looked at Walmart (or Amazon? I forget) and they were 1k. I will watch Twitter!
> 
> I agree as of now there's not much of a point to buy one. I'm holding out for ES or possibly Avowed if that materializes and sounds decent.



I was able to get a PS5 in Jan of last year by following those alert twitters. Definitely do this instead of scalpers. 



Alberto7 said:


> Me and my girlfriend got COVID over the holidays, so we had nothing to do. I was watching The Witcher season 2. My girlfriend caught me watching an episode halfway through the season and just sat next to me for the whole episode. Didn't say a peep until it ended. Then she goes "... can we watch more? That was kinda cool."
> 
> Fast-forward a month, and we've played all of the Witcher 3 plus both expansions, we've rewatched the entire show, and we're both reading the books. It's been rough doing that and also making time to play guitar.
> 
> We're currently trying to complete as many sidequests as we can on the game before starting NG+. Tons of sidequests I didn't do on my first playthrough.
> This game is just as great, if not better, every time I play it.



That’s just adorable. Good for you guys. 



wankerness said:


> Witcher 3 on Deathmarch, especially at the beginning of the game, is like having ten root canals simultaneously. Fights take like 5x longer due to everything having monstrous HP increases and you generally die in one hit to everything (unless you chain cast that shield spell, in which case 2 hits) at which point you have to start the whole thing over. It makes Dark Souls seem like Lego Star Wars. I was actually kind of glad it was so horrible, it eliminated me from having any desire to get the platinum on the game, so I could also skip some other tedious trophies. I never liked Gwent at all, though, so that was the big other one I didn't want to do.
> 
> Oh yeah, I got one of those back-paddle DIY kits for PS5 yesterday. The installation was a huge pain in the ass, I'm surprised the controller still works. Doesn't seem to work for the R3/L3 clicks, unfortunately, unless you want to solder, but it does what I needed it to do, which is bind circle to a back paddle so I can properly play games where manual camera movement while using face buttons. I guess I'll have to reverse the mod if my sticks start drifting and I want to try and get a warranty repair! Hopefully Sony releases an official one that has no modding required sooner rather than later.



Oh link please? I’ve been waiting for a clip-in option like the PS4 had. My knuckles are killing me.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> My girlfriend's finally repaired the boat and unlocked the island on Stardew Valley and got married to that dirtbag Shane, so I'm thinking at some point she's going to run out of things to do in this game. Is there anything else in this vein? I haven't really heard anything good about any Harvest Moon games since about 2002. Animal Crossing is the only other thing she's put this kind of time into. Maybe I'll get her to go back and finish BOTW.



I've not played anything like that, but i usually see Graveyard Keeper in reply to that question.


----------



## spudmunkey

Just replaying some Sonic Mania. Damn, they got it just right. So good.


----------



## p0ke

Finally bought The Ringed City, and I've got some time to play it this weekend


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Oh link please? I’ve been waiting for a clip-in option like the PS4 had. My knuckles are killing me.



it was this thing:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B095H6WXX6/?tag=sevenstringorg-20

I haven’t played any ps5 games with it since installing so maybe I made the subtle vibration and adaptive triggers and microphone stop working without noticing, and I skipped the soldering necessary for mapping R3/L3, but when playing PS4 games it sure works fine. The buttons are bigger and click a bit more nicely than the Sony attachment did, IMO, but due to its nature obviously the interface for remapping is nowhere near as good. I’d watch a YouTube video showing the install first. It probably took me about half an hour.


----------



## beerandbeards

I’m playing Ghost of Tsushima on NG+. I wanted to play the DLC but it’s been a long time since I last played and I wanted to get my combat chops back. It did not take long, especially with having all my upgrades and skills already unlocked, to feel like an absolute Mongol nightmare.


----------



## wankerness

Been trucking along through Sekiro on NG+. At a certain point shortly after Genichiro, things flip, and EVERYTHING is a hell of a lot harder than on NG. The biggest difference is that later bosses do about double the posture damage that they did on NG, so if you try deflecting everything, you will constantly have to be blocking during their pauses to regain posture (or trying to do ichimonjis to drain the bar, which is slow and risky), which results in you barely getting any time to do any damage unless you want to get staggered as soon as they do their next series of attacks. As a result, I had to radically change strategies on Ape (whole first phase I just had to hold block and occasionally retaliate with a single whirlwind after attacks that left openings - second phase was incredibly easy though with the deflect/spear strategy), Emma (deflecting usually ended in me staggering and her then hitting me with Ashina Cross or something for my entire health bar, it took like 15 attempts, had to just start running away from certain moves instead of deflecting like on NG), and Great Shinobi Owl (also very difficult, took fewer attempts than emma, but had to always dodge his slams and double-ichimonji or else I'd get staggered and die). True Corrupted Monk utterly destroyed me since a single whirlwind would stagger me even deflecting everything and she has all those awful unblockable slashes she throws into combos. I lost so decisively (struggled along for 10 minutes, got her to less than half of a full posture bar on her FIRST life and only did a sliver of vitality damage). At least she's the last major boss I have to kill for the platinum, and then I'm done!!!

Even the minibosses are bad news. Blazing Bull was terrifying, so was the second Ogre, and some of the little purple ninja assholes like the one that buffs his damage and the one with the dogs. This is hands-down the hardest Fromsoft game by a huge margin. Even if the levels themselves are radically easier than anything else in their oeuvre, the boss difficulty is just so far beyond. If DS3's every miniboss was like the double Sulyvahn beast fight, that would be about on the level of this. Jeez!!

Since you can't spec anything or change builds or anything there's no reason at all to play this game on higher NG cycles other than increased difficulty, since your damage barely increases after the first playthrough and your health CAN'T increase yet everything's damage just keeps increasing. I'm guessing after another couple cycles you'd just get instantly staggered any time a boss tries to hit you!


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Been trucking along through Sekiro on NG+. At a certain point shortly after Genichiro, things flip, and EVERYTHING is a hell of a lot harder than on NG. The biggest difference is that later bosses do about double the posture damage that they did on NG, so if you try deflecting everything, you will constantly have to be blocking during their pauses to regain posture (or trying to do ichimonjis to drain the bar, which is slow and risky), which results in you barely getting any time to do any damage unless you want to get staggered as soon as they do their next series of attacks. As a result, I had to radically change strategies on Ape (whole first phase I just had to hold block and occasionally retaliate with a single whirlwind after attacks that left openings - second phase was incredibly easy though with the deflect/spear strategy), Emma (deflecting usually ended in me staggering and her then hitting me with Ashina Cross or something for my entire health bar, it took like 15 attempts, had to just start running away from certain moves instead of deflecting like on NG), and Great Shinobi Owl (also very difficult, took fewer attempts than emma, but had to always dodge his slams and double-ichimonji or else I'd get staggered and die). True Corrupted Monk utterly destroyed me since a single whirlwind would stagger me even deflecting everything and she has all those awful unblockable slashes she throws into combos. I lost so decisively (struggled along for 10 minutes, got her to less than half of a full posture bar on her FIRST life and only did a sliver of vitality damage). At least she's the last major boss I have to kill for the platinum, and then I'm done!!!
> 
> Even the minibosses are bad news. Blazing Bull was terrifying, so was the second Ogre, and some of the little purple ninja assholes like the one that buffs his damage and the one with the dogs. This is hands-down the hardest Fromsoft game by a huge margin. Even if the levels themselves are radically easier than anything else in their oeuvre, the boss difficulty is just so far beyond. If DS3's every miniboss was like the double Sulyvahn beast fight, that would be about on the level of this. Jeez!!
> 
> Since you can't spec anything or change builds or anything there's no reason at all to play this game on higher NG cycles other than increased difficulty, since your damage barely increases after the first playthrough and your health CAN'T increase yet everything's damage just keeps increasing. I'm guessing after another couple cycles you'd just get instantly staggered any time a boss tries to hit you!


I'm on to NG+ 4 i think it is, and little things have changed with minibosses too. The second bull at fountainhead, you can normally completely stealth deathblow from the roof above it. At some point in the NG+ cycle if you try that, it takes half its HP off instead. It made me jump like hell when that happened, and had to scramble to get ready for the fight from a bad position.

I quite enjoy having to change tactics to recover posture. It really starts paying off to properly time deflects rather than tapping the button as well.


----------



## wankerness

I read for the first time today that if you hold down L1 after each deflect and then quickly release and press/hold again before the next attack from the enemy (deliberate button presses) instead of just rapidly clicking it and trying to rapidly click it again when you see the next attack coming (short, light presses), it tends to work much better on draining their posture and you not losing yours. Good to know, I wish something in the game had told you that from the beginning!!! I'll try it on this stupid monk guy this evening and see how it goes. I guess it's impressive I got so far without playing the game correctly.


----------



## Empryrean

I finally cracked the seal on Monster Hunter Rise for pc, I haven't touched monster hunter since world a few years back and good God I'm having a blast. So many more qol changes have been added in, I find it funny that it's literally the opposite of my experience with fighting games. I can't stand stuff getting simplified to be more marketable or capture a larger audience but monster hunter is doing it right in all the correct ways. Needless to say here goes several hundred hours of my time


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> I read for the first time today that if you hold down L1 after each deflect and then quickly release and press/hold again before the next attack from the enemy (deliberate button presses) instead of just rapidly clicking it and trying to rapidly click it again when you see the next attack coming (short, light presses), it tends to work much better on draining their posture and you not losing yours. Good to know, I wish something in the game had told you that from the beginning!!! I'll try it on this stupid monk guy this evening and see how it goes. I guess it's impressive I got so far without playing the game correctly.


I've read that if you keeping tapping block, the parry window decreases. Not for an extended period of time, but just while you're doing it. Tapping obviously can get you out of an unpredictable situation, but you can end up with several blocks rather than full deflects in a combo for example.
Not sure if it's my imagination, but it seems like there's a sort of "partial deflect" that can occur during tapping or badly timed deflects as well, where the enemy posture gets damaged a bit, but you take sort of half posture damage as well.

Something like that has definitely happened to me with those freaky Giraffe minibosses. Sometimes their posture bar flies up, but other times if i'm a little off it takes a while.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Empryrean said:


> I finally cracked the seal on Monster Hunter Rise for pc, I haven't touched monster hunter since world a few years back and good God I'm having a blast. So many more qol changes have been added in, I find it funny that it's literally the opposite of my experience with fighting games. I can't stand stuff getting simplified to be more marketable or capture a larger audience but monster hunter is doing it right in all the correct ways. Needless to say here goes several hundred hours of my time


I was playing a looooot of MHR on Switch this month and think I'll put it down for a bit. Beat the story missions and am HR50 and am okay with stopping for now since I can basically solo any monsters to grind for more gear so I'm just feeling a bit worn out on it. Still super fun and the qol updates from MHW are very welcome. Although one thing I don't like that they removed from MHW is retroactively giving you HR levels after passing the level caps for stuff you've done. In MHR if you hit that wall, no hunts will count until you finish the urgent quest to unlock the cap.


----------



## Empryrean

BlackMastodon said:


> Although one thing I don't like that they removed from MHW is retroactively giving you HR levels after passing the level caps for stuff you've done. In MHR if you hit that wall, no hunts will count until you finish the urgent quest to unlock the cap.


Ah I didn't realize they did this, I could totally understand though. in MHW I recall playing a bunch of quests online and when i finally made it to Kirin(i think it was kirin?) my Hr jumped several levels straight out the bat


----------



## p0ke

Finally reached the Ringed City. Goddamnit the way there was a pain in the ass! Getting used to the controls and overall strategies again + wtf is with those angels... 
The first boss was really cool though - I got to the second phase on my first attempt and I think I could've gotten him if I hadn't accidentally pressed the estus-button many times when I intended to attack (fuck you Jedi Fallen Order!). 
Tried a bunch of times before looking for phantoms, and in the end the fight was a breeze with both of them by my side.


----------



## WarMachine

GoW for PC. Just as great as i remember on the PS4. So nice to play with higher FPS as well. Bad thing is, i work night shifts and no matter what time of the fucking day it is, if i sit for any extended period on my couch i fucking pass out lol. So it's been making this one hard to play over the weekend. I've gotten up to the base of the mountain where you dissolve the dark breath with the bifrost.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I've read that if you keeping tapping block, the parry window decreases. Not for an extended period of time, but just while you're doing it. Tapping obviously can get you out of an unpredictable situation, but you can end up with several blocks rather than full deflects in a combo for example.
> Not sure if it's my imagination, but it seems like there's a sort of "partial deflect" that can occur during tapping or badly timed deflects as well, where the enemy posture gets damaged a bit, but you take sort of half posture damage as well.
> 
> Something like that has definitely happened to me with those freaky Giraffe minibosses. Sometimes their posture bar flies up, but other times if i'm a little off it takes a while.



well, armed with this knowledge and with a commitment to holding L1 every time I hit it even if it was early, I easily dispatched corrupted monk. It’s amazing how huge of a difference being deliberate vs spammy made!! The boss’s posture maxed out in like a minute vs the ten minutes with no progress the day before.

now I’m killing that purple ninja next to the save point in the third version of hirata castle hundreds and hundreds of times to grind exp cause it’s by far the most efficient  5 more ability points and I’ve platinumed this son of a bitch. I am looking forward to going back to easy games for a bit before elden ring comes out!!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bought Record Of Lodoss War: Deedlit In Wonder Labyrinth... a Metroidvania with the Lodoss anime series pastiche. Haven't played it since Lost Judgment's plot finally started picking up. 

Lost Judgment.... played up to chapter 2 and in pure Yakuza tradition, I put the main plot to a screeching halt so I can play some sidequests witha dancing minigame a la 5 and 0. Not the same as karaoke but seeing a former boy band member do mocap dancing with a dance group will do. 

As for the plot, it's even darker than the first game. I remember a lot of players didn't like Judgment for not leaning to the goofy side of the Yakuza lineage, but I commend it for being it's own thing. The sequel leans even harder to the J-Drama aesthetic, which for me is the right direction. Yakuza 7 was fantastic since it treads the fine line of dark mature themes with extreme goofy humor, but Lost Judgment needed to be different to that. School Bullying is a major topic in this game and Yagami is the more better choice to tackle the topic. RGG went so far as to giving him a new fighting style (Snake) based on disarming and counters, which the game expects you to use against student bullies. Of course you're not penalised when you use his other Kung Fu styles and straight up beat up said bullies, so so much for that. Still, uncomfortable as it may be to see an adult beat up a bunch of teenagers, the game bends over backwards to show how harrowing School Bullying can be, so I have no qualms beating up bastard teenagers. Though it is still too early in the game to see where and how far they're going with it.

Of course all of that isn't saying much now that Yagami has his own Sega Master System in his apartment. So that means I can easily stop everything and play Alex Kidd In Miracle World, and all it's slippery jank, all day long.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> well, armed with this knowledge and with a commitment to holding L1 every time I hit it even if it was early, I easily dispatched corrupted monk. It’s amazing how huge of a difference being deliberate vs spammy made!! The boss’s posture maxed out in like a minute vs the ten minutes with no progress the day before.
> 
> now I’m killing that purple ninja next to the save point in the third version of hirata castle hundreds and hundreds of times to grind exp cause it’s by far the most efficient  5 more ability points and I’ve platinumed this son of a bitch. I am looking forward to going back to easy games for a bit before elden ring comes out!!



I find it so satisfying being deliberate with deflects as well.

If you've got access to Mibu village, there's a poisonous purple ninja you can stealth kill every few seconds near the idol.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I find it so satisfying being deliberate with deflects as well.
> 
> If you've got access to Mibu village, there's a poisonous purple ninja you can stealth kill every few seconds near the idol.



That guy takes over twice as long to kill as the purple dude in the antechamber (he only spawns after you kill the Dragon boss - till then he's a green kimono guy), he's like 2100 every 10 seconds or so. I ground it out! Somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 kills for those last 26 skill points. Oof. Now I have the platinum and I think I might be done with this game till I find a need to restart it.

Just started playing Jedi Fallen Order on PS5, I don't like the floaty movement. I forgot how much this copied Tomb Raider/Uncharted. Might quit pretty fast and try to go back to Farcry 6 or start Guardians of the Galaxy before everything gets put on hold for HZD2 and Elden Ring!!


----------



## MFB

Best place for farming in my opinion was Fountainhead Palace by where the Sakura Bull idol is; you can spawn and farm roughly 10K (might even be more) for 2 minutes worth of stealth kills from the eel dudes in there.

Farming for the last skill tree is an absolute nightmare, it requires so much


----------



## Leviathus

Lol, the skill point grind for plat is the real final boss in Sekiro.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Best place for farming in my opinion was Fountainhead Palace by where the Sakura Bull idol is; you can spawn and farm roughly 10K (might even be more) for 2 minutes worth of stealth kills from the eel dudes in there.
> 
> Farming for the last skill tree is an absolute nightmare, it requires so much



I did a couple longer routes and none of them were ever nearly as efficient as that purple dude in hirata upper tower - antechamber 3.0. On NG he was ~1200 exp every 10 sec, and NG+ was 2100, so it went FAST. You didn't even need to go into stealth, you could just walk right up and deathblow him and then run back to the idol. It was mindnumbing, but that's what podcasts are for! If I'd had to concentrate on the game I might have done something like that, or the three elite dudes right before the Dragon boss in fountainhead.

On NG I did grind that purple ninja in mibu village in the cavern a little bit. I tended to just grind when there was a specific skill I wanted at some point and I was coming up on a boss or something. But, as far as grindiness goes, nothing was nearly as bad as grinding concords in Dark Souls 3 from the silver knights for HOURS. I just think the boss xp was out of whack - I'd frequently not even get a single level from boss kills even on NG+. It should have been easier to level off them and less incentive to level off the biggest, baddest dude you could stealth kill next to a save point.


----------



## Thesius

Pretty much Diablo 2 since the remaster. Master Duels as well.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Bought The Turing Test, if you like the Portal series of games you'll like this game. Slightly different mechanics but the goal remains the same.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing a bunch of Far Cry 6, I don't like how they rolled back a lot of the mechanics to make it more "IMMERSIVE" or something. As a result there are very, very few fast travel points, lots of the enemy bases just infinitely respawn enemies and can't be captured, and things get pretty tedious. Ah well. I still generally like the look and feel of it so it's not terrible or anything, but I definitely prefer 5 greatly even with its annoying kidnap mechanics.


----------



## MFB

I started a new playthrough of GOW since one of my coworkers started it, and it's become such a comfort game for me. We're slowly talking another coworker into starting it as well, because why not?

I plan to finish the Valkyrie's on this one, since my last NG+ was on Hard and Sigrun kicked my ass without question. I don't think I tried her on Normal, but I could be wrong. Then once I get the Zeus armor, maybe I'll try NG+ on GMGOW.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I started a new playthrough of GOW since one of my coworkers started it, and it's become such a comfort game for me. We're slowly talking another coworker into starting it as well, because why not?
> 
> I plan to finish the Valkyrie's on this one, since my last NG+ was on Hard and Sigrun kicked my ass without question. I don't think I tried her on Normal, but I could be wrong. Then once I get the Zeus armor, maybe I'll try NG+ on GMGOW.



I played through GOW without much trouble on normal but definitely had to set it to easiest for the goddam valkyrie queen. Ridiculously hard. 

I sort of want to replay that, but then I think about how it has like 12 bosses apart from the optional ones and over half of them are "the same troll with a log but different colored." That game's boss fights were sadly lacking.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, I'll admit there was some reskinning going on for bosses, but overall the fact that the game is as polished as it was when they basically remade the entire game is impressive as shit. The game as a whole is what kept me interested, and there's enough arena areas/enemy fights outside the bosses that make it worthwhile.

I'm sure Ragnarok will have more variety to it


----------



## SamSam

Cleared a decent chunk of DS2 now. I've got to take on the zombie king and ancient dragon and they both seem like a fair jump in challenge compared to the pushover bosses that preceded them.

I still have the expansions to tackle as well.


----------



## wankerness

SamSam said:


> Cleared a decent chunk of DS2 now. I've got to take on the zombie king and ancient dragon and they both seem like a fair jump in challenge compared to the pushover bosses that preceded them.
> 
> I still have the expansions to tackle as well.



I would advise skipping the ancient dragon, you don't get jack for beating him (just another Giant soul, but if you get the others you have enough to beat vendrick without it) and it's famously one of the worst fights in the entire series. To say nothing of the runback. 

Vendrick is very easy mechanically if you use the patented "circle behind him and poke him in the butt" strategy. The only challenge comes from when he walks into the corner and you get stuck on him and then he 2-shots you. If he gets in the corner just run away from him so he jumps back towards the middle of the room, and then repeat. If you have the stats for a greatshield you can at least block one hit (though you'll get staggered so you're dead if he does the three-hit combo). If I don't concentrate or don't run away when he gets too close to the wall I tend to get killed, and it's frustrating since the fight can be like 5-10 minutes long.


----------



## SamSam

wankerness said:


> I would advise skipping the ancient dragon, you don't get jack for beating him (just another Giant soul, but if you get the others you have enough to beat vendrick without it) and it's famously one of the worst fights in the entire series. To say nothing of the runback.
> 
> Vendrick is very easy mechanically if you use the patented "circle behind him and poke him in the butt" strategy. The only challenge comes from when he walks into the corner and you get stuck on him and then he 2-shots you. If he gets in the corner just run away from him so he jumps back towards the middle of the room, and then repeat. If you have the stats for a greatshield you can at least block one hit (though you'll get staggered so you're dead if he does the three-hit combo). If I don't concentrate or don't run away when he gets too close to the wall I tend to get killed, and it's frustrating since the fight can be like 5-10 minutes long.



I did fall victim to the wall last night


----------



## SamSam

And King Vendrick has fallen. Avoiding the walls made it a walk in the park


----------



## gabito

Currently playing Control, I'm really confused 

I mean, I like it, it's like a David Lynch / X-Files crossover, but it's anything but straightforward. It's also kind of difficult, I wasn't expecting that. I don't really like difficult games but I'm interested enough that I might push forward... or I may just play until I'm frustrated enough to finally activate the God Mode switch and enjoy the story and setting until the end.


----------



## TedEH

I always thought of Control as being one of those kinds of games you don't have to "understand", and maybe aren't supposed to. It's more about the vibe or the aesthetic than it is about making any sense. Or maybe I'm just quick to excuse confusing video game nonsense, you can decide.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I always thought of Control as being one of those kinds of games you don't have to "understand", and maybe aren't supposed to. It's more about the vibe or the aesthetic than it is about making any sense. Or maybe I'm just quick to excuse confusing video game nonsense, you can decide.



For me it's the same with David Lynch: I've seen most of his movies and TV series, but I can't say I understood any of them. But for some reason I really like what he does.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Currently playing Control, I'm really confused
> 
> I mean, I like it, it's like a David Lynch / X-Files crossover, but it's anything but straightforward. It's also kind of difficult, I wasn't expecting that. I don't really like difficult games but I'm interested enough that I might push forward... or I may just play until I'm frustrated enough to finally activate the God Mode switch and enjoy the story and setting until the end.



I love David Lynch and the X-Files but didn't really jive with Control's "plot." They actually based it off of SCP Foundation internet writings. My main issue with the game was that I did not care about any of the characters and thus was very bored whenever they'd talk. They talk like the lead guy from Scanners. It's annoying. 

There are a couple fights towards the end of that which are totally infuriating, partly cause the game uses Dark Souls style checkpoints with respawning enemies and fines you every time you die, so you get triple punished having to run all the way back to the boss fight, restart the fight, AND lose a bunch of currency. Definitely make sure to do the "sidequest" with throwing all the TVs into the furnace, that weapon mod will help A LOT. There was one other really good mod that was hidden, but I forgot what it was. I mainly used the charged sniper weapon and the basic pistol with that overpowered mod.

The bad fights are the terrible one where the fight is on moving platforms and then one particular optional psychic boss that you either have to be very careful and slow on or probably die a lot on. There's another boss or two that's supposed to be really hard but I had no problems due to weapon mods. It's definitely not easy, but it's not THAT bad.


----------



## TedEH

When I think back, I remember being frustrated by the checkpointing in what should have otherwise been some of the coolest parts of the game. There's some really flashy segments that are a blast until you have to repeat them again.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I love David Lynch and the X-Files but didn't really jive with Control's "plot." They actually based it off of SCP Foundation internet writings. My main issue with the game was that I did not care about any of the characters and thus was very bored whenever they'd talk. They talk like the lead guy from Scanners. It's annoying.
> 
> There are a couple fights towards the end of that which are totally infuriating, partly cause the game uses Dark Souls style checkpoints with respawning enemies and fines you every time you die, so you get triple punished having to run all the way back to the boss fight, restart the fight, AND lose a bunch of currency. Definitely make sure to do the "sidequest" with throwing all the TVs into the furnace, that weapon mod will help A LOT. There was one other really good mod that was hidden, but I forgot what it was. I mainly used the charged sniper weapon and the basic pistol with that overpowered mod.
> 
> The bad fights are the terrible one where the fight is on moving platforms and then one particular optional psychic boss that you either have to be very careful and slow on or probably die a lot on. There's another boss or two that's supposed to be really hard but I had no problems due to weapon mods. It's definitely not easy, but it's not THAT bad.



Yeah, dialog seems a bit stilted TBH, but in a kind of Yorgos Lanthimos way. Oh, and those close-up shots and inner monologue when they're talking... But I'm liking the game so far anyway, it has personality.

Regarding the difficulty: it seems they're aware it was an issue for some, and they added an "Assist mode" later that allows you to totally ignore well... everything. It basically is a God Mode switch. I know I couldn't and I won't tolerate the difficulty until the end, so I welcome it. It screams "This should've been a movie", I think. Or a better made game.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Yeah, dialog seems a bit stilted TBH, but in a kind of Yorgos Lanthimos way. Oh, and those close-up shots and inner monologue when they're talking... But I'm liking the game so far anyway, it has personality.
> 
> Regarding the difficulty: it seems they're aware it was an issue for some, and they added an "Assist mode" later that allows you to totally ignore well... everything. It basically is a God Mode switch. I know I couldn't and I won't tolerate the difficulty until the end, so I welcome it. It screams "This should've been a movie", I think. Or a better made game.



Y'know, that's a really good comparison. I'm just not sure that it was a conscious, deliberate Yorgos stilted style ala Killing of a Sacred Deer or a possibly accidental Scanners/Resident Evil 1 style. Guess it doesn't really matter.

I didn't know they'd added an "assist mode." That's kind of too bad that they only seem to have "normal" and "easy to the point of totally trivial," but oh well, better than nothing. Like I said it's very doable on normal (I got through it without TOO many problems and that was before I turned into Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro fanboy) but it definitely has its frustrating bits and its death system IS perhaps overly punitive.

I think as a game it's pretty solidly constructed, as long as you're playing on a super-powered PC or PS5 or something. It definitely had a lot of slowdown in later, busy firefights even on PS4 Pro.


----------



## MFB

Platinum'd GOW and Spider-Man this weekend. GOW I only had to get the last 3 or so Ravens and then I think I needed like, 6 artifacts as well. The more tedious of all was the dig sites, but even those I needed 3 as well and then bam, platinum.

Installed Lords of the Fallen, got it for under $5 so I really have nothing to lose.


----------



## TedEH

I made it to the end of the Cyberpunk story today.... and..... ya know, I like the game. Everything I said about it in past posts still applies - it has its jank, but honestly, New Vegas was jankier. As in, New Vegas bugs were game-breaking more often than in Cyberpunk - for me, at least, and on PC. Is it a good game? I think that depends. Is it fun? Did I feel like my time was well spent? Yes. I enjoyed it enough to call it good. But.... is it a tightly designed, thought provoking, boundary-pushing, genre-inventing, masterpiece? Lol no. Of course not.



Spoiler



The good:
- I am actually impressed with the visuals. Some effort went into the presentation. The lighting is pretty stellar at times. The glitchy effects are cool. The rain effects are cool. Explosions really make an impact.
- Other people's expectations aside, I'm very impressed with what they accomplished in the city itself. It's no Breath of the Wild open world, but it's at the very least several steps above your average GTA or Ubi- style open world in terms of feeling like a living and lived-in space, with a lot of detail and a lot going on, and places to go and things to see, etc.
- While it's got some edgy moments, I do like the writing. I like the characters. I think most of the major side-characters had a legit arc, growth, and a reasonable payoff at the end. Honestly, for all the crap people give this game for being edgy (or some who jump strait to calling it offensive), sometimes it's surprisingly mature in how it handles relationships between the characters.
- There's a mission where you help an AI cab company track down some rogue AI vehicles. What could have been a boring fetch quest ended up being one of the more memorable side-gigs.
- I'm not the type to get hung up on all the little details of shooter mechanics, but the shooting was fun enough for me.
- The stealth option was actually viable a lot of times, and fun to pull off.
- Set pieces. Lots of them. I dig that.
- Honestly, Grand Theft Deus Ex is kinda my jam.
- There's some music related scenes where you can tell that someone who could play animated the performance. As in, I think they animated the performances to match what they were actually playing. As someone who gets mad at every film and game that doesn't even _try_ when it comes to looking like a musician is really playing, I appreciated this - but you could also add it to the list of things where the detail here is nice, but that time could have been spent improving something more important.

The bad:
- Ok, yes, there are bugs. I've spoken about that already.
- There was so much detail poured into the consumables, for them to mostly be useless. I talked about this already too.
- There's almost too many healing items. I rarely had fewer than 100 healing items. I never had to think about it. Effectively, it means you have an auto-heal button available at all times. I don't haaaaaaaate it - actually I might prefer that to the Halo-esque "wait for your screen colour to come back" thing, but this could have benefited from... I dunno, more forethought.
- The RPG elements, by which I mean the skill tree (because today's "RPG" = "skill tree" apparently), are kinda lame. The skills were mostly just little incremental boosts, so the benefit is small, and the motivation to build a character this way is sorely lacking. Most of the time I would accumulate points and forget I had them because there was not much reason to use them. In other games those skills might open more paths or gameplay styles maybe, but not here.
- In the same vein, the Deus-Ex style upgrades you could get felt pretty lame too. Again, mostly little increments. When you find something that seeeeeems like it could be cool (like "you can be invisible!" Cool, good for stealth?) it would turn out that they don't work very well or for very long, so you mostly forget you wasted skill points on it.
- It wasn't always suuuuuuuper clear that a story was leading up to a romance arc until suddenly you're presented with a "ok, you can kiss them now" button that felt like it wasn't earned. It only happened once, but it was still strange.
- They didn't need to include genitals in the game and in the character creator, but they sure did. Yup. Sure did. Add that to the list of things that got attention that could have been used elsewhere.
- The driving physics felt kinda bad on a keyboard. I suspect it would be better with a controller, but I didn't try it. Some vehicles slid around like they were driving through pools of butter, and others felt like tanks for no reason.
- There was a sort of "crafting" mechanic. I barely used it. Another mechanic that mostly felt useless.
- The game sometimes throws "iconic" items at you, and they basically just follow you throughout the game. There's no real feel of getting cool new loot, cause most of the time, the one pistol you get in the first few hours is still better than any new gun you get.
- I know there's other mechanics that also kinda don't work, but honestly, they mostly don't work because you can ignore them. Which.... you can ignore them so.... meh.


----------



## MFB

MFB said:


> Installed Lords of the Fallen, got it for under $5 so I really have nothing to lose.



Played the first little section today, it's somewhere between Diablo and Dark Souls; difficulty wise it wants to be Dark Souls with how the bosses play, the inclusion of a stamina/endurance bar and managing gear load for encumberment etc... but in the end it still ends up feeling/looking somewhere in between and just sort of lukewarm as not being the best of either.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Played the first little section today, it's somewhere between Diablo and Dark Souls; difficulty wise it wants to be Dark Souls with how the bosses play, the inclusion of a stamina/endurance bar and managing gear load for encumberment etc... but in the end it still ends up feeling/looking somewhere in between and just sort of lukewarm as not being the best of either.



Ouch, that game is infamous for being one of the worst (and most blatant) Souls-clones (much better ones being Nioh, Ashen, Mortal Shell, The Surge, and Code Vein). I've heard the feeling of everything is just really "off" and it's hard to describe why it's so bad without playing it. Sounds like you're not as down on it as others.

Still, though, why are you playing that instead of DS2 or 3, actual good, official Souls games?! 

I've been plugging away at Far Cry 6. I felt like I was getting close to the end of the game with how much time I'd dumped into it at about the time I finished 1 of THREE monstrous questlines, so no, I'm more like 1/3 done with it after ~40 hours. Ubisoft needs to start contracting their game size, I don't know anyone who actually wants their games to be this huge. It's like AC Valhalla again, but at least this doesn't have all the heinous tasks like chasing tattoo papers, doing LONG puzzle-platformer sections as your alternate self, and stacking rocks like that one does.

I do hate the races and have skipped them all after the first one I did resulted in me, right at the end of the race, twice in a row, getting the jetski grounded with no way to get it back in the water while time ticked down to 0. And I haven't tried the cockfighting minigame.

Biggest problem with this I've noticed besides the monstrous size is the infuriating NPC behavior. You constantly run into NPCs that inform you about quest locations or something, but the game bloats these questgivers by giving them a paragraph of dialogue that they have to get through before the information gets added to your map, and the moronic AI will result in them getting locked into combat mode if any enemy comes within about 100 meters, and thus I'm constantly trying to get the quest from them, having them get interrupted by an enemy driving past, waiting 2 minutes for them to get OUT of combat mode after you kill the enemy, hoping they complete their long dialogue before another enemy drives past, etc.

I also think the animal helpers suck bigtime compared to the human ones in FC5. I really liked those, made the game feel less lonely and boring. There was a really great one that could do silent sniper kills with a bow on command. Now you just have a shitty rooster that you can send in to get meleed to death by basic enemies in five seconds. 

Your character is an unpleasant turd, as usual. She's not as heinous as the guy you played as in Far Cry 3, but she's just boring stupid toughguy and all the dialogue is so forced edgelord (I am guessing I've heard her say comemierda a good 500 times). 

The graphics seem like they're about the same as FC4 but with fancier environments. Enemy behavior, environmental destruction, etc all seems unchanged since then, too. They really need to overhaul their engine.


----------



## TheBlackBard

More of a general post in terms of gaming, but I've found myself gaming in the living room on my Xbox Series S more than on my PC and a large part of that seems to be the more comfortable setting of a big floofy couch as opposed to a computer chair. I think I'll likely get whatever games come to console on console and any indie games that aren't on console or are CRPG's/Boomer Shooters on PC since I can't stand to play FPS on a controller.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Ouch, that game is infamous for being one of the worst (and most blatant) Souls-clones (much better ones being Nioh, Ashen, Mortal Shell, The Surge, and Code Vein). I've heard the feeling of everything is just really "off" and it's hard to describe why it's so bad without playing it. Sounds like you're not as down on it as others.
> 
> Still, though, why are you playing that instead of DS2 or 3, actual good, official Souls games?!



Yeah, I own Nioh (and Nioh 2) and they're currently claiming the title of hardest game I've ever played even after finishing half the FS catalogue. I didn't know Surge/Code Vein were DS-lites but can't say I'm entirely surprised.

I bought it cause it looked decent, and again, it was $3 so I'm out absolutely nothing; it's just disappointing since it is clearly well made, but it just tried to do one thing and ended up missing the mark enough that it firmly falls into the "this makes sense why no one is talking about it."

I may go back to DS2, I hate having started it and not finishing up, but god damn is it cheap with enemy placements. I could start DS3 since it's more in line with the type of FS games I enjoy, but even still, I need some fun and not frustration


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Yeah, I own Nioh (and Nioh 2) and they're currently claiming the title of hardest game I've ever played even after finishing half the FS catalogue. I didn't know Surge/Code Vein were DS-lites but can't say I'm entirely surprised.
> 
> I bought it cause it looked decent, and again, it was $3 so I'm out absolutely nothing; it's just disappointing since it is clearly well made, but it just tried to do one thing and ended up missing the mark enough that it firmly falls into the "this makes sense why no one is talking about it."
> 
> I may go back to DS2, I hate having started it and not finishing up, but god damn is it cheap with enemy placements. I could start DS3 since it's more in line with the type of FS games I enjoy, but even still, I need some fun and not frustration



Lords of the Fallen I think I heard described as a lazy attempt by a AAA company (Bandai) to cash in on Dark Souls, hence it superficially resembles it VERY closely with more graphical polish, but completely misses the mark when it comes to weight of the combat or responsiveness of the controls and especially with level/boss design. 

I haven't played Surge/Surge 2, but I have them. I know they at least have some unique stuff to the combat with targeting of bodyparts and different style of defense. Code Vein I played a bit, it's a pretty direct Dark Souls ripoff with anime visual style but it's much easier (apart from bosses) and the level design's fairly dire. Still, the controls and stuff feel good and it's at least got something unique about it. I sorta want to try Nioh/Nioh 2 but I'll wait for the PS5 versions to go on sale.

DS2's enemy placement is the cheapest in the early sections of the game. If you can get through Forest of Fallen Giants and Heide's Tower, you're past the difficulty peak. Assuming you are leveling adaptability early on, anyway, and carry a bow for dealing with some of the really dense areas like Iron Keep and Drangleic Castle. No-Man's Wharf and Undead Purgatory are pretty nasty on a first playthrough, too, but they're optional and you can come back to them later when you're over-levelled. Again, though, if you don't put a lot of emphasis on adaptability early on you will have a very bad time since timing rolls is far more difficult. Once you have 100+ agility and some beef to your offense stats and an upgraded weapon I think it's actually the easiest of the trio.

DS3 is widely considered the easiest of the three, but I think the bosses are a HUGE step up from DS1/2.


----------



## gabito

Finished Control: graphics are fantastic, and I really liked the art direction. Also the characters' faces look mostly great, even if they all fall within uncanny valley territory eventually. I mean, at least the techology looks better than what they tried to do with Horizon Zero Dawn or LA Noire... The faces' models and textures look great, but the animations' transitions are, well, uncanny. Depending on the lighting, there were a few moments where I could've thought that the character talking was a real person though.

The plot is non existent, or it looked like that to me. Or maybe it just went over my head? I don't know, there's no story, no plot, no twists, no nothing? And if you don't have a story you should at least have interesting characters which there are... almost none. Ahti is cool, though. But he appears, what, 2 or 3 times in the whole game? Voice acting is generally rigid / stilted but that may be intentional to set a certain tone or aesthetic.

I didn't like the gameplay, not because it's bad but just because it's not for me. Hordes of enemies shooting at me from everywhere is not my thing, really. I don't particularly like the "die, go back to your last checkpoint, the enemies are there again... oh, and also you lose some game money too" DS-ish mechanics either. I also don't like frantic gameplay a lot... I know, I should research more before I buy hehe.

But I was more interested in the game's concept than anything else, and generally speaking I think they had a really cool idea or concept, but the actual implementation of it is lacking. A better story and / or characters would've helped a lot, I guess. They have an interesting idea, but nothing interesting to say.

Oh, and the framerate was sometimes shit on a base PS4. That shouldn't happen. It should run at least OK. I don't care and never pay attention to those things, but it was atrocius. Like "You'll get killed because of it" atrocious.

But that's just me, it seems that lots and lots of people really liked the game and that's cool.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> Oh, and the framerate was sometimes shit on a base PS4. That shouldn't happen. It should run at least OK. I don't care and never pay attention to those things, but it was atrocius. Like "You'll get killed because of it" atrocious.


It was just as bad on the One S. Like unplayably bad at times, if I remember right. In with the new, who cares about the old consoles, I guess is the philosophy.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’ve said this a million times, but almost all DS 2 bosses can be beaten by just dodging left once your adaptability/agility is up high enough that your I-frames give you a big window.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> *DS2's enemy placement is the cheapest in the early sections of the game. If you can get through Forest of Fallen Giants and Heide's Tower, you're past the difficulty peak.* Assuming you are leveling adaptability early on, anyway, and carry a bow for dealing with some of the really dense areas like Iron Keep and Drangleic Castle. No-Man's Wharf and Undead Purgatory are pretty nasty on a first playthrough, too, but they're optional and you can come back to them later when you're over-levelled. Again, though, if you don't put a lot of emphasis on adaptability early on you will have a very bad time since timing rolls is far more difficult. Once you have 100+ agility and some beef to your offense stats and an upgraded weapon I think it's actually the easiest of the trio.
> 
> DS3 is widely considered the easiest of the three, but I think the bosses are a HUGE step up from DS1/2.



Bolded for emphasis, as that's EXACTLY where I got to; I made it through the Forest of Fallen Giants and I'm at the Dragonrider fight in Heide's Tower but I haven't pushed through it entirely.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, the framerate was bad on PS4 Pro too. As soon as you had a big firefight and started throwing stuff or smoke started appearing things got choppy.

Some guy here posted repeatedly saying he never once had a framerate drop, and I think he was on a base PS4 too, so maybe YMMV.

The plot's definitely not non-existent, it's just a bit of the dark souls style thing where they give you all the pieces to put together what happened but don't connect the dots for you. You have to read all the notes, etc to fully understand what was going on. I can appreciate that, but I was turned off by the bland characters and voiceacting. I'd rather they either go full dark souls and have basically no dialogue and an even more minimal plot, or else make it a little more straightforward so you aren't confronted with tons of cutscenes that don't make sense unless you're reading all the notes you find/watching all the videos. You might have appreciated it more if you looked up some guy on youtube summarizing the plot and thus didn't have to waste brain cells figuring it out yourself.

I think the gameplay is really fun once you've unlocked most of the skills. You start to feel like a badass by the end of the game. As a result the DLC kinda plays better than the base game cause you're already going in with the ability to use all your powers, while by the time you have them in the base game, it's almost over.



MFB said:


> Bolded for emphasis, as that's EXACTLY where I got to; I made it through the Forest of Fallen Giants and I'm at the Dragonrider fight in Heide's Tower but I haven't pushed through it entirely.



Oh, did you already kill the Dragonslayer then (Ornstein - Dragonrider is Smough)? Heide's Tower starts off like bad news with all those old knights (big statue guys), but then I know when you kill Dragonrider, all those resting knights wake up and things get a million times nastier. I always have to be careful to kill Dragonrider second to avoid extra frustration. That part of the game definitely killed me the most on first playthrough, those Heide Knights are a serious pain in the ass, especially the big stretch of old knights and heide knights en route to Dragonslayer. I remember I couldn't even spawn at the first bonfire after fighting Dragonrider cause I'd immediately get rushed by a heide knight AND an old knight. The spear one before the Dragonslayer boss killed me a LOT of times. I definitely used the "kill some of the enemies 12 times to stop them spawning" way out in some of that area.

The actual BOSSES in that zone are a complete joke, of course. The "circle around everything to the left" strategy does work on a lot of them (some exceptions, but not many). Ornstein I think you just need to dodge his impale and otherwise circle with a shield all the way! Somewhat sadly, I think the very earlier Pursuer boss is one of the fastest attacking ones in the game, making it harder than most subsequent bosses since you can't just use that strategy.

The one part of the game that comes close to being as infuriating as the early sections is the undead crypt towards the end of the game, there's a section with these statues that spawn super overpowered enemies every time a bell gets rung, and they're blocked from one another by gravestones you have to smash to get through, it took me a long time to figure out to rush those statues and break them as fast as possible to stop them spawning permanently. It's still the section other than DLC most likely to kill me on repeat playthroughs.


----------



## MFB

Sorry, Dragonslayer, I thought there was a designation for the Dragonrider's between the two but apparently not; one is Slayer, and the other is Rider. I've tried my hand at the resting knights and those fuckers are super aggro, and even the regular giant Knights do solid damage when they land.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Breath of the Wild is good.


----------



## Leviathus

Been checking out the fan made Bloodborne PS1 "Demake". Very cool so far, just beat Cleric Beast.


----------



## StevenC

Pokemon Legends Arceus, against all odds, is a good game I am excited to play every day


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Pokemon Legends Arceus, against all odds, is a good game I am excited to play every day



I'm kind of curious about it, but haven't played a pokemon game since Gold. I played about 5 minutes of "Hey you pikachu" on switch and promptly lost interest. The BOTW look to this one is interesting, but I worry it's the same tedious battle system. Can you like, deploy a pokemon and run away while AI continues to beat down the opposing pokemon? Or do you have to sit there and watch the whole exchange?


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I'm kind of curious about it, but haven't played a pokemon game since Gold. I played about 5 minutes of "Hey you pikachu" on switch and promptly lost interest. The BOTW look to this one is interesting, but I worry it's the same tedious battle system. Can you like, deploy a pokemon and run away while AI continues to beat down the opposing pokemon? Or do you have to sit there and watch the whole exchange?


It's a lot different from all 3 of those games. 

Basically as far as combat goes, it's the same old Pokémon with some new additions. 

All the Pokémon are roaming around freely. No more random encounters. You decide whether to battle or try to capture them without battling.
All the Pokémon are roaming around freely. Some will run away from you, some will basically ignore you, and some will try to kill you on sight.
All the Pokémon are roaming around freely. If you're in a battle another Pokémon might join in. You can choose your target. 
During battle you can wander around, but you still control your Pokémon's moves. I still haven't figured out why this is a feature. 
There are strong and agile styles now. One is strong but slow, the other is fast but weaker. Selection of these styles can change the turn order, but they use 2PP.
The turn order is different. I don't know exactly how, but it feels like all moves have a speed stat now.
There are boss battles that require you to go between action and turn based styles.
Hey You is garbage for a lot of reasons, but if you didn't like the battle system on Gold it's not tweaked that much. But, battling is a significantly smaller aspect of this game. So far I've had 5 trainer battles and 2 compulsory wild Pokémon battles. Every other battle I've decided to get into. I will say that the battles feel significantly faster paced for whatever reason. 

You have to throw your Pokémon at another to start a battle, and you have to throw Pokéballs when not in battle to catch 'em. I should note there are no motion controls or other capture mechanics from Hey You.

The gameplay loop exists independent of battles pretty much. You go out into a big area, search for Pokémon capture or battle then to achieve goals in the Pokédex. There's a lot of sneaking and running away from Pokémon that will kill you. Basically straight away you can find a level 40 monster that will murder you if it sees you.


----------



## gabito

Bought a bunch of Lego whatever games on sale. I don't really like Lego video games (or Legos in any form, actually), but the kids love them and I like to play with them so whatever.

I know my life will be a constant hellish loop of "Hey dad, will we play tonight?", "Can we play now?", "Can we switch to the other Lego game? This one's boring now", "Homework is done, can we play now?", "WHY ARE YOU PICKING UP ALL THE PIECES?", "Can we play now?", "Why don't you look up what we have to do on your phone?", "Can we play now?" for the next few months, but oh well...


----------



## MFB

gabito said:


> (or Legos in any form, actually)



Say what now?!


----------



## gabito

MFB said:


> Say what now?!



Yeah, I like drawing, playing guitar, and a lot of creative stuff, but never liked those bricks of hell. I'd rather smash them with a hammer than dealing with two stuck pieces. Maybe that's why I never cared about Minecraft either... I just draw something if I feel the will to "create".


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Bought a bunch of Lego whatever games on sale. I don't really like Lego video games (or Legos in any form, actually), but the kids love them and I like to play with them so whatever.
> 
> I know my life will be a constant hellish loop of "Hey dad, will we play tonight?", "Can we play now?", "Can we switch to the other Lego game? This one's boring now", "Homework is done, can we play now?", "WHY ARE YOU PICKING UP ALL THE PIECES?", "Can we play now?", "Why don't you look up what we have to do on your phone?", "Can we play now?" for the next few months, but oh well...



The Harry Potter ones are fantastic, they were the perfect balance between "way too easy to die" and "way too many cutscenes" that are the bookending periods of Lego games.


----------



## p0ke

Got a bit further in the ringed city today. I got to where a dragon is blowing fire on the path and that seemed impossible until I realized my shield blocks like 90% of the damage. Then I got to the part where you fight the dragon on a cliff. I almost got him on my first attempt and a few attempts later I defeated him. But wtf, where are the souls etc? Then I realized it's Midir, and the proper fight's waiting in another area. Already looking forward to dying many many times!


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Got a bit further in the ringed city today. I got to where a dragon is blowing fire on the path and that seemed impossible until I realized my shield blocks like 90% of the damage. Then I got to the part where you fight the dragon on a cliff. I almost got him on my first attempt and a few attempts later I defeated him. But wtf, where are the souls etc? Then I realized it's Midir, and the proper fight's waiting in another area. Already looking forward to dying many many times!



I've never beat Midir "legit," just used the pestilent mist strategy. I mean, it's still not EASY cause you still have to survive and actually have to hit him with that for like 5 minutes, but man, the openings on that guy are so rare that I just couldn't do it with a regular weapon. You might have to look up a guide to even find the fight.

Gael's a much, MUCH less frustrating fight. It's similarly incredibly difficult but I feel like I understand all the mechanics and am never getting instakilled by hitbox confusion or anything. He's widely considered the best Fromsoft boss of all time so you should enjoy it! It's kind of like a 3 phase version of Artorias from DS1 with a lot more craziness.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Gael's a much, MUCH less frustrating fight. It's similarly incredibly difficult but I feel like I understand all the mechanics and am never getting instakilled by hitbox confusion or anything. He's widely considered the best Fromsoft boss of all time so you should enjoy it! It's kind of like a 3 phase version of Artorias from DS1 with a lot more craziness.



So I've heard. Definitely looking forward to the fight.


----------



## wankerness

Just preordered Horizon Forbidden West and Elden Ring. It's too bad I'm only going to get to play HFW for about a week before Elden Ring comes out and probably takes over all my attention for weeks. Why'd they have to release the two games I'm most excited about this year ONE WEEK apart?!?!?

Horizon Forbidden West unfortunately is victim to a convoluted attempt by Sony to trick people into wasting 10 extra dollars on the PS5 version. So, if you buy a PHYSICAL copy of the PS4 version, or buy any kind of special edition of it, you get the PS4 and PS5 versions together (PS4 disc can get a free upgrade to PS5). If you buy the digital, basic version of the PS4 game for 60, you do NOT get any option whatsoever to upgrade to PS5, you'd have to pay the full 70 dollars to "upgrade!!" It's ridiculous. So, I had to preorder a disc cause screw them for trying to get 10 extra bucks.  Hopefully it will actually deliver on the 18th!

Elden Ring fortunately only has one standard edition for 60 bucks and it is blatantly marketed as being for both PS4 and 5. Good for them for not trying to do the 60/70 ps4/ps5 pricing baloney. Sony's said none of their first party games will have free upgrades going forward, hopefully third party continue to be 60 bucks or have free upgrades. I'm not too optimistic. Oh well, not like anything else I care enough to buy on release day is coming out this year, besides maybe Breath of the Wild 2.


----------



## beerandbeards

In a lull until Horizon Dawn comes out, so I picked up Tony Hawk Pro Skater on sale. It’s pretty fun but not as nostalgic as I thought I’d feel playing. It’s actually quite upgraded but still arcadey


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Just preordered Horizon Forbidden West and Elden Ring. It's too bad I'm only going to get to play HFW for about a week before Elden Ring comes out and probably takes over all my attention for weeks. Why'd they have to release the two games I'm most excited about this year ONE WEEK apart?!?!?
> 
> Horizon Forbidden West unfortunately is victim to a convoluted attempt by Sony to trick people into wasting 10 extra dollars on the PS5 version. So, if you buy a PHYSICAL copy of the PS4 version, or buy any kind of special edition of it, you get the PS4 and PS5 versions together (PS4 disc can get a free upgrade to PS5). If you buy the digital, basic version of the PS4 game for 60, you do NOT get any option whatsoever to upgrade to PS5, you'd have to pay the full 70 dollars to "upgrade!!" It's ridiculous. So, I had to preorder a disc cause screw them for trying to get 10 extra bucks.  Hopefully it will actually deliver on the 18th!
> 
> Elden Ring fortunately only has one standard edition for 60 bucks and it is blatantly marketed as being for both PS4 and 5. Good for them for not trying to do the 60/70 ps4/ps5 pricing baloney. Sony's said none of their first party games will have free upgrades going forward, hopefully third party continue to be 60 bucks or have free upgrades. I'm not too optimistic. Oh well, not like anything else I care enough to buy on release day is coming out this year, besides maybe Breath of the Wild 2.


I have complained a lot about HZD, but I think the worst thing about it is that the DLC and sequel have the same abbreviation.


----------



## wankerness

Trying desperately to finish Far Cry 6. I regret buying the DLC - two of the episodes came out and they're goddam roguelikes. Oh well, it will eventually be worth it for Blood Dragon as long as the cost of Blood Dragon by itself doesn't end up being less than I paid for the special edition or whatever I bought.

This game is as buggy as Skyrim, if not worse. Like, it's just CONSTANT bugs, I get so used to dealing with them I forget that a lot of games actually run well and rarely have bugs. Here are some things that happen in an average 5 minutes of gameplay:

-You're driving on a road, the pavement texture changes (ex you get to a bridge), there's no visible elevation change but your car reacts as if you hit an upwards cannon, you go flying up into the air and off the road. Especially infuriating during races.
-The PS5 controller emits annoying click sounds like a motor is failing or something for no apparent reason no matter what you're doing, even just walking or standing still. Same thing happens with both my controllers, does not happen with any other game so I know it's not the controllers. Restarting the game sometimes clears this up for a bit, but usually not.
-Your companion gets completely confounded by any animal enemy you encounter, it's like the AI breaks. you can't fight them with your amigo unless you get the first hit in. Same thing happens with your amigo and human enemies if the enemy starts using melee attacks, it's like every hit resets their AI and they have to reengage in combat mode and it often effectively means they get stunlocked to death.
-Enemies regularly get stuck in vehicles, drive vehicles into walls over and over, etc
-Often if you engage an enemy in a vehicle, the game seems to break and start spawning identical vehicle after identical vehicle on top of you until you give up and run away. I had it happen with 6 of the same armed boat recently. I've taken to running away from trucks if it happens 3 times in a row so I'm not sure how high it can go.

Then just more generally the AI on enemies is just plain terrible. They run around and path like chickens with their heads cut off all the time. The animal enemies have the exact same idiotic behavior patterns that date back to Far Cry 4, where the most advanced AI they display is they run up and attack with no provocation, but then if you hit them they'll run off at some unrealistic turbo speed. Others just walk up and attack and sit there till you kill them.

Then there are other things that have happened repeatedly but don't happen constantly, ex:

-All of a sudden your "Amigo" (animal buddy) disappears. You can see in the menu that it's summoned. You try dismissing it, nothing happens. You try resummoning it, nothing happens. You try summoning a different animal, nothing happens. It just plain doesn't work until you fully exit the game and re-open it.
-If you put the system in suspend mode and then resume the game, sometimes a bunch of the sound drops out. Like, all character voices stop playing, gunshot noises stop, engine noises stop, but you still hear bullet impacts and tire noises. I've had this happen in some other games so it's probably not a uniquely Ubisoft issue here, but it's happened a few times and requires restarting the game.

Then of course there's the fact that the characters are all horrible and annoying and all the questlines are unbearably long. I'm now finished with 2/3 of the main questlines and can't wait to be done. I think I'm 60 hours in? 

Yeah, this game is a gigantic mess. It's like, if you like Far Cry 4/5, you might like this too, but only if you expect absolutely no improvements to anything other than graphics. I consider it worse cause I don't like the way skill upgrades are locked to specific weapons/gear (the exp/leveling system is totally meaningless apart from causing enemies to scale and you getting access to some better gear from vendors at a couple thresholds).


----------



## p0ke

Oh man, I found Midir... I got halfway into his health bar with the phantom, but then I ran out of estus and that was it. I don't know how many millions of times I'll have to try until I get him...


----------



## Ralyks

Hour 29 of Tales of Arise, got through the fourth Lord realm, and shit just got weird.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Injustice 2. Goddamn they are being stingy with the Hellboy epic gear.


----------



## Werecow

I'm on Sekiro NG+5. Things getting really tough now. All the minibosses and even some enemies are doing moves and extra things i don't remember them doing.
The ninja guy before Owl Father called down tons of extra dogs.
The fat sumo-type guys with metal rods have started doing unblockable swipes, when i've not seen them do that before.
I just barely got through (real) corrupted monk by using pellets after all gourds.
If you've got about 80% health left on a boss or miniboss, you're risking being one-shot by one of their big moves.
God knows what Isshin is going to be like, because he's my Kryptonite.

I've read the difficulty in the game tops out at NG+7, so i'm gonna attempt that eventually.


----------



## beerandbeards

All of you souls, blood borne, nioh, sekiro players seem like masochists lol.

I just don’t have the patience anymore to get to a skill level to play and enjoy those games. Nioh was the last game I attempted and it defeated me completely.

is it true there going to be a new Guitar Hero game at some point? I miss playing those games with the family.


----------



## Choop

Putting off playing anything new or replaying something until I get a new monitor. Leaning really hard towards an ultrawide since about 90% of the games I play support it to some degree, and for the ones that don't I'd either play with vertical black bars or windowed mode. It may annoy me, but maybe not, I have no idea. I played PS1 games on the PS3 at 4:3 with vertical black bars and it was no biggie. It's either that or get a 4k monitor, but running a monitor at 4k doesn't make sense for me unless it's around 32 inches, and there just aren't that many options out there right now. Gigabyte M32U is probably the best affordable one, and it's still like $740-799.

Anyway, since I'm still in 60fps land I've been playing SF4 again lately. Somebody sent me a hate message a few days ago saying "you're the reason we can't take online seriously" or something like that, so that was fun. XD Also playing Hell Let Loose, trying to level up Anti-Tank and Assault classes, and a little bit of Rifleman since the upper tier rifleman loadouts for Germany and Russia are amazing. That game will be so good on a newer monitor -- with my current one I experience a lot of ghosting, especially around foliage and it's super distracting at times.


----------



## narad

Beat Demon's Souls (is that really the most appropriate punctuation for that title?). My first souls game. For two of the bosses I felt it was challenging and sort of lived up to the hype of it being a punishingly difficult game, but overall it wasn't so bad and the last 6 bosses or so were mostly done on the first try, and 3 were pretty trivial with the bow. 

I can't say I'm disappointed -- I'm personally not in the mood for something outrageously challenging -- but I'm just surprised given the reputation. It kind of makes me wonder if there's a generation gap or something -- I basically stopped playing games around the time the original Demon's Souls came out. Are games just easier these days? Like I grew up playing Ikaruga. That's a game whose difficulty is worth lamenting about.


----------



## Emperoff

p0ke said:


> Oh man, I found Midir... I got halfway into his health bar with the phantom, but then I ran out of estus and that was it. I don't know how many millions of times I'll have to try until I get him...



Pestilent Mist spell!


----------



## MFB

After platinuming GOW and Spider-Man last weekend, I decided to go back to HZD and see if I could finish up both the FW expansion and get the remaining trophies. Gotta say, FW is tedious as shit with these new enemies. 

Every area is just Scorchers all over the place, and when you get them down to 25% health or so, they spam the same movie over and over. Same for Fireclaws, not to mention the UPGRADED Fireclaws after the cauldron. Fucking nightmares.


----------



## Werecow

narad said:


> Beat Demon's Souls (is that really the most appropriate punctuation for that title?). My first souls game. For two of the bosses I felt it was challenging and sort of lived up to the hype of it being a punishingly difficult game, but overall it wasn't so bad and the last 6 bosses or so were mostly done on the first try, and 3 were pretty trivial with the bow.
> 
> I can't say I'm disappointed -- I'm personally not in the mood for something outrageously challenging -- but I'm just surprised given the reputation. It kind of makes me wonder if there's a generation gap or something -- I basically stopped playing games around the time the original Demon's Souls came out. Are games just easier these days? Like I grew up playing Ikaruga. That's a game whose difficulty is worth lamenting about.


They're definitely a lot easier than years ago. As standard, I play everything of my main genres on top difficulty, and they still don't approach the difficulty of old games on "normal" difficulty.

I can't speak for Demon's Souls, but i played Sekiro recently and that was _really_ hard for me. Though it is the one and only Fromsoft game i've played, and i've no previous history at all for 3D melee games, and thus no general instinct for playing games like that.. Guess i threw myself in at the deep end.


----------



## Emperoff

narad said:


> Beat Demon's Souls (is that really the most appropriate punctuation for that title?). My first souls game. For two of the bosses I felt it was challenging and sort of lived up to the hype of it being a punishingly difficult game, but overall it wasn't so bad and the last 6 bosses or so were mostly done on the first try, and 3 were pretty trivial with the bow.
> 
> I can't say I'm disappointed -- I'm personally not in the mood for something outrageously challenging -- but I'm just surprised given the reputation. It kind of makes me wonder if there's a generation gap or something -- I basically stopped playing games around the time the original Demon's Souls came out. Are games just easier these days? Like I grew up playing Ikaruga. That's a game whose difficulty is worth lamenting about.



There is. Those people claiming the Souls series is difficult obviously never played 8bit and 16 bit games 

It's the generation of gamers bred with maps with arrows pointing where to go, health regeneration, save gaming anywhere, etc. who had problems. They're indeed difficult, but not impossible (unlike plenty of old games I played growing up  ). Most of the time the game just punishes you for being reckless/greedy.


----------



## Werecow

Emperoff said:


> There is. Those people claiming the Souls series is difficult obviously never played 8bit and 16 bit games
> 
> It's the generation of gamers bred with maps with arrows pointing where to go, health regeneration, save gaming anywhere, etc. who had problems. They're indeed difficult, but not impossible (unlike plenty of old games I played growing up  ). Most of the time the game just punishes you for being recjkless/greedy.


8-bit home computer games in particular were a nightmare. It was incredibly rare that i completed anything at all. It didn't help that hardly any games even had a save game function, and nearly all just had a few lives and perma-death.


----------



## CanserDYI

Maybe I need to just "get gud" but I have played all three souls games, beat them all a few times, and still think the games are unnecessarily hard. Some of my favorite games, but holy shit.


----------



## StevenC

Emperoff said:


> There is. Those people claiming the Souls series is difficult obviously never played 8bit and 16 bit games
> 
> It's the generation of gamers bred with maps with arrows pointing where to go, health regeneration, save gaming anywhere, etc. who had problems. They're indeed difficult, but not impossible (unlike plenty of old games I played growing up  ). Most of the time the game just punishes you for being reckless/greedy.


Unless your definition of hard is obtusely difficult to get kids to spit out more coins or making a game with very little content last long enough to justify its price, then no it's not a generational thing. Games are cheaper and longer nowadays so the difficulty doesn't have to be as cheap.


----------



## MFB

Wrapped up pretty much everything I could on HZD, still can't crack the last Bellowback in the FW challenge but I'll get it eventually. So for now I'm close to Platinum, but it's fine going back on the shelf.

Started a game called Death's Door, neat little indie title. This is what I was hoping I'd get out of Hollow Knight, but that one just felt well, hollow. I also grabbed SW: Squadrons for $12 on sale for later, conceptually I'm all about it, just not sure how well it was executed.


----------



## Mathemagician

Demons Souls/Dark souls really fucked over people like friends of mine who were coming in off games like Devil May Cry, or other action games where your character is “The Hero” and can slash his way through enemies like nothing. 

Then the first skelly on the bridge pokes you twice and you die. 

It’s art.


----------



## narad

StevenC said:


> Unless your definition of hard is obtusely difficult to get kids to spit out more coins or making a game with very little content last long enough to justify its price, then no it's not a generational thing. Games are cheaper and longer nowadays so the difficulty doesn't have to be as cheap.


 Tell me about it. I was playing Zantar, and no matter how many chieftains I eat, I can't ascend to a higher level.


----------



## Emperoff

Mathemagician said:


> Demons Souls/Dark souls really fucked over people like friends of mine who were coming in off games like Devil May Cry, or other action games where your character is “The Hero” and can slash his way through enemies like nothing.
> 
> Then the first skelly on the bridge pokes you twice and you die.
> 
> It’s art.



I'm also a huge DMC fan. Very different game concepts. Getting high ranks on DMC games is hella hard too.


----------



## Mathemagician

Emperoff said:


> I'm also a huge DMC fan. Very different game concepts. Getting high ranks on DMC games is hella hard too.



I wouldn’t know. I’m team “mash the fastest attack and get a D+”.


----------



## MFB

I've owned 3 DMC games, only finished 1 of them, and have absolutely zero fucking clue how the scoring works or what the story is besides "you're the son of the devil."


----------



## BlackMastodon

MFB said:


> I've owned 3 DMC games, only finished 1 of them, and have absolutely zero fucking clue how the scoring works or what the story is besides "you're the son of the devil."


I'm pretty sure the score is based off of time to complete the mission, damage taken, items used, and variety in attacks used. There's usually a red shrine on each mission where you have to beat the shit out of it using a variety of attacks to get your current attack ranking up to a certain level. The only ones I couldn't do were the SSS ones. I cna probably only count the number of times I've reached SSS on one hand and I've played through DMC 3-5 multiple times since the PS2 days.


----------



## StevenC

Still playing Pokémon Legends Arceus. It's still really good. 

A few annoyances though:

- The box isn't super easy to navigate. This might just be after being used to have a touch screen for 15 years, but it's a bit of a pain. 
- Similarly, the DS format really lends itself to stat based rpgs and team building. Same problem I've had in other games like Bravely Default 2.
- They got rid of natures. 
- Battle system isn't super fun anymore. Which isn't a big deal because there aren't a load of trainer battles, but it honestly feels much more rock paper scissors than before without any real value on strategy beyond that. 
- Continuing from that battling Pokémon you want to catch becomes a lot less engaging because of those changes. Status moves don't seem to help like before: Pokémon don't go to sleep; paralysis doesn't do much; frozen has been replaced with frostbite. You can't tank out a capture with paralysis like old games, which makes it less possible to play with only standard Pokéballs. 
- Catching water Pokémon in the water sucks. They're all pretty aggressive and you can't sneak up on them like other Pokémon, so you're mostly forced into wild throws at things you can't really see or get into battles that don't work as well as before. 
- Not enough trainer battles. Makes sense with the story, and with the battle system being less good you'd wonder why I want more, but it makes it feel a bit like you're playing a game about playing Pokémon Go. 

Still fun to catch and raise Pokémon, and fill out the dex. Just a couple of what feel like own goals more than anything.


----------



## TedEH

I finally got to the end of Persona 5 yesterday. To think that this game has a version that lasts _longer_ than this is pretty nuts. tl;dr: Good game, anime as bawls, localization is awkward at times, kinda too long for it's own good, the battle mechanics and "palaces" are improvements over what I remember from 3. Music is good. Has waifus if that's your thing.



Spoiler



I like a lot of what the game does. There's a lot of symbolism / motifs / themes, etc., that someone smarter than me could probably dive into (there's youtube videos out there that have done just that). The Velvet Room is a whole mood in itself, and while it's pretty edge-y for no reason at times (the whole execution theme), I like what it's going for. The tarot thing works pretty well. The overall idea that strengthening your social bonds buffs your cognitive-world abilities does a good job of tying the games to halves together. The monster designs are good - but then I think there's a lot of carry-over from previous games.

IMO that depth didn't carry over into the dialogue though. I still feel like the localization lands in an awkward place at times - where the structure and pacing of certain bits just don't quite add up the right way even though it's pretty clear what 's being said. There's some tonal whiplash too where you'll go from kids-show-esque "adults are bad and we have to fight back" generic dialogue to all of the sudden people are swearing and shooting people in the face. The characters, as much as they could be argued to have some "depth", still felt kinda cardboard to me. Like it's great that the characters are all distinct and have their own motivations, etc., but they felt very video-game-y. They wear their defining characteristics on them at all times. You have "the shouty one who likes running". You have "the good looking one that wants to be a model". You have "the artist who arts, and sees everything as art". You have "the one who is _so book smart_ that she somehow forgot to learn how to socialize with other kids" - which is legitimately a part of her arc. You have "the otaku that can't socialize properly because they're a hacker". Romance is exactly your "everyone lusts for you because you were nice to them a few times" video game-y fare.

The ending..... kinda goes off the deep end in a way I wasn't expecting. You spend like 100 hours doing normal high school kid things with a some "sneaking into the alternate world", then the last couple hours suddenly have you fighting angels and gods and all kinds of wacky nonsense just starts happening as if they needed to cram a dramatic anime-as-bawls ending in at the last minute.

I like the battle mechanics though. It feels like a lot of effort went into the sort of rock-paper-scissor-fire-water-wind-nuclear(?) puzzle structure of the fights, the difficulty curve ramping up, the non-combat elements of the game tying into how they prepare or buff for the combat loop, etc. In a lot of ways it's just an iteration of what's already been done in past games, but I think it comes together well and gets properly challenging towards the end. I appreciated that I didn't have to do much grinding outside of the normal gameplay loop to keep up with the difficulty curve. It felt very intentional that the mementos mini-missions were added to give you a goal instead of just pointlessly grinding. 

The music isn't quite my jam, but it's catchy in it's own way. Sounded like real instruments to me, which is good. Some of the vocal performances nailed it, while others felt pitchy and awkward to me. The game's overall mix is good though.

Now that I've reached the end, I think most of the games major flaws stem from overstaying its welcome. They could have cut the game in half and it still would have felt like a complete experience. The ending drags too long. Much of the dialogue drags too long. Some characters you can't meet until incredibly late in the game, and the later in the game you meet someone, the less fleshed out that character tends to be, since you didn't have the ridiculous amount of time spent building into a more convincing person. I even noticed a couple of flubs in the recorded VO - where either the line didn't match the subtitles, or there was a bad cut, etc. Which is the kind of thing that's bound to happen when a game has this much recorded dialogue in it.

You might like this game if:
- You like JRPG mechanics.
- You're into tons and tons of dialogue.
- You're into well researched, if not sometimes on-the-nose, symbolism.
- You'll play a 100+ hour game for the waifu at the end.

This game might not be for you if:
- Cardboard characters or juvenile writing bothers you.
- You can't handle the bouncy pop music.
- You're really not into anime.
- You want a combat loop that's more active than puzzle
- You don't have a lot of time to kill


----------



## RevDrucifer

Got a little deeper into Cyberpunk yesterday. One part of me really digs it, the other part of me is like “Fuck….I forgot about all this crafting…..and is it worth picking up every object I find in the game?” While I heard the majority of glitches were resolved, I still run into some audio ones that fuck up the actual game play; like when I’m waiting on someone to tell me what to do, or I get a call while driving and the dialogue won’t start….or two dialogues start going at once….

Still a cool game and I’ll probably finish it. I just think The Division ruined the enjoyment of crafting/collecting shit for me.


----------



## TedEH

RevDrucifer said:


> I forgot about all this crafting


IMO you don't really have to engage with the crafting much. At some point there's a perk that auto- breaks down junk into resources, then I just dump all resources into whatever gun I decided I like at the time - which had me using the same gun (Lizzie's pistol) for the majority of the game. Not sure if a bug or a feature, but my experience was that a lot of the more janky parts of the game at least didn't demand you engage much with them. I suppose that's kind of redeeming? I guess?


----------



## wankerness

narad said:


> Beat Demon's Souls (is that really the most appropriate punctuation for that title?). My first souls game. For two of the bosses I felt it was challenging and sort of lived up to the hype of it being a punishingly difficult game, but overall it wasn't so bad and the last 6 bosses or so were mostly done on the first try, and 3 were pretty trivial with the bow.
> 
> I can't say I'm disappointed -- I'm personally not in the mood for something outrageously challenging -- but I'm just surprised given the reputation. It kind of makes me wonder if there's a generation gap or something -- I basically stopped playing games around the time the original Demon's Souls came out. Are games just easier these days? Like I grew up playing Ikaruga. That's a game whose difficulty is worth lamenting about.



Demon's Souls' difficulty mainly comes from the outrageously punishing death mechanics, like if you don't know to suicide when you're in the nexus so you don't risk pushing world tendency black and making the game harder with every death. If you approach the game treating "Body" form as something never to count on it's not that bad. The other difficulty mainly just comes from some of the level design. I think a few areas like with those big respawning ghost guys or pretty much anything in the poison swamp is really hard. And magic in that game is a LOT better than in subsequent games, making that another way to play the game on "easy mode." Bows are similarly OP, especially if you get the lava bow. You can make it through most levels "easily" if you just go incredibly slowly and pull everything with ranged weapons to never get ambushed.

Bosses in that game are a lot easier than in any subsequent "Soulsborne" game, I think partly cause most of them are designed for you to have to beat the whole level AND THEN THEM all in one go. As a result they're pretty easy. Flamelurker can be nasty, the gargoyles can be difficult based on the randomness of how they attack you, the spider is a pain if you don't cheese it with a bow (which it sounds like you did), but only the Old King boss at the very end is really on par with the later games for difficulty IMO. Hardest boss is that red phantom tentacle-head guy on a tiny staircase over a fatal fall en route to one of the jail bosses. Can't remember which, maybe the PVP one?


----------



## wankerness

CanserDYI said:


> Maybe I need to just "get gud" but I have played all three souls games, beat them all a few times, and still think the games are unnecessarily hard. Some of my favorite games, but holy shit.


What do you think is unnecessarily hard about them? I agree the first Dark Souls is full of blatant asshole stuff like the rafters in Anor Londo with the ninjas on them, the infamous Anor Londo archers, the way you have to get ALL the way up Sen's Fortress with traps of increasing difficulty with no checkpoint at all till you finish, etc. But 2 and 3 aren't too cruel very often. Maybe some of the ganks in DS2 where they drop multiple of some nasty enemy on you that wrecks you if you don't expect it. But, I think they're generally "fair" and neither has anything even close to as trollish as things like Tomb of the Giants with those goddam dogs or the room with like 6 giant skeletons. This is all assuming you play on easymode, which is pretty much the only way I ever play (strength build with a fast weapon and shield).



Mathemagician said:


> Demons Souls/Dark souls really fucked over people like friends of mine who were coming in off games like Devil May Cry, or other action games where your character is “The Hero” and can slash his way through enemies like nothing.
> 
> Then the first skelly on the bridge pokes you twice and you die.
> 
> It’s art.


Yeah, the stamina system I think is the hardest for people to adjust to. That and the related concept of how the game sorta queues up what you do, so if you panic spam attack your character commits to doing two attacks and sometimes the situation can change in that one second and make you really regret having hit attack twice instead of once. Panic rolls, too. It results in you having to ALWAYS be thinking about stamina and make decisions on the fly about how to allocate it, on top of the health and enemy behavior that is normally all you have to think about with action games.



Emperoff said:


> I'm also a huge DMC fan. Very different game concepts. Getting high ranks on DMC games is hella hard too.


I think getting high ranks on those games is a lot harder than just getting through Dark Souls games. I mean, you can just button-mash your way through Bayonetta and it's a breeze, but trying to get perfect ranks on everything is incredibly hard. I guess the only parallel in Dark Souls would be trying to get through with some kind of shitty build or making rules for yourself (ex, no ranged attacks/bows under any circumstances, or no shields ever, or something). The game doesn't have any incentive for not taking the path of least resistance, though, so as a result you can make it much easier than others might experience depending on their build/playstyle.



MFB said:


> I've owned 3 DMC games, only finished 1 of them, and have absolutely zero fucking clue how the scoring works or what the story is besides "you're the son of the devil."


I have only played the first one, and never finished it (my brother had it when it was new, but I was in college at the time so I only got to play it during vacations). From what I remember, the cutscenes only existed to show "awesome" stuff like hitting people with motorcycles or fully impaling your way off a sword. And the scoring system seemed to be something with attack variety and not getting hit. Who knows. I don't know if I'll ever play another. Maybe 5 sometime. I started 4 once and utterly hated it. I couldn't adjust to the way your character moved and the way the camera was.



Werecow said:


> They're definitely a lot easier than years ago. As standard, I play everything of my main genres on top difficulty, and they still don't approach the difficulty of old games on "normal" difficulty.
> 
> I can't speak for Demon's Souls, but i played Sekiro recently and that was _really_ hard for me. Though it is the one and only Fromsoft game i've played, and i've no previous history at all for 3D melee games, and thus no general instinct for playing games like that.. Guess i threw myself in at the deep end.


Sekiro is mechanically and boss-wise way, way harder than any other Souls game (BASE GAME, there's definitely stuff in DS3's DLC that is on par with Sekiro, arguably DS2's also). Owl Father is definitely one of the biggest challenges I've ever encountered in a game, and that was just to beat the guy on "easy" on a first playthrough. However, the fact you don't have to deal with stamina management, you don't die instantly if you fall off a cliff, and there are save points EVERYWHERE mitigates things in a big way so I can see why some people think it's easier. I dunno. I'd recommend trying DS3 and/or Bloodborne sometime. They're very different beasts. They have a lot more room for different approaches to things.


----------



## narad

wankerness said:


> Demon's Souls' difficulty mainly comes from the outrageously punishing death mechanics, like if you don't know to suicide when you're in the nexus so you don't risk pushing world tendency black and making the game harder with every death. If you approach the game treating "Body" form as something never to count on it's not that bad. The other difficulty mainly just comes from some of the level design. I think a few areas like with those big respawning ghost guys or pretty much anything in the poison swamp is really hard. And magic in that game is a LOT better than in subsequent games, making that another way to play the game on "easy mode." Bows are similarly OP, especially if you get the lava bow. You can make it through most levels "easily" if you just go incredibly slowly and pull everything with ranged weapons to never get ambushed.
> 
> Bosses in that game are a lot easier than in any subsequent "Soulsborne" game, I think partly cause most of them are designed for you to have to beat the whole level AND THEN THEM all in one go. As a result they're pretty easy. Flamelurker can be nasty, the gargoyles can be difficult based on the randomness of how they attack you, the spider is a pain if you don't cheese it with a bow (which it sounds like you did), but only the Old King boss at the very end is really on par with the later games for difficulty IMO. Hardest boss is that red phantom tentacle-head guy on a tiny staircase over a fatal fall en route to one of the jail bosses. Can't remember which, maybe the PVP one?



Ah, that's a good point. I did read up on the game dynamics so I knew early enough to suicide and only die in body form maybe 2-3 times. And I did know to go exchange some souls for weapon upgrades, so I had the lava bow (all the other equipment was normal stuff, claymore for the whole game basically).

But ya, Flamelurker and Maneater(s) were tough for me. Actually Tower Knight was probably the overall hardest, but I was still learning the mechanics. The blind warrior guy sucked in that he could randomly get me a bunch and the path there was long and very annoying. I just bowed the leechmonger guy, so that was a trivial one. With the girl/guardian in the swamp I woudn up finding a vantage where I could hit here with arrows, so that was easy, though the guardian didn't seem that tough either. And then the dirty colossus also bowed to death, but with a lot of running and tumbling -- I think that's probably the actual way to kill him. Dragon God, easy with the dragonbone smasher. Storm King, easy with storm ruler. But I was surprised towards end game when it was proper melee fights but still not that difficult. Penetrator was too slow so I was able to heal up easy, beat him first try. The old king seemed like he was going to be super tough until I realized he's vulnerable when he's doing that storm thing, then it was an easy victory (and similarly easy to run away and heal up). It would have been tough if it wasn't possible to keep healing (and I always kept the adjudicator shield and ring of rejuvination on).

In comparison, I watched some youtube vid of dark souls III killing some darkeater dragon thing. That battle looked crazy.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Spider Man was dope.


----------



## wankerness

narad said:


> Ah, that's a good point. I did read up on the game dynamics so I knew early enough to suicide and only die in body form maybe 2-3 times. And I did know to go exchange some souls for weapon upgrades, so I had the lava bow (all the other equipment was normal stuff, claymore for the whole game basically).
> 
> But ya, Flamelurker and Maneater(s) were tough for me. Actually Tower Knight was probably the overall hardest, but I was still learning the mechanics. The blind warrior guy sucked in that he could randomly get me a bunch and the path there was long and very annoying. I just bowed the leechmonger guy, so that was a trivial one. With the girl/guardian in the swamp I woudn up finding a vantage where I could hit here with arrows, so that was easy, though the guardian didn't seem that tough either. And then the dirty colossus also bowed to death, but with a lot of running and tumbling -- I think that's probably the actual way to kill him. Dragon God, easy with the dragonbone smasher. Storm King, easy with storm ruler. But I was surprised towards end game when it was proper melee fights but still not that difficult. Penetrator was too slow so I was able to heal up easy, beat him first try. The old king seemed like he was going to be super tough until I realized he's vulnerable when he's doing that storm thing, then it was an easy victory (and similarly easy to run away and heal up). It would have been tough if it wasn't possible to keep healing (and I always kept the adjudicator shield and ring of rejuvination on).
> 
> In comparison, I watched some youtube vid of dark souls III killing some darkeater dragon thing. That battle looked crazy.


Yeah, Darkeater Midir gets my vote for hardest boss in any Souls game. I still can't fight that guy without cheesing it with pestilent mist. And even then I tend to randomly get oneshot by a laser at some point in the 10 minutes it takes to kill him.

Dark Souls 1's bosses are even a big step up from Demon's Souls, but they're pretty rudimentary compared to what followed in DS2 DLC, Bloodborne and DS3, which I think is where they really figured out boss design.

On a directly related note, I started playing Bloodborne for the second time (NG, not NG+) yesterday night after getting the platinum on it about a year ago. Died once to Cleric Beast and like 5 times to Gascoigne (always to the stupid werewolf form, it's insane how fast you can get taken down). I had forgotten how nasty the early game is, and just how much health bosses have relative to Dark Souls. I also barely remember how to get anywhere since it's the only one of these games I only played through once instead of at least twice (the others all require NG+ for trophies). I'm going to try it with the spear this time - I went cleaver last time, and switched to Ludwig's pretty early on. We'll see if I have to start using the Ludwig crutch again (seriously that thing's scaling is utterly broken, it does like 1.5x the damage of any other weapon\ and is super easy to use).

Far Cry 6 I'm now finished with besides the last trophy for the platinum, which requires doing some idiotic weekly quests for three weeks. If I can make myself do it, I can finally uninstall it in another week after the second reset!


----------



## Mathemagician

Quiet Coil said:


> Spider Man was dope.


Which one did you play through? I think I got one of them free on PSN and need to play through it and the other new ones.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Mathemagician said:


> Which one did you play through? I think I got one of them free on PSN and need to play through it and the other new ones.


The “not-Miles Morales” Sony one (though I’m sure I’ll hit that next).

Finished the story yesterday and boy they didn’t pull many punches. Going to work through the DLC and a few trophies before moving on.


----------



## Mathemagician

Glad to hear it sounds like you liked it. I may have to move it up my list.


----------



## MFB

Honestly, after playing MM:SM and then going back to vanilla Spider-man - there's definitely some mechanics that Insomniac needs to incorporate from the latter into the upcoming sequel. Miles' venom powers make combat far more interesting, as well as just the ability to bank finishers (how did they not think of that first time around?). Story-wise it definitely felt like DLC, and thats why I wouldn't pay more than half-price, but gameplay wise it was definitely an evolution to the baseline.


----------



## wankerness

I didn't like Spider-Man. Maybe the novelty wore off after playing the Batman Arkham games to death, but it felt like a lot of copy-paste busywork in the city, and the story has a bunch of annoying pacing problems. Ex, the numerous sections where you have to play as not-Spiderman in some crummy scripted stealth sequence, etc. I think it made you do that with at least two characters. I dunno, it's been a few years. I also remember the boss battles being way too spread out in the game, like you would go several hours with none and then fight three almost in a row, etc. But, the actual MECHANICS are rock-solid.

There's only 1.5 of these games (I hear "Spider-Man Miles Morales" is kind of a half-sequel, sorta like Far Cry New Dawn is to 5 or something, new content but lots of reused map and shorter game), so there's not much to catch up on. I'll be curious to see what happens with #2. If they made the open world less bland, things would be much better.


----------



## Quiet Coil

I just like stuff I can (mostly) play with my grandkids that doesn’t suck, and aside from a few cutscenes that were a bit too violent Spider Man fit the bill fairly well. Can’t say the same for something like Red Dead Redemption 2!

I’m also terrible at tuning out anything in my surroundings, so my usual routine of playing through something I enjoyed again on the hardest difficulty doesn’t quite work either. Definitely better to divide/divert my attention towards them than to rage quit a brutal fight for the umpteenth time!

P.S. The Arkham games are killer, and while I thought I might be able to pull off Arkham Knight with the kiddos, the opening scene with Joker’s body being cremated told me otherwise!


----------



## wankerness

Quiet Coil said:


> I just like stuff I can (mostly) play with my grandkids that doesn’t suck, and aside from a few cutscenes that were a bit too violent Spider Man fit the bill fairly well. Can’t say the same for something like Red Dead Redemption 2!
> 
> I’m also terrible at tuning out anything in my surroundings, so my usual routine of playing through something I enjoyed again on the hardest difficulty doesn’t quite work either. Definitely better to divide/divert my attention towards them than to rage quit a brutal fight for the umpteenth time!
> 
> P.S. The Arkham games are killer, and while I thought I might be able to pull off Arkham Knight with the kiddos, the opening scene with Joker’s body being cremated told me otherwise!


Yeah, there's a distinct lack of family-friendly action games if you don't stick to Nintendo games. I don't like it, but Immortals: Fenyx Rising might fit the bill. Just be warned it's incredibly unfunny and constantly making jokes.

The Arkham games definitely earn their ratings, and the second one definitely pushes the limits of the T rating (Arkham Knight was M). The first one I think is just kinda dark and gritty and then has the 13-year old boy fantasy material design of Poison Ivy and the nightmare-material Scarecrow sequences, but the sequels got worse. Like, the second one has people threatening to rape you and yelling profanity at you if you play as Catwoman, the third has even more outrageous costumes for Poison Ivy, both have the serial killer subplots, lots of hinted sexual weirdness with Harley Quinn, etc. Spider-Man's a* lot* lighter despite having the same rating as the first two.

I usually play games on "normal" or the easier settings. I'm usually just trying to get through them. "Story Modes" in some newer games usually make things TOO easy, but I don't like taking multiple tries on bosses if I'm not really enjoying what's going on. Not to mention games are often horribly tuned on hard difficulties and it seems like Normal is the only fully tested one.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

I'm a few hours into a Prey playthrough, so far pretty fun and there are always small details scattered throughout the game. Watched my friend play the game a few years ago and it's equally fun to play as it is to watch, just wish I could ADS but the Neuromod attacks make up for it. 
Also bought the Moon DLC but haven't gotten around to it as it looks like its structured differently than the main game, sorta like Returnal.


----------



## fantom

Want to talk about unnecessarily hard?

I just finished the La Mulana remake. I literally have no idea how I am ever supposed to play a platformer again. The sheer sense of peace that I don't have to sit through another obscure puzzle for 5 days... Oh crap I bought La Mulana 2 in a bundle. Anyone else play these and have similar recommendations?

Dark Souls felt like a walk on the park in hindsight. Still hyped for Elden Ring.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Yeah, Darkeater Midir gets my vote for hardest boss in any Souls game. I still can't fight that guy without cheesing it with pestilent mist. And even then I tend to randomly get oneshot by a laser at some point in the 10 minutes it takes to kill him.



+1 for this so far. I haven't played DS2 yet and after Midir I still have Gael left to fight, but goddamn Midir is tough. I lack the stats to use pestilent mist too (I do have the spell though), so idk, maybe I'll just have to restat so I can use that... I got pretty far in the fight last time though, up to the point where he starts doing the abyss stuff, so I guess if I just keep hammering I might eventually get him. The problem with that is that I only have 1 ember and I definitely need the phantom if I'm gonna stand any sort of chance. Luckily those should be relatively easy to farm from some knights near the lothric castle.

Another boss that's hard af is the black dragon in the DS1 DLC. I never actually beat him.
Also the King of Storms guy in DS3. First part of the fight is relatively manageable, but once his dragon is dead I couldn't find any other way but to keep backing off just enough to prevent him from attacking, and when he's just walking towards you I kept firing arrows into him... I maxed out my arrows before the fight and that was still barely enough to take him out  In DS3 you can only carry 99 arrows and they automatically refill from the endless box if there are more in there when you visit a bonfire, whereas in DS1 you can carry 999 arrows around.


----------



## RevDrucifer

TedEH said:


> IMO you don't really have to engage with the crafting much. At some point there's a perk that auto- breaks down junk into resources, then I just dump all resources into whatever gun I decided I like at the time - which had me using the same gun (Lizzie's pistol) for the majority of the game. Not sure if a bug or a feature, but my experience was that a lot of the more janky parts of the game at least didn't demand you engage much with them. I suppose that's kind of redeeming? I guess?



It’d probably do me some good to watch a video regarding some tips for the game. I haven’t explored that aspect of it at all and I’m a couple hours into the game. (Just had Keanu jump in my head). 

The bugs haven’t been terrible, the worst parts have been when elevators wouldn’t activate during a shootout and I’m trying to find cover somewhere while thinking the elevator isn’t where I should be going because the call button isn’t activating. It’s happened a couple times now where I have to approach the elevator several times before the call button can be used. Aside from that, it’s just been the dialogue issues getting jumbled up. Mostly non-interactive ones, so you’re right about that.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

fantom said:


> Want to talk about unnecessarily hard?
> 
> I just finished the La Mulana remake. I literally have no idea how I am ever supposed to play a platformer again. The sheer sense of peace that I don't have to sit through another obscure puzzle for 5 days... Oh crap I bought La Mulana 2 in a bundle. Anyone else play these and have similar recommendations?
> 
> Dark Souls felt like a walk on the park in hindsight. Still hyped for Elden Ring.


spelunky will make you rip your hair out


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> +1 for this so far. I haven't played DS2 yet and after Midir I still have Gael left to fight, but goddamn Midir is tough. I lack the stats to use pestilent mist too (I do have the spell though), so idk, maybe I'll just have to restat so I can use that... I got pretty far in the fight last time though, up to the point where he starts doing the abyss stuff, so I guess if I just keep hammering I might eventually get him. The problem with that is that I only have 1 ember and I definitely need the phantom if I'm gonna stand any sort of chance. Luckily those should be relatively easy to farm from some knights near the lothric castle.
> 
> Another boss that's hard af is the black dragon in the DS1 DLC. I never actually beat him.
> Also the King of Storms guy in DS3. First part of the fight is relatively manageable, but once his dragon is dead I couldn't find any other way but to keep backing off just enough to prevent him from attacking, and when he's just walking towards you I kept firing arrows into him... I maxed out my arrows before the fight and that was still barely enough to take him out  In DS3 you can only carry 99 arrows and they automatically refill from the endless box if there are more in there when you visit a bonfire, whereas in DS1 you can carry 999 arrows around.


The biggest problem with Midir for me is he's one of the rare bosses that is totally immune to any kind of strategy that involves a shield since all his attacks either stagger you instantly or go right through even the biggest shield in the game, and that's definitely how I play those games. Evidently if you use a weapon with a high enough swing there are some pretty repeatable, mechanical strategies for countering most of his moves with a smack to the face, but it only works with certain weapons. Gael also is pretty much impossible if you try using a shield, but his attacks are a LOT easier to dodge since he's a small boss and doesn't have giant hitboxes on all his attacks.

Black Dragon Kalameet in DS1 is unbelievably hard if you try dodging his bullshit. But, if you use greatshield of artorias, you can block everything he does with no real threat unless you get stuck under him at the wrong angle when he does a charge. Well, besides that move where he rears up and then levitates you, you have to dodge that.

Same deal with Nameless King in DS3 that you used some weird bow strat on. You can easily beat him with a small 1h weapon and the dragonslayer greatshield (it has a lot of lightning resist so you only have to heal chip damage occasionally).

Been playing Bloodborne, this game still is harder than I remember. Mainly cause I've played SO much dark souls since then and the dodge iframes in this are absolutely pitiful compared to rolling iframes in that. I'm frequently dodging things that would easily have been rolled through on Dark Souls with the same timing, but here I'll like avoid the start of their sweep but get hit by the back-end of it cause I'll have dodged the same direction that their arm was moving. Also, the backwards dodges are SO gimped, if you try to retreat in this game you're generally just plain screwed. I also hate that parrying is not guaranteed even with the right timing - it seems down to chance and it's annoying when you time a parry right, the enemy doesn't flinch, and you get smacked in the face.

I died like 5 times to Vicar Amelia at sub-15% of her health just cause whenever I take a big hit it's my first reaction to roll away and heal, and in this game all you can do to even come close to mimicking that is break lock-on, run away, and spam heal while praying the boss won't jump on you while you do that. Ack. Now I'm in the Forbidden Woods. The boss runs in this game are almost as annoying as DS1 in terms of distance/mobs you have to avoid/kill every boss attempt. The only bosses I've one-shot so far are cleric beast and witch of hemwick. I am bad at this game! Oh well, I'm starting to get stats up enough to compensate for lack of skill.

I feel so damn exposed in this game relative to Dark Souls and Sekiro. Like, if you're in an enemy's face, ALL you can do is dodge around them and hit them. No reliable parry like in Sekiro, no block like in Sekiro/DS, far less defensive rolling ability than in DS, far less mobility than in either. Then again, blood vials are incredibly OP at the start of the game compared to Estus Flasks since you can carry 20+ of them at once and you can go on a long time between resting if enemies keep dropping them.


----------



## Werecow

Sekiro NG+6 now and my form seems suddenly better than NG+5. I haven't fully died once yet. I lost just one life to Guardian Ape, and that was because i tried to jump his grab move and jumped into his chin, so he caught me. Only reason i died is because he still killed me with about 90% of my health remaining.
I really beat up Owl Father by just posture damage rather than mainly HP damage. I kept sprinting right at him and actually kept cornering him for a change. Was really satisfying.
True Monk next.

I somehow managed to beat Isshin at the end of NG+5 on my first attempt, so amazingly with how shit i was when i started, i can actually see myself doing a no death run at some point.


----------



## Ralyks

To anyone who's finished Tales of Arise


Spoiler



I just defeated Vholran. Figured I was at the end. I was proven incorrect. Hell, there was even a 2nd anime intro. I'm at the 35 hour mark. How much further do I have to go?


----------



## SamSam

Just bought an Xbox Series X to play Elden Ring. My local shop was sold out of PS4 Preorders and only had the Collector's Edition available. £40 base game vs £180 CE I figured I would rather put that extra £140 towards the console. 

On a side note Gamepass is absolutely phenomenal! Console cost aside I've been able to buy the console without and games and have access to plenty of titles. Beyond that I've avoided spending around £120 on other games I was going to buy for Switch! I've saved £50 on importing Deedlit in Wonderland which I've had in my playasia basket for a while now!


----------



## wankerness

SamSam said:


> Just bought an Xbox Series X to play Elden Ring. My local shop was sold out of PS4 Preorders and only had the Collector's Edition available. £40 base game vs £180 CE I figured I would rather put that extra £140 towards the console.
> 
> On a side note Gamepass is absolutely phenomenal! Console cost aside I've been able to buy the console without and games and have access to plenty of titles. Beyond that I've avoided spending around £120 on other games I was going to buy for Switch! I've saved £50 on importing Deedlit in Wonderland which I've had in my playasia basket for a while now!


I don't trust Gamepass to stay good. I bet they're going to go the Netflix route. As soon as they achieve market dominance (ex, they manage to strongarm their way onto Playstation by holding COD for ransom) they'll start having garbage selection of non-first-party games (partly due to other companies like EA deciding they want their own services) and they'll jack their prices way up. Seems like a pretty good deal right now, though!

Is it like PS+, where if you download something on your library it stays there even if it stops being one of the current selections? Or is it like Netflix where you better finish it before the deadline or you're cut off?

Anyway, been playing more bloodborne, still kind of sucking it up. Beat Shadows of Yarnham and Darkbeast Paarl first try, but died like 10 times to Rom the goddam spider. Also tried fighting Bloody Crow on this playthrough and saw why people say he's the hardest boss in the game. Pretty quickly decided I was going to use the stair "exploit" to beat him when I got killed in less than 1 second a few times in a row. That guy should NOT have infinite ammo on a pistol that can sometimes one-shot you with 20 vitality. I'm mostly running around blind this time, I don't remember much in terms of map layouts or sidequests from first playthrough. I looked up guides on Eileen's quests and had to look up how to get to Iosefka's clinic the back way cause some of the maps are gigantic mazes, especially Forbidden Woods. This game is really more like Demon's Souls than Dark Souls 2/3 with its map layouts - there's frequently ONE "bonfire" per level and you have to get through the whole level and kill the boss. Plus, the annoyance of having to teleport back to the hub world and THEN to where you want to go, every time. There's more shortcuts to unlock than in Demon's Souls, but it's surprising to me that even Dark Souls 1 is sometimes kinder with bonfire placement than this. I guess at least nothing's as bad as Four Kings so far.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> they'll start having garbage selection of non-first-party games


I suspect this is why they're buying up so much stuff. What would now count as "first party" studios, could, IMO, hold up a reasonable lineup for Gamepass even if the rest of the library thins out. Gamepass loses all value (both for MS and the customer) if the lineup sucks. I hope they don't go the way of the Netflix - if it's any indication, I just cancelled my Netflix because they increased the price again while still having nothing I really want to watch. I think they'll be fine as long as they still have content people want to play.



wankerness said:


> Is it like PS+, where if you download something on your library it stays there even if it stops being one of the current selections? Or is it like Netflix where you better finish it before the deadline or you're cut off?


It's more the Netflix model. I had Outer Wilds installed and it wouldn't let me launch it during that window where it was removed from the service. The fact that this can happen really is a sore point for the service IMO. There is an exception though: 360 titles you get through Games with Gold stay in your library permanently (and you can download them on a 360).


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I suspect this is why they're buying up so much stuff. What would now count as "first party" studios, could, IMO, hold up a reasonable lineup for Gamepass even if the rest of the library thins out. Gamepass loses all value (both for MS and the customer) if the lineup sucks. I hope they don't go the way of the Netflix - if it's any indication, I just cancelled my Netflix because they increased the price again while still having nothing I really want to watch. I think they'll be fine as long as they still have content people want to play.
> 
> 
> It's more the Netflix model. I had Outer Wilds installed and it wouldn't let me launch it during that window where it was removed from the service. The fact that this can happen really is a sore point for the service IMO. There is an exception though: 360 titles you get through Games with Gold stay in your library permanently (and you can download them on a 360).


Can you download the 360 Games with Gold things on a newer Xbox? Or are they locked to the 360 hardware? I have a fair number of those from my years with Gold on 360. My 360 system's a rickety old thing with a spinning hard drive that I'm sure will fail any day now, but I plan on getting a Series X as soon as they have any exclusives I want.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Can you download the 360 Games with Gold things on a newer Xbox?


Anything being put out in Games with Gold, as I understand it, is part of the backwards compatibility list - as in you're meant to play them on your One / Series console. Being able to keep them and download them on the 360 I think is just a quirk of how the backwards compatibility works.


----------



## SamSam

All my 360 games were available to download as soon as I linked my account.

The first party titles are day one releases on game pass so as long as the first party titles are strong it's sound.

PS+ is pretty much a crap shoot ranging from awesome to shit with little in between. Game Pass works like a reverse PS+, once you sub you can access anything added (until they deliberately remove it), PS+ if you add the game it's yours, if you miss it you're not getting another chance.

If Bloodborne 2 is a PS exclusive I'll need a PS5 either way. But I won't pay above retail and have no qualms of waiting until I can get one later down the road. Demons Souls is the only game right now that interests me aside from FFVII remake.

Bloodborne is my favourite PS4 game so I won't miss out on a sequel!


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, the concept of getting an xbox at this point only interests me because of how I'd be able to play my old 360 games again. And presumably get at all my Rock Band DLC, though now my controllers are all starting to give out and they're EXPENSIVE. However, I don't know that I actually have any that I would play. I have been meaning to go through FF XIII-2 at some point after starting it right before getting a PS4, and I'd like to play vanilla Dark Souls 2, and then I have some games I bought but never played like Shadows of the Damned, but my PS4 backlog is big enough that I dunno when I'd bother with older, often much jankier games. It's kind of funny how with a lot of genres on console, older games are actually just WORSE. Very few companies went to the trouble of coming up with satisfying gameplay mechanics so as a result stuff like motion and jumping and physics just feel like trash. Nintendo's one of the only companies that got around it, with stuff like the old Zelda games and Mario games holding up really well in terms of gameplay (not graphics, but those aren't nearly as important). Weirdly the 16 bit era feels a lot less dated than the PS1/N64/PS2 era since there weren't nearly as many concerns about getting controls and graphics to feel immediately responsive. FFVI feels more modern to me in many ways than FFVII through IX. I guess often starting with PS1 everything just feels like crappy prototypes for modern games and they generally didn't really get things there on a technical level till mid/late 360/PS3 era. Though of course there are notable exceptions and weird classics out there that don't have modern equivalents. Mostly on PC, I think.

I think a lot of my PC/360 favorites already got rereleased on modern consoles and thus I would have no reason to go back to them. Ex Mass Effect Trilogy or the upcoming Portal 1/2. After I just bought Portal 2 a year ago for 360. Dammit. Maybe I'd play Dragon Age 2, the best Dragon Age.

EDIT: In bloodborne, progressed a bit more and killed that Rotten/Tower Knight combo boss, and then unlocked a few areas. So now I have Cainhurst Castle, Nightmare Frontier, Upper Cathedral, and Nightmare of Mensis available. I poked my head into all of the areas for a quick refresher on the zones, and ugh. We have the options of getting annihilated by spiders, getting owned by the infinite range frenzy snipers in the tower, dealing with a poison swamp and giants that can 1-shot you with boulders from across the map, or getting hit by every single grab attack by the tons of brainsuckers. This is a bad part of the game!!!


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I don't trust Gamepass to stay good. I bet they're going to go the Netflix route. As soon as they achieve market dominance (ex, they manage to strongarm their way onto Playstation by holding COD for ransom) they'll start having garbage selection of non-first-party games (partly due to other companies like EA deciding they want their own services) and they'll jack their prices way up. Seems like a pretty good deal right now, though!
> 
> Is it like PS+, where if you download something on your library it stays there even if it stops being one of the current selections? Or is it like Netflix where you better finish it before the deadline or you're cut off?
> 
> Anyway, been playing more bloodborne, still kind of sucking it up. Beat Shadows of Yarnham and Darkbeast Paarl first try, but died like 10 times to Rom the goddam spider. Also tried fighting Bloody Crow on this playthrough and saw why people say he's the hardest boss in the game. Pretty quickly decided I was going to use the stair "exploit" to beat him when I got killed in less than 1 second a few times in a row. That guy should NOT have infinite ammo on a pistol that can sometimes one-shot you with 20 vitality. I'm mostly running around blind this time, I don't remember much in terms of map layouts or sidequests from first playthrough. I looked up guides on Eileen's quests and had to look up how to get to Iosefka's clinic the back way cause some of the maps are gigantic mazes, especially Forbidden Woods. This game is really more like Demon's Souls than Dark Souls 2/3 with its map layouts - there's frequently ONE "bonfire" per level and you have to get through the whole level and kill the boss. Plus, the annoyance of having to teleport back to the hub world and THEN to where you want to go, every time. There's more shortcuts to unlock than in Demon's Souls, but it's surprising to me that even Dark Souls 1 is sometimes kinder with bonfire placement than this. I guess at least nothing's as bad as Four Kings so far.


EA Play is included with Game Pass. 

Game Pass is more equivalent to PS Now, where you're access to the games is dependent on being part of the service. That's what you're paying for. 

PS+ is more like Games with Gold where you get the games for free as a bonus. You're paying to play online. You can still play Games with Gold games when you are no longer a subscriber.

Personally, I don't think Microsoft are trying to monopolise the games industry. Mainly because they can't compete with Nintendo, and if they wanted to make Game Pass multiplatform they'd start with Switch, where they already have Ori games and Steve in Smash Bros. I could be wrong, but Microsoft hasn't made as many anti consumer moves as other companies.


----------



## Ralyks

As noted, I have a PS5 and an XSX. I definitely play my PS5 way more, but the Xbox has been nice because of Game Pass. Literally the only non-Game Pass games on my console are from games I bought on 360 and Xbox One. That in itself is pretty sweet. Plus when I play Minecraft with my son, I usuay go for the Xbox version, and he's currently in his Minecraft/Roblox fanatic phase.

Although despite all of that, I still prefer the PS5 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Plus I want to see what this new tiered hybrid Plus/Now service is going to be.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> EA Play is included with Game Pass.
> 
> Game Pass is more equivalent to PS Now, where you're access to the games is dependent on being part of the service. That's what you're paying for.
> 
> PS+ is more like Games with Gold where you get the games for free as a bonus. You're paying to play online. You can still play Games with Gold games when you are no longer a subscriber.
> 
> Personally, I don't think Microsoft are trying to monopolise the games industry. Mainly because they can't compete with Nintendo, and if they wanted to make Game Pass multiplatform they'd start with Switch, where they already have Ori games and Steve in Smash Bros. I could be wrong, but Microsoft hasn't made as many anti consumer moves as other companies.


Yeah, I know PS Now is the crap equivalent of Game Pass, I just wasn't sure if, since you can download the game to your hard drive instead of "streaming," if you'd continue being able to play it after it's removed from the service as long as you don't uninstall (ala Games with Gold/PS+). Sounds like no?

EA Play is currently included with Game Pass. I guess we'll see if Video Games As A Service goes the way of streaming - initially Netflix was the only game in town and they had tons of stuff, then as soon as other companies saw how much money they were making they yanked their stuff off the service and started making their own services, making it so now you have to subscribe to like 5 services to get the equivalent of what Netflix used to be, while Netflix themselves have increased prices from 8 to 20 bucks a month for streaming in HD despite losing most of their content.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I know PS Now is the crap equivalent of Game Pass, I just wasn't sure if, since you can download the game to your hard drive instead of "streaming," if you'd continue being able to play it after it's removed from the service as long as you don't uninstall (ala Games with Gold/PS+). Sounds like no?
> 
> EA Play is currently included with Game Pass. I guess we'll see if Video Games As A Service goes the way of streaming - initially Netflix was the only game in town and they had tons of stuff, then as soon as other companies saw how much money they were making they yanked their stuff off the service and started making their own services, making it so now you have to subscribe to like 5 services to get the equivalent of what Netflix used to be, while Netflix themselves have increased prices from 8 to 20 bucks a month for streaming in HD despite losing most of their content.


Yeah, you download the game and can keep the file forever, but it will run a DRM check before you play every game looking for either the disc, purchase history or Game Pass. I'm not sure how the rights are structured for Game Pass and haven't been using it long so I don't know if games are ever dropped from it, but if they're not on Game Pass anymore you won't get access. For example, I have Halo MCC and 5 on disc but since I got Game Pass I can play without the disc and can give those games away if I wanted.

I suppose the big difference is that Microsoft isn't just the service like Netflix was, but the delivery method too. If Apple TV had happened before Netflix then maybe they can strongarm Disney into never making D+ available beyond a subsection of Apple TV. Maybe with Game Pass being there before EA Play etc, Microsoft can make it unappealing for EA to want to exist outside of Game Pass. And having the likes of Bethesda and Activision will surely help them make that case, for example "why would Game Pass subscribers pay more for Battlefield when CoD is included for free".

Now, I suppose that is still dependent on fairer pricing and maybe I'm being naive. But I do see it being much more like the music streaming model than the TV/movie streaming model. I also think Microsoft is more interested in beating Sony for the sake of it than to monopolise the games industry.


----------



## wankerness

I think if you look at the recent history of big corporations taking over the market you will probably not find any examples where they DIDN'T jack up their prices and make service worse as soon as they'd cornered the market. These big investments and making services great are to get people dependent on them and to destroy the competition, upon which their shareholders will demand they keep increasing their profits cause if you don't increase profits year over year in capitalism it's the same as failing. I see no reason to be very optimistic about it. If Playstation continues surviving as a real competitor that will be best for everyone. 

I don't really count Nintendo as a competitor since they've kind of just done their own thing the last few generations and maintained a space as "you need this system in addition to the others since our first party games are the star of the show and will never be on any other system, but we won't get ports of most of the big multiplatform games cause our hardware's too weird/low-spec."

Played a bunch more Bloodborne, still having weird experiences with bosses. I did the areas in a different order than my first playthrough and did a LOT less grinding so I'm having trouble with certain bosses that I just facerolled through the first time since I was like level 125 (ex Ebrietas killed me like 7-8 times before I managed to chain a couple viscerals this time). Died a few times to Logarius, mainly in first phase, and then kind of cheesed him by just parrying him over and over on 2nd and 3rd phase. Killed Amygdala first try in a pathetic fashion, I ran in with 5 blood vials expecting to get stomped and instead killed her in less than a minute by smacking her in the face with transformed Ludwig like 5 times. Comically low health on that boss, if you can hit her in the head. I beat Micolash first try - thank god, I utterly hate this boss, I just got lucky and he never cast call from beyond. Mergo's Wet Nurse one-shot me first attempt with the twirly move that I forgot about, but killed her pretty easily second try. Those horrible brainsuckers in the Upper Cathedral got me over and over, though - that's my least favorite part of the game, I think.

Now I'm starting the DLC and immediately remembering how it's incredibly long compared to any of the other Fromsoft DLC. If I don't finish it in the next few days I'll probably just abandon it when HZD2 comes!


----------



## p0ke

I noticed that my phone has a desktop mode when you plug it in using the same adapters I use for my MacBook, so yesterday I figured I'd try Xbox game streaming using that. Worked like a charm! Even my Chinese Xbox 360 controller receiver worked out of the box (it doesn't work at all on my Mac and on PC you have to disable some protection things to get the driver to install). So now I can play my Xbox games anywhere in the house even if the TV is occupied


----------



## NoodleFace

I have cleared my schedule for Elden Ring. In the meantime Ive been playing some games that just sort of sat as rainy day games. Played Stardew valley for a few years and fell in love. I played it so much I got burnt out hard. 

I play games on my own some nights, but play PG/PG-13 games with my kids on the weekend mornings. Recently played through FFVIIR, Dragon Quest XI and Tales of Arise. I'm hoping Horizon Forbidden West isn't too bad because that's my next one for next week.


----------



## MFB

Finished my playthrough of Death's Door this weekend. Overall fun little title, final boss was more annoying than I expected given the phases you fight him in, but I'd still recommend it.


----------



## CanserDYI

NoodleFace said:


> I have cleared my schedule for Elden Ring. In the meantime Ive been playing some games that just sort of sat as rainy day games. Played Stardew valley for a few years and fell in love. I played it so much I got burnt out hard.
> 
> I play games on my own some nights, but play PG/PG-13 games with my kids on the weekend mornings. Recently played through FFVIIR, Dragon Quest XI and Tales of Arise. I'm hoping Horizon Forbidden West isn't too bad because that's my next one for next week.


Stardew valley should be required to play.


----------



## NoodleFace

CanserDYI said:


> Stardew valley should be required to play.


Absolutely. I always knew it was good, but I actually think it's genius now. Knowing one dude made it kind of inspired me


----------



## SamSam

For some reason I'm playing Skyrim yet again. 499 on a current gen console. To play Skyrim. Yet again. I fucking love it


----------



## Choop

SamSam said:


> For some reason I'm playing Skyrim yet again. 499 on a current gen console. To play Skyrim. Yet again. I fucking love it



Hahaha wow! It's been several years since I've played that -- might be cool to mess around with some mods for it.


----------



## gabito

I've been playing God of War 3 Remastered. Got it with my PS4 back in 2018 but never got around to play it (I have the plat for the PS3 version, though... and for every other GoW game).

I love the GoW series, it's the reason why I bought a PS2 a long time ago and got back to play video games semi regularly. I was fascinated by the gigantic bosses, great looking landscapes, stupid puzzles, and epic story. It's always fun to play these games again even if the gameplay is repetitive, and the story is dumb as they come. Man, is Kratos (and almost everybody else) an asshole...

Anyway, the game is short, it looks great, and the gameplay is pretty good. Currently doing a Titan run, which went well for the most part with a rough patches here and there...


----------



## MFB

People like to dunk on GOW3 for being "too dark" but logically it makes sense that it's the darkest of the series; like, all the Gods have aligned against Kratos, so he kicks the shit out of them and basically ends the world of man in doing so. That's pretty in-line with Greek gods not caring about what happens to us as a result of their squabbling.

I love it and have been meaning to replay it for the umpeenth time but there's other games I should play first before re-re-re-playing that one


----------



## gabito

MFB said:


> People like to dunk on GOW3 for being "too dark" but logically it makes sense that it's the darkest of the series; like, all the Gods have aligned against Kratos, so he kicks the shit out of them and basically ends the world of man in doing so. That's pretty in-line with Greek gods not caring about what happens to us as a result of their squabbling.
> 
> I love it and have been meaning to replay it for the umpeenth time but there's other games I should play first before re-re-re-playing that one



Yeah, pretty much every story involving Greek gods is tragic and / or fucked up. GoW has nothing funny in it, no lovable characters, no comic relief... nada, zero. It's grim and violent, even if sometimes in a ridiculous over the top way.

It's all about Kratos crazy need for revenge and him being an very resourceful and persistent killing machine who cares about nothing else but murdering everything and everybody in his way. I mean, almost nobody who he talks to survives these games...


----------



## wankerness

NoodleFace said:


> Absolutely. I always knew it was good, but I actually think it's genius now. Knowing one dude made it kind of inspired me


My experience with the game just comes from watching my girlfriend play it for many, many hours, but it has made me notice some shortcomings. He could probably use a partner to work on the game, if only just for the NPC stuff/writing. Like, the game does suffer majorly in terms of some of that stuff just cause it's impossible that the guy could have added all the stuff he did and still have time to program/write any of the NPCs to behave in any sort of adaptive ways. 

For example, there's this character "Shane" that has a problem with alcohol, and at some point in his "storyline" he passes out from alcohol and almost dies and then swears it off and becomes sober. However, there's no adaptation of the character's behavior around this plotline, so the very same day you can still give him a beer and he'll be like "THANKS, HOW DID YOU KNOW THIS IS MY FAVORITE?" In fact, he keeps saying this after you've been giving him the same item(s) for literal years of gameplay, and/or are married to him!!

The way kids don't age is weird, too, though I think the game was really only designed to be played for three years and it just is sort of on a loop after that, so kids aging couldn't really be a thing without a HUGE overhaul of everything. However, I love that he programmed in some other stuff, like how if you don't want the kid anymore you can have it turned into a frickin dove by the witch, and then after that you can randomly get haunted by the spirit of the kid through your TV set!!

The dungeon stuff and especially the island stuff is great as far as "DLC" goes. Skull dungeon is maybe a little too brutal, but I guess some people run out of stuff to do and going through literal hundreds of floors in the game's tight day-long time limit that are filled with monsters that can take off 1/4 your health with each hit is the only way to challenge them!! Seems needlessly nasty to me, though. If time dilated in the skull cavern or something it would be a lot more realistic to get the 200 floors necessary in the like 25 minutes of gametime you have to do it.


----------



## Werecow

Completed Sekiro NG+7. Guess i could try it without Kuro's charm, but it sort of feels like a fake layer of bullshit on top of the gameplay.
I've got God Of War to play for the first time (i'm PC only), but worried i'll find the combat boring after my long Sekiro stint. For some reason i'm tempted to replay Days Gone. No idea why.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> Completed Sekiro NG+7. Guess i could try it without Kuro's charm, but it sort of feels like a fake layer of bullshit on top of the gameplay.
> I've got God Of War to play for the first time (i'm PC only), but worried i'll find the combat boring after my long Sekiro stint. For some reason i'm tempted to replay Days Gone. No idea why.


God of War has really good combat once you get a ways in. I was very bored by the combat at first, but when you start getting runes and upgrading BOY and especially when you get a different weapon things improve a lot. It's not a patch on Sekiro's, but it's not like it's the same thing only worse. My only problem with it after the first stretch was that the camera is too close to your character so it's hard to see what you're fighting if it's coming from the side.

DO NOT replay Days Gone unless you do it on NG+, the first like 15 hours of NG just suck, you could be over half finished with God of War in that time!


----------



## NoodleFace

wankerness said:


> My experience with the game just comes from watching my girlfriend play it for many, many hours, but it has made me notice some shortcomings. He could probably use a partner to work on the game, if only just for the NPC stuff/writing. Like, the game does suffer majorly in terms of some of that stuff just cause it's impossible that the guy could have added all the stuff he did and still have time to program/write any of the NPCs to behave in any sort of adaptive ways.
> 
> For example, there's this character "Shane" that has a problem with alcohol, and at some point in his "storyline" he passes out from alcohol and almost dies and then swears it off and becomes sober. However, there's no adaptation of the character's behavior around this plotline, so the very same day you can still give him a beer and he'll be like "THANKS, HOW DID YOU KNOW THIS IS MY FAVORITE?" In fact, he keeps saying this after you've been giving him the same item(s) for literal years of gameplay, and/or are married to him!!
> 
> The way kids don't age is weird, too, though I think the game was really only designed to be played for three years and it just is sort of on a loop after that, so kids aging couldn't really be a thing without a HUGE overhaul of everything. However, I love that he programmed in some other stuff, like how if you don't want the kid anymore you can have it turned into a frickin dove by the witch, and then after that you can randomly get haunted by the spirit of the kid through your TV set!!
> 
> The dungeon stuff and especially the island stuff is great as far as "DLC" goes. Skull dungeon is maybe a little too brutal, but I guess some people run out of stuff to do and going through literal hundreds of floors in the game's tight day-long time limit that are filled with monsters that can take off 1/4 your health with each hit is the only way to challenge them!! Seems needlessly nasty to me, though. If time dilated in the skull cavern or something it would be a lot more realistic to get the 200 floors necessary in the like 25 minutes of gametime you have to do it.


All valid points. His name game Haunted Chocolatier, I wonder how much he'll improve on everything.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

What's the go-to method in order to play Guitar Hero and/or Rockband on the PC? I have USB PS3 RockBand guitars/drumset and an old GH guitar with a PS2 controller port - I assume I can use the USB guitars? Ideally I'd like to play custom songs and not looking for vanilla games on Steam

I haven't looked into it very much but wanker mentioned it a few posts ago, reminds me of how fun those games are.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still stuck in Lost Judgment 2 Terminator Day. Chapter 6 and 44 hours in because I insist in getting up to date with all the School sidequests and others. 

The High School Mystery Club is a large subplot to warrant it's own game. In this case, it's an excuse to either make you play through existing minigames or games (like Virtua Fighter 5 or the whole new Photography mechanic), or introduce new minigames that are usually competent at best, janky at worst but never really groundbreaking or utterly terrible. Basically classic Sega arcade games.

While some of them are just redressed versions of stuff from previous Yakuza games (Dancing takes over Karaoke, the Pub ladies chat takes over Hostess chatting), there's 3 new substantial minigames. The first is some Robot build/battle a la Real Steel with tower defense rules, a straight up Boxing game, namely a variant of the usual fighting engine but clunked up to feel like a typical boxing game, a full Road Rash ripoff complete with some Lost Paradise biker rejects and a Tony Hawk style skateboarding deal. Despite the games being average at best, it's the stories themselves that make you want to press through. Granted that they're more or less high school J-Drama stories (as uber Japanese as it gets), they're intriguing enough with the odd humour here and there. 

I will say getting the skateboard really makes travelling around town much easier. Certainly fun avoiding random encounters, grinding through side rails and occasionally going over cars as well as getting hit by them. I think Deadly Premonition 2 did the same thing with the skateboard, but I haven't played it. 

And I while you can accumulate a fair amount of Master System games here, I haven't touched any of them as of yet. After realising I suck in Alex Kidd, I'll probably leave it alone for a while. 

It's too much to do, which a problem with open world sandboxes. In the case of Yakuza games, it's a blessing and a curse. You're in the same one or two towns so the samey-ness breaks you down, or you can consider it cozy and familiar enough to just go straight to the objective.


----------



## Steinmetzify

Still on Warzone.

Bought a Scuf controller last night because these KBM motherfuckers keep drop shotting me and I can’t counter it with a regular controller. 

We’ll see what’s up now biatches


----------



## TedEH

Steinmetzify said:


> Still on Warzone.


I forgot what thread I had left open and came back to this to think "I know right, when is this gonna end". Being this close to the trucker nonsense is doing my head in.

Sooooooooo I guess this weeks coping mechanism is that I'm determined to finish Spirit Tracks. It's gonna happen this time. And probably won't take long, 'cause I'm close to the end of it. I have some thoughts, but I'll wait until I get to the end of the game so that it's as fair as it can be. In short though -> It's probably the Zelda game that has had the most trouble keeping my attention.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I forgot what thread I had left open and came back to this to think "I know right, when is this gonna end". Being this close to the trucker nonsense is doing my head in.
> 
> Sooooooooo I guess this weeks coping mechanism is that I'm determined to finish Spirit Tracks. It's gonna happen this time. And probably won't take long, 'cause I'm close to the end of it. I have some thoughts, but I'll wait until I get to the end of the game so that it's as fair as it can be. In short though -> It's probably the Zelda game that has had the most trouble keeping my attention.


I thought the general consensus was that it wasn't great, but it was a big improvement over Phantom Hourglass? I haven't played more than 5 minutes of either of them.

EDIT: Still Bloodborne. After going through the lab up to Maria's boss door, I switched over to chalice dungeons and have been trying to bang them out enough to unlock every kind of online one available to get some half-decent gems. Here, the framerate is finally starting to bother me - reaction speeds of your character feel like sludge in comparison to any of the Dark Souls games (all of which run well over 30 fps on PS4/5) or especially Sekiro. They really need to patch this thing to run at 60 fps like fans have managed to do. I don't have a problem with 30 fps steady, it's when things start chugging when you're dealing with a group of mobs and timing is extremely important that it gets frustrating. Sekiro's probably a harder game, but at least you're never, ever fighting the game's engine along with the enemies!

I withdraw my earlier complaint about parrying not being 100% reliable, it is, just timing has to be really precise with certain enemies where you hit something in its attack animation. I didn't realize I was just screwing up the timing. Well, except for the rare exceptions, like you fight a higher level brick troll that can't be parried at all or something. 

Funniest enemy in this game has to be the SUPER HARDCORE merciless watcher variant that has a big club and rolls around like a madman naked Dark Souls player. They're only in chalice dungeons, but they're great.


----------



## wankerness

Yikes at the graphics on Horizon Zero Dawn Forbidden West. New benchmark for graphics, Demons Souls has been dethroned in a big way! Hopefully this actually gets delivered to me on Friday so I can play it for a week before Elden Ring comes out.



They allowed reviews to come out ahead of time, which is a good sign. Sounds like it's more of the same, but a ton of gameplay enhancements/improvements. Sounds like the biggest problem will be that it assumes you remember the plot of the first one really well, along with who all the characters were. I played through it twice, but sure don't remember most of the characters. I saw some thing saying the sidequests here were the best since Witcher 3, guess we'll see how true that ends up being. I can't say I cared about characters/plots in any of them in the first game that I can remember.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I thought the general consensus was that it wasn't great, but it was a big improvement over Phantom Hourglass? I haven't played more than 5 minutes of either of them.


They have a lot in common. There's arguably some improvements over Hourglass, but having completed one, and approaching completion of the other, there's a lot in common.


----------



## TheBlackBard

More Lost Odyssey and the more and more I play, the more I wish that we had more modern turn based RPG's in the style of Final Fantasy. Other than this and Octopath Traveler, I haven't been aware of any major JRPG's that are turned based in the same fashion, though I would love to be proven wrong. Will say it was awesome of the Final Fantasy VII community to provide an actual remake to the game via various graphics and FPS mods.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> More Lost Odyssey and the more and more I play, the more I wish that we had more modern turn based RPG's in the style of Final Fantasy. Other than this and Octopath Traveler, I haven't been aware of any major JRPG's that are turned based in the same fashion, though I would love to be proven wrong. Will say it was awesome of the Final Fantasy VII community to provide an actual remake to the game via various graphics and FPS mods.


I don't know what your "style of FF" qualifier means, but Dragon Quest XI and Persona 5 were both turn-based RPGs and giant hits in the last few years.


----------



## Leviathus

Bloodborne PSX...some things never change...


----------



## wankerness

I've seen a bunch of people are playing that. Is it FUN? The screenshots all look miserable!! 

I can't believe they included insight, does it actually do anything if the demake is only the first level?


----------



## Leviathus

It's very well done. Controls take a bit to get used to but once you do it just feels like Bloodborne. Yharnam is a little switched up too which is cool. 

Insight unlocks some parts of the hunters dream. It may do something else but its not like ps4 bloodborne insight.


----------



## John

Just finished playing through Breath of the Wild. Quite a bit of  the Master Sword Trials and the first part of the ballad were a drag, but the rewards made things a lot easier afterwards.


----------



## Ralyks

Tales of Arise is going longer than expected (although I did stop to grind for a bit). I'm hoping to finish it soon because they surprised dropped the PS5 version of Cyberpunk 2077 today. Tried it, and yup, much, much better. And I already loved the game as it was.


----------



## LostTheTone

Although slightly off-topic for this thread - Is anyone else getting a SteamDeck? And did anyone manage to get into the first wave of orders that will be dispatched next week? 

I am in the second wave (delivery sometime after March) but holy shit am I chomping at the bit to give one a try. And it's kinda a different form factor for PC gaming, and a bunch of stuff may not actually work on it at all. So, if anyone else has one arriving soon I'd love to know how well it plays and the battery life and such like. And what games both work, and work well on that kind of platform. Personally, I'm planning to binge my way through every Soulslike game on Steam as I travel back and forth from gigs through the summer


----------



## TedEH

I've been seeing tons of praise for the Steam Deck but I have some doubts about the real-world appeal. If you have a big steam library you likely have a PC that can play them already. And if you're a person who is into gaming-on-the-go, there's a good bet you have something like a Switch already. A good chunk of the audience for this thing might already have their hands on one of the existing devices that do similar things already - GPDWin / Ayaneo / etc. So who does that leave behind? Enthusiasts maybe. Those who liked the idea of GPDWin etc but were disappointed with the execution. And.....? I'm not sure who else.

Don't get me wrong, it looks like a cool device. I bet it's actually a pretty great gaming platform. But I can't help but wonder if it's going to sputter out pretty quickly since it's not really covering any new ground. The Steam controller was IMO a good controller, but it did some weird things and added stuff nobody really wanted into a market where good controllers already existed. The Steam Link similarly doesn't add much value to an environment where there are more and more streaming options around. The standalone console-like Steam Boxes seem, in my mind, to fit this same category of "it existed already but maybe we can package it up in a way that makes it relevant to certain groups of enthusiasts" - and those flopped hard.

I'd like to see it take off. I'm also pretty excited for the sort of off-shoots from a project like this - the improvements to Linux-based gaming, the tech that came with the Steam controller and all the remapping and accessibility options that gave us, etc. Those are all fantastic from an enthusiast point of view. I'm not convinced yet that it's a Switch killer though. Nor a standalone PC killer. Or really a thing that has a clearly defined market carved out for itself. Guess we'll see. Maybe I'm very wrong.


----------



## wankerness

John said:


> Just finished playing through Breath of the Wild. Quite a bit of  the Master Sword Trials and the first part of the ballad were a drag, but the rewards made things a lot easier afterwards.


Yeah, I did the DLC as early as possible. In that game I beelined the four temples and thus had very few hearts cause I only did a handful of shrines I hit on the way, and then I went straight for the DLC to improve those abilities. Thus they were probably harder than they were for anyone that actually played through the game first, but on the positive side, I really benefitted from the buffs to abilities since probably more than half of my time spent playing the game came after I finished those.

The worst part BY FAR is the section where you die in one hit to anything, specifically that horrific segment of a shrine with the treadmill and the spikes in the wall. At least that wasn't any harder at a low "level" than it would be at any level.

I skipped the master sword trial after one attempt - getting several levels in, dying, and realizing I'd have to do it ALL over again. It's way, way more tedious than the similar trials in Wind Waker and Twilight Princess since you have to be constantly equipping gear, etc and thus restarting is a huge time sink.

Speaking of infuriating, now I've hit a brick wall with the Loran Darkbeast in Bloodborne's lower loran dungeon. The maingame version is a complete joke since you can just chain stagger it with strong attacks, but this thing poises through everything and has a TON of health. The chalice dungeons are interesting for forcing you to fight bosses as if you were fighting them at a pitiful level with a non-upgraded weapon. But, it's pretty annoying for those of us who tend to brute-force encounters instead of properly learning them! This game is feeling slower and slower to me - it's interesting that everyone talks about how fast-paced it is relative to Dark Souls. But that paradoxically makes it seem slower, since the enemies dance circles around you while you slowwwwwwly try to hit them (straight swords in DS really aren't slower than most 1h weapons in this game) and are subject to the same dark souls rules of "you hit attack twice, you attack twice, even if you change your mind." I think a big part of it are the major framerate issues that it has, but it's pretty bad. I really wish they were going to remake this or patch it, but it seems like that's not in the cards.


----------



## LostTheTone

TedEH said:


> I've been seeing tons of praise for the Steam Deck but I have some doubts about the real-world appeal. If you have a big steam library you likely have a PC that can play them already. And if you're a person who is into gaming-on-the-go, there's a good bet you have something like a Switch already. A good chunk of the audience for this thing might already have their hands on one of the existing devices that do similar things already - GPDWin / Ayaneo / etc. So who does that leave behind? Enthusiasts maybe. Those who liked the idea of GPDWin etc but were disappointed with the execution. And.....? I'm not sure who else.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, it looks like a cool device. I bet it's actually a pretty great gaming platform. But I can't help but wonder if it's going to sputter out pretty quickly since it's not really covering any new ground. The Steam controller was IMO a good controller, but it did some weird things and added stuff nobody really wanted into a market where good controllers already existed. The Steam Link similarly doesn't add much value to an environment where there are more and more streaming options around. The standalone console-like Steam Boxes seem, in my mind, to fit this same category of "it existed already but maybe we can package it up in a way that makes it relevant to certain groups of enthusiasts" - and those flopped hard.
> 
> I'd like to see it take off. I'm also pretty excited for the sort of off-shoots from a project like this - the improvements to Linux-based gaming, the tech that came with the Steam controller and all the remapping and accessibility options that gave us, etc. Those are all fantastic from an enthusiast point of view. I'm not convinced yet that it's a Switch killer though. Nor a standalone PC killer. Or really a thing that has a clearly defined market carved out for itself. Guess we'll see. Maybe I'm very wrong.



I think you're certainly right that the SteamDeck is doomed to be a niche device. You have to be a pretty specific type of person to be interested in it; but I happen to be exactly that kind of person. 

If the SteamDeck hadn't arrived, I almost certainly would have bought a Switch instead. We already have one in the house (I bought it for my wife) and while the game library isn't all that I would want to take on the road, I'm sure that I would have been ok with that. For me though the GPDWin and similar are just too expensive. The middle SteamDeck is more than a Swtich, but it's still only £400, which isn't obscene, and I don't have to rebuy Dark Souls etc like I would on the Switch, so the total cost is probably about the same. 

I am now in a period in my life where I don't even want a desktop gaming machine. My laptop is my daily driver, but I actually want something more mobile and more separated from work. I do still travel, and weirdly those long journeys to gigs (and to see my in laws) are the only times where I would just sit and play games for hours on end. There are also some properly weird use cases that matter to me; I play games while on the exercise bike and doing that with a laptop requires a weird cludged together stand to get it in the right place. It's a whole deal. 

Point being is that I can afford a SteamDeck, and I live in that weird fringe where I want slightly more hardcore gaming than a Switch, but slightly more Switchyness than a laptop. 

Funny you mention the SteamController because I fucking _hated _my one. Sent it back within a day. Just loathed it. But I am a sucker for these kind of devices that say "No YOU figure out something cool to do with it!".


----------



## Choop

I signed up for the Steam Deck but will probably opt out of buying one -- I just don't travel enough or need to game away from a PC/Couch enough to make it worth it for myself. It does look like a really cool device, though, and looks head and shoulders above any other handheld PC, especially considering the cost/performance.


----------



## TedEH

LostTheTone said:


> Funny you mention the SteamController because I fucking _hated _my one. Sent it back within a day. Just loathed it. But I am a sucker for these kind of devices that say "No YOU figure out something cool to do with it!".


I've got one, and I've mentioned it here before that I liked it. But I also got it before I ever tried a One or PS4 controller - so it was comparable to what was the previous gen controllers at the time. The Switch Pro, Xbone and PS4 controllers are blow it out of the water at this point in terms of build quality, ergonomics, etc., but I wasn't a huge fan of the 360 controller. The biggest win for me was that I was always a mouse+keyboard player, but also liked the idea of using a TV + couch rather than sitting at my desk all day, so having the gyro and stuff like the programmable layers of buttons and modes etc went a long way.

Opinions of the controller itself aside though - it's really the configuration stuff that came with it that was the major win there. Being able to use any controller, and remap all the buttons in whatever way you want - and in all kinds of dynamic ways that a console can't do, or that Windows doesn't normally allow for on it's own. IMO that's huge. I'm really glad that this stuff continued to develop even without any love for the Steam controller itself.

That's my real hope for the Deck right now. Not so much that the device itself will take off, but that the work done for it will advance all the stuff needed to support it - the Linux gaming stuff, controller configuration stuff, a drive to make titles scalable back to weaker hardware, etc etc.


----------



## wankerness

PSA: 3dS and Wii-U storefronts are being removed in a couple months, so if you want to buy digital copies of any 3DS or Wii-U/Wii-U VC games (there are a lot of Wii games, etc on there) you better do it soon!

3DS sure are incredibly easy to mod and download stuff for, but Wii-U is pretty messy unless you use some downloading program on PC that hijacks the store to get a direct copy of an installation file that the wii-u can read - guessing that won't work too well after this. Fortunately there's not much that's locked to Wii-U that isn't available on Switch - I'd say Windwaker and Twilight Princess HD are the biggest two.


----------



## TedEH

I commented this is the emulation thread. There's a good number of digital-only items that are locked to the Wii-U - in particular, virtual console GBA titles that are not available anywhere legally unless you want to track down rare and expensive originals. Good example would be something like Minish Cap - there's not many around, lots of the ones online are fakes/repros, and legit copies go for 2-3x now what they were new, if you can find them.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I commented this is the emulation thread. There's a good number of digital-only items that are locked to the Wii-U - in particular, virtual console GBA titles that are not available anywhere legally unless you want to track down rare and expensive originals. Good example would be something like Minish Cap - there's not many around, lots of the ones online are fakes/repros, and legit copies go for 2-3x now what they were new, if you can find them.


Ah yeah, I forgot about the GBA thing. I have Minish Cap on there already. Maybe I'll get the Metroid titles just in case I ever want to play them. Fortunately I already have a DS with an R4, so I don't need any of those, and I have hard copies of most of the other GBA games I'd want (ex the Castlevania ones, which were also just rereleased on modern platforms). Harvest Moon is the only other thing on the GBA list that I have any interest in, I think.

I have heard a lot of complaints that the Wii-U versions of N64 games are worse than the Wii versions, some difference with the emulation I guess. Otherwise I might have wanted to get F Zero and mayyybe Donkey Kong. Though my N64 still works fine and I have real copies of all those games besides Sin and Punishment, it would just be slightly less horrible looking on the Wii-U.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Though my N64 still works fine


I'm super thankful that the 64s seem to hold up really well with time (mechanically speaking, the games are.... well, we all know the mixed bag that n64 games are).


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I'm super thankful that the 64s seem to hold up really well with time (mechanically speaking, the games are.... well, we all know the mixed bag that n64 games are).


My controller sticks are a little bit janky, but still very usable. The system itself is like it's made out of granite, those things have to be one of the best-constructed consoles ever. Especially when you compare it to the PS1. I had a lot of friends that had dead controllers where the stick would just kind of flop around in the middle instead of holding neutral position even back in the late 90s/early 00s, I guess I didn't play Mario Party on mine and maybe that's the difference. I did buy some of those steelstick conversion kits on a whim when I saw them in stock, so if I ever get the urge to play through anything major on N64 again I'll just put that in a couple controllers.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Playinlots if Breath of the Wild and loving it. The weapons breaking really isn't a problem with all the drops everywhere. 

So I accidentally stumbled upon the Master Sword while looking for that tree bastard to upgrade my inventory. Not stronk enough to get it though.


----------



## LostTheTone

TedEH said:


> I've got one, and I've mentioned it here before that I liked it. But I also got it before I ever tried a One or PS4 controller - so it was comparable to what was the previous gen controllers at the time. The Switch Pro, Xbone and PS4 controllers are blow it out of the water at this point in terms of build quality, ergonomics, etc., but I wasn't a huge fan of the 360 controller. The biggest win for me was that I was always a mouse+keyboard player, but also liked the idea of using a TV + couch rather than sitting at my desk all day, so having the gyro and stuff like the programmable layers of buttons and modes etc went a long way.
> 
> Opinions of the controller itself aside though - it's really the configuration stuff that came with it that was the major win there. Being able to use any controller, and remap all the buttons in whatever way you want - and in all kinds of dynamic ways that a console can't do, or that Windows doesn't normally allow for on it's own. IMO that's huge. I'm really glad that this stuff continued to develop even without any love for the Steam controller itself.
> 
> That's my real hope for the Deck right now. Not so much that the device itself will take off, but that the work done for it will advance all the stuff needed to support it - the Linux gaming stuff, controller configuration stuff, a drive to make titles scalable back to weaker hardware, etc etc.



I found that the touchpad just didn't work well as a mouse or as an analogue stick. The ideas there were really cool, which is why I wanted to try it, and maybe if I had stuck with it I would have gotten used to it, but it just didn't feel right.

For me, I already had a wireless Xbox pad, and I also had already paid for a utility called reWASD to do rebinding and macros and such like. So coming in I really just cared about whether it was a good mouse or not, which it somewhat wasn't. 

Still, you're right that it was a good tech demo and I think they have learned lessons for the SteamDeck - They went with two stick on the SteamDeck, but also there is still a proper touchpad, and I think having them separated will make both better at their jobs. And they also have experience doing rebinding and such. That's one thing up on the GPDWin stuff; the hardware is going to be more integrated and adjustable and should (in theory) give a lot of options and no problems.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> The system itself is like it's made out of granite, those things have to be one of the best-constructed consoles ever. Especially when you compare it to the PS1.



Yeah, I got the PS1 in 1996 and it just barely lasted until I got the PS2. Laser was pretty busted by then and it actually worked best sitting upside down for some reason  The controllers were good quality though, I still have a fully working PS1 Dual Shock (a blue transparent one that came bundled with Crash Bandicoot 3 for xmas 1998).

By the way, the N64 sticks were pretty hit and miss even when they were brand new. Mine was tight and didn't flop around, but a friend of mine got one that was basically hanging loose when he took it out of the box. He claimed he liked it better that way, but I thought it was almost unplayable.

.... and guess what I'm still playing.
Midir sucks  I went farming for embers yesterday, but in half an hour the lothric knights only dropped one. Then I went and fought Midir and didn't get a single hit in before I got toasted. I guess I'm being too aggressive, I should let the phantom take the damage and just get 1-2 hits in when there's an opening and back off again. I also read that the dragonslayer swordspear would be good for the fight, so I guess I might try upgrading that for this fight... It has some lightning attack that'll do heavy damage to dragons, beside the normal thrust attacks that Midir's also weak against.


----------



## LostTheTone

p0ke said:


> Midir sucks



Weirdly for a huge Dark Souls fan I genuinely can't remember if I actually played through the DS3 DLCs. I went and looked it up and the pictures look... Somewhat familiar?


----------



## p0ke

LostTheTone said:


> Weirdly for a huge Dark Souls fan I genuinely can't remember if I actually played through the DS3 DLCs. I went and looked it up and the pictures look... Somewhat familiar?



Well, they do recycle their components a fair bit, so there's a chance you're mixing it up with something else.


----------



## Choop

On Midir I wouldn't bother using a phantom since it's just going to die super fast. You'll have to deal with the boss's increased health by yourself, plus while the phantom is up it gets harder to read his attacks.


----------



## TedEH

I ended up busting out the n64 last weekend, mostly 'cause I ended up watching a YouTube video about Goldeneye, which gave me the itch to go back and play it myself, so I did. Forgot how quickly you can get through the easiest mode.


----------



## LostTheTone

TedEH said:


> I ended up busting out the n64 last weekend, mostly 'cause I ended up watching a YouTube video about Goldeneye, which gave me the itch to go back and play it myself, so I did. Forgot how quickly you can get through the easiest mode.



SSO Speedrunning forum when?


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Yeah, I got the PS1 in 1996 and it just barely lasted until I got the PS2. Laser was pretty busted by then and it actually worked best sitting upside down for some reason  The controllers were good quality though, I still have a fully working PS1 Dual Shock (a blue transparent one that came bundled with Crash Bandicoot 3 for xmas 1998).
> 
> By the way, the N64 sticks were pretty hit and miss even when they were brand new. Mine was tight and didn't flop around, but a friend of mine got one that was basically hanging loose when he took it out of the box. He claimed he liked it better that way, but I thought it was almost unplayable.
> 
> .... and guess what I'm still playing.
> Midir sucks  I went farming for embers yesterday, but in half an hour the lothric knights only dropped one. Then I went and fought Midir and didn't get a single hit in before I got toasted. I guess I'm being too aggressive, I should let the phantom take the damage and just get 1-2 hits in when there's an opening and back off again. I also read that the dragonslayer swordspear would be good for the fight, so I guess I might try upgrading that for this fight... It has some lightning attack that'll do heavy damage to dragons, beside the normal thrust attacks that Midir's also weak against.


If you want to go the "easy" route I'd suggest respeccing to a build with a ton of attunement and just enough int to use pestilent mist. Might want to fight Gael first so you don't have to respec twice though! And DO NOT summon for him since that makes him have massively increased HP/defense and the summon will get 1-shot long before the end anyway, leaving you with a much harder version of the boss to deal with alone. I only summoned her like once so I don't have much personal experience with it, but I see the wiki also strongly advises against it cause it makes him do some of his most annoying attacks a lot more often and also makes it a lot harder to hit him in the head where he takes increased damage.

Embers were never a problem for me since I farmed three lothric straight swords right towards the beginning of the game and lothric knights drop embers, I had probably a hundred and rarely used them so on top of all the ones you find in the regular game I never ran out. EDIT: Oh, I see you tried doing that. You should make sure you're using the item drop boosting items. Gold Serpent ring, that straight sword you get from the crystal sage soul, and if you want to really go all out, that mimic head (symbol of avarice).

In bloodborne, finally went back to the DLC after gaining tons of levels through the dungeons. It's kind of obscene how much exp you get from those things by about layer 4, I was gaining like 4 levels each floor. Build's maxed out with 50 vit, 50 str, 50 skill, and now I'm just dumping points into Arcane cause why not. So, I facerolled through Maria and all of fishing hamlet (did die to the sharks in the well, I can't dodge the anchor guy when he dives at you while flailing around ever). So, just Orphan, Gehrman and Moon Presence left, and then I will be finished with this game.

Oh, before HZD2 tomorrow I have to also finish up Far Cry 6 by doing one more crummy weekly "insurgentes" boss. I HATE the special operations in Far Cry 6, they all require you to carry this stupid device wayyyyy across the map that heats up whenever it's in sunlight, and then there are "water" sources around the map that you need to use to cool it back down, but frequently when it gets hot you can't find where the damn things are and it explodes and you have to start all over again from the beginning. Also, the NPC that "assigns" you these things is utterly loathsome and you have to hear tons of back and forth dialogue between her and your character every time you play these maps. And you have to do one special operation every week to unlock the insurgentes boss! Argh. I really don't like this game. But, one more trophy and I'll have platinumed it and then I never have to think about it again. Until Blood Dragon releases.

The worst thing about the next couple weeks is I signed up to play a community theater musical, so now I have work all day, then 3-4 hours of rehearsal every night that's a half hour drive away, so I'll have basically no time to touch HZD2 or Elden Ring until March! Maybe I should take work vacation like an ultra-nerd.


----------



## wankerness

LostTheTone said:


> Weirdly for a huge Dark Souls fan I genuinely can't remember if I actually played through the DS3 DLCs. I went and looked it up and the pictures look... Somewhat familiar?



The things that you'd probably remember most would be the Angels (these big elaborate spirits that rain death on you from anywhere on the map until you find their hidden summoners) or especially the godawful giants that summon armies of ghost archers that annihilate you instantly if you aren't in cover. If those don't ring a bell, it's time for you to play the DS3 DLC!


----------



## Choop

Related to the Retro/Emulation thread, but I beat Sonic 1 with my 8bitdo Sega style controller a couple nights ago. First time! Not a very long or terribly difficult game, but those last couple levels were totally designed by a sadist.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

Choop said:


> Related to the Retro/Emulation thread, but I beat Sonic 1 with my 8bitdo Sega style controller a couple nights ago. First time! Not a very long or terribly difficult game, but those last couple levels were totally designed by a sadist.


That controller looks neat. I've been wanting to jailbreak my PSVita as it's just been sitting for almost a decade now, from what I've seen it's got the power to run a lot of games outside of handheld stuff, but in the end I would like to download mostly GBA games on that giant Vita screen. I assume it was easy to find the ISO for that game? Haven't seen a good place to download GameCube games after they shut down the Dolphin site, or whatever it's called.


----------



## LostTheTone

Choop said:


> Related to the Retro/Emulation thread, but I beat Sonic 1 with my 8bitdo Sega style controller a couple nights ago. First time! Not a very long or terribly difficult game, but those last couple levels were totally designed by a sadist.



Did you do a proper all chaos emerald run or what?


----------



## CanserDYI

BlackMastodon said:


> Playinlots if Breath of the Wild and loving it. The weapons breaking really isn't a problem with all the drops everywhere.
> 
> So I accidentally stumbled upon the Master Sword while looking for that tree bastard to upgrade my inventory. Not stronk enough to get it though.


Yeah that game is absolute crack. Can't wait to play it again.


----------



## Choop

LostTheTone said:


> Did you do a proper all chaos emerald run or what?



Nah! I wasn't trying for it, but I did get 3 of them, haha. Might revisit in the future. Are you a Sonic fan? I think I'd only ever beaten Sonic 2 and almost completed Sonic & Knuckles in the past. One thing I like about revisiting these older games is just how pretty some of them are. The Sonic games are all nice looking.



CovertSovietBear said:


> That controller looks neat. I've been wanting to jailbreak my PSVita as it's just been sitting for almost a decade now, from what I've seen it's got the power to run a lot of games outside of handheld stuff, but in the end I would like to download mostly GBA games on that giant Vita screen. I assume it was easy to find the ISO for that game? Haven't seen a good place to download GameCube games after they shut down the Dolphin site, or whatever it's called.



It's really cool! The controller is responsive and the buttons feel good -- it feels like maybe slightly better build quality than the original Sega controllers, but the shape and button layout is the same. And I'm sure you could find it -- it's also available on a handful of digital storefronts.


----------



## LostTheTone

Choop said:


> Nah! I wasn't trying for it, but I did get 3 of them, haha. Might revisit in the future. Are you a Sonic fan? I think I'd only ever beaten Sonic 2 and almost completed Sonic & Knuckles in the past. One thing I like about revisiting these older games is just how pretty some of them are. The Sonic games are all nice looking.



I'm not quite a proper fan - I had an Amiga 500 back in the Megadrive days, so I came to them late and only via emulator. But they are classics, and I still love the "...& Knuckles" add on cartridge design that spices up old games. Doing those long playthroughs to do all the emeralds and finishing up as supersonic is good times.


----------



## Jeffrey Bain

Been playing the absolute fuck out of Apex Legends; feel free to add me on PS if any of you are on there @Bain1989


----------



## p0ke

Choop said:


> On Midir I wouldn't bother using a phantom since it's just going to die super fast. You'll have to deal with the boss's increased health by yourself, plus while the phantom is up it gets harder to read his attacks.


I don't stand a chance without the phantom  I mean, without it I get maybe 2-3 hits in, but with it I've gotten 50% in a couple of times. Guess I just gotta git gud  But yeah, if I don't summon the phantom, I don't need embers and that removes one issue...


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I don't stand a chance without the phantom  I mean, without it I get maybe 2-3 hits in, but with it I've gotten 50% in a couple of times. Guess I just gotta git gud  But yeah, if I don't summon the phantom, I don't need embers and that removes one issue...


The thing is the fight will go on a lot longer with the phantom up since bosses get a massive defense/hp buff if you summon, and the phantom is doing pretty crap damage. Phantoms in DS games are incredibly helpful on some bosses where the boss HP is low enough that the phantom can tank the boss for the time it takes to kill them or get through their hardest phase (ex Friede, Abyss Watchers, Sullyvahn, Ornstein & Smough, pretty much everything in DS2 or BB). But, they're incredibly useless on other bosses where they die early, or don't do enough damage to balance out the HP increase, or don't soak aggro, and then leave you with a buffed version of the fight (ex Gaping Dragon or Deacons of the Deep or Crystal Sage), this is especially a problem in fights with multiple phases (ex Fume Knight, or Midir, who gets way worse at 50%, just in time for your phantom to be dead). If you can really nuke the boss sometimes they can be a big help, ex swordmaster on Gundyr or the tanky guy on DS2 DLC Dragon can make the fight a joke if you can do enough damage to kill him before he kills the phantom, but if you're slow it's worse than not summoning because you don't want a greatly extended version of phase 2 with no phantom.

Long way of saying the phantom on Midir is absolutely not worth it unless you're burning him down so fast with the phantom help that the phantom has most of their health/heals left by 50%, which I doubt very much is the case! Sure it might be the only way you're currently getting to 50%, but your odds of getting him to 0% after reaching 50% are far lower. Boss health buff doesn't go away when the phantom dies! The main reason to ember is just for the increased health, but that doesn't help against his automatic 1-shot black laser attacks that he spams more and more through the fight anyway.


----------



## LostTheTone

p0ke said:


> Guess I just gotta git gud



At least you have identified the core problem


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> I don't know what your "style of FF" qualifier means, but Dragon Quest XI and Persona 5 were both turn-based RPGs and giant hits in the last few years.




Been meaning to check out Persona 5. It doesn't really look to me like it'd give me the same feel necessarily, but I'll try anything these days.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> Been meaning to check out Persona 5. It doesn't really look to me like it'd give me the same feel necessarily, but I'll try anything these days.


Dragon Quest XI is absolute panacea if you're looking for something nostalgic ala Octopath Traveller, it's got lovable characters, a really solid and simple turn-based battle system, and a pretty good story to boot. There's some grinding necessary at times, but not too much. I haven't played the "S" version of it, but I think it's what you'd want to go for since it replaces the cruddy midi music on the initial release.

Persona 5 is turnbased but not at all that classic RPG style, it's VERY modern stylistically and forces hours and hours of cutscenes down your throat, which you may or may not like depending on your tolerance for anime high school hijinx. I've played through it twice and I think it's a very good game, but not for all tastes, that's for sure.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> The thing is the fight will go on a lot longer with the phantom up since bosses get a massive defense/hp buff if you summon, and the phantom is doing pretty crap damage. Phantoms in DS games are incredibly helpful on some bosses where the boss HP is low enough that the phantom can tank the boss for the time it takes to kill them or get through their hardest phase (ex Friede, Abyss Watchers, Sullyvahn, Ornstein & Smough, pretty much everything in DS2 or BB). But, they're incredibly useless on other bosses where they die early, or don't do enough damage to balance out the HP increase, or don't soak aggro, and then leave you with a buffed version of the fight (ex Gaping Dragon or Deacons of the Deep or Crystal Sage), this is especially a problem in fights with multiple phases (ex Fume Knight, or Midir, who gets way worse at 50%, just in time for your phantom to be dead). If you can really nuke the boss sometimes they can be a big help, ex swordmaster on Gundyr or the tanky guy on DS2 DLC Dragon can make the fight a joke if you can do enough damage to kill him before he kills the phantom, but if you're slow it's worse than not summoning because you don't want a greatly extended version of phase 2 with no phantom.
> 
> Long way of saying the phantom on Midir is absolutely not worth it unless you're burning him down so fast with the phantom help that the phantom has most of their health/heals left by 50%, which I doubt very much is the case! Sure it might be the only way you're currently getting to 50%, but your odds of getting him to 0% after reaching 50% are far lower. Boss health buff doesn't go away when the phantom dies! The main reason to ember is just for the increased health, but that doesn't help against his automatic 1-shot black laser attacks that he spams more and more through the fight anyway.


Yep... The thing is, whenever I've gotten to 50% it's been me that died and not the phantom  The phantom only died on me one time, and then I warped out of the fight immediately. The damage it does doesn't really help much, but it allows me to stand back a bit and only attack when the head is down (vs. solo I have to roll around all the time dodging something)

Anyway, I decided to try a different approach. I need some attunement (7 levels to be specific) so I can use the aforementioned swordspear effectively, so I'm gonna grind for a bit and then try again. It does less normal damage than my current sword, but it also does lightning damage which Midir is weak against and it's way faster. So hopefully that'll do the trick.


----------



## Ralyks

Welp, took almost 55 hours (of course with grinding, as JRPGs are wont to do) but I'm finally watching the credits to Tales of Arise. This would have made my top 5 if I played it last year. The ending left me satisfied enough too.

Time to dive into Cyberpunk 2077 PS5.


----------



## LostTheTone

Ralyks said:


> Time to dive into Cyberpunk 2077 PS5.



Let me know if they have managed to fix the crafting system, and a bunch of other stuff that you'll know about if you run into it.

I have super mixed feelings about Cyberpunk - I did genuinely enjoy it a lot. I'm a huge fan of the genre and the tabletop game and while there were flaws I had a really good time in the game. Building a relationship with Keanu Reeves is something I always wanted to do, and being a cyborg lesbian was another one crossed off the bucket list. 

But slowly as the game went on I felt busted overpowered. One of the problems with a big open world is that you encounter stuff in the wrong order, and when you have level scaling a lot of quests become trivial. My swanky lady-pimp outfit was also incredibly bulletproof, so I could mostly just wade in with an auto shotgun and not worry. 

That didn't kill the game, but it did make it less memorable. Cyberpunk is at its best when it feels like a Deus Ex style stealth RPG. When you are infiltrating places, rather than murdering, it's exciting. It makes you use the hacking tools, it makes you want to build less powerful but stealthy weapons, there's a bunch of cybernetics just for this. Its good. But the further you get into the game, and the more access you have to more stuff, the less it matters if you get spotted. That's a core problem in the formula, because if you have no reason not to run headlong into obstacles, you have no reason to explore or think too hard, and that means you just walk through challenges. 

So it'll be interesting to see if they have done some rebalancing in the much vaunted 1.5 patch. I hope so, honestly, because I'd be down to replay. I got (I think?) the most dismal ending and was too dispirited to replay the ending so I wouldn't mind another go. And now it's been a year, maybe there are some fancy mods to fix it up and make it a proper Deus Ex style game.


----------



## wankerness

Apparently the Cyberpunk patch makes it so you can't launch the game on PS4. Nice. I'll check it out when it's 20 or less for native PS5 version. 

Downloaded Horizon Forbidden West cause Best Buy's "release day delivery" is scheduled for Monday instead of today, nice. Guess I'm returning the physical copy!

Beat Orphan of Kos last night in Bloodborne (only 2 tries since I was horribly overlevelled), so just Laurence/Gehrman/Moon Presence left there. Also managed to platinum FC6 while Horizon 2 was downloading, so I can uninstall that mess.


----------



## Choop

I'm probably just going to have to break down and borrow my sister's PS4 to play Bloodborne. It's pretty ridiculous that they haven't attempted to port, optimize, or expand on that game in all this time. Looks like a great game, but that low FPS is going to suck. >.>


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> I'm probably just going to have to break down and borrow my sister's PS4 to play Bloodborne. It's pretty ridiculous that they haven't attempted to port, optimize, or expand on that game in all this time. Looks like a great game, but that low FPS is going to suck. >.>


For the most part it's only annoying in the dungeons (cause they're sort of the B-content and many are randomly generated and thus they're not as polished) and on Orphan of Kos cause he has heavy water splash effects, especially when he starts doing all his AOE, depending on where in the area you're fighting him. I remember experiencing the same thing on Dark Souls 1 when fighting the first DLC boss, the lion/snake thing in the pond.

It still is pretty disappointing they haven't optimized it, when some fan modded it to work just fine at 60 fps on a PS4 Pro years ago. DS3 and Sekiro run almost flawlessly at 60 fps on a PS5, it's very weird that this older game doesn't. I initially heard it was something with attacks being timed to frames that would break combat at 60 fps (kinda like how originally DS2 caused double durability damage to your gear if you had 60 fps instead of 30), but the fan mod figured out that problem pretty easily.

Started playing Horizon Forbidden West, now is the break for work and a gig. Ah well. In the first hour or so there was a LOT of exposition and a lot of boring stealth (mandated by the fact the basic ostrich robots take you out in like 2 hits and your bow hits like a wet noodle, but stealth kills are insta-robot-death). I really don't remember doing too much stealth in the original game other than the very beginning of the game. I also never used one single trap after that first huge 4-legged robot you fight as a boss at the beginning when you have no skills or upgrades. Here's hoping I can similarly bypass them in this game - I don't find traps to be fun in any game I've ever played. Besides the games with weird incidental traps like games where dead bodies of your enemies turn into land mines, or throwing proximity mines everywhere in Goldeneye multiplayer.


----------



## Mathemagician

Minor update on my PS5 console. I have one from Jan 2021 so a little over a year. 

1) The disc drive ate the first BluRay I tried watching a month ago. Turns into a jet engine like it’s trying to chew it if I attempt to eject/use the disc reader. 

2) The controller has developed drift so now it kind of pulls down if I lift my finger off it and leave it idle. It’s intermittent but has gotten worse since like November. 

Not great build quality for something only I have used and never moved. No kids knocking it around or anything, etc. 

I’m really annoyed with it.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

LostTheTone said:


> Building a relationship with Keanu Reeves is something I always wanted to do, and being a cyborg lesbian was another one crossed off the bucket list.


I'm glad you were able to live out one of your dreams. Fast forward a few years we might be able to plug in like they do in Black Mirror and experience it IRL, or at least in your brain. 


Mathemagician said:


> 1) The disc drive ate the first BluRay I tried watching a month ago. Turns into a jet engine like it’s trying to chew it if I attempt to eject/use the disc reader.


I've only had mine since Oct., does yours vibrate a lot when initially inserting a disc? Mine hasn't been noisy and I try to keep it elevated so it doesn't turn into the jet engine PS4 I have sitting next to it.


----------



## Mathemagician

I wouldn’t know. I had just been playing the games I have digitally for the last year. This was literally the first disc I’ve ever inserted. I watched the movie and then it wouldn’t give it back.


----------



## wankerness

Weird, I haven’t had any problems with the disc drive, though I don’t think I’ve ever put in a non-game disc. Anyway, drift is covered by warranty so you should be able to get the controller fixed by Sony.

The controller is good, but they are using the exact same goddam manufacturer/part for the stick bearing on switch, ps4, ps5, and Xbox controllers and they’re cheap pieces of garbage so all controllers are equally likely to develop drift. It’s terrible how there’s a monopoly unless you want to buy some super expensive third party thing.


----------



## Mathemagician

I actually DON’T mind paying $150+ for a “pro” controller. I use an arcade stick for fighting games so that’s $200 right there. After using paddles I fucking hate not being able to map at least 2 buttons onto back paddles. 
Sony is dragging their feet on offering quality controllers and it’s pissing me off. Like I’ll even pay, but there has to be a product. And I don’t trust 3rd party unless it’s been out for a few years to see the wear & tear.


----------



## Werecow

I tried Sekiro ng+8 _without_ Kuro's charm. As i suspencted, it just puts a layer of bulshit on the whole game.
Going through the hirata estate, i noticed the thugs with just a sword took two or even three more hits than usual (these are the ones you don't need to defend/deflect from if you get the first hit in.

What this translated to was the mob you have to get through to the drunken miniboss being difficult to the point where i completely died 4 times in a row trying to get through them. Splitting up an enemy like i usually do to get my 3 or 4 hits in (and then the deathblow giving me my invulnerability for a split second while it went through the deathblow animation) didn't work anymore. The extra blows needed gave the mob time to get in their hits, which was often 3 or 4 simultaneously and instant death. The sword guys seemed to attack more often. On top of that, the archers were firing off fire arrows quicker than they usually do as well.

Next with the minibosses... i died to the easy General at the beginning of the game, in the first area leading to the ogre. Turns out "chip damage" means taking away about 1/6th of your health each time a deflect isn't perfect. Being early with a deflect attempt, and trying again counts as a failed deflect (100% proof now that tapping to deflect doesn't work for _full_ deflects). On top of that, i was doing a tiny amount of posture damage to him by hitting him (another Kuro's charm characteristic). So what kept happening was that i kept getting my posture bar fully broken down (because you also get huge posture damage from an imperfect deflect with this, on top of a third extra posture damage done for your blocks), and i actually died to him. The first since my very first time playing the game.

I've also read status effects like burning build up 40% faster. So what i'm trying to say is FUCK this mode, i won't be bothered with that again


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Apparently the Cyberpunk patch makes it so you can't launch the game on PS4. Nice. I'll check it out when it's 20 or less for native PS5 version.


I mean, it's 25 bucks on the PS Store right now.

But yeah. As someone who played the PS4 version on a PS5 and finished the story in 30 hours, this is playing much smoother, extremely less buggy, and goddamn it's gorgeous. Really having fun playing through this again. And I eagerly await meeting my digital angel Panam again.


----------



## TedEH

I made it to the end of Spirit Tracks. Finally.



Spoiler



Took me forever to get to the end of it, but I did it. While I wouldn't call it a bad game, I think it would be fair to call it the weakest Zelda title I've played so far. it just couldn't keep the hooks in me for most of the game, especially the first half. The train movement and the pacing kinda ruined it, and some of the puzzles are really weak. A lot of the game felt like a time sink, more than being "fun". 

The good:
- For such a thin story, the characters have, well, a lot of character. There's a good amount of interaction between Link + Zelda, and the cartoonishness of it works well.
- A handful of standard Zelda-esque items made their way here, and they do what you'd expect them to do. Some are under-utilized (like the bombs), but at least they're there.
- The train movement is an improvement over the travel in the previous game.... but there's a flip side to that, I'll mention later.
- The music has some catchy moments. There was effort put into synchronizing the train sounds to the music, and it works, usually.
- One of the core elements of the game is the dungeons, and they're mostly good. Mostly.
- I still like how you can draw on the map, and how it's incorporated into some puzzles.
- Being able to control Zelda via the phantom bodies is clever and makes for some of the best puzzles / dungeons the game has.

The less-good (and sometimes bad):
- While the train movement is an improvement.... I kinda didn't like it. It felt like filler. Avoiding the bad trains was a pain, even when it was setup as a clear puzzle.
- I still think that using the touch screen to control like isn't a good gimmick. It's hard to control your speed, sometimes you run into holes in the ground for no reason, etc. Your mobility is limited and the game design has to take a hit because of that.
- The pacing is kinda whack, made worse by how the tracks unlock. You travel a bit, do a small dungeon, more train travel, one small simple puzzle, more train, a dungeon, more train, etc. The train segments kill any sense of pace especially when some of the non-dungeon puzzles in between are so basic.
- There are so many locations you visit that feel like a single-use throw away. Some of them have one house, or one simple puzzle that feels like it was thrown together because they just "needed" a puzzle.
- Once I unlocked all four quadrants of the map, I was convinced this was close to the end of the game. It even pulled some "we're getting close to the end" dialogue. I was ready to be disappointed with how thin the game was at that point. The best parts of the game are near the end, so you need to slog through the whole rebuilding-the-tracks-and-tower before you get there.
- The last dungeon in the game finally feels like a sizable challenge, except it kinda goes too far off the deep end compared to the other dungeons being pretty short. It took much longer to complete, and the solutions weren't obvious. The difficulty curve got real steep suddenly. 
- Oh and I almost forgot having to blow into the mic is another novelty that gets old quick.

It's another step towards finishing all the Zelda games, I guess. But it's kinda meh.


----------



## wankerness

Been playing lots of Horizon 2. It's pretty. The gameplay is great. The cutscenes go on too long and the plot is way too complicated this go-round. But man, it's a technical marvel. These are not good screenshots, and they don't reflect the fact the game is completely rocksolid 60 fps at all times in performance mode while looking like this




.

And it's pretty great design-wise, too. My favorite area so far visually is the drowned version of Las Vegas, post being totally rebuilt as a dome by an asian billionaire and then flooding, then experiencing the apocalypse, then getting completely flooded. It's awesome. Like Blade Runner meets some kind of biodome. Though it is annoying to maneuver when you're underwater and the boss was kind of frustrating since I was underlevelled.


----------



## MFB

Doing another playthrough of Death's Door to get the "Umbrella Only" achievement - which is exactly what it sounds like, the only weapon you can use is the umbrella; it does half as much damage as the sword, so you have to rely on speed + ranged attack in conjunction with small combos to replenish your ranged stamina. 

Makes for some really tricky boss fights as I quickly found out. I'm close to 100% it on my other save file, but this new one will close out the other trophies I missed on first play.

I'm also contemplating finishing a 2nd run of Spiderman Miles Morales as completing NG+ is legit the last trophy to get the platinum. I could probably do it in a day if I tried on Story mode.


----------



## Ralyks

MFB said:


> Doing another playthrough of Death's Door to get the "Umbrella Only" achievement - which is exactly what it sounds like, the only weapon you can use is the umbrella; it does half as much damage as the sword, so you have to rely on speed + ranged attack in conjunction with small combos to replenish your ranged stamina.
> 
> Makes for some really tricky boss fights as I quickly found out. I'm close to 100% it on my other save file, but this new one will close out the other trophies I missed on first play.
> 
> I'm also contemplating finishing a 2nd run of Spiderman Miles Morales as completing NG+ is legit the last trophy to get the platinum. I could probably do it in a day if I tried on Story mode.


Actually grabbed Deaths Door recently. Seems like a fun Zelda-esque game so far.

And the NG+ Trophy for Miles Morales? I think I did it in 3 - 4 hours on easiest mode while skipping the cutscenes.


----------



## MFB

Ralyks said:


> Actually grabbed Deaths Door recently. Seems like a fun Zelda-esque game so far.
> 
> And the NG+ Trophy for Miles Morales? I think I did it in 3 - 4 hours on easiest mode while skipping the cutscenes.


Honestly, I really enjoyed DD more than I expected. It's mechanically simple, there's as much lore as needed to make the game work, and it doesn't over extend for what it is.

I had a feeling Miles would be short, didn't think it was THAT short. 

I've been thinking about also picking up RE8 on sale but I'm a little hesitant after RE7. I hate the unkillable enemy (the "pursuer") which is what 7 hung it's hat on; so if 8 has more of that then I'll save my money.


----------



## Ralyks

MFB said:


> I've been thinking about also picking up RE8 on sale but I'm a little hesitant after RE7. I hate the unkillable enemy (the "pursuer") which is what 7 hung it's hat on; so if 8 has more of that then I'll save my money.


While there are moments like that, it definitely is a minority part of the game. Village was easily.one of my favorite games last year.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> My favorite area


Spoilers man! We got tags for that.

I'm honestly just happy to hear about a game that is being reported as being solid at launch. That's refreshing. Liked the first game, but I might wait until a PC version, or when I have a PS5 some time down the line before digging into this one so that I can appreciate all the "technical marvel".


----------



## Choop

Sort of disappointed but I decided to hold off on getting an ultrawide because a good one is such an expense...however I did order a Dell S2721DGF high refresh 1440p monitor to hold me over until a proper 21:9 upgrade can be had. The Dell was super cheap at $300 via Bestbuy! It'll still be useful for games like Hell Let Loose, I notice the ghosting in that game with my current monitor really badly -- very distracting at times.


----------



## TedEH

Honestly you may have made the better choice. In terms of monitors, I went from a 1080p 120hz screen to a 2560x1080 (21:9) monitor, then eventually to 4k/144. The ultra-wide thing is fun for a while, but once the novelty wears off you realize it's not thaaaaat much more real estate, and compatibility isn't always great. It's wide enough that you get a little more FOV in 3d titles, but it's not enough to simulate having two monitors for productivity purposes. Some games/apps/websites handle it well, others don't. Most of the time, 1920 is the expected width, or 16:9 is the expected ratio, and the extra space ends up wasted. On top of that, the measurements become hard to compare to other monitors because of how it's measured diagonally. If you're not seeing the monitor in person before buying, you might be surprised at how short it is compared to a 16:9 with the "same measurements". 1440/144 is, IMO, right in that sweet spot where it won't take an expensive beast of a video card to get the full potential out of it, and it still feels like a good upgrade from a basic 1080p monitor.


----------



## p0ke

Ralyks said:


> Actually grabbed Deaths Door recently. Seems like a fun Zelda-esque game so far.



It's great, the only actual complaint I have with it is that I wish it was much longer  I hope there'll be sequels though. I'm thinking about doing the same as @MFB and getting that umbrella achievement at some point just because the game is so much fun.


----------



## Giest

Pokemon Legends, Metroid Dread, and The Outer Worlds. Can't play a ton of them online vidya games with my country internet.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Spoilers man! We got tags for that.
> 
> I'm honestly just happy to hear about a game that is being reported as being solid at launch. That's refreshing. Liked the first game, but I might wait until a PC version, or when I have a PS5 some time down the line before digging into this one so that I can appreciate all the "technical marvel".


Yeah, this game is pretty rock-solid technically. I actually haven't closed it since I first launched it, 22 hours in now. Usually even pretty stable games will at least crash once or twice. This one, I've encountered ONE glitch so far (a door blocking an item at the end of a puzzle was able to be walked through as if it was already open so I got to skip all the puzzle) in 22 hours. I mean, there's some wonkiness, especially with climbing, much like an Assassins Creed game where you'll get stuck climbing a wall when you don't want to be, but it's not GLITCHES, it's just annoying.

My biggest annoyance with this game is just how much time you have to spend looting. Like, after a battle with robots you'll run around looting all the pieces you shot off of them as well as their bodies, you'll have to run around and loot tons of plants to restock health berries, etc. If there was an "auto-loot" option in accessibility I would turn it on. As is, the only "cheat" I have on is "always highlight climbable handholds" which just prevents me from having to click L3 as much.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I actually haven't closed it since I first launched it, 22 hours in now.


I think this is something that gets overlooked pretty often - both by gamers themselves, and by devs. Now that most consoles have some kind of suspend feature (unless you're on PC), titles have to be able to handle hours upon hours of uptime. I read that as -> if your game instance can run for 100 hours without crashing or falling apart, you've accomplished something. That's putting aside any implications related to pausing and saving.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> Honestly you may have made the better choice. In terms of monitors, I went from a 1080p 120hz screen to a 2560x1080 (21:9) monitor, then eventually to 4k/144. The ultra-wide thing is fun for a while, but once the novelty wears off you realize it's not thaaaaat much more real estate, and compatibility isn't always great. It's wide enough that you get a little more FOV in 3d titles, but it's not enough to simulate having two monitors for productivity purposes. Some games/apps/websites handle it well, others don't. Most of the time, 1920 is the expected width, or 16:9 is the expected ratio, and the extra space ends up wasted. On top of that, the measurements become hard to compare to other monitors because of how it's measured diagonally. If you're not seeing the monitor in person before buying, you might be surprised at how short it is compared to a 16:9 with the "same measurements". 1440/144 is, IMO, right in that sweet spot where it won't take an expensive beast of a video card to get the full potential out of it, and it still feels like a good upgrade from a basic 1080p monitor.



Haha I appreciate the reassurance! My current monitor is a 1440p Asus Designo. I like the resolution/ppi, but this particular monitor is older and maxes at 60hz and definitely has ghosting to a degree, so I figure the high refresh 1440p should still be a nice upgrade. I think with the games I play, it was going to be about 50/50 whether or not the extra UW width would work out, but I'd still like to try one in the future. This is a weird time to get a display since variations of oled are just on the horizon, which at the very least should push down the cost of upper end IPS/VA technology or even mostly replace it down the road. I was going to get the LG 34" ultrawide IPS, but it's like $800 and their warranty on monitors is not especially good.

Guess I'll be playing Elden Ring soon. There are so many games on my list to play but that's going to be one to not miss.


----------



## MFB

p0ke said:


> It's great, the only actual complaint I have with it is that I wish it was much longer  I hope there'll be sequels though. I'm thinking about doing the same as @MFB and getting that umbrella achievement at some point just because the game is so much fun.


I made it past the Frog King last night, he took less tries than Grandma surprisingly. If you do an Umbrella Only play, the stats to invest in are:

Ranged damage
Dexterity (for charging ranged attacks)
Speed

Umbrella is all about short combos, one or two hits to recharge and then get the hell out of there and keep moving with ranged attacks being your main damage. It's been pretty intense so far


----------



## LostTheTone

Choop said:


> Haha I appreciate the reassurance! My current monitor is a 1440p Asus Designo. I like the resolution/ppi, but this particular monitor is older and maxes at 60hz and definitely has ghosting to a degree, so I figure the high refresh 1440p should still be a nice upgrade. I think with the games I play, it was going to be about 50/50 whether or not the extra UW width would work out, but I'd still like to try one in the future. This is a weird time to get a display since variations of oled are just on the horizon, which at the very least should push down the cost of upper end IPS/VA technology or even mostly replace it down the road. I was going to get the LG 34" ultrawide IPS, but it's like $800 and their warranty on monitors is not especially good.
> 
> Guess I'll be playing Elden Ring soon. There are so many games on my list to play but that's going to be one to not miss.



Yeah you definitely made the right choice IMHO. 

For better or worse, we are just used to 16:9 monitors. And they are better than 4:3 monitors. You can realistically put two windows side by side on a 16:9, and in games you do get a better field of view. These are nice to have, and you miss them if you don't have them. But going yet further does make me wonder what you really get out of it. Dividing the screen into thirds is tricky and feels unnatural. The extra real estate can be nice in some games - I used to play Eve Online which can result in a lot of menus and boxes and overviews and chats. But in a lot of games, ultrawide just means your rectangle is a different shape. 

I wouldnt complain if someone handed me a free ultrawide, but I wouldnt pay hundreds of my own stirling pounds for one.


----------



## TedEH

IMO it makes more sense to prioritize physical size and ppi over aspect ratio. And colour accuracy, and ghosting, brightness, etc. Now that I've made the jump to 4k (and intentionally went for as big a screen as I could find that had the features I wanted), it's become pretty natural to split the monitor into quadrants and treat it like I have 4x 1080p monitors to work within. It's a natural improvement for productivity purposes in a way that ultrawide was not. Especially given that most interfaces assume 1080p anyway, it divides up nicely and just kinda works. I've also future-proofed for when 4k inevitably becomes the standard and video cards hopefully won't cost a kidney anymore.

That being said - ultrawide is kinda "fun" in a novel kind of way. I'd take the ultrawide over 1080p just because it's a bit more screen real-estate (and I still do - I use the ultrawide too as a secondary monitor still), but if you can get mooooore pixels at a normal aspect, the more pixels overrides the novelty ratio, to me at least.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> IMO it makes more sense to prioritize physical size and ppi over aspect ratio. And colour accuracy, and ghosting, brightness, etc. Now that I've made the jump to 4k (and intentionally went for as big a screen as I could find that had the features I wanted), it's become pretty natural to split the monitor into quadrants and treat it like I have 4x 1080p monitors to work within. It's a natural improvement for productivity purposes in a way that ultrawide was not. Especially given that most interfaces assume 1080p anyway, it divides up nicely and just kinda works. I've also future-proofed for when 4k inevitably becomes the standard and video cards hopefully won't cost a kidney anymore.
> 
> That being said - ultrawide is kinda "fun" in a novel kind of way. I'd take the ultrawide over 1080p just because it's a bit more screen real-estate (and I still do - I use the ultrawide too as a secondary monitor still), but if you can get mooooore pixels at a normal aspect, the more pixels overrides the novelty ratio, to me at least.



What size is your 4k monitor? I was considering that as well, but I think I'd prefer to have a 32" screen minimum for it, otherwise I would probably just scale the desktop too much and not see much benefit from it for my uses. Just speaking for gaming, the main advantage of ultrawide in games that support it (or can be made to support it) is the extra field of view, but yeah I could see for productivity a 4k monitor being superior. Some 4k ultrawides even exist now which is crazy to think.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I think this is something that gets overlooked pretty often - both by gamers themselves, and by devs. Now that most consoles have some kind of suspend feature (unless you're on PC), titles have to be able to handle hours upon hours of uptime. I read that as -> if your game instance can run for 100 hours without crashing or falling apart, you've accomplished something. That's putting aside any implications related to pausing and saving.


Yeah. It's very striking in comparison to far cry 6 which had multiple components that broke EVERY time you put the system in suspend mode no matter how short your session was, on top of glitches that would stack up over time.


----------



## MFB

Umbrella Only run officially complete, Betty was the worst of the bosses to fight for sure.


----------



## TedEH

Choop said:


> What size is your 4k monitor?


It's a 32". In particular it's a Gigabyte M32U. I tend to agree that 4k needs to be big enough, or you need to sit close enough, for it to make sense, but it might not be as extreme as you'd think.

As a thought experiment - remembering that screens like this are measured diagonally - does a 13" laptop monitor bother you? If a 13" laptop screen at 1080p looks "sharp" but isn't too small to real comfortable, and you'll be viewing it at about the same distance, then it's comparable to a 26" 4k screen.

1080p x 13" = ~170ppi
4k x 32" = ~140ppi


----------



## TedEH

On an unrelated note - I've started playing Outer Wilds. Seems pretty good so far.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> It's a 32". In particular it's a Gigabyte M32U. I tend to agree that 4k needs to be big enough, or you need to sit close enough, for it to make sense, but it might not be as extreme as you'd think.
> 
> As a thought experiment - remembering that screens like this are measured diagonally - does a 13" laptop monitor bother you? If a 13" laptop screen at 1080p looks "sharp" but isn't too small to real comfortable, and you'll be viewing it at about the same distance, then it's comparable to a 26" 4k screen.
> 
> 1080p x 13" = ~170ppi
> 4k x 32" = ~140ppi



I think a 13" laptop at 1080 is a bit small yeah, I'd scale it some, but 4k @ 32" seems pretty good.


----------



## MFB

MFB said:


> Umbrella Only run officially complete, Betty was the worst of the bosses to fight for sure.


Platinum'd as of roughly an hour ago. God damn seeds/pots at the end we're a nightmare to figure out which ones were missing.


----------



## p0ke

MFB said:


> Umbrella Only run officially complete, Betty was the worst of the bosses to fight for sure.



I can imagine, she wasn't easy even on a normal run. 



MFB said:


> Platinum'd as of roughly an hour ago. God damn seeds/pots at the end we're a nightmare to figure out which ones were missing.



Took me a couple of days in the end as well. Also finding the statues to bring the ghosts to took a surprisingly long time, as some of them really blend into the background.


----------



## MFB

There was definitely a couple of those statues I ran by without realizing it until the ghost went into it, and I acted like I totally knew it was there


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> On an unrelated note - I've started playing Outer Wilds. Seems pretty good so far.


That game ran like garbage on my PS4 Pro, weirdly enough, since it seems pretty lo-fi. Guess it was a bad port. Are you playing it on PC? I only played it for like 30 minutes before losing interest. I've seen a lot of people rave about it so I should probably give it another chance some day.


----------



## Giest

TedEH said:


> On an unrelated note - I've started playing Outer Wilds. Seems pretty good so far.



Outer Worlds? It's fun ain't it? Kinda showing age and the load times are bonkers for me cause I'm on a Switch- but I'm enjoying the mechanics, atmosphere, and story a lot. Definitely a PC SSD title if I had to do it again, but worth it in spite of that imo.


----------



## wankerness

Giest said:


> Outer Worlds? It's fun ain't it? Kinda showing age and the load times are bonkers for me cause I'm on a Switch- but I'm enjoying the mechanics, atmosphere, and story a lot. Definitely a PC SSD title if I had to do it again, but worth it in spite of that imo.


I'm sure he's talking about Outer Wilds, the puzzle/exploration game that came out at the same time as Outer Worlds, the cheap Fallout in Space.


----------



## TedEH

Giest said:


> Outer Worlds


Wilds and Worlds are different games. I played Worlds a while back and thought it was pretty good too, but I heard the switch port of it was horrible. That one for me is definitely a PC title.

Wilds I first started up on the One S, which seemed to run fine. Then switched to PC just cause I can. It does feel a little bit jumpy - almost like there's GC stutters, which I vaguely remember being a bit of a pitfall to using Unity... I think this uses unity? It runs mostly fine though. 1440 runs just fine for me, and 4k stutters a bit at times but does the job.


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> I'm sure he's talking about Outer Wilds, the puzzle/exploration game that came out at the same time as Outer Worlds, the cheap Fallout in Space.



Cheap it may have been, but it was still a good game, damnit. A spiritual successor that was genuinely harmed by not having a deep trove of lore and flavour to draw from, but which was a good game anyway.


----------



## wankerness

LostTheTone said:


> Cheap it may have been, but it was still a good game, damnit. A spiritual successor that was genuinely harmed by not having a deep trove of lore and flavour to draw from, but which was a good game anyway.


I didn't like it cause it felt low-rent and unfinished. Like, the first mission has really nasty satirical stuff and had me excited, but then you just have a bunch of boring corridor style areas and some companion interactions and bam it's finished. Seemed like it had about half the budget and/or development time it needed. The combat also got really boring really fast.


----------



## CanserDYI

Half way through Resident Evil 8 and gotta say, I think it's an awesome game, but both Ethan and Mia are such unbelievable characters, it's hard to get "attached" to them. Nothing that comes out of their mouths sound like real human sentences or reactions to what's going on around them, is this a Japanese translation thing going on or is it just bad writing? 

I love the game, but Jesus every time Ethan talks I want to gag him.


----------



## Choop

I couldn't help myself and preordered Elden Ring last night. .-. I figure I was definitely going to get it within the next few months...may as well get on it now.


----------



## wankerness

The one thing that puts me off jumping on Elden Ring instantly is that those games always have really, really arcane sidequests that you would never figure out yourself in a million years, and there aren't going to be good wiki guides out there on launch day. On the other hand, this would be the first Soulsborne I played without walkthroughs on my first playthrough, so that could be exciting (or really frustrating). I just read a review stating it was the hardest game from the studio yet so that's not a good sign.


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> I didn't like it cause it felt low-rent and unfinished. Like, the first mission has really nasty satirical stuff and had me excited, but then you just have a bunch of boring corridor style areas and some companion interactions and bam it's finished. Seemed like it had about half the budget and/or development time it needed. The combat also got really boring really fast.



It doesn't live up to the promise, but I think pretty much every problem can be chalked up to having this generic lifeless setting to work in. There's very little different mechanically to New Vegas, but the world is just so much less alive and interesting in Outer Worlds.

Even stuff like the game's length (and I agree that it feels weirdly paced and ends abruptly) I think in part come down to the fact that you just don't want to wander around and explore like you would in Fallout. There are things to find out there, I promise. But you don't care all that much about finding them.

Your companions are... Alright. On paper they aren't more or less interesting than Boone, but we care so much more about the NCR and so on. I can't even remember the factions in the Outer Worlds.

There are some real missed opportunities here too. The smaller, semi-open worlds aren't used to their potential, instead you just go back and forth between set positions. The mad science weapons are really cool, and you have to go out and find them which is awesome, but the weapons aren't worth it really. 

But I still enjoyed it. I played a bunch of Supernova runs and had a good time. It's such a shame that it wasn't all that it could have been.


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> The one thing that puts me off jumping on Elden Ring instantly is that those games always have really, really arcane sidequests that you would never figure out yourself in a million years, and there aren't going to be good wiki guides out there on launch day. On the other hand, this would be the first Soulsborne I played without walkthroughs on my first playthrough, so that could be exciting (or really frustrating). I just read a review stating it was the hardest game from the studio yet so that's not a good sign.



You'd be surprised how quickly those wikis show up. If you play like a normal person (ie, struggle with some bosses and sleep sometimes) then the wiki writers will be out ahead of you.

Also worth noting that Elden Ring isn't just a straight Souls game. It's not as different as Sekiro, but it's not just a clone either. That means that it'll feel harder for a while, until you get the hang of the mechanics and figure out what you're doing.

I am going in day 1, full bareback, no wiki, no nothing. I'mma git gud son.


----------



## wankerness

LostTheTone said:


> You'd be surprised how quickly those wikis show up. If you play like a normal person (ie, struggle with some bosses and sleep sometimes) then the wiki writers will be out ahead of you.
> 
> Also worth noting that Elden Ring isn't just a straight Souls game. It's not as different as Sekiro, but it's not just a clone either. That means that it'll feel harder for a while, until you get the hang of the mechanics and figure out what you're doing.
> 
> I am going in day 1, full bareback, no wiki, no nothing. I'mma git gud son.


I dunno, from what I've heard the game is just harder at least in the early stages. Though maybe it's partly a bunch of writers being lulled into complacency by the starting characters and early gear available in the network test being massively overpowered relative to what made it into the final version.

But, some Souls games also infamously had "game reviewer difficulty" out before the release where everything had like 30% less damage/HP so game reviewers could actually get through it. Wondering if that was the case here, too.

I'm looking at reviews for this thing now, they seem outrageously high. Like, lots of 98/100, 10/10 sorts of things. Maybe that's normal for these games? Regardless, hype levels are extreme. I wonder if that's going to cause a Last Jedi-style backlash as soon as all the people who screech about difficulty settings get a hold of it.

Ex: IGN: "FromSoftware takes the ball that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild got rolling and runs with it, creating a fascinating and dense open world about freedom and exploration above all else, while also somehow managing to seamlessly weave a full-on Dark Souls game into the middle of it. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Elden Ring ended up as one of the most unforgettable gaming experiences I’ve ever had."

Gameinformer: "Elden Ring isn’t just the best game this year; it’s one of the best games ever made."

etc


----------



## Choop

^lol maybe yeah. I'm trying not to really read too much about it or look at it too much because I want it to be fresh, but that's pretty much how I played the first Dark Souls game and it was great. My first character ended up being kind of a mess, but the overall experience was good. I'm mostly more curious than anything about how they translated their typical game design formula into an open-world format.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> ^lol maybe yeah. I'm trying not to really read too much about it or look at it too much because I want it to be fresh, but that's pretty much how I played the first Dark Souls game and it was great. My first character ended up being kind of a mess, but the overall experience was good. I'm mostly more curious than anything about how they translated their typical game design formula into an open-world format.


I started doing that once around 2012 and it was awful, just looking at the expansive character stat screen and trying to make sense of it, and then going to New Londo as my first area (since the game doesn't give you any hints you're supposed to go up the stairs to undead burg first) and not knowing how to kill ghosts. I died very quickly and was like "what the hell, oh well, they said it was hard so this must just be how it is." Then I stumbled through the Burg for a bit, got to the taurus demon, lost a TON of souls due to some weird glitch with my bloodstain going through the wall of the tower where I got squashed by the boss. I promptly quit the game for almost ten years. I'm guessing I wouldn't have nearly that much issue with this thanks to now having a ton of familiarity with all their games, but I did read in multiple reviews that the NPC quests are even more important and obtuse than ever before (like, they block progression to areas sometimes, and some of them just die if you don't talk to them before some unspecified event happens like in DS3, etc, so you have to remember where they all are and periodically check in with them).


----------



## gabito

CanserDYI said:


> is this a Japanese translation thing going on or is it just bad writing?



With Resident Evil games it's usually both. Translations have improved, but the B-movie level dialogues are probably intrinsic to these games.


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> I started doing that once around 2012 and it was awful, just looking at the expansive character stat screen and trying to make sense of it, and then going to New Londo as my first area (since the game doesn't give you any hints you're supposed to go up the stairs to undead burg first) and not knowing how to kill ghosts. I died very quickly and was like "what the hell, oh well, they said it was hard so this must just be how it is." Then I stumbled through the Burg for a bit, got to the taurus demon, lost a TON of souls due to some weird glitch with my bloodstain going through the wall of the tower where I got squashed by the boss. I promptly quit the game for almost ten years. I'm guessing I wouldn't have nearly that much issue with this thanks to now having a ton of familiarity with all their games, but I did read in multiple reviews that the NPC quests are even more important and obtuse than ever before (like, they block progression to areas sometimes, and some of them just die if you don't talk to them before some unspecified event happens like in DS3, etc, so you have to remember where they all are and periodically check in with them).



I had a similarish experience with the first Dark Souls. I knew it was supposed to be hard, but like you I just had no idea how things worked and the game does not try to help. I didn't do THAT badly, and I did manage to kill Taurus Demon, but after that I got walloped by the drake on the bridge and figured "Oh ok, this guy is my next boss" and then spent forever dying just trying to reach him and fighting him like a man.

I eventually came back, with a non-spoiler gamefaq which told me I was going the wrong way, and gave me an idea what scaling was and how to work out characters and I was well away from there.


----------



## wankerness

I've seen multiple commenters on Kotaku articles that bitch about how they couldn't kill the first werewolf in Bloodborne so they quit the game in frustration. For those who haven't played it, you're blatantly supposed to just run away from it cause you don't have a weapon at the time, but the game doesn't tell you to outright so some people just kept throwing themselves at it over and over and quitting in frustration. The games are definitely able to completely confound people that don't approach them with any knowledge. I was never THAT stupid, but I wasn't far off with my first crack at Dark Souls.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> The one thing that puts me off jumping on Elden Ring instantly is that those games always have really, really arcane sidequests that you would never figure out yourself in a million years, and there aren't going to be good wiki guides out there on launch day. On the other hand, this would be the first Soulsborne I played without walkthroughs on my first playthrough, so that could be exciting (or really frustrating). I just read a review stating it was the hardest game from the studio yet so that's not a good sign.



I'm not really into these Soulsborne games... I mean, I beat the original Demon's Souls a few years ago, but that was more than enough for me really. I'm not wiliing to devote myself so much of my time and energy to anything but maybe guitar playing, I find these games exhausting and they require too much dedication. I like everyting else, though: the setting, the "story" and the way it's delivered, the lore, etc. I really like the idea of these games, but not what it takes to play or beat them.

That said, I've just watched some of Elden Ring's footage and read some reviews and damn it looks so fucking good (even on a base PS4) and interesting. I might give it a try in the future, even if I have to read every guide and use every glitch available to beat it as cheesely as possible.


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> I've seen multiple commenters on Kotaku articles that bitch about how they couldn't kill the first werewolf in Bloodborne so they quit the game in frustration. For those who haven't played it, you're blatantly supposed to just run away from it cause you don't have a weapon at the time, but the game doesn't tell you to outright so some people just kept throwing themselves at it over and over and quitting in frustration. The games are definitely able to completely confound people that don't approach them with any knowledge. I was never THAT stupid, but I wasn't far off with my first crack at Dark Souls.



I think the thing is that players don't really get that running away is an option, or going somewhere else is either, unless they get told directly.

Once you have that first moment where the lightbulb goes on and you figure it out, then you are completely fine for the rest of the series. But until then it does feel bad. You're in a fight, but you can't win, and you can't see how you could win, but the game is telling you this is a normal death not a supposed to lose or whatever. You do have to change your mind set, but the early Souls games are terrible at communicating that.

The end of my time in Sekiro ironically came because it was the other way around - When I was stuck on a boss, my Dark Souls brain was telling me that I could get a couple of levels to be more awesome, and that I should be using a shield or trying a different weapon, maybe stripping off all my armour so I could dodge better. And then the game was like "Nah man, you really do just have to parry everything". Which I declined to do. 

I did look at the wiki and discover that the boss had a "weakness" and when I did try it it seemed more plausible to do the boss that way... But I still had to parry everything on the way through. It just felt so bad.

I haven't come back to that game ever - It's just too fast and twitchy. When I play Dark Souls today I feel a sense of mastery; I know everything therefore I can (mostly) beat these tough guys. In Sekiro, even when I was blocking more successfully I did not feel like I was in control, I felt like I was lucky.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> I'm not really into these Soulsborne games... I mean, I beat the original Demon's Souls a few years ago, but that was more than enough for me really. I'm not wiliing to devote myself so much of my time and energy to anything but maybe guitar playing, I find these games exhausting and they require too much dedication. I like everyting else, though: the setting, the "story" and the way it's delivered, the lore, etc. I really like the idea of these games, but not what it takes to play or beat them.
> 
> That said, I've just watched some of Elden Ring's footage and read some reviews and damn it looks so fucking good (even on a base PS4) and interesting. I might give it a try in the future, even if I have to read every guide and use every glitch available to beat it as cheesely as possible.


Dark Souls difficulty is overstated in some ways, almost every boss can be outlevelled and/or strategy cheesed if you're going with a strength build and if you bother to also level your ranged ability (especially dex for bows) you can get through the levels vastly easier since the AI is so stupid you can pick off monsters one by one since the others tend to just sit there dumbly while the one you hit comes after you. It's mainly that you might need to get a skeletal guide that tells you roughly where to go and which NPCs you need to talk to for a first playthrough. 

If you finished Control with the optional bosses and you look up a basic guide of where you're supposed to go, nothing is going to give you too much trouble in Souls games* other than the frustration of runbacks. Which is greatly mitigated if you start with 2 or 3. I would recommend 3 as the best entry point to the series for people that are scared of it. It's hard, sure, but mechanically it's REALLY not as bad as its rep if you read any very basic guides going in (ex how to make a build with a shield and lothric straight sword). 

*DS1 is still going to be frustrating cause it has the most heinous level design in the series with Anor Londo and Sen's Fortress and Tomb of the Giants having stuff that can not be made easy with any amount of gear.

And really, if you got through frickin Demon's Souls you'll be more than fine. That one has by far the most frustrating runbacks of the entire series. Every entry gets progressively more "user-friendly" IMO. Demon's Souls has easy bosses, but the levels are a nightmare, the punishments for death while in "body form" are obscene, and the psychological weight of having to clear the entire level again if you die on the boss made things a lot less fun than in the later games where each game tended to have shorter and shorter runbacks to the boss.

Iron Pineapple's video on Elden Ring suggested that this game has checkpoints right before basically every boss so it really makes death feel like a lot less of an issue. He said it led him to try bosses he didn't think he could beat over and over just cause there was no longer really any punishment for dying (the punishment in other games usually mainly consisting of hollowing, dragon plague or whatever in Sekiro, or lengthy reclears of trash to get back to the boss). So, he said it's definitely the most "accessible" of the series by far. Like, the bosses are still sometimes really hard but the ability to just go somewhere else and find easier places to level up/get new abilities/get new gear is not really there much in most of the other games.


----------



## MFB

The only part of DS1 that I found to be inherently designed as a middle finger to the player was Tomb of The Giants; both getting there, and some of the areas within such as when you find the blacksmith and deal with the wheeling skeletons.


----------



## Leviathus

Just gotta get lucky enough to get a skull lantern before pinwheel. 

EDIT: Or grab the sunlight maggot beforehand, though who'd know on a first playthrough...Man i love DS1's world design.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> Just gotta get lucky enough to get a skull lantern before pinwheel.
> 
> EDIT: Or grab the sunlight maggot beforehand, though who'd know on a first playthrough...Man i love DS1's world design.


I find the skull lantern to be completely unusable especially when dealing with those goddam skeleton dogs. It's a great way to get annihilated. I will got to ANY length to get the sunlight maggot first. But yeah, good luck figuring that out yourself on a first playthrough. You have to donate 30 humanity to an NPC behind a hidden wall, and then know that that opens up some shortcut in a completely different area which has a bug that only shows up if you talked to solaire in the right places at the right time. Couldn't be simpler!!


----------



## wankerness

Finished Horizon Forbidden West's main quest and a fair amount of side content. I definitely liked the first game more. This one's GOOD, but shoots itself in the foot with the ungodly amounts of dialogue. Like, the cutscenes are as omnipresent as a Yakuza game, if not worse, but the writing's at a much lower level than those games and it's an ACTION GAME, so every time they happened I had to resist with all my might not to just skip all the cutscenes. I ended up just skipping all of them on sidequests after a while. It's unbelievable how much NPCs will not shut up. I hate that. The plot is also much more convoluted (introducing additional clones, flying immortal dudes, all the tribes and characters from the first one plus more, a "big bad" tribe leader that ultimately seems like a waste of time, etc). I really like the plot in the first and thought the reveal of Ted Faro as one of the most heinous video game villains of all time despite not even being IN THE GAME was brilliant. This, meh. It's not awful but it's too much.

The gameplay is fantastic and even better than the first. There are a lot of new enemies and a couple are goddam infuriating (acid clawstriders and fire monkeys in particular), but it's all fast and furious even if you're running a build based around as much slowdown and concentration as possible on shots. As with the first, the regular bows are OP to the point where I barely touched any other weapons in beating the game on normal.

And like I said, this game is completely impeccable technically. Load times even when fast-travelling across the entire world tend to be ~2 seconds, framerate in performance mode never goes below 60, detail etc is about the best I've ever seen.

So yeah, if you like the first definitely check it out, but unless you have a lot of patience or interest in the characters, be ready to completely ignore the plot and skip all cutscenes for maximum enjoyment.

The main plot is about 25-30 hours, I think? I had 44 hours on completion but I did a ton of running around doing things like all the enemy tribe camps. I played on normal at all times except a couple times when I'd happen on something really really overpowered like a robot spinosaurus when I was massively underlevelled and would lose a lot of progress if I died. In those cases I flipped it to story mode, which is laughable, takes enemies that hit you for 80% of your health bar a swipe to making them hit you for ~5% of your health, while taking their health to less than 1/4 of what it is on normal.

The world is big, but it's like Ghost of Tsushima big instead of Ubisoft unbelievable bloat. I'd guess it's probably around 1/3-1/2 the size of Ac Valhalla? I consider that a very good thing, for the record. There's still plenty of collectables and activities all over the place so there's tons of busywork, but it's not like Far Cry 6 or AC Valhalla where you feel like you're getting to the end and the game seems to just restart. Repeatedly.


----------



## gabito

Playing Forbidden West. It's pretty good so far.

It looks and runs great on my base PS4, they did a very good job. Like REALLY good.

I like how the characters move and how their faces actually do something besides moving their mouths when having a conversation. No more dead eyes, no more "stand there and read your script, that's enough" like in Bethesda's games. Also the expessions blend perfectly, unlike what happened in Control.

That said, Aloy's expressions sometimes look like they were lifted from a Disney / Pixar movie. I guess that gives another meaning to the Frozen wilds...

I also like that they don't reset all of Aloy powers / weapons at the beginning, like on every God of War and every other game sequel. Instead you have to explain to a friend how to use them, so both you and him learn how to do things during this tutorial. I liked that, it was clever.


----------



## CanserDYI

So uh, I never got around to playing it, but I finally started Skyrim. I love this game, but it's also hilariously buggy.

Cue 10 year old memes and jokes I now understand.


----------



## MFB

gabito said:


> Playing Forbidden West. It's pretty good so far.
> 
> It looks and runs great on my base PS4, they did a very good job. Like REALLY good.



Damn it man, don't tell me that!

Guess I'll have to snag it after I finish up Elden Ring, I was holding out thinking "I bet it's optimized for PS5 and the Pros are doing fine with it, but I'm sure base is a nightmare." I'm wondering how it is on the Slim since that's what I have, guess I'll have to some research to be safe.


----------



## Mathemagician

In a few days Elden Ring. For the first time since DS1 I’m just going to play with no guides and find whatever I find. I’ll worry about quests and achievements on future playthroughs. Now hopefully I stick to that, ‘cause that’s not my style.


----------



## TedEH

Finished with Outer Wilds. Game is good. It's one you can't talk about much without spoiling it in a way that ruins it for prospective players, so I won't say much about it. The premise is straightforward - you have a little spaceship, so go out and explore your little solar system. What you learn while you're out there IS the game, so to describe any of it would be to rob another player of the gameplay. That makes for a pretty unique game, in a good way, but it has the downside that there's no replay value: Someone who has learned everything in the game can just start the game and go right to the end, since there would be no extrinsic motivation to do otherwise. So if ever there was a game to avoid spoiling, it's this one. If you've got 15-20hrs to kill and are curious though, go do it.


----------



## Ralyks

I like Elden Ring…. But I’m also wondering if SoulsBourne games are really for me.

Playing Martha is Dead. This game is mentally draining but enjoyable. And gruesome. Sheesh.

And also, 10 hours in on Cyberpunk 2077 PS5, and not a single glitch or hiccup. And I’m really enjoying my romp through Night City again. I may actually try to 100% the game this time. This is definitely the game that should have been launched originally, and I saw that as someone who really liked and finished the native PS4 version.


----------



## madrigal77

PUBG on Xbox Series X. Been playing a bit of the Cyberpunk 2077 demo too.


----------



## WarMachine

Chrono Trigger.
Yeah I know, old but still great. 
I played it up to the point that you bring Crono back and had to put it down for a bit.


----------



## TedEH

In a sort of weird playing-lots-of-games limbo where a bunch of things are in progress now but none have my full attention.

- I'm about a third of the way through Donkey Kong Country (on an actual SNES, not the classic or an emulator). I tend to play until the difficulty curve gets frustrating then do something else and come back to it later.
- Same boat with Kirby & The Amazing Mirror. One of the better Kirby titles so far. Not quite as good as Super Star, but it's close to it.
- And I started a new file on BotW just because every time someone talks about it, I want to play it.


----------



## Werecow

TedEH said:


> - And I started a new file on BotW just because every time someone talks about it, I want to play it.



That just made me think of the Deus Ex meme of the same vein, and now i'm about to start up the original game. I guess it's true.


----------



## TedEH

Crap, now I have to go install that too.


----------



## WarMachine

TedEH said:


> - And I started a new file on BotW just because every time someone talks about it, I want to play it.


I get ya dude, the struggle is real.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I'm about to start the 3rd/4 ancient beasts in BotW - already cleared the elephant and the chameleon, gonna go bird then camel next. I'm getting sidetracked by too much side stuff and getting a bit burnt out so I think I'm gonna just push through the main stuff. I unlocked all the towers so I have the full map, got a good amount of shrines cleared without hunting them down, and I think I have 7/12 memories unlocked, so just gotta give 'er. 

In 4 wankerness quote replies me and gives way too much exposition on what I haven't experienced yet and spoils it for me.


----------



## gabito

Just finished Horizon Forbidden West. It's a *good* but not great game, I think? I mean, I liked it, but it's lacking something the first one had.

This one is a technical marvel, though: I played it on a base PS4 and besides some geometry pop-in it runs great. Didn't run into obvious FPS drops (not that I care much about that, sorry), and load times are really fast for an open world game running on an old system using a mechanical hard drive (around 20 or 30 seconds tops to load a save file or fast travel, sometimes way less, take that RDR 2!).

Except for the story, everything is the same as in the first one but better: better textures, more polish, more atention to detail, some new weapons and tools, etc.

I liked that they have a kind of Mass Effect 2 thing running where you have to make some friends, they are all together somewhere, and you can have conversations and check on things after every major mission. That adds greatly to character development, which I think the first game lacked a lot. I mean, I would run into people in this game and except for Erend and Sylens I couldn't remember anyone's names or faces, or even if they were part of the first game. The first game was all about Aloy, and fuck everybody else. This one's more of a team effort, you get to know some of the characters. There isn't a thing like ME2's loyalty missions, but you even get to do some missions for / with them.

Beware though, character development is better here, but you will not find some Mordin Solus (or Garrus, or whatever) level characters or backstories. They're just better than they were before. Acting's good, the animations are good, I don't really like Aloy I think? She's OK, a super driven and (obviously) capable woman, but she didn't click with me.

There is an attempt to make this game some kind of Witcher 3 thing gameplay-wise, I guess: they have their Gwent-type game, contracts, bandit camps, and some reviews mentioned that there were some interesting side missions... and I wholeheartedly disagree. They're OK at best, but not Witcher 3 level good. They're not fetch quests, though (*there are* fetch quests, but just in a separate mission category).

I liked the story for the most part, but it's absolutely not as good as the first game's. Specially its delivery. Almost every sequel is the same: you have a good premise for the first game / movie / book. A mistery, problem, whatever. Once the mistery is solved, there's... nothing? It's like writers always struggle to find something interesting afterwards. I couldn't stop playing HZD because I found the setting was really interesting, they had a clever take on post apocalypse, *I wanted* to know what happened to the world, and they delivered the information bit by bit until the end. I didn't care much about the characters (or even the gameplay, I'm kind of tired of open world games and having to fight things all the time), but the story kept me going.

The story here is... something. There are like, I think, 5000 plot twists (most are a let-down)? Five millon diferent tribes you have to interact with? Immortal enemies from outer space (but they are really from Earth... the same people that left on a spaceship, THE SAME PEOPLE!)? And then some digital mind hive chasing after them and set on destroying Earth? It's like that they ran out of ideas or, better yet, they had a lot of ideas and used all of them. I mean, in ME you had to save the whole galaxy, but I wasn't expecting them to escalate things like that here lol. What's next, Aloy fighting a black hole all by herself? The Big Bang maybe? I think Kotaku's review put it best: "Sometimes the question is better than the answer".

It's not really hard to follow, though. The story is simple, but there's just a lot of stuff there. A LOT.

Oh, and I get it: CEOs are bad. Trillionaires are really bad. And totally-not-Jeff-Bezos is the worst (but he dies really easily) now that Ted Faro is not there anymore (but wait, he *is* there... kinda). Not-Elon-Musk's fight was tough, though. I guess I'm not buying a Tesla anytime soon. Not that I disagree with the sentiment about egomaniac despicable asshole billionaires, but come on... it was all a bit on the nose, eh? Oh: I liked Carrie-Anne Moss' acting as Tilda.


There's an obvious set up for a sequel at the end. I don't know why, but I didn't like that. I'm not really interested in playing a sequel this time. Let them be happy with their robots for once, and maybe have a pig for a pet. I mean, there are like 5 different animal species now, it's that or a fox... or maybe a vulture. There are so few animals, what do they eat? Nuts and bolts?


----------



## StevenC

I've been playing old Mario Karts in anticipation of the new DLC. Here is my definitive ranking:

1 8D 
2 Double Dash 
3 DS 
4 Wii 
5 SMK 
6 7 
7 64 
8 GBA



wankerness said:


> I really like the plot in the first and thought the reveal of Ted Faro as one of the most heinous video game villains of all time despite not even being IN THE GAME was brilliant.


Ted Faro wasn't a heinous villain, he was a conceited idiot and that ending was cheap as hell.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Ted Faro wasn't a heinous villain, he was a conceited idiot and that ending was cheap as hell.


Yeah, you with that game is like me with the ending to The Mist. We get that you hate it, but it seems like most everyone else likes it.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Yeah, you with that game is like me with the ending to The Mist. We get that you hate it, but it seems like most everyone else likes it.


I am 100% convinced this is a conspiracy.


----------



## StevenC

I'd like to revise my earlier ranking. Mario Kart Super Circuit is a technical marvel; Mario Kart 64 is just a load of bullshit.


----------



## wankerness

I've never played either. I never even HEARD of super circuit, had to search for it. That's the GBA one! I take it it's much better looking than Super Mario Kart or something?

I played a lot of Super Mario Kart and then a fair amount of the Gamecube one, didn't play another until the Switch version. Weirdly I played a lot of Diddy Kong Racing on N64 but never had Mario Kart 64. DKR must be one of the only successful Mario Kart clones ever, huh?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Crossed Lost Judgment off the list. 

Overall much better than the first Judgment game, but really more of the same you'd expect from Tales of Kamurocho. But better is better.

The story is more meatier, since the characters are now comfortable in their groove so they can expand a bit more. You're still required to have played the first game, so if you haven't warmed up to Yagami, this game won't convince you. The central theme of high school bullying hits pretty hard too, since the game does everything it can to point out all the social and emotional consequences that come from it. Which in turn takes play in the other theme of 'distorted justice' and clashing ideology. Definitely one of the more mature plots in the medium. And it doesn't hold back on the gore either. Right off the bat, the opening scene is almost something you'd see in Zodiac or Silence Of The Lambs, and it gets more disturbing as the game goes on. It's not for the squeamish. 

Of course the game doesn't forget it's roots as a Yakuza game, so wild flailing tone shifts, cultural barriers and loads and loads of goofiness is still a plenty in the side content. The School Stories replaces the old Friends system and as I've said before, adds a whole slew of mini games that can warrant it's own spinoff. It's also J-Drama as balls, but it ends in a satisfying payoff. Some fun characters here and there though some of them are mere background filler (the E-Sports and Gambling cases), which is expected for such a big sidequest. There's a few extra sidequests that actually had me in hysterics. 

Going back to Yagami, I'll continue to defend his place in the canon. Unlike Kiryu and Ichiban (the latter leaning as hard as possible to being a hero in every sense of the word), Yagami is a broken man, born from an immoral upbringing and constantly struggling with his sense of what justice should be and how it weighs him down as his story goes. It's right of a noir crime thriller, albeit through a Japanese Drama filter, but a grounded change from the usual suspects. Though of course the wild tone shifts can either make him more humane or undermine his arc. 

As for the gameplay...

It's back to 3 fighting styles (4 if you count DLC), and it's a much needed addition. The Snake style is the most fun of the lot, allowing you to disarm thugs as well as using counters. The 4th style is the Boxer minigame extracted to the main system. And with the new moves and mechanical tweaks, the game suddenly turns to Tekken and you can break fights with a well timed launch and a semi infinite juggle. Though it requires you to constantly switch styles during the combo, so I appreciate these kind of intricate fighting game mechanics thrown in.

Thank God the key mechanics are gone. Though in place is a photograph mini game where you have to capture the perfect photo evidence, it's still crap but at least less contrived and happens less often. 

The skateboard is a godsend to speed travel time. Though having the actual skating game largely outside the School quests is an odd choice. Aside from moving the plot forward, I never played it once.

Yagami replaced his pinball machine to a full functioning Sega Master System, which is a massive distraction if you have nostalgia for the console. And while, I did clock a substantial amount of time on Alex Kidd in Miracle World and a bit of Maze Hunter 3D and Sagaia (Darius 2), I didn't get all the games since Secret Command required to beat Amon, aka clear everything, and I lost patience with the VR and Drone races. 

Yeah it's more of the same, but it's a welcome growth for the spinoff series. 

I probably should play Elden Ring like everyone else, but I still have that Lodoss Metroidvania game to start soon. That and the Kaito DLC was announced for the end of the month so I'm not off the Lost Judgment train yet....


----------



## gabito

How unlucky for the Horizon games to be released just before BOTW first, and Elden Ring now.

Better luck next time, maybe it'll be GTA VI's turn.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I've never played either. I never even HEARD of super circuit, had to search for it. That's the GBA one! I take it it's much better looking than Super Mario Kart or something?
> 
> I played a lot of Super Mario Kart and then a fair amount of the Gamecube one, didn't play another until the Switch version. Weirdly I played a lot of Diddy Kong Racing on N64 but never had Mario Kart 64. DKR must be one of the only successful Mario Kart clones ever, huh?


Yeah, had Super Circuit as a kid. It really is a good looking game for the hardware it was on, and the sprite work is great. Not sure exactly where it is, but after I dig it out it's next on the list. Though that might also require finding a SP/DS charger, as I think my Lite has a broken d-pad. Don't think I want to buy that on the eShop.

Super Circuit or Double Dash was the first one I owned, and I've played all of them to death since then. Except 7 because it's not very good. The first one I played was 64 when I spent a couple of weeks in hospital and they had an N64 in the children's ward playroom.


----------



## TedEH

8 deluxe is on sale right now, which would be tempting if I had company often enough to actually play it.

In other news - BotW continues to be the video game equivalent of comfort food for me.


----------



## kasterzanayed

I had to take a break from gaming. Usually, I spend 3-4 hours every day playing Call of Duty. That’s the way to relax after busy work day for me. I sit on the couch with my roommate, eat junk food, and shoot the shit out of aggressive orcas. Sometimes I even fall asleep while I’m gaming. Recently, I started to doubt if that is a good time to spend. I’m trying to quit gaming, but that’s not easy. I still play simple card games like https://online-solitaire.com/spider-solitaire to reduce stress after work.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> 8 deluxe is on sale right now, which would be tempting if I had company often enough to actually play it.
> 
> In other news - BotW continues to be the video game equivalent of comfort food for me.


My friend code is always open


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Spent some time on Record Of Lodoss Wars: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth... and that's the last time I'll be calling that game with it's title from here on.... and it's a cozy type of Metroidvania. By cozy, I mean it's more or less Symphony of the Night, right down to the moonwalking. Though it's not as solid as Symphony nor Bloodstained, or any Igarashi game. 

The visuals are rather confusing, even the basic menu is odd to navigate and some poorly designed environments, but at least it's fun, solid, and at times hard as balls. So it's a nice addition to the genre.


----------



## narad

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Spent some time on Record Of Lodoss Wars: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth... and that's the last time I'll be calling that game with it's title from here on.... and it's a cozy type of Metroidvania. By cozy, I mean it's more or less Symphony of the Night, right down to the moonwalking. Though it's not as solid as Symphony nor Bloodstained, or any Igarashi game.



That's crazy. It honestly looks just like a re-skin:







I'm not sure it can even be called a Metroidvania when it's so much a Castlevania.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

narad said:


> That's crazy. It honestly looks just like a re-skin:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure it can even be called a Metroidvania when it's so much a Castlevania.



It's more or less the same as how Axiom Verge is jus Super Metroid.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Spent some time on Record Of Lodoss Wars: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth... and that's the last time I'll be calling that game with it's title from here on.... and it's a cozy type of Metroidvania. By cozy, I mean it's more or less Symphony of the Night, right down to the moonwalking. Though it's not as solid as Symphony nor Bloodstained, or any Igarashi game.
> 
> The visuals are rather confusing, even the basic menu is odd to navigate and some poorly designed environments, but at least it's fun, solid, and at times hard as balls. So it's a nice addition to the genre.


How's the map design/music? If those are good I might check it out. I LOVE those games, even the GBA/DS ones that people like less (ex Harmony of Dissonance).


----------



## Tree

Not much free time to play lately, but the obvious one being Elden Ring when I've got a spare hour here and there.

Also, been playing a fair amount of Dead By Daylight with the lady. As jank as that game is, it's surprisingly addictive.

Speaking of jank; we were also playing Chameleon Twist not too long ago to test out running Retroarch on the Xbox One . My N64 needs some repairs so it was the perfect time to test since my carts are all just sitting there.


----------



## gabito

It seems Elden Ring killed this thread. Guitar players are a masochistic bunch.

Honestly, there's not much I want to play until God of War Ragnarok is released. After that, I'm not looking forward for anything but maybe GTA VI. So maybe by 2030, I guess...


----------



## BlackMastodon

Tree said:


> Not much free time to play lately, but the obvious one being Elden Ring when I've got a spare hour here and there.
> 
> Also, been playing a fair amount of Dead By Daylight with the lady. As jank as that game is, it's surprisingly addictive.
> 
> Speaking of jank; we were also playing Chameleon Twist not too long ago to test out running Retroarch on the Xbox One . My N64 needs some repairs so it was the perfect time to test since my carts are all just sitting there.


Oh man, Chameleon Twist was great back in the day! I have no idea how it holds up but I'm nostalgic as hell for that game.


----------



## Tree

BlackMastodon said:


> Oh man, Chameleon Twist was great back in the day! I have no idea how it holds up but I'm nostalgic as hell for that game.



It’s tons of fun for how short the game is. It’s one of those that’s typical of it’s era, where it’s not a legitimately *good *game, but it ticks all the right boxes for a fun experience. 

I can’t shake the feeling that Chameleon Twist started it’s life as some other IP, but then the project got cancelled so they shoehorned the whole Alice in Wonderland and Chameleon stuff on top of it so as not to lose the work they already did.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished up Lodoss: Alice Through The Windshield Glass.



wankerness said:


> How's the map design/music? If those are good I might check it out. I LOVE those games, even the GBA/DS ones that people like less (ex Harmony of Dissonance).



While it does it's best to copy SOTN's homework, it's a lot less substantial. Sure turning the map upside down was cool to extend gameplay, but Deedlit has only 6 major areas and the game is over by 4 hours. Speaking of maps, there a few nifty aesthetic designs here and there but not much to write home about. I couldn't help feel that it still feels semi linear, in the more Metroid than Vania. You veer off to a new direction it often is a short diversion to a power up, locked door rather than a whole new area, often than not you're backtracking back to the main path, so it makes the world much smaller. 

Music is alright. Nothing that made me rush out to youtube to check the OST unlike anything by Michiru Yamane, it's more just there. 

The whole dual elemental mechanic fresh off Ikaruga's homework makes the gameplay deeper to some degree. Wind makes you float, Fire makes you stronger etc. Though it makes the game easier since you can power them up and if you get hit, you can auto heal by switching elements. There's more elements but they're relegated to collectible spells and most of the time you won't be using any of them outside your starting Light spell, which is cheap, strong and homes in to enemies. Grab the spells along ranged weapons (boomerang, shuriken etc) and you can bum rush every boss in the game. 

Story... well I guess it helps if you know the Lodoss lore, but even then it's nothing special. Then again, neither was Bloodstained but we all enjoyed that as a non Castlevania Castlevania greatest hits compilation. 

If you want a bite sized kiddy version of SOTN, then I suppose Lodoss: Do Wah Deedlit Deedlit Dum Deedlit Do is worth a look. Just keep the expectations low. Otherwise, ROTN SOTN Robots still exist and still worth replaying.


----------



## TedEH

A while back, I inherited some old games from a friend, so I've been digging through some of those. Fired up Stubbs the Zombie and getting a kick out of it. It's very early-2000s feeling - both in terms of the generic gameplay, but also in the unrestrained sense of humour. Very linear and will never win any game design awards, but it's some decent dumb fun.


----------



## Tree

TedEH said:


> A while back, I inherited some old games from a friend, so I've been digging through some of those. Fired up Stubbs the Zombie and getting a kick out of it. It's very early-2000s feeling - both in terms of the generic gameplay, but also in the unrestrained sense of humour. Very linear and will never win any game design awards, but it's some decent dumb fun.


I believe there was a reboot, or remaster of Stubbs within the last year or two. I’ve never played either myself, but it may be something to look into if you’re enjoying it.


----------



## TedEH

Yeh I saw what looked like a steam port - but that would cost money, and I got this one for free, hah. I mostly picked it so that I could try out an OG Xbox I recently fixed up.


----------



## Tree

Free>any amount of money always 

OG Xboxes are pretty rad on many accounts. Especially when you get into modding/homebrew.


----------



## TedEH

I have a second xbox that I kinda want to use to try out installing a mod chip or something, since the HDD + disc drives in it are dead, but it otherwise boots fine.


----------



## bastardbullet

It's been almost 2 months since i've finished returnal but i guess i'm still under the influence. Probably it was one of the best games i came across in 10+ years, now i'm counting the days for the ascension expansion. Also, pretty much enjoyed the deathloop for it's highly nostalgic vibe referring to dishonored and maybe bioshock a little. It was also a lot fun to raid other players or getting raided by them. I guess the roguelike theme is kind of a new black thing for me and currently i'm loving it.

Mortal shell is next on my list.


----------



## Tree

bastardbullet said:


> It's been almost 2 months since i've finished returnal but i guess i'm still under the influence. Probably it was one of the best games i came across in 10+ years, now i'm counting the days for the ascension expansion. Also, pretty much enjoyed the deathloop for it's highly nostalgic vibe referring to dishonored and maybe bioshock a little. It was also a lot fun to raid other players or getting raided by them. I guess the roguelike theme is kind of a new black thing for me and currently i'm loving it.
> 
> Mortal shell is next on my list.



Mortal Shell is really cool, but super short. Also, no spoilers, but there’s a “shell” that’s basically a game breaking easy mode. If you happen to find it early on you’ll steamroll the game. Otherwise it can be relatively punishing/challenging. In a good way of course


----------



## bastardbullet

Tree said:


> Mortal Shell is really cool, but super short. Also, no spoilers, but there’s a “shell” that’s basically a game breaking easy mode. If you happen to find it early on you’ll steamroll the game. Otherwise it can be relatively punishing/challenging. In a good way of course


Thank you for the hint, i'll look around for it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

finally getting around to uncharted 3 and 4.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> finally getting around to uncharted 3 and 4.


I loved 3, kinda didn't like 4 that much thanks to the whole game being about Nathan's brother, who I didn't like as much as all the characters from the first three. But man, the ending is great. And the gameplay is better than the previous. I'm a little curious to replay 4 with the PS5 upgrade, but eh, I'll wait for it to be on sale.


----------



## wankerness

Tree said:


> Mortal Shell is really cool, but super short. Also, no spoilers, but there’s a “shell” that’s basically a game breaking easy mode. If you happen to find it early on you’ll steamroll the game. Otherwise it can be relatively punishing/challenging. In a good way of course


I got really, really frustrated with that game right at the beginning and quit before finding this. The fact you can't heal was infuriating to me considering how many enemies you'd fight and how the combat is arguably harder and clunkier than DS. Maybe I'll look up a brief guide so I can get started with it.


----------



## Ralyks

No matter what I try to play, I get drawn back to Cyberpunk 2077. I'm currently 22 hours into my PS5 playthrough and I'm not far into the main story at all. Meanwhile I finished three story on PS4 In like 30 hours. I'm just motivated to do everything this time around.

That said, have Persona 4 Arena Ultimax downloading at home for PS4, if anyone else plays it. Hat or on PS3. This might be the time I finally try to get good at a fighting game.


----------



## TedEH

Ralyks said:


> No matter what I try to play, I get drawn back to Cyberpunk 2077


They took a lot of flak, but I honestly think that game accomplishes a lot of things - and building a world that is, at least to some tastes, compelling, is one of those things.


----------



## StevenC

The new Mario Kart tracks slap!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I probably should play Elden Ring like everyone else



And I did. And per usual From MO, dying a lot. I'll probably have this as my pick up and play game (what I usually do with Soulsbournes) until Kaito Files and Chrono Cross become available.

EDIT: Looks like Nier Replicant Ver: 5318008 is 50% off. Dammit Squenix. Looks like I'll be playing that damn gardening minigame again.


----------



## Tree

wankerness said:


> I got really, really frustrated with that game right at the beginning and quit before finding this. The fact you can't heal was infuriating to me considering how many enemies you'd fight and how the combat is arguably harder and clunkier than DS. Maybe I'll look up a brief guide so I can get started with it.


Yeah, the beginning hours of the game are definitely frustrating. The shell I was referring to is intended for the endgame and that’s more or less where you’ll find it. I didn’t get it until I was halfway through the game. 

The healing items respawn after a set period of time, I forget how long. But, you can get a pretty efficient farming route going once you learn how to take on the mobs. There’s also a merchant that sells some healing stuff at “firelink shrine”. 

It’s not at all a perfect souls clone, but it’s the only non-From one that at least nails the weight and atmosphere. The story is really uninteresting though.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> And I did. And per usual From MO, dying a lot. I'll probably have this as my pick up and play game (what I usually do with Soulsbournes) until Kaito Files and Chrono Cross become available.
> 
> EDIT: Looks like Nier Replicant Ver: 5318008 is 50% off. Dammit Squenix. * Looks like I'll be playing that damn gardening minigame again. *


Don't do it, it's terrible. Unless you're *really *trying to go for platinum. I can say with 100% certainty my enjoyment of that game was decreased greatly by doing the goddam gardening minigame that took approximately 3 weeks to finish and also grinding out every single weapon upgrade. Nier Automata has such QOL improvements when it comes to the grind and even that game has a TON of grinding.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Don't do it, it's terrible. Unless you're *really *trying to go for platinum. I can say with 100% certainty my enjoyment of that game was decreased greatly by doing the goddam gardening minigame that took approximately 3 weeks to finish and also grinding out every single weapon upgrade. Nier Automata has such QOL improvements when it comes to the grind and even that game has a TON of grinding.



I don't care for trying to go for platinum trophies. I just wouldn't mind playing Nier again after a while. Besides, having the younger shonen protagonist in Replicant as opposed to the old man in Gestalt does alter the narriative in subtle parts of the game, so it'd be interesting to experience that perspective.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I don't care for trying to go for platinum trophies. I just wouldn't mind playing Nier again after a while. Besides, having the younger shonen protagonist in Replicant as opposed to the old man in Gestalt does alter the narriative in subtle parts of the game, so it'd be interesting to experience that perspective.


I bolded the line about the gardening minigame, skip that!!! Time-gated things in a game that requires multiple playthroughs would be awful. The game itself is great. It's just too bad you need to play through the second half of the game FOUR TIMES to get to the new content.

I like the character design and sorta just prefer the vibe of dad-Nier to the brother one, but the time jump makes a lot more sense with brother-Nier. I haven't gone back to the 360 version since playing the remake, I'm kind of curious about how the repeat playthroughs play since your character in that sounds like less of an impetuous shithead than your character in Nier Replicant. I can't remember the voiceacting for example.


----------



## Werecow

I've been having a go at God Of War, and honestly i've found it a bit boring and a chore to play so far. I've been catching myself sighing at the prospect of another fight starting. Trying to decide if i should just drop it for a while and try again another time, because at the moment i'm tempted to replay old games i've played many times before over this.

I've also been playing Black Mesa, replaying again but this time to see what they did with Xen. I'm still really impressed with how they've kept the feeling of Half-Life intact, while improving the visuals so much. The atmosphere feels as good as when i first played it, which is quite a feat with how old games can disappoint after such a long time.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I've been having a go at God Of War, and honestly i've found it a bit boring and a chore to play so far. I've been catching myself sighing at the prospect of another fight starting. Trying to decide if i should just drop it for a while and try again another time, because at the moment i'm tempted to replay old games i've played many times before over this.
> 
> I've also been playing Black Mesa, replaying again but this time to see what they did with Xen. I'm still really impressed with how they've kept the feeling of Half-Life intact, while improving the visuals so much. The atmosphere feels as good as when i first played it, which is quite a feat with how old games can disappoint after such a long time.


Are you talking about God of War the 2017 game, or God of War the ancient PS2 edgelord thing? The modern one took me a while to get into. I hated the wallowy combat and thought it was really boring until I started gaining more abilities. Then I got REALLY into it.


----------



## WarMachine

narad said:


> That's crazy. It honestly looks just like a re-skin:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure it can even be called a Metroidvania when it's so much a Castlevania.


Not that it's an entirely *bad* thing but dayum, Alucard vs Andras from Portrait of Ruin.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Are you talking about God of War the 2017 game, or God of War the ancient PS2 edgelord thing? The modern one took me a while to get into. I hated the wallowy combat and thought it was really boring until I started gaining more abilities. Then I got REALLY into it.


I guess the 2017 one. I'm PC only and it's only just come out on that.
I've just let the Light Elves back into their temple thing. The puzzles have been ok, just the combat is way too hack n slash for me so far (that and rolling around is not my thing really). I was hoping the ranged combat would turn out to be more fun, but it's pretty basic. I've also found the story a bit meh so far, and getting a bit annoyed with how he treats his son. I guess that side is yet to pick up though.
I think i might put it on hold. It was probably a mistake to play it after and while still playing Sekiro.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’m debating getting the newest King of Fighters game, but then again may just wait for Street Fighter 6 to come in. Idk, I really liked parts of 5, and a LOT of the characters/designs. But it didn’t land with me as well as 4 did. Could have just been a timing thing where I had more free time for 4, idk.


----------



## Choop

Mathemagician said:


> I’m debating getting the newest King of Fighters game, but then again may just wait for Street Fighter 6 to come in. Idk, I really liked parts of 5, and a LOT of the characters/designs. But it didn’t land with me as well as 4 did. Could have just been a timing thing where I had more free time for 4, idk.



3D models in KOF still look real weird to me -- the animations have this constant herky jerky quality haha. Going to be interesting to see what the competition is like for it at EVO this year, though.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I guess the 2017 one. I'm PC only and it's only just come out on that.
> I've just let the Light Elves back into their temple thing. The puzzles have been ok, just the combat is way too hack n slash for me so far (that and rolling around is not my thing really). I was hoping the ranged combat would turn out to be more fun, but it's pretty basic. I've also found the story a bit meh so far, and getting a bit annoyed with how he treats his son. I guess that side is yet to pick up though.
> I think i might put it on hold. It was probably a mistake to play it after and while still playing Sekiro.


God of War's combat is definitely inferior to Sekiro's, but it gets a lot better. I'd suggest turning the difficulty up and paying more attention to those rune abilities or whatever they're called (equippable special moves). Also combat gets a lot more involved once BOY starts learning more moves and you can manage that. And a different weapon you get like 2/3 of the way through the game really makes things more varied. If you hate rolling, you can use a shield, I think I remember shield parrying being a thing.


----------



## TedEH

Finished with Stubbs the Zombie.



Spoiler



I guess there's not a ton to say about this one, but I'll still use the spoiler tag just to keep in the habit of not polluting the thread with these giant mini-review posts.

In short: It's a very "early 2000s" feeling OG Xbox game, where you stumble through linear levels and eat brains. You get a small handful of abilities or tools, but none of them change the core of the game dramatically. What the tools do isn't really called-out either, but they're simple enough that you intuit pretty quickly that most actions result in your victims also becoming zombies which end up balancing out the tons of enemies the game throws at you in the guise of "difficulty".

The good:
- There's a lot of charm in the zombie theme.
- Stubbs himself is kinda likeable.
- The game has a sense of humour that doesn't hold back.
- The VO for people getting their brains eaten is really amusing.
- There's a couple of bosses that I think make clever use of the game's mechanics.

The less-good:
- Linear is ok, but this game is VERY linear. Painfully linear. There's no off-the-beaten path or exploration or secret hunting or extra items or anything. It's just bare-bones make-it-to-the-end levels. That's all you get.
- I think the above is why, to a lot of people, the game feels short. There's not a lot of "content" in the game.
- The humour is pretty brazen at times, which doesn't bother me, but for some, it might be dismissed as "insensitive" or "offensive" or charitably "a product of an earlier period of gaming".
- There's a greenish-grey old-timey screen filter over a lot of the game that makes things look muddy and dark and gross at times.

It's decent dumb fun, but has aged pretty poorly from game design perspective.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

After the last PS5 update my console will not recognize controllers, had to call PSN support and they are sending a repair box for me to ship it for repair 

First I thought it was the controller, bought a new one, nothing!


----------



## StevenC




----------



## HungryGuitarStudent

gabito said:


> It seems Elden Ring killed this thread. Guitar players are a masochistic bunch.


Hahah! I’m definitely one of them. That being said, what’s so cool about Elden Ring is that it isn’t linear, therefore you’re never stuck in an area or boss fight. You can always go explore the world, and it is huge and filled with stuff to do.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

HungryGuitarStudent said:


> Hahah! I’m definitely one of them. That being said, what’s so cool about Elden Ring is that it isn’t linear, therefore you’re never stuck in an area or boss fight. You can always go explore the world, and it is huge and filled with stuff to do.



Part of the appeal of Elden Ring, and Breath of the Wild for that matter (hell, even the Xenoblade series), is that these games don't care if the player miss or overlook anything. 

Most of the triple A sandboxes insist in revealing as much stuff on the map as possible to the player. You can't help that despite such an large world, you're being hand held through the mini plot missions with everything tutorialised in fear of missing out all the content. I haven't played the new Horizon game but apparently the main character even mumbles that the player should veer off the critical path. It all feels constraining as if you constantly marking off an obligatory checklist. Granted I had fun with these kind of games back with Saints Row 2-4 and Just Cause 2, but it's more of the same. Elden Ring and BOTW allows the player to progress freely and organically as the player sees fit. 

I know everyone's sick of me ragging on about the Yakuza games, but the series really is the patron saint of not caring whether the player misses out on side content or not. The elaborate underwater Virtua Cop style rail shooter, and Mario Kart clone minigames are completely optional. Hell I had no idea there was a House Of The Dead rail shooter in Lost Judgment because I didn't bother visiting one of the Club Sega arcade buildings. 

These kind of games have a lot of confidence to have their world speak for themselves and let the player off the leech and go nuts. Elden Ring made feel old memories of playing Ultima Underworld 1 back in the day. Exploring different areas, dying a lot and actively finding alternatives to the critical path. It's the same feeling as how Dark Souls felt like a new take on the Metroidvania genre. 

Yeah yeah, Elden Ring, BOTW, Yakuza and Xenoblade are all Japanese developed games, but then again, so was Shenmue; the godfather of all Japanese open world games, complete with the confidence. And those games suck tremendously.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> God of War's combat is definitely inferior to Sekiro's, but it gets a lot better. I'd suggest turning the difficulty up and paying more attention to those rune abilities or whatever they're called (equippable special moves). Also combat gets a lot more involved once BOY starts learning more moves and you can manage that. And a different weapon you get like 2/3 of the way through the game really makes things more varied. If you hate rolling, you can use a shield, I think I remember shield parrying being a thing.


Thankyou. I got some shield skills and switched over to almost completely parrying now. Found a couple runes that are like ice laser abilities that make it more fun as well. Definitely a bit more enjoyable now.

I'm still wondering if Sekiro has forever ruined other fighting games for me though hahaha.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> Thankyou. I got some shield skills and switched over to almost completely parrying now. Found a couple runes that are like ice laser abilities that make it more fun as well. Definitely a bit more enjoyable now.
> 
> I'm still wondering if Sekiro has forever ruined other fighting games for me though hahaha.


Sekiro's combat is really unique and extremely polished, and the difficulty curve combined with the way the parrying works makes it way more satisfying to cleanly beat a boss than in any other game I've ever played. I think there are plenty of other games with good combat, but nothing quite like it. Just don't play it for a while and maybe you'll forget what it was like!


----------



## Mathemagician

Elden Ring made me like the game when I died a bit to the first proper “boss” and decided to go poke around and then I realized that I had just skipped the entire area/dungeon. Like all of it.

Then I went off in another direction and came back to that boss a good 20 hours later at the “proper” level and just barely beat it. Made me laugh that they would just do that.

That game just does not give AF about me.


----------



## LostTheTone

Mathemagician said:


> Elden Ring made me like the game when I died a bit to the first proper “boss” and decided to go poke around and then I realized that I had just skipped the entire area/dungeon. Like all of it.
> 
> Then I went off in another direction and came back to that boss a good 20 hours later at the “proper” level and just barely beat it. Made me laugh that they would just do that.
> 
> That game just does not give AF about me.



In theory the whole series does that.

In theory.

The addition of a big open world is both a blessing and a curse to the Souls series, IMHO. In the old games you could always wander off and explore, and there was even some stuff to find. Like, you can just go to Pinwheel first, if you want and he's not that tough; theres a whole deal about doing Four Kings early. But in general you can feel where the progression is supposed to be, and the enemies tend to be reasonably well balanced for you.

That's... Kinda not the case for Elden Ring. There are those dungeons laying around which just say "You figure out when you're supposed to do me", and there are _loads _of them. And since they are optional you can just ignore them, and in fact you can ignore a lot of bosses, so if they are just frustrating you can forget they were ever there. But you can also stumble upon them at way too high a level and breeze through them. In my first playthrough I hit up Redmane Castle very early (before I had done Godrick) and it was fucking rough, but it gave out good souls so I got a bunch of levels. Then I breezed Godrick, and ran all the way through to Renalla within an hour or two, including killing her the first time I fought her. It felt... Just off.

The problem of having so much optional stuff and so much open space is that you don't really get that feeling of "git gud". You can always just come back later. I feel like I'm spiraling around, not pushing through.


----------



## Mathemagician

In that case you can just limit yourself/make yourself play through the story by roughly following the path. It’s open ended like that. I’ve kept my HP low to make sure there’s some challenge. Because with 65+ INT I’m wrecking face otherwise.


----------



## gabito

I'm re playing MGS Ground Zeroes / The Phantom Pain. This time on the PS4 (last time it was on a PS3).

Good game, still the best gameplay in the series. And the story and characters are still shit for MGS's standards. It's a shame, really.


----------



## Choop

gabito said:


> I'm re playing MGS Ground Zeroes / The Phantom Pain. This time on the PS4 (last time it was on a PS3).
> 
> Good game, still the best gameplay in the series. And the story and characters are still shit for MGS's standards. It's a shame, really.



This is on my list to play, still. I have so many big open-worldy type games in my backlog. Not sure how I'm going to have time to get through them all... @[email protected]


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Sekiro's combat is really unique and extremely polished, and the difficulty curve combined with the way the parrying works makes it way more satisfying to cleanly beat a boss than in any other game I've ever played. I think there are plenty of other games with good combat, but nothing quite like it. Just don't play it for a while and maybe you'll forget what it was like!


Part of my problem is that it's not a genre i naturally lean towards. It took Sekiro for me to just love a game purely for the fighting. I liked Jedi Fallen Order beforehand, but that was also for the adventure and story elements. With Sekiro now, i play over and over just for the fighting, attempting no-hit kills on bosses and trying to get that no-death playthrough i'm close to.
I've watched extended parts of playthroughs of all the Dark Souls and Elden Ring, and i have zero interest in trying them. They're way too slow / don't have the same ferocity in the fighting, and don't have the sense that even when you're defending you're utterly dominating and still causing harm to your opponent. I was hoping there would be a "Sekiro class" in Elden Ring that let you deflect almost any move, but from what i can tell it's 100% Souls combat. Makes me a bit sad i can't move on to them.


----------



## Mathemagician

Man how is Sekiro the one FromSoft game I haven’t played?


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> Part of my problem is that it's not a genre i naturally lean towards. It took Sekiro for me to just love a game purely for the fighting. I liked Jedi Fallen Order beforehand, but that was also for the adventure and story elements. With Sekiro now, i play over and over just for the fighting, attempting no-hit kills on bosses and trying to get that no-death playthrough i'm close to.
> I've watched extended parts of playthroughs of all the Dark Souls and Elden Ring, and i have zero interest in trying them. They're way too slow / don't have the same ferocity in the fighting, and don't have the sense that even when you're defending you're utterly dominating and still causing harm to your opponent. I was hoping there would be a "Sekiro class" in Elden Ring that let you deflect almost any move, but from what i can tell it's 100% Souls combat. Makes me a bit sad i can't move on to them.


The parallel experience in the DS games is being the classic "no armor, huge 2h weapon, never use a shield" method where you stubbornly refuse to learn anything the "easy" way and instead focus on learning all the fight mechanics perfectly. Or you can parry some bosses, especially in elden ring. Ex this kind of play (Elden Ring's first major boss, no hits taken, shield only comes out for parries, kind of show-offy).



It's definitely not the same style as Sekiro, AT ALL, but yeah, if you're not playing with a shield you are having a similar experience where you have to totally dominate the boss especially on repeat NG cycles. No hit boss runs are a really popular thing for people to do to try and challenge themselves.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> The parallel experience in the DS games is being the classic "no armor, huge 2h weapon, never use a shield" method where you stubbornly refuse to learn anything the "easy" way and instead focus on learning all the fight mechanics perfectly. Or you can parry some bosses, especially in elden ring. Ex this kind of play (Elden Ring's first major boss, no hits taken, shield only comes out for parries, kind of show-offy).
> 
> 
> 
> It's definitely not the same style as Sekiro, AT ALL, but yeah, if you're not playing with a shield you are having a similar experience where you have to totally dominate the boss especially on repeat NG cycles. No hit boss runs are a really popular thing for people to do to try and challenge themselves.



I found out i really don't like rolling around. Not only do i not like the actual doing it, i hate that you often see that you should have been hit, but it was just the fact that you were invulnerable at the time that you didn't lose health. I'm weird in that it annoys me when i win with what look like glitches 

I love how in Sekiro, almost whatever your opponent is doing you can turn into immediate direct harm back at them with the right timing, especially when it's some huge combo where each hit would be the end of you. You can either be constantly messing them up with every motion, or toying with them as they bust out all their best moves.


----------



## Werecow

Mathemagician said:


> Man how is Sekiro the one FromSoft game I haven’t played?


----------



## wankerness

I bounced off sekiro HARD the first time I played it, which was after I’d played through DS1-3 and Bloodborne. Just could not adjust to the twitchy combat or lack of leveling up, and after dying hard to the second mini boss I gave up for a while. I’m glad I went back, but just be warned that playing other Fromsoft games is not necessarily going to prepare you.


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> I bounced off sekiro HARD the first time I played it, which was after I’d played through DS1-3 and Bloodborne. Just could not adjust to the twitchy combat or lack of leveling up, and after dying hard to the second mini boss I gave up for a while. I’m glad I went back, but just be warned that playing other Fromsoft games is not necessarily going to prepare you.



Man I still hate Sekiro with a passion. I just couldn't quite master the combat, and being stuck with one weapon and no levelling up took too much of the fun out of it for me. Maybe I should try to stick it out again? 

Although having said that, when I ragequit Sekiro was when I went and played Nioh, and I still need to play Nioh 2, so that might be a better shout.


----------



## Tree

I couldn’t really get into Sekiro either. I got it on release and was pretty disappointed because I wanted more Souls action (IE Elden Ring). It is inexplicably Miyazaki in its delivery, but I wanted the character building RPG elements. It’s much more an Action game at its core than any other modern Fromsoft outing. 

I will go back to it at some point, to enjoy it on its own merit. But for me personally it came out at the wrong time


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> Man how is Sekiro the one FromSoft game I haven’t played?



Have you played any of the Armoured Core games? Or don't they count as they're pre Git Gud FromSoft games? 

You can try the ultimate Git Gud FromSoft game... Steel Battalion Heavy Armour where the Kinnect controls are so over complicated the game is unplayable. 


In all seriousness, I can see Sekiro turning off players so used to Dark Souls. Even Bloodborne was at least Souls veteran friendlier. Sekiro's combat system and mechanics are such a jarring change.


----------



## wankerness

Those of us who are bad at souls games and compensate by grinding and leveling up past the "minimum intended level," or looking up ways to cheese bosses with certain weapons/builds, had a hard time adjusting to Sekiro where (with a couple exceptions like Demon of Hatred) you HAVE to do it the "right" way. Sure, some enemies have minor weaknesses to specific gadgets, but thanks to their use being highly limited you're still going to have to learn the fight correctly. There is a little bit of "grinding" you can do (you can run around and kill optional bosses and explore for minor health and damage increases here and there), but for the most part you just have to smash your head into that wall over and over until things "click." Bloodborne and the DS games are all very easily able to be outlevelled, which makes many of the bosses very substantially easier. Also with Sekiro's "leveling," you can only get the health upgrades ONCE and the damage upgrades radically decrease in power after the first playthrough, so basically if you collect everything on NG that's it and your character will not get stronger on subsequent playthroughs, you just have to get better.

I definitely think it's worth sticking with Sekiro at least until you've come to grips with the combat. You might never love it, but I have a hard time imagining that you could possibly progress through that game without at least greatly appreciating the combat system. It's really satisfying and feels a lot more like a precision duel than anything else I've played. Ghost of Tsushima's handful of difficult boss "duels" were the only thing that came close, but I think they're basically the same thing only less interesting. 

I will admit that when I went back to Bloodborne after Sekiro I was initially always panicking cause it was like "ENEMIES ARE COMING TO HIT ME IN THE FACE AND I CAN'T JUST MASH L1 TO DEFLECT EVERYTHING!!" In that way, Sekiro's kind of easier than Bloodborne, where you can only gimpily dodge or use the limited and clunky gun parry mechanic. Sekiro's so fast and furious with unlimited stamina and how you can just take off running away from enemies at any time that the woodenness of Bloodborne in comparison feels limiting. Then again, healing in Sekiro is far crappier than all other Souls games and basically at all points in the game you can only take a handful of hits before dying. And since your healing items don't come back on a res, that "two deaths per fight" thing isn't really all that huge of a benefit.


----------



## Tree

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the game for what it was and had no issues with its difficulty myself. It just really wasn’t what I expected at all, which is probably my fault because I avoided all spoilers for it leading up to launch. 

At that time I was still playing DS3 daily because I was heavy into the PVP dueling community, participating in tournaments, etc. So, I had all the wrong expectations. Nowadays it’s hard for me to sit down and play a game to completion just because of time. I’ve still only got 28 hours in Elden Ring since release night 

Sekiro is high up on my “start over” list of games along with FFVII Remake which I also never got more than an hour or so into.


----------



## Tree

Unrelated: I also really want whatever they’re doing with Splinter Cell to come to light fully. God I love those games…now I want to replay Chaos Theory.


----------



## /wrists

Super Auto Pets by teamwood


Chill online auto battler




teamwood.itch.io


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> Those of us who are bad at souls games and compensate by grinding and leveling up past the "minimum intended level," or looking up ways to cheese bosses with certain weapons/builds, had a hard time adjusting to Sekiro where (with a couple exceptions like Demon of Hatred) you HAVE to do it the "right" way. Sure, some enemies have minor weaknesses to specific gadgets, but thanks to their use being highly limited you're still going to have to learn the fight correctly. There is a little bit of "grinding" you can do (you can run around and kill optional bosses and explore for minor health and damage increases here and there), but for the most part you just have to smash your head into that wall over and over until things "click." Bloodborne and the DS games are all very easily able to be outlevelled, which makes many of the bosses very substantially easier. Also with Sekiro's "leveling," you can only get the health upgrades ONCE and the damage upgrades radically decrease in power after the first playthrough, so basically if you collect everything on NG that's it and your character will not get stronger on subsequent playthroughs, you just have to get better.
> 
> I definitely think it's worth sticking with Sekiro at least until you've come to grips with the combat. You might never love it, but I have a hard time imagining that you could possibly progress through that game without at least greatly appreciating the combat system. It's really satisfying and feels a lot more like a precision duel than anything else I've played. Ghost of Tsushima's handful of difficult boss "duels" were the only thing that came close, but I think they're basically the same thing only less interesting.
> 
> I will admit that when I went back to Bloodborne after Sekiro I was initially always panicking cause it was like "ENEMIES ARE COMING TO HIT ME IN THE FACE AND I CAN'T JUST MASH L1 TO DEFLECT EVERYTHING!!" In that way, Sekiro's kind of easier than Bloodborne, where you can only gimpily dodge or use the limited and clunky gun parry mechanic. Sekiro's so fast and furious with unlimited stamina and how you can just take off running away from enemies at any time that the woodenness of Bloodborne in comparison feels limiting. Then again, healing in Sekiro is far crappier than all other Souls games and basically at all points in the game you can only take a handful of hits before dying. And since your healing items don't come back on a res, that "two deaths per fight" thing isn't really all that huge of a benefit.



I think the real frustration for me in Sekiro was that some number of mechanics felt undercooked or can't quite make their mind how they are supposed to work.

Having both health and posture is a weird choice to me, when the game really cares about posture. Having gadgets that are really limited in use... So limited that you still have to finish most boss fights the old fashioned way. Having guard when the game really wants you to deflect. Having three kinds of undeflectable special attack, except some of them you can deflect but you get a special counter for them too.

Against boss fights it feels good, because its one guy with one set of moves, but in general combat I do struggle. I feel like the game wants me to focus and deflect everything, but theres several dudes and flurries of attacks. It just never quite fit right for me.


----------



## Werecow

Tree said:


> Unrelated: I also really want whatever they’re doing with Splinter Cell to come to light fully. God I love those games…now I want to replay Chaos Theory.


Same here. It's one of my favourite game series. I really REALLY hope it's fully singleplayer as well, and not a Ubisoft "let's make everything into the same live-service open-world RPG" type of game.

Apart from Ironside missing, i think Blacklist is pretty good as well. It's the last Ubisoft game i bought. Wow, nearly 10 years since they've made a game i want to play.


----------



## Tree

Werecow said:


> Same here. It's one of my favourite game series. I really REALLY hope it's fully singleplayer as well, and not a Ubisoft "let's make everything into the same live-service open-world RPG" type of game.
> 
> Apart from Ironside missing, i think Blacklist is pretty good as well. It's the last Ubisoft game i bought. Wow, nearly 10 years since they've made a game i want to play.


Oh, yuck I hadn’t even considered how hard they’ve tanked into their AAA game formula. Hopefully they have enough sense not to tamper too much. 

Blacklist was a lot of fun. I enjoyed all of the fluidity and new movement mechanics that they adapted from Conviction since they ultimately fine tuned it all and went back to allowing for more stealth oriented play. Sam looking, and sounding younger is jarring though.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ended up buying Nier Replicant Ver 1.Y0K0T4R05AT0N4K3Y804RD since it was 50% of sale, and already hard to readjust after a good Elden Ring session.  It is nice to come back to the Yoko Taroverse. 

This will probably take a backseat until The Kaito Files and Chrono Cross come along.


----------



## wankerness

LostTheTone said:


> I think the real frustration for me in Sekiro was that some number of mechanics felt undercooked or can't quite make their mind how they are supposed to work.
> 
> Having both health and posture is a weird choice to me, when the game really cares about posture. Having gadgets that are really limited in use... So limited that you still have to finish most boss fights the old fashioned way. Having guard when the game really wants you to deflect. Having three kinds of undeflectable special attack, except some of them you can deflect but you get a special counter for them too.
> 
> Against boss fights it feels good, because its one guy with one set of moves, but in general combat I do struggle. I feel like the game wants me to focus and deflect everything, but theres several dudes and flurries of attacks. It just never quite fit right for me.


I think the mechanics in that game are "fully cooked." Posture and health are two separate things that you can target with different strategies, but they also converge. Parrying an attack does posture damage, but doesn't do health damage. You can either chip a boss down slowly over time with hit and run attacks and their posture will never get low until their health does (the lower their health, the slower their posture regenerates, and at a certain point in their health bar it stops regenerating entirely), or get really aggressive and good with parries, never give them a chance to regen, and force a posture break MUCH earlier than their health gets low. The two systems synergize. On harder bosses I tended to do a lot of careful hit and runs until their health hit the point where posture stopped regenerating, at which point I'd get a lot bolder in trying to build up the posture meter since I knew it wouldn't regenerate if I ran off and healed. Then of course there's demon of hatred where I think you HAVE to do health damage. And the headless ape, where I always just chipped away at his health in phase 1 with big, damaging counterattacks instead of even attempting to do parry/posture stuff.

In general combat the game wants you to use stealth to take out as many guys as possible. Something I REALLY like about the game compared to some other "stealth" games (or Elden Ring) is that a stealth attack is a guaranteed kill no matter if it's a grunt or huge dude (or guaranteed take off one health bar, if they're a boss). In general if you take on more than two enemies you already screwed up and you need to run for it. You CAN switch between targets and parry everything if it's just a couple guys, but it's tough since you have to be jostling the right stick to the target you want to parry before they hit you.


----------



## rokket2005

I bad endinged Persona 4 Golden the other night, and of course my last save is after the deadline for not getting the bad ending. Apparently punishment for chasing randy nurses instead of talking to Dojima two more times.


----------



## Ralyks

Anyone else grab Ghostwire: Tokyo? I'm still debating how much I like it. Like, it's not bad, but I don't know if I would call it great. Visual though, it's quite exceptional and they did a great rendition of Shibuya.

Cyberpunk 2077 v1.5 continues to be an amazingly fun time.

Aaaaand I still have Stranger of Paradise and Tiny Tinas Wonderland only touched upon. Definitely a fantasy themed Borderlands, although the humor is so far much better than BL3. And of course, they finally put an actual character creator in a BL game and I hope that continues into BL4.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Casually slogging through Nier Ver 1100101110010010. Aside from Elden Ring ruining my groove and vice versa, I forgot how mundane and crap some of the early game side quests are here. But it's still nice to be back. 

The difference between Gestalt and Replicant get more apparent when you've experienced both. Since all the angsty dialogue in the early game suits the younger protagonist and his brother/sister relationship better, rather than buff Doc Brown wearing BDSM undies on his face surrogate father/daughter relation. 

I find it fascinating that Squenix actually retooled the protagonist specifically to appeal to Western audiences, since the company is the poster boy of sword wielding shonen boys in a fantasy world. Namely that they'd do such a thing late in gaming history. I'd expected that in the 90s pre FF7 heavy censorship era but not 2010. Still, Gestalt gives a refreshing take where you get to play a tired old man fiercely protecting his surrogate child. Different and not as pedestrian as Replicant's young angsty sword wielding anime hero with unkempt hair number 1100101110010010. 

Either way, both protagonists are suitably fine in this quirky world.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Anyone else grab Ghostwire: Tokyo? I'm still debating how much I like it. Like, it's not bad, but I don't know if I would call it great. Visual though, it's quite exceptional and they did a great rendition of Shibuya.
> 
> Cyberpunk 2077 v1.5 continues to be an amazingly fun time.
> 
> Aaaaand I still have Stranger of Paradise and Tiny Tinas Wonderland only touched upon. Definitely a fantasy themed Borderlands, although the humor is so far much better than BL3. And of course, they finally put an actual character creator in a BL game and I hope that continues into BL4.


I want to play all of these. But there's no way I will till I'm completely sick of Elden Ring. Aka I guess I'll be waiting till they're 25 dollars.


----------



## magicpad

Between work/band stuff I don't game nearly as much as I used to, but having Gamepass has been nice..... you can dive into a lot of different stuff both old and new.... here are a few that I've really enjoyed recently:

-Quantam Break
-Prey
-Death's Door
-Tunic


----------



## Werecow

Still playing God Of Chest Opening. I was expecting there to be, and wish there was a bit more fighting. I spend about 90% of the time working out how to open chests and doors.
I've also started yet another run of Sekiro today, so i guess that doesn't bode well for how i feel about God Of War. Just got a no-hit (other than a returned lightning) really aggresive kill on Genichiro which was pretty pleasing.


----------



## Giest

Reached 20 hours in Breath of the Wild and I'm completely fed up with this game. It would be a great game without all the antagonistic mechanics and lack of player direction, but I just can't do it anymore. Every area is just a new way to get screwed with little or no explanation as to progress. By far my least favorite aspect is the weapon degradation, I'm not against it but I am against it being so damn short and vague. Why bother even opening chests? Whatever I find in there is just going to break in my battle for the next chest, unless it's something like arrows.

I can't disagree with folks who think it's a great game, there's a great game in there for sure. I never found it all for myself, though.


----------



## TedEH

I'm always surprised when I hear someone just bounce right off of BotW, especially while souls-likes, brutal difficulty, open worlds, retro-done-modern, etc. are the trends lately - and you'd think it'd be more common to hear people bounce off of those titles. To each their own of course.


----------



## Giest

TedEH said:


> I'm always surprised when I hear someone just bounce right off of BotW, especially while souls-likes, brutal difficulty, open worlds, retro-done-modern, etc. are the trends lately - and you'd think it'd be more common to hear people bounce off of those titles. To each their own of course.



With Souls it's really just difficult, there's not five mechanics taking turns antagonizing you along the way to every objective. I mean really Souls-type games tend to be awful for everyone, except Souls games. Some rip off studio thinks they can substitute substantial difficulty for fulfilling progression and it never works. BotW is not a difficult game to me, it's an annoying one. Truth be told Elden Ring doesn't excite me at all, neither do the rest of the Souls titles- but I don't think they are annoying to play. As far as open world games go it doesn't make a difference to me by default, but does often make a difference overall. Open world with no bounty board or liaison element is a hard pass from me, but with those elements or some other in place effectively solving the problem of WTF to do then hell yea.

I think a lot of folks have a philosophy that some games which use real life mechanics or obscure realism features are better for it, I do not subscribe to that uniformly. If I wanted a walking simulator I'd just do the real thing, and if I wanted a simulation it wouldn't be of that. There's also a lot of liberty taken with those realistic mechanics being implemented in completely unrealistic manners. It's hard to know where the studio draws the line, and they never tell you until you're right there screwing it up already. This is actually a big draw for me to the older Zelda games where it was in contrast done well and made a lot of the puzzles fantastic. BotW, nah.

It's one thing where you get rolled because you need to improve. Get gud. It's an entirely different thing when you're thrust into a fantasy world with a simulation fetish and poor direction and hardly any explanation of environmental/survival/exploration mechanics. That's not even getting to the way the story has unfolded, which is a bit indulgent to say "unfolded" since it's really more like uncrumpling the now balled up paper ball the last plot was written on.

I'll tell ya right now if Souls had survival mechanics as severe and vaguely relayed as BotW nobody would play that shit ever. It would be two steps forward and two steps back the entire way.


----------



## wankerness

What are you complaining about with BOTW's "antagonistic mechanics," specifically? I don't remember anything in that game being arcane or punishing. Maybe the first time you get hit with lightning cause you're wearing a metal item, but they give you a ton of obvious clues in the form of your metal gear making zappy sounds in warning for like 30 seconds before it happens. Maybe the temperature gauge and how you take damage if it's into red in either heat or cold or desert, but that has an obvious visual indicator and characters in-game force the knowledge down your throat about mitigating it with foods. Maybe that they throw you in areas with a ton of high cliffs and you can't climb them unless you make a ton of stamina food or level up stamina for a while, but that's pretty mild as far as RPG zone-gating mechanics go.

I don't like the weapon-breaking, but the only thing in that game I remember being truly unfair and idiotic is when it starts raining and you need to climb something. That's just wasting your time. Otherwise it seems pretty straightforward. I guess the VERY early game is rough in terms of you never having money or arrows and not having figured out the good food recipes yet, but yeah, the game is most definitely not that difficult unless you're doing DLC.


----------



## TedEH

Giest said:


> like uncrumpling the now balled up paper ball the last plot was written on


I know you didn't mean this is a positive way, but I still kinda like this as a metaphor for what devs tend to call environmental storytelling.

I honestly didn't take BotW to be very simulation-heavy. Definitely more-so than other Zelda games, I guess, if that's the standard. Maybe it doesn't fit the "git gud" philosophy entirely, but there's definitely a point where you've picked up enough of how the game works that things suddenly feel a lot more accessible without getting "easy". Then you can progress to the point of understanding how you can just short of break the game with some mechanics. You can cheese the cooking to basically have an endless supply of healing.


----------



## AMOS

Doom Eternal


----------



## Emperoff

I'm enjoying Dark Souls III again with the servers down and no invasions, no messages, no nothing. Feels like a completely different game, a very lonely experience that reminds me of my first Dark Souls playthrough. Goood times.


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> I'm always surprised when I hear someone just bounce right off of BotW, especially while souls-likes, brutal difficulty, open worlds, retro-done-modern, etc. are the trends lately - and you'd think it'd be more common to hear people bounce off of those titles. To each their own of course.



Souls games are just hard. BOTW steals your fucking weapons and calls it “content” as an excuse to keep giving you more “drops” that are just copies of whatever you broke. 

I really loved exploring in BOTW but I never finished it. Didn’t know where to go and didn’t care about the story. 

Idk, I just don’t give a fuck about link. Or princess Zorda. Like, give me new fucking characters. 

Every single souls game makes you dig for the story and they give you and interesting enough world to make me want to. 

BOTW was just to see where I could glide to.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> BOTW was just to see where I could glide to.


It is! For me, that just happens to be comfort food in video game form.


----------



## Giest

TedEH said:


> I know you didn't mean this is a positive way, but I still kinda like this as a metaphor for what devs tend to call environmental storytelling.
> 
> I honestly didn't take BotW to be very simulation-heavy. Definitely more-so than other Zelda games, I guess, if that's the standard. Maybe it doesn't fit the "git gud" philosophy entirely, but there's definitely a point where you've picked up enough of how the game works that things suddenly feel a lot more accessible without getting "easy". Then you can progress to the point of understanding how you can just short of break the game with some mechanics. You can cheese the cooking to basically have an endless supply of healing.



I'll try to clarify those points, sorry if I'm having trouble explaining myself. I've been out of serious gaming for a long time, and a lot of this stuff is kinda off in the weeds as to why I fundamentally stopped enjoying the game. Most of these issues are exacerbated because they are all that is left when the fun is gone for me.

The plot is just unremarkable because it's nothing new to me so far. It doesn't really matter if you tell it backwards, forwards, or as a giant splattering across a map. Others may disagree, and personally I have to admit medieval fantasy stuff is not my usual squeeze for anything, but I at least enjoy it for what it is- apparently basically the same story as last time only _this time_ with crucial lore we previously never heard about. I liked the previous plots a great deal in general, and I like this one too for that reason. That said, it's still nothing new for me so far. Not good, not bad, just unremarkable. I guess if it ain't broke don't fix it, but personally for previous Zelda games the plot and atmosphere are huge draws for me. Granted those were on older systems and had more limitations by far, so I'm using that as a slide rule in an attempt to make a comparison.

As far as the "sim" stuff, there's a lack of logical congruity to survival and movement mechanics which are themselves predicated on a great deal of basic logic, and there are nearly zero mechanics tutorials which are sequential enough to keep you informed as to how to play the game itself. That's what I mean about the simulation aspects the devs went for and not knowing where they draw the lines. Here are a couple examples, I can't climb rocks easily when it's raining. I learned this only in death. There's a suit you need for the cold weather areas which is an early main quest point, just good luck with that is all I'm gonna say. I instead learned of warm weather cooking in death. Lightning will kill you if you don't unequip your metal items, I learned that...in death. These aren't oops try again deaths, no- this is go to hell and have fun crawling back out for 10-15 minutes because you were meandering aimlessly and not periodically saving due to nothing substantial happening for long periods of time. Now that I know about all this stuff I'm not really having fun dealing with it, none of it matters to the plot or adds anything to the game besides immersion- and it's just immersing me in simulated annoyances.

Cooking is tedious and mostly asinine in my opinion. There's absolutely no need for cooking food in this game outside of temperature buffs which really should be elixirs, but that last part is my opinion. The elixirs on the other hand you basically need, so hope you like 10 in game cut scenes of cartoon cooking when you have to crank out 10 stamina or haste elixirs. First it might rain for five seconds and douse your fire, so now you can't cook or even wait by that fire until it stops raining. Are we havin fun yet? There is hardly anything intellectual about the crafting, the recipe methods are all basically read a description then commit to dumb luck and persistence. Grinding out "craft" items isn't fun, it's just yet another one of those things I put up with because the rest of the game is really good. I'd ride the horse to break up the gameplay and wait for the rain to stop, but that sumbitch don't listen worth a rip because I haven't bonded with him yet. I learned that in death, though I think because I just stopped tuning in at all.

The enemies and combat are really good (the AI is ok), the environment is really good, the art style is really good, the lore is really good, it's a stable running game, and it's got tons of hours worth of gameplay in it. Everything about the game is good except when the rules of reality within the game screw me left right and center while the plot with scant voice acting or prevailing instruction puts me to sleep. They screwed up "environmental storytelling" in my opinion, which is really just a good way of herding the player through an open world. There's nothing really compelling me to move to the next objective or zone, I'm just wandering around looking for dungeons, cool items, and enemies while trying to buff up my character.

Shit, they screwed up the whole game I'm just gonna be honest and say it again because I don't have the time or ability to fully explain every criticism I have for this game. Most or all of the stuff I just mentioned isn't a big deal for me or most people, but that is if such annoying things are contrasted by fulfilling rewards. It's still fun to roll through bullshit and score a sweet reward or buff in other games. I really don't mind that in other games which also go a little too hard on the good idea fairy mechanics. For me the real fun is the player progression, and a big part of that is loot. Like I said chests in this game don't really matter at all, everything that comes out of them gets broken quickly. If I wanted to do 15 minutes of gameplay for a five minute accomplishment I'd play mobile games, I ain't with it. If the core enjoyment of the game for me lasted more than just until the next battle/encounter I would be playing it, the other issues I brought up are largely personal preference and I'm able to take it in stride. That's why I say I won't argue that it's not a good game, just the reasons I have little desire to ever finish it. If BotW 2 has survival mechanics like this one I won't be too hyped. If it has degrading weapons I'll probably write this series off entirely. So my issue really is that it's not more fun for me than it is adverse, and it's not more fun because the loot system is pathetic. That's the real problem, not the obliquely realistic select mechanics.

So basically I don't especially care about the plot and I really don't care at all about the items. There's nothing inspiring me to finish this game anymore. I don't care how it ends, I don't care what the best weapons are, I don't care what the best recipes are, and I don't care that Link probably never got to smash with Zelda and the boy needs a serious talk about unreasonable relationships and other fish in the sea. I spent the last 10 hours grinding (personal statement) and enjoying none of it. The first two-three hours were one of the best games I ever played.


----------



## TedEH

Giest said:


> I'll try to clarify those points, sorry if I'm having trouble explaining myself.


I haven't read the whole post yet, but just for the sake of saying it - you don't owe an explanation. It's cool not to like a popular game.

Edit after actually reading the post:
Fair - the game isn't above criticism. I think there are equally fair responses to each point, in some cases they're in-game solutions you might not have discovered yet, but no game is for everyone.


----------



## BlackMastodon

TedEH said:


> I haven't read the whole post yet, but just for the sake of saying it - you don't owe an explanation. It's cool not to like a popular game.
> 
> Edit after actually reading the post:
> Fair - the game isn't above criticism. I think there are equally fair responses to each point, in some cases they're in-game solutions you might not have discovered yet, but no game is for everyone.


Yeah, I'm with you. I personally find the main mechanic behind Souls-like games way more punishing and frustrating than anything in BotW. Weapons fall apart, yeah, but there's a billion of them. Or throw bombs at enemies and run circles around them.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I still hate the weapon durability mechanic in BoTW . It makes combat a chore and not something to actively seek out, and it makes rewards basically meaningless. I had way more fun finding koroks and exploring than I did fighting. 
I have no problem with gear degrading or breaking but ffs let me easily repair it or maintain it.


----------



## StevenC

I'm not letting myself buy Kirby until I've finished the other games I'm halfway through, so that's currently Halo Infinite, Skyward Sword HD and Pokemon Legends Arceus.

BotW is still the best game and anyone who complains about it is wrong.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> I'm not letting myself buy Kirby until I've finished the other games I'm halfway through


I'm going cheapo mode and waiting for someone to buy it, decide it's too easy or they don't like it, then I'll grab it used at a discount. It's in that "I want it, but I don't want it enough for full price" category.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I'm going cheapo mode and waiting for someone to buy it, decide it's too easy or they don't like it, then I'll grab it used at a discount. It's in that "I want it, but I don't want it enough for full price" category.


I enjoyed the demo a lot. It's Kirby and it's fun, so it's good on those merits alone. It seems like a silly game in a good way. But yeah, if it were £30 instead of £50 I'd probably have finished it by now. If it's in Tesco today that will be the real test of my resolve.

PLA is the last game I got, so I'm going to try and finish it first because I've played it most recently. I'd have to change carts to play Skyward Sword, and I'm just not looking to shoot things right now.

PLA is still so good though. Just fun to play and do the gameplay loop in. Like, there's a load of problems in there but nothing too major to playing the game, but a couple of qol tweaks and I'd be far more interested in 100%ing everything in the research Dex. So many of the menus are poorly laid out, and there is a different menu button for you Dex, map and pack, none of which are the start button.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I think my biggest complaint about BotW is the cooking mechanic. Let me cook multiples of the same recipe instead of picking the individual ingredients each time! Or give me a cookbook where I can just say "make X number of Y recipe using these ingredients." Otherwise, having that much healing and buffing available is very helpful.


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> I think my biggest complaint about BotW is the cooking mechanic. Let me cook multiples of the same recipe instead of picking the individual ingredients each time! Or give me a cookbook where I can just say "make X number of Y recipe using these ingredients." Otherwise, having that much healing and buffing available is very helpful.


Having an ability to choose to craft more than 1 of a recipe would have been a gigantic quality of life improvement, yes. Animal Crossing New Horizons unfortunately continues that trend of obnoxiousness.

I never used elixirs, ever, except at the very beginning of the game when I hadn't gotten the armor sets for environmental resistance. I beelined for those. I used food constantly. I'm curious why you (Giest) think elixirs are necessary and food is useless? Food is incredibly overpowered, you can just pause and chow down every time your health gets low. Makes the game pretty trivial pretty quick, to be honest.

I don't really remember BOTW's death punishments. I don't remember it being very major. I remember dying over 30 times to the same enemy in a row trying to practice the shield parrying for the robot lasers (I never got good at it), and I don't remember being frustrated by just doing it over and over. Maybe it autosaves when you get close to a fast travel or something? I don't remember!

I like that the plot is in "breadcrumb" format. It's cool being thrown into a post-apocalyptic world as a character who essentially had their memory wiped and learning what happened. It's not amazing in the story department, but it's definitely not worse than all the previous Zelda games. A lot of the calamity flashbacks are actually pretty cool, mainly the stuff you learn in the animal dungeons. I like the same approach in Horizon Zero Dawn and (to a lesser extent, due to far less cutscenes/voiceacting) Dark Souls 1/2.

The only thing I take issue with is some of the voiceacting. Zelda in particular is terrible, she sounds like an american high schooler trying to do an english accent, and you have to listen to her drone on and on in a few parts.


----------



## Emperoff

TedEH said:


> I'm always surprised when I hear someone just bounce right off of BotW, especially while souls-likes, brutal difficulty, open worlds, retro-done-modern, etc. are the trends lately - and you'd think it'd be more common to hear people bounce off of those titles. To each their own of course.



Every time I hear somebody saying souls-like games are hard I just assume they have never played videogames until year 2000 or something


----------



## wankerness

Emperoff said:


> Every time I hear somebody saying souls-like games are hard I just assume they have never played videogames until year 2000 or something


Well, only old people at this point played any video games before 2000. And old people tend to be confused by souls games cause there are way too many buttons and systems to keep track of. Not to mention your reflex speeds rapidly decline after about age 25.

The souls games are hard compared to the vast majority of other games, especially anything modern with multiple difficulty settings. Anyone who says differently is trying to do some kind of weird flex!


----------



## Emperoff

wankerness said:


> Well, only old people at this point played any video games before 2000. And old people tend to be confused by souls games cause there are way too many buttons and systems to keep track of. Not to mention your reflex speeds rapidly decline after about age 25.
> 
> The souls games are hard compared to the vast majority of other games, especially anything modern with multiple difficulty settings. Anyone who says differently is trying to do some kind of weird flex!



Git gud.


----------



## StevenC

BlackMastodon said:


> I think my biggest complaint about BotW is the cooking mechanic. Let me cook multiples of the same recipe instead of picking the individual ingredients each time! Or give me a cookbook where I can just say "make X number of Y recipe using these ingredients." Otherwise, having that much healing and buffing available is very helpful.





wankerness said:


> Having an ability to choose to craft more than 1 of a recipe would have been a gigantic quality of life improvement, yes. Animal Crossing New Horizons unfortunately continues that trend of obnoxiousness.
> 
> I never used elixirs, ever, except at the very beginning of the game when I hadn't gotten the armor sets for environmental resistance. I beelined for those. I used food constantly. I'm curious why you (Giest) think elixirs are necessary and food is useless? Food is incredibly overpowered, you can just pause and chow down every time your health gets low. Makes the game pretty trivial pretty quick, to be honest.
> 
> I don't really remember BOTW's death punishments. I don't remember it being very major. I remember dying over 30 times to the same enemy in a row trying to practice the shield parrying for the robot lasers (I never got good at it), and I don't remember being frustrated by just doing it over and over. Maybe it autosaves when you get close to a fast travel or something? I don't remember!
> 
> I like that the plot is in "breadcrumb" format. It's cool being thrown into a post-apocalyptic world as a character who essentially had their memory wiped and learning what happened. It's not amazing in the story department, but it's definitely not worse than all the previous Zelda games. A lot of the calamity flashbacks are actually pretty cool, mainly the stuff you learn in the animal dungeons. I like the same approach in Horizon Zero Dawn and (to a lesser extent, due to far less cutscenes/voiceacting) Dark Souls 1/2.
> 
> The only thing I take issue with is some of the voiceacting. Zelda in particular is terrible, she sounds like an american high schooler trying to do an english accent, and you have to listen to her drone on and on in a few parts.


This is the one thing Arceus actually gets right and improves on. You've just got a crafting table key item and can craft as much stuff as you have resources for, and there's no damn animation to sit through. It'd be perfect if you could have all your resources available when in the town or in your house.


Emperoff said:


> Every time I hear somebody saying souls-like games are hard I just assume they have never played videogames until year 2000 or something


Yeah, we had this conversation before. Lost Levels isn't hard, it's cheap. Breaking mental models as a shortcut to difficulty is bad game design. The best pre 2000 games aren't any harder than their post 2000s counterparts.


----------



## TedEH

Emperoff said:


> Every time I hear somebody saying souls-like games are hard I just assume they have never played videogames until year 2000 or something


I mean, you could arguably just group it all into: Anytime I hear [someone's experience is different than mine] I just [get confused in some capacity].

I haven't played any of the souls- or likes- games, by which I mean the FromSoft games. I've played some titles that are supposedly influenced by them - like Hollow Knight - and while they aren't the hardest games ever made (they aren't the cheap difficulty you see in NES games) they certainly are built to be challenging and finely-skill-based, in a way that a lot of modern game design often shies away from. I can vouch, there's a HUGE push in games right now for accessibility in a variety of forms, and difficulty is a part of that. Some would argue this makes the average game "easy". Souls-likes fly in the face of that idea, for better or worse. "Git gud" is a design philosophy that many bounce off of, it's just not an interesting take in the way that "the widely popular BotW actually sucks" is.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I mean, you could arguably just group it all into: Anytime I hear [someone's experience is different than mine] I just [get confused in some capacity].
> 
> I haven't played any of the souls- or likes- games, by which I mean the FromSoft games. I've played some titles that are supposedly influenced by them - like Hollow Knight - and while they aren't the hardest games ever made (they aren't the cheap difficulty you see in NES games) they certainly are built to be challenging and finely-skill-based, in a way that a lot of modern game design often shies away from. I can vouch, there's a HUGE push in games right now for accessibility in a variety of forms, and difficulty is a part of that. Some would argue this makes the average game "easy". Souls-likes fly in the face of that idea, for better or worse. "Git gud" is a design philosophy that many bounce off of, it's just not an interesting take in the way that "the widely popular BotW actually sucks" is.



I've been playing video games since, what... 1986? I played everything there was to play, and I love the idea and execution of the soulsborne games, but there's no way I'll play them after beating Demon's Souls and having played a few hours of DS I and II. I find them too demanding, and I don't want to devote so much time and energy on a game (I'll devote so much time and energy on other stuff, though).

I enjoy easier games like, I don't know, GTA, God of War, Mass Effect, or whatever much much *much* more. I'll sometimes play or replay those games in harder difficulties (if there's any) if I really like them... just to play it again from a different perspective. Or sometimes I replay the games in VERY EASY or something to just enjoy the story (ie: MGS). I sometimes get my enjoyment from things that aren't the difficulty or even the gameplay mechanics: story, characters, the world, lore, graphics, or whatever else there's there.

I actually thought it was nice when games started being more accessible and streamlined: "Cool, I don't need a PhD to play this thing".

There's obviously a niche for people who enjoy super challenging games, but I'm not part of that niche (and by the definition of "niche", most people aren't).


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I mean, you could arguably just group it all into: Anytime I hear [someone's experience is different than mine] I just [get confused in some capacity].
> 
> I haven't played any of the souls- or likes- games, by which I mean the FromSoft games. I've played some titles that are supposedly influenced by them - like Hollow Knight - and while they aren't the hardest games ever made (they aren't the cheap difficulty you see in NES games) they certainly are built to be challenging and finely-skill-based, in a way that a lot of modern game design often shies away from. I can vouch, there's a HUGE push in games right now for accessibility in a variety of forms, and difficulty is a part of that. Some would argue this makes the average game "easy". Souls-likes fly in the face of that idea, for better or worse. "Git gud" is a design philosophy that many bounce off of, it's just not an interesting take in the way that "the widely popular BotW actually sucks" is.


Hollow Knight is a lot harder than Dark Souls, I think you might want to give the first one a try just for historical reasons if nothing else. It's very wildly influential.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Hollow Knight is a lot harder than Dark Souls, I think you might want to give the first one a try just for historical reasons if nothing else. It's very wildly influential.


I plan to at some point. I've gotten mixed recommendations - some say "play the first ones so you can understand where they came from" and others go "why would you want to play the inferior version when that design philosophy has been iterated on? Just play the _good_ ones."


----------



## StevenC

I've gotten better at games in the past 25 years of playing them. I wonder why they've gotten so easy?


----------



## Mathemagician

I know I’ve said this in another thread. But in souls games the HP stat is your difficulty meter. Just build more HP and your margin of error increases. People want to build glass cannons and wonder why they get 1-2 shot.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> I plan to at some point. I've gotten mixed recommendations - some say "play the first ones so you can understand where they came from" and others go "why would you want to play the inferior version when that design philosophy has been iterated on? Just play the _good_ ones."



I'd personally recommend playing the older ones as well because they are just good. That kind of perspective you referenced reminds me of when I played the first Legend of Zelda for the first time like 6 years ago or something, but it was so great. It has the core qualities that make Zelda great, even if I would say that ALttP is a "better" game, or whatever. 

Getting close to the end of Elden Ring I think. Not sure what to play next, there are so many games that I have on my to-play list and so not enough time to play them. ><


----------



## Emperoff

TedEH said:


> I mean, you could arguably just group it all into: Anytime I hear [someone's experience is different than mine] I just [get confused in some capacity].
> 
> I haven't played any of the souls- or likes- games, by which I mean the FromSoft games. I've played some titles that are supposedly influenced by them - like Hollow Knight - and while they aren't the hardest games ever made (they aren't the cheap difficulty you see in NES games) they certainly are built to be challenging and finely-skill-based, in a way that a lot of modern game design often shies away from. I can vouch, there's a HUGE push in games right now for accessibility in a variety of forms, and difficulty is a part of that. Some would argue this makes the average game "easy". Souls-likes fly in the face of that idea, for better or worse. "Git gud" is a design philosophy that many bounce off of, it's just not an interesting take in the way that "the widely popular BotW actually sucks" is.



Hollow Knight creators deny any influence from Dark Souls franchise. And honestly, I found the optional content of Hollow Knight waaaaaay harder than anything in souls games (Path Of Pain anyone?).

It's ok to not wanting to "Git gud". Some people enjoy videogames that take them by the hand and focus on the story. Some other people like games that are challenging and need to develop a certain skill level to complete the game. Some others like both. But If you prefer the second group, you certainly won't like souls games 

The problem comes when the hyperbolic "these games are SO difficult" cries deter people from actually trying an enjoying a challening game, that rewards patience and skill instead of button mashing. The lore of the fraanchise is quite massive and unique, and it's often overshadowed by the difficulty thing.



TedEH said:


> I plan to at some point. I've gotten mixed recommendations - some say "play the first ones so you can understand where they came from" and others go "why would you want to play the inferior version when that design philosophy has been iterated on? Just play the _good_ ones."



Depending on what you're looking for. You could certainly skip DS2, but if you play DS3 without beating DS1 you will lose a truckload of nice details. Going backwards to a more clunky and slower pace will also feel awkward.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I plan to at some point. I've gotten mixed recommendations - some say "play the first ones so you can understand where they came from" and others go "why would you want to play the inferior version when that design philosophy has been iterated on? Just play the _good_ ones."


Based on the fact you're always playing old, janky games I'd definitely suggest playing Dark Souls 1 instead of one of the later, slicker ones (ex Bloodborne or DS3). It's loaded with saw-edged, frustrating stuff that isn't in the sequels, but it's still a lot more user-friendly than the precursor, Demon's Souls. I think Dark Souls is the more influential of the two by a considerable margin, too. Plus, as much as I prefer the fast-travelable worlds of DS2 and 3, DS1 definitely has the most complex, fully-developed map. And you will come to appreciate it as the game forces you to run back through entire areas to return to safety.


----------



## Choop

Emperoff said:


> Hollow Knight creators deny any influence from Dark Souls franchise. And honestly, I found the optional content of Hollow Knight waaaaaay harder than anything in souls games (Path Of Pain anyone?).



Mmm, I think they are just lying. What about the whole, "you lose all of your currency/souls on death but can get it back if you run back to where you last died, unless you die again" thing? And just the general dreary atmosphere and overall difficulty. Plus the trinkets kind of behave similarly to the rings in the Souls games. The NPC interactions in the game also felt very Dark Soulsy. I feel like...there is definitely influence there.


----------



## Emperoff

Choop said:


> Mmm, I think they are just lying. What about the whole, "you lose all of your currency/souls on death but can get it back if you run back to where you last died, unless you die again" thing? And just the general dreary atmosphere and overall difficulty. Plus the trinkets kind of behave similarly to the rings in the Souls games. The NPC interactions in the game also felt very Dark Soulsy. I feel like...there is definitely influence there.



Dunno. That's what they said. I thought everything was massively familiar as well. I don't see the point of lying, though.


----------



## Choop

Emperoff said:


> Dunno. That's what they said. I thought everything was massively familiar as well. I don't see the point of lying, though.



Could be a legality type thing, like not being allowed to reference a popular current IP as an influence when aspects are blatantly borrowed from it, for ass-covering reason haha. I honestly don't know, just spitballing here.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> Could be a legality type thing, like not being allowed to reference a popular current IP as an influence when aspects are blatantly borrowed from it, for ass-covering reason haha. I honestly don't know, just spitballing here.


Probably either that or lying. I remember similar things happening with bands back in the day. Like, bands that would sound like they were copying other bands using every opportunity possible to talk about how much they didn't like the band as some sort of weird cover for the fact they sounded similar. (Agalloch and Opeth)

Hollow Knight absolutely has heavy dark souls influence. I mean, maybe they copied it from Lords of the Fallen or something and truly don't like Dark Souls, but it still traces back to DS.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Anybody play Bleak Sword on your phone? It’s dope.


----------



## TedEH

I just made it through to the end credits of Spyro on PS1 (not the remake). Got 89%. Probably not going to 100% it, just cause that's not my deal.



Spoiler



To my tastes, it holds up better than I would have expected it to - although it's much easier than I remember it being as a kid.

It's a very early 3d game, and you can feel it, but I think it pulls it off as well as you could expect a PS1 title to. The worlds are imaginative and you can tell that there was some pretty heavy use of LODs and whatnot to make it work on the system. There's a lot of variety visually, although sometimes it's _just_ visual. I didn't bother reading the manual, but the game was able to get across everything you're meant to do - established a sort of in-game design language to follow, and sticks with it - which doesn't sound like much now, but that wasn't a given for the time.

Part of the reason that design language works is that the game, at it's core, is kept very simple: rescue green dragon statues, tackle anything made of metal, shoot fire at just about everything else, pick up anything that isn't nailed down, repeat. Almost everything is a variation of that, for good and bad. It's not deep, and it's not super difficult, but there's enough challenge and enough shiny junk to pick up that the sense of progression is pretty constant. The enemies end up feeling a bit like a missed opportunity since they have a lot of visual variety, but through most of the game they don't vary much otherwise. Hit the shiny ones and burn the non-shiny ones. The upside is that it's also not the longest game ever. There's enough there to say covers a good amount of ground, but it doesn't overstay its welcome for a game that has such thin mechanics. I count that as a good thing.

There are some challenges that are a little obtuse though - in particular, there's a "charge" ability added about half way through the game, but it's a bit hard to control and sometimes expects you to speed through these weird twisting paths that you'd never know you're supposed to follow without looking it up. They're these weird rare difficulty spikes in the middle of an otherwise pretty easy game.

I have mixed feelings about the bosses though - they make use of the skills you've picked up during the game - but then they tend to just end abruptly, and sometimes include some cheap timed platforming.

Overall.... I think it's earned the nostalgia value. Still good.


----------



## Tree

TedEH said:


> I just made it through to the end credits of Spyro on PS1 (not the remake). Got 89%. Probably not going to 100% it, just cause that's not my deal.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> To my tastes, it holds up better than I would have expected it to - although it's much easier than I remember it being as a kid.
> 
> It's a very early 3d game, and you can feel it, but I think it pulls it off as well as you could expect a PS1 title to. The worlds are imaginative and you can tell that there was some pretty heavy use of LODs and whatnot to make it work on the system. There's a lot of variety visually, although sometimes it's _just_ visual. I didn't bother reading the manual, but the game was able to get across everything you're meant to do - established a sort of in-game design language to follow, and sticks with it - which doesn't sound like much now, but that wasn't a given for the time.
> 
> Part of the reason that design language works is that the game, at it's core, is kept very simple: rescue green dragon statues, tackle anything made of metal, shoot fire at just about everything else, pick up anything that isn't nailed down, repeat. Almost everything is a variation of that, for good and bad. It's not deep, and it's not super difficult, but there's enough challenge and enough shiny junk to pick up that the sense of progression is pretty constant. The enemies end up feeling a bit like a missed opportunity since they have a lot of visual variety, but through most of the game they don't vary much otherwise. Hit the shiny ones and burn the non-shiny ones. The upside is that it's also not the longest game ever. There's enough there to say covers a good amount of ground, but it doesn't overstay its welcome for a game that has such thin mechanics. I count that as a good thing.
> 
> There are some challenges that are a little obtuse though - in particular, there's a "charge" ability added about half way through the game, but it's a bit hard to control and sometimes expects you to speed through these weird twisting paths that you'd never know you're supposed to follow without looking it up. They're these weird rare difficulty spikes in the middle of an otherwise pretty easy game.
> 
> I have mixed feelings about the bosses though - they make use of the skills you've picked up during the game - but then they tend to just end abruptly, and sometimes include some cheap timed platforming.
> 
> Overall.... I think it's earned the nostalgia value. Still good.


There's something intangibly magical about that era of PS1 and N64 platformers IMO. On paper, these "collect-athon" games should all basically play and feel the same, yet I don't ever find myself tiring of them. Even if bouncing from one to the next. Maybe it's just heavy handed nostalgia as I was at the peak age demographic, but I still maintain that their charm and fun factor are undeniable.



wankerness said:


> Based on the fact you're always playing old, janky games I'd definitely suggest playing Dark Souls 1 instead of one of the later, slicker ones (ex Bloodborne or DS3). It's loaded with saw-edged, frustrating stuff that isn't in the sequels, but it's still a lot more user-friendly than the precursor, Demon's Souls. I think Dark Souls is the more influential of the two by a considerable margin, too. Plus, as much as I prefer the fast-travelable worlds of DS2 and 3, DS1 definitely has the most complex, fully-developed map. And you will come to appreciate it as the game forces you to run back through entire areas to return to safety.



Like what I said above towards old platformers, DS1 has that same kind of magic for me. Take out the BoC and that game is essentially perfect. I've replayed it more than any other in the series (save for DS3 speed-running through NG cycles to get the upgraded rings for PVP). It perfectly encapsulates that feeling of discovery and being lost in a new world that I first had when playing OoT and Majora's Mask as a kid, which coincidentally, are two more of my most replayed games ever.

I really want to boot up my Xbox 360 and play through DS1 unpatched again just for the fun of it. Now that I actually know how the game works it should be fun abusing all the different kinds of builds and the un-nerfed Havel's Ring/Ninja flip ring combo.


----------



## TedEH

Tree said:


> There's something intangibly magical about that era of PS1 and N64 platformers IMO. On paper, these "collect-athon" games should all basically play and feel the same, yet I don't ever find myself tiring of them. Even if bouncing from one to the next. Maybe it's just heavy handed nostalgia as I was at the peak age demographic, but I still maintain that their charm and fun factor are undeniable.


I do think there's something to be said about how a lot of modern games tend to take a number of "solved" designs for granted - I mean, game dev is very iterative. We already "know what makes good feeling character movement", but we only know it because of all the experimentation that happened in earlier titles. All the little subtle bits about how to conserve momentum, how to blend animations, how to create the illusion that your input was responded to immediately, how to move a camera around, how to represent health and game states - especially considering how many titles now use the same engines and toolsets/plugins/middleware - it's all "solved" now. On some level, going back to play games that weren't designed in the context of all of this being common knowledge sometimes leads to jank but also (IMO) hints at other directions that games could have gone and just didn't. We didn't need to standardize right sticks to be camera movement, but we did. We didn't need to standardize ironsights in shooters, but we did. We didn't need to standardize the tabbed inventory/status/map screens that so many games use (usually by hitting tab or select on a controller), but we did. We didn't need to jam crafting and survival mechanics into everything, but we did.


----------



## wankerness

My memory of PS1 cartoony kid games were that they were mostly terrible and Spyro and Ape Escape were about the only good ones. Well, depending on how you stretch the definition of cartoony kid games, I guess Medievil was good. 

I hated those Crash Bandicoot games. Running towards the camera while reacting to obstacles?? Yuck! I can't really even think of other popular ones. Gex? That one sure felt dated immediately.

N64 really had a stranglehold on decent platformer/adventure games at that time. Partly aided by the fact the PS1 had those weird, grainy pixelation effects on textures that didn't lend itself to bright primary colors as much as GRIM AND GRITTY games like MGS or Silent Hill.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

Finally found a D&D group, it's been way too long. The other guitarist I've been jamming with has a group with his work buddies and I've been steady dropping hints at praccy, well last weekend he's telling me about his brand new campaign he's running and I'm like "...y'all got room for one more?" He had to check with the group, but the answer was _yes!_ 

We're playing 5e, some kind of underdark survival horror setting. I've got a Level 2 Rogue all rolled up, planning to go Arcane Trickster/Wizard(Bladesinger) multiclass and fill out the party's utility roles. Very excited to get rolling this Sunday.


----------



## Choop

Ah the dithering! That's one of the real hallmarks of PS1 graphics.


----------



## Giest

wankerness said:


> Spyro



I got the remastered titles for Switch not too long ago. It's pretty decent for 20$ or whatever I paid, same games just updated the graphics.


----------



## wankerness

Choop said:


> Ah the dithering! That's one of the real hallmarks of PS1 graphics.


Yeah, probably? I just looked up screenshots that are examples of that and it's hard for me to tell if it was that or just pixellated textures or some combination that created what I'm thinking of. Basically everything looked grainy and gritty. It really did not lend itself to N64 style cartoony graphics. In a mostly bright game like FF8 it mostly just looked like a problem, but with something like MGS it kind of added to the atmosphere. I'd be curious to see a before and after with dithering removed of something I played a lot of back in the day, like MGS. 

I think my hacked PS2 still works, maybe i'll hook it up sometime. Though I think my PS1 discs are all scratched to hell so I'd probably have to burn some downloaded roms or something.


----------



## TedEH

The PS1 looked distinct because the math behind how textures were projected wasn't perspective-correct - so changes in depth made your textures wobble. It's "affine texture mapping".


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I wonder if emulators are good enough that I can play mgs4 on pc now. It's the only one in the series I never got to play


----------



## Leviathus

KnightBrolaire said:


> I wonder if emulators are good enough that I can play mgs4 on pc now. It's the only one in the series I never got to play


I think there's a few custom builds of the rpcs3 emu specifically designed for mgs4, not sure if it's 100% playable tho. Look here >> https://github.com/rajkosto/rpcs3/releases


----------



## Mathemagician

Tree said:


> There's something intangibly magical about that era of PS1 and N64 platformers IMO. On paper, these "collect-athon" games should all basically play and feel the same, yet I don't ever find myself tiring of them. Even if bouncing from one to the next. Maybe it's just heavy handed nostalgia as I was at the peak age demographic, but I still maintain that their charm and fun factor are undeniable.
> 
> 
> 
> Like what I said above towards old platformers, DS1 has that same kind of magic for me. Take out the BoC and that game is essentially perfect. I've replayed it more than any other in the series (save for DS3 speed-running through NG cycles to get the upgraded rings for PVP). It perfectly encapsulates that feeling of discovery and being lost in a new world that I first had when playing OoT and Majora's Mask as a kid, which coincidentally, are two more of my most replayed games ever.
> 
> I really want to boot up my Xbox 360 and play through DS1 unpatched again just for the fun of it. Now that I actually know how the game works it should be fun abusing all the different kinds of builds and the un-nerfed Havel's Ring/Ninja flip ring combo.



Bright colors and janky AF movement, lol. 

Those ps1 games were amazing, but 3D was so new that none of it was refined like we had seen for 2D on SNES/Genesis due to so many prior 2D games. I love those old ps1 games too.


----------



## p0ke

I'm still fighting Midir  Tbh I haven't played at all in a month or so and just got back at it today. I'm still not getting that many hits in, but the difference to before is that each attempt now takes ~15 minutes since I've learned to dodge him. I just miss too often, and when I do, I instinctively press attack again and then he punishes. Anyway, getting there...


----------



## narad

wheresthefbomb said:


> Finally found a D&D group, it's been way too long. The other guitarist I've been jamming with has a group with his work buddies and I've been steady dropping hints at praccy, well last weekend he's telling me about his brand new campaign he's running and I'm like "...y'all got room for one more?" He had to check with the group, but the answer was _yes!_
> 
> We're playing 5e, some kind of underdark survival horror setting. I've got a Level 2 Rogue all rolled up, planning to go Arcane Trickster/Wizard(Bladesinger) multiclass and fill out the party's utility roles. Very excited to get rolling this Sunday.



Meanwhile, what games I'm _not_ playing...




Feel bad man. This was my first time trying 5e / dnd post jr high school, and I basically get kicked out for not RP'ing hard enough, even though I basically signed myself up for a 3rd job trying to learn all these druid abilities and exceptions in the nights leading up to each session.


----------



## Mathemagician

Bro that’s not people you want to spend time with man. It’s rough but chin up.


----------



## Tree

p0ke said:


> I'm still fighting Midir  Tbh I haven't played at all in a month or so and just got back at it today. I'm still not getting that many hits in, but the difference to before is that each attempt now takes ~15 minutes since I've learned to dodge him. I just miss too often, and when I do, I instinctively press attack again and then he punishes. Anyway, getting there...


Unsure if you know this already, but stay in front of him. You can dodge most of his attacks and combos without even rolling. 

Also, try maintaining your patience and wait for hit confirmation. Only attack once unless you're using something super quick like a dagger. You'll get him! He's definitely one of the more fun/engaging dragon bosses they've come up with.


Mathemagician said:


> Bro that’s not people you want to spend time with man. It’s rough but chin up.


For real. @narad You'd likely having more problems with these dudes over various other things in the future. You probably dodged a bit of a bullet early on.


----------



## TedEH

For me, that goes in the "sometimes I'm glad nobody has ever convinced me to get into D&D" pile. Every time the subject comes up, I dismiss it away with "it must really just depend on the group you're playing with", but I've yet to ever come across a group of people I would want to play that game with. Seems like the common denominator is the game itself, not the people.


----------



## narad

Yea, I was impressed with these guys' world building and the effort put into the maps and scenery and things of that sort, but never really clicked. Every time I thought "okay, I'm up", someone would wind up like half doing my thing anyway, "okay, okay, so he's a wolf now, right? okay, and he's leading us through the woods, checking the surroundings..." like why am I even here. And then I didn't have to be lol But ya, I guess you can imagine who won't be going to Okutama lol


----------



## gabito

Nice.

I just finished replaying Thimbleweed Park yesterday.


----------



## TedEH

WHAT.
New Monkey Island? And Ron Gilbert is onboard? Inject that shit right into my veins.


----------



## mechanyx

New Monkey Island was not something I ever anticipated. This can't come soon enough as I can't get Elden Ring to launch on my Windows machine (For context I hate Windows and only ever boot into it to run things like computer games).


----------



## Werecow

Sort of bouncing off God Of War i think. I realised i was finding it boring, so i decided to restart the whole game at a higher difficulty level (i often do this). Now the game seems completely out of wack with its difficulty spikes. Exploring is almost pointless now because almost anywhere other than where you're supposed to be going is filled with enemies that one-shot you. Dealing with mobs also turned into a frustrating shitshow, with often 1 creature in a crowd that can one-shot you, or even worse an add you didn't see popup mid-fight that can one-shot you.
It's frustating, because the game feels nearly at somewhere i could like it, but i either find it boring or irritating, often from minute to minute.


----------



## wankerness

Sounds like you played too much sekiro. Guess you’re stuck playing Sekiro (on higher NG cycles) and dwarf fortress forever.


----------



## p0ke

Tree said:


> Unsure if you know this already, but stay in front of him. You can dodge most of his attacks and combos without even rolling.
> 
> Also, try maintaining your patience and wait for hit confirmation. Only attack once unless you're using something super quick like a dagger. You'll get him! He's definitely one of the more fun/engaging dragon bosses they've come up with.



Yeah, I believe I have the strategy down, I just need to be more patient. Like I said, I survive for a long time already, but when my own hit misses I instinctively hit again and since my swing is pretty slow, he gets me there. Then I have to take some estus and while doing that he usually gets me again and I'm stuck in a loop until I manage to heal and dodge simultaneously. I just gotta keep dodging, hit exactly once even if I miss and then dodge again. It's gonna be a long fight, but I'll get him at some point. And since I hit him in the head all the time I'll get the critical thing for massive damage at some point.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

narad said:


> Meanwhile, what games I'm _not_ playing...
> 
> View attachment 105957
> 
> 
> Feel bad man. This was my first time trying 5e / dnd post jr high school, and I basically get kicked out for not RP'ing hard enough, even though I basically signed myself up for a 3rd job trying to learn all these druid abilities and exceptions in the nights leading up to each session.



That's brutal but +1 not the people you want to spend time with. I've _nope_d out of more potential D&D groups than I've actually been a long-term part of. Lotta weirdos on some kind of ego trip out there, I just wanna kill guys and take their stuff with some light RP. The single biggest "NOPE" for me personally was when I was a freshman at University, I went to another dorm (Nerland hall, "affectionately" known as Nerdland) to check out these people's campaign, and literally the first thing I hear when I walk in is some dude in the most stereotypical spitty nerd voice, "Is it against my Paladin's code of alignment to have sex with this person?"

I hung around for about an hour against my better judgement, and while it didn't get any weirder, it also didn't get any _less _weird. I'm not here to judge, but I personally am for sure not here for _that._ 

I was also in a group at the local comic shop for a while, which was both the weirdest and one of the funnest games I've been a part of. Had plenty of your usual pungent, inscrutable comic shop denizens along with some slightly more socially-endowed (and bathed) individuals who made the whole thing bearable. Lotta good, and funny, and weird memories from there.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

In the event when Chrono Cross drops tomorrow and I get declared legally dead by the Missing Person's Unit, I'm trying to mad rush finish The Kaito Files DLC. About half way in, and it's quite a substantial DLC in both story and gameplay. Definitely longer than Majima's side story in Kiwami 2. 

There's no sidequests and no access to Yokohama, so you can just go straight through Kaito's little adventure. But that said, some of the Kamurocho distractions are still here (Club Sega, Batting cages, Darts, Shogi etc). Only exceptions is that no Mahjong and the Master System only has Alex Kidd and not the rest you collected in the main game. And Kaito also shows that he's a more interesting character than Yagami.... well in a Western point of view for lack of better term. I'll still defend Yagami but namely because I've seen enough J-Drama to recognise and appreciate a character that comes straight out of them, for better or worse. 

As for Kaito himself...

He's basically Zero Suit Kiryu but without the Rush fighting style. So it's more familiar ground after a full course meal of Yagami's speed, juggle and counter based gameplay. Though the detective side is more the same, just with more crude skills like smell and hearing. No parkour sequences, thankfully since they're just scripted button prompted one way paths that sucked. 

I'll have to admit that Lost Judgment has left quite a lasting impression. One of the strongest plots in the canon that I'm still thinking about. Such a shame that it got overshadowed by so many games that were released in the same time period.


----------



## wankerness

I'm still very apprehensive of that game since my only IRL friend that plays those games absolutely hated it and abandoned it after about 5 hours. And he actually liked judgement, while I strongly felt it was the worst Yakuza game. I just am not excited to get back into that character's world since I don't really like him or any of his pals, and I REALLY don't like tailing missions or first person examining for clues ala Metroid Other M. The high school setting definitely has me more interested than the first game did plotwise, but eh, the character is just such a bore to me. Worst Yakuza protagonist this side of the baseball player from 5.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Sounds like you played too much sekiro. Guess you’re stuck playing Sekiro (on higher NG cycles) and dwarf fortress forever.


I could cope with that, apart from the Dwarf Fortress part haha.


I'm starting a Lone Wolf, Honor Mode playthrough of D: OS 2. It's one of the few playthroughs i've not attempted. Need to look up a few builds, but to be anything other than a rogue sounds a bit bonkers.


----------



## CanserDYI

Guys. I'm...a fucking idiot.

So. A few pages back in this thread i said I'm finally getting around to playing Skyrim.

So yeah, LOVE the game, been having a blast. About 190 hours in (yes. One hundred and ninety hours in. you read that correctly.), and I'm JUST NOW realizing that you can use perk points and upgrade your guys skills.



I'm just...baffled that I got this far being so weak. I'm done with most of the story lines.


----------



## gabito

CanserDYI said:


> Guys. I'm...a fucking idiot.
> 
> So. A few pages back in this thread i said I'm finally getting around to playing Skyrim.
> 
> So yeah, LOVE the game, been having a blast. About 190 hours in (yes. One hundred and ninety hours in. you read that correctly.), and I'm JUST NOW realizing that you can use perk points and upgrade your guys skills.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm just...baffled that I got this far being so weak. I'm done with most of the story lines.



In Skyrim you can do (more or less) whatever you want however you want... I played it for hundred of hours, finished the main storyline, a lot of sidequests, and I still don't have a fucking clue of what anything in the skill tree does.

Lockpicking? OK, I guess I want to lockpick stuff like I did in Fallout 3. Destruction? OK, sounds good, I like destruction. And so on.

It's a super dumbed down RPG (I have nothing against that), and that's probably part of why it's so popular.


----------



## Werecow

CanserDYI said:


> Guys. I'm...a fucking idiot.
> 
> So. A few pages back in this thread i said I'm finally getting around to playing Skyrim.
> 
> So yeah, LOVE the game, been having a blast. About 190 hours in (yes. One hundred and ninety hours in. you read that correctly.), and I'm JUST NOW realizing that you can use perk points and upgrade your guys skills.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm just...baffled that I got this far being so weak. I'm done with most of the story lines.


On my first go, i think i played about 50-60 hours without seeing my first dragon, all because i just decided to do stuff other than go to Bleak Falls Barrow and Whiterun. It got to the point where i thought i had a bug in my game once i saw everyone posting dragon fight videos. I never use guides and don't watch spoilery playthrough videos beforehand though.


----------



## Ralyks

Welp, see this in 2028.


----------



## Choop

Ralyks said:


> Welp, see this in 2028.




Kingdom Hearts, now Final Fantasy/Disney/Darksiders.


----------



## MFB

I didn't even finish KH3, the games story was incredibly convoluted when they first came out and it became increasingly hard to follow with the various sequels on different platforms; the game mechanics also felt off/odd compared to the current landscape of gaming, so that makes KH4 an easy pass.


----------



## wankerness

CanserDYI said:


> Guys. I'm...a fucking idiot.
> 
> So. A few pages back in this thread i said I'm finally getting around to playing Skyrim.
> 
> So yeah, LOVE the game, been having a blast. About 190 hours in (yes. One hundred and ninety hours in. you read that correctly.), and I'm JUST NOW realizing that you can use perk points and upgrade your guys skills.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm just...baffled that I got this far being so weak. I'm done with most of the story lines.


I think that you get passive damage/defense increases when you get skill ups, they’re just obviously far less than if you get the perks on top. 

That game, on medium/high difficulty settings, gets pretty annoying with enemy scaling though, so I am surprised you weren’t getting stomped unless you were on very easy difficulty. Or maybe the game just doesn’t consider you to have leveled up until you take the health/mana/stamina bonuses that show up on the perks page?


----------



## Ralyks

Choop said:


> Kingdom Hearts, now Final Fantasy/Disney/Darksiders.


Honestly, I hope this one focuses on more Square Enix properties.


----------



## Seabeast2000

Is there a Steam Deck thread? Looks like they are finally shipping....


----------



## TedEH

So I played.... Spyro 2! Because I picked up all three originals at the same time, so might as well do em all.



Spoiler



You already know how Spyro works at this point. Be a dragon. Breathe fire. Collect junk.

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

- The visuals are generally an upgrade from the last one right away.
- There's a bit more challenge, which is good. It's still not hard by any stretch but I don't feel like I'm breezing through it.
- There's a whole ton of little character bits that flesh out the world better than the first.
- Some of those characters are...... pretty dumb though.
- Voiced dialogue! Much more voiced dialogue!
- Some of the power ups are better - the flying, the fireballs, etc.
- But the supercharge is worse - it's harder to control, and isn't used in great ways.
- In this game you don't get gems for killing enemies, which I'm on the fence about - since it gave you a good incentive to get 100% kills.
- The gems feel pretty generic, and a lot of the little missions you have to do to get them are.... just weird and kinda contrived in a video-game-y way.
- You get a new hover move! It's handy!
- The bosses are pretty lame by modern standards, but huuuuuge step up from the last game.
- The progression is....

Ok, my big criticism here is that the progression feels really off balance. I 100%'d a lot of the first half of the game just to find out that you can now skip past the rest because the gem+orb gates don't need many. I could have skipped the entire last hub area. And I wonder if they knew this, since the last hub switches up how it gates progress - you suddenly don't need "talismans" anymore, you just need to have picked up enough "orbs", which you've been racking up this whole time, sometimes three per level.

Oh and the flying levels. They're still kinda lame.

But overall - Spyro 2 feels like some thought was put into it, where #1 feels like they yolo'd the design. Not bad.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

First day with the new D&D group yesterday. Super fun and chill. The annoying little dogs I could've done without but I've endured _far _worse in the name of gaming.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So spent all gaming time on Chrono Cross HD. Well I did try out Radical Dreamers, then immediately turned it off after the intro. I knew for a fact that Cross was retelling the entire story anyway (as well as cutting a few corners like Magus), and there's no point in me going through text based game when there's already a perfectly functioning JRPG that comes with it. Really Dreamers is more of an artifact for the curious that's nice for Square to admit that it exists.

Also curious is that outside the opening menu, the 'arranged' soundtrack is nowhere to be found. Now I smell a rat thinking that Squenix will release the new OST as paid DLC, but after reading that composer Yasunori Mitsuda actually holds all the rights to the entire soundtrack, I'll gladly pay for it. The battle theme still sucks though...


----------



## Jarmake

I recently started playing dark souls 3 seriously, since I missed playing bloodborne... Well, it's been a fun ride this far. I've defeated Iudex Gundyr (doh), Vordt of the Boreal Valley, Curse-Rotted Greatwood, Crystal Sage, Abyss Watchers, Deacons of the Deep, High Lord Wolnir, Old Demon King and Pontiff Sulyvahn, so there's 10 bosses left, dlc's included.

So far this game has been much easier than Bloodborne was, but I think it helps when you actually play BB & Old Hunters through first 

Pontiff's beasts though... Those guys can fuck right off, especially the two at the secret place after Pontiff's battle.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> I recently started playing dark souls 3 seriously, since I missed playing bloodborne... Well, it's been a fun ride this far. I've defeated Iudex Gundyr (doh), Vordt of the Boreal Valley, Curse-Rotted Greatwood, Crystal Sage, Abyss Watchers, Deacons of the Deep, High Lord Wolnir, Old Demon King and Pontiff Sulyvahn, so there's 10 bosses left, dlc's included.
> 
> So far this game has been much easier than Bloodborne was, but I think it helps when you actually play BB & Old Hunters through first
> 
> Pontiff's beasts though... Those guys can fuck right off, especially the two at the secret place after Pontiff's battle.


Those guys are a great argument for why every build should have enough points in dex to wield a bow. You can very easily separate them, but only with a bow cause moving close enough to hit them with any other ranged attack will attract both of them. I'm sure it's POSSIBLE to kill both at once as melee, but you'd have to both be very good and very lucky in terms of their attack timings.

DS3 is definitely easier than bloodborne until the DLC. I think Midir is substantially harder than anything in BB's dlc.


----------



## WarMachine

CanserDYI said:


> Guys. I'm...a fucking idiot.
> 
> So. A few pages back in this thread i said I'm finally getting around to playing Skyrim.
> 
> So yeah, LOVE the game, been having a blast. About 190 hours in (yes. One hundred and ninety hours in. you read that correctly.), and I'm JUST NOW realizing that you can use perk points and upgrade your guys skills.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm just...baffled that I got this far being so weak. I'm done with most of the story lines.


Don't feel bad dude, i've had it installed for over a year and haven't really touched it. I've heard enough stories of how much time you can dump into it and that's one of the biggest reasons i haven't given it a chance yet lol. I know that if i get stuck in i won't be able to put it down.


----------



## bastardbullet

It’s been a while since i’ve finished returnal but, i love the atmosphere so much. So, anybody wants to play in co-op mode, just find me.

Psn id: akchamurat


----------



## pahulkster

Just got Cyberpunk after writing it off because of all the previous bs. Haven't gotten anything else since getting my Series X so I figured why not. Only got to do an hour or two so far so I can't really say too much about how it is. I like the setting and vibe so that's a plus. As long as things actually work it should be a cool play though. My guns seem to do zero damage which is weird but I have no idea about the leveling and weapons at this point either.


----------



## wankerness

Returnal and Cyberpunk are on my list of games I want to play but not for more than 30 dollars. Returnal is stubbornly at 50 on every sale for some reason. Cyberpunk I didn't want before the big update, and now that it happened I don't think it's as cheap anymore!


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> Welp, see this in 2028.




I would have been excited had I not played KH3. 




MFB said:


> I didn't even finish KH3, the games story was incredibly convoluted when they first came out and it became increasingly hard to follow with the various sequels on different platforms; the game mechanics also felt off/odd compared to the current landscape of gaming, so that makes KH4 an easy pass.



If you want to understand the story, albeit more slowly play through the FF14 MMO. The lead behind KH was the initial lead behind FF14, and he used the EXACT SAME FUCKING TROPES for each game.

Essentially people from “another” world or universe “kill” themselves to free their souls in order to be able to travel between worlds. Then they get up to world-ending hijinks and you have to stop them. 

Only KH keeps adding different “types” of souls - or something. I don’t fucking know. 

Anyways KH3 had fun character design, and Gummi travel was awesome. And I can’t remember another thing about it.


----------



## pahulkster

I paid $30 in the xbox store. I think it was 5 or 10 at one point.


----------



## Steinmetzify

They put the D O double jizzle into COD hahaha


----------



## Legion

just started cyberpunk. lets see how this goes


----------



## Ralyks

Apparently hit the point of no return in Ghostwire: Tokyo. May just try to Platinum it at this point.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

PS5 repaired and back home after a few weeks - loaded up BF4 since 2042 still a mess


----------



## TedEH

In the quest to play every (main?) Zelda game, I've crossed off: Minish Cap.



Spoiler



I kinda wish I'd played this one before, or that it was more accessible without a Wii U (the shop is shutting down soon) or forking out a bajillion dollars to collectors or resorting to the yar-har approach - since I think this might be one of the best 2d Zeldas. And it's a great GBA title. Some thoughts in no particular order:

- The game feels shorter than other 2d Zeldas. Not in a bad way. It's in that "I feel like I got a full game but it didn't overstay it's welcome" zone.
- It's mercifully a huge modernization of the gameboy Zeldas - visually, in movement, in progression, the way the story plays out, etc. Pretty much everything.
- That's not to say progression is aaaaaaaaaalways well called out, I did need to look up a thing or two, but I didn't need a guide, like the gameboy titles felt like they needed.
- The bosses aren't _brilliant_, but they're perfectly good. Rarely too overwhelming or confusing, and usually has a bit of depth to them. The Octoroc boss was kinda lame, but it's balanced out by a cool robot boss.
- The dungeons are few, but they're pretty solid.
- The bow feels weirdly sluggish to use for some reason. Like the animation to draw an arrow takes too long.
- Otherwise, most of the items are reasonably fun to use, and, as Zeldas do, they're integrated into dungeons the way you'd hope.
- I dig the art style.
- The shrinking mechanic is used well.
- I didn't do any of the shells stuff... which, apparently people didn't like anyway.
- The kinstones are also.... well, I don't hate them. On a surface level they're fine if you don't want to 100% the game, but there's some potential to be frustrated if you're bothered by what could become a grind for lame rewards.

It's good. I like it. Consistently at least decent. The odd bad bits aren't that bad. When it's good, it's very good.


----------



## spudmunkey

Wordle


----------



## CanserDYI

wankerness said:


> I think that you get passive damage/defense increases when you get skill ups, they’re just obviously far less than if you get the perks on top.
> 
> That game, on medium/high difficulty settings, gets pretty annoying with enemy scaling though, so I am surprised you weren’t getting stomped unless you were on very easy difficulty. Or maybe the game just doesn’t consider you to have leveled up until you take the health/mana/stamina bonuses that show up on the perks page?


Oh i got stomped A LOT. I just thought it was "git gud, bro" and I hammered my way through it. God you know how long some fights were? Jesus christ I'm having anxiety thinking about some of it, seeing how much stronger my character is now that I've actually used all my perks. My archery was high, and I still was just chipping away at people and enemies, but once I leveled that up, I'm just one shotting everything lol.


----------



## wankerness

CanserDYI said:


> Oh i got stomped A LOT. I just thought it was "git gud, bro" and I hammered my way through it. God you know how long some fights were? Jesus christ I'm having anxiety thinking about some of it, seeing how much stronger my character is now that I've actually used all my perks. My archery was high, and I still was just chipping away at people and enemies, but once I leveled that up, I'm just one shotting everything lol.


I love Skyrim and have played it all the way through a few times, but man, the combat in that game is BAD. Any fight that goes on a while is terrible. It's just mashing forward and back alternating while swinging wildly, pretty much, especially if you're 2H weapon focused. The stealth builds were vastly more fun.

Magic's kinda fun especially if you enchant a suit of armor to get you down to 0% mana use on destruction and run around dual-casting the strongest bolt spells, but with the way scaling works in that game it eventually gets very tedious with having to hit basic enemies like 5 times even with the strongest spells in the game. I enjoy that game a lot more if you just turn the difficulty down progressively as the enemies keep scaling and your damage stops scaling since the combat just plain isn't fun and thus the longer fights are awful. Like, the game keeps scaling them if you keep leveling, even though you probably ran out of abilities that actually make you do more damage to spend perks on a long, long time ago and thus the enemies are gaining more HP/Damage in response to you getting a lower chance of a lockpick breaking or whatever other bullshit skills you start having to spend on after a while.


----------



## CovertSovietBear

CanserDYI said:


> "git gud, bro"


Life Coach Canser the wise


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> In the quest to play every (main?) Zelda game, I've crossed off: Minish Cap.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I kinda wish I'd played this one before, or that it was more accessible without a Wii U (the shop is shutting down soon) or forking out a bajillion dollars to collectors or resorting to the yar-har approach - since I think this might be one of the best 2d Zeldas. And it's a great GBA title. Some thoughts in no particular order:
> 
> - The game feels shorter than other 2d Zeldas. Not in a bad way. It's in that "I feel like I got a full game but it didn't overstay it's welcome" zone.
> - It's mercifully a huge modernization of the gameboy Zeldas - visually, in movement, in progression, the way the story plays out, etc. Pretty much everything.
> - That's not to say progression is aaaaaaaaaalways well called out, I did need to look up a thing or two, but I didn't need a guide, like the gameboy titles felt like they needed.
> - The bosses aren't _brilliant_, but they're perfectly good. Rarely too overwhelming or confusing, and usually has a bit of depth to them. The Octoroc boss was kinda lame, but it's balanced out by a cool robot boss.
> - The dungeons are few, but they're pretty solid.
> - The bow feels weirdly sluggish to use for some reason. Like the animation to draw an arrow takes too long.
> - Otherwise, most of the items are reasonably fun to use, and, as Zeldas do, they're integrated into dungeons the way you'd hope.
> - I dig the art style.
> - The shrinking mechanic is used well.
> - I didn't do any of the shells stuff... which, apparently people didn't like anyway.
> - The kinstones are also.... well, I don't hate them. On a surface level they're fine if you don't want to 100% the game, but there's some potential to be frustrated if you're bothered by what could become a grind for lame rewards.
> 
> It's good. I like it. Consistently at least decent. The odd bad bits aren't that bad. When it's good, it's very good.


There's a good chance that GB/GBA games are about to come to Switch based on the latest leaks. Hopefully Metroids and Zeldas will be in the first batch. And Golden Sun.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> good chance that GB/GBA games are about to come to Switch


So I've heard. A step in the right direction if true, but not as big a step as I'd like to see. They're sitting on a gold mine of classic titles that there's clearly an audience for, putting aside any preservation argument, but I've little confidence they're ever going to come around to making things accessible in a reasonable way. NSO has a loooooooong way to go.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> So I've heard. A step in the right direction if true, but not as big a step as I'd like to see. They're sitting on a gold mine of classic titles that there's clearly an audience for, putting aside any preservation argument, but I've little confidence they're ever going to come around to making things accessible in a reasonable way. NSO has a loooooooong way to go.


100% agree, but right now I'm just happy to get to play some games I own in a more sensible, modern format.


----------



## Mathemagician

StevenC said:


> There's a good chance that GB/GBA games are about to come to Switch based on the latest leaks. Hopefully Metroids and Zeldas will be in the first batch. And Golden Sun.



Gooooldeeeeen Suuuuuun. Super fun and “easy” 16-bit style RPG. Really liked those games back in the day. Would have loved for the series to keep growing. Hopefully it sells well.


----------



## StevenC

Mathemagician said:


> Gooooldeeeeen Suuuuuun. Super fun and “easy” 16-bit style RPG. Really liked those games back in the day. Would have loved for the series to keep growing. Hopefully it sells well.


That's actually a good point. Surely Nintendo can see which games on NSO services are getting played the most to look for what properties have demand, in lieu of actual sales data. But this is Nintendo after all.

That said, Camelot haven't made anything other tennis and golf games in the past 25 years (other than 3 Golden Suns).


----------



## Werecow

After starting up D: OS 2 with the intention of doing my first lone wolf playthrough, i got to the point of no return and couldn't abandon the party members i love. So looks like i'm doing yet another "normal" playthough.


----------



## TedEH

Mathemagician said:


> Gooooldeeeeen Suuuuuun


It's on the backlog - I've got it installed on the Wii U and waiting for me to have some free time and clear out some other things on the backlog. I like seeing some hype for it in the meantime.


----------



## wankerness

After my fourth ~100% playthrough of Elden Ring, I finally loaded up a game that wasn't Elden Ring yesterday evening for the first time since February. I went back to Horizon: Forbidden West. This really highlighted just how different Elden Ring is from every other open world. It's like, mechnically, it's not that different in terms of you're trying to fill in a giant map and unlock checkpoints to fast travel to. But, the way your brain has to process it is COMPLETELY different. HFW (and all the Assassins Creed/Far Cry games, Batman games, etc) make you think in terms of map icons and just filling in the question marks with different icons and warping to the closest checkpoints to whatever area you're trying to fill in. Elden Ring, you actually are LOOKING at everything and really exploring the world. This is the second game that has succeeded at this, the first game being Breath of the Wild. So it's kind of like a version of Breath of the Wild that's radically more difficult (largely since you can't pause the game and heal to full with practically unlimited healing items every time the going gets tough) and without weapon durability. 

I'm definitely looking forward to BOTW2 next year since Elden Ring has really kinda spoiled me on these collect-a-thon icon-festival open world things again. BOTW would have, except that game has giant flaws of its own that balanced it out a bit (ex, the shrines are mostly all stupid tiny detours with re-used assets and one or two very simple puzzles and there are no real full-blown zelda dungeons, just the mini-dungeons that are the beasts; I hate how the enemy scaling works; I don't like the weapon breaking even if I got used to it; you can completely outscale all difficulty by upgrading armor since it isn't percentage-based and instead a flat reduction that can make almost all enemies only able to hit you for a half heart). While Elden Ring mainly just has tuning problems but most definitely has the full-blown dungeons thing worked out, and the mini-dungeons are a lot more absorbing than most of the shrines in BOTW. That said, BOTW's actual exploration is better especially thanks to the brilliant "you can climb anything" mechanic in BOTW.

Everyone still talks way too much in HFW. I was just mashing "skip" and "progress dialogue" every single time a cutscene came up.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> After my fourth ~100% playthrough of Elden Ring, I finally loaded up a game that wasn't Elden Ring yesterday evening for the first time since February. I went back to Horizon: Forbidden West. This really highlighted just how different Elden Ring is from every other open world. It's like, mechnically, it's not that different in terms of you're trying to fill in a giant map and unlock checkpoints to fast travel to. But, the way your brain has to process it is COMPLETELY different. HFW (and all the Assassins Creed/Far Cry games, Batman games, etc) make you think in terms of map icons and just filling in the question marks with different icons and warping to the closest checkpoints to whatever area you're trying to fill in. Elden Ring, you actually are LOOKING at everything and really exploring the world. This is the second game that has succeeded at this, the first game being Breath of the Wild. So it's kind of like a version of Breath of the Wild that's radically more difficult (largely since you can't pause the game and heal to full with practically unlimited healing items every time the going gets tough) and without weapon durability.
> 
> I'm definitely looking forward to BOTW2 next year since Elden Ring has really kinda spoiled me on these collect-a-thon icon-festival open world things again. BOTW would have, except that game has giant flaws of its own that balanced it out a bit (ex, the shrines are mostly all stupid tiny detours with re-used assets and one or two very simple puzzles and there are no real full-blown zelda dungeons, just the mini-dungeons that are the beasts; I hate how the enemy scaling works; I don't like the weapon breaking even if I got used to it; you can completely outscale all difficulty by upgrading armor since it isn't percentage-based and instead a flat reduction that can make almost all enemies only able to hit you for a half heart). While Elden Ring mainly just has tuning problems but most definitely has the full-blown dungeons thing worked out, and the mini-dungeons are a lot more absorbing than most of the shrines in BOTW. That said, BOTW's actual exploration is better especially thanks to the brilliant "you can climb anything" mechanic in BOTW.
> 
> Everyone still talks way too much in HFW. I was just mashing "skip" and "progress dialogue" every single time a cutscene came up.



I've always played open world games visually like that. I actually never fast travel either, as i like experiencing all the random events and mad stuff that happens unexpectedly, and just enjoying being in that world.
I have map icons and mission icons on the in-game compass turned off where possible, and navigate visually, occasionally getting my bearings on the main game map. They only become a filling in the map icons exercise if you let it.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

Session two with the new 5e D&D group yesterday. We hit third level last session, so I'm Rogue 2/Wizard 1 now. Already making that wizard level count. The party has neither a rogue nor an arcane caster so I'm aiming to fill two utility niches along with reliable DPS, which so far is working out swimmingly. I'll be aiming for Bladesinger Wizard 6 ultimately to pick up that extra attack, but won't finish it out until mid-teens, I'll be interspersing Rogue/Arcane Trickster levels to keep my Roguish abilities and Sneak Attack dice up in the meanwhile.





CanserDYI said:


> Guys. I'm...a fucking idiot.
> 
> So. A few pages back in this thread i said I'm finally getting around to playing Skyrim.
> 
> So yeah, LOVE the game, been having a blast. About 190 hours in (yes. One hundred and ninety hours in. you read that correctly.), and I'm JUST NOW realizing that you can use perk points and upgrade your guys skills.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm just...baffled that I got this far being so weak. I'm done with most of the story lines.




I liked Skyrim a lot but this really exemplifies why it wasn't a long-lasting obsession. I ran into the "edges" of the world a lot faster than in Oblivion, in which I ran into the "edges" of the world a lot faster than in Morrowind. There was simply more content, more spells, more skills, more cool ways to combine them in the older games (and _lots_ of shitty ways to combine them). Skyrim did a great job of making the franchise accessible to casual gamers and the scaling was a welcome challenge to powergaming veterans of the franchise (my fully kitted out max skills, max enchants sword and board character could still get one-shotted by Briarhearts if my shield wasn't up). What it gave up for that was the massive depth of the inventory, skill, and spell system that made the earlier games so much fun, but also have a much steeper skill curve. It was a lot easier to make a worthless character in Morrowind than it was to make a strong one, and powergaming to the highest degree required some really meticulous skill management that I found extremely enjoyable.

Morrowind's draw for me was the massive array of skills, spells, and items. Oblivion's biggest draw for me was the way melee and magic using were combined, making for truly formidable spellsword builds with a fun and smooth playstyle. Skyrim fell short on both of these, I appreciated the attempts at making the world dynamic, they were very effective through low and mid levels but wore thin once I'd seen most of the game's "random" events and quests. So, once I'd kind of "broken" the game via my powergaming and seen the edges of the "random" persistent world, it wasn't fun anymore, whereas in ESIII and ESIV, running around with a broken AF character that I built from scratch is a lot of the fun of the game for me.

I do have to give it up for the Aetherial Crown questline in Skyrim, the huge underground "underdark" style cavern system was super cool and thematic, that was my biggest "WOW" moment from that game by far. Also easily the best item in the game, broker than hell.

I have a hard time enjoying modern RPGs because they tend to be too "breakable." Pillars of Eternity grabbed me for a few weeks, until I had a party that trivialized even the "hardest" encounters. I never even finished the game.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I've always played open world games visually like that. I actually never fast travel either, as i like experiencing all the random events and mad stuff that happens unexpectedly, and just enjoying being in that world.
> I have map icons and mission icons on the in-game compass turned off where possible, and navigate visually, occasionally getting my bearings on the main game map. They only become a filling in the map icons exercise if you let it.


Yeah, you certainly CAN force yourself to play those things the way BOTW and Elden Ring force you to play. But it's not the default. Maybe my brain just isn't capable of ignoring things that make a game easier to beat faster if they're included as a default option. Like, I never even thought about turning off all the guidance systems in Assassin's Creed Odyssey (I forget what they called that option, adventure mode or something?). Might have been more engrossing, but definitely would have made it take at least twice as long to do anything. Batman Arkham City and Skyrim were (I think) the first open world games I played and they both really forced the icon spam down your throat with default options. I mean, with Skyrim, I still would run just about everywhere and go after every single question mark I saw and thus would take FOREVER to finish sidequests cause I was meandering around, but again I was following icons instead of staring at terrain. I'd never look somewhere if there was no icon on the radar cause I knew it was "pointless." BOTW and Elden Ring do not do that and instead force you to study the map and the overworld to try and figure out where there might be something interesting. 

AssCreed Valhalla tried undoing what they'd done with the previous few entries a little bit and instead added vague colors to your radar so it was a bit more of a mystery what exactly your map was picking up in the area, but it still very much was a "look for the subtle colors on the map/radar and go at them."


----------



## CanserDYI

God I loved Batman Arkham city.

On a separate note, playing through Far Cry 5, my first experience with a Far cry game. Extremely satisfying combat, not much else. I don't really care about any of the characters and the story seems so ridiculous and unbelievable, it's hard to immerse into it and enjoy it as anything more than an arcade style/GTA style "cause as much mayhem as you can before dying" game.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Yeah, you certainly CAN force yourself to play those things the way BOTW and Elden Ring force you to play. But it's not the default. Maybe my brain just isn't capable of ignoring things that make a game easier to beat faster if they're included as a default option. Like, I never even thought about turning off all the guidance systems in Assassin's Creed Odyssey (I forget what they called that option, adventure mode or something?). Might have been more engrossing, but definitely would have made it take at least twice as long to do anything. Batman Arkham City and Skyrim were (I think) the first open world games I played and they both really forced the icon spam down your throat with default options. I mean, with Skyrim, I still would run just about everywhere and go after every single question mark I saw and thus would take FOREVER to finish sidequests cause I was meandering around, but again I was following icons instead of staring at terrain. I'd never look somewhere if there was no icon on the radar cause I knew it was "pointless." BOTW and Elden Ring do not do that and instead force you to study the map and the overworld to try and figure out where there might be something interesting.
> 
> AssCreed Valhalla tried undoing what they'd done with the previous few entries a little bit and instead added vague colors to your radar so it was a bit more of a mystery what exactly your map was picking up in the area, but it still very much was a "look for the subtle colors on the map/radar and go at them."


With Skyrim, although you can turn all the help off, i used this great mod from Gopher that lets you modify the HUD to any degree. I had it set to just a single basic version of the compass (no icons whatsoever). It was great. I spent god knows how long exploring by eye. When i did want to actually get to a specific place, i remember having to say to myself things like "right, i have to go between those two mountains in the distance, slightly closer to the left one" etc. It's a really great frame of mind to be able to get in to.


----------



## wankerness

wheresthefbomb said:


> Session two with the new 5e D&D group yesterday. We hit third level last session, so I'm Rogue 2/Wizard 1 now. Already making that wizard level count. The party has neither a rogue nor an arcane caster so I'm aiming to fill two utility niches along with reliable DPS, which so far is working out swimmingly. I'll be aiming for Bladesinger Wizard 6 ultimately to pick up that extra attack, but won't finish it out until mid-teens, I'll be interspersing Rogue/Arcane Trickster levels to keep my Roguish abilities and Sneak Attack dice up in the meanwhile.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I liked Skyrim a lot but this really exemplifies why it wasn't a long-lasting obsession. I ran into the "edges" of the world a lot faster than in Oblivion, in which I ran into the "edges" of the world a lot faster than in Morrowind. There was simply more content, more spells, more skills, more cool ways to combine them in the older games (and _lots_ of shitty ways to combine them). Skyrim did a great job of making the franchise accessible to casual gamers and the scaling was a welcome challenge to powergaming veterans of the franchise (my fully kitted out max skills, max enchants sword and board character could still get one-shotted by Briarhearts if my shield wasn't up). What it gave up for that was the massive depth of the inventory, skill, and spell system that made the earlier games so much fun, but also have a much steeper skill curve. It was a lot easier to make a worthless character in Morrowind than it was to make a strong one, and powergaming to the highest degree required some really meticulous skill management that I found extremely enjoyable.
> 
> Morrowind's draw for me was the massive array of skills, spells, and items. Oblivion's biggest draw for me was the way melee and magic using were combined, making for truly formidable spellsword builds with a fun and smooth playstyle. Skyrim fell short on both of these, I appreciated the attempts at making the world dynamic, they were very effective through low and mid levels but wore thin once I'd seen most of the game's "random" events and quests. So, once I'd kind of "broken" the game via my powergaming and seen the edges of the "random" persistent world, it wasn't fun anymore, whereas in ESIII and ESIV, running around with a broken AF character that I built from scratch is a lot of the fun of the game for me.
> 
> I do have to give it up for the Aetherial Crown questline in Skyrim, the huge underground "underdark" style cavern system was super cool and thematic, that was my biggest "WOW" moment from that game by far. Also easily the best item in the game, broker than hell.
> 
> I have a hard time enjoying modern RPGs because they tend to be too "breakable." Pillars of Eternity grabbed me for a few weeks, until I had a party that trivialized even the "hardest" encounters. I never even finished the game.



I've always been a bit curious about Morrowind, but I REALLY don't like Oblivion and loved Skyrim so I worry Morrowind would be even worse in terms of appeal to me, even though I know general consensus seems to be it's a lot better than Oblivion. I guess Oblivion I hate how clunky and static it feels with combat, and I hated the dialogue minigame, and Skyrim just felt so much more exciting and "arcade-y" I guess. 

The ability to make custom spells was fun and I sorta liked some of the skills that went away in Skyrim (especially when you'd max out jumping or whatever it was called and be able to bounce off water surfaces if you timed your jumps right). But god, I hated going in Oblivion portals so much, and the voice acting was SO, SO BAD. And I didn't enjoy any of the questlines at all except maybe the end heist of the thieves guild, though you had to put up with that gray fox idiot going CAPITAL!!! for what felt like an eternity first.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> With Skyrim, although you can turn all the help off, i used this great mod from Gopher that lets you modify the HUD to any degree. I had it set to just a single basic version of the compass (no icons whatsoever). It was great. I spent god knows how long exploring by eye. When i did want to actually get to a specific place, i remember having to say to myself things like "right, i have to go between those two mountains in the distance, slightly closer to the left one" etc. It's a really great frame of mind to be able to get in to.


That does sound fun. If I hadn't played through the game multiple times and thus have a basic idea of where most of the important stuff is, I would definitely try it out. Maybe in ten years when I've forgotten it all.


----------



## wankerness

CanserDYI said:


> God I loved Batman Arkham city.
> 
> On a separate note, playing through Far Cry 5, my first experience with a Far cry game. Extremely satisfying combat, not much else. I don't really care about any of the characters and the story seems so ridiculous and unbelievable, it's hard to immerse into it and enjoy it as anything more than an arcade style/GTA style "cause as much mayhem as you can before dying" game.


Far Cry 5 is really fun IMO as a sandbox game, and I like hanging out with your companions. My favorite by far was the one-eyed chick with the bow, you could use her to stealth 1-shot enemies pretty regularly. Hurk was the most entertaining but he'd usually end up getting me killed with all his explosions. 

The only problem I have with that game is how it ramrods you through the plot with the awful "kidnapping" mechanic and prevents you from clearing out the map because of it. But as far as actual gameplay/location/mechanics go it's definitely my favorite of the series.


----------



## wankerness

Getting really, really annoyed with HFW's combat. Like, every fight is just "enemy dives at you or does some big aoe, knocks you down, you fall down and take five seconds to get up again and can't do shit until the animation is over, repeat x10." Frequently the monsters will dive at the screen and knock your character OFF the screen entirely so you can't even see what you're doing. Monsters will regularly fly at you from off the screen and knock you down for five seconds. It's maddening. The game needs some kind of quick-recovery mechanic like there are in a lot of action games (ex, you hit roll right as you get knocked down you just bounce up again). It's not HARD since you can heal even when knocked down somehow and enemies don't do that much damage unless you're on higher difficulties, but it's incredibly not fun constantly being knocked down and having to wait to get back to gameplay, sometimes having it chain repeatedly with enemies that spam laser barrages or whatever. I don't understand the rolling iframes in this game AT ALL, I think maybe it just doesn't have them. I've been playing too much elden ring, now only that game seems easy to me.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wheresthefbomb said:


> Session two with the new 5e D&D group yesterday. We hit third level last session, so I'm Rogue 2/Wizard 1 now. Already making that wizard level count. The party has neither a rogue nor an arcane caster so I'm aiming to fill two utility niches along with reliable DPS, which so far is working out swimmingly. I'll be aiming for Bladesinger Wizard 6 ultimately to pick up that extra attack, but won't finish it out until mid-teens, I'll be interspersing Rogue/Arcane Trickster levels to keep my Roguish abilities and Sneak Attack dice up in the meanwhile.


I've got my first game since pre-Covid this Sunday, barring any scheduling issues, and have been trying to plan this since October I think? Looking forward to it since it's all with close friends, 2 of which are veterans and one will be DM'ing. Only downside is that we'll be doing it virtually which I've had tech issues in the past with, but will try to work out the kinks ahead of time this time around.


----------



## Tree

Just started playing MK11. It's the first 3d Mortal Kombat I've played since Deception first came out, I think. I was so disappointed at the change to fight pacing from the original 2d games (MK4 included) that I had sworn off wanting to try any of the newer iterations. UMK3 and Trilogy were my bread and butter growing up. 

Rambling aside, it's actually been incredibly fun and the combo/string system is engaging. I haven't gone full tryhard yet, I'm still just getting my bearings, but this makes me want to go back and try some of the others leading up to this. I started the story mode and I'm so lost  I can put two and two together, it's not like MK has the most complex world building, but it would still be nice to actually see everything the characters are referencing happen myself.


----------



## Empryrean

I'm tryin out a mod for Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 where a few new characters have been added in and I have to say it's kind of amazing what the modding community has done. I almost want to try playing with people but I think I have more fun just trying out combos


----------



## Choop

Empryrean said:


> I'm tryin out a mod for Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 where a few new characters have been added in and I have to say it's kind of amazing what the modding community has done. I almost want to try playing with people but I think I have more fun just trying out combos



Apparently there is a new mod for UMVC3 that lets it run at 120hz!


----------



## LostTheTone

Tree said:


> Just started playing MK11. It's the first 3d Mortal Kombat I've played since Deception first came out, I think. I was so disappointed at the change to fight pacing from the original 2d games (MK4 included) that I had sworn off wanting to try any of the newer iterations. UMK3 and Trilogy were my bread and butter growing up.
> 
> Rambling aside, it's actually been incredibly fun and the combo/string system is engaging. I haven't gone full tryhard yet, I'm still just getting my bearings, but this makes me want to go back and try some of the others leading up to this. I started the story mode and I'm so lost  I can put two and two together, it's not like MK has the most complex world building, but it would still be nice to actually see everything the characters are referencing happen myself.



Oh dude, the MK cannon is pants-on-head madness at this point. Just steer into it, Zombie Liu Kang all the way


----------



## wankerness

The aesthetic changes with the MK series are off-putting to me. I feel like it peaked with 9 on 360, it was comically disgusting and outrageous and all the characters looked insane, and the DLC with like horror movie characters was a lot of fun. After that they toned it down BIGTIME in some arenas, and then made it way worse in others. Like, they decided "we can't sexualize our characters anymore!" so suddenly all of them were fully clad (the characters like Sonya and Kitana make some sense cause they were Soul Calibur/Dead or Alive level sexualized, but then like Jax and Liu Kang also suddenly put shirts on for the first time in the series!! And body proportions with like arm sizes got more and more realistic each game). Which is fine, but this sudden apparent concern about characters being too sexy corresponded to the "we must also make the violence far more explicit and realistic because if there's one thing people who want a game where ninjas fight monsters want, it's fatalities and bone-breaker moves that are as true to real-life anatomy as possible!" It stopped being fun Dead Alive style splatter and turned into gross torture porny stuff. I mean, it's still outrageous and they still have DLC with Jason and the Alien, but that's the general trend with the last couple entries as far as I've seen (I played 9 for several hours, X for a few less than that, and 11 I bounced off of almost immediately cause I also didn't like how it got slower paced and how slow the unlocks seemed like they would be).

(I'm still generally not a fighting game guy, and the only ones I ever played for hundreds of hours were Killer Instinct 1/2 on SNES/N64)


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> The aesthetic changes with the MK series are off-putting to me. I feel like it peaked with 9 on 360, it was comically disgusting and outrageous and all the characters looked insane, and the DLC with like horror movie characters was a lot of fun. After that they toned it down BIGTIME in some arenas, and then made it way worse in others. Like, they decided "we can't sexualize our characters anymore!" so suddenly all of them were fully clad (the characters like Sonya and Kitana make some sense cause they were Soul Calibur/Dead or Alive level sexualized, but then like Jax and Liu Kang also suddenly put shirts on for the first time in the series!! And body proportions with like arm sizes got more and more realistic each game). Which is fine, but this sudden apparent concern about characters being too sexy corresponded to the "we must also make the violence far more explicit and realistic because if there's one thing people who want a game where ninjas fight monsters want, it's fatalities and bone-breaker moves that are as true to real-life anatomy as possible!" It stopped being fun Dead Alive style splatter and turned into gross torture porny stuff. I mean, it's still outrageous and they still have DLC with Jason and the Alien, but that's the general trend with the last couple entries as far as I've seen (I played 9 for several hours, X for a few less than that, and 11 I bounced off of almost immediately cause I also didn't like how it got slower paced and how slow the unlocks seemed like they would be).
> 
> (I'm still generally not a fighting game guy, and the only ones I ever played for hundreds of hours were Killer Instinct 1/2 on SNES/N64)



I tend to agree - MK worked best when the ultraviolence was leaning more towards comedy than horror. Obviously the early entries didn't have much choice, but even in MK2 they were putting in silly stuff just because it was over the top and fun. A lot of the time I only learned the fatalities etc because they were entertaining to see, not because I wanted to watch a faces of death video. 

I think the sexiness (or not) is also somewhat down to graphical abilities. Historically they were rendered in glorious pixels, so even if you felt like the ladies were over sexualised this was just what drawing someone in a leotard with pixels looks like. In the modern era vast amounts of time and effort are put into rendering the exact curve of buttocks and deciding whether Kitana has a VPL is a real thing. 

As it turns out, the closer we get to "real" the more uncomfortable we get with seeing explicit things, and the more deliberate the choice to show us it becomes.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Finally bought Cyberpunk 2077, finished the game in a couple of days. I had a lot of fun! The graphics are insane, the immersion too. I liked the character's stories a lot as well..


----------



## wheresthefbomb

BlackMastodon said:


> I've got my first game since pre-Covid this Sunday, barring any scheduling issues, and have been trying to plan this since October I think? Looking forward to it since it's all with close friends, 2 of which are veterans and one will be DM'ing. Only downside is that we'll be doing it virtually which I've had tech issues in the past with, but will try to work out the kinks ahead of time this time around.



I've done a little virtual gaming back in the day over MSN messenger, but broadly much prefer in person, which this group fortunately is. I would've happily settled for virtual gaming though, gotta scratch that itch. Glad to hear you've found a group, it's hard to to be gaming when you want to be, and it's a big part of my socialization these days as well. Also for me personally it's really, really nice to hang out with other responsibleish adults in a context that doesn't involve alcohol.


----------



## Ralyks

Finished Ghostwire: Tokyo. Debating if I want to bother with the platinum. It was a good game. Not great, not bad, just good. Like a 7/10. Although visually quite stunning.

Anyway, I'm currently playing The Stanley Parable Deluxe Edition, and this has got to be the silliest thing I've ever played.


----------



## Werecow

Ralyks said:


> Finished Ghostwire: Tokyo. Debating if I want to bother with the platinum. It was a good game. Not great, not bad, just good. Like a 7/10. Although visually quite stunning.


What's the combat like? First-person single-player is normally my thing, but the trailers strangely did absolutely nothing for me. The enemy AI looked like it was placeholder almost, just sorta standing there while you waved your hands around.


----------



## wankerness

Ghostwire looked cool as far as visuals went, I always like to see the Shinjuku district after so many Yakuza games and visiting there make me think of it as an old home.  But yeah, the gameplay did not really get featuredin anything I saw so I don't know what to think. Probably going to wait for a big discount regardless.

I finished Horizon Forbidden West besides one trophy needed for the platinum - the goddam MACHINE STRIKE one. The game is yet another in a long line of open world games that has to include some goddam full-fledged minigame. This one's sort of a tactical one where you move pieces around a board and attack other pieces doing damage based on what terrain they're on etc, but the rules are insanely confusing (why is the computer sometimes able to attack me 4 turns in a row when they're limited to 2 turns 90% of the time?!?!) and you are forced to go through multiple long rounds of "tutorials" where you're limited to garbage pieces instead of able to use the ones you've unlocked and I very quickly got annoyed and gave up before completing a single "real" challenge. Ugh. I will try again sometime just so I can say I'm done with this game. The base game is astounding technically and it's got a lot of good aspects, but the sheer amount of bad dialogue/plot that you're confronted with at all times is really draining and I especially hate how constantly you're knocked down for lengthy periods in the combat. The first game was a lot better in all regards other than graphics and loading times and weapon variety, I think. There are maybe too MANY ammo types this go-round, though. 

YS IX is on sale for 30 bucks, still seems like a bit much but hey. I went back to Elden Ring after getting really frustrated with HFW and I need to break this cycle. I'm getting an itch to replay DS3 though...


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Played only Chrono Cross since it's release, and up to what feels like the middle of the second act. 

I keep forgetting how you can easily recruit about 9 characters in one sitting at this point in the game. Most of them are crap fillers that add little or nothing to the main story. There are only so many elements and gear to equip and the weird levelling system lets them catch up anyway so you may as well pick 2 favorites and stick with them. One you'll want with the stealing agility since stolen items are extremely rewarding in this game so that narrows down your choices from all the superfluous dead weight sitting on bench. 

Regarding the new QOL options, the big 3 are turning off random encounters, auto battle and a powered up easy mode. I didn't bother using them since it makes the game insultingly easy, bar one situation to recruit another bench warmer just as a flex.


----------



## LostTheTone

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Played only Chrono Cross since it's release, and up to what feels like the middle of the second act.
> 
> I keep forgetting how you can easily recruit about 9 characters in one sitting at this point in the game. Most of them are crap fillers that add little or nothing to the main story. There are only so many elements and gear to equip and the weird levelling system lets them catch up anyway so you may as well pick 2 favorites and stick with them. One you'll want with the stealing agility since stolen items are extremely rewarding in this game so that narrows down your choices from all the superfluous dead weight sitting on bench.
> 
> Regarding the new QOL options, the big 3 are turning off random encounters, auto battle and a powered up easy mode. I didn't bother using them since it makes the game insultingly easy, bar one situation to recruit another bench warmer just as a flex.



It's interesting how some styles of game make these slight missteps - Older JRPGs are one where it is almost part of the genre conventions to have way more characters to recruit than you ever really need. Which isn't bad, by any means, but it's a different kind of play too. I'm reminded for Shining Force 3 (which I occasionally go back to because I'm a massive fanboi) where each character gets exactly one action per turn, so just having more dudes is a massive advantage. Even when you are at the party limit, having 16 _good _characters is a huge advantage.

Still for all that... The quirks are often what makes the games charming and interesting. And sometimes they are what makes the games balls hard too. I wouldn't want to see updated versions just patching out weird design decisions. For better or worse, they are artefacts of their time.


----------



## gabito

I'm currently playing Torment: Tides of Numenera.

All you do in most games is "solving" every conflict with your fists, a gun, or some kind of weapon, and that's fine but I'm kind of tired of it, so this is a nice change of pace. I don't want to fight or kill something every two steps. Not always, anyway.

There's a lot of reading in this game, so I'm taking my time. It's cool that you can talk your way out of most situations, and death is not always definitive. It's a really old school-ish game, from a time where CRPGs still tried to give you that feeling of playing a tabletop RPG with a dungeon master narrating your adventures.

Might give Disco Elysium a go when I finish this one.

And I'm still waiting for God of War Ragnarok (yeah, I know this contradicts my "I don't want to kill stuff all the time" statement, but oh well...).


----------



## Mathemagician

LostTheTone said:


> It's interesting how some styles of game make these slight missteps - Older JRPGs are one where it is almost part of the genre conventions to have way more characters to recruit than you ever really need. Which isn't bad, by any means, but it's a different kind of play too. I'm reminded for Shining Force 3 (which I occasionally go back to because I'm a massive fanboi) where each character gets exactly one action per turn, so just having more dudes is a massive advantage. Even when you are at the party limit, having 16 _good _characters is a huge advantage.
> 
> Still for all that... The quirks are often what makes the games charming and interesting. And sometimes they are what makes the games balls hard too. I wouldn't want to see updated versions just patching out weird design decisions. For better or worse, they are artefacts of their time.


Yeah I’m old enough to remember that “X number of playable characters” was once a selling point. That was a time when the “customization” of selecting different characters was still super novel. 

I know I played/beat Chrono cross back in the PS1, and all I remember is the 3 ring spell system. Maybe I’ll pick it up on sale.


----------



## wankerness

I kind of like that function cause if you have enough extraneous characters you can assemble a team with only characters that you like. It would just always bite you in the ass on the inevitable late-game segment where you had to split up into multiple full parties and use most of your characters and you’d never leveled half of them. Ff6 was a big example of this.


----------



## TedEH

Lately I've been making my way slowly through Bayonetta. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect going in, I just knew it was something vaguely popular. I think I expected something Devil-May-Cry-Esque, and it sort of is, but it feels more like..... God of War: Sassy Witch Edition.


----------



## wankerness

I never really played God of War, I vaguely remember bouncing off it HARD after the first segment of the game made you get through like fifteen minutes of enemies before giving you a checkpoint. I died once and was like "nope, not the game for me." I was much less of an action gamer guy at that point and was just like "screw this." So, obviously I don't have much knowledge of that game's systems. But, I thought Bayonetta seemed a lot like Devil May Cry in terms of things like the way you can float in air while doing ridiculous combos and how you get rated on style, plus the upgrade system with a weird vendor character, etc. I haven't played DMC since probably about 2003 and Bayonetta since about 2012, maybe my memories are wrong.


----------



## LostTheTone

wankerness said:


> I kind of like that function cause if you have enough extraneous characters you can assemble a team with only characters that you like. It would just always bite you in the ass on the inevitable late-game segment where you had to split up into multiple full parties and use most of your characters and you’d never leveled half of them. Ff6 was a big example of this.



I like it too. But there's a sweet spot - You don't just want a million dudes that you flatly don't care about and will just compare the stats. You need just enough dudes that you have choice, but not so many that you can just make a whole team out of the bullshit OP guys. Especially in these kinda fantasy games, having to choose between casters who are made from tissue and rock hard melee dudes but can only kill one guy at a time is interesting gameplay. 

It also creates interesting niches for stuff that most games would min-max out of existence. The utility dudes, who don't hit very hard but do still hit, and also have both a mediocre attack spell and a low key heal. Looking back when you have a GameFAQ or whatever, you forget how unexpected things really were the first time around, how every encounter deliberately had something unexpected about it that you had to deal with.


----------



## LostTheTone

TedEH said:


> Lately I've been making my way slowly through Bayonetta. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect going in, I just knew it was something vaguely popular. I think I expected something Devil-May-Cry-Esque, and it sort of is, but it feels more like..... God of War: Sassy Witch Edition.



You know, I was tempted by Bayonetta being on sale on Switch atm, for what it's worth I remember it not being quite as good as people remember too. Like, I remember it was fine but not something that spawns a huge fan base like DMC did. Of course, I never played DMC much either, so YMMV.


----------



## wankerness

LostTheTone said:


> You know, I was tempted by Bayonetta being on sale on Switch atm, for what it's worth I remember it not being quite as good as people remember too. Like, I remember it was fine but not something that spawns a huge fan base like DMC did. Of course, I never played DMC much either, so YMMV.


I remember being very entertained by Bayonetta. I played it on some lower difficulty setting so I didn't have any issues getting through it, I know it's infamously hard on higher diffiiculties. It's silly in all the right ways and it doesn't overstay its welcome. I never got into 2, though, too many endless cutscenes.

I liked it more than I remembered liking DMC, but again I had only gotten 2/3 through DMC and several years earlier. I remember mainly being annoyed by how the bosses were all sort of escalating versions of themselves since I really hated a couple of those ones I had to fight repeatedly.


----------



## TedEH

I think I'm about a third of the way through it, and I'd be willing to bet that Bayonetta is more popular for the Sassy Witch content than it is for gameplay design. If I wasn't someone who was very tolerant of Old Game Jank, I'd likely have bounced off this one pretty quick too, especially as someone who was never good at more combo-based action system. I die pretty often in this one. There's enough creativity on display to keep me going, but it's more of a "pick at it when I have some spare time" kind of thing than a "I really want to get off work so I can keep playing" kind of deal.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

LostTheTone said:


> It's interesting how some styles of game make these slight missteps - Older JRPGs are one where it is almost part of the genre conventions to have way more characters to recruit than you ever really need. Which isn't bad, by any means, but it's a different kind of play too. I'm reminded for Shining Force 3 (which I occasionally go back to because I'm a massive fanboi) where each character gets exactly one action per turn, so just having more dudes is a massive advantage. Even when you are at the party limit, having 16 _good _characters is a huge advantage.



I'm ok with a large playable roster to a certain degree. By nature, tactics based RPGs like Suikoden and Shining Force benefit more with them. If the characters add something to the story then all the better. The more choices actually adds more to the strategic factor in JRPGs until you find a team that you like or breaks the game.

I can forgive FF6 for the 14 character roster since the story flow makes you familiarise with most of them as you progress until the second half when you can choose whomever you want for a main party. Hell, one of my favourite recent JPRGs lets you choose 12 from 39 characters to go nuts on the final boss. In that case I enjoyed it since i can experiment with their styles, and that I've invested in their stories over the course of 9 games. 

Chrono Cross has none of those perks. Bloated with 45 characters and you'll barely need most of them both story and gameplay, since you can only have 3 in your party. A product of its time it may be. But it's also a quasi sequel to one of the most tightly knitted games of its genre. I still think Cross is a good game but comparing Cross to Trigger is like comparing Portal 2 to Portal 1 or Doom Eternal to Doom 2016.


----------



## bastardbullet

Just finished the mortal shell, elden ring is next. Also, curently killing time with the ascent, not sure if i liked or not. We’ll see. Oh, and after years, i’ve finally decided to give a second shot for tlou part 2 and i guess i’m somewhere around the middle of the game already. I still hate the control mechanics and coerced co-op parts including other characters are just a pain in the ass.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Chrono Cross has none of those perks. Bloated with 45 characters and you'll barely need most of them both story and gameplay, since you can only have 3 in your party. A product of its time it may be. But it's also a quasi sequel to one of the most tightly knitted games of its genre. I still think Cross is a good game but comparing Cross to Trigger is like comparing Portal 2 to Portal 1 or Doom Eternal to Doom 2016.



Uhh...don't most people think those are better than the originals?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> Uhh...don't most people think those are better than the originals?


I'm not one of them. Still great games if a bit bloated with stuff that doesn't really make it better than the originals.


----------



## Jarmake

Yhorm the Giant fell yesterday, when I finally had some time on my hands and booted up my ps4. With storm ruler (or whatever the sword was) it was a walk in a park. Can't say the same thing about the road to Yhorm. Fucking Jailers, they can go straight to hell. 10/19 bosses down, next up Aldrich, Devourer of Gods.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> Yhorm the Giant fell yesterday, when I finally had some time on my hands and booted up my ps4. With storm ruler (or whatever the sword was) it was a walk in a park. Can't say the same thing about the road to Yhorm. Fucking Jailers, they can go straight to hell. 10/19 bosses down, next up Aldrich, Devourer of Gods.


Aldrich and the twin princes were the two main-game bosses that gave me a headache my first playthrough. Had to learn to play with unlocked camera on aldrich and change my weapon setup for the first time on princes.


----------



## LostTheTone

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'm not one of them. Still great games if a bit bloated with stuff that doesn't really make it better than the originals.



I generally agree with your examples - Portal 1 and Doom 2016 are very close to being perfect examples of their genre. Their sequels are by no means bad games at all, but I feel they have to be marked down for being "More of the same". Yeah, I enjoyed them, but part of what really elevated the first ones was that their length and pacing was (to my mind) exactly correct. 

A lot of very good games have similar things going on - They are deliberately paced and built around their story beats. The story of Portal is something very special and that perfectly subverts the expectations that it built for you. It's jaw dropping. Portal 2 has a better story, but it kinda keeps drip feeding it to you and it's more overtly comic and it doesn't have quite the same moment of revelation.


----------



## wankerness

I have never actually played through Portal 2's single player. I've played through the co-op, though, and that is glorious. Probably the best couch co-op that came out until maybe It Takes Two. I will have to buy it on Switch at some point.


----------



## TheBlackBard

gabito said:


> I'm currently playing Torment: Tides of Numenera.
> 
> All you do in most games is "solving" every conflict with your fists, a gun, or some kind of weapon, and that's fine but I'm kind of tired of it, so this is a nice change of pace. I don't want to fight or kill something every two steps. Not always, anyway.
> 
> There's a lot of reading in this game, so I'm taking my time. It's cool that you can talk your way out of most situations, and death is not always definitive. It's a really old school-ish game, from a time where CRPGs still tried to give you that feeling of playing a tabletop RPG with a dungeon master narrating your adventures.
> 
> Might give Disco Elysium a go when I finish this one.
> 
> And I'm still waiting for God of War Ragnarok (yeah, I know this contradicts my "I don't want to kill stuff all the time" statement, but oh well...).




I've been on this path for a minute and funnily enough, when I went back to AAA "RPG's" like Skyrim and Fallout 4? They felt VERY thin in comparison in terms of story and choices and such. Planescape: Torment, Disco Elysium, Pillars of Eternity, hell even Divinity: OS is way better in the writing department. CRPG's might be a bit dated in presentation and such, but I fully expect that to be somewhat rectified with Avowed, which is Obsidian's next first person RPG. Skyrim is there when I need a hack n slash, and Fallout 4 is there when I need a shooting game where I can snarkily say "yes" to something, but that's it. They're not there when I want to play RPG's anymore.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Also, Doom: Eternal IS better than 2016, but 2016 is still an amazing game.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I have never actually played through Portal 2's single player. I've played through the co-op, though, and that is glorious. Probably the best couch co-op that came out until maybe It Takes Two. I will have to buy it on Switch at some point.


Definitely recommend doing so, if not for experiencing the fun and excellent single player story, then just to experience the entire game. You've only played half of it if you only did the multiplayer co-op.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> Also, Doom: Eternal IS better than 2016, but 2016 is still an amazing game.


My brief experience with Doom Eternal was that I played one level and it exhausted me cause I hated the way it seemed like it was going to be balanced around running out of ammo constantly and having to use the chainsaw strategically to get ammo back. Games with very limited crucial resources stress me out bigtime and I don't enjoy them! Doom 2016 felt more like the original on medium difficulty in which you COULD run out of ammo, but you'd have to miss a lot. It's definitely a tic of mine, it's kind of like games with weapon durability or platformers with lots of precision jumps over instant death pits in general.

That said most I know who are any good at it think it's a lot better and appreciate how incredibly complex all the mechanics are. Speed runs of it are hypnotizing to watch.


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> My brief experience with Doom Eternal was that I played one level and it exhausted me cause I hated the way it seemed like it was going to be balanced around running out of ammo constantly and having to use the chainsaw strategically to get ammo back. Games with very limited crucial resources stress me out bigtime and I don't enjoy them! Doom 2016 felt more like the original on medium difficulty in which you COULD run out of ammo, but you'd have to miss a lot. It's definitely a tic of mine, it's kind of like games with weapon durability or platformers with lots of precision jumps over instant death pits in general.
> 
> That said most I know who are any good at it think it's a lot better and appreciate how incredibly complex all the mechanics are. Speed runs of it are hypnotizing to watch.



All comes down to personal taste. If Doom: Eternal is the kind of game that stresses you then I could see where you prefer 2016 over it vastly. That said, I love ALL the Doom games. Still do vanilla runs of the OG's once a month if not more. They all got a special place in my heart.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> All comes down to personal taste. If Doom: Eternal is the kind of game that stresses you then I could see where you prefer 2016 over it vastly. That said, I love ALL the Doom games. Still do vanilla runs of the OG's once a month if not more. They all got a special place in my heart.


I love all the old ones a lot, my favorites are probably The Plutonia Experiment and Doom II. Zdoom was a staple of my PC setups for a long time. I liked 2016 but I didn't totally love it apart from the soundtrack and general aesthetics. Didn't like the platforming. I guess Eternal leans into that much more.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

wankerness said:


> I have never actually played through Portal 2's single player. I've played through the co-op, though, and that is glorious. Probably the best couch co-op that came out until maybe It Takes Two. I will have to buy it on Switch at some point.



Portal 2's co op is fantastic and it's greatest strength. It also makes the game have absolutely no replay value whatsoever.

I did get to play It Takes Two on a date in a gamer bar and it was a lot of fun. Story is a bit on the cringe side but it's much better than Starbreeze's previous efforts.


----------



## wankerness

It takes two is utterly fantastic gameplay wise, the level variety is great, the controls are perfect, and it’s just a ton of fun the way your abilities interact . It also has some of the worst cutscenes I’ve ever seen in a game and they go on FOREVER. I strongly recommend anyone that plays it skip them all.


----------



## mongey

LostTheTone said:


> I generally agree with your examples - Portal 1 and Doom 2016 are very close to being perfect examples of their genre. Their sequels are by no means bad games at all, but I feel they have to be marked down for being "More of the same". Yeah, I enjoyed them, but part of what really elevated the first ones was that their length and pacing was (to my mind) exactly correct.
> 
> A lot of very good games have similar things going on - They are deliberately paced and built around their story beats. The story of Portal is something very special and that perfectly subverts the expectations that it built for you. It's jaw dropping. Portal 2 has a better story, but it kinda keeps drip feeding it to you and it's more overtly comic and it doesn't have quite the same moment of revelation.


I re played through portal 1 and 2 late last year.

Portal 1 is indeed pretty much a perfect game. Script , story , acting and gameplay. Personally I’d say it’s probably the greatest game ever made.

2 is still good but it did move a bit from the clever puzzle mechanics to a pixel hunt to find surfaces to warp to.


----------



## LostTheTone

mongey said:


> I re played through portal 1 and 2 late last year.
> 
> Portal 1 is indeed pretty much a perfect game. Script , story , acting and gameplay. Personally I’d say it’s probably the greatest game ever made.
> 
> 2 is still good but it did move a bit from the clever puzzle mechanics to a pixel hunt to find surfaces to warp to.



Perhaps most importantly, Portal was a game made to be a cute little throwaway thing to go into the Orange Box. It was just supposed to be fun, but kinda disposable. And that completely changes how you interact with it, when it suddenly becomes... Not that... And elevates itself into the pantheon of gaming history.

Portal 2 has some great stuff going on too. And yes, the co-op is amazing game design (and a good way to find out whether your wife has motion sickness). But the point of Portal isn't it's mechanics or even its level design. Making really satisfying little puzzle rooms is not greatness.

The form of Portal 2 is much more traditional - It is a much straighter game. The plot is good, the writing is excellent, JK Simmons is doing some of the best work of his already great career. But it is still a pretty standard adventure game in terms of presentation, and it is inside an existing universe where we go in knowing that we literally cannot trust anything, so it's less impactful.

It is still excellent, but "merely" an excellent execution of a good game formula. And when you sit down and think about the games that really rise above the crowd, they all do something different than you expected.

Even Doom 2016, to me at least, does that by recreating the original frantic magic of Doom but putting that into a modern formula. The way it balances the chainsaw is really smart design, because it isn't a scavenging mechanic, it is something to add flow to combat and let you keep using your favourite weapons, so it is really satisfying. You can mostly forget the chainsaw and switch weapons, but it's way more fun to stick with your favourite and the dive in their to get more ammo, then finish up your spree killing in the funnest way you have.

I don't think Eternal quite pulls that off, and I think the added features like the grappling hook are gimmicks that you would expect from an old expansion pack, but aren't all that interesting to me.

On top of that, Doom 2016 was a game that we had no idea whether it would take itself seriously or not. The decision to make the Doom Slayer character be completely disinterested in the plot that led to him being released, and only interested in murdering demons, was simply inspired. The game takes itself seriously, but created this twitchy impatient character for the player that wants to just rush on ahead and keep killing. That's quite unique, because it's not really played for laughs. It just kinda synchronises with the players desires. Doing that again in Eternal is not bad... But it isn't the stellar exciting development that it was the first time around.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I think I'm about a third of the way through it, and I'd be willing to bet that Bayonetta is more popular for the Sassy Witch content than it is for gameplay design. If I wasn't someone who was very tolerant of Old Game Jank, I'd likely have bounced off this one pretty quick too, especially as someone who was never good at more combo-based action system. I die pretty often in this one. There's enough creativity on display to keep me going, but it's more of a "pick at it when I have some spare time" kind of thing than a "I really want to get off work so I can keep playing" kind of deal.


Bayonetta 1 and 2 are probably the only games I've ever spent significant time replaying because the gameplay is so good. Trying to grind out Pure Platinum trophies on every level is taking years, but worth it. 

I guess I've played Majora's Mask and Sunshine a few times as well.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> Trying to grind out Pure Platinum trophies on every level is taking years, but worth it.


I guess that's not what motivates me to a play a game - I'm not the completionist type - but you can tell the game was designed to reward people who git gud at it. If I ever get around to the second one, I'd be curious to see if it gets a little more "accessible". Not easier per-se, but just more modern maybe.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I guess that's not what motivates me to a play a game - I'm not the completionist type - but you can tell the game was designed to reward people who git gud at it. If I ever get around to the second one, I'd be curious to see if it gets a little more "accessible". Not easier per-se, but just more modern maybe.


Yeah that's not why I play any other game either. Just these two are addictive. The second one is definitely more accessible in my opinion.


----------



## Ralyks

The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe. This game is so goddamn silly and delightful and bizarre. I love it.


----------



## LostTheTone

Ralyks said:


> The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe. This game is so goddamn silly and delightful and bizarre. I love it.



Stanley Parable is definitely something unique. I think it is one of the only games that can say that it's experimental in a good way, and that can genuinely say it's an interactive story that feels constantly engaging.

It's almost rogue-like structure that challenges the player to explore and remember where they've been before is really clever design. Those short loops with an episodic structure mean you can find a lot quickly, but once you get into it it's suddenly quite difficult to find a new branch and you have to pay attention. And it's very awesome to have that old school thing of "Did the developers think of this?" because that's super satisfying when you find that yes they really did.


----------



## Ralyks

LostTheTone said:


> Stanley Parable is definitely something unique. I think it is one of the only games that can say that it's experimental in a good way, and that can genuinely say it's an interactive story that feels constantly engaging.
> 
> It's almost rogue-like structure that challenges the player to explore and remember where they've been before is really clever design. Those short loops with an episodic structure mean you can find a lot quickly, but once you get into it it's suddenly quite difficult to find a new branch and you have to pay attention. And it's very awesome to have that old school thing of "Did the developers think of this?" because that's super satisfying when you find that yes they really did.



Pretty much sums it up. And it helps that Ultra Deluxe pretty much doubles the content and it's pretty damn funny.


----------



## TedEH

I really enjoyed the original Stanley Parable. And the demo. The bar was set pretty high, and I remember being a bit disappointed with The Beginners Guide, so I definitely want to try this new one at some point, but also don't want to set myself up for disappointment compared to the original.


----------



## wankerness

The reviews for it are REALLY positive. I'll check it out someday. I know I played through Stanley Parable once a really long time ago (I think it was free?) but I don't really remember it.


----------



## Leviathus

Started playing Thief 1 again, blackjackin' these taffers left and right.


----------



## Werecow

Leviathus said:


> Started playing Thief 1 again, blackjackin' these taffers left and right.


I replay them every couple of years on average. I'm shocked every time by how well they stand up still, and how good the atmosphere is.


----------



## WarMachine

TedEH said:


> In the quest to play every (main?) Zelda game, I've crossed off: Minish Cap.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I kinda wish I'd played this one before, or that it was more accessible without a Wii U (the shop is shutting down soon) or forking out a bajillion dollars to collectors or resorting to the yar-har approach - since I think this might be one of the best 2d Zeldas. And it's a great GBA title. Some thoughts in no particular order:
> 
> - The game feels shorter than other 2d Zeldas. Not in a bad way. It's in that "I feel like I got a full game but it didn't overstay it's welcome" zone.
> - It's mercifully a huge modernization of the gameboy Zeldas - visually, in movement, in progression, the way the story plays out, etc. Pretty much everything.
> - That's not to say progression is aaaaaaaaaalways well called out, I did need to look up a thing or two, but I didn't need a guide, like the gameboy titles felt like they needed.
> - The bosses aren't _brilliant_, but they're perfectly good. Rarely too overwhelming or confusing, and usually has a bit of depth to them. The Octoroc boss was kinda lame, but it's balanced out by a cool robot boss.
> - The dungeons are few, but they're pretty solid.
> - The bow feels weirdly sluggish to use for some reason. Like the animation to draw an arrow takes too long.
> - Otherwise, most of the items are reasonably fun to use, and, as Zeldas do, they're integrated into dungeons the way you'd hope.
> - I dig the art style.
> - The shrinking mechanic is used well.
> - I didn't do any of the shells stuff... which, apparently people didn't like anyway.
> - The kinstones are also.... well, I don't hate them. On a surface level they're fine if you don't want to 100% the game, but there's some potential to be frustrated if you're bothered by what could become a grind for lame rewards.
> 
> It's good. I like it. Consistently at least decent. The odd bad bits aren't that bad. When it's good, it's very good.


Im a big Zelda fan, and i think the Minish Cap is one of the best in the series. I went in not expecting much based off of the art style but man, i loved that game.


----------



## LostTheTone

Werecow said:


> I replay them every couple of years on average. I'm shocked every time by how well they stand up still, and how good the atmosphere is.



Well, other than the ill advised zombie killing levels 

You're right though, Thief is still a classic today. I do really wish that they had done a proper, faithful reboot with modern tech because there are rough edges but that doesn't stop that deep warm and fuzzy sensation that you get from sneaking around.


----------



## TedEH

LostTheTone said:


> You're right though, Thief is still a classic today. I do really wish that they had done a proper, faithful reboot with modern tech because there are rough edges but that doesn't stop that deep warm and fuzzy sensation that you get from sneaking around.


As someone for whom video game audio is part of how I make my living, it saddens me that the modern Thief games threw out the sound-as-spacial-awareness concept that IMO was key to what made the first two games work.


----------



## LostTheTone

TedEH said:


> As someone for whom video game audio is part of how I make my living, it saddens me that the modern Thief games threw out the sound-as-spacial-awareness concept that IMO was key to what made the first two games work.



It saddens me as a gamer, honestly. 

IIRC the whole reason that Thief came to be was because of developers showing off some of the special tricks their new Dark Engine could do - The two huge advances were how sound could (somewhat) realistically spread through the level, and the AI was able to react in different ways to different sounds. Just building demos to show how it works was enough to make them see this was something really special and compelling.

It's just so intuitive but also so compelling and creates really amazing tension. The fact that you can sense where things are without the need for some artificial mechanic amazing, doubly so when you can't see the source.

Most importantly, using sound like this makes you feel that you are never truly safe. You always have to keep your ears pricked up, and hearing footsteps where you didn't expect them can really make your heart race. It is a special game that can make you feel constantly vulnerable but also very smart and capable.


----------



## TedEH

Those titles honestly did a lot of things right:
- The spacial sound thing (works even better if you have the EAX or whatever driver and some headphones)
- Proper AI instead of just rushing you (it's probably still just basic state machines by todays standards, but it's still key)
- I think the AI "barks" to notify you (again with sound) of character states, I think was also novel at the time
- Intentionally unreliable maps + note taking that made exploration and mental models of places a part of the experience
- Deliberately underpowering the player to force you to use other tactics than combat (note how Doom Eternal has looped us back to forcing us to play certain ways by killing the player if they don't)
- Lots of circular paths leading in and out of rooms, giving you that early immersive-sim type progression where you _choose_ how to traverse a space
- Rope arrows were brilliant.
- They understood that exploration can / should yield rewards.
- World building through incidental dialogue was fantastic.
- Relatively small amount of UI / HUD

These ideas weren't standard at the time. They knew what they were doing, IMO.


----------



## LostTheTone

TedEH said:


> Those titles honestly did a lot of things right:
> - The spacial sound thing (works even better if you have the EAX or whatever driver and some headphones)
> - Proper AI instead of just rushing you (it's probably still just basic state machines by todays standards, but it's still key)
> - I think the AI "barks" to notify you (again with sound) of character states, I think was also novel at the time
> - Intentionally unreliable maps + note taking that made exploration and mental models of places a part of the experience
> - Deliberately underpowering the player to force you to use other tactics than combat (note how Doom Eternal has looped us back to forcing us to play certain ways by killing the player if they don't)
> - Lots of circular paths leading in and out of rooms, giving you that early immersive-sim type progression where you _choose_ how to traverse a space
> - Rope arrows were brilliant.
> - They understood that exploration can / should yield rewards.
> - World building through incidental dialogue was fantastic.
> - Relatively small amount of UI / HUD
> 
> These ideas weren't standard at the time. They knew what they were doing, IMO.



Those things aren't even standard today!

I think that the combination of a non-combat core mechanic (stealth), exploration, real feeling level design and incidental world building are the key features of truly exceptional games, and they all tie together through one single concept; _*verisimilitude*._

Games that do these things feel like a real place. 

The ability to solve problems without just killing everything lets us much more easily connect with the character. And Thief creates very sympathetic situations; if you are going to fight you either do it in a very planned way because you don't have a choice, or you are going to flail and panic and flee. Creating environments which at least feel like they make logical sense as a building, rather than a game level, means that your own real world intuition still works. You know where people store stuff and hide things. The exploration pays off your curiosity, and because this is a real(ish) place it is full of real things for ambient story telling. You always feel like you understand how these games work, without anyone having to tell you. 

Of course, it's easy to say this stuff. It is incredibly difficult to actually design a game that does these things. But, even when you have games that try to do this and aren't quite instant classics, they are still way more interesting games than the normal sludge of the AAA industry. 

Prey is... Not an all time classic game. It has problems. But fuck me, at least it tried. And I genuinely enjoyed my time playing it. There were some of those same feelings of being alone and hearing weird alien noises and just being scared. That first level which starts off as tutorial but transitions into survival horror and also tells you lots about the overall narrative is maybe a tiny bit too cute for its own good, but if I had written that I would be pretty smug too. And it had ambition and aesthetics and felt like a real place. The meta-narrative is eventually what hurt it, which is a shame, because it was trying something new. 

Its kinda telling that even 20 years after Thief, there are only a handful of games that have recreated it's magic.


----------



## TedEH

LostTheTone said:


> Its kinda telling that even 20 years after Thief, there are only a handful of games that have recreated it's magic.


And by a team with ties back to the people who made Thief in the first place, as I understand it. 



LostTheTone said:


> _*verisimilitude*_


I'm glad you picked this word over "realism". I know there's a lot of game design philosophies that aim for some degree of either verisimilitude or realism, but it's a tough nut to crack. I've heard lots of arguments for game systems that "work" because they _don't_ target realism in any way - they target either accessibility or risk/reward feedback loops, or some other aesthetic quality.

I guess - if I go into thinking-out-loud-mode - there's a difference between an aesthetic verisimilitude and a mechanical verisimilitude. The latter being what immersive sims do really well: cohesion and consistency of the mechanical components/systems that make up a game, so that you can put whatever aesthetic or narrative you want on it, without breaking the "realness" of the space.


----------



## LostTheTone

TedEH said:


> I'm glad you picked this word over "realism". I know there's a lot of game design philosophies that aim for some degree of either verisimilitude or realism, but it's a tough nut to crack. I've heard lots of arguments for game systems that "work" because they _don't_ target realism in any way - they target either accessibility or risk/reward feedback loops, or some other aesthetic quality.
> 
> I guess - if I go into thinking-out-loud-mode - there's a difference between an aesthetic verisimilitude and a mechanical verisimilitude. The latter being what immersive sims do really well: cohesion and consistency of the mechanical components/systems that make up a game, so that you can put whatever aesthetic or narrative you want on it, without breaking the "realness" of the space.



IMHO realism isn't a helpful word for video games, at least outside of the hyper-real sims (trains, planes, whatever) where all games are works of fiction and we are clearly aware that they are works of fiction.

What we are really talking about is a mix of that internal mechanical consistency with design choices that feel like they occurred naturally - You could say "things that continue the illusion in an thoughtful and credible way". It's all about making all the various elements feel like they reasonably exist in the same world together. The player will suspend disbelief, as long as the game reinforces it and rewards them for thinking about problems in the games own terms. And that means presenting things that feel just real enough that we scan over them, rather than actually being realistic.

Those systems all still need to have proper risk/reward and feedback though. You need to present players with choices that aren't just obviously better or worse. But you need all of that calculus hidden away with the player just presented with "Choice?" without even necessarily telling them what all the options are.

That's what creates the sort of meta-realness within immersive sims - The sense that turning around and walking the other way is still a valid option. There's nothing in the game's world which would stop you doing that, so that is open to you if you think to do it. You have to solve the problem, not get to the end, and the choices you make will impact things later on. That's a quality of the real world which can be brought in without having to make every aspect work like the real life counterpart. And of course that transcends setting and context so it can go into any genre or timeframe.


----------



## WarMachine

Debating on picking up either Dying Light 2 or FFXV. They are both on sale, i can get FF for 19 bucks. I loved Dying Light, but i've read tons of mixed reviews on the new one. Anyone here played it? Would it be worth getting for 47 bucks or what for it to drop more?


----------



## WarMachine

Fuck it, just pulled the trigger on Dying Light 2.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

D&D 5e session 3 - We are playing Out of the Abyss. I've never done a 1-20 campaign before so I'm pretty stoked. Even if it doesn't go that far it has been a lot of fun already. Spoilers ahead...

We had an intense battle with some hags on a lake that almost killed two of us because we refused to let them add our sentient mushroom friend to their soup. After that, we got involved in a kuo-toa religious dispute and enjoyed a front row seat as prospective sacrifices to the "deep father" who turned out to be the demogorgon going godzilla on the kuo-toa city. After a bizarre lovecraftian scene of exploding fish heads and cannibalism, we made our madness saving throws, gathered our party, and ran as fast as our little level 3 legs would carry us. I failed my first madness save today, if we fail three total we gain permanent madness so that should be fun.

We ended there, gaining level 4 for our troubles. I'll likely be taking my first Arcane Trickster level, but more Wizard levels after that so I can scribe and cast the L2 scrolls I'm slowly stockpiling. Long term I'll be shooting for Bladesinger 5 by 12th level to unlock level 3 scribing and Counterspell, not to mention all the cool utilities and rituals along the way. 

Also, our Dwarven Hexblade rescued a Hooked Horror egg in an earlier session. It was born, and imprinted onto him which has resulted in numerous amusing and hilarious situations.


----------



## Werecow

wheresthefbomb said:


> D&D 5e session 3 - We are playing Out of the Abyss. I've never done a 1-20 campaign before so I'm pretty stoked. Even if it doesn't go that far it has been a lot of fun already. Spoilers ahead...
> 
> We had an intense battle with some hags on a lake that almost killed two of us because we refused to let them add our sentient mushroom friend to their soup. After that, we got involved in a kuo-toa religious dispute and enjoyed a front row seat as prospective sacrifices to the "deep father" who turned out to be the demogorgon going godzilla on the kuo-toa city. After a bizarre lovecraftian scene of exploding fish heads and cannibalism, we made our madness saving throws, gathered our party, and ran as fast as our little level 3 legs would carry us. I failed my first madness save today, if we fail three total we gain permanent madness so that should be fun.
> 
> We ended there, gaining level 4 for our troubles. I'll likely be taking my first Arcane Trickster level, but more Wizard levels after that so I can scribe and cast the L2 scrolls I'm slowly stockpiling. Long term I'll be shooting for Bladesinger 5 by 12th level to unlock level 3 scribing and Counterspell, not to mention all the cool utilities and rituals along the way.
> 
> Also, our Dwarven Hexblade rescued a Hooked Horror egg in an earlier session. It was born, and imprinted onto him which has resulted in numerous amusing and hilarious situations.


I've never played D&D in person, but "because we refused to let them add our sentient mushroom friend to their soup" sounds amazing


----------



## Empryrean

After playing a laughable amount of Elden ring I finally dropped into some Guilty Gear Strive to see if maybe I can appreciate it now and I gotta say. I hate everything about current gen fighting games even more now.


----------



## wankerness

I bought Ys IX and Kero Blaster.

And then started another Elden Ring character  I need to start Ys IX and make myself finish it.

Still haven't gone back to Horizon, cause screw Machine Strike. Though maybe I can just find a higher level opponent and fight them without having to go through all the tutorial garbage.

I've gotten urges to play Jedi Knight, Jedi Knight 2, and the previous Tomb Raider Trilogy (Anniversary, Legend, Underworld). But I'd have to do that on PC! There's a console port of Jedi Knight 2 but it sounds pretty awful. I played that game a lot way back in the day, but that was when I could stand doing Mouse/keyboard. Dunno if the PC version has some mods that make controllers work OK on it - the console versions definitely don't. I haven't played those Tomb Raider games, but supposedly they're pretty good. I never really liked Tomb Raider 2 or 3 back in the day, but I really liked the "reboot" trilogy starting in 2013.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I bought Ys IX and Kero Blaster.
> 
> And then started another Elden Ring character  I need to start Ys IX and make myself finish it.
> 
> Still haven't gone back to Horizon, cause screw Machine Strike. Though maybe I can just find a higher level opponent and fight them without having to go through all the tutorial garbage.
> 
> I've gotten urges to play Jedi Knight, Jedi Knight 2, and the previous Tomb Raider Trilogy (Anniversary, Legend, Underworld). But I'd have to do that on PC! There's a console port of Jedi Knight 2 but it sounds pretty awful. I played that game a lot way back in the day, but that was when I could stand doing Mouse/keyboard. Dunno if the PC version has some mods that make controllers work OK on it - the console versions definitely don't. I haven't played those Tomb Raider games, but supposedly they're pretty good. I never really liked Tomb Raider 2 or 3 back in the day, but I really liked the "reboot" trilogy starting in 2013.


Tomb Raider Anniversary, Legend, and Underworld were all fun. I remember I got them along with all the other TR games including the 2013 reboot a while back in a Steam sale for a ridiculous price and started with those. I have no interest in playing the older ones because of their outdated gameplay, but these ones were modern and fun enough to play. Not going for realism like the reboot trilogy but I enjoyed the sometimes ridiculous over-the-topness of them. I remember liking Legend the most out of them, Underworld had some not-always-responsive climbing mechanics which resulted in a lot of bullshit deaths, which sucks for a TR game.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Apparently Slipknot is in cahoots with Smite and they're playable in the game, which is hilarious to me. Never did I think I'd see a MOBA/slipknot collaboration


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> Apparently Slipknot is in cahoots with Smite and they're playable in the game, which is hilarious to me. Never did I think I'd see a MOBA/slipknot collaboration


Never would've expected that either. I wonder if they're just gonna be skins for existing characters or if they'll make new ones for them which implies that they are metal gods? Still not Kiss levels of marketing at least.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

BlackMastodon said:


> Never would've expected that either. I wonder if they're just gonna be skins for existing characters or if they'll make new ones for them which implies that they are metal gods? Still not Kiss levels of marketing at least.


idk the metalsucks article said that all 9 of them are playable, so i'm guessing skins


----------



## rokket2005

I got my Steam Deck yesterday and despite Steam saying Trails in the Sky isn't verified for it I booted it up it worked and I was immediately nostalgic for it even though I just played it like a year ago. It'll be such a good lay in bed and play kind of game.


----------



## Mathemagician

wheresthefbomb said:


> D&D 5e session 3 - We are playing Out of the Abyss. I've never done a 1-20 campaign before so I'm pretty stoked. Even if it doesn't go that far it has been a lot of fun already. Spoilers ahead...
> 
> We had an intense battle with some hags on a lake that almost killed two of us because we refused to let them add our sentient mushroom friend to their soup. After that, we got involved in a kuo-toa religious dispute and enjoyed a front row seat as prospective sacrifices to the "deep father" who turned out to be the demogorgon going godzilla on the kuo-toa city. After a bizarre lovecraftian scene of exploding fish heads and cannibalism, we made our madness saving throws, gathered our party, and ran as fast as our little level 3 legs would carry us. I failed my first madness save today, if we fail three total we gain permanent madness so that should be fun.
> 
> We ended there, gaining level 4 for our troubles. I'll likely be taking my first Arcane Trickster level, but more Wizard levels after that so I can scribe and cast the L2 scrolls I'm slowly stockpiling. Long term I'll be shooting for Bladesinger 5 by 12th level to unlock level 3 scribing and Counterspell, not to mention all the cool utilities and rituals along the way.
> 
> Also, our Dwarven Hexblade rescued a Hooked Horror egg in an earlier session. It was born, and imprinted onto him which has resulted in numerous amusing and hilarious situations.



Awwwww maaaaan, I wanna do this. 



BlackMastodon said:


> Never would've expected that either. I wonder if they're just gonna be skins for existing characters or if they'll make new ones for them which implies that they are metal gods? Still not Kiss levels of marketing at least.



I mean there’s enough members for Slipknot to have its own pantheon. Haven’t played in years but I bought the all gods pack on PSN so I’ll have to check this out.


----------



## Jarmake

I had a bit over a week long break from ds3, but last night I killed Aldrich, devourer of Gods. Then today I killed Dancer of Boreal Valley on second try, downed the Lothric Wyverns and spanked down the Dragonslayer Armor on one try. Next up is the grand archives... 6 bosses to go.


----------



## StevenC

F Zero X is on Switch now, so that's going to be the rest of my life


----------



## Jarmake

Grand Archives was a nasty place. Gah, I hate all those Thralls. And so many gargoyles in one place! Oh well, at least I found the next boss, who were Lothric & Lorian, the twin princes. I also found the shortcut just next to the fog wall, so I don't have to kill half of the worlds population every time I try to get to them!

Special thanks to the black hand trio npc's, who tried to fuck my day up and killed me once trying. Good job guys!


----------



## Jarmake

Oh damn, I have been counting the bosses all wrong, there's still plenty more to beat... The list that I saw didn't have the dlc bosses included. Oh well, more for me to kill


----------



## Tree

Jarmake said:


> Oh damn, I have been counting the bosses all wrong, there's still plenty more to beat... The list that I saw didn't have the dlc bosses included. Oh well, more for me to kill


TRC is probably Fromsoft's best DLC area to date. Artorias DLC and Hunter's nightmare are runner ups.


----------



## StevenC

StevenC said:


> F Zero X is on Switch now, so that's going to be the rest of my life


This game feels way harder than all the other F Zeros I've played, and I am bad at it.


----------



## wankerness

L&L


StevenC said:


> This game feels way harder than all the other F Zeros I've played, and I am bad at it.


It's hard but it's nowhere near as hard as the gamecube one. That one was brutal.

Though I haven't played the switch online version. I wouldn't be surprised if it's got input lag or something that makes things harder.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> L&L
> 
> It's hard but it's nowhere near as hard as the gamecube one. That one was brutal.
> 
> Though I haven't played the switch online version. I wouldn't be surprised if it's got input lag or something that makes things harder.


I don't know, I was able to beat the Gamecube one and even the story mode on higher difficulties. I'm just not sure I can wrap my head around how to go fast in this system. 

Could be lag though.


----------



## wankerness

Could be just inexperience and the systems just not behaving similarly, too. I remember playing F Zero X all the time as a kid but then when the Gamecube one came out I got like two missions into the story mode, lost a few times on the canyon race that was like two missions into storymode, and was just like SCREW THIS!!! Maybe if I'd played that one first I'd have had the opposite reaction.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Could be just inexperience and the systems just not behaving similarly, too. I remember playing F Zero X all the time as a kid but then when the Gamecube one came out I got like two missions into the story mode, lost a few times on the canyon race that was like two missions into storymode, and was just like SCREW THIS!!! Maybe if I'd played that one first I'd have had the opposite reaction.


Yeah, the input lag isn't too bad.

Made some progress with the mechanics, the step from standard to expert was just bigger than expected, and playing handheld didn't help. Beat the Jack cup and making progress learning Queen.

Feels like there's more bs in this game than GX. Like on the first lap it feels like a pack of cars will just boost past for no obvious reason, and some sections are super satisfying to drive but on the first lap with 30 cars you're basically rolling a dice on making it through any corner. Mute City 2 for example.


----------



## chopeth

Elden Ring.... so freaking loooooonng!!!


----------



## Jarmake

Tree said:


> TRC is probably Fromsoft's best DLC area to date. Artorias DLC and Hunter's nightmare are runner ups.


That's great to hear! I loved the old hunters dlc on bloodborne.

I just put Oceiros to rest and went straight to untended graves... Seems awfully dark place to me.


----------



## Tree

Jarmake said:


> That's great to hear! I loved the old hunters dlc on bloodborne.
> 
> I just put Oceiros to rest and went straight to untended graves... Seems awfully dark place to me.


Have fun with the upcoming boss. He'll give you plenty of Tekken-style beatdowns until you figure out how much of a joke he is to parry.


----------



## TedEH

Haven't stopped by this thread in a while - I never finished Bayonetta yet, but I ended up grabbing Kirby and the Forgotten Land, and have been poking at that one just because it's such a light-hearted and admittedly-easy time that it works well as a mostly mindless de-stressor. People like to crap on easy games, but man, sometimes I don't want to be challenged. Life is challenging enough, just let me win for a while, hah.


----------



## wankerness

Tree said:


> Have fun with the upcoming boss. He'll give you plenty of Tekken-style beatdowns until you figure out how much of a joke he is to parry.


I've never parried that guy a single time. Guess I'm making the game harder for myself?


----------



## Jarmake

Tree said:


> Have fun with the upcoming boss. He'll give you plenty of Tekken-style beatdowns until you figure out how much of a joke he is to parry.



Well, Champion Gundyr promptly threw me off the cliff and that was that.


----------



## Tree

wankerness said:


> I've never parried that guy a single time. Guess I'm making the game harder for myself?


It really trivializes him, but it's fun as hell once you learn it. You don't even need to roll if you just properly space his attacks that can't be parried. 

That said, there is still something satisfying about going toe to toe with him conventionally. There isn't anything quite like his fight in any of the games. 


Jarmake said:


> Well, Champion Gundyr promptly threw me off the cliff and that was that.



I think that's par for the course 
Did you get any good kicks to the face?


----------



## Tree

After playing a bit of MK11 recently, I've gotten the urge to go back to the classic (Klassic?) games. Fightcade seems incredibly interesting to be able to play UMK3 online with others competitively.


----------



## Jarmake

Tree said:


> It really trivializes him, but it's fun as hell once you learn it. You don't even need to roll if you just properly space his attacks that can't be parried.
> 
> That said, there is still something satisfying about going toe to toe with him conventionally. There isn't anything quite like his fight in any of the games.
> 
> 
> I think that's par for the course
> Did you get any good kicks to the face?


not really... he just swung his halberd once, which I dodgerolled and then he grabbed me by my throat, impaled me with the before mentioned halberd and threw me off the arena. I really did get the impression that he didn't want me coming there, so I quit after the first try.

Maybe today will be my time to tickle him to submission.


----------



## Jarmake

God damn you, Champion Gundyr. I can get him to half health or a little less, but the second phase is just so exhaustingly relentless. This was my third try on him and I had to quit after two consecutive tries... My left thumb was like "what the frick are you doing man, some kind of torturing?".


----------



## Mathemagician

DS3 first boss right? If I remember right the strat is to just be aggressive and keep trying to get behind him. Backing up is bad.


----------



## Jarmake

Mathemagician said:


> DS3 first boss right? If I remember right the strat is to just be aggressive and keep trying to get behind him. Backing up is bad.



The first one is Iudex Gundyr, this one is Champion Gundyr... and Champion Gundyr isn't playing around like Iudex is.


----------



## StevenC

Played Tomb Raider (2013) over the last couple of days being sick. It's ok, not really my kinda game with all the interactive cutscene set pieces and fairly uninteresting exploration, which is weird for a game about an explorer.

Solid 6/10, basically mechanically sound and I wanted to finish it with all the collectables. Got it on Games With Gold years ago and I won't pay for the sequels.

Edit: also bad writing and I hated all the characters


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Played Tomb Raider (2013) over the last couple of days being sick. It's ok, not really my kinda game with all the interactive cutscene set pieces and fairly uninteresting exploration, which is weird for a game about an explorer.
> 
> Solid 6/10, basically mechanically sound and I wanted to finish it with all the collectables. Got it on Games With Gold years ago and I won't pay for the sequels.
> 
> Edit: also bad writing and I hated all the characters


The cutscenes and characters aren't good, but I like the gameplay a lot. I prefer it to the Uncharted games. Those obviously have the VASTLY superior writing/characters, but I really like the gameplay mechanics on Tomb Raider/Rise of the Tomb Raider. The weapons are a lot more fun and varied than in Uncharted.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> The cutscenes and characters aren't good, but I like the gameplay a lot. I prefer it to the Uncharted games. Those obviously have the VASTLY superior writing/characters, but I really like the gameplay mechanics on Tomb Raider/Rise of the Tomb Raider. The weapons are a lot more fun and varied than in Uncharted.


I haven't played Uncharted, but I guess I'll avoid them then. I liked some of the combat sections, but they had a bunch of mechanics that didn't seem to really get used or be useful. And the later game big fights all become too linear or too many enemies so you couldn't do any of the fun stuff.

I'll probably play the next one if it's on Game Pass.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> I haven't played Uncharted, but I guess I'll avoid them then. I liked some of the combat sections, but they had a bunch of mechanics that didn't seem to really get used or be useful. And the later game big fights all become too linear or too many enemies so you couldn't do any of the fun stuff.
> 
> I'll probably play the next one if it's on Game Pass.


Uncharted is even more "platforming section, fight a bunch of guys in a room or hallway, platforming section, fight a bunch of guys in a hallway, here's a puzzle in a tomb" than Tomb Raider, which at least occasionally makes you feel like you're on one big open area (even if it's fairly linear). Uncharted 2/3/4 are mainly considered classics for the incredibly high production values and incredibly good writing/voice-acting (by videogame standards). The gunplay in the later ones is also extremely good if you play on high difficulties, supposedly, but I haven't.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Uncharted is even more "platforming section, fight a bunch of guys in a room or hallway, platforming section, fight a bunch of guys in a hallway, here's a puzzle in a tomb" than Tomb Raider, which at least occasionally makes you feel like you're on one big open area (even if it's fairly linear). Uncharted 2/3/4 are mainly considered classics for the incredibly high production values and incredibly good writing/voice-acting (by videogame standards). The gunplay in the later ones is also extremely good if you play on high difficulties, supposedly, but I haven't.


How are the puzzles? The puzzles in Tomb Raider were ok but either too obvious or too obtuse, lots of find the one thing I have to interact with and very few a-ha moments.

The other thing I hated about the combat was that the enemies seemed to get harder at the same rate as you, so it never felt like you were making progress. At least for the islanders it didn't feel like it made a lot of sense that they became so much more heavily armed as the game went on despite Lara visiting places earlier that should be the full kit. Probably around the Shantytown was the best balance for fun combat in my opinion. Never get to feel like a tank rolling over dudes at the end, or get to really feel like an underdog disrupting their plan.

Maybe I'll give an Uncharted a go if a dust off the PS4 and a friend lends me one.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> How are the puzzles? The puzzles in Tomb Raider were ok but either too obvious or too obtuse, lots of find the one thing I have to interact with and very few a-ha moments.
> 
> The other thing I hated about the combat was that the enemies seemed to get harder at the same rate as you, so it never felt like you were making progress. At least for the islanders it didn't feel like it made a lot of sense that they became so much more heavily armed as the game went on despite Lara visiting places earlier that should be the full kit. Probably around the Shantytown was the best balance for fun combat in my opinion. Never get to feel like a tank rolling over dudes at the end, or get to really feel like an underdog disrupting their plan.
> 
> Maybe I'll give an Uncharted a go if a dust off the PS4 and a friend lends me one.


Uncharted has fewer puzzles than tomb raider, they were ok I guess. If you like the puzzle aspect the third tomb raider game (shadow of) has BY FAR the most emphasis.

The problem with uncharted is the first game legit sucks, but I don’t know how the second plays without knowing the characters. The games are at least quite short (10-12 hours) so you can blow through them quick, but yeah, the first game is VERY dated while the sequels all hold up.


----------



## Jarmake

Champion Gundyr has been defeated. Had a couple of days off and got back to the game just now and CG dropped like a sack of potatoes on the first try. The black knights before the dark firelink place gave me more grief than him.


----------



## RG503

warcraft and vanguard.


----------



## WarMachine

Diablo 2 Resurrected. As usual, late to the party lol. Overall so far i don't think its bad, worth the 25 bucks i paid for it. Im still early in to it, im on the last part of act I, going after the smithy. I think i made it to jail level 2 before i had to crash out lol. Rocking the Necromancer class to start with. Playing this game reminds me why i had so much fun with Diablo 3. The graphics, gameplay and NO WEAPONS AND ARMOR DURABILITY made it fun as hell. I really wish for this version they would've copped the gameplay and style of D3, but like i said, for 25 bucks not too shabby. Elden Ring will probably be my next buy.


----------



## Jarmake

Ancient Wyvern was a fun one. Never would have done the plunging attack if there wasn't any messages on the ground... Could have been a hairy battle without it.


----------



## wankerness

Jarmake said:


> Ancient Wyvern was a fun one. Never would have done the plunging attack if there wasn't any messages on the ground... Could have been a hairy battle without it.


One of the messages is there even if you aren’t playing online, they really wanted to make sure everyone got it.

I’ve missed that a couple times when the dragon reared back right as I jumped. Infuriating when it happens.


----------



## Jarmake

wankerness said:


> One of the messages is there even if you aren’t playing online, they really wanted to make sure everyone got it.
> 
> I’ve missed that a couple times when the dragon reared back right as I jumped. Infuriating when it happens.


Yeah, indeed there is a offline message... And that's the only one I got, since I am playing offline. 

I had to search for the place to jump for a while, but found it eventually and succeeded on the first try, fortunately.


----------



## StevenC

Kirby 64 got added to NSO so I just finished that. Definitely a nice action game to cleanse the pallet after Cutscene Simulator 2013. Cutter/Spark is still the best in games ever, but also double Bomb and Rock/Spark are excellent fun. Chilled out game, Kirby's walk speed says it all. You can run but you don't need to. Generally an easy game, but the last two bosses are a lot of fun and provide some challenge.

8/10 everything about the game is good and it delivers on its promises. Still humming all the songs and jingles. Probably my favourite of the 2000s Sakurai games. Good writing and I loved all the characters.


----------



## gabito

Bought Flashback (old Sega / Megadrive game) on sale for the PS4 a few days ago and just finished it. I didn't even know there was a PS4 version.

I don't think I've finished it more than once when I was a kid. It's not a long game, but it can be difficult. Or some parts of it were, at least... It now features a "rewind" function which allows you to, well, rewind when you make a mistake. I used it a few times and could finish the thing in a few hours. It's still a nice game if you like the "cinematic platformer" genre.


----------



## mongey

have been revisiting some old xbox 360 games with the kids. Burnout paradise city is still an awesome open world driving game


----------



## Ralyks

Just got the Platinum trophy for The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe. If you look at the trophy list, you'll understand.

Anyway, 60 hours into my Cyberpunk 2077 1.5 game, and I don't think I'll be slowing down until I platinum that too. The 1.5 truly feels like a new, much much improved game.


----------



## Tree

Just got MKX on sale to continue with my Mortal Kombat trend. 

Haven’t played too much of it, but I will say MKX is better than 11. Fight me.


----------



## StevenC

Playing Recore. It's fun but I'm not that far in. It's not very well made at all though, just lacks all the polish you expect from bigger games. A lot of weird character animations, cut scene angles, Joule's model just looks weird. Some classic Xbox One brand jank.

It's fun so far though. It's like Knack meets Horizon meets Metroid Prime. But everything they took from the first two is bad things that replaces good things in Prime.

Also has decent voice acting but I don't need to hear Joule comment on every chest she opens. Scenario is also very cool, but there's still plenty of time for the game to undo it with a dumb twist.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

D&D 5e Out of The Abyss - Session 5

We leveled up last game after the demogorgon reveal. I took my first level of arcane trickster, putting me at AT3/Wizard 1. After the party's life cleric treated our madness, we rested up and moved on. We ran into a couple of goblins, who ended up being our guides through a web maze area. Somewhat anti-climactically, we did not encounter any enemies or danger due to consistently good rolls on our part. The goblins joined us and we rescued a few folks from the webs, putting our group of (mostly noncombat) companions at 18.

One of the rescues was a halfling rogue, who told us about a tomb containing magical treasure in the area. Being adventurers, we took this opportunity to engage in some gleeful graverobbing. The life cleric's turn undead made quick work of the weaker ghosts in the area, and after a few of your standard tomb puzzles, we ended up fighting a big scary wraith.

We were getting our asses kicked in a major way. Our paladin and barbarian were about to go down, with the hexblade close behind. At this critical moment, a voice call out into all of our minds, "Here! In the sarcophagus! I can help you!" Being the only one still mobile, and with full hit points thanks to a well-timed shield spell (my last), I dashed over the sarcophagus and pulled out… *a fucking lightsaber.*

Okay well, it's called the Sun Blade, but it's basically a sunlightsaber that kills the shit out of undead. It deals radiant damage, and thanks to the 5E rules, that means that my sneak attack damage is also radiant, bypassing the wraith's asshole damage reduction. With that, I dealt the fearsome specter and massive blow, and sent it back to wherever dead things go when they die again.

We ended there. This is quite a powerful weapon for 4th level party, so I am both excited and apprehensive as to what our DM has in store for us next session. As much as I'd like to keep it, the sword is pretty obviously a Paladin weapon and I will likely be handing it over to our Paladin at the beginning of next session. I sure made fittingly epic use of it, though!


----------



## Seabeast2000

Finally bought MS Flight Sim.


----------



## pahulkster

Just downloaded Ground Zero Texas: Nuclear Edition. I loved the game and my Sega CD as a kid so it's cool to see the game in a better resolution.


----------



## p0ke

I bought Mass Effect: Legendary Edition recently as it was on sale for 27€ on xbox live. I'm maybe 1/3 into ME1 and loving it just as much as when it came out for the Xbox 360.
Is my memory failing though, or did they cut down on the driving around empty planets looking for minerals to harvest? I recall doing that a lot in the original and now I just tap planets and boom, you found a <whatever> deposit. If they did indeed remove that, then awesome, because I recall that shit being tedious af.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I bought Mass Effect: Legendary Edition recently as it was on sale for 27€ on xbox live. I'm maybe 1/3 into ME1 and loving it just as much as when it came out for the Xbox 360.
> Is my memory failing though, or did they cut down on the driving around empty planets looking for minerals to harvest? I recall doing that a lot in the original and now I just tap planets and boom, you found a <whatever> deposit. If they did indeed remove that, then awesome, because I recall that shit being tedious af.


They did not cut down on it, the only thing changed at all with the driving around on planets is they messed with the vehicle physics a little bit. There's still the same amount of crappy planets that are just a big empty square with a few nodes to gather from and maybe a copy/paste enemy base or mine for a sidequest or collectible. I believe what you're referring to are the handful of "invisible" planets like Asteroids where you just move the cursor around a bit until you see an unlabelled dot, click it, and then automatically get a turian insignia or minerals or whatever the reward for finding that particular map dot is. It's always been there and separate from the driving around planets.

I know this cause I 100%'d the game probably 6 times on PC/360 and then twice more with this Legendary edition


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> They did not cut down on it, the only thing changed at all with the driving around on planets is they messed with the vehicle physics a little bit. There's still the same amount of crappy planets that are just a big empty square with a few nodes to gather from and maybe a copy/paste enemy base or mine for a sidequest or collectible. I believe what you're referring to are the handful of "invisible" planets like Asteroids where you just move the cursor around a bit until you see an unlabelled dot, click it, and then automatically get a turian insignia or minerals or whatever the reward for finding that particular map dot is. It's always been there and separate from the driving around planets.
> 
> I know this cause I 100%'d the game probably 6 times on PC/360 and then twice more with this Legendary edition


Ok, then I guess I just haven't entered any of the blank planets yet.


----------



## thebeesknees22

cranked through FF7 Intergrade over the weekend. It was suuper short, but it was ok.


----------



## CanserDYI

Jumped back into my old Stardew Valley game, my god I'm sucked back in.


----------



## wankerness

Got the Nioh collection, started the first one, am deeply regretting it. This game is tuned like Sekiro in that you have very limited healing items and everything kills you in about 2 hits tops, but with the save point bullshit placement of dark souls 1. It's ridiculous. You will be thrown into an area with like 5 demons that can all hit you for 3/4 of your life, and they're right before a goddam boss with a ton of health that also hits you for 3/4 of your life while stacking a paralyze debuff on you which when full makes you just sit there until she walks up and one shots you. You die to her (you absolutely will) then you have to go back through the big gauntlet of demons again if you want to get your currency back. It's infuriating and makes me not want to even try. And this is with MOST of my level points dumped into HP!!

I honestly don't get this game. The loot system is the RNG bullshit of borderlands or Diablo, so it's possible in theory to get the same armor pieces but with really lucky rolls that make it so enemies tickle you - it seems like that's what's going on with most of the boss videos I've watched where people are only getting hit for like 1/3 health, cause everything just massacres me instantly. Or you can get normal luck like me, in which case everything just stomps on you cause your gear doesn't have a bunch of damage reduction bonuses vs the specific annoying enemies you're fighting at the time.

You can't save and quit in this game, and if you start a mission you have to go all the way through and kill the boss to get out of it again unless you have one of the rare "homeward bone" types of items.

Basically, this game feels like the really late-game areas of Elden Ring where everything can kill you almost instantly, but without any of the tools that give you a fighting chance there.

I think I hate it!


----------



## MFB

Finally, someone else knows the pain of Nioh! 

I thought it was just me, but honestly, the design is punishing as FUCK. I made it to the second boss and was like, nope, not for me.


----------



## StevenC

Still on Recore. It's actually very good even this many hours in. I'd seen some reviews say it gets boring after the first few hours, but do far still enjoying it. I get the sense that it was released in a bad state and would have been better received if the initial launch was the Definitive Edition. 

That said, the controls suck at times. Some of the platforming requires you to trigger button prompts that are dependent on the camera as well as position. You might have to do a double jump, dash, camera, interact which is A-A-B-RS-hold X with only a split second for the interaction. 

Same thing with the camera. It just gets itself in dumb positions sometimes. Then, between trying to escape stun locks and adjust the camera, you end up jumping to your death. 

There's a glider robot which when used has a fixed camera that is way too tight, but more than enough control to get yourself killed by accident. The result ends up being you just aim your jump and wait for a minute or two for it to end. It would get great if it were like Breath of the Wild and there's no reason out shouldn't be. 

The robot companions are dumb and broken. There are enemy encounters where you will be without them. Not intentionally, just because their AI gets stuck on terrain sometimes and the button for calling them isn't perfect. When they work though they're fun for combat, particularity SP-DR. Combat in general is pretty good, if a bit random and unintelligible as to what works or why you won from time to time. I've had a couple of battles that have been difficult for 3 tries and then a breeze for no obvious raisin. Or occasionally accidentally lining up prefect shots and be completely in the dark for how to recreate them. 

Good game though, worth playing especially if you have Game Pass.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Finally, someone else knows the pain of Nioh!
> 
> I thought it was just me, but honestly, the design is punishing as FUCK. I made it to the second boss and was like, nope, not for me.


I tried it a little bit more - got all the paralysis resist gear out of the boss lead-up and found a slightly closer checkpoint so I can run straight to her. Problem is, the boss is still nuts. Like, the reaction speeds required for her are way worse than anything in the Soulsbourne series apart from like, Maliketh and Malenia and maybe Owl Father and the way it's like "you get hit by anything other than just the last hit of a combo, YOU'RE DEAD" is too much for the second freaking boss of the game (the flying spider lady). It's a pretty mechanically repetitive fight but I can tell it would take me a hell of a lot of attempts to internalize everything. 

I really don't have a problem with the combat mechanics or anything, even though the "time your ki pulse thing OR ELSE" is an additional step of micromanaging stamina I could do without.The combat is pretty fun and it was jarring going back to Elden Ring with its action queuing (ex, you press a button twice you will do that action twice no matter how much you want to cancel it). It's just stupid how easily you die to EVERYTHING and that combined with the soulsbourne mechanics of (almost) everything respawning every time you die just makes it too much.

I'll probably come back to it and kill this boss someday and push through. From what I've read, you can spec into some slow time spell pretty early on and trivialize the rest of the game. Not helping here, though!


----------



## MFB

Yup, the flying chick with the poison damage was where I got to as well; if I recall correctly, the run to her wasn't really that bad, couple guys you can't dunk on no problem and that a few others you have to dip by and don't chase, but it doesn't change that the amount of times you have to do because you'll keep dying is insulting.

I think I got her to half health at one point and then her mechanics changed and I was SOL for healing, so I died and haven't gone back.


----------



## Jarmake

I bought a nintendo switch and it was a steal. Got rayman legends with it (which I have played through earlier and my kids are playing it on pc currently). Any game recommendations for the system? I had switch a couple of years ago, played some breath of the wild on it and didn't like it.

Maybe Luigi's Mansion 3?


----------



## StevenC

Jarmake said:


> I bought a nintendo switch and it was a steal. Got rayman legends with it (which I have played through earlier and my kids are playing it on pc currently). Any game recommendations for the system? I had switch a couple of years ago, played some breath of the wild on it and didn't like it.
> 
> Maybe Luigi's Mansion 3?


Mario Odyssey, Bayonetta 1&2, Triangle Strategy, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Bravely Default 2, Mario Kart 8D, Splatoon 3 when it comes out, Mario & Rabbids, Link's Awakening, Metroid Dread, Hollow Knight if you haven't played it anywhere else, Pokemon Legends Arceus, Bowser's Fury, Celeste, Monster Hunter Rise, DK Tropical Freeze, etc.

Luigi's Mansion 3 sucks in my opinion. Doesn't really have any of the fun of the first two. Get Breath of the Wild again instead and see the light.


----------



## mongey

wankerness said:


> Got the Nioh collection, started the first one, am deeply regretting it. This game is tuned like Sekiro in that you have very limited healing items and everything kills you in about 2 hits tops, but with the save point bullshit placement of dark souls 1. It's ridiculous. You will be thrown into an area with like 5 demons that can all hit you for 3/4 of your life, and they're right before a goddam boss with a ton of health that also hits you for 3/4 of your life while stacking a paralyze debuff on you which when full makes you just sit there until she walks up and one shots you. You die to her (you absolutely will) then you have to go back through the big gauntlet of demons again if you want to get your currency back. It's infuriating and makes me not want to even try. And this is with MOST of my level points dumped into HP!!
> 
> I honestly don't get this game. The loot system is the RNG bullshit of borderlands or Diablo, so it's possible in theory to get the same armor pieces but with really lucky rolls that make it so enemies tickle you - it seems like that's what's going on with most of the boss videos I've watched where people are only getting hit for like 1/3 health, cause everything just massacres me instantly. Or you can get normal luck like me, in which case everything just stomps on you cause your gear doesn't have a bunch of damage reduction bonuses vs the specific annoying enemies you're fighting at the time.
> 
> You can't save and quit in this game, and if you start a mission you have to go all the way through and kill the boss to get out of it again unless you have one of the rare "homeward bone" types of items.
> 
> Basically, this game feels like the really late-game areas of Elden Ring where everything can kill you almost instantly, but without any of the tools that give you a fighting chance there.
> 
> I think I hate it!


I tried with nioh a few times and just couldn’t be bothered. I like some of the ideas , but just felt like a cheaper souls game. 

It’s missing that feeling that even though your getting your ass kicked , you are getting closer.


----------



## MFB

I started up Hades this weekend, not sure how I feel about it. I knew it was rogue-like, I'm just not crazy about their "level design" which seems generous to the concept as it just feels like they made a combination of Room 1-10 and then just threw it into a RNG and said good enough. Literally, ever room is entered and exited through the same animation and you've got roughly the same three to four enemies in each. Because of that it's also tough to feel like I've made any progress, not to mention that the only healing items are Centaur Hearts and from what I read they're few and far between. So like, do I have to complete the game in one run basically?

I don't know, at the moment it's just like a less interesting Diablo


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I started up Hades this weekend, not sure how I feel about it. I knew it was rogue-like, I'm just not crazy about their "level design" which seems generous to the concept as it just feels like they made a combination of Room 1-10 and then just threw it into a RNG and said good enough. Literally, ever room is entered and exited through the same animation and you've got roughly the same three to four enemies in each. Because of that it's also tough to feel like I've made any progress, not to mention that the only healing items are Centaur Hearts and from what I read they're few and far between. *So like, do I have to complete the game in one run basically?*


Yes. Isn't that standard for rogue-like? Rogue-likes are always randomly generated every time you die, so "level design" can't really be much of a thing other than the parameters it's feeding it. The scenery and enemies definitely change substantially every time you beat a boss since you're getting to the next circle of hell or whatever they called it.

I played the crap out of that game for about a week but eventually got bored with the grind. You basically are just farming to upgrade weapons so you're better able to progress, but every single time you die you start over from the very beginning so you'll be seeing A LOT of the early bosses. As you progress further, the early bosses can get swapped out for alternate bosses and things generally just get harder to match your new power level. I never "escaped." There's also stuff like rep levels/rewards with the gods that you can randomly meet on your route (if you give them a gift) that function as progression. I contemplated during on "god mode" or whatever the easy mode is where you get a stacking buff every time you die just so I could see the end, but I lost interest before doing that. I think it's a good game and I did get several hours of enjoyment out of it, but Roguelikes just really aren't my thing.


----------



## MFB

Maybe? 

I feel like there was a period where a lot of new indie games came out and everyone was calling them "rogue-likes" as well so it got misattributed to some that truly weren't, like, people used it to also describe Hollow Knight which isn't true. Dead Cells also got the title of "rogue-like" given to it, but I haven't played it, but I know it's a side-scroller similar to HK but that's about it; so with that said, I don't think I've ever played an actual rogue-like as I can't even think of what the OG game would be (virtually just any NES/SNES without a save function?).

If that's accurate though, this will be my last as that's kind of a shit concept. Like, I can see the novelty in changing things every time you die, but it seems like that should be a separate mode vs. the default where it's "you can NEVER strategize for something, as it's always different."


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> Luigi's Mansion 3 sucks in my opinion.


I liked it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Even if just from the angle of a person who does games, appreciating the level of detail put into it. But then I also liked the newest Paper Mario which people hated. Oh well.



Jarmake said:


> Any game recommendations for the system?


Realistically, it's a solid (if aging) platform - you just gatta pick a franchise or genre to your taste, and you'll likely be happy with it. Highlights for me are gonna be BotW, Mario Odyssey, Metroid Dread, etc - all the normal stuff. But the icing on it is having portable versions of games that are good on any platform -> you can carry just about the whole Doom franchise with you, all the Borderlands / Bioshock type stuff, Skyrim if that's your jam, lots of indie games land on the platform, etc.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Maybe?
> 
> I feel like there was a period where a lot of new indie games came out and everyone was calling them "rogue-likes" as well so it got misattributed to some that truly weren't, like, people used it to also describe Hollow Knight which isn't true. Dead Cells also got the title of "rogue-like" given to it, but I haven't played it, but I know it's a side-scroller similar to HK but that's about it; so with that said, I don't think I've ever played an actual rogue-like as I can't even think of what the OG game would be (virtually just any NES/SNES without a save function?).
> 
> If that's accurate though, this will be my last as that's kind of a shit concept. Like, I can see the novelty in changing things every time you die, but it seems like that should be a separate mode vs. the default where it's "you can NEVER strategize for something, as it's always different."


Yeah, randomly generated levels and starting over from the beginning every time you die are kind of the defining trait of roguelikes and why I tend to hate them. Hades mitigates it by having true progression for your character's damage and stats over time and by having the constantly dying and restarting thing as being part of its story in a clever way.

Returnal's the only other one I want to give a try to. I haven't played Dead Cells myself exactly because I heard it was a roguelike. And yeah, Hollow Knight absolutely is not roguelike, it's got actual levels and nothing changes when you die. Anyone who called it that didn't know what they were talking about. If anything it's a soulslike crossed with a "metroidvania." Binding of Isaac I think tended to be the defining game of the genre before Hades came out. I had a friend that LOVED it, but I utterly hated it cause I hated having to start over from the beginning and being at the mercy of RNG for whether a particular run would end well since you could get certain buffs that made things trivial or could get none of the buffs and everything was hard as nails.


----------



## TedEH

I meant to come here to post what I've moved on to, and forgot to post that bit:

Since I'm stuck in self-isolation mode for a while, I finally dug into Halo. The collection has been sitting installed on my xbox for a while but I never touched it. Currently about half way through CE. Playing with the original visuals (surprising nobody). I definitely would have enjoyed this when I was younger if I'd owned an xbox at the time.


----------



## Jarmake

Thanks for the tips, guys. Maybe I'll give BOTW another chance eventually, but I think I'm going to try some Mario-games and maybe even the new-ish pokemon game.


----------



## MFB

TedEH said:


> I meant to come here to post what I've moved on to, and forgot to post that bit:
> 
> Since I'm stuck in self-isolation mode for a while, I finally dug into Halo. The collection has been sitting installed on my xbox for a while but I never touched it. Currently about half way through CE. Playing with the original visuals (surprising nobody). I definitely would have enjoyed this when I was younger if I'd owned an xbox at the time.



Smart choice actually, there's issue with the anniversary edition graphics where they made them look better but the hitboxes/colliders are unchanged; so you can be trying to shoot past a tree that used to look wider and now doesn't, but guess what? That bullet isn't going anywhere because of a god damn hitbox from 2001.

I tried replaying Halo:CE maybe a year or so ago, and god damn is it SLOW moving. I made it up to right after the Library and just got bored and stopped.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I meant to come here to post what I've moved on to, and forgot to post that bit:
> 
> Since I'm stuck in self-isolation mode for a while, I finally dug into Halo. The collection has been sitting installed on my xbox for a while but I never touched it. Currently about half way through CE. Playing with the original visuals (surprising nobody). I definitely would have enjoyed this when I was younger if I'd owned an xbox at the time.


CE Anniversary visuals suuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Not just because they look awful, but as MFB says they did a terrible job overall. Hitboxes and invisible walls and platforms all over the place. Just a sloppy job, and honestly they took away so much atmosphere. I play through all of them a couple times a year, and it looks so bad compared to Halo 3, 4 and Reach all for 360.



Jarmake said:


> Thanks for the tips, guys. Maybe I'll give BOTW another chance eventually, but I think I'm going to try some Mario-games and maybe even the new-ish pokemon game.


Definitely give Let's Go, Sword/Shield and BDSP a miss. They're not very good at all. Arceus has its flaws but is by far the best Pokémon game in the Switch.


----------



## BlackMastodon

MFB said:


> Maybe?
> 
> I feel like there was a period where a lot of new indie games came out and everyone was calling them "rogue-likes" as well so it got misattributed to some that truly weren't, like, people used it to also describe Hollow Knight which isn't true. Dead Cells also got the title of "rogue-like" given to it, but I haven't played it, but I know it's a side-scroller similar to HK but that's about it; so with that said, I don't think I've ever played an actual rogue-like as I can't even think of what the OG game would be (virtually just any NES/SNES without a save function?).
> 
> If that's accurate though, this will be my last as that's kind of a shit concept. Like, I can see the novelty in changing things every time you die, but it seems like that should be a separate mode vs. the default where it's "you can NEVER strategize for something, as it's always different."


This is the general concept of Rogue-likes and I've come across a few that were fun. I guess the idea is that you can come and go and do a run in less than an hour if you don't have much time and you get better with time as you learn more, but I understand it's not for everyone. I like some but don't feel the need to play every one. 

I'd recommend giving Slay the Spire a try if you find it on sale before writing off the genre. I think the deck builder gameplay is the perfect way to do a rogue-like, and StS is widely considered one of the best. Tons of replayability, even once you've unlocked the progression for each character.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Maybe?
> 
> I feel like there was a period where a lot of new indie games came out and everyone was calling them "rogue-likes" as well so it got misattributed to some that truly weren't, like, people used it to also describe Hollow Knight which isn't true. Dead Cells also got the title of "rogue-like" given to it, but I haven't played it, but I know it's a side-scroller similar to HK but that's about it; so with that said, I don't think I've ever played an actual rogue-like as I can't even think of what the OG game would be (virtually just any NES/SNES without a save function?).
> 
> If that's accurate though, this will be my last as that's kind of a shit concept. Like, I can see the novelty in changing things every time you die, but it seems like that should be a separate mode vs. the default where it's "you can NEVER strategize for something, as it's always different."


Dead Cells is very much a roguelike. The level design changes everytime, the weapons and powerups available change everytime, enemies change as well.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> CE Anniversary visuals suuuuuuuuuuuuuck





MFB said:


> there's issue with the anniversary edition graphics


I heard that supposedly the Halo 2 updates were much better, but if the option is there I'll likely stick to the original setups as much as I can anyway, just cause that's how I do.

If I reaaaaaally wanted to go original, I have an original Xbox copy of Halo 1, but only that one, so having the collection in one spot is just too convenient.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I heard that supposedly the Halo 2 updates were much better, but if the option is there I'll likely stick to the original setups as much as I can anyway, just cause that's how I do.
> 
> If I reaaaaaally wanted to go original, I have an original Xbox copy of Halo 1, but only that one, so having the collection in one spot is just too convenient.


Halo 2 Anniversary is much better. Mainly because for the most part it's the same art style just updated whereas CE doesn't know what it wants to be. Sometimes you'll switch between them on 2 and not really notice what's changed because they didn't change important things. CE looks like different places on some levels and sometimes the older graphics look newer. 

The 2A cutscenes are very high quality, so it's worth trying to watch those even if you play the rest of the game on old graphics. You can't change settings during cutscenes unfortunately, but the old graphics are really rough in some parts. Though, 2A does have some major lighting problems at some parts, particularly any darker levels and Covenant levels with super bright light sources that don't light anything up.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Jarmake said:


> Any game recommendations for the system?



If you don't mind easy going management sims, Spiritfarer would be the top of my recommendations. It's a great pick up and play that's not all too long either. 

...which reminds me, I need to play the last update.


----------



## wankerness

Well, since I'm a glutton for punishment, I went back to Nioh hell-bent on beating that shitty second boss. I got wrecked a couple times. Then I looked all the way through the magic skill tree and found I had the skill points to learn some ability called "guardian spirit talisman," which when specced into shot out a homing fireball at her that stunned her and basically made it so three casts of it allowed me to get her to about 15% of her health bar without much risk besides the couple seconds between casts and having to dodge her attempt to grab you every time the stun wore off.  After learning that ability, it only took three attempts.

So, this game has wayyyyy too many abilities and is really impenetrable but certainly appears to have many options for cheesing difficult encounters. That's more my kind of game. I then got stomped on one of the follow-up sub-missions and quit for the night, but I think maybe I will be able to do this game after all if I go the cheap route and learn the "sloth" ability as soon as possible.

But yeah, if by going by trophy % is any indication, this game is way more impenetrable than nearly anything in the fromsoft catalog. I think only bloodborne had boss clearing numbers close to this bad (only 60% of players beat the first boss, and only 40% of players had the achievement for beating the second boss!!).


----------



## Mathemagician

Just beat ER and now I don’t know what to play. I’ve been playing a bit of crash bandicoot but I got to level 6 where you’re riding a pig and have to dodge things and well, It’s the end of the game for me as I’m not 11 anymore and will never beat this level.

Anything good out there to play? I like single player games/rpgs the most.


----------



## StevenC

Jarmake said:


> Thanks for the tips, guys. Maybe I'll give BOTW another chance eventually, but I think I'm going to try some Mario-games and maybe even the new-ish pokemon game.


Also, if you didn't have a Wii U check out Pikmin 3 Deluxe and DK Tropical Freeze. Warioware and Yoshi are also very good.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Just beat ER and now I don’t know what to play. I’ve been playing a bit of crash bandicoot but I got to level 6 where you’re riding a pig and have to dodge things and well, It’s the end of the game for me as I’m not 11 anymore and will never beat this level.
> 
> Anything good out there to play? I like single player games/rpgs the most.


That guardians of the galaxy game is supposed to be quite a good single player action game, that's been on my list for a while. That and RE8.


----------



## MFB

GOTG is enjoyable, once you get the skill trees unlocked you'll find yourself using the same combos for large crowd control vs. single enemies, etc... but that's typical for any game really. I got my money out of it for the $30/40 bucks I paid for it; from what I've heard, Gamora and Drax are more in line with their comic counterparts than the movies and I do enjoy Star Lord in that more than Chris Pratt.


----------



## dr_game0ver

wankerness said:


> Well, since I'm a glutton for punishment, I went back to Nioh hell-bent on beating that shitty second boss. I got wrecked a couple times. Then I looked all the way through the magic skill tree and found I had the skill points to learn some ability called "guardian spirit talisman," which when specced into shot out a homing fireball at her that stunned her and basically made it so three casts of it allowed me to get her to about 15% of her health bar without much risk besides the couple seconds between casts and having to dodge her attempt to grab you every time the stun wore off.  After learning that ability, it only took three attempts.
> 
> So, this game has wayyyyy too many abilities and is really impenetrable but certainly appears to have many options for cheesing difficult encounters. That's more my kind of game. I then got stomped on one of the follow-up sub-missions and quit for the night, but I think maybe I will be able to do this game after all if I go the cheap route and learn the "sloth" ability as soon as possible.
> 
> But yeah, if by going by trophy % is any indication, this game is way more impenetrable than nearly anything in the fromsoft catalog. I think only bloodborne had boss clearing numbers close to this bad (only 60% of players beat the first boss, and only 40% of players had the achievement for beating the second boss!!).


As a person who has completed the game multiple times, give up now. If you have a hard time against Hino-enma, the second easiest boss of the game after the actual spider lady, you are not ready for what is to come. level 3 boss will make you cry tears of blood and Yuki-onna... Ho GOD Yuki-onna...

Joke aside, the game takes a lot of learning, like the first time you played DS, but it is so rewarding...


----------



## Mathemagician

Ok see that could work. I enjoyed the original ultimate alliance on Xbox 360. Way more story than I expected going into it.


----------



## StevenC

It's 2022 and Sony opens their showcase with a game from 2005 that has been on every console since. And it was the best game they showed.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> It's 2022 and Sony opens their showcase with a game from 2005 that has been on every console since. And it was the best game they showed.


For those of us who don’t watch those, what was that?


----------



## Quiet Coil

wankerness said:


> For those of us who don’t watch those, what was that?


RE4 (remake)… which appears to be exclusive to PS5.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> For those of us who don’t watch those, what was that?


Yeah, RE4 Remake. They also had Street Fighter 6 (which might be interesting unless they pull a SF5) some multiplat indies that we've seen for a while now, more FF16, and not a lot else of note.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm. I kind of remember liking that game on GameCube but don’t know that I’d play a remake. What did ffxvi look like? Not that I’m too hyped after Ffxv.


----------



## TedEH

Maaaaaaaaaan I've just seen the Sonic gameplay videos and WOW is it bad. Like Unreal asset flip level of bad.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Predictable as it was, I'm ok with an RE4 remake since it's still the best game in the series. 

SF6, I'm a little lukewarm about (no pun intended), since SF5, despite eventually becoming a solid in depth game, left me cold. But I've noticed a funny pattern on the series and that the even numbered titles do better than the odds. 2 revolutionised the industry and laid the foundation of competitive gaming as we know it, and 4, while not as groundbreaking, still fared better on it's launch. The odds... nobody cared about 1, and even it's Alpha quasi sequel got erased by it's updates. Nobody cared about SF3 until Third Strike and everyone knows the crappy start of SF5. Hopefully Capcom can get this to a good start, and keep the story mode in the game this time please. Though I'm still keeping my expectations low. 

FFXVI.... well, as long as the game doesn't feel unfinished, that's something to look forward to at least.


----------



## Jarmake

My wife will be happy to know that RE4 remake is coming out... She has played 4 many times and still seems to enjoy it.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Hopefully the AI won't be completely braindead in the RE4 remake. Escorting the blond chick was the worst fucking part of that whole game.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Predictable as it was, I'm ok with an RE4 remake since it's still the best game in the series.
> 
> SF6, I'm a little lukewarm about (no pun intended), since SF5, despite eventually becoming a solid in depth game, left me cold. But I've noticed a funny pattern on the series and that the even numbered titles do better than the odds. 2 revolutionised the industry and laid the foundation of competitive gaming as we know it, and 4, while not as groundbreaking, still fared better on it's launch. The odds... nobody cared about 1, and even it's Alpha quasi sequel got erased by it's updates. Nobody cared about SF3 until Third Strike and everyone knows the crappy start of SF5. Hopefully Capcom can get this to a good start, and keep the story mode in the game this time please. Though I'm still keeping my expectations low.
> 
> FFXVI.... well, as long as the game doesn't feel unfinished, that's something to look forward to at least.



Yeahhh, I'm leery of SF6. The new gauge system seems interesting, but the look and pacing seem very reminiscent of SF5.


----------



## wankerness

After looking at a list of the games shown, I'm actually most interested in that "Stray" cat game. It very well could be terrible, but I like what I see and will pay attention to reviews.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Mathemagician said:


> Anything good out there to play? I like single player games/rpgs the most.


Divinity: Original Sin 2 is probably one of the best CRPG's and single player experiences you can find if you haven't tried that. I got it because I kept seeing it pop up on sale and I wanted to kind of get a test run ahead of Baldur's Gate 3 since it's the same developer. Highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy tabletop games like D&D.


----------



## Werecow

I'd second Divinity: Original Sin 2 as well. I really like the first game too, but the second seems to have become my favourite RPG of all time, judging by the amount of times i've replayed it. Even though it's not DND, it feels like the most DND game i've ever played, in that you have so much freedom to try mad shit, and quite often it'll work. The combat allows for so much creativity.


----------



## thebeesknees22

I needed a break from rpg's so I've pulled the trigger on gran turismo 7. 

i haven't played a GT game since the first one.


----------



## wankerness

Apparently Assassin's Creed Origins just got a free update to 60 FPS on PS5. Apparently Odyssey also got such an update, a while ago. I don't know that I'll play them again, but that's cool. I might actually replay Far Cry 5 if they do it for that one. 

I wish other companies would take their lead, so Fromsoft would do that for Bloodborne!!!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Choop said:


> Yeahhh, I'm leery of SF6. The new gauge system seems interesting, but the look and pacing seem very reminiscent of SF5.



Just saw the leaked roster and already a big step up from 5's launch.


----------



## Choop

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Just saw the leaked roster and already a big step up from 5's launch.



Yeah! I like the stylish streetwear look everyone has. Also Capcom is showing some restraint with the number of blonde characters lol.
As long as it feels good to play I will be on it -- which I know is a vague thing to say, but SF5 just felt stiff and despite becoming very balanced and overall solid, I never could gel with it. The gameplay footage of 6 makes it seem a lot like SF5 with the kind of slower, long hitstop on every attack thing. but its early and not enough has been shown to judge it yet.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of Halo CE.



Spoiler



We already know what Halo is at this point, so there's not much point in an in-depth explanation of it. Aliens. Pew pew. Recharging shields. You get the idea.

Some thoughts:
- There's some good areas / designs worthy of the game's legacy / nostalgia.
- The vehicle movement feels terrible to me. I'm glad we've moved on from these kinds of slippery movement.
- The aim assists are pretty transparent most of the time, and I appreciated that.
- The 2-gun limit feels pretty restrictive given that they aren't all equally usable in each scenario, so the game wants to you go in guns blazing, but I have to pause and juggle my weapon types to be properly effective.
- Introduction of the flood is handled well.
- There's the mission in all the long corridors fighting flood and following the spark thing, which is really moody, which is great, but it drags on waaaay too long.
- That mission starts a pattern of the end of the game starting to feel padded out and repetitive. The early game felt really fleshed out, but the late game feels game-y and padded.
- The ending of the game with the warthog is, IMO, terrible. The vehicle physics are frustrating, so ending on a vehicle escape is a sour note to be left with.


----------



## spudmunkey

SF6 shouldn't be SF6. It looks like it could be fun as hell, but it should have been something like "Street Fighter: Underground" (not exactly, ut you know what I mean), leaving room for a "nirmal" SF6.


----------



## Mathemagician

spudmunkey said:


> SF6 shouldn't be SF6. It looks like it could be fun as hell, but it should have been something like "Street Fighter: Underground" (not exactly, ut you know what I mean), leaving room for a "nirmal" SF6.



I absolutely don’t want that. Off-number games that aren’t the main series never get the full care & attention that a main series game gets. In terms of polish, dlc, and most importantly fast balance patches.


----------



## Empryrean

spudmunkey said:


> SF6 shouldn't be SF6. It looks like it could be fun as hell, but it should have been something like "Street Fighter: Underground" (not exactly, ut you know what I mean), leaving room for a "nirmal" SF6.


seeing how similar the design choices were from 5 to 6 i totally agree. they could have just made it a rehash of 5 cause what little I've seen them show off the hitstop and weird weight problems with attacks seem to carry over. I think they made a good choice not showing ryu do a standing lp cause I feel like that'd be the nail in the coffin for everyone who judged sf5's stubby normals. the addition of the live-action commentary feels like a push in making everyone feel like they're at an esports arena which is a direction I've never agreed with. They're further alienating their core base of players who will buy the game and play it casually without wanting to be the best.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Witcher 3, because back in the day when I was playing it, left a lot of stuff unfinished, so I'm cleaning up some loose ends, and making different decisions this time around. Also been playing on my Xbox Series S, which is in the living room, because I don't always want to be on my PC. Being able to spread out on the couch, have blankets, and be comfortable while gaming has been a (pun fully fucking intended) game changer for me.


----------



## wankerness

Playing more Nioh. The way many garden-variety enemies (demons, stone soldiers, etc) can kill you instantly with one casual combo is still really annoying, but I'm usually getting through levels alright. I think the main mental block was that the game vastly prefers that you block rather than dodge, while I'm so used to the DS games where blocking while holding a weapon with no shield is almost always a bad idea and dodges are overpowered. Only killed two more bosses (some kind of demon dog/dragon and then a repeat of the first boss in the pirate ship in the twilight realm), both took a few tries but seemed way easier than the stupid bat lady did when I tried fighting her "legit." Maybe I'm just getting used to it. Been playing with a spear and then using magic nukes occasionally, but haven't messed around with any other melee weapons much at all. But yeah, haven't had much game time recently and might not for a few more days!


----------



## Mathemagician

Empryrean said:


> seeing how similar the design choices were from 5 to 6 i totally agree. they could have just made it a rehash of 5 cause what little I've seen them show off the hitstop and weird weight problems with attacks seem to carry over. I think they made a good choice not showing ryu do a standing lp cause I feel like that'd be the nail in the coffin for everyone who judged sf5's stubby normals. the addition of the live-action commentary feels like a push in making everyone feel like they're at an esports arena which is a direction I've never agreed with. They're further alienating their core base of players who will buy the game and play it casually without wanting to be the best.



Generally speaking the hardcore fighting game fans are the ones keeping series alive. When a new SF launches it gets some general attention from video game fans. But the subsequent upgrades ( Super/Ultra/etc) and seasonal DLC are what keep development going and that comes mostly from hardcore fans. The hype and annual bump in players that come from tournament season is again the most devoted/hardcore fans who tune in and support things like EVO or the Capcom Cup.


----------



## ArtDecade

I just started playing Cobra Kai on the PS4. It was on sale for 9 bucks and I am obviously a big time gamer that know his stuff.


----------



## TedEH

I moved on from Halo 1 to Halo 2. it goes in some interesting directions.
But also for some reason whenever I've got a few minutes and unsure of what to do with myself (which happens a little more often this week, since I'm stuck inside with the 'rona) I've been booting up:

Wolf3D!
Because why not. It's classic. It's straitforward. When I was younger I only ever beat the first episode, but now that I'm older I can run through the other episodes pretty quickly.


----------



## Empryrean

Mathemagician said:


> Generally speaking the hardcore fighting game fans are the ones keeping series alive. When a new SF launches it gets some general attention from video game fans. But the subsequent upgrades ( Super/Ultra/etc) and seasonal DLC are what keep development going and that comes mostly from hardcore fans. The hype and annual bump in players that come from tournament season is again the most devoted/hardcore fans who tune in and support things like EVO or the Capcom Cup.


Oh without a doubt, I was very blindly optimistic with 5 and bought the dlc just to play with some friends. I’m gonna wait it out with 6 and try it before i commit this time. It’s crazy to me that they continue to try appealing to new players and ignore legacy skill every generation.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Got to the end of Halo CE.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> We already know what Halo is at this point, so there's not much point in an in-depth explanation of it. Aliens. Pew pew. Recharging shields. You get the idea.
> 
> Some thoughts:
> - There's some good areas / designs worthy of the game's legacy / nostalgia.
> - The vehicle movement feels terrible to me. I'm glad we've moved on from these kinds of slippery movement.
> - The aim assists are pretty transparent most of the time, and I appreciated that.
> - The 2-gun limit feels pretty restrictive given that they aren't all equally usable in each scenario, so the game wants to you go in guns blazing, but I have to pause and juggle my weapon types to be properly effective.
> - Introduction of the flood is handled well.
> - There's the mission in all the long corridors fighting flood and following the spark thing, which is really moody, which is great, but it drags on waaaay too long.
> - That mission starts a pattern of the end of the game starting to feel padded out and repetitive. The early game felt really fleshed out, but the late game feels game-y and padded.
> - The ending of the game with the warthog is, IMO, terrible. The vehicle physics are frustrating, so ending on a vehicle escape is a sour note to be left with.


What difficulty did you play on? Halo generally is pretty good for not really caring what guns you use outside of Legendary. The later games have some enemies that you really don't want certain guns with that can get annoying if you don't know the level already, but CE is very forgiving with providing you good weapons pretty much all the time. The Flood for example are easier with UNSC weapons, so they usually carry and drop same. 

I will absolutely give you the corridor levels. Assault on the Control Room is very repetitive at times, and I still don't know how to get through Truth and Reconciliation reliably*, but then you have to repeat both levels? At least The Library is spooky enough that the repetition adds something. 

But I absolutely will not let you slander the Halo vehicle controls. 

The Anniversary graphics totally ruin all of the flood levels' atmosphere, and The Siment Cartographer isn't noticeably improved. 

*The underground section of The Silent Cartographer is also completely impossible to me.


----------



## TedEH

I tend to play games on whatever looks like the "normal" difficulty - I'm not the type to go "it's not a real challenge unless it's at the highest difficulty and I let the game slap me around". Not my idea of fun. I die often enough on normal that I feel no need to bump the difficulty up.

Yeh, the game absolutely gives you what you need - and I'm sure you could get through with any weapon, but there was a very deliberate setup of energy guns for shields, bullets for un- shielded, shotguns to be that OP room clearing gun that you run out of ammo for pretty quickly if you over-use it, the starting rifle being kinda weak but still handy for the little flood bulb looking things when they swarm, etc.

I stand by the vehicle comment though. 2 improves it a fair bit, but in 1 it's strait up slippery jank.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MSI is trying to kickstart what basically equates to a controller for your foot. hmmm could be cool.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Mathemagician said:


> Generally speaking the hardcore fighting game fans are the ones keeping series alive. When a new SF launches it gets some general attention from video game fans. But the subsequent upgrades ( Super/Ultra/etc) and seasonal DLC are what keep development going and that comes mostly from hardcore fans. The hype and annual bump in players that come from tournament season is again the most devoted/hardcore fans who tune in and support things like EVO or the Capcom Cup.


 SF4 proved this. After a long hiatus, SF4 brought a lot of people back to the franchise like all the 'old school' SF2 fans but hilariously got weeded out by the 'gud' players. By the time the Ultra editions were out it was just the FGC and hardcore players that stuck around who adapted as the game evolved. 

SF5 shot itself in the foot by releasing the most bare minimum base game on launch with little content especially for single player (piss poor story mode where the main actual plot was released as separate DLC), and more early-early access geared to the hardcore crowd. Granted that once Champion edition kicked it, it was a really good game, but the damage was done. That and despite the impressive 46 final roster, paying 5 seasons of updated content isn't exactly appealing. It's an issue with every fighting game ever, but considering the genre's history, I tend to neglectfully look the other way...

I daresay I'm excited for SF6. The starting roster is pretty big, the story mode (World Tour) is sort of exciting and refreshing (I for one love what they're doing with Ken, certainly more interesting than Ryu), and I like the Luke / Jamie dynamic that's becoming the new dual protagonists. Gameplay mechanics... still to early to tell. The hype Capcom are buzzing feels like a more inclusive game the same way SF4 did, and that's definitely a good thing.


----------



## StevenC

Bloody_Inferno said:


> It's an issue with every fighting game ever, but considering the genre's history


Except Melee which I'm told was perfect from the moment it was conceived.


----------



## gabito

Yakuza 0.

Some homeless people asked me to buy a few different alcoholic beverages for them and I'm seriously considering not to play this thing anymore.

Besides me having to take notes (or a picture) to remember each item, I have to more or less guess where to buy them (or check out a guide). Nah.

I mean, it felt kinda like an outdated game from the beginning, and I get that japanese games use different tropes and can be sort of an acquired taste, but... now I have to work? To take notes? Ugh, I only want to know what happens next.

Man, I was playing on easy, just to enjoy the story, trouble free. I couldn't care less about these Yakuza games' gameplay.

I don't know if I'm so invested in you, 5 dollars (on sale) game. Well... I'm not. Maybe some other day.

Still waiting for GoW Ragnarok. It's the only thing I want to play and that keeps me from selling or giving away my PS4.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

StevenC said:


> Except Melee which I'm told was perfect from the moment it was conceived.



That's an illusion the good fighting games give, until the players evolve and notice the balance issues. Samurai Showdown 2 was the perfect fighting game until Ukyo ruined everything. Similarly, in Melee's case, it was Fox and Falco. Though of course it's more nuanced than that, but for a good chunk of it's lifetime, competitive Melee players were only picking 8 characters. And as already stated, the competitive FGC are the key to the fighting game's longevity. 

Capcom were the progenitors of this culture; trying to fix any kind of bugs and balance issues the moment SF2 Champion Edition was released. That's why there's 3-5 versions of a Street Fighter game. Every other company just cut the pretense and released new updates as sequels like normal people.  It wasn't until the advent of DLCs where everyone followed the SF business model. It makes sense especially once you bought the base game. But charging a season pass at the same price of a retail game, aka The Champion Edition effect, is why I don't condone the game developers. A bitter pill to swallow, but I was guilty too, buying every available edition of SF2, Alpha and 3, and feeding a ton of coins to the arcades where Capcom made a few squintillion dollars. 

No fighting game has been perfectly balanced since Karate Champ (and to some extent Street Fighter 1's 2 player, but again, nobody cares about SF1). But some games have come very close, be it on launch or after a few patches over the years. Melee is definitely one of them, certainly better than Brawl and Ultimate ever were. 

Incidentally, my friend threw a low key birthday party where we watched bad kung fu movies and played Melee all night. Melee was a lot more fun than I remembered and was even doing well with bottom feeders like Kirby and Bowser... then again, none of use were exactly competitive powerhouses.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Similarly, in Melee's case, it was Fox and Falco. Though of course it's more nuanced than that, but for a good chunk of it's lifetime, competitive Melee players were only picking 8 characters.


No items.
Fox only.
Final destination.
*both players alternate between Down+B shield and wave dashing until the timer ends*


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Yakuza 0.
> 
> Some homeless people asked me to buy a few different alcoholic beverages for them and I'm seriously considering not to play this thing anymore.
> 
> Besides me having to take notes (or a picture) to remember each item, I have to more or less guess where to buy them (or check out a guide). Nah.
> 
> I mean, it felt kinda like an outdated game from the beginning, and I get that japanese games use different tropes and can be sort of an acquired taste, but... now I have to work? To take notes? Ugh, I only want to know what happens next.
> 
> Man, I was playing on easy, just to enjoy the story, trouble free. I couldn't care less about these Yakuza games' gameplay.
> 
> I don't know if I'm so invested in you, 5 dollars (on sale) game. Well... I'm not. Maybe some other day.
> 
> Still waiting for GoW Ragnarok. It's the only thing I want to play and that keeps me from selling or giving away my PS4.


I think that's a sidequest, just skip it or look up the answers online. I definitely used guides for a few things in that game, like the toy racer plotline/minigame.

It took me a while to jive with that game. I bounced off it after a few hours and didn't go back to it for months, but then I really got into the plot and the sense of humor of some of the sidequests and especially the cabaret club sidequest/minigame and ended up utterly loving it by the end. It's clunky and dated and there are a lot of boring fetch quests and things that you should not do because they're a huge grind (ex, trying to get all the outcomes from telephone club, or interacting with the weapon crafting/explorer club). But there's a ton of really great stuff in that game if you give it a chance. It takes a while for the combat to get interesting/fun (once you have a few fighting styles, particularly "monster" for Kiryu and "breakdancer" for Majima, it really opens up) and it takes a bit to get invested in the plot, especially if you aren't paying much attention initially like me.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Just bought V Rising and will give it a whirl. Sounds like it's a fun time.


----------



## wankerness

Starfield looks really bad. Maybe I won't be getting an Xbox this generation after all.


----------



## TedEH

Curious what you think looks bad about it - I see some red flags for sure, but I actually want to play this one, so I'm holding off on judging too harshly until I try it out. There are bits that kinda reminded me of Fallout and Outer Worlds, which is promising in a way. The bits that worry me are the promised scale (that almost never seems to go well) and the focus on combat for a lot of the trailer - which kinda looked like discount MachineGames/Wolfenstein shooting, and I can't decide if that's good or bad.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Curious what you think looks bad about it - I see some red flags for sure, but I actually want to play this one, so I'm holding off on judging too harshly until I try it out. There are bits that kinda reminded me of Fallout and Outer Worlds, which is promising in a way. The bits that worry me are the promised scale (that almost never seems to go well) and the focus on combat for a lot of the trailer - which kinda looked like discount MachineGames/Wolfenstein shooting, and I can't decide if that's good or bad.


The biggest red flag BY FAR was their boast about “over 1000 explorable planets!” Pair that with the lack of any reasons why you’d WANT to explore any of them, and I’m very pessimistic about it. I’m expecting a bunch of procedurally generated crap instead of a curated experience. Skyrim had some copy-paste dungeon layouts, but it was still consistently satisfying to clear out the various ruins cause there was often sidequests or at least some environmental storytelling going on.

On top of that the graphics have some of the same jank from their older games, the shooting looks uninspired (like Outer Worlds - just very perfunctory and bland), and the space combat looked like something out of a fan mod. 

It looked more like something from the studio that brought us Fallout 76 than the studio that brought us Skyrim.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> The biggest red flag BY FAR was their boast about “over 1000 explorable planets!” Pair that with the lack of any reasons why you’d WANT to explore any of them, and I’m very pessimistic about it. I’m expecting a bunch of procedurally generated crap instead of a curated experience. Skyrim had some copy-paste dungeon layouts, but it was still consistently satisfying to clear out the various ruins cause there was often sidequests or at least some environmental storytelling going on.
> 
> On top of that the graphics have some of the same jank from their older games, the shooting looks uninspired (like Outer Worlds - just very perfunctory and bland), and the space combat looked like something out of a fan mod.
> 
> It looked more like something from the studio that brought us Fallout 76 than the studio that brought us Skyrim.


I'm curious why you would think they'd make 1000 explorable planets that don't at least feel as satisfying as the tombs/dungeons in Skyrim? Like, it's not Bethesda's first rodeo, those planets will have side quests and environmental storytelling and maybe a god disguised as a stray dog or something.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

yeah I thought Starfield looked awful. Bethesda lost all goodwill with me after all the shit they pulled with fallout 76.


----------



## gabito

From what I've seen: Starfield's landscapes look good, characters' faces look like an Oblivion's fan mod to make them look less like potatoes, animation looks a bit outdated, you get to pick some locks, to shoot a lot of guys, you may or may not talk to people and make some stupid choices, voice acting seems to be wooden and uninspired, and gameplay looks aimless.

So, yeah, it's a Bethesda game.

Also Sony finally anounced TLOU's remake. Too soon, I guess? I don't think that was necessary... but what is? Maybe creating a new and really good game for this new generation is expecting too much from them. I mean, it's been only 2 years since PS5's release, and big AAA games are taking 3 or more years to make.


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> I'm curious why you would think they'd make 1000 explorable planets that don't at least feel as satisfying as the tombs/dungeons in Skyrim? Like, it's not Bethesda's first rodeo, those planets will have side quests and environmental storytelling and maybe a god disguised as a stray dog or something.


Because they’ve trended towards procedurally generated crap with their last few games and Skyrim didn’t have remotely close to that many dungeons. It only got up anywhere close to 1000 if you started counting the procedurally generated quests as “new content.” Yuck. I just have zero faith in modern Bethesda to do anything the “hard way” anymore. Pushing quantity over quality in this press release is a huge red flag. Maybe it was just bad advertising and someone other than this guy would have emphasized that there’s actual fun/varied content and reasons to explore everything. This guy made it sound like No Man’s Sky 1.0.

Not to mention if you have to get in your ship and fly to each new planet for the equivalent of one dungeon worth of content that’s some incredible time bloat. I’d rather have planets that have more on them than the filler planets in mass effect, and just far less of them.


----------



## StevenC

The new Kojima game looks awesome though. Forza looks interesting for the first time in a while, new Sea of Thieves content is always welcome, and finally news of Silksong. 

All in all, a pretty good Direct imo.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The biggest red flag BY FAR was their boast about “over 1000 explorable planets!”





BlackMastodon said:


> that don't at least feel as satisfying as the tombs/dungeons in Skyrim?


IMO even Skyrim was very hit-or-miss with it's random content filling the world. When it worked it worked well, but it felt like a lot of filler to me, as a person who only played Skyrim years after it originally came out (and therefor the novelty of the scale of the game had long worn off). The bigger a game is, the more you have to lean on proc-gen and filler, which can go sideways very easily. I mean, you see the same thing with face animations - when there's just _way too much dialogue to animate_ you end up with Mass Effect Andromeda faces.



wankerness said:


> It looked more like something from the studio that brought us Fallout 76 than the studio that brought us Skyrim.


Given how long ago Skyrim came out, this is probably more accurate than not.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> The new Kojima game looks awesome though.


What do you mean it looks awesome? I thought they hadn't revealed ANYTHING about it. Except that it can be played in first and third person and has a girl in a hallway.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> What do you mean it looks awesome? I thought they hadn't revealed ANYTHING about it. Except that it can be played in first and third person and has a girl in a hallway.



You say it like that's not enough for Kojima stans?


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> What do you mean it looks awesome? I thought they hadn't revealed ANYTHING about it. Except that it can be played in first and third person and has a girl in a hallway.


EXACTLY


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I'm excited for Darktide. Scratch that 40k and L4D itch at the same time. Also Space Marine 2. yayayayayayayyaya can't wait to slice greenskins in half again


----------



## TedEH

Of everything I saw so far - I'm most interested in Plucky Squire and High on Life.


----------



## Ralyks

Anyone else upgrade their PS Plus? Only cost me 35 bucks since I have 230 days left on my current subscription, plus I had money in my PS Store wallet. I'll tell ya what, there's a lot of games I'm downloading that I normally don't feel like paying for otherwise.

Also, boy was it a trip playing Jumping Flash! for the first time in damn near 30 years.

Anyway, other than that, officially 80 hours into my quest to Platinum Cyberpunk 2077. Mostly just need to get the rest of the endings and clear out a few more gigs.

Oh, also, fucking XBOX gets Persona 3 and 4?! Fuckers..... Yes, I have a Series X, but my point stands.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Anyone else upgrade their PS Plus? Only cost me 35 bucks since I have 230 days left on my current subscription, plus I had money in my PS Store wallet. I'll tell ya what, there's a lot of games I'm downloading that I normally don't feel like paying for otherwise.
> 
> Also, boy was it a trip playing Jumping Flash! for the first time in damn near 30 years.
> 
> Anyway, other than that, officially 80 hours into my quest to Platinum Cyberpunk 2077. Mostly just need to get the rest of the endings and clear out a few more gigs.
> 
> Oh, also, fucking XBOX gets Persona 3 and 4?! Fuckers..... Yes, I have a Series X, but my point stands.


They announced that stuff was coming to playstation also. I was mad temporarily too till I looked up the press release from this morning!

The only thing that has me wanting to upgrade ps+ is returnal, but if I liked it I’d probably want it for long enough that it would be worth buying it and cancelling the subscription. I think I own everything else I’d ever play on the service.

Edit: yep, looked through the list. There’s like fifteen games I own but haven’t played yet like yonder cloud chronicles and ys ix that would have saved me money, but returnal is seriously the only thing on the list I don’t have that I want to play. Maybe I’d download shibuya scramble and a harvest moon game and play them for an hour.


----------



## Mathemagician

I’ve been debating about the upgrade to PSN. May do it this summer if work slows down a bit.


----------



## Ralyks

Like I mentioned, the upgrade was cheaper for me now since I already have an active PS Plus account. 35 extra bucks for the last 230 days of my current subscription doesn't seem bad. I'm seeing plenty here that I wouldn't otherwise pay to play.

Also @wankerness as soon as I saw Ys games in there, you came to mind. And then I downloaded them.

And yes, I saw that P3P, P4G, and P5R are all getting PS5 ports and FUCK YES!!!!.... Except why P3P? I feel like FES is the way to go.
Now can we get Revelations, Innocent Sin, and Eternal Punishment, or am I pushing it there?


----------



## wankerness

Huh. 35 dollars for 230 days would be worth it to me. How did you take advantage of that? I have had regular ps+ for years, not sure how much time is remaining on it. It's been a while since I added a year.


----------



## wankerness

Ew, I figured it out. My yearly subscription ran out in 30 days, so I could get 1 month for 5 bucks, but then I'd be paying the full extra 60 bucks for one year. Definitely not worth it until there's more than 60 bucks worth of games I would download. Guess I should have loaded another year of PS+ onto my account before yesterday.


----------



## Tree

Final Fantasy Tactics, cause it’s the GOAT!


----------



## TedEH

I finished Halo 2.



Spoiler



Some random thoughts because it's how I do:

- It's an improvement over CE in a bunch of ways.
- Visuals are a big step up.
- The dual-wielding is fun at first, but I don't like how it prevents you from throwing grenades or picking up your second weapon.
- I did a lot of "oh hey I want that gun", chuck down the left-hand gun, switch gun, pick up the one I want, switch back, pick the dual wield back up.
- The played with the old visuals, but occasionally switched to the new ones.... the old ones still hold up, and sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. The update wasn't always better, just slightly different.
- The audio though..... either I have some setting wrong (centre channel?), or the vocal mix reaaaally needs some work. Half the time I can't hear any of the dialogue, and the subtitles don't apply to a lot of in-game stuff.
- The anniversary cutscenes are really slick.
- They fixed the vehicles! Thank jebus!
- The final "boss fight" was disappointingly trivial. Like it went down easier than some of the normal enemies, and I was very confused.
- I didn't know going in that half the game was playing as the arbiter. I dig it.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I finished Halo 2.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Some random thoughts because it's how I do:
> 
> - It's an improvement over CE in a bunch of ways.
> - Visuals are a big step up.
> - The dual-wielding is fun at first, but I don't like how it prevents you from throwing grenades or picking up your second weapon.
> - I did a lot of "oh hey I want that gun", chuck down the left-hand gun, switch gun, pick up the one I want, switch back, pick the dual wield back up.
> - The played with the old visuals, but occasionally switched to the new ones.... the old ones still hold up, and sometimes it's hard to tell them apart. The update wasn't always better, just slightly different.
> - The audio though..... either I have some setting wrong (centre channel?), or the vocal mix reaaaally needs some work. Half the time I can't hear any of the dialogue, and the subtitles don't apply to a lot of in-game stuff.
> - The anniversary cutscenes are really slick.
> - They fixed the vehicles! Thank jebus!
> - The final "boss fight" was disappointingly trivial. Like it went down easier than some of the normal enemies, and I was very confused.
> - I didn't know going in that half the game was playing as the arbiter. I dig it.


Yeah, that's sounds like Halo 2 

The sound is very messed up it's not just you. The visuals are much better in Halo 2, and the anniversary edition was a much better update to those graphics than CE's compete overhaul, so the bits in 2 that were simple, well done and dark aren't really improved much. Other bits are a massive improvement.


----------



## onefingersweep

Counter-Strike since 2002. Tried a ton of games but that's the game I always keep playing.


----------



## Jarmake

Yesterday I beat the twin princes' and today I beat king of the storm/the nameless king and soul of cinder.

So, the base game is officially completely through and there's both of the dlc left... Soon I'm going to have to install Elden Ring on my ps4, so it will be ready when I complete the dlc's.


----------



## p0ke

Jarmake said:


> Yesterday I beat the twin princes' and today I beat king of the storm/the nameless king and soul of cinder.
> 
> So, the base game is officially completely through and there's both of the dlc left... Soon I'm going to have to install Elden Ring on my ps4, so it will be ready when I complete the dlc's.



I'm still stuck on the second DLC because I wanna beat Midir fair and square before proceeding  I've got the strategy down but I just need a shitload of patience (and a bit of luck I guess).

Anyway, now I'm playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition, just beat ME1. I'm mainly playing for the story, so I skipped most of the side stuff.
I was too quick to uninstall it though before starting ME2 - I didn't realize I need to manually save my game to be able to import the character into the next game, so now I'm waiting for it to reinstall so I can just start it once, save, and then uninstall it again  I had one save that I could've used, but it was halfway into the game, so I didn't want to import that in case some of the choices and stuff made some difference. I have a vague recollection that they actually didn't, but I don't remember whether I imported or started from scratch 10+ years ago when I played ME2...


----------



## TheBlackBard

KnightBrolaire said:


> I'm excited for Darktide. Scratch that 40k and L4D itch at the same time. Also Space Marine 2. yayayayayayayyaya can't wait to slice greenskins in half again



Not only that, but they're doing a retro style shooter in the vein of Doom called Boltgun and they're also doing a CRPG called Rogue Trader. Sounds too good to be true for that much good stuff to come out, but if it does great, definitely buying them. But for what it's worth, it's not orks they're focusing on in Space Marine 2, it's the Tyranids.

The Selaco demo finally came out, which is an original came made in the GZDoom engine, and they've done a pretty good job so far at making it so enemies aren't just target practice and rather attempt to flank you and strategize.

Replaying Dead Space to get ready for The Callisto Protocol, and I'm more than likely picking up TMNT: Shredder's Revenge tomorrow when it officially gets unlocked on the Xbox store.


----------



## wankerness

I never played Dead Space, despite playing through 2 and 3. I think I have it on Steam, but now that they're remaking it I'll probably just wait for that to come out.


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> I never played Dead Space, despite playing through 2 and 3. I think I have it on Steam, but now that they're remaking it I'll probably just wait for that to come out.



If you want a pile of junk that EA heavily has their hand in, go ahead. The animations and such that they've shown look pretty trash and break the immersion where even the 2008 version, though somewhat dated still looks and feels more fluid than what they've shown.


----------



## Mathemagician

Picked up some of the Shantae games on switch because they were on sale. Really fun/cool platformer. Well it’s new to me anyways.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> If you want a pile of junk that EA heavily has their hand in, go ahead. The animations and such that they've shown look pretty trash and break the immersion where even the 2008 version, though somewhat dated still looks and feels more fluid than what they've shown.


Hmm. I'll wait and see probably. The second one was published by EA and was great, though I know EA also famously turned the 3rd into crafting/microtransaction festival and everyone hates it (besides me), so I'm guessing the popular narrative is EA was hands-off the second one. I'd have to get some decent speakers or something for my desktop to play on PC, it's currently running out of a crappy little set of stereo speakers plugged straight into the motherboard since my external focusrite sound thing died


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> I never played Dead Space, despite playing through 2 and 3. I think I have it on Steam, but now that they're remaking it I'll probably just wait for that to come out.


The first one is a classic. It's basically a way better RE4 in space imo.


----------



## Tree

KnightBrolaire said:


> The first one is a classic. It's basically a way better RE4 in space imo.


For real. Unlike RE4, which I still have a huge soft spot for, OG Deadspace still has tense moments and makes you feel claustrophobic. Which is kinda what a survival *horror* game should be trying to do.


----------



## p0ke

Oh man, I tried fighting Midir again today and I got so goddamned annoyingly close! His bar was down to 1/4 and I had 5-6 estus left, and since I'd been hitting him in the head all the time I would've gotten the critical attack soon. But then I failed to dodge his eating attack... Fuuuuuuuck!!!


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Oh man, I tried fighting Midir again today and I got so goddamned annoyingly close! His bar was down to 1/4 and I had 5-6 estus left, and since I'd been hitting him in the head all the time I would've gotten the critical attack soon. But then I failed to dodge his eating attack... Fuuuuuuuck!!!


Yeah that's part of why I hate that fight. You can be doing great for ten minutes and then just get 1 shot. Happens all the time with his 1-shot laser enrage thing at low health. :/ At least in elden ring the fights tend to be over in about 2 minutes one way or the other.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Yeah that's part of why I hate that fight. You can be doing great for ten minutes and then just get 1 shot. Happens all the time with his 1-shot laser enrage thing at low health. :/ At least in elden ring the fights tend to be over in about 2 minutes one way or the other.


Yeah, the laser is the worst kind of bullshit... I've died to that so many times I don't even want to count, but I never fail to dodge that eating attack... Except now.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Tree said:


> For real. Unlike RE4, which I still have a huge soft spot for, OG Deadspace still has tense moments and makes you feel claustrophobic. Which is kinda what a survival *horror* game should be trying to do.


I love both games but Dead Space is a better game in every way imo. The shooting feels so much more substantial, and the game has atmosphere for days. It has amazing creature designs and the whole Event Horizon/Thing vibes tickle me pink as those are two of my all time favorite horror films. Plus the UI/ holo map designs are still untouchable. I can't believe more games haven't copied the idea of the holo map.


Man now I want a remake of Extermination from PS2. It was basically the Thing but with Syphon Filter.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

TheBlackBard said:


> Not only that, but they're doing a retro style shooter in the vein of Doom called Boltgun and they're also doing a CRPG called Rogue Trader. Sounds too good to be true for that much good stuff to come out, but if it does great, definitely buying them. But for what it's worth, it's not orks they're focusing on in Space Marine 2, it's the Tyranids.
> 
> The Selaco demo finally came out, which is an original came made in the GZDoom engine, and they've done a pretty good job so far at making it so enemies aren't just target practice and rather attempt to flank you and strategize.
> 
> Replaying Dead Space to get ready for The Callisto Protocol, and I'm more than likely picking up TMNT: Shredder's Revenge tomorrow when it officially gets unlocked on the Xbox store.


Boltgun looks fun. I don't particularly care about Rogue Trader or most CRPGs since I'm still working through the latest Baldur's gate. 
Calisto Protocol looks awesome, I'm very excited for it, especially since it's got some of the original Dead Space team working on it.


----------



## Werecow

I've just been replaying the entire Metro series. Had been looking forward to playing Exodus with RTX (for the first time). But the black levels are so screwy, that i hated it and playing the standard version instead. I basically had a choice between the deepest shadows being a washed out grey, or with a supposed fix, the lighting and shadows being too dark. Pretty dissappointing, but the standard version still looks stunning.

I'll have to replay Dead Space 1 & 2 for the umpteenth next with all this talk. Shame they never made a 3rd 

The Callisto Protocol is at the top of my wishlist. Really hyped for that after the gameplay reveal.


----------



## WarMachine

Grabbed TMNT Shredder's Revenge on Steam. Definitely worth it while its on sale for 22 bucks (ends July 7th i think).
If you're a fan of the OG series and games, you'll love this one. Not much replay value, i beat the story mode then immediately beat the arcade mode to see if there were any unlockables for beating both lol.


----------



## wankerness

That sounds fun but I can't justify 25 bucks for it if it's TMNT IV length. I'm all over it as soon as it goes on sale for PS though.


----------



## WarMachine

wankerness said:


> That sounds fun but I can't justify 25 bucks for it if it's TMNT IV length. I'm all over it as soon as it goes on sale for PS though.


It's just a fuzz longer than TMNT IV. Its got 16 stages total.


----------



## NoodleFace

I played shredders revenge with 5 friends and it's some of the most fun I've had in gaming in a long time. took us maybe 2-3 hours to beat the game, but well worth the $20 for me

Also it's free if you have gamepass


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Started playing TMNT Shredders Revenge myself. It's good fun and a nice successor to the Turtles in Time and the old Arcade game.


----------



## narad

Beat my first play through of Triangle Strategy. My god that is a slow game. Sit down some nights with 45 mins to spare and the desire to reach some sort of minor victory, and wind up doing nothing by dialogue and voting on what to do next.


----------



## gabito

Playing Mortal Kombat 9 on the PS3. I haven't played a fighting game since MK II on the Sega Genesis, but it's been fun so far.

I may try X and 11 in the future.


----------



## WarMachine

gabito said:


> Playing Mortal Kombat 9 on the PS3. I haven't played a fighting game since MK II on the Sega Genesis, but it's been fun so far.
> 
> I may try X and 11 in the future.


If you can, try XL over X, its got all the extra DLC. 11 is pretty, but i preferred X over 11 by a mile. It was way more fun IMO. And 9 was great also


----------



## gabito

WarMachine said:


> If you can, try XL over X, its got all the extra DLC. 11 is pretty, but i preferred X over 11 by a mile. It was way more fun IMO. And 9 was great also


I was wondering about XL. I'll do that, thank you.


----------



## wankerness

I think 9 is the most "fun" since that was the point at which the characters were still cartoony and the gore was still fun. X leans too hard into the "TOTALLY EXTREME" torture-porn arena and 11 is just kind of bland. As far as actual gameplay goes I can't really speak to any of them cause I'm just a stupid button masher in those games.


----------



## BlackMastodon

KnightBrolaire said:


> Plus the UI/ holo map designs are still untouchable. I can't believe more games haven't copied the idea of the holo map.


Holy shit, yes. I remember being really impressed with how cool the UI design was the first time I played Dead Space years ago. So simple and smart, and no other game has even tried anything like it. Instead, every shooter now has to have perks and a battlw royale mode.


----------



## wankerness

What’s the map like? The screenshots I could pull make it look about the same as Descent or Metroid Prime before it, or that Jedi Dark Souls game from a couple years ago. Wasn’t doom 2016 also a 3D rotatable map? I haven’t played it since 2017 

The UI in 2 I remember thinking was really cool the way it existed in the game world. It was like a much, MUCH slicker version of what Fallout 3 attempted.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> What’s the map like? The screenshots I could pull make it look about the same as Descent or Metroid Prime before it, or that Jedi Dark Souls game from a couple years ago. Wasn’t doom 2016 also a 3D rotatable map? I haven’t played it since 2017
> 
> The UI in 2 I remember thinking was really cool the way it existed in the game world. It was like a much, MUCH slicker version of what Fallout 3 attempted.


The map and menus are all holo and fully 3D/project from Isaac's suit. The workbenches for upgrading also do it. For 2008 it was insanely impressive.

One of my other favorite details is how the game doesn't pause in the map/menus so there are situations where you can get attacked while in the menu. It just adds to the atmosphere/dread/paranoia that the game does such a good job of cultivating.


----------



## Mathemagician

BlackMastodon said:


> Holy shit, yes. I remember being really impressed with how cool the UI design was the first time I played Dead Space years ago. So simple and smart, and no other game has even tried anything like it. Instead, every shooter now has to have perks and a battlw royale mode.



Tell me about it. Bruh if EA/Ubisoft/Activision made Elden Ring it’d have a fucking season pass.


----------



## spudmunkey

TMNT: Shredder's Revenge is goddamn fun.

Full disclosure: I've probably put in $100 into the TMNT arcades, and I had every NES and Game Boy game, so I'm the prime target for it.

My only complaint: the character sprite size is a bit small compared to the arcade games. They seem sized like in the NES games. That said, if the sprites were larger, they'd likely have had to limit it to 4 players instead of 6, so I guess I get the choice. The online multi-player has been flawless, and so much fun.


----------



## TedEH

I've been slowly poking at two things.

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold - It's an improved Wolf3d engine game with a little more to it than just shooting, although not _much_ more. The enemies are more varied, the guns are sort of more varied but mostly same-y. The sound is higher quality in some ways, but worse in some others.

Tunic - Only just stared this one, but it's sort of like playing an indie Zelda rip off that doesn't give you any instructions and expects you to figure it out. It looks nice, movement is a little clunky, the mechanics of the game feel week thought through so far.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

TedEH said:


> IMO even Skyrim was very hit-or-miss with it's random content filling the world. When it worked it worked well, but it felt like a lot of filler to me, as a person who only played Skyrim years after it originally came out (and therefor the novelty of the scale of the game had long worn off). The bigger a game is, the more you have to lean on proc-gen and filler, which can go sideways very easily. I mean, you see the same thing with face animations - when there's just _way too much dialogue to animate_ you end up with Mass Effect Andromeda faces.
> 
> 
> Given how long ago Skyrim came out, this is probably more accurate than not.



For me, Skyrim and felt much smaller than Oblivion, which in turn felt much smaller than Morrowind (despite it being smallest of the three). I know part of this is due to the simplification of fast travel, but a lot of what made Morrowind feel so big was that encounters and areas were highly polished with more "personal" touch. I also found Morrowind much more replayable, despite the static world. Once the "random" encounters in Skyrim started to repeat, it really ruined my immersion.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

ukrainian defense force out there repping STALKER ayyyy


----------



## Carrion Rocket

*Dead Space 2*
Really liked the mostly unbroken narrative. Reminded me of playing Half-Life for the first time again.

*Dead Space: Extraction*
That whole era of on rails Wii shooters was never my bag. But as far as a prequel to the original Dead Space, it was a prequel done right. You find out what happened on the Ishimura before Issac and co even get there. And that's all it needed to be.

*Dead Space 3*:
I understand that co-op (which is online only) was forced upon the developers, but whoever decided that certain collectibles needed to be only obtainable by the second player can go fuck themselves.

*Resident Evil 5*:
The inability to move and shoot at the same time took some time to get used to. And the AI companion wasn't a hindrance like I had been led to believe. But the El Higante boss fight is one of the worst I've ever experienced. It was my brick wall for progression on professional.

*Resident Evil 6*:
I have no desire to ever play this piece of shit again.

*Star Wars: The Force Unleashed*
I don't know why, but Starkiller's design and way of movement reminds me of Raziel from the Soul Reaver games.


----------



## wankerness

wheresthefbomb said:


> For me, Skyrim and felt much smaller than Oblivion, which in turn felt much smaller than Morrowind (despite it being smallest of the three). I know part of this is due to the simplification of fast travel, but a lot of what made Morrowind feel so big was that encounters and areas were highly polished with more "personal" touch. I also found Morrowind much more replayable, despite the static world. Once the "random" encounters in Skyrim started to repeat, it really ruined my immersion.


Skyrim felt bigger than Oblivion to me largely because I fuckin hated the way oblivion kept reusing THE EXACT SAME LAYOUTS for the rifts and mini-dungeons/caves. It got so damn repetitive so quick and made me utterly hate going in rifts. I thought it was quite a bad game, especially on Xbox 360, where it was loaded with game breaking bugs that you couldn’t fix since you didn’t have access to the console (I finished it on pc, with the most fixed fan patch that existed, and even then I had to use console commands a few times to unbug sidequests. Good thing the wiki had console command fixes for practically every quest/npc since people were so used to the game’s garbage). Skyrim seemed like a breath of fresh air after it. I only missed some of the weirder skills, like how if you leveled jumping you could eventually jump off water.


----------



## NoodleFace

spudmunkey said:


> TMNT: Shredder's Revenge is goddamn fun.
> 
> Full disclosure: I've probably put in $100 into the TMNT arcades, and I had every NES and Game Boy game, so I'm the prime target for it.
> 
> My only complaint: the character sprite size is a bit small compared to the arcade games. They seem sized like in the NES games. That said, if the sprites were larger, they'd likely have had to limit it to 4 players instead of 6, so I guess I get the choice. The online multi-player has been flawless, and so much fun.


My only complaint.. 

6 of us playing, all gamers. We quickly found out you could meditate then use your special. 6 people doing that constantly was INSANE. We were screen clearing without even seeing enemies pop in. Bosses were also funny. Now, the game isn't hard, so it's not like we absolutely broke the game but it felt overpowered.

We had to have a gentleman's agreement to only use specials we earned organically. Then it felt like the arcade game again.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Skyrim felt bigger than Oblivion to me largely because I fuckin hated the way oblivion kept reusing THE EXACT SAME LAYOUTS for the rifts and mini-dungeons/caves. It got so damn repetitive so quick and made me utterly hate going in rifts. I thought it was quite a bad game, especially on Xbox 360, where it was loaded with game breaking bugs that you couldn’t fix since you didn’t have access to the console (I finished it on pc, with the most fixed fan patch that existed, and even then I had to use console commands a few times to unbug sidequests. Good thing the wiki had console command fixes for practically every quest/npc since people were so used to the game’s garbage). Skyrim seemed like a breath of fresh air after it. I only missed some of the weirder skills, like how if you leveled jumping you could eventually jump off water.


I remember building my character as a stealth wizard, just to sort skip through those rift things. I'd walk through 90% of them completely invisible. It was so annoying getting into exploring and another damned rift popping up.
I'd also play the game with an enemy/creature levelling mod to change the stupid levelling mechanics, where bandit grunts would eventually have daedric armour (which basically breaks lore with how rare it should be), and smaller creature types would completely dissappear from the countryside as you got to a high level.

On the positive, some of the top-side scenery was awesome to explore, and some things it did better than Skyrim. I really missed the weather effects Oblivion had, like heavy rain storms, with wind that whipped up the long grass.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Motorstorm Apocalypse

Who thought this game needed a story mode? And with some of the most unlikable characters, as well?


----------



## rokket2005

I started 13 Sentinels : Aegis Rim about a week ago and I'm liking it a lot. I heard basically nothing but praise about it for the last year or so but I had so many other things to get through first. It's the first visual novel type game I've played, and while there is really fun combat that's kind of Armored Core meets tower defense, the story is definitely the selling point. Really pretty visually too, which I normally don't care about so much, but it adds to the constant intrigue. Highly recommend so far.


----------



## Mathemagician

Forgive me if I already mentioned this. Switch had a small sale/demo of stardew valley. 

So that. My first farm sim game ever. I did not get a dance to the spring fling. But that’s ok, because my veggies came in noice. 

I also sold the first 15 seeds the game gives you because I though I was putting them in storage. I was not, lol.


----------



## wankerness

That game has a lot of systems in it that are not very intuitive or transparent. Selling stuff, for instance, and whether it's best to sell to that asshole Pierre or just put it in the chest or what. The fishing, for another example, takes a lot of getting used to, at least on console. But yeah, my girlfriend has spent probably 200+ hours in that game at this point. It's very zen in some respects, has a TON of depth when it comes to stuff to do, and also has the insidious mechanism of not saving until you start the next day, at which point you're like "well the day started, now I have to play to the end!" It's a vicious cycle.


----------



## Mathemagician

That save mechanic is another level lol. I definitely wish the days were a tad longer but it does really force you to decide what you are going to do that day. Which makes sense from a sim perspective. Fishing took me a bit but it’s similar to many mmos/rpgs that have fishing. 

Yeah nothing is really explained which j guess is ok since you can’t really die. 

I don’t know how Pierre is an asshole yet. I fucking HATE that Joja mart manager though. Fuck him. I’m gonna rebuild the community center for the kids.


----------



## /wrists

Super Auto Pets lol


----------



## Ralyks

Welp, PS5 is out for repair (basically, since I got the thing, it would crash when playing PS4 games. Yes, not PS5 games, but PS4 games). I thought maybe a system update would solve that, but nope. Tried every troubleshooting suggestion Sony fave, but nope. So it's probably a fried motherboard.

So, been playing the Xbox. Mainly Citizen Sleeper, which in still deciding if it's my kind of game or not. Also, TMNT Shredders Revenge is awesome.


----------



## wankerness

Mine's definitely been having issues for a few months now, too. It will unpredictably crash horribly if I suspend any game. If I always close out games before putting the system in rest mode, it never crashes. It's happened with multiple games so it doesn't seem specific. Not really sure what to do about it since it's probably a software problem.


----------



## beerandbeards

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. Great nostalgic feeling side scroller beat ‘Em up. Played online with my brother and nephew and it was everything you’d want.


----------



## TedEH

Finished Tunic today;



Spoiler



It's late and I'm tired, so I'll try to be brief, but also maybe some actual spoilers.

This game has some great ideas that mostly center on the in-game manual, and how information is mostly hidden from you. There's a sort of "key item" that you chase for a good amount of time that turns out not to be an item at all, and I won't spoil that, but it leads to a really good "ooooooooooooooooooooooh THAT'S what's going on" moment.

By the time I got to the end of the game, I had some inventory items that did.... I have no idea what. I think I like that in this game though. The flip side is that you have that Outer Wilds style issue that once you know you know, and there's not much replay value.

The biggest downside to this one is the difficulty spikes when you reach bosses. Every time I encountered a boss, I had to take a break and come back to avoid wanting to just give up over repeated failures.

There's also some end-game fetch-questing type stuff you need to do to get the "good ending", and it's easy to accidentally miss important stuff, but I don't think it's enough to bring the experience down.

I'd put this in the "if you're on the fence, just try it" category.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Almost snagged a PS5 this morning. Just so happened to check Target and the store a city over had 5 in stock, but by the time I had finished the checkout process they'd sold out. About threw my laptop through the wall.

I'm about to pop in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for the first time. Heard alot of good things, so I'm ready to finally check it out.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> Almost snagged a PS5 this morning. Just so happened to check Target and the store a city over had 5 in stock, but by the time I had finished the checkout process they'd sold out. About threw my laptop through the wall.
> 
> I'm about to pop in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for the first time. Heard alot of good things, so I'm ready to finally check it out.


What did you think? I played it for a couple hours and just didn't get into it. I think the camera being zoomed so much further in on the character combined with the wallowy movement and slow combat just made it feel too clunky for me.

In other Castlevania news, I just watched a long video about how good and ahead of its time Castlevania 64 was. One of their main theses was that it played more like a modern 3d actioner than people were able to handle at the time, so stuff like the deliberate platforming and just negotiating the combat with the camera was not something people were used to. They drew some interesting parallels between CV and Dark Souls that I never really noticed (how pre-SOTN Castlevania/CV64 is all about being deliberate and having to commit to attacks and being held back by attack animation speed and slow jumping abilities etc). I'm kind of curious to play through it again. I think I sold my cartridge way back in the 90s, but I still have Legacy of Darkness. Might have to check it out. I'd much rather Konami release something like they did with the other side-scrolling ones so I could replay it with a modern controller, but I don't really see that happening anytime soon.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I haven't played Lords of Shadow in like 10 years (...jesus christ...) but I enjoyed it at the time. Mind you, I love the Devil May Cry games it played way more like that or the original God of War trilogy than any other Castlevania game, so take that for what it's worth. Never did check out the sequel, though.


----------



## TedEH

I started up Golden Sun, since it's one of the handful of virtual console titles I scooped up on the Wii U before the store shuts down. First impression is that this is going to be good-for-it's-time, but nothing special by modern standards. By that I mean it feels really formulaic so far, the kind of thing you could throw together in RPG maker with a bit of added polish, and that makes me worry that it's legacy is mostly because of the cool combat swoosh thing it does. With any luck it gets good once it gets going.


----------



## wankerness

Played about 45 minutes of Ys IX, it was ok I guess, combat seemed dull and button-mashy. I’ll have to give it some more time.

Started up sekiro again on PC today. It is sure a lot harder on NG than it is on NG+ in the early game. I felt like a noob idiot dying repeatedly to Butterfly and Genichiro. Now I’m to the interior of the gun fort and should probably get to the ape on the next session. Having a shitty controller is really a liability - I have some generic pc controller the copies the Xbox controller design, but the L1/R1 buttons aren’t super reliable and the back paddles are terrible so I can’t depend on them! I appreciate my ps4 controller with button add on even more now.


----------



## MFB

Funny enough I was considering doing a new playthrough of Sekiro, and that might just confirm that I'm supposed to. I didn't finish my NG+ play which is fine since it's not tied to any trophies, and doing a 2nd/3rd will allow me to pick up the ones I didn't get the first time for a platinum maybe.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Funny enough I was considering doing a new playthrough of Sekiro, and that might just confirm that I'm supposed to. I didn't finish my NG+ play which is fine since it's not tied to any trophies, and doing a 2nd/3rd will allow me to pick up the ones I didn't get the first time for a platinum maybe.


You actually do have to do NG+ since there’s a trophy that requires you to kill all bosses on the same “character” (aka you have to do the bad ending bosses on ng+ if you did sword saint on ng) and another that requires you to get all item upgrades (you can’t get enough lapis lazuli without getting to the fountainhead palace or w/e it’s called a second time). Unless you mean you did those and just have no reason to do the last bosses, which is true as long as you already got the all bosses achievement (iirc you never did owl father?).

NG is definitely a lot more fun since your character actually gets stronger through the course of the game and there’s motivation to kill all the mini bosses.


----------



## mongey

been playing a bunch of fall guys since it has just been revived .

its fun but ,as I found our when it first came out, the maps get repetitious pretty quick . already a bit over it


----------



## MFB

Ah shit, is the all bosses trophy on the same playthrough? I thought it was just collectively, not with a single one, if that's the case then yeah I guess I'll have to finish that playthrough. I got up to Guardian Ape completed, so I think it's once you hit Owl Shinobi that you have to make different choices to get the alternate endings.

I did forget that even though I got all the baseline skills, I need to complete the very last scroll, all of which are like 9 points each which is some real BS. So that'd also mean completing NG+ to achieve


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Finished my first run on TMNT Shredder's Revenge story mode and unlocked Casey Jones. It's got the hallmarks of a great brawler, almost touching the arcade version of Alien Vs Predator but a few flaws linger the longer you play, especially considering the arcade brawler is a bygone genre. 

The playable characters are the heart of every brawler, and the cast here have enough quirks for variety but still not unique enough for the to feel different. What made AvP so good was that all the playable characters were so different to each other that it gave a lot of replay value. As different as the characters are, they're still fundamentally the same movesets. Taking a deep dive into them does make you appreciate everyone (Raphael just happens to be the best character... again), but I suppose I just wished the developers leaned harder into the concept. The 4 turtles were more unique in Turtles In Time, and (while not the same genre) Turtles Tournament Fighters made each of them as unique as their personality implies. Streets Of Rage 4 suffers similarly, which is funny since Streets Of Rage Remake makes each character unique to each other it's a joy playing all of them. Perhaps future DLC can introduce other characters and extra tweaks on the current cast. 

Another thing that makes brawlers problematic is that their primary gameplay loop is so simple (walk right and beat everything up) so the variety is a much needed spice. All the vehicle based stages still play like a normal stage with a few frills. Again some new mechanics (new unique skateboard moves etc) would be nice to break the monotony. Some of the bosses do spice things up (Chrome Dome, and the last 2 bosses) but most of them are interchangeable with each other, again another issue with the genre. Funny to say this, but TMNT could greatly benefit from their ripoff rivals Battletoads for some gameplay variety... or at least the old school games (SNES one especially), since the recent Battletoads game sucked tremendously. 

I guess I'm being so harsh to a game driven by nostalgia, especially one pointing right at me who played the OG arcade, NES, and SNES TMNT games. But there's a lot to like and ultimately I had a lot of fun. I miss James Avery's voice but it's always nice hearing Rob Paulsen as Raphael again. And as a multiplayer, it's an absolute hoot and even better at parties. But gameplay I wished Shredder's revenge learned and improved from the past rather than wallow in it.


----------



## Mathemagician

Finished year one in stardew valley. I new see how these games are so addicting. No achievements/trophies. Just pure monopolistic farming/fishing with no outside competition. Nice.


----------



## mongey

Mathemagician said:


> Finished year one in stardew valley. I new see how these games are so addicting. No achievements/trophies. Just pure monopolistic farming/fishing with no outside competition. Nice.


I played the hell out of it for ages on on my Mac book. Can’t remember how many years i got through but it was allot. 

Finished the main story and kind of fell off from there. 

But it’s a great game, and I’m not huge on sim games generally.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Here I go again, yet ANOTHER playthrough of Disco Elysium.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Ah shit, is the all bosses trophy on the same playthrough? I thought it was just collectively, not with a single one, if that's the case then yeah I guess I'll have to finish that playthrough. I got up to Guardian Ape completed, so I think it's once you hit Owl Shinobi that you have to make different choices to get the alternate endings.
> 
> I did forget that even though I got all the baseline skills, I need to complete the very last scroll, all of which are like 9 points each which is some real BS. So that'd also mean completing NG+ to achieve


The bosses you can't do on the same playthrough are siding with Owl


Spoiler



leading to you having to fight Emma and "easy" Isshin


 vs not siding with Owl at about the 2/3 mark and thus eventually fighting the Genichiro/Sword Saint boss. Owl Father is just kind of in an optional area, he's not a binary choice that locks out anything else. But yes, I looked it up to verify, you have to do them on the same "character" so one has to be done in NG+.

Yeah, it's not hard to get the all abilities trophy and it technically could be done on NG, it would just be* really* tedious. I just farmed the first robe asshole in the late-game NG+ version of Ashina Castle's lowest level for HOURS. It's totally brainless so I got some good podcast listening in. It's like a 6 second farm loop just backstabbing that guy, running back to the idol, running right back to him and backstabbing, etc. I think I read that it takes getting through NG+4 or so if you want to get that all abilities trophy without any grinding.

Make absolutely sure you do the pot nobles quests on each playthrough (which requires getting almost all the treasure carp scales) or it would take more than two playthroughs to get enough Lapis Lazuli to unlock all the upgrades.


----------



## MFB

Restarted Sekiro tonight, I can already feel the headache while playing even when not fighting bosses. Why do I do this to myself?


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Restarted Sekiro tonight, I can already feel the headache while playing even when not fighting bosses. Why do I do this to myself?


Cause it has about the best combat system ever in a game, imho. It’s a game with some very serious flaws but the good is so good that it’s well worth the suffering. Well, unless you take more than about an hour on a boss, that just sucks.

I played for another hour or so today, killed the monkey mob and the giant serpent and then took a few tries on guardian ape. On first try, I got his second phase down to about 1% before dying, and then I kept dying repeatedly to first phase in about 20 seconds per attempt. Got really mad and went on the offense instead of playing defensively, and killed both forms only using two gourds 

Then I died horribly to snake eyes sirahagi so one-sidedly a few times in a row I had to quit the game. Wtf is wrong with this mini boss and why did I never have trouble before?!


----------



## MFB

That Snake Eyes feels MUCH harder than the one on the bridge before the gun fortress. I'm assuming you also cleared out the RPG enemies before engaging them? If not, then that's like, priority #1. 

It took me a decent amount to do the run between Guardian - Snake Eyes - then the boss that's not too far from there; I remember that moment almost broke me as the back-to-back-TO-BACK of bosses.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I always cleared out the area first. Something about its attack patterns just made it so it was impossible for me to either do vitality or posture damage. Like, most of its attacks couldn't be deflected to increase posture (ex the gun shots), it always spammed the grab move which you just had to dodge and thus also couldn't effectively capitalize on, and it always blocked the sabimaru which was the super-easy way to kill the first one. I'd fight it for 2 minutes and get like 2 hits on it, not even coming close to taking down a full health bar. There's also the problem where you either have to stealth deathblow it or kill all the other mobs, you can't do both! Well, maybe you could if you ran away instantly after doing so and managed to take out the other several cannon guys with it shooting at you the whole time.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I always cleared out the area first. Something about its attack patterns just made it so it was impossible for me to either do vitality or posture damage. Like, most of its attacks couldn't be deflected to increase posture (ex the gun shots), it always spammed the grab move which you just had to dodge and thus also couldn't effectively capitalize on, and it always blocked the sabimaru which was the super-easy way to kill the first one. I'd fight it for 2 minutes and get like 2 hits on it, not even coming close to taking down a full health bar. There's also the problem where you either have to stealth deathblow it or kill all the other mobs, you can't do both! Well, maybe you could if you ran away instantly after doing so and managed to take out the other several cannon guys with it shooting at you the whole time.



IIRC, there's what, two soldiers on the ground by the statue before SE right? I would always go to the guy at the very top of the arena above the sculptor's idol, and then trees to cut across and take out the other guys up top. Once that was done go back to ground level, wait for SE to go down towards the cave on his path, and rush the two guards to kill them while he's on his way back up to me. 

I think you can time it right so that they're dead and you're hidden behind the statue so you can get the free deathblow, or just pop a sugar for invisibility and run by to the end of the cave and fight him in close quarters.


----------



## wankerness

I'm sure this is going to be one of those situations where I kill it in 30 seconds on my first try the next time I play the game. But damn, that thing seemed invincible yesterday.


----------



## MFB

Nothing like having an enemy with legitimately one hit to go and you die, only to realize you still have your resurrection to use; so you get back up and pop him for the last hit to break posture and bam - Gyobu is down in the first attempt on this run.

He got me with two of those big whirlwind attacks he does in the very beginning and I use two pellets to come back from that. But because I was so close to death I legit thought I used my revive already so I was going all out.

Edit: the two little gwee-gwohs in the garden tag teamed me and killed me, what a fucking shit


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> Nothing like having an enemy with legitimately one hit to go and you die, only to realize you still have your resurrection to use; so you get back up and pop him for the last hit to break posture and bam - Gyobu is down in the first attempt on this run.
> 
> He got me with two of those big whirlwind attacks he does in the very beginning and I use two pellets to come back from that. But because I was so close to death I legit thought I used my revive already so I was going all out.
> 
> Edit: the two little gwee-gwohs in the garden tag teamed me and killed me, what a fucking shit


I've talked about my addiction to Sekiro before, but man it's still a strange game for me.

I sort of always have a run-through on the go, and i actually chill out while playing it now (yeh i know). What's weird is that it really relfects my state of mind like no other game. Last week i had a run where i no-damage defeated three bosses, and had one death through the whole game (to Isshin). A couple of days later on the next run, i've died from full health to a giant chicken, died three times just getting to Drunkard, then got to Gyoubu and all of a sudden just couldn't beat him. I died completely three times to him, and it was because my deflects just weren't working at all. Not just mis-timed so it was a block, but full hits on me. He is usually one of the bosses i usually don't need a gourd with. It was like i had to re-learn him from scratch.


----------



## Spaced Out Ace

I was playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but I finished that last weekend. I like action RPGs, but most of them seem to be pretty bright and kid friendly. I wish I enjoyed Super Metroid, though I don't quite gel with something about it.


----------



## MFB

Wow, I really can't beat Genichiro now even though I've had no issues up through this entire first portion? Guess I have to put it down for the night then.


----------



## wankerness

Well, I did beat Snake Eyes first try today, after rushing to her and backstabbing, and then the cannon guy kept hitting her when he tried to shoot me and that made it a joke. Accidental cheese!

Headless Ape/his girlfriend took three tries, the real difficulty is just finding openings to attack the ape with a head, it dies in like 10 seconds of sustained attacks but that can take minutes to achieve.

O'Ren of the water or whatever also took one try. Drunkard #2, one try. Corrupted monk took two. Tried one headless once and died after wasting tons of consumables and then asked myself "why am I even bothering." The rewards for those things are not worth it, at all. I think you only need to kill one of the wizard guys for the upgrade material and can skip all the others along with ALL the headless and still get platinum.

And then I tried to fight that red-eyed asshole on the island in the dungeon and got killed AT LEAST 10 times. That guy is the fucking worst. Even by himself!

Then I scrambled around for a really long time trying to figure out how to get back in Ashina Castle and quit at that save point. My girlfriend comes back tomorrow though so I probably won't get a chance to play much again until my muscle memory is all gone again.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> And then I tried to fight that red-eyed asshole on the island in the dungeon and got killed AT LEAST 10 times. That guy is the fucking worst. Even by himself!


Had no idea what you were talking about at first, then found a video of someone fighting two people with red eyes at once there. Is that what happens if you send people to the creepy surgeon guy? I've sent the samurai guy to him before, but i've never seen the outcome.


----------



## gabito

Mortal Kombat XL. 

It's been fun so far, but after playing MK9 for a while it feels kind of slower paced. Not that unusual for MK games (they usually are that way, compared to other fighting games at least), but MK9 felt faster.

Not complaining though, the game is good.


----------



## gabito

Yay, Kratos and his annoying kid are finally back!


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> Had no idea what you were talking about at first, then found a video of someone fighting two people with red eyes at once there. Is that what happens if you send people to the creepy surgeon guy? I've sent the samurai guy to him before, but i've never seen the outcome.


Yeah. It's the quest with that medical guy if you send the Mibu Village NPC to him. He turns the NPC into a redeye and he has a big 2H sword and he hits like a truck and is relentless. Was taking off 80% of my health per attack with 7 prayer necklaces.

If you go to the island slightly early in the quest chain you only have to fight them one at a time, that's what I did, but was still getting WRECKED. I think on my first playthrough I did it like normal where you have to fight them both and had to do shenanigans with popping the stealth sugar, swimming over there, climbing up the side of the area, and deathblowing one of them so I didn't have to fight both at once. But yeah, the sword NPC is NASTY. And the rewards are crap.

I played for an hour or so this morning, beat the two purple ninja asshole minibosses before Great Owl (one in the serpent temple in the woods, the other right before the window to get to Owl). I think in this game I'm just REALLY bad at fighting any enemy that kicks you instead of hits you with a sword. For some reason I suck at properly parrying these guys. I'm blocking everything, but my posture always gets built up super-fast and I rarely get a chance to counterattack cause I'm always getting shoved back by their attacks. I hate them. The "real" bosses tend to be much easier than the minibosses I think, partly cause the minibosses usually only have one health bar so they tend to be way overtuned in comparison. I hate these ninja guys and if memory serves the worst is still to come (the one that chain summons dogs in Hirata Estate 2).


----------



## MFB

I can kick the absolute fuck out of any spear enemy with the Mikiri Counter, and enemies with sword/rifle are quick enough to beat as the default, but the dudes with the heavy axes screw up my timing compared to the rest. Someday I'll remember what it is, but they attack so erratically compared to the typical weapons, that I just always take at least two hits from them.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Yeah. It's the quest with that medical guy if you send the Mibu Village NPC to him. He turns the NPC into a redeye and he has a big 2H sword and he hits like a truck and is relentless. Was taking off 80% of my health per attack with 7 prayer necklaces.
> 
> If you go to the island slightly early in the quest chain you only have to fight them one at a time, that's what I did, but was still getting WRECKED. I think on my first playthrough I did it like normal where you have to fight them both and had to do shenanigans with popping the stealth sugar, swimming over there, climbing up the side of the area, and deathblowing one of them so I didn't have to fight both at once. But yeah, the sword NPC is NASTY. And the rewards are crap.
> 
> I played for an hour or so this morning, beat the two purple ninja asshole minibosses before Great Owl (one in the serpent temple in the woods, the other right before the window to get to Owl). I think in this game I'm just REALLY bad at fighting any enemy that kicks you instead of hits you with a sword. For some reason I suck at properly parrying these guys. I'm blocking everything, but my posture always gets built up super-fast and I rarely get a chance to counterattack cause I'm always getting shoved back by their attacks. I hate them. The "real" bosses tend to be much easier than the minibosses I think, partly cause the minibosses usually only have one health bar so they tend to be way overtuned in comparison. I hate these ninja guys and if memory serves the worst is still to come (the one that chain summons dogs in Hirata Estate 2).


The key to the ninja that summons dogs is to interrupt him with shuriken if he's about to whistle.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> The key to the ninja that summons dogs is to interrupt him with shuriken if he's about to whistle.


Yeah, that was how I beat him on my first playthrough, it's just annoying that not only is he the same infuriating to fight purple ninja, he'll summon dogs that are virtually guaranteed to kill your ass if you let him get away for a few seconds. 

Weirdly the guy by the serpent temple only buffed himself on a couple of attempts this time. I thought that was unavoidable based on my first two playthroughs. Maybe I just got really lucky this go-around, maybe the PC version is on a different patch than PS4 was.


----------



## MFB

Mmm, nothing like having the final blow against Genichiro be a lightning reversal into a deathblow. Tried maybe a handful of times right after dinner, then went to the gym, came back home and got him on the 2nd or 3rd try.

Also took down Drunkard Jinzo AND kept the dude alive afterwards, which has never happened. Gonna go after Madam Butterfly next and fuck up that old broad's shit.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Weirdly the guy by the serpent temple only buffed himself on a couple of attempts this time. I thought that was unavoidable based on my first two playthroughs. Maybe I just got really lucky this go-around, maybe the PC version is on a different patch than PS4 was.


After doing so many runs, i've noticed that enemies can have "patterns" of behaviour, where on some runs they'll do things repeatedly that they don't do a single time on other runs. I've noticed it mostly against Owl Ashina and Genichiro. Sometimes Owl will use firecrackers in Ashina, and it took me about 5 runs for him to do that the first time to me. Genichiro will also sometimes decide to do just unblockable swipes instead of the usual unblockable thrust that he normally does after his leap attack.


----------



## MFB

I think this run was the first time Genichiro did the grab attack on me, I don't recall ever seeing it on my first playthrough or even my NG+ run. He also only thrust maybe once or twice, something I don't recall him doing before either; luckily for me, I had trained with Hinabe for thrusts as I forgot those were unblockable even with Mikiri.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, Genichiro did the grab attack ONCE in my 5 or so attempts this playthrough, I'd forgotten about it too. The thrust thing is guaranteed to open phase 3 though, so I always remembered that. It's just kind of rare the rest of the time.

I played for about 30 minutes yesterday - beat Shinobi Owl on my first try (only 5 gourd uses, and only got hit by his stupid healing bomb twice despite the fight dragging on for probably five minutes, but did use Rice which is super overpowered), then did all the tons of running around and talking to NPCs till they move and doing the specific missable eavesdrops to set up the various optional endings. Stopped in front of the dog-summoning ninja jerk in the V2 Hirata Estate.


----------



## MFB

I forgot how annoying the dude in front of the Ashina Tower is, like, he's got four rifle-guards around him and then the Tengu's on the roof can hit you with their shuriken too. Might try and work my way down to open up that door, but he's not required so I may just say screw it and leave him.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I forgot how annoying the dude in front of the Ashina Tower is, like, he's got four rifle-guards around him and then the Tengu's on the roof can hit you with their shuriken too. Might try and work my way down to open up that door, but he's not required so I may just say screw it and leave him.


The spear guy? Just take the path around the back of the tower, come out the front entrance, and backstab him and then fight him closer to the tower so the patrolling giant guy doesn't see you.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> The spear guy? Just take the path around the back of the tower, come out the front entrance, and backstab him and then fight him closer to the tower so the patrolling giant guy doesn't see you.



Whoops, didn't remember that guy and that the location could be interpreted as that one; but no, I'm thinking of the dude who's a copy of the first boss, red armor/big sword at the top of the stair case in front of the castle where Genichiro is at the top. 

For the actual spearman you're referring to, that is always my strategy.


----------



## rokket2005

Figured I'd make my monthly check in here to tell you all about the niche jrpgs I play that no one else cares about.

I finished *13 Sentinels : Aegis Rim* and it is very good. Probably not a ton of replayability since it's like 85% visual novel, but how all the characters were tied together was really good and I enjoyed the battles too. Upgrading mechs is always fun.

*Atelier Ryza : Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout*. I hadn't played any Gust games before, but I've been listening to their battle themes for like a year. The big hook/gimmick here is alchemy, which is basically a crafting minigame but it's pretty fun and kind of a min/maxers wet dream. Combat is pretty simple ATB turn based with some tactics level boosting mechanics that make most battles play out the same, but crafting dank bombs and shit completely break the battle system. Supporting cast is likeable and not nearly as bland as I feared they were going to be. They're certainly better than any character Square has written in the last 20 years. Ryza herself is adorable while simultaneously being an absolute fucking bombshell. The game starts out light-hearted and whimsical, ends with some pretty heavy consequences being dealt with. Overall an enjoyable game that's only like ~35ish hours to do pretty much everything in.

*Atelier Ryza 2 : Lost Legends and the Secret Fairy*. I'm about 15 hours in and so far it's better than Ryza 1 in pretty much every way. The music is a total fucking bop again, battles and crafting have been expanded so it's not just a copy/paste from the first game, and all of the characters from the first game return plus some extras and it's been nice seeing how they all grew in the time between games. My biggest complaint so far is that the main battle theme is one of the best battle themes in games( linked below). Period. Is that a problem I hear you say? The problem is that the song takes like 3 and a half minutes to loop, but most regular battles are over in like 30 seconds tops. There is an option to change any song in the game to another, plus literally 1000's of songs from older Atelier games, which is a super nice feature but I don't want to change the music of places I haven't been so that I get a more or less vanilla experience the first time through. All of the songs in the game are good too, so it's not like it's suffering through bad music to get to the battle theme. Really loving it so far, and if Xenoblade Chronicles 3 wasn't releasing in 3 weeks it would definitely be in my game of the year discussion.



That being said, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is going to be the best game of the year. It's going to be the best game of the last 4 and half years, going back to XC2, and I have faith in Takahashi that it will be better than XC2 also making it the best game of all time. Thank you, this has been my TED talk.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Whoops, didn't remember that guy and that the location could be interpreted as that one; but no, I'm thinking of the dude who's a copy of the first boss, red armor/big sword at the top of the stair case in front of the castle where Genichiro is at the top.
> 
> For the actual spearman you're referring to, that is always my strategy.


Oh that guy. Yeah I dunno. I always beeline the guy that bangs the pan and then kill all the other guys and run away and hide if I accidentally pull the boss before everyone is dead (I think you have to get out of the minizone before he'll reset, but he will eventually). Never had a problem killing all the trash before fighting him.


----------



## StevenC

Finished the main campaign for Recore. It's pretty good. 7/10. Worth playing for most people, mechanically sound and the combat is fun, if a bit repetitive. Story has potential but to be honest it's badly executed. There's a load more to play but I don't know if I have any motivation to play it.

Some of the platforming sections are a lot of fun, and some are so difficult that it's easier to cheese them.


----------



## wankerness

Played Sekiro for about a half hour this weekend. Got to Owl Father with no issues (killed both mini bosses with no deaths), then proceeded to get hopelessly destroyed by him in first phase a few times. Ran off to fountainhead for a break, killed “real” corrupted monk in three tries. Owl Father is my kryptonite in this damn game. He’s like those kicking ninjas except way worse! I basically understand the strat and all the counters, you just have to perfectly time and more importantly aim all your dodges. I suck!!


----------



## MFB

Ran out of snap seeds during Lady's second phase so I'll just come back to her; I'm not playing this game of "dodge all her apparitions + HER attacks at the same time," miss me with that shit. I tried the Shichimen Warrior that's in the Abandoned Dungeon and somehow the dude rocked me with terror like, immediately. I don't remember them doing that much damage before, but yeah, needless to say it didn't feel good. I'm up to the Screen Monkeys, and then that'll unlock the Divine Child/etc... Managed to kill the first Snake Eyes before the gunfort too, felt good taking him down on my ...3rd try?


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Ran out of snap seeds during Lady's second phase so I'll just come back to her; I'm not playing this game of "dodge all her apparitions + HER attacks at the same time," miss me with that shit. I tried the Shichimen Warrior that's in the Abandoned Dungeon and somehow the dude rocked me with terror like, immediately. I don't remember them doing that much damage before, but yeah, needless to say it didn't feel good. I'm up to the Screen Monkeys, and then that'll unlock the Divine Child/etc... Managed to kill the first Snake Eyes before the gunfort too, felt good taking him down on my ...3rd try?


Snap seeds are pretty useless IMO, it seems like they don't really knock her out of that phase when you do them. It never seemed any easier to use them than just dodge the apparitions for 20 seconds or whatever.

The shichimen warriors and headless will 2-shot kill you with terror effects pretty much, unless you have the resistance buff against it that you get from the purple gourd. Definitely buy that thing and pop it just before you engage them, and make sure to reapply it every 15 seconds or something. If you take too long to kill them you'll probably have to start using the sedatives, too. But yeah, those fights are absolutely miserable and stupid. I always just buffed up with ako's and divine confetti and used the lilac umbrella and tried to kill them before everything was worn off, but I'd usually end up having to use 2 confetti per enemy and would still almost die a couple times even with resistance up. I hate them. The only "easy" way to kill them is if you get lucky with midair deathblows on the shichimen warriors when they jump away, I think I managed to do that successfully like 3/10 times.

Make sure you're looking up ending guides, cause there's some very missable stuff that locks out the option to fight owl father. And the game's pretty short so it comes up faster than you'd think. This playthrough I've been using the "Sekiro Cheat Sheet" on github just to make sure I don't miss anything since I'm trying to get the platinum again (might give up on the skill point grind). Haven't had to look up any actual guides except when I couldn't remember how you get to the old grave.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, now that I'm getting towards the half-way point I'm going to take a look at the ending guide so I don't lock myself out of anything. Up until now there's really no choices to be made, but with Kuro making his decision to sever the immortality, it's where you can definitely fuck something up if you're not careful.

I feel like I'm also getting less upgrade materials for items, but now that I'm up to the Gun Fort/Sunken Valley, I think I'll be getting more scraps so hopefully that'll make upgrades quicker.

Regarding the skill point grind, one thing I did read and I don't know if it's BS, is that upgrading your attack points affects the amount of skill pts required. Not sure why those are tied together, but it's BS if they are given how many points are required for some of the later skills (some from Isshin's scroll are 9 points per skill)


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Regarding the skill point grind, one thing I did read and I don't know if it's BS, is that upgrading your attack points affects the amount of skill pts required. Not sure why those are tied together, but it's BS if they are given how many points are required for some of the later skills (some from Isshin's scroll are 9 points per skill)


I think what you read is advice telling you not to upgrade attack power with skill points. If you buy the halves of the mask from vendors, it allows you to spend skill points for tiny upgrades of AP. Since it's drawing from the same skill points that you'd otherwise be using on skills, you definitely don't want to do that until you already bought all the abilities you want since it certainly affects the way each skill point takes more exp than the previous, plus it's a miniscule upgrade that really only exists for something for you to dump EXP into on late NG cycles when you already have all the skills.

Upgrading AP with the memories has no effect as far as I know, that wouldn't make any sense.


----------



## MFB

Ahh, that would make a lot more sense. I mean, I've beaten the game once and made it halfway through NG+ immediately after beating it and am now on my 3rd run, and it didn't ring ANY bells that skills cost go up as attack power does, but I forgot about those god damn masks that change that ability.


----------



## MFB

Took down Folding Screen Monkeys/Nightjar Ninja at the Hirata Estate/Long Arm Giraffe/Centipede or whatever the hell their names are, and got the Mist Raven's Feather/Divine Abduction Prosthetics last night. I'm up to Guardian Ape against, so once I take him down on this one I think I'm gonna use this as my Shura ending playfile as I'm pretty sure I got the dried fruits on my NG+ file so I can get the Return ending.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Took down Folding Screen Monkeys/Nightjar Ninja at the Hirata Estate/Long Arm Giraffe/Centipede or whatever the hell their names are, and got the Mist Raven's Feather/Divine Abduction Prosthetics last night. I'm up to Guardian Ape against, so once I take him down on this one I think I'm gonna use this as my Shura ending playfile as I'm pretty sure I got the dried fruits on my NG+ file so I can get the Return ending.


Are you doing a NG or a NG+? You definitely want to do the "good" endings on NG if you can since owl father and sword saint are much harder on NG+ and they have a much higher baseline of difficulty than the Shura ending bosses.

Of course if you're on PS4 or Windows you can just savescum them all in one playthrough, but you'd still need the file where you did shura ending for one playthrough and sword saint for the other.


----------



## MFB

This one is NG, my one from last June is on NG+ not much farther ahead of where I currently am. Isn't Shura ending where you fight Owl Father and Sword Saint/Emma, so wouldn't that one wanted to be done on my current NG file? I was looking at the endings guide yesterday and don't recall them being on the other two "good" endings.

I'll have to look into how to savescum on the PS4, I've never done it with any of the FS games but it'd definitely be easier for this one


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Finally playing Uncharted 4.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> This one is NG, my one from last June is on NG+ not much farther ahead of where I currently am. Isn't Shura ending where you fight Owl Father and Sword Saint/Emma, so wouldn't that one wanted to be done on my current NG file? I was looking at the endings guide yesterday and don't recall them being on the other two "good" endings.
> 
> I'll have to look into how to savescum on the PS4, I've never done it with any of the FS games but it'd definitely be easier for this one


Shura ending is when you side with great owl instead of fighting him on the roof of the castle, and then fight emma and ashina (sword saint in his wimpy non-sword-saint mode). It's the bad ending cause you're killing your friends and preventing yourself from going to either fountainhead or the hirata estate revisited areas, as well as missing the third version of Hirata Castle. You're basically missing 1/4 of the game or so by doing it. All the hardest bosses are after them, so you certainly CAN do it on NG, but if you're fighting Owl Father for the first time I would highly advise against trying to learn him on NG+ when he hits considerably harder and has a lot more health. Especially since if you'd been collecting all the prayer beads and saving him for the end of the game instead of as soon as possible, you'll barely have more health or damage on NG+ than you would in NG since health caps out after the first 40 prayer beads and damage starts decreasing exponentially slower after you get the first set of memories.

Great Shinobi Owl = guy you fight on the rooftop at the point where you choose between Shura ending and the other "good endings"
Sword Saint = mega-buff version of Ashina that you fight at the very ending of the game in the three good endings, he now has a gun and giant spear instead of just a katana
Owl Father = super pumped up version of Great Shinobi Owl that you fight in the same room you fought Lady Butterfly if you do the right eavesdrops and don't do the Shura ending


----------



## MFB

OK, then yeah I was just mixing up the two but it does make sense that you'd fight OF on the non-Shura endings when writing them all out.

Regarding Sword Saint, I got the Immortal Severance ending on my first playthrough, and he broke out the spear in phase 2, and gun in phase 3, so I'm familiar with those already and want to see what non-SS has in store. Shit was terrifying when I got to each new phase because I thought I had it cracked and then suddenly, nope, guess again scrub. Owl Father/Emma will be the new bosses I get to go against, but only one of them actual seems like it'll give me trouble.

Guess I'll flip the script and my NG+ is for Shura ending, so that's a little relief


----------



## MFB

Down goes Guardian Ape on the first god damn try, what a maneuver!


----------



## MFB

Took down Snake Eyes #2 last night on first try as well, felt pretty good, then I pushed my luck with Headless Ape and he took me down on the first two tries. I could have sworn you could use Finger Whistle on him and have the two fight each other, but apparently not? Seems dumb considering animals/beasts are listed in the description. So I was using fire crackers on Brown Ape, and hitting Headless with the Spear for additional posture damage, but still got caught by the terror roar and said oh well.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> Took down Snake Eyes #2 last night on first try as well, felt pretty good, then I pushed my luck with Headless Ape and he took me down on the first two tries. I could have sworn you could use Finger Whistle on him and have the two fight each other, but apparently not? Seems dumb considering animals/beasts are listed in the description. So I was using fire crackers on Brown Ape, and hitting Headless with the Spear for additional posture damage, but still got caught by the terror roar and said oh well.


You can use any umbrella to protect against the roar, even the basic one. While he's roaring I usually sneak around to his back with the umbrella up, then whirlwind slash him as he comes out of it. When there isn't the second ape around anyway.


----------



## MFB

Werecow said:


> You can use any umbrella to protect against the roar, even the basic one. While he's roaring I usually sneak around to his back with the umbrella up, then whirlwind slash him as he comes out of it. When there isn't the second ape around anyway.



That surprising given that it's a perilous attack, and I figured given that it's inflicting a status affect that you don't need some upgraded version of it; but I'll keep it in mind. Phase 1 barring that same roar doesn't give me any trouble, and especially using Spiral Spear (or whatever the highest form of the spear is) for the extra posture damage after it does that big heavy sword drop. It's just that they seem to group together during Phase 2 that's tough to separate Brown with firecrackers while Headless is still attacking with the extra range of the sword.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> That surprising given that it's a perilous attack, and I figured given that it's inflicting a status affect that you don't need some upgraded version of it; but I'll keep it in mind. Phase 1 barring that same roar doesn't give me any trouble, and especially using Spiral Spear (or whatever the highest form of the spear is) for the extra posture damage after it does that big heavy sword drop. It's just that they seem to group together during Phase 2 that's tough to separate Brown with firecrackers while Headless is still attacking with the extra range of the sword.


Yeh, lots of people think you need at least the purple umbrella for the terror, but any will do. No idea why that is.

My usual tactic is to hit headless once, and it usually makes brown charge over like a scripted event. So if you hit headless and back off quick, brown rushes over to you and causes a big gap between them. Be ready with firecrackers at the end of that rush, and that gap lets you really wail on brown.


----------



## Crungy

Anyone play much on the Switch and have recommendations? 

I received one as a father's day gift and really like it... So far I have Kirby Star Allies and Mutant Year Zero, I like both and surprisingly really like MYZ. Surprising to me because I haven't really ever been into those types of games.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> Yeh, lots of people think you need at least the purple umbrella for the terror, but any will do. No idea why that is.
> 
> My usual tactic is to hit headless once, and it usually makes brown charge over like a scripted event. So if you hit headless and back off quick, brown rushes over to you and causes a big gap between them. Be ready with firecrackers at the end of that rush, and that gap lets you really wail on brown.


Yeah, that sounds like a good tactic. I've only ever fought them on NG and NG+ and always just had the 2-ape part of the fight go on FOREVER cause I wasn't using firecrackers and would basically just run around in circles until they split up naturally, and then I'd get like 2 hits on brown ape before the other one would catch up and I'd have to run around for another minute.

Today I played for another half hour, killed that dragon boss (it's easy but if you get hit by the first hit in the big combo he does you can get stunlocked to death), then died a couple times to that big spear asshole by the ashina reservoir idol. I just can't execute this fight flawlessly, I suck. When he hits you for 2/3 of your life and every hit you deflect almost fills up your posture bar, it's pretty low margin for error! I'm wondering how you're SUPPOSED to initiate the fight, too. I always just use the stealth sugar, get one deathblow on the miniboss, run onto the branch so the samurai guy with him walks off the ledge and dies, and then try to fight him. I accidentally made HIM fall off the ledge once which caused him to disappear and me having to reset the area to try again. Too bad. I guess they programmed him to disappear instead of dying when falling off cliffs, unlike demon of hatred!


----------



## Ralyks

I have Sekiro sitting in my PO Box because it was like bucks used, and with GameStop coupons, basically free. I'm going to choose to blame SSO for this purchase.

Otherwise, I've been Twitching getting the Platinum in Cyberpunk, and after that it's a rotation between Shin Megami Tensai 3, Corpse Party, and Horizon Zero Dawn (so I can finally start Forbidden west). Even had like 7 viewers the other day!


----------



## MFB

Ralyks said:


> I have Sekiro sitting in my PO Box because it was like bucks used, and with GameStop coupons, basically free. I'm going to choose to blame SSO for this purchase.
> 
> Otherwise, I've been Twitching getting the Platinum in Cyberpunk, and after that it's a rotation between Shin Megami Tensai 3, Corpse Party, and Horizon Zero Dawn (so I can finally start Forbidden west). Even had like 7 viewers the other day!



Don't blame us for your wise purchase, the more I play it, the more I'm thinking it MIGHT edge it's way into being my favorite FS game. I'm thinking of doing a BB replay after I finish to see how they compare for highs/lows. I loved Yharnam on my first playthrough and the combat might be it's saving grace vs. Sekiro's parry system.


----------



## Giest

Finally beat Breath of the Wild the other day. Think it's a really good game, but I still don't appreciate the weapon degrading system, storyline, or the convenience utilities locked behind the DLC. The later game is much better than the early game in my opinion, mostly due to scant tutorial or initial progression indicators. I'd give it an 8/10 I guess, really only not 10/10 because of the weapon degrading making opening chests and collecting gear pretty underwhelming. Eagerly awaiting BoTW2 next year.

Gonna try Metroid Dread next.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Don't blame us for your wise purchase, the more I play it, the more I'm thinking it MIGHT edge it's way into being my favorite FS game. I'm thinking of doing a BB replay after I finish to see how they compare for highs/lows. I loved Yharnam on my first playthrough and the combat might be it's saving grace vs. Sekiro's parry system.\



I played Bloodborne again after finishing all the DS games including Souls and Sekiro (beat Orphan of Kos right before Elden Ring dropped, haven't gone back to do Ludwig/Gehrman/Moon Presence since then). I think the QOL upgrades that even DS2 has compared to it make some areas of it frustrating, and the framerate thing is REALLY jarring especially after coming from Sekiro. It feels so sluggish, and the slowdown that accompanies some kinds of the lower floors of the dungeons can be incredibly frustrating. I also felt really naked after coming from Sekiro. It felt like if you play Sekiro but take away the ability to block, the ability to parry as often and as quickly as you want, and especially the ability to actually get back out of boss range without breaking lockon and running away. I mean, it's a great game and is absolutely a masterpiece (it probably has the best level/boss visual designs of any of their games) but I think it is really starting to show its age, especially since the remasters of DS and DS2 and DeS all bumped them up to a constant 60 fps while BB often struggles to maintain 30.



Ralyks said:


> I have Sekiro sitting in my PO Box because it was like bucks used, and with GameStop coupons, basically free. I'm going to choose to blame SSO for this purchase.
> 
> Otherwise, I've been Twitching getting the Platinum in Cyberpunk, and after that it's a rotation between Shin Megami Tensai 3, Corpse Party, and Horizon Zero Dawn (so I can finally start Forbidden west). Even had like 7 viewers the other day!



Have you played ANY Fromsoft games? I think Sekiro is in some ways the most intimidating of them all. I mean, it's a great game and everyone should absolutely play it, but I remember first trying it after finishing DS1/DS2/DS3/BB and it still feeling so overwhelming that I felt defeated by it by the time I'd tried fighting the first few minibosses (big samurai guy at the very start, big spear guy about an hour in, big ogre guy also about an hour in) and had to come back to it again after several months of replaying and getting platinums on all the others. Then again, if you haven't played any souls games maybe you'd be less dependent on the crutches those games had (ex grinding to outlevel areas, some overpowered builds/weapons/spells).

Also if you've played things like, I dunno, Ninja Gaiden or Bayonetta or whatever on higher diffiiculty settings it might feel easy.


----------



## MFB

Took down Headless on my 2nd try tonight, I didn't realize/remember that if you kill him then you don't have to do the rest of the fight against Brown; homeboy just sits down and fades out like a true bro.


----------



## StevenC

Crungy said:


> Anyone play much on the Switch and have recommendations?
> 
> I received one as a father's day gift and really like it... So far I have Kirby Star Allies and Mutant Year Zero, I like both and surprisingly really like MYZ. Surprising to me because I haven't really ever been into those types of games.


Kirby and the Forgotten Land is much better than Star Allies. 

All the big games like Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, Bayonetta 1&2, Metroid Dread, Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8D, Link's Awakening, Animal Crossing etc

Mario and Rabbids is really good and it's sequel its coming out soon. Bravely Default 2 if you want that style of RPG.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Crungy said:


> Anyone play much on the Switch and have recommendations?
> 
> I received one as a father's day gift and really like it... So far I have Kirby Star Allies and Mutant Year Zero, I like both and surprisingly really like MYZ. Surprising to me because I haven't really ever been into those types of games.


If you like action rpgs the Xenoblade games are worth checking out.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Crungy said:


> Anyone play much on the Switch and have recommendations?
> 
> I received one as a father's day gift and really like it... So far I have Kirby Star Allies and Mutant Year Zero, I like both and surprisingly really like MYZ. Surprising to me because I haven't really ever been into those types of games.


Monster Hunter if you like fun action games that require a bit more depth than a DMC-style game but less than a Soulsbourne game. Highly recommend trying to the demo and seeing if it's your speed.


----------



## Werecow

Crungy said:


> Anyone play much on the Switch and have recommendations?
> 
> I received one as a father's day gift and really like it... So far I have Kirby Star Allies and Mutant Year Zero, I like both and surprisingly really like MYZ. Surprising to me because I haven't really ever been into those types of games.


You might like Divinity: Original Sin 2 if you like MYZ.
It's a classic RPG that plays in real-time when exploring the world, and changes to turn-based when combat starts. I don't have a Switch, but i know the Switch version got good reviews for the port.


----------



## Werecow

I just did the Shura ending for the second time ever. I hate it. Not just the actual ending, but the game cutting short like that. I only did it to add the One Mind combat art and the Shura gauntlett to the new save i started.
I'm immediately starting another run to get the taste out of my mouth now


----------



## Empryrean

I've started to play DNF Duel and my god it is such a breath of fresh air compared to any other fighting game that's come out lately.


----------



## Mathemagician

I want to play Sekiro but holy shit it just sounds so exhausting. Like I platinum’d Elden ring but I out leveled anything remotely hard and summoned whenever I wanted.

This may mean I actually have to git good. And I only ever said that as a meme because the Souls’s games aren’t actually that hard lol.


----------



## TedEH

Looks like I'm back to multiple things on the go at a time again.

Haven't finished Golden Sun, but it seems like a long one.

I've continued my Halo journey by starting up 3 - but this time I decided I wanted to try it on PC, and I'm reminded of how playing older games on modern PCs is a fantastic way to play. It's modern enough to run without hassle, but old enough that I can run it at 4k and aaaaaaaaalmost keep up with 120hz, even with my old pre-rtx video card. (I keep the refresh at 98hz though because that's the fastest I can go without needing to use 422 subsampling.)


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Mathemagician said:


> I want to play Sekiro but holy shit it just sounds so exhausting. Like I platinum’d Elden ring but I out leveled anything remotely hard and summoned whenever I wanted.
> 
> This may mean I actually have to git good. And I only ever said that as a meme because the Souls’s games aren’t actually that hard lol.


sekiro will fucking wreck you if you don't literally git gud. Even Nioh is more forgiving ime


----------



## MFB

KnightBrolaire said:


> sekiro will fucking wreck you if you don't literally git gud. Even Nioh is more forgiving ime



Bullshit. I went to Nioh after Sekiro and it punished the fuck out of me, maybe because it's an entirely different combat style, but @wankerness did as well and I don't think he pushed much further than I did. 

I forgot how much Shinobi Owl sucks after the other bosses I've faced, almost had him down on an attempt earlier but ran out of spirit emblems/bad positioning on my part. Dude eats up posture.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

MFB said:


> Bullshit. I went to Nioh after Sekiro and it punished the fuck out of me, maybe because it's an entirely different combat style, but @wankerness did as well and I don't think he pushed much further than I did.
> 
> I forgot how much Shinobi Owl sucks after the other bosses I've faced, almost had him down on an attempt earlier but ran out of spirit emblems/bad positioning on my part. Dude eats up posture.


 I honestly think Sekiro was harder. Nioh has some bullshit moments but it never outright forces you to utilize parries and posture breaking to advance in the game. Sekiro goes nah fam you gon git gud or get the fuck out from the beginning.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> sekiro will fucking wreck you if you don't literally git gud. Even Nioh is more forgiving ime


Yeah, very hard disagree on that one. Nioh at least in the early game is a lot harder than sekiro cause the numbers are so bullshit - everything hits like an absolute truck, defensive options are far more limited than sekiro (and way more about twitch reactions), monsters spawn like crazy, save points are fewer and farther between, and bosses have a fuck load more health and just healthbars (no posture system for rewarding aggression). The game also seems to expect you to constantly be farming gear and thus it seems every level you’re barely tickling enemies until you’ve grinded the level for drops. That said there are much more effective and consistent ways to cheese most of the game that don’t exist in sekiro. Unlocking them is the hard part.

Sekiro forces you to “git gud “ to some degree but doing so is a lot easier than in nioh if you’re old (ex over 30). But you can face roll through many bosses in sekiro to some degree. Again, my sword saint kill is a thing of beauty for showing just how badly you can play and succeed. I will try uploading that later.

I’ve been fighting owl father all morning after maxing out my prayer beads. I got to phase two ONCE and completely didn’t remember how to deal with the goddam flame owl attack. Mostly I just die pathetically before he’s even to half health in phase 1. Ridiculous how hard this guy is compared to every other boss in the game (for me). Sword Saint and Demon of Hatred seem downright easy and forgiving in comparison despite having more phases. EDIT: Of course i beat him first try after this. Big difference was just this attempt I would immediately dodge forward after he does that knockback that always precedes the firecrackers. Still had to use Rice on him though and had 0 gourds left at the end. Hate this guy. On to Demon of Hatred!


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I want to play Sekiro but holy shit it just sounds so exhausting. Like I platinum’d Elden ring but I out leveled anything remotely hard and summoned whenever I wanted.
> 
> This may mean I actually have to git good. And I only ever said that as a meme because the Souls’s games aren’t actually that hard lol.



Yes, it sort of forces you to git gud, however if you play Elden Ring right after it you'll probably feel like "wow, my defensive options in this game are so limited! I just have to take hits to the face from everything unless I dodge or have a shield build!!" Sekiro basically gives you a katana that doubles as a shield and you have unlimited stamina so you can just mash dodge/sprint/jump/attack all to your hearts' content. Plus the "posture system" is a HUGE boost to offensive ability, you'll find that once you get boss healthbars down to 50% all of a sudden the fight is pretty much over since their posture will stop regenerating and you can very quickly finish them. Also you can react a LOT faster to boss attacks. The hard end bosses in Elden Ring feel like they're more tuned around Sekiro abilities than Elden Ring ones in some ways.

Also you can pause and heal/choose consumables while the game is paused which really can make a gigantic difference in difficulty when you can just take a breather and carefully go through your items in the middle of a boss fight.


----------



## Mathemagician

Ooooooh good to know. Ok cool.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Yeah, I'm going to third that. I've played Nioh and Sekiro, and I made it MUCH further in Sekiro than in Nioh. With Nioh, it's like "the fuck just happened?! He only hit me once!" With Sekiro, I actively wanted to keep trying feeling like I could actually beat the boss I was stuck on.


----------



## wankerness

Just beat demon of hatred legit for once (my first attempt ever fighting him was to make him fall off the cliff, and then I reloaded my save since I didn't think that would work and was consistently getting into Phase 3 but eventually just quit trying cause there was no point since I just wanted to finish the game at that point). This fight IS hard. It took me like 10-12 tries or something. I still think Owl Father is more frustrating, but Owl Father definitely has more repetitive and easily punishable patterns and at least isn't inflicting burn with all his attacks. With this dude, I got him to Phase 3 with like 3 gourds, and then ended up popping both fine snow AND the rice ball and still had 0 gourds left at the end and thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest. Oof. The main problem with him is just the way he runs ALL the way across the arena all the time combined with how incredibly difficult it is to avoid his bullshit unless you're either right on him or far away from him, he's lethal at midrange, especially with those stupid fireball volleys.


----------



## CanserDYI

I know it's a mobile game, but has anyone played the rusty lake series of mystery puzzle games? Holy shit they're addicting.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

wankerness said:


> What did you think? I played it for a couple hours and just didn't get into it. I think the camera being zoomed so much further in on the character combined with the wallowy movement and slow combat just made it feel too clunky for me.


I realize this is late but, I was only able to play the game for a few hours before getting the unhandled error at the start of a level. Literally right after selecting the level I wanted to play the error comes up. They did patch it to not corrupt your saves, but the error still just kinda happens. And I might aswell just walk away from it if I can't progress.

So I went ahead and started replaying the Mass Effect games. I'm almost at the level cap for the first game. Just gotta grind out some more XP to reach level 60, but once I'm done with that I'm importing into ME2.


----------



## Werecow

I've been playing The Ascent alongside Sekiro. It's a twin stick shooter in a Cyberpunk open-ish world. The world is so good that i kinda wish it was a full RPG instead. It feels a lot more Cyberpunk than Cyberpunk 2077. The gameplay gets a bit samey after a while, but it's fun for a bit of a blast every now and then.


----------



## Ralyks

In a move I didn't expect, I broke out my PSTV and got both Persona 2 games on there (turns out I forgot I already bought the first Persona game). I've been curious as fuck about these games forever and with 3p and 4G finally getting ported to current consoles, figured it was time to finally check them out.


----------



## wankerness

Beat sword saint today, took like five tries. This guy is a hell of a lot easier than demon of hatred or owl father cause you get so many openings on him and he doesn’t have much health in each phase. Phase 2 where he gets out the spear/gun is pretty bad, though, and phase three gram go wrong in a big hurry if you miss any lightning reversals. Kind of a fun boss, instead of super stressful like the last two, though he’d be more fun if your goddam resurrection powers came back every attempt without going off and killing 20+ dudes to refill the two wheels!!! Oh well. 

I died to Genichiro almost every attempt due to refusing to use heals on him so that’s my fault for being bad.


----------



## Mathemagician

Gonna make sure I send out 100 garlics, can’t give up free money on my farm. Also trying to fix up the hidden boat. I want a boat at least in video game life.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Gonna make sure I send out 100 garlics, can’t give up free money on my farm. Also trying to fix up the hidden boat. I want a boat at least in video game life.


The boat's kind of a late-game DLC thing, though you can certainly do it early if you want.

My girlfriend is still playing almost exclusively stardew valley months later. She's deep into the Mr. Qi requests that are like super-endgame and are all like "get to floor 120 of the skull cavern" or "get 4 prismatic shards in 4 days" or other things that are not at all easy. But man, her farm looks ridiculously crowded now, covered with machines and statues that are constantly generating Iridium or making rare gems or whatever, along with all her farming stuff like the wine cellar and the greenhouse and ackkk. That game has a LOT of content. 

The funniest thing I've seen in that game is that after she divorced her spouse, she then had the option to turn their children into birds. If only real life were that easy, huh?


----------



## Mathemagician

Yeah that Mr. Qi stuff I only did one of the first ones. “Get to level 25” and halfway there “IS THAT A STEGOSAURUS?! 

Yes. Yes it was. 

“I love this game”. 

Lol. 

I only just got to year 3. So I still have more stuff to discover but I’m also not trying to Min/Max my farm. I have my sprinklers set to auto and I check my greenhouse for star fruit and ancient fruits regularly. 

Then I just poke around doing what I want like a hippie. It’s relaxing AF not having timers on anything. Even the “timed” bulletin quests will repeat eventually.


----------



## Crungy

Thanks to those who posted Switch suggestions. I have played some of the monster hunter games (wii and Xbox one versions, forget the names) and liked them but wasn't super crazy about them. I might pick them back up eventually. 

Xenoblade 2 sounded good, is it necessary to play them in order though or no?


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> Yeah that Mr. Qi stuff I only did one of the first ones. “Get to level 25” and halfway there “IS THAT A STEGOSAURUS?!
> 
> Yes. Yes it was.
> 
> “I love this game”.
> 
> Lol.
> 
> I only just got to year 3. So I still have more stuff to discover but I’m also not trying to Min/Max my farm. I have my sprinklers set to auto and I check my greenhouse for star fruit and ancient fruits regularly.
> 
> Then I just poke around doing what I want like a hippie. It’s relaxing AF not having timers on anything. Even the “timed” bulletin quests will repeat eventually.


Yeah, it's kind of jarring when you're on like year 10 of the game and everyone's still the same age and the holidays all repeat exactly the same. But, for a one-man game to actually progress time meaningfully for 40 characters or whatever would be totally unreasonable, plus it means the game is more chill cause you have as much time as you want for stuff. I'd incorrectly assumed when watching her go through the first few years that the game would just END after you hit the 3 year time limit set by the start of the game, like Persona or something, and you'd have to try again to see all the other relationships etc.

I still haven't played it at all except once or twice where she threw the controller at me to answer a phone call or something. Sure have seen a ton of it, though! Maybe I'll get it on playstation for the achievements sometime.


----------



## RevDrucifer

I’ve been looking for a new game to get lately and when I initially started reading all the Sekiro talk I got excited, but the more I read the more I realized it’s probably not for me. I definitely prefer a good storyline over memorizing combatants every move to be able to get one hit against them.  

Hell, some games I’ll even put on Easy the first time through just so I can get into the story of it, then go back and beat it on Normal or Hard the 2nd time around. 

I’ve heard Elden Ring isn’t quite as much of a pain in the ass as Sekiro. The trailers all look great for Elden Ring and obviously it was probably the most talked about game this year, I might just take the chance on it and get it.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Beat sword saint today, took like five tries. This guy is a hell of a lot easier than demon of hatred or owl father cause you get so many openings on him and he doesn’t have much health in each phase. Phase 2 where he gets out the spear/gun is pretty bad, though, and phase three gram go wrong in a big hurry if you miss any lightning reversals. Kind of a fun boss, instead of super stressful like the last two, though he’d be more fun if your goddam resurrection powers came back every attempt without going off and killing 20+ dudes to refill the two wheels!!! Oh well.
> 
> I died to Genichiro almost every attempt due to refusing to use heals on him so that’s my fault for being bad.


I still find Isshin more difficult than Owl father for some reason. I often no damage the Genichiro phase and first phase of Isshin. But Isshin's second phase still regularly completely kills me. I've never fully got the deflect timing of the huge elongated spear combo he does that ends in a perilous thrust. Seems to be 50/50 i manage to deflect the first couple hits of it. If i get cought out by that, and then he really presses forward, i find it really difficult to recover. No idea why i still find it so difficult when i'm so practiced at the game now 
His third phase i actually find easier, long's i get the lightning redirects. As he'll sometimes do the lightning enough to completely wreck himself with redirects.


----------



## wankerness

RevDrucifer said:


> I’ve been looking for a new game to get lately and when I initially started reading all the Sekiro talk I got excited, but the more I read the more I realized it’s probably not for me. I definitely prefer a good storyline over memorizing combatants every move to be able to get one hit against them.
> 
> Hell, some games I’ll even put on Easy the first time through just so I can get into the story of it, then go back and beat it on Normal or Hard the 2nd time around.
> 
> I’ve heard Elden Ring isn’t quite as much of a pain in the ass as Sekiro. The trailers all look great for Elden Ring and obviously it was probably the most talked about game this year, I might just take the chance on it and get it.


Sekiro's more userfriendly in that you don't die instantly if you fall off a cliff and it has a pause button, but the combat is more difficult from a mechanical standpoint. Elden Ring gets very nasty towards the end but can be powered through with cheese. If you mainly want to play games on easy you might have a hard time getting into it. Just make sure you don't touch the first major castle until you've done all the side caves you can possibly find and leveled up your health and weapons quite a bit.

Also if you "prefer a good storyline" Sekiro is the only Fromsoft game where there's a standard story to speak of. The others are just vague cutscenes and otherwise it's reading item descriptions and stuff and that's about it. Very impenetrable unless you put a lot of effort in. I don't tend to care about videogame stories so it's perfect for me since there's basically no dialogue other than a few NPC sidequests and very limited cutscenes.


----------



## StevenC

Crungy said:


> Thanks to those who posted Switch suggestions. I have played some of the monster hunter games (wii and Xbox one versions, forget the names) and liked them but wasn't super crazy about them. I might pick them back up eventually.
> 
> Xenoblade 2 sounded good, is it necessary to play them in order though or no?


Xenoblade is really only loosely related in terms of story, and it is absolutely not important to play 1 to enjoy 2 or 2 to enjoy 3 (coming soon).


----------



## MFB

God damn did I forget how fucking GOOD it feels to beat Great Shinobi Owl. 

I've easily died to him the most on this run, probably two dozen attempts, but the last two were like, almost zen like. I just stayed really tight on him when only guarded when I absolutely needed to, but it was mostly just bait him into his overhead leap and then hit him with nightjar slash. No prosthetic during phase 1, and then in phase 2 I accidentally used the normal firecracker vs long spark which gives the extra posture damage.


----------



## Ralyks

Side tracked. Stray came out today. I've nuzzled with other cats, scratched up a carpet, befriended a tiny flying robot, zip lined in a bucket, and meowed over 100 times. 10/10 Game of the year.


----------



## MFB

Ralyks said:


> Side tracked. Stray came out today. I've nuzzled with other cats, scratched up a carpet, befriended a tiny flying robot, zip lined in a bucket, and meowed over 100 times. 10/10 Game of the year.



Shit, I didn't realize that was launching this month. Guess I know what I'm playing after Sekiro!


----------



## wankerness

Sounds like it’s good, but extremely short. I might wait for a sale cause I’m not paying for their Netflix service!!


----------



## MFB

I can crack the first two phases of Corrupted Monk no problem, I just forgot how much Phase 3 absolutely fucking rushes you and eats up posture. Gonna have to pop a sugar while it's changing phases I guess, I'm like, 0/5 as of last night.


----------



## destroyerdogs

I've been playing Tekken 7 again, after taking a break for like 2 years after my son was born. It's been pretty fun getting back into it.
Kind of itching to play Elden Ring or Demon's Souls again, though.


----------



## thebeesknees22

I've been making my way back through Final fantasy 15 here and there. 

I kinda really hated it when it first came out. I beat it, but it felt like a real bore to get through.

This time I'm semi-speed running it and it's a lot more fun that way. the landscapes and overall world was cool. The story was just terrible.


----------



## StevenC

F1 2021 is kicking my ass. I don't know if it's setup related or because I'm on controller, but I'm really struggling with a lot of the hairpins in this game. Even corners on older tracks that I know very well. Also some of the more aggressive breaking zones with a corner incorporated, like turns 7/8 and 10/11 at Portimao for example.

I might have lost some finer motor control in my hands since the last time I played one of these games, though, so maybe it's just time to buy a sim rig.


----------



## Mathemagician

RevDrucifer said:


> I’ve been looking for a new game to get lately and when I initially started reading all the Sekiro talk I got excited, but the more I read the more I realized it’s probably not for me. I definitely prefer a good storyline over memorizing combatants every move to be able to get one hit against them.
> 
> Hell, some games I’ll even put on Easy the first time through just so I can get into the story of it, then go back and beat it on Normal or Hard the 2nd time around.
> 
> I’ve heard Elden Ring isn’t quite as much of a pain in the ass as Sekiro. The trailers all look great for Elden Ring and obviously it was probably the most talked about game this year, I might just take the chance on it and get it.



So for Elden ring the “basic tips” are as follows:

Boost your HP, it’s your cushion and it matters more than in a game like Devil May Cry or similar. 

To do more damage, boost your weapon’s levels. 

Leveling your stats helps, but it is secondary for most damage calculations. You need the minimum stats to use a weapon or spell, but after that level your sword or staff up by one will give you a bigger boost than leveling your stat by one. 

And last but not least, if you get stuck/enter a hard area. You are free to fuck right off and wander elsewhere to level up more. There’s nothing stopping you from coming back later. 

That’s enough to enjoy your first playthrough.


----------



## wankerness

With how much he talks about having to get into the story I think maybe he just shouldn't play DS games or Elden Ring. Sekiro's the only one with a typical story!


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> God damn did I forget how fucking GOOD it feels to beat Great Shinobi Owl.
> 
> I've easily died to him the most on this run, probably two dozen attempts, but the last two were like, almost zen like. I just stayed really tight on him when only guarded when I absolutely needed to, but it was mostly just bait him into his overhead leap and then hit him with nightjar slash. No prosthetic during phase 1, and then in phase 2 I accidentally used the normal firecracker vs long spark which gives the extra posture damage.


I can't wait for you to fight Owl Father if you had this much trouble with regular version! 

If you're trying for platinum this run, I noticed some other things you're going to have to do. You absolutely have to do all the bosses AND the first three sword saint endings (via save scumming) on your first playthrough, as well as doing the pot nobles quest that gives you another lapis lazuli. And then on your second playthrough, you have to do the Shura ending, and then save scum back and fight great owl instead to get to fountainhead/the lapis lazulis, or else you'd have to do a third playthrough since you'd be locked out of getting the ones needed for all upgrades.

Basically I think the minimum number of playthroughs required with no save scumming whatsoever would be four, while you only technically need one full one and then NG+ up through the fountainhead palace if you do save backups.

Fortunately it's incredibly easy to do that on Playstation Plus and PC.

I started burning through NG+, got through Lady Butterfly and Gyoubu and all associated minibosses in about an hour, had my first death on that spear asshole in Ashina Reservoir.


----------



## MFB

Dark Souls I definitely wouldn't recommend for him, there's basically zero story to get into, and what there IS isn't presented in any sort of accessible/traditional manner; Bloodborne is the first one that has a story that seems more presented up front, but even still it's not like it'll be the most interesting compared to other games, it's still very dry (realistically, "hunter must hunt.") 

Unfortunately that leaves him with Sekiro, which mechanically is the hardest of their bunch, OR Elden Ring which does also have a fairly intricate story however given the size of the world and the initial barrier of difficulty many people won't make it too far in and are better off just reading the wiki of what the story is


----------



## wankerness

I read some more about Stray. DEFINITELY waiting for a deep sale on this one. 5-6 hours long, and apparently the game totally shifts genres into something familiar and uninteresting about halfway through that. The first few hours are apparently brilliant.

"This is like if Untitled Goose Game shifted to a JRPG at the halfway point where you now have to save the world from some ultra-powerful behind the scenes entity that had been manipulating the residents of Goosetown into its cult all along and you had to defeat him with QTE goose antics."

That actually sounds funny though, sounds like this is more just bad.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I can't wait for you to fight Owl Father if you had this much trouble with regular version!
> 
> If you're trying for platinum this run, I noticed some other things you're going to have to do. You absolutely have to do all the bosses AND the first three sword saint endings (via save scumming) on your first playthrough, as well as doing the pot nobles quest that gives you another lapis lazuli. And then on your second playthrough, you have to do the Shura ending, and then save scum back and fight great owl instead to get to fountainhead/the lapis lazulis, or else you'd have to do a third playthrough since you'd be locked out of getting the ones needed for all upgrades.
> 
> Basically I think the minimum number of playthroughs required with no save scumming whatsoever would be four, while you only technically need one full one and then NG+ up through the fountainhead palace if you do save backups.
> 
> Fortunately it's incredibly easy to do that on Playstation Plus and PC.
> 
> I started burning through NG+, got through Lady Butterfly and Gyoubu and all associated minibosses in about an hour, had my first death on that spear asshole in Ashina Reservoir.



It wasn't trouble in the sense that I can't beat him, just that I forgot how different he is compared to the majority of the enemies you fight; especially after coming off the fight with Guardian/Headless; he's much slower, attacks more in successions versus attack-retreat-attack-retreat, etc... his reach is much longer than you're expecting since he uses a sword, but no, it's at like spear range, all those little variations that I had to change my playstyle to. 

I also forgot that firecracker use 2 emblems at once instead of 1, so with having 19 available you can only use it 9 times and that's for the entire fight. So initially I was using them in the beginning and trying to just get it into phase 2, when it should be the opposite. And hey, some days I just can't get the rhythm going to match the fight, and I've also had some truly awful mis-times with healing items.

For save scumming, it sounds like I need PS+? I was hoping to avoid it but I guess I can just buy the one month as I'll legitimately never use it besides this.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> For save scumming, it sounds like I need PS+? I was hoping to avoid it but I guess I can just buy the one month as I'll legitimately never use it besides this.


Probably? I've never NOT had it. Cloud saving (and the extremely easy ability to first turn off auto-sync, then just force quit the game and manually either download or upload save from/to cloud) is a PS+ thing though. You technically can do it with a specially formatted USB drive, but I don't know exactly how that works. Probably the same way, just a lot slower.

Do you have a PS5? You do get a bunch of free games with PS+ immediately if you do. Not sure if you care about any of them, though.

I've had the service since I got the system back in 2017 so I have a TON of games connected to my account that are dependent on the subscription (ex, Bloodborne) and I also do very regularly use the cloud save stuff.


----------



## wankerness

Beat Genichiro this morning, took two tries but it was close (used a divine grass, no gourds left). The jerk kept spamming the grab move that is usually so rare! I hate grabs. 

I'm going out of town for over a week and I fully expect to be unable to play the game when I try to pick it up again.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Man, I really want to play the Live A Live remake... except it's Switch exclusive.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Tales of Arise. First Tales game I've ever played, and first game of this kind with this combat system I've ever played, and honestly? I'm loving it quite a bit, actually. May go back and look for other games like this, but I've also been looking at the Persona series when it comes to Xbox later this year.


----------



## MFB

TheBlackBard said:


> Tales of Arise. First Tales game I've ever played, and first game of this kind with this combat system I've ever played, and honestly? I'm loving it quite a bit, actually. May go back and look for other games like this, but I've also been looking at the Persona series when it comes to Xbox later this year.



Is Persona not on Xbox already? I know P5 is like, always on sale in the PS store but I don't think I ever realized it wasn't released on all consoles. I've always been curious about it as it's got a huge fanbase, but I'm not sure if the combat would be my bag, and demos no longer exist so it's all or nothing with purchases now.


----------



## TheBlackBard

MFB said:


> Is Persona not on Xbox already? I know P5 is like, always on sale in the PS store but I don't think I ever realized it wasn't released on all consoles. I've always been curious about it as it's got a huge fanbase, but I'm not sure if the combat would be my bag, and demos no longer exist so it's all or nothing with purchases now.



Not yet, no. I'll be playing it when it comes, though. Was told 4 and 5 are amazing.


----------



## Ralyks

TheBlackBard said:


> Tales of Arise. First Tales game I've ever played, and first game of this kind with this combat system I've ever played, and honestly? I'm loving it quite a bit, actually. May go back and look for other games like this, but I've also been looking at the Persona series when it comes to Xbox later this year.


I got hooked on Tales of Arise. Part of me wants to get it again when there's a big sale on it.

I'm so. Damn. Close. To getting the Platinum trophy for Cyberpunk 2077. And I officially crossed the 100 hour mark.

Oh, and I picked up Omori for PS4 today. So that's happening tonight. I already know how it plays out but I want to experience the fucked up-ness for myself.


----------



## BlackMastodon

MFB said:


> Is Persona not on Xbox already? I know P5 is like, always on sale in the PS store but I don't think I ever realized it wasn't released on all consoles. I've always been curious about it as it's got a huge fanbase, but I'm not sure if the combat would be my bag, and demos no longer exist so it's all or nothing with purchases now.


I miss the days of demo disks. You'd think demos would be more readily available in the age where you can download several gigs of data in a few short minutes, but I guess I'm not surprised because demos take away from predatory business practices. Why let them try for free when you can create the illusion of that and offer refunds so long as it's within a week and they've played less than an hour? I rarely even get to a new game within the first week of owning it, and it rarely picks up enough within the first hour to let me know if I'll wanna keep playing or not.


----------



## Mathemagician

Several games on the switch have had demos recently. Can’t name off the top of my head but the little “what’s new” section keeps showing “new demos/new demos coming soon!”


----------



## MFB

Mathemagician said:


> Several games on the switch have had demos recently. Can’t name off the top of my head but the little “what’s new” section keeps showing “new demos/new demos coming soon!”



Must be nice!

But I guess that's how Nintendo gets you, on the one hand you get demos, and on the other, absolutely ZERO backwards compatibility and having to rebuy games on new systems.


----------



## CanserDYI

Just started Stray, having a blast actually. Really interesting game.


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> Must be nice!
> 
> But I guess that's how Nintendo gets you, on the one hand you get demos, and on the other, absolutely ZERO backwards compatibility and having to rebuy games on new systems.




I picked it up for first party games. And the first time I’m using it in years is to play Stardew valley while watching tv, lol.


----------



## CanserDYI

Mathemagician said:


> I picked it up for first party games. And the first time I’m using it in years is to play Stardew valley while watching tv, lol.


I have 400 hours in Stardew and regret nothing.


----------



## _MonSTeR_

CanserDYI said:


> Just started Stray, having a blast actually. Really interesting game.


I’m watching my wife play through Stray, I’m more invested in that cute little kitty cat than any other game character since... 

Genius idea to make even the most jaded gamer care about the character they’re playing!


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Man, I really want to play the Live A Live remake... except it's Switch exclusive.



...and just like that, I caved. Bought a Switch and Live A Live.  Will most likely play Xenoblade 2 at some point as well before I jump onto 3.


----------



## Werecow

I happened to see that GOG.com were doing an Arkham series sale yesterday, and that was enough for me to instantly reinstall Asylum. I'm about halfway through the game already.
I'll probably have to go right through the series now. It's almost annoying when this sort of thing happens.


----------



## st2012

Finishing up Dragon Quest 11 and considering picking back up with Lost Ark.


----------



## rokket2005

I beat Ryza 2 like a week ago and it is wonderful. Definitely in my top 2-3 games that I've played so far this year. 

I also beat Phoenotopia : Awakening today and it's pretty good. I thought it was more of an RPG, but it's side scrolling action/adventure that takes a few cues from Zelda II. Apparently it started as a flash game, and over the course of 6 years or so they fleshed it out into it's current version. I liked it quite a bit, not as much as I liked Crosscode last year, but still a fun time.


----------



## MFB

Gotta say, it's kind of bullshit that items in Sekiro are linked to specific endings/playthroughs. In order to get maximum vitality, you need to go for the Purification ending, which includes fighting Father Owl to get. It didn't even occur to me as I was doing Dragons Return ending, but fuck it, guess I'll have to do that on a different playthrough at a later date since I've missed the eavesdrops.


----------



## Mathemagician

st2012 said:


> Finishing up Dragon Quest 11 and considering picking back up with Lost Ark.



Did you like DQ? I’ve only ever played the first Dragon warrior monsters game on game boy but that was more like a Pokémon game. 

I’ve had DQ11 on my switch for about a month now since it went on sale. And I look forward to one day clicking on that icon to start it instead of stardew valley. But that day is not today.


----------



## st2012

Mathemagician said:


> Did you like DQ? I’ve only ever played the first Dragon warrior monsters game on game boy but that was more like a Pokémon game.
> 
> I’ve had DQ11 on my switch for about a month now since it went on sale. And I look forward to one day clicking on that icon to start it instead of stardew valley. But that day is not today.


I've enjoyed the hell out of it (120 hours in so far). It's very old school which may or not be your thing.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Leveled my ME1 character. Had an online friend who wanted to play some GTA IV online, so I hoped on that. And of all the songs for Rockstar to patch out, the R. Kelly song isn't one of them?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Decided to play the Live A Live scenarios in chronological order, got the Prehistoric chapter done and doing Imperial China next. 

I've been a strong advocate to not falling too hard into the traps of nostalgia as of late, so I'll admit it's hypocritical for me to buy a brand new console just so I can play a remake of a game originally released in 1994. So excuse me as I become a pig wallowing in a pile of nostalgia crap while I harp on about this game. But I'll harp on like an angel with Parkinson's if Squenix keep up with bringing their older, obscure property back from the dead for the rest of the world to play. And Live A Live is a game I'll wholeheartedly recommend to all the JRPG fans here. 

Live A Live is a real odd duck, even back then it didn't do well in the local market thanks to Squaresoft and Enix's heavy hitters. But it planted the seeds of a ton of modern day influence in the genre. The battle system semi incorporated to Tales Of and Star Ocean series and Koudelka (who remembers that?), Toby Fox mined this game as much as he did Earthbound for dear life, members of the development team became part of what will become Chrono Trigger, composer Yoko Shimomura just jumped ship from Capcom then moving to bigger grander projects, and games like the latter day SaGa games and namely Octopath Traveler can point their lineage starting here. 

As for the game itself... in some aspects it's aged well, in other's it's still a relic ghost of 90s past. 

I do like the HD2D aesthetic that latter day 16 bit graphics have aged better than many games after it as well as a needed update, since the original is similar to FF4 in aging less gracefully. The music remains fantastic, since Shimomura was still on a hot streak from Street Fighter 2 writing banger after banger, and the new arrangements sound great. The game is completely voice acted and so far it's give or take, but I do like the charm of the Prehistory chapter being completely dialog free so the voices are just a bunch of grunts, gasps and exclaims. The story may start of with a bunch of stock archetypes from the trope library but then (without wishing to spoil) the second half turns the game over it's head, which was pretty new and daring for it's time. 

Right, now the good out, the not so good to bad in. By nature of being a game broken into 7 mini vignettes, not everyone will like the entire cast. All the characters are completely trope driven: Caveman dude, Kung Fu Master/Disciple, Ninja dude, Clint Eastwood, Ryu from Street Fighter, Anime Hero Kid dude and... the Egg Robot from MASK I suppose. And not only is there only one female protagonist in this dude ranch, to get her is completely optional as the other choices are... other dudes. Gameplay despite the drastic story setting changes, remains largely the same with all the characters not as diverse as one would think. And once the spectacle of the second half twist is done, the game degrades into typical familiar JRPG affair. I remembered the second half being heavily grindilicious and based from what I heard, the remake remembers it's lineage and bears it's grindy fangs at that point too. All the flaws are basically the byproduct of their era, and time only just soured them. 

But considering it's not that big of a JRPG, it's a nice pick up and play. It took me only a few hours to finish one chapter, so it's also an ideal Switch game. Even if I won't play this in portable mode for a bit, I'll probably finish the game sooner than later. 

TL/DR: Playing the Live A Live remake is like watching that Hellfish episode of the Simpsons. The old guard get to relive their past glories then conveniently ends with Grandpa Simpson still being silly old Grandpa Simpson. But it's a fun little ride and a good artifact to check out, especially from a company that was trying new and innovative ideas as opposed to becoming the company eerily similar to corporation Final Fantasy VII was fighting against.


----------



## narad

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Decided to play the Live A Live scenarios in chronological order, got the Prehistoric chapter done and doing Imperial China next.
> 
> I've been a strong advocate to not falling too hard into the traps of nostalgia as of late, so I'll admit it's hypocritical for me to buy a brand new console just so I can play a remake of a game originally released in 1994. So excuse me as I become a pig wallowing in a pile of nostalgia crap while I harp on about this game. But I'll harp on like an angel with Parkinson's if Squenix keep up with bringing their older, obscure property back from the dead for the rest of the world to play. And Live A Live is a game I'll wholeheartedly recommend to all the JRPG fans here.
> 
> Live A Live is a real odd duck, even back then it didn't do well in the local market thanks to Squaresoft and Enix's heavy hitters. But it planted the seeds of a ton of modern day influence in the genre. The battle system semi incorporated to Tales Of and Star Ocean series and Koudelka (who remembers that?), Toby Fox mined this game as much as he did Earthbound for dear life, members of the development team became part of what will become Chrono Trigger, composer Yoko Shimomura just jumped ship from Capcom then moving to bigger grander projects, and games like the latter day SaGa games and namely Octopath Traveler can point their lineage starting here.
> 
> As for the game itself... in some aspects it's aged well, in other's it's still a relic ghost of 90s past.
> 
> I do like the HD2D aesthetic that latter day 16 bit graphics have aged better than many games after it as well as a needed update, since the original is similar to FF4 in aging less gracefully. The music remains fantastic, since Shimomura was still on a hot streak from Street Fighter 2 writing banger after banger, and the new arrangements sound great. The game is completely voice acted and so far it's give or take, but I do like the charm of the Prehistory chapter being completely dialog free so the voices are just a bunch of grunts, gasps and exclaims. The story may start of with a bunch of stock archetypes from the trope library but then (without wishing to spoil) the second half turns the game over it's head, which was pretty new and daring for it's time.
> 
> Right, now the good out, the not so good to bad in. By nature of being a game broken into 7 mini vignettes, not everyone will like the entire cast. All the characters are completely trope driven: Caveman dude, Kung Fu Master/Disciple, Ninja dude, Clint Eastwood, Ryu from Street Fighter, Anime Hero Kid dude and... the Egg Robot from MASK I suppose. And not only is there only one female protagonist in this dude ranch, to get her is completely optional as the other choices are... other dudes. Gameplay despite the drastic story setting changes, remains largely the same with all the characters not as diverse as one would think. And once the spectacle of the second half twist is done, the game degrades into typical familiar JRPG affair. I remembered the second half being heavily grindilicious and based from what I heard, the remake remembers it's lineage and bears it's grindy fangs at that point too. All the flaws are basically the byproduct of their era, and time only just soured them.
> 
> But considering it's not that big of a JRPG, it's a nice pick up and play. It took me only a few hours to finish one chapter, so it's also an ideal Switch game. Even if I won't play this in portable mode for a bit, I'll probably finish the game sooner than later.
> 
> TL/DR: Playing the Live A Live remake is like watching that Hellfish episode of the Simpsons. The old guard get to relive their past glories then conveniently ends with Grandpa Simpson still being silly old Grandpa Simpson. But it's a fun little ride and a good artifact to check out, especially from a company that was trying new and innovative ideas as opposed to becoming the company eerily similar to corporation Final Fantasy VII was fighting against.


I heard "game of the year" from some classic game YouTuber. I'm tempted... I'm probably the exact demographic.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

narad said:


> I heard "game of the year" from some classic game YouTuber. I'm tempted... I'm probably the exact demographic.


It's definitely for the long time fans of the JRPG genre, enough of the classic nostalgia without the modern bloat. I do feel there's a lot of heart and effort put into the remake.


----------



## Werecow

As predicted, i'm straight on to Arkham City now, with interludes of Sekiro.


----------



## TedEH

I got to the end of Golden Sun.



Spoiler



Some random thoughts, not grouped or ordered in any way:

- It's old-school and you can feel it. IMO this one hasn't aged super well.
- The combat isn't super deep, but it works, and the swoosh effects still stand out, which is cool.
- I sometimes felt like I was cheesing the fights to get past them, since the difficulty got pretty steep near the end.
- I found the story gets kinda hard to follow after a while, which is bad, because the story is what tells you where to go. I got lost a few times and had to look up where to go.
- The world map similarly doesn't give much hint where you're supposed to be going, so you end up going down a lot of dead ends.
- The djinn monsters and the re-classing is kinda neat. I didn't tend to switch things up much once I found a pattern that worked for me though.
- Some of the music is pretty catchy.

It's not a bad game, and I didn't hate playing it, but the way it's aged makes it feel like a grind for a lot of it. It's sort of like in order to praise it, I feel like I need to tack on "for it's time" and "for a handheld title". The characters are otherwise generic and unmemorable. Some of the towns are pretty memorable, but not much is done with them. It has it's moments where you could start building some real meat to some characters or story elements, and then it just doesn't.

So it's..... ok. It's just ok.

Now back to trying to get through Halo 3, and maybe I'll finish Bayonetta before picking something new.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Gotta say, it's kind of bullshit that items in Sekiro are linked to specific endings/playthroughs. In order to get maximum vitality, you need to go for the Purification ending, which includes fighting Father Owl to get. It didn't even occur to me as I was doing Dragons Return ending, but fuck it, guess I'll have to do that on a different playthrough at a later date since I've missed the eavesdrops.


I warned you!!!
Any playthroughs of that game (well, NG ones anyway) I highly recommend this:






Sekiro Cheat Sheet


Cheat sheet for Sekiro. Checklist of things to do, items to get etc.




metarecursivo.github.io


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> I got to the end of Golden Sun.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Some random thoughts, not grouped or ordered in any way:
> 
> - It's old-school and you can feel it. IMO this one hasn't aged super well.
> - The combat isn't super deep, but it works, and the swoosh effects still stand out, which is cool.
> - I sometimes felt like I was cheesing the fights to get past them, since the difficulty got pretty steep near the end.
> - I found the story gets kinda hard to follow after a while, which is bad, because the story is what tells you where to go. I got lost a few times and had to look up where to go.
> - The world map similarly doesn't give much hint where you're supposed to be going, so you end up going down a lot of dead ends.
> - The djinn monsters and the re-classing is kinda neat. I didn't tend to switch things up much once I found a pattern that worked for me though.
> - Some of the music is pretty catchy.
> 
> It's not a bad game, and I didn't hate playing it, but the way it's aged makes it feel like a grind for a lot of it. It's sort of like in order to praise it, I feel like I need to tack on "for it's time" and "for a handheld title". The characters are otherwise generic and unmemorable. Some of the towns are pretty memorable, but not much is done with them. It has it's moments where you could start building some real meat to some characters or story elements, and then it just doesn't.
> 
> So it's..... ok. It's just ok.
> 
> Now back to trying to get through Halo 3, and maybe I'll finish Bayonetta before picking something new.



Pretty much my exact feelings on this game. Solid for a GBA turn-based RPG, but pretty dry in many aspects. The djinn-class-changing thing is probably the most interesting part about the game.


----------



## gabito

I'm playing Stick It To The Man.

Small, pretty funny game.


----------



## DarrellM5

Fallout 4..........again.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Got one trophy left on Mass Effect Legendary (insanity iii). For as many times as I’ve played these games, apparently they apparently haven’t gotten old.

Picked up Ace Combat 7 last week (85% off) as I was trying to explain arial maneuvers to my grandkids. The cursing was annoying so I just dropped out all of the chatter - missions are eerily quiet now. Lots of fun watching them figure stuff out (when they’re not randomly crashing into stuff for fun).


----------



## Werecow

Arkham City was a lot shorter than i remembered it. I mainly just did the story quest, but even the actual City was smaller than i remembered. Arkham Knight must have mingled with my memories.

On to Arkham Origins now.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Tales of Arise has captured my full attention. Stayed up till six in the morning playing it, and I don't know why, but I just cannot get enough of it. Good thing too, game finally got me off my two year Disco Elysium fanaticism.


----------



## TedEH

Finished the Halo 3 campaign today. Not much to say, 'cause it's Halo, and Halo is a known value at this point. Going from old-school console to playing on PC in 4k was a huge improvement. But also the game as a whole felt like a big improvement / refinement of everything before it. Except for the narrative - which felt kinda short but unmemorable at the same time. While it's party my own fault for playing in bursts, I didn't retain any of whatever was going on narratively. Something something fired a halo? Weren't those supposed to kill everyone? Meh. Shot some aliens. Drove some cars. The ending driving sequence felt like a callback to CE, but executed much better. Good game, would play again.


----------



## gabito

Bought a PS5 on impulse... I mean, I bought a PS4 when God of War was released in 2018, it's only logical to buy a PS5 for GoW Ragnarok. Or maybe not, who knows.

Anyway, we'll see if this thing is worth it when / if it arrives. At least I can keep playing my PS4 games on it, if nothing else.


----------



## wankerness

Make sure you keep your PS4 controllers, especially if you have the button attachment, since IMO they're much more ergonomic and I'd rather wear them out than PS5 controllers when playing PS4 games.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Make sure you keep your PS4 controllers, especially if you have the button attachment, since IMO they're much more ergonomic and I'd rather wear them out than PS5 controllers when playing PS4 games.



Yeah, I don't think I'm going to sell the PS4. I'll probably move it to another room, or just store it.


----------



## wankerness

First thing I played after my long vacation was sekiro, and beat guardian ape first try! Then discovered snake eyes mk 2 is easy if you do a double ichimonji every time you dodge the grab. 

I always forget how ridiculous it is that basically 10 minutes after fighting Ape you have to fight the dual guardian apes. Not good boss pacing in that case.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Make sure you keep your PS4 controllers since IMO they're much more ergonomic


This is something I never expected to read in my life. PS5 controllers aren't great but the PS4 controller is only a small step up from a SNES controller with spikes attached.


----------



## TedEH

Speaking of PS5 on an impulse - I jumped on an ad for one that was "mint" but somehow also "needs repair" at the same time, but for much lower price than I'll find any time soon.. Story I got was that it's overheating, which is usually a pretty straightforward fix. Took it home, tore it apart (why do screws on consoles always suck so much), redistributed the liquid metal junk to actually be in the right place - and so far so good. Was able to play that astros playroom thing for an hour or two without any problem. We'll see if it stands up.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> This is something I never expected to read in my life. PS5 controllers aren't great but the PS4 controller is only a small step up from a SNES controller with spikes attached.


The ps5 controller is an even bulkier version of the PS4 controller and the stupid better vibration is pointless with most ps5 games and all ps4 games. Pa4 controllers are good for thumb cramps thanks to the centered left stick, but at least they were small! Xbox controllers are definitely superior as are switch pro controllers.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> Speaking of PS5 on an impulse - I jumped on an ad for one that was "mint" but somehow also "needs repair" at the same time, but for much lower price than I'll find any time soon.. Story I got was that it's overheating, which is usually a pretty straightforward fix. Took it home, tore it apart (why do screws on consoles always suck so much), redistributed the liquid metal junk to actually be in the right place - and so far so good. Was able to play that astros playroom thing for an hour or two without any problem. We'll see if it stands up.



That's awesome! Maybe I can find a similar deal -- I'm not scared to open up a console haha. I want to play a handful of PS4 games, but I guess it would really make more sense to just jump on a PS5 since because backwards compatibility.


----------



## TedEH

I'm not 100% sure how the compatibility works, and had entirely forgotten that my ps4 digital stuff would work on the 5, so that gives me some stuff to play around with. There's some ads nearby for people selling the ps4/5 combo vouchers for Forbidden West, so it's tempting to give that a play too since I can get it cheap.

If you can find a similar deal - cleaning dirt out of a PS5 is really easy, since sooo much of the volume of that giant console is just air space and it's all pretty accessible, but the flip side is that if you want to do the standard re-paste type job, the ps4 might be easier First time I've ever seen liquid metal in person and maaaaan is it messy. It gets everywhere.


----------



## Choop

Yeah liquid metal makes me nervous since it's conductive -- if it gets on the wrong thing it could cause a short. From what I read the PS5 can do almost all PS4 games, at least via disc. I really just want to play Bloodborne, The Last of Us PT 2, and the Shadow of the Colossus games from PS4.


----------



## wankerness

The PS5 has a very short list of PS4 games that don't work correctly on it. I have a LOT of games and I think the only one I've ever played that won't work on PS5 is Assassins Creed Syndicate. With storage expansions, you can run most PS4 games a lot better than even on PS4 Pro (typically the framerates are the same as PS4 Pro but the loading times are considerably shorter if you have them installed on an SSD). A handful of games, mostly Ubisoft, have patches that let them run at 60 fps on a PS5 but they're locked to 30 on PS4 Pro.


----------



## narad

Finished the first sub-story of "Live A Live". It's very charming, and actually has some pretty lewd dialogue options. But man, the auto-save doesn't work at important times and there are stretches of time you don't have any option to manually save, and I definitely don't have the combat down -- more like 70% to win most encounters -- so wound up repeating the last 30 mins like 4 times before getting the ending I wanted. For someone that fights for any video game time, it was a bit of a letdown to make me do boring parts over and over.


----------



## MFB

Choop said:


> Yeah liquid metal makes me nervous since it's conductive -- if it gets on the wrong thing it could cause a short. From what I read the PS5 can do almost all PS4 games, at least via disc. I really just want to play Bloodborne, The Last of Us PT 2, and the Shadow of the Colossus games from PS4.



I own the SoTC remaster, and having not played it since the PS2 release, the controls are pretty fucking awful; like, confusingly so.


----------



## Choop

MFB said:


> I own the SoTC remaster, and having not played it since the PS2 release, the controls are pretty fucking awful; like, confusingly so.



Hah! I wonder about it. I remember the controls for the PS2 one being kind of awkward, and I think the grip control was tied to the pressure sensitive PS2 buttons. Also the low frame rate on the PS2 one just makes it difficult to revisit anyway.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

narad said:


> Finished the first sub-story of "Live A Live". It's very charming, and actually has some pretty lewd dialogue options. But man, the auto-save doesn't work at important times and there are stretches of time you don't have any option to manually save, and I definitely don't have the combat down -- more like 70% to win most encounters -- so wound up repeating the last 30 mins like 4 times before getting the ending I wanted. For someone that fights for any video game time, it was a bit of a letdown to make me do boring parts over and over.



Which scenario did you start off with? 

The battle is rather primitive, for lack of a better word. Though it's easily exploitable now the remake has the ATB meter visible unlike the original. Come to think of it, we can be pretty sure Trey Parker and Matt Stone played the hell out of the original since they ripped the combat right off this for Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole.


----------



## narad

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Which scenario did you start off with?
> 
> The battle is rather primitive, for lack of a better word. Though it's easily exploitable now the remake has the ATB meter visible unlike the original. Come to think of it, we can be pretty sure Trey Parker and Matt Stone played the hell out of the original since they ripped the combat right off this for Stick of Truth and Fractured But Whole.



Western one. So like literally died one time after watching the whole credits.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

narad said:


> Western one. So like literally died one time after watching the whole credits.



Yeah that one was rough. There's no warning on what the general game mechanics are about so you basically don't have much to play around in terms of traditional JRPGs go. And the whole conceit is trying so a puzzle in a time limit to make the boss easier. 

I was surprised about the lewd dialogue myself. The English dub actors really hammed it up, starkly contrasts the Japanese original. But considering the setting, I didn't mind it.


----------



## Mathemagician

PS4 controller hurts my knuckles so bad. Such a terrible outdated design. The PS5 is much more comfortable and I’m glad they ignored all the “purist” nerds who don’t leave the house and moved away from that awful shape. It was like a 2 by 4 with two toilet paper rolls coming off it.


----------



## Choop

I haven't purchased a new controller for PC yet, but I really will probably get something like the MS Pro Controller or something -- so I can map that dang L3 button to one of the flick/triggers on the back. I don't know if it's just my specific XBone controller or what, but it will depress if I press in any direction a little too hard, and it definitely got me killed more than a few times in Sekiro and Elden Ring. .-.

I still haven't had the chance to handle a PS5 controller yet. Oh lately though I have been playing Zelda ALttP with my 8bitdo SNES controller via bluetooth, and that controller is nice and solid! They have an Xbox variant with some back buttons -- wonder how good that one is.


----------



## gabito

At least the PS4's controllers were an improvement compared to the PS3's, which were more or less like toys. Battery duration was great, though, mine still last for days and they're originals from the PS3 I bought in 2013.

I never owned an XBox, but its controllers are great.

I like the PS4's controllers, though. We'll see about the PS5's.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> PS4 controller hurts my knuckles so bad. Such a terrible outdated design. The PS5 is much more comfortable and I’m glad they ignored all the “purist” nerds who don’t leave the house and moved away from that awful shape. It was like a 2 by 4 with two toilet paper rolls coming off it.


I'm guessing that it probably comes down partly to hand size. I find the PS4 one much more comfortable and the PS5 one verging on being too big, but I have little girl hands.

It's partly that with PS4 I was ALWAYS using the button attachment and found it indispensable for DS games (or any other game that required you to actively use any face buttons at the same time as the right stick). I have a PS5 controller that I modded myself to have back paddles, but it's not nearly as comfortable as the official attachment they put out for PS4. There's less of a difference when dealing with an out-of-the-box controller with no back buttons.

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about with "purist nerds." I thought the big problem with PS controller design is putting the left stick far away from where your thumb is, having the arrow pad be the thing your thumb doesn't have to strain to reach, and they didn't fix that with the ps5. What did they fix, against the will of "purist nerds?"


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> I'm guessing that it probably comes down partly to hand size. I find the PS4 one much more comfortable and the PS5 one verging on being too big, but I have little girl hands.
> 
> It's partly that with PS4 I was ALWAYS using the button attachment and found it indispensable for DS games (or any other game that required you to actively use any face buttons at the same time as the right stick). I have a PS5 controller that I modded myself to have back paddles, but it's not nearly as comfortable as the official attachment they put out for PS4. There's less of a difference when dealing with an out-of-the-box controller with no back buttons.
> 
> I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about with "purist nerds." I thought the big problem with PS controller design is putting the left stick far away from where your thumb is, having the arrow pad be the thing your thumb doesn't have to strain to reach, and they didn't fix that with the ps5. What did they fix, against the will of "purist nerds?"



The overall shape of the PS5 controller is much closer to the curves/angles of the ergonomic Xbox controllers - because that’s a really good design. A lot of the dorks were mad that it didn’t have the same look that Sony controllers have had since essentially the ps1. (not you, you seem to have a good head in your shoulders).

I am so so glad they made the changes they did. And yes I agree that they should have finally flipped the Left analog with the D-pad but we can’t win em all right away.


----------



## TedEH

I grabbed God of War (Dad of War?) and started that up. (Backlog be damned, I guess, hah.) I was able to get maybe 2-3 hours in without the PS5 melting down, so the fix seems promising. This game is both almost exactly what I expected, but also kinda surprising in some ways. Whoever made this has clearly played the old God of War games, and there's more nods than I was expecting. I was ready for it to completely depart from the old games, but it's got more of that dna than I anticipated. It looks fuggin sharp in 4k - to the point that I find the UI stuff hard to read on my older 1080p TV.


----------



## wankerness

Beat the Emma/Ashina boss today in Sekiro after massively raising my blood pressure. This version of Ishiin gives me more trouble than sword saint, I think, though I guess it's not fair to compare this NG+ version to that NG version. I died a LOT on this clown, many of the deaths coming from getting the Emma fight down to a science where I didn't have to use any heals (I think she's harder than Genichiro as an "intro phase") and then a few learning both his first and second phases. I ended up cheesing his last phase by spamming Dragon Flash at him from across the arena, but even getting him down that last sliver of health was a risky proposition that almost resulted in a game over. The most annoying thing about him is that stupid move where he makes fire shoot of the ground and you can't at all see if you're standing on a bad patch cause of the camera if you're anywhere close to a wall. Ugh. If you could do any practice on that phase without having to get through the first two I'm sure it would be pretty easy to learn, but I'm always nervous at that point cause I don't want to have to redo everything else! Oh well, probably never doing this boss again since now I have all the associated trophies with that ending on both PS and Steam.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Started Shadow of the Tomb Raider last night, even though I still haven't beat Breath of the Wild, though I plan on trying to get through that soon. 

Only got a bit past the prologue/tutorial bit at the beginning but more of the same, and I loved the gameplay of the last 2 in the reboot series. 

Actually my favourite thing about it is that there's options to just let you hold buttons instead of mash then in those QTE-type moments, or just hold the thumbstick instead of rotate the stick, so those are welcome QOL things that other games could learn from (looking at you, Monster Hunter).


----------



## wankerness

BlackMastodon said:


> Started Shadow of the Tomb Raider last night, even though I still haven't beat Breath of the Wild, though I plan on trying to get through that soon.
> 
> Only got a bit past the prologue/tutorial bit at the beginning but more of the same, and I loved the gameplay of the last 2 in the reboot series.
> 
> Actually my favourite thing about it is that there's options to just let you hold buttons instead of mash then in those QTE-type moments, or just hold the thumbstick instead of rotate the stick, so those are welcome QOL things that other games could learn from (looking at you, Monster Hunter).


I got a ways into that but stopped at some point. It is a LOT less combat-heavy than the previous two, and the puzzles are a lot more involved and common. I think I got annoyed with one with spinning flames and never went back to it. Not a bad game, but I didn't like the direction they took the series with that one.


----------



## Empryrean

Anyone else playing DNF Duel? I haven't had this much fun in a fighting game in so long


----------



## Ralyks

So there's 104 hours and 33 minutes right there.

Anyway, probably play Omori later. Although getting the Platinum in Cyberpunk is making me wonder about going for the platinum for Yakuza 7...


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I just beat Maneater. It's a fun game but very repetitive.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Finished up the last trophy for the Mass Effect Trilogy remaster, now either to do the same for Spider Man or dig into something new like Red Dead Redemption or Ghost of Tsushima.


----------



## gabito

Got my PS5 today.

PS5 controllers *definitely* feel better in my hands. The same way that PS4 controllers felt better than the PS3's.

It's a shame that the PS5 game library is... scant? almost two years after it was released. I mean, luckily I can still play all my PS4 games (yay, finally SONY!) with way shorter loading times, and some have their PS5 "versions" (faster framerate, some graphical improvements, mostly the same game), which is all nice but I guess we'll have to wait a few more years to see the console's full potential. Nothing new here, the same happened with the PS3 (and I guess the PS4 too), but it's always a bit frustrating.

Yeah, I know Demon's Souls is out there, but there's no way I'm playing that. That game on the PS3 left me with almost no will to play ever again.

No, I'm not gonna play Elder Ring either, even if it looks absolutely *GORGEOUS* to me.

Oh, and it sucks that R* is charging 40 dollars for GTA V's PS5 version. Fuck that, fuck them, that's totally a shit move (*).

(*) I'll probably still buy it... again. Maybe on sale.


----------



## gabito

Oh, I'm currently replaying The Witcher 3, now on the PS5. 

It looks the same (duh), but it runs generally better and loads way faster so there's that.


----------



## wankerness

I'm waiting for the upcoming PS5 patch before replaying that since it's supposed to be soon.


----------



## wankerness

If you don't want to play Demon's Souls (I think you should, if you have PS+ you can cheese it bigtime with uploading saves as a form of game freeze), the other big great graphical showcase on the system right now is Returnal, which is a roguelike that gets compared to soulslikes all the time cause of its difficulty. It sounds a lot harder/more frustrating than Demon's Souls or especially Elden Ring. I haven't played it cause it still hasn't gotten cheap enough for me.

Horizon Forbidden West is probably the best-looking game on the system to my eyes, but I definitely think it's worse than Demon's Souls and Elden Ring. And the PS4 versions of HFW and Elden Ring really do hold up quite well against the PS5 versions and as a result the PS5 versions kind of feel graphically held back by the cross-platform thing. I think Demon's Souls is widely considered to still be the best-looking game on the system. Except maybe Ratchet and Clank or whatever (I get that franchise confused with Jak and Dexter, never played either).

Most of the other "PS5" games I've played are just faster load-time versions of things that barely look different from PS4 games. AC Valhalla, Ghost of Tsushima, Far Cry 6. I'd highly advise not playing either AC:V or FC6, they suck.

I'm still hoping for the native PS5 versions of RDR2 and Witcher 3. Haven't played the first, and want to replay the second. Guessing the first should be a graphical powerhouse.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> PS5 controllers *definitely* feel better in my hands.


I agree, but I found it wasn't as huge a leap as from the 3 to the 4. Same thing with the xbox controllers. The jump from 360/ps3 era controllers to xbone/ps4 felt huuuuge to me. Since then, it's still improvement, but feels incremental. I found the ps4 controller feels good in terms of build quality, but it still had that old-school playstation shape - the Ps5 controllers biggest improvement, to me, is less the build quality and more the ergonomics of it.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> If you don't want to play Demon's Souls (I think you should, if you have PS+ you can cheese it bigtime with uploading saves as a form of game freeze), the other big great graphical showcase on the system right now is Returnal, which is a roguelike that gets compared to soulslikes all the time cause of its difficulty. It sounds a lot harder/more frustrating than Demon's Souls or especially Elden Ring. I haven't played it cause it still hasn't gotten cheap enough for me.
> 
> Horizon Forbidden West is probably the best-looking game on the system to my eyes, but I definitely think it's worse than Demon's Souls and Elden Ring. And the PS4 versions of HFW and Elden Ring really do hold up quite well against the PS5 versions and as a result the PS5 versions kind of feel graphically held back by the cross-platform thing. I think Demon's Souls is widely considered to still be the best-looking game on the system. Except maybe Ratchet and Clank or whatever (I get that franchise confused with Jak and Dexter, never played either).
> 
> Most of the other "PS5" games I've played are just faster load-time versions of things that barely look different from PS4 games. AC Valhalla, Ghost of Tsushima, Far Cry 6. I'd highly advise not playing either AC:V or FC6, they suck.
> 
> I'm still hoping for the native PS5 versions of RDR2 and Witcher 3. Haven't played the first, and want to replay the second. Guessing the first should be a graphical powerhouse.



Yeah, AC:V is super long and boring. It looks nice, though. 

I got HFW on my PS4, I’ll check the PS5 version if only to see how good it looks. 

I was already well into this TW3 playthrough, so it makes sense to me to keep playing it. I’m sure I’ll play it again when they patch it, though. I really like it. 

Anyway, I’m downloading Cyberpunk 2077 (which I already beat on the PS4) which will undoubtedly run and look better now. Not that any of that will make the story or characters any better, but it’s still an enjoyable game.


----------



## narad

"Playing", or at least waiting for an update to install to try out the new sim setup...


----------



## wankerness

Well, I beat the Dragon boss on Sekiro NG+ and did the pot noble quests for the last needed lapis lazulis, so now I'm down to needing the "All Abilities" trophy for the Platinum. I'm on NG+, and grinding this clown in the Castle antechamber that drops like 2.1k exp every reset (~10 seconds). This still is an insane grind. I need 35 more ability points (!!!!) after doing two clears with all the minibosses with added material grinding! This game's EXP requirements for unlocking all abilities are insane. I bet you'd need to get to like NG+6 without any grinding to get this trophy. 

So yeah, looks like I'll be killing this dude for at least 4 hours or so if I want that last trophy. Damn. Good game, but damn. I forgot how bad the exp grind for that last trophy was on PS4. Maybe I did more material grinding on NG+ or something and thus I didn't need THAT many from this guy.

After this, I dunno. Might watch movies for a while instead of playing games. My brain is kind of rewired to only like Fromsoft games these days. I think I had ONE trophy left for HFW (playing a few games of Machine Strike) but I just couldn't make myself do it.


----------



## NoodleFace

Xenoblade Chronicles 3. This series is ALMOST topping my favorite RPGs: FF6 and Chrono trigger

This one is incredible so far.


----------



## ImNotAhab

Just finished Spider Man Miles Morales. Quite disappointing, a real mediocre cash grab with an absolutely dreadful antagonist. 
Miles was good though.


----------



## rokket2005

I rolled credits on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 yesterday. Game of the year. I booted into post game and suffice it to say I'll still be playing it for another few months probably.



NoodleFace said:


> Xenoblade Chronicles 3. This series is ALMOST topping my favorite RPGs: FF6 and Chrono trigger
> 
> This one is incredible so far.



FF6 and Chrono Cross were my favorite games for 15-20 years. Then Xenoblade 2 completely obliterated them. I can't really compare 3 vs. 2 yet, because it'll take me quite a bit of reflection to determine that, but there's so much to love in 3, and post game stuff is always pretty great in Xeno games too. Initial thoughts though are that I still prefer the characters a lot more in 2 than 3.


----------



## NoodleFace

rokket2005 said:


> I rolled credits on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 yesterday. Game of the year. I booted into post game and suffice it to say I'll still be playing it for another few months probably.
> 
> 
> 
> FF6 and Chrono Cross were my favorite games for 15-20 years. Then Xenoblade 2 completely obliterated them. I can't really compare 3 vs. 2 yet, because it'll take me quite a bit of reflection to determine that, but there's so much to love in 3, and post game stuff is always pretty great in Xeno games too. Initial thoughts though are that I still prefer the characters a lot more in 2 than 3.


I think for me 1 = 2 > 3 so far. XC1 holds a very special place in my heart, and I cannot believe it was a Wii game. XC2 I actually hated when I first started... but then came around and its one of my favorite games of all time.


----------



## p0ke

TedEH said:


> The jump from 360/ps3 era controllers to xbone/ps4 felt huuuuge to me.



Yeah, but you know which jump really felt huge? The update from OG Xbox to Xbox 360, especially if going from the original Duke-controller to 360. I also had the S-type controller which was OK, but the 360 controller was just the best controller ever at that point. After that the xbone controller felt mostly like a cosmetic upgrade tbh (not counting the hugely improved connectivity with other devices, the 360 controller is a pain in the ass to use with PC/mobile compared to the xbone controller that just works out of the box on everything).


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Completely forgot the PS5 version of Cyberpunk was available. I'm gonna try to do a bunch of side activities before continuing the main story. Mainly because I know Rogue requires a few grand before you can even start that segment of the game.

Not sure how I feel about the haptic feedback on the DS5 though. At times it reminds me of having a really crap 3rd party controller from the PS2 days.


----------



## Choop

Replaying Zelda: A Link to the Past lately. Still super fun -- will probably run through some of the portable Zelda games after this one. I've never played any of them besides Link's Awakening.

Played a few games of Hell Let Loose last Sunday. The game's been updated with a lot of new stuff including night mode maps, and the Germans can have the Panther tank now. Scary! Had an especially fun game at Foy as a machine gunner. There's so much depth to this game.

Also trying to work myself up to actually trying to learn Tekken 7 for real.


----------



## NoodleFace

Carrion Rocket said:


> Completely forgot the PS5 version of Cyberpunk was available. I'm gonna try to do a bunch of side activities before continuing the main story. Mainly because I know Rogue requires a few grand before you can even start that segment of the game.
> 
> Not sure how I feel about the haptic feedback on the DS5 though. At times it reminds me of having a really crap 3rd party controller from the PS2 days.


there are some games that do haptic really well. I think it's nice tech that can for sure be improved. It's not like the useless touchpad in the middle of the controller lol


----------



## wankerness

NoodleFace said:


> there are some games that do haptic really well. I think it's nice tech that can for sure be improved. It's not like the useless touchpad in the middle of the controller lol


The touchpad has been used by a handful of games. Like, Gravity Rush 2 you had to do different directional swipes on it for different actions. Honestly I feel like something that can actually be used as a controller is more relevant to gameplay than some motors that make your hands go brrr, but what do I know. A lot of games also use it as the "pause" button, but that doesn't take advantage of the touchscreen aspect.

I feel like the last game that the vibration actually mattered to gameplay was Zelda: OOT.  I often turn it off cause all it does is make my hands hurt.


----------



## gabito

Like everything else, it more or less depends on each game's implementation.

I'm kind of liking the dualsense's adaptative triggers, but I'm indifferent to the rumble thing. I'm giving it a chance to see how well these fancy controllers work, but I might turn it off as I always do since the PS3.

Not sure about the controller's speaker, in some games it's super loud, and in others it's OK. But having different sound sources sounds confusing to my old brain, I tend to prefer having all the sound coming from the same place.

I think the touchpad works better now? It's been kind of useless in my PS4 games. Not precise enough, and I can't remember any games using it very well (not that the touchpad would allow it).

All those features - and the controller's lights- look like gimmicks to me, I can live without them. Although as I said the adaptative triggers have been helpful to some extent, I can measure how much pressure I need to apply better. But anyway, so far these look like very well built and comfortable controllers in my hands.


----------



## NoodleFace

I thinks back4blood handles haptic very well on ps5. The triggers locked in certain positions and vibrated hard while shooting. Not sure so much on other games


----------



## wankerness

I find it kind of annoying most of the time. It's like, oh, if I play the PS5 version, it takes more effort to press R2 to draw my character's bow than on the PS4 version! Great!

I've heard Astro's Playroom is by far the best tech demo for the possibilities of the controller, but I haven't played it.


----------



## gabito

It's pretty good (and short).

It feels more Nintendo-ish than your typical Playstation game. Even the enemies look like they were ripped from some unreleased Mario game.


----------



## Mathemagician

I played back 4 blood on launch and it wasn’t for me. Has it gotten better? I didn’t like all the cards/builds bs. What I liked about the original games was the dumb fun of it all. Pick a characters whose voice likes you like, and then run around shooting/melee-ing everything in sight.

I did like that the levels felt bigger/many were interesting designs. But that was the only “improvement”.

Idk personally I wanted simple gameplay. I’m fine with guns having upgrades. But I’d prefer single straight upgrades where the next color quality is always an improvement. Stuff that’s a side grade is not the kind of “depth” I’m looking for in a zombie shooter.

Feels bad as I waited 10 years for a sequel to Left 2 Dead: Tokyo Drift.


----------



## wankerness

I think Left 4 Dead 2 was the last multiplayer game I ever played with random people (well, besides my short experiments with WoW and Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV, and a couple rounds of Fall Guys). It was fun! I have zero interest in "Back 4 Blood" though.

Not having ANY RL friends who play any games other than CoD, GTA online, and Halo is very disappointing. And I barely have any of those anymore, they all have kids and thus online gaming isn't going to happen again for several more years minimum.


----------



## NoodleFace

Back4Blood was fun in that I played the campaign with my wife and some friends and we had fun... then had 0 desire to play it again.

Card system was a "good try" but fell flat for me. I still enjoyed the game for what it was. Not worth the $60 (x2) price tag on launch though


----------



## KnightBrolaire

I'm just going to wait for warhammer darktide to scratch that L4D2 itch.


----------



## Ralyks

gabito said:


> Oh, and it sucks that R* is charging 40 dollars for GTA V's PS5 version. Fuck that, fuck them, that's totally a shit move (*).
> 
> (*) I'll probably still buy it... again. Maybe on sale.



In their defense, online was free and the campaign was only 10 bucks for like the first two months after it dropped on PS5.

Anyway, bouncing between finishing Stray, and playing Omori and Shin Megami Tensai 3. Also started a Twitch channel for both having as well as streaming guitar practice and writing and such.
https://twitch.tv/strangeafc If anyone cares. Or just follow to get those rookie numbers up.


----------



## wankerness

I last played GTAV...on xbox 360. Can't believe it's still a "new release." I wish I'd finished it but I can't comprehend replaying all that with how dated the shooting felt even when it really was new. I'm guessing I was around 2/3 through, I'd done a fair number of Trevor missions.


----------



## Mathemagician

I played GTA4 (not 5) about 6+ years after it came out and got up to my first “Hey Nico” phone call.

First time I learned those games had a storyline.



KnightBrolaire said:


> I'm just going to wait for warhammer darktide to scratch that L4D2 itch.



I did pick up vermintide cheap a year or two ago. If it had more interesting levels/felt better to play it might not be so dead online.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I last played GTAV...on xbox 360. Can't believe it's still a "new release." I wish I'd finished it but I can't comprehend replaying all that with how dated the shooting felt even when it really was new. I'm guessing I was around 2/3 through, I'd done a fair number of Trevor missions.



They’re milking it and will keep doing it until 6 happens. Same as Skyrim…

I love GTA 5, I played the story maybe 6 or 8 times since 2013… and yeah, generally speaking the controls and some other gameplay aspects were and are outdated. 

They somehow managed to make it worse in RDR 2. Maybe if they released games every 2 or 3 years instead of 5, 6 or more they would be aware of some of the improvements modern games have implemented. But, who knows?

Still love the game, though. Not GTA online, fuck that.


----------



## TedEH

Not quite a story about a game in particular, but it's gaming related, so heeeere it goes:

I saw a decent deal for a new 3DS, and I went for it, 'cause I'm a sucker for novelty and want to see if the 3d is actually any better than it was when I borrowed a friends original 3ds years ago. Get there, he's reset it so I'd have to go through all the setup to try again, but it looks clean etc and it boots fine. Take it home. Realize at this point it's a European model and region locked out of any of the games I have for it. I had meant to do a system transfer from a 2DS, and now that seems out of the question. Send the guy a message to confront him about it, and he makes up excuses about how it's "easy to change the region, just google it" then ghosts me.

Some googling later, and I learn that you caaaaan technically change the region of the console, but it tends to get you booted from the shop, so that's a no-go. At least the thing is easy to put homebrew stuff onto, which takes the region lock off - I just don't trust putting my "real" account on it to get my store content. It's also shockingly easy to just download.... well, anything. I don't normally like to use the yar-har-har method to play any games, but to grab the one or two titles I already owned I guess isn't the end of the world. Past that, I can use this thing to rip the games I own physically, which is kinda cool.


----------



## Werecow

I was just about to play Spider-Man for the first time (due to the PC release). Installed it, then decided literally at the last minute that i'd do my usual thing of waiting a few weeks to see if a game needs patching.

I guess another Sekiro run couldn't hurt.


----------



## NoodleFace

Miles morales? The good news is it takes like 6 hours to beat


----------



## gabito

NoodleFace said:


> Miles morales? The good news is it takes like 6 hours to beat



Yeah, that game should be DLC.


----------



## StevenC

I discovered Art of Rally on Game Pass yesterday and am now totally hooked. Such a perfect little game.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Not quite a story about a game in particular, but it's gaming related, so heeeere it goes:
> 
> I saw a decent deal for a new 3DS, and I went for it, 'cause I'm a sucker for novelty and want to see if the 3d is actually any better than it was when I borrowed a friends original 3ds years ago. Get there, he's reset it so I'd have to go through all the setup to try again, but it looks clean etc and it boots fine. Take it home. Realize at this point it's a European model and region locked out of any of the games I have for it. I had meant to do a system transfer from a 2DS, and now that seems out of the question. Send the guy a message to confront him about it, and he makes up excuses about how it's "easy to change the region, just google it" then ghosts me.
> 
> Some googling later, and I learn that you caaaaan technically change the region of the console, but it tends to get you booted from the shop, so that's a no-go. At least the thing is easy to put homebrew stuff onto, which takes the region lock off - I just don't trust putting my "real" account on it to get my store content. It's also shockingly easy to just download.... well, anything. I don't normally like to use the yar-har-har method to play any games, but to grab the one or two titles I already owned I guess isn't the end of the world. Past that, I can use this thing to rip the games I own physically, which is kinda cool.


I made sure to buy one with the 3D capabilities, and pretty quickly found myself just turning it off and leaving it off. It's an interesting gimmick but I have yet to see a single example of it really affecting gameplay. It mostly just makes your eyes go out of focus.


----------



## TedEH

I know it's divisive, or maybe debatable is the word I'm looking for, but I've always been a fan of 3d. I had a 3d vision monitor, I thought the original 3ds was pretty cool. I'm one of the few people who I think would rather leave the 3d all the way up most of the time. Now that I can see the difference, I think it's safe to say the "new" models did improve the 3d a fair bit.


----------



## Mathemagician

….I completely fucking forgot that the 3ds was fucking 3D.


----------



## TedEH

I'm ok with being the weirdo who gets suckered in by novelty. The only downside is that when cool stuff doesn't catch on, you don't get any more of it. I liked 3D-Vision, but that's gone. No more 3d tvs. No more high-frame-rate movies. I'm worried a bit that VR is going to die again.


----------



## narad

TedEH said:


> I'm ok with being the weirdo who gets suckered in by novelty. The only downside is that when cool stuff doesn't catch on, you don't get any more of it. I liked 3D-Vision, but that's gone. No more 3d tvs. No more high-frame-rate movies. I'm worried a bit that VR is going to die again.



Maybe but man was Skyrim VR an experience.


----------



## wankerness

3D TVs going away is actually annoying, I had a number of 3D blu-rays that were pretty cool, especially the old vintage movies like House of Wax that had the real deal 3D instead of those crappy digital conversions in the 2010s. But, I can't watch them in 3D anymore after my 2012 plasma died! It's too bad, since 3D discs keep coming out (ex, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, Parasite, Robot Monster), but you just can't see them in 3D anymore unless you buy a projector that supports it.

VR is a whole different beast from 3DS, that actually radically changes the experience.

The 3DS version of 3D actively makes games worse, IMO. It just makes it so parts of the image are blurry instead of the whole thing being clear, basically, and there's no depth I've ever seen in a game that wasn't just as obvious in 2D as in 3D. Note that I've only played the 3DS Zelda games and Star Fox.


----------



## CanserDYI

I've still yet to try any form of real VR outside of the shitty cell phone ones from like Alcatel which are just a phone holder for your head.


----------



## Mathemagician

I really wanted to play the borderlands VR. But never got around to buying one of the birth control helmets I’d need to use it. 

It’s still on my to-do list but first I need to decide what I’m replacing my old 42” tv with as it finally died on me.


----------



## TedEH

narad said:


> Maybe but man was Skyrim VR an experience.


You know..... I've always been pretty critical of Skyrim, for a lot of reasons, but I think the VR version might be the thing that redeems it for me, if I ever get around to trying that.

If Starfield comes out in VR, I'd be all over that. Doesn't seem likely though.


----------



## HarveyForte

Anyone here play the shin megami series? SMTV, Strange Journey, Nocturne, Persona, etc 

Soul hackers comes out in less than 10 days and I’m so pumped.


----------



## rokket2005

I've been on a huge Atlus kick basically since SMT V came out. Played SMT V, P5R, P4G, SMT IV, and 13 Sentinels since then. I'm looking forward to Soul Hackers 2, but I don't know that I'll get it at launch with how Atlus pricing seems to go. Plus it's not like I don't have any other games to play until it goes on sale. I think when I need a break from XC3 I'm going to play through Tokyo Mirage Sessions.


----------



## HarveyForte

Tokyo Mirage Sessions was actually refreshing even though it’s way more…anime. 

And I agree on the Altus pricing. The amount of DLC on launches is insane.


----------



## Spaced Out Ace

wankerness said:


> 3D TVs going away is actually annoying, I had a number of 3D blu-rays that were pretty cool, especially the old vintage movies like House of Wax that had the real deal 3D instead of those crappy digital conversions in the 2010s. But, I can't watch them in 3D anymore after my 2012 plasma died! It's too bad, since 3D discs keep coming out (ex, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, Parasite, Robot Monster), but you just can't see them in 3D anymore unless you buy a projector that supports it.
> 
> VR is a whole different beast from 3DS, that actually radically changes the experience.
> 
> The 3DS version of 3D actively makes games worse, IMO. It just makes it so parts of the image are blurry instead of the whole thing being clear, basically, and there's no depth I've ever seen in a game that wasn't just as obvious in 2D as in 3D. Note that I've only played the 3DS Zelda games and Star Fox.


Charles Band's Parasite from the Empire Picture days?


----------



## TedEH

HarveyForte said:


> Anyone here play the shin megami series? SMTV, Strange Journey, Nocturne, Persona, etc


I've played a few Persona games. Fun, sure, but I find they drag on a little too long and are narratively kinda juvenile (bordering on 3 edgy 5 me at times). I've got a copy of Devil Summoner I might try out at some point - I'm at least mildly curious how different other SMT titles are from Persona.


----------



## Ralyks

HarveyForte said:


> Anyone here play the shin megami series? SMTV, Strange Journey, Nocturne, Persona, etc


Persona 5 is one of my top 3 games, I'm paying through SMT3 Nocturne HD now, I have Persona 1 and both P2s on my PSTV/Vita, I have P4G on Vita but probably just going to wait for the PS4 port (same with P3P), and I'm grabbing Soul Hackers 2 when it comes out next week. Even contemplating grabbing SMTV on Switch.

Anyway, all that aside, Rollerdrome is kind of addicting. Tony Hawk but instead of skateboards, it's roller skates and guns.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I know it's divisive, or maybe debatable is the word I'm looking for, but I've always been a fan of 3d. I had a 3d vision monitor, I thought the original 3ds was pretty cool. I'm one of the few people who I think would rather leave the 3d all the way up most of the time. Now that I can see the difference, I think it's safe to say the "new" models did improve the 3d a fair bit.


I used to always play with 3D on a little bit because it gave it that depth which was nice. It's the early 2010s 3D where the screen is a box behind, rather than earlier pop out of the screen 3D. Imo it just makes it look nicer most of the time. 

However, since brain things have happened to me I absolutely cannot use the 3D anymore. I know the original 3DS had trouble for people with glasses, and just didn't work for others, but everyone I knew who who had problems before found the N3DS to just work. Unless they were one of the people to whom it gave headaches.


----------



## gabito

I played a few hours of Metro Exodus. It looks very nice, voice acting is terrible, story and characters were uninteresting, bored me terribly, uninstalled it.

Back to Miles Morales collect-a-thon activities and side missions, I guess. Mindless _fun_.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Been playing more Cyberpunk on the PS Quintuple. The haptic feedback is growing on me. I'm gonna need a bigger TV.


----------



## Crungy

I got into No Man's Sky a couple weeks ago and I'm hooked. I wished I started it sooner even though it sounds like it's come a long way in recent times.


----------



## Empryrean

I've been reeled back into Melty Blood Lumina with the funy cat. After playing a bunch of Arcsys fighters for a while it feels so fast in comparison (in a good way)


----------



## st2012

Went back to New World after hearing that they've updated it in the last couple months. Maybe it'll stick this time.


----------



## p0ke

I was finally able to order an Xbox Series X, so now I'm waiting for Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 to come on sale  And maybe finally I'll be able to beat Midir in DS3 when I get a console that doesn't lag and controllers that don't disconnect randomly. Also I'm sure I'll enjoy Mass Effect Legendary Edition way more with better graphics.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I was finally able to order an Xbox Series X, so now I'm waiting for Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 to come on sale  And maybe finally I'll be able to beat Midir in DS3 when I get a console that doesn't lag and controllers that don't disconnect randomly. Also I'm sure I'll enjoy Mass Effect Legendary Edition way more with better graphics.


Does ME Legendary Edition actually have current gen graphic updates relative to the xbox one? Thought it looked the same on whatever system you were playing on, just would have faster load times.


----------



## Mathemagician

My tv died. And I don’t “want” to spend money on one. So I’ve been practicing playing guitar and singing more. Go figure. It works exactly as anyone would have expected. What is this Soviet Russia?


----------



## Mathemagician

Empryrean said:


> I've been reeled back into Melty Blood Lumina with the funy cat. After playing a bunch of Arcsys fighters for a while it feels so fast in comparison (in a good way)




This is funny to me because any time I would load up my old copy of BlazBlu that felt SO fast compared to SF which is my normal go-to.


----------



## BlackMastodon

st2012 said:


> Went back to New World after hearing that they've updated it in the last couple months. Maybe it'll stick this time.


I think this is the first time I've heard anything about New World outside of seeing the banner ads before it was released. Is it anything special as far as MMO's go? Or another EQ/WoW clone?

I saw the other day that Guild Wars 2 is coming to Steam for its 10th Anniversary (!) and was wondering if I wanted to try it again. I played it for a couple months when it came out (and probably posted about it in this thread [!!]) but bounced off since I was also really busy in school. The gameplay seemed fine but also seemed overly simplified compared to old WoW, which ironically new WoW is WAY more simplified than that and I didn't like their latest flavour of MMO at all when I tried it a couple years back. Also GW2 has the added benefit of being free with microtransactions, which is just 1 rung above monthly subs on the ladder of shit sandwiches. Will likely give it a go.


----------



## wankerness

I played Guild Wars 2 for a bit when it came out. I don't remember much about it apart from the interesting "painted" art style, or why I bounced off it so hard. I think that I didn't like the emphasis on random world events, like you were always supposed to drop what you were doing and run over to try and complete some world objective or something. I think that Star Wars TOR and FF14 might have also done that and maybe my memory of the various games is getting conflated since I bounced off all of them. I think I hated the leveling system in GW2, also, like I think you sorta built your own character instead of choosing a class and auto-learning skills. I think everything felt kind of samey because of it, like everyone had a collection of attacks and heals and there weren't really roles. Don't remember any instances, either. I think it just seemed especially unappealing to me as someone who mainly liked raiding in WoW but leveling solo and avoiding PVP.

It was a long time ago, though. All I know for sure is that I definitely liked FF14, WoW and Star Wars TOR a lot more than it.

EDIT: I think I'm going to buy a good flash-memory memory card for N64 and play through some of the old games before selling them all off and getting one of those emulation cartridges for the system. Seems like the biggest memory card you can get of decent quality is still the puny little 256 page variety where some games take THE ENTIRE THING and there's no way to back up the save other than buying more hardware. Annoying. I think I'll just have to play through games and finish them one at a time so I don't have to worry about it. Or else skip straight to the emulation cartridge stage.

Castlevania 64 is first on my list, though I have to get the cartridge back from my brother who doesn't know where it is. But, I'm very curious to replay it. We'll see if I can readjust to the controller.


----------



## StevenC

p0ke said:


> I was finally able to order an Xbox Series X, so now I'm waiting for Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 to come on sale  And maybe finally I'll be able to beat Midir in DS3 when I get a console that doesn't lag and controllers that don't disconnect randomly. Also I'm sure I'll enjoy Mass Effect Legendary Edition way more with better graphics.


I would really recommend Game Pass if you don't have it already. It's really worth it.

Also includes Art of Rally.


----------



## Empryrean

Mathemagician said:


> This is funny to me because any time I would load up my old copy of BlazBlu that felt SO fast compared to SF which is my normal go-to.


Oh don't get me wrong, blazblue is a fast game I think I worded that weirdly. The buffer period between pushing a button and stuff happening on screen feels faster in the Melty Blood games to me, if I were a game designer I'm sure I could put it more elegantly but that's the best way I can explain it


----------



## p0ke

StevenC said:


> I would really recommend Game Pass if you don't have it already. It's really worth it.
> 
> Also includes Art of Rally.


Yeah, I've had it before, but I don't play very often so I can't really justify paying for it on a monthly basis. I play maybe once or twice a month so just buying games when they're on sale makes more sense.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Does ME Legendary Edition actually have current gen graphic updates relative to the xbox one? Thought it looked the same on whatever system you were playing on, just would have faster load times.


Could be. I just recall it saying "optimized for xbox s/x", but I could be mistaken. My current xbox is the og xbox one though, so it's always running the worst looking versions of every game, so at the very least I'll get the xbox one x improvements, like higher framerates etc.


----------



## wankerness

Booted up my first game in a month on PS5...stardew valley. Way to take advantage of that processing power!


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Does ME Legendary Edition actually have current gen graphic updates relative to the xbox one? Thought it looked the same on whatever system you were playing on, just would have faster load times.



There’s no PS5 dedicated version, on PS5 it runs the same as the PS4 Pro version (60fps / 4k or whatever it was). I think it’s limited to 30fps on the base PS4 but I’m not sure.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> There’s no PS5 dedicated version, on PS5 it runs the same as the PS4 Pro version (60fps / 4k or whatever it was). I think it’s limited to 30fps on the base PS4 but I’m not sure.


Yeah that makes sense. I had it on PS4 Pro so I never saw it in action on a regular PS4. I often forget how many games are radically better on PS4 pro vs PS4 since I'm getting so used to how they're often barely better on PS5 than PS4 Pro (even in some cases where there's a dedicated PS5 version).


----------



## st2012

BlackMastodon said:


> I think this is the first time I've heard anything about New World outside of seeing the banner ads before it was released. Is it anything special as far as MMO's go? Or another EQ/WoW clone?


I'm not a huge MMO guy so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I feel like the combat is a little more action oriented than most MMO's where you just cycle through tons of skills and then wait on cooldowns. I enjoy the world but it got really "grindy once I hit about lvl 30 and, from what I've heard, end game had a ton of issues when it released. I'm enjoying it at the moment.


----------



## DarrellM5

I'm playing Skyrim in VR again.


----------



## BlackMastodon

wankerness said:


> I played Guild Wars 2 for a bit when it came out. I don't remember much about it apart from the interesting "painted" art style, or why I bounced off it so hard. I think that I didn't like the emphasis on random world events, like you were always supposed to drop what you were doing and run over to try and complete some world objective or something. I think that Star Wars TOR and FF14 might have also done that and maybe my memory of the various games is getting conflated since I bounced off all of them. I think I hated the leveling system in GW2, also, like I think you sorta built your own character instead of choosing a class and auto-learning skills. I think everything felt kind of samey because of it, like everyone had a collection of attacks and heals and there weren't really roles. Don't remember any instances, either. I think it just seemed especially unappealing to me as someone who mainly liked raiding in WoW but leveling solo and avoiding PVP.
> 
> It was a long time ago, though. All I know for sure is that I definitely liked FF14, WoW and Star Wars TOR a lot more than it.


I didn't play FF14 or SWTOR, but I remember Warhammer Online also had something like environmental instances that gave you "Renown" points, which was something like faction experience in old WoW? It's been a really long time since they shut down the servers, but even longer since I played. There were some fun things like castle sieges that made for unique gameplay but it did get tedious when you came by and a group was already on phase 3 out of 3 and you wouldn't get as much rewards for helping.

GW2 I remember was unique in how you unlocked new skills by leveling up existing skills, like use Skill 1 20 times to unlock Skill 2, use Skill 2 50 times to unlock Skill 3, etc, but you still gained levels through exp I think. And you're right, every class did have healing skills, tank skills, and dps skills so it did all feel kinda same. 

It's possible they completely changed the gameplay since the 1.0 launch, though, so I'll likely give it a whirl. I might even be able to use my old CD key since I bought a physical copy.


----------



## p0ke

Received my Series X today and I gotta say it's considerably smaller IRL than I expected. It's basically the same size as the OG Xbox One but just a different shape, so it fit perfectly in the same slot in my TV unit. So far so good! I really like how the controller feels too, it's the same as before but with this nice grippy pattern on it.

... Now I'm just upset that the Matrix Unreal Engine 5 demo got delisted before I got to try it.


----------



## Werecow

I just did a no damage fight against Corrupted Monk for the first time, with no consumables used, no prosthetics, and no combat arts apart from one Whirlwind Slash at the start. That's such a bitch of a fight without using any special tactics.
I'm really pleased, considering i've been playing Arkham Knight, and that usually makes me press the wrong button sometimes in Sekiro.

Back to Batman now, to glide around and chill out.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I just did a no damage fight against Corrupted Monk for the first time, with no consumables used, no prosthetics, and no combat arts apart from one Whirlwind Slash at the start. That's such a bitch of a fight without using any special tactics.
> I'm really pleased, considering i've been playing Arkham Knight, and that usually makes me press the wrong button sometimes in Sekiro.
> 
> Back to Batman now, to glide around and chill out.


Worst thing about that fight is how if you stand too close to him he smashes you over the head with the polearm and you can't block/deflect it; you really have to be deliberate in standing at medium distance. I also am TERRIBLE at not getting hit during the "he teleports around as phantoms" section.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Worst thing about that fight is how if you stand too close to him he smashes you over the head with the polearm and you can't block/deflect it; you really have to be deliberate in standing at medium distance. I also am TERRIBLE at not getting hit during the "he teleports around as phantoms" section.


I meant the ghostly version of her above. She barely takes any damage in that one. Hitting her when it looks like she's not blocking regularly does completely zero damage. It can be so time consuming without any divine confetti or snap seeeds.

In that second fight, did you know you can get up on a tree branch and instantly deathblow her out of that second phase? The real her is a barely visible ghost that stays still under the tree, while all the phantoms fly around. The second phase can be done away with in a few seconds doing that.

I think i'm gonna really practice that second fight as well in my current run.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I meant the ghostly version of her above. She barely takes any damage in that one. Hitting her when it looks like she's not blocking regularly does completely zero damage. It can be so time consuming without any divine confetti or snap seeeds.
> 
> In that second fight, did you know you can get up on a tree branch and instantly deathblow her out of that second phase? The real her is a barely visible ghost that stays still under the tree, while all the phantoms fly around. The second phase can be done away with in a few seconds doing that.
> 
> I think i'm gonna really practice that second fight as well in my current run.


Ahhh, OK. Yeah, the first version was definitely harder for me on NG+ in both my NG+ runs. She has SO much health on that one health bar, the fight seems to go on forever. The other one seems a lot shorter despite having three phases just cause they all have so little health.

Hmm, I didn't know that. I do remember my first time through the game on NG I used some kind of trick to get a deathblow before one of the phases had initiated, but I didn't bother with that on the subsequent playthroughs. I usually did use oil and flame vent on the third phase to make it a bit easier, but other than that always did it straight up no prosthetics.


----------



## TedEH

st2012 said:


> New World


Is that the same one that had some drama a while back about bricking video cards or something like that? Hopefully they've fixed that by now - I haven't heard anything about it since.



gabito said:


> There’s no PS5 dedicated version


I think there's some titles that don't have dedicated PS5 versions per the store, but they still detect you're on a PS5 and up some settings. GoW is one of those.

Speaking of GoW - I got a good chunk through that, but had to put it aside while traveling for a bit. Buuuut I brought my switch with me, and started up the Skyward Sword HD remake, so that's a thing. I'm tempted to try playing GoW remotely, but I have doubts that it'll be a good experience.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I think there's some titles that don't have dedicated PS5 versions per the store, but they still detect you're on a PS5 and up some settings. GoW is one of those.



Yeah, this is not one of those games AFAIK: no PS5 version, nor PS5 patch.

You can select performance (60fps) or quality modes (30fps, nicer graphics) on any console though. Or was it 60fps in both, but different resolutions or something like that? I can’t remember… I don’t even remember what I chose.

I think on PS5 it should run the same than on the PS4 Pro. Maybe with faster loading times and more consistent framerate?

I played it on a base PS4 and it was cool (especially ME3), I’m sure I’ll play it again someday.


----------



## p0ke

Damn, tried DS3 on the new console and what a difference! If you just took a screenshot you wouldn't even see the difference, but playing it at a solid 60fps vs barely managing 30fps is a huge difference. It felt almost too smooth 

And yeah, Mass Effect Legendary Edition does indeed say Optimised for Series X|S, but I don't know what that actually means.

Oh and another great thing - the battery pack from the xbone controller also fits the new controller.


----------



## st2012

TedEH said:


> Is that the same one that had some drama a while back about bricking video cards or something like that? Hopefully they've fixed that by now - I haven't heard anything about it since.


Yeah, I remember that as well. I think it was fucking up a specific, high end card. As my modest gaming budget doesn't allow for that kind of hardware, I was never in any danger


----------



## StevenC

I have two questions that this seems like the place most equipped to answer:

1) Game Pass has a bunch of Yakuza games, what is the definitive order to play them? 

2) I have a Series X and a PS4 Pro; an X1 copy of Dark Souls 3, Bloodbourne, and probably only 360 copies of Dark Souls 1 and 2; what order should I play these games?


----------



## KnightBrolaire

StevenC said:


> I have two questions that this seems like the place most equipped to answer:
> 
> 1) Game Pass has a bunch of Yakuza games, what is the definitive order to play them?
> 
> 2) I have a Series X and a PS4 Pro; an X1 copy of Dark Souls 3, Bloodbourne, and probably only 360 copies of Dark Souls 1 and 2; what order should I play these games?


It doesn't really matter what order you play the dark souls games tbh, but bloodborne and DS3 feel the closest mechanically. They're much faster paced and reward aggressive playing much more than DS1 or 2. 
DS1 is the best in terms of level design but is also the oldest, so it feels slower and clunkier control wise vs bloodborne/ DS3. 

DS2 is the worst in the series imo, and can be skipped, unless you really want to play it.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> It doesn't really matter what order you play the dark souls games tbh, but bloodborne and DS3 feel the closest mechanically. They're much faster paced and reward aggressive playing much more than DS1 or 2.
> DS1 is the best in terms of level design but is also the oldest, so it feels slower and clunkier control wise vs bloodborne/ DS3.
> 
> DS2 is the worst in the series imo, and can be skipped, unless you really want to play it.


DS2 is my favorite. There's dozens of us! Dozens!!!

DS3 has a lot of callbacks to 1 and a few to 2, but there's not really any compelling reason you need to play them in order. I think DS1, BB, or DS3 are all valid starting points.

DS1 - very slow-paced, nastier level hazards, most intricate level design, more dated combat and low quality of life features. It's a real classic, though, so you should play it sometime.
BB - faster paced than DS1, but still fairly slow-paced by modern standards partly cause of the framerate woes, still quite low quality of life but much less nasty than DS1 where you have to run everywhere for most of the game, probably the coolest monster/boss design in the fromsoft canon (especially if you think hp lovecraft and victorian horror stuff are cool), least complex leveling system and gear systems so more accessible without reading anything about it
DS3 - feels by far the most modern of the three and has many more QOL features than either (ex, you can teleport to any save point right away from the beginning of the game), difficulty curve is a LOT more linear through the game as opposed to DS1 and especially BB which will stomp you into the ground very early on, but the later bosses are harder than anything in DS1 and the base game of BB. You need much faster reflexes to play this game than DS1, and somewhat faster than BB. Level design isn't as good as DS1 (well, most of DS1) or BB imo but it's not bad.

DS2 has way more QOL features than DS1 or BB but is a lot more rickety-feeling than any of the three above. It lacks polish but it has great levels and a ton of great ideas, many of which were left by the wayside till Elden Ring. DS3 felt like a regression in some ways.


----------



## rokket2005

StevenC said:


> I have two questions that this seems like the place most equipped to answer:
> 
> 1) Game Pass has a bunch of Yakuza games, what is the definitive order to play them?


Yakuza 0, then Kiwami and Kiwami 2, then continue with 3. It might be a bit jarring going from the remakes back to 3, but 2009 wasn't that long ago, right?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

StevenC said:


> I have two questions that this seems like the place most equipped to answer:
> 
> 1) Game Pass has a bunch of Yakuza games, what is the definitive order to play them?
> 
> 2) I have a Series X and a PS4 Pro; an X1 copy of Dark Souls 3, Bloodbourne, and probably only 360 copies of Dark Souls 1 and 2; what order should I play these games?





rokket2005 said:


> Yakuza 0, then Kiwami and Kiwami 2, then continue with 3. It might be a bit jarring going from the remakes back to 3, but 2009 wasn't that long ago, right?



Atleast the version of 3 on gamepass is the remastered one. If it was the two remakes and then the original localized version it'd be a really rough time.


----------



## wankerness

rokket2005 said:


> Yakuza 0, then Kiwami and Kiwami 2, then continue with 3. It might be a bit jarring going from the remakes back to 3, but 2009 wasn't that long ago, right?


Three feels REALLY dated, and 4 is also kinda rough, but a big improvement. 5 feels on par with 0 technically. I suggest he skips 3 if he doesn't like it, there's not much important plotwise to the later games, unlike 4 and 5.


----------



## StevenC

Ok, I'll get 0 and Kiwami downloading, and check for DS3 updates.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> Ok, I'll get 0 and Kiwami downloading, and check for DS3 updates.


Be aware that 0 (or any in the series, really) is a game that has a VERY different vibe from most and might take some effort to get into. On top of a ton of incredibly lengthy cutscenes throughout the game and especially at the beginning, the combat system starts off incredibly rudimentary and takes its time adding fighting styles and unlockable moves, so you have to get a ways in before it really starts being fun. I think it took me several hours (and a multiple month break between starting it and going "wtf is this crap" and going back to it) to really get into it, and then I became a pretty huge fan of the series and have played all the entries available on PS4/5. Well, besides Lost Judgment.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Be aware that 0 (or any in the series, really) is a game that has a VERY different vibe from most and might take some effort to get into. On top of a ton of *incredibly lengthy cutscene*s throughout the game and especially at the beginning, the combat system starts off incredibly rudimentary and takes its time adding fighting styles and unlockable moves, so* you have to get a ways in before it really starts being fun*. I think it took me several hours (and a multiple month break between starting it and going "*wtf is this crap*" and going back to it) to really get into it, and then I became a pretty huge fan of the series and have played all the entries available on PS4/5. Well, besides Lost Judgment.


Don't worry, Death Stranding is one of my favourite games.


----------



## wankerness

I've been playing Stardew Valley finally. On the last day of the first fall, so 3/4 through the first year. It's about what I remember seeing, though I've gotten really lucky with some things that I remember my girlfriend having to grind for and not complete for in-game years (ex, I got all four dwarf scrolls just naturally progressing through the 120 levels of the cave). This game has some serious jank to it that's infuriating, like, how you HAVE to have an inventory object selected at all times, but if it's anything other than a tool and you talk to someone, you just give it to them. No, Abigail, I did not mean to hand you that geode that you hate so much, and I didn't know it was your birthday so I should feel even worse about it, CALM DOWN!!!

The constant rush against time in this game does also create annoyance with the plodding speed your character has. Plus games like this I generally prefer playing with the D pad, but on console, D pad is for WALKING and if you want to move full speed you have to use the stick. Inventory management is also incredibly bad on console, like, if you catch a fish with a full inventory you have to first drag one of your current items in the trash, but then you ALSO have to drag the fish to your inventory, if you just close the inventory after freeing a slot you release the fish!!

The amount of money necessary to unlock even the major upgrades (I'm working on gold tools and the upgraded chicken coop/house/barn) is nuts, especially when you take into account you need to drop like 40k to unlock the desert area. Ack. I HATE farming plants (I think I'll do the bare minimum until I have the recipe for the iridium sprinklers and can put those everywhere and not have to water anything) so I mainly make money by getting lucky with gems in the lower levels of the cave, and from chicken eggs/cow milk. It's going to be a while!!

Fishing seems profitable some seasons but not others. That minigame was INFURIATING for a long time, now that I'm at level 7 or something it's a lot easier cause your fishing bar is a lot bigger.


----------



## Albake21

wankerness said:


> Three feels REALLY dated, and 4 is also kinda rough, but a big improvement. 5 feels on par with 0 technically. I suggest he skips 3 if he doesn't like it, there's not much important plotwise to the later games, unlike 4 and 5.


You want to talk dated, try playing 0, then Kiwami 1, then PS2 version of Yakuza 2 because Kiwami 2 wasn't out the time yet. Now THAT was a shock of difference 

Funny enough, Yakuza 2 is still my favorite of the series even though I never played the Kiwami version. Might consider the Kiwami version just for the extra Majima stuff in the future.


----------



## Mathemagician

StevenC said:


> Don't worry, Death Stranding is one of my favourite *movies*.


FTFY. 

Ok so I finally started Dragon Quest 11. And man it is a slow game. But it really feels like a modern JRPG like the ones I grew up playing. Makes me want to play all the older ones. As long as they are on modern consoles. I’m liking the art style and enjoying the pacing. 

I remember reading somewhere that the game is designed to be long and really only played like 45min-1hour at a time and I didn’t get it but after a week of mostly grinding to lvl 8 and barely getting started I get it. 

This isn’t a knock on the game quite the opposite. I love the art style so it makes it easy to just relax and see what happens. 

I def think I needed that 2 month break of just playing Stardew Valley after platinum-ing Elden Ring. Whew. I was wiped from that one. 

I’m about to start year 4 and I think I’m on my way to automating a lot of my money making/setting my farm up to clear itself. Is there an item that picks my veggies up for me outdoors? That’d be perfect.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> FTFY.
> 
> Ok so I finally started Dragon Quest 11. And man it is a slow game. But it really feels like a modern JRPG like the ones I grew up playing. Makes me want to play all the older ones. As long as they are on modern consoles. I’m liking the art style and enjoying the pacing.
> 
> I remember reading somewhere that the game is designed to be long and really only played like 45min-1hour at a time and I didn’t get it but after a week of mostly grinding to lvl 8 and barely getting started I get it.
> 
> This isn’t a knock on the game quite the opposite. I love the art style so it makes it easy to just relax and see what happens.
> 
> I def think I needed that 2 month break of just playing Stardew Valley after platinum-ing Elden Ring. Whew. I was wiped from that one.
> 
> I’m about to start year 4 and I think I’m on my way to automating a lot of my money making/setting my farm up to clear itself. Is there an item that picks my veggies up for me outdoors? That’d be perfect.


IIRC the previous Dragon Quest games were on handhelds, and the most recent console one before 11 was on PS2!!! So yeah, I liked DQ11 quite a bit but my hopes to play more of them were instantly dashed. I'll play 12 when they finally release one, assuming it's not also on a handheld.


----------



## Mathemagician

I got 11 on switch and I don’t regret it. Just didn’t seem like a game where I’d care more about graphical fidelity than all the little “definitive edition” things. The 8bit mode is awesome and I could see it making the game appeal to a whole crowd of people that really only like retro style games.


----------



## p0ke

StevenC said:


> I have a Series X and a PS4 Pro; an X1 copy of Dark Souls 3, Bloodbourne, and probably only 360 copies of Dark Souls 1 and 2; what order should I play these games?



I'd start with DS1, though I don't know how much of a difference there is between the 360 and the xbone version. At least the framerate is probably lower, since the xbone version is remastered and runs 60fps when possible. It's a great game but it feels almost turn-based compared to DS3, so that's why I'd start with it - after DS3 it'll feel super slow. I haven't played DS2 yet myself because DS3 happened to come on sale before it and I don't like to jump back and forth between games  I'll play it once I've finished the DS3 DLC's. 

In terms of story the order doesn't really make any difference unless you read and analyze every little hint about the lore. The stuff isn't really told or shown, you have to piece it together yourself if you want to know, and it definitely isn't mandatory in any way.

Don't know about Bloodborne - I won't play that anytime soon since it's PS exclusive...


----------



## RevDrucifer

StevenC said:


> Don't worry, Death Stranding is one of my favourite games.



Easily in my top 3 favorite games of all time. Maybe I’ll replay that one now that I have a better tv/sound system. That was the first game that I ever got anxiety/spooked while playing; when it’d start raining and I had a TON of shit I was carrying on my back, the house is all dark and you’re just waiting to get grabbed.

That game was enough to get me to buy every future Kojima game without even watching a preview. I love everything about it, the gameplay, story, artwork. One of the most creative and original games I’ve ever played.


----------



## StevenC

RevDrucifer said:


> Easily in my top 3 favorite games of all time. Maybe I’ll replay that one now that I have a better tv/sound system. That was the first game that I ever got anxiety/spooked while playing; when it’d start raining and I had a TON of shit I was carrying on my back, the house is all dark and you’re just waiting to get grabbed.
> 
> That game was enough to get me to buy every future Kojima game without even watching a preview. I love everything about it, the gameplay, story, artwork. One of the most creative and original games I’ve ever played.


My favourite part is that it makes you have like 5 kinds of interaction with every BT area. The original "oh crap this is a new BT area I have to get through"; then "hmm, do I really want to take this delivery if it goes near that BT area"; evolving to "screw that, this game has roads? Long way it is"; which then becomes "maybe I'll sneak in there one last time to build a zip line for all my friends"; and finally "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I hope they can't grab me".


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I'd start with DS1, though I don't know how much of a difference there is between the 360 and the xbone version. At least the framerate is probably lower, since the xbone version is remastered and runs 60fps when possible. It's a great game but it feels almost turn-based compared to DS3, so that's why I'd start with it - after DS3 it'll feel super slow. I haven't played DS2 yet myself because DS3 happened to come on sale before it and I don't like to jump back and forth between games  I'll play it once I've finished the DS3 DLC's.
> 
> In terms of story the order doesn't really make any difference unless you read and analyze every little hint about the lore. The stuff isn't really told or shown, you have to piece it together yourself if you want to know, and it definitely isn't mandatory in any way.
> 
> Don't know about Bloodborne - I won't play that anytime soon since it's PS exclusive...


DS1 on 360 is half the framerate of the ps4/xbone remaster versions at best and that already much lower framerate is infamous for dipping precipitously through blighttown, making the area vastly more difficult. I would definitely not start with DS1 on 360 as your first souls game. I'm not sure how xbox series x works with playing 360 games. Do they basically get emulated as accurately as possible so old framerate issues remain, or is it like playing PS4 Pro games on a PS5 where frequently the framerate is better? Ex, playing Elden Ring's PS4 version on a PS5 is by far the best framerate experience you can get on console.


----------



## Empryrean

Cult of the Lamb has a deathgrip on me


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> DS1 on 360 is half the framerate of the ps4/xbone remaster versions at best and that already much lower framerate is infamous for dipping precipitously through blighttown, making the area vastly more difficult. I would definitely not start with DS1 on 360 as your first souls game. I'm not sure how xbox series x works with playing 360 games. Do they basically get emulated as accurately as possible so old framerate issues remain, or is it like playing PS4 Pro games on a PS5 where frequently the framerate is better? Ex, playing Elden Ring's PS4 version on a PS5 is by far the best framerate experience you can get on console.


Not sure about 360 as I haven't played that many of those games. They're emulated for sure, they even show the 360 splash screen when they start, but not a clue about framerates and the likes. It's more comparable to playing PS3 games on a PS5 I guess...? 

And yeah, that's true, + blighttown's a pain in the ass even without framerate drops. I was mainly suggesting DS1 from my own experience, which is based on the remastered version.


----------



## Werecow

Been playing through more of Arkham Knight. The "chase the APC" side missions are some of the silliest missions ever in a game i think. Huge 6 wheeled transporters that speed along like an F1 car, and corner like they're on rollercoaster tracks. I spend the whole time on each one just sitting there thinking "wtf.... wtf.... wtf...."


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Not sure about 360 as I haven't played that many of those games. They're emulated for sure, they even show the 360 splash screen when they start, but not a clue about framerates and the likes. It's more comparable to playing PS3 games on a PS5 I guess...?
> 
> And yeah, that's true, + blighttown's a pain in the ass even without framerate drops. I was mainly suggesting DS1 from my own experience, which is based on the remastered version.



The remastered version is 60 fps nonstop everywhere on PS4/Xbone (and 30 FPS nonstop everywhere on switch), so it's a hugely different experience.

If it was like playing PS3 on PS5, no games would run unless you streamed them (puke). One thing Xbox One completely destroyed PS4 on was backwards compatibility. Almost everything from 360 could be played on Xbone, but PS3 discs flat out did nothing on PS4 and you couldn't buy them digitally, either, unless an actual remaster came out. Which applies to probably like 5% of the total PS3 catalog! The streaming selection now is still pretty dogshit, mostly limited to big franchise games that you can play on any other platform more smoothly.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Team Ninja has a new soulsborne esque game set in Three Kingdoms era china (it's called Wo Long fyi). Looks pretty cool tbh.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> Team Ninja has a new soulsborne esque game set in Three Kingdoms era china (it's called Wo Long fyi). Looks pretty cool tbh.


Yeah, that looks interesting. I like that they ditched the stamina bar, but it still looks a bit too much like Nioh for my liking. Guess I'll wait for reviews. Supposedly it feels more like Sekiro, so that's a good thing?

Maybe I should try playing Nioh 2, but I really did not like 1.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Yeah, that looks interesting. I like that they ditched the stamina bar, but it still looks a bit too much like Nioh for my liking. Guess I'll wait for reviews. Supposedly it feels more like Sekiro, so that's a good thing?
> 
> Maybe I should try playing Nioh 2, but I really did not like 1.



I've heard 2 is in fact harder than 1, so temper your expectations.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> The remastered version is 60 fps nonstop everywhere on PS4/Xbone (and 30 FPS nonstop everywhere on switch), so it's a hugely different experience.
> 
> If it was like playing PS3 on PS5, no games would run unless you streamed them (puke). One thing Xbox One completely destroyed PS4 on was backwards compatibility. Almost everything from 360 could be played on Xbone, but PS3 discs flat out did nothing on PS4 and you couldn't buy them digitally, either, unless an actual remaster came out. Which applies to probably like 5% of the total PS3 catalog! The streaming selection now is still pretty dogshit, mostly limited to big franchise games that you can play on any other platform more smoothly.


Yeah, that's one awesome thing about xbox. Even many of the original xbox games run on current consoles. 

And nope, the remastered version of DS1 definitely does not run 60fps on everything. The og xbone doesn't have enough power to do that, it runs at ~30fps with occasional drops. Blighttown isn't bad on it, but on some bosses it dropped really low. The purple abyss "mist" seems to cause it.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> And nope, the remastered version of DS1 definitely does not run 60fps on everything. The og xbone doesn't have enough power to do that, it runs at ~30fps with occasional drops. Blighttown isn't bad on it, but on some bosses it dropped really low. The purple abyss "mist" seems to cause it.


Weird. I guess I just assumed, since the PS4 one never had the slightest slowdown, but I always forget I had a ps4 pro. I guess it makes sense, my computer handled sekiro with almost no hitches but chugged in one section of DS1's remaster (the fight with the sentinel lion/scorpion thing at the start of the DLC, I think maybe it was all the water effects going on with that fight since it's in a puddle).


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Weird. I guess I just assumed, since the PS4 one never had the slightest slowdown, but I always forget I had a ps4 pro. I guess it makes sense, my computer handled sekiro with almost no hitches but chugged in one section of DS1's remaster (the fight with the sentinel lion/scorpion thing at the start of the DLC, I think maybe it was all the water effects going on with that fight since it's in a puddle).


Yup. That old xbone didn't do 60fps on any game. I think the remastered version was optimized for Xbox One X, which is basically equivalent to PS4 Pro. 

Stupid naming conventions! Especially Xbox is getting pretty damned confusing with the X and S crap (the previous generation had Xbox One / Xbox One X / Xbox One S and now the current is Xbox Series X / Xbox Series S)... 
Then again PS always had the Slim versions too, and recently the Pro version for the PS4... So yeah, same crap except I guess PS5 only has one version + a slightly cheaper one that just doesn't have a disc drive...?

I don't remember that DLC start beast causing any major slowdowns though, but Artorias for example, when he did his abyss stuff was like watching a slideshow


----------



## BlackMastodon

Having fun with Guild Wars 2. It's free to play, so I feel like I'm getting my money's worth from my original purchase.


----------



## Naxxpipe

Recently got myself onto the CRPG train again, and picked up Divinity: Original Sin 2. Having fun, despite being an absolute scrub.


----------



## gabito

I've been playing - or trying to play- several games the last two weeks:

- Tried to get back into Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I abandoned like a year ago after playing 30-ish hours... I lasted maybe 1 hour and swore to never touch a Ubisoft game again.
- For some reason installed GTA IV on my PS3. I love GTA V, and I remembered really liking IV when I played it. Now it was... rough. Graphics on the PS3 are the worst (but tolerable for me), driving and shooting are insanely bad for a game about driving and shooting (this is the case for most GTA games though, but V is better), and even the acting is terrible. Like *really* bad. Didn't get too far, maybe 2 hours and it was enough.
- Got FIFA 21 really cheap to play with my friends. I'm not a football fan (we don't call it "soccer" around here), but the game is fun to play once in a while. I haven't played a FIFA game since '13 I think (which I got bundled with my PS3), and... it's the same game? I mean, it looks really good, but after a few minutes of not remembering what to do muscle memory kicked in and I was scoring goals like nothing changed.
- Updated the PS4 version of Uncharted 4 to the PS5 version for 10$. Not really interested in playing the main game again, but I wanted to buy "The Lost Legacy" which I couldn't play before (and is unavailable to buy separately). Unsurprisingly for a Naughty Dog game it looks AMAZING, and I love Claudia Black since watching Farscape a long time ago, so win win I guess.

There are not many games on the PS5 I'm interested in playing so far, I'm on the fence about buying TLOU Part I. The original / remake is a game I play at least once every year or two, but I'm on "Not paying 70$ for this, I'll wait until it's on sale"'s side for now.


----------



## MFB

Coincidentally, they announced a new AC game yesterday that features a character from Valhalla as the main player, so it's set before that; I'm at best curious about how they approach it. Artwork/location wise it looks to be similar to AC1, and rumor is that there's not really much of a mythology portion to it because of that, so I'm hoping if the RPG elements are rolled back it'll be a nice return to the original entries in the franchise.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Coincidentally, they announced a new AC game yesterday that features a character from Valhalla as the main player, so it's set before that; I'm at best curious about how they approach it. Artwork/location wise it looks to be similar to AC1, and rumor is that there's not really much of a mythology portion to it because of that, so I'm hoping if the RPG elements are rolled back it'll be a nice return to the original entries in the franchise.


I just looked that up. Looks like it's speculation at this point, with people just saying it LOOKS like that character (Basim).

If it is that character, meh. I was good with Origins, I don't need another desert-set AC. Though I guess he had also been in Constantinople, which might be more interesting. Still, I'd much rather have something radically different like one set in the mayan empire or something.

I'm definitely not preordering this time till I know there's no fucking rock stacking, rap battles, infuriating obstacle courses where you play as that horrible woman from the future, or tattoo chasing. I grew to hate AC Valhalla after playing too much of it. I still have a lot of fondness for Odyssey, Origins, Black Flag, and Syndicate though.


----------



## Choop

Playing through Super Metroid; its really great, and I'm mad at myself for not having played it sooner. I did play and enjoy Metroid Prime quite a bit years ago. Strongly considering doing a lets play or long play of something just for fun, maybe Mega Man Legends or some other old PS1/N64 era title.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I just looked that up. Looks like it's speculation at this point, with people just saying it LOOKS like that character (Basim).
> 
> If it is that character, meh. I was good with Origins, I don't need another desert-set AC. Though I guess he had also been in Constantinople, which might be more interesting. Still, I'd much rather have something radically different like one set in the mayan empire or something.
> 
> I'm definitely not preordering this time till I know there's no fucking rock stacking, rap battles, infuriating obstacle courses where you play as that horrible woman from the future, or tattoo chasing. I grew to hate AC Valhalla after playing too much of it. I still have a lot of fondness for Odyssey, Origins, Black Flag, and Syndicate though.



Don't get me wrong, I'm for sure not pre-ordering, just keeping an eye on it for details to see what potential new direction they take it. I haven't played Valhalla at all and never finished Odyssey, but I did enjoy Origins. I own both Unity/Syndicate but haven't finished either (barely started Unity) as it sort of feels like I'm digging the grave for my love of the franchise if I do. I know up through Black Flag is quality, and then Unity/Syndicate/Rogue all had hugely unsuccessful launches due to bugs, and are sort of red-headed stepchildren of the series because of it, then we got the RPG switch flipped.


----------



## p0ke

I wanted some kid-friendly games I could play with the kids, so I bought both the Ori games. Really digging the Metroid'y gameplay and painting like graphics.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Don't get me wrong, I'm for sure not pre-ordering, just keeping an eye on it for details to see what potential new direction they take it. I haven't played Valhalla at all and never finished Odyssey, but I did enjoy Origins. I own both Unity/Syndicate but haven't finished either (barely started Unity) as it sort of feels like I'm digging the grave for my love of the franchise if I do. I know up through Black Flag is quality, and then Unity/Syndicate/Rogue all had hugely unsuccessful launches due to bugs, and are sort of red-headed stepchildren of the series because of it, then we got the RPG switch flipped.


I've heard Unity is pretty good after all the bug fixes, but I was pretty bored by the 30 minutes I played and had to slowly walk around after people who were talking at me, plus the combat was still the awful clunky Black Flag and earlier system. Syndicate was a big improvement in every way other than graphics IMO (Unity is a VERY good looking game). Rogue is pretty good from what I hear, it's like Black Flag with less bullshit and a shorter campaign.

I think Origins is good and Odyssey was better (but I like ancient greece more than ancient egypt, and playing as an arrow spammer ala Horizon Forbidden West more than a melee/stealth player). Valhalla made being a ranged spammer impossible and thus I foudn the combat more restrictive, but it has positive qualities. The main issues are the awful side activities and the horrid map. Odyssey and to a slightly lesser extent origins are great to explore and get lost in, especially all the scenic islands. Valhalla is just a whole bunch of land with some piddly little river going through some of it, making boats basically pointless and making you just have to run/fast travel everywhere. It’s ugly and boring setting-wise. And the combat isn’t nearly varied enough to maintain interest over the thousands and thousands of enemies you have to kill. Some of the weapons are cool and melee’s probably more varied than the previous games, but it’s still basically mash dodge to slow down time and then spam light or heavy attack and that’s it, nothing to make it interesting. It’s so damn easy that there’s no need to learn enemy attack patterns or anything (not that you’d want to have to considering how much bloat there is).


----------



## Ralyks

Soul Hackers 2 is a very fun JRPG. Simple turn based combat, the normal SMTisms (the art style, demons/personas/etc depending on which spinoff it is, a bumpin’ soundtrack that I’d spin in the car), dig the look, enjoying the story, and surprisingly good voice acting (I enjoy Ringo as the main protagonist, and actually find her quite charming). Nothing groundbreaker, just a very enjoyable JRPG. Only downsides are bland dungeon design, and after a few times, I just instantly skip the sabbath attacks, but wish the game would do something to just make it shorter after a while.

Got Inscryption for PS5. Really neat, even though I know how it plays out because I watched a play through thinking this game wouldn’t get ported to any consoles. Welp… I gotta stop doing that. Anyway, still fun regardless and highly recommended if you enjoy card games and a really neat/creepy story that takes some pretty big twists.

Got Saints Row…….. Traded it back in for the TMNT Cowabunga Collection. Worth it. Currently playing through the arcade version of Turtles in Time with my son. Played the hell out of the SNES version as a kid, but saw the arcade cabinet literally once in my life. Also, the museum mode-type part is a TMNT fans absolute dream. I was age 6 - 8 all over again. Apparently there’s over 3,000 pieces of content in there. I normally look over museum modes, but this is just freaking great. As for Saints Row…….. maybe it will have less jank by the time it inevitably goes on sale.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> TMNT Cowabunga Collection. Worth it. Currently playing through the arcade version of Turtles in Time with my son. Played the hell out of the SNES version as a kid, but saw the arcade cabinet literally once in my life. Also, the museum mode-type part is a TMNT fans absolute dream. I was age 6 - 8 all over again. Apparently there’s over 3,000 pieces of content in there. I normally look over museum modes, but this is just freaking great. As for Saints Row…….. maybe it will have less jank by the time it inevitably goes on sale.


Hmm. I never played any of those games besides Turtles IV for SNES (and just some quick demos from my friends on NES of how terrible some of those games were). Is anything else in the set actually good? Is the arcade version of Turtles in Time considerably different?

This seems like a good candidate for something to buy when it gets to like the 10 dollar range if everything other than Turtles in Time really does not hold up. I think maybe I played Hyperstone Heist for a little while on Genesis and found it was basically a remixed version of Turtles in Time and was pretty good, too. But Tournament Fighters and the old NES ones, yuck!

I like that Konami is releasing these old games. Too bad about everything else they do as a company. Hopefully they find a way to release the Castlevania DS games on console, those are all great and I'd play the shit out of them. I sure blew through the GBA collection in a week.

Been playing lots of Stardew Valley exclusively, almost done with the second year, have almost everyone in the town maxed out on reputation already, got to the Island and floor 100 of the skull cavern last night, but sure am nowhere close to affording any of those 500,000 wizard towers or even the 250,000 pam house. I should look up a guide for making money.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Got to roughly the same point in Guild Wars 2 that I did 10 years ago when I stopped playing, and once again I'm pretty sure I'm done with it. Played for maybe 15-20 hours, got to around level 35 and cleared 2 map areas, but it's not enough to keep me interested. It doesn't help that the free version doesn't have mounts or full access to the auction house so it makes getting around and gearing up way more of a chore. I can confidently say that MMO's aren't for me anymore. The first bit is always a lot of fun, but I'll just stick to CRPG's to get my kicks. 

On that note, when the hell is the full version of Baldur's Gate 3 gonna be released?!


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> On that note, when the hell is the full version of Baldur's Gate 3 gonna be released?!



Just "2023" they've said most recently. In other words when it's done. I'd rather they not rush it to be honest.
D: OS 2 is one of my favourite games ever, so i bought BG 3 immediately to support them. I've completely avoided everything but the anouncement cinematic and a couple basic combat demonstration videos with no context, partly for no spoilers, but partly because it makes waiting less frustating as well


----------



## BlackMastodon

Werecow said:


> Just "2023" they've said most recently. In other words when it's done. I'd rather they not rush it to be honest.
> D: OS 2 is one of my favourite games ever, so i bought BG 3 immediately to support them. I've completely avoided everything but the anouncement cinematic and a couple basic combat demonstration videos with no context, partly for no spoilers, but partly because it makes waiting less frustating as well


I got D:OS2 when I heard that Larian was doing BG3 to get a feel for it and also loved it. Got stuck at a point and haven't picked it up again in over a year, may try it again and see if I can work through it, but I was also hoping BG3 would be out by now.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> This seems like a good candidate for something to buy when it gets to like the 10 dollar range if everything other than Turtles in Time really does not hold up. I think maybe I played Hyperstone Heist for a little while on Genesis and found it was basically a remixed version of Turtles in Time and was pretty good, too. But Tournament Fighters and the old NES ones, yuck!


In your case, maybe wait for a sale. What made it easy for me is having a 7 year old son that I can show a huge part of my childhood too. Plus the controls are simple enough for him too (I say as he's probably better at Minecraft than I'll ever be) so we have fun doing multiplayer. Obviously, Shredders Revenge is better than any of these games, but it's nice to take my son on a stroll down memory lane.


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> I got D:OS2 when I heard that Larian was doing BG3 to get a feel for it and also loved it. Got stuck at a point and haven't picked it up again in over a year, may try it again and see if I can work through it, but I was also hoping BG3 would be out by now.


Yeh, good chance it would have been if not for them remote working during the pandemic.

The good thing about it though is that they're great at using early access to actually improve and tailor their games. They work with the fans to get the basic RPG systems working well.


----------



## p0ke

Kids got hooked on Super Bomberman R. It's great because it's really simple and has local multiplayer support, so all the 3 of us can play it together. I also set up the old Xbox One controllers such that they automatically sign the kids in, now I just gotta customize the controllers so they know which is which when they pick the controllers up. That way they don't have to touch the account stuff on the console at all. Already ordered some colored silicone covers for them...

... and DS3 wise, I'm *still* fighting Midir  I've got the strategy down perfectly, but I always get some kind of focus fatigue a few minutes in and fail to dodge some stupid attack and get stuck in his combo. Also I tend to get too aggressive when he starts to do his abyss stuff. I know I need to back off when he does it, but I just always keep thinking "I'll get the critical hit soon so I'll keep whacking him". 
I'm sure it won't be long until I have him beat, and I think I might even be able to do it without taking any damage if I can just stay focused and calm throughout.


----------



## wankerness

Midir's stupid, I hate him. I might try doing a 2H playthrough someday where I try to fight him legit, but it's kind of like, why would I do that to myself?! After finally whittling him down to second phase he does the automatic 1-shot laser moves that seem like luck whether they miss you or not! Thus I've only ever fought him with the stupid toxic cloud strategy where you still have to avoid his bullshit for a while but you don't really have to worry about openings and committing to swings, you just plop toxic clouds around where you think he'll be for the next several seconds.


----------



## TedEH

Got to the end of God of War today, and it's pretty solid all the way through. The combat is satisfying, the story accomplishes what it sets out to do (in my opinion), I like the ways it both does and doesn't tie back to the previous games. Good game. I have some nitpicks (like Kratos sometimes is so much louder than everything else, but I'm not sure if that's my own setup problem), and maybe the ending is a little.... cliffhanger-y? Sequel bait? I definitely want to play the sequel now.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> Got to the end of God of War today, and it's pretty solid all the way through. The combat is satisfying, the story accomplishes what it sets out to do (in my opinion), I like the ways it both does and doesn't tie back to the previous games. Good game. I have some nitpicks (like Kratos sometimes is so much louder than everything else, but I'm not sure if that's my own setup problem), and maybe the ending is a little.... cliffhanger-y? Sequel bait? I definitely want to play the sequel now.


Yeah, the ending was unsatisfying, that’s probably my only complaint about GoW. 

And the kid is pretty annoying… Kratos used to kill people for way less. But he’s a changed man now.


----------



## wankerness

The bosses are also pretty lame. Oh, a different colored troll holding a big stone obelisk? Another? ANOTHER?

There’s like five actual different bosses! Plus the valkyries which are also pretty similar.


----------



## hilljack13

No me, but the wife is playing the Saints Row prequel. I restarted Skyrim a few weeks ago and have been going through the Assassin's Creed series. I


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The bosses are also pretty lame. Oh, a different colored troll holding a big stone obelisk? Another? ANOTHER?
> 
> There’s like five actual different bosses! Plus the valkyries which are also pretty similar.


That element didn't bother me too much - since the line between boss and just a strong but otherwise normal encounter is pretty fuzzy. The setpiece bosses did the job well enough most of the time.


----------



## wankerness

That's another thing I vaguely remember about that game, the setpiece boss fights are EXTREMELY spaced out. Like there's one to open the game, a bug guy, a dragon, some twins, and then you're at the end of the game!

I haven't actually played the game since the week it came out. I played it like ALL DAY for that few days, got the platinum, and haven't touched it since! I have mostly fond memories, though. But my memory was that there were a LOT of trolls and barely anything else. I think maybe some of those ice guys were set up as bosses, though they're also a regular enemy? And then there's the valkyries which are all optional and all pretty similar.

I should really play it again before the sequel comes out just to get back in the mood. I do remember the early game being pretty dire before I'd unlocked enough abilities with the axe to make the combat feel fluid.


----------



## feilong29

I decided to take a stab at Yakuza: Like a Dragon. First Yakuza game I've tried and I'm loving it! Has a battle system like the old FF games, and lots of homages to Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy in terms of battle music, themes and such. Solid story, mechanics and side quests that keep you engaged. I have to run a frikkin business in the game, lol.


----------



## wankerness

feilong29 said:


> I decided to take a stab at Yakuza: Like a Dragon. First Yakuza game I've tried and I'm loving it! Has a battle system like the old FF games, and lots of homages to Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy in terms of battle music, themes and such. Solid story, mechanics and side quests that keep you engaged. I have to run a frikkin business in the game, lol.


Great game unless you try to take on the final challenge tower, in which case you're going to be grinding things like running circles around in the park to collect insects for hours and killing the same enemies in the sewers hundreds and hundreds of times to max all your characters out.


----------



## feilong29

wankerness said:


> Great game unless you try to take on the final challenge tower, in which case you're going to be grinding things like running circles around in the park to collect insects for hours and killing the same enemies in the sewers hundreds and hundreds of times to max all your characters out.



I find myself running around between the same areas/groups to grind now--that is my only critique is that it takes FOREVER to gain experience and some mobs are hella-strong. 

I remember trying to do that final dungeon in Final Fantasy XV and kept going in circles and eventually gave up. 

Back to Yakuza--made the mistake of finding a chance to sell items, and sold ALL my "crap" materials and then shortly discovered I could upgrade my gear lol...$100k of stuff, gone and when I actually needed it. Lesson learned hahaha


----------



## CanserDYI

Im playing Hollow Knight and loving the hell out of it.


----------



## wankerness

feilong29 said:


> I find myself running around between the same areas/groups to grind now--that is my only critique is that it takes FOREVER to gain experience and some mobs are hella-strong.
> 
> I remember trying to do that final dungeon in Final Fantasy XV and kept going in circles and eventually gave up.
> 
> Back to Yakuza--made the mistake of finding a chance to sell items, and sold ALL my "crap" materials and then shortly discovered I could upgrade my gear lol...$100k of stuff, gone and when I actually needed it. Lesson learned hahaha


You'd be better off reading guides on grinding and upgrades. You absolutely should not spend money on upgrading anything other than the final weapons, since you're just throwing it down the toilet before then. You do have access to most of those "final weapons" early on. The game just doesn't make it clear that certain weapons can be upgraded incredibly far while others start out stronger but can only be upgraded a couple times and thus are a waste of time.

Regarding grinding, there are these really specific mobs that spawn in the same few places in late game that give radically more (like, 100x more) experience than anything else. They're the equivalent of the Metal Slimes from Dragon Quest if you're familiar with those. But basically you only need to do the grinding necessary to get through the story until you have those guys unlocked cause otherwise it is painfully slow.


----------



## feilong29

wankerness said:


> You'd be better off reading guides on grinding and upgrades. You absolutely should not spend money on upgrading anything other than the final weapons, since you're just throwing it down the toilet before then. You do have access to most of those "final weapons" early on. The game just doesn't make it clear that certain weapons can be upgraded incredibly far while others start out stronger but can only be upgraded a couple times and thus are a waste of time.
> 
> Regarding grinding, there are these really specific mobs that spawn in the same few places in late game that give radically more (like, 100x more) experience than anything else. They're the equivalent of the Metal Slimes from Dragon Quest if you're familiar with those. But basically you only need to do the grinding necessary to get through the story until you have those guys unlocked cause otherwise it is painfully slow.


Greatly appreciate the tips!


----------



## wankerness

feilong29 said:


> Greatly appreciate the tips!


The only time you really have to do any grinding to get through the story is a certain very difficult boss in the later middle of the game. I just looked it up - it's Chapter 12, and you want to be level 50 for that. Before then the game's pretty lenient IIRC. Besides a couple randomly really hard side missions (I remember a giant vacuum robot and a backhoe being two that wrecked me that I just came back to later when I had better/more electrified gear).


----------



## TedEH

Next on the list is...... Stray. Seems like it'll be a short one, I got something like a 3rd of the collectible memories in the first session.


----------



## StevenC

I am going to be playing at least two good games in 2023


----------



## TedEH

Already done with Stray. It did what it says on the box - it's a good short adventure where you do cat things as a cat. Looks pretty good in 4k. Some of the music I found kinda lacked polish - some sub notes made everything vibrate for no reason, and they had a crackly "noise" effect that was a little too true-to-life and made me think something was wrong with my speakers for a solid couple of minutes. A few under-developed ideas, but it accomplishes just about everything it sets out to do.

Re: the direct:
Felt like a lot of it was harvest moon type clones, and throwback JRPGs. Surprised to see Kirby. Glad the Bayonetta release date is set. Also glad BotW2 has a name and release date, but it's too far away and I am impatient.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> I am going to be playing at least two good games in 2023


What are you talking about? Zelda and Octopath Traveler 2? Pikmin 4 and Goldeneye?

The Goldeneye HD remaster with modern controls is actually the first game that has me contemplating an xbox. Switch gets the N64 port on their godawful emulation subscription service that doesn't even allow you to change button mappings, zzzz.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> What are you talking about? Zelda and Octopath Traveler 2? Pikmin 4 and Goldeneye?
> 
> The Goldeneye HD remaster with modern controls is actually the first game that has me contemplating an xbox. Switch gets the N64 port on their godawful emulation subscription service that doesn't even allow you to change button mappings, zzzz.


Zelda and Pikmin. I'll play Hexadecimalpath but who knows if it will be good or not.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The Goldeneye HD remaster with modern controls is actually the first game that has me contemplating an xbox. Switch gets the N64 port on their godawful emulation subscription service that doesn't even allow you to change button mappings, zzzz.



Who needs either when you've got your original N64 cart.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Who needs either when you've got your original N64 cart.


Um, people who like controls that aren't terrible and framerates that are higher than 15 and don't constantly dip whenever anything happens.  I was a huge proponent of the 1.2 control style with that game (walk with C buttons, aim with stick) but the default controls were a gigantic joke where you had to walk forward/back with the stick, strafe right/left with the C buttons, look sideways with the stick, and look up/down by holding down the C buttons, with wonky acceleration based on the longer you held it down. You could also hold down R to bring up a targeting reticle and then use the stick to aim, basically meaning you could not react half as fast to anyone that knew how to play if you were using the default controls and they weren't straight in front of you. But, only having one left stick is still way worse than having dual sticks with proper controls. I am sure transferring the original control styles to stick without reprogramming the game would be awful, which is what I'm guessing the switch online version will do based on their other offerings.

The N64 one is probably preferable to the Switch Online version given how that service has been going so far. Although they claim it will be playable via online multiplayer - that said, Switch's online servers are notoriously terrible and the wifi cards in the system are so bad that you'd probably have to arrange special sessions with friends who all had LAN adapters for it to be worth it.

The perfect dark remaster on Xbox 360 is so infinitely superior to the N64 version it's not even funny. There's no reason at all to play the N64 one in comparison. It's much lower resolution, the controls are vastly inferior, and the framerate's a disaster, on top of the UI being cramped due to the small 4x3 resolution. I expect this Xbox Goldeneye remake to be the same deal.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Um, people who like controls that aren't terrible and framerates that are higher than 15 and don't constantly dip whenever anything happens.  I was a huge proponent of the 1.2 control style with that game (walk with C buttons, aim with stick) but the default controls were a gigantic joke where you had to walk forward/back with the stick, strafe right/left with the C buttons, look sideways with the stick, and look up/down by holding down the C buttons, with wonky acceleration based on the longer you held it down. You could also hold down R to bring up a targeting reticle and then use the stick to aim, basically meaning you could not react half as fast to anyone that knew how to play if you were using the default controls and they weren't straight in front of you. But, only having one left stick is still way worse than having dual sticks with proper controls. I am sure transferring the original control styles to stick without reprogramming the game would be awful, which is what I'm guessing the switch online version will do based on their other offerings.
> 
> The N64 one is probably preferable to the Switch Online version given how that service has been going so far. Although they claim it will be playable via online multiplayer - that said, Switch's online servers are notoriously terrible and the wifi cards in the system are so bad that you'd probably have to arrange special sessions with friends who all had LAN adapters for it to be worth it.
> 
> The perfect dark remaster on Xbox 360 is so infinitely superior to the N64 version it's not even funny. There's no reason at all to play the N64 one in comparison. It's much lower resolution, the controls are vastly inferior, and the framerate's a disaster, on top of the UI being cramped due to the small 4x3 resolution. I expect this Xbox Goldeneye remake to be the same deal.


FWIW, they've updated the N64 emulator and it doesn't suck anymore. The latency on Maio 64 is still enough that speedrunners can notice it, but generally it's fine.

It's annoying that Goldeneye had dual stick control as an option with two controllers, but it's not available on NSO.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> FWIW, they've updated the N64 emulator and it doesn't suck anymore. The latency on Maio 64 is still enough that speedrunners can notice it, but generally it's fine.
> 
> It's annoying that Goldeneye had dual stick control as an option with two controllers, but it's not available on NSO.


Did they add the button mapping functionality? That seemed like the worst problem, especially considering virtual console supported it.


----------



## Isaiah04

Replaying Resident Evil 4 and Dead Space. I'm really excited for the remake of Dead Space this coming year, from what I've seen its going to be a faithful remake with major graphical upgrades. Also wondering how the games audio design will be, I've always been a sucker for scary ambiance haha. And luckily right around the corner too is going to be the Resident Evil 4 remake which i'm honestly hoping is going to be fantastic.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The perfect dark remaster on Xbox 360 is so infinitely superior to the N64 version it's not even funny. There's no reason at all to play the N64 one in comparison


I mostly kid about using the old carts, but I'm a sucker for the nostalgia, so I'm that old guy who will still plays the original carts sometimes. It's hard to argue that the Rare Replay version isn't fantastic, because it is. It did just enough. The same treatment for Goldeneye sounds pretty great.


----------



## wankerness

I did think of one reason to play the original Perfect Dark - the name "N-Bomb" was pretty funny. They (probably rightly) renamed them in the remaster. I don't know if N-Bomb just didn't have a mainstream meaning at the time of the original release, or if whoever released the remaster didn't like the joke.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Great game unless you try to take on the final challenge tower, in which case you're going to be grinding things like running circles around in the park to collect insects for hours and killing the same enemies in the sewers hundreds and hundreds of times to max all your characters out.


I swear, I AM going to go back to that game for the platinum. If I only do it for one Yakuza game, it's going to be Like a Dragon.

And speaking of Yakuza, the PS Direct announced a remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin. Sounds awesome..... Right? Someone tell me if this is a good thing, because the only thing I k ow about the original is it's basically the Yakuza characters but in a feudal Japan setting.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> And speaking of Yakuza, the PS Direct announced a remake of Like a Dragon: Ishin. Sounds awesome..... Right? Someone tell me if this is a good thing, because the only thing I k ow about the original is it's basically the Yakuza characters but in a feudal Japan setting.



While it is indeed just another Yakuza game, localising Ishin is great for 2 reasons:

1: Ishin was made during the same time as Yakuza 0, and uses the same engine before switching to Dragon in 6. And it goes all out as much as 0 did. By many accounts, it's one of the series highlights, up there with the 0 and 5 as the best Kiryu led games.

2: Localising anything is always a good thing. For some games, it's considered a miracle.


----------



## Ralyks

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Ishin was made during the same time as Yakuza 0, and uses the same engine before switching to Dragon in 6. And it goes all out as much as 0 did.


Did they confirm if it's the same engine as 0? Because this game looks like a ground up Kiwami style remake.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Ralyks said:


> Did they confirm if it's the same engine as 0? Because this game looks like a ground up Kiwami style remake.



Just looked it up, looks like they're using Unreal Engine 4.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

While we're on the subject of Yakuza, to the bemoaning of everyone who's sick of me talking about the franchise...

Yakuza 8 has been announced for 2024, but also this:



RGG Studios have quite the momentum. And they're really pushing the original name of the franchise to the west.


----------



## gabito

Yay.

True to God of War's tradition, the new game seems to be more or less the same game as the last one (which I'm OK with). So, this time we don't get to have 7 or so of almost-the-same-game, because this one will be the last one... but who knows, maybe Kratos will move to the Middle East later and fight Jesus and the apostles or something.


----------



## TedEH

I think I'd be down for GoW iterations that keep the general idea of the last one but take on different mythologies.

I'm kinda in a weird "what game do I play next limbo" where I keep starting new things but don't stick with them for much more than maybe an hour. I know my gamepass is going to run out in January, so I want to "use up" the stuff I want to play there, which means mostly trying to wrap up the Halo games - but I might just skip to Infinite and call it good, since I don't reaaaally care about the story. Also slowly poking at Skyward Sword HD whenever I'm not at home.

I also started a file in the new Last of Us remake, since I got a free copy of that one. This one might stick. I'm still caught in the novelty of having a PS5, so this keeps that momentum going.

I ended up getting a PS+ subscription through work, and there's a bunch of the souls-like type games on there, so there's also an urge to dive into some of those to see what the hype is all about.


----------



## wankerness

How did you get a free copy of the last of us remake?

What souls games are on there? I thought only Demon's Souls was. That's probably the least accessible but still infinitely preferable to any third party ones that would run a high risk of turning you off to the subgenre. Bloodborne is a decent entry point. If Dark Souls 3 was on there that's what I'd recommend but I didn't think any of the three dark souls or sekiro were.


----------



## wankerness

Bloody_Inferno said:


> While we're on the subject of Yakuza, to the bemoaning of everyone who's sick of me talking about the franchise...
> 
> Yakuza 8 has been announced for 2024, but also this:
> 
> 
> 
> RGG Studios have quite the momentum. And they're really pushing the original name of the franchise to the west.



Nice. That looks vastly more appealing to me than the damn Judgement games, and I do have a lot of fondness for the beat-em-up style over the RPG style so I didn't want ALL Yakuza games to be turn-based going forward. 

Beyond Judgement just went on sale for 27 bucks so maybe I'll finally pick it up, despite strongly disliking the first.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> How did you get a free copy of the last of us remake?


I work for (a company owned by) Sony. 



wankerness said:


> infinitely preferable to any third party ones that would run a high risk of turning you off to the subgenre


Hm..... Demon's Souls in on there for sure, and Bloodborne I think as well. I have access to a PS3 copy of DS1 and 2, but that means busting out the PS3. There's some stuff that I thiiiiiiiiink is in the genre, but kinda tangentially maybe? Like Ghost of Tsushima is there. If Eldin Ring was on there, I'd be grabbing that, but no dice - which is part of what draws me to the genre - there's so much hype for that one, and it's good looking in screenshots, so I figure if I dip my toes into the genre a bit, maybe it's worth a purchase later.


----------



## thebeesknees22

gabito said:


> Yay.
> 
> True to God of War's tradition, the new game seems to be more or less the same game as the last one (which I'm OK with). So, this time we don't get to have 7 or so of almost-the-same-game, because this one will be the last one... but who knows, maybe Kratos will move to the Middle East later and fight Jesus and the apostles or something.



Ooooooooooohhhhhhh 
I can't wait for this one. It already feels like it's going to be another instant classic. 

GOW4 is imho the best game ever made. This one looks like it'll be a solid follow up/continuation. 

can't wait for it to come out


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I work for (a company owned by) Sony.
> 
> 
> Hm..... Demon's Souls in on there for sure, and Bloodborne I think as well. I have access to a PS3 copy of DS1 and 2, but that means busting out the PS3. There's some stuff that I thiiiiiiiiink is in the genre, but kinda tangentially maybe? Like Ghost of Tsushima is there. If Eldin Ring was on there, I'd be grabbing that, but no dice - which is part of what draws me to the genre - there's so much hype for that one, and it's good looking in screenshots, so I figure if I dip my toes into the genre a bit, maybe it's worth a purchase later.


Nah, ghost of Tsushima is basically just an improved version of assassins creed. I’d say start with demons souls or bloodborne. The original version of dark souls is notorious for frame rate frustrations in one of the hardest parts, and the original release of dark souls 2 is very different from the remastered/remixes version that’s become the standard since then.

If the remastered DS was on the service I’d say start with that since it’s considered the biggest classic (I definitely think it’s far from the best, but it’s easily one of the most influential games of this century). But...yeah. Not sure about the previous generation version. I should play it on 360 to see just how bad it is, since I do have it. I played it for like three hours, accidentally went two very wrong ways at the start (first the graveyard, then Anor Londo) and promptly quit, to not play again for 8 years.

Elden ring would be the best entry point but yeah, doubt that’s going to be free till it starts getting price cuts.

Demons souls is just full of weird punishing and frustrating mechanics that aren’t in the later games (ex dying in “human form” even once making all enemies get stronger, locking you out of npc quests, as well as you losing half your max health - basically the easiest/safest way to play it is to kill yourself in the hub world any time you’re in human form so you never risk the enemy strength penalties for dying in human form in the regular levels). It’s mechanically the easiest in terms of boss difficulty and is a classic for a reason plus the ps5 version is probably the best looking game on the system. Just...it hurts and you should be aware of some mechanics going in cause the game does not explain any of them. “World tendency” being the worst one.

Bloodborne is less arcane but has by far the hardest starting bosses in the series, I know a substantial portion of people that have played it gave up on the first bosses without killing either.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Been way too busy for gaming lately, but finally finished the Live A Live remake last night with 2 bad endings and the good one. Beaten all the new elite bosses as well, sans one where you were required to flee from battles 100 times, and I couldn't be assed anymore. 

My complaints still stand, and it loses it's momentum on the second half of the game where it shifts to open world grindfest. But at least the combat is simple enough to get through, and it's worth seeing to the end. 

I was just about to pull the trigger on Xenoblade 2 and it's Torna expansion, but it's only a few weeks until the localisation of Trails of Zero drops... and that usually means me getting back to hibernating in the fridge again.


----------



## Nicki

I restarted my Final Fantasy XIV addiction.

Good-bye life.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> I work for (a company owned by) Sony.


So, uh, are you guys making a game or anything?


----------



## wankerness

As I'm sort of in a holding pattern in Stardew Valley (maxed rep with everyone, got perfection statue, now have nothing to work towards besides the frickin million G items and it takes me multiple seasons to get that much money), I booted up Dark Souls 2 for 360, on my machine that has no wireless adapter and is on the wrong floor to be wired. So, I'm playing version 1.0, with all that comes with it! Aka, Miracles aren't nerfed into the ground. So, I'm playing as a cleric and just got lightning spear, and have more than 3 times the number of casts as in all later versions of the game, plus it actually does pretty hefty damage (took 9 casts to take out that boss in noman's wharf even with summoned help). It's nice! The enemy placement is weird, some areas feel incredibly deserted. Like, Heide's Tower on the SOTFS version is loaded with not just those big stone guys but Heide knights. This seems to have all the stone guys, and NOTHING ELSE. So there are big empty gaps. Like, no dragon landing outside the Ornstein fight, no heide knights activating after you kill Smough, no guard on that big ramp, etc. The pirate ship area was also pretty deserted (but still dense). The first big open area in Forest of Fallen Giants had about 1/3 the number of dudes. Etc. The lost tower area seems about the same so far, though. Placement of estus shards and bone dust seems similar but with some differences already, so that's kind of fun. 

I sure died a bunch of times struggling through pursuer. The early game in this is brutal even with way more lenient enemy placement. Your character handles like garbage and can't possibly drink estus in the time between attacks from the likes of Pursuer until you're at about 20 adaptability, at which point the game suddenly starts becoming much easier. Using my old standard, the 1h mace, which is incredibly overpowered against most bosses.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> So, uh, are you guys making a game or anything?


If I was, I'd likely not be allowed to say, hah. That was the case with the previous job - I _waaaaas_ actively working on actual games that at least some people would actually care about (I can't spill unreleased details of course). This new job (started 3-4 months ago) isn't in game-dev directly - it's instead working on audio middleware that happens to be used by a lot of games - which for me felt like a natural transition.

Having been in something games-related for quite a while though means I've stacked up a good amount of free stuff. I've managed to get a year each of Gamepass and PS+ without paying for them, which reaaaaaally compounds the backlog problem. You'd think that means I don't spend much on games, but I still somehow end up buying more anyway. If I can somehow swing a free Switch Online voucher, I can complete the mooching trifecta.


----------



## Choop

TedEH said:


> If I can somehow swing a free Switch Online voucher, I can complete the mooching trifecta.


----------



## gabito

Went back to GoW (2018) for my 3rd (or 4th?) playthrough. Last time was in 2019, so I barely remember anything besides it being a good game that I liked a lot. Like every time I replay a game everything looks smaller and less impressive, but it's still a great game.

The influences from other games / companies are clear: TLoU, some Arkham Asylum metroidvania-ish stuff, and more. But it's still its own game, and some of the landmarks of the earlier GoW games are still there.

I still despise the small white reticle. I can't believe you can't change that, there's snow and clear skies everywhere and I can barely see it most of the time. Just being able to change the color would be enough.

And I can barely stand BOY. I understand Kratos is (or was) a lousy father (and all-round asshole) and the kid is angry about his mother's death, but he sounds almost like a contemporary teenager most of the time. I know nobody in the game talks like they used to talk in whatever era the game is set, but for some reason he sounds out of place (to me at least). It's like he's only missing an iPhone and AirPods to finally go all "yeah yeah, whatever dude" on Kratos before uploading something to TikTok.

Anyway: 9/10

"Did I tell you the story where I murdered my last kid for way less than that, BOY?"
"No, but I'm well aware that killing your father runs in the family, old man..."


----------



## wankerness

Dark Souls 2 1.0 is kind of a bastard in sections. That whole Drangleic Castle basement with the stone guys waking up and the sentinels is way, WAY harder than it is in SOTFS since the guys revive in groups, attack faster, and the sentinels have at least 50% more HP. There's still fewer enemies in general, making some sections WAY easier than in SOTFS, but some stuff is blatantly imbalanced and was rightly nerfed. I feel like SOTFS really smacks you in the face with difficulty in the early game but makes the late game easier.

It also doesn't help that playing at 30 FPS with the ratchety buttons on an xbox 360 controller and occasional hitches while the game loads things makes things more difficult. I am currently getting stomped by the demon of song, a boss I don't remember ever having trouble with before! I think I just need to level health more, my stats are spread way too thin (I think I have 25 points into health) and as a result I'm getting 1 shot sometimes even with a human effigy up.


----------



## TedEH

Just finished Last of Us pt 1. It's not bad. Certainly _looks_ good on a PS5, and the story is put together reasonably well. Characters are likable. I dunno that there's much to comment on regarding gameplay, since it's a pretty straitforward action / survival kind of deal. Levels are linear. Some off-paths to find small rewards / caches, but it's clearly pre-open-world design, and I'm ok with that. I know they pointed to audio being a selling point for this one, and I could see it. Spatial stuff was done pretty well. I wasn't expecting the stealth mechanics going in, but appreciated them for sure. Was forgiving enough, in the sense that AI never did / saw anything that made me go "aw, well that's just unfair", except for maybe one special encounter. But I appreciated that you could fail the stealth and still recover the situation by running or trying a fire fight. Can't decide if I'm "hooked" enough to do the DLC or just move on.

I might be leaning towards moving on because the new Monkey Island is out and that's got my name written all over it.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I'd recommend doing the DLC. It's relatively short and to the point and gives some good background exposition on Ellie's character.


----------



## gabito

Yeah, the DLC is good (and short).


----------



## wankerness

I didn’t think it was very good. I do think it’s funny how many CHUDs got furious about it including non-straight people, though. And how that fury carried right over into Last of us Part 2 reactions!!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finally had enough time to sit down and get to Act 2 of the PS5 version of Cyberpunk. It did all the available side gigs in Act 1 so I could just steam roll through the rest of the early game. I was weird not having Silverhand in your head to deliver a few quips on a couple of them, but they went by quick enough. Found a optical camo upgrade early enough that it made a few of the stealth optional gigs a cake walk.


----------



## wankerness

Trombone Champ - this is definitely the funniest rhythm game I've ever played. So simple, but so brilliant. Basically guitar hero except your mouse's vertical position corresponds to your slide position, and the pitch of your trombone in game corresponds to your mouse position with the accuracy of about a quarter tone. Needless to say, everything you play is comically out of tune until you get very good. It's great.


----------



## Werecow

wankerness said:


> Trombone Champ - this is definitely the funniest rhythm game I've ever played. So simple, but so brilliant. Basically guitar hero except your mouse's vertical position corresponds to your slide position, and the pitch of your trombone in game corresponds to your mouse position with the accuracy of about a quarter tone. Needless to say, everything you play is comically out of tune until you get very good. It's great.


I saw this just last night. Looks like a really funny game with friends.


----------



## wankerness

Werecow said:


> I saw this just last night. Looks like a really funny game with friends.



Yeah. I got a couple middle/high school band directors addicted to it yesterday. It apparently derailed their afternoons and every student that saw it had to get in on watching it.

It also gets points for having a semi-amusing sense of humor even beyond the gameplay. Like, the intro that plays when you start appears to be some kind of Dark Souls parody. Plus all the terminology it uses (toots, etc) and the ridiculous "facts" that appear on loading screens.


----------



## TedEH

Y'all weren't kidding - that Last of Us DLC was really short. Not bad, but short. And didn't add anything mechanically. And narratively you could have inferred everything, so I guess it's more fleshed out character details, but you don't really learn anything about the universe or have any plot-relevant reveals or anything.


----------



## rokket2005

I beat Ys Origin last night as Yunica and it's pretty good. Started a second run with Hugo the 2nd character you can use right away as I didn't really want to jump right into another game right away. That was before I got an email from Amazon this morning that said my switch copy of Trails from Zero, which I preordered a month ago and comes out the 27th, won't ship to me until November. Why they can't fulfill preorders even is ridiculous, especially since I don't imagine it's going to be a mega seller, and I have to imagine it's just NISA being shitty with stock amounts. I'm picking up a Bayonetta 1 preorder from Best buy on Friday, and if they have it I'll grab it then, but otherwise I might as well playthrough Ys Origin again or Tokyo Mirage Sessions and Great Ace Attorney chronicles if it turns out i really do have a month before trails.


----------



## wankerness

Connected my ol' xbox 360 to the internet and it promptly updated Dark Souls 2 to 1.10 instead of 1.00, instantly my lightning spam build became totally non-viable (it gave me 1/3 as many casts of each spell and also reduced their damage by about 30% - one of the most heavy-handed nerfs of all time). So, guess I'm going dark orb spam for the DLC! It was a great build to play through once as, though. Very good damage, but the tradeoff that the casts are INCREDIBLY slow. Sure took out darklurker with zero effort, though. The NPC invaders in OG DS2 are also comically stupid and all died to lightning spam easily. The ones in SOTFS have greatly improved AI and that would not have worked. 

I am slightly tempted to try playing Dark Souls 1 1.00 off the disc (if my disc is a first pressing, not sure about that, I think it is). Apparently the game is monstrously more difficult, like everything will aggro on you from much, MUCH further away and bosses drop a pathetic amount of souls (ex 750 from the Gargoyles). Think that would get old really quick, though!


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Reached the point of no return in Cyberpunk. Taking care of the side content before I go through the endings.

I'm not even done with the side content and I've already hit it on PS5. I had to grind out the PS4 version to reach level 50. I don't know if CDPR reworked the progression system or what, but I'm just walking through the majority of armed combat. I've accidently taken more stimpaks than I've intentionally taken at this point.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm. I'll have to buy that game if it ever gets down to 20 bucks for the PS5 version. Kinda the way I feel about Lost Judgment. The initial reports were SO offputting that I'm in no rush even though I probably would like it.

I see that Cyberpunk is currently 25 and Lost Judgement is currently 27. Not cheap enough! Especially considering Lost Judgement has 30 dollar DLC.


----------



## gabito

Still replaying GoW 2018.

I have only one rule for GoW games, and that's "I really like these games, so I will get the plat for every one of them". I did it for all of the PS3 remasters and GoW III / Ascension, GoW III's PS4 remaster, and now - after 4 years and 3 playthroughs- I'm 8 Odin Ravens away from getting the plat for this one.

It's a stupid rule, I know.

And I fucking hate collectibles (shame on you and your game-padding techniques, game developers), so it took a while.


----------



## wankerness

Playing Dark Souls 1 on xbox 360 for the first time seriously. I had two save files when I booted it up, both level 12, both in firelink without even the taurus demon killed. I was really bad in 2013 and never tried to get better, I guess!

I'm to O&S. This character I loaded was a sorcerer, so I went with it. It seems that was the wrong choice for my playstyle - I can't deal with O&S AT ALL. Ornstein dodges 80% of my spells, and when I do occasionally manage to down him, I tend to get 1-shot by super-smough's bullshit hammer charge before I can take off more than 5% of his health with my few remaining spells. I think I need to go back to Sen's funhouse and find the stupid key to unlock Big Hat Logan and then run all the way back to firelink and buy actual good spells from him (ex homing soulmass) and then run ALL the way back to O&S and try again. Ugh. At least I got through Sen's Fortress with only one death (though I skipped all the extra bullshit with chasing rolling rocks and stuff and now that's biting me in the ass cause I can't unlock the shorcut). I have 36 int and 25 vitality so that shouldn't be the problem.

The technical limitations of this are shocking. DS2 honestly runs quite well on Xbox 360 - it's only 30 fps instead of 60, but there are very rarely any dips of any kind and the visuals really aren't much different from the SOTFS port on PS4. So, I was very surprised when I went back to DS1 and there are CONSTANTLY framerate dives, like every time you use a bonfire or even an estus flask. And Blighttown - holy shit! I always heard it had framerate problems, but I had no idea just how bad they truly were. It was going around 5 fps for some sections, and basically the ENTIRE LEVEL was usually hovering around 15. It felt like a slideshow at times. And it's like that all the way until you get into Queelag's room, basically! It's like this game wasn't designed to run on current gen systems at all, or something. I can't believe something this badly optimized was allowed to get out there. I wonder if the PS3 version is any better?

On top of that, the lighting is absolutely horrible. I mean, the game's never looked great, even in the remastered versions, but a lot of the levels felt almost like Tomb of the Giants. I had to jack the brightness on my TV to 100% and the game to 100% to be able to even see what I was walking on in a lot of places (ex Valley of the Drakes, Blighttown, the indoor sections of Anor Londo). The graphical upgrade for DS2 on xbox 360 is pretty astonishing in terms of playability - I find it even more odd how much backlash there was to that game. That said, I did also immediately notice how much tighter and fluid the controls seem in comparison to DS2, so there's that.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

damn EA's version of Monster Hunter looks neat:


----------



## TedEH

Continuing my way through the Halo Infinite campaign and I have mixed feelings about it so far. It's not a bad game by any stretch, but it feels like there's a lot of trade-offs going on. The open world allowed them to flex some tech, but from a design standpoint kinda doesn't make sense - it just feels like grind between main missions. It's like the game is _actually_ pretty linear with the veneer of an open world game. I'm not very far in though, maybe it'll open up more at some point.

Another trade off is the sound design - where I think it comes across very polished, but there's a lot to nit-pick - like I'm not sure how I feel about such a prominent "you have killed something" sound. It's helpful, but maybe too helpful? The grunt chatter is pretty great though. Voice acting is.... mixed? Some of the characters sound great and others sound grating - like the Not-Cortana lady sounds like I'm listening to a commercial or something. Like they overshot "charm" and landed in something "campy" instead. It's definitely got that 2020s "every voiced character has to be a funny/sassy/dramatic caricature that talks too much" thing going for it.

Then the combat - again, feels like something got traded off somewhere. There's a level of polish in _most_ encounters, especially during the linear levels, the guns have been balanced to the point where it barely matters what you use, for better or worse - but every "boss" encounter I've seen so far has had a frustrating difficulty spike to it. Like you'll be breezing through swarms of normal enemies, just to be put up against several hulking tanks of enemies with names that soak up all your ammo and still won't die. Oh - and enemies have extraordinary vision and memory -> they can spot me from across the map when they're like 2 pixels tall and still _always see me_ and _still be able to hit me_. As soon as I'm in line of sight of a sniper-type enemy, I have to sneak around 'cause it's too far away for me to see it, let alone shoot it, but he can hit me with no problem.

It's not that the game isn't fun, 'cause it is. And it's not that the game isn't flashy, 'cause it's that too. And it's not unpolished in terms of presentation. But it's a game that'll be fine for an hour, then get frustrating for the next hour, then be really cool for an hour, then pull some really cheap deaths, then show you a really well executed set piece or cutscene, then pit you against an unfair boss, then you explore for a few hours and find some cool stuff, then you get back to the main missions and wonder what that grinding actually contributed to anything, etc etc.


----------



## p0ke

I bought the remastered version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 yesterday. Goddamn, I used to love these games and the new version didn't ruin it. The only slightly annoying thing is that the soundtrack isn't identical - I don't wanna hear Machine Gun Kelly when I'm pretending to be back in the 90's (even though the new tracks kinda fit it... )  I didn't check if it's possible to disable individual songs like in the originals though...


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> damn EA's version of Monster Hunter looks neat:




The fact this is made by Koei Tecmo and published by EA gives me no faith it's not going to be primarily a vehicle for DLC. The last Dynasty Warriors was a nightmare. Hyrule Warriors 2 wasn't like that, but that was probably cause Nintendo was the publisher. I don't really see EA telling them to knock it off with all the monetization.

Still plugging away on Dark Souls on 360. It's amazing how badly this runs. Fighting Sif and going through the Demon Ruins were just about as bad as Blighttown in terms of framerate. Demon Ruins, when you're anywhere close to the lava, additionally has this ungodly bloom effect that makes the screen look like a really blurry low-res picture taken with a flip phone at all times. It's horrible and makes it almost impossible to see anything. That said, it does look like a stylistic choice and it certainly makes things look steamy and boiling, while the remaster just kinda makes the area look like anything else, just with bright lava floors. However, I'd prefer that over 10 fps and no ability to identify items since you're blinded.

After running back to free Logan and getting homing soulmass and soul spear, I ran all the way back to O&S and proceeded to have the easiest fight against them I've ever had. Used Soulmass like 4 times and that was the end of Smough, then used it a few more times and one soulspear and that was the end of Super Ornstein, who I never even had to get into melee range of. I guess I see why sorcerer builds are considered easy mode. However, it took a lot of work to get it to this point, since I had no chance against them with the soul arrow spells.

Tomb of Giants wasn't as bad as normal, just very slowly crept through and 1-shot those awful skeleton dogs with soul spears (since they 1-shot ME with the jump even if I blocked it). However, Nito seemed way, WAY harder than I remember, with scads of skeletons chasing me around including a few giant ones that I didn't remember being involved. I had to run around in circles around the arena and spam estus and pray, basically.

I screwed up Onion Knight's questline (i saved his daughter, but then he wasn't in demon ruins, and I killed those monsters he's supposed to fight, and then I found him in blighttown, and then he came back to demon ruins but those monsters didn't respawn). Bed of Chaos only killed me once which I guess is a blessing.

The bulk of duke's archives was surprisingly easy, I always thought those stupid crystal guys were strong vs magic, but nope. Stopped at the crystal bridge shit though cause I absolutely hate it and not having an xbox live subscription that would allow me to see the bridges would make it all the worse. Plus those huge crystal golems really are nearly immune to magic and have a shitton of HP so I don't stand a chance of actually killing them.


----------



## Albake21

Any Saints Row fans here? I was a massive fan of 1 and 2, but then 3 and 4 lost me with how wacky it got. I was pretty excited for the reboot, but wow has it fell VERY flat. As a longtime fan though, I had to give it a shot for myself. 22% into the game and I'm absolutely pulling my hair out with how mind numbingly bad the writing is and how horribly outdated the gameplay is. Glad I bought it at a discount, but man this is just painful to sit through. Hoping to just quickly get through it, see all it offers, and then back on eBay it goes.


----------



## CanserDYI

Playing through Breath of the Wild again, god it's so much easier second time through and way more fun, now that I kinda know my way around and can take my time just enjoying the game instead of just trying to beat the story.


----------



## BlackMastodon

I think I've finally done enough side stuff in BotW that I'm ready to fight Calamity Ganon and be done. It's been a great experience and I'm still loving it, but I can't be arsed to find more shrines and koroks and I'm not a conpletionist. Good timing before Tears of the Kingdom come sout this spring.


----------



## StevenC

Splatoon 3 is the best game I own


----------



## CanserDYI

StevenC said:


> Splatoon 3 is the best game I own


Honestly that good? My son is obsessed with number 2 and I figured how different could 3 be?


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Albake21 said:


> Any Saints Row fans here? I was a massive fan of 1 and 2, but then 3 and 4 lost me with how wacky it got. I was pretty excited for the reboot, but wow has it fell VERY flat. As a longtime fan though, I had to give it a shot for myself. 22% into the game and I'm absolutely pulling my hair out with how mind numbingly bad the writing is and how horribly outdated the gameplay is. Glad I bought it at a discount, but man this is just painful to sit through. Hoping to just quickly get through it, see all it offers, and then back on eBay it goes.


That new Saints Row requel looks like something that would've been outdated on even the PS3. That Agents of Mayhem game they did looked outdated on the PS4. I personally stopped at three. I have Gat out of Hell (and I think I might have 4) as PS+ games, but I've never bothered to boot either up.

I did plat the PS5 version of Cyberpunk. I had one issue with the Autojock trophy where I stopped getting alerts about cars to buy from a fixer, but I was able to look up a workaround that finally got them to start popping up. I'm ready for the DLCs. And the new run of figures. Panam, Judy, and Smasher were supposed to come out last month, but they've been pushed back to March 2023.


----------



## StevenC

CanserDYI said:


> Honestly that good? My son is obsessed with number 2 and I figured how different could 3 be?


I mean, to an extent it's an online multilayer game and it's just the fanbase migrating. However, the campaign mode is sooooooooo good. Even better than Octo Expansion imo. They haven't added a whole bunch of stuff, but the new weapons are fun and so is the improved Salmon Run. Haven't done a threeway Splatfest thing yet, but looking forward to it. 

Table Turf Battle is worth the price of admission alone for me tbh.


----------



## Albake21

Carrion Rocket said:


> That new Saints Row requel looks like something that would've been outdated on even the PS3. That Agents of Mayhem game they did looked outdated on the PS4. I personally stopped at three. I have Gat out of Hell (and I think I might have 4) as PS+ games, but I've never bothered to boot either up.


Heh, yeah I'd say it's on par with a game from the PS3/360 generation. Absolutely nowhere near worth a AAA price tag. 3 was pretty bad for me. 4 even though way too wacky, was at least a fun game on its own and it surprisingly had some SR1 callbacks. Agents of Mayhem was straight up bad. Gat out of Hell I didn't even bother with, the reviews were bad enough for me to skip it. It's sad what Volition has done with this franchise.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So I caved and finally bought and started Xenoblade 2 knowing I will immediately put it on hold the moment Trails of Zero drops in the Oceanic regions (in a few days). So that'll keep me busy from leaving my JRPG hole, aside for the occasional sunlight and nourishment here and there. 



Albake21 said:


> Heh, yeah I'd say it's on par with a game from the PS3/360 generation. Absolutely nowhere near worth a AAA price tag. 3 was pretty bad for me. 4 even though way too wacky, was at least a fun game on its own and it surprisingly had some SR1 callbacks. Agents of Mayhem was straight up bad. Gat out of Hell I didn't even bother with, the reviews were bad enough for me to skip it. It's sad what Volition has done with this franchise.



Personally I thought Saints Row 4 was on par with 2 as the best in the series (also 2 of my favorite sandbox games of all time). Going full Army of Darkness off the leash was the logical conclusion Volition had to go after introducing the quirky wacky stuff in 2. The Third has it's moments but has serious pacing issues that takes it a few notches off greatness for me. 

Also the problem with Saints Row as a franchise is that Saints Row 4 (and Gat Out Of Hell) going full over the top wacky has killed the story stone dead. There was nowhere to go but Agents of Mayhem (which didn't work), and finally rebooting the series. Though I'll probably skip the current reboot unless it hits ridiculously cheap bargain bin prices. From what I hear, it's exactly a classic last gen Saints Row game to it's own detriment. So it's giving a vibe that's dated and unnecessary.


----------



## gabito

Got the plat for GoW 2018 last week.

And just finished Stick it to the Man, a fun little game.

There's nothing I really want to play now, so I guess I'll keep playing The Witcher 3 (my go to "I have nothing else to do" game) until GoW Ragnarök is released.


----------



## wankerness

Finally bought Returnal. Sony refuses to discount it an acceptable amount (last sale was 45 bucks) but the physical discs are cheap (just bought one new and sealed off ebay for 20 bucks with free shipping, which is about the going rate). Glad I bought the disc version of the PS5!!

Similarly there are some switch games I want to check out but they all cost way too much digital. Guess I have to wait for cheap copies on ebay. If they even have physical copies! (Live a Live, Pokemon Legends, Kirby) I really want to try out Steelrising on PS5 too, but again, no way I want to pay more than about 25 for that. I'll probably be waiting a while!

I am still waiting for the PS5 version of Witcher 3 to play that again. I remember REALLY liking it, but it was also one of the first games I played on next gen consoles and I know I was maybe overly impressed with some of them and would be less so today.


----------



## TedEH

I'd be surprised if the Pokemon and Kirby titles didn't have physical releases.

I've been doing the same with Switch titles, for the most part - waiting for used physical copies. There's just something about the Nintendo value calculation that doesn't quite work. Putting aside even the idea that digital should arguably be cheaper because there's no packaging and less distribution to worry about - you know very well going in that you're not going to get a big modern spectacle of a game just by virtue of how far behind the hardware is at this point. Pokemon games, for example, are aliased to all hell and back and hard to look at, and built on the same game play loop from decades ago. I mean, I'd be the last person to deny what goes into making _any_ title, but the big blockbuster "wow" titles are pretty few and far between for your $80 (that's CAD) compared to what you get on almost any other platform.

I really like the Switch for what it is, but once the novelty of its gimmicks wear off, and the portability looses some teeth when you work from home anyway, and knowing that it's a platform that sits on that edge of the awkward digital-future where you have to worry if your games will be accessible to you anymore in 10 years, and knowing Nintendo isn't good with legacy support - I suspect this is a platform that isn't going to age well.


----------



## wankerness

The thing about the Switch that gets my goat the most is how the 3rd party ports are radically more expensive. Like, Skyrim just came out for it, and it's 70 goddam bucks. That's more expensive than it is on any other platform, even considering the fact that since it's on Switch the odds of it being heavily discounted are MUCH lower. Not to mention it's borderline unplayable on handheld mode on switch cause they don't have an in-game brightness slider and the older Switch models have screens that are way too dark to see anything in any cave in that game.

Or that shitfest Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which is 100 dollars on switch for the GOTY edition, even though it's objectively a lot worse than the other versions (IIRC i bought that game's full version with all the DLC for ~45 bucks on playstation less than six months after its original release).


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The thing about the Switch that gets my goat the most is how the 3rd party ports are radically more expensive





wankerness said:


> objectively a lot worse than the other versions


^ And that's just it. I don't mind spending money for the stuff I want, and games are pretty frivolous in the grand scheme, but you _just know_ you can get better builds on other platforms.

And the idea of being able to take "full games" with you in your pocket isn't an exclusively Nintendo thing anymore. Steam deck? Aya Neo? GPDWin? Cloud services? A cell phone with a controller?

Then again.... RIP Stadia, I guess.


----------



## CanserDYI

Yeah switch has decimated my pocketbook with my kid wanting every new Mario/Nintendo game that comes out. Fucking 60 bucks is hard to swallow for games that simple....


----------



## wankerness

The good first party games are the ones where their pricing scheme DOESN"T bug me. I mean, Mario Galaxy and Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart and even Bowser's Revenge are all incredibly polished and excellent games and if people are still paying 60 for them that's OK with me. I mean, if people will pay for them, why would you discount them? And Nintendo actually went to the work of releasing fully polished products in their cases. They're great, and they were at launch.

It's the bullshit like the endless flood of lazy, badly programmed pokemon games that stay 60 bucks that I can't defend. I don't think those are technically first party, though. Things like that make me understand people who pirate Switch games. Sounds like Legends: Arceus is the first pokemon game really worth playing since the Gameboy Color days. And even it is supposedly quite buggy and wonky. Hopefully the sequels clean up that formula.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> ^ And that's just it. I don't mind spending money for the stuff I want, and games are pretty frivolous in the grand scheme, but you _just know_ you can get better builds on other platforms.
> 
> And the idea of being able to take "full games" with you in your pocket isn't an exclusively Nintendo thing anymore. Steam deck? Aya Neo? GPDWin? Cloud services? A cell phone with a controller?
> 
> Then again.... RIP Stadia, I guess.


The portable thing is nice with some games. Like, Stardew Valley is great in handheld mode. Animal Crossing, etc.

But, you try playing Dragon's Dogma or Dark Souls or even Breath of the Wild in handheld mode and it's bad news. I'd go so far as to say Dark Souls is unplayable once you're out of the first few zones, Dragon's Dogma is very uncomfortable and extremely difficult to see what's on the screen in some zones, and BOTW is just very uncomfortable and also drains the battery in what feels like minutes (the way the controllers feel in handheld mode leads me to get immediate handcramps with anything that uses a lot of dual stick movement).


----------



## TedEH

People generally pirate Nintendo stuff for the same reason you pirate anything else -> it loses the perceived-value-vs-cost test. People generally are willing to pay for things when it fits their value model - but every little inconvenience or hiccup or comparison to other platforms is going to throw that balance off.

Like the whole attitude towards old IP is a huge driver of piracy. I don't need to pirate PC games at this point, 'cause Valve and Epic and Microsoft have made games so accessible that there's no reason to. Hell, Epic gave away some bangers when their store was just becoming a thing. The PS+ setup is headed in a similar direction. Then on the other hand you have Nintendo doing things like shutting down their stores and taking products off the market that people have proven they want access to. The "limited time" digital sales of the Mario collection was just BS. As much as there's an element to piracy of some people just wanting to have stuff for free - there's the flipside of driving your audience to it by being just about antagonistic towards your consumers.


----------



## Koldunya

Conan Exiles mostly, on an RP server. It's fun, it's like playing The Sims With Violence.


----------



## StevenC

RE: Nintendo pricing

People keep buying those games forever. Like Mario Kart 8 sold to every single person who owned a Wii U, and then all of those people bought it again on Switch. That's why the price never really drops.

However, I don't understand NoA's pricing at all. In Europe Switch games are all cheaper than PS/Xbox games, have way more price points available, the physical editions of a lot of games are more expensive, etc. The Switch tax is a real thing globally, but NoA just makes such a bad job of it.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> People generally pirate Nintendo stuff for the same reason you pirate anything else -> it loses the perceived-value-vs-cost test. People generally are willing to pay for things when it fits their value model - but every little inconvenience or hiccup or comparison to other platforms is going to throw that balance off.
> 
> Like the whole attitude towards old IP is a huge driver of piracy. I don't need to pirate PC games at this point, 'cause Valve and Epic and Microsoft have made games so accessible that there's no reason to. Hell, Epic gave away some bangers when their store was just becoming a thing. The PS+ setup is headed in a similar direction. Then on the other hand you have Nintendo doing things like shutting down their stores and taking products off the market that people have proven they want access to. The "limited time" digital sales of the Mario collection was just BS. As much as there's an element to piracy of some people just wanting to have stuff for free - there's the flipside of driving your audience to it by being just about antagonistic towards your consumers.


The other thing with pirating nintendo games being rampant is it's pretty easy to jailbreak their current systems. It's true of the switch, and it was definitely true of the Wii-U and especially the DSs (where all you had to do was buy an SD card with some app installed on it, basically). By contrast I think playstation consoles even back in the PS2 days required actual hardware mods. You can easily pirate full switch games and even play it on the actual hardware and that is NOT the case at all with xbox or PS4 (well, it is with the ones with PC ports obviously, but that's more of a recent Xbox thing).


----------



## TedEH

I guess that's a big selling point (for me) for PCs - there's no need to "jailbreak" them since they're already general purpose machines. I think it's also another point in the PC-like handhelds getting popular now. If I had a steam deck, the library is vast enough, and the platform is open enough, that I don't think I'd feel any need to "hack" the thing. My 3DS on the other hand..... so much more useful once it was opened up - and I don't even use it for "pirated" stuff - if anything, I go the other way around, where I'll jailbreak stuff so that I can use the hardware to rip roms off stuff I already own. I see no problem with taking a game you paid for, ripping the rom, and playing it on your phone or PC or whatever is convenient.


----------



## TedEH

Just finished the Halo Infinite campaign and I have some thoughts....



Spoiler



I think that overall, as a Halo title, it's pretty decent, but I maintain my previous criticisms about the difficulty spikes for "bosses". The thing that gets me about this one is that the open world kinda does nothing for the game - I don't understand what it's inclusion was supposed to do other than check the "we made an open world" box. The first 2/3 of the game primes you for what might turn into a Ubi-style hunt-the-icons grind where you just collect and shoot things for the fun of it, and, not gonna lie, I think there could have been some value in that if it was better tied into how you progress through the game. But the open world parts are sparse, and you eventually just get funnelled into linear missions like a traditional Halo game. Don't get me wrong, those linear sections work well, since it is Halo after all - that's what Halo does: linear shooting galleries and corridors and arenas etc. IMO the game succeeds as a Halo shooting game, but fails miserably as an open world title, even if the world _visually_ looks pretty nice.

Some random thoughts.

- Just to reiterate: the open world adds nothing.
- I found the guns to be almost toooo balanced. It mostly didn't matter what you picked, you were always effective if you put some effort into it.
- Except for some segments where I think the intention is to run through instead of killing anything, but they aren't signposted very well if that was the intent.
- To go with the super-balance of guns, they're also super abundant. You always have what you need. I can't decide if that's good or bad. Fun maybe. But not very challenging. Some will like it, some won't, I guess.
- The vehicles sure are slippery as always. If it wasn't a Halo game, I'd say they felt "wrong".
- The grunt dialogue is pretty funny.
- The rest of the dialogue was pretty average.
- I wasn't a fan of Not-Cortana. Something about the way they animated her face with one lip always slightly raised up, and the weird naivety of the character just felt off to me.
- Then when you see Cortana, her face is also a little odd.... like she has too much teeth. Way too much teeth.
- I feel like I'm nitpicking those models too much, but it's hard to not see it once you see it.
- The visuals push my PC pretty hard (I still have a gtx1080), but the upscaler still looks good if you target 1080 and upscale to 4k. The resolution scaling is really transparent, which I found impressive.
- I think the sound implementation was also really good, for the most part. I think it was supposed to be spatialized, but I tried Windows Sonic and it didn't reaaally add much. I left it off.
- The ducking for dialogue is something reaaaally aggressive. Some might like this. I found it distracting.

It's..... a decent Halo game I guess.

Edit:
I will come back to say though that the grapple is pretty great.


----------



## Albake21

TedEH said:


> Just finished the Halo Infinite campaign and I have some thoughts....
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I think that overall, as a Halo title, it's pretty decent, but I maintain my previous criticisms about the difficulty spikes for "bosses". The thing that gets me about this one is that the open world kinda does nothing for the game - I don't understand what it's inclusion was supposed to do other than check the "we made an open world" box. The first 2/3 of the game primes you for what might turn into a Ubi-style hunt-the-icons grind where you just collect and shoot things for the fun of it, and, not gonna lie, I think there could have been some value in that if it was better tied into how you progress through the game. But the open world parts are sparse, and you eventually just get funnelled into linear missions like a traditional Halo game. Don't get me wrong, those linear sections work well, since it is Halo after all - that's what Halo does: linear shooting galleries and corridors and arenas etc. IMO the game succeeds as a Halo shooting game, but fails miserably as an open world title, even if the world _visually_ looks pretty nice.
> 
> Some random thoughts.
> 
> - Just to reiterate: the open world adds nothing.
> - I found the guns to be almost toooo balanced. It mostly didn't matter what you picked, you were always effective if you put some effort into it.
> - Except for some segments where I think the intention is to run through instead of killing anything, but they aren't signposted very well if that was the intent.
> - To go with the super-balance of guns, they're also super abundant. You always have what you need. I can't decide if that's good or bad. Fun maybe. But not very challenging. Some will like it, some won't, I guess.
> - The vehicles sure are slippery as always. If it wasn't a Halo game, I'd say they felt "wrong".
> - The grunt dialogue is pretty funny.
> - The rest of the dialogue was pretty average.
> - I wasn't a fan of Not-Cortana. Something about the way they animated her face with one lip always slightly raised up, and the weird naivety of the character just felt off to me.
> - Then when you see Cortana, her face is also a little odd.... like she has too much teeth. Way too much teeth.
> - I feel like I'm nitpicking those models too much, but it's hard to not see it once you see it.
> - The visuals push my PC pretty hard (I still have a gtx1080), but the upscaler still looks good if you target 1080 and upscale to 4k. The resolution scaling is really transparent, which I found impressive.
> - I think the sound implementation was also really good, for the most part. I think it was supposed to be spatialized, but I tried Windows Sonic and it didn't reaaally add much. I left it off.
> - The ducking for dialogue is something reaaaally aggressive. Some might like this. I found it distracting.
> 
> It's..... a decent Halo game I guess.
> 
> Edit:
> I will come back to say though that the grapple is pretty great.





Spoiler: Possible Halo Infinite Spoilers



This is very accurate to my playthrough of Infinite. I played it at launch, so I've had time for it settle in. And honestly, I'm even more disappointed with it looking back.

You're 100% right, open world was pointless. It adds absolutely nothing to the game, and if anything, I think it was a major detriment to the campaign as a whole. The whole campaign is two biomes, forerunner tech or grassy mountain. That's it. They essentially took the second mission of CE and made it into a campaign. Great mission, but terrible idea.

The second biggest issue is how the story is told to the audience. Everything cool that happened between 5 and Infinite is just told you through holograms. That's the whole story in a nutshell. Everything cool that happens in the game happens off screen or is told to you through holograms. "Oh by the way, Cortana died... anyways the banished are bad."

The characters are very forgettable, and there aren't even that many to remember... Not-Cortana is truly an awful character. I saw the ending a mile away. Her character is so bubbly and so Disney-like that it just turns me off. The very moment she rebelled against Chief, had a pouty fit like a child, I seriously contemplated stopping the game right then and there. I was so turned off by it. The pilot is a bit relatable and has human qualities, but it all felt very forced to just have a sad and relatable character. Not much substance other than he's a human. I can barely even remember any of the Banished, honestly, nothing memorable.

The only thing I'll give the game is that I did have _fun _with the actual gameplay. It was fun returning to a more classic formula of fighting the covenant, but it's not enough to carry the campaign. Grappling hook was fun, couldn't imagine this slog of a campaign without it.

All in all, better than 5? worse than 1-4. I'd give it like a 5 or 6 out of 10. Which is way too low for Halo IMO.

And multiplayer..... oh man I don't even want to touch that dumpster fire. I could be here writing up a 3 page essay. The Halo Infinite multiplayer experience is an abysmal joke. A hollow shell of what Bungie pulled off with 1 through Reach.


----------



## TedEH

Albake21 said:


> Spoiler: Possible Halo Infinite Spoilers
> 
> 
> 
> This is very accurate to my playthrough of Infinite. I played it at launch, so I've had time for it settle in. And honestly, I'm even more disappointed with it looking back.
> 
> You're 100% right, open world was pointless. It adds absolutely nothing to the game, and if anything, I think it was a major detriment to the campaign as a whole. The whole campaign is two biomes, forerunner tech or grassy mountain. That's it. They essentially took the second mission of CE and made it into a campaign. Great mission, but terrible idea.
> 
> The second biggest issue is how the story is told to the audience. Everything cool that happened between 5 and Infinite is just told you through holograms. That's the whole story in a nutshell. Everything cool that happens in the game happens off screen or is told to you through holograms. "Oh by the way, Cortana died... anyways the banished are bad."
> 
> The characters are very forgettable, and there aren't even that many to remember... Not-Cortana is truly an awful character. I saw the ending a mile away. Her character is so bubbly and so Disney-like that it just turns me off. The very moment she rebelled against Chief, had a pouty fit like a child, I seriously contemplated stopping the game right then and there. I was so turned off by it. The pilot is a bit relatable and has human qualities, but it all felt very forced to just have a sad and relatable character. Not much substance other than he's a human. I can barely even remember any of the Banished, honestly, nothing memorable.
> 
> The only thing I'll give the game is that I did have _fun _with the actual gameplay. It was fun returning to a more classic formula of fighting the covenant, but it's not enough to carry the campaign. Grappling hook was fun, couldn't imagine this slog of a campaign without it.
> 
> All in all, better than 5? worse than 1-4. I'd give it like a 5 or 6 out of 10. Which is way too low for Halo IMO.
> 
> And multiplayer..... oh man I don't even want to touch that dumpster fire. I could be here writing up a 3 page essay. The Halo Infinite multiplayer experience is an abysmal joke. A hollow shell of what Bungie pulled off with 1 through Reach.





Spoiler: More Halo



Yeh the ending bits didn't really feel earned. Like I don't understand how some sentient / intelligent AI doesn't pick up on how similar it looks to the other sentient / intelligent AI that serves the same role until it's spelled out. There's no weight to the reveal because it was obvious from the outset.

I'm always of two minds with this kind of criticism, because _mechanically_ the game works pretty well. On a technical level, the game plays and runs well. The shooting and core loops of the game are fun. Even traveling in the open world and some of the side missions are fun, but they just don't contribute enough to what the core of the game is. Some people have described it as feeling incomplete or rushed, and I'd believe it. I'm still willing to call it a "good" game, and an enjoyable time - in the same way that I can walk out of a theater thinking "well, the story was nonsense, but at least the cinematography was excellent".

I'm not a multiplayer person though, so I can't speak to that half of things.


----------



## Werecow

Been trying Spiderman (i'm PC only so it's not been out long). A few hours in, it's the most underwhelmed i've felt about a game in a long time. I'm amazed at the reputation the game has.

The fights were ok (only ok) for about 20 minutes, and then became dull. Now the rest of the game has been swinging around repeating the same boring fight over and over again. Then doing the bigger quests, usually a slightly longer version of that same fight, and maybe a bit of looking around in a building, and the quest is done in just a couple of minutes. Then it's back slogging away at the small fights and repeating minigames, in a good-looking but increasingly bland feeling city.


----------



## StevenC

I'm so glad everyone is using my spoiler tag idea for the one game I actually want to read opinions about


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I guess that's a big selling point (for me) for PCs - there's no need to "jailbreak" them since they're already general purpose machines. I think it's also another point in the PC-like handhelds getting popular now. If I had a steam deck, the library is vast enough, and the platform is open enough, that I don't think I'd feel any need to "hack" the thing. My 3DS on the other hand..... so much more useful once it was opened up - and I don't even use it for "pirated" stuff - if anything, I go the other way around, where I'll jailbreak stuff so that I can use the hardware to rip roms off stuff I already own. I see no problem with taking a game you paid for, ripping the rom, and playing it on your phone or PC or whatever is convenient.


The steam deck seems cool, I just...I dunno. I would have to actually test one before committing to it. I've had such bad, uncomfortable experiences with both the Switch and the 3DS when it comes to the handheld controllers fitting my hands comfortably and I wouldn't want to get something like that and find I have the same problem with it.

My problem with PC gaming is just that I don't like my PC setup relative to my other setups, though now I have a decent controller and monitor it's less uncomfortable. I need to get some decent speakers that don't take up much space, too. Most of my annoyances with PC gaming mostly date back several years to how much tweaking was always required to get things working right. Like, I remember the dark ages of the early 2000s where I had to keep multiple versions of graphics drivers on my desktop and install them based on what game I wanted to play, cause different games had crippling issues depending on which graphics driver I had. KOTOR was one I definitely remember that being the case with. Bad times. Then fast forward about ten years and I'd try to run bethesda games with mods and there was all the bullshit with having to set up the loader app with the mods in the right order or all kinds of issues would pop up, and then you'd introduce some mod and the framerate would plummet so you'd have to go through a bunch of screens trying to uncheck and check options to figure out what the culprit was (usually some kind of shadow detail or something). Or I'd download KOTOR (again) and have issues with having to use some kind of wrapper application to get it to work properly on a new system. On consoles it's always just you install the game, it goes. If there are bugs, they're out of your hands. Unless the game's made by Bethesda, this is preferable to me.

Bethesda exception is in regards to Oblivion, where on PC I had several cases of NPCs breaking completely (either dying, becoming un-interactable, or just not spawning) and making quests impossible but the wiki for the page showing console commands you could use to like, regenerate the NPC where he should be and un-break the quest. No such recourse on console! I'm guessing Fallout 3 and New Vegas might be similar if I try playing them on console. Skyrim was relatively polished but still buggy as shit, I just don't remember anything breaking to the point where I would have needed a console to proceed unlike Oblivion.


----------



## Albake21

TedEH said:


> Spoiler: More Halo
> 
> 
> 
> Yeh the ending bits didn't really feel earned. Like I don't understand how some sentient / intelligent AI doesn't pick up on how similar it looks to the other sentient / intelligent AI that serves the same role until it's spelled out. There's no weight to the reveal because it was obvious from the outset.
> 
> I'm always of two minds with this kind of criticism, because _mechanically_ the game works pretty well. On a technical level, the game plays and runs well. The shooting and core loops of the game are fun. Even traveling in the open world and some of the side missions are fun, but they just don't contribute enough to what the core of the game is. Some people have described it as feeling incomplete or rushed, and I'd believe it. I'm still willing to call it a "good" game, and an enjoyable time - in the same way that I can walk out of a theater thinking "well, the story was nonsense, but at least the cinematography was excellent".
> 
> I'm not a multiplayer person though, so I can't speak to that half of things.


Because the gameplay is decently fun, I've written it off as: It's a good game, but a mediocre Halo game. Like if this was a first in a series, I'd be pretty hopeful for the future, but this the 8th campaign in the series...


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I've had such bad, uncomfortable experiences with both the Switch and the 3DS when it comes to the handheld controllers fitting my hands comfortably and I wouldn't want to get something like that and find I have the same problem with it.


But... Haven't you said you like PS controllers?


----------



## ArtDecade

Hitman 2 was on sale. I bought it and I started playing it this morning.


----------



## MFB

StevenC said:


> But... Haven't you said you like PS controllers?



99% sure he likes the 5's, but hates the PS4's controller


----------



## TedEH

Now that I'm putting Halo aside for a while, there's a part of me that wants to dig into some new territory, but also still keep the I-have-a-PS5-now novelty going, which leads me to:
I booted up the Demon's Souls remake. Picked that one because it's on PS+, and as far as I understand, the original is where the name souls-like comes from, and should give me a good sense of the genre's origins. I tend to like the idea of starting earlier in the genre and making my way forward. If I come out of this game thinking "that was fantastic", maybe Dark Souls gets put on the backlog, and Eldin Ring.

Wish me luck, I guess, hah.

I'm hoping that it'll do for me what the Metroid games did - where it took some time to "click", but once it did, I got really into it and appreciated the thoughtfulness that had to go into that design. On a similar note, I have Metroid Fusion staring at me from my 3DS and begging to be played, and it's going to happen eventually. Might take that one with me for something to kill time when I'm away from home or something.


----------



## StevenC

MFB said:


> 99% sure he likes the 5's, but hates the PS4's controller


The 5 sucks too


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> But... Haven't you said you like PS controllers?


Controller ranking for my hands:

Good:
Switch Pro
PS4

OK:
PS5
Switch controllers in that plastic housing that makes them more ergonomic
Xbox 360 (I hate how clicky the buttons are, I don't find them uncomfortable though)

Bad:
Switch controllers when the system is in handheld mode so it doesn't hvae grips
3DS

I prefer the Xbox stick layout but I haven't actually played an xbox one or series X or anything post 360 so I can't really comment on how they feel with my hands. I think it's the tiny things that are the problem. The 3DS thing I hate is how much effort it takes to move the "stick" compared to your average videogame joystick, my thumb gets all weird pretty quickly.


----------



## TedEH

I actually think we've gone really far with controllers. Each generation is notably better than the previous. I remember a time when the 360 controller was the "standard" (I guess because of PC compatibility?) but the Xbone and Series controllers are miiiiiiiiles better. The 360 controller feels like a toy by todays standards. I find it pretty easy to rank controllers:
(PS5/Xbone) > Switch Pro > PS4 > 360 / Steam Controller (yeah, I went there) > PS3 > Joycons / 3DS / Most decent handhelds > PS2 > anything older than those.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I actually think we've gone really far with controllers. Each generation is notably better than the previous. I remember a time when the 360 controller was the "standard" (I guess because of PC compatibility?) but the Xbone and Series controllers are miiiiiiiiles better. The 360 controller feels like a toy by todays standards. I find it pretty easy to rank controllers:
> (PS5/Xbone) > Switch Pro > PS4 > 360 / Steam Controller (yeah, I went there) > PS3 > Joycons / 3DS / Most decent handhelds > PS2 > anything older than those.


Sorta. The controllers are definitely more responsive and comfortable. I HATED the dual shock on PS1 for most games, they were so loose and imprecise, and I never really loved the gamecube controller, especially the handful of games that had wonky dual stick controls with that C stick. However I think part quality has possibly gone down. My 3/4 failure rate on PS4 controllers and 1/2 failure rate on switch pro controllers, not to mention the constant complaints on the internet about stick drift on Switch joycons, speaks to this.

I know N64 sticks were infamous for going "limp" (I had lots of friends with controllers like that), but mine still all work fine from the 90s. Same deal with the dual shock PS1 and PS2 controllers I still have, though to be fair I haven't used the sticks on those for nearly as many hours as I've used the PS4/Switch ones. My xbox 360 controller, though, is still as good as it was the day I got it as far as the stick goes, and I've definitely used that thing for several hundred hours. The buttons themselves have just started being harder to press. Probably jammed up with dirt.

I've heard that Xbox One, PS4, PS5, Switch Pro, and Switch joycons all use THE EXACT SAME PART for their sticks which is the source of all these problems. That company produces crap and has a total monopoly on the market. I would pay pretty good money for a stick with a higher quality build, but I think I read even some of those super expensive "pro" controllers use the same damn piece.


----------



## Mathemagician

wankerness said:


> The steam deck seems cool, I just...I dunno. I would have to actually test one before committing to it. I've had such bad, uncomfortable experiences with both the Switch and the 3DS when it comes to the handheld controllers fitting my hands comfortably and I wouldn't want to get something like that and find I have the same problem with it.
> 
> My problem with PC gaming is just that I don't like my PC setup relative to my other setups, though now I have a decent controller and monitor it's less uncomfortable. I need to get some decent speakers that don't take up much space, too. Most of my annoyances with PC gaming mostly date back several years to how much tweaking was always required to get things working right. Like, I remember the dark ages of the early 2000s where I had to keep multiple versions of graphics drivers on my desktop and install them based on what game I wanted to play, cause different games had crippling issues depending on which graphics driver I had. KOTOR was one I definitely remember that being the case with. Bad times. Then fast forward about ten years and I'd try to run bethesda games with mods and there was all the bullshit with having to set up the loader app with the mods in the right order or all kinds of issues would pop up, and then you'd introduce some mod and the framerate would plummet so you'd have to go through a bunch of screens trying to uncheck and check options to figure out what the culprit was (usually some kind of shadow detail or something). Or I'd download KOTOR (again) and have issues with having to use some kind of wrapper application to get it to work properly on a new system. On consoles it's always just you install the game, it goes. If there are bugs, they're out of your hands. Unless the game's made by Bethesda, this is preferable to me.
> 
> Bethesda exception is in regards to Oblivion, where on PC I had several cases of NPCs breaking completely (either dying, becoming un-interactable, or just not spawning) and making quests impossible but the wiki for the page showing console commands you could use to like, regenerate the NPC where he should be and un-break the quest. No such recourse on console! I'm guessing Fallout 3 and New Vegas might be similar if I try playing them on console. Skyrim was relatively polished but still buggy as shit, I just don't remember anything breaking to the point where I would have needed a console to proceed unlike Oblivion.



Buy the Hori controller handles for handheld mode. They aren’t battery powered but they are way more comfortable than the thin/near worthless Nintendo controller nuggets.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

pc game pass is 1$ so i figured I'd give deathloop a try.


----------



## Naxxpipe

Me and the fiancé had a blast playing "It takes two" earlier this year, so we picked up another co-op game by the same devs, "A way out". Pretty good so far. Nice story without being overly challenging for the less gaming-experienced.

She also got and played through "Call of the Sea" which from the bits I saw seemed like a quite enjoyable detective-game, and she gave it a thumbs up.


----------



## Choop

Going to put the Mega Man Legends let's play on hold until I can get some more time to devote to it, but I'll probably run through Resident Evil one time for spooky October.~ Anybody else playing spooky games?


----------



## TheBloodstained

I'm currently playing an ungodly amount of *Farming Simulator 22*. Some current stuff in my working life is pretty much stressing me out hard, but I find that doing some farming winds me down a lot. Sadly, it also means that my instruments are collecting dust at the moment, but I know that it's just a rough patch I'm going through, and I can see an end on it, so while I'm feeling stressed now I know things will get better in a couple of weeks.
Until then... TRACTOR 4 LIFE MO-FO's! 



...I do also have *Scorn* on preorder, which is supposed to go live at the end of october. Kind of thinking about dedicating an entire weekend just to play that.


----------



## beerandbeards

I’m amped up for Callisto Protocol and the Dead Space remake!!! Of course God of War Ragnarok. 

I’ll wait to see the reviews on the new Batman (lack of Batman) game.

Ghostbusters Spirits Unleashed looks like it’ll be a fun game if I can play with the family


----------



## Albake21

KnightBrolaire said:


> pc game pass is 1$ so i figured I'd give deathloop a try.


I played Deathloop at launch, and as a non Arkane fan, I really enjoyed it for what it was. I think it gets a lot of undeserved hate. If you play it through, let us know how you like it. I had a lot of fun with it, and I even paid full price for it.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Now that I'm putting Halo aside for a while, there's a part of me that wants to dig into some new territory, but also still keep the I-have-a-PS5-now novelty going, which leads me to:
> I booted up the Demon's Souls remake. Picked that one because it's on PS+, and as far as I understand, the original is where the name souls-like comes from, and should give me a good sense of the genre's origins. I tend to like the idea of starting earlier in the genre and making my way forward. If I come out of this game thinking "that was fantastic", maybe Dark Souls gets put on the backlog, and Eldin Ring.
> 
> Wish me luck, I guess, hah.
> 
> I'm hoping that it'll do for me what the Metroid games did - where it took some time to "click", but once it did, I got really into it and appreciated the thoughtfulness that had to go into that design. On a similar note, I have Metroid Fusion staring at me from my 3DS and begging to be played, and it's going to happen eventually. Might take that one with me for something to kill time when I'm away from home or something.


Demon's Souls is a good game but be aware it's probably the least user-friendly of all those games. Each one gets progressively less contemptuous of the player with its basic mechanics. I think you are more likely to bounce off it than if you ease in by starting with Dark Souls 3 or Elden Ring, or even Dark Souls 1. But, the remake does look great and is a lot more user friendly than the original. Like, at least you can pick up items when your inventory is full. In the original apparently if you tried to pick up an item and it would have sent you over the inventory limit it was just lost forever, and to clear out inventory space you'd have to leave the level and go back to the nexus and put it in storage and come back again.

The number one tip for a new player is commit suicide in the nexus (home base) any time you're in "body form" (whole health bar). If you die in the levels proper while in "body form" you both get locked out of side quests and enemies get a buff. Functionally the game punishing you by getting harder if you're having a hard time. This makes it so you are stuck at half health, though, unless you get the "cling ring" which reduces the penalty to 75% max health while in soul form. But, it's difficult to get back into body form (you have to kill a boss) so it's much better to just adjust to the soul form health penalty and treat that as the default.

Number two is if you play as a sorcerer/magic user the game is notably easier. Dude with shield is also much easier than any of the high-damage high-risk setups.

Number three is don't try doing any of the later poison swamp levels till you get the sodden ring. Which requires getting level 3-2 to "pure black" world tendency. God, I hate world tendency. The game doesn't explain it at all, either.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I've heard that Xbox One, PS4, PS5, Switch Pro, and Switch joycons all use THE EXACT SAME PART for their sticks which is the source of all these problems.


From what I understand, it's been the same basic "tech" for generations as well. It's all just a little box with some pots/resistors and rubber bands holding it together, and your standard cheap microswitch under it for the L3/R3 buttons. The real differences between them are mostly just build quality - although the joycon ones are pretty different. They're flatter, and I've never seen what the internals of them look like.

I know there's lots of stories out there about stick drift, but I've honestly never really encountered anything like that on a modern controller. I could understand the joycons maybe being flawed as they try to crunch the same idea into a smaller package, but mine have always been fine. Maybe I got lucky. Not to say I think people are lying. All controllers that use these kinds of sensors are going to be subject to some kind of dead zone / inaccuracy that's inherent to the design, and at the scale these things are pumped out, there's bound to be some that fall out of an acceptable tolerance. I must have a good 20-30 controllers for different systems and things kicking around here, and outside of dead N64 sticks and stuff that's just flat out broken from abuse, I think I only ever had one controller with a noticeable "drift" - and it was a beat up 360 controller, and the drift was slight enough that most titles dead zones negated it.

I suppose I technically had an xbone controller that drifted, but it was a broken controller that I was using for donor parts. I think it had been working fine until someone threw it at a TV or something - but that's hardly the controller's fault.



KnightBrolaire said:


> give deathloop a try


Dooooo it. Don't get discouraged by the "pff Pray Mooncrash was better" crowd. It's good, IMO.



wankerness said:


> Demon's Souls is a good game but be aware it's probably the least user-friendly of all those games.


I think I'm prepared for an unfriendly experience. I'll have some time tonight to actually dig in a bit, so that first bounce-off point might be soon.


----------



## CanserDYI

I got these little sillicone "skins" for the joycons when they are in handheld mode, they have a built up little pad on the back giving them some shoulder to hold onto, makes the experience much better.

God I love the switch and wish playstation had an actual equivalent (don't say the vita, its not the same.)


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> Sorta. The controllers are definitely more responsive and comfortable. I HATED the dual shock on PS1 for most games, they were so loose and imprecise, and I never really loved the gamecube controller, especially the handful of games that had wonky dual stick controls with that C stick. However I think part quality has possibly gone down. My 3/4 failure rate on PS4 controllers and 1/2 failure rate on switch pro controllers, not to mention the constant complaints on the internet about stick drift on Switch joycons, speaks to this.
> 
> I know N64 sticks were infamous for going "limp" (I had lots of friends with controllers like that), but mine still all work fine from the 90s. Same deal with the dual shock PS1 and PS2 controllers I still have, though to be fair I haven't used the sticks on those for nearly as many hours as I've used the PS4/Switch ones. My xbox 360 controller, though, is still as good as it was the day I got it as far as the stick goes, and I've definitely used that thing for several hundred hours. The buttons themselves have just started being harder to press. Probably jammed up with dirt.
> 
> I've heard that Xbox One, PS4, PS5, Switch Pro, and Switch joycons all use THE EXACT SAME PART for their sticks which is the source of all these problems. That company produces crap and has a total monopoly on the market. I would pay pretty good money for a stick with a higher quality build, but I think I read even some of those super expensive "pro" controllers use the same damn piece.


The N64 stick going limp was pretty much just a usage thing. People who played a lot of Mario Party tended to have broken sticks. It's the same with GCN controllers and Smash players. My brother has gone through loads of GC controllers that now have dead left sticks, but the handful that never got used for Smash, like our Wavebird, are still fine for most games.

I've had no failures across 3 Switch Pros and 4 X1/Series controllers. I've had one Joycon stick go out of 4 sets, and every PlayStation controller I've ever owned has failed somehow eventually.


----------



## wankerness

StevenC said:


> The N64 stick going limp was pretty much just a usage thing. People who played a lot of Mario Party tended to have broken sticks. It's the same with GCN controllers and Smash players. My brother has gone through loads of GC controllers that now have dead left sticks, but the handful that never got used for Smash, like our Wavebird, are still fine for most games.
> 
> I've had no failures across 3 Switch Pros and 4 X1/Series controllers. I've had one Joycon stick go out of 4 sets, and every PlayStation controller I've ever owned has failed somehow eventually.


It's very possible some or all of theml just got dirt in the sticks. I intend to take a couple PS4 controllers apart and clean them and see if they work again - there's nothing to lose other than time since they're basically unusable for any game that requires precision. It's just annoying that this was never an issue for me with older controllers.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Albake21 said:


> I played Deathloop at launch, and as a non Arkane fan, I really enjoyed it for what it was. I think it gets a lot of undeserved hate. If you play it through, let us know how you like it. I had a lot of fun with it, and I even paid full price for it.


I love most of Arkane's stuff but I just wasn't sure about the game on launch. Definitely has the Dishonored DNA all over it from playing it, but I'll have to see how it goes. I just made it to fristad rock and already I can tell there's going to be a lot of backtracking for cool time specific stuff.


----------



## TheBlackBard

First time playing a Persona game, started with P5: Royal and this is the first time in a long time where I felt like the hype behind a game was well warranted. I'm not terribly far in, but between wanting more turn-based RPGs and the mechanics in the game, I'm ready to put this very high on my games of all time list.


----------



## Mathemagician

MFB said:


> 99% sure he likes the 5's, but hates the PS4's controller



PS5 is Sony’s first good controller.


----------



## NotDonVito

Choop said:


> Going to put the Mega Man Legends let's play on hold until I can get some more time to devote to it, but I'll probably run through Resident Evil one time for spooky October.~ Anybody else playing spooky games?


I played through Legends 1 & 2 for the first time a couple months ago. I played them back in the day but never finished either. Both fantastic games, especially 2 with it's deeper exploration of the lore. I probably spent a week playing each playing in small to medium bursts.

Anyways I finally got into Overwatch 2 today. Not worth sitting in half hour long server queues, and I'm saying this as someone who played the crap out of the original. I'll probably play it for another day and I'm out.

Also I think all Playstation controllers are good except the PS3's weird non-concaving triggers,


----------



## rokket2005

wankerness said:


> The thing about the Switch that gets my goat the most is how the 3rd party ports are radically more expensive. Like, Skyrim just came out for it, and it's 70 goddam bucks. That's more expensive than it is on any other platform, even considering the fact that since it's on Switch the odds of it being heavily discounted are MUCH lower. Not to mention it's borderline unplayable on handheld mode on switch cause they don't have an in-game brightness slider and the older Switch models have screens that are way too dark to see anything in any cave in that game.
> 
> Or that shitfest Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which is 100 dollars on switch for the GOTY edition, even though it's objectively a lot worse than the other versions (IIRC i bought that game's full version with all the DLC for ~45 bucks on playstation less than six months after its original release).


Skyrim came to switch in 2017. This new "Anniversary" edition that Bethesda is putting out is $70 on all platforms. Also, you can save a ton of money by not buying Ubisoft garbage.


----------



## TedEH

I mean, you could save a lot of money by not playing games at all. Or buying guitars, for that matter.


----------



## wankerness

rokket2005 said:


> Skyrim came to switch in 2017. This new "Anniversary" edition that Bethesda is putting out is $70 on all platforms. Also, you can save a ton of money by not buying Ubisoft garbage.



The anniversary edition is 60 on other platforms, 70 on switch. And I was just listing a random 3rd party game that I had noticed prices for. Almost everything on switch is ludicrously priced besides indie games. Anything I’m interested in I just set up price alerts and wait for, unless it’s something new and exclusive I don’t want to wait for. Which is kinda what I do on PS, but I have to wait a lot less time and tend to get much steeper discounts on old games.


----------



## TedEH

Welp, I put about 2 hours into Demon's Souls and made zero progress. I entered what I assume is the first area and just constantly get my ass handed to me. Having to basically restart every time you die is brutal. I made it as far as an armoured looking guy with a staff that can two-shot you. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I actually kinda like the way the combat seems to work, but it really does feel like the game is designed to be antagonistic on purpose, which I guess isn't new to anyone. Like an old arcade game that has the goal of bleeding you of your quarters.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TedEH said:


> Welp, I put about 2 hours into Demon's Souls and made zero progress. I entered what I assume is the first area and just constantly get my ass handed to me. Having to basically restart every time you die is brutal. I made it as far as an armoured looking guy with a staff that can two-shot you. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> I actually kinda like the way the combat seems to work, but it really does feel like the game is designed to be antagonistic on purpose, which I guess isn't new to anyone. Like an old arcade game that has the goal of bleeding you of your quarters.



That's pretty normal. First impressions were never the strength of Souls games, as this is more or less the first impression of every single one of them. Honestly I wish these games would take their own advice on 'git gud' when it comes to that aspect. 

Once you reach the 2 options of giving up entirely, or persevere onward on the path to 'git gud', the hard part is deciding the 2 for whichever reason. But to be fair, the From games do reward you immensely when you push forward. 

Comparing it to old school games is apropos. One epiphany I had with Dark Souls on my first (and frankly pathetic) run was that it reminded me of when I first bought Zelda 2 as a kid. Got thrown into a large world and died a lot.


----------



## TedEH

I'll give them that it looks good, at least - and the jist of the gameplay loop seems straitforward.
For a title / genre that has a reputation for being brutally difficult, I can at least say I was getting the hang of how to clear the first half of that first level, sort of. It seems like the key to not getting too frustrated would be to treat each attempt like you're going for a high score or something, rather than expecting every run to make meaningful progress. I assume the pattern is that you're supposed to keep trying over and over until you learn what you're doing wrong, then get hit with a new curve, curse to yourself, and try again until you eventually figure the whole thing out, repeat until has git'd good.
I'm pretty determined not to bounce off of it after the first attempt though. We'll see if I think the same thing tomorrow.

I think also, I was expecting something more like a boss rush than full levels, and that kinda makes it seem less intimidating somehow.


----------



## wankerness

What build are you playing as and what’s your basic combat strategy? Demons souls and dark souls 1 in particular can be largely trivialized by playing them as practically turn-based by hiding behind a shield and waiting for everything to swing at you, then after you block quick attacking them and then blocking again. Just have to learn to manage stamina (it only regenerates when you stop blocking). But you can just run around with L1 held down at all times and be much, MUCH safer than if you run around without guarding. Especially considering all the monsters that jump out at you.

The other tip for bad players is to get a bow ASAP and use it to pull monsters one at a time from far away (or snipe from safe places). After you beat the lava spider you can get a really good bow if you’re a strength build. Even if you’re a sorcerer a regular bow is still a great tool for making things easier.

This is really what I was saying though about dark souls 3 or especially elden ring being a better intro. Those ease you into things more. Demons souls is like “hey, do this entire level AND defeat the boss without dying!!!” Most levels do eventually have some shortcut that makes it so you don’t have to clear the whole level every time but it’s still by far the most punishing run backs of the whole series. At least the bosses are mostly a lot easier.


----------



## TedEH

I took the thief, mostly for "sure, that sound cool" reasons more than any meaningful gameplay reason. I probably lucked into the right choice, since it means I started off with a shield + bow, which definitely helped some of the first few attempts. Strategy so far has been to lean on the parry / riposte to try to end encounters pretty quickly. Anything with fire I'm trying to roll behind and back stab, again with the hope of ending it before there's a chance for them to retaliate. I think one of the early attempts had me leaning on the L1 pretty constantly, but the reflex is to go for L2 instead, and when I botch the timing, I get chewed up pretty quick.

The bow is handy for sure, but you run out of arrows pretty quick if you're depending too much on it.

IMO, in so many games, a new player can't really "choose a build" based on stats or qualities presented without having an understanding of the game first, so the selection feels arbitrary the first time around. Sure, this one class has +12 left foot points in exchange for -10 ability to handle spicy food or some dumb thing - how am I supposed to know what impact that has on anything? You can't until the second playthrough so all you can do is guess and go for what sounds cool, or spend a bunch of time studying before starting to play, but ain't nobody got time fo dat.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> Welp, I put about 2 hours into Demon's Souls and made zero progress. I entered what I assume is the first area and just constantly get my ass handed to me. Having to basically restart every time you die is brutal. I made it as far as an armoured looking guy with a staff that can two-shot you. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> I actually kinda like the way the combat seems to work, but it really does feel like the game is designed to be antagonistic on purpose, which I guess isn't new to anyone. Like an old arcade game that has the goal of bleeding you of your quarters.



I only played the original (in 2016 I think), but I suppose this one is more or less the same. The first real obstacle (as in "I looked up how to beat this thing") was a big spider you find in some cave. There's even a way to cheese it IIRC.

With those games you have to be methodical: discover what the enemies do, discover what you have to do to hit them, remember all of that forever, try to make as little mistakes as you can, and repeat the process one billion times until you beat the game.

I finished the game, and I know Souls games are really popular around here but I ended up hating it and I don't plan on playing anything by From Software ever again. Not because they're bad, cheap, low quality, or because there isn't anything I like about them (I really like the settings, lore, and the way lore is "delivered" if you can call that delivery), but I find the level of concentration and dedication required to play the game draining. If I'm to spend that kind of energy, I'll do it playing guitar or something like that.

The remake looks really nice, though (Elden Ring looks amazing too). But, ugh, no. Not touching that.


----------



## RevDrucifer

I’ve been playing Death Stranding again. 

Absolutely love this game and this time through I’m spending more time doing world-building stuff than burning through the story. Trying to get it to a point where I can zip-line across the entire map. 

There are points in that game, when you’re just walking forever and the music kicks in, they picked such excellent music for it. I think I said it before in this thread, but I’ve never played a game that’s caused me to feel such a range of emotions when playing it, from the desolate/alone feeling when trudging through a barren area, the anxiety of crossing an area trying to avoid BT’s while carrying a ton of gear on my back, the subtle joy when the sun comes out and it stops raining, etc. 

And the creativity in the story is just nuts. I tried explaining it to a friend and couldn’t even capture the essence of the game.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I took the thief, mostly for "sure, that sound cool" reasons more than any meaningful gameplay reason. I probably lucked into the right choice, since it means I started off with a shield + bow, which definitely helped some of the first few attempts. Strategy so far has been to lean on the parry / riposte to try to end encounters pretty quickly. Anything with fire I'm trying to roll behind and back stab, again with the hope of ending it before there's a chance for them to retaliate. I think one of the early attempts had me leaning on the L1 pretty constantly, but the reflex is to go for L2 instead, and when I botch the timing, I get chewed up pretty quick.
> 
> The bow is handy for sure, but you run out of arrows pretty quick if you're depending too much on it.
> 
> IMO, in so many games, a new player can't really "choose a build" based on stats or qualities presented without having an understanding of the game first, so the selection feels arbitrary the first time around. Sure, this one class has +12 left foot points in exchange for -10 ability to handle spicy food or some dumb thing - how am I supposed to know what impact that has on anything? You can't until the second playthrough so all you can do is guess and go for what sounds cool, or spend a bunch of time studying before starting to play, but ain't nobody got time fo dat.



The stats are really inscrutable at first. But they carry over (mostly) between all the games in the series, so they start to feel natural.

Generally thieves run off “dexterity” in these games. Usually good shields and most bigger swords/axes/maces require high strength, dex is for bows and spears and daggers and katanas and other fast, light weapons. Dex builds tend to leave you a lot more vulnerable since you can’t turtle very well behind a wimpy shield, so you have to get a lot better at the game to progress unless you just start disregarding your starting class and putting all your points into strength. You’ll have to learn to dodge a lot of attacks instead of just blocking them, and you’ll have less ability to stagger enemies than with a bigger weapon.

Leveling hit points is usually one of the most important things you can do in these games. Not sure if it’s as helpful in demons souls though thanks to the health penalty in soul form.

Endurance is another stat that you might want to consider. In almost all of these games you have an “equipment load” (weight of armor and weapons combined) and a max load determined by some stat (it’s endurance in demons souls and dark souls 1). Your ability to dodge and regenerate stamina depends on how little of your equip load you fill. For example in dark souls 1 if you’re above 50% equip load your character basically falls over instead of rolling, between 25% and 50% works normally, and under 25% has boosted stamina recovery and rolls go farther. I think demons souls is just binary “under 50% good over 50% bad.” If you want to wear better armor or get a bigger weapon you need to level this, cause being over 50% equip load is very bad for suvivability. It also gives you more stamina so you can do more swings of your weapon or whatever. 

So yeah, you chose right in getting a shield and bow to start, but if you commit to dex instead of pivoting to a caster or strength build you will functionally be playing the game on hard mode.


----------



## MFB

Picked Tunic back up after a large hiatus on firing up my XB1 while I was in FromSoft mode, it's good I just wish there was a cipher around so I could read the damn in-game lore. I've managed to level up my character on +2 to HP, and +1 to ATT but even that required a guide to figure out, like really?

I'm also tired of one big world and acting like the player should know where to go when they complete somewhere. You don't have to point me in a direction with umpteen different markers, but even just a sign showing what the next "correct" area is, or some expo dump to say "GO HERE STUPID!" would be nice.


----------



## Albake21

KnightBrolaire said:


> I love most of Arkane's stuff but I just wasn't sure about the game on launch. Definitely has the Dishonored DNA all over it from playing it, but I'll have to see how it goes. I just made it to fristad rock and already I can tell there's going to be a lot of backtracking for cool time specific stuff.


Sadly there's great bit of backtracking, some may not find that enjoyable, but I try to look at it like small open worlds you go back to do specific objectives in. That's where I think a lot of people were turned off, but personally, I thought there was enough in each world to keep me content with going back.


----------



## TedEH

I think with Tunic, that confusion is supposed to be baked into the experience on purpose - I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it was meant to recreate the feeling of playing an import game without the benefit of google in the before-times to look stuff up. Personally, I'd refrain for looking up tooooo much about that one before spending a good amount of time trying to work stuff out because the AHA I GET IT NOW moment is meant to be part of the gameplay loop. At the same time, I definitely caved and google a couple of things when I played it.


----------



## MFB

TedEH said:


> I think with Tunic, that confusion is supposed to be baked into the experience on purpose - I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it was meant to recreate the feeling of playing an import game without the benefit of google in the before-times to look stuff up. Personally, I'd refrain for looking up tooooo much about that one before spending a good amount of time trying to work stuff out because the AHA I GET IT NOW moment is meant to be part of the gameplay loop. At the same time, I definitely caved and google a couple of things when I played it.



I get that, and some stuff is definitely obvious based on the game guides you pick up about like, dodging/I-frames/stamina etc... but like I said, when it comes to big mechanics and not knowing how they work (eg. leveling up) then it becomes a bit of a problem; especially when you're carrying around large amounts of coin wondering if you're ever going to use them for anything, as those ALSO require an item and not just money.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Albake21 said:


> Sadly there's great bit of backtracking, some may not find that enjoyable, but I try to look at it like small open worlds you go back to do specific objectives in. That's where I think a lot of people were turned off, but personally, I thought there was enough in each world to keep me content with going back.


I don't have a problem with backtracking but the world seems a bit more bare and less interesting than the Dishonored series. That's probably my only complaint besides the lack of weapon diversity early on.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Demon's Souls Day 2



Alright, so I took another crack at it. Got _much_ farther this time. Managed to only die once this time. Found the ring that lets you keep a bit more health in ghost mode. Found a crossbow. Bought some better armour. Unlocked the two gates that open shortcuts back into the map. Almost got toasted by a big ol' dragon, but managed to get away from it.

I had been expecting to be entirely obliterated by the first boss, Phalanx, but I found it kind of easy. Just ran around in circles until I caught the little mini slime dudes on their own and slowly whittled them down that way until the boss was exposed. I assume they won't all be that easy.

I might go back and re-read some previous recommendations now that I have some context.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Got to the point in Xenoblade 2 where the field opens up and I ran around with a bit of grinding while occasionally getting mulched by high level monsters. 

I don't remember the first Xenoblade game being tutorialed up the butt like this one. Be it collecting materials, the over engineered battle mechanics, introduced to elite monsters or touching a female in the chest insignia is interrupted with tutorials. Ok the last one was made up but you may as well have been.

Either way, I've put the game on hold now that Trails From Zero has come out and I'm ready to go back to my Trails hibernation. 

It's always nice to get back to this world. And while albeit downgraded from 3D, the city of Crossbell is a game town I'm well familiar with (both in structure and geopolitics) and really good to navigate through again. And it's nice to start with a small ragtag party again. Now I like Class VII but the overstuffed ensemble does suffer as a collective.


----------



## StevenC

RevDrucifer said:


> I’ve been playing Death Stranding again.
> 
> Absolutely love this game and this time through I’m spending more time doing world-building stuff than burning through the story. Trying to get it to a point where I can zip-line across the entire map.
> 
> There are points in that game, when you’re just walking forever and the music kicks in, they picked such excellent music for it. I think I said it before in this thread, but I’ve never played a game that’s caused me to feel such a range of emotions when playing it, from the desolate/alone feeling when trudging through a barren area, the anxiety of crossing an area trying to avoid BT’s while carrying a ton of gear on my back, the subtle joy when the sun comes out and it stops raining, etc.
> 
> And the creativity in the story is just nuts. I tried explaining it to a friend and couldn’t even capture the essence of the game.


I got the Low Roar Death Stranding vinyl which is good fun to spin. Just a magic game.


----------



## gabito

I don’t usually like JRPGs, but after all the praise Persona 5 got I gave it a go. 

I just finished the second castle, and now I like JRPGs even less than before.

Oh well… I guess japanese games are not for me (unless they’re called Deadly Premonition or the words “Metal Gear” are part of their names).


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> I don’t usually like JRPGs, but after all the praise Persona 5 got I gave it a go.
> 
> I just finished the second castle, and now I like JRPGs even less than before.
> 
> Oh well… I guess japanese games are not for me (unless they’re called Deadly Premonition or the words “Metal Gear” are part of their names).



Japanese games? This is like playing call of duty and saying American games are not for me! Super-japanophile Rpg/Dating simulators aren’t your thing apparently.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> I don’t usually like JRPGs, but after all the praise Persona 5 got I gave it a go.


I was about to jokingly say "careful, criticizing Persona games around here gets you called a racist sometimes" - and then well....


wankerness said:


> This is like playing call of duty and saying American games are not for me!


¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

I don't disagree- titles like Persona and CoD are both very targeted and know who their audience is. Nothing wrong with acknowledging that.

There was one game I played a while back that was sort of the exception to that kind of genre-pidgeonholing: Anachronox - where it was very much trying to take the J out of the JRPG formula and the result was something really unique. I kinda wish more games tried stuff like that.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Japanese games? This is like playing call of duty and saying American games are not for me! Super-japanophile Rpg/Dating simulators aren’t your thing apparently.



Nope, they aren’t. I was kinda joking anyways, I know fans can get salty about these things…

I think the only JRPG I could finish was Ni No Kuni, mainly because I love Studio Ghibli stuff. But I got really really REALLY bored by the end. Finished it anyways.

For japanese games I’m more into the Ico / SoTC / MGS / Deadly Premonition side of things (I’m sure I’m forgetting some games). Once in a while I trick myself into thinking “Oh, I may like this game, even if I didn’t like any other JRPGs before… I mean, there’s got to be a reason that so many Final Fantasy games exist” and then I play a few (or many) hours and go “Yeah, I remember now. I’d rather do something else.” and go watch Attack on Titan’s last episode or something.

So, no JRPGs or living in Tokyo life simulators for me.

No Ubisoft games either, fuck those things.

And no, American soldier / war / imperialism simulators aren’t usually my thing either. I used to like Quake though, I’m OK with shooting eldritch horrors or aliens once in a while.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Nope, they aren’t. I was kinda joking anyways, I know fans can get salty about these things…
> 
> I think the only JRPG I could finish was Ni No Kuni, mainly because I love Studio Ghibli stuff. But I got really really REALLY bored by the end. Finished it anyways.
> 
> For japanese games I’m more into the Ico / SoTC / MGS / Deadly Premonition side of things (I’m sure I’m forgetting some games). Once in a while I trick myself into thinking “Oh, I may like this game, even if I didn’t like any other JRPGs before… I mean, there’s got to be a reason that so many Final Fantasy games exist” and then I play a few (or many) hours and go “Yeah, I remember now. I’d rather do something else.” and go watch Attack on Titan’s last episode or something.
> 
> So, no JRPGs or living in Tokyo life simulators for me.
> 
> No Ubisoft games either, fuck those things.
> 
> And no, American soldier / war / imperialism simulators aren’t usually my thing either. I used to like Quake though, I’m OK with shooting eldritch horrors or aliens once in a while.



“Jrpgs are not for me” is an acceptable statement, you said Japanese games period! Yes, there are plenty of subgenres I avoid. Like military FPS games. So your initial statement was not comparable to your other examples here!

There’s a lot of latitude with Japanese rpgs too, though. I mean dark souls is technically an rpg, so’s super Mario rpg, Nier, Pokémon games, etc. but yeah I basically know what you mean. Just hope you aren’t really being that sweeping in your avoidance of anything made by a Japanese company. Stuff like persona, dragon quest, final fantasy, trails of cold fire and those other weebtastic jrpgs are a sub genre of their own!


----------



## gabito

Well, I’m planning on playing Death Stranding (a Hideo Kojima game) very soon on one of the several japanese devices I have at home, so I guess reports of my anti japanese games sentiment were exaggerated (by myself).


----------



## wankerness

That still sounds like the game equivalent of folding laundry to me. I’ve seen some haters reverse course on it though after the various patches or whatever. Maybe if I see it for 20 bucks I’ll get it.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> That still sounds like the game equivalent of folding laundry to me.



Yeah, it probably is. But I’d still fold laundry in a post apocalyptic Hideo Kojima game rather than sing karaoke or use pachinko machines in a Yakuza game, or go to school or to the batting cages in Persona  

On a more serious note, I really liked how polished Persona 5 is. Also the 2D art and general style is very good. I may still play it a little more and see how it goes.


----------



## wankerness

Persona's an incredibly polished game but can be really tedious if you're not into it since probably about 50% of the length of the game is dialogue/cutscenes. If you are not liking the characters or plot you should probably not waste more time on it. The gameplay is good, but it's pretty sparse between a LOT of dialogue and cutscenes and running around doing barely interactive social activities. Yakuza's minigames are mostly pretty interactive and some are really in-depth (ex the mario kart in one game, crazy taxi in another, rail shooter fishing in another, tracking/hunting, all the actual embedded Sega arcade games, full-blown shogi/mahjong simulators, tower defense style minigames, of course the hostess club games that are more fun than the game itself, etcetcetc), Persona's...definitely are not. There's some darts that work the same as darts in Stardew Valley or Yakuza, and...I think maybe Fishing was interactive. Everything else I remember is pretty much just a quick memory/logic game or pure dialogue.


----------



## alinas

I played retro bowl, but gave up on it. Crusader Kings is my go to strategy series. haven't got the time to start it yet but its on the list.


----------



## TedEH

Went through Return to Monkey Island. I could nitpick some things about it, like the art style is hit-or-miss to me, but overall it did what I wanted it to.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> That still sounds like the game equivalent of folding laundry to me. I’ve seen some haters reverse course on it though after the various patches or whatever. Maybe if I see it for 20 bucks I’ll get it.


Death Stranding is sort of like meditation. But with some really fucking scary bits and really weird car controls.


----------



## coreysMonster

I gave Overwatch 2 a chance. Didn't enjoy it. It feels like they've made it even more difficult to have a good time when you're not sweaty try-harding with 5 people on voice in quick play / arcade. It's _still _worse than OW was in the first year, and it _still _feels like their primary target audience is streamers / e-sports.
Maybe I'm just a boomer that can't play shooters that aren't Team Fortress 2 anymore, but blech. Not for me.


----------



## BlackMastodon

coreysMonster said:


> I gave Overwatch 2 a chance. Didn't enjoy it. It feels like they've made it even more difficult to have a good time when you're not sweaty try-harding with 5 people on voice in quick play / arcade. It's _still _worse than OW was in the first year, and it _still _feels like their primary target audience is streamers / e-sports.
> Maybe I'm just a boomer that can't play shooters that aren't Team Fortress 2 anymore, but blech. Not for me.


I comend you for trying. Nothing about that game makes me want to try playing it.


----------



## gabito

Said goodbye to Persona 5, couldn’t stand it anymore. It’s obviously a very well made game, but it’s not for me. 

Seems I’ll have to wait until GoW Ragnärok is released…


----------



## Mathemagician

gabito said:


> Said goodbye to Persona 5, couldn’t stand it anymore. It’s obviously a very well made game, but it’s not for me.
> 
> Seems I’ll have to wait until GoW Ragnärok is released…



I haven’t played it yet, but fair to you for trying something new before deciding it wasn’t your bag.


----------



## TheBlackBard

gabito said:


> Said goodbye to Persona 5, couldn’t stand it anymore. It’s obviously a very well made game, but it’s not for me.
> 
> Seems I’ll have to wait until GoW Ragnärok is released…


That's more than fair. I personally love it to death, but it's not for everyone and like @Mathemagician said, good on you for trying something new.


----------



## TedEH

I think I might be reaching the point where I bounce off of Demon's Souls.


Spoiler



After beating the weird goop shield monster guy, I ended up leaving and going to this mining area. I was able to make it to the Armor Spider, but I'm something like a dozen attempts in, and can't put even a dent in it. So I went back and picked another world - I dunno if they're setup by difficulty or something, but I can't even make it a few minutes into this world, the one that starts in "Depraved Chasm". I make it as far as a hidden away shop person with some rats below and that's about as far as I can make it so far. Gave up on that and thought maybe the first world is the "easy" one - so I go back there, and have a better time of the exploration, but the Tower Knight just destroys me immediately, and the need to run all the way back is frustrating enough to just turn the game off. I get that the game is supposed to be hard, and I'm arguably finding _some_ fun in it, but there's enough frustration in my life to stack more on top through what's supposed to be my entertainment. I don't think I'm in the right headspace for this type of game right now. I "get it" I think, but just can't do it right now. Maybe I'll try again later. Dunno.

That being said - I don't think I'm so turned off by the concept of it that I wouldn't still want to give another title a try - maybe something modern'd up a little - something that's still in the same vein but not _quite_ as antagonistic to the player.



In the meantime, I've also been poking away at Metroid Fusion, which is much more my pace.


----------



## MFB

Defeated the Garden Knight in Tunic last night, so I think I've ran both the East & Western Bells now and I genuinely have no clue where I'm supposed to go if true; I'm gonna take a look later today and see, I think at this point I'm supposed to do something with the wells as it looks like areas become accessible once the water is raised, but I have zero god damn clue how I do that since I feel like I explored everywhere


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I think I might be reaching the point where I bounce off of Demon's Souls.
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> After beating the weird goop shield monster guy, I ended up leaving and going to this mining area. I was able to make it to the Armor Spider, but I'm something like a dozen attempts in, and can't put even a dent in it. So I went back and picked another world - I dunno if they're setup by difficulty or something, but I can't even make it a few minutes into this world, the one that starts in "Depraved Chasm". I make it as far as a hidden away shop person with some rats below and that's about as far as I can make it so far. Gave up on that and thought maybe the first world is the "easy" one - so I go back there, and have a better time of the exploration, but the Tower Knight just destroys me immediately, and the need to run all the way back is frustrating enough to just turn the game off. I get that the game is supposed to be hard, and I'm arguably finding _some_ fun in it, but there's enough frustration in my life to stack more on top through what's supposed to be my entertainment. I don't think I'm in the right headspace for this type of game right now. I "get it" I think, but just can't do it right now. Maybe I'll try again later. Dunno.
> 
> That being said - I don't think I'm so turned off by the concept of it that I wouldn't still want to give another title a try - maybe something modern'd up a little - something that's still in the same vein but not _quite_ as antagonistic to the player.
> 
> 
> 
> In the meantime, I've also been poking away at Metroid Fusion, which is much more my pace.


I think there’s a crease where you can hide when the big spider throws fire balls (or whatever it was) at you. Or at least there was one in the original game. 

You can go to any world, but I think that’s the easiest one, yeah…

It gets worse, much worse. MUCH worse. Frustrating as hell. I finished the thing, but just because I was determined to “finish a souls game”. Can’t say I enjoyed it, not at all. 

After that I played a bit of Dark Souls I and II, and noped the fuck out. I can see why some people enjoy that kind of game, but I didn’t like them in the 80s / 90s, and I don’t like them now. Most I can do is watch someone else playing them, like when I was a kid  

I suppose that’s why back then I enjoyed more playing graphic adventures than, say, something like Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins. 

I sometimes play games I reeeaally like in the hardest difficulties in a second or third playthrough though, but that’s a different thing.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

gonna finish up deathloop and then start infamous second son.


----------



## TheBlackBard

KnightBrolaire said:


> gonna finish up deathloop and then start infamous second son.



Infamous: Second Son was my first PS4 and I played the shit out of it. Have fun!


----------



## BlackMastodon

Beat Breath of the Wild the other night. Thought the Calamity Ganon fight was pretty good if not a bit tedious, though the last segment was bordering on a QTE. Also was expecting more of a cutscene or endgame cinematic, but overall loved the game and see where the hype came from. Very excited for Tears of the Kingdom now. 

Started Monster Hunter Sunbreak today and it's more of the same, with a few quality of life improvements, which is absolutely perfect for me. 

Also bought Moonlighter a couple months ago and have been meaning to pick that up. Love the concept of a roguelike where you play as a shopkeeper who goes dungeon diving by night to stock the shop.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I think I might be reaching the point where I bounce off of Demon's Souls.
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> After beating the weird goop shield monster guy, I ended up leaving and going to this mining area. I was able to make it to the Armor Spider, but I'm something like a dozen attempts in, and can't put even a dent in it. So I went back and picked another world - I dunno if they're setup by difficulty or something, but I can't even make it a few minutes into this world, the one that starts in "Depraved Chasm". I make it as far as a hidden away shop person with some rats below and that's about as far as I can make it so far. Gave up on that and thought maybe the first world is the "easy" one - so I go back there, and have a better time of the exploration, but the Tower Knight just destroys me immediately, and the need to run all the way back is frustrating enough to just turn the game off. I get that the game is supposed to be hard, and I'm arguably finding _some_ fun in it, but there's enough frustration in my life to stack more on top through what's supposed to be my entertainment. I don't think I'm in the right headspace for this type of game right now. I "get it" I think, but just can't do it right now. Maybe I'll try again later. Dunno.
> 
> That being said - I don't think I'm so turned off by the concept of it that I wouldn't still want to give another title a try - maybe something modern'd up a little - something that's still in the same vein but not _quite_ as antagonistic to the player.
> 
> 
> 
> In the meantime, I've also been poking away at Metroid Fusion, which is much more my pace.



I’m not surprised - as warned repeatedly that game is the least user friendly in the series!! The run backs are insane. If you aren’t a veteran you are going to have a terrible time with demons souls imo. The bosses and levels are easier, but the run backs and death punishments cancel all that out entirely. It’s fun to me, but it sure wouldn’t have been if I’d started with it.

I really think you should start with dark souls 3 or elden ring, or go through dark souls 1 or bloodborne with a walkthrough if you’re feeling bold.


----------



## MFB

I haven't played DS3 yet, just got burnt out from all the other FS games I played before it, but I'd say BB is probably the best introduction to their niche; it's got the mechanics middle ground of parrying with the off-hand but rewards aggressiveness that if you want to move backwards to DS and take your fights more methodically you can, or if you want to move to strictly parrying and on-the-attack Sekiro is right there waiting. The bosses also didn't feel overly cheap, and given that we're in October the environment is absolutely dynamic for pure Spooktober.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> bloodborne


By an odd coincidence, I ended up playing this one the other day at someone else's place and it's soooooooooo much more forgiving. Having an audience to laugh every time you mess up is kinda fun in it's own way too. I felt like I was having fun more often than not, which I can't always say of Demon's Souls. Been too busy to return to it since then though.


----------



## CanserDYI

BlackMastodon said:


> Beat Breath of the Wild the other night. Thought the Calamity Ganon fight was pretty good if not a bit tedious, though the last segment was bordering on a QTE. Also was expecting more of a cutscene or endgame cinematic, but overall loved the game and see where the hype came from. Very excited for Tears of the Kingdom now.
> 
> Started Monster Hunter Sunbreak today and it's more of the same, with a few quality of life improvements, which is absolutely perfect for me.
> 
> Also bought Moonlighter a couple months ago and have been meaning to pick that up. Love the concept of a roguelike where you play as a shopkeeper who goes dungeon diving by night to stock the shop.


I feel quite the same about Calamity Ganon. The first fight was a pretty decent fight, but the final Beast was really.... anticlimactic? I genuinely found the Thunderblight, Fireblight, etc way more difficult than the final end game, and frankly, the most difficult part of the game wasn't even Ganon('s). It was the damn Lynel's in my opinion. Those things are _hard_. I know there isn't really any situation where you _have _to defeat one, but I wanted to, dammit, and I never did because they were so pointlessly difficult.

Such an amazing game though and worth every second of gameplay, I thoroughly enjoy most aspects of the game, even the weapon degradation.


----------



## BlackMastodon

CanserDYI said:


> I feel quite the same about Calamity Ganon. The first fight was a pretty decent fight, but the final Beast was really.... anticlimactic? I genuinely found the Thunderblight, Fireblight, etc way more difficult than the final end game, and frankly, the most difficult part of the game wasn't even Ganon('s). It was the damn Lynel's in my opinion. Those things are _hard_. I know there isn't really any situation where you _have _to defeat one, but I wanted to, dammit, and I never did because they were so pointlessly difficult.
> 
> Such an amazing game though and worth every second of gameplay, I thoroughly enjoy most aspects of the game, even the weapon degradation.


Yeah I avoided all the Lynels I could until late game but then I needed to grind out the White Mane ones to upgrade the Soldier armour set. I went from thinking the game got very easy and I was hording the best weapons and shields, to then basically using all of them up to kill 6 Lynels. And the only Ancient Beast boss/Blight guys I found legitimately difficult was the lightning one, but they were decent boss fights.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I haven't played DS3 yet, just got burnt out from all the other FS games I played before it, but I'd say BB is probably the best introduction to their niche; it's got the mechanics middle ground of parrying with the off-hand but rewards aggressiveness that if you want to move backwards to DS and take your fights more methodically you can, or if you want to move to strictly parrying and on-the-attack Sekiro is right there waiting. The bosses also didn't feel overly cheap, and given that we're in October the environment is absolutely dynamic for pure Spooktober.


Going back to Bloodborne after DS3/Elden Ring/Sekiro makes the boss runbacks feel like Demon's Souls, though. Especially crap like the one to the Shadows of Yarnham. That game has LONG gaps between checkpoints most of the time. As a result I would place it about one step above Demon's Souls for forgiveness for new players. It sounds like Ted was playing Demon's Souls on super-hard-mode (trying to parry stuff instead of block it, etc) so he might adjust pretty easily to it, but Bloodborne is also definitely harder in that you can't just hide behind a shield and play reactively with no reaction speed required unlike the DS games and you can't be a pewpew sorcerer and mow everything down out of their damage range like Elden Ring/DS1/DS2 either. I mean, it's not harder than DS1/2/3 are if you don't use a shield, in fact it's probably easier. But it also has way more complex level design - you'd probably need to look up a guide to figure out where the hell to go in more than one location, unlike DS3 and Elden Ring which apart from some huge "secret areas" are comparatively straightforward.

I went most of the way through DS3 the last two days, as a dex build (but with a shield like a wimp when clearing out levels). There were a couple parts I died repeatedly in, but by and large that game is ridiculously forgiving compared to some of the earlier ones. Like, things like NPC invaders are far more difficult than DS1, and some of the bosses definitely have some of that delayed swing stuff that you saw so much in Elden Ring combined with way more aggressiveness than DS1 and 2 where you can just circle around with a shield and poke everything to death, but then you compare Anor Londo's level design to the DS1 rendition and it's night and day easier.

Definitely was getting wrecked by champion gundyr repeatedly until I decided to try parrying him. Took like three tries to learn which moves were parryable and the last fight he pretty much hit me twice. Ridiculous how good parrying is on that guy. Too bad it's so unreliable in most of the game (there's really very little in-game that tells you what attacks are or aren't parryable and with how tight some of the windows are it's tough to tell if you screwed up or if it's impossible).


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> I think there’s a crease where you can hide when the big spider throws fire balls (or whatever it was) at you. Or at least there was one in the original game.
> 
> You can go to any world, but I think that’s the easiest one, yeah…
> 
> It gets worse, much worse. MUCH worse. Frustrating as hell. I finished the thing, but just because I was determined to “finish a souls game”. Can’t say I enjoyed it, not at all.
> 
> After that I played a bit of Dark Souls I and II, and noped the fuck out. I can see why some people enjoy that kind of game, but I didn’t like them in the 80s / 90s, and I don’t like them now. Most I can do is watch someone else playing them, like when I was a kid
> 
> I suppose that’s why back then I enjoyed more playing graphic adventures than, say, something like Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins.
> 
> I sometimes play games I reeeaally like in the hardest difficulties in a second or third playthrough though, but that’s a different thing.


It's odd to me that people focus on Demon's Souls as the Souls game they're going to finish. It's WAY more frustrating than any of the later ones with the possible exception of DS2's opening and DS1's middle section. I guess most games being so story-heavy makes people not want to start with games with sequel numbers after them.

The Lava Spider is seriously possibly the hardest boss in Demon's Souls. I just cheesed him with a bow from the hallway, I read that was the recommendation. Every other boss I fought "legit" besides the girl with the bodyguard. If you can get past him you should have smooth sailing for much of the rest of the game as long as you look up a guide for how to get the ring that stops you from being horribly slowed when you're in the swamp levels (5-2, 5-3).

The actual level scaling is basically like 1-1,2-1,3-1,4-1,5-1,1-2,2-2, etc with a couple exceptions (I think 1-2, Tower Knight, is easier than some of the other level 1s, since I think world 1 had more levels in it than the other worlds).

I'm curious what went wrong with Tower Knight for Ted. He really is one of the easier bosses. Unless you try to fight him on hard mode and don't start the fight by running around killing all the archers first, of course. That said I definitely embarrassingly got killed by him a couple times by failing to properly dodge the shield smash. And the big laser or whatever his projectile was was a surprise. I think his runback had a shortcut to it which made it less horrible than some of the other levels (ex 5-2). But again, Demon's Souls is THE WORST game for learning the ropes with these things since it really feels like it's punishing you every time you die, way more than their later games.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> It sounds like Ted was playing Demon's Souls on super-hard-mode (trying to parry stuff instead of block it, etc) so he might adjust pretty easily to it, but Bloodborne is also definitely harder in that you can't just hide behind a shield and play reactively with no reaction speed required unlike the DS games and you can't be a pewpew sorcerer and mow everything down out of their damage range like Elden Ring/DS1/DS2 either.


I did do that at first - I kept trying to nail the timing for the parry, and when it works, it works great, but when it fails, you get wrecked immediately.

Having not gotten very far in either, one of the big things I find different is that BB seems pretty forgiving if you mess up. Like, I can run into a crowd, get hit a couple of times, run back out, heal, go back, swing and miss, etc., and it's not _eeeeeasy_, but the mistakes feel like my own mistakes mostly. In DS, it feels like you have basically one chance to make a mistake, then you get wrecked immediately, even against the lowliest of baddies - and there's lots of little SURPRISE WE HID SOMETHING HERE moments that feel intentionally crafted as a screw-you to the player.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I'm curious what went wrong with Tower Knight for Ted.


I only got one attempt in, had zero idea what to expect, and panic'd. It might go well on another attempt when I have time.


wankerness said:


> The Lava Spider is seriously possibly the hardest boss in Demon's Souls.


If that's the one I'm getting destroyed by, I feel less bad about it - since it's the second one I encountered, made me think it should have still been on the easier side of things.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I did do that at first - I kept trying to nail the timing for the parry, and when it works, it works great, but when it fails, you get wrecked immediately.
> 
> Having not gotten very far in either, one of the big things I find different is that BB seems pretty forgiving if you mess up. Like, I can run into a crowd, get hit a couple of times, run back out, heal, go back, swing and miss, etc., and it's not _eeeeeasy_, but the mistakes feel like my own mistakes mostly. In DS, it feels like you have basically one chance to make a mistake, then you get wrecked immediately, even against the lowliest of baddies - and there's lots of little SURPRISE WE HID SOMETHING HERE moments that feel intentionally crafted as a screw-you to the player.


Bloodborne's difficulty spikes are interesting, cause you're right, the opening is pretty good for teaching you the ropes, but then BAMMO it hits you with what is easily the hardest first boss in any of these games in the form of Father Gascoigne. What's good about the game is that if you can get past him you most definitely have the skills to beat the rest of the game, but it's BRUTAL for new players. I know a lot of people that got to him (or Cleric Beast, the optional boss you can fight first) and just got killed a bunch of times, ran out of healing items, realized they'd have to farm healing vials for a while to keep failing, and said screw this. Which is too bad, cause most of the subsequent bosses seem much easier.


----------



## MFB

Yeah, it definitely gatekeeps with Papa Guacamole, but as you said - if you get past him, you won't run into anything for a bit that you can't tackle. I had some minor qualms with Amelia after but it's because I think I was still playing it wrong at that point, but those two together really do give you the tools to beat the rest.


----------



## TedEH

If nothing else, I can appreciate that the titles give you a lot to talk about - about progress, about the approaches you're taking, etc.


----------



## TheBlackBard

I have to say, after playing Souls games for 11 years, the FromSoft formula and the knockoffs have made me turn to something else stylistically. That's why I'm playing stuff like Tales of Arise, Disco Elysium, Persona 5 Royal, Lost Odyssey and other games, because it really has gotten old seeing game after game with "Souls" in the name or otherwise being compared to them. I go back to Dark Souls 1 here and there, but other than that, other than Demon's because I haven't played it, I don't go back and revisit them that much even if I did love them. Elden Ring, though awesome at the start, I just realized there really wasn't a whole lot that separated it from prior Fromsoft installments, except for an open world. Don't get me wrong, there are other cool changes, but nothing that really spoke to me. I personally think the industry needs a break from similar formulas that try to take what they can from Souls and add their own twist to it. Evil West and The Callisto Protocol have my attention. Dead Space remake... eh... the graphics of the older one are still perfectly fine for me, and I only spent 3 bucks on it. I might see what the fuss is about when they do something new, as my love for those games aren't dead, but... I'm certainly not excited about them the way I used to be.


----------



## TedEH

TheBlackBard said:


> I personally think the industry needs a break from similar formulas


I think in certain frames of mind, I might agree, but at the same time, variety exists out there - you just gatta look for it. Making very similar games does serve a purpose though, and once you make something people like, there's going to be people asking for more of the same - or more derivative works. Look at what happened to the Metroidvania space.


----------



## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> I think in certain frames of mind, I might agree, but at the same time, *variety exists out there - you just gatta look for it*. Making very similar games does serve a purpose though, and once you make something people like, there's going to be people asking for more of the same - or more derivative works. Look at what happened to the Metroidvania space.



Which is why I made it clear that I was playing other kinds of games.  Unless you're referring to variety in the sense of clones, then no, because I haven't really found one that's done Souls, except for maybe Salt and Sanctuary. Had the same mood and vibe despite being a 2D/platformer, the weapons had heft, but then you get poor examples like Mortal Shell and The Surge and... all those do is remind me that the people they derived inspiration from still did it better.


----------



## TedEH

TheBlackBard said:


> Unless you're referring to variety in the sense of clones


I wasn't thinking that specifically, but in theory that's what's supooooooooosed to happen within that space. It kinda worked in the metroidvania space, 'cause it's a simple enough type of game, at it's core, that you can translate the things that make a good metroid game onto other things. I get the impression that a "Souls game" is pretty strict in what counts for some reason, lest you land in the world of "the Dark Souls of Something Something", like Hollow Knight, which was arguably also a Metroidvania, which brings us back around to how genres in games are sometimes just as dumb as genres in music.

Variety good though. Variety always good. Play all the things.


----------



## wankerness

Dark Souls 1 is a metroidvania itself, it just had a lot of unique characteristics that when another game copies them, it's immediately going to be identified as the sub-subgenre instead of just a Metroidvania. I think it's like how at first there were just FPS games but now saying FPS is not enough cause enough different strains of them have developed that you have Team-based shooters, Far Cry clones, Military Shooters, Boomer shooters, etc. Sure, you COULD just call them FPS games, but being more specific is going to give most people a better idea of what something is.

Hollow Knight, Dark Souls, and Super Metroid are all similar in that they are a big sprawling map with sparse save points that involves a lot of backtracking, though DS takes it a step further in not having any in-game map at all. I think THE big traits that identifies things as a soulslike are 1) The mechanic where everything respawns if you heal at a checkpoint and 2) the mechanic where when you die it restarts you at your last save point, all enemies respawn, AND you have to go and recover your "dropped souls" or they're lost permanently. Super Metroid and the various Castlevania RPGs all were a lot laxer in that it would kick you back to the checkpoint and the enemies would respawn, but you wouldn't actually lose anything permanently on death - the game would basically "reload your save" when you died, while with Dark Souls the game saves CONSTANTLY, especially right when you die, to avoid you bypassing the mechanic. 

A lot of those kinds of games allow saving anywhere or have automatic saves/invisible checkpoints to try and avoid frustrating the player, DS sort of delights in it. Though every game softens that a bit more..


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> the game saves CONSTANTLY, especially right when you die, to avoid you bypassing the mechanic.


I've wondered before if some games would be improved by making save-scumming just a part of the game. Instead of saving/loading, just make up some BS about how your character has time travel powers or pull the unreliable narrator joke or something. That's just about what Sand of Time was about.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I've wondered before if some games would be improved by making save-scumming just a part of the game. Instead of saving/loading, just make up some BS about how your character has time travel powers or pull the unreliable narrator joke or something. That's just about what Sand of Time was about.



On repeat playthroughs my character definitely has “time travel powers” in certain sections I hate and don’t want to do more than once! Playstation cloud saves are a godsend. Same with how easy it is on pc to just backup everything locally whenever you want. I read that Xbox forces auto upload on cloud saves so you can’t save scum on that platform. Damn shame.


----------



## TedEH

It's one of the best part of emulators - being able to scum the save states.


----------



## NexusMT

wankerness said:


> Dark Souls 2 1.0 is kind of a bastard in sections. That whole Drangleic Castle basement with the stone guys waking up and the sentinels is way, WAY harder than it is in SOTFS since the guys revive in groups, attack faster, and the sentinels have at least 50% more HP. There's still fewer enemies in general, making some sections WAY easier than in SOTFS, but some stuff is blatantly imbalanced and was rightly nerfed. I feel like SOTFS really smacks you in the face with difficulty in the early game but makes the late game easier.
> 
> It also doesn't help that playing at 30 FPS with the ratchety buttons on an xbox 360 controller and occasional hitches while the game loads things makes things more difficult. I am currently getting stomped by the demon of song, a boss I don't remember ever having trouble with before! I think I just need to level health more, my stats are spread way too thin (I think I have 25 points into health) and as a result I'm getting 1 shot sometimes even with a human effigy up.


Agreed I think SOTFS kicks you in the face in the beginn until you level up and then on the DLCs, they are hard AF.


----------



## NexusMT

Anyway I’m thinking about getting COD MW2. The MW 2019 was well worth it considering the amount of updates and maps they game got. This year game done by the same developers, plus campaign and base for Warzone 2 it feels like a no brainer to me. When I get bored of the MP maps I will play the bigger 40vs40 maps.


----------



## MFB

NexusMT said:


> Anyway I’m thinking about getting COD MW2. The MW 2019 was well worth it considering the amount of updates and maps they game got. This year game done by the same developers, plus campaign and base for Warzone 2 it feels like a no brainer to me. When I get bored of the MP maps I will play the bigger 40vs40 maps.



I've thought about it as I'm currently without a multiplayer that I can just fire up and kill some time after work to decompress, but I remember how awful MW2019 got by the end of it and it's like, do I want to go through that again? At a minimum I'll wait to see what the general consensus on the subreddits is, and go from there.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Demons Souls



I took another crack at the Tower Knight just now and did much better than last time. Got him down to about half way. Attempt 1 I died before I managed to take out the archers. Attempt 2 I got all the archers out of the way, then figured out I could usually roll under the legs for each attack and keep swinging for the feet until he falls. Makes me wonder if I should be targeting his head when that happens or something. The one thing I keep failing to dodge is when he jumps backwards, and I get hit by the shield on the way by. Good news, I think I can beat it. Bad news, I wasted all my grass figuring it out, so I'll need to farm some before getting much farther. Medium news? I think the dragon on the way makes it easy to farm souls, since it does most of the work for you.

I've also been hoarding the random item-based souls and not using them at all until I'm about to spend them - seems like the best way not to risk losing em all. Just before saving, I bought two more levels, so maybe that'll give me enough boost to get through the next attempt.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Spoiler: Demons Souls
> 
> 
> 
> I took another crack at the Tower Knight just now and did much better than last time. Got him down to about half way. Attempt 1 I died before I managed to take out the archers. Attempt 2 I got all the archers out of the way, then figured out I could usually roll under the legs for each attack and keep swinging for the feet until he falls. Makes me wonder if I should be targeting his head when that happens or something. The one thing I keep failing to dodge is when he jumps backwards, and I get hit by the shield on the way by. Good news, I think I can beat it. Bad news, I wasted all my grass figuring it out, so I'll need to farm some before getting much farther. Medium news? I think the dragon on the way makes it easy to farm souls, since it does most of the work for you.
> 
> I've also been hoarding the random item-based souls and not using them at all until I'm about to spend them - seems like the best way not to risk losing em all. Just before saving, I bought two more levels, so maybe that'll give me enough boost to get through the next attempt.


Yeah, when he falls you have to avoid the impact, but then definitely attack his head, you can take off a ton of his health very quickly cause he takes hugely increased damage there.

Don’t use soul items unless you’re in the nexus and going to spend them immediately. I usually use them when I either only need a few souls to gain a level, or when I need to buy something from a vendor. Also be aware that boss souls can be traded for weapons and spells later on so you probably shouldn’t use them until you know you don’t want what they make.


----------



## CanserDYI

Hollow Knight feels like an honorary souls game IMHO. I love it.


----------



## Ralyks

So I'm at the point in Soul Hackers 2 where I'm assuming I could finish the story within the next 2 - 3 hours, and I was gonna take the time to finish all the side stuff.... But then I remembered Persona 5 Royal comes out Friday on PS5, so that's out the window and I'm just gonna finish SH2's story tonight or tomorrow. Considering I put around 110 hours into vanilla P5, this is gonna consume me, probably just in time for the P3P and P4G ports in January.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Demon's Souls



Took down the Tower Knight on the next attempt, but I did a bunch of preparing ahead of time - mostly just some grinding to stock up on grass, then spent a bunch of souls to boost a couple of levels, then narrowly avoided dying at the last second before the boss went down. I guess this is as much as I can do in this first world before I go do more stuff. I'm not confident enough to take on the spider thing again, so I suppose it's time to pick a new area.

I've realized too I've been ignoring a few mechanics that could be helpful - like magic. The cloak seems like a pretty handy way to skip overly-difficult sections maybe.


----------



## wankerness

The spider thing is easily killable if you either get an upgraded bow or start speccing into magic and get the soul arrow or whatever the blue attack spell is called. If you try fighting it in melee range it's very bad news. 

I think the level it's on is the easiest one available to you so it would be in your best interests to look into "cheese strategies" for the spider. But, you could always skip to 3-1 and come back when you're overlevelled.


----------



## OmegaSlayer

Aside from playing Warframe, I purchased (again) Bayonetta in the 10th Anniversary Collection, bundled with Vanquish, and I'm having insane fun.
I put 120 hours in the game at release in the PS3 era, the game is so good.
I'm on the opposite side of the Souls game, I like fast gameplay, so I'm always in the Devil May Cry/Bayonetta side of things.

Very very tempted to pick up a Switch just to play the 3 Bayonetta games.


----------



## wankerness

As I get old and bad at reflexes games like bayonetta become less appealing since the reflexes required are too high. Souls games are good for old people with bad reflexes. When I played bayonetta ten years ago I already had to play the damn thing on easy!

I have two but have never made it more than an hour in. Too many cutscenes!!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> But, you could always skip to 3-1 and come back when you're overlevelled.


That's what I'm thinking of doing next, and/or come back with a truckload of arrows+bolts and just range kill it very slowly. Previous attempts were all up-close melee attempts, 'cause I had no magic and hadn't thought to grind to buy a ton of arrows. I do like the design of the map up to that point, and had conveniently ran in with a stab weapon which everything in there seems to be weak to. It's pretty satisfying to sneak up behind everything and one-shot them.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> That's what I'm thinking of doing next, and/or come back with a truckload of arrows+bolts and just range kill it very slowly. Previous attempts were all up-close melee attempts, 'cause I had no magic and hadn't thought to grind to buy a ton of arrows. I do like the design of the map up to that point, and had conveniently ran in with a stab weapon which everything in there seems to be weak to. It's pretty satisfying to sneak up behind everything and one-shot them.


It shouldn't be that slow assuming you upgrade the bow. That's another thing about these games - typically upgrading weapons produces a far bigger damage increase than upgrading your offensive stats. You should probably make that priority one once you get a weapon you want to stick with and figure out the upgrade system. I think there are "sharp" weapon upgrades in that game (if I remember correctly) and that's probably the path you want to go if you're sticking with a dex build.

As I've only played through the game 1.5 times (to get the platinum medal) and only did it with one character my knowledge of the game is pretty limited compared to all the other Souls games. I think I just stuck with one weapon for both playthroughs and used the upgrade path that gives you mana regen since I was a caster build.


----------



## Mathemagician

New Genshin continent means back in my exploring game. I don’t care how average the combat is. Nothing beats jumping off a high mountain and gliding over a lake in a chasm to find a random treasure chest. Same reason I loved the latest Zelda game tbh.

Edit:
And on DS series. I would def say they are metroidvanias for sure. At least the earlier ones. But imo Elden Ring is a Zelda-style game and frankly the best one I’ve played in idk how many.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> You should probably make that priority one once you get a weapon you want to stick with and figure out the upgrade system. I think there are "sharp" weapon upgrades in that game (if I remember correctly) and that's probably the path you want to go if you're sticking with a dex build.


I may have lucked into this strategy - I've been carrying around a Mail Breaker + 6 and some basic sword + 3 I think, usually using the breaker because it's higher damage from the upgrades, and it moves fast (and that one area with the Spider all the enemies seem weak to the stabby moves), and switching to sword when I want the extra reach.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, usually with those games it’s good to have at least two damage types handy. I usually went either with “slash” (regular sword) and “strike” (maces, etc - strong vs armored enemies). Maybe an elemental weapon or a pyromancer or something for the occasional physical-resistant enemy (like slimes in ds1/3). DS3 also made me have to carry around a thrust (stabby) weapon for those damn caged enemies.

Again though I don’t remember enough about demons souls to remember if either of those are helpful here. You might be fine with just stab/slash the whole game!


----------



## TedEH

Armor Spider is dead. Now it's the Flamelurker I need to figure out. Getting to it was easy enough. Picked up a cool sword along the way that seems to do a lot more damage than the one I had. Boosted some more levels. Realized the crossbow kinda sucks, so getting used to the bow instead. Bow has been upgraded a couple times but needs more. I'm guessing there's some trick to all the fire-y dudes - magic or something?

Something I've noticed makes the game a significant amount easier is that you can kinda cheese the levelling a bit - just keep returning to some easy to reach area with strong-ish normal enemies, spam them to collect souls, upgrade, repeat until you run out of other materials. I kept returning to the area where the Tower Knight was, going backwards, backstab the two big knight dudes, repeat until you've got enough souls to stock up on everything you need. I had been having trouble running out of arrows before, but not anymore I guess.


----------



## Mathemagician

Yep that’s by design. The game is meant to be hard mechanically. But “just level up more” is always valid, I do it every game. I’m not trying to beat them at SL1, lol.


----------



## wankerness

The mechanic that the souls games do have that runs counter to the stupid body form/black world tendency bit is that every time you die, you have to reclear enemies, which means the more you die the more extra souls you're getting, so eventually you outlevel stuff. It's not cheesing the game to grind EXP, that's just a feature of almost all RPGs. Plenty of people think it destroys the "fun" if you're too high level and thus the game stops being incredibly hard, but I have always liked in RPGs feeling more and more powerful as it goes on. It's definitely a core feature of those games to find good spots for farming souls instead of trying to play the game in some purist style where you kill everything once and have to choose between buying upgrades/items and leveling up. And the fact enemies infinitely respawn means you can do it as long as you can stand it.

If you look at a ranking of boss difficulty for demon's souls, flamelurker is usually close to the top. I personally had no issue, but I wasn't playing as a melee build. I think it's just sort of a case of you have to have good enough weapons to be able to wreck him before you run out of healing items. I definitely think you should avoid him until you've at least finished 3-1 and 4-1 and maybe even 5-1. He's definitely tuned higher. World 1 is the only one you want to try doing more than one level in a row, the others all have big jumps in tuning each level.

The only other bosses I ever see ranked as more difficult than him are flame spider ( which is the one boss I personally had to cheese), the boss in 3-2, and then the big end boss in 4-4.


----------



## OmegaSlayer

wankerness said:


> As I get old and bad at reflexes games like bayonetta become less appealing since the reflexes required are too high. Souls games are good for old people with bad reflexes. When I played bayonetta ten years ago I already had to play the damn thing on easy!
> 
> I have two but have never made it more than an hour in. Too many cutscenes!!


Well, it's like stopping to shred and start to play blues 
PS I think you're younger than me


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I'm finishing up my Mass Effect 2 replay. And since I've put off playing Mass Effect 3 for a decade, I guess it's time to finally start it.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> that's just a feature of almost all RPGs


I hadn't really thought of it as an RPG, as much as it makes sense. There's clearly RPG elements, but the core of the game seems more about mechanic mastery than the build/grind focus I associate with more "pure" RPGs.


wankerness said:


> Plenty of people think it destroys the "fun" if you're too high level and thus the game stops being incredibly hard, but I have always liked in RPGs feeling more and more powerful as it goes on.


There's so many game-dev types who are convinced that there's only one "correct" fun power curve, based on "flow states" and they'll quote M. Csikszentmihalyi all day at you to sound smart about it - but I'm absolutely on board with most games that leave you overpowered by the end. To me, that's one way to feel "growth" of the character. If you went through all of this leveling and growth and powering up, just to still be struggling the whole way, that kills the sort of "ludic" narrative. (Am I using that word correctly? I dunno.) A game getting easier as you go mechanically reinforces the idea that you're stronger.

Also half the point of a lot of games is the power fantasy anyway. Which is probably why the Souls types don't quite jive with everyone, because you really have to work for that power fantasy in this case.



wankerness said:


> If you look at a ranking of boss difficulty for demon's souls, flamelurker is usually close to the top. I personally had no issue, but I wasn't playing as a melee build.


Oddly, the first attempt at him, without knowing what I was doing, I was able to take a good third of his health down really slowly, but I had a lot of healing stuff at the time. I have a suspicion this one won't be a big deal for me once I come up with a way to do more damage, since all the weapons I've got just chip away soooooo slowly. That's where I'm thinking I'll need to start trying out the magic stuff.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> I'm finishing up my Mass Effect 2 replay. And since I've put off playing Mass Effect 3 for a decade, I guess it's time to finally start it.



It’s the most fun one combat wise by far. Play as a class with lots of biotics or tech powers and do all those cross-class combo explosions! I also like how in that game if you import a save from a full ME2 run you start at like level 30 and thus immediately can hit the ground running with the combat system.


----------



## wankerness

OmegaSlayer said:


> Well, it's like stopping to shred and start to play blues
> PS I think you're younger than me


I might be! I dunno. It might just be a brain adjustment thing. I didn't struggle with Sekiro and that requires some serious reflexes in the boss fights. Bayonetta just has SO MUCH STUFF on the screen and so many flashing lights and bright explosions that it was like "I can't process all this!!" I have the Vanquish 2-pack on PS4 and Bayonetta 2 on my Wii-U so maybe I'll try them again sometime. I haven't played 1 since Xbox 360. Another big part of why I ditched Bayonetta 2 was at the time I only had that great big pad controller with the built-in screen at the time, and that is uncomfortable as hell for anything involving button mashing. I have a Wii-U pro controller now which would probably make it playable.



TedEH said:


> I hadn't really thought of it as an RPG, as much as it makes sense. There's clearly RPG elements, but the core of the game seems more about mechanic mastery than the build/grind focus I associate with more "pure" RPGs.
> 
> There's so many game-dev types who are convinced that there's only one "correct" fun power curve, based on "flow states" and they'll quote M. Csikszentmihalyi all day at you to sound smart about it - but I'm absolutely on board with most games that leave you overpowered by the end. To me, that's one way to feel "growth" of the character. If you went through all of this leveling and growth and powering up, just to still be struggling the whole way, that kills the sort of "ludic" narrative. (Am I using that word correctly? I dunno.) A game getting easier as you go mechanically reinforces the idea that you're stronger.
> 
> Also half the point of a lot of games is the power fantasy anyway. Which is probably why the Souls types don't quite jive with everyone, because you really have to work for that power fantasy in this case.
> 
> 
> Oddly, the first attempt at him, without knowing what I was doing, I was able to take a good third of his health down really slowly, but I had a lot of healing stuff at the time. I have a suspicion this one won't be a big deal for me once I come up with a way to do more damage, since all the weapons I've got just chip away soooooo slowly. That's where I'm thinking I'll need to start trying out the magic stuff.


The DS games are pretty good about power creep. All of them tend to have a difficulty slider where the game starts out extremely difficult, then as you fill out your build to hit softcaps and the like they get easier (especially if you take pains to upgrade your weapon as quickly as possible), and then towards the end of the game the enemy tuning starts to get up to the level where they're still hard for an optimized build and knowing how to play. But, the game still feels a lot better at that point cause you don't run out of stamina in a couple swings and if you go back to earlier areas you just mow through enemies. Then each playthrough (NG+, NG++, etc) steadily increases enemy damage and resistances while your character stops improving as fast so the game steadily gets harder.

Flamelurker is weak to magic apparently. I think at this point to pivot to magic you'd have to spend a lot of time grinding since you'd need to boost your intelligence a bunch to have its damage to the point where it would be if you were a caster build. So, you might be better off farming some of that buff item that coats your weapon with magic damage. Sticky White Slime, I think it's called? The wikis are sometimes confusing since a bunch of items have different names in the remake vs the original.


----------



## thebeesknees22

is it just me or does the new trailer for FF XVI look..... terrible. Like... geez. What happened?

I used to be a huge Final Fantasy fan, but every FF seems to be getting worse and worse....and worse...


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Bayonetta just has SO MUCH STUFF on the screen and so many flashing lights and bright explosions that it was like "I can't process all this!!"


I kinda had the same experience, I think. I really wanted to like the game, 'cause it's got a lot of character, but it's difficult in the "playing fighting games against pros" kind of way, where the mechanics seem to hide a lot of their complexity - just by having a lot of moving parts that move fast. Maybe I'll return to it eventually.

I find it funny that I bounce off of that game, but keep going in DS. At least is DS it mostly feels like my fault when I fail, rather than just being overwhelmed by the game. A cheap death is Bayonetta is just a cheap death. A cheap death in DS is usually a HA GOTCHA that you'll remember and won't fall for next time.



wankerness said:


> I think at this point to pivot to magic you'd have to spend a lot of time grinding


Yeah, I'm probably not going to pivot the build at this point, but if the sticky white stuff (lol) does the job, that's easy enough to stock up on.


----------



## wankerness

thebeesknees22 said:


> is it just me or does the new trailer for FF XVI look..... terrible. Like... geez. What happened?
> 
> I used to be a huge Final Fantasy fan, but every FF seems to be getting worse and worse....and worse...


When was the last FF you liked?

I liked 13, but the world tells me I'm wrong. 15's story was even more impossible to follow, got tedious in some sections (that goddam survival horror chapter!!!) and I hated the fact you only played as a boy band. But like, I really haven't gotten attached to the story in any of those games apart from 6, and most of the subsequent ones I just like a few characters and the story is just an unfortunate thing I try to ignore. So it's probably kind of more of the same!


----------



## thebeesknees22

wankerness said:


> When was the last FF you liked?
> 
> I liked 13, but the world tells me I'm wrong. 15's story was even more impossible to follow, got tedious in some sections (that goddam survival horror chapter!!!) and I hated the fact you only played as a boy band. But like, I really haven't gotten attached to the story in any of those games apart from 6, and most of the subsequent ones I just like a few characters and the story is just an unfortunate thing I try to ignore. So it's probably kind of more of the same!


I did like the FF 7 remake. A lot actually. I wasn't sure I would, but it was pretty fun on the first play through, and a few play throughs after even though the story is quite a bit different. 

Before that oh man...outside of that it's been a while. 9-12 where ok to meh. I didn't like them. didn't just absolutely hate them either. 

13 was bad. 15 was terrible.. I can't play that game unless I try to speed run it, but speed running it actually is kinda fun. The story is just flat out awful though. 

6 was the best by far story wise. 7 (original 2nd best) etc..

Even though 9-15 were meh or blah, at least they looked nice. FF16 doesn't even look nice in the trailer. It's just super average. With as long as they spend making FF's they should look like GOW 4 level or close to it.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I thought the FFXVI trailer looks... fine. At least it's drawing from the spirit of the classic Sakaguchi directed games. And instead of ripping off one George in the first 6 games, they're ripping off another.

I think we as Final Fantasy fans are just getting old and grumpy.


----------



## TheBlackBard

The last truly great Final Fantasy game was called Lost Odyssey and that was back in 2008.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TheBlackBard said:


> The last truly great Final Fantasy game was called Lost Odyssey and that was back in 2008.



...in which, surprise surprise, directed by Sakaguchi after his not so subtle split from Square Enix.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Bloody_Inferno said:


> ...in which, surprise surprise, directed by Sakaguchi after his not so subtle split from Square Enix.



I just want another turn based FF, but clearly that's not going to happen. I know, I know, things must evolve, hardware limitations... bleh... ah well, least Octopath Traveler and Persona 5 exist.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> I just want another turn based FF, but clearly that's not going to happen. I know, I know, things must evolve, hardware limitations... bleh... ah well, least Octopath Traveler and Persona 5 exist.



Dragon Quest XI and Yakuza 7 are really good classic turn-based RPGs from the last couple years, too.


----------



## gabito

I'm playing The Last Guardian. I like it so far.

The controls suck, they used light bloom and yellow / green lighting like it's 2005, and the aesthetics are very familiar, so yeah, it's a Fumito Ueda game.

I love Shadow of The Colossus and I don't like ICO so much, so I'd place this one second among Fumito Ueda's creations (according to my super accurate and unquestionable preferences). But I haven't finished yet, so we'll see. The big dog is killing me, I love that it does whatever the fuck it wants, is very funny / frustrating. But I'm not in a hurry, so you do you Clifford.


----------



## TedEH

I remember Last Guardian having some performance issues too if you ran it on a launch-version PS4. Decent game otherwise though.


----------



## TedEH

In some very tangential news: I did something kinda dumb.

Now that the RTX 40- series is coming out, people are offloading their 30- series cards, so I spotted one for a less-than-eye-watering price and grabbed it. This _sounds_ like an ok idea until I remembered that my power supply is really old. Old enough that I don't remember how old it is. It's modular, but I seem to have lost the extra cables, so I don't have the extra PCIe power cable that this card needs. I also can't just get a new cable, since Antec doesn't even list it on their discontinued page anymore, and it uses a proprietary 10-pin cable that I can't find online anywhere.

Looks like I'll be power supply shopping. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I remember Last Guardian having some performance issues too if you ran it on a launch-version PS4. Decent game otherwise though.



There's still some texture / geometry pop-in on the PS5. Nothing too bad, but yeah... I guess the dog's feather technology is too taxing for these devices.

Also - amazingly- graphics looks a bit worse than SoTC's remake from 2018. I know this game had troubles during development, and it was initially going to be released for the PS3 (and you can tell).

But I don't care too much about that, this is one of those "I can live with this" games for me.


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> Dragon Quest XI and Yakuza 7 are really good classic turn-based RPGs from the last couple years, too.



Man for whatever reason... I don't know why... I just do not dig Dragon Quest XI's art style. I don't know if I have to give it another go or what, but...


----------



## StevenC

Mario + Rabbids 2

So far it's not as good as the first one. Feels a bit more handholdy, and there's a lot of choice acting for some reason. Tbh, I just wanted more of the first game but Ubisoft rarely seems to realise what makes a game good.


----------



## thebeesknees22

anyone pick up A Plague Tale: Requiem yet?

I'm debating it. The graphics look really super nice. I really suck at sneaking games though... I'm more o f the melee kinda guy.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I liked 13, but the world tells me I'm wrong


Wow, there are others? Finally. XIII was perfectly acceptable with, in my opinion, and underrated combat system. Never played the sequels yet, but they're on Gamepass, so that could happen.

Pretty sure I'm in the final hour of Soul Hackers 2. I hate how boring the dungeons were, because everything else about the game was great.

And, well, this happened today...


----------



## KnightBrolaire

Ralyks said:


> Wow, there are others? Finally. XIII was perfectly acceptable with, in my opinion, and underrated combat system. Never played the sequels yet, but they're on Gamepass, so that could happen.
> 
> Pretty sure I'm in the final hour of Soul Hackers 2. I hate how boring the dungeons were, because everything else about the game was great.
> 
> And, well, this happened today...
> View attachment 116114


let me know how gotham knights is. I've only seen mixed reviews so far.


----------



## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> let me know how gotham knights is. I've only seen mixed reviews so far.



I’ve only seen outright bad reviews, but they’re mostly focused on technical issues that might get fixed. Ex, it doesn’t really look better than Arkham Knight but evidently runs at 30 FPS on ps5/series x. Regardless, sounds like a good game to put off buying until they fix it.


----------



## Mathemagician

TheBlackBard said:


> Man for whatever reason... I don't know why... I just do not dig Dragon Quest XI's art style. I don't know if I have to give it another go or what, but...



I was the same until this year. It helps knowing that the creator also created dragon ball characters. So I bought 11 on sale and just started playing it. They grow on you, really lends itself to feeling like a different world, versus so many games trying to look “realistic”. Imo.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I’ve only seen outright bad reviews, but they’re mostly focused on technical issues that might get fixed. Ex, it doesn’t really look better than Arkham Knight but evidently runs at 30 FPS on ps5/series x. Regardless, sounds like a good game to put off buying until they fix it.


Let's just say I haven't opened it yet and only really grabbed it because for some reason I can neither remember nor explain why I already had it pre-ordered. So I may just give it back tomorrow. I'm thinking of getting my son his first Pokemon game for the holidays anyway so I'll just do that.

On another note, I didn't really think the graphical upgrade for P5R would be significant because it wasn't exactly graphic intensive back on vanilla PS4 anyway. But damn, the 4K60 really makes it sharper, smoother, and vivid. Plus I honestly didn't put much time into P5G on PS4 so I don't know about most of the new Golden content (despite putting 113 hours in original P5). So this is a pleasant upgrade, plus all the DLC thrown in. I missed these kids. I haven't finished Strikers either so maybe after this I'll restart it.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I was the same until this year. It helps knowing that the creator also created dragon ball characters. So I bought 11 on sale and just started playing it. They grow on you, really lends itself to feeling like a different world, versus so many games trying to look “realistic”. Imo.



Yeah. The designs put me off immediately, especially your stupid character’s haircut, but the characters are so damn charming that I couldn’t help but love the game as soon as I started building my party. Great, great characters in that game, like the best classic final fantasy groups.


----------



## Ralyks

Soul Hackers 2 is done. Still duneon design aside, damn good game. Feel like if it made my top 10 this year, it would be in the 8 to 10 range. Didn't blow my mind, but a very solid cyberpunky JRPG with some great characters, solid voice acting, good turn based RPG combat, and a bangin' soundtrack (as a Shin Megami Tensai game should have). Definitely worth a grab when it inevitably has a saie.

Anyway, let's see how bad Gotham Nights is. A lot of gamers seem to think reviewers are being hard on it, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Good thing I'm friends with the manager at the GameStop I go to since he said he'd still let me exchange it if it sucks.


----------



## p0ke

I realized some time ago that my phone can do xbox game streaming and it works pretty well, even on mobile data. So now I ordered one of those telescopic gamepad things that wrap around the phone so I can keep getting killed by Midir on the go


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

TheBlackBard said:


> I just want another turn based FF, but clearly that's not going to happen. I know, I know, things must evolve, hardware limitations... bleh... ah well, least Octopath Traveler and Persona 5 exist.



Now, I of all people am a little bit reluctant to recommend this, but maybe give the Legend of Heroes: Trails series a go. My reluctance is due to the series comes with a serious caveat that it's essentially the MCU of JRPGs with 9 titles (12 including the upcoming new entries) worth of continuity, and the pacing of these games are extremely sloooooooooow. But if you can get over that hump, the games will reward you handsomely since you have the same balance of JRPG/life sim elements like the Persona games, and a well refined battle system, that gets better with each installment.



TheBlackBard said:


> Man for whatever reason... I don't know why... I just do not dig Dragon Quest XI's art style. I don't know if I have to give it another go or what, but...



If you're not into the Dragon Ball series, that would make it difficult to get into XI, or any Dragon Quest game in general since it's all done by the same artist.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Forza Horizon 5 babyyyyy


----------



## p0ke

Ralyks said:


> Wow, there are others? Finally. XIII was perfectly acceptable with, in my opinion, and underrated combat system. Never played the sequels yet, but they're on Gamepass, so that could happen.



I enjoyed FF XIII, but for whatever reason I haven't played the sequels. They seem even better though.



Ralyks said:


> Soul Hackers 2



Hmm, looks like another game for my "waiting to go on sale" list. I'd consider it at full price if it weren't for the dungeon design that everyone's complaining about.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I enjoyed FF XIII, but for whatever reason I haven't played the sequels. They seem even better though.
> 
> 
> 
> Hmm, looks like another game for my "waiting to go on sale" list. I'd consider it at full price if it weren't for the dungeon design that everyone's complaining about.


FFXIII-2 is a game I started once. It's generally regarded to be better, at least partly cause the battle system is more complex and interactive, but I remember not liking it as much. I think maybe it was that you had fewer people in the party at once and had to collect the right monster partners to counter things, and if you didn't have the right "pokemon" it was bad news. I dunno, though. It's been several years and I only got a few hours in. Maybe someday I'll try again.

FFXIII I think has the best soundtrack of the series. I LOVE that main theme, so much, especially the variants "Sunleth Waterscape" and "Archylte Steppe."

The battle system always gets trashed as letting you autoattack everything to death or something, but it's really deep. I think it's a lot like FFXII. If you just try to burn through the story and skip all the side stuff, you really CAN ignore how interesting and complex the battle systems are. Like, try fighting the last "hunts" in FFXII or farming Adamantoise in FFXIII and let me know how well things go if you just "let the game play itself." I do wish FFXIII allowed for more manual control over party members, but it really could get very complex with settings characters up to be debuffers and how building up staggers worked. It was great in the late-game.

My biggest problem with FFXIII was Hope. I hated that little asshole.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: 'Souls



Can't remember if I mentioned that I got past the Armor Spider. Took down the Fools Idol today. Also progressed in Bloodborne a bit - got as far as taking out Father Gascoigne.

I ended up googling something and learned that I might have accidentally consumed an item that I shouldn't have - apparently the souls you get from beating bosses can be given to the blacksmith guy for upgrades, but I just used them. Oops.


----------



## narad

TedEH said:


> Spoiler: 'Souls
> 
> 
> 
> Can't remember if I mentioned that I got past the Armor Spider. Took down the Fools Idol today. Also progressed in Bloodborne a bit - got as far as taking out Father Gascoigne.
> 
> I ended up googling something and learned that I might have accidentally consumed an item that I shouldn't have - apparently the souls you get from beating bosses can be given to the blacksmith guy for upgrades, but I just used them. Oops.



Unless you're very specific builds, most of those items aren't that useful IMO. But ya, without reading stuff online there would have been like 0% chance I wouldn't have just immediately consumed them long before getting to the point where you could use them for other things.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> My biggest problem with FFXIII was Hope. I hated that little asshole.


A-fuckin’-men.
And yeah, I remember actually having a lot of fun with the combat. Shifting paradigms around in combat made it a little more fast paced and strategic to make up for not having as much control over the party.


----------



## wankerness

narad said:


> Unless you're very specific builds, most of those items aren't that useful IMO. But ya, without reading stuff online there would have been like 0% chance I wouldn't have just immediately consumed them long before getting to the point where you could use them for other things.



That’s what he gets for not reading my posts!!

I think the big useful one is the flame spider one (gives the insanely overpowered firestorm spell, or the insanely overpowered fire bow which I think scales with strength). But probably not that useful for a dex build. I have no idea which souls are useful for a dex build. Looking it up is a good idea.

One thing the director said about these games was he expected people to look stuff up online. I guess he really liked the idea of community helping each other through the game, hence the whole note and summoning systems. Also hence the incredibly arcane systems like world tendency-tied quests that are a miracle anyone ever figured them out and no regular player could be expected to do.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> One thing the director said about these games was he expected people to look stuff up online. I guess he really liked the idea of community helping each other through the game, hence the whole note and summoning systems.



And never in his wildest dreams did he think that it would instead result in, "try finger but hole"


----------



## gabito

Just finished The Last Guardian, really liked it despite its flaws.

Loved the overall setting, the huge map (it's a really really big structure, full of complex, elaborate details, and everything seems to be connected), the boy and beast's interactions, the interesting and original art direction and architecture, the music, the mistery, the quietness... everything you would expect from a Fumito Ueda game is there.

Oh, and the controls: there were some parts in the game were I had to control the boy jumping from super high structure to super high structure, hanging from chains and big mobile-like things, running across collapsing platforms, all while being hundred of meters above the ground and risking both the boy's and the beast's lives. Those made me feel like Spider-Man... if Spider-Man had multiple strokes before his tenth birthday. 

The controls really suck. The boy moves and controls like the protagonists in ICO and SotC. While in those games it was tolerable, here not so much. It seems they just lifted the code they had from the other games and used it here, you climb the beast just like you would climb a colossus, and you jump and run and everything else like an idiot. I'd rather control a balloon.

But the game is nice anyways, I liked it except for the controls. I'm not good at solving puzzles, and I usually don't like puzzle games, but they were all more or less different and generally clever but not too hard. I got stuck in a few were I couldn't see very well were I was supposed to climb, but that's mostly it. I didn't find controlling the beast so frustrating as others have said, but maybe I'm good with polygon animals, I don't know. You just have to ask, and wait a little.

It was nice, but my ranking still is SotC > TLG > ICO.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> That’s what he gets for not reading my posts!!


I don't remember seeing a post about not consuming the soul items right away. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If I go back to re-read old advice, it makes sense now, in context, but it's hard to absorb advice _before_ having played the game.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I don't remember seeing a post about not consuming the soul items right away. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> If I go back to re-read old advice, it makes sense now, in context, but it's hard to absorb advice _before_ having played the game.





wankerness said:


> Don’t use soul items unless you’re in the nexus and going to spend them immediately. I usually use them when I either only need a few souls to gain a level, or when I need to buy something from a vendor. *Also be aware that boss souls can be traded for weapons and spells later on so you probably shouldn’t use them until you know you don’t want what they make.*



You even "liked" the post! Ah well. As I said I don't know if they're useful. I only used them cause I was going for the platinum trophy and needed all the spells to get it. I really have no idea if any boss souls are good for a dex build. A quick look around the net suggests that there isn't a single boss soul weapon that's any good for a dex build besides maybe the Blueblood Sword (from the boss in 5-3 so you're not getting it for your first playthrough till it's basically too late to use it!). Looks like the best dex weapons are generally considered the uchigatana (4-1 by the big demon guy), kilij (also 4-1, drops from gold skeletons) , winged spear (1-2 on a bridge), and the secret dagger (3-1 in a locked room), and you should be upgrading in the "sharp" path for melee weapons and "sticky" for bows (compound longbow being the best). So, you'll be farming bladestone!


----------



## TedEH

I have Swiss cheese memory at times, apparently. I will continue to read, like, then forget advice when I need it.  I'd been running with this fire-y dragon sword and a very-upgraded mail breaker and just didn't change cause I've already spent to upgrade those. I plan on trying to upgrade / try some more things though, now that I've amassed a small collection - I think I have the secret dagger and winged spear.


----------



## wankerness

I'm now stuck on Midir in DS3. I screwed up and was rushing through bosses at a speed that meant I beat 4 of them before talking to the magician guy, so he permanently left before I gave him a scroll, so I don't have the option available to use pestilent mist. So I have to fight him "legit" for the first time! Yuck. I can consistently get him under 50% with several estus remaining but there's always some chain of stupid like he'll do his rampage at the same time as the purple projectile spam and I'll get 2-shot too quickly to react. Annoying boss! The worst part by far is how long it takes, every attempt takes over 10 minutes. And the runback (very long path with NO enemies so no difficulty) is such a blatant waste of the player's time that I just started save scumming, it's less obnoxious. So, I've only been doing a couple of attempts a day to preserve sanity.

I'm using the dragonslayer axe and the black iron greatshield, seems a LOT easier than trying to roll everything. I basically understand the fight and am fighting him by standing right in front of them, it's just absolutely infuriating whenever he does a big headbob and the lockon breaks and then your character automatically turns around and you get hit in the butt. The lockon in this game is the worst in the series, I think.


----------



## Werecow

Aftonbayer said:


> I'm right now playing Eldon Ring. However, the game always uses the full amount of CPU and GPU resources when I try to play it. I gave my best effort to fix the problem, but I was unable to do so. After that, I discovered this method on Google, but I was hesitant to use it because I lacked experience. Guys, can I successfully apply the techniques described there?


There's actually nothing wrong with a game doing that, unless it's causing stutter or system stability problems. Having said that, I know that game in particular has stutter problems which can't really be fixed properly. Just have to put up with it if you want to play it.


----------



## Choop

You usually want a high GPU usage -- some games will also utilize the CPU more heavily than others, but constantly maxing out is kind of strange. You can limit the framerate in the GPU settings and that could help.


----------



## TedEH

Was that original post deleted....?

High GPU usage is pretty normal if nothing is limiting your rendering (vsync, frame rate cap, etc) or if the game is just demanding, but high CPU usage could just be a sign that your PC isn't up to the task (and/or the game just runs poorly). You don't really want to max them out though. That's a great way to generate a lot of heat while having a poor gaming experience.


----------



## feilong29

I have been avoiding any top-down-view games forever (i.e. Diablo) but had a friend hype up Diablo 3, so I gave it a try...and I love it!! My world of gaming has been expanded, and in good time because I was not interested in gaming so much up til recently. I'm going to be trying V Rising or Pathfinder next. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!


----------



## TedEH

Were you familiar with Diablo 1 or 2 before hand? I'm curious how 3 is (or isn't) different from the previous games. I played a bunch of 2, and regretfully poked at the mobile game, but no idea what to expect from 3 if I wanted to try it some day.


----------



## feilong29

TedEH said:


> Were you familiar with Diablo 1 or 2 before hand? I'm curious how 3 is (or isn't) different from the previous games. I played a bunch of 2, and regretfully poked at the mobile game, but no idea what to expect from 3 if I wanted to try it some day.


I did not--instead, I just watched a video to explain the story/lore. I kind of want to play 2 because it has a good story-line.


----------



## TedEH

I remember enjoying 2, and I planned on going back to it eventually. No idea how well it works on modern machines though.


----------



## rokket2005

I'm about ~35 hours into Trails from Zero and already know it's going to take my game of the year over XC3. XC3 is great, not nearly as good as 2, but the writing in Trails is just magnitudes better.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> I'm about ~35 hours into Trails from Zero and already know it's going to take my game of the year over XC3. XC3 is great, not nearly as good as 2, but the writing in Trails is just magnitudes better.


Yeah Trails from Zero is eating away my time as well. I've put Xenoblade 2 on hold until I've finished Zero. Hopefully I'll get it done soon qnd get back to XC2 before Azure comes out and I'll put everything else on hold again.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

feilong29 said:


> I have been avoiding any top-down-view games forever (i.e. Diablo) but had a friend hype up Diablo 3, so I gave it a try...and I love it!! My world of gaming has been expanded, and in good time because I was not interested in gaming so much up til recently. I'm going to be trying V Rising or Pathfinder next. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!


Are you looking for more action rpgs like Diablo, or are you open to classic rpgs as well? 
Torchlight 2 is a fantastic diablo esque arpg, same with Path of Exile. 

Wasteland 2 and 3, Divinity Original Sin and Baldur's Gate 3 are all great CRPGs.


----------



## feilong29

KnightBrolaire said:


> Are you looking for more action rpgs like Diablo, or are you open to classic rpgs as well?
> Torchlight 2 is a fantastic diablo esque arpg, same with Path of Exile.
> 
> Wasteland 2 and 3, Divinity Original Sin and Baldur's Gate 3 are all great CRPGs.


I am looking for more action rpgs at this time, however, I got into a classic as well: Star Ocean: First Departure R. That game is hard as hell--either I'm running through it too fast and not at an appropriate level, or they made the enemies wicked tough at the very beginning.

Thanks for those suggestions though, I'm going to check them all out!


----------



## KnightBrolaire

feilong29 said:


> I am looking for more action rpgs at this time, however, I got into a classic as well: Star Ocean: First Departure R. That game is hard as hell--either I'm running through it too fast and not at an appropriate level, or they made the enemies wicked tough at the very beginning.
> 
> Thanks for those suggestions though, I'm going to check them all out!


Titan quest is another really good ARPG, but it's getting relatively old at this point. If you want an ARPG with roguelike elements check out Children of Morta.


----------



## BlackMastodon

feilong29 said:


> I have been avoiding any top-down-view games forever (i.e. Diablo) but had a friend hype up Diablo 3, so I gave it a try...and I love it!! My world of gaming has been expanded, and in good time because I was not interested in gaming so much up til recently. I'm going to be trying V Rising or Pathfinder next. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated!


V Rising is much more in the Minecraft/survival/building stuff camp than the other games listed above. It's fun, but I dropped off after ~30 hours of fucking around. It's not ALL smashing trees and rocks and building stuff, but it's how you unlock and upgrade better gear to level up (kind of like power/gear rating from Destiny) to go out and kill stronger stuff. 

Re: Divinity Original Sin - I've only played the second one but can confirm, it's an incredible CRPG and turn based game.


----------



## TheBlackBard

KnightBrolaire said:


> Are you looking for more action rpgs like Diablo, or are you open to classic rpgs as well?
> Torchlight 2 is a fantastic diablo esque arpg, same with Path of Exile.
> 
> Wasteland 2 and 3, Divinity Original Sin and Baldur's Gate 3 are all great CRPGs.



To add to the CRPG list: Disco Elysium, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Planescape: Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera (yes I know it gets flack for not being as good as Planescape, but I still loved it), Neverwinter Nights...


----------



## MFB

Man, saw a couple videos on PSX/PS2 and it's kind of making me want to pick one up since the PS2 can play all the PSX games with backwards compatibility - they're just going for stupid prices even though you can play them on emulator; I just fear if I do shell out money for one, the nostalgia is going to fall off very quickly.


----------



## rokket2005

feilong29 said:


> I am looking for more action rpgs at this time, however, I got into a classic as well: Star Ocean: First Departure R. That game is hard as hell--either I'm running through it too fast and not at an appropriate level, or they made the enemies wicked tough at the very beginning.
> 
> Thanks for those suggestions though, I'm going to check them all out!


If you want action rpg go buy Ys 8 Lacrimosa of Dana. Ys 9 is amazing too. Origin, Celceta, and Ys 7 are good too, but I'd definitely start with 8 then go from there. It's ~$18 on psn, free on PS+ and it's usually on sale on steam/humble/gmg every 3 weeks or so.


----------



## AMOS

Sniper Elite 4 on Xbox series X and I can't do anything except run around. It won't let me choose a rifle or anything else


----------



## StevenC

Mario+Rabbids 2 is really really good. It's a very different game, the levels aren't the puzzles of the first game, but it's still fantastic.

Only come across 1 bug that made me restart the game, so that's a job well done for Ubisoft.


----------



## TedEH

MFB said:


> saw a couple videos on PSX/PS2 and it's kind of making me want to pick one up since the PS2 can play all the PSX games with backwards compatibility


There's so many PS2s out there that it should be easy to find a cheap one. I've got at least two kicking around here. They definitely do the backwards compatibility thing. Look out for dead lasers though. Some of those consoles can't read discs very well anymore. As an alternative - any PS3 should be able to play PSX discs, but not PS2.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

MFB said:


> Man, saw a couple videos on PSX/PS2 and it's kind of making me want to pick one up since the PS2 can play all the PSX games with backwards compatibility - they're just going for stupid prices even though you can play them on emulator; I just fear if I do shell out money for one, the nostalgia is going to fall off very quickly.


I've seen alot of PS2 emulation on Series S consoles. Stuff like XBXS2 (which is a branch of PCX2, which is a branch of RetroArch) runs pretty well from some of the videos I've seen. And then there is also DuckStation for PSX emulation.


----------



## TedEH

Carrion Rocket said:


> which is a branch of PCX2, which is a branch of RetroArch


Not sure that's quite how that works - RetroArch is just a front-end for a bunch of emulation platforms. PCSX2 is the actual emulator.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Man, saw a couple videos on PSX/PS2 and it's kind of making me want to pick one up since the PS2 can play all the PSX games with backwards compatibility - they're just going for stupid prices even though you can play them on emulator; I just fear if I do shell out money for one, the nostalgia is going to fall off very quickly.


What would you play on it?

I have a PS2 that's been collecting dust since I bought it in 2006 or so. It's modded, but sucks at reading burned discs. I think I've played through FFX and part of FFX-2 on it and THAT'S IT. I know the PS2 was a system with a million games on it, but what on it is actually still good today and doesn't have a superior "remaster" out there? I've already played some of the big classics in their PC renditions so I have no reason to go back to 4x3 interlaced versions of them (ex Silent Hill 2/3/4, GTA III/VC/SA, Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts), and then I've got the HD versions of a bunch of others on 360 or PS4 (ex MGS 2/3, Twisted Metal Black, FFXII, Persona 4, Shadow of the Colossus, Bully, Okami, Katamari Damacy). Kinda likewise with PSX - I actually did play that system a fair amount, but at this point I think Parasite Eve is the only game I remember liking on it I can't just play a better version of elsewhere. Oh, and MGS1 I guess, I don't think the PC version of that is very good and I'm sure it loses the gimmicks (ex Psycho Mantis stuff). And Silent Hill 1, but I've played that through a PC emulator before and didn't think it really lost anything.

I sorta feel like the first generations of 3D consoles fall victim to something that say, the SNES doesn't - they often seem like things where the technical limitations of the time result in a lot of games being way too ambitious for their own good and thus feeling paradoxically MORE dated than considerably older games that weren't trying too hard to be "realistic." I mean, like, the graphics often just look BAD instead of like interesting stylistic choices and the controls are often similar. It's like they thought they were making realistic graphics and it results in that same kind of feeling that CGI from the 90s/early 00s has where it looks a lot worse than practical effects from the previous decade before technology caught up to ambition more recently.

The Dragon Quest PS2 game is one of the only ones I have interest in.


----------



## gabito

You can use an external hard drive with a modded PS2, copy all the PS1 and PS2 isos you want and play like a maniac. Not sure about TV connectors, though. Do TVs still have RCA inputs? You may need some kind of adapter.

Or you can buy a fat PS3: you can play PS1/2/3 games with those. If you mod it you don't need to use the disc drive, so a dead laser would be a non-issue. And I think you can get away with playing any PS2 game even with a modded PS3 Slim.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> Or you can buy a fat PS3: you can play PS1/2/3 games with those.


Only some of the early models with the extra usb plugs on the front. I've got a fat PS3, and it doesn't have the PS2 compatibility. They took that out at some point.


----------



## wankerness

I briefly looked into Fat PS3s, ones that actually still work are pretty rare. My brother has one where the disc drive is completely failed and most of the ones I saw online were in similar disrepair or cost a lot of money.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> Only some of the early models with the extra usb plugs on the front. I've got a fat PS3, and it doesn't have the PS2 compatibility. They took that out at some point.



Ah, right. I think you can play PS2 games with any PS3 if you mod it using HEN or whatever (but I'm not sure about performance, or if that includes EVERY PS2 game). I tested that on my modded PS3 Slim using a few PS2 discs that I had and I think I also used a Silent Hill 2 iso I got somewhere and everything seemed to run fine, but I didn't finish any game because I was just curious about if they would run when they supposedly couldn't be played using a non fat PS3.

PC emulation or remasters are probably a better option in most cases, but that's not always possible.


----------



## TedEH

The old PS3 that had the extra usb plugs would be ideal though -> it had the hardware of a PS2 in it, rather than being an emulation, so compatibility was very good.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> What would you play on it?
> 
> I have a PS2 that's been collecting dust since I bought it in 2006 or so. It's modded, but sucks at reading burned discs. I think I've played through FFX and part of FFX-2 on it and THAT'S IT. I know the PS2 was a system with a million games on it, but what on it is actually still good today and doesn't have a superior "remaster" out there? I've already played some of the big classics in their PC renditions so I have no reason to go back to 4x3 interlaced versions of them (ex Silent Hill 2/3/4, GTA III/VC/SA, Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts), and then I've got the HD versions of a bunch of others on 360 or PS4 (ex MGS 2/3, Twisted Metal Black, FFXII, Persona 4, Shadow of the Colossus, Bully, Okami, Katamari Damacy). Kinda likewise with PSX - I actually did play that system a fair amount, but at this point I think Parasite Eve is the only game I remember liking on it I can't just play a better version of elsewhere. Oh, and MGS1 I guess, I don't think the PC version of that is very good and I'm sure it loses the gimmicks (ex Psycho Mantis stuff). And Silent Hill 1, but I've played that through a PC emulator before and didn't think it really lost anything.
> 
> I sorta feel like the first generations of 3D consoles fall victim to something that say, the SNES doesn't - they often seem like things where the technical limitations of the time result in a lot of games being way too ambitious for their own good and thus feeling paradoxically MORE dated than considerably older games that weren't trying too hard to be "realistic." I mean, like, the graphics often just look BAD instead of like interesting stylistic choices and the controls are often similar. It's like they thought they were making realistic graphics and it results in that same kind of feeling that CGI from the 90s/early 00s has where it looks a lot worse than practical effects from the previous decade before technology caught up to ambition more recently.
> 
> The Dragon Quest PS2 game is one of the only ones I have interest in.



The OG Killzone isn't available on PS4, although it looks like by KZ2 they moved them to PS3 which is a bummer, and I never played MGS2/3 and it's unavailable on Xbox or PS stores at this point so I'd have to go an emulator to play them; and on the PS2 that'd also mean access to replay MGS1. I remember having a fair bit of games on the PS2 but I'd have to look through the library to see what we own that's not available at all (like GOW1/2 which was remastered for PS3 and doesn't run on PS4).

It's more about the access to both the X and the 2's library then just the PS2's. There's definitely some older franchises that got left behind that would also be fun to play through (Parasite Eve, Dino Crisis, etc)


----------



## TedEH

MFB said:


> MGS2/3 and it's unavailable on Xbox


Isn't the 2+3 HD collection on the Xbox store still?


----------



## MFB

TedEH said:


> Isn't the 2+3 HD collection on the Xbox store still?



No, or if it is then it's VERY recent, but due to licensing issues it's been unavailable for as long as I can recall


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Isn't the 2+3 HD collection on the Xbox store still?


There was a news article in the last year about some problem with licensing footage used in a cutscene in one of the games or something stupid like that. I quick snapped up a disc copy of the 360 collection cause those kinds of rights issues usually mean the game is permanently yanked from storefronts cause the companies don't care enough to pay the relicensing fees.

Yup https://kotaku.com/metal-gear-solid-games-being-removed-over-historical-fo-1848013833

Knowing Konami they'll never get re-added. I'd imagine if you already own it you can redownload it, but I dunno.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> There was a news article in the last year about some problem with licensing footage used in a cutscene in one of the games or something stupid like that. I quick snapped up a disc copy of the 360 collection cause those kinds of rights issues usually mean the game is permanently yanked from storefronts cause the companies don't care enough to pay the relicensing fees.
> 
> Yup https://kotaku.com/metal-gear-solid-games-being-removed-over-historical-fo-1848013833
> 
> Knowing Konami they'll never get re-added. I'd imagine if you already own it you can redownload it, but I dunno.



Yeah, you can. I downloaded the games again recently.


----------



## Ralyks

I still got my MGS 2/3 PS3 disc. Now I just need to go play then again...

Anyway, Persona 5 Golden rules, I'm hooked the fuck back in, and I'm already digging some of the changes that I clearly don't remember from the few hours I played on P5G for PS4. And, considering I know I'm in this for 100+ hours, the platinum trophy actually looks obtainable compared to vanilla P5 and can possibly be done in one playthrough.

Ok, I also sneak in games of Overwatch 2. I know it's just Overwatch 1.5, but it's still funny dammit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Souls



Finally took down Flamelurker. I ended up having to use the fire-resistant armour, use magic to boost the weapon I'm using (which is now an estoc+7) and just try a bunch of times. I also got brave and collected all the items near the two dragons in the first area. So I think I've downed 2x bosses in the first area, 2x in the second, 1x in the third area but reached the next one, and I've reached the boss in 4-1, but got cocky and died. I think I should be able to take it down in another run with a bajillion arrows. I remembered to bring the Flamelurker soul thingie to the blacksmith and that unlocked some new options.



Unrelated - I think I mentioned before that I needed another power supply for a video card upgrade. I did it - and now I'm up to a 3080. Sweeeeet jebus does Doom Eternal play well this way.


----------



## rokket2005

Finished Trails from Zero tonight. 

It's so fucking good.

I don't know if I liked it more than the Sky trilogy just yet, but just in the way that everything has built and developed is masterful storytelling in every way.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> Finished Trails from Zero tonight.
> 
> It's so fucking good.
> 
> I don't know if I liked it more than the Sky trilogy just yet, but just in the way that everything has built and developed is masterful storytelling in every way.



Bloody hell, I'm still in chapter 2 (though grinded heavily once I got access to the moon temple entrance). 

Once Azure comes out, you'll probably have a clearer opinion on where the Crossbell duology stands in the Trails games. I do agree though, despite the SLOWEST prologue/chapter 1 known to man, Zero is tightly knit. With only 4 main characters, Zero outdoes FFXV by a large margin and you get invested quickly, since each member of the SSS are fun and likeable characters. Even the entire Class VII crew can't touch these guys since you don't have much investment in them outside Rean. With all the character development and masterclass in world building (passively weaving it into the narrative like every Trails game), the slow chapters are somewhat justified.


----------



## rokket2005

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Bloody hell, I'm still in chapter 2 (though grinded heavily once I got access to the moon temple entrance).
> 
> Once Azure comes out, you'll probably have a clearer opinion on where the Crossbell duology stands in the Trails games. I do agree though, despite the SLOWEST prologue/chapter 1 known to man, Zero is tightly knit. With only 4 main characters, Zero outdoes FFXV by a large margin and you get invested quickly, since each member of the SSS are fun and likeable characters. Even the entire Class VII crew can't touch these guys since you don't have much investment in them outside Rean. With all the character development and masterclass in world building (passively weaving it into the narrative like every Trails game), the slow chapters are somewhat justified.


Yeah, I started it last Wednesday or Thursday I think. Blasted right through (the barrier.) I've never had a problem with the parts that people complain about being slow in Trails because it's still interesting even when it's not tense and a lot of action. I do really like all of the SSS too, Elie's probably my least favorite, but even when I could swap them out with other support members I really only did to check out their S-Crafts. I couldn't really take Elie out anyway since she was my main DPS late game.

I haven't played any of the Coldsteels yet either. III was actually the first game I bought in the series knowing full well there were a bunch of other games I was supposed to play first and I'm so glad that I started from the beginning. I've seen so many people start with Zero since it just got it's official localization and I want to slap all those people across the face. They're not going to have a god damn clue what's going on through the whole second half of Zero.
Once Azure comes out it's going to be a few ultra Kiseki months for me playing through that and all the Cold Steel games before Reverie comes out.


----------



## StevenC

I can't believe the first time Nintendo UK sent me a game on release day it's the one time I'm still playing another game.

Anyway, Bayo 3 will be started soon. Still having a lot of fun with Mario+Rabbids.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Spoiler: Souls
> 
> 
> 
> Finally took down Flamelurker. I ended up having to use the fire-resistant armour, use magic to boost the weapon I'm using (which is now an estoc+7) and just try a bunch of times. I also got brave and collected all the items near the two dragons in the first area. So I think I've downed 2x bosses in the first area, 2x in the second, 1x in the third area but reached the next one, and I've reached the boss in 4-1, but got cocky and died. I think I should be able to take it down in another run with a bajillion arrows. I remembered to bring the Flamelurker soul thingie to the blacksmith and that unlocked some new options.


Nice. I think you're past most of the major roadblocks people tend to encounter. I think Flamelurker is almost universally considered the hardest boss besides the end guy in 1-4 (people occasionally make a case for the boss in 3-2, but they're basically an easier prototype for an infamous recurring boss in Dark Souls/Dark Souls 2). The thing that I remember pissing me off the most in worlds 1 through 4 is a very specific monster hanging out on a staircase en route to the 3-2 boss - I'm sure you'll immediately know what I'm talking about as soon as you meet him if you haven't already. At least when he inevitably kills you repeatedly there's not that much runback to try again.

The one thing I'd very, VERY highly recommend doing before tackling world 5 is getting the sodden ring, which is a convoluted process that you will *never* find accidentally:


----------



## gabito

I just finished Kentucky Route Zero. I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, I'm all for weird stuff but couldn't find anything that hooked me into the game.

I liked episodes one, two, and five, but three and four were total slogs. The interludes were all hit or miss. I really liked the art design, and the few musical numbers. I think I like the game's idea, but the execution not so much.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> Kentucky Route Zero


I had heard such good things about this one, but I couldn't get through it when I tried. It's still installed on my xbox, but I never made it through I think the second episode. It just couldn't get it's hooks in me either.


----------



## beerandbeards

Had to get my Fallout fix so I rebooted Fallout 4. I miss having Fallout 3 and New Vegas but 4 is good. I hate the settlement management but I let them go and do my own thing.


----------



## p0ke

beerandbeards said:


> I hate the settlement management but I let them go and do my own thing.



Yeah, I also don't get why anyone would like the settlement bullshit. I guess building a bit of a home base is Ok, but when you have many settlements and they all cry for help all the time, it just gets annoying af. Also a few times I'd just finished killing the attackers and fast travelled to wherever I was before the attack, and then the same settlement is immediately under attack again. It just plain sucks. Luckily that shit's optional.

Another annoying thing is the new power armor system. It makes sense and is more realistic in a way than in Fallout 3, sure, but because it's basically a tank that you keep in your base, I never end up using it. 

Fallout 3 is my favorite Fallout game, but that's probably just because it came out first (of the new Fallouts) and scratched the itch. I played it so much that I just couldn't be bothered anymore when NV came out. People say NV is superior, but I just never got excited by it. The general vibe just didn't hit the spot like FO3.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

p0ke said:


> Yeah, I also don't get why anyone would like the settlement bullshit. I guess building a bit of a home base is Ok, but when you have many settlements and they all cry for help all the time, it just gets annoying af. Also a few times I'd just finished killing the attackers and fast travelled to wherever I was before the attack, and then the same settlement is immediately under attack again. It just plain sucks. Luckily that shit's optional.
> 
> Another annoying thing is the new power armor system. It makes sense and is more realistic in a way than in Fallout 3, sure, but because it's basically a tank that you keep in your base, I never end up using it.
> 
> Fallout 3 is my favorite Fallout game, but that's probably just because it came out first (of the new Fallouts) and scratched the itch. I played it so much that I just couldn't be bothered anymore when NV came out. People say NV is superior, but I just never got excited by it. The general vibe just didn't hit the spot like FO3.


you're missing out dude, fallout NV does everything fallout 3 did but better. 4 was worse than either of those (at least without mods).


----------



## p0ke

KnightBrolaire said:


> you're missing out dude, fallout NV does everything fallout 3 did but better. 4 was worse than either of those (at least without mods).



Many people say that, but for whatever reason it just doesn't do it for me the same way. I'm not saying I don't like it, because I really do and I have spent hundreds of hours in it (much after the release though), but like I said the general vibe just doesn't do it for me like Fallout 3 did. 

Oh and I bought another new game: Hellblade - Senua's Sacrifice. I realized I don't have any proper next-gen games for my Series X, so I googled which games have the best graphics and that was one of the games that came up. Then I found it for 4€, so it was a no-brainer to buy it. Let's see when I get to play it though


----------



## KnightBrolaire

p0ke said:


> Many people say that, but for whatever reason it just doesn't do it for me the same way. I'm not saying I don't like it, because I really do and I have spent hundreds of hours in it (much after the release though), but like I said the general vibe just doesn't do it for me like Fallout 3 did.
> 
> Oh and I bought another new game: Hellblade - Senua's Sacrifice. I realized I don't have any proper next-gen games for my Series X, so I googled which games have the best graphics and that was one of the games that came up. Then I found it for 4€, so it was a no-brainer to buy it. Let's see when I get to play it though


hellblade is very repetitive gameplay wise but the story is great.


----------



## p0ke

KnightBrolaire said:


> hellblade is very repetitive gameplay wise but the story is great.



Yeah, I'm mostly interested in the graphics (ray tracing and the likes) and at 4€ I don't care if it's repetitive


----------



## TedEH

Hellblade felt very "double-A" to me, which I guess is what it's going for. That is to say - fantastic presentation for an indie game, but it was a tradeoff for gameplay depth. It earned a lot of "good guy points" for trying to take mental health seriously, but I personally felt that this aspect fell kinda flat. YMMV on that one. Not a bad game by any stretch though.



Spoiler: Souls



Took down Adjudicator. This one felt kinda like a joke, 'cause I just spammed arrows from the top ledge until it died, and the bow I'm using is upgraded enough (+8) that it didn't take much. The hardest part was just getting to it, 'cause so many of the normal enemies in that world are a pain. I failed over and over until I realized I could take down the flying manta ray things with magic.


----------



## MFB

I had started a new playthrough of GOW2018, but after my previous three in the past ...2 years, I think I'm OK with not doing a not-so-needed refresher for Ragnarok  I love the game still, and it's my 2nd favorite GOW (although I haven't played GOW1/2 since they came out) but after seeing the BTS on the making of and playing it so many times, I see some of the limitations where they had to do X/Y/Z and it's kind of souring it.

Oh well, guess that just means I need to chill out and wait for Ragnarok next week, which I keep forgetting is around the corner already


----------



## CanserDYI

I can't get into God Of War. I want to so bad, but for some reason just feel absolutely nothing every single time I download it and try to start it. 

Its not that I don't like it, it just inspires NOTHING in me, I'm whelmed. Its not bad, its not good, its not even gad or bood. Its just something that exists that I can't feel anything for, and I want to haha.


----------



## BlackMastodon

The settlement building in FO4 was fun for a bit but I'm a sucker for that, until I realized that it's pretty fucking pointless. They basically just gather resources that you can easily come across yourself, and it's a place to hang your power armour, but I also never really ended up using it in my play through. Finished it once and never cared to start it up again to try the other endings.


----------



## TedEH

I keep forgetting the next GoW is coming so soon. Getting through the last one pretty recently was good timing. I've got pretty high hopes for this next one, even if it's ultimately more of the same with some extra polish.


----------



## p0ke

TedEH said:


> Hellblade felt very "double-A" to me, which I guess is what it's going for. That is to say - fantastic presentation for an indie game, but it was a tradeoff for gameplay depth. It earned a lot of "good guy points" for trying to take mental health seriously, but I personally felt that this aspect fell kinda flat. YMMV on that one. Not a bad game by any stretch though.



Yeah and apparently it's done well enough that a sequel's coming soon. Hopefully that'll improve on the stuff that's lacking in the first one. 
It does look awesome though so I'm looking forward to playing it.


----------



## TedEH

p0ke said:


> it's done well enough that a sequel's coming soon


If nothing else, the trailer was a banger.


----------



## wankerness

Hellblade certainly isn't an ugly game, but I sure wouldn't use it as a graphics demo either, especially not on a current-gen system like a Series X. The budget for it was tiny and it shows. The main character is very well rendered but there's not a lot else going on. The audio is the star of the show, assuming you either have a nice surround system or use headphones. It's INCREDIBLY atmospheric and oppressive.

I really, really didn't like that game and just wanted it to be over. The gameplay's so incredibly regimented and it really detracted from the experience for me. It's rigidly like "here's the part where you wander around, here's the part where the game stops everything and a whole bunch of enemies start spawning in, repeat repeat repeat." There's no danger in the segments with no enemies, you can't get out of the rooms when there are enemies, everything's just so damn segmented between combat/not combat. Also the combat sections are terrible and programmatic - it's like enemies just spawn one after the other until you've exhausted the spawn supply. Every level adds like, one attack animation for the enemies, or eventually makes it so you are fighting TWO enemies at once, etc. I assume this was all intentional and by design and is supposed to represent something with mental health or some bullshit, but it makes for extraordinarily boring world design and gameplay IMO.

I only remember the game changing things up once, in the section with having to run from fire! Well, and there's bosses, but that's normal. Combat's OK I guess. I haven't played it since playing Dark Souls, I think it sorta duplicated the weightiness but was more about counters and timing.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Mild spoiler for Hellblade



I wasn't sure what to think when I learned, long after playing, that there are also basically no stakes. The game tells you from the beginning that if you fail too many times and the arm rot thing reaches your head your save will be erased. But it never happens. The game never allows this to happen. You can fail as often as you like and there aren't any consequences.

You can read that as some kind of biting commentary about real-world scary threats that aren't real, or it's a cheap tactic to add tension where there wasn't any. I suppose it "worked" in that regard.


----------



## wankerness

I forgot about that. Yeah, that just made the game more stressful and when I read about it I was really annoyed.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Hellblade certainly isn't an ugly game, but I sure wouldn't use it as a graphics demo either, especially not on a current-gen system like a Series X. The budget for it was tiny and it shows. The main character is very well rendered but there's not a lot else going on. The audio is the star of the show, assuming you either have a nice surround system or use headphones. It's INCREDIBLY atmospheric and oppressive.



Well, I read somewhere that the next-gen version of the game is a lot nicer looking than the original. But yeah, I have a pretty nice surround system that doesn't really get utilized at the moment, so that'll be nice at least.

What game would you recommend as a sort of graphics demo then? That Matrix UE-demo would've been cool to see IRL but it was removed from the store like 2 days before I got my SX


----------



## wankerness

Hmm, I didn't know there was a next-gen version. 

Generally big first party games tend to look the best. I've heard Microsoft Flight Simulator of all things looks spectacular. Forza. Gears of War 5. Not sure if any are up your alley! Ori and the Will of the Wisps or whatever I think is supposed to be pretty gorgeous in a very stylized way too. 

For cross platform stuff it sounds like Cyberpunk and Metro Exodus and Doom Eternal. 

I just looked this up and it's kind of shocking how few games on Xbox have amazing graphics compared to PS5. There's just barely any exclusives yet. Maybe there will be a big wave in a year or two when all those things like the Bethesda deal finally come through.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> Hmm, I didn't know there was a next-gen version.
> 
> Generally big first party games tend to look the best. I've heard Microsoft Flight Simulator of all things looks spectacular. Forza. Gears of War 5. Not sure if any are up your alley! Ori and the Will of the Wisps or whatever I think is supposed to be pretty gorgeous in a very stylized way too.
> 
> For cross platform stuff it sounds like Cyberpunk and Metro Exodus and Doom Eternal.
> 
> I just looked this up and it's kind of shocking how few games on Xbox have amazing graphics compared to PS5. There's just barely any exclusives yet. Maybe there will be a big wave in a year or two when all those things like the Bethesda deal finally come through.



I don't know if it's an actual next-gen version or what but it has the "Optimized for Series S|X" thing, which I guess allows some higher graphics settings or something.

Gave the game a quick spin and sure, it looks good but like you said, not next-gen good. Actually mostly reminds of the recent Tomb Raider games, just with different combat and more linear environments. It's made in UE4 so no wonder it doesn't look like a next-gen game.
And wow, I didn't imagine the combat to be this monotonous! I've fought maybe 20 enemies and there seems to be exactly one way to deal with them.

And yeah, those are basically the games I'm waiting for, I just don't wanna pay 40-60€ each when I know they'll be on sale for like 10-20€ somewhat soon. That's why I grabbed Hellblade of all things now. I'll probably buy MS Flight Simulator somewhat soon though because I imagine my stepson's gonna love it (and it's a good trick to keep him away from war games and other inappropriate stuff)

I bought both the Ori games, but I'm still playing the first one and apparently the second one should be especially beautiful. The first one looks nice though, just again, not in a next-gen way.


----------



## StevenC

Finished Mario + Rabbids 2.

Really good, definitely worth playing. Interesting progression from the first game. Some things are really well done, other things aren't. Game is a bit too easy despite playing on the hardest setting and not using any items. Some missions are a bit too easy to cheese with certain characters. Really liked the bits when it gave me 4 heroes at once. Final battle was a bit of a letdown. Started getting a lot of bugs in regular gameplay after the patch. Also think some of the completion is bugged because I've done everything and checked it against lists online but don't have 100%. Probably an 8/10 for me. Maybe a 9 if it weren't glitchy, had more 4 hero fights, or better final boss.

A worthy successor, but a very different vide. Recommended.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Demon's Souls Progress



Took down the Maneater, and the weird PvP boss thing that comes after it, soooo I guess I'm done with that world....? I think? It opened up the fog in the first world, which seems to be a pretty tough area, so I haven't dug around that area much yet.

I got kind of annoyed at the Maneater fight 'cause once I finally started to get good at it, the fight bugged out because I was using the stealth ring. Apparently it makes the AI go wonky and fly up into weird parts of the map. I unequipped and re-equipped the ring a bunch of times as close as I could get, and maaaaaaybe that's what got it unstuck? I dunno how long it was stuck up there, but it's possible it gave me an advantage to only have to fight one at a time. Oh well.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Finished my Mass Effect 2 playthrough. I've read into a few things about starting ME3. I already know about the ending(s) since the 2012 internet went ballistic over it. But I might take a break for now before I dive into it. I never got around to playing The Last of Us II. I think I'm gonna play that next and then go into ME3 since I know that'll be weeks of my life.


----------



## p0ke

I've never played any of the Witcher games, but now I came across Witcher 3 for 80 cents  Plus I had some discount coupon so I ended up paying 43 cents for it. So woohoo, I've got way too many games to play now.

Update: blah, should've scrolled before buying  I could've gotten the bundle with all the DLC for almost nothing more... Oh well, I'll play the base game first and buy the dlc for a few euros each later if I feel like it...


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Spoiler: Demon's Souls Progress
> 
> 
> 
> Took down the Maneater, and the weird PvP boss thing that comes after it, soooo I guess I'm done with that world....? I think? It opened up the fog in the first world, which seems to be a pretty tough area, so I haven't dug around that area much yet.
> 
> I got kind of annoyed at the Maneater fight 'cause once I finally started to get good at it, the fight bugged out because I was using the stealth ring. Apparently it makes the AI go wonky and fly up into weird parts of the map. I unequipped and re-equipped the ring a bunch of times as close as I could get, and maaaaaaybe that's what got it unstuck? I dunno how long it was stuck up there, but it's possible it gave me an advantage to only have to fight one at a time. Oh well.


Ha, yeah, that's a Dark Souls game for you. Stealth rings can really trivialize certain bosses (I don't think you've done the big one that it's a gamechanger for yet in Demon's Souls). The maneater boss can be really frustrating if you get bad luck and they both are on the ground all the time, but it can also be frustrating when they both fly constantly and you can never get hits on them. Sounds like the RNG worked in your favor here.

The PVP boss is hilarious. If you hang around that area you can get summoned in AS the boss, too. I had a lot of fun with that when the game was somewhat new, since a LOT of people were going through the area and thus I was getting to fight a lot of people that were even worse than me at the game; I mostly was winning by just holding my sword 2H and running around mashing R1 and dodging. You got some reward for killing a certain number of people as the boss (I think the huge silly hat that the boss is wearing?) and I remember getting that very quickly.

So now what do you have left? 4-2/3 and all of world 5? Again, make sure you get that sodden ring, or you're going to have a bad time in world 5. It's infamously one of the worst levels in the history of Souls games, especially 5-2, and that ring was added to the remake just to make it less miserable (I guess the compromise is that it's really, really hard to find without looking it up).

My favorite boss in the game is the one in 4-3. Partly cause I had no idea that it had a very specific mechanic that was reused in Dark Souls 3 which I'd played first, but mostly cause it's the most visually and aurally spectacular thing in the game IMO.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> I've never played any of the Witcher games, but now I came across Witcher 3 for 80 cents  Plus I had some discount coupon so I ended up paying 43 cents for it. So woohoo, I've got way too many games to play now.
> 
> Update: blah, should've scrolled before buying  I could've gotten the bundle with all the DLC for almost nothing more... Oh well, I'll play the base game first and buy the dlc for a few euros each later if I feel like it...


That's too bad. You can't just buy the game of the year edition on top of it? Often that costs considerably less than the DLC does by itself.

The DLC for Witcher 3 is really famously some of the best of all time so I'd very, VERY highly recommend that you get it.



Carrion Rocket said:


> Finished my Mass Effect 2 playthrough. I've read into a few things about starting ME3. I already know about the ending(s) since the 2012 internet went ballistic over it. But I might take a break for now before I dive into it. I never got around to playing The Last of Us II. I think I'm gonna play that next and then go into ME3 since I know that'll be weeks of my life.


ME3 is BY FAR the best game in the series combatwise, it's really really fun especially if you have an imported full-clear from ME2 (like, you did all the DLC so you're max level). I don't like that there are fewer characters than 2, and there are definitely some problems with bloat. Even compared to 2 which had the pretty terrible Overlord and Firewalker DLC, there's too much dlc imo, Leviathan and Omega especially are LONG and sections of them are boring. But, it's a great game and a lot of the plot strands get resolved really well. Even if the ending makes a lot of people rage out for some reason.


----------



## Jarmake

Maybe it was fromsoft games tiredness or something, but after playing bloodborne and dark souls 3 I started Elden Ring, but just left it after beating Margit the fell omen. I know I will be back sooner or later, but for now it shall collect dust in the shelf.

After putting it away I have been trying various games, like Resident Evil 8, Forza Horizon 5 and some Days Gone (again), but none of those really sucked me in. Maybe I should try re8 with the new dlc, which enables 3rd person to the base game as well, if I understood correctly. I know I loved re2 remake and liked the third one too, so maybe this one is better in 3rd person too?

Then I played through portal 2, which was a couple of nights type deal (I played it when it came out and didn't really remember any of it anymore) and then bought Red Dead Redemption 2 on my new pc. We already had it on ps4, because my wife loves rdr1&2 and I bought the second one for her as a gift as soon at it came out, but I wanted to play it with better framerates and better graphics. I've played it for a couple of hours now and it's been... Okay, this far. I don't see myself doing 100% completion like my wife did, but I think I'm going to stick to it for now. Who knows, maybe I'll love it in the end?


----------



## wankerness

I got RDR2 with my ps4 pro several years ago and still haven't even unwrapped the disc. It just sounds like so much WORK - all the descriptions of how you have to watch lengthy animations for everything and like, quickly return animal pelts to the town or they get rotten really turned me off. Realism and fun usually are at odds with one another in my experience. Maybe I'll check it out when they have a PS5 version!

The other thing putting me off is that I never played the previous game. I bought that when I first got an xbox 360 and just still haven't tried it. At this point I'm guessing it would feel like a chore, too, just due to outdated combat (even GTA5's combat is really dated now) and lengthy loading times. 

Maybe I'll play Red Dead Revolver. The fact that game prominently features music from Killer Nun makes me like it on principle.


----------



## TedEH

Jarmake said:


> Maybe it was fromsoft games tiredness or something


I could picture that, 'cause just this one I'm trying to get through feels like a sort of commitment. It's the same sentiment that made me almost bounce off the beginning, then kept me going through the getting-good parts, and now has me wanting to see it through - but could also have me wanting something very different afterwards.

IMO that could be the sign of a good game, or one kind of good game. A lot of the time if I bounce off of a game, it's because I don't feel invested in it, to whatever level I want to be invested in a game at that time.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> I got RDR2 with my ps4 pro several years ago and still haven't even unwrapped the disc. It just sounds like so much WORK - all the descriptions of how you have to watch lengthy animations for everything and like, quickly return animal pelts to the town or they get rotten really turned me off. Realism and fun usually are at odds with one another in my experience. Maybe I'll check it out when they have a PS5 version!
> 
> The other thing putting me off is that I never played the previous game. I bought that when I first got an xbox 360 and just still haven't tried it. At this point I'm guessing it would feel like a chore, too, just due to outdated combat (even GTA5's combat is really dated now) and lengthy loading times.
> 
> Maybe I'll play Red Dead Revolver. The fact that game prominently features music from Killer Nun makes me like it on principle.



You may end up liking it, but it's a complete slog of a game. And, on top of that, it's SUPER long, +100 missions or something.

I finished it once. Tried to play it again, but I couldn't.

It's a very polished game, full of details, good graphics, good acting. The story is good, I think. Gameplay is the same as always: GTA, but you ride a horse. You can't experiment much with missions, they're pretty linear. The game forces you to do what it wants. It's mostly linear gameplay trapped in an open world. Also, gameplay and game design feel kind of outdated TBH, but they can get away with it because they are Rockstar.

It seems there's no PS5 version in the foreseeable future, rumor is they abandoned it after the remastered GTA trilogy flopped. But who knows...


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I could picture that, 'cause just this one I'm trying to get through feels like a sort of commitment. It's the same sentiment that made me almost bounce off the beginning, then kept me going through the getting-good parts, and now has me wanting to see it through - but could also have me wanting something very different afterwards.
> 
> IMO that could be the sign of a good game, or one kind of good game. A lot of the time if I bounce off of a game, it's because I don't feel invested in it, to whatever level I want to be invested in a game at that time.


You're playing the most tedious and least user-friendly one, of course you're having that reaction! I really think you should try Elden Ring next for the other extreme. Though that one is BY FAR the longest and most "bloated."

The real problem with Fromsoft games "burnout" is less that you get sick of them specifically, and more that they are liable to make you get sick of OTHER games. I had no problem with Assassins Creed or Horizon Zero Dawn or whatever other games have constant dialogue and interactions with NPCs. Then I played the DS games, tried to play Horizon Forbidden West, and it was just like SHUT UP I DON'T NEED YOU TO TELL ME WITH AUDIO EVERYTHING I SHOULD BE DOING AT ALL TIMES AHHH. It takes a bunch of acclimation for me to get back into the average handholding game with tons of dialogue and maps and icons and waypoints and especially horrible sections where you have to slowly walk behind NPCs while they blab at you, etc. Now I just get annoyed with all the bullshit I have to skip to get to the gameplay and it usually results in me having to go back to the Fromsoft games instead. They're very "pure gameplay," kinda like NES/SNES games or something. I think that's unfortunately rare in modern high-budget games. The only other one I can think of offhand that doesn't inundate you with plot/dialogue and doesn't keep you from the gameplay is Doom 2016 (and presumably Doom Eternal, I haven't played that one yet besides one level).


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> They're very "pure gameplay,"


Yeh, that makes a lot of sense, and might be a big reason why a lot of the more gamey-games (gameplay-forward games? Dunno what to call them) tend to be adamantly liked by their fans. I think Metroid games and the Doom games like you mentioned, etc fall into that category. Maybe the immersive-sim type games I tend to like also are closer to that end of the spectrum - like Thief has a decent narrative, but mostly gets out of the way to let you do the video-game-y things.

I like the more "trying to tell a story" kinds of games too, but it's like a whole different kind of experience.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, Nintendo games tend to be pretty good about staying out of your way and letting you enjoy the gameplay. Zelda BOTW has more cutscenes and voiceacting than older games, but it's a pretty small part of the experience and your character's total silence is a huge improvement over the AC games/HZD/etc when it comes to avoiding tedium and handholding. The mario games have even less dialogue and cutscenes (though when they have them, they seem like incredible drudgery, ex the intro to Mario Galaxy).

Metroid WAS good until Metroid Prime 3 and Other M. The opening of 3 with having to walk around talking to people and pretty much everything I saw of Other M put me off the series. If they ever release a Metroid Prime 4 I'll still check it out. Metroid Prime 1 is definitely on a short list of my favorite games.


----------



## StevenC

Bayonetta 3 is so good and I love it and I want to play it all the time. 



wankerness said:


> Yeah, Nintendo games tend to be pretty good about staying out of your way and letting you enjoy the gameplay. Zelda BOTW has more cutscenes and voiceacting than older games, but it's a pretty small part of the experience and your character's total silence is a huge improvement over the AC games/HZD/etc when it comes to avoiding tedium and handholding. The mario games have even less dialogue and cutscenes (though when they have them, they seem like incredible drudgery, ex the intro to Mario Galaxy).
> 
> Metroid WAS good until Metroid Prime 3 and Other M. The opening of 3 with having to walk around talking to people and pretty much everything I saw of Other M put me off the series. If they ever release a Metroid Prime 4 I'll still check it out. Metroid Prime 1 is definitely on a short list of my favorite games.


I gotta say, this is a big part of what makes me like Mario+Rabbids 1 more than 2. All of the cutscenes in the original are little transitional bits and comedy skits, whereas the sequel has really tedious full voice acting but for only two characters and is much less funny in cutscenes. And the only way to turn this off is to turn off all character sounds in all parts of the game.


----------



## TedEH

StevenC said:


> Bayonetta 3 is so good and I love it and I want to play it all the time.


Reviews I've seen all said the game itself was good, but the performance was bad. Maybe a good example of why we need some new hardware from the Nintendo camp soon.


----------



## StevenC

TedEH said:


> Reviews I've seen all said the game itself was good, but the performance was bad. Maybe a good example of why we need some new hardware from the Nintendo camp soon.


I haven't had any complaints so far on performance. Some things have been low res or low poly, but that seems to be pretty in keeping with how Platinum makes games more than anything. 

That said, I'd buy a Switch Pro tomorrow.


----------



## p0ke

wankerness said:


> That's too bad. You can't just buy the game of the year edition on top of it? Often that costs considerably less than the DLC does by itself.
> 
> The DLC for Witcher 3 is really famously some of the best of all time so I'd very, VERY highly recommend that you get it.



Thanks for the tip, I ended up buying the GOTY version on top of the base game I already bought. Feels a bit stupid to buy the base game twice, but in terms of price we're talking less than 2€ so doesn't really matter


----------



## p0ke

Got to the first boss in Hellblade - that was like a million times more fun than the normal combat, but way too easy coming from the DS games. Anyway, might be just enough of a change to make me continue playing the game. I hope the sequel improves on the general depth of the game, because this definitely has a lot of potential.

Oh and I started Witcher 3 and ran into a bit of a first world problem immediately. The loading times are too fast, so I can't read any of the loading screen texts before they go away  But otherwise this seems just as good as people say, just gotta find some time to play it.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Y'all know already



Took out the Penetrator, and rescued the two people in that zone hidden behind the officials. Got mildly annoyed that I wasn't too careful and lost something like 50k souls to the dragon on a bridge that comes shortly after that. Oops. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


----------



## wankerness

I'm one of those people who will spend a ton of time and arrows picking off those dragons just so I don't have to worry about them again since they don't respawn. Same deal with dragons in the other DS games. 

That's the final boss area, if you haven't finished worlds 4 and 5 yet it's not worth heading over there I don't think.


----------



## wankerness

p0ke said:


> Got to the first boss in Hellblade - that was like a million times more fun than the normal combat, but way too easy coming from the DS games. Anyway, might be just enough of a change to make me continue playing the game. I hope the sequel improves on the general depth of the game, because this definitely has a lot of potential.
> 
> Oh and I started Witcher 3 and ran into a bit of a first world problem immediately. The loading times are too fast, so I can't read any of the loading screen texts before they go away  But otherwise this seems just as good as people say, just gotta find some time to play it.


Witcher 3 is a game where I think knowing the previous games inside and out would improve it - I REALLY got into the plot and characters once I'd figured out what the hell was going on, but that took probably 15-20 hours. It just assumes you remember everything from the previous games. I'd played 2 once years earlier but didn't remember anything other than I had a hot redhead sorcerer friend and there was a guy with a baggy hat.

But yeah. That's one of the very few games where I wasn't actively annoyed by characters/voiceacting. That game's characters and writing are incredibly good for a video game.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Reviews I've seen all said the game itself was good, but the performance was bad. Maybe a good example of why we need some new hardware from the Nintendo camp soon.


The one review I saw said it was absolutely terrible. However, they were mainly complaining about the plot. Who plays these games for plot?!









Bayonetta 3: The Kotaku Review


PlatinumGames' latest proves there’s not enough fanservice in the world to make up for a terrible story




kotaku.com





They do also say the graphics are worse than Bayonetta 2. It's too bad this series is tied to Switch.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I'm one of those people who will spend a ton of time and arrows picking off those dragons just so I don't have to worry about them again since they don't respawn.


Oooooooooooooh and it's really easy to stock up on a bajillion arrows. This makes it sound like those dragons aren't actually much of a threat at all.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Oooooooooooooh and it's really easy to stock up on a bajillion arrows. This makes it sound like those dragons aren't actually much of a threat at all.


They're absolutely a huge threat and make the boss runback for 1-4 a nightmare. Killing them with arrows is really tedious and you have to find some really weird safe spot to do it, but it's definitely possible! If you've been levelling a bow and are fine with the tradeoff of a bit of tedium for making things a LOT easier I'd highly suggest it. 

This is the same skill I honed when sitting on top of high cliffs in Zelda BOTW and just tossing bomb after bomb to chip away at menacing monsters' health until they died. 

That's one thing I really like about these games, generally there are very few "guardrails" for letting you kill stuff. Sometimes it backfires with friendly NPCs.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> If you've been levelling a bow and are fine with the tradeoff of a bit of tedium for making things a LOT easier I'd highly suggest it.


I very well might. I find levellng a bow and stocking up on arrows made the game a loooooot easier. Especially those bell-ringing cthulu looking weirdos - I basically always used the bow for them 'cause I get nuked by magic way too easily. I think I have, at this point, a Long Bow +8. I also have that weird white double-bow thing but don't have the stats to use it. I also stupidly consumed the soul thing that would have let me upgrade to the fire-y bow thing, so I'm stuck to regular bow.


----------



## StevenC

wankerness said:


> The one review I saw said it was absolutely terrible. However, they were mainly complaining about the plot. Who plays these games for plot?!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Bayonetta 3: The Kotaku Review
> 
> 
> PlatinumGames' latest proves there’s not enough fanservice in the world to make up for a terrible story
> 
> 
> 
> 
> kotaku.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> They do also say the graphics are worse than Bayonetta 2. It's too bad this series is tied to Switch.


Yeah, I'm going to disregard any opinion that opens with "I need a Switch for Bayonetta" then proceeds to "Witch Trials are a slog". What a valueless take.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I very well might. I find levellng a bow and stocking up on arrows made the game a loooooot easier. Especially those bell-ringing cthulu looking weirdos - I basically always used the bow for them 'cause I get nuked by magic way too easily. I think I have, at this point, a Long Bow +8. I also have that weird white double-bow thing but don't have the stats to use it. I also stupidly consumed the soul thing that would have let me upgrade to the fire-y bow thing, so I'm stuck to regular bow.


The fire bow is by far the best boss soul item in the game as far as I can tell, but I think it has heavy strength requirements so you might not have been able to use it anyway. A +8 longbow will be more than fine.

Bows make all the Dark Souls games (and Elden Ring) way, way, way easier. They're the coward's way out, for sure, but that's me. Most enemies can be picked off or just pulled by themselves if you use a bow instead of rushing in with melee weapons, plus you can deal with the various enemies that are placed in sniper locations that you can't possibly melee without dodging for a long time. 

Those mindflayer guys were definitely bad news if I didn't have the opportunity to rush them and melee them down before they could react. The red mindflayer guy on the tiny staircase on the way to the maneater boss was my least favorite enemy in the game. I got killed by him more than any of the bosses.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The red mindflayer guy on the tiny staircase on the way to the maneater boss was my least favorite enemy in the game. I got killed by him more than any of the bosses.


Gah I swore at that guy so many times before I figured out how to cheese it with the bow and hiding behind pillars.



wankerness said:


> They're the coward's way out, for sure, but that's me


I'd rather cheese my way through a tough part than hit a brick wall and stop having fun, and I'm sure the game "knows" people will do this.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

People still read Kotaku?


----------



## Choop

Demon's Souls is such a cool game -- I've only played the PS3 version but would love to get my hands on the remake. My all time favorite build was when I went all-in with the Blueblood sword and just boosted the luck stat; that sword has a great moveset.


----------



## TedEH

Carrion Rocket said:


> People still read Kotaku?


They're the NIckelback of media coverage - it's trendy to take cheap shots at them, but at the end of the day, their content is consumed by an overwhelming majority of people whether they like it or not.

If you're a fan of "the old Kotaku" whatever that might mean, Jason Shreier, ex-Kotaku guy, has written some interesting books.


----------



## wankerness

Carrion Rocket said:


> People still read Kotaku?


Kotaku is frequently terrible. But, what alternatives are there? IGN is a nightmare and has been for decades. Eurogamer is good occasionally but really sparse and now parts are paywalled. Polygon is basically the same as Kotaku just with more articles and less engagement. The late-stage capitalism form that internet "news" has taken has pretty much destroyed all the sites that formerly had good writers and existed as more than a device to pump you full of videos, slideshows, and ads.


----------



## Mathemagician

So I never got far in demons souls back in the day, if I pick it up magic is like OP in that game right? I want to basically just power through a first playthrough in the next few months.


----------



## TedEH

In my limited experience, "easy mode" seems to be basically shields and anything ranged enough that you can stay out of harms way.


----------



## gabito

I really liked Kotaku until maybe 2 or 3 years ago. I guess that when Stephen Totilo, Jason Schreier, and some others left I started liking it less and less... I can barely tolerate it now.

I ocasionally read it, but I'm not really interested in their opinions about NFTs, Twitch drama, and most of the stuff they write about nowadays.

Polygon is OK, I read it once in a while too.

Eurogamer is good, I think.

I tend to be more interested in Digital Foundry's and videogamedunkey's videos lately.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> videogamedunkey


Legitimate question: Do people actually take that guy serious as a reviewer?

I ask that because his new foray into publishing strongly implies that he _thinks_ he's a serious reviewer, but I always saw him as a sort of shit-poster. Funny, sure, but never all that serious.


----------



## gabito

Mathemagician said:


> So I never got far in demons souls back in the day, if I pick it up magic is like OP in that game right? I want to basically just power through a first playthrough in the next few months.



Magic was way overpowered in the original game, but I don't know if it's the same in the remake.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> Legitimate question: Do people actually take that guy serious as a reviewer?
> 
> I ask that because his new foray into publishing strongly implies that he _thinks_ he's a serious reviewer, but I always saw him as a sort of shit-poster. Funny, sure, but never all that serious.



I think he's a smart (and funny) guy. He tends to notice things I'd never notice by myself, and seems to know about games / gaming. Or at least he knows enough to keep me interested or entertained.

I usually don't like the games he likes, though. But he seems to play everything, my taste in games is kind of narrow. Don't know about the reviews (his or anyone's), I agree with some stuff he says, and disagree or don't care about the rest.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> seems to know about games / gaming


I can't remember if this thread already got into the topic about how he's taken credit for a bunch of indie successes because he has such _great influence_ and _great taste_ that he therefor _must_ know what goes into making great games - therefor naturally he becomes a publisher, even though publishers generally don't have that much to do with the dev process.

I'd like to see him succeed, but I'm much more worried that he's going to accidentally tank a bunch of indie companies.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I can't remember if this thread already got into the topic about how he's taken credit for a bunch of indie successes because he has such _great influence_ and _great taste_ that he therefor _must_ know what goes into making great games - therefor naturally he becomes a publisher, even though publishers generally don't have that much to do with the dev process.
> 
> I'd like to see him succeed, but I'm much more worried that he's going to accidentally tank a bunch of indie companies.



I don't know if he has good taste or if he knows anything about what makes a game good, but probably the exposure he gave to some games made them more successful than if the games had not been shown on his channel. He sure has the influence and that can make a difference, but the same goes for PukeDiePie or whatever that other guy is called (or any other influencer with a huge following).

I know nearly nothing about his publishing company and wish him well, but I'm only interested in the funny (and short) videos TBH.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> He sure has the influence


I tend to wonder if his actual influence is a bit overestimated - and I say that as someone who was a dev for a long time - I had _no idea_ who he was until long after the games he takes credit for the success of.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I tend to wonder if his actual influence is a bit overestimated - and I say that as someone who was a dev for a long time - I had _no idea_ who he was until long after the games he takes credit for the success of.



Well, I got to know about him maybe about... one year ago? But I'm not really into watching youtubers regularly or following them (besides RedLetterMedia, which I really like), I'm more into using the search bar than the follow button...

But I guess when one of these guys makes a video about a videogame it has some impact on its sales (or at the very least it brings awareness to it).

Now that I think about it, PiewDiePie has like 15x the followers so him playing a game sure is more likely to change things for an indie (or probably any) game. Videgamedunkey's videos probably not so much, but maybe a little? Maybe he's delusional, maybe he's not, who knows.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> PiewDiePie


He's definitely an outlier when it comes to influence, but I wouldn't be shocked if moooost of the time it ends up being a very transient boost. Realistically, sometimes that's all you need, then you coast on the momentum, but also.... it could also just flatten out back into nothing the next week when some new thing is hot on the youtubes.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Legitimate question: Do people actually take that guy serious as a reviewer?
> 
> I ask that because his new foray into publishing strongly implies that he _thinks_ he's a serious reviewer, but I always saw him as a sort of shit-poster. Funny, sure, but never all that serious.


He often has legitimately good, incisive opinions that are disguised by comedy. Like, sometimes if he really loves something he'll go on about it without many jokes. Like, Super Mario 3D World/Bowser's Fury. I mean, there's a lot of intentional hyperbole and irony in there still, but he legitimately loves the game and goes into some detail about the specific things that he thinks put it so far above other games.

His Elden Ring review is honestly probably the best one I've seen/read. Unlike the vast majority of reviews out there, he actually played the ENTIRE GAME and appropriately trashes the late game for having a lot of frustrating bullshit in it due to outrageous tuning. Again, there's some humor in it, but it's a really good review.

Some of the stuff he hates he mainly conveys via comedy, but there's often a pattern to it that really exposes legitimate problems with games. Like, his infamous Assassins Creed videos. Or the Mass Effect Andromeda one, or the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 one from a few weeks ago. Occasionally his negative videos are more serious and less disguised by irony, like Overwatch 2.

I can't imagine using him as a primary source for videogame criticism since he makes no effort to review things on launch or play everything, but his opinions are valid and often he has a unique POV and he's often legitimately funny. And his top 10 lists for the year really usually are good. He's very, very much the kind of reviewer that loves things that emphasize gameplay (his favorite games are mostly Mario games and like, Sekiro, with some exceptions for stuff like Uncharted games) and dislikes bloat and handholding.



TedEH said:


> I can't remember if this thread already got into the topic about how he's taken credit for a bunch of indie successes because he has such _great influence_ and _great taste_ that he therefor _must_ know what goes into making great games - therefor naturally he becomes a publisher, even though publishers generally don't have that much to do with the dev process.
> 
> I'd like to see him succeed, but I'm much more worried that he's going to accidentally tank a bunch of indie companies.


Your first line was exactly what a lot of people who aren't familiar with him were outraged about. I'm sure that's exactly what he said, cause that's his whole bit. There's a lot of irony there. He definitely often has some serious nuggets in his things like "dunkview," but a lot of his other videos are just pure comedy. And even the dunkview ones are full of ironic blowhard statements. If you watch him regularly, you get it and find it funny. If you don't, he sounds like an egotistical asshole.

I don't love all his videos but he's occasionally got some really good reviews and occasionally got some high comedy. Like, his BOTW video that's just basically a comedy highlight reel is legitimately fantastic and made more than one person I know play the game when they previously had no interest. The Dark Souls 1 and 3 videos thta are pure comedy are pretty funny.

The weirdest thing I've ever seen him release was a completely straightforward lovefest for a classic French arty movie called Playtime. It's a really good video and probably his least popular video ever!


----------



## TedEH

The thing is, I DO watch his videos, and I do find him funny, and sometimes I think he makes good points, and sometimes I think he has decent taste. But none of those are qualifiers for being a publisher.



wankerness said:


> There's a lot of irony there.


It's an easy out. "Nono, the shitposting parts aren't the real me, I'm actually very good" only goes as far as being able to _demonstrate_ whatever the supposed real qualifications are.

The thing is, maybe he does have a good amount of business sense and would make a good publisher - but that's not the argument he put forward. He said that he has _such good taste_ that he can _make good games happen_, but that's not how any of this works. It's a lose-lose: If he's being sarcastic, that's a terrible red flag. If he's not being sarcastic, it's still a terrible red flag. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about and is doing it anyway, or his business sense is buried in a mountain of impenetrable sarcasm.


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## wankerness

What are the qualifications of being a publisher in your opinion? As far as I can tell they're "have a lot of money."


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## TedEH

Certainly _anything_ more than just liking video games, for one. 

Yeah, having a lot of money is an element - but so would be having the business sense to know what to do with that money. How about some marketing experience? How about some project planning and scoping and managing experience? How about any software experience?

If he had come out of the gate with a strong argument like:
"Running a youtube channel is effectively a full on business - we do our own marketing, we hire people, we do budgets and scope things, there's analytics involved, there's negotiations involved, we make difficult decisions all the time that impact real people - and we think this all would translate to being a publisher"
then BAM - I'd be sold. That's a demonstration that you have _some skillset_ and the confidence to use them.

But that's not what was put forward. He just went "I know good games, therefor I know how to make good games happen"... which is not how things work.


----------



## wankerness

Most videogame companies are run by scumbags that don't care about their product and are just the worst that capitalism has to offer. I figure worst case scenario here is we get some additional crappy indie games that we wouldn't have otherwise. I don't get the anger over this. Yeah, maybe he doesn't know anything and will fail - and? Who's the victim, besides himself?


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Most videogame companies are run by scumbags that don't care about their product and are just the worst that capitalism has to offer.


I've met a decent number of people who own game companies and could attest to the opposite. A large number of the behemoth companies at the top of the game and in the headlines are headed by people with the same kinds of business ethic as anyone who runs giant corporations, but they are not the majority of the industry - and I can attest from the inside that the vast majority of people who work underneath those heads share your general sentiment about the state of the industry.



wankerness said:


> Who's the victim, besides himself?


I stated it right up front - he could very easily end up tanking people's indie startups - which are the people he's appealing to. Imagine you put all your life savings into starting a new business, you employ say 15-20 people who now depend on you to make a living, and you're not big enough to absorb the loss of your publisher crashing and burning. That's a huge risk. And if it does go down, I won't claim to know all the legal implications, but that's 20 families you've just screwed.

Video games are made by regular joes who need to put food on their tables like everyone else - and getting into positions/companies that pay well is competitive enough that it's not a sure thing to be able to say everyone can just jump to a new thing and they'll be fine.


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## wankerness

Eh, we'll see what happens. Maybe it will be a disaster. In the meantime, I like his videos! Plus, he's one of the fellow Wisconsinites that makes Youtube bearable (Red Letter Media being the big one). They're the only thing this state has to offer! Besides New Glarus.


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## KnightBrolaire

wankerness said:


> Eh, we'll see what happens. Maybe it will be a disaster. In the meantime, I like his videos! Plus, he's one of the fellow Wisconsinites that makes Youtube bearable (Red Letter Media being the big one). They're the only thing this state has to offer! Besides New Glarus.


*cough* jeff loomis *cough*


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## wankerness

KnightBrolaire said:


> *cough* jeff loomis *cough*



Hm. I’ve only heard dreaming neon black and was annoyed by the super wavery vocals. I know he has a good rep but didn’t know he was from Wisconsin!


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Progress...



Old Hero, Storm King, Dragon God, and Leechmonger are down. I had a very productive run this time, apparently. Is this how one "gets good"?

Since I hadn't tackled anything in world 5 in a long time, going back to it now is much easier. I guess that's not surprising.


----------



## wankerness

5-2's the really bad one. Did you ever get the sodden ring? Guessing you don't have pure black world tendency if you killed all the bosses, so I think you have to do other crap to make the tendency go back down. 

Old Hero is a total joke with that stealth ring. I fought him once without it just out of curiosity, it was basically just as easy only you had to wait longer. Storm King's a fun gimmick boss but also quite easy. I died a few times on Dragon King cause destroying rubble as a magic build was pretty pokey, I ended up sniping out the problem sections with a bow before running. I don't like that boss much, reminds me very much of the Scarecrow sections of Arkham Asylum but less fun.

Leechmonger is a funny boss cause he's pretty much a joke, but his arena has bridges where you die if you jump off them, so my first attempt I ran in there thinking I could just jump down, and bam. Had to redo the level. I hate that about Demon's Souls. I need to play through it again, it's the game in their catalog I'm the least familiar with.

Anyway, I went through Dark Souls 2 SOTFS again (halfway through NG+ after a full clear) and now am going back to finish up the base version on Xbox 360 as well. SOTFS has SO many more enemies in a few sections it's ridiculous, but weirdly feels easier overall. I think partly cause the giant volume of enemies means you level up even faster. Plus some items are in much more logical, easy to find places, like the stamina regen shield is wayyyyy at the very end of the game in an obscure location in DS2 while in SOTFS they basically hand it to you less than halfway through the game. Been trying out some ultra greatswords cause I never have in this game. Aiming them is really hard and small enemies that constantly sidestep are like a hard counter to most of them, but it's sure fun when they connect or when you fight a boss. The pursuer ultragreatsword is my favorite I think, because of the ridiculous counter damage. Crypt Blacksword is the only one I'd messed with before, and it's a beast, plus it's the only one with horizontal swings that I've tried out.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> 5-2's the really bad one. Did you ever get the sodden ring? Guessing you don't have pure black world tendency if you killed all the bosses, so I think you have to do other crap to make the tendency go back down.


Yeh, I think I'm at the end game now. Used a bunch of those blue stone thingies and flung myself off a cliff over and over to get to pure black, get the ring, got through world 5 without a huge hassle. I basically just gatta fight the guy guarded by the dragon, and I assume that's it.


----------



## CanserDYI

Playing Call of Cthulhu on PS4 and besides the pretty shit graphics, it's really enjoyable.


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## TedEH

Well, I did it. Saw the credits for Demon's Souls. And..... I think I got what I wanted out of it. That is - I was hoping that once it "clicked", it would be pretty enjoyable, and that's more or less where I landed. The first third of the game felt like a struggle, but the rest of it was more manageable than you'd expect from the reputation of these games. I'll probably move on to something unrelated for a while, but I'm confident I'll end up picking up Elden Ring at some point. I do have access to the Dark Souls games too, and I never resumed Bloodborne, but maybe I'll go back to it.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Well, I did it. Saw the credits for Demon's Souls. And..... I think I got what I wanted out of it. That is - I was hoping that once it "clicked", it would be pretty enjoyable, and that's more or less where I landed. The first third of the game felt like a struggle, but the rest of it was more manageable than you'd expect from the reputation of these games. I'll probably move on to something unrelated for a while, but I'm confident I'll end up picking up Elden Ring at some point. I do have access to the Dark Souls games too, and I never resumed Bloodborne, but maybe I'll go back to it.



It’s generally a pattern that those games start out brutal and get easier as you fill out a build and upgrade weapons. Glad you got through it and didn't hate it. Really, that one's pretty mechanically outdated. But if you played through as a dex build with a bow you're probably in good shape for DS1/2/3 and Elden Ring at least, plus you're much more prepared for Bloodborne than you would have been if you played as a shield build. Just be aware that combat's at a much slower pace in DeS and the first two Dark Souls than it is in everything afterwards. It just infamously had rushed production through the second half so the level design sorta sucks on the late game areas.

Dark Souls is still the big towering classic that everyone talks about the brilliant level design, plus it basically spawned the whole subgenre. DeS is like the weird prototype run for it, even though it definitely has unique characteristics of its own. I think that you might want to do Elden Ring or DS3 next to get a much more user-friendly experience though. But DS1 is a unique experience thanks to it really having a metroidvania style world instead of the "hub with teleporters everywhere" design of everything after (before Elden Ring).

Bloodborne and Sekiro are probably the better games to DS1/2/3/ER in terms of world design and boss design, and Sekiro's also fairly user friendly besides the *huge* combat learning curve (i mean, if you fall off a cliff you just lose 1/3 your health, there are save points everywhere, there are actual in-game tutorials, etc).


----------



## TedEH

The way you describe it makes it sound like I'd want to go DS1 or Elden Ring next. Between those, probably Elden Ring just cause of the hype, and because I'm a sucker for newer flashy games sometimes.

I re-watched an old Errant Signal video that was put out right around when DS3 sparked a bunch of "should games have an easy mode" arguments - and I like his take on how the From games are basically _mechanically about learning_. Where the punishment of the early game is part of the mechanic of drilling the systems until you get it, then you continue, fail because you didn't know, and iterate until you've figured it out, at which point the game stops being arbitrarily "difficult" - so much as you've just _succeeded _at the games goal of teaching via punishment. The argument being made was ultimately that the way the difficulty is designed IS the game, so to include an "easy mode" wouldn't be "bad" per-se, it would just be a fundamentally different game because at that point you've defeated the core loop of the game.


----------



## CanserDYI

Yeah, while I raged at DS games for, quite a while, to say the least, when I finally beat them, it was so freaking satisfying. Their levels are ones that I could rewalk in my mind with no problem even years after playing, because of so. many. faiures. Over. and over again. But while I still have a certain ire for parts in the games, I would NOT put an easy mode them. These games taught me to not underestimate opponents, as let your guard down and even the easiest of opponents will leave you wishing you didn't stray so far away from your last campfire with so many souls....


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## wankerness

I don't really think having an "easy mode" would hurt those games much. I mean, they kind of have a way out of a lot of the difficulty (mass levelling up instead of trying to tackle bosses/areas as fast as possible). But, if you just cranked player damage up 10% and enemy damage down 10% or something that would already make a pretty huge difference to most of it. You definitely wouldn't be getting the same experience out of it, but you could probably argue the same thing about the myriad of games that exist right now that DO have easy modes - anyone's welcome to choose them but they are probably going to gloss right past a lot of gameplay mechanics.

Dark Souls 1 is the exception where I don't think an "easy mode" could easily be made like that cause all the hardest stuff there is environmental hazards. It would be impossible to make a real "easy mode" without having things like, I dunno, wider bridges or a Sekiro-style of failing at platforming (falling off a cliff resets you to your position minus a bunch of health).


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## StevenC

wankerness said:


> I don't really think having an "easy mode" would hurt those games much. I mean, they kind of have a way out of a lot of the difficulty (mass levelling up instead of trying to tackle bosses/areas as fast as possible). But, if you just cranked player damage up 10% and enemy damage down 10% or something that would already make a pretty huge difference to most of it. You definitely wouldn't be getting the same experience out of it, but you could probably argue the same thing about the myriad of games that exist right now that DO have easy modes - anyone's welcome to choose them but they are probably going to gloss right past a lot of gameplay mechanics.
> 
> Dark Souls 1 is the exception where I don't think an "easy mode" could easily be made like that cause all the hardest stuff there is environmental hazards. It would be impossible to make a real "easy mode" without having things like, I dunno, wider bridges or a Sekiro-style of failing at platforming (falling off a cliff resets you to your position minus a bunch of health).


For a series which has so much replayability, you'd think an easy mode wouldn't be an issue when there are other genres where the reward for beating the game is a higher difficulty now that you're better at the game.


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## wankerness

Well, they DO have higher difficulties after beating it in the form of each NG cycle getting harder (enemies take less damage, do more damage, and have more health) and your stats getting bigger and bigger diminishing returns as you get higher level. Or Sekiro, where there are TWO hardmodes available (the bell and the charm) in addition to the NG+ option. 
I get why they don't want an easy mode, it's absolutely true that if there was one people would just be able to faceroll through everything. You can do that via mods if you really want. I personally don't care if players were using easy mode, they'd only be cheating themselves. But I see why the company would scorn it since it's essentially meaning the players aren't seeing a lot of the work they put into the systems. Most companies clearly don't care (I mean, look at how radically pathetic the gameplay is in say, Mass Effect 3 if you're on easy mode vs hard mode), but if a game company cares that's their prerogative I guess. The outside world of people that don't want to contend with the difficulty don't really have the right to demand it.


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## TedEH

I guess what I took from that video I watched, and I think I agree, as far as my limited Fromsoft knowledge goes, that the difficulty sort of IS the game. It's not that you couldn't make a comparable game with lower difficulty, or with a setting, but it would defeat a lot of what the game _is_. I can kinda see the opposite end of it though, in that there are parts of the games that are worth seeing in their own right - the environment art, the level design, etc - that someone who can't or won't deal with the core of the games lose access to. At that point though - you could just as easily watch a lets-play or something, and still get to see all that, while also witnessing the core mechanic and mechanical themes they're trying to put forward.


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## wankerness

I think the counterargument is that for people that are really awful at videogames, they'd have roughly the same experience that somehow that isn't completely awful when playing on the easy setting. Not saying I necessarily agree with it as opposed to the "if you suck at games maybe just play something else, not every game has to be for everyone" crowd, but it's the argument I've seen!

It always kind of boggles my mind and turns me into annoyed old conservative man, though, when I see comment after comment of "oh it's not fair I love japan I love ninjas but I can't play Sekiro cause I have neurofibrurdouslyghghis which means that when I have to press buttons on the controller in anything approaching rhythm I'm overcome with extreme pain and start throwing up everywhere. Fromsoft needs to put in an easy mode where all I have to do is press attack once and everything falls over." If you really have medical problems like that, maybe you just shouldn't be playing videogames?! But, whatever. Clearly some developers like Naughtydog actually DO have accommodations for people that are THAT unable to play games.


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## CanserDYI

TedEH said:


> I guess what I took from that video I watched, and I think I agree, as far as my limited Fromsoft knowledge goes, that the difficulty sort of IS the game. It's not that you couldn't make a comparable game with lower difficulty, or with a setting, but it would defeat a lot of what the game _is_. I can kinda see the opposite end of it though, in that there are parts of the games that are worth seeing in their own right - the environment art, the level design, etc - that someone who can't or won't deal with the core of the games lose access to. At that point though - you could just as easily watch a lets-play or something, and still get to see all that, while also witnessing the core mechanic and mechanical themes they're trying to put forward.


Definitely, I found the difficulty like you said, _ is_ the game, it's actually _learning _to fight these enemies, versus button mashing. What's great is that once you really get it, you _get it. _The game turns into a completely different game once you understand how combat works, how to wait for your enemy instead of bum rushing every situation, it really teaches you how you should play other games, too. 

By the way, my next tattoo is going to be a Silver Knight from DS3, not because the game means anything to me, but my little boy is a gamer. He is 6 years old and absolutely WRECKS adults in Fortnite and Splatoon, and he was watching me rage hard about 2 years ago when he was 4, and he watched me fight those silver knights for so long, he asked to try. Within about 2 minutes and 3 fails he started wrecking those Knights left and right, just farming them for fun for me. I just get overjoyed and super proud of him every time I see those Silver Knights.

Any time someone talks about DS being difficult I bring up my son learning the mechanics from watching it, and even a 4 year old can learn it, it's not difficult, it just forces your mind to play differently. And I'm thinking because he wasnt so "trained" from playing other games, it was easy for him to learn to think that way.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Clearly some developers like Naughtydog actually DO have accommodations for people that are THAT unable to play games.


Without pushing too many NDA lines, I can say that there absolutely are some titles that are trying VERY hard and investing a TON of resources into accessibility and I can't fault it - stuff like bringing in consultants from differently-abled communities. I worked with someone like this once - and from that experience I'd be willing to say that the end result is often a better game overall, not just for the minority the feature might have been "designed for". It's not a one-size-fits-all conversation though - I tend to think there is space in the market for both very accessable games and very inaccessible games.



CanserDYI said:


> Any time someone talks about DS being difficult I bring up my son learning the mechanics from watching it


I wonder if kids have an advantage in souls-likes just from being good at learning.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Without pushing too many NDA lines, I can say that there absolutely are some titles that are trying VERY hard and investing a TON of resources into accessibility and I can't fault it - stuff like bringing in consultants from differently-abled communities. I worked with someone like this once - and from that experience I'd be willing to say that the end result is often a better game overall, not just for the minority the feature might have been "designed for". It's not a one-size-fits-all conversation though - I tend to think there is space in the market for both very accessable games and very inaccessible games.
> 
> 
> I wonder if kids have an advantage in souls-likes just from being good at learning.


I really like the sliders in Horizon Forbidden West. I mean, you can individually tune things like enemy damage, player damage, enemy health, etc with sliders in the menu, as well as things like perma-highlighting weakpoints on enemies or highlighting pickups in the environment. It's really cool and nice for things like tedious part farming where it's not difficult, just time-consuming (now it takes 30 seconds to kill a big enemy instead of 5 minutes etc). I've often wanted things like that with games that just have static difficulty settings, ex Nier Automata, where what I REALLY wanted was to double or triple enemy health but not enemy damage since normal was way too easy and hard basically turned you into a glass cannon (enemies still died too fast to go through their dialogue but you'd also die in 1 hit from almost everything). If they'd had a system like HFW, I could have just slid the enemy health bars up all the way and left everything else how it was on default and would have been happy.

I haven't really looked at the graphical options in HFW, but I did for Last of Us Part 2 and that was interesting. Lots of very major overhauls for people with visual impairment that basically could make the game look like Predator-vision or something.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> I've often wanted things like that with games that just have static difficulty settings


I'd add to that wish list: Something in the UI to indicate the "default" difficulty setting, or whatever other setting, when they're given stylized names.

Like if you start your game with "what's your rank?" and have to pick from "nosepicker" "baby" "I cut the crusts off my own damn sandwiches" and "ULTRA GIGA MECHA BALL CRUNCH MODE" - I'd like to know which one was tuned to be the intended experience, or at the very least what the differences are going to be so I can decide if I care.


----------



## TheBlackBard

FromSoft games HAVE easy modes. It's being able to summon and making yourself OP by farming all the time. Nothing I've ever come across, save for maybe a few things in Elden Ring are much of an issue when you have decent players that you can summon. You can make them as easy or as hard as you want. Now, to the uninitiated, the first little while where you typically can't summon, that might be a little hectic, but most of those bosses are fairly negligible compared to the rest of the game.


----------



## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> I guess what I took from that video I watched, and I think I agree, as far as my limited Fromsoft knowledge goes, that the difficulty sort of IS the game. It's not that you couldn't make a comparable game with lower difficulty, or with a setting, but it would defeat a lot of what the game _is_. I can kinda see the opposite end of it though, in that there are parts of the games that are worth seeing in their own right - the environment art, the level design, etc - that someone who can't or won't deal with the core of the games lose access to. At that point though - you could just as easily watch a lets-play or something, and still get to see all that, while also witnessing the core mechanic and mechanical themes they're trying to put forward.



Well the good news is, if they want to see the game, but aren't good enough to learn to beat it, there's always YT and Twitch.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> FromSoft games HAVE easy modes. It's being able to summon and making yourself OP by farming all the time. Nothing I've ever come across, save for maybe a few things in Elden Ring are much of an issue when you have decent players that you can summon. You can make them as easy or as hard as you want. Now, to the uninitiated, the first little while where you typically can't summon, that might be a little hectic, but most of those bosses are fairly negligible compared to the rest of the game.


Summoning REALLY isn't an option on most platforms for most bosses on any of those games besides Elden Ring. Multiplayer's completely disabled apparently permanently on DS1 on PC for example, and the others have terrible populations for co-op. I think I saw about 2 summon signs per playthrough on DS1, DS2 and DS3 the last couple years on PS4 and PC and they were usually in stupid places where I'd never want to summon (like on Moonlight Butterfly or Dragonrider or other bosses I could beat blindfolded!).

DS1 has NPCs you can summon on a couple bosses, but due to the wonky system of having to reverse hollowing at the bonfire, half the time I'd get invaded and killed before I could even get to the boss. There certainly are a lot more bored gankers with names like "IkillNewbs" in those games than there are potential coop partners.

I've successfully summoned ONE TIME EVER for a boss I was having trouble on in any Fromsoft game - the stars aligned on an NG+ and I summoned in some rando and we annihilated super ornstein with no difficulty whatsoever. I remember spending actual hours trying to find a summon sign to help on the boss I was most stuck on in Elden Ring, though (hilariously, the draconic sentinel on my first playthrough). I saw like two summon signs in that entire time and they both just disappeared when I tried to use them.


----------



## gabito

God of War Ragnarök woo-hoo!

So far it's to GoW 2018 what GoW II was to GoW I: more of everything, and (slightly) better. Nice, that's what I wanted.


----------



## thebeesknees22

gabito said:


> God of War Ragnarök woo-hoo!
> 
> So far it's to GoW 2018 what GoW II was to GoW I: more of everything, and (slightly) better. Nice, that's what I wanted.


I need a sick day! ...but I need money! 

I'll have to check it out after work


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## RevDrucifer

I just remembered GOW is out this week, this couldn’t be any better timing; Hurricane Nicole has me closing our campus down, my staff is hauling ass closing everything up and at 10AM I’m fuckin’ out of here and will be downloading that game immediately. 

The last one was the first one I played and I LOVED it, I can’t fuckin’ wait to start this one!


----------



## TedEH

I've been poking at the new CoD while waiting for my GoW copy to arrive.

I don't play a lot of CoD, but IMO moden CoD campaigns feel really weird as a video game. Like, it's less video-game-y and more like a bunch of little military-pron / war-mongering vignettes strung together. On one hand, I like having a collection of set pieces. On the other hand, all the disparate levels nuke any real sense of video-game-style progression. The Amsterdam level is a great technical achievement that lasts all of 5 minutes.


----------



## CanserDYI

Okay I played about a half hour of GoW (2018), I own it but man it felt like quicktime central with old feeling "level" design. Does it get better after that first "boss fight" (I can't even remember his name, but the super tattooed skinny Viking fellow that you fight in that ice field IIRC, its been like 4 years). 

I still really want to play it because I bought it full price, but man, the first part of that game really let me down, and hope someone can tell me it gets better?


----------



## TedEH

You're still in the intro / tutorial bits if I remember it right. Once it properly gets going, it's not very quick-time-y IMO.


----------



## RevDrucifer

CanserDYI said:


> Okay I played about a half hour of GoW (2018), I own it but man it felt like quicktime central with old feeling "level" design. Does it get better after that first "boss fight" (I can't even remember his name, but the super tattooed skinny Viking fellow that you fight in that ice field IIRC, its been like 4 years).
> 
> I still really want to play it because I bought it full price, but man, the first part of that game really let me down, and hope someone can tell me it gets better?



It gets A LOT fucking better! I think when I first played it, I got tired of that dude kicking my ass and just quit, I had no previous experience with GoW games. Someone told me it was a great game and once I was past that part I’d be good to go, they weren’t lying. 

I LOVE games where you’re putting together pieces of old stories in ancient ruins and shit like that, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Myst, etc, so GoW was right the fuck up my alley. I loved everything about that game, which I haven’t said about a game since GTAV. The mechanics, the artwork, scenery, storyline, everything. 

Starting Ragnarok now!


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## wankerness

CanserDYI said:


> Okay I played about a half hour of GoW (2018), I own it but man it felt like quicktime central with old feeling "level" design. Does it get better after that first "boss fight" (I can't even remember his name, but the super tattooed skinny Viking fellow that you fight in that ice field IIRC, its been like 4 years).
> 
> I still really want to play it because I bought it full price, but man, the first part of that game really let me down, and hope someone can tell me it gets better?


The opening has a bunch of QTE style crap and I think that recurs like ONE more time in the entire game.

The combat sucks ass for the early game IMO with you just swinging that putzy, weightless axe around but gets radically better as you start unlocking more abilities and especially another weapon. I'd say give it a few hours at least.

I have like, no hype for this GOW2 game. Maybe I'll wait till the first round of discounts. Guess it doesn't help money is tight right now.


----------



## MFB

I'm waiting until Friday to play GOW:R since I have the entire day off, and then it's the weekend; don't want to give myself this little window tonight/tomorrow when I can just wait for the full thing.


----------



## RevDrucifer

Thanks to Hurricane Nicole I had half a day today and tomorrow off entirely, let’s see how much of GoW2 I banged out! Just finished installing, time to jump in!


----------



## TedEH

Jumping on the hype train - GoW2 is installing....


----------



## wankerness

Hm. I could technically play it all evening today and tomorrow, and then all of Sunday. Maybe I should read reviews. And see if it's 70 instead of 60 cause that bugs me. 

EDIT: Reviews sound pretty good, sounds like they fixed the terrible boss variety from the first and added a lot more NPCs and stuff. Sounds like the main problem is they made the game incredibly overwhelming with skill trees and upgrades for EVERYTHING. That might not bug me as long as I'm not asked to upgrade armor that then gets replaced with something that needs to be upgraded from scratch again.

And yeah it's 70 bucks. No more free PS4 to PS5 upgrades, if you get the PS4 one you have to pay 10 bucks for the upgrade. Darn.


----------



## thebeesknees22

I'm not very far into it yet, but the new GOW: ..... friggin' awesome so far. Can't wait to dig into it for real this weekend. thank you long weekend due to the holiday


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Finished the CoD campaign



I'm not a typical CoD fan, so I have no real context for the series. I've tried to play a couple of previous campaigns before but never got into it. I've never been really into the Gritty McArmy Man, military fantasy kinds of game. I can give this one that they built some decent characters, even if they're mostly variations of army-man stereotypes. Generally speaking, it's a decent, short, fun time, the stumbles in some places.

Some good stuff:
- It's primarily a shooter, and the shooting seems mostly fun, to me, a not-picky person when it comes to shooters
- The cinematics look fantastic. Facial animations are maybe second only to Last of Us Pt 1.
- It took me a while to spot the separation between pre-rendered and live-rendered stuff.
- There's a lot of variety in the levels, without leaning on "here's a city, here's a jungle, here's a sewer", etc. There's enough detail that locations have some real character to them, mostly.
- The recreations of real places are impressive.

The less good:
- Sometimes scene transitions are janky, with audio glitches and flashy screens.
- It stands out that cutscenes are lower framerate than the gameplay
- The end boss was kinda frustrating.
- Towards the end of the game, enemies start getting bullet-sponge-y, which ramps up difficulty in a really artificial-feeling way.
- There are some segments that try to throw in some other single-player staple mechanics, like crafting, and these tend to be the worst parts of the game.
- There's so much variety in weapons, but it's never clear (at least to me, a non-gun-person and CoD newcomer) which ones are appropriate, or do more damage, and they're all so same-y that I can't tell most of them apart. It's just a string of nonsense letters that spew bullets. Using them for such a short time before you get something new means none of them end up memorable enough to favour any of them.


----------



## Mathemagician

TedEH said:


> The way you describe it makes it sound like I'd want to go DS1 or Elden Ring next. Between those, probably Elden Ring just cause of the hype, and because I'm a sucker for newer flashy games sometimes.
> 
> I re-watched an old Errant Signal video that was put out right around when DS3 sparked a bunch of "should games have an easy mode" arguments - and I like his take on how the From games are basically _mechanically about learning_. Where the punishment of the early game is part of the mechanic of drilling the systems until you get it, then you continue, fail because you didn't know, and iterate until you've figured it out, at which point the game stops being arbitrarily "difficult" - so much as you've just _succeeded _at the games goal of teaching via punishment. The argument being made was ultimately that the way the difficulty is designed IS the game, so to include an "easy mode" wouldn't be "bad" per-se, it would just be a fundamentally different game because at that point you've defeated the core loop of the game.



Difficulty being part of learning/paying attention is core to the series. 


(Spoilers) 

In DS2, there is a boss (I won’t spoil where) that has an arena that will allow him to heal if he gets near a corner. 

But if the player had been paying attention to what the level was trying to show you, 3 if not 4 of those corners should be inactive. 

But rushing to the boss means the player wasn’t taking their time. 

Without the healing it’s one of the best designed boss fights in that game. And it’s still hard but fair.


----------



## wankerness

I love that boss mainly cause I've only ever fought him using the special hat that makes him rage, and I never screwed myself over by wasting the items that stop him from healing and failing to locate the second stash of them  Love the sound effects he makes. I'm clearing to him right now!! 

I'm on my fourth DS2 clear in the last three weeks and am finally getting burned out on it. I've almost got the platinum on the original version of it on xbox - just have to start a NG++ and then get all the way to drangleic to buy the last spells from that ghost dude. After playing SOTFS and the base game back to back, I think that the complaints about SOTFS being way harder are false or from people that got hung up early. The EARLY game is, especially Heide's Tower which is admittedly insane, but it has a LOT of changes to item placements throughout the game that make things easier since you'll actually find things cause they were in total nonsense locations before (ex, the dull ember being on that precarious little balcony in the lava and iron keep vs just being right there in front of you when you arrive at the same zone you turn it in). Plus the base game has more utter bullshit ganks where there will be a group of 5 enemies and if you try pulling one with a bow ALL OF THEM come after you while that never happens in SOTFS. Drangleic Castle in particular is total BS on the base game compared to the substantially easier SOTFS. Like, that big open room with all the stone guys is heavily, heavily nerfed on SOTFS - the little guys only activate one at a time instead of swarming you, and the sentinels have about 50% the health.


----------



## gabito

Just noticed Return to Monkey Island is now available for the PS5. I may buy it later.

Anyway, still playing GoW Ragnarök. I have a couple more opinions now:

- There's a million accessibility options, but it seems changing the reticle's color is still not possible (might have missed that, tbh). At least it's bigger now, and easier to see.
- Some of the characters (ie: Atreus) still talk like if they were people living in the XXI century. I don't expect a period piece, but I still don't like that.
- Dialogue is funnier now.
- Companions have something to say about everything, that's nice. It feels almost natural. They have conversations, like people (and gods) do.
- There are some pacing issues , I don't mind long cutscenes or long exposition but the IronWood / Angrboda level was a slog. And she too talks like a contemporary girl... Go back to your century, misplaced goddess.
- Atreus is still kind of annoying.
- Just a minor character, but the squirrel is amazing. Great design, animation, and voice acting.
- So-fucking-many-puzzles. It's like you can't go anywere without solving one.
- Related to that, NPCs will give you advice about how to solve a puzzle 5 seconds after you discover it. I don't know if that can be disabled, but it's kind of annoying and it defeats the purpose of having puzzles I guess?
- So-fucking-many-things-to-collect-and-upgrade. I mostly ignore that, though. If the game gets too difficult (and it surely will, because I'm very bad at this) I'll just play on easy, or super easy. I don't care anymore.
- I'm mostly playing the main story missions, but there's a lot of extra stuff to do. I'll do that later.

I know it looks like I'm (mostly) complaining, but I really like the game.


----------



## wankerness

God, NPCs that won't shut up. I hate that. I know everyone hated Navi in Zelda OOT and she'd occasionally force info on you, but that game still had the right idea by having a button to talk to your NPC companion if you wanted a hint. Wish that was still the case instead of the game deciding you're taking too long and not LETTING you figure it out if you're slow.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> God, NPCs that won't shut up. I hate that. I know everyone hated Navi in Zelda OOT and she'd occasionally force info on you, but that game still had the right idea by having a button to talk to your NPC companion if you wanted a hint. Wish that was still the case instead of the game deciding you're taking too long and not LETTING you figure it out if you're slow.



Yeah, the Uncharted games have NPCs giving advice too, and the amount of time until they did it was too short I think. They usually give ONE hint, and only sometimes IIRC.

This is worse.

In GoWR you get to the puzzle and instantaneously they give you a hint. And then another a few seconds later. And then another... and another, until they say something like "Why don't you put A into B, and then push the lever so we can get to the next section of the game, you stupid spartan?"

Still not sure if you can disable that.


----------



## wankerness

Yep, that's really common in AAA games. Often your character just talks to themselves and says the solution, which is somehow even stupider.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> God, NPCs that won't shut up. I hate that.


I can live with exposition or gameplay hints disguised as mostly-natural-sounding "banter".... but what really gets to me is the trend of needing every character to blurt out forced characterization and jokes that have nothing to do with anything. IMO character development and interaction needs to be pointed or it just comes across as try-hard. We don't need a "look how edgy I am" forced joke every 60 seconds. Borderlands and Watch Dogs come to mind. I think that's a big part of why I have no interest in "hero shooters". I don't care about 100 different special personalities that just exist to exist - I just want to play the game.


----------



## bostjan

I didn't get along with Uncharted. It seemed like, from the very beginning, I could just about empty a clip into a low-level enemy at point-blank range and the enemy wouldn't go down. That just started me out with pure frustration.

But I'm old school. I played a lot of NES and SNES games, a couple N64 games, and Silent Hill on PS1 (the original one) and then basically didn't have time to play any video games for the next 10+ years. So, when I came back into it and suddenly everything is a tutorial, enemies tend to take ludicrous amounts of damage, health works in strange ways to me - IDK, everything about video games just seems foreign to me now. I'd be less frustrated with the difficulty of something like Contra, where everything, including you, except bosses, dies in one shot, and if you don't immediately figure out what the mechanics and hazards are, you learn by getting killed. I watch my wife play God of War, where you are this hulking muscular immortal deity assassin, yet when you fight with "grey wolf" or "elemental slime" or whatever level negative one enemy, you still have to hack and slash at it for several seconds, even with upgraded weapons, and so many levels involve scores of these things mobbing you at the same time, so a threatless encounter can still take 5 minutes to resolve, without really providing any challenge or feeling of accomplishment.  I guess you can just try to avoid fighting in order to get on with the game, but, to me, it seems like the designers are just more concerned about forcing you to log more hours into playing than they are with providing the maximum amount of enjoyment.


----------



## wankerness

bostjan said:


> I didn't get along with Uncharted. It seemed like, from the very beginning, I could just about empty a clip into a low-level enemy at point-blank range and the enemy wouldn't go down. That just started me out with pure frustration.
> 
> But I'm old school. I played a lot of NES and SNES games, a couple N64 games, and Silent Hill on PS1 (the original one) and then basically didn't have time to play any video games for the next 10+ years. So, when I came back into it and suddenly everything is a tutorial, enemies tend to take ludicrous amounts of damage, health works in strange ways to me - IDK, everything about video games just seems foreign to me now. I'd be less frustrated with the difficulty of something like Contra, where everything, including you, except bosses, dies in one shot, and if you don't immediately figure out what the mechanics and hazards are, you learn by getting killed. I watch my wife play God of War, where you are this hulking muscular immortal deity assassin, yet when you fight with "grey wolf" or "elemental slime" or whatever level negative one enemy, you still have to hack and slash at it for several seconds, even with upgraded weapons, and so many levels involve scores of these things mobbing you at the same time, so a threatless encounter can still take 5 minutes to resolve, without really providing any challenge or feeling of accomplishment.  I guess you can just try to avoid fighting in order to get on with the game, but, to me, it seems like the designers are just more concerned about forcing you to log more hours into playing than they are with providing the maximum amount of enjoyment.


Sounds like you're using the wrong difficulty settings! I don't know which Uncharted you were playing, but 2 and 3 have a sweet spot of difficulty where things suddenly become really tactical and interesting, but then it tips over into bullet spongey-ness if you take it up another notch. I think I just rushed through on normal where everything died really quickly cause I was more interested in the story than in long tactical cover-based shooting segments.

Also sounds like you're a proponent of the glass cannon NES style of difficulty where everything dies quickly and also kills you in basically one hit. Guess you should check out Nier Automata on higher difficulty settings! There are a lot of games where the higher difficulties unfortunately increase enemy damage dealt AND enemy health (or reducing player damage, even more annoyingly). There are very few games I've played where higher difficulty just jacks up enemy damage but not health. It's a big reason why I usually only play games on normal difficulty. I HATE bullet spongeyness. Hence I hate Mass Effect 2's highest difficulty (it adds two layers of shields on EVERYTHING so everything is incredibly tedious and many of your abilities no longer work since they're blocked by the shields/barriers/armor) but love Mass Effect 3's (they don't really increase enemy health much but radically jack up how much damage they do to you so you have to be keenly aware of enemy positioning vs your own and use crowd control and all that stuff).


----------



## bostjan

wankerness said:


> Sounds like you're using the wrong difficulty settings! I don't know which Uncharted you were playing, but 2 and 3 have a sweet spot of difficulty where things suddenly become really tactical and interesting, but then it tips over into bullet spongey-ness if you take it up another notch. I think I just rushed through on normal where everything died really quickly cause I was more interested in the story than in long tactical cover-based shooting segments.
> 
> Also sounds like you're a proponent of the glass cannon NES style of difficulty where everything dies quickly and also kills you in basically one hit. Guess you should check out Nier Automata on higher difficulty settings! There are a lot of games where the higher difficulties unfortunately increase enemy damage dealt AND enemy health (or reducing player damage, even more annoyingly). There are very few games I've played where higher difficulty just jacks up enemy damage but not health. It's a big reason why I usually only play games on normal difficulty. I HATE bullet spongeyness. Hence I hate Mass Effect 2's highest difficulty (it adds two layers of shields on EVERYTHING so everything is incredibly tedious and many of your abilities no longer work since they're blocked by the shields/barriers/armor) but love Mass Effect 3's (they don't really increase enemy health much but radically jack up how much damage they do to you so you have to be keenly aware of enemy positioning vs your own and use crowd control and all that stuff).


There being difficulty settings at all was kind of a new thing for the PS1-era. I remember that damned lizard in Silent Hill that killed you with one bite, and you had exactly two seconds between the time it opened its mouth and when it ate you to get off three shots from the hunting rifle right down its throat. It was difficult, but it seemed like a fair challenge. A boss that takes three hits to its weak spot and kills you with one. Pretty cool, if you think of what it would be realistically like to fight a giant demon lizard.

I guess I basically grew up playing Doom (1993), where it was pretty easy to mow down the weaker enemies and much more of a slog with the stronger ones. To me, that was perfection. The new Doom was super great, but I was very mildly annoyed with how much the weaker enemies could tank damage with the mid-level weapons. In the original, you could usually frag a demon with 3-5 shotgun hits on Hurt Me Plenty. 

But anyway, it's likely my fault. I don't want to play the game on EASY, even if I suck at it. Why? Because if I manage to get to the end of the game, I don't want it to give me a fakeout ending that just nags you to reset the difficulty to see the real ending.

And modern games where you have to be online for single player can all go jump off a cliff, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm probably sounding like a broken record, but I *love* a good story in a game. Anything that takes me out of the immersion can ruin my experience. So, games with human enemies without any sort of headgear, who soak up multiple headshots without batting an eye, that's annoying. Games where your character is a badass fighter, but you get bogged down by swarms of enemies that won't die, that's annoying. "Glass cannon" - I like that, I guess. Let me win if I'm good, but let me lose if I mess up. No Rock'em Sock'em Robots level of damage/health tanking for me nor for the enemies, because it doesn't really make sense unless your character is a knight in a suit of plate armor attacking with a shitty toothbrush.


----------



## wankerness

bostjan said:


> But anyway, it's likely my fault. I don't want to play the game on EASY, even if I suck at it. Why? Because if I manage to get to the end of the game, I don't want it to give me a fakeout ending that just nags you to reset the difficulty to see the real ending.



The last game I was aware of to pull that ridiculous stunt was Castlevania 64. That is DEFINITELY not a thing with any games released this century that I've ever heard of! Usually the only thing that might be locked behind higher difficulties is trophies/achievements which definitely don't sound like something you'd care about. And often, even those aren't. Usually games are tuned for normal to be the default experience and if "easy" feels better to play there's no reason at all not to just do that if it will make it more fun.



bostjan said:


> And modern games where you have to be online for single player can all go jump off a cliff, as far as I'm concerned.



I kind of agree with that in principle, but when does it really affect you? Is your system offline randomly? I think it's mainly PC games that pull that crap, and usually for "piracy" reasons. I last remember people really freaking out about it with Diablo 3, but I think it probably applies to subsequent Blizzard games. What about single player games with online elements, like say, Elden Ring, where you can play it offline if you want, but it removes the in-world message system and invasion/co-op mechanics (both of which are fully opt-in)? I'm not aware of a single player game on console that is "ONLINE ONLY" but I've never had a system offline on PS4 or PS5 so I don't really know.



bostjan said:


> I'm probably sounding like a broken record, but I *love* a good story in a game. Anything that takes me out of the immersion can ruin my experience. So, games with human enemies without any sort of headgear, who soak up multiple headshots without batting an eye, that's annoying. Games where your character is a badass fighter, but you get bogged down by swarms of enemies that won't die, that's annoying. "Glass cannon" - I like that, I guess. Let me win if I'm good, but let me lose if I mess up. No Rock'em Sock'em Robots level of damage/health tanking for me nor for the enemies, because it doesn't really make sense unless your character is a knight in a suit of plate armor attacking with a shitty toothbrush.


[/QUOTE]

Hmm. If you really wanted all games to be totally realistic or else they're ruined for you, you're probably going to be stuck to tedious simulators and/or Red Dead Redemption 2. I mean, even games where enemies all can be killed in one hit eventually have enemies in body armor or whatever that shrug off damage for a while totally unrealistically, or your character can carry more ammo than they'd realistically be able to, or blahblahblah. There's definitely a certain degree of "Game" that has to happen for something to be fun instead of a chore. Otherwise you'd get games where enemies are the same throughout, your character moves at a snail's pace except for short sprints unless they're a long distance runner that isn't carrying a weapon, and there's no escalation or de-escalation. Well, unless you initially are fighting morons that can't hit you and eventually their accuracy just improves or something.


----------



## RevDrucifer

Ragnarok is cool, but it’s not drawing me in like GoW did. It’s definitely a sequel to GoW and just picks up where GoW left off, which may be why it’s not as thrilling to me. In GoW there was so much history being laid out with each side quest or mission and that stuff has been maybe 1/4 of what I’ve experienced so far. 

Game play is great, my only gripe is that they’ve made some of the rune chests an absolute pain in the ass to obtain. I don’t think I gave up on a single one in GoW but I’ve already said ‘fuck this’ to several in Ragnarok. One of the ones where I had to ring the bells, it didn’t matter which order I went in, how fast I did it, the second I rang one bell, the other would disappear immediately. Specifically, the rune that looks like a lowercase n. I think I tried for 30 minutes to get it and just got frustrated and moved on.

On the other hand, my lack of desire to find out what happens next is giving me ample time to do all the side quests instead of going straight for the storyline. We’ll see how I feel about it once it’s over.


----------



## MFB

Spoiler



Got through the first Thor fight in Ragnarok last night, curious to see how they evolve throughout the game; I died for a minute and then he revived me with Mjolner and I have no idea if that's scripted or not. I do like how quickly they pulled in Thor/Odin to just be like, "no bullshit, we want peace," because at this point - I can't they had much of a leg to stand on by coming right to him. Makes me wonder how much of a powerhouse Tyr is if they don't want him found quick enough to just go "fuck this, stop looking for him."

The Leviathan axe definitely feels like it's not doing much in the beginning, nor do the blades, and it looks like there's now environmental cues for the blades to use as a grappling gun type tool. No preference either way, I get that it adds a bit more verticality, but sort of like Halo/DOOM it feels a bit out of place after the originals, but we'll see.


----------



## CanserDYI

Bioshock, again. Shocker lol. Probably my 20th playthru, but this time on _playstation. _


----------



## TheBlackBard

TedEH said:


> I can live with exposition or gameplay hints disguised as mostly-natural-sounding "banter".... but what really gets to me is the trend of needing every character to blurt out forced characterization and jokes that have nothing to do with anything. IMO character development and interaction needs to be pointed or it just comes across as try-hard. We don't need a "look how edgy I am" forced joke every 60 seconds. Borderlands and Watch Dogs come to mind. I think that's a big part of why I have no interest in "hero shooters". I don't care about 100 different special personalities that just exist to exist - I just want to play the game.


I think if you feel that way about Borderlands, you kinda missed the point of Borderlands. It's not a game to be taken seriously.


----------



## MFB

TheBlackBard said:


> I think if you feel that way about Borderlands, you kinda missed the point of Borderlands. It's not a game to be taken seriously.



While that's true, there's a point where it falls back onto itself where it's don't-me-seriously-seriousness becomes infuriating in itself; like, we get what you're trying to do, but now you've just created a different annoyance of the same level as when you take something too seriously. It's like the dude from Matrix 4 who's explaining what The Matrix is about and it's like, shut the fuck up.


----------



## TheBlackBard

MFB said:


> While that's true, there's a point where it falls back onto itself where it's don't-me-seriously-seriousness becomes infuriating in itself; like, we get what you're trying to do, but now you've just created a different annoyance of the same level as when you take something too seriously. It's like the dude from Matrix 4 who's explaining what The Matrix is about and it's like, shut the fuck up.



Didn't see that one.


----------



## wankerness

TheBlackBard said:


> I think if you feel that way about Borderlands, you kinda missed the point of Borderlands. It's not a game to be taken seriously.



I don’t see how what you said has anything to do with what he said. He’s saying the jokes are unfunny and shoved down your throat at all times, both of which are true. My problem with borderlands (3 at least) is how your player character NEVER SHUTS UP. They have to have unfunny terrible one liners every time you kill anything and when you’re killing thousands of enemies it gets old REALLY fast, and there’s no option I’m aware of to turn off the sass. I hate it.

2 drove me up the wall with all the unskippable dialogue you had to sit through every playthrough cycle. Handsome Jack was entertaining and funny the first time, but by the fifth or sixth playthrough I just hated all the dialogue and desperately wanted a way to skip it. I think three might have been like that too, but I didn’t play it nearly as many times through the main plot as 2 due to the improvements with difficulty being changeable without going through the story each time you want it to increase.

1 is probably my favorite cause it was by far the least dialogue heavy. But I do really like all three. Just too bad about the damn writing/voice acting.


----------



## TedEH

TheBlackBard said:


> you kinda missed the point of Borderlands


I think everyone else covered it. 



wankerness said:


> My problem with borderlands (3 at least) is how your player character NEVER SHUTS UP. They have to have unfunny terrible one liners every time you kill anything and when you’re killing thousands of enemies it gets old REALLY fast, and there’s no option I’m aware of to turn off the sass. I hate it.


^ It's this. It's how "character development" and humour in some titles have both boiled down to sassy one-liners and innuendo.

Borderlands 1 I think was good, and 2 mostly just took a good thing and made it better. The antagonists in 3 were painfully awful though, and at that point the franchise had been around long enough to have a formula that's gotten a bit stale. At that point, if the formula doesn't evolve past the one-liners, there's not much more to "get". IMO "everyone is always sassy" isn't good writing.

Then you've got the Tiny Tina's stuff, which is mechanically fine because it's more Borderlands, and it's an interesting premise - but for the little of it I've seen it pushes the whole parasocial thing a bit far. By that I mean like the game is trying _very hard_ to make it feel like the characters are all your best buds, ya know, just, nerdin' out with ya, right. 'Cause they're like your friends. Except they're not because they're video game characters and banter comes across forced to me as an excuse to play up the Lol Random Rainbow Unicorn level of humour.


----------



## Mathemagician

BL3 did introduce some characters I actually cared about, and we did get backstory on a few more. 

The old western sharpshooter guy was a fantastic character, as was his evil sister (I think it was his sister?). That was a well done story/planet. 

BL3 was enormous though. That said it took a while for the humor to grow on me. It’s very in your face and it’s almost like the same way you’d ignore ads while online? You almost have to treat the antagonists as annoying ads until the segments where you actually interact with them. 

Not trying to defend it and say it’s the best game ever. Just that it took a while and eventually I could ease into it, if that makes sense.


----------



## KnightBrolaire

for me the borderland series has always been purely about creating gorychaos and looting. I never gave a shit about the main storylines, but some of the side missions were really well done. In that aspect it most reminds me of Bethesda games, where the best shit is off the beaten path. The humor is definitely hit or miss but overall I enjoy how goofy the games are. 

Uncharted series is definitely annoying gunplay wise imo. It feels like shit compared to better cover shooters of the time period like Gears of War and Tomb Raider 2013. I'd argue the gunplay is the worst thing about the Uncharted series besides the melee combat.

I'm still pecking away at Deathloop and really enjoying it. Gonna start up Aragami 2 after I finish it. I still have a few weeks left on game pass so I figure I should at least get 2 games out of it lol


----------



## TheBlackBard

wankerness said:


> I don’t see how what you said has anything to do with what he said. He’s saying the jokes are unfunny and shoved down your throat at all times,* both of which are true*. My problem with borderlands (3 at least) is how your player character NEVER SHUTS UP. They have to have unfunny terrible one liners every time you kill anything and when you’re killing thousands of enemies it gets old REALLY fast, and there’s no option I’m aware of to turn off the sass. I hate it.
> 
> 2 drove me up the wall with all the unskippable dialogue you had to sit through every playthrough cycle. Handsome Jack was entertaining and funny the first time, but by the fifth or sixth playthrough I just hated all the dialogue and desperately wanted a way to skip it. I think three might have been like that too, but I didn’t play it nearly as many times through the main plot as 2 due to the improvements with difficulty being changeable without going through the story each time you want it to increase.
> 
> 1 is probably my favorite cause it was by far the least dialogue heavy. But I do really like all three. Just too bad about the damn writing/voice acting.



For you and him, perhaps, but a lot of people love it, because the wisecracks and quips are part of what keep the game entertaining. Some of the oneliners from the character, the one you play as, I could see those getting old, but not the wisecracks from NPC's and such.

But then again, in a game like BL, knowing how goofy and wacky it is, I'd say that measure of delivery is expected much in the same way you would expect certain games to adhere to certain tropes and styles. A FromSoft game. Probably gonna induce some rage. Elder Scrolls. Probably gonna start as a criminal (if the last few are anything to go on). It's to be expected, so... I don't know, but I feel like what I said was still relevant.


----------



## rokket2005

I started Ys : Memories of Celceta on either Tuesday or Thursday, don't remember. Beat it today and it's really good. I played through Ys Origin maybe a month and a half ago, and it was nice to play as Adol again despite how much I liked Yunica and Hugo. I liked all of the characters too, whereas in VIII I never used Hummel, and I never really used Hawk in IX. Not too daunting either as it's probably about half as long of a game as Ys VIII, a nice Ysy jaunt.


----------



## Ralyks

I put months worth of hours into Borderlands 2. I was just about randomly pairing with people online and made online friends I played online with for years after. The only thing that made me put down Borderlands 3 after some 40 hours of completing the campaign? I could NEVER get matchmaked into a game. Literally once ever. Why they went from being able to pick from a list of games in BL2 to whatever matchmaking nonsense in BL3 is beyond me, but it basically made online nonexistent for me and thus just made me lose interest.

Anyway, aside from Persona 5 Golden (current between Palaces 2 - 3, really liking new content, P5 still rules) and Overwatch 2, this happened:



Sonic Frontiers.... Man, I think I get the reviews now. Are the controls tight? Not totally. Is it a graphical marvel? Not necessarily. Is the story intriguing? I'm not so sure. Is the voice acting good? Absolutely not. And despite all of this, I want my son to get off the PS5 so I can play some more. Didn't realize dropping Sonic into a downgraded Breath of the Wild would actually work, but here we are.

As for SMT V, I literally only got to starting it, so will report back later. But it certainly feels like a SMT-ass SMT game, so that's fine with me.


----------



## TedEH

TheBlackBard said:


> the wisecracks and quips are part of what keep the game entertaining


It's the kind of thing some people are drawn to, and others find really off-putting, and that's fine. I happen to be in the camp right now that would rather the mechanics of the game be the entertaining part, not everyone and their cousin getting sassy quips in at every opportunity. I don't want my games to sass me. I'm too old for sass. Get off my digital lawn.


----------



## gabito

Finished GoW Ragnarok.

It's good, but for some reason I liked the previous one more. Probably because of the novelty, or the simpler story. Also, storywise I think they're trying too hard to be Naughty Dog (specifically TLoU's Naughty Dog). They're not as good as ND. All that stuff about prophecies and fate is a mess, I'm not sure I understand what they were trying to do, or if it makes any sense.

Still didn't like Atreus' character, I know he's a kid but whatever: he's the champion of stupid, emperor of fuckups. Also there's something weird about the model's face (not the actor's face, the actual 3D model). I'm not one to complain about this kind of stuff, but I didn't like the sections where you play as him (never had a problem with that in TLoU or other games where you play as different characters).

Freya is still better in this one, I love the crazy lady.

Brok & Sindri are cool. Angry Sindri is terrifying.

Angrboda is, meh...

Thor is conflicted. An alcoholic making everybody's lives miserable. They tried to make a parallel between him and Kratos' stories, but I don't think they succeeded? Not enough character development. There are too many characters and too little time. Also I don't think they have the storytelling skills to do it right. As I said, they're not Naughty Dog...

Odin is the asshole everybody says he is.

Every other character is there just because. They're filler.

The companions are somewhat chatty and generally fun, they comment about the places you visit (or visited) and usually have something interesting or fun to say, but the game is patronizing to an irritating extent. Not only they solve the puzzles for you (and there's nothing you can do about that AFAIK), but they'll tell you to go back to the right path if you decide to explore a bit and not follow the compass' directions. Fuck that. *Really* fuck that.

There's plenty of different enemies. They have a tendency to mob you, and it can be hard to know where the hits are coming from or what you are supposed to do (camera is too close to the main character). Also everyone seems to have a shield.

There's more boss variety (I think, I didn't count), but I don't think any of them is particularly memorable. They can be difficult (at least some were to me). I just learned that there's a glitch in the difficulty settings where if you change difficulty... it doesn't change at all. So I thought I was playing on a lower difficulty in some parts, but I wasn't. Oh well...

I did a few secondary missions and they are good (not The Witcher 3 good, but good). I have plenty to do still. I'm cursed with having to get the platinum for every GoW game, and that's what I'm going to do next. It'll take some time, though.


----------



## MFB

Spoiler



Freed Tyr last night, was very surprised that's he's just ...in the very place you thought he would be and that's the end of it? Like, OK? I did Atreus's mission to, I enjoy how they broke up his mechanics in that the only difference is whether or not your holding the trigger for aiming, vs. "nope, Atreus is ONLY ranged attacked, you have to dodge these guys constantly." This one feels different compared to the original and I can't quite place my finger on why, I don't want to say it feels dumbed down as it's not like GOW2018 was a maze to figure out, but it definitely seems more linear with it's spaces now; and that coupled with as gabito said, the companions feeling the need to harp on my "lack of" direction makes it feel more hand-holdy.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm. Guess I'll wait for them to patch in options to turn that crap off, cause if it's that annoying I bet they will.


----------



## wankerness

Ha, the first videogame site I went to today has a big headline "God of War won't let you turn off puzzle hints." Guess it's really catching on. Yeah, I'm sure they'll eventually patch that option in.


----------



## TedEH

I haven't gotten tooo far in, but I didn't find the hints too bad. In one case it was kinda handy 'cause I was legitimately looking in completely the wrong place.


Spoiler



I've only gotten as far as the first real set of side-quests where you shut down the towers and rescue the island-whale thingie that's chained down. I didn't do the main quest in that area yet.


----------



## gabito

Just learned that the next gen (more like current gen) version of The Witcher 3 will be out in December. Nice, time to finish my nth playthrough.

Still missing 3 or 4 trophies. I suppose I'll finally get the plat, perhaps... in the next 2 or 3 years


----------



## brector

gabito said:


> Just learned that the next gen (more like current gen) version of The Witcher 3 will be out in December. Nice, time to finish my nth playthrough.
> 
> Still missing 3 or 4 trophies. I suppose I'll finally get the plat, perhaps... in the next 2 or 3 years


Yeah, and it only took them what, 2+ years? 

I have been sitting on it, planning on loading it up over the holiday


----------



## Mathemagician

Ralyks said:


> I put months worth of hours into Borderlands 2. I was just about randomly pairing with people online and made online friends I played online with for years after. The only thing that made me put down Borderlands 3 after some 40 hours of completing the campaign? I could NEVER get matchmaked into a game. Literally once ever. Why they went from being able to pick from a list of games in BL2 to whatever matchmaking nonsense in BL3 is beyond me, but it basically made online nonexistent for me and thus just made me lose interest.
> 
> Anyway, aside from Persona 5 Golden (current between Palaces 2 - 3, really liking new content, P5 still rules) and Overwatch 2, this happened:
> View attachment 117052
> 
> 
> Sonic Frontiers.... Man, I think I get the reviews now. Are the controls tight? Not totally. Is it a graphical marvel? Not necessarily. Is the story intriguing? I'm not so sure. Is the voice acting good? Absolutely not. And despite all of this, I want my son to get off the PS5 so I can play some more. Didn't realize dropping Sonic into a downgraded Breath of the Wild would actually work, but here we are.
> 
> As for SMT V, I literally only got to starting it, so will report back later. But it certainly feels like a SMT-ass SMT game, so that's fine with me.




Oh crap, I FORGOT THAT MATCHMAKING WAS BROKEN. 

I replayed it like a year after launch and vaguely recall it still being terrible too. 

Broooo. Is it fixed yet? I’d totally do another playthrough in the next year or so. I miss loot.


----------



## wankerness

I NEVER played Borderlands 3 multiplayer, not once. I think it was *vastly* more playable than 2 was single player. You don't get unstoppably overpowered like you do in 1 (you were basically unkillable if you played even close to competently as the siren especially), but it's not like 2 where practically every enemy completely goes through your shield and takes you to 1 health with their first shot and kills you with the second, either. It was pretty well-balanced! Apart from raids, I was able to clear everything on really high difficulty settings no problem with a couple builds. I absolutely hated 2 at high difficulties except when playing with friends, but 3 was totally fine solo even into higher mayhem levels. You should be fine with the matchmaking continuing to be broken!!

I get that it's probably way more fun multiplayer, but as someone with no friends that play the game, it was still a fun experience. I just burned out on it after well over a hundred hours put into it.

That's good news about Witcher 3, I have been thinking about it a lot recently. I need to play it again. I don't think I'll ever do the platinum, though - death march difficulty sounds like pure masochism (the kind of difficulty increase I hate, where not only does everything kill you in 1 hit, it also has wayyyy more health so the fights take vastly longer so everything turns into a lengthy battle of hit and run and/or kiting).


----------



## gabito

Yeah, there are a few very tedious / boring trophies which I got because I played the game so many times and also because I had nothing better to do, but Death March is what's stopping me from going for it... but maybe some day.

I don't know, maybe there's a glitch or some way to cheese the game, I'm not above that


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> Yeah, there are a few very tedious / boring trophies which I got because I played the game so many times and also because I had nothing better to do, but Death March is what's stopping me from going for it... but maybe some day.
> 
> I don't know, maybe there's a glitch or some way to cheese the game, I'm not above that


I read a little about it when I played the game. Basically it said you have to spec hard into that shell shield ability and then just kite everything. Apparently the first bunch of the game is absolutely horrible and you will frequently have 10+ minute long fights with every random enemy where you will die instantly if you make a mistake at any point, but it gets easier as the game goes on.


----------



## RevDrucifer

MFB said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Got through the first Thor fight in Ragnarok last night, curious to see how they evolve throughout the game; I died for a minute and then he revived me with Mjolner and I have no idea if that's scripted or not. I do like how quickly they pulled in Thor/Odin to just be like, "no bullshit, we want peace," because at this point - I can't they had much of a leg to stand on by coming right to him. Makes me wonder how much of a powerhouse Tyr is if they don't want him found quick enough to just go "fuck this, stop looking for him."
> 
> The Leviathan axe definitely feels like it's not doing much in the beginning, nor do the blades, and it looks like there's now environmental cues for the blades to use as a grappling gun type tool. No preference either way, I get that it adds a bit more verticality, but sort of like Halo/DOOM it feels a bit out of place after the originals, but we'll see.





Spoiler



They definitely improve as the game goes on, but they did feel a bit weaker in the start, which is kind of odd being that they were kicking ass at the end of the last game and it would have been cool if they started them where that left off. 

There’s going to be another weapon introduced later in the game, it’s a blast to use and like you can grapple with the blades, you can use this one for getting around the map as well, but I don’t want to give any more away. It definitely helped pick up my interest a little more once I got it


----------



## MFB

RevDrucifer said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> They definitely improve as the game goes on, but they did feel a bit weaker in the start, which is kind of odd being that they were kicking ass at the end of the last game and it would have been cool if they started them where that left off.
> 
> There’s going to be another weapon introduced later in the game, it’s a blast to use and like you can grapple with the blades, you can use this one for getting around the map as well, but I don’t want to give any more away. It definitely helped pick up my interest a little more once I got it





Spoiler



Yeah, I know this one picks up after a time skip (not sure if they specify how long) but it's obvious VISUALLY that the axe hasn't been worked on for some time and it seems like there's no interaction with Brok/Sindri during that time what with travel between realms being blocked off (don't recall if that was at the end of GOW but would've been better to explain a bit more). But I would've preferred it be more like Thor doing damage during the fight is what strips away all the upgrades and THEN you start back at zero.

I've upgraded the handle ...3 times now I think? And the axe itself once, so now it's doing some damage, along with my skill upgrades which I'm really good at neglecting, so it feels like it's picked up a bit more now. I'm assuming that third weapon is what you see on the way to Tyr in Svartalfheim where the companions will tell you "I don't think we can do anything with those," etc.


----------



## thebeesknees22

I just finished the main arc of GOW Ragnarok. 

It's... It's ... A-Maaaaaazing. Greatest game ever made. Period. 

What a story. Fantastic characters and depth.

I will say no more. Other than that was so much unbelievably better than I could have ever have hoped for.


----------



## TedEH

I haven't got nearly as far as some, but I've hit a couple of moments that have made what I've played so far worth it.



Spoiler



Watching the boy try to open the chest and just crack his hand was entirely unexpected and is one of the rare times I've actually audibly laughed at a joke in a video game.


----------



## RevDrucifer

MFB said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I know this one picks up after a time skip (not sure if they specify how long) but it's obvious VISUALLY that the axe hasn't been worked on for some time and it seems like there's no interaction with Brok/Sindri during that time what with travel between realms being blocked off (don't recall if that was at the end of GOW but would've been better to explain a bit more). But I would've preferred it be more like Thor doing damage during the fight is what strips away all the upgrades and THEN you start back at zero.
> 
> I've upgraded the handle ...3 times now I think? And the axe itself once, so now it's doing some damage, along with my skill upgrades which I'm really good at neglecting, so it feels like it's picked up a bit more now. I'm assuming that third weapon is what you see on the way to Tyr in Svartalfheim where the companions will tell you "I don't think we can do anything with those," etc.



Good call, I hadn’t even thought of that!



Spoiler



The 3rd weapon comes after Tyr. Playing last night I found myself switching between all 3 weapons and you can definitely fuck some shit up going between all 3. Without giving much away, the 3rd weapon is useful like the blades are for getting around the map. The more I play and the more the story goes along, I’m digging it more. There’s a lot more characters introduced and for a little while it’ll feel disjointed until it all comes back around and meets up. You definitely see how they put work into creating a story for this rather than just “Ok now they gotta go take out Odin”

There’s a lot more humor in this one, which I love. Between Mimir, Brok and Sindri there’s a few good laughs, even with Kratos. And yeah, I’m terrible with keeping track of upgrades. I didn’t even realize last night there’s bonus damage for set builds, that kind of drove me nuts with the Division and I’ve been ignoring them.

I’m still trying to keep up with the two arrow types Freya and Atreus have, which can REALLY help out, but I get lost with all the upgrade options and how they interact with those arrows, I need a flowchart for this crap!


----------



## RevDrucifer

TedEH said:


> I haven't got nearly as far as some, but I've hit a couple of moments that have made what I've played so far worth it.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Watching the boy try to open the chest and just crack his hand was entirely unexpected and is one of the rare times I've actually audibly laughed at a joke in a video game.



The humor in the game is definitely an added bonus. I wouldn’t read my spoiler above, but I don’t think I’m giving much away by saying Mimir, Brok and Sindri all bring some humor to the game that makes it a bit more enjoyable, especially when they’re busting Kratos’ balls.


----------



## MFB

RevDrucifer said:


> Good call, I hadn’t even thought of that!
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> The 3rd weapon comes after Tyr. Playing last night I found myself switching between all 3 weapons and you can definitely fuck some shit up going between all 3. Without giving much away, the 3rd weapon is useful like the blades are for getting around the map. The more I play and the more the story goes along, I’m digging it more. There’s a lot more characters introduced and for a little while it’ll feel disjointed until it all comes back around and meets up. You definitely see how they put work into creating a story for this rather than just “Ok now they gotta go take out Odin”
> 
> There’s a lot more humor in this one, which I love. Between Mimir, Brok and Sindri there’s a few good laughs, even with Kratos. And yeah, I’m terrible with keeping track of upgrades. I didn’t even realize last night there’s bonus damage for set builds, that kind of drove me nuts with the Division and I’ve been ignoring them.
> 
> I’m still trying to keep up with the two arrow types Freya and Atreus have, which can REALLY help out, but I get lost with all the upgrade options and how they interact with those arrows, I need a flowchart for this crap!





Spoiler



OK, I thought I was losing my mind this whole time, but you CAN change arrow types right? Because ever since I got the sonic arrows, that's ALL Atreus has been using and the D-Pad doesnt seem to switch like in the 2018 version. You clearly have two different ones while playing as him, so I don't know what the disconnect is.[/spoiler[


----------



## gabito

RevDrucifer said:


> The humor in the game is definitely an added bonus. I wouldn’t read my spoiler above, but I don’t think I’m giving much away by saying Mimir, Brok and Sindri all bring some humor to the game that makes it a bit more enjoyable, especially when they’re busting Kratos’ balls.



I liked the humor. It's not excesive. They even get a few chuckles and at least one smile from Kratos.



MFB said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> OK, I thought I was losing my mind this whole time, but you CAN change arrow types right? Because ever since I got the sonic arrows, that's ALL Atreus has been using and the D-Pad doesnt seem to switch like in the 2018 version. You clearly have two different ones while playing as him, so I don't know what the disconnect is.[/spoiler[





Spoiler



You get two types of arrows as in the previous game, but they're not available from the beginning IIRC.


----------



## MFB

That just reminded me, what happened to the ...companion or summons that you used to have? I used the FUCK out of the Wolves one, those dudes inflicted hella stun and damage when fully upgraded.


----------



## gabito

You get those too. I think you have to upgrade something, put something into a socket, or whatever. I can't remember, I just upgraded and added stuff randomly once in a while, I couldn't care less about that stuff.


----------



## RevDrucifer

MFB said:


> That just reminded me, what happened to the ...companion or summons that you used to have? I used the FUCK out of the Wolves one, those dudes inflicted hella stun and damage when fully upgraded.



They’re in there but I can’t remember where they come in place. I just unlocked a 3rd one for Atreus last night. I keep forgetting they‘re available!


----------



## MFB

Gotcha. Update from last night.



Spoiler



Didn't get to play much more, made it into the temple in Alfheim and saw the Lake of Souls, went up and Kratos got the draw back into it before Atreus stopped him. Saw Groa's shrine and the false Ragnarok prophecy that she gave Odin before calling it a night.

After seeing the lake and what Sindri told us about Brok, my assumption is that Brok ain't making it out of this thing alive, especially given that Sindri was only able to get 3/4 of his soul out - so it's not like he's complete.

And I STILL haven't found a heavy runic attack yet, did I miss it? Even the light one I have is still the very first one you get.


----------



## RevDrucifer

MFB said:


> Gotcha. Update from last night.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Didn't get to play much more, made it into the temple in Alfheim and saw the Lake of Souls, went up and Kratos got the draw back into it before Atreus stopped him. Saw Groa's shrine and the false Ragnarok prophecy that she gave Odin before calling it a night.
> 
> After seeing the lake and what Sindri told us about Brok, my assumption is that Brok ain't making it out of this thing alive, especially given that Sindri was only able to get 3/4 of his soul out - so it's not like he's complete.
> 
> And I STILL haven't found a heavy runic attack yet, did I miss it? Even the light one I have is still the very first one you get.



I _think _I got one last night, finally. It’s hard to assess how far into the game I am due to the side missions I’ve been doing, but I was wondering about that as well for a while. I was starting to fade out for my last hour of playing and I’m still too immature to just go to bed when I’m tired, I generally end up forgetting everything that happens in the last hour before I go to bed.


----------



## MFB

RevDrucifer said:


> I _think _I got one last night, finally. It’s hard to assess how far into the game I am due to the side missions I’ve been doing, but I was wondering about that as well for a while. I was starting to fade out for my last hour of playing and I’m still too immature to just go to bed when I’m tired, I generally end up forgetting everything that happens in the last hour before I go to bed.



Bedtime procrastinators unite  I was up until 2AM on Sunday because I didn't realize how late it had gotten. 

I think even now I've only got one more side quest added to my list since Mimir's in Svartalfheim, seems like they aren't as many as people made it seem and it's not full blown RPG thankfully, maybe I'll knock that out along with the other Draugr Hole that's in the mine for those sweet rewards. I went into it the first few times without a resurrection stone and it kept killing me at the last maybe, 20% health since it seems like enemies aren't dropping much health. I think I also need to change me autolock settings for combat, I don't think it picks a new target after I kill someone.


----------



## thebeesknees22

MFB said:


> Bedtime procrastinators unite  I was up until 2AM on Sunday because I didn't realize how late it had gotten.
> 
> I think even now I've only got one more side quest added to my list since Mimir's in Svartalfheim, seems like they aren't as many as people made it seem and it's not full blown RPG thankfully, maybe I'll knock that out along with the other Draugr Hole that's in the mine for those sweet rewards. I went into it the first few times without a resurrection stone and it kept killing me at the last maybe, 20% health since it seems like enemies aren't dropping much health. I think I also need to change me autolock settings for combat, I don't think it picks a new target after I kill someone.


Those draugr holes are tough. I've managed to kill 2 of them so far, but by a razor thin bit of health left both times.


----------



## gabito

MFB said:


> I think even now I've only got one more side quest added to my list since Mimir's in Svartalfheim, seems like they aren't as many as people made it seem and it's not full blown RPG thankfully



There's plenty. Some are pretty short and straightforward, some are more involved, some are just the "collect things" type, some are "clear this and that area of baddies", some are some kind of fetch quest, and some more are added after you beat the game.

Now that I beat the game it seems every place I go some quest is given to me or automatically added to my quest log.

Still not "The Witcher 3" almost-infinite-amount-of-side-quests, but there are quite a few.


----------



## wankerness

What difficulty is everyone playing it on?


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> What difficulty is everyone playing it on?


Whatever the middle one was - it was the most "neutral" / default sounding one.

I always assume (maybe wrongly) that this is the tuned "intended experience", and the rest of the modes are derived from it.


----------



## thebeesknees22

wankerness said:


> What difficulty is everyone playing it on?


it varied for me. Most of the time normal balanced, but a handful of times i'd hit a boss I had a hard time with so I'd flip it to story mode. I ain't got time to go wandering around getting stronger so ...I did what I had to. I won't apologize for it. lol


----------



## p0ke

Looks like I'll be waiting a little bit before getting deeper into Witcher 3 - the developer just announced that a next-gen update for it is coming next month, and apparently it'll be free. So I'll wait for that until diving into it.


----------



## gabito

thebeesknees22 said:


> it varied for me. Most of the time normal balanced, but a handful of times i'd hit a boss I had a hard time with so I'd flip it to story mode. I ain't got time to go wandering around getting stronger so ...I did what I had to. I won't apologize for it. lol



Same. Or more like 50/50 maybe? The thing I'm least interested in as of late is struggling with a game's difficulty, I enjoy the stories and generally "exploring" or just fucking around and looking at the pretty graphics.

Yeah, I'm old and tired.


----------



## MFB

TedEH said:


> Whatever the middle one was - it was the most "neutral" / default sounding one.
> 
> I always assume (maybe wrongly) that this is the tuned "intended experience", and the rest of the modes are derived from it.





thebeesknees22 said:


> it varied for me. Most of the time normal balanced, but a handful of times i'd hit a boss I had a hard time with so I'd flip it to story mode. I ain't got time to go wandering around getting stronger so ...I did what I had to. I won't apologize for it. lol



Same for me, first playthrough is always just balanced/medium/etc to play it through, then if I want to go back and replay it on harder I can. I'm surprised at how many times I've died to what shouldn't even be hard enemies, but it seems like there's a lot of high-powered enemies with multiple health bars compared to other entries. I'm sure if I got better with the quickspin and was more on my block game I'd be doing better, but I'm going with a high STR/dodge build like it's fucking BB/Sekiro because I'm an idiot I guess.


----------



## gabito

I even died a few times on easy , but I'm sure that was because I was being reckless. For good players it shouldn't be an issue.

There are a some enemies were you *really* have to pay attention though (think the valkyries in GoW 2018).


----------



## thebeesknees22

MFB said:


> Same for me, first playthrough is always just balanced/medium/etc to play it through, then if I want to go back and replay it on harder I can. I'm surprised at how many times I've died to what shouldn't even be hard enemies, but it seems like there's a lot of high-powered enemies with multiple health bars compared to other entries. I'm sure if I got better with the quickspin and was more on my block game I'd be doing better, but I'm going with a high STR/dodge build like it's fucking BB/Sekiro because I'm an idiot I guess.


same. I'd surprisingly beat some really tough boss in balanced mode juuust barely and then get slaughtered by some noname regular baddies right after. lol

It's all about nailing the strategy for each type and if you miss a beat then boom, you get nailed.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Same for me, first playthrough is always just balanced/medium/etc to play it through, then if I want to go back and replay it on harder I can. I'm surprised at how many times I've died to what shouldn't even be hard enemies, but it seems like there's a lot of high-powered enemies with multiple health bars compared to other entries. I'm sure if I got better with the quickspin and was more on my block game I'd be doing better, but I'm going with a high STR/dodge build like it's fucking BB/Sekiro because I'm an idiot I guess.


I don't even remember how I played the first one. I don't think I used a shield, because I remember trying out the parry mechanic once or twice and not really using it again afterwards, but I don't remember the defensive techniques. Isn't it pretty much just you mash dodge whenever anything gets close cause there's no stamina bar and thus no reason not to? 

Sounds to me like this is the kind of experience I'll probably have (playing on normal, dying to regular enemies more often than bosses). My memory of the first one was the only boss I took more than one try on was that one with the insect minions. It was more the masses of enemies in later areas that caused me problems. I'm sold, I'll buy this game and start it tomorrow I guess (unfortunately Tuesdays are the day I have band practice right after work until late).


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I don't even remember how I played the first one. I don't think I used a shield, because I remember trying out the parry mechanic once or twice and not really using it again afterwards, but I don't remember the defensive techniques. Isn't it pretty much just you mash dodge whenever anything gets close cause there's no stamina bar and thus no reason not to?
> 
> Sounds to me like this is the kind of experience I'll probably have (playing on normal, dying to regular enemies more often than bosses). My memory of the first one was the only boss I took more than one try on was that one with the insect minions. It was more the masses of enemies in later areas that caused me problems. I'm sold, I'll buy this game and start it tomorrow I guess (unfortunately Tuesdays are the day I have band practice right after work until late).



Yeah, you have an evade + double-evade if you need to and that combined with an attack if you by the skill (throw the axe WHILE evading back), but my first instinct is naturally to block since this game HAS a shield which can also be used offensively. The window is just a bit odd as the attacks are telegraphed so it's just adapting to that again.

Honestly, I think Ragnarok will be what you wanted AC:Valhalla to be since it has some side quests but is still quite linear, there's skill trees but it's not bogged down, etc. (and obviously no climbing/map clearing via tower point, etc)


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Getting close to the end of TLOUP2.

And with all the buzz Ragnarok is getting I might just jump on that when I get done.

Basically anything to keep my gimmick of never finishing the Mass Effect trilogy going.


----------



## wankerness

The part where you crawl around on the high beams between tall buildings towards the end of TLOUP2 is the most scared I've ever been playing a videogame. Jesus christ was that effective. My palms get sweaty just thinking about it.


----------



## MFB

Spoiler



Finished Alfheim last night, returned to Svartalfheim to do another couple side quests and trying to clear the Draugr hole out after completing a DIFFERENT one in some desert after I freed the big jellyfish (AKA Lunch according to BOI). Mimir's big whale boy is free now, which was a weird sort of quest, and I don't really know if the designer's thought about the implications of a creature that size in a body of water that small; it seems like it'd have legitimately nowhere to go. 

Got some updated armor by doing that desert sidequest, the upgrades seem pretty slow compared to the other one as well, but maybe I'm just misremembering.


----------



## RevDrucifer

wankerness said:


> What difficulty is everyone playing it on?



I’ve been switching as well. Depends on my mood and how much BS I feel like dealing with. In the case of the graves, I’d rather come back to them when I have a stronger build and take them out without a handicap on my character, other times, specifically when I’m wiped out from work or I’m really diggin’ on the storyline, I might drop it down a level.


----------



## RevDrucifer

MFB said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Finished Alfheim last night, returned to Svartalfheim to do another couple side quests and trying to clear the Draugr hole out after completing a DIFFERENT one in some desert after I freed the big jellyfish (AKA Lunch according to BOI). Mimir's big whale boy is free now, which was a weird sort of quest, and I don't really know if the designer's thought about the implications of a creature that size in a body of water that small; it seems like it'd have legitimately nowhere to go.
> 
> Got some updated armor by doing that desert sidequest, the upgrades seem pretty slow compared to the other one as well, but maybe I'm just misremembering.





Spoiler



Hahahahah just wait, the jellyfish story doesn’t end there!


----------



## RevDrucifer

MFB said:


> Same for me, first playthrough is always just balanced/medium/etc to play it through, then if I want to go back and replay it on harder I can. I'm surprised at how many times I've died to what shouldn't even be hard enemies, but it seems like there's a lot of high-powered enemies with multiple health bars compared to other entries. I'm sure if I got better with the quickspin and was more on my block game I'd be doing better, but I'm going with a high STR/dodge build like it's fucking BB/Sekiro because I'm an idiot I guess.



Blocking is definitely a big thing, I’ve come to realize. I was ignoring it initially and just beating the shit out of everyone but after taking a few blows that depleted a good amount of my health bar I started playing more defensively. I got some rune or shield piece that kicked up the power of the double-tap block and it’s made it equally offensive as it is defensive, to the point I can just push someone to the other side of the screen and take ’em out with the blades. 

One thing I did a lot in the first game I’m trying not to do now is keep enemies suspended in the air with the blades while continuously nailing them with it. It’s an easy way to take enemies down, but I relied on it too much in the first game and I’m having a bit more fun learning all the combinations and jumping from weapon to weapon to clear areas. 

One thing I’m stoked about; I haven’t used a single YouTube walkthrough or guide yet to solve anything. Previously if I spent more than 5 minutes trying to figure something out I’d just look it up but I’m not being a lazy bitch this time. The sigil arrows are almost always the answer I’m looking for this time around, instead of throwing the axe at a gear to freeze it.


----------



## MFB

That's coincidental as I ALSO got two new shield upgrades that affect the L1 double-tap - one inflicts status damage as an additional attack when I interrupt, and the other increases my cooldown on it, so I went with that one. I'm trying to BLOCK more than parry now which I think was what hurt me before, and working on my evasion as my armor rewards me with a perfectly timed evade.

I have a similar problem in that I'm all about kiting enemies with the ranged attack of the axe, but my usual it L2 + R2 to freeze someone, calls it back, sprint + R2 for the big ground slam and then go into fucking them up close range. I also NEVER use the blades for whatever reason even though their MO is big crowd control situations, my brain just doesn't send the signal to switch weapons when I'm fighting.


----------



## wankerness

I think I pretty much never touched the axe again after getting the blades in the first game. Are they less effective relative to it this go-round?

I installed the game yesterday, should finally get to play this evening!


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Are they less effective relative to it this go-round?


I find it hard to tell.... my intuition says that they seem to do less damage overall unless an enemy is designed specifically to take the heat damage from them. Maybe it's higher DPS vs damage-per-hit, but who knows.

But also, I find that the way the hit animations work with the axe are just so much more satisfying. You don't "feel" the hit with the blades in the same way, so they're less fun, so I use them less for that reason.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I think I pretty much never touched the axe again after getting the blades in the first game. Are they less effective relative to it this go-round?
> 
> I installed the game yesterday, should finally get to play this evening!



I think by the time you got them in 2018, my axe was so upgraded I was like, "Well, I don't want to start from the bottom again!" and used them sparingly (and did end up getting them fully upgraded); I'm sure they work just as well as the axe, just in different situations, but it's tough for me to say since I barely remember to use them.

edit: also what Ted said


----------



## wankerness

Well, I played it for a while, up until the character change. I like it, but some things are frustrating cause I don’t understand them. The main thing that drives me nuts are the highlighted attacks. Based on other games like Batman Arkham Asylum or whatever and the game telling you, red means you have to dodge, you can’t block. But what the hell is yellow? It seems like it means the same thing!! I tried blocking yellow attacks, tried parrying them, and always just got nailed. This is mainly based on that obnoxious alligator/dinosaur boss thing where the yellow attack was a grab.

The other thing that was driving me nuts was Thor’s ground pound red attack - this game doesn’t seem to have iframes, and one roll wasn’t even close to enough to get out of the damage radius of that, so I got hit by EVERY SINGLE ONE.

I did two sidequests which were a nice detour and got me a good armor set. However, I think I hate the upgrade system, cause it seems like you can upgrade anything, but later gear has better starting values, so upgrading early gear is just throwing limited resources down a hole. I upgraded the fancy armor once and some decent weapon attachments once and a shield once and I guess that will probably be it until I get some newer gear.

So far I’ve been playing on medium, but I had to take it down to 2/5 on the two draugr barrows with The Hateful or whatever the mini boss is called cause they seemed tuned higher than the other enemies in the zone and I didn’t feel like coming back later. Although it already seems like this game is forcing you to wait until freeroam mode a lot more than the previous game did, with whatever those leaky pipe looking things are all over the place that you can’t interact with. 

But yeah, I’ve definitely died several times. Fortunately there’s basically no punishment for it most of the time.


----------



## MFB

Yellow is supposed to be parry, but as you can see, the window is a little wonky compared to FS games, and you're right that there's no i-frames which probably also what's hurting me on the evade moves.


----------



## TedEH

I thought that it was:
red = your block will always be broken and you'll take damage
yellow = your block will be broken, but you take no damage
no circle = you can parry almost anything
blue = you should double-tap the block because there's an intentionally wide parry window that's designed to be how you take down this enemy.


----------



## wankerness

I think I mainly don't have the slightest idea what the parry timing would be on a move where a huge fuckin alligator opens it's mouth and picks you up. That seemed like an un-parryable attack if I ever saw one. If that's really what yellow means though guess that's just a very wonky window compared to the others. I'll have to practice on guys that do swings instead of eating you.

Oh, now Ted says he doesn't think yellow means parry. Google time it is!

OK, so you're both right, yellow means "you can perfect-parry it, but if you mistime it and block instead it's going to break your guard unless you have a super-beefy shield." Clear as mud! The blocking in this game is super jank, it seems like you only bring your shield out sometimes when you hold L1.

Another thing about this game I dislike is the camera/lock on system. It seems like an even worse version of Bloodborne when it comes to needing to get away from an enemy and grab a healing item on the ground. Even if you manage to break lockon, your character just sidles away slowly backwards instead of TURNING AROUND AND RUNNING when you yank the stick back away from the enemy most of the time. This combined with the way the camera is so zoomed in on you that you can't see behind you (or even your feet) makes things really cumbersome if you need situational awareness. Usually if I hold down sprint he'll eventually turn away and run, but usually by the time I've gotten away from the apparent strong magnetic pull of your character facing whatever's killing you, it's too late and they've hit me again and I've died before I could sidle all the way back to that health pickup on the other side of the arena.

I'm guessing there might be settings somewhere that make this easier. The only thing it asked me when I started the game about lockon was if I wanted it to automatically lock on to another enemy when the first one died, to which I said yes - that doesn't seem like it would help to turn off with this particular repeating scenario.

EDIT: Oh yeah, to comment on the blades vs axe, I think the axe feels a bit better in this game than the last, but the blades are still just comically overpowered on some enemy types cause you can just keep spamming the move where you grab an enemy and toss them in the air. I've managed to successfully juggle three humanoids at once, just hitting them over and over while they were suspended in the air with them unable to attack back. Great stuff. Most of the chaos blades techniques I haven't tried AT ALL, but that one is so great.


----------



## bostjan

Anyone here played GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition? I downloaded it a long time ago and just barely got to playing it for any amount of time a 3-4 weeks ago. There are a lot of things that are just totally game-breaking (for example, the rampage missions in GTA III won't spawn enough enemies in the time limit, so they are impossible to complete, including the story missions, so I'm stuck in that one), a lot of graphics "upgrades" that are awful (they reskinned Denise in GTA SA and she looks not just bad but comically bad now, actually pretty much everything about San Andreas looks notably worse, from the weather to the NPCs to the cutscenes...), and the menus have a weird look and feel to them that don't really seem to match the style of the original game, but other than that, I guess it is a game.


----------



## gabito

I finished the game and still don't know what the warning circles mean. Red is obviously "avoid at all costs", but I just dodge everything that involves a warning circle because I almost never got it right when it comes to blocking (unless there's no warning, you can always block that). Oh, and when an enemy has their shield up, double-tap L1 and you usually break it.

Yeah, the camera is too close.

I'm doing all the secondary stuff now, and for some reason I'm way more entertained than when I played the main mission. Lots of lore and exploration, interesting stuff. Also some of the realms seem to be quite big. Well, at least Vanaheim and Svartalfheim are.


----------



## RevDrucifer

wankerness said:


> Well, I played it for a while, up until the character change. I like it, but some things are frustrating cause I don’t understand them. The main thing that drives me nuts are the highlighted attacks. Based on other games like Batman Arkham Asylum or whatever and the game telling you, red means you have to dodge, you can’t block. But what the hell is yellow? It seems like it means the same thing!! I tried blocking yellow attacks, tried parrying them, and always just got nailed. This is mainly based on that obnoxious alligator/dinosaur boss thing where the yellow attack was a grab.
> 
> The other thing that was driving me nuts was Thor’s ground pound red attack - this game doesn’t seem to have iframes, and one roll wasn’t even close to enough to get out of the damage radius of that, so I got hit by EVERY SINGLE ONE.
> 
> I did two sidequests which were a nice detour and got me a good armor set. However, I think I hate the upgrade system, cause it seems like you can upgrade anything, but later gear has better starting values, so upgrading early gear is just throwing limited resources down a hole. I upgraded the fancy armor once and some decent weapon attachments once and a shield once and I guess that will probably be it until I get some newer gear.
> 
> So far I’ve been playing on medium, but I had to take it down to 2/5 on the two draugr barrows with The Hateful or whatever the mini boss is called cause they seemed tuned higher than the other enemies in the zone and I didn’t feel like coming back later. Although it already seems like this game is forcing you to wait until freeroam mode a lot more than the previous game did, with whatever those leaky pipe looking things are all over the place that you can’t interact with.
> 
> But yeah, I’ve definitely died several times. Fortunately there’s basically no punishment for it most of the time.



At some point, an upgrade for the roll distance comes up and let’s you actually get out of the way, but I can’t remember if it’s a rune or what it was. When I’m doing a marathon session of 6 hours or so, I just forget all the details of this stuff.

And fully agreed on the upgrades; the next level up seems to come faster than I have the option to upgrade so it makes upgrading a moot point.


----------



## wankerness

RevDrucifer said:


> At some point, an upgrade for the roll distance comes up and let’s you actually get out of the way, but I can’t remember if it’s a rune or what it was. When I’m doing a marathon session of 6 hours or so, I just forget all the details of this stuff.
> 
> And fully agreed on the upgrades; the next level up seems to come faster than I have the option to upgrade so it makes upgrading a moot point.


Hmm. That would have been useful. Too bad you fight Thor RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME! Ah well. I am not sure if you can even lose that fight. The one time I "died" he was like "you can't quit yet!!!" and pulled me back up.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> Hmm. That would have been useful. Too bad you fight Thor RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME! Ah well. I am not sure if you can even lose that fight. The one time I "died" he was like "you can't quit yet!!!" and pulled me back up.



You CAN do a double evade by the way, or just sprint past him and use the quick turn


----------



## RevDrucifer

wankerness said:


> Hmm. That would have been useful. Too bad you fight Thor RIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME! Ah well. I am not sure if you can even lose that fight. The one time I "died" he was like "you can't quit yet!!!" and pulled me back up.



Yeah I think that’s basically an ‘active’ cut scene. 

At this point in the story I’m curious to how it’s all going to end. I can definitely see it going in multiple directions in regards to who is going to fight who and who might end up teaming up, which I dig quite a bit being as far into the story as I am.


----------



## wankerness

Usually I hate videogame stories and just want to mash skip on all the cutscenes, but so far I'm actually interested in what's going on and am not annoyed by the dialogue (except when the game presents you with branching paths that frequently contain treasure chests and the second you walk in the direction of any of them Atreus is like "what are you doing we have to stay on the path!" SHUT UP, BOY!!!). So, that's a big achievement. Usually only Naughtydog and classic bioware have that effect for me.

The only other thing I really have to add about the voiceacting is to mention Odin's voice. What is up with that?? It sounds like he's a weedy little new york mobster!! It's kind of funny. The voice actor is fine but it's definitely odd casting in the context of everyone else in the game.


----------



## gabito

Yeah, the actors are very good but the way some of them talk is like… I don’t know. Like they don’t belong there.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> some of them talk is like… I don’t know. Like they don’t belong there.


I've noticed that as I become an adult - I can't internalize "fantasy talk" very well. Sooooo much fantasy dialogue comes across as stilted and unnatural, but it's so universal that to complain about it would feel mostly meaningless since everyone else has mostly accepted it.

Like real people aren't normally so exaggerated, and if they were, it would be off-putting.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I've noticed that as I become an adult - I can't internalize "fantasy talk" very well. Sooooo much fantasy dialogue comes across as stilted and unnatural, but it's so universal that to complain about it would feel mostly meaningless since everyone else has mostly accepted it.
> 
> Like real people aren't normally so exaggerated, and if they were, it would be off-putting.


Yeah, I wouldn’t expect them to talk like they are characters from The Hobbit, The VVitch, or something, but “middle aged new yorker” and “XXI century teenagers” come across as weird to me in this context. 

I think that something more neutral like Kratos’ or Freya’s acting, or just weird / eccentric like Brok’s or Mimir’s sounds fine though.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I've noticed that as I become an adult - I can't internalize "fantasy talk" very well. Sooooo much fantasy dialogue comes across as stilted and unnatural, but it's so universal that to complain about it would feel mostly meaningless since everyone else has mostly accepted it.
> 
> Like real people aren't normally so exaggerated, and if they were, it would be off-putting.


I'm not saying fantasy talk is always great, but I am saying that if you have a fantasy game, everyone's generally speaking either neutrally or with attempts at norse accents, and then you cast one guy that sounds like he belongs on the Sopranos that they're going to stick out like a sore thumb. As I mentioned before, it's not even that I don't like it, it's that I think it's funny and that it is VERY jarring compared to everything else going on so far (haven't noticed any characters sounding like teenagers yet besides Atreus who's fine but I'm only like 6 hours in).

Reminds me of the Princess Mononoke english dub where almost everyone's trying to sound neutral and like they're in a medieval fantasy, and then Billy Bob Thornton's character waltzes through sounding like a narcoleptic Foghorn Leghorn. Except that's just plain bad, not merely amusing.


----------



## Ralyks

Man, everyone talking about their SoulsBourne games and their God of Wars, you know what's up in this household?!



...... Ok, mostly my son because he's been waiting forever for this, but still.


----------



## wankerness

I have the first one. Did they make any great advances in the sequels?


----------



## MFB

Spoiler



Finished Atreus second mission, those ones feel like forever even though they're not nearly as bad as other games side character missions. I'm glad they didn't force an Atreus/Angrboda love story, I'm sure the anti woke crowd would've rioted if they did. Then I did the Freya fight before stopping to go to bed.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> I think that something more neutral like Kratos’ or Freya’s acting, or just weird / eccentric like Brok’s or Mimir’s sounds fine though.


I actually count Freya's voice in the camp of sometimes sounding like bad stage-play delivery. It ranges from excellent at times - when it needs to be - but the banter, and some of the minor-story-points dialogue is as awkward as anything else. It's all the over-acting and dramatic pauses and having modern+fantasy tones jammed next to eachother.

I can't describe how it bothers me without spoilers:


Spoiler



I find Atreus to be voiced fine, and in a way I expect. It's awkward, but in a teenage way that make sense and is believable to me.

Angrboda on the other hand is exactly the contrast I'm talking about - it's that cringy attempt at "wow, I've never spoken to _real people before_" kind of writing that feels like I'm being delivered video-game-y drama exposition rather than witnessing a believable character. A teenager being awkward is something I can believe. "Hehe I'm going to be weird for the first few minutes of our interaction because this terrible dialogue is the only way to get across that my character has been isolated for a while" just doesn't land for me. Especially when it contrasts with the environment that fails to tell the same story. I'm supposed to just take in the details just because they're exposited at me rather than be able to see a lived in space and be able to put two and two together myself.

Aaaaand then, just to further contrast it again, the next thing you do in that segment is visit the giant grandmother's house - the set dressing for that whole scene is set up VERY well to show instead of tell - and while they hammer the "abusive family member" thing pretty on-the-nose via dialogue too, most of what you need to know you can just see - instead of having a character fantasy-talk you into understanding what's going on.

Example 2:
When Freya stops short of killing you because she witnesses you taming the boy-bear outburst - there's no dialogue, just a really well captured facial expression that shows the conflict she's experiencing. It's exceptionally well executed in that moment.
Then you go on some video-game-y adventure with her, and the tone shifts into a fantasy-talk pissing match over who is the worst parent and who has made the most dramatic mistakes - and it's the farthest thing from a natural sounding conversation.



I don't know how to explain it better than that. The dialogue and delivery in this game is good where it matters, but I just have so much trouble with fantasy dialogue in general. I think it's a lot of why I can't get into most things in fantasy settings.

Edit:
To be clear - I don't hold it against the game at all. In some cases, I don't know that there would have been a reasonable alternative that suits the medium. In most other cases, it's just my own taste at play. My brain lights on fire when asked to reconcile fantastical exposition nonsense, and there's not much I can do to help it. Maybe some kind of very low threshold for suspension-of-disbelief.


----------



## narad

Grabbed Tactics Ogre Reborn. Not bad. Digging it more than Triangle Strategy, that's for sure.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I actually count Freya's voice in the camp of sometimes sounding like bad stage-play delivery. It ranges from excellent at times - when it needs to be - but the banter, and some of the minor-story-points dialogue is as awkward as anything else. It's all the over-acting and dramatic pauses and having modern+fantasy tones jammed next to eachother.
> 
> I can't describe how it bothers me without spoilers:
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I find Atreus to be voiced fine, and in a way I expect. It's awkward, but in a teenage way that make sense and is believable to me.
> 
> Angrboda on the other hand is exactly the contrast I'm talking about - it's that cringy attempt at "wow, I've never spoken to _real people before_" kind of writing that feels like I'm being delivered video-game-y drama exposition rather than witnessing a believable character. A teenager being awkward is something I can believe. "Hehe I'm going to be weird for the first few minutes of our interaction because this terrible dialogue is the only way to get across that my character has been isolated for a while" just doesn't land for me. Especially when it contrasts with the environment that fails to tell the same story. I'm supposed to just take in the details just because they're exposited at me rather than be able to see a lived in space and be able to put two and two together myself.
> 
> Aaaaand then, just to further contrast it again, the next thing you do in that segment is visit the giant grandmother's house - the set dressing for that whole scene is set up VERY well to show instead of tell - and while they hammer the "abusive family member" thing pretty on-the-nose via dialogue too, most of what you need to know you can just see - instead of having a character fantasy-talk you into understanding what's going on.
> 
> Example 2:
> When Freya stops short of killing you because she witnesses you taming the boy-bear outburst - there's no dialogue, just a really well captured facial expression that shows the conflict she's experiencing. It's exceptionally well executed in that moment.
> Then you go on some video-game-y adventure with her, and the tone shifts into a fantasy-talk pissing match over who is the worst parent and who has made the most dramatic mistakes - and it's the farthest thing from a natural sounding conversation.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know how to explain it better than that. The dialogue and delivery in this game is good where it matters, but I just have so much trouble with fantasy dialogue in general. I think it's a lot of why I can't get into most things in fantasy settings.
> 
> Edit:
> To be clear - I don't hold it against the game at all. In some cases, I don't know that there would have been a reasonable alternative that suits the medium. In most other cases, it's just my own taste at play. My brain lights on fire when asked to reconcile fantastical exposition nonsense, and there's not much I can do to help it. Maybe some kind of very low threshold for suspension-of-disbelief.



Yeah, I mostly agree. I find the voice acting to be good in general, but as I said: I'd prefer the acting to be more neutral-sounding (or maybe the opposite too? I'm fine with them being more exaggerated - or even with made up accents and pronounciation-, like Brok, Sindri, the squirrel, et al) rather than "This guy sounds like he's a surfer dude, what the hell is he doing here?"

And yeah, there's sometimes a sharp contrast between their regular "main scenes" acting and the characters' banter delivery. Even more so when you get to explore with a certain companion (I'm talking about Freya, but I don't want to spoil that), and then you have the actor sounding literally like they're reading their lines like "Maybe you should pull that lever", in the most "I'm really bored of doing this, I should read the contracts I sign" tone ever (not that you could put much emotion talking about that kind of stuff, but you'll see). It reminds me of Peter Dinklage's "That wizard came from the moon" in Destiny, but worse.

But anyway, I like the game and I'm just nitpicking. After a while I just get used to it or ignore that kind of stuff.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> squirrel


Gah, how did I forget the squirrel guy? Definitely lands in the fantasy BS dialogue bucket.



gabito said:


> But anyway, I like the game and I'm just nitpicking.


+1.

Where it matters, the game is hitting the notes I want it to hit so far.


----------



## Crungy

bostjan said:


> Anyone here played GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition? I downloaded it a long time ago and just barely got to playing it for any amount of time a 3-4 weeks ago. There are a lot of things that are just totally game-breaking (for example, the rampage missions in GTA III won't spawn enough enemies in the time limit, so they are impossible to complete, including the story missions, so I'm stuck in that one), a lot of graphics "upgrades" that are awful (they reskinned Denise in GTA SA and she looks not just bad but comically bad now, actually pretty much everything about San Andreas looks notably worse, from the weather to the NPCs to the cutscenes...), and the menus have a weird look and feel to them that don't really seem to match the style of the original game, but other than that, I guess it is a game.


I tried San Andreas when they first released it and it was terrible, enough to uninstall. I'd rather play it on my actual PS2 but at the same time age has not been kind to those old GTA games. The only I can kind of get into is 3.

I agree on the menus too, it felt out of place.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> Gah, how did I forget the squirrel guy? Definitely lands in the fantasy BS dialogue bucket.



Haha  , I'm not a native english speaker and that kind of stuff resonates in a different way with me. Probably more "exotic" or "weird" to my ears.


----------



## bostjan

Crungy said:


> I tried San Andreas when they first released it and it was terrible, enough to uninstall. I'd rather play it on my actual PS2 but at the same time age has not been kind to those old GTA games. The only I can kind of get into is 3.


3 definitive or 3 on the PS2? GTA III Definitive is unplayable. Or maybe the different consoles got different bugs. But whatever mission where you have to kill 30 Triads in 2 minutes, and it only spawns ten of them and, if you get super lucky, you might get three more to spawn in the 2 minutes, it's just an absolute impasse. I remember that the PS2 version of that mission was challenging, but for the difficulty, not because of a bug. In the DE, it's super easy, since there are hardly any enemies, but you can't complete it. There were a bunch of other missions before that which I recall being broken, too, but I somehow managed to get through them after multiple tries. Tons of glitches and tons of times I've just gotten stuck because the next part of a multipart mission just wouldn't happen.

Oh, yeah, for example, the mission where 8 Ball blows up the ship in the port! The AI kept having him rush right in and get killed before I could even get set up. The PS2 version doesn't let him move until you start shooting. In order to pass the mission, I had to run 8 Ball over and park my car on top of him so he wouldn't run off. I know that's cheating, since that's not how the game wants you to complete the mission, but I serious tried going as fast as possible and I was usually failing just about the time I got to the top of the roof where you are supposed to shoot.

I guess the games are mostly the same if all you want to do is blow up shit and cause pandemonium, though.

SA, honestly, I never played on the PS2 myself, I only ever watched my friends play it, and I don't remember them ever making it very far. I'm currently in the desert part of the game, and the amount of enjoyment I've got out of it seems to have tanked, so I'm hardly playing it now. The missions are all kind of a slog at this point, the difficult is ramped up, but it seems mostly like cheap difficulty rather than anything that feels rewarding - maybe that's how the original game was, though. I feel like there are at least fewer glitches in SA than in III, but I also kind of feel like they "improved" SA sort of like how that old lady "improved" that painting of Jesus in Spain, where the developers who ported it probably honestly thought that their efforts would make it look better, but then everything they were changing ended up looking like absolute shit, so they gave up and just released it with some graphical "upgrades" and the rest just copied and pasted over from the original. Honestly, they should have just left it as is and called it a port, rather than a "definitive edition."

But the release has been out a long time now, and I honestly didn't touch it after I bought it, first because I didn't have enough room for it until I finished other games and then because I didn't have time to play it. I get the feeling that everyone else downloaded and probably demanded their money back long ago.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> I have the first one. Did they make any great advances in the sequels?


Basically amped the silliness up to 11, added a "story mode", added more ways to cause chaos, and the map is massive. At worse, it's only 30 bucks and will probably see a sale sooner than later. It's been silly broken fun though. But my kid absolutely loves the original, so this was basically an early Christmas gift.

As for me, in the middle of Palace 3 in Persona 5 Golden. I don't know if there's a whole bunch of new dialogue in even parts from vanilla P5, but for some reason, I find Ryuji way more endearing this time around.


----------



## wankerness

God of War - got through some more major sections of the story, and finally hit a section I didn't like. This was the lengthy


Spoiler



Angrboda


 section. I mean, I don't have a problem with the character or what happened exactly, it just took so damn long. No, I did not want to sidle around on a yak collecting fruits for 30 minutes! The


Spoiler



cauldron


boss, though, made up for it - that was by far the most fun boss yet. Possibly partly cause it was so easy, I didn't even get hit during the whole fight. 
Got through the next big section and the optional quests with


Spoiler



Kratos and Freya,


 I loved all of that, I think she's the best character in this game at this point. 

I switched from using the defensive shield to the dauntless one that can't even block, and the game's gotten a lot easier when I ONLY can use a shield for parries. It's extremely effective, and if the shield can only parry it's a lot easier to get the timings right. So yeah, only dodging or parrying at this point. I definitely screw it up fairly often (this game does require you to be somewhat deliberate with parries, if you are in the middle of an attack it seems like it won't cancel the animation to parry instead), but things are still going a lot smoother (and faster - parries do a LOT of stun to enemies) than they were with the blocking shield.


----------



## Crungy

bostjan said:


> 3 definitive or 3 on the PS2? GTA III Definitive is unplayable. Or maybe the different consoles got different bugs. But whatever mission where you have to kill 30 Triads in 2 minutes, and it only spawns ten of them and, if you get super lucky, you might get three more to spawn in the 2 minutes, it's just an absolute impasse. I remember that the PS2 version of that mission was challenging, but for the difficulty, not because of a bug. In the DE, it's super easy, since there are hardly any enemies, but you can't complete it. There were a bunch of other missions before that which I recall being broken, too, but I somehow managed to get through them after multiple tries. Tons of glitches and tons of times I've just gotten stuck because the next part of a multipart mission just wouldn't happen.
> 
> Oh, yeah, for example, the mission where 8 Ball blows up the ship in the port! The AI kept having him rush right in and get killed before I could even get set up. The PS2 version doesn't let him move until you start shooting. In order to pass the mission, I had to run 8 Ball over and park my car on top of him so he wouldn't run off. I know that's cheating, since that's not how the game wants you to complete the mission, but I serious tried going as fast as possible and I was usually failing just about the time I got to the top of the roof where you are supposed to shoot.
> 
> I guess the games are mostly the same if all you want to do is blow up shit and cause pandemonium, though.
> 
> SA, honestly, I never played on the PS2 myself, I only ever watched my friends play it, and I don't remember them ever making it very far. I'm currently in the desert part of the game, and the amount of enjoyment I've got out of it seems to have tanked, so I'm hardly playing it now. The missions are all kind of a slog at this point, the difficult is ramped up, but it seems mostly like cheap difficulty rather than anything that feels rewarding - maybe that's how the original game was, though. I feel like there are at least fewer glitches in SA than in III, but I also kind of feel like they "improved" SA sort of like how that old lady "improved" that painting of Jesus in Spain, where the developers who ported it probably honestly thought that their efforts would make it look better, but then everything they were changing ended up looking like absolute shit, so they gave up and just released it with some graphical "upgrades" and the rest just copied and pasted over from the original. Honestly, they should have just left it as is and called it a port, rather than a "definitive edition."
> 
> But the release has been out a long time now, and I honestly didn't touch it after I bought it, first because I didn't have enough room for it until I finished other games and then because I didn't have time to play it. I get the feeling that everyone else downloaded and probably demanded their money back long ago.


Sorry about the confusion, I was referring to gta3 on the PS2. 

That's pretty disheartening they all sound rough for DE. 3, Vice City and SA were my favorites for years! Once gta4 came out that changed the game (yet again). I had a hard time enjoying the older titles after playing the next gen, it felt so robotic and cartoony.

I'm not sure but was there actual refunding happening? Or did they just start working on patching stuff? I had heard they fixed the weather on SA but by that point I lost interest.


----------



## wankerness

Grove Street patched the GTA: DE a little bit but it's still absolutely terrible. If you have a PC you should get the original versions and just download fan patches for them. I have San Andreas and VC, and fortunately steam still lets me download the old versions (since you can't buy them anymore). I think if you didn't have them already you have to get them illegally unfortunately.

To give Grove Street credit, they just did a really major overhaul and fixed their Ark: Survival Evolved port this week...only FOUR YEARS after the original came out and was a total disaster. So maybe these ports will be good in 2026!


----------



## AMOS

What are some good Xbox games that feature 8 and 9 string guitar in the music? Besides Doom.


----------



## MFB

AMOS said:


> What are some good Xbox games that feature 8 and 9 string guitar in the music? Besides Doom.



Maybe _Killer Instinct_ since Mick worked on that before DOOM, but I think he got the 8 string right before that, and the 9 was before/for Eternal and he sold it after.


----------



## AMOS

MFB said:


> Maybe _Killer Instinct_ since Mick worked on that before DOOM, but I think he got the 8 string right before that, and the 9 was before/for Eternal and he sold it after.


Yeah the Schecter with the Bats, I'd sell it too! Nice guitars though I have the 7 with a Floyd.


----------



## Crungy

I was going to say Wolfenstein New Order and Colussus but I don't know if he even used 8's on those.


----------



## AMOS

Hellsinger is pretty wild, good Metal. Serj Tankian provides the vocals.


----------



## pahulkster

Had knee surgery last week so I've been sitting around smashing through GoW all week. Probably not going to 100% everything but I finished the story and tons of side stuff. Haven't played anything that much since Elden Ring and probably won't again until Hogwarts Legacy.


----------



## John




----------



## RevDrucifer

GoW-

I’m not going to discuss the outcome of the spoiler as it’ll give too much away and the spoiler itself is obviously coming at some point in the game.



Spoiler



Just fought Heimdall and that took a bit of patience in figuring out how to do it. Big story arc change here, but man, when you finally get a hit on the guy it‘s remarkably satisfying because he’s such a fucking prick. Don’t take this as a declaration of a win or a loss. You’ll find out on your own.


----------



## MFB

More GOW from myself as well



Spoiler



Got up through Atreus in Asgard AKA Adventures in Babysitting, then I diverter with Kratos and Freya to go the other Hafgufa in Alfheim so that questline should be totally done. Not sure how I felt about the Phantom, seems pretty easy as you just wittle it down and attack the pillars but it's definitely a new encounter.

Still no heavy runic attack for the axe, I figured surely once I finished Vanaheim I'd have one but I guess not. Or if I was supposed to then I missed it. 

I feel like killing the Nidogg is going to get me in trouble with Ratataskr (the squirrel) but we'll find out. I'm also putting predictions that the snake you put the giant into becomes another world serpent to replace Jorgmundr after his fight with Thor during Ragnarok. I also though Thor would come back to the Shrine in Muspelheim as Angrboda walked out and realize another giant still lived, but was fine with being wrong.


----------



## wankerness

Going through GOW:Ragnarok and hitting some brickwalls. First I fought a couple berserkers that were incredibly hard but I managed to kill. Then I summoned this asshole that spammed aoe lightning that seemed to be undodgeable and would stun you until you mashed circle for a while, at which point he'd run up and like 2 shot you. I couldn't even dent the guy on STORY difficulty. Then I looked up what health bar colors mean, and I guess I was supposed to be a higher level to fight him! He had a purple health bar which apparently means "tuned for 3 levels higher than you." It seems most people haven't hit this guy yet - I did find one topic about him which has people losing their minds over how "op" he is. Guess he's the worst of the berserkers!



Then, I went exploring and found another berserker encounter, this one with TWO of them, both with red skull health bars, and they were even more impossible.

Then I checked out Muspelheim, did the first 6 challenges, and then got to one called "Survive" where you had to kill 99 enemies. However, the wimpy enemies in the first wave of five of them killed me in 3 hits ON STORY DIFFICULTY. Jesus christ. This game needs way better explanations of level requirements. The previous batch of challenges were all pretty easy except for the "don't get hit" one on medium difficulty, and this seemed completely impossible on story difficulty despite seeming to be the next step of the quest.

Anyway my axe is only at level 4 so I guess I must have a lot of story left. But, what I like is exploring the big zones and clearing out collectibles. Guess I have ubisoft brain. The locked gates ala Metroidvania are pretty annoying, especially when there's absolutely no hint as to how to reach regions of the map (ex the stuff past Freyr's camp). I thought I had all the abilities and thus could go anywhere after getting


Spoiler



the spear


, but apparently there's some other junk yet to get to do things like wake up statues, plus the regions locked behind story progress. I mainly just don't want


Spoiler



to have to do all the endgame stuff with Atreus cause I don't like him as much as Freya


. But, I haven't read any spoilers so maybe that's not a concern.

Anyway, I discovered how to properly use one piece of armor I have - if you go unarmed, you do radically more damage than with ANY weapon - both your unarmed strikes do more damage and they also put poison on the target which does a ton of damage. It's OP as hell. I mean, it still won't work if you're fighting stuff a few levels too high for you, but it's seriously like the great equalizer when it comes to just about everything besides the annoying enemies like the phantoms where you can't do damage in regular ways. I won't be surprised if they nerf it.

My Kratos is ALMOST to level 7 on the character sheet, but yeah, axe is still at level 4 so I think I have a ways to go in the story.

My number one problem with this game is the health bar. Seriously, what's the point of not refilling your health after every encounter? It just wastes your time. You know if you walk into a boss room with 1/4 health that you're probably completely screwed, so then you get killed, and then you pop back up with full health right before the boss so it's barely a punishment. Why not just start you with full health instead of wasting your time on that first doomed attempt???


----------



## pahulkster

Only have two optional boss fights and some of the Muspelheim challenges left on GoW. Doubt I'll finish them but great game overall. Played through on whatever the middle normal difficulty is and it was a good balance overall. Definitely could have beaten it on the next one up. After finishing the story I watched some gameplay videos of people playing on the hardest setting and have zero interest in ever trying that. I hate damage sponge enemies and situations where a grunt can kill you in three hits. 

The bosses I have left are harder than anything in Elden Ring for me which is a little ridiculous. Mainly because the dodge is still janky for me after playing like 55 hours. I'm at level 9 with a few different setups I can use for different play styles and can't get more than 75% on either. It's doable but I just don't want to sink the time and frustration into it. I know it's not relevant but if you consider how crazy Kratos is after doing everything in all the games you really should be a god level power against anything.


----------



## wankerness

Absolutely, God of War: Ragnarok's difficulty *on regular* with the nastier optional bosses and combat trials is much higher than Elden Ring's (if you're in any way acclimated to soulsborne games - I know there are people that are good at Bayonetta or whatever that jump into Elden Ring trying to take out an entire camp at once and try to roll through everything while spamming attack like they're Dante and just get annihilated immediately in the first area). The combat in GOW is much more complex and defensive options are a lot tighter to have to time and think about than "ye olde rolling iframes through almost anything." I think the huge lack of any punishment for dying, though, leads many to think it's much easier since they can just hurl themselves at bosses over and over again without any risk of losing souls or having to do a boss runback or whatever. Not to mention the game puts checkpoints at phase changes in bosses, which makes things way, WAY easier!!

Basically I think people that complain about Dark Souls difficulty are mainly people that would normally be playing these kinds of games on easy. But the fact story difficulty exists means probably not many people are going to complain about the difficulty here unless they're an idiot like me who tries to fight the hardest bosses in the game when they're nowhere close to fully levelled.

I think also those sorts of hand-holding sections in GOW like all the QTEs and the way the platforming is as big of a joke as in Tomb Raider or Horizon Zero Dawn (just look for icons on the walls, no possibility whatsoever of falling to your death) make it seem like an easier game. But the actual combat can be really nasty.

Got my character up to level 7, mostly through exploring


Spoiler



all the "new" regions of Vanheim, I reallllly don't like that now on top of the metroidvania abilities we have a night/day mechanic with different areas being only accessible in day or night,


and the map is woefully inadequate for noting anything like that on the map. Makes exploration very hard to do systematically unless you have a really great memory. I'm going for the platinum with this and think I'll probably end up having to resort to guides for some areas, especially that maze-like mine


Spoiler



where you rescue Tyr


and there are huge puzzle rooms. It takes forever to get to-and-fro in that level and not knowing exactly where you should be looking for one raven or whatever is very frustrating.


----------



## wankerness

RevDrucifer said:


> GoW-
> 
> I’m not going to discuss the outcome of the spoiler as it’ll give too much away and the spoiler itself is obviously coming at some point in the game.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Just fought Heimdall and that took a bit of patience in figuring out how to do it. Big story arc change here, but man, when you finally get a hit on the guy it‘s remarkably satisfying because he’s such a fucking prick. Don’t take this as a declaration of a win or a loss. You’ll find out on your own.


I was kind of shocked by how easy that fight was. After beating him I had to double-check that I didn't have it on story difficulty (nope, had it on the middle setting, balance). I figured out the gimmick in about 10 seconds and it mostly stopped even being a gimmick after the first phase or two!* It's weird how easy they made the story bosses relative to the non-story bosses, but I guess it kind of makes sense - that way ANYONE can beat the main story but will still actually have a bit of challenge on some of the optional content.

The funny thing is the random enemies that are stronger than the story bosses. I guess I don't know if they're mandatory or only put in side exploration areas. I'm talking like, for example, those guys that teleport in with a HUGE sword that have a big honking shield on their back so you can only hit them from the front, and have a ton of health.



Spoiler



I THINK it was like, you had to hit him with the spear explosion once, but then you could just run and him and hit him with any old thing for a bit, then you'd have to do the spear explosion again to turn off his evasion abilities, etc. I don't know if all the spear explosions were really necessary after the first one, but the whole fight sure was a pattern of "hit with spear explosion, beat him up for a couple health bar segments, hit with spear explosion, etc for the whole fight for me! And I was actually able to dodge all his attacks without much problem so my realm shift armor and enchants sure made things even easier.


----------



## pahulkster

I realized after about forty hours that the compass doesn't operate on a fixed point like Skyrim lol. I just thought it was a pos or completely broken. Made navigating some regions (Vanaheim especially) a lot easier. 

I'm not particularly good at Elden Ring at all. I cleared it three times but always used summons. Couldn't beat the final boss of Dark Souls 3 and that is the only other soulsborne game I've played. The biggest issue starting God Of War was not using circle to dodge/roll. Elden Ring was the last game I sunk major hours into and that button push was burned into my brain. I ate shit so many times the first day or two.


----------



## p0ke

I finally bought Cyberpunk 2077 today. Found it on sale for 16€, so now looking forward to playing it and especially looking forward to seeing ray tracing etc in action.


----------



## wankerness

pahulkster said:


> I realized after about forty hours that the compass doesn't operate on a fixed point like Skyrim lol. I just thought it was a pos or completely broken. Made navigating some regions (Vanaheim especially) a lot easier.
> 
> I'm not particularly good at Elden Ring at all. I cleared it three times but always used summons. Couldn't beat the final boss of Dark Souls 3 and that is the only other soulsborne game I've played. The biggest issue starting God Of War was not using circle to dodge/roll. Elden Ring was the last game I sunk major hours into and that button push was burned into my brain. I ate shit so many times the first day or two.



Yeah, I realized that eventually. It is really overpowered if you have a marker in an area you have no idea how to get to, since it will walk you through whatever convoluted nonsensical path you need to take to get to it (I used it to great effect on some ledge I couldn’t figure out how to get to in the crater.) only problem with it is the map is mostly blank and you can’t set a map marker as far as I can tell.


----------



## wankerness

Finished the story of GOW Ragnarok last night. It’s a good story! I just don’t like all the Atreus detours. He’s an actually likable character this time, though. The game in general is remarkably wholesome in tone and themes and it’s very much the Mr Rogers of super violent AAA games. 

Boss checkpoints really are making me rethink comments on difficulty. You kinda can just brute force your way through most bosses by kamikazeeing them until their health gets low enough for a cutscene, then you die and get started over from the cutscene with full health. Like, free full health heals on every phase change basically. That said I didn’t die at all on any version of the last boss. 

The second-to-final boss, though, was SO fast and ridiculous with the aoe spam that I limped through that fight with a few deaths. Good for all the checkpoints making it trivial, I guess!!

So yeah, got through all the story stuff on medium difficulty without much problem (except for one late duo of bosses that I tried to turn the difficulty to medium, annihilated them, then realized it had been on story - I need to do that fight over again cause it seemed like it might have been really hard on regular. I don’t think there’s any way to fight bosses again short of starting a full new game though) but have definitely had to crank it down on the optional stuff a few times. Going to try and do all the optional stuff remaining when I get a chance, but probably won’t get much gaming time this weekend cause holidays and families. Blech!!


----------



## KentBrockman

I bought the "first" GOW for the PS4 about four years ago. I found it difficult, even on the easiest difficulty...I suck at video games. Great soundtrack as you'd expect from GOW games. I can't say that I enjoyed the story as much as the PS2/PS3 games though. The over-the-shoulder view makes me a little nauseous at times. Despite that, I remember enjoying it.

In the early 2000s, I found the Spyro the Dragon demo on my Crash Bandicoot Warped disc. In 2012, I bought the first three Spyro games from the PSN store. In 2022, I am finally getting around to playing them! I am about to have another crack at Gnasty Gnorc. I am thoroughly enjoying this game. Sometimes, I want to play something that isn't gritty.


----------



## wankerness

The over-the-shoulder view on GOW Ragnarok is mainly a problem cause the camera is zoomed in way too tight for what the game wants you to react to. Like, the last bosses put "danger zones" all over the place on the floor randomly but due to the camera being zoomed so far in and not able to be changed, you can't see if you're even standing on one cause you can't see your character below the knees (and thus none of the ground anywhere close to you) So the only way you can be guaranteed to not get hit is to run forward to the closest safe zone you can see and just assume that you're standing in a danger zone, even if you're not. Terrible camera when you consider some of the encounter design.

Another thing that's required, but is at least changeable, is you need to jack the camera speed WAY up on the last few bosses, since every time they jump around the room it breaks lock-on and you have to manually turn around to see them before they nail you in the next second (ala Twin Princes from DS3). The default camera rotation speed is very, very slow.

EDIT: Speaking of God of War, I'm kind of curious about the originals. From what I can tell, it appears that 1/2 were last released for PS3, which is not an option obviously (it seems VERY strange that they haven't been ported to PS4 considering it's one of their biggest franchises, but they haven't, only 3). I do have a PS2. Are the remasters a huge improvement, or would playing them on PS2 be fine? Has anyone played them in the last several years?

I do have a disc of the first one for PS2 that I inherited from my brother so I guess I could just try. RCA inputs and all!


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> EDIT: Speaking of God of War, I'm kind of curious about the originals. From what I can tell, it appears that 1/2 were last released for PS3, which is not an option obviously (it seems VERY strange that they haven't been ported to PS4 considering it's one of their biggest franchises, but they haven't, only 3). I do have a PS2. Are the remasters a huge improvement, or would playing them on PS2 be fine? Has anyone played them in the last several years?



The remasters only look prettier and sharper (especially GoW II). They also have trophies.

On PS3 you'll find the remasters of GoW I / II and also remasters of Ghost of Sparta + Chains of Olympus, which are originally PSP games but very good for GoW standards (like shorter versions of the PS2 games). Also GoW III and GoW Ascension (which is good!), obviously. None of them is very good story-wise, but they're entertaining. GoW I can be punishing sometimes.

As it happens with GoW 2018 and GoW 2022, they are (more or less) all slightly different or improved versions of almost the same game. Square square triangle is your friend.


----------



## gabito

p0ke said:


> I finally bought Cyberpunk 2077 today. Found it on sale for 16€, so now looking forward to playing it and especially looking forward to seeing ray tracing etc in action.



I think they used RT for the shadows only (like in GTA V PS5's version...). They look nice and sharp, but they're... shadows. I like it better when they use that kind of technology for reflections.

It's a nice looking game nonetheless.


----------



## wankerness

gabito said:


> The remasters only look prettier and sharper (especially GoW II). They also have trophies.
> 
> On PS3 you'll find the remasters of GoW I / II and also remasters of Ghost of Sparta + Chains of Olympus, which are originally PSP games but very good for GoW standards (like shorter versions of the PS2 games). Also GoW III and GoW Ascension (which is good!), obviously. None of them is very good story-wise, but they're entertaining. GoW I can be punishing sometimes.
> 
> As it happens with GoW 2018 and GoW 2022, they are (more or less) all slightly different or improved versions of almost the same game. Square square triangle is your friend.


If I had a PS3, I'd be all over them for the trophies aspect, not to mention HDMI. But, I don't, and sony has never worked out how to run PS3 games on PS4, and I'm not paying for their crummy game streaming service, so PS2 it is!

I played GOW3 for like, 45 minutes and was shocked by how hard it was compared to GoW 2018, not to mention button mashy. It was basically a devil may cry game, only even more edgelordy. I assume the first two are going to be similar. But, I'm kinda curious. I think I'll start with 1 instead of immediately buying 2 cause from what I've heard about those games they might just turn me off completely with their edgelord bullshit (ex the infamous aphrodite sequence).


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> If I had a PS3, I'd be all over them for the trophies aspect, not to mention HDMI. But, I don't, and sony has never worked out how to run PS3 games on PS4, and I'm not paying for their crummy game streaming service, so PS2 it is!
> 
> I played GOW3 for like, 45 minutes and was shocked by how hard it was compared to GoW 2018, not to mention button mashy. It was basically a devil may cry game, only even more edgelordy. I assume the first two are going to be similar. But, I'm kinda curious. I think I'll start with 1 instead of immediately buying 2 cause from what I've heard about those games they might just turn me off completely with their edgelord bullshit (ex the infamous aphrodite sequence).



They're... violent. And spectacular for the time. Some of the bosses are big. REAAAALLY BIG.

Also misogynistic to a certain extent, but Kratos is incredibly violent towards everyone (if that's an excuse...). I think somebody counted how many characters who met Kratos along all the games in the series survived and it was like 3 or 4 or them. That's counting friends and enemies... He's not an antihero, he's a very very angry asshole.

There's a particular puzzle I think in GoW III where you have to use one female captive as part of the solution and it doesn't end well for her. That was one of the times I said "OK, how stupid can they be?", but it's the same with several of the male NPCs you find along the way so there's that too.

I don't think these are games to be taken too seriously, it's all very over the top.


----------



## TedEH

The old man in me says busting out the PS2 is always the right answer.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> The old man in me says busting out the PS2 is always the right answer.


I'll have to see if it works. I haven't hooked it up since my old setup almost 10 years ago, when I just had it going straight into an HDTV that still had RCA inputs. I could not connect my N64 through my receiver when I tried a couple years ago cause my receiver was incapable of handling the incredibly low resolution of the RCA output (I have nothing that takes S-video anymore); I had to plug it in straight to my newer TV with some weird adapters (RCA to 3.5 mm??) and that made it bypass my speaker system of course. Hoping the PS2 can go through the receiver.

My PS2 nostalgia is not strong, I never had one until that generation was pretty much over, and I never bought any games for it, it just collected dust in my basement. My brother had one, and I remember playing Devil May Cry on it a bit, but other than that my only real memory was playing one at summer camp when some guy had just gotten one and everyone was like WHOAAAAA when we saw the graphics on Twisted Metal Black. Around 2012 I finally hooked the damn thing up and played through FFX, started FFX-2, and that is about all the action it's seen.


----------



## TedEH

While, as a kid, most of my nostalgia is pointed squarely at Nintendo, I had a PS2 for a good while - played the Kingdom Hearts games, GoW, SotC, Persona, Crash and Spiro games, etc. To me, the PS2 felt like a significant generational leap, and a step towards games being more "serious".

Might not be worth it for many, but I know there's upscalers for this purpose to get older consoles etc onto newer TVs.


----------



## p0ke

gabito said:


> I think they used RT for the shadows only (like in GTA V PS5's version...). They look nice and sharp, but they're... shadows. I like it better when they use that kind of technology for reflections.
> 
> It's a nice looking game nonetheless.



Yeah, I'm hoping this'll be my first game that actually feels like a next-gen game (though it is technically cross-gen). 
I waited this long because I wanted to play it on a system that'll do it justice, also I guess a lot of the initial bugs have been fixed.

Got any tips on games where RT is utilized more?


----------



## gabito

p0ke said:


> Yeah, I'm hoping this'll be my first game that actually feels like a next-gen game (though it is technically cross-gen).
> I waited this long because I wanted to play it on a system that'll do it justice, also I guess a lot of the initial bugs have been fixed.
> 
> Got any tips on games where RT is utilized more?



Spider-Man Miles Morales and Spider-Man remastered look very good and use ray tracing.

Also Metro Exodus, and Control Ultimate Edition.

They're all cross-gen, though... sadly there's not a lot of current-gen games.


----------



## p0ke

gabito said:


> Spider-Man Miles Morales and Spider-Man remastered look very good and use ray tracing.
> 
> Also Metro Exodus, and Control Ultimate Edition.
> 
> They're all cross-gen, though... sadly there's not a lot of current-gen games.



Aren't those Spider-Man games Playstation exclusives though? I'm running Xbox so no luck with those. 

Control is definitely one I wanna play at some point, since the developer is from Finland and their track record is almost flawless. Really looking forward to Alan Wake 2, the atmosphere in the first one was just epic and then adding all the new technological advancements to that should result in something pretty awesome.


----------



## gabito

p0ke said:


> Aren't those Spider-Man games Playstation exclusives though? I'm running Xbox so no luck with those.
> 
> Control is definitely one I wanna play at some point, since the developer is from Finland and their track record is almost flawless. Really looking forward to Alan Wake 2, the atmosphere in the first one was just epic and then adding all the new technological advancements to that should result in something pretty awesome.


Oh… I think the Spider-Man games are now available on PC, but I don’t think you can play those on XBox.


----------



## p0ke

gabito said:


> Oh… I think the Spider-Man games are now available on PC, but I don’t think you can play those on XBox.



Yeah, I play on Xbox exclusively, so no luck with that. They look awesome based on what I've seen, so I would've wanted those otherwise. Oh well, just gotta wait for the actual next-gen games to start coming out, I guess. And some games are still getting next-gen updates too, like Witcher 3.

Oh yeah, I gave Cyberpunk a quick spin yesterday - seems great so far! I even liked the tutorial part, it reminded me of Metal Gear Solid VR Training which was a lot of fun back in the day. Character creation took most of my playtime though  Still didn't manage to make V look like me


----------



## gabito

Got burned out and abandoned GoW Ragnarok for a while. I'll get back to it eventually.

I bought TLoU Part I on sale and just finished it. I love the game and played it many many times on PS3 and PS4, so I don't care buying it again but if you already own it... it's not really necessary to buy it again.

Except for a few minimal differences I noticed in some encounters it's the exact same game: TLoU 2013 running on TLoU Part II's engine. The QoL improvements are not drastic (except for the accessibility options, those are good), and gameplay is the same.

It obviously looks better, and the facial animations are top notch: you can really see Ashley Johnson's expression on Ellie's face (the part were Ellie plays an imaginary videogame comes to mind). The clickers and bloaters look AWESOME - lots of detail- and everything looks great. It's a Naughty Dog game after all.

Oh, and for some reason Sarah and young Joel look like Pixar characters, that was funny.

The excuse they gave to remake this was that "the remake would allow Part I and Part II to be played sequentially with no technological or visual discrepencies" and that's alright, but weirdly enough I think it looks even better than Part II... even if marginally.

Anyways, great game. And I finally could get the plat, it's an easy one this time.


----------



## MFB

Jesus Christ, these Berserkers are no fucking joke, I'm getting my teeth kicked in on them. Apparently I'm only level 5 which feels weird considering I managed to finished the mission with Gorm/Grom. My axe is at level 5 as well, blades still at level 4 - do the upgrades for those ever get quicker, it's painfully slow at this rate; or maybe it's because I've got them both so I have to choose between the two instead of focusing on one?


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

I'm getting a curved 27" 1440p 165Hz, upgrading from 27" 1080p 144Hz. Looking forward to finally play in 1440p! The future is here boysss


----------



## TedEH

MFB said:


> Apparently I'm only level 5 which feels weird considering I managed to finished the mission with Gorm/Grom. My axe is at level 5 as wel


This sounds right to me. I think I'm in about the same part of the game, and about the same level - and I've been doing most of the side-quest stuff as I go along.


----------



## Quiet Coil

Finished up Lego Skywalker Saga - was a lot more satisfying than my initial impressions led me to believe it would be.

Finally getting going on Ghost of Tsushima - overall I feel like I prefer the fantastical elements of something like Onimusha, but the little details in GoT are pretty great. Definitely feels like inFamous in feudal Japan, for better or worse.


----------



## Ralyks

Persona 5 Royal, basically finished palace 3 with a week left so just trying to get whatever confidants I haven't gotten yet and work on social stats until the story for palace 4 begins.

Also, ordered a few games on sale for Black Friday. Grabbed Atari 50 because I've heard only amazing things about it, Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection, and bought a copy of Witcher 3 again now that the PS5 update is like 2 weeks away.

Aaaaand my son is still obsessed with Goat Simulator 3. At least until the new Need For Speed comes out.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Jesus Christ, these Berserkers are no fucking joke, I'm getting my teeth kicked in on them. Apparently I'm only level 5 which feels weird considering I managed to finished the mission with Gorm/Grom. My axe is at level 5 as well, blades still at level 4 - do the upgrades for those ever get quicker, it's painfully slow at this rate; or maybe it's because I've got them both so I have to choose between the two instead of focusing on one?



The blade and axe upgrades mostly come from the main story, I think a couple are from sidequests collections like the draugr holes.

The berserkers are tuned higher than the valkyries in the previous game. DO NOT try to do them all at level 5. A couple are doable. But two of them in particular kicked my ass repeatedly, ON STORY DIFFICULTY, even with my weapons both at level 9 and my armor/shield at 8 (the trio with one regular berserker and two goddam mages all at once, and the fucking asshole mage that teleports everywhere and everything puts bifrost on you which kills you incredibly quickly even on story difficulty).

I’m working on the last guy now. He’s a lot easier than the trio but his health bar is really, really long and his phase where he behaves identically to the aforementioned bifrost teleporting mage kills me every time.

I have most of the sidequests and collectibles done, muspelheim and finding the artifacts in Midgard are all I have left besides this berserker king asshole, I think. I haven’t read a trophy guide so I don’t know if there’s some secret questline I’ve missed or something.


----------



## MFB

Holy shit, then that explains a lot as you don't access the Valkyries until midway thru GOW, and even then they ramp up in difficulty whereas these are all seemingly the same level of BS. I tried 3 different ones, Svartalfheim/Midgard/one other one and they all handed me my ass in the same manner.

I've been using the blades more now that they're upgraded, not bad but there's still a lack of weight to them compared to the axe; got both my runic attacks up to lvl 3 and they both do HIGH AOE damage combined.

Also rocking the Muspelheim set of armor after unlocking it, just a lateral move from the Blinding Light set I had before; amulet is equipped with Midgard/Niflheim sets.


----------



## wankerness

The berserkers definitely have a wide range of difficulty. I did a couple of the easy ones first at like level 5 just by getting lucky, then hit the lightning aoe jerk who seemed impossible even on story and just stopped trying them till post game. Some of them were very easy at level 8, like the lightning guy, but some were incredibly nasty still. I have been using the radiant belt/gloves for phase shift and the chest that does poison damage if you’re unarmed, all at level 8 or 9. I need to figure out better amulet setup, it’s pretty haphazard right now.


----------



## MFB

Spoiler



Took down Heimdall, figured out the mechanic pretty quickly, but the lack of a companion meant I couldn't use a resurrection stone so Ph. 1 I took him down in two tries, and Ph. 2 took three total, so not too bad honestly. Fight reminded me a lot of the Apollo/Hermes fights from GOW3, just really cocky shits you can't wait to kill.

Now I'm exploring the Vanaheim crater, this thing is fucking massive, like wow. I closed one of the rifts that had two of the big Bergsra monsters on them (fire breathers) one lvl 7 and the other lvl 8; felt good taking them down on the third try, had to be smart with my maneuvering around the arena, and when to use runic/ranged attacks.


----------



## MFB

Spoiler



Hoo boy, took down some more baddies in the Vanaheim Crater. The three dreki, one tracked by the glowing spit and another two in a single fight at their feeding spot. Then a Frost Phantom that was two levels above myself, and had five pillars to destroy instead of three + the dragon attacking with fire from it's perch during the whole fight.

Lastly, another Druagr hole closed, and it was ALSO two levels above me, and y'all know how much of a difference that can make on challenges like those. Felt pretty fucking good only doing three attempts on it knowing that though.

Trying to find the Soul Eater in the main part, and then I really should move on to saving Birgir, but it's not like he'll actually die before I get to him.


----------



## wankerness

Well, beat the berserker king first try when using a block shield (that rectangular one) and the armor that increase your melee damage after blocking, and then beat the super secret final-Er boss after him first try using the same build, after failing spectacularly on the first attempt with my old standard poison/parry build. So yeah, the fights seemed to take a long time, but survivability was SO much higher that it was trivialized. I probably could have turned up the difficulty a few notches and still beaten them more easily than on story difficulty with a dodge/parry build. Ah well. Got the platinum, now have one final collection quest (a really stupid wild goose chase where you get no clues whatsoever about where the items you’re looking for are in each realm), and then I’ll be done with the game. Overall very good, solid plot, etc. definitely better than the first game imo, and that one was already very good.

So far my 2022 games I’ve played rankings are like Elden Ring >>> this >>>> HOrizon Forbidden West >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Far Cry 6. Probably like 9.5/10 flawed but one of my favorite games ever, 9/10 really good but no replay value currently, 7.5/10 terrible plot but great gameplay, 3/10 very bad game with decent gameplay for reviews.


----------



## MFB

Finished it about an hour ago, will post my final thoughts when I get home from the gym.


----------



## MFB

Thoughts after wrapping up last night:



Spoiler



Overall, I did enjoy it, but there were some parts that I thought were just OK. The final battle for Asgard seemed pretty tame by the time you get to it despite uniting Hel, Light/Dark Elves, etc. I'm not sure if that was technical limitations or what, but they cut it down pretty quickly to just the God Squad by destroying the towers, leaving the last one the Jorgmundr 2.0 that I was correct in predicting; although that itself is confusing, as that snake goes from a standard python looking snake to a giant serpent, but somehow they say it's the same Jorgmundr that's in Midgard and recognizes Loki/Atreus despite never seeing him get sent back in time by Thor? 

I know Gabito mentioned it, but all the fate/destiny stuff did seem messy as they constantly say they're writing their own but end up doing exactly what the prophecy says up until the very last moment so it's like, WERE they writing their own or was the prophecy wrong? Loki doesn't end up serving Odin like the mural said, and Kratos is alive, so where was the diverging point between the two? 

I knew Brok would end up dying once Sindri tells you the story of him missing the last piece of the soul (Mimir mentions it again in the endgame portion, but I don't know if they say WHICH piece he's missing), so that coupled with his anger at the Lady of the Forge, it only made sense to send him off. Still didn't feel good to see happen though.

I think the way the villains were written/interacted made perfect sense, Thor being the sympathetic parallel to Kratos and him NOT getting to atone for what he's done by Odin killing him; Odin outright saying he'll never stop in his quest for knowledge, as that's his whole deal. Sif was the only one who I don't recall if she had a side, she was constantly against Loki but I'm not sure if it was just misplaced anger and we don't hear the parts when it was really at Odin, like at the end of the game.

Between the two, right now after finishing this one, I feel like the smaller scope of 2018's reboot/continuation works better with just Balder as the big bad, this one rightfully expands on it in scale but there were parts where I just felt like, "do I really need to be playing this little bit right now?" (AKA Atreus) One day there'll be a companion mission that doesn't feel like a lesser version of the main game. No major changes to the axe/blade runic attacks, just the addition of the Draupnir Spear which I really never used even thought I upgraded it to almost max level (seriously, the crater is a highway to maxing it). Leveling felt like it was much slower than 2018 as well, I ended the game at like, 7.5 whereas I think I finished the previous one a full level higher or maybe even 9? Can't recall after how many times I've played it honestly.

Now I'm cleaning up for trophies etc, taking care of everything I didn't on this first pass, seeing how much I can get and maybe snag the platinum since I did for 2018. I think the Muspelheim trials are going to be the biggest hurdle at this point. The King of the Hill one killed me last time, not quite sure why I biffed it so badly, but maybe I was just out of practice for the playstyle they require. I took down two different Berserkers as well - one in Svartalfheim by the mine entrance who required solid parrying skills (changed my shield rond for increased parry window and I think I found the timing) and another one that I forget. I almost had the lightning dude killed but that fucker gets ONE solid reversal on you with his unblockable lightning attack and it can change the course of the fight.


----------



## TedEH

I feel like I'm playing GoWR really slowly - I kept hearing there's a [something something] that happens "15 hours in" but it took me 30 hours to get there, and so I have no idea how much left there is to go.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I feel like I'm playing GoWR really slowly - I kept hearing there's a [something something] that happens "15 hours in" but it took me 30 hours to get there, and so I have no idea how much left there is to go.


Depends on what you're doing. If you're dying repeatedly to things then you're probably actually only halfway through. If you were doing all the side content then you're probably going to end up finishing it in about the right time. Seems like the game with all side content is ~40 hours long, but the side content can all be skipped till after the main story. I did it as soon as it was available (and frequently hit metroidvania style roadblocks) so I did it very inefficiently and think I beat the main story around 35 hours and finished all side content around 40 hours. If I'd focused on the story I think it probably would have been more like 20 hours for the story and 35 total.


----------



## gabito

MFB said:


> Thoughts after wrapping up last night:
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Overall, I did enjoy it, but there were some parts that I thought were just OK. The final battle for Asgard seemed pretty tame by the time you get to it despite uniting Hel, Light/Dark Elves, etc. I'm not sure if that was technical limitations or what, but they cut it down pretty quickly to just the God Squad by destroying the towers, leaving the last one the Jorgmundr 2.0 that I was correct in predicting; although that itself is confusing, as that snake goes from a standard python looking snake to a giant serpent, but somehow they say it's the same Jorgmundr that's in Midgard and recognizes Loki/Atreus despite never seeing him get sent back in time by Thor?
> 
> I know Gabito mentioned it, but all the fate/destiny stuff did seem messy as they constantly say they're writing their own but end up doing exactly what the prophecy says up until the very last moment so it's like, WERE they writing their own or was the prophecy wrong? Loki doesn't end up serving Odin like the mural said, and Kratos is alive, so where was the diverging point between the two?
> 
> I knew Brok would end up dying once Sindri tells you the story of him missing the last piece of the soul (Mimir mentions it again in the endgame portion, but I don't know if they say WHICH piece he's missing), so that coupled with his anger at the Lady of the Forge, it only made sense to send him off. Still didn't feel good to see happen though.
> 
> I think the way the villains were written/interacted made perfect sense, Thor being the sympathetic parallel to Kratos and him NOT getting to atone for what he's done by Odin killing him; Odin outright saying he'll never stop in his quest for knowledge, as that's his whole deal. Sif was the only one who I don't recall if she had a side, she was constantly against Loki but I'm not sure if it was just misplaced anger and we don't hear the parts when it was really at Odin, like at the end of the game.
> 
> Between the two, right now after finishing this one, I feel like the smaller scope of 2018's reboot/continuation works better with just Balder as the big bad, this one rightfully expands on it in scale but there were parts where I just felt like, "do I really need to be playing this little bit right now?" (AKA Atreus) One day there'll be a companion mission that doesn't feel like a lesser version of the main game. No major changes to the axe/blade runic attacks, just the addition of the Draupnir Spear which I really never used even thought I upgraded it to almost max level (seriously, the crater is a highway to maxing it). Leveling felt like it was much slower than 2018 as well, I ended the game at like, 7.5 whereas I think I finished the previous one a full level higher or maybe even 9? Can't recall after how many times I've played it honestly.
> 
> Now I'm cleaning up for trophies etc, taking care of everything I didn't on this first pass, seeing how much I can get and maybe snag the platinum since I did for 2018. I think the Muspelheim trials are going to be the biggest hurdle at this point. The King of the Hill one killed me last time, not quite sure why I biffed it so badly, but maybe I was just out of practice for the playstyle they require. I took down two different Berserkers as well - one in Svartalfheim by the mine entrance who required solid parrying skills (changed my shield rond for increased parry window and I think I found the timing) and another one that I forget. I almost had the lightning dude killed but that fucker gets ONE solid reversal on you with his unblockable lightning attack and it can change the course of the fight.





Spoiler



I think Jorgmundr recognizes Atreus because of the time he (Atreus) puts some giant's soul into the dead-but-not-quite snake's body. Then the snake grows into this super gigantic snake and fights Thor during Ragnarok (they say something like "There's Jorgmundr... but he looks different somehow", goes back in time who knows how may years and eventually meets Kratos and Atreus during GoW 2018. So there are 2 Jorgmundrs at some point, but GoW 2018's Jorgmundr went somewhere else in GoW Ragnarok? I don't know.

IIRC Mimir mentions that the part of Brok's soul that's missing is the part that guides him into Valhalla or something like that, so he's denied an afterlife. It seems Nords have pretty shitty afterlife rules... poor Brok. Also that's why The Lady Of The Forge couldn't see him.

I found the Muspelheim trials to be easier this time. There are less of them (I think), but you have to do some stuff (different combinations of the base trials) to unlock all the extra ones. You get to choose which ones, so you can choose the ones you like the most.

I still have to fight all the Berserkers and Gna... not looking forward to it but I'll do it eventually.


----------



## MFB

TedEH said:


> I feel like I'm playing GoWR really slowly - I kept hearing there's a [something something] that happens "15 hours in" but it took me 30 hours to get there, and so I have no idea how much left there is to go.



I feel like once you do the


Spoiler



Heimdall fight


 then that's when things really kick into high gear and you're within the last handful of hours of linear gameplay. There's a slightly more definitive moment that it's legit "you're going into the last mission from here" but I'd say even that's surprising for how late it is in the main story.


----------



## MFB

gabito said:


> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I think Jorgmundr recognizes Atreus because of the time he (Atreus) puts some giant's soul into the dead-but-not-quite snake's body. Then the snake grows into this super gigantic snake and fights Thor during Ragnarok (they say something like "There's Jorgmundr... but he looks different somehow", goes back in time who knows how may years and eventually encounters Kratos and Atreus during GoW 2018. So there are 2 Jorgmundrs at some point, but GoW 2018's Jorgmundr went somewhere else in GoW Ragnarok? I don't know.
> 
> IIRC Mimir mentions that the part of Brok's soul that's missing is the part that guides him into Valhalla or something like that, so he's denied an afterlife. It seems Nords have pretty shitty afterlife rules... poor Brok. Also that's why The Lady Of The Forge couldn't see him.
> 
> I found the Muspelheim trials to be easier this time. There are less of them (I think), but you have to do some stuff (different combinations of the base trials) to unlock all the extra ones. You get to choose which ones, so you can choose the ones you like the most.
> 
> I still have to fight all the Berserkers and Gna... not looking forward to it but I'll do it eventually.





Spoiler



So, I did some reading after my post, Jorgmundr IS the same as 2018 it's just that in the fight from Ragnarok he does at some point get hit so hard from Thor that he travels back to the events BEFORE GOW2018 and awaits our arrival (and he keeps growing during that time from the size we see him, as you said, they do mention him looking different.) I'm assuming the hit he takes from Thor is right before Thor leaves that fight and swoops in to fight Kratos. 

So he's a closed loop, it's just not how we typically see it.


----------



## TedEH

There's lot of spoiler tags being thrown around, so I won't click any but instead say I'm at this point roughly:


Spoiler



I saved at the point where the Boy has just convinced everyone to let him return to Asgard after Heimdall dies.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> There's lot of spoiler tags being thrown around, so I won't click any but instead say I'm at this point roughly:
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I saved at the point where the Boy has just convinced everyone to let him return to Asgard after Heimdall dies.


I think you're like 4/5 of the way through the story then.


----------



## RevDrucifer

How the fuck do you guys remember all these names of the bosses/beasts?!? 

I beat it last Wednesday night but still have a few side quests to wrap up. I can’t remember a fucking name of anything from that game!


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I think you're like 4/5 of the way through the story then.



Yeah, then that's the point where you're in the legit endgame


----------



## MFB

RevDrucifer said:


> How the fuck do you guys remember all these names of the bosses/beasts?!?
> 
> I beat it last Wednesday night but still have a few side quests to wrap up. I can’t remember a fucking name of anything from that game!



I've always been a huge fan of Norse/Greek mythology to the point where I considered doing it as my major in my college, but it requires a triple major in: history (of whatever region), language (of whatever region), and one other aspect as well, and the reality is that you do nothing with it besides teach others or if you're lucky, talk about it on History Channel


----------



## gabito

RevDrucifer said:


> How the fuck do you guys remember all these names of the bosses/beasts?!?
> 
> I beat it last Wednesday night but still have a few side quests to wrap up. I can’t remember a fucking name of anything from that game!



Some I remember: Brok & Sindri, Freya, Freyr, Mimir... others are stored in my brain using placeholders like "the humongous snake", "the gigantic old lady", "Atreus' girlfriend's grandma", "the blonde asshole", and then I look up (or copy and paste) their names when I want to say something about them.

To this day I don't know how to write Angr... something or Jorg... whatever. Nor will I


----------



## RevDrucifer

gabito said:


> Some I remember: Brok & Sindri, Freya, Freyr, Mimir... others are stored in my brain using placeholders like "the humongous snake", "the gigantic old lady", "Atreus' girlfriend's grandma", "the blonde asshole", and then I look up (or copy and paste) their names when I want to say something about them.
> 
> To this day I don't know how to write Angr... something or Jorg... whatever. Nor will I



Hahahaha that makes sense. I just turned 40 but didn’t think my short term memory took THAT much of a hit.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> To this day I don't know how to write Angr... something or Jorg... whatever. Nor will I


I end up usually making up new names for people anyway....


Spoiler



Magic lady and her Frere (instead of Freyr, 'cause he's the brother)
Angry Booty and her Grumpy Grandma
BOY
The Giant Snake
The Squirrel guy
The boat guy
The Mom
Thicc Thor Jr.
NID-HOG I remember 'cause of the indie game, but I'll never pronounce it correctly
Heimdall I can remember because it makes me picture Idris Elba
Tyr I can remember 'cause he's prominent, but also 'cause I vaguely remember opening for the band once, and getting into conversations about how to pronounce it.


----------



## MFB

Ah yes, who could forget everyone's favorite act from America's Got Talent? Angry Booty and Grumpy Grandma!

We also would have accepted "Jeff Dunham's newest dummies" (not counting his entire fanbase)


----------



## BlackMastodon

Somehow, God of War Ragnarok has made me skip posts faster than all the Soulsbourne talk in this thread, but that's probably because I want to play God of War and this one eventually. 

Monster Hunter Sunbreak is still fun. I can't think of a more satisfying grind in a video game, and I'm hesitant to even call it a grind.


----------



## rokket2005

Atlus updated Soul Hackers 2 about a week ago, so I jumped back in from about 20 hours in and now I'm in the last dungeon I think. The story really picked up and got a lot better since I started where I left off and I'm liking it quite a bit more than I thought I was going to. It's still like C tier SMT, but it's still pretty good. 

I also got an sd card for my steam deck finally and setting up ps2 emulation on it took more time than I was hoping tonight. Tried out Xenosaga 1 for settings and such, then an hour later I was still playing. I guess I'm playing that after I finish Soul Hackers.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Further derailing the GOW R thread just to say I finished Trails From Zero. 

If you can get past the fact that it's a dated looking port of a PSV game from 12 years ago and more of the same albeit evolved turn based JRPG system ripped from Chrono Trigger (and also highly abusable), Zero is still a quaint and charming game and a good gateway to the long running series. 

It's a lot more short scaled than most games of its kind (it's just Crossbell city and surrounding areas, and you'll be constantly patrolling Crossbell over and over again), but part of the charm is knowing the locale and getting to know your team and watch them grow with every struggle and accomplishments. And this small group is just full of great characters, it's easy to get invested. The plot escalates hard on the last chapter but ends on a high note, which is a nice change to the gut punch cliffhangers of Sky FC, and Cold Steel 1 and 3, and long time players since the beginning get an amazing payoff. 

Time to go back to Xenoblade 2 and hopefully finish that before Trails To Azure comes out.


----------



## Ralyks

rokket2005 said:


> Atlus updated Soul Hackers 2 about a week ago, so I jumped back in from about 20 hours in and now I'm in the last dungeon I think. The story really picked up and got a lot better since I started where I left off and I'm liking it quite a bit more than I thought I was going to. It's still like C tier SMT, but it's still pretty good.


What did it update? I finished SH2 last month (in time for Persona 5 Golden) and traded it in, but I thought about picking it up when it inevitably gets a big sale to finish the platinum and play the DLC, which apparently adds some 10 hours.
Also, yeah, I guess it's C-tier SMT, but I had fun with it, the story was pretty good, and I found myself really liking the characters and some damn good voice acting performances. Ringo in particular is one of my favorite main characters in recent gaming.


----------



## rokket2005

Ralyks said:


> What did it update? I finished SH2 last month (in time for Persona 5 Golden) and traded it in, but I thought about picking it up when it inevitably gets a big sale to finish the platinum and play the DLC, which apparently adds some 10 hours.
> Also, yeah, I guess it's C-tier SMT, but I had fun with it, the story was pretty good, and I found myself really liking the characters and some damn good voice acting performances. Ringo in particular is one of my favorite main characters in recent gaming.


They added a run button, which in and of itself makes Axis way less of a slog to run through. They also added a few new demons, I don't remember which. It also seemed like I was having fewer crashes and startup hangs than I did before, but I still get them frequently enough, mostly startup hangs rather than crashes, so they might've not done anything on that front. Atlus/Sega pc ports stay losing.

I didn't think much of the story originally and I dropped it right before the Zenon fight since that was around when Atlus announced they were going to update it in November. After that fight things have gotten really good and if the whole game was this good I'd probably like it more than TMS.


----------



## gabito

Just got the plat for GoW Ragnarok. I only needed a guide for 3 artifacts and 1 raven that were well hidden, but you can find almost everything just by exploring (I like that).

Gna and the King of whatever were hard, but I learned about a build that made things waaaay easier. I got them at my 2nd or maybe 3rd try. But it's done.

It was nice playing it, but I still like GoW 2018 the most. It's similar to what I think about TLoU and TLoU Part II: I understand the sequels may be better, but please give me something shorter and more focused: "Simple story, complex characters". Bring ashes / snarky girl to mountain / fireflies. Get to know the characters. Survive. Something happens at the end. Kratos is bald Joel. That's it.

I finished GoW 2018 like 3 or 4 times, but I don't know if I'm going to play this one again. Maybe in a few years? It's still missing New Game+ anyways


----------



## RevDrucifer

Just a minor gripe that popped up last night while playing Ragnarok while I was in the pub; how the fuck does a game with THIS kind of graphics work not allow you to move around tables and also doesn’t have a jump button?! 

It’s like it’s incredibly well done in every aspect, except being able to move around certain areas…and you can only jump on shit if you’re right next to it.


----------



## gabito

RevDrucifer said:


> Just a minor gripe that popped up last night while playing Ragnarok while I was in the pub; how the fuck does a game with THIS kind of graphics work not allow you to move around tables and also doesn’t have a jump button?!
> 
> It’s like it’s incredibly well done in every aspect, except being able to move around certain areas…and you can only jump on shit if you’re right next to it.



Traversal is kind of bad for a modern game. Too rigid, I think? You get used to the freedom other games give you and the in modern GoW you can't go around a pebble if that's not were they want you to go. "I can climb a titan and kill it, but that barrel? Let's find another way."

The old God of War games were similar, but even more linear and limited. You couldn't even control the camera!

It's obviously a game design decision, and something that sets it apart from other games.


----------



## TedEH

It makes sense to me that you can't jump in a game like that - both because visuals and gameplay serve very different purposes, but because aiming for ultimate freedom of movement opens up a huge can of design and implementation worms. I think that something as trivial as "let me jump" would throw huge wrenches in the tightness of the combat, leaving alone how detaching from rigid navigation generates so many edge cases.

There are some games where the movement expression is the core way you interact with the game (see: Mario Odyssey), but in GoW your core expression is the combat. The navigation only really has the goals of "let you see the world from the angles it was designed to be seen at" and "don't break the game's core systems". I think it works well in that regard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


----------



## wankerness

RevDrucifer said:


> How the fuck do you guys remember all these names of the bosses/beasts?!?
> 
> I beat it last Wednesday night but still have a few side quests to wrap up. I can’t remember a fucking name of anything from that game!


I remember the ones that I'd already heard before from Norse mythology osmosis. I've never really read Norse mythology but I've played some videogames that use references (Assassins Creed Valhalla, Age of Mythology, other stuff over the decades) and seen the Thor movies. Sif, Odin, Thor, Freya, Heimdall, Garm, Thor, Angrboda, Loki, Draugr, Einherjar, etc are all represented in those things. So, it's fun to see the difference in portrayal for me (ex Thor as a drunken buffoon vs cool sexy guy; Heimdall as a little shit instead of Idris Elba) and I do remember that stuff. I'm usually terrible with character names in either movies or games and the reason I'm good with them here is just that it's working so much in areas I'm already familiar with.


----------



## wankerness

RevDrucifer said:


> Just a minor gripe that popped up last night while playing Ragnarok while I was in the pub; how the fuck does a game with THIS kind of graphics work not allow you to move around tables and also doesn’t have a jump button?!
> 
> It’s like it’s incredibly well done in every aspect, except being able to move around certain areas…and you can only jump on shit if you’re right next to it.


Ted replied well. This is just a gameplay decision, not a limitation. I think Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the first game to really do this, and this is very much the same template (both games had a jump that was sort of tied to the same button as "interact" and only turned to jump when you hit areas set as "jumpable" or "climbable" or whatever). They decided they weren't going to make trying to exploit your way through areas ala jumping up mountains in Skyrim part of the gameplay. It's much more...curated. Much like a Naughtydog game. You see what they want you to see, there isn't much freedom.


----------



## TedEH

Finished the GoWR story (to the credits - didn't do anything post credits yet)



Spoiler



Man, some of the late-game story beats are a real punch to the gut, in a good way. I kinda wish I got to see what was in the weird green crack thing, but other than that, it feels like most of the rest of the major story lines got the payoff they deserved.

Edit: Actually, there's one or two things I kinda wish HAD happened but didn't.
The first game hinted at how Tyr + Kratos are able to travel between the mythologies but it's never explained. I kinda wish the cross-mythology thing had been expanded on.
But to go along with that - the whole time, I was seeing Kratos get closer and closer to his old self - and I was waiting for the payoff of the old theme music, but it never quite happens.
DUN.
DUNNA.
DUN-NA-NA.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, it has a good story. I don't think it's quite Naughty Dog level, but it's definitely in that second tier that is mainly only occupied by like, Yakuza games or Nier Automata or something. Certainly way, way, WAY better than an Assassin's Creed game or Horizon Forbidden West.

I've been loving all the outrage about the "best story" nominations for the video game awards. Everyone's freaking out about how they included Elden Ring as a nominee. That game's story is vastly better than Horizon Forbidden West's, yet I don't see anyone complaining about the inclusion of that. I guess people just can't deal with alternative storytelling methods and grade story by how many voiced cutscenes there are. This all said, I bet God of War wins that award hands down. Though I don't have a clue what "Immortality" is and haven't played either Plague Tale game.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Yeah, it has a good story. I don't think it's quite Naughty Dog level, but it's definitely in that second tier that is mainly only occupied by like, Yakuza games or Nier Automata or something. Certainly way, way, WAY better than an Assassin's Creed game or Horizon Forbidden West.


I don't play a lot of Naughty Dog games, but I honestly think GoWR was a better story than Last of Us Pt 1, having played both recently. GoW made me feel things where TLoU did not.

But I'd go a step farther in that I think GoW does a better job of including the gameplay systems in the story so that not only are they not dissonant, but they kinda fit the story themes.


----------



## gabito

I still see the first game as the result of SSM trying to be Naughty Dog narratively-wise. GoW Ragnarok feels different, not so dramatic, more adventure-like as in a Marvel movie maybe?

I think they are always first class Sony Santa Monica, but B tier Naughty Dog at most.


----------



## wankerness

TLOU part 1 I think is a bit more interesting thematically, especially that rightfully famous ending, and I think it has much better-drawn characters. I think your personal reaction of not feeling anything is down to personal reaction and not any kind of actual marker of lack of quality in comparison. Like, I definitely could see GOW:R's themes of forgiveness and being a better person being more appealing than TLOU1's questions of what it means to love someone and frequent nihilism. GOW:R is kind of a kitchen sink approach of throwing in tons and tons of crap when it comes to the actual plot, while TLOU is pretty focused. It just has good characters and as a result things work better than they maybe should have with how much the story beats are all over the place.


----------



## TedEH

I guess rather than thinking of it in a way that one has to "be better" -

I think TLoU is a "good story on paper", in the sense that you could academically deconstruct it and call it more value-full implementation of a narrative and themes etc.

GoWR on the other hand was more subjectively moving, as far as I'm concerned.

TLoU executed it's narrative well. GoW punched me in the feels.

Both good stories, but with different goals.


----------



## RevDrucifer

TedEH said:


> It makes sense to me that you can't jump in a game like that - both because visuals and gameplay serve very different purposes, but because aiming for ultimate freedom of movement opens up a huge can of design and implementation worms. I think that something as trivial as "let me jump" would throw huge wrenches in the tightness of the combat, leaving alone how detaching from rigid navigation generates so many edge cases.
> 
> There are some games where the movement expression is the core way you interact with the game (see: Mario Odyssey), but in GoW your core expression is the combat. The navigation only really has the goals of "let you see the world from the angles it was designed to be seen at" and "don't break the game's core systems". I think it works well in that regard. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



I SAID I WANT TO JUMP DON’T BRING LOGIC INTO THIS


----------



## TedEH

Games are almost entirely made of logic. Sort of.


----------



## wankerness

I was eyeing a bunch of games on the black friday sale on PS store (Cyberpunk, DMC5, Stray, Ghostwire, Steelrising, Diablo II, Scarlet Nexus, and Death Stranding), but NONE of them are still on sale for cyber monday. Oof. Guess I'll just continue playing fromsoft games and stardew valley until that Witcher 3 remaster comes out in a couple weeks.


----------



## TedEH

Xmas is coming, which will mean tons of sales incoming. I'm banking on some patience paying off.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, I'm sure it will. Just weird that they completely ended their black friday sale before cyber monday and what's up now has literally nothing I'm interested in. 25 for cyberpunk and the "utlimate edition" or whatever they call it for death stranding actually had me ready to bite, I just was being indecisive on which off that list I wanted the most. Guess they made up my mind for me! I think two years ago their end-of-year sale was incredibly good, but last year's was awful. We'll hope it's more like the one two years ago.


----------



## wankerness

I'm trying to start clearing out my old N64 and SNES games now (I have boxes and manuals for a lot of them). Ebay sure has gotten bad! They like, bury your listings unless you pay to "promote" them and they try really hard to encourage you to leave "allow offers" up, which results in no one bidding on anything and instead trying to offer you 50% of whatever you list anything as. Ugh. I should find a different place to sell!! So far I've only sold two of them (Turok and WWF War Zone) and both went for the minimum starting bid. I'm getting tempted to just list them as buy it now with free shipping and jacking the price up 200% cause it seems like that's the better path towards success with the instant gratification everyone seems to want on there now.


----------



## TedEH

Any time I buy from Ebay, I always just do buy-it-now and sort by lowest+shipping until I find something that doesn't look like garbage. The actual auction parts have become this meta-game of sniping and junk that I just don't care enough to play.


----------



## wankerness

Hmm, OK. So I guess I'll try buy it now on the next wave of these things and see if that's any more successful. I have some valuable games and it will bug me if I don't sell them for anything (ex body harvest with box/manual/etc in near mint, carmageddon 64, space station silicon valley).

I lost my star fox 64 box somehow! Darn it. Also somehow I still have boxes and manuals for games I sold off decades ago when I cleared out my SNES collection for a PSX. I guess I'll have to try selling those independently.

I think I'll probably hold on to Goldeneye and Donkey Kong 64 (long enough to finally finish it) and then get one of those cartridges that can load any rom you throw at it. Seems like they cost less than a hundred bucks, so it would be a good investment since I can probably get several hundred for all my current games.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Hmm, OK. So I guess I'll try buy it now on the next wave of these things and see if that's any more successful. I have some valuable games and it will bug me if I don't sell them for anything (ex body harvest with box/manual/etc in near mint, carmageddon 64, space station silicon valley).
> 
> I lost my star fox 64 box somehow! Darn it. Also somehow I still have boxes and manuals for games I sold off decades ago when I cleared out my SNES collection for a PSX. I guess I'll have to try selling those independently.
> 
> I think I'll probably hold on to Goldeneye and Donkey Kong 64 (long enough to finally finish it) and then get one of those cartridges that can load any rom you throw at it. Seems like they cost less than a hundred bucks, so it would be a good investment since I can probably get several hundred for all my current games.


If you're into flipping games for profit, make sure you grab a physical copy of The Legend of Heroes Trails from Zero... preferably on both PS4 and Switch. They're eventually going to go up in value because they always do after a while. Trails of Cold Steel 1 when from $40 CAD to $130 CAD in a year.


----------



## Ralyks

From now on, when a company wants to make a retro/compilation game, they need to take influence from Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. This is an absolutely fascinating history lesson done extremely well. Lots of neat interviews, and great memorabilia and photos of games from their history. And if you're reading about a game and want to play it, one button and you're there. Didn't think a collection like this would end up on my yearly top 10, especially in such a short time, but this thing is awesome, and highly recommended for anyone with a nostalgia for retro gaming, and gaming history in general.


----------



## Choop

Finally have some free time since I wrapped up my web dev bootcamp...and the first game I played was the original Castlevania on NES -- it's fun! I also bought a few games on the most recent Steam sale that I may or may not get around to actually playing. Right now I'm kind of just in the mood to revisit classic games, and I know I mentioned Mega Man Legends a while ago, so I intend to play that again real soon.


----------



## wankerness

Played a bunch of Stardew Valley, trying to grind out the stupid "kill 50 pepper rexes" goal for the adventurer's guild, these assholes seem to spawn at the rate of about 1 per 30 floors so it's been terrible, except one day I got lucky and got a floor with 10 of them on it. Got burned out after 7 straight days of doing nothing but going to the skull cavern and getting a total of 5 for the week!!

Booted up Elden Ring for the first time in several months, cleared through the back half of Crumbling Farum Azula on my one character (a pure strength build) that hadn't beaten the game yet, died horribly a lot of times to both the damn draconic sentinel and Maliketh, had to resort to mimic tear on the latter. Then got absolutely wrecked by second form of Horah Loux a couple times and quit. Man, God of War made me worse at this game. 

Booted up Dark Souls 1, found I had a character that was halfway through Sen's Fortress, cleared through the rest of that and finished Anor Londo and then ran around the world doing various things. This game is turning into comfort food even if I have to very slowly creep through the chandeliers and poison the archers like a straight up bitch. I was struck by how slick the remaster runs compared to the 360 version that I'd most recently been playing. It does look a bit more plasticy, but wow is a consistent 60 fps a gigantic improvement to gameplay. And while Blighttown is still hideous and has horrendous lighting, at least you can sort of see what the hell is going on.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> It does look a bit more plasticy, but wow is a consistent 60 fps a gigantic improvement to gameplay.


This is how I justify spending so much on PC hardware - performance matters sooooo much in some games.

I started up Death Stranding... got an hour or two into it.... and I'm mostly just confused so far. It feels very polished but I have nooooo idea what the crap is going on, which feels like it's by design.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Getting ready to play The Callisto Protocol.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I started up Death Stranding... got an hour or two into it.... and I'm mostly just confused so far. It feels very polished but I have nooooo idea what the crap is going on, which feels like it's by design.



Same.

But it's what I expect from Hideo Kojima's games. That and hours and hours of cutscenes.


----------



## RevDrucifer

wankerness said:


> I was eyeing a bunch of games on the black friday sale on PS store (Cyberpunk, DMC5, Stray, Ghostwire, Steelrising, Diablo II, Scarlet Nexus, and Death Stranding), but NONE of them are still on sale for cyber monday. Oof. Guess I'll just continue playing fromsoft games and stardew valley until that Witcher 3 remaster comes out in a couple weeks.



Whatever they’re charging for Death Stranding, it’s worth it. Even if it was $10 last week and $100 today. That game is fucking awesome. I can see why some people didn’t dig it and just saw it as “This is like a USPS Simulator”, but I’ve never played a game that did such a good job at immersing me into the story and getting an emotional reaction from me. 

The soundtrack is awesome and the originality of the entire game is just crazy.


----------



## wankerness

I get it to some degree, but when the "complete" version of the director's cut of death stranding was 25 less than a week ago I'm not going to pay 50 for it today! Maybe if it doesn't get discounted over the new years sale...


----------



## RevDrucifer

TedEH said:


> This is how I justify spending so much on PC hardware - performance matters sooooo much in some games.
> 
> I started up Death Stranding... got an hour or two into it.... and I'm mostly just confused so far. It feels very polished but I have nooooo idea what the crap is going on, which feels like it's by design.



Nothing in that game really makes sense until you get closer to the end. The story is just so out there and unique that it’s impossible to guess or assume what’s going to happen. Even with the things you CAN guess ahead of time, there’s a twist added onto it that’ll make you go “Ok, saw about 1/4 of that coming….the rest…..what the fuck?” 

The real fun parts started when the ziplines came in, but what drew me to the game the most was how at some points, when you’re trudging your way up a mountain with all this gear on your back, haven’t seen another person or living thing for quite and while and this somber music starts playing, you can’t help but to take on this desolate/almost hopeless feeling, then something awesome happens and you’re implored to keep moving ahead to find out more about the story, just a really awesome game all around.


----------



## TedEH

I can't say the intro wasn't compelling. I just couldn't possibly explain what I saw without sounding like I'm high.


----------



## StevenC

RevDrucifer said:


> Nothing in that game really makes sense until you get closer to the end. The story is just so out there and unique that it’s impossible to guess or assume what’s going to happen. Even with the things you CAN guess ahead of time, there’s a twist added onto it that’ll make you go “Ok, saw about 1/4 of that coming….the rest…..what the fuck?”
> 
> The real fun parts started when the ziplines came in, but what drew me to the game the most was how at some points, when you’re trudging your way up a mountain with all this gear on your back, haven’t seen another person or living thing for quite and while and this somber music starts playing, you can’t help but to take on this desolate/almost hopeless feeling, then something awesome happens and you’re implored to keep moving ahead to find out more about the story, just a really awesome game all around.


The best thing about those moments is you know there's no BTs for a bit. 


TedEH said:


> I can't say the intro wasn't compelling. I just couldn't possibly explain what I saw without sounding like I'm high.


I haven't finished that game and I couldn't either.


----------



## RevDrucifer

TedEH said:


> I can't say the intro wasn't compelling. I just couldn't possibly explain what I saw without sounding like I'm high.



Hahahaha that’s what I love about it so much; even after you finish it and understand it, you won’t be able to explain it without sounding like you’re high. It’s going to get weirder.


----------



## TedEH

RevDrucifer said:


> It’s going to get weirder.


I'm at the beginning of Chapter 2 and trying to follow the story makes me feel drunk - or maybe like it was written by someone who was drunk at the time.



Spoiler



"Ok, so there's this lady... she's kind of the president, but also maybe your mom who is dead, but also maybe your long lost nightmare beach wife or something, and she's still stranded on the beach... no wait, she's captured by the terrorists, or... maybe she's free, I don't know, but she's here now so that you can rebuild America".

Also eating bugs gives you blood. "Do you mean protein? Health?" Nonono blood. It gives you blood. And your invisible-time-monster-detector is POWERED BY BABIES.


----------



## RevDrucifer

TedEH said:


> I'm at the beginning of Chapter 2 and trying to follow the story makes me feel drunk - or maybe like it was written by someone who was drunk at the time.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> "Ok, so there's this lady... she's kind of the president, but also maybe your mom who is dead, but also maybe your long lost nightmare beach wife or something, and she's still stranded on the beach... no wait, she's captured by the terroriest, or... maybe she's free, I don't know, but she's here now so that you can rebuild America".



Your best option is to not think too hard about it until the end. You’ll definitely get nuggets here and there but it’s a pretty big universe they’ve created and the creativity involved is somethin’ else. Reading the emails you get sent provides a little insight but they won’t give away the whole story.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I'm at the beginning of Chapter 2 and trying to follow the story makes me feel drunk - or maybe like it was written by someone who was drunk at the time.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> "Ok, so there's this lady... she's kind of the president, but also maybe your mom who is dead, but also maybe your long lost nightmare beach wife or something, and she's still stranded on the beach... no wait, she's captured by the terrorists, or... maybe she's free, I don't know, but she's here now so that you can rebuild America".
> 
> Also eating bugs gives you blood. "Do you mean protein? Health?" Nonono blood. It gives you blood. And your invisible-time-monster-detector is POWERED BY BABIES.



Also whales. Lots of whales.


----------



## TedEH

I've been poking at Metroid Fusion for a while and finally finished it today. The timer claims my play time was 5hrs but it feels like more than that. It's a good Metroid game, but I think I played it in the wrong order - it's been spoiled by knowing that Samus Returns and Dread are basically the same thing but better.


----------



## wankerness

I have Fusion and my cart's flash memory died, so I can't save my game. Someday I'll have to beat the whole thing in one sitting.


----------



## CanserDYI

Was watching my kid play today and I pulled out my phone and caught this fantastic little elimination. For 6 years old this kid plays against adults all the time, I was so impressed with this one. I know it's Fortnite, but soon it will be battlefield....can't wait.


----------



## bastardbullet

Finally i'm on the callisto protocol on ps5, no glitches no major fps drops since so far. Lots of people have been cursing the game & playability performance on pc and xbox versions, i guess today the first patch released for those.


----------



## wankerness

bastardbullet said:


> Finally i'm on the callisto protocol on ps5, no glitches no major fps drops since so far. Lots of people have been cursing the game & playability performance on pc and xbox versions, i guess today the first patch released for those.



Yeah, I’m going to have to wait with that one. Early reviews suggest there are a ton of one-hit kills that require perfectly timed dodges, and the game is not great at teaching you how the timings work, every time you die you have to watch a lengthy unskippable gruesome cutscene of your character dying, and the problem is compounded by frame rate issues making your timing off. I guess it plays better in performance mode (which I’d think would always be what people choose on every game, but what do I know?!).


----------



## rokket2005

I'm about ~15 hours in to Xenosaga and I'd been holding onto all my upgrade points cause I wasn't sure where to use them just yet. It's a good thing too, cause I got smacked around by a boss and found out that putting your points into tech attacks is much more useful than stat upgrades, at least at this point in the game. I like the battle system more than Xenogears' so far, the similarities are very evident though. The characters are all really great, which I fully expect from Takahashi at this point.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> I'm about ~15 hours in to Xenosaga and I'd been holding onto all my upgrade points cause I wasn't sure where to use them just yet. It's a good thing too, cause I got smacked around by a boss and found out that putting your points into tech attacks is much more useful than stat upgrades, at least at this point in the game. I like the battle system more than Xenogears' so far, the similarities are very evident though. The characters are all really great, which I fully expect from Takahashi at this point.



I'll have to revisit the Xenosaga games at some point, especially now that feeling that Takahashi has certainly left an impression with Nihon Falcom on the Trails games. Though that'll also mean I'll have to replay Xenosaga 2 and that sucked for a myriad of reasons.


----------



## rokket2005

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'll have to revisit the Xenosaga games at some point, especially now that feeling that Takahashi has certainly left an impression with Nihon Falcom on the Trails games. Though that'll also mean I'll have to replay Xenosaga 2 and that sucked for a myriad of reasons.


Yeah, I've heard a lot of people dog on the second game for a myriad of reasons from redesigns, budget constraints, Jr. being the main character etc. There are also people that have hated on XC2 for the past five years, and it's my favorite game of all time, so I don't trust anyone else's opinions on video games. 
I haven't played Coldsteel, but from what I've heard there is more mech stuff involved than just Pater-Mater. Also from what I've seen from Kuro it seems like XC3 might've taken a few cues from Falcom in terms of XC3s' Ouroboros forms, but how much of that was designed and already in place by the time Kuro came out is questionable. Probably most of it with the way that Takahashi constructs his narratives over several games.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> Yeah, I've heard a lot of people dog on the second game for a myriad of reasons from redesigns, budget constraints, Jr. being the main character etc. There are also people that have hated on XC2 for the past five years, and it's my favorite game of all time, so I don't trust anyone else's opinions on video games.
> I haven't played Coldsteel, but from what I've heard there is more mech stuff involved than just Pater-Mater. Also from what I've seen from Kuro it seems like XC3 might've taken a few cues from Falcom in terms of XC3s' Ouroboros forms, but how much of that was designed and already in place by the time Kuro came out is questionable. Probably most of it with the way that Takahashi constructs his narratives over several games.



One of the biggest blows that Xenosaga 2 copped was the loss of writer (and Takahashi's wife) Soraya Saga, who's contributions were just as important as Takahashi's. She's still credited, but a lot of changes made to her drafters resulted in her exit in less than amicable terms. Mitsuda didn't come back either due to disagreements with Namco, which hurts personally since Ep1 soundtrack is my favorite album of all time. Yuki Kajiura's songs were great, but she was limited to event tracks while Shinji Hirose fell asleep and filled most of the game with stock music. 

I won't spoil much of Trails post Zero, but you've heard right. Pater Mater is a big hint of what's to come and will start to show even before you start the Erebonia arc. A lot of concepts with the DG Cult and gnosis tablets are definitely from the same Nietzche and Jung sources that Takahashi and Saga were fascinated and drawing from. It's hard not to spoil anything Trails related. I've already ruined 2 important characters in the Calvard arc. 

Speaking of Xenoblade, I'm back to soldiering on XC2, but the constant barrage of tutorials is slowing me down significantly. I don't remember XC1 being this bad.


----------



## rokket2005

Where are you at if you don't mind me asking? Aside from one tutorial fairly late game, most of them wrap up right around the end of chapter 3. I don't remember there being any tutorials in xc1, cause it's just it's press left or right and the b button. XC2s combat is much deeper, and there's stuff that the game just flat out doesn't tell you that you're left to parse on your own.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> Where are you at if you don't mind me asking? Aside from one tutorial fairly late game, most of them wrap up right around the end of chapter 3. I don't remember there being any tutorials in xc1, cause it's just it's press left or right and the b button. XC2s combat is much deeper, and there's stuff that the game just flat out doesn't tell you that you're left to parse on your own.



I'm embarrased to admit I'm still in Torigoth and got distracted by a sidequest or 3.  I jumped off it early just to get Trails from Zero off my chest.


----------



## rokket2005

I probably spent 15- hours running around Gormott on my first playthrough too. It's a nice area to get lost in.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

rokket2005 said:


> I haven't played any of the Coldsteels yet either. III was actually the first game I bought in the series knowing full well there were a bunch of other games I was supposed to play first and I'm so glad that I started from the beginning. I've seen so many people start with Zero since it just got it's official localization and I want to slap all those people across the face. They're not going to have a god damn clue what's going on through the whole second half of Zero.



Just noticed this post...

Even if I will 'reluctantly' say that Zero is a decent gateway, just as Cold Steel 1, I agree that the impact of the second half becomes a hell of a lot more meaningful after playing the 3 Sky games. Hell, most of us who started with Cold Steel fell victim already in the second game throwing a massive left turn after what feels like the final climax. And Falcom CEO going around stating Cold Steel 3 is a good gateway during press for it's release... only from his marketing perspective to give incentive to new plays to buy all the games, yes. But not in a way when telling people getting into MCU to start on Infinity War. 

But to be fair, these games have always been troubled by localisation delays. Even as far back as Sky SC, just imagine the wait between the 2 games after that damn cliffhanger. The Crossbell games that took 12 years to be officially localised, and even NISA just got the fan translation from The Geofront guys. That is a cool story though. And it does take an eternity to translate In Search Of Lost Time quantities of dialogue.


----------



## p0ke

Played some more Cyberpunk 2077 yesterday and I gotta say, IMHO it's absolutely worth all the hype. At least now, after all the updates and with the next-gen version. Very immersive, looks great and the plot's interesting so far too.


----------



## MFB

Grinding out more GOW:R trophies, took out half the berserkers, ended last night with the duo in Svartalfheim at the mines and those fucks are tricky. I think one got a power up or becomes more aggro when the first dies, because I thought I'd coast once I was down to him.

Amulet is fully upgraded so I have addl. damage when over 75% health, addl. rage based off my defense (super high) along with maxed out armor/BoC/DS but surprisingly not my axe?

Have more money than I know what to do with (thanks wishing well) so I've been maxing out random gear and seeing if there's any reason to switch. So far, no. Might finish the Muspelheim challenges tomorrow, the first of the BIG arena ones was a blast (99 enemies total, only took about a dozen hits) and maybe try to finish another Berserker or two.


----------



## MrBouleDeBowling

I never played Cuphead before but with the DLC and the Netflix cartoon it made headlines again so I gave it a go. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, it absolutely lives up to its reputation and I was never that good at videogames. A true fucking challenge for my ADHD brain. After a lot of practice and dying an embarassing number of times, I finally managed to beat the main game. 

Now I'm getting started with the DLC. Wish me good luck!


----------



## bastardbullet

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I’m going to have to wait with that one. Early reviews suggest there are a ton of one-hit kills that require perfectly timed dodges, and the game is not great at teaching you how the timings work, every time you die you have to watch a lengthy unskippable gruesome cutscene of your character dying, and the problem is compounded by frame rate issues making your timing off. I guess it plays better in performance mode (which I’d think would always be what people choose on every game, but what do I know?!).


I didn't really felt the need to jump over the performance mode at all, not sure why but it seemed all good to me. Dodge mechanism is a bit weird & wild for most, i get it but again i've had no issues. 

One thing drove me crazy was somewhere at the beginning, i sold an item without thinking twice and regretted it. So i just wanted to return where i manually saved the game which was right before the last autosave. F*ck me i'll never do that; the game literally punished the hell out of me for it. Creatures jumping from everywhere with an imbossible combat level which cost me a good 45-50 minutes of an inferno to catch up with where i was before. Not sure is it really a thing but, i suggest you not to go back and forth in between the checkpoints like i did.


----------



## gabito

Sitll playing Death Stranding.

I still can't decide if I like it or not... the game says I've been playing 17 hours, and I'm still on chapter 3. I don't know if I spent that much time playing, but I've read every email and data file the game sent me, and maybe I left the console on while I was doing something else, so it may be true...

The amount of info and tips the game throws at you is overwhelming, so I disabled that at some point. Consequently, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing most of the time  It can be pretty annoying, and some level of handholding in _a Hideo Kojima game_ is pretty common, but the game interrupts anything you're doing all the time... and it still can be confusing.

The UI / UX is kind of bad. And you spend a lot of time micromanaging stuff, so there's that.

Stealth / combat missions are what you can expect from _a Hideo Kojima game_. Very MGSV-like.

Supposedly things pick up story and gameplay-wise after chapter 3, so we'll see. When it's about _a Hideo Kojima game_ I can be pretty biased, so I guess I'll end up liking the game no matter what


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Grinding out more GOW:R trophies, took out half the berserkers, ended last night with the duo in Svartalfheim at the mines and those fucks are tricky. I think one got a power up or becomes more aggro when the first dies, because I thought I'd coast once I was down to him.
> 
> Amulet is fully upgraded so I have addl. damage when over 75% health, addl. rage based off my defense (super high) along with maxed out armor/BoC/DS but surprisingly not my axe?
> 
> Have more money than I know what to do with (thanks wishing well) so I've been maxing out random gear and seeing if there's any reason to switch. So far, no. Might finish the Muspelheim challenges tomorrow, the first of the BIG arena ones was a blast (99 enemies total, only took about a dozen hits) and maybe try to finish another Berserker or two.


The muspelheim challenges are really tedious since you have to redo the easy ones over and over in different orders to unlock different "final challenges." They aren't at all hard, though.

The berserker trio is the worst thing in the game IMO. Not sure if it would have been a lot easier with that tank setup I ended up using on the king and final final boss, though. The duo was nowhere close to as annoying.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> The muspelheim challenges are really tedious since you have to redo the easy ones over and over in different orders to unlock different "final challenges." They aren't at all hard, though.
> 
> The berserker trio is the worst thing in the game IMO. Not sure if it would have been a lot easier with that tank setup I ended up using on the king and final final boss, though. The duo was nowhere close to as annoying.



I ran into them and tried once, got the sisters to half health but the main one was just absolutely hammering me during those attacks anyway, so I just took the L and said I'll come back to it. I was a bit confused on the changes to the Crucible, like, rehashing arenas in different orders? Just make it shorter and be done with it, that's just weird gatekeeping.

I also found the other boss you're referencing, promptly got my shit packed by them and said much like the Berserker trio, I'll come back.


----------



## TedEH

gabito said:


> Sitll playing Death Stranding.


I feel like I'm having a pretty different experience hah. Only on chapter 2, but the game feels almost kinda casual. Lots of just running around. No real time pressure, even though the UI kind of implies there is. Random music popping up during quiet times is pretty welcome. It's almost got that BotW "I just want to wander for a while" thing going on. I think I've gotten an "S" rank on every delivery/mission so far, and it feels almost like the game is setting up for some kind of meta joke about the rank being meaningless and you get S every time or something.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I feel like I'm having a pretty different experience hah. Only on chapter 2, but the game feels almost kinda casual. Lots of just running around. No real time pressure, even though the UI kind of implies there is. Random music popping up during quiet times is pretty welcome. It's almost got that BotW "I just want to wander for a while" thing going on. I think I've gotten an "S" rank on every delivery/mission so far, and it feels almost like the game is setting up for some kind of meta joke about the rank being meaningless and you get S every time or something.



Yeah, I got an S on every mission too, and I'm sure I'm not good at the game  

Or maybe I am? 

The BT encounters made me feel kind of anxious at first, but after I got the hang of it (and hematic grenades) not anymore. Mule encounters are more fun so far, they can be chaotic.

I want more cutscenes!


----------



## TedEH

I haven't figured out the grenades yet....
It does seem like the presentation implies there's more danger to BTs than there really is. I've gotten pretty close to them and managed to get away every time.


----------



## gabito

TedEH said:


> I haven't figured out the grenades yet....
> It does seem like the presentation implies there's more danger to BTs than there really is. I've gotten pretty close to them and managed to get away every time.



I still don't know if the can see you, or only hear you? They got me a few times, but I don't know why (I mean, I fell or I was being noisy, but still...). But yeah, it's not the end of the world.


----------



## Nicki

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I'll have to revisit the Xenosaga games at some point, especially now that feeling that Takahashi has certainly left an impression with Nihon Falcom on the Trails games. Though that'll also mean I'll have to replay Xenosaga 2 and that sucked for a myriad of reasons.


Sorry, this interested me because 

1. I'm going through Trails of Cold Steel 2 atm (though it's pissing me off because it won't fucking end)
2. I'm not sure what connection to Takahashi there is outside of the work he did on the first Legend of Heroes game. I can't find any reference to him on any of the Trails games. 

You mind elaborating on the connection?


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Nicki said:


> Sorry, this interested me because
> 
> 1. I'm going through Trails of Cold Steel 2 atm (though it's pissing me off because it won't fucking end)
> 2. I'm not sure what connection to Takahashi there is outside of the work he did on the first Legend of Heroes game. I can't find any reference to him on any of the Trails games.
> 
> You mind elaborating on the connection?



I may be overstating it, but Takahashi's fascination with mecha (and all the applied game mechanics) are definitely in the Trails games. He's been known to have Gundam figures all over his desk during his Square years, maybe even as far as his early time in Falcom. 

The other is anything to do with religious themes, like the Septian Church, Gnosticism (there's a theme in Zero), but they're not fully in depth in the Trails games.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Played and finished a horror game called SOMA. I enjoyed it but it was overhyped for me with the reviews calling it a masterpiece and the "overwhelmingly positive" status on Steam. I didn't find it super mind blowing like the reviews would say, I don't know if the ending was supposed to be unexpected but the game already tells you what's going to happen way before the end. I didn't find myself surprised or shocked. But without the overhype or very high expectations it's really a good game and I enjoyed learning all about it's world.


----------



## wankerness

SOMA's basically just a walking simulator, isn't it?


----------



## Nicki

Bloody_Inferno said:


> I may be overstating it, but Takahashi's fascination with mecha (and all the applied game mechanics) are definitely in the Trails games. He's been known to have Gundam figures all over his desk during his Square years, maybe even as far as his early time in Falcom.
> 
> The other is anything to do with religious themes, like the Septian Church, Gnosticism (there's a theme in Zero), but they're not fully in depth in the Trails games.


I don't think you can connect him to the Trails series since his involvement with the Legend of Heroes ended after Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes. The Divine Knights were definitely Gundam inspired, but with no direct or indirect involvement from Takahashi whatsoever in the Trails series, I think you're seeing a connection that's really non-existent.


----------



## RevDrucifer

TedEH said:


> I feel like I'm having a pretty different experience hah. Only on chapter 2, but the game feels almost kinda casual. Lots of just running around. No real time pressure, even though the UI kind of implies there is. Random music popping up during quiet times is pretty welcome. It's almost got that BotW "I just want to wander for a while" thing going on. I think I've gotten an "S" rank on every delivery/mission so far, and it feels almost like the game is setting up for some kind of meta joke about the rank being meaningless and you get S every time or something.





gabito said:


> Yeah, I got an S on every mission too, and I'm sure I'm not good at the game
> 
> Or maybe I am?
> 
> The BT encounters made me feel kind of anxious at first, but after I got the hang of it (and hematic grenades) not anymore. Mule encounters are more fun so far, they can be chaotic.
> 
> I want more cutscenes!





TedEH said:


> I haven't figured out the grenades yet....
> It does seem like the presentation implies there's more danger to BTs than there really is. I've gotten pretty close to them and managed to get away every time.



I don’t want to give too much away, but you’re not wrong about the ranking system. Maybe you get a trophy or something if your score is above a certain level but I don’t recall anything else, at the most, you might make a couple people feel more comfortable with joining the uh…..I can’t remember what the call it, a little faster than they would normally. 

The grenades/BT’s….well, if they snag you and you drop all the shit you’re carrying, unless you have a bunch of container spray on you, you risk losing everything when the containers hit the tar. That REALLY sucks when you’re carrying a load so damn big you have to walk as slow as possible, all the way across the damn map, only to get pulled in by some BT’s and lose everything, making you restart. 

Also, you can piss on them and it’s effective at keeping them away.  Definitely keep a stock of your piss and shit test tubes (the fact I’m saying that and it’s a thing cracks me up, never mind the animations)

I LOVE the music popping up when you’re on a trek, I don’t know how they‘re triggering the songs to start but they always come in at the perfect time and they do such a great job at immersing you into your character; whether it’s a lonely song or a hopeful sounding one, I know I‘d actually start feeling that way while playing.


----------



## Nicki

I played a bit of Assassin's Creed Odyssey on my lunch break... I forgot how floaty the modern AC games feel in terms of movement.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, the later AC games do feel weird. Origins especially was jarring the first time I played it, I felt like my character was bluescreened onto the environment or something, as opposed to a three dimensional object in a virtual world. You get used to it, but it's weird during the adjustment period.


----------



## rokket2005

Nicki said:


> I don't think you can connect him to the Trails series since his involvement with the Legend of Heroes ended after Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes. The Divine Knights were definitely Gundam inspired, but with no direct or indirect involvement from Takahashi whatsoever in the Trails series, I think you're seeing a connection that's really non-existent.


We just meant that there a lot of similar themes that seem to be borrowed and exchanged between the Xeno games and Trails. Mutual admiration between the creators certainly exists.


----------



## beerandbeards

Finished GoW:R last week and was excited to check out Callisto Protocol as I’m a fan of Dead Space. Unfortunately it got some mixed reviews so I’m going to wait until it’s cheaper or it gets some patches.

So no game to play until the Dead Space remake next month. Looked into Evil West which has coop. It’s a fun game, and if you like the mechanics of GoW you will feel at home. Had some glitches unfortunately but that stuff will get patched eventually. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes GoW mechanics, and is will big to wait until it’s patched and cheaper. It’s a pretty straight forward game without too much upgrades and no side quests.


----------



## wankerness

I saw a few reactions to Evil West that basically said they were expecting to be playing Pokemon or Callisto Protocol, but it ended up being the best release since GOW:R by far. Though given how bad Pokemon and Callisto Protocol seem to be in their current forms, that might not be saying a lot.


----------



## StevenC

New Mario Kart tracks are once again 5/8 good. Much like the previous packs, the brand new track is straight up bad. Just not fun and uninspired. Also Berlin is just kind of a mess and the 3DS track is super dull.

That said.

London, Maple Treeway, Peach Gardens, and 3DS Rainbow Road are all top tier tracks. Boo Lake is a very good addition too. It's nice to see them expanding the development of these tracks as the DLC goes on. Peach Gardens has a whole new final lap, for example, which really caught me off guard the first time. Maple Treeway is such a gem in a game that handles nicely, London is insanely fast on 200cc.

Finally, the custom item selection is a great addition. Now if we could just have custom lap counters to do a few laps of N64 and 3DS Rainbow Roads.


----------



## Matt08642

I just fired up my emulator and I'm playing F-Zero X from the N64 again. Makes me miss when games didn't have season passes and other bullshit lol.


----------



## Nicki

rokket2005 said:


> We just meant that there a lot of similar themes that seem to be borrowed and exchanged between the Xeno games and Trails. Mutual admiration between the creators certainly exists.


I'm not saying that the mutual admiration can't exist, but to be honest, those same themes have existed in video games long before either Xenogears/saga/blade and Trails. They've been standard fare in JRPGs since the NES.

Again, not saying the staff on the two series can't riff off each other and be fans of the other's work. I just disagree that Takahashi had anything to do with Trails and the creators of both series just re-use themes that exist in games they knew from their own pasts.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Nicki said:


> I'm not saying that the mutual admiration can't exist, but to be honest, those same themes have existed in video games long before either Xenogears/saga/blade and Trails. They've been standard fare in JRPGs since the NES.
> 
> Again, not saying the staff on the two series can't riff off each other and be fans of the other's work. I just disagree that Takahashi had anything to do with Trails and the creators of both series just re-use themes that exist in games they knew from their own pasts.



He doesn't have any direct influence yes. But digging deeper in the Trails games shows that Falcom certainly copied his Xeno homework. If anything, it's more obvious in the gameplay department, a lot less than story, especially in CS3 onward. Though of course it's a superficial thing as well since mecha is synonymous with Japanese pop culture. 

Also it's very hard to pinpoint what I'm talking about without spoiling it. So...



Spoiler



Rean's students in the new Class 7 get their own Soldats, except Altina who gets the biggest Soldat of them all, that you can summon during battles. Outside the mecha fights, the implementation of mecha during standard battle is right off the Xenosaga games. 

The other superficial influence is the Gnosis pills and the DG Cult (who you'll need to bookmark for now but will come back in a few years), but again, that's superficial and doesn't go anywhere as deep as Takahashi and Saga ever did.



How far are you into Cold Steel 2 btw?


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

wankerness said:


> SOMA's basically just a walking simulator, isn't it?


It's a horror game. It has monsters, hiding, being chased, can't fight back, puzzles, etc, etc. Also lots of gore and other weird stuff. I didn't find it very scary, but it depends on the person I guess. That's not the highlight of the game though, the best part is the story and slowly discovering what's happening.

Honestly I don't mind walking simulators, if it has a good soundtrack, story and visuals. I still remember some of the tracks from Dear Esther. I also want to buy What Remains of Edith Finch now that it's on sale.

Spec Ops The Line is another game that comes to mind. I think the gameplay is okay, the story super overrated but I love the soundtrack so much in that game, sometimes I come back just because of that.


----------



## Nicki

Bloody_Inferno said:


> He doesn't have any direct influence yes. But digging deeper in the Trails games shows that Falcom certainly copied his Xeno homework. If anything, it's more obvious in the gameplay department, a lot less than story, especially in CS3 onward. Though of course it's a superficial thing as well since mecha is synonymous with Japanese pop culture.
> 
> Also it's very hard to pinpoint what I'm talking about without spoiling it. So...
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Rean's students in the new Class 7 get their own Soldats, except Altina who gets the biggest Soldat of them all, that you can summon during battles. Outside the mecha fights, the implementation of mecha during standard battle is right off the Xenosaga games.
> 
> The other superficial influence is the Gnosis pills and the DG Cult (who you'll need to bookmark for now but will come back in a few years), but again, that's superficial and doesn't go anywhere as deep as Takahashi and Saga ever did.
> 
> 
> 
> How far are you into Cold Steel 2 btw?


I finished it on Tuesday. Yes, finished _finished _it - epilogue and all. Honestly, I was *VERY *disappointed with it.

I didn't like how the plot was handled in Act 2 and it felt really pointless, much like the final boss. The writing seemed to have taken a nose dive since CS1 since the bulk of it was just "We'll get through this together!" and "As long I have my classmates with me, I know I can!" and other super cringy lines like that. I didn't mind going around Erebonia to reassemble the cast in act 1, I (initially) looked forward to the dialogue that others would have with Rean upon seeing him but then it just turned into "We can do this together!" every single time. I also didn't like how they implimented the save clear data carryover. That was horrendous. Scaling monsters up was just the wrong approach. Breezing through some areas to be able to more freely explore and get through the plot quicker would have been more preferable as it would have been like a "reward" to the player for playing through the first game. I also don't generally don't cheese the bosses and I *STRUGGLED *with a lot of them on normal. Particularly because I carried over save data, a lot of the bosses were one-shotting me. So I felt like I was being punished for carrying my save data through. Eventually, I would just sit there for 10 minutes intentionally wiping so I could weaken enemies and just mash X to beat them with physical attacks. It got to the point where I just didn't care anymore since no matter what I did, I wouldn't be able to get through a turn based battle actually thinking out my actions for each character's turn since the boss could one shot me anyway. It was absolutely ridiculous. From what I've read (and experienced) the game is so poorly balanced that all boss battles either go highly in favour of the player, or highly in favour of the enemy. There's nothing in between. 

And then.. the epilogue... Falcom obviously didn't know what an "Epilogue" in story-telling is.

Man... I was looking forward to playing the second game but CS2 has just left a really bad taste in my mouth and I'm going to shelving the series for a long time. Just having the 3rd and 4th games starting at me whenever I look at my PS4 games is going to make me scowl until I'm ready to go back to it, but I don't think I'll be making the mistake of carrying my save data over again. I may also use a guide when I go through CS3 and 4 so that I can be better prepared for what's ahead. Going through blind is doable, but not at all enjoyable.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Nicki said:


> I finished it on Tuesday. Yes, finished _finished _it - epilogue and all. Honestly, I was *VERY *disappointed with it.
> 
> I didn't like how the plot was handled in Act 2 and it felt really pointless, much like the final boss. The writing seemed to have taken a nose dive since CS1 since the bulk of it was just "We'll get through this together!" and "As long I have my classmates with me, I know I can!" and other super cringy lines like that. I didn't mind going around Erebonia to reassemble the cast in act 1, I (initially) looked forward to the dialogue that others would have with Rean upon seeing him but then it just turned into "We can do this together!" every single time. I also didn't like how they implimented the save clear data carryover. That was horrendous. Scaling monsters up was just the wrong approach. Breezing through some areas to be able to more freely explore and get through the plot quicker would have been more preferable as it would have been like a "reward" to the player for playing through the first game. I also don't generally don't cheese the bosses and I *STRUGGLED *with a lot of them on normal. Particularly because I carried over save data, a lot of the bosses were one-shotting me. So I felt like I was being punished for carrying my save data through. Eventually, I would just sit there for 10 minutes intentionally wiping so I could weaken enemies and just mash X to beat them with physical attacks. It got to the point where I just didn't care anymore since no matter what I did, I wouldn't be able to get through a turn based battle actually thinking out my actions for each character's turn since the boss could one shot me anyway. It was absolutely ridiculous. From what I've read (and experienced) the game is so poorly balanced that all boss battles either go highly in favour of the player, or highly in favour of the enemy. There's nothing in between.
> 
> And then.. the epilogue... Falcom obviously didn't know what an "Epilogue" in story-telling is.
> 
> Man... I was looking forward to playing the second game but CS2 has just left a really bad taste in my mouth and I'm going to shelving the series for a long time. Just having the 3rd and 4th games starting at me whenever I look at my PS4 games is going to make me scowl until I'm ready to go back to it, but I don't think I'll be making the mistake of carrying my save data over again. I may also use a guide when I go through CS3 and 4 so that I can be better prepared for what's ahead. Going through blind is doable, but not at all enjoyable.



To be fair, I struggled with 1 and 2 as well. The fight with C in 1 and McBurn in 2 kicked my ass hard on my first playthrough. I wasn't until after when I realised that speed is the name of the Trails battle systems. Basically, abusing impede, action, any Art that triples time (Machias has one) and you'll be wiping the floor with most enemies. It certainly made 3 and 4 significantly easier for me. Admittedly I didn't notice how the clear data carryover was implemented so I can't comment. 

I also think Cold Steel 2 is one of the weakest in the entire Trails series. 

You're right about the cringy anime dialogue, and in a game this big, it's enough to make most guys in this thread declare ethnic cleansing against Japan. And it certainly doesn't help since the game's pacing is about as fast as the continental drift, making you sing the same 'power of friendship' chorus for every character or NPC you invite to the SS Courageous Machine. The game is unsubtle about beating you over the head with it, and it also doesn't help that my biggest problem with Class 7 as a whole is that everyone is just moons orbiting around Rean. Frankly I was a bit dissapointed as well. Though after starting 3, I realised why that 'we can do this together' song was constantly yelled at you...



Spoiler



After the first epilogue (more on that) the second epilogue , that Reverie final dungeon remix made more sense. After all of that friendship song in Rean's heart, being teared right out of him by Osborne, he becomes an emotional wreck while being the war hero he never wanted to be. And his last time with Cass 7 together becomes a lot more poignant (in an anime sense). The class disbands and everyone has their own path to follow and grow... except Rean. He's stuck back juggling school and war against neighboring countries and it eats him up until all he could do is fall apart and cry in Towa's arms. It's pretty depressing when you lay it all out.



I suggest you take a substantial break from the series after that and don't even think of touching Cold Steel 3 for a while. Have you played the Trails In The Sky trilogy at all? Probably best to tackle those, as well as Trails From Zero. 



Spoiler



That first epilogue, let's just call it a diversion, makes a ton more sense after playing Zero and the upcoming Azure. Yes that whole diversion is extremely jarring, and unfortunately that's how most of us outside Japan had to experience it since it took 12 years to localise the Crossbell games.



It's either playing the games or going through a video summary to keep you up to speed, since Cold Steel 3 does not waste time before you're asking who the hell is who, like someone starting the MCU at Infinity War. There's also the Northern War anime that's coming out next year so that's another diversion.  There's also this hidden CS2 NG+ scene that you'll need to see as well.


----------



## Nicki

Bloody_Inferno said:


> To be fair, I struggled with 1 and 2 as well. The fight with C in 1 and McBurn in 2 kicked my ass hard on my first playthrough. I wasn't until after when I realised that speed is the name of the Trails battle systems. Basically, abusing impede, action, any Art that triples time (Machias has one) and you'll be wiping the floor with most enemies. It certainly made 3 and 4 significantly easier for me. Admittedly I didn't notice how the clear data carryover was implemented so I can't comment.
> 
> I suggest you take a substantial break from the series after that and don't even think of touching Cold Steel 3 for a while. Have you played the Trails In The Sky trilogy at all? Probably best to tackle those, as well as Trails From Zero.
> 
> It's either playing the games or going through a video summary to keep you up to speed, since Cold Steel 3 does not waste time before you're asking who the hell is who, like someone starting the MCU at Infinity War. There's also the Northern War anime that's coming out next year so that's another diversion.  There's also this hidden CS2 NG+ scene that you'll need to see as well.


Cold Steel 1 wasn't as bad in balance as Cold Steel 2. Yeah the fight with C was unbelievably broken and badly balanced but overall I didn't have too tough a time with it (up until the final fight - that was another poorly balanced one).

I ran Chrono Drive with Fie more often than not but it really didn't help. I noticed that it wasn't providing more turns when I needed them so I'm not sure how effective the speed stat is. Again, it's absolutely meaningless when the boss was one-shotting me due to being so high level from carrying my save file over.

Yeah I'm going to be taking a very long break from the Cold Steel series. Right now, I've fired up AC Odyssey. I have Trails in the sky 1 and 2 (also, LoH 1 & 2 on PSP ) as well as a myriad of other games to play so I'm good to take as long as a break as I need from Cold Steel.

Thanks for the heads up on the hidden scene. I'll check it out.


----------



## MFB

Beat all the Berserkers on Balanced mode, but had to switch to Story for Berserker King; only reason being that due to him pulling abilities from all the others, I used one specific shield for the one in Nifelheim which is basically a status reversal shield (absorb bifrost, double-tap L1 and put it back on them). BUT, that meant my parry window was now much smaller since it took away that ability, which is required for some other ones like the trio you fight in the Barrens of Alfheim. So I said fuck it, bumped it down and beat him after a handful of tries realizing I was going to have to do that - I think the furthest I got him without it was halfway, and again, that's strictly because he abused the Bifrost version which is probably the 2nd toughest of all due to how glass-cannon-esque it is to your health.

Gonna try to kill Gna tonight, and maybe finish the Muspelheim trials to round out all the main trophies, the rest would be following a guide for relics/artifacts/lore and then voila - PLATINUM


----------



## wankerness

Huh. I never tried that status reversal shield, I just used that super tanky rectangular one on the king and blocked everything. Yeah, the bifrost crap was ridiculous, it was like if that gets on you you have to go almost a minute without getting hit or bammo, all your health disappears. I think it was responsible for all of my deaths in the parry/poison build. Blocking pretty much negated it.


----------



## MFB

I was using that one in the beginning of the game, but in the middle I was using the Shatter shield (builds up stun during block) or the Onslaught after that, now I'm using the Dauntless in the endgame which rewards better parrying (which I can do based on the Rond I'm assuming).


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I was using that one in the beginning of the game, but in the middle I was using the Shatter shield (builds up stun during block) or the Onslaught after that, now I'm using the Dauntless in the endgame which rewards better parrying (which I can do based on the Rond I'm assuming).


I think that parry one with the increased window was the most "fun" one and I'm glad I used it for almost the entire game. Just turned to crap on the last couple enemies that attack so relentlessly that I am guessing you either can't parry everything or would have to be a gaming god.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I think that parry one with the increased window was the most "fun" one and I'm glad I used it for almost the entire game. Just turned to crap on the last couple enemies that attack so relentlessly that I am guessing you either can't parry everything or would have to be a gaming god.



I'm assuming you mean the end game enemies we're discussing and not just Thor/Odin? Cause I had no problem with them, but yeah Hrolfi/Gna are pretty quick with some of their attacks, to the point where lock on was useless and I just went the opposite direction of the arrow onscreen and prayed.


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> I'm assuming you mean the end game enemies we're discussing and not just Thor/Odin? Cause I had no problem with them, but yeah Hrolfi/Gna are pretty quick with some of their attacks, to the point where lock on was useless and I just went the opposite direction of the arrow onscreen and prayed.


Yeah, I'm talking about the berserker king and gna only.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Nicki said:


> Cold Steel 1 wasn't as bad in balance as Cold Steel 2. Yeah the fight with C was unbelievably broken and badly balanced but overall I didn't have too tough a time with it (up until the final fight - that was another poorly balanced one).
> 
> I ran Chrono Drive with Fie more often than not but it really didn't help. I noticed that it wasn't providing more turns when I needed them so I'm not sure how effective the speed stat is. Again, it's absolutely meaningless when the boss was one-shotting me due to being so high level from carrying my save file over.
> 
> Yeah I'm going to be taking a very long break from the Cold Steel series. Right now, I've fired up AC Odyssey. I have Trails in the sky 1 and 2 (also, LoH 1 & 2 on PSP ) as well as a myriad of other games to play so I'm good to take as long as a break as I need from Cold Steel.
> 
> Thanks for the heads up on the hidden scene. I'll check it out.



Odd that I've never come across any OHKO experiences, sans one embarrassing round against the final boss in Zero, but that's another game. I'll have to recheck these out, or dare say try it in Nightmare or something. One thing that I really love about these games is how deep I can go with character builds. 

IME, speed does help a lot. Fie is interesting since even when she's already a speedy evasion tank by default, you can break her even more by stacking time and wind orbs to make her untouchable. You can do the same with Rean, albeit more protagonist versatility and have both impede everyone before the enemy's first turn. Have Machias cast Chrono Burst on himself and Burst drive on everyone else, with Alisa as your CP battery, and it becomes embarrassing. Magic is weird here since casting time is much more apparent here than most JRPGs, but a few cast orbs fixes that, certainly gives Elliot some time off the bench. Abusing speed mechanics made the most of the latter bosses for both games easier for me. I won't say much else about the final boss for 2 since that jumps into spoiler territory beyond these games, because of course it does. 

That extra NG+ scene also implies that you've read all the books you've collected, tabloids, fictional books, all of it. You know... lore building.


----------



## Ralyks

On Palace 5 of Persona 5 Royal. Hit the 60 hour mark but it's flew by. Got a number of confidants maxed out, included one of the two you need to unlock the 3rd semester. This game still rules. That said, I don't know what happened but I'm like, 20 levels above what the Theieves Guild says is the average so combat has been a bit easy.

Anyway, go figure, Death Stranding 2 got announced at the TGS last night.


----------



## Nicki

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Odd that I've never come across any OHKO experiences, sans one embarrassing round against the final boss in Zero, but that's another game. I'll have to recheck these out, or dare say try it in Nightmare or something. One thing that I really love about these games is how deep I can go with character builds.
> 
> IME, speed does help a lot. Fie is interesting since even when she's already a speedy evasion tank by default, you can break her even more by stacking time and wind orbs to make her untouchable. You can do the same with Rean, albeit more protagonist versatility and have both impede everyone before the enemy's first turn. Have Machias cast Chrono Burst on himself and Burst drive on everyone else, with Alisa as your CP battery, and it becomes embarrassing. Magic is weird here since casting time is much more apparent here than most JRPGs, but a few cast orbs fixes that, certainly gives Elliot some time off the bench. Abusing speed mechanics made the most of the latter bosses for both games easier for me. I won't say much else about the final boss for 2 since that jumps into spoiler territory beyond these games, because of course it does.
> 
> That extra NG+ scene also implies that you've read all the books you've collected, tabloids, fictional books, all of it. You know... lore building.


Pretty sure the one hit KO is only because I carried my save data.

Yeah I know you can get Fie up to 100% evade with evergreens, evade 2 and falco. I tried it... really boring. 

Anyway... AC Odyssey is really boring so I think I'm going to skip that one and move on to something else... Not sure what yet.


----------



## rokket2005

Ralyks said:


> On Palace 5 of Persona 5 Royal. Hit the 60 hour mark but it's flew by. Got a number of confidants maxed out, included one of the two you need to unlock the 3rd semester. This game still rules. That said, I don't know what happened but I'm like, 20 levels above what the Theieves Guild says is the average so combat has been a bit easy.
> 
> Anyway, go figure, Death Stranding 2 got announced at the TGS last night.


I never went into the Thieves' den until I had beaten the game so I didn't know that there were recommended levels, but if the 5th palace is Okumura you'll be happy to be over leveled for the garbage the boss of that palace pulls .


----------



## wankerness

Well, death stranding and cyberpunk went back on sale already, so I bought them. Will start them when I’m done with my 6th elden ring playthrough


----------



## Ralyks

rokket2005 said:


> I never went into the Thieves' den until I had beaten the game so I didn't know that there were recommended levels, but if the 5th palace is Okumura you'll be happy to be over leveled for the garbage the boss of that palace pulls .


Not the Thieves Den that's the Museum, the Thieves Guild where you press the touch pad on the PlayStation controller and it shows you what other players did inyour situation (hang out with confidents, grow a social stats, etc). But yes, it's Okumuras palace, and yes, actually glad I'm over leveled, have had one or two close calls in there. I'm not sure if the game gives you more time or it's because I planned it out this time, but it feels like it's easier to grow confidants and social stats. I have like 5 or 6 confidants maxed and and almost all the others are at least level 5 (except maybe Yusuke, Don't know why I'm resistant to hanging out with him), and except for proficiency, all of my social stats are at level 4. I feel like I wasn't anywhere near this at this point in vanilla P5.


----------



## rokket2005

Ralyks said:


> Not the Thieves Den that's the Museum, the Thieves Guild where you press the touch pad on the PlayStation controller and it shows you what other players did inyour situation (hang out with confidents, grow a social stats, etc). But yes, it's Okumuras palace, and yes, actually glad I'm over leveled, have had one or two close calls in there. I'm not sure if the game gives you more time or it's because I planned it out this time, but it feels like it's easier to grow confidants and social stats. I have like 5 or 6 confidants maxed and and almost all the others are at least level 5 (except maybe Yusuke, Don't know why I'm resistant to hanging out with him), and except for proficiency, all of my social stats are at level 4. I feel like I wasn't anywhere near this at this point in vanilla P5.


ah, I remember looking at what other people did in P4, but I don't think I ever did in 5. I also don't think I ever got Yusuke past like level 4 in P5R, Ann either, just didn't ever use them after I got other options. I liked Yusuke in strikers a lot though, and you kind of have to use everyone in that game. I also never even got the Politician guy, I think he was the Sun arcana. There was something about having to get a job at the noodle place, and I was like if I need money I'll just go into Mementos.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> Not the Thieves Den that's the Museum, the Thieves Guild where you press the touch pad on the PlayStation controller and it shows you what other players did inyour situation (hang out with confidents, grow a social stats, etc). But yes, it's Okumuras palace, and yes, actually glad I'm over leveled, have had one or two close calls in there. I'm not sure if the game gives you more time or it's because I planned it out this time, but it feels like it's easier to grow confidants and social stats. I have like 5 or 6 confidants maxed and and almost all the others are at least level 5 (except maybe Yusuke, Don't know why I'm resistant to hanging out with him), and except for proficiency, all of my social stats are at level 4. I feel like I wasn't anywhere near this at this point in vanilla P5.



The game definitely gives you more time. They removed a lot of those BS days where the cat would demand you do nothing but go to sleep, and they added some social events like darts and the jazz club which give you other benefits in addition to confidant level.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> my 6th elden ring playthrough


I had been hoping that the game awards would have meant Elden Ring finally goes on sale, but nope. Some day. I'll get to it some day.


----------



## Lionsblood79

Skins matches on PGA2K23


----------



## Lionsblood79

Patiently awaiting The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to come out, game is gonna be SICK


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> The game definitely gives you more time. They removed a lot of those BS days where the cat would demand you do nothing but go to sleep, and they added some social events like darts and the jazz club which give you other benefits in addition to confidant level.


Honestly I dig it not only because I can actually get shit done in one playthrough, but I actually feel like I'm getting the complete picture. Also, turns out Kawakamis level 10 skill is extremely useful.


----------



## MFB

59hrs total to get the Platinum for GOW:R, now I can chill out on playing that franchise for a bit. I think I played through 2018 four times total, this one doesn't have the same appeal to me at the moment.

Not sure what I'll move onto now, probably check out the sales and see if anything grabs me


----------



## beerandbeards

I got the platinum trophy for GoW:R last night. Vanaheim is a maze of a map but thankfully there’s online guides lol

My brother and I finished Evil West coop. Straight forward and fun game with a bit of a challenge. Unfortunately it’s a bit buggy but hopefully they patch it up. Not so bad to prevent us from playing but irritating enough.

Looking forward to Dead Space, Harry Potter looks neat, and Jedi Survivor


----------



## Carrion Rocket

I saw Armored Core 6 got announced (finally). Really miss that game series.

Got Ragnarok loaded up on the PS5.
Installed RE7 on the PS4.
Started a new playthrough of MGS2HD on the PS3 for the millionth time.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Carrion Rocket said:


> I saw Armored Core 6 got announced (finally). Really miss that game series.


Reaaaaaally hoping its gonna be more like AC4 with faster paced combat and not totally focused on multiplayer. Also hope it comes out for PC.


----------



## beerandbeards

Carrion Rocket said:


> I saw Armored Core 6 got announced (finally). Really miss that game series.
> 
> Got Ragnarok loaded up on the PS5.
> Installed RE7 on the PS4.
> Started a new playthrough of MGS2HD on the PS3 for the millionth time.


I want a Metal Gear Solid remastered for the current generation


----------



## Mathemagician

I platinum’d Elden ring in my first playthrough so I’m just waiting for them to announce giant enormous new dlc areas. Bigly. I want bigly new content to explore and get killed by.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I had been hoping that the game awards would have meant Elden Ring finally goes on sale, but nope. Some day. I'll get to it some day.



It’s been on sale for 35 a lot in the last month, just not through the Sony store.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> It’s been on sale for 35 a lot in the last month, just not through the Sony store.


I don't have a disc console, so that rules out any place that would ship a physical copy - so I'd been waiting for a sale on either the playstation store or Steam - 'cause that's where most of my library lives and I hate having to juggle platforms if I can avoid it. Also, I sometimes get credit for the playstation store, so if I can use the credit + a sale, maybe I can get it reaaaaaaally cheap.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

reinstalled Neverwinter Nights - Enhanced Edition

my D&D group hasn't met for months, this is scratching the itch a little bit


----------



## Ralyks

beerandbeards said:


> I want a Metal Gear Solid remastered for the current generation


Rumor is they've been working on a complete remake as a PS5 exclusive for a few years now.


----------



## beerandbeards

Ralyks said:


> Rumor is they've been working on a complete remake as a PS5 exclusive for a few years now.


How will I defeat Psycho Mantis without my controller being plugged in?


----------



## Werecow

wheresthefbomb said:


> reinstalled Neverwinter Nights - Enhanced Edition
> 
> my D&D group hasn't met for months, this is scratching the itch a little bit


One of my favourite games. I've replayed the campaign of the original version at least every couple years since it released i think. Not tried the enhanced edition yet. It make much difference?


----------



## Ralyks

beerandbeards said:


> How will I defeat Psycho Mantis without my controller being plugged in?


Or tell me what Konami games I've been playing?..... Kidding, Konami haven't made a good game in forever.


----------



## wheresthefbomb

Werecow said:


> One of my favourite games. I've replayed the campaign of the original version at least every couple years since it released i think. Not tried the enhanced edition yet. It make much difference?



The main thing the EE did was bundle all of the expansions and official content. I think previously the Diamond Edition did this for PC but there was no comparable OSX version until the EE was released.

I mostly just play through the original/expansion campaigns every year or two, but some of the extra content is cool an there are some pretty good modules out there made by other players. 

I just gained entrance to the Host Tower in Luskan with my Bard/Blackgaurd/Arcane Archer character. Pew pew!


----------



## gabito

I finished Death Stranding Director's Cut a few days ago.

The lore is pretty interesting, really imaginative. The story is good (and super convoluted and complex, and the delivery is questionable at best... but it's Kojima, what can you expect?). The humor is sometimes cringey but... Kojima. Oh, and the characters' names! Silliness at its best. Really stupid names. But yeah, all of Kojima's silliness and excentricity is there, good and bad.

Graphics look very good, wasn't expecting that. The soundtrack is phenomenal, I loved Low Roar (didn't know they existed, really good stuff).

Gameplay is GOOD. Very well thought and polished. That "walking simulator" stuff from the reviews is kind of an exaggeration... I mean, you have to walk, and walking demands a lot of attention and planning from the player, but you can also drive, use ziplines, teleport, and more. There are many encounters were you can sneak past enemies, or fight, or shoot, or do whatever you want (think MGS V). And there are quite a few boss encounters too (some are good! some... not so much). But yeah: there's a lot of walking, like there's a lot of driving in the GTA games.

Now, the characters are bad IMO. Like REALLY bad. They follow the trend from MGS V: an almost mute protagonist (Norman Reedus being Daryl Dixon being Sam Strand being Sam Porter Bridges being "grunt man"), and mostly uninteresting and irrelevant secondary characters (except for maybe Deadman?). They're there only for exposition. Lore exposition devices is what they are, and nothing more. They could be a tape or a log. No charisma, no meaningful interactions with Sam, no interesting conversations, no... nothing. And then you have the millions of holograms you meet: all of them deserve the "Bethesda wooden acting award". I'm one of those players who cares about the story in games, and I can tolerate stupid or bad stories, but bad characters... not so much.

There's a point were they gather and say something like "now that we're connected, and we care about each other, our connections, and love, and blah blah" and I was "WTF? You don't know each other, why do you care? Let him die, whatever.". Some stuff felt undeserved. Very anime-y (bad anime-y...) / soap opera-y melodrama.

Oh, and there are two missions at the end which are... some bullshit. You spend the whole game travelling westward, and when you reach the finish line the game says "Oh, and now you have to go back! And everything you worked so hard for doesn't work!" not once, but twice! Total-and-complete-bullshit.

It's the rare Kojima game were I liked the gameplay more than the story, and I'm overall satisfied, but I don't think I'll play this one again. I spent a lot of time reading wikis, though. Lore is good. Now, they just announced Death Stranding 2 and yes... I liked DS enough to want to play DS2 when the time arrives.


----------



## TedEH

I'm still in the early game so I didn't read the spoilers but...


gabito said:


> Graphics look very good


Man, the intro was fantastic looking. LIke "I'm not sure if this is pre-rendered or live" kind of fantastic.



gabito said:


> hat "walking simulator" stuff from the reviews is kind of an exaggeration...


I like any kind of game that takes a really basic premise (walking to places to deliver things) and system-ize and game-ify in a compelling way. Even being so early in the game, I think they accomplished this. I feel very much like I'm presented with a problem, and a set of tools, and it's up to me to figure it out, rather than how a lot of games give you a problem, prescribe the solution, and it's just retry-until-you-do-what's-expected.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I don't have a disc console, so that rules out any place that would ship a physical copy - so I'd been waiting for a sale on either the playstation store or Steam - 'cause that's where most of my library lives and I hate having to juggle platforms if I can avoid it. Also, I sometimes get credit for the playstation store, so if I can use the credit + a sale, maybe I can get it reaaaaaaally cheap.


Yeah, that definitely does rule out some deals, though now that there aren't free ps4 to ps5 upgrades on games going forward it's not as bad as it used to be. I dunno what the story is with Elden Ring, since it's published by Bandai Namco, who are a publisher whose other stuff always gets heavily discounted. It was 35 at both best buy and amazon in the last month, but that was for the PS4 disc. But AFAIK it has never gone on sale at all on the PS store. I guess too many people are still paying for it at full price. It took demon's souls and returnal at least a year to get reasonable discounts, but they were constantly at least getting a discount to 50 instead of 70 in the meantime, and they were much smaller hits.


Ralyks said:


> Rumor is they've been working on a complete remake as a PS5 exclusive for a few years now.


Rumor, or is there any real evidence for this? That's kind of an "i'll believe it when I see it." Kinda like how every now and then there will be a huge detailed "leak" about a Bloodborne remake but it's always from like, 4Chan. And while some 4Chan leaks turned out to be real, there's no accountability on there by design so anyone can post anything.

I would worry that an MGS remake would recast everyone with boring celebs cause that's what Hideo Kojima likes. I would definitely miss the original voice acting. I never played the Gamecube version, partly cause I heard they re-recorded everything. (And now I think it's ridiculously expensive if I wanted to get it!)


----------



## Quiet Coil

Really getting into Ghost of Tsushima. The swordplay feels great, but I love how chill the flow of the game is. I could see it being too slow for some, but for me it’s relaxing and immersive.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> I would worry that an MGS remake would recast everyone with boring celebs cause that's what Hideo Kojima likes. I would definitely miss the original voice acting. I never played the Gamecube version, partly cause I heard they re-recorded everything. (And now I think it's ridiculously expensive if I wanted to get it!)


I'm with ya. Imo they should just remake the old msx metal gears instead of mgs 1 or 3 where everything would have to be so perfect for everyone to really like it.

Also, you could check out Twin Snakes on the Dolphin emu if you cared enough. I tried it earlier this year but gave up for whatever reason. Goofier for sure, but fun to compare to the og.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Baldur's Gate 3 release date is August 2023, apparently. JFC that's a long early-access period, I was hoping for early 2023 but we'll see.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> I'm with ya. Imo they should just remake the old msx metal gears instead of mgs 1 or 3 where everything would have to be so perfect for everyone to really like it.
> 
> Also, you could check out Twin Snakes on the Dolphin emu if you cared enough. I tried it earlier this year but gave up for whatever reason. Goofier for sure, but fun to compare to the og.


Hm. I always forget that that exists. If that works really smoothly with modern gamepads that would actually be great. I have a lot of Gamecube games that are hard to play thanks to my old failing controllers and the picture looking pretty terrible on non-CRT tvs. My computer's a few years old but I'm guessing you don't need an absolute top-of-the-line graphics card to handle it.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> Hm. I always forget that that exists. If that works really smoothly with modern gamepads that would actually be great. I have a lot of Gamecube games that are hard to play thanks to my old failing controllers and the picture looking pretty terrible on non-CRT tvs. My computer's a few years old but I'm guessing you don't need an absolute top-of-the-line graphics card to handle it.


I used a ds4 and didn't have any problems.


----------



## Werecow

BlackMastodon said:


> Baldur's Gate 3 release date is August 2023, apparently. JFC that's a long early-access period, I was hoping for early 2023 but we'll see.


I bought first day to support them, but other than the reveal trailer i've managed to avoid any story content at all. Did the same with D: OS 2, and was definitely worth it for me. I can't imagine replaying a first chapter over and over as it's developed as some people do. Really looking forward to it, it's been ages since i've played a new D&D rules game.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Hm. I always forget that that exists. If that works really smoothly with modern gamepads that would actually be great. I have a lot of Gamecube games that are hard to play thanks to my old failing controllers and the picture looking pretty terrible on non-CRT tvs. My computer's a few years old but I'm guessing you don't need an absolute top-of-the-line graphics card to handle it.



I played Twin Snakes using Dolphin on an old (2013?) Macbook with a PS3 controller. It worked fine.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> anything.
> 
> I would worry that an MGS remake would recast everyone with boring celebs cause that's what Hideo Kojima likes.


I believe it would be Konami making it, not Kojima. Pretty sure he doesn't have the rights to MGS.


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> I believe it would be Konami making it, not Kojima. Pretty sure he doesn't have the rights to MGS.


Oh, snap. In that case it would just be a pachinko machine.


----------



## gabito

wankerness said:


> Oh, snap. In that case it would just be a pachinko machine.



Yeah, there's already one.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> Oh, snap. In that case it would just be a pachinko machine.


Too late, that happened.


----------



## wankerness

Well, maybe when they meant MGS1 remake, they meant MGS1 Pachinko machine remake, as another, better, pachinko machine!


----------



## Ralyks

rokket2005 said:


> I never went into the Thieves' den until I had beaten the game so I didn't know that there were recommended levels, but if the 5th palace is Okumura you'll be happy to be over leveled for the garbage the boss of that palace pulls .


So yeah, after crusing through most of the game to this point, I died FOUR TIMES from the Okumura boss. Pain is the ass. I almost out the game down but then



Spoiler



I guess I got Yoshikawa? Or at least for a minute? I'm guessing more maybe later? Her bit at the Palace in the Stadium was just weird



Anyway, 12 days to kill until the deadline, so grinding more confidants and social stats. I only just remembered now who's palace is next.


----------



## Mathemagician

BlackMastodon said:


> Baldur's Gate 3 release date is August 2023, apparently. JFC that's a long early-access period, I was hoping for early 2023 but we'll see.



I feel like I’ve been following this since pre-Covid. Seems like the kind of game I’d like on pc but not console. I tried playing one of the divinity’s on console but the text was just too small for me from across the room. Hope it has a mac release cause that’s all I got now (not holding my breath).


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> So yeah, after crusing through most of the game to this point, I died FOUR TIMES from the Okumura boss. Pain is the ass. I almost out the game down but then
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> I guess I got Yoshikawa? Or at least for a minute? I'm guessing more maybe later? Her bit at the Palace in the Stadium was just weird
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway, 12 days to kill until the deadline, so grinding more confidants and social stats. I only just remembered now who's palace is next.



I like Yoshikawa a lot, it's too bad she feels like well-integrated DLC instead of a full main character. 

Okumura is a boss that I remembered being a total ass, so I just looked up strats before fighting him for the first time in my Royal playthrough to not go through that crap where his adds respawn if you don't just already know their weakness and nuke the hell out of them. Very weird design on that guy compared to the rest of the game, he's tuned more like a final boss.


----------



## thebeesknees22

anyone pick up FF 7 crisis core reunion today?

I'm on the fence on getting it. It just looks ..I dunno. Kinda half assed?  Then again I feel like I need to play this one before the next FF7 remake sequel drops even if it's kinda mmeh


----------



## Ralyks

thebeesknees22 said:


> anyone pick up FF 7 crisis core reunion today?
> 
> I'm on the fence on getting it. It just looks ..I dunno. Kinda half assed?  Then again I feel like I need to play this one before the next FF7 remake sequel drops even if it's kinda mmeh


It's currently sitting in my car, waiting for my son's basketball practice to be over so I can play. I dunno, about half assed, it was a PSP game. You can only do so much.

Anyway, this all checks out, although P5R would likely be closer if it didn't just come out a month ago. Also, Planet Coaster would be my son's doing.


----------



## Naxxpipe

Fired up Path of Exile for the new league after quite some time away. Still fun!


----------



## gabito

Briefly tested GTA V's last update yesterday. Ray traced reflections! A whole new world! It's nice and shiny. For a 10 years old game, of course.

It seems it's wrap-up time... I'd never think The Witcher 3 would be first, but I clearly spent a lot of time on my personal mission to clear every secondary quest there is in this game. Now that the last-gen update is up I can finally finish the main mission, I guess. Or maybe it's time to start from the beginning? I don't have a clue what I was doing anyway.

Funny thing is 3 of these games I already beat (GoW 3 or 4 times, MGS V twice, and I think this is my second playthrough of TW3?). So I guess I'm stuck in the past.

Hideo Kojima and Cory Barlog are the owners of my free time.


----------



## pahulkster

Finally started the new Horizon. Feels like the old game which is fine because I remember liking that. I only just started too so it's hard to say what will change.


----------



## Ralyks

Oh shit, I got picked to do the closed beta for Street Fighter 6. So that's happening this weekend.



thebeesknees22 said:


> anyone pick up FF 7 crisis core reunion today?
> 
> I'm on the fence on getting it. It just looks ..I dunno. Kinda half assed?  Then again I feel like I need to play this one before the next FF7 remake sequel drops even if it's kinda mmeh


Ok, I'm gonna walk back my response to this a little bit after spending a half hour with it. So gameplay-wise, it's fun, not too far off from FFVII Remake. Visually? It's gone from looking like VII Remake, to just a remastered version of the original, to looking like it just straight up ripped from the PSP, and back again. Not really consistent and kinda weird. But otherwise, seems like it will be a good game. Interesting to learn more about Zack and Clouds real origins.


----------



## BMFan30

Naxxpipe said:


> Fired up Path of Exile for the new league after quite some time away. Still fun!


Underrated game, used to play the fuck out of this like 3 or 4 years ago with my Greek friend. Was a blast. PoE came closer to the vibes of Diablo 2 and felt like it did a better job of being Diablo 3 than D3 itself. 

Although, I played the shit out of both games. Will play D4 when I upgrade graphics card. It's honestly the only game I look forward to other than some car games and skateboarding simulators.


----------



## thebeesknees22

Ralyks said:


> Oh shit, I got picked to do the closed beta for Street Fighter 6. So that's happening this weekend.
> 
> 
> Ok, I'm gonna walk back my response to this a little bit after spending a half hour with it. So gameplay-wise, it's fun, not too far off from FFVII Remake. Visually? It's gone from looking like VII Remake, to just a remastered version of the original, to looking like it just straight up ripped from the PSP, and back again. Not really consistent and kinda weird. But otherwise, seems like it will be a good game. Interesting to learn more about Zack and Clouds real origins.


yeah that was my issue with the stuff i've seen on youtube. It does just look like a remastered version and not a full remake like the FF7 remake was.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I'm sort of wanting to play Crisis Core, but also not really. Also was hoping to grab Minstrel Song (the other Squenix re-release, except nobody outside die hard JRPG fans are talking about it). It'd love to just go through that again, since it was a great remake, but I don't think current me has any patience for a vintage SaGa game.


----------



## Ralyks

I would just like to take a moment to say that I still can't believe I played a game this year called "Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion"


----------



## wankerness

Heh, no surprises here.


I wish you could see the rest of the list (it says I played 19 games). It's unfortunate I played Far Cry 6 more than GOW:Ragnarok, but that's what happens when one is massively padded with bullshit to waste your time and the other isn't! 

If this list was able to pool time across platforms, I think DS1 and 2 would have shown up since I played entirely through both of them on NG and NG+ both on Xbox 360 and PC.


----------



## TedEH

I completely forgot I played P5 this year, but it's such a long game that it ends up at the top just cause I tend to reach the credits of a game and move on.


----------



## beerandbeards

How are you guys getting those reports? I don’t see it on the app


----------



## thebeesknees22

beerandbeards said:


> How are you guys getting those reports? I don’t see it on the app


you have to login to your playstation account i think

here's mine.... I still play the crap out of DAI. lol


----------



## gabito

beerandbeards said:


> How are you guys getting those reports? I don’t see it on the app



https://wrapup.playstation.com/


----------



## Xaios

I've been mostly playing RDR2 at ultra settings since throwing in my new GPU. For new I'm just kinda chilling and hunting near Valentine, not rushing through the story at all.


----------



## Ralyks

Welp...



Not gonna lie, I was tempted to preorder the Anniversary bundle with the vinyl. But I'll probably buy them piecemeal when they're out digitally, starting with VI and working backwards likely.


----------



## wankerness

Fortunately all physical copies, even the "regular, cheap" ones (still over a hundred frickin bucks with Square's insane shipping costs) were sold out within about 5 hours. Wonder what percentage of those went to scalpers?

I'll probably get these. I don't know that I'll ever actually play any besides 6, but I sure do like that one!


----------



## MFB

Bought a "bunch" of games this weekend, in the sense that it was mainly two collections of all one series: Castlevania. The Konami Collection was on sale for I think $8, and then they also had Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood on sale for $3, so I bought both and have more Castlevanias than I ever thought possible to play through. I made it as far as the 2nd level of C1, with the flying enemies and knights, and god damn does the timing of those guys absolutely suck balls  It's also old enough that I don't know if much like Megaman games, the enemies ever "stop" or if it's just an infinite cycle until you get off screen from their spawn point, so I'm finding out as I go. 

I also bought Shredder's Revenge and am burning my way through that with good ol' Leonardo, it's what I thought Cowabunga collection would overhaul everything to play as; the only level that seemed a bit cheap so far has been the rooftops one where you meet the lime-green ninjas with spear and the white sword ninjas. It can be a bit weird timing your attacks since they tend to turtle but you can hit them with the charged attack, or from air, etc.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I'll probably wait until the price drops to get any of those FF pixel remasters. I've played 4-6 countless times and wouldn't mind doing those again. 1 and 3 give or take but will probably skip 2 since that hasn't aged well. 


Still on Xenoblade 2 and finally finished chapter 2. There's something amusing about being able to freely fast travel to any part of the explored world when the current situation is a 'thrilling' escape rush out of a giant battlecruiser, it completely breaks the immersion of the game. Certainly did for me when I set a party member free from captivity and ready for our glorious escape... only to fast warp back into town and/or the open fields so I can clean up a few sidequests: save a missing child, stop some feral thieves, fetch a few materials, then jump back into the cruiser and resume the escape. At least they should've locked the fast warping and keep the roller coaster ride going. The whole thing just felt awkward.


----------



## Mathemagician

Across several consoles my top 3 play time would be Elden ring, stardew valley, dragon quest 11.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Fortunately all physical copies, even the "regular, cheap" ones (still over a hundred frickin bucks with Square's insane shipping costs) were sold out within about 5 hours. Wonder what percentage of those went to scalpers?
> 
> I'll probably get these. I don't know that I'll ever actually play any besides 6, but I sure do like that one!


I signed up for the waiting list... $260 USD though... YEEEEEEEOWCH!


----------



## gabito

I just finished Alan Wake Remastered. I had always wanted to play it because I love "Twin Peaks-like" stuff, but I didn't own an XBox or a powerful enough PC.

Well... it was bad. Bad gameplay loop, bad controls, bad acting, bad protagonist, kind-of-bad graphics (yeah, I know it's and old game, but still...). The story is not that good, either. I don't know, maybe it was good, but I hated everything else so much that I couldn't enjoy it.

I think I'll add Remedy to my list of "I shouldn't play this company's games anymore". I'm not a big fan of Control or Max Payne either.

But playing Alan Wake made me think that I should give Deadly Premonition another go. I finished it maybe 5 years ago and loved it... And yes: the game is a piece of shit (even worse than Alan Wake), but the story and characters are GREAT, and a few bosses and set pieces are good too.


----------



## Ralyks

Decided to use funds I had sitting in my PS Wallet to get Neon White and Norco on PS5. I have a feeling I'll really dig Neon White from what I played, and I tried Norco before and the atmosphere sucked me in immediately.

Played some of the Street Fighter 6 beta. Yeah, I think I found a fighting game to get into along with Persona 4 Arena Ultimax.

And finally, Night in the Woods just got a PS5 update. I absolutely love that game, and it has some of the best writing I've ever seen in game. So it's high time for a new playthrough.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I don't have a disc console, so that rules out any place that would ship a physical copy - so I'd been waiting for a sale on either the playstation store or Steam - 'cause that's where most of my library lives and I hate having to juggle platforms if I can avoid it. Also, I sometimes get credit for the playstation store, so if I can use the credit + a sale, maybe I can get it reaaaaaaally cheap.


It (Elden Ring) is on sale as of last night on the PS store. 42 bucks on the US store anyway. There's no reason to buy the "Deluxe Edition," it's just the soundtrack and digital artbook.


----------



## TedEH

I saw - and I've got some store credit at the moment, so I think I could grab it for about $25 CAD out of pocket. I'm very much considering it.
Edit: $32.96 after the credit and taxes. Which is still much better than the $90 it would usually be.


----------



## StevenC

Elden Ring is now on my Xbox as a present for my brother, so I may finally play it in the new year.

Also downloaded Eastward on Game Pass because a friend worked on it, and I think downloaded something else.

Also Dwarf Fortress.


----------



## CanserDYI

Decided to boot up an emulated copy of Pokemon Silver, one of my most beloved games I ever played, and it still holds up so well. I sat down and played like 7 hours of it yesterday without realizing it. 


What's your favorite handheld Pokemon title? I really enjoyed the Fire Red and Leaf green remakes too, as a kid I played the originals to death, it was nice to have a mild refresh on them.


----------



## TedEH

When I was a kid, I used to get a $3 allowance every week if I was lucky. I saved up and bought Pokemon Blue for $40, and it was the first game I properly owned. Played the bajeezus out of it. Then we later got gold + silver (I got silver, brother got gold) as xmas gifts one year and played the bajeezus out of those too. As far as my personal taste, that was peak Pokemon and nothing has lived up to those.

IMO that's the only point in the Pokemon franchise where the games were impressive in their own right, in the context of the gaming space of it's time. The originals were so imaginative and novel and did things on a gameboy that other games couldn't get even close to. But everything since has been a re-hash of an existing formula with gimmicks tacked on, and gets more and more behind the curve in implementation - in visuals, in creativity, in mechanics, etc.

Not the hottest of takes, but as a kid for whom early Pokemon games had an almost formative role in my life - the franchise has become the biggest disappointment.


----------



## rokket2005

I beat Xenosaga 1 like a week and a half ago, but I've been putting off starting the second game. I'll probably start it up after Christmas when there's more time. I've been playing a bunch of Holocure in the meantime though which is more or less a Hololive reskin of Vampire Survivors.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Death Stranding Ep. 6



It turns out I was spending waaaaaaaaay too much time running around doing extra stuff during ep 3 that didn't really contribute to much, so I've started ignoring a lot of stuff that isn't the main story. Suddenly the next two episodes go by really fast. I made it to the point where your BB gets taken away for some kind of maintenance (which.... feels fishy to me), but then saved there and haven't left the room yet.

IMO the main story is more interesting than the side material by a long shot. As much as I have no problem with the delivery/travel simulator part of the game, it reaaaaaally drags on if you take the approach you might with other games where you try to do most of the relevant-sounding side quest stuff before moving on. Bad choice in this one so far IMO. The main story, however, gives that travel enough meaningful tension and variety to still feel like you're doing something worthwhile.


----------



## Ralyks

I finally tried Vampire Survivors at the urging of others. Not at all what I expected.... But oddly addicting.

Tried High on Life. And now it's making me wonder if I should try giving Rick and Morty another shot. Pretty funny. Hasn't gotten annoying yet, but I guess that type of comedy is in my wheelhouse.

Finally, my son discovered Steep on the PlayStation, so I've been getting back into that while he learns. He seems to love it though.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Skate 2.

2009 was a damn good year for video games.


----------



## CanserDYI

TedEH said:


> When I was a kid, I used to get a $3 allowance every week if I was lucky. I saved up and bought Pokemon Blue for $40, and it was the first game I properly owned. Played the bajeezus out of it. Then we later got gold + silver (I got silver, brother got gold) as xmas gifts one year and played the bajeezus out of those too. As far as my personal taste, that was peak Pokemon and nothing has lived up to those.
> 
> IMO that's the only point in the Pokemon franchise where the games were impressive in their own right, in the context of the gaming space of it's time. The originals were so imaginative and novel and did things on a gameboy that other games couldn't get even close to. But everything since has been a re-hash of an existing formula with gimmicks tacked on, and gets more and more behind the curve in implementation - in visuals, in creativity, in mechanics, etc.
> 
> Not the hottest of takes, but as a kid for whom early Pokemon games had an almost formative role in my life - the franchise has become the biggest disappointment.


My problem with Pokemon is that there are just _too many damn pokemon (_at least after 2nd gen). I thought 300 was plenty, any more and they just start becoming slight variations of other pokemon and then some just outright "I don't believe anything like this could exist in our physical world, even with some imagination". And don't get me started on the names....

Yeah, Pokemon peaked around Gold/Silver 100%.


----------



## TedEH

CanserDYI said:


> My problem with Pokemon is that there are just _too many damn pokemon_


That's certainly one of the problems. I think it would be mitigated by not having so many other design issues though.

To me, the biggest issue is that it's been the same game since the 90s with little more improvement than an occasional coat of paint and some weird gimmicks. Game design has evolved but Pokemon has not. And sometimes that coat of paint is pretty awful in itself. Too many monsters would be fine if the presentation was top notch and the gameplay evolved.

It's a poor quality product that coasts on nostalgia for something that was genuinely good when it was first designed.

In the era of huge cinematic 4k open world games, the Pokemon titles look like a joke. They look awful. And it's not the Switch's fault, there are plenty of great looking Switch games. It's terrible art direction. Even the camera angles suck - there's a whole video on youtube right now breaking down how the static camera angles during battles really destroy any sense of drama or urgency - which is a thing that _earlier_ games managed to get right - and that modern RPGs have often figured out.

So they play bad, they look bad, the narratives are slapped together nonsense - it's just so disappointing.


----------



## wankerness

I played the first 45 minutes of cyberpunk, and HATED it. Like, it seemed borderline incoherent with tons of characters getting introduced and haphazard time jumps, the combat was wonky (a bunch of grunts get followed by a big guy that instantly 1-shots you, time to reset the whole area!!), I hated the aesthetic, etc. just miserable. Not sure if I’ll ever pick it up again. I might just so I don’t feel I flushed 25 dollars down the toilet.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I played the first 45 minutes of cyberpunk, and HATED it. Like, it seemed borderline incoherent with tons of characters getting introduced and haphazard time jumps, the combat was wonky (a bunch of grunts get followed by a big guy that instantly 1-shots you, time to reset the whole area!!), I hated the aesthetic, etc. just miserable. Not sure if I’ll ever pick it up again. I might just so I don’t feel I flushed 25 dollars down the toilet.



Definitely had a couple games like that, I think RE7 was the last one where I realized pretty quickly I was going to find it hard to finish if I ever did, and spoiler alert: I haven't. 

Looks like HZD2 is on sale for 50% off, so I'm probably going to grab that even if I've heard it suffers a bit of the same fate as GOWR where the characters just don't shut the fuck up and let you actually solve stuff on your own. Tales of Arise is also on sale, so I'm trying the demo before I consider shelling out $25 for that as well.


----------



## Albake21

I'm about 15 hours into Kingdom Come Deliverance and I'm absolutely blown away by this game. As someone who is super picky about midevil/fantasy type games, this absolutely nails it for me. It's so raw and realistic. Feels like a group of 90s RPG devs came together and made a modern RPG. The story, the characters, and the world are all phenomenal. 

The landscapes and nature are just jaw dropping. There are so many times I just stop on my horse and just take it in. Everything just feels like such a real world you get sucked into. Highly recommend so far from what I've played.


----------



## Ralyks

CanserDYI said:


> Yeah, Pokemon peaked around Gold/Silver 100%.


I was obsessed with Pokemon with Red/Blue/Yellow (I even came close to buying a Japanese Green cart that the local game store had), I was extremely hyped for Gold and Silver... And proceeded to not only not buy either of those, but I haven't bought a single Pokemon game since. I almost got one of the new ones because I felt like my kid would enjoy it, but then I heard they were a total mess and probably not bothering.


----------



## wankerness

Everything I’ve heard suggests arceus is very fun and worth playing and probably the best since the glory days. I’ll get it when it eventually goes on sale. Sounds like the follow-ups regressed back to what came before Arceus unfortunately.


----------



## Alberto7

The missus and I went a bit nuts with the holiday sales for our PS5. We got:

- God of War 4
- God of War: Ragnarok (came bundled with the console)
- Need for Speed: Heat, for good funs
- Horizon: Zero Dawn
- Kena: Bridge of Spirits

I also went ahead and got Gran Turismo 7 for myself. Love me some racing sims.

There's a lot of other ones I want, but I think it's enough as it is. I'm covered for a while I think!


----------



## Mathemagician

I need to finish DQ11. I’m like right at the final boss. But I do this every rpg I play. I just stop right before the last boss. Can’t explain why.


----------



## Albake21

Mathemagician said:


> I need to finish DQ11. I’m like right at the final boss. But I do this every rpg I play. I just stop right before the last boss. Can’t explain why.


Does it have anything to do with not wanting the game to end? I remember when Breath of the Wild came out, a couple of my friends never even beat it because they just got so lost in the world and didn't want it to end.


----------



## Mathemagician

Probably. I ended my first playthrough if FF7 back on PS1 right in front of sephiroth. I stopped playing ff9 before the last boss. Then only beat it after someone else did on my save file. After I explored every inch of the map on BOTW I stopped playing. Lol it’s a pattern. Only games I’ve beaten through in years are fromsoft games.


----------



## Alberto7

I think that's kind of common with games that have a lot of sidequests or a big world to explore (as is the case with many RPGs). With games that large the final boss is almost like a formality to "finish" the game, when in reality game completion is more dependent on the world itself and its characters.

My girlfriend played Breath of the Wild for like 300 hours before she decided to actually go beat Ganon. She'd been everywhere, she had everything, except for that. Granted, she did see me finish it on my file so she knows how the game ends, but she likes the gameplay and exploration aspects a lot more.


----------



## wankerness

Mathemagician said:


> I need to finish DQ11. I’m like right at the final boss. But I do this every rpg I play. I just stop right before the last boss. Can’t explain why.


Is it the final final boss, or the final boss before the "B section" of the game?


----------



## Albake21

Alberto7 said:


> My girlfriend played Breath of the Wild for like 300 hours before she decided to actually go beat Ganon. She'd been everywhere, she had everything, except for that. Granted, she did see me finish it on my file so she knows how the game ends, but she likes the gameplay and exploration aspects a lot more.


I fully plan to do this when Tears of the Kingdom comes out. I did explore BOTW a decent amount, but I did just end up doing the dungeons and beating Ganon a little too quickly. But once I beat him, I really lost steam with going back and exploring. To me, it was over and finished. So I get @Mathemagician as I've been in the opposite situation many times and wish I had taken my time.


----------



## wankerness

Albake21 said:


> I fully plan to do this when Tears of the Kingdom comes out. I did explore BOTW a decent amount, but I did just end up doing the dungeons and beating Ganon a little too quickly. But once I beat him, I really lost steam with going back and exploring. To me, it was over and finished. So I get @Mathemagician as I've been in the opposite situation many times and wish I had taken my time.



BOTW’s final boss is so non-final, though. Unlike your average huge rpg, when you beat him, it just rolls you back to where you were before you even started into his castle. Its like you imagined the whole thing! It’s kind of weird pacing but it meant that my approach of rushing all four animal temples ended up making for a pretty zen experience. I beat them all with with like seven to 10 hearts and then just chilled the rest of the time I played it without anything other than short term goals. Other than “try to find all the shrines” and “do all the sidequests I find.”

By contrast usually with FF games or whatever you end up with a last save right before the final boss so your game is effectively done. Unless they have NG+, but then you have to look up all the stuff that you need to make sure not to miss in a first playthrough, and blah.


----------



## Alberto7

wankerness said:


> BOTW’s final boss is so non-final, though. Unlike your average huge rpg, when you beat him, it just rolls you back to where you were before you even started into his castle. Its like you imagined the whole thing! It’s kind of weird pacing but it meant that my approach of rushing all four animal temples ended up making for a pretty zen experience. I beat them all with with like seven to 10 hearts and then just chilled the rest of the time I played it without anything other than short term goals. Other than “try to find all the shrines” and “do all the sidequests I find.”
> 
> By contrast usually with FF games or whatever you end up with a last save right before the final boss so your game is effectively done. Unless they have NG+, but then you have to look up all the stuff that you need to make sure not to miss in a first playthrough, and blah.


To be fair though, that's been like that in every Zelda game. You finish the game, you see the ending cutscenes, and then you're just back to your save file prior to defeating the final boss. I want to believe that, since BotW has a direct sequel, the final boss was as underwhelming as it was so as not to overshadow the real final boss in TotK, since they are (rather, should be) directly related.

But yeah, something similar happened to me after beating BotW. Sometimes finishing all the shrines after finishing the game felt like a bit of a chore. I adored that game, but it didn't become a daily player for me until the second DLC came out with the additional storyline, and I got hooked afterwards for some reason. And with how broken the game has become, I'd been having an absolute blast glitching the game out the last couple of months. But I digress.


----------



## TedEH

Alberto7 said:


> holiday sales


I find holidays great both for acquiring new stuff, but also burning through the backlog with the time off. Grabbed Elden Ring for me. Grabbed Forbidden West for a gift.

My Gamepass should be running out in January (I had a voucher for about a year) - so I want to get to High on Life before that runs out, 'cause it looks good enough to try, but maybe not good enough to spend extra money on when there's already a backlog.


----------



## wankerness

I want to play High on Life just for the Red Letter Media content (apparently they have all of Demon Wind in there with those guys doing commentary). Probably not worth an xbox, though.


----------



## thebeesknees22

i went ahead and pulled the trigger on FF crisis core remake. I should be working on music stuff this weekend since it'll be one of my few chill weekends left but ...eh.... I'm gonna sit on my butt all weekend and play this


----------



## wankerness

Alberto7 said:


> To be fair though, that's been like that in every Zelda game. You finish the game, you see the ending cutscenes, and then you're just back to your save file prior to defeating the final boss. I want to believe that, since BotW has a direct sequel, the final boss was as underwhelming as it was so as not to overshadow the real final boss in TotK, since they are (rather, should be) directly related.
> 
> But yeah, something similar happened to me after beating BotW. Sometimes finishing all the shrines after finishing the game felt like a bit of a chore. I adored that game, but it didn't become a daily player for me until the second DLC came out with the additional storyline, and I got hooked afterwards for some reason. And with how broken the game has become, I'd been having an absolute blast glitching the game out the last couple of months. But I digress.


Yeah, but unlike most of the other zelda games the point of the game seems to be more the exploration and "side content" and the main quest itself almost seems like an afterthought apart from how it leads you into the major zones (ex getting gear for surviving in the desert etc) and gives you an ability or two that's useful for exploration (the jump move). With the other zelda games there's generally no other reason to play after you finish the main quest unless you want to like, collect the last few bugs, or collect all the Poes or whatever to get one more heart container or something. With BOTW I think you can choose to make the main quest the only point of the game if you don't like the exploration or shrines, but IMO it doesn't seem like the sort where you beat it and quit. Unless you want to save Ganon for after you've finished all the DLC and stuff (in which case you'll probably chop him down in five seconds).

I think my girlfriend got into that mindset, though. She just would play aimlessly for hours enjoying the exploration and didn't have much interest in going to Ganon's castle cause "then the game would be over." As a result she has like 80 hours in the game, three full stamina wheels and a TON of hearts, and I think she's only actually finished like 2 of the legendary beasts.

I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel. Which is amusing to me cause I bounced so hard off the game that I quit it after getting off the intro plateau and didn't touch it again for years. But, forcing myself to adjust to it really worked.


----------



## MFB

Beat my Leonardo playthru of Shredder's Revenge last night, started one with Donny right after as it's such a laid back pickup/putdown game that I figured why not try and grind out some of the other non-multiplayer trophies; I'll need to link up with my buddy who has it on Xbox for some of those. I think the biggest hurdles will be the 250-hit combo one and the SS without any damage one, his fight is so erratic since he teleports/dash attacks that it can be tough to track.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> IMO it doesn't seem like the sort where you beat it and quit


I kinda did that, both of the times I played it, but it was a deliberately meandering path to the ending. I think if you do things the game pushes you towards - the exploring, the beasts, doing tons of shrines as you come across them, etc., you'll eventually reach a point where you feel powerful enough to not struggle through the ending, and to me at least, it felt like a reasonable time to go to the ending and conclude the game. The major difference, in my eyes, is that instead of heading to the end game when the _game_ runs out of goals for you, you head to the end game when you yourself run out of other meaningful goals.

"I beat the beasts, I have the gear I want, I have as much stamina and hearts as I think is meaningful to me, and I've resolved the side-quests I care about.... I guess it's time to wrap it up."


----------



## beerandbeards

Witcher 3 remaster….

Damn this came just grips me and locks me into the world. I get lost for hours at a time sometimes playing. I just love the game and played it through at least 4 times so far including DLC content.


----------



## thebeesknees22

I've made through a good chunk of FF Crises Core remake. 
It's alright. Waaay too many fights, but they're fast. It feels like an old game for sure, but it's at least entertaining.

And it bugs me that they always have zack and angeal wear the buster sword on their backs with the blade facing down. 

They would slice their Achilles heels when running if they did that. Plus it would make for an awkward swing when drawing the sword if it were face down............... It should be blade facing up like in the original cover art.... the figurines are blade down too which has always bothered me on the Cloud figure I have. 

...but I digress.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

So my sister/brolaw bought me the TMNT Cowabunga Collection on Switch for Christmas. This is both the best and potentially the worst game that could be gifted to me. 

Being quite critical when it comes to the perception of nostalgia, this game exposes the hypocrisy I'm well too aware of. I love all these games, even the ball bustingly difficult NES game, so having this and the ability to play it on the plop is dangerous for me. But on the other hand, it's the perfect pick up and play antidote to Xenoblade 2, which at times does feel too big that I have to set aside time and bog down just to make some significant progress. 

Now excuse my as I quietly weep while dying on that water level....


----------



## Werecow

I just realised i didn't buy a new release game this year. It seems like my tastes in AAA gaming have mostly evaporated.


----------



## MFB

Played thru the Nier demo the other night, it's good, the 3D parts are what I expected combat wise but the bullet hell/side/too down was not what I expected to see at all. Not opposed to blending the two as it is unique to the franchise (or as far as games I've played it is) just unexpected.

Tough to say if I'll play the full thing, all depends on price/my desperation to play something besides my already full backlog


----------



## wankerness

MFB said:


> Played thru the Nier demo the other night, it's good, the 3D parts are what I expected combat wise but the bullet hell/side/too down was not what I expected to see at all. Not opposed to blending the two as it is unique to the franchise (or as far as games I've played it is) just unexpected.
> 
> Tough to say if I'll play the full thing, all depends on price/my desperation to play something besides my already full backlog



I don’t know where the demo ends, but I think the game had really sunk its teeth into me well before the end of the first playthrough (which I think is like 12 hours if you don’t try and grind everything)? And it just got better from there, with the whole “third playthrough” being the best experience I’d had in gaming up until that point.

I’d recommend playing through without doing too many sidequests, it’s easy to get overpowered in that game to the point where the bosses die too fast to make an impact.


----------



## MFB

wankerness said:


> I don’t know where the demo ends, but I think the game had really sunk its teeth into me well before the end of the first playthrough (which I think is like 12 hours if you don’t try and grind everything)? And it just got better from there, with the whole “third playthrough” being the best experience I’d had in gaming up until that point.
> 
> I’d recommend playing through without doing too many sidequests, it’s easy to get overpowered in that game to the point where the bosses die too fast to make an impact.



Without having played the actual game, I'm not sure if it's the first mission or not, but you play as 2B - and 9S is there too - investigating a factory that's building Goliath class weapons and it ends with you taking it down; only to reveal there's like, 3 more in the immediate vicinity and they get taken out via black box.

Started a Raph playthru of TMNT, beat it with Donnie and holy fuck does that last boss fight suck with how slow he moves. Not a fun one by any means. Raph might be my favorite so far, he lacks range but he has speed and power so you get in close and go crazy, Wolverine style.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

Got to the part of Skate 2 that made me stop playing back in the day.

And it's ALOT glitchier than I remember. There's so many times I've bailed because the game detects I've hit some environmental geometry that I'm nowhere near or is, in one instance, invisible.


----------



## Werecow

According to my Steam Replay end of year thingy, 27% of my total gaming time this year was Sekiro, and i haven't played it since August  Next was Divinity: O S 2.

50% of the games i played were up to 7 years old, and 33% were over 8 years old. I kinda expected more in the 8 years old %, but i blame my Sekiro addiction for that this year.


----------



## TedEH

I got to the end of Death Stranding and sweeeeeeet jebus that was the longest ending I can remember in a game. I think it took two hours+ to get from what I thought was the ending to the point where it hands control back to you for the post-game. Generally enjoyed it though. It was.... unique. in a bunch of ways.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Finished Days Gone on PC


----------



## MFB

MFB said:


> Without having played the actual game, I'm not sure if it's the first mission or not, but you play as 2B - and 9S is there too - investigating a factory that's building Goliath class weapons and it ends with you taking it down; only to reveal there's like, 3 more in the immediate vicinity and they get taken out via black box.
> 
> Started a Raph playthru of TMNT, beat it with Donnie and holy fuck does that last boss fight suck with how slow he moves. Not a fun one by any means. Raph might be my favorite so far, he lacks range but he has speed and power so you get in close and go crazy, Wolverine style.



Raph playthru complete, easily the best playing Turtle so far, and now Mikey is a close second - something about the up close, quick brawler style of the nunchuks/sais is far more appealing than the range you get with Leo/Donny at the cost of speed. Curious to see how April/Casey play, it seems like April would just be a reskin of Mikey and Casey SHOULD be an improved version of Leo (same power/speed with more range), but we'll find out.

Picked up THPS1+2 on the store the other night since it's down to $15, still need to grab HFW before I forget and I saw Hitman 3 is also stupidly low priced so I MIGHT grab it even thought I'm not it's the type of stealth game I'm looking for.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Aside from getting bogged down with Xenoblade 2 and its endless tutorials, I played a bit of the SNES port of TMNT Tournament Fighters on the Cowabunga Collection. Surprisingly, it holds up, though I shouldn't be surprised since I've always thought it was a high tier fighting game for its time, up there with the best Street Fighters. Namely because it uses the exact mechanics as the Capcom games, albeit without the Medium strength buttons, so it's not as deep. It's still good fun, and I'm glad I can still pull off Raphael's Power drill tick/throw mixups and his Chest Buster combos.


----------



## Nicki

Over my holiday break, I started up Elden Ring again from my save file and I beat about a dozen bosses. Honestly, I didn't enjoy the game at all, despite being as big of a fan of DS1 and DS3. It's really disappointing how nearly every optional boss in the world is just about the same, has the same (or very very similar) mechanic and strategy no matter if you're on foot or riding Torrent. Rush in, take a few swings, rush out... That was it. With the exception of Radahn, all the bosses that I beat played the exact same way and it's really disappointing. None of the magic of DS1 or DS3 is here and the flaws in bringing the Soulsborne formula to an open world have really started to show. So I'm shelving this one as unfinished. For me, it's just not a good time. I know it won GOTY, but in my opinion, it didn't deserve it. But also, the game awards are about as relevant as the Grammy's. It's just a popularity contest and pickings this year were slim to begin with... so... hollow victory.

Started the Secret of Mana remake. It's cute. Not sure how much of my attention it will hold since I'm playing other games right now as well...

Fired up Skyward Sword HD. Was planning on playing it while we were at my wife's aunt's house but due to the storm, we stayed home. Despite what people have said about this game, it's been one of my favorite Zeldas.

Where I really spent a lot of time was on the Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1. Beat X1, X2 and X3 as well as got all the trophies for each of those. Definitely an easy list. I'm going to start up X4 (one of my favorites as a kid) tonight and start making my way through that list. Definitely going to Platinum this one.


----------



## Choop

Got some Steam moneyz for Xmas -- didn't have anything pressing on my wishlist, but went ahead anyway and bought Cuphead and Inscryption, Lately though I've been on a classic games kick, recently finishing Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Honestly I really liked it; it's janky some, but also really neat, especially for its time. Considering finally playing FFVI for the first time.


----------



## TedEH

I've been using some of my time off to play through High on Life. I think the reviews were pretty harsh - it's not bad. It lacks some polish here and there, but the gameplay is fine. The make-or-break of it is down to whether or not the comedy sticks for you. I find it's hit-or-miss, but the misses aren't so bad that I'm bothered by it. The art style and the characters have some charm, so as a short "might as well try it 'cause it's on Gamepass" kind of deal, I'm not mad at it.


----------



## CTID

pretty turbulent year in my personal life but found time to platinum Elden Ring, and still want to keep playing it. picked it up for my wife on our ps4 for christmas so i've been laying off so i don't spoil anything for her. beat dark souls 2 for the first time in prep for ER at the beginning of the year and i'm still not certain if i hate that game or not. definitely put a couple hundred hours into Escape From Tarkov as well, and Red Dead 2 and Hitman 1-3 are both games i've put plenty of time into, but own on Epic


----------



## Quiet Coil

Fully involved in Ghost of Tsushima. Having a bit of sake on hand doesn’t hurt either.


----------



## TedEH

Aaaand finished High on Life. Not much to add since 4 hours ago - decently funny if you don't hate the comedy style. Gameplay is ok. Audio feels unpolished to me. There's a weird problem where vsync doesn't seem to work and GPU just pins at 100%, which isn't great but not the end of the world. Ending is a little anti-climatic. Not a bad game, but probably will never play it again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


----------



## CTID

TedEH said:


> Aaaand finished High on Life. Not much to add since 4 hours ago - decently funny if you don't hate the comedy style. Gameplay is ok. Audio feels unpolished to me. There's a weird problem where vsync doesn't seem to work and GPU just pins at 100%, which isn't great but not the end of the world. Ending is a little anti-climatic. Not a bad game, but probably will never play it again. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


it's on gamepass and i've been thinking about trying it, but it kind of seemed like a mediocre fps with the gimmick of justin roiland comedy to sell it. i'll still probably play it at some point but tarkov just wiped so i'm off to sell my soul to daddy nikita


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

I needed to catch up on some podcasts and youtube interviews, so I did one playthrough of the arcade version of Turtles In Time (with Raph of course) on the Cowabunga Collection. Even without the nostalgia goggles, I'm preferring the SNES port instead. The old school arcade jank and difficulty are still here so I died quite a bit over stupid collision detection moments. It's only marginally better than the original TMNT arcade, which also played through a few days ago and also carries the same issues of being an arcade game rigged to eat all your pennies. The SNES version of Turtles In Time, while maybe too easy even on the hardest setting, isn't as egregious in having a gang of foot soldiers corner you into turtle soup. I also think the SNES music sounds better, but that's just me. And I do need to learn Neon Night Riders on guitar...

Shredder's Revenge is still the best 2D TMNT brawler available, possibly up there with the arcade version of Alien Vs Predator as the best of its kind.


----------



## TedEH

I think it's finally time for me to tackle Elden Ring.


----------



## profwoot

Got through God of War (2018) and found it pretty fun but I had no desire to do any of the end game gear grind. Elden Ring is significantly harder, yes? Still tempted to give that a shot but I'm a filthy casual these days so not sure whether I'd get very far.

For now I'm back to Detroit: Become Human. I bounced off of it earlier this year but am enjoying it now. The actual gameplay is weird, but the story and characterization so far are exceptional.


----------



## TedEH

profwoot said:


> I had no desire to do any of the end game gear grind


I refuse to let the internet convince me that there's any need to 100% a game. In a single player game like that, once the credits roll, it's said its piece. The sequel does a great job if you want more.


----------



## gabito

profwoot said:


> Got through God of War (2018) and found it pretty fun but I had no desire to do any of the end game gear grind.



No need to. The main story is good enough. The secondary stuff is nice, but mostly filler.


----------



## Carrion Rocket

TedEH said:


> I refuse to let the internet convince me that there's any need to 100% a game. In a single player game like that, once the credits roll, it's said its piece. The sequel does a great job if you want more.


Oh, there's a secret ending if I 100% the game. Let me youtube that.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Carrion Rocket said:


> Oh, there's a secret ending if I 100% the game. Let me youtube that.


Secret ending is just the character cast quietly eating shawarma.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I refuse to let the internet convince me that there's any need to 100% a game. In a single player game like that, once the credits roll, it's said its piece. The sequel does a great job if you want more.



A lot of games have whole additional zones and a ton of content that can be skipped if you beeline the ending. Like say, Skyrim - that game’s main quest is pretty lackluster and I feel like you should at least do the guilds before saying the game “said its piece.” Elden Ring is another big one in this department, there are MASSIVE sections of the game you could conceivably miss when playing it as linearly as possible. Though in its case you’ll probably be really underlevelled for the last bosses if you didn’t do most of the “optional” stuff.

God of war is primarily a narrative game I guess, and the “post game cleanup “ isn’t much, but I don’t think a policy like that which certainly could apply to God of War can apply to everything!


----------



## Ralyks

I think my favorite non-updated (Cyberpunk 2077 v1.5), non-remastered (Persona 5 Royal for PS5) game of the year is now Norco. This game is utterly fascinating and the soundtrack is pretty dope to boot.


----------



## AwakenTheSkies

Got Uncharted on PC, makes my GPU model in particular crash. Fuckkkkk


----------



## Alberto7

From this thread I think @wankerness and @MFB will be happy to know that I ended up putting GoW Ragnarok on pause while I finished GoW 2018  and boy am I glad I did! Just finished Ragnarok, and talk about poignant. Norse mythology and defying prophecy/fate are cool and all, but I'll take the fatherhood/family themes and related moments over everything else in that game. Man, was that well done. Sotry-wise, I think I liked the 2018 game better. It's much simpler in concept and much easier to wrap my head around. Ragnarok is a bit more of a proper fantasy epic, but it still very noticeabily keeps the same themes of the 2018 game at the center of its story-telling, which I am very glad about. Super happy I played those two games. Also, watching a few videos with summaries of the first three games did, indeed, help quite a bit to place everything into its proper context.

Guess I'll be moving on to Elden Ring now, we'll see.

I've also started playing Gran Turismo 7. It's really just for casual, "killing-time" type playing. Lots of fun and pretty challenging.


----------



## CTID

picked up elden ring for my wife as one of her christmas gifts been sitting watching her play it while i've been replaying Ocarina of Time on my 3ds. really gotta save up for a steam deck one of these days


----------



## MFB

Alberto7 said:


> From this thread I think @wankerness and @MFB will be happy to know that I ended up putting GoW



THANK FUCK


----------



## AMOS

AC Odyssey, level 25


----------



## MFB

I think I officially soured myself on Shredder's Revenge, after doing three back to back playthroughs and trying to do a fourth to round out all the Turtles. I'm sure that's entirely understandable and should be expected, just wanted to be able to cross off the big four but oh well, I'll come back to it and the MP mode in the future to try and get the Platinum.


----------



## TedEH

I've had some company for the last few days, so we got through most of It Takes Two. Mechanically, I think the game is pretty good - the cooperation theme is pulled off pretty well. Story-wise I'm of two minds so far. I've heard zero criticism of the game's narrative or message from anyone, but lots of praise. Without reaching the end yet (I think we're close to the end) - it feels like playing though the most cliche'd "staying together for the kids means everything" and "you can always make it work if you just tried harder" kind of thing, which makes for a nice feel-good story, but in reality is a terrible message and a very shallow take on how relationships work.

The animations are pretty great though. There's a lot of character on display. Lots of little details. And the title mostly performs really well - it's been keeping pretty close to stable for me at 4k/120 even in split screen.


----------



## Nicki

Started playing the Demon's Souls remake and am about half-way through. After having so much experience with FromSoft games now, I'm finding it laughably easy. I'm still torn on returning to Elden Ring though. I love the idea of the open world and how movement and combat feels in that game. However, it's pretty universally recognized at this point that balance in Elden Ring is just so all over the place and boss fights are the weakest part of that game that I'm VERY reluctant to pick it back up. I'm really in a Souls mood and want to love the ever living crap outta Elden Ring but I just can't.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I've had some company for the last few days, so we got through most of It Takes Two. Mechanically, I think the game is pretty good - the cooperation theme is pulled off pretty well. Story-wise I'm of two minds so far. I've heard zero criticism of the game's narrative or message from anyone, but lots of praise. Without reaching the end yet (I think we're close to the end) - it feels like playing though the most cliche'd "staying together for the kids means everything" and "you can always make it work if you just tried harder" kind of thing, which makes for a nice feel-good story, but in reality is a terrible message and a very shallow take on how relationships work.
> 
> The animations are pretty great though. There's a lot of character on display. Lots of little details. And the title mostly performs really well - it's been keeping pretty close to stable for me at 4k/120 even in split screen.


The story is TERRIBLE. The cutscenes are some of the most grating in memory. And there's definitely been some heavy criticism of the story. Kotaku's review was mainly complaining about the story IIRC. I think they focused particularly on the incredible tonal dissonance in say, the scene where you're torturing a toy to make your daughter cry!

Too bad the game within those awful cutscenes is so fun.


----------



## TedEH

I'd be lying if I said half the fun we're having with it isn't mocking the narrative. I've never heard someone say "and this is why we're getting a divorce" so many times in one day. I was really hoping that there would be a surprise ending where they take the more nuanced and mature path of going "yeah, we went through all this, and we grew as people, and a separation is still the healthiest choice for everyone" then bam, they all live mostly happily ever after. I'm 99.9999% sure that won't happen though.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> Started playing the Demon's Souls remake and am about half-way through. After having so much experience with FromSoft games now, I'm finding it laughably easy. I'm still torn on returning to Elden Ring though. I love the idea of the open world and how movement and combat feels in that game. However, it's pretty universally recognized at this point that balance in Elden Ring is just so all over the place and boss fights are the weakest part of that game that I'm VERY reluctant to pick it back up. I'm really in a Souls mood and want to love the ever living crap outta Elden Ring but I just can't.


I'm a bit confused as to how you were playing Elden Ring. The bosses in that game aren't more "same-y" than in any other Fromsoft game, other than there are SO MANY of them that of course a bunch end up copy-pasted. But I mean, compared to Dark Souls 1 or Dark Souls 2 where almost all the non-DLC bosses could be defeated via circling around them and poking them in the butt? I mean, just in Limgrave you've got some very, very different boss attack patterns and timings on stuff like the watchdog and godrick and the demihuman queen and the Scaly Misbegotten. And if you insist on fighting things on horseback, yeah, the fights are the same, but that's an incredibly boring (and weirdly higher risk) way to fight things. I mean, the horse has no iframes and it's really easy to get stunned off it, while if you fight the same bosses on the ground you can actually properly interact with them - I haven't tried fighting things like the Tree Sentinels or Night Watch guards on horseback since the first playthrough. I mainly only use it for total joke bosses like the Mariners, and that one stupid asshole with the flag in Caelid who you have to be able to get really far away from fast. Oh, and for catching up whenever the flame giant tries to escape. But otherwise fights turn into super drawn-out hit and run things and it's just not fun.

I guess if you're using the Mimic Tear or something tanky like that then basically every fight turns into chasing around the boss while it attacks your spirit and try to kill it before it kills the spirit, making them all feel the same. But if you're that upset with the boss mechanics, I'd think you were playing it like a REAL MAN (aka no spirit summons, no NPC summons). I have no interest in doing that myself, there are too many bosses for me to learn that many movesets. But certainly it's very possible as there are plenty of videos out there of people beating the game at level 1 without any summons (and some without even using things like weapon arts).

I just started playing Elden Ring on PC, which was a mistake. The damn thing crashed spectacularly twice in my first multi-hour session. I think I'm going to turn all the settings to lowest possible and see if that makes it any more stable (currently I think it's at "Medium" at 2560x1440 and I didn't touch anything else - I only have a 1060 gtx and my fans sure are getting loud sometimes. but the game's "suggested" settings were "high" instead of medium so I already knocked it down a notch).


----------



## feilong29

I began playing Chained Echoes on my Steam Deck last week and it's a great JRPG in the vein on Chrono Trigger, but with improved graphics. The leveling system is interesting in that you don't level up your character, but you level up weapons/armor and stats/attacks. Very challenging! I also took a stab at Ni No Kuni II and it's pretty sweet so far.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I'm a bit confused as to how you were playing Elden Ring. The bosses in that game aren't more "same-y" than in any other Fromsoft game, other than there are SO MANY of them that of course a bunch end up copy-pasted. But I mean, compared to Dark Souls 1 or Dark Souls 2 where almost all the non-DLC bosses could be defeated via circling around them and poking them in the butt? I mean, just in Limgrave you've got some very, very different boss attack patterns and timings on stuff like the watchdog and godrick and the demihuman queen and the Scaly Misbegotten. And if you insist on fighting things on horseback, yeah, the fights are the same, but that's an incredibly boring (and weirdly higher risk) way to fight things. I mean, the horse has no iframes and it's really easy to get stunned off it, while if you fight the same bosses on the ground you can actually properly interact with them - I haven't tried fighting things like the Tree Sentinels or Night Watch guards on horseback since the first playthrough. I mainly only use it for total joke bosses like the Mariners, and that one stupid asshole with the flag in Caelid who you have to be able to get really far away from fast. Oh, and for catching up whenever the flame giant tries to escape. But otherwise fights turn into super drawn-out hit and run things and it's just not fun.
> 
> I guess if you're using the Mimic Tear or something tanky like that then basically every fight turns into chasing around the boss while it attacks your spirit and try to kill it before it kills the spirit, making them all feel the same. But if you're that upset with the boss mechanics, I'd think you were playing it like a REAL MAN (aka no spirit summons, no NPC summons). I have no interest in doing that myself, there are too many bosses for me to learn that many movesets. But certainly it's very possible as there are plenty of videos out there of people beating the game at level 1 without any summons (and some without even using things like weapon arts).
> 
> I just started playing Elden Ring on PC, which was a mistake. The damn thing crashed spectacularly twice in my first multi-hour session. I think I'm going to turn all the settings to lowest possible and see if that makes it any more stable (currently I think it's at "Medium" at 2560x1440 and I didn't touch anything else - I only have a 1060 gtx and my fans sure are getting loud sometimes. but the game's "suggested" settings were "high" instead of medium so I already knocked it down a notch).


Generally, I'm running a STR/DEX build with a two handed dismounter. Very few bosses are fought on horseback. The mimic tear for me is useless. I either run the two marionnette archers or the two soldiers. Occasionally, I'll pull out the wolves.

My complaints with bosses in Elden Ring are how the fights with them are designed. Mechanically, they are either complete bullshit, like Malenia, Valiant Gargoyles and the Iron Maiden ones, or absolute push overs like the fire lizards, tree sentinals and a few others (who I can't remember because I was able to 4 shot them right at the start of the fight). With Malenia, you cannot dodge out of the entirety of Waterfowl Dance and the arena filling poison spewed by the Valiant Gargoyles (not to mention they're completely uncomplementary movesets) is utter bullshit. Same thing can be said about the Iron Maidens two on one fight. With both the Iron Maidens and the Gargoyles, the AI is such at both bosses WILL attack you at the same time and their movesets don't compliment the other boss like is does with the Belltower Gargoyles and Ornstein and Smough. DS1 two on ones were fair because even though you were outnumbered, you could manage both boses, their movesets and their AI was written so that if one was attacking you, the other would hold back until the attack string was done. Elden Ring? Nope. Fuck that fairness. You HAVE to summon ashes so that they distract one boss while you kill the other. And if your summon goes down before you kill one boss, you're fucked, again.

An example of really stupid design is that last night I was fighting Godefrey (the copy/paste boss in the Gael on Altus Plateau) and able to dodge most of his attacks with the exception of one because there was not enough time to react. He takes a swing of his axe, then immediately follows up with a sweep of his free fist. There's 0 time to react to the fist because you're still in recovery frames from dodge-rolling the axe swing. Then there was his overly massive reach from his longest combo where you could be almost half the arena away and the last vertical swing of his axe can still reach you. It basically meant that if you played aggressively, you were in for a bad time. It means there's only two ways to beat him; either stay at a distance and use magic/arrows or wait for the one rolly anime-jump attack to dodge roll under to get in 3 swings before backing the hell away and waiting for the next rolly anime-jump attack.

Margit is also guilty of having immediate follow up attacks with no time to react because you're in recovery frames.

Then there was the full grown falling star beast... How on earth is any melee fighter supposed to kill that thing without using the poison mist cheese? Defensive capabilities are way too high for the mechanics of that boss. All the strategies I could find online were either to completely change build into a magic user, or poison mist cheese.

Boss design in Elden Ring is easily the Souls series lowest. The amount of copy/paste went a bit too far and the quality of boss fights suffered because Quantity-Over-Quality took over HARD. And, the long wind ups... oh the long wind ups.... so unintuitive from a player's perspective. Also, most bosses DON'T have stamina recovery. They can spam as many attack strings as they want with no penalty.

This video essay easily echos my own thoughts on the vast majority of bosses in Elden Ring. It really feels like if you didn't roll a magic build, you're fucked. Two on one fights in this game are just bad and the fact that bosses don't have stamina bars makes the whole thing worse.



Again, my main complaint is the bosses are just badly designed because of the Quantity-Over-Quality mentality that took over development. Another complaint I have is levelling and how little souls?marks?wtfaretheycalled? you get for killing enemies in the open world and it only makes less than a handful of spots viable for farming.


----------



## wankerness

I agree with that video in general. I just have seen plenty of video evidence from people that bothered to actually learn the hard bosses (ex Malenia and Maliketh) to show that they do, in fact, have openings and are completely beatable even as a level 1 that doesn't use any summons or weapon arts. I just don't have the patience or skill to learn to "properly" beat them cause they ARE massively overtuned in terms of insane damage output and spammy attacks. Like, you really CAN dodge waterfowl dance without using bloodhound's step, but it's extremely non-intuitive (I think the first roll you have to do is forwards and the second two are back, and there's very precise delays on the timing you have to do to avoid getting instagibbed). And Maliketh has a LOT of attacks you can jump over and hit with the jump attack and that serves as the "opening," when if you play it like a Dark Souls game and roll through everything you basically never get any chances to do any damage. Hoarah Lux is the same way. Again, I agree they're overtuned and way too hard, as are most of the trash mobs in zones like Mountaintop of the Giants or Haligtree, but it all IS beatable if you're good enough.

EDIT: I do think some of the duo bosses are untuned bullshit, especially the gargoyles - that fight is totally miserable unless you have insane dps and can blow the first one up before the second one spawns, which I was able to do with 2 greatswords, but couldn't do at all on any other build. The dual crucible knights is totally miserable. Godskin Duo isn't great, but at least they have tiny amounts of HP.

The runes thing is bizarre (the Dunkey video was the first that really drew attention to it, but it seems very obvious) where he's going through a bunch of insanely difficult mobs like say, the crucible knight in farum azula which drops like 8000 runes and has a fuckton of HP and can 2-shot you even if you have 50 vigor and then comparing it to those albinaurics at the start of Moghwyn Palace that all drop like 2K each and you can kill like 25 in one hit with the right weapon. I think that's stupid. But, I think it's very consistent with their other games. All of their games have a couple soul-farming spots which are insanely better than all the other places to the point where you'd be nuts to try and grind almost anywhere else. Ex Dark Souls 1 with the NPCs in the forest and the phalanx in the painting; Dark Souls 2 with the giant memory and ascetics, Dark Souls 3 with the 3 winged guys in the library. Sekiro's a bit of an exception, but even there it was radically more efficient to just backstab the first mob over and over and over at a certain bonfire in the third phase of the castle than it was to do anything more interesting.

I think that Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro are the pinnacle of boss design so far with Fromsoft. But, I think Elden Ring is great and I've successfully beat all the bosses with greatswords (usually dual with the watchdog greatsword in the OH) as well as bleed builds, faith builds, and an int build. I'm going through as an int caster for the second time on my new playthrough. It definitely trivializes some things. But it's not required. Though after they nerfed the shit out of Flame of the Redmanes last patch the final boss duo is a hell of a lot harder as many non-caster builds.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I agree with that video in general. I just have seen plenty of video evidence from people that bothered to actually learn the hard bosses (ex Malenia and Maliketh) to show that they do, in fact, have openings and are completely beatable even as a level 1 that doesn't use any summons or weapon arts. I just don't have the patience or skill to learn to "properly" beat them cause they ARE massively overtuned in terms of insane damage output and spammy attacks. Like, you really CAN dodge waterfowl dance without using bloodhound's step, but it's extremely non-intuitive (I think the first roll you have to do is forwards and the second two are back, and there's very precise delays on the timing you have to do to avoid getting instagibbed). And Maliketh has a LOT of attacks you can jump over and hit with the jump attack and that serves as the "opening," when if you play it like a Dark Souls game and roll through everything you basically never get any chances to do any damage. Hoarah Lux is the same way. Again, I agree they're overtuned and way too hard, as are most of the trash mobs in zones like Mountaintop of the Giants or Haligtree, but it all IS beatable if you're good enough.
> 
> EDIT: I do think some of the duo bosses are untuned bullshit, especially the gargoyles - that fight is totally miserable unless you have insane dps and can blow the first one up before the second one spawns, which I was able to do with 2 greatswords, but couldn't do at all on any other build. The dual crucible knights is totally miserable. Godskin Duo isn't great, but at least they have tiny amounts of HP.
> 
> The runes thing is bizarre (the Dunkey video was the first that really drew attention to it, but it seems very obvious) where he's going through a bunch of insanely difficult mobs like say, the crucible knight in farum azula which drops like 8000 runes and has a fuckton of HP and can 2-shot you even if you have 50 vigor and then comparing it to those albinaurics at the start of Moghwyn Palace that all drop like 2K each and you can kill like 25 in one hit with the right weapon. I think that's stupid. But, I think it's very consistent with their other games. All of their games have a couple soul-farming spots which are insanely better than all the other places to the point where you'd be nuts to try and grind almost anywhere else. Ex Dark Souls 1 with the NPCs in the forest and the phalanx in the painting; Dark Souls 2 with the giant memory and ascetics, Dark Souls 3 with the 3 winged guys in the library. Sekiro's a bit of an exception, but even there it was radically more efficient to just backstab the first mob over and over and over at a certain bonfire in the third phase of the castle than it was to do anything more interesting.
> 
> I think that Dark Souls 3 and Sekiro are the pinnacle of boss design so far with Fromsoft. But, I think Elden Ring is great and I've successfully beat all the bosses with greatswords (usually dual with the watchdog greatsword in the OH) as well as bleed builds, faith builds, and an int build. I'm going through as an int caster for the second time on my new playthrough. It definitely trivializes some things. But it's not required. Though after they nerfed the shit out of Flame of the Redmanes last patch the final boss duo is a hell of a lot harder as many non-caster builds.


I think bosses are THE reason to play a souls game. And with the bosses in Elden Ring arguably being the worst aspect of that game, it's hard for me to justify even bothering to play it any further.


----------



## Ralyks

90 hours into Persona 5 Royal. Maxed out all social stats, only confidant I haven't maxed out that isn't tired to the story is Haru (my least used character anyway), romanced Makoto (it was between her and Futaba, but I respect Sojiro too much. I romanced Tae in vanilla P5), about to do the big dive into Mementos, and did what needs to be done to get the third semester I hope. Think the only non-story progression trophy I need is to defeat the Reaper. I'm level 71ish so I hope that's enough to take him down without too much of an issue? I don't know, I never attempted it in vanilla P5.

And Norco also continues to be awesome.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> I think bosses are THE reason to play a souls game. And with the bosses in Elden Ring arguably being the worst aspect of that game, it's hard for me to justify even bothering to play it any further.


Yeah, I guess I like the dark souls games for the gameplay and level design and weapon variety, and the way the gameplay improves as your build gets filled out. It all just plays really well to me. I think the bosses more often serve as annoying distractions to what I like, which is just going around and collecting items and exploring. I absolutely hate some of the obstacles like Manus and Twin Demons and Midir (some hard ones I like cause they're so visually spectacular like Friede and Gael). I actually enjoy fighting some bosses, but not a lot of them, I usually would prefer to be able to kill them all first try so I can get back to the levels.

Sekiro is an exception, I think there the boss fights are absolutely the highlight and the gameplay is so damn satisfying and isn't really shown off on regular mobs that you can stealth up to or kill with R1 spam.

So that makes sense that Elden Ring is mostly great to me and bad to you!


----------



## wankerness

Ralyks said:


> 90 hours into Persona 5 Royal. Maxed out all social stats, only confidant I haven't maxed out that isn't tired to the story is Haru (my least used character anyway), romanced Makoto (it was between her and Futaba, but I respect Sojiro too much. I romanced Tae in vanilla P5), about to do the big dive into Mementos, and did what needs to be done to get the third semester I hope. Think the only non-story progression trophy I need is to defeat the Reaper. I'm level 71ish so I hope that's enough to take him down without too much of an issue? I don't know, I never attempted it in vanilla P5.
> 
> And Norco also continues to be awesome.


The reaper is the one area where vanilla is way easier, there you could just wait for flu season and it would be affected by a really crippling debuff and the fight was trivial. I don't remember struggling on it in Royal either, though, I was probably just really high level.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> Yeah, I guess I like the dark souls games for the gameplay and level design and weapon variety, and the way the gameplay improves as your build gets filled out. It all just plays really well to me. I think the bosses more often serve as annoying distractions to what I like, which is just going around and collecting items and exploring. I absolutely hate some of the obstacles like Manus and Twin Demons and Midir (some hard ones I like cause they're so visually spectacular like Friede and Gael). I actually enjoy fighting some bosses, but not a lot of them, I usually would prefer to be able to kill them all first try so I can get back to the levels.
> 
> Sekiro is an exception, I think there the boss fights are absolutely the highlight and the gameplay is so damn satisfying and isn't really shown off on regular mobs that you can stealth up to or kill with R1 spam.
> 
> So that makes sense that Elden Ring is mostly great to me and bad to you!


Totally. I didn't click with Sekiro. The game wants you to play a specific way and I just didn't want to do things that way. I'm used to push-pull of souls and dodging as opposed to parrying. I might revisit it some day, but I just wasn't having fun with it so I put it down.


----------



## MFB

Nicki said:


> Totally. I didn't click with Sekiro. The game wants you to play a specific way and I just didn't want to do things that way. I'm used to push-pull of souls and dodging as opposed to parrying. I might revisit it some day, but I just wasn't having fun with it so I put it down.



It didn't click with me immediately as I went to it off the back of Bloodborne, maybe even BB and DS1, and was furious that I had to PARRY as opposed to block and tried to brute my way through it. I got half way (I think I stopped at Guardian Ape originally), none of which was enjoyable, but then I picked it up again and pushed through to the end only to find myself immediately starting a NG+ and making it up to Headless before I stopped in one sitting. Replayed it again this year, and I think I have to give it my top spot for FS games as it really does click.


----------



## StevenC

On the topic of Elden Ring, the only criticism I'm willing to listen to on it is if Hbomberguy makes a video about it.

I started Hollow Knight yesterday. About 10 hours in. It's very good but it makes me so mad all the time. But then I beat the thing that annoyed me and I feel very happy. Like just now I beat the



Spoiler



Mantis Lords and those guys are tough. But by the time I was able to beat the second phase with two of them I was beating the first phase without taking any hits.



So yeah. Hopefully will get through some more of it in the next few days to weeks and will report back.


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> It didn't click with me immediately as I went to it off the back of Bloodborne, maybe even BB and DS1, and was furious that I had to PARRY as opposed to block and tried to brute my way through it. I got half way (I think I stopped at Guardian Ape originally), none of which was enjoyable, but then I picked it up again and pushed through to the end only to find myself immediately starting a NG+ and making it up to Headless before I stopped in one sitting. Replayed it again this year, and I think I have to give it my top spot for FS games as it really does click.


That's exactly my story of my first playthrough as well, even right up to Guardian Ape.

I picked it up and restarted several months later and something really did click in my head, and it became such an addiction to me. I've never had another game give me such a feeling of mastery over an opponent as when you learn a boss or miniboss well in Sekiro. That feeling of almost nonchalantly deflecting these insane moves coming my way, while at the same time that counting as a way to defeat the opponent. It's so satisfying.

I've now got over 400 hours in the game, and gradually ticking off no-damage fights against all the bosses and minibosses.


----------



## MFB

Werecow said:


> That's exactly my story of my first playthrough as well, even right up to Guardian Ape.
> 
> I picked it up and restarted several months later and something really did click in my head, and it became such an addiction to me. I've never had another game give me such a feeling of mastery over an opponent as when you learn a boss or miniboss well in Sekiro. That feeling of almost nonchalantly deflecting these insane moves coming my way, while at the same time that counting as a way to defeat the opponent. It's so satisfying.
> 
> I've now got over 400 hours in the game, and gradually ticking off no-damage fights against all the bosses and minibosses.



I think Guardian is where everyone stops because it's a triple run of bosses: Guardian > Snake Eyes > Headless, with the latter being two fights in one, so it's technically FOUR bosses after you just fought what most would consider to be the hardest one so far. It's definitely a soul-crushing experience the first time you play that, and I imagine that goes for those who are familiar with From games to begin with.

Some day I'll platinum it using the guide wankerness gave me, but I've played it thru 3 times now and it needs a rest


----------



## Werecow

MFB said:


> I think Guardian is where everyone stops because it's a triple run of bosses: Guardian > Snake Eyes > Headless, with the latter being two fights in one, so it's technically FOUR bosses after you just fought what most would consider to be the hardest one so far. It's definitely a soul-crushing experience the first time you play that, and I imagine that goes for those who are familiar with From games to begin with.
> 
> Some day I'll platinum it using the guide wankerness gave me, but I've played it thru 3 times now and it needs a rest


Yeh, on the first time playing when the combat hasn't fully clicked, the normal game can just feel like a bit of filler between yet another almost impossible miniboss/boss fight for quite a while.
I don't know if it's standard to enjoy Fromsoft games more on replays (i don't like their Souls games combat), but Sekiro almost felt like it was designed to be like that. I found the normal gameplay too easy, and the bosses too hard on first playthrough. It felt like a more balanced experience on replays to me. I was really stubborn in learning bosses with single clicked deflects, and hardly any prosthetics though.


----------



## MFB

Werecow said:


> Yeh, on the first time playing when the combat hasn't fully clicked, the normal game can just feel like a bit of filler between yet another almost impossible miniboss/boss fight for quite a while.
> I don't know if it's standard to enjoy Fromsoft games more on replays (i don't like their Souls games combat), but Sekiro almost felt like it was designed to be like that. I found the normal gameplay too easy, and the bosses too hard on first playthrough. It felt like a more balanced experience on replays to me. I was really stubborn in learning bosses with single clicked deflects, and hardly any prosthetics though.



Yup, yup, yup, especially for where we got to on those first gameplays, the enemies were just basic soldiers who didn't provide much of a challenge; but one you encounter the Tengu fighters, the Nightjar ninjas, and I can't remember who the red ones at Ashina Castle night-time are but those fuckers, the 'in between' combat of bosses goes away and you're constantly on guard (in my opinion). I truly don't remember how much/how well I used prosthetics on my first playthru, but I'm going to go ahead and say probably not at all. I think the bull fight was the only one I knew what to do and that was because it's on the item description, but I remember getting wrecked at the first main boss (horse general, forget his name) and hadn't even realized there was a sprint - I just thought every enemy was going to outpace me like DS/BB.

Once I went back and went SLOW into it, I learned the game so much more and was able to beat it, albeit not without it's own frustrations. I remember my old neighbor asking what I was playing one day because I sounded really really pissed off, and I was, but I was enjoying the challenge it was giving me and thinking I could make it through.


----------



## TedEH

Spoiler: Finally getting into Elden Ring



I didn't get very far at all yet. I made it to Margit, but haven't been able to beat him yet since all of my attempts were with starting gear and no level-ups, etc. I realized I can make it to the other side of the castle without doing that fight at all. I think the story implied I needed or wanted something from that castle so I assumed the fight was necessary to do, but I think that might not be true. I probably still want to re-attempt it at some point. I managed to get him down to half health with only starting gear and levels, so I'm sure it's doable. I instead went the other direction from the gates and just did some exploring/grinding/etc.

First impressions - very much a souls/from game, so I'm glad I started with another one in order to be prepared for the "first while is going to kick my ass" thing. The general combat feels good though. I like that the stealth works pretty well. I like that I can choose what to engage and when. I'm on the fence about the fast-travel, so I won't comment on that yet. The first few bits of the world feel really well assembled - in the way that they've taken the BotW open-world influence and used it properly. They understood the assignment when tackling "open-world", or at least that's the impression so far. I could see this being a great "lose yourself for hours just exploring" kind of title.

The downsides though - right from the start, the goal seems a little fuzzy. I know I'm supposed to follow some golden glowy path thing, but that made me think that Margit was the goal, but then after getting around the castle and seeing that the path just goes though, I'm suddenly unsure of what I'm actually working towards. I suspect that'll clear up as the game goes on. The reaaaaal downer though is that the performance on the PS5 is a little less than stellar. It's not horrendous - certainly playable, but I've gotten spoiled by really well performing games lately, so having frequent frame drops you can feel and not being able to do anything about it is a bit disappointing. Makes me wonder if I should have gone for the PC version instead. It's not a big deal though, I guess.


----------



## Nicki

StevenC said:


> On the topic of Elden Ring, the only criticism I'm willing to listen to on it is if Hbomberguy makes a video about it.
> 
> I started Hollow Knight yesterday. About 10 hours in. It's very good but it makes me so mad all the time. But then I beat the thing that annoyed me and I feel very happy. Like just now I beat the
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Mantis Lords and those guys are tough. But by the time I was able to beat the second phase with two of them I was beating the first phase without taking any hits.
> 
> 
> 
> So yeah. Hopefully will get through some more of it in the next few days to weeks and will report back.


Love love love Hollow Knight. I did a 105% complete on my first playthrough. That boss definitely gave me trouble as well until I stopped trying to fight and just took the time to learn the attack patterns and just jumped/dodged around them. After that, it's cake. Just make sure you fully upgrade the Dream Nail before you hit the final boss so that you can fight the final final boss.

Anyway... I played more Elden Ring last night. I still hate this game to my core. I'm firmly, and I mean FIRMLY, in the camp that believes this game should not have won GOTY. Yes, it deserved the nomination, but it did NOT deserve to win.

I opened up the farming spot that nets you 40k runes in a few minutes at Mohgwyn's Palace. I bumped my character up 15 levels to lvl 89 sitting with 35 str, 28 dex and 40 vig. I STILL CANNOT BEAT THOSE STUPID GARGOYLES because of that arena wide poison AoE. Of course, I posted on the reddit sub and was met with the natural toxic response of that sub of "sKiLl IsSuE gIt GuD". I genuinely hate the Souls community who just close their eyes and ears to any criticism of the game they misguidedly put up on a pedestal. Easily a fundamentally broken boss fight and analysis after analysis of bosses in this game have been done (the video I mentioned before is one of SEVERAL that mention how flawed that boss is) and they still claim "eLdEn RiNg Is PeRfEcT dUrR dUrR".

And now because I no longer care about the challenge in this game or having fun in it, as it's lost all of what's made the Souls games great, I'm going to absolutely break it by going full psychopath and over level the ever living crap outta my STR stat. Going to take a nice long time to just farm and farm and farm until I've pumped the stat up another 100 points to 135 before I touch another boss.


----------



## Choop

I can't exactly remember how I beat that boss since it's been almost a year now since playing it, but I do remember it taking a good number of tries. I had the marionette soldiers ashes for it, and was using a Str/Faith build. I just remember kiting them, and trying to burn one down quickly -- it was just kind of luck whether they would kill my ashes too fast or not, and which gargoyle would attack which marionette (or me). I really liked Elden Ring quite a bit despite some of the annoyances with certain boss fights.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> The reaper is the one area where vanilla is way easier, there you could just wait for flu season and it would be affected by a really crippling debuff and the fight was trivial. I don't remember struggling on it in Royal either, though, I was probably just really high level.


Yeah, I went and beat Reaper shortly after posting this. Wasn't too hard at lev 71. More annoying than anything. Felt like I was chipping away until Showtime attacks came up to deal actual significant damages. Took maybe 10 - 15 minutes to beat him.
Anyway, I'm at the part when, in vanilla P5, I can go face the final boss (with that badass final boss music), who I'm assuming is no longer the final boss with the Third Semester to follow. Also hoping you can go back to Mementos in the Third, I forgot to do the trophy to change the cognition of Mementos and would rather not have to put some 20 - 30 hours into a NG+ just to do that.


----------



## TedEH

Nicki said:


> I'm firmly, and I mean FIRMLY, in the camp that believes this game should not have won GOTY


Despite having a generally good time so far, I'm kinda on a similar page that I'm searching for whatever that thing is that makes this GOTY material and while I can sort of see it - this feels like it would be _some people's_ best game, and other people's worst game, of the year. Despite all the things I think Elden Ring does well or right so far, even just from being in the early game, it still has a huge accessibility wall - which I would have thought would exclude it from being a general-appeal GOTY. It's a very polished game for a niche, but still a niche.


----------



## gabito

FromSoftware is a cult.

Just say no.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> Love love love Hollow Knight. I did a 105% complete on my first playthrough. That boss definitely gave me trouble as well until I stopped trying to fight and just took the time to learn the attack patterns and just jumped/dodged around them. After that, it's cake. Just make sure you fully upgrade the Dream Nail before you hit the final boss so that you can fight the final final boss.
> 
> Anyway... I played more Elden Ring last night. I still hate this game to my core. I'm firmly, and I mean FIRMLY, in the camp that believes this game should not have won GOTY. Yes, it deserved the nomination, but it did NOT deserve to win.
> 
> I opened up the farming spot that nets you 40k runes in a few minutes at Mohgwyn's Palace. I bumped my character up 15 levels to lvl 89 sitting with 35 str, 28 dex and 40 vig. I STILL CANNOT BEAT THOSE STUPID GARGOYLES because of that arena wide poison AoE. Of course, I posted on the reddit sub and was met with the natural toxic response of that sub of "sKiLl IsSuE gIt GuD". I genuinely hate the Souls community who just close their eyes and ears to any criticism of the game they misguidedly put up on a pedestal. Easily a fundamentally broken boss fight and analysis after analysis of bosses in this game have been done (the video I mentioned before is one of SEVERAL that mention how flawed that boss is) and they still claim "eLdEn RiNg Is PeRfEcT dUrR dUrR".
> 
> And now because I no longer care about the challenge in this game or having fun in it, as it's lost all of what's made the Souls games great, I'm going to absolutely break it by going full psychopath and over level the ever living crap outta my STR stat. Going to take a nice long time to just farm and farm and farm until I've pumped the stat up another 100 points to 135 before I touch another boss.


It sounds like maybe you made a post that was interpreted as more "THIS BOSS IS BROKEN BULLSHIT" and less "how do I do better on this boss?" That community can be very helpful or very annoyed with boss help posts, it seems to depend on the tone of the OP. I've seen lots of threads about that boss specifically complaining about the one utter bullshit aspect of it, the way one lays down poison and the other flaps its wings and basically covers the entire area in something that does damage, DOES POISE DAMAGE, AND stacks a frickin poison debuff on you. And there is a lot of hate out there for that boss. But it is not unbeatable! Like, on my first playthrough, i beat it first try without blinking and didn't even realize it was considered a hard boss until my second playthrough where it was a brick wall. I've done the damn thing as at least four different builds and on 6 characters. Some of them it died easily on the first try (faith/str and int), on some of the others it was the single hardest boss in the game (anything dex or bleed related). But yeah, the community is not all toxic and knee-jerk defensive of the game unless you go in aggressively.

If you really want to beat that boss and get back to coasting, just go get the mimic tear ash and pump it up to +7 or higher (you should already have that materials to do at least that). The mimic tear will use whatever you have equipped at the time that you summon it, so you can easily slap on two greatswords or unequip your shield or something and then switch to a shield or whatever's easier for you as soon as the mimic spawns in (it behaves a lot more aggressively without a shield, but its survivability is a lot lower). Another tip is to make some of that perfume bottle that puts a bubble shield on you - if you have that in a quickslot the mimic will use it regularly and if you run anywhere close to the mimic when it casts it you get a bubble shield on you that absorbs the next hit the boss does. The gargoyles are weak to strike damage so if you have some beefy mace/hammer (ex the brickhammer from the first dungeon) or use the guts greatsword from the wrecked caravan in caelid (I think it does strike damage weirdly) you should be able to gangbang the first gargoyle down before the second one can really get started with its bullshit, and the fight's much easier when it's only against one of them. Though I definitely died about 10 times AFTER killing the first gargoyle on my last playthrough (dex build). I hate that boss.

Also you CAN respec in the game. The respec material is not unlimited but there are several pretty easily available. If you really think you can't do it as your current build you could try something else. It will just suck getting a weapon upgraded (it's really easy to get the bell bearings for smithing stones 1-4 early before even killing Renalla, but the later ones are locked pretty far in behind progress). I think the easiest time I had on that boss was as an int build, using the meteorite staff (buffs all "gravity" spells and can't be upgraded so it's full strength when you pick it up from Caelid) and the rock sling spell (does physical strike damage, buffed by that staff, found in the same ruins in caelid and can be gotten REALLY early). You can do that without even having to upgrade any weapons. So I think all that would cost you would be two larval tears.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Despite having a generally good time so far, I'm kinda on a similar page that I'm searching for whatever that thing is that makes this GOTY material and while I can sort of see it - this feels like it would be _some people's_ best game, and other people's worst game, of the year. Despite all the things I think Elden Ring does well or right so far, even just from being in the early game, it still has a huge accessibility wall - which I would have thought would exclude it from being a general-appeal GOTY. It's a very polished game for a niche, but still a niche.


I think that people were mainly just blindsided by how immersive and "gamey" it is and how little handholding it has, we haven't really seen a big mainstream hit like that since Zelda BOTW. It's very easy to get lost in the game exploring and discovering, and the arcane systems (like the bizarrely confusing quests) just added to that immersiveness. I'm glad they implemented some user-friendly features like putting icons on the map for NPCs you've talked to after version 1.0. But it's still pretty impenetrable.

The game is EXTREMELY brutal at the beginning if you don't run around exploring/leveling for a long time before trying to take on the first "real" boss (Margit in the castle). I was very surprised that they made a boss that hard be the first "gatekeeper." He's easily the hardest "first" boss in any of these games unless you count Gascoigne from Bloodborne. I'd be curious to hear what you're doing in it. This discussion should all probably be in the elden ring thread instead of the general games thread so as not to disturb those that are offended by fromsoftware.


----------



## MFB

^ You had me immediately when I read "Easily the hardest 'first' boss" as I was like "WHAT ABOUT PAPA GUAC!" and then sure enough there it was five words later


----------



## Nicki

TedEH said:


> Despite having a generally good time so far, I'm kinda on a similar page that I'm searching for whatever that thing is that makes this GOTY material and while I can sort of see it - this feels like it would be _some people's_ best game, and other people's worst game, of the year. Despite all the things I think Elden Ring does well or right so far, even just from being in the early game, it still has a huge accessibility wall - which I would have thought would exclude it from being a general-appeal GOTY. It's a very polished game for a niche, but still a niche.


I think I mentioned in a previous reply that pickings for GOTY this cycle were slim. The only three choices were Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok and Elden Ring.

I played through HFW and I was not impressed. The game _looked_ gorgeous on the PS5. But that's about all that it had going for it. The glider added nothing. The combat leaned to far into melee vs bow usage, and the difficulty curve left a lot to be desired due to the reliance on the loot system which is its own special problem that either needed more time in the oven, or should have been removed altogether. The platforming was somehow WORSE than HZD and the main story played out in a way that made it feel like an afterthought that fell apart right at the end;


Spoiler



"BUT ACTUALLY IT WAS THIS THING ALL ALONG, NOT THE THING WE TOLD YOU IT WAS FOR THE WHOLE GAME".


 Incredibly uninspired and unoriginal. Aloy is a terrible protagonist in this one because NONE of the lessons she learned as part of her character growth in HZD carried into HFW and her continuous muttering to herself made both my wife and I shout "SHUT. UP. ALOY" at the TV a few DOZEN times. This is objectively a bad game and there's no changing my mind on it. In all likelihood, everything I hate about the game is the result of Sony rushing Guerilla to finish the game in time for the PS5 release so that it would have its "killer app" at launch (or close to).

I found GoW 2019 to be so incredibly boring. The story moved at a snails pace, Christopher Judge's voice acting and portrayal of Kratos was awful, Atreus was annoying and the gameplay loop was incredibly repetitive; Go place, kill things, solve puzzle. Go place, kill things, solve puzzle. Go place, kill things, solve puzzle, boss fight. Rinse. Repeat. If GoW 2019 is anything to go by, GoW:R suffers the same flaws (I don't know 100% for certain since I'm not going to play it when I think GoW 2019 is one of the worst games from Sony for the reasons mentioned).

I agree that Elden Ring does have accessibility issues but only insofar that the difficulty balance is all over the place. You can steamroll a boss in one area, then discover a hidden nook in the same area with a boss that will OHK you or a critical path boss that does the same. The "open world" would have benefited from level zoning a la MMO in my view. This approach creates its own set of challenges and problems, but they would have been far less egregious sins than what was done with ER as it is now. With zoning, you could have 7 or 8 challenging but balanced bosses and 2 or 3 bosses that you'll need to come back for later. Perfectly fine. But the unbalanced bullshit that FromSoft went with, as I stated before is the result of Quantity-Over-Quality taking over the dev team in order to meet timelines.

In my opinion, this odeous crop of manure of GOTY contenders is due to pandemic developed games. They are hopefully the last of them. I think the dry spell of AAA releases over the last 2 years have left gamers STARVED for great gaming experiences that it got to a point where gamers will take absolutely anything they can and praise and defend the polished turds.



wankerness said:


> It sounds like maybe you made a post that was interpreted as more "THIS BOSS IS BROKEN BULLSHIT" and less "how do I do better on this boss?" That community can be very helpful or very annoyed with boss help posts, it seems to depend on the tone of the OP. I've seen lots of threads about that boss specifically complaining about the one utter bullshit aspect of it, the way one lays down poison and the other flaps its wings and basically covers the entire area in something that does damage, DOES POISE DAMAGE, AND stacks a frickin poison debuff on you. And there is a lot of hate out there for that boss. But it is not unbeatable! Like, on my first playthrough, i beat it first try without blinking and didn't even realize it was considered a hard boss until my second playthrough where it was a brick wall. I've done the damn thing as at least four different builds and on 6 characters. Some of them it died easily on the first try (faith/str and int), on some of the others it was the single hardest boss in the game (anything dex or bleed related). But yeah, the community is not all toxic and knee-jerk defensive of the game unless you go in aggressively.
> 
> If you really want to beat that boss and get back to coasting, just go get the mimic tear ash and pump it up to +7 or higher (you should already have that materials to do at least that). The mimic tear will use whatever you have equipped at the time that you summon it, so you can easily slap on two greatswords or unequip your shield or something and then switch to a shield or whatever's easier for you as soon as the mimic spawns in (it behaves a lot more aggressively without a shield, but its survivability is a lot lower). Another tip is to make some of that perfume bottle that puts a bubble shield on you - if you have that in a quickslot the mimic will use it regularly and if you run anywhere close to the mimic when it casts it you get a bubble shield on you that absorbs the next hit the boss does. The gargoyles are weak to strike damage so if you have some beefy mace/hammer (ex the brickhammer from the first dungeon) or use the guts greatsword from the wrecked caravan in caelid (I think it does strike damage weirdly) you should be able to gangbang the first gargoyle down before the second one can really get started with its bullshit, and the fight's much easier when it's only against one of them. Though I definitely died about 10 times AFTER killing the first gargoyle on my last playthrough (dex build). I hate that boss.
> 
> Also you CAN respec in the game. The respec material is not unlimited but there are several pretty easily available. If you really think you can't do it as your current build you could try something else. It will just suck getting a weapon upgraded (it's really easy to get the bell bearings for smithing stones 1-4 early before even killing Renalla, but the later ones are locked pretty far in behind progress). I think the easiest time I had on that boss was as an int build, using the meteorite staff (buffs all "gravity" spells and can't be upgraded so it's full strength when you pick it up from Caelid) and the rock sling spell (does physical strike damage, buffed by that staff, found in the same ruins in caelid and can be gotten REALLY early). You can do that without even having to upgrade any weapons. So I think all that would cost you would be two larval tears.


I don't understand the justification with people thinking the mimic tear, the jelly, the headless knight or any other summon (other than maybe, MAYBE marionettes that I had a good round with) is actually useful in this fight. Summons are useless in this fight because they die to poison in seconds. I've tried a +4 mimic, a +5 jelly, a +5 headless knight, a +5 wolves and +3 marionettes. Only the marionettes got me anywhere when the RNG was good enough that they stun locked the second gargoyle long enough for me to get it to within 1 swing to kill the first before poison came out of nowhere and killed me.

My question to Reddit was "Why has this boss not been nerfed yet?" when it's so widely complained about? I'm over and done with this game's bullshitery and balance swings to the point where I'm now going to unbalance the game heavily in my favour. Trying to play the game "the right way" according to the cork sniffers, is leading to nothing but making me want to pull my hair out. But the cork sniffing community is largely toxic garbage and instead of trying to be helpful, they just spew vitriol because they're too stupid to see how badly designed the bosses in ER actually are.

Yes, I know you can respec, but why should I have to? The bosses should be just as difficult for magic users as they are for melee. But my experience so far is that this game is brutally difficult for melee users whereas Magic users can largely breeze through the game.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> I don't understand the justification with people thinking the mimic tear, the jelly, the headless knight or any other summon (other than maybe, MAYBE marionettes that I had a good round with) is actually useful in this fight. Summons are useless in this fight because they die to poison in seconds. I've tried a +5 mimic, a +5 jelly, a +5 headless knight, a +5 wolves and +3 marionettes. Only the marionettes got me anywhere when the RNG was good enough that they stun locked the second gargoyle long enough for me to get it to within 1 swing to kill it before poison came out of nowhere and killed me.
> 
> My question to Reddit was "Why has this boss not been nerfed yet?" when it's so widely complained about? I'm over and done with this game's bullshitery and balance swings to the point where I'm now going to unbalance the game heavily in my favour. Trying to play the game "the right way" according to the cork sniffers, is leading to nothing but making me want to pull my hair out. But the cork sniffing community is largely toxic garbage and instead of trying to be helpful, they just spew vitriol because they're too stupid to see how badly designed the bosses in ER actually are.
> 
> Yes, I know you can respec, but why should I have to? The bosses should be just as difficult for magic users as they are for melee. But my experience so far is that this game is brutally difficult for melee users whereas Magic users can largely breeze through the game.


The mimic tear is absolutely not useless - I can't vouch for any other summons on that fight, though. The only one I remember trying was a massively upgraded version of the greatshield bros, and they would all just die instantly to AOE so they were worthless. I'd guess the only useful ones would be Latenna (if you can tank), Dung Eater, Tiche, and maybe the Omenkiller. Yes, it can get killed by poison early due to bad luck. Maybe even repeatedly. It will definitely die to poison if you let the fight go on for a long time. But it will allow you to do a* lot *more damage since it will split aggro instead of you having to play defensively the whole time. And the first gargoyle, if you just rush in and jump attack the shit out of it with a big weapon, will probably die before it gets a chance to get any poison off. Again, I beat it using the guts greatsword and remember it being one of the easier times I had with the boss, just cause with the ash distracting it I was able to basically just hit it so hard that it kept getting poise broken (jump attacks with ultra greatswords really do a number on it, especially if you have the jump attack talisman and/or the raptor's black feathers) and I could finish it off before the second gargoyle could fully ramp up the bullshit with poison etc. Though maybe that was the playthrough where I got the dungeater puppet, and that is one incredibly overpowered summon early in the game even compared to the mimic. Can't remember.

You should be able to get it to +7 using materials that you find before you find the ash - another thing you could do if you don't want to respec is just look up locations of the ghost gloveworts +6 through +10. I know it's possible to get the thing to +10 REALLY early in the game, but I can't remember if you can before the gargoyles.

One thing definitely NOT to do is summon in D (the yellow summon sign) cause that will buff the gargoyle's health and he'll die even easier than a well-upgraded mimic tear and you'll be left with gargoyles with massively increased health pools. But you probably knew that already.

I am confused by your anger here combined with your behaviors, and would have to guess that's part of why your reddit post was received badly. If you hate this boss so much, are having so much trouble with it that you're spending all this time power-leveling to beat it, then why wouldn't you just spend two of a consumable item to respec and be done with it? If you hadn't apparently made up your mind that it's impossible I'd get it, but this seems like a weird hill to die on (this boss is impossible as my current build/i will not change my current build). According to steam/PS achievements about 50% of players have beaten it, and I would wager that at least a decent percentage of them were strength builds that didn't respec for the fight, considering that's many hundreds of thousands of people and strength builds are pretty popular.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The game is EXTREMELY brutal at the beginning if you don't run around exploring/leveling for a long time before trying to take on the first "real" boss (Margit in the castle). I was very surprised that they made a boss that hard be the first "gatekeeper." He's easily the hardest "first" boss in any of these games unless you count Gascoigne from Bloodborne.


I think it would be fine if ER hadn't eschewed the modern video-game-y practice of almost always pointing you directly at what you're "supposed to be doing". It's both a strength and weakness at the same time. I followed the sparkly lights until I got steamrolled by Margit - and it took a bunch of aimless exploring and grinding before I feel like I'm back on track again. Lvl 30, about to challenge Margit again, and found a hint to open a magic door that I think might lead to some actual progression - although I don't know what stops me from just running _around_ the magic place and continuing to trace the path of the sparkly bits without fighting anything until I have no choice.

Oddly - I keep hearing people say Gascoigne was supposed to be the hardest "first real boss", but I 1-shotted that one. Maybe I'm more of a Real Gamer(tm) than I thought I was.


----------



## wankerness

I agree that the GOTY contenders were pretty weak. I was a diehard fan of HZD but thought HFW was a big disappointment since the plot was TERRIBLE (insert post from that guy that utterly hates the first game saying "what's the difference?"). The constant dialogue and handholding was really annoying, there's too much tedious busywork, the game feels long for long's sake, everything feels micromanaged by quest markers and radar helpers so you're just running from marker to marker, etc. Combat is still fun even though I think they went too far with ammo types and weaknesses this time around, graphics are incredible, technical aspects are probably the best on the PS5, but...yeah. Well before the end I just wanted to get it over with.

GOW: Ragnarok is a very good game and I really liked it but it's definitely not that far removed from the first game or any other good prestige story-driven action game (ala Naughty Dog). Elden Ring, warts and all, was by far the most radical nominee and it was really something different for the vast majority of people who played it (since the game sold so many millions more than any previous Fromsoft game so probably a ton of them had never been exposed to that kind of Dark Souls bullshit).


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I think it would be fine if ER hadn't eschewed the modern video-game-y practice of almost always pointing you directly at what you're "supposed to be doing". It's both a strength and weakness at the same time. I followed the sparkly lights until I got steamrolled by Margit - and it took a bunch of aimless exploring and grinding before I feel like I'm back on track again. Lvl 30, about to challenge Margit again, and found a hint to open a magic door that I think might lead to some actual progression - although I don't know what stops me from just running _around_ the magic place and continuing to trace the path of the sparkly bits without fighting anything until I have no choice.
> 
> Oddly - I keep hearing people say Gascoigne was supposed to be the hardest "first real boss", but I 1-shotted that one. Maybe I'm more of a Real Gamer(tm) than I thought I was.


If you beat Gascoigne first try without using the music box then yeah, you're more of a REAL GAMER than you thought you were.

Yeah...following the sparkles to immediately progress is a big, big no-no - if you take what NPCs tell you as good advice then it's very understandable that you beelined him and got flattened. I think Margit doesn't become anything approaching "easy" unless you've got AT LEAST 20 of both vigor and your primary damage stat and have also upgraded your weapon a couple times (yes, I know you can beat the hardest boss in the game at level 1 with a non-upgraded dagger, but I'm terrible at these games). Getting some flask upgrades first really helps, too. I'd explore the weeping peninsula if you haven't gone there yet (big area in the south of limgrave). Weapon upgrade materials are most common in mines, they're the little black dots surrounded by red on the map.


----------



## BlackMastodon

gabito said:


> FromSoftware is a cult.
> 
> Just say no.


Unless it's an Armored Core title. I'll eat that shit right up.


----------



## Mathemagician

Nicki said:


> Started playing the Demon's Souls remake and am about half-way through. After having so much experience with FromSoft games now, I'm finding it laughably easy. I'm still torn on returning to Elden Ring though. I love the idea of the open world and how movement and combat feels in that game. However, it's pretty universally recognized at this point that balance in Elden Ring is just so all over the place and boss fights are the weakest part of that game that I'm VERY reluctant to pick it back up. I'm really in a Souls mood and want to love the ever living crap outta Elden Ring but I just can't.




I still maintain that Elden Ring is in the “Zelda” game genre and the best Zelda game out there in terms of content and world/secrets to explore. 

Anyways I picked up some fun games on sale that I’d been putting off forever. 

Dragon Ball Z Kakarot. About to follow the homie through the best sagas ever. 

Trails of Cold Steel Numero Uno. Because several nerds here talked about it nonstop for 47 years and I love good JRPGs. 

The Valkyrie Profile double set. Two more JRPGs that I never got to play. 

Kingdom Come deliverance. Just looks like a very different rpg than what I normally play. 

Debating on checking if any of the mana games are on sale but realistically I have like over a years worth of games right there. Not counting my backlog which we won’t talk about.


----------



## Leviathus

BlackMastodon said:


> Unless it's an Armored Core title. I'll eat that shit right up.


The new one coming out looks cool. Wonder how much souls influence it'll have compared to the older games.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> The new one coming out looks cool. Wonder how much souls influence it'll have compared to the older games.


I would assume very little. I am more worried about what little I've heard about this series, which is that it really gets lost in the weeds of menu customization tedium.


----------



## BlackMastodon

Leviathus said:


> The new one coming out looks cool. Wonder how much souls influence it'll have compared to the older games.





wankerness said:


> I would assume very little. I am more worried about what little I've heard about this series, which is that it really gets lost in the weeds of menu customization tedium.


I'm very curious how the last decade of huge success they've had with the Soulsbourne games and Sekiro and Elden Ring will colour their long-standing formula for mech combat and customizing. I skipped AC5 because I didn't have a console that generation, but also because it didn't interest me since it sounded like they changed the gameplay. AC4 I had a ton of fun with, though, and didn't have a problem with the customizing once I got the hang of it. Some of the things like mech balancing/tuning were extremely unintuitive, though, and it would help to have more explanations of what certain things do.


----------



## Leviathus

From the steam page:

ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON will offer a game experience based on the mech game know-how FromSoftware cultivated over 25 years of developing games in the series, *but now introducing groundbreaking gameplay found in the developer’s recent action games*


----------



## BlackMastodon

So dodge-rolling mechs?


----------



## jco5055

I've been playing Symphony of the Night for the first time, and it's pretty good! Just got to the inverted castle.


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## wankerness

jco5055 said:


> I've been playing Symphony of the Night for the first time, and it's pretty good! Just got to the inverted castle.


That game is easily one of the best of all time. A lot of the handheld Castlevania games are very worth playing, too. There's a set of the three GBA games available for current gen systems now, and then there are three DS games which are even better but I think you'd need a Nintendo DS or 3DS to play them. Or emulator? I dunno how DS games emulate on PC.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> The mimic tear is absolutely not useless - I can't vouch for any other summons on that fight, though. The only one I remember trying was a massively upgraded version of the greatshield bros, and they would all just die instantly to AOE so they were worthless. I'd guess the only useful ones would be Latenna (if you can tank), Dung Eater, Tiche, and maybe the Omenkiller. Yes, it can get killed by poison early due to bad luck. Maybe even repeatedly. It will definitely die to poison if you let the fight go on for a long time. But it will allow you to do a* lot *more damage since it will split aggro instead of you having to play defensively the whole time. And the first gargoyle, if you just rush in and jump attack the shit out of it with a big weapon, will probably die before it gets a chance to get any poison off. Again, I beat it using the guts greatsword and remember it being one of the easier times I had with the boss, just cause with the ash distracting it I was able to basically just hit it so hard that it kept getting poise broken (jump attacks with ultra greatswords really do a number on it, especially if you have the jump attack talisman and/or the raptor's black feathers) and I could finish it off before the second gargoyle could fully ramp up the bullshit with poison etc. Though maybe that was the playthrough where I got the dungeater puppet, and that is one incredibly overpowered summon early in the game even compared to the mimic. Can't remember.
> 
> You should be able to get it to +7 using materials that you find before you find the ash - another thing you could do if you don't want to respec is just look up locations of the ghost gloveworts +6 through +10. I know it's possible to get the thing to +10 REALLY early in the game, but I can't remember if you can before the gargoyles.
> 
> One thing definitely NOT to do is summon in D (the yellow summon sign) cause that will buff the gargoyle's health and he'll die even easier than a well-upgraded mimic tear and you'll be left with gargoyles with massively increased health pools. But you probably knew that already.
> 
> I am confused by your anger here combined with your behaviors, and would have to guess that's part of why your reddit post was received badly. If you hate this boss so much, are having so much trouble with it that you're spending all this time power-leveling to beat it, then why wouldn't you just spend two of a consumable item to respec and be done with it? If you hadn't apparently made up your mind that it's impossible I'd get it, but this seems like a weird hill to die on (this boss is impossible as my current build/i will not change my current build). According to steam/PS achievements about 50% of players have beaten it, and I would wager that at least a decent percentage of them were strength builds that didn't respec for the fight, considering that's many hundreds of thousands of people and strength builds are pretty popular.


My anger is at the fundamentals of the fight and how it compares to other two on ones in the souls series as well as the mechanics used both in this boss fight and in the souls series in general. These bosses take up the whole screen when you're up close and it's impossible to keep track of what both are doing at the same time, which necessitates the usage of a summon and prayer to the RNG god that summon doesn't die in seconds so that it distracts the second gargoyle long enough for you to deal with the first. Other souls games either had both bosses be small enough to fit on one screen or zoomed the camera out so that you could keep both on screen. In both of those cases, keeping track of both bosses was manageable. Here, no such thing. It's summon and pray.

Second is the poison mist AoE for two reasons. First, in any other souls game with a poison mist mechanic, the tick damage did not start until you were poisoned. Here, you're taking damage in the process. Second, the poison spews out in a cone from the front of the gargoyle in such a distance/width that it's incredibly difficult to avoid and when you're football fields away, it doesn't make sense for the poison to travel that far away from the gargoyles given their movesets. Third, the better usage would be a circular pattern at the base of the gargoyle to force the player to back away, allowing the gargoyles an opportunity for one of their aerial diving attacks as a follow up and to close distance to the player. Third, the audio cue that poison is coming is so faint that it may as well be non-existent. If the boss is going to be offscreen barfing up poison, the audio cue for the player should be immediately obvious. Why not have one gargoyle be the one to spew poison and let the player decide to either leave him until after or to burn the other down and manage the poison?

Lastly, it's the uncomplimentary movesets of the gargoyles in conjunction with their AI. As evidenced by the general statement of "they're easier to manage one on one" sentiment that is so widely published across any help article/wiki about this fight, they were NOT designed with each other in mind and designed more as if they were meant to fought individually. The fact that you need a summon to distract one while you kill the other further emphasizes that. Then have them just about always ignore the fact that one is already fighting the player. It doesn't matter if one is spewing poison during the other's attack string, if you bring them close together they will both attack you simultaneously, or so close together that it creates a situation where damage in unavoidable (I was just testing this out because I wanted to see what they would do). One attacks, one sits back and they can swap places all day long and the fight would be fair. You'd only have to manage one at a time.

My anger is that the boss is fundamentally broken and throws the "tough but fair" mantra of previous souls games out the window. The boss is EXTREMELY poorly designed. More so than any other boss in the souls game I've encountered.

My anger at this game is that there are too many examples where there was not enough care and attention given to making the game balanced and fair. Unavoidable combo strings in multiple bosses, mechanics (or rather, a lack thereof) that just don't add up, gank fights that require what amounts to nothing more than waiting for good RNG... Need I go on?

Again, my problem with this game is the bosses. Arguably the what needed to be this game's second greatest aspect, next to the open world. It's so, so clear that it was quantity over quality. And for someone like me who plays Souls games FOR the bosses, this game ranks as the least enjoyable FromSoft Souls game because this pattern is repeated with nearly every boss.

And why won't I respec just specifically to beat one boss? I straight up shouldn't have to. Every DS game allows you to approach a boss however you want. No matter how you look at Elden Ring, it's a Souls game. As I mentioned. The difficulty curve for a magic user should be the same difficulty curve of a melee. There's no excuse not to balance the boss mechanics this way. It was already done by the same team in previous games. Why wasn't the same done here? Because they were either lazy, or didn't have time because again, quantity over quality kicked in and meant that not every boss could be given attention. In my opinion, if you cannot spend time tuning a boss so that it sticks to the "tough but fair" mantra of the souls series, the boss doesn't belong in the game. But no... they HAD to go and put in over 100 bosses and spend all of 5 minutes tuning each one. Any more time spent on that would have taken away from the open world they focused too hard on.

Any argument that sums up to "It's an open world game so it's impossible to balance" only supports what I and others think, which is "then it shouldn't have been an open world game".

Like... fuck the bosses in Lords of the Fallen were better... and that game was not good.

Now, with that wall of text, I'll add that I grinded out about 20 of my 100 planned levels and dumped all those points into STR. I then tested the stats against the boss and WAS finally able to beat it after another 10 attempts. It amounted to little more than what I argued above. BS poison deaths & summon and pray, but fight the bosses individually because if my summon died before I could kill the first gargoyle, it was "You Died".


----------



## wankerness

I get what you're saying and I don't disagree that the boss sucks, I've just been trying to help solve this problem of "get past the boss if it makes you so miserable" while it has seemed like your posts on the subject were more to complain for the sake of complaining! Yeah, the balancing on the dual gargoyles sucks. Yeah, the camera is a big problem (and has been on all of these games besides arguably Sekiro where it would actually zoom out some on the big bosses). Some of the other bosses also definitely suck. I like a lot of the other bosses and I like the open world and there are pretty easy ways to cheese past the suckage. Ah well. I think it's been true of most of these games, like DS3 had bosses that were a total joke for certain builds and very hard for others (ex Nameless King). It's just more accentuated here cause there's bigger build variety and the bosses attack faster and do more damage relative to your health pool in a lot of cases.

If you insist on never respeccing, the one boss I remember being such a pain in the ass as a strength build that I died about 30 times to was Malenia. She SUCKED, I had to use some weirdo gimmick build dual wielding greatswords that were bleed and frost spec'd, and even then I basically ended up getting lucky and stunlocking her with my summoned Omenkiller. Oh and Hoarah Lux's second form is terrible, but at least he attacks slowly so it's a lot easier to learn. Just the damage is INSANE.


----------



## Nicki

wankerness said:


> I get what you're saying and I don't disagree that the boss sucks, I've just been trying to help solve this problem of "get past the boss if it makes you so miserable" while it has seemed like your posts on the subject were more to complain for the sake of complaining! Yeah, the balancing on the dual gargoyles sucks. Yeah, the camera is a big problem (and has been on all of these games besides arguably Sekiro where it would actually zoom out some on the big bosses). Some of the other bosses also definitely suck. I like a lot of the other bosses and I like the open world and there are pretty easy ways to cheese past the suckage. Ah well. I think it's been true of most of these games, like DS3 had bosses that were a total joke for certain builds and very hard for others (ex Nameless King). It's just more accentuated here cause there's bigger build variety and the bosses attack faster and do more damage relative to your health pool in a lot of cases.
> 
> If you insist on never respeccing, the one boss I remember being such a pain in the ass as a strength build that I died about 30 times to was Malenia. She SUCKED, I had to use some weirdo gimmick build dual wielding greatswords that were bleed and frost spec'd, and even then I basically ended up getting lucky and stunlocking her with my summoned Omenkiller. Oh and Hoarah Lux's second form is terrible, but at least he attacks slowly so it's a lot easier to learn. Just the damage is INSANE.


It's fine. I'm pretty well exhausted on talking about ER at this point. My replies were that I've already tried most of the suggested tactics and they didn't work because of the broken fundamentals that this, and other bosses (Malenia included) exhibit. Seems that over levelling did.

My complaints with it are just exacerbated by the fact that I'm playing Demon's Souls remake as well and that game's bosses have none of the same issues.


----------



## wankerness

Demon's Souls has the problem where the bosses are laughable pushovers even compared to DS1 (besides maybe Old King Allant) but the levels can be some SERIOUS bullshit, especially considering many of them have to be completely navigated every attempt, plus it has the hardmode version of DS2's progressive max health decrease on death. I think overall it's still one of the easier entries in the series, but man, some of the mechanics like world tendency are so nasty compared to what came after.

I am going to replay that at some point. I played through on "easymode" (magic caster with magic sword) and just played it to get the platinum, which was like 1.5 playthroughs. I liked it but I'm not as familiar with it as any of the other games.


----------



## TedEH

Nicki said:


> I'm pretty well exhausted on talking about ER at this point.


Then we'll be glad to hear that I killed Margit, and stole some key thing without killing the dragon guarding it - I'M ON THE HYPE TRAIN.

GOTY? Maybe not. But I'm just having fun with it, as some might say.


----------



## Alberto7

I started playing Elden Ring last night and put it down after an hour of not knowing what the fuck I was doing. I don't think I knew what I was getting myself into.  I don't know if it is the difficulty of it or the overall atmosphere of the game, but playing it feels like trying to find your drunk as shit friend at 2 AM in the gross part of town: you're alone and afraid, weirdoes abound, it's kinda wet and damp, it smells funny, and you just don't wanna have to do it. It's like it doesn't want me to play it. I felt similarly when playing the DS1 remaster, but I did spend a few hours grinding away at that one, though I never finished it. I think the art style and that raw, gloomy atmosphere that all Souls games seem to have put me off a lot more than the difficulty. I actually kind of enjoy the difficulty, but in these games I just feel like I'm gonna die for real whenever my character dies. 

Alas, I will chip away at it slowly, because I haven't given it a good chance and I just wanna see what all the hype is about. And because I bought it online and can't return it 

... I also have a feeling that if I ever get to actually enjoy it, it will be for the reasons I currently don't like it.  Like learning to like beer as a teenager.


----------



## MFB

Hmmm, if everyone is jumping on the ER train, maybe this is my sign to do a new playthru as a Dex or Caster build like I should have done the first time


----------



## Ralyks

Finished the vanilla portion of Persona 5 Royal, started the third semester, and, uhh.... I'll just say I'm on day 1/2 and boy, this wasn't what I expected. But, more P5, so zero complaints.


----------



## wankerness

Alberto7 said:


> I started playing Elden Ring last night and put it down after an hour of not knowing what the fuck I was doing. I don't think I knew what I was getting myself into.  I don't know if it is the difficulty of it or the overall atmosphere of the game, but playing it feels like trying to find your drunk as shit friend at 2 AM in the gross part of town: you're alone and afraid, weirdoes abound, it's kinda wet and damp, it smells funny, and you just don't wanna have to do it. It's like it doesn't want me to play it. I felt similarly when playing the DS1 remaster, but I did spend a few hours grinding away at that one, though I never finished it. I think the art style and that raw, gloomy atmosphere that all Souls games seem to have put me off a lot more than the difficulty. I actually kind of enjoy the difficulty, but in these games I just feel like I'm gonna die for real whenever my character dies.
> 
> Alas, I will chip away at it slowly, because I haven't given it a good chance and I just wanna see what all the hype is about. And because I bought it online and can't return it
> 
> ... I also have a feeling that if I ever get to actually enjoy it, it will be for the reasons I currently don't like it.  Like learning to like beer as a teenager.


Elden Ring is different from the others in that some of the overworld areas are actually beautiful and there's calming music in most zones. Compared to Dark Souls it's rainbow and unicorn fest. Besides Caelid.


----------



## profwoot

Finished Detroit Become Human, made some bad choices toward the end, all my PCs died. Not sure it's worth replaying, but dig the overall cut of its jib.

About to fire up Elden Ring for the first time. Slightly nervous. My only experience with From is a few minutes of DS3 wherein I got repeatedly pwned by a giant knight before I even had a chance to learn any of the controls.


----------



## wankerness

profwoot said:


> Finished Detroit Become Human, made some bad choices toward the end, all my PCs died. Not sure it's worth replaying, but dig the overall cut of its jib.
> 
> About to fire up Elden Ring for the first time. Slightly nervous. My only experience with From is a few minutes of DS3 wherein I got repeatedly pwned by a giant knight before I even had a chance to learn any of the controls.


Elden Ring has a short tutorial, though it's not much better than the ones in DS1/2/3. You need to jump off the cliff next to the ghost right after the beginning where you get unavoidably pwnd by a many-armed boss (he tells you to do so if you talk to him). If you "couldn't figure out the controls" on the first boss in DS3 after the tutorial section before him though I dunno if you're going to have any better luck!


----------



## profwoot

wankerness said:


> Elden Ring has a short tutorial, though it's not much better than the ones in DS1/2/3. You need to jump off the cliff next to the ghost right after the beginning where you get unavoidably pwnd by a many-armed boss (he tells you to do so if you talk to him). If you "couldn't figure out the controls" on the first boss in DS3 after the tutorial section before him though I dunno if you're going to have any better luck!


Maybe I missed the DS3 tutorial? I just remember a long run with only a couple guys to kill and then the giant dude with the giant sword. This was a few years ago so shrug.


----------



## Leviathus

You don't have to beat the tutorial boss in ER like you have to beat Gundyr in DS3 to progress.


----------



## wankerness

profwoot said:


> Maybe I missed the DS3 tutorial? I just remember a long run with only a couple guys to kill and then the giant dude with the giant sword. This was a few years ago so shrug.


There are messages all over the ground in that first run that give all the controls etc. If you just ran past them instead of interacting with them then you would have missed them. Be aware of those in these games, in Elden Ring they look sort of like glowing chalk marks on the ground.



Leviathus said:


> You don't have to beat the tutorial boss in ER like you have to beat Gundyr in DS3 to progress.


Yeah, Elden Ring doesn't FORCE you to beat any boss until Margit so you have a hell of a lot more time to screw around and level.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> Yeah, Elden Ring doesn't FORCE you to beat any boss until Margit so you have a hell of a lot more time to screw around and level.


He's optional too tho right? One of my fav aspects of ER is being able to skip huge sections of the game. Great for subsequent playthroughs.


----------



## HoneyNut

I just discovered Quake 3 Excessive Plus. Plus I realized Im not too bad at it! \m/ \m/


----------



## Nicki

Ralyks said:


> Finished the vanilla portion of Persona 5 Royal, started the third semester, and, uhh.... I'll just say I'm on day 1/2 and boy, this wasn't what I expected. But, more P5, so zero complaints.


P5 Royal is in my shelf to be played but I don't know if I'll ever get to it. I played some of P4Golden of my Vita back in the day and never finished it because it got slow and repetitive and I lost interest. Not sure if P5 is going to end up the same.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> He's optional too tho right? One of my fav aspects of ER is being able to skip huge sections of the game. Great for subsequent playthroughs.


I don't know TBH. There's definitely speed running/glitching strats that involve skipping story bosses. As far as I know if you're not going to try and break the game the "great rune bosses" apart from Mogh and Malenia are all required, and Godrick can't be accessed without beating Margit unless there's some weird way to exploit it or something that I'm unaware of. Other than them I think there's a handful of required gatekeeper bosses like Margit, Red Wolf of Radagon, Flame Giant, etc that block things you need to get to for progress. I am guessing if you did a full glitchless clear doing the absolute minimum of bosses necessary you'd only have to fight like 12.


----------



## wankerness

Nicki said:


> P5 Royal is in my shelf to be played but I don't know if I'll ever get to it. I played some of P4Golden of my Vita back in the day and never finished it because it got slow and repetitive and I lost interest. Not sure if P5 is going to end up the same.


It's a REALLY big time investment, especially Royal which dumps another 15 or so hours on top of a game that was already about 100 hours for your average playthrough. It's good but I definitely can see a lot of people losing interest, especially when you get to things like the days where you're just waiting for story beats to happen.


----------



## Ralyks

wankerness said:


> It's a REALLY big time investment, especially Royal which dumps another 15 or so hours on top of a game that was already about 100 hours for your average playthrough. It's good but I definitely can see a lot of people losing interest, especially when you get to things like the days where you're just waiting for story beats to happen.


Vanilla P5 took me I think 115 hours. I got through the vanilla portion of P5R in around 93ish with all social stats and only Haru not maxed out at confidant, but it probably helped with the added ability to literally run through weaker shadows, cutting down on a LOT of exp and money grinding (Mementos basically felt like cheating with grinding by the halfway point). I feel I was able to do things with social stats, confidants, and Mementos requests until towards the end. It is a time investment, but I feel that's why I like the calendar system for time progression. It kinda forces the story to progress.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> I don't know TBH. There's definitely speed running/glitching strats that involve skipping story bosses. As far as I know if you're not going to try and break the game the "great rune bosses" apart from Mogh and Malenia are all required, and Godrick can't be accessed without beating Margit unless there's some weird way to exploit it or something that I'm unaware of. Other than them I think there's a handful of required gatekeeper bosses like Margit, Red Wolf of Radagon, Flame Giant, etc that block things you need to get to for progress. I am guessing if you did a full glitchless clear doing the absolute minimum of bosses necessary you'd only have to fight like 12.


You only need 2 great runes to get into Leyndell, so you could skip whichever 2 of the 4 pre-capitol shardbearers you want afaik. Of course depending on who you pick you may be barred from doing certain things like respec-ing or getting Ranni's ending.


----------



## Bloody_Inferno

Still chipping away at Xenoblade 2. There's a hell of a lot of busy work juggling through the merc missions, random sidequests and general upkeep on keeping all the blades at a decent level, though I don't mind. I do get annoyed in true Xenoblade fashion when you try to kill a few field enemies then a random Lv90 monster decides he also wants to take a bite out of you and proceeds to join in for some instakilling. Probably the funniest was trying to sneak past a snoring Lv90 monster to do a sidequest, only to have him kill you because the battle system still registers you in his range. There's a part in Mor Ardain that was notorious for this, when I was forced to lead a conga line of Lv80s all want to rip into my flesh at first glance. It's weird when you get a sigh of relief the moment you hit the spot that triggers the story boss of the moment. This usually happens in every Xenoblade game at least once. 

Still, the Mor Ardain music makes it all fun. One of the best JRPG field themes I've heard in any game.


----------



## CanserDYI

StevenC said:


> On the topic of Elden Ring, the only criticism I'm willing to listen to on it is if Hbomberguy makes a video about it.
> 
> I started Hollow Knight yesterday. About 10 hours in. It's very good but it makes me so mad all the time. But then I beat the thing that annoyed me and I feel very happy. Like just now I beat the
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> 
> 
> 
> Mantis Lords and those guys are tough. But by the time I was able to beat the second phase with two of them I was beating the first phase without taking any hits.
> 
> 
> 
> So yeah. Hopefully will get through some more of it in the next few days to weeks and will report back.


Hollow knight made me rage quit so many times, but god it's like souls and Metroid and MegaMan wrapped in one for me and it's delightfully addicting.


----------



## StevenC

CanserDYI said:


> Hollow knight made me rage quit so many times, but god it's like souls and Metroid and MegaMan wrapped in one for me and it's delightfully addicting.


I haven't quit on any bits yet. I've paused because I had other things to do for a bit, but nothing's been so tough as to make me quit yet.



Spoiler



Currently in Royal Waterways. Beat Flukeworm and Dung Defender, got the map and seem to have explored almost everything already. I have about 400 essence, found The Hive but can't enter, have been on the trams between Kingdom's Edge and Deepnest but haven't checked around much of whatever area is in between them. Haven't fought any of the main 3 story bosses marked on my map. Beat the first trial at the coliseum.



So that's where I'm at 26 hours in. Pretty good so far.


----------



## TedEH

IMO a strong point of what makes Hollow Knight work is also something that makes Elden Ring work: That you can get "stuck" somewhere, and just chose to go make progress elsewhere until you're prepared to try to difficult part again - which means that for all the difficulty of it, you're never truly "stuck".



Spoiler: ER Progress



I actually find it kind of hard to track "progress" in this game since there's so much to do outside of the bigger bosses that would normally count as progression trackers. I didn't realize I hadn't actually done the "peninsula" bit that gets recommended early on, so I went and did that. Cleared out the castle, killed some kind of lion thingie there to take the sword. Also killed the Erdtree Avatar that's in that area. I managed to make it to the Godrick boss fight, but didn't beat it. Decided to spend more time grinding for a while before trying it again. Cleared out the first dog boss thingie in the Academy. That opened up the way to be able to explore the roofs, which for some reason is always fun to do in games. Realized I've been collecting a lot of the smithing thingies, so my original sword (uchigatana?) is now +9. I feel like I should try to up my armour somehow, since I've not made a lot of progress in that department.


----------



## wankerness

Wow, you're really exploring - that academy is the second major dungeon and is tuned for a considerably higher level than the castle. Depending on build that dog can get nuked really fast, though. You cleared the first big optional dungeon, Castle Morne - the next one is in the north end of Liurnia. The tiny optional dungeons all over the place are a real grab bag - some of the best items in the game come from them, and a ton of them have some total garbage reward like an ash summon that has no utility or some spell that isn't even for your build or that kind of thing. I tend to do all of them that I can find cause I'm like that in open world games. The ones I hate the most are the Heroes Graves, especially the lava one where you can't kill the chariots and the one that's full of those watchdogs.

Uchigatana is a really solid weapon for the whole game, especially if you go dex/arcane and do a bleed build. The only hiccup are a couple bosses that are immune to bleed and strong vs slash like the Gargoyles that were pissing Nicki off so much the last couple pages - you should probably have some kind of backup in place for them. I don't think you'd replace it until late in the game, generally (Rivers of Blood from a long sidequest involving the guy with the Raiden hat in Limgrave, or Nagakiba from the same sidequest!).

The other thing you can easily do with Dex is go Dex/Int and be a spell caster/katan user - there's a *really *good Katana that's accessible fairly early on (it's in one of those optional minor dungeons in Caelid) that's split dex/int scaling and has an insanely powerful weapon art called Moonveil. That's how I'm going through on PC right now, it's pretty fun. At 30 int and 20 dex and 33 vigor right now, pretty squishy. I waited as long as possible to fight Radahn since I couldn't cheese him with scarlet rot, so he was a pushover with rock sling again.

Yesterday I beat the Gargoyles on my third try - killed the first gargoyle both the first two attempts and then got instagibbed by huge smashes from the second one. I hate that boss a lot, but boy does rock sling make them a lot easier. I've been really ADD and trying to do as many dungeons as possible while delaying progress, and also going for some of the sidequests I usually screwed up (ex, as a caster, you really want the talisman you get from assisting Seluvis in making the potion to betray Ranni). Quit when I got to the Lake of Rot, but right now I'm 24 hours in, at the capital and the lake of rot and have a +9 moonveil and a +8 mimic tear so it will be smooth sailing. My spell loadout has been exclusively glintstone pebble and rock sling for spells, and then some utility incantations like flame cleanse me and heal (for those awful puking multiarm guys).

The thing that killed me the most times so far on this playthrough is that little asshole that's right before the final boss of the academy - Moongrim the Carian Knight or whatever he's named. That guy killed me AT LEAST 10 times. He was kryptonite to a low level dex/int build and he would 1 shot me from full health if I ran out of stamina or he parried me.  Fortunately that kind of thing is not a problem anymore after you get Moonveil and can spam the weapon art like a noob.

Oh, I played Spiritfarer for a couple of hours, too. That is a great game. I wish they made a version where the animals don't leave you permanently on a timer. I love snake lady and uncle frog.


----------



## F0rte

Escape from Tarkov!


----------



## Nicki

TedEH said:


> IMO a strong point of what makes Hollow Knight work is also something that makes Elden Ring work: That you can get "stuck" somewhere, and just chose to go make progress elsewhere until you're prepared to try to difficult part again - which means that for all the difficulty of it, you're never truly "stuck".


For Hollow Knight, I'd say this is only half true. Since there's no concept of leveling up in that game, it kinda forces you to really pay attention to what's going on on-screen so that you learn the mechanics of the enemies. You CAN go explore somewhere us to get upgrades to your health, or find all the stuff to make your nail OP, but at the end of the day, if you're not dodging boss attacks and working around the mechanics of the fight, you're still going to get "stuck". It's very much a Metroidvania/Platformer than an Action/Adventure RPG like Elden Ring, where you go off somewhere else, level up, come back and do more damage to the boss you're stuck on.


----------



## Leviathus

wankerness said:


> The thing that killed me the most times so far on this playthrough is that little asshole that's right before the final boss of the academy - Moongrim the Carian Knight or whatever he's named. That guy killed me AT LEAST 10 times. He was kryptonite to a low level dex/int build and he would 1 shot me from full health if I ran out of stamina or he parried me.  Fortunately that kind of thing is not a problem anymore after you get Moonveil and can spam the weapon art like a noob.


Carian retaliation is no joke! I always hit that guy at the wrong time and get parried and 1shot.  

He's not as bad as big hat jackass in the liurnia divine tower tho ime.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Moongrim the Carian Knight or whatever he's named. That guy killed me AT LEAST 10 times. He was kryptonite to a low level dex/int build and he would 1 shot me from full health if I ran out of stamina or he parried me


I'm stuck on that guy right now - I tried to stay back and use a bow, but he blocks it. Tried to swing wildly - parried and 1-shot'd. So my best shot so far seems to be to try to nail the parry timing myself and use it back. I tried to cheese it and lure him out to the falling boulder thingie, but he's not dumb enough to stand under it, hah.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I'm stuck on that guy right now - I tried to stay back and use a bow, but he blocks it. Tried to swing wildly - parried and 1-shot'd. So my best shot so far seems to be to try to nail the parry timing myself and use it back. I tried to cheese it and lure him out to the falling boulder thingie, but he's not dumb enough to stand under it, hah.


He's a son of a bitch. You basically just have to find something that breaks his AI. I was using the Uchi at that point and just kept timing the R2 charge up to stab him whenever he'd jump at me or do something, and then I'd immediately roll away. Using R1 at all on him before he gets out the caster offhand is a death sentence and even then the hit and run with R2 is easier.


----------



## StevenC

So after 20 or 30 tries I had to take a break from trying to beat Galien. I think I'm getting to within a few hits of the end though. It's just always the way that one mistake leads to many mistakes and it's hard to find space to heal in that fight.


----------



## wankerness

Leviathus said:


> Carian retaliation is no joke! I always hit that guy at the wrong time and get parried and 1shot.
> 
> He's not as bad as big hat jackass in the liurnia divine tower tho ime.


I can deal with that jackass by just charging him and beating him down with melee in the standard tower, but in the reverse tower I've always just had to very slowly pick him off with arrows. I hate everything about that reverse tower, it's really scary with all the insecure footing over bottomless pits, and having that asshole sniping away at you nonstop while ghosts can run up and jump to you and giant hands are everywhere is very stressful. I've never tried killing him via melee in the reverse tower, he seems to be easier to hit with arrows there (but it's very tedious). 

Weirdest thing about that NPC is how there are two of him, one in each version of the tower. My second playthrough I was all excited like "woo I can get around dealing with him in the reverse if I kill him in the standard!" Then nope, there he was again anyway! Guess he has unique drops in each, but otherwise it doesn't make much sense.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> Wow, you're really exploring


Thought about this for a moment - and I think I thought this is kinda what the game wants you to do. As in - every time I hit a roadblock (aka. some enemy that I can't get past after several attempts), I just pick an area I've not been to and point myself that way, or return to an area I knew I bypassed before. IMO it's a good way to avoid frustration. And it means that "grinding" isn't just reloading the same area over and over - the exploration does the levelling for me. I've been to the fire-y area, I've been into the underground areas you access through the wells, I solved a weird turtle puzzle to get more memory slots, etc. And I'm sure there's a ton ahead I haven't seen yet.

I had the thought earlier today that this game reminds me a bit of Skyrim. It's like this is the game Skyrim wished it was. Like Skyrim, if it didn't suck.


----------



## Ralyks

So, Persona 5 Royal third semester....



Spoiler



When I last left off, I was at the new Palace for the first time. After I put it down, I came to the realization that Dr. Maruki was probably going to be involved. Two minutes after resuming, yup, that happened. The Kasume/Sumire twist I didn't quite see coming. Human Morgana was... Something. The overall plotline I like, yet I feel like it could have been spun off into it's own P5 sequel, or even as the basis of the plot for Persona 6. And lastly, a deeper dive into Sadistic, Ruthless Akechi is something I'm totally here for. Yet I can't help but feel another fight is coming with him towards the end.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> Thought about this for a moment - and I think I thought this is kinda what the game wants you to do. As in - every time I hit a roadblock (aka. some enemy that I can't get past after several attempts), I just pick an area I've not been to and point myself that way, or return to an area I knew I bypassed before. IMO it's a good way to avoid frustration. And it means that "grinding" isn't just reloading the same area over and over - the exploration does the levelling for me. I've been to the fire-y area, I've been into the underground areas you access through the wells, I solved a weird turtle puzzle to get more memory slots, etc. And I'm sure there's a ton ahead I haven't seen yet.
> 
> I had the thought earlier today that this game reminds me a bit of Skyrim. It's like this is the game Skyrim wished it was. Like Skyrim, if it didn't suck.


That IS what the game wants you to do, you're just taking it to an extreme by going to the "linear progression" part of the game before beating the first "linear progression" part (I consider the Legacy Dungeons to be the linear progression even though they aren't necessarily). I think it's a good thing! And I love that you can just instantly warp to any grace from anywhere other than uncleared minor dungeons at any time, it really encourages just trying to locate all the graces and dungeons as fast as possible so you can jump around to continue progress quickly if you hit a roadblock. Finding the maps is fun too, since they are the only thing that shows up on the map before you find them.

I think Skyrim failed in that it mostly made you want to go after all the "undiscovered" icons that would constantly show up on your radar if you were walking, following the objective markers, and you'd never explore with your eyeballs. At least, that's what it did to me, I know some people forced themselves to play it in more immersive ways. I loved Skyrim and played it for hundreds of hours, but it definitely has some big issues especially today vs 2011/2012 when I was so into it.

One thing Elden Ring does that means you can't just "explore to success" is that it does not give any exp at all unless you're actually able to kill enemies that you locate. Well, unless you locate the handful of places where enemies will just kill each other or jump off a cliff or whatever that you can farm with no threat to you. In a lot of these kinds of games (everything from World of Warcraft to Assassins Creed) I'd just explore everywhere and would end up gaining several levels just from filling in the map. I like that this (like BOTW) mostly actually makes you do things to get things. It's surprisingly rare in open world games.


----------



## TedEH

To some point, I've noticed you can sometimes just..... run past some of the things you can't kill. Not always, obviously, but a couple of times I've gone "Oh no! ....anyway" and just sprinted past, stole the item, ran away.



Spoiler: In the name of exploring...



I found the weird underground city thing that you take a magical elevator to. Bunch of shiny brute guys down there. There's a bunch of lantern thingies you can light, but I've no idea what they do, so I'm just gonna light em and see what happens.


----------



## StevenC

Today I beat Galien, Flukemarm, Dung Defender, and Broken Vessel. I also attempted Broken Kin, Grey Prince Zote, and Enraged Guardian, all of whom can go fuck themselves. Especially Zote.

Think I've done 15 bosses now and still at least 4 compulsory bosses left I think.


----------



## rokket2005

Bloody_Inferno said:


> Still, the Mor Ardain music makes it all fun. One of the best JRPG field themes I've heard in any game.


Mor Ardain's music is really great...

_But wait, There's More!_


I've been playing Loop Hero over the past few days cause I didn't really want to start anything new just yet. I might as well though, cause Loop Hero is just not very fun. It makes no promises about it not being a slog, and that's basically what it is.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> To some point, I've noticed you can sometimes just..... run past some of the things you can't kill. Not always, obviously, but a couple of times I've gone "Oh no! ....anyway" and just sprinted past, stole the item, ran away.
> 
> 
> 
> Spoiler: In the name of exploring...
> 
> 
> 
> I found the weird underground city thing that you take a magical elevator to. Bunch of shiny brute guys down there. There's a bunch of lantern thingies you can light, but I've no idea what they do, so I'm just gonna light em and see what happens.



Yeah, running away has always been part of dark souls. Especially enemies between the bonfire and the boss that you’d otherwise have to kill a ton of times. Suicide runs to light bonfires/touch graces are always fun.


----------



## thebeesknees22

I'm checking out the Forespoken demo. 

The trailers make it look like garbage, but the mechanics are actually kinda fun so far. It looks nice too. The first thing that bugs me is banter with the main character and the little protector dude (whatever he is), makes her come across a big ol' jerk. I kinda need a mute button for her so she shuts up.

The one downside i see so far is that it seems like a lot of farming and meandering all over the place like in the Witcher series. My OCD makes it hard for me to ignore things and I end up wasting a lot of time on nothing. ...must...collect...all..the plants... etc.

I'll keep this one on my radar when it lands, but i'm not sure if i'll pick it up. Might wait for a sale though unless the story turns out to be crap.


----------



## Nicki

I just beat Demon's Souls PS5 remake 20 minutes ago. Elation is one word to describe how I feel, as is "Wow either I don't suck at Souls games like Elden Ring would have me believe, or I'm just used to the Souls formula and that made this game easy."

Yep.. either of those two words work.


----------



## TheBlackBard

Nicki said:


> I just beat Demon's Souls PS5 remake 20 minutes ago. Elation is one word to describe how I feel, as is "Wow either I don't suck at Souls games like Elden Ring would have me believe, or I'm just used to the Souls formula and that made this game easy."
> 
> Yep.. either of those two words work.



Elden Ring is remarkably tougher than the SoulsBorne games, as far as boss fights go anyways.


----------



## wankerness

Yeah, with some of the later bosses, it’s basically Sekiro speed bosses with DS3 character limitations.


----------



## profwoot

Elden Ring is pretty cool! I'm 10-15 hours in, beat several bosses, pretty much got the hang of it. The lack of plot or characterization or any coherent words at all is quite stark. It ends up feeling more like Diablo than Skyrim. If Diablo had the good sense to fire its terrible writers, at least.

Anyway, weird game. The UI is very primitive and the keybindings are painfully limited as is true for most console ports. Looking forward to seeing what's next.


----------



## TedEH

There's no plot or characterization? It's delivered in a non-traditional way maybe, but I wouldn't say there's none. At 10 hours in I felt like I'd barely scratched the surface of that title.


Spoiler: progress



Turns out I overkill'd the grind/exploration and when I went back to retry Godrick, I did it in one shot. I figured out a way to get past the difficult guy who keeps parrying and one-shotting - by staying a good distance away, sometimes hiding in a spot where he won't go because of the falling boulder thing, and using the ranged ashes/moves. I took a few attempts at Rennala, but I get destroyed in the second phase 'cause my character is poorly defended against magic.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> There's no plot or characterization? It's delivered in a non-traditional way maybe, but I wouldn't say there's none. At 10 hours in I felt like I'd barely scratched the surface of that title.
> 
> 
> Spoiler: progress
> 
> 
> 
> Turns out I overkill'd the grind/exploration and when I went back to retry Godrick, I did it in one shot. I figured out a way to get past the difficult guy who keeps parrying and one-shotting - by staying a good distance away, sometimes hiding in a spot where he won't go because of the falling boulder thing, and using the ranged ashes/moves. I took a few attempts at Rennala, but I get destroyed in the second phase 'cause my character is poorly defended against magic.



Rennala’s second phase can be bad news cause some of her attacks can easily kill you instantly if you get hit by the whole force of them. She’s best dealt with by hitting her with a fast weapon so she gets stunlocked cause she has no poise (resistance to stagger). The wolf summon devastates her too. If you’re still using the uchigatana that’s a very good weapon against her. But yeah, I often get instagibbed on the first attempt or two. The longer the fight goes on the worse it gets cause some of her summons are really bad news.


----------



## TedEH

wankerness said:


> If you’re still using the uchigatana that’s a very good weapon against her


I haven't attempted it again yet, but I'd been using this ice hand-axe I picked up at some point. It seems to swing faster, and the damage it does is higher, plus the ice effect. It's not better in _every_ situation, but most of the time is the go-to right now.

I forgot to mention that we finished off It Takes Two, and my thoughts on the matter didn't change. Good gameplay. Great ideas. Runs well. But the underlying message is awful. I ended up thinking about it later that the game kinda has a creepy religious undertone to it - I mean, you're a painfully white traditional family going to great (and occasionally terrible) lengths to uphold the value of the atomic family unit _because a book told you this was the only acceptable option_. I found reviews that praised the story because they think it's just a cute story, and others that condemned it as being a really naive/immature take on relationship dynamics - but none that picked out the religious parallel.


----------



## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I haven't attempted it again yet, but I'd been using this ice hand-axe I picked up at some point. It seems to swing faster, and the damage it does is higher, plus the ice effect. It's not better in _every_ situation, but most of the time is the go-to right now.


The icerind hatchet is a decent weapon, especially the weapon art (hoarfrost stomp) in AOE situations, but the uchigatana (and good bleed weapons in general like the bloody helice) will usually do a *lot* more damage unless the enemy is immune to bleed but not frost (there are some like this). Frost buildup functions very similarly to bleed in that when it procs the enemy gets hit for 10% of their health, except when they get hit with bleed, the counter immediately resets and you can start building up the next "hemorrhage" instantly. Frost weapons have a similar "hemorrhage" effect but then the enemy gets chilled for a while and you can't start to build up the effect again until it wears off. So basically it's a LOT slower between the damage spikes unless you do complex things like hit the enemy with fire damage right after they get afflicted with frost to reset their status instead of waiting for it to wear off. (Also the uchigatana scales way better with stats at higher upgrade levels than the hatchet)

Additionally bleed build-up on weapons scales with your arcane stat, making it so it can proc even faster. I think ice is just static with whatever the weapon's frost build-up is in the description. Basically bleed or frost weapons say "55 Bleed Damage" or "55 Frost Damage" or whatever in their description - various enemies have various resistances to those two effects that you have to hit that number before the proc happens. Some enemies are ludicrously weak to bleed, like those giant octopi, and it will proc after like two swings, while some bosses it can take more like 10 especially if you are hitting them slowly and it has a chance to roll off (the same way if you get hit by an enemy with bleed, you have that bar in the middle of the screen, and it slowly goes down over time if you don't get hit with another bleed effect).

Ah, mechanics that aren't clearly explained in game!! Well, the bleed stuff actually is pretty clear if you look at stats/menus. But frost definitely isn't as obvious.


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## StevenC

I hate Watcher Knights more than anything else in the world.


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## Nicki

StevenC said:


> I hate Watcher Knights more than anything else in the world.


They can be a pain. They have some easy tells and so long as you're not splitting them up too much, they're a pretty fun fight. You can also kill one before even entering the boss room.


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## StevenC

Nicki said:


> They can be a pain. They have some easy tells and so long as you're not splitting them up too much, they're a pretty fun fight. You can also kill one before even entering the boss room.



Yeah, I've found that trick. I can usually kill the first one before the second one spawns and without taking any hits, but sometimes it just won't slash at me at all. Usually getting to the last pair of them, so I think it's just a matter of time at this point. Annoying though.


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## TedEH

wankerness said:


> The icerind hatchet is a decent weapon, especially the weapon art (hoarfrost stomp) in AOE situations, but the uchigatana (and good bleed weapons in general like the bloody helice) will usually do a *lot* more damage unless the enemy is immune to bleed but not frost (there are some like this).


I think something about my stats/build is throwing that balance off maybe, since it appears my icerind+4 (181+58) is doing more damage than the uchigatana+8 (168+57) somehow. I'm basing that off the numbers I see in the menu, but also just in practice it seems to cut down enemies faster. Not very "scientific" way to measure it, but it "feels" stronger.


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## Nicki

StevenC said:


> Yeah, I've found that trick. I can usually kill the first one before the second one spawns and without taking any hits, but sometimes it just won't slash at me at all. Usually getting to the last pair of them, so I think it's just a matter of time at this point. Annoying though.


I forget, if at that point in the game if you are able to go and get the nail upgraded. If you haven't done so yet, upgrade it as much as you're able to. It's worth going out of the way for. Also, there's a charm (Mark of Pride) that makes your nail longer that can really help you keep distance.


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## MFB

I started a new Elden Ring character, a Confessor who I want to do a sorceror build with named Castor the Caster (hehe, dumb but fun) and I don't know how far I'll take him but we'll see if it's further than Maliketh.


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## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I think something about my stats/build is throwing that balance off maybe, since it appears my icerind+4 (181+58) is doing more damage than the uchigatana+8 (168+57) somehow. I'm basing that off the numbers I see in the menu, but also just in practice it seems to cut down enemies faster. Not very "scientific" way to measure it, but it "feels" stronger.



The upgrade system is confusing in that the hatchet is a unique weapon (only goes to +10) while the uchi is a regular weapon (goes to +25). Thus the hatchet is currently at a higher relative upgrade level. That tends to happen. I’d make sure you save some somber smithing stones for when you find moonveil (or rivers of blood or Eleonora’s poleblade or bloody helice if you’re doing arcane instead of int). They’re very, very common in later areas but the first few +5 and +6 ones can give you a huge head start on the game if you use them on the right weapon.

Additionally some enemies are strong vs slash damage so the hatchet would be at a slight advantage against them. Ex skeletons and those miner guys in mining shafts.



TheBlackBard said:


> Elden Ring is remarkably tougher than the SoulsBorne games, as far as boss fights go anyways.


If you play without ash summons, absolutely.


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## StevenC

Nicki said:


> I forget, if at that point in the game if you are able to go and get the nail upgraded. If you haven't done so yet, upgrade it as much as you're able to. It's worth going out of the way for. Also, there's a charm (Mark of Pride) that makes your nail longer that can really help you keep distance.


I have the Coil Nail and two length extension charms. I just suck 

I'm getting to the final pair wire regularly now. Nearly had one killed the last time.


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## wankerness

MFB said:


> I started a new Elden Ring character, a Confessor who I want to do a sorceror build with named Castor the Caster (hehe, dumb but fun) and I don't know how far I'll take him but we'll see if it's further than Maliketh.



Confessors are faith, not int ?? Being a pure caster faith build doesn’t work too well, it’s kinda like the DS games where faith is more of a support magic school and int is the one that does damage. I tried to do it on my first playthrough, you’d have to fully charge up a lightning spear and it would still do about the same damage as the wimpiest sorcery (glintstone pebble) which you could just spam all day cause it cast four times faster and used 1/4 the FP.


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## MFB

wankerness said:


> Confessors are faith, not int ?? Being a pure caster faith build doesn’t work too well, it’s kinda like the DS games where faith is more of a support magic school and int is the one that does damage. I tried to do it on my first playthrough, you’d have to fully charge up a lightning spear and it would still do about the same damage as the wimpiest sorcery (glintstone pebble) which you could just spam all day cause it cast four times faster and used 1/4 the FP.



Ah shit did I have it backwards? They're all so vaguely similar and I looked it up and some people had suggested Confessor vs. Astrologer or the other one, so that's why I went with it; luckily I'm at the first grace point so I can nix him and redo.


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## StevenC

Nicki said:


> I forget, if at that point in the game if you are able to go and get the nail upgraded. If you haven't done so yet, upgrade it as much as you're able to. It's worth going out of the way for. Also, there's a charm (Mark of Pride) that makes your nail longer that can really help you keep distance.


I DID IT! 

Now onto the Watcher


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## wankerness

MFB said:


> Ah shit did I have it backwards? They're all so vaguely similar and I looked it up and some people had suggested Confessor vs. Astrologer or the other one, so that's why I went with it; luckily I'm at the first grace point so I can nix him and redo.


Yeah, if you're doing int caster either do astrologer or prisoner (Prisoner has high dex and high int). But Astrologer starts with the good offensive spell. If you choose prisoner you'll be stuck doing melee for a bit until you can find sorceress sellen and get the glintstone pebble spell from her.

That said I think Prisoner is a better stat start cause you're going to have to do some melee damage for a while, especially for Renalla who's super resistant to magic. Start as prisoner, get the uchigatana from the deathtouched catacombs, get the longbow from the bell maidens, find sorceress sellen in Limgrave and buy glintstone pebble, and then take the "trap" to Caelid and run around in the swamp to get the Rock Sling spell and the Meteorite staff. Should be good with that setup all the way till you get Moonveil. Though you might eventually want some points in faith to be able to cleanse poison/rot and also cast heal to knock out those puking teleporting assholes in two hits.


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## TedEH

I forgot to mention I cleared whatsherface magic queen of the moon or whatever in the academy. Started chipping at the Caria Manor, but all the enemies seem to have jumped in difficulty here compared to the previous areas.


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## wankerness

T


TedEH said:


> I forgot to mention I cleared whatsherface magic queen of the moon or whatever in the academy. Started chipping at the Caria Manor, but all the enemies seem to have jumped in difficulty here compared to the previous areas.


The manor has those giant hands which are fuckin relentless. I HATE fighting those things. Your best bet is using a bleed weapon like the uchigatana, they're one of the enemies that's super-weak to bleed. You can see their fingers in the dirt, just start chopping at them and they get stunned when bleed procs (should be after 2-3 hits).

After you're out of the courtyard, you can pretty much run right past all the ghosts if you have some idea where you're going, they do hit pretty darn hard so if you're going to fight them, make sure you don't get ganged up on. The boss is a lot easier than most of the enemies leading up to it.


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## Leviathus

The Caria Manor hand guys also hate fire.


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## Quiet Coil

Just finished Ghost of Tsushima - loved it through and through. The protagonist is a bit of a bitch, but the ending I went with made me less annoyed with him.

Now for NG+!


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## TedEH

I take it back - cleared out that area, plus a dragon behind the building, and started on the quest that the tower lady makes you do with the 3 other dudes.


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## OmegaSlayer

I'm playing a pretty recent game for the upteenth time
Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night
(Probably the game with the best soundtrack EVER)


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## wankerness

TedEH said:


> I take it back - cleared out that area, plus a dragon behind the building, and started on the quest that the tower lady makes you do with the 3 other dudes.


That quest is one of the best things to make sure you do in the game. It takes you to a lot of huge areas that you can't get to otherwise. If you get hung up on it it's worth looking up how to progress. (The first major part of it unlocks after you beat the main Caelid boss)


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## wankerness

OmegaSlayer said:


> I'm playing a pretty recent game for the upteenth time
> Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night
> (Probably the game with the best soundtrack EVER)


Yeah, that game definitely got my vote for best soundtrack right up until I played Nier Automata in 2017 or 2018. The first castle is one great track after another. Too bad about 3/4 of the zones in the reverse castle all using the same damn piece of music, but oh well. I was always confused by how the game soundtracks contained a really badass version of Bloody Tears but it wasn't actually used in-game. Now that I look it up apparently that was exclusive to the Saturn version, but it was always included in the soundtracks I'd download.

I played it a LOT of times back on my PS1, and then got all the trophies/achievements on the re-releases on Xbox 360 and PS4. I love it so much. Only the DS Castlevanias scratch the same itch the same way, and I don't really like having to pull out the DS to play them. I hope they port them to console the way they just ported all the GBA ones a year or two ago.

Actually I take that back, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Moon is a very worthy follow-up also. I can't wait for the sequel.


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## Ralyks

Pretty sure I'll finally finish Persona 5 Royal tonight. I'm on day 2/2 so I'm pretty sure the end is near without actually knowing what happens. Thank God. I absolutely adore this game but I'm ready to move on.... Wait, Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden come to modern consoles next week? Welp. Guess I'm putting Witcher 3 off a bit more. Try to finish Norco in the meantime.


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## TedEH

wankerness said:


> That quest is one of the best things to make sure you do in the game.





Spoiler



So I've heard. I took down the general this morning, and there's some kind of meteorite thing I need to go visit soon. The armour you can get after that fight seems pretty intense, but instant regret when I realize it's so heavy that I can't carry much else while saying in the Med Load range.


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## MFB

You seem to be blowing through it if you're up past Radahn already, I think it's safe to not spoiler the name as they won't mean anything to those who haven't played it, nor is it particularly "new." What level are you at by this point?


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## TedEH

I'm at level 67 - the in-game timer puts me at 51 hours in. I've had a lot of time off, so I'm able to sink a bunch of time into it, 'cause why not.


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## wankerness

The other quest I’d do if possible is the one from white mask varre (the guy who calls you maidenless at one of the first grace points). It requires you to invade three people but then gives you a teleport item to a zone that’s really, really hard to get to otherwise (have to kill some random npc invader out in the middle of nowhere and then find a teleporter that’s hidden somewhere else).

You’re playing online, right? I’m always struck every playthrough by how much the messages add to the game. Lots of missable things get pointed out by them and they add a lot of humor to the game. Plus unlike the DS games you can’t be invaded unless you’re actively trying to be.


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## TedEH

The messages actually - I was wondering if maybe there's more than one way to write them, since I keep seeing things that I couldn't possibly write myself - like [something] but [something else]. Usually combinations of thing, or longer messages.
I really enjoy how there's almost a code to the souls-games messages. Like it seems each game designates certain animals to be "dogs" even though they are not dogs. Sometimes it's all animals. Often it is turtles.
So many "fingers, but hole" messages. The experience is enhanced this way for sure.


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## OmegaSlayer

wankerness said:


> Yeah, that game definitely got my vote for best soundtrack right up until I played Nier Automata in 2017 or 2018. The first castle is one great track after another. Too bad about 3/4 of the zones in the reverse castle all using the same damn piece of music, but oh well. I was always confused by how the game soundtracks contained a really badass version of Bloody Tears but it wasn't actually used in-game. Now that I look it up apparently that was exclusive to the Saturn version, but it was always included in the soundtracks I'd download.
> 
> I played it a LOT of times back on my PS1, and then got all the trophies/achievements on the re-releases on Xbox 360 and PS4. I love it so much. Only the DS Castlevanias scratch the same itch the same way, and I don't really like having to pull out the DS to play them. I hope they port them to console the way they just ported all the GBA ones a year or two ago.
> 
> Actually I take that back, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Moon is a very worthy follow-up also. I can't wait for the sequel.


There are rumors of a remake going on...fingers crossed it's good


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## wankerness

TedEH said:


> The messages actually - I was wondering if maybe there's more than one way to write them, since I keep seeing things that I couldn't possibly write myself - like [something] but [something else]. Usually combinations of thing, or longer messages.
> I really enjoy how there's almost a code to the souls-games messages. Like it seems each game designates certain animals to be "dogs" even though they are not dogs. Sometimes it's all animals. Often it is turtles.
> So many "fingers, but hole" messages. The experience is enhanced this way for sure.


Nah, you can write those too. The default is just one operator, but some button toggles message format so you can either add a gesture "ghost" or an operator/second phrase (I think it's Triangle on PS?). The ones with pointing are by far the most frequently helpful, a lot of people take the time to actually line up the gesture with what they're pointing at even when it's in an upwards direction.

If you leave a message in a commonly travelled place it can be a nice boost. Every time someone rates your message, either positively or negatively, you get a heal for like 1/2 your health. It can't be relied on, but when the game was new I could depend on it enough that if I sat there for a minute or two I'd usually get a free heal.

And yeah, there's definitely tons of in-jokes that just get created from messaging trends. DS2 and Elden Ring definitely have the most lively message scenes. "Could this be a dog?" is almost guaranteed to be in front of any random animal statue that isn't a dog. Except flying ones, when it usually replaces dog with bird. I like those. The one that drives me nuts is Fort....Night? Although it's funny when you go in the reverse tower and someone's guaranteed to have written Night....Fort?


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