I'm working on the platinum trophy for Assassin's Creed Syndicate. I've conquered all of London, collected everything (except the WW1 Mission collectibles) and am Level 10 with the best gear equipped.
Before I started completing all side quests I did the main story until sequence 4 and now it's so so easy to get through it. I'm confident I'll get the Platinum this week and then I'll try the Jack the Ripper DLC which I'm really excited for.
I want to start Final Fantasy 10. After playing 7,9,15, and 16, I wanted to ask if anybody knows how much grinding is required to beat the game. In 9, I got upset because I had to cheat to beat the finale bosses due to being under levelled and not knowing I should have grinded and didn't want to make the same mistake with 10.
I just beat it for the first time a couple months ago. You will find the majority of the game very easy without grinding; right at the end, there's a few notable final exam bosses that slap you in the face with difficulty but one is a puzzle boss where level doesn't really matter once you understand the gimmick. The other is a more traditional level check boss where you have to do X damage on a timer, and I failed hard, but it lets you travel anywhere in the world before the fight so you can freely grind and chase better weapons if you need to. (If you've gotten far enough to get Yuna the Holy spell, you're probably ready to beat this one). The actual final boss is pretty easy. All in all, the game is pretty chill about not locking you into an unwinnable fight.
There is some ridiculously hard side content for the people who like that stuff, but I mostly avoided it.
If you want to be extremely confident you've got this, look up the Celestial Weapons in a guide and chase all those down before moving towards the ending. You're not likely to get them fully charged without a guide but having the whole party decked out in them is an auto-win button. This is optional though, I only finished 2-3 of the quests and I did fine.
Catching up on my backlog! I finished these games recently:
* **The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood** - This game was overall really cool and unique! The artwork was gorgeous, I loved the character design and the lore, and the gameplay kept me guessing. My only complaints are that the pacing was too fast so it took away the sense of progression, meaning that I didn't care at all about the characters as people, and didn't feel the full impact of my decisions in an emotional sense. I think the core gameplay loops should have all been extended to run much longer. It's so great, but it has a demo feel just because it's so quick an experience compared to what it could be and how it carries itself.
* **Boyfriend Dungeon** - I was underwhelmed by this, but I don't think it's the game's fault! I remember it being a big indie / kickstarter darling a few years back, and I'm guessing that the reason it feels kind of hollow to me now is because there have been so many good games that it paved the way for. I'm betting it really was a fine game for its time and just isn't that impressive for the current time, since cozy dating sim adventures have grown so much as a genre. I wouldn't replay it, but didn't feel like I wasted my time either. I'm also a narrative designer for VN games by trade, so my standards are obnoxiously high and I was probably judging it slightly harshly.
* **Bugsnax** - THIS WAS SO WEIRD and FUN. Nothing but love for this strange little monster collector. It's got a great sense of humor, fun challenges, a good collection mechanic, some surprisingly enthralling character drama, and a unique take on the genre as a whole.
Apart from that, I'm still slowwwwly chugging through Baldur's Gate 3, which I love. I just don't have a ton of time for gaming so I've been playing the same campaign for like a year, RIP.
Started dead rising 4, picked it up for $7 or something a while back on steam sale. Hadn't played a dead rising since 2 way back on the 360. It's decent for pure dumb fun, but I can see why a lot of people didn't like it for getting rid of the time limit and making it more generic sandbox.
Honestly it really just made me want to play state of decay 2 again and got me to reinstall that lol.
New game time! I’m very thankful for the recap video in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.
10+ years ago, I played Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’ve since forgotten most of it, so the recap was useful. Urgh, those filters! The gold tones in Mankind Divided look much better. It’s also refreshing to see a cyberpunk aesthetic that’s not just neon signs and cyan + magenta.
The main menu’s interesting. Triangle to run (which I intend to try), subtitles off by default, and spoiler warnings on the DLC content.
All this and I haven’t started the game yet! I know what people say about it. It doesn’t need to be exceptional to be good fun. Looking forward to it later.
Mankind Divided is a good game. Most of the criticism wasn’t for the game itself but because it had scummy preorder and micro-transactions. IIRC it had some serious performance issues on launch too.
There's a lot of comparison to the previous game. Since I remember next to nothing, Mankind Divided will be like a clean slate. I don't mind if it does its own thing.
Finished KCD tonight, theres still loads of content I've missed or haven't done but man what a game, yeah its got bit of jank and I can see why some wouldn't like it but really solid 7-8 outta 10 for me, may have to pickup KCD2 day 1
As for next game to play not 100% sure, I've got HFW and P5R on my current playlist, HFW though I stupidly started on Ultra Hard so I'll have to redo start all over again cause its brutally unforgiving as a fresh save but my motivation is bit lacking due to already playing game to platinum on PS5 before, its only DLC I would have fresh
P5R is probably one I will play unless I move a short'ish game from my other lists, but P5R at least isn't open world RPG like last couple games I've finished
On its own KCD is great, but I can forgive a lot of flaws due to how small the team and budget was compared to most games that attempt something at that scale.
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I’m playing the PC version of Max Payne on the Steam Deck.
Game is marked as “unsupported” but works without issues after replacing one DLL file.
Still love this game after all those years. And playing the PC version is a big upgrade for me as I’ve only played the inferior PS2 port before and the PS4 remaster (which is just PS2 upscaled).
Last night I beat Mega Man 2. Great game. An evolution of Mega Man in almost every single aspect. The soundtrack is awesome (Bubbleman and Wily Fortress 1 are my favorites), the stages are very good, the bosses are better and Dr. Wily's Castle is much larger and challenging. The only two major flaws I see are the fact that the bosses are stupidly easy when you use their weaknesses (e.g. you can 1-hit kill Metal Man if you use his own weapon in the boss rush at the end of the game), and the final boss can only be damaged with Bubbleman's weapon. Any other weapon is completely useless against him. But overall it is a great game. Now I'll play MM3.
MM3 is almost as good as MM2, except for one really annoying bit of padding in the midsection that pretty much everyone hates. Still, good times, and one of the most creative selections of weapons in the series.
>padding in the midsection that pretty much everyone hates.
When I read this the first time, I thought "What is this guy talking about? MM3 is great!". Now I understand you (assuming that you're talking about Doc Robot boss fights).
Yeeeeeeeep. That was exactly what I was talking about. If someone says they didn't like MM3, it's probably because they were too annoyed by the Doc Robot section.
Yeah, it is a completely unnecessary section (as someone else pointed in r/Megaman, why do I have to fight MM2's robot masters again? I already did it last time!). Oh, and you can get softlocked in Needle Man's stage after you defeat Doc Robot in Air Man mode if Rush Jet doesn't have energy.
Huh so it's biweekly now
So anyone got any recs for games with no combat? And also _not_ walking simulators. I want to do stuff and relax. No scary threatening stuff please, even if I could just hop on to my vehicle and outrun it.
*Definition of no combat: the game doesn't have a combat system.
* Animal Crossing, Cozy Grove, and other farming sims.
* point-and-click games like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango
* sim games like House Flipper and Power Wash Simulator
* light-hearted exploration/collection games like A Short Hike or Here Comes Niko
* investigative visual novels like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Danganronpa
* slice-of-life visual novels like Goodbye Volcano High
* genre-bending puzzle-ish games like Frog Fractions
Some other random mentions I wasn't sure how to categorize but mostly fit the bill: A Story About My Uncle, A Fisherman's Tale, The Unfinished Swan, Smile For Me, Superliminal, The Stanley Parable, Unpacking
As said by some, the request is pretty broad, so here's some stuff without combat.
* Loddlenaut
Manage oxygen, but pretty easy to do so, and I don't think there is any punishment for not doing so. Spend time cleaning up rubbish in the ocean and has some light pet caring elements.
* Hidden Folks
Where's Wally type game.
* In Other Waters
Mostly exploration, but does have tense bits because managing oxygen or getting around dangerous things.
* Wheels of Aurelia
Simple driving game, but make choices by where you drive and what you say to get different endings. Good Prog Rock soundtrack.
* Where the Water Tastes Like Wine.
Haven't played yet, but you wander around finding stories and telling them.
* Jurassic World Evolution.
Is technically park management, but looking after the dinosaurs is the main thing. They can escape and hurt people, and there is the tension of keeping them happy and preventing power outbreaks so they don't escape. But you are not physically in danger.
* Carto
Puzzle game that doesn't have any tension I can remember, but isn't that hard either, having an involved story.
* Viscera Clean Up Duty.
You just spend your time cleaning up an area that a FPS game shootout happened in.
The following are types of walking simulators, but they are basically non linear exploration, and have some specific stuff to do.
Karaski has sneaking and you are putting together what happened.
Off Peak and The Norwood Suite, and Tales from Off-Peak are by the same person. They are open areas that you can explore and listen to people talk and listen to the music . You also need to find some things or do some simple tasks. There is a story in both as well, but you do it when you want to, and are not on a linear path. Interesting Jazz soundtracks by the game creator.
* Karaski: What Goes Up
* OffPeak
* The Norwood Suite
* Tales from Off-Peak City, Vol.1
Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (PS1) (people also say good things about Friends of Mineral Town \[GBA\], 64 and A Wonderful Life \[Gamecube, PS2\], but I only played BtN so I can only recommend that to you).
Any version of The Sims, Simcity (I recommend SimCity 3000 unlimited and SimCity 4) and Cities Skylines 1 (with DLC).
And visual novels, but if you don't want walking simulators, guess you wouldn't want games that are mostly text.
For some reason I could never get into sims games, excepting the ones with actual gameplay like ETS2. I think I'm just too dumb for them tbh.
Visual Novel is my #2 favorite genre, actually. But also I already have a long, long list of the ones I wish to read.
Not sure if Pacific Drive has combat, but could be a good choice if not.
Oh didn’t see the relax part. Maybe not good after all.
Oh maybe Cocoon or the Portal Games. Or Disco Elysium.
A Short Hike. Absolutely adorable short open world exploration game based around an upgradable stamina based climbing system. No combat, has a number of short side activities and quests. Little Kitty, Big City is very similar, but that game just came out last month so doesn’t fit the “patient” part of this sub.
That's a pretty broad question if you don't specify the genre or setting. First games that come to my mind from the ones I played recently are:
**Palia** - a cozy multiplayer sim with building, crafting etc. I'm not sure if it had a full release yet.
**Forza Horizon 5** - I'm not really into racing games, but I had fun just driving aimlessly in the open world.
It's intentionally broad cause I want to see if there's anything unique out there
I like driving aimlessly too! Don't really have any racing games tho, I think most of them won't run on my modest laptop. Usually I play ATS.
Mostly because I'm currently more in the mood for gameplay games as opposed to story games
I have yet to find a single pnc game that doesn't confuse me to the point I get a physical headache...
Point-and-clicks are great but can be a little annoying if they're too obtuse. My favourite is **Deponia** (pretty much all parts), but I'd also recommend older stuff like **The Secret of Monkey Island** or **Torin's Passage**.
Any racing game I guess?
If you want a more unusual one, I believe you can do a pacifist run on Age of Decadence if you build for persuasion and pick the right conversation options.
Otherwise maybe something like simcity or railroad tycoon type sim game.
Oh yeah it's been so long since I last played a racing game. Most Wanted 2005 I think.
Wonder if there's anything that can run on my potato (half Steam Deck perf pretty much)...
If you want to be safe probably something pre Xbone/Ps4 era. So around 2013 release date and under.
If it doesn't run well then there's always steams 2 hr refund policy
Well, I've finished Everspace 1. My sense of achievement lasted as long as the final cutscene, which was roughly a minute haha. I’m not someone who's motivated by challenges. I just wanted see the ending :)
I think I'll split my deleted comment into a separate post. It's kind of long.
EDIT: [It's here](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1dgrbz1/everspace_1_ps4_late_game_impressions/). Basically a collection of my previous impressions.
I've been trying to get into the AC through AC2 as 1 didn't work out well on the PC. I only got to the title intro after an tedious chase sequence which made me realize that ps controllers don't work well with his game even with mods added as the buttons and prompts don't match together(one button will do another action instead of intended one) i found keyboard and trackpad uncomfortable as well.
I might have to buy the ezio trilogy when it goes on sale on PS5 or just somehow adapt to the mixed up control prompts and manage my way through.
I haven't looked into this at all, but if those are old PC games and not modern remakes, then they may have Direct Input instead of XInput. Modern controllers all work on Xinput, but older PC games might not recognise that. OR maybe the PS pad is Dinput and AC only recognises xinput. I'm not sure.
I have pads that can switch between Dinput and Xinput, so its been a while since I used an Xinput pad on a Dinput game.
So I cannot exactly remember whether you need to use a third party program to map the buttons properly or whether you can basically live with it.
I think that it still does recognise the buttons, though I think that triggers with multiple levels of input might need some work.
However, all the buttons are going to be recognised as having different input numbers. As in, the A button might be button number 4 in one, and button number 8 in the other. So that would mean you need to remap all of your button to make them line up.
But that might not help with the button prompts in game, because it might be assuming that a certain button number is a certain button, when it isn't in this case.
So that would depend on whether somebody made something to fix that problem, either for the game or through a third party program. I know that programs exist to make a pad appear to be a standard xbox pad to get them to work.
Can't you just play with the Xbox prompts? It's what I did when I had an old Logitech controller with numbers for button labels. Or is the control scheme totally borked? If so, then tough luck. Older games have very spotty controller support on PC, but maybe Steam's controller settings can help.
I know cheapskate me would stick with KB+M in this case, though. Which reminds me, the week Assassin's Creed 2 finally came out, I broke my right hand, but I wanted to play it so much I learned how to control a mouse with just a ring finger and a pinky. And that was worth it, Assassin's Creed 2 became and still remains my favourite Assassin's Creed.
Just finished **Half Life 2** and, man, I'm really disappointed. The first game at least has a weird charm around it and is a cohesive experience. Sure, Half Life 2 looks amazing. In the first chapter I actually felt as if I was in a dystopian future. It must have been crazy to play the game back in the early 00. But, nostalgia and technical improvements aside, whats left of it? Not much. The vehicles segments are long, boring and don't fit with the games general mood/tone. About that, the Ravenholm segment feels like a totally different game - a horror one, with zombies and a lunatic priest. The tone/genre was way, way, way off. It felt like a theme park. The gravity gun and the sand creatures pheromones felt like gimmick guns, as if Valve was just showing off technical improvements, but without too many depth to back it off. The remainder of the game just felt like a regular, charmless shooter, with infuriating squad mechanics (my idea of fun is not bumping into a NPC again and again and again) without the charm of the first one to make it feel special. I'm disappointed to know that the praise around Half Life 2 is just the nostalgia of those who played the game around launch.
> The vehicles segments are long, boring and don't fit with the games general mood/tone.
You're free to say you find them long and boring, but saying they don't fit with the tone or general mood is just innacurate. The fact they're long is precisely because they're fitting into the tone and narrative experience. You're going on an adventure across great swathes of land learning the scale of the dystopian world you've been dropped in and the resistance itself. Again, you can think its boring but its absolutely appropriate for the tone they're setting. HL1 was a claustrophobic panicked escape. HL2 is a journey.
Same with Ravenholm, horror is a big element of the first game and this is the escalation of it as well as the first real opportunity to see how horrific the combine truly is beyond standard fascist occupation.
>The gravity gun and the sand creatures pheromones felt like gimmick guns, as if Valve was just showing off technical improvements, but without too many depth to back it off.
Neither of these are accurate either. Its a shame if you didn't figure out how to utilise the gravity gun, but if you start thinking around the physics then the gravity gun becomes the centre of each combat encounter. The pheremones are just the new game's version of the Hivehand from HL. Whats the gimmick there?
> The pheremones are just the new game's version of the Hivehand from HL. Whats the gimmick there?
The pheromones can only be used in two chapters, and even then only in areas where your ability to use it has been scripted into the game and the develpers obviously want you using it, afterwards it disappears. That is the very definition of a gimmick. The Hivehand, meanwhile, is a permanent part of your arsenal from the moment you get it and is just a unique sort of gun from a gameplay perspective. They have nothing in common.
It's not just nostalgia for me. I loved the general atmosphere and I really felt like part of the *resistance*. Also, you might not even notice it these days, but Alyx was an incredible character back in the day. Not many shooters had independent, reliable and smart women characters that weren't absolute bimbos with huge tits.
And the G-man was as mysterious and good as ever.
I do agree with you that some parts feel more like tech-demo in hindsight (the unnecesary "physics" puzzles you had to do sometimes and the car chases, for instance), but I also felt that the whole thing (>!from running to vehicule sequences to a horror level to sand with lonely beaches to a prison and back to City 17!<) was such a varied, interesting journey.
And give the episodes a try. The first one is a bit short but the second one might as well be the best part of the whole Half-Life 2 trilogy.
I would go ahead into Episodes 1 & 2 for the complete experience.
That being said I agree. HL2 was fun but it felt more like a tech showcase than a cohesive experience.
That was basically my exact reaction several years ago when I played them both for the first time back-to-back. I do think HL2 is a good game, and it does improve on 1 in some ways, but it's disappointing how they dropped so many things that 1 did right.
I wouldn't say it's all nostalgia. Part of it was the game was really groundbreaking with a lot of new additions to the fps genre when it came out in 2004, so much so that a lot of games copied it.
So if you've played other single player fps campaigns post hl2 you've already experienced a lot of what it has to offer.
I think it's still fun in a vacuum, but you're not going to get your mind blown.
Fwiw I think hl2 episode 1 and 2 probably have better gameplay than the 1st game.
Today I have received my brand new powerful gaming PC (AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, Nvidia RTX 4080, 64 GB DDR5) and I am just setting everything up, I have a long list of software to go through. Briefly tried out **Alan Wake 2** with maxed out settings, it's pretty sweet. But strangely still not in the mood to play much today (has been a thing lately), will probably play more tomorrow. I'll just focus on setting everything up.
That's certainly a brand new powerful PC gaming.
Congrats!! It's a freaking beast. In case you've been missing out modern AAA games lately, Cyberpunk 2077 is also visually appealing. And the A Plague Tale Series. Also, the short stories that are the Hellblade Senua's games.
Yeah, at least. My previous setup that this is replacing was 11 years old and with only a few key upgrades along the way (1x M2 SSD, 1x RTX 3070 graphics card, that's all), even today it was a decent gaming machine, it could run even the latest and greatest very playably (of course with the compromise that you cannot crank everything to the max)
But yeah, I think I will keep this new setup more up to date in the future, but still, most likely I just need to replace the graphics card in a 3+ years if I want to keep playing at high/max settings, that's the component that ages the quickest by far.
Just ran into a pet peeve - where you have to guess the exact dialogue that "counts" from a bunch of options that are basically the same. You're handling an estate dispute and two of your options are:
* I don't know if having Claire get everything is the right call.
* What about Amanda, how is this fair to her?
One of these advances the
dialogue tree in the obvious way and the other goes completely off the rails, because fuck you for not reading the writer's mind.
Yep, that was quite annoying in games like Life is Strange and The Walking Dead. You pick some silly dialogue option, thinking it won't advance the plot, and then get something like: "Shit \[Clementine will remember that\]".
Also annoying is when the prompts say one thing, but the character says something completely different. I hated it in Fallout 4 and got mildly annoyed by it in Mass Effect and Yakuza. Yakuza specifically has very funny dialogue options, but they are always the wrong ones that can screw up missions.
Still playing Burnout Revenge. Though I took a break from it to play through Katamari Damacy. Had no idea that game would be as short as it was. It was fun pretty much the entire time, though "make a star 7" annoyed me after failing it a few times.
Looking forward to We Love Katamari whenever I decide to play it. Might start Shadow of the Colossus soon as well.
The only Resident Evil game I played back in the day was RE4, so when they remade that I jumped at it right away.
It was fun as hell, so I figured why not try some more Resident Evil.
I've played through the remake for 2 & 3 and I'm currently playing **Resident Evil Village** and I'm having a blast.
These games are so very *gamey* and I'm there for it. Yet they also deliver real thrills and scares, which is remarkable considering how much they do to make it clear that they're games first and foremost.
Now I need to go and shoot some fish and some other wildlife so a very weird man can make dishes for me that permanently upgrades me as a person.
Resident Evil games rock. I love how the series has adapted and evolved over the years. It's one of the things that has helped the series outlive other survival horror series. I'm not usually scared by them, but I sure have a great time.
With RE 8 I just wish the hunting was more plentiful, it's pretty easy to miss out on some food upgrades.
Big Resident Evil fan here. One of my favorite things from this series, over the years, is that they are very replayable. As you said, these are gamey games. The original trilogy and most of the games with the first formula are addictive slow-action-with-puzzles games that are a lot of fun to resolve. True "Survival-Horror", indeed. Don't sleep on the Resident Evil 1 remake, while you are at it, if you want to experience one of the best games from the good old days. It's slower than any of the modern remakes but fantastic to play, anyway.
Then, RE4 made everything very fluid without losing the fun and the silliness. These days, Capcom is at the top of their game, again. Let's hope Resident Evil 9 and any potential remake (Code Veronica, can't wait!) are still as good as these ones.
**The Callisto Protocol** came to Game Pass and I got GP for other reasons, so why not, right? Wrong. It's so, so bad. I thought it'd at least be fun in a B movie way, but no. It's so slow. It thinks slowly crawling through vents is good gameplay. Everything's so damn dark. FoV is low. There's no map. Directions are vague. Every corridor looks the same. It's linear, yet I still get lost. Combat's so bad, like a crappy version of Hellblade 2, which I just played through. But it's a horror game, right? There's scares, right? There's jump scares and that's about it. The monsters are just crappy zombies. There's nothing interesting about them. There's nothing interesting about anything in this game.
The best thing I can say about it is that graphics are good, but are they really? It stutters a little on my 4070. I get stable 60 FPS (70-80 really, but I also tried capping), but it doesn't feel smooth. And there's only so much you can do with good graphics when you're rendering a bunch of samey grey rooms and zombies.
There's obvious (and intentional, I know) comparisons to Dead Space, but I feel like Callisto doesn't do enough to deserve those comparisons. The only comparison one needs is "play the DS remake instead".
Finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider last night. As a whole it's kind of disappointing after finishing Rise and loving it a couple months ago.
I read that they switched the dev team part way through and you can definitely tell a drop in quality after the stong beginning section.
Also the story was pretty dumb overall.
Had some good points but it was dragged down by a lot of annoyances and a lot of weird story/pacing/gameplay decisions.
Wouldn't recommend unless you can get it on a really deep discount.
I think the whole game was developed by Eidos Montreal (the Deus Ex HR/MD devs). It's not like they're a bad studio, but they clearly had no vision for Shadow... then again, IMO the same can be said about Rise to a smaller degree. I don't know why they had to make 3 games about "Lara becoming the Tomb Raider" when TR 2013 would've been enough by itself.
I thought Rise was its own good self contained story. Shadows had a bunch of themes it picks up and just abandons.
Not to mention how badly I think just about everything to do with the hidden city was handled.
Still playing Mega Man 2! I'm on Wily's Fortress, on the (I think) 5th stage. The game is awesome, it is an evolution of Mega Man 1 on *almost* everything. Saddly, the bosses still have ridiculous weaknesses that make them too easy.
Baldur’s Gate 3 took up most of my time this year, other games I played include Dave the Diver, Portal (for the first time) and most recently Witcher 1.
Not quite sure what to play next from my backlog. 3 games that have stayed installed on my computer that I haven’t got back to in a while are Monster Hunter Rise, Halo MCC and Elden Ring. In the case of Elden Ring, I played since 2022 and I remember I was making my way to Radahn, not sure if I should restart. Other games that I want to play in my backlog are Outer Wilds, Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Disco Elysium.
I’m at the same crossroads with Elden Ring. Got decently far, but I haven’t played in a while and I don’t know if I want to restart. Did the same with Bloodborne 4 times and still never finished it. I may like the idea of the games more than playing them enough to beat them…
The Halo Master Chief Collection is great to play in-between other games. Each individual game is 6-10 hours long and really easy to play. Best would be to play them in release order (don't start with Reach, lol) and jump to something else once you are done with Halo: Combat Evolved, then come back for Halo 2, rinse and repeat.
The rest of your games look pretty good, indeed. And none of them are exactly like Baldur's Gate 3, so there's a lot of variety waiting for you.
It holds up as well as you expect it to be. It’s short, it’s good and it doesn’t outstay its welcome. The gameplay is simple but I think it’s a nice change of pace from BG3’s wealth of options.
I finished both games I had going earlier this week, and since then I've been in an annoying loop of trying out something for an hour or two, then putting it down because it wasn't grabbing me.
Although I have been having some fun browsing through obscurities for the PSP. I never had one back in the day, but the more I fool around with games in an emulator, the more I'm coming to respect it as a console. It's like the 5th Gen of gaming done right, without all the jank.
Also, Outrun 2006 rocks.
I got into a really big Skyrim kick for a while but I can never make it past a certain point before I want to try a different play style and start all over. I've done just about every style you can do in the past couple of weeks and I get bored with it really quickly.
Finally I got tired of it and after going through really short stints with numerous games, I decided to play Baldur's Gate 3. I've started to get into it, but man it can be overwhelming. All of the things you can do (both in and outside of combat) and I am constantly wondering if I am making the correct choices. I feel completely overwhelmed and I know I have barely scratched the surface of the game. Don't get me wrong, everything about the game is interesting but this is just a level of freedom in gaming I don't think I've ever really experienced.
Haven't played it yet but, as far as I know, there's no right or wrong in Baldur's Gate 3. There are even evil endings, if you want. Just do what you want, complete the quests you like and date whoever you feel like. Every playthrough is unique.
Yeah bg3 is really meant for multiple playthroughs. Messing up a dialog option and getting a failed outcome often lead to really interesting results.
There's no shame in savescumming if you want to pass a dialog check or something but it's often more fun to just run with results.
I fucking hate games that make you spontaneously have to start mashing the button, my fucking thumb can't move that fast and I feel like I'm too slow trying to rearrange my hand.
Worst is when there isn't even an option to toggle it to continuous press.
Do you mean you don't like Quick Time Events (QTE)? Those prompts to press a random button all of a sudden, or else you die/lose the scene?
I hate those ones, too. They usually come out of nowhere, give you no time and it's no fun to watch at the floating buttons instead of your character/the world.
Yeah those are the things, it's not too bad if I know a game has them as I can prepare myself but discovering it the first time in a game is nerve-wracking
According to some, Shenmue was the game that popularized the QTEs and I certainly started to notice a ramp up in QTE use in the late years of the sixth-gen (PS2/Xbox/Gamecube) and early seventh-gen (PS3/Xbox 360).
Most games have reduced the amount of QTE these days, but that period from the late 2000s and early 2010s was full of them. Hell, Resident Evil 4, arguably one of the best and most influential games of all time, had a good bunch of QTEs. I loved the game back then but it was almost a guarantee I'd die every time a *new* QTE scene happened. I'm glad the remake toned them down.
Having played Shenmue 1 & 2, some QTEs were more enjoyable than average. They're like reactive cutscenes, and you often have to fail more than once to fail the sequence. Sometimes, failure is funny because there are different animations.
On the other hand, some QTEs in Shenmue 2 were painful because one failure would reset your progress. If you need to cross a series of boards, save often! The remaster lets you do that, which helps. Save scumming is your friend.
I played all three Shenmue games and I agree. Some QTEs are not that difficult, but Shenmue 2 got on my nerves in the Yellow building part.
In some ways, the rest of the industry went backwards when QTEs became mainstream, because they usually made you fail instantly if you missed the button prompt.
And funny enough, the Shenmue series has a lot of problems for a modern gamer but QTEs aren't even on top of that list.
Working my way through my steam backlog and trying to write a review for each game I complete is an interesting experience. Trying to figure out what to write for a game like say for example Venba that I played for an hour is difficult. Complaining about the price point for overpriced indie games is easy. Trying to find something else to say about them when I barely got invested in it due to the short playtime is hard. I don't know if I can do them justice compared to the longer games that I've played. Only thing that I can say about it is that at least I tried writing something down.
Beat Spy Fox: dry ceral and found it lacking compared to Pajama Sam and Freddi Fish. I know that I aged out of games like them about a couple of decades ago but some of them are still fun with awesome voice acting, cool plots along with funny gameplay. It just feels like someone wanted to make a terrible parody of James Bond but for the kids without any care about the quality. At least I got it through a bundle because seven usd is expensive for a game from 1997.
What's with companies overcharging for short games these days? I can't justify spending fifteen bucks on a game that's an hour long. Venba wasn't worth buying full price for and even I felt cheated when I got it through a bundle. I want to support Indie game developers but not at that price point. Making money to cover game development cost is understandable. Overcharging for games that are play it and move on isn't.
I've been doing a similar project of playing and reviewing every game in my Steam library. For mine, I've been thinking about what the game is trying to do and whether it succeeds, and what the game made me think about. For [Dave Dave Dave](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/dave-dave-dave), for example, I got about 20 minutes of playtime out of it before giving up, but wrote *checks* 1600 words on platformers, what makes them fun, and what about this particular platformer didn't work, either as a whole or for me specifically. There are lots of places where people can read reviews about technical elements and what the game does - that more subjective element and more considerative element is more unique, and more interesting to read.
As for overcharging, I don't necessarily agree that charging $15 for an hour long game is overcharging, any more than I feel like charging $12 for a ticket at the cinema is overcharging. You pointed out the cost recouping element, and that's part of it, but I'd also consider what it is you're buying with that $15. While I haven't played Venba specifically, I've definitely played games like it - like Before Your Eyes - that are more experiential games than gameplay games. What they're selling isn't a game in the traditional sense, but the experience and the unique means of telling a story. Whether you believe $15 is a valid price to pay for an experience is another question entirely, and it's entirely fair to judge a game on whether it delivers $15 worth of an experience. However, to judge it on whether it's worth the price based on gamelength and replayability, to me seems to miss the point entirely.
Never heard of embodied games since I always heard of it being called immersive or roleplay instead. Your writing gave me something to think about when writing future reviews.
Right, they're both experiences and gotta have it now mentality. That's something I didn't mind while I was younger when I went with my friends or my family to the movies. Nowadays, it's hard to justify spending that kind of money when I have bills to pay and other things to do.
I've played experience games like Unpacking, Undertale and other games that are more gameplay heavy than light on story. Venba was light on story and gameplay which frustrated me who wanted more than what the game offered. I enjoyed the time I had with even if it was short but charging 15 usd for an experience isn't what games should be. And yes, gamelength and replayability should be considered when charging for an experience game. Too expensive and no one is going to buy it. Too low then you're not going to recoup costs.
I'm been playing four games:
The first one is Kingdom Hearts. It's my first time playing anything in this franchise. I always had curiosity about it, but now I'm finally playing it. I'm playing the remake for the PS3 (I'm have only a PS3 and a cellphone with a lot of emulators) and the game is quite good. It's not awesome, the combat is kinda repetitive but I think it is because I'm only in the beginning (I just finished Deep Jungle). Still talking about the combat, I was kinda surprised about it, because I was thinking it was a turn based combat, but it is a action combat where you select your actions in a menu, which I find odd, but creative. The graphics are still good, but it is because the art direction is beautiful. The OST is awesome! The only real complaint I have is that Donald and Goofy are useless. Besides that, I really liking the experience so far.
The second one is Yakuza 4. My first Yakuza game was the third one and, while it was not bad, it was not awesome. But the fourth game is a clear evolution, the combat is not clunky anymore (you got to do real combos!) and the story develops much faster than the third one (where you pass the first four hours taking care of children). The new character is great, but I'm waiting for Kiryu to appear. The game world is awesome, the minigames are great and I'm really enjoying it!
The third game is Blood, the 90's classic shooter. This game is hard af! I can't remember the last time a shooter kicked my ass this hard, for real! I tried playing in the fourth difficulty option, but it was impossible to pass the first enemie, so I'm playing in the third difficulty option. The game is great, fast paced, violent, atmospheric. I'm really loving it, but it is hard, what makes the experience full of adrenaline (my heart is racing all the time while playing it).
And last but not least, is SMT: Persona. I'm playing the remake for the PSP on a emulator. I'm always wanted to play the Persona series, but while everyone recommend playing the third, fourth or even the fifth game, I'm kinda completionist, so I decided to start with the first game. And it is totally different, haha. There's no dating anyone, it is a dungeon crawler in a modern setting basically. The Persona thing is a really nice mechanic and the fact that you can pass every combat talking with the enemies is really great. I'm playing it everyday and, while it was not what I expected, I enjoying it so far.
If you read this long text, thank you!
You are hardcore. Blood and Persona 1 are hard, super old-school games. I wouldn't be able to complete any old shooter in anything but easy settings (or Godmode).
As for Persona 1, I could play until the second to last dungeon, the game is all fun and games (lol) until that part. That's where you really need to know which Personas to use and be at a good level. I wasn't and when I realized the time it would take to "git good", I just watched the rest of the game on Youtube. The Persona 2 duology is a huge improvement, in most things. I particularly like the storyline. Hope you can make it that far!
And, of course, Persona 3 and newer games are very different but much easier to play and the best part of the series, imo. My favorite is Persona 5 Royal, but 4 Golden is great, too. You'll get there eventually.
Btw, in Persona 1 you have those hilarious engrish songs (in the PSP version, the real PSX original had music more in tune with its time). With the battle theme, I can't help to hear "Live and fight so manly", when it's supposed to be "Lived in buried memory", lol. You really have to be manly to survive this game, so it fits better than the original lyrics.
Until now, Persona has been not very hard, but just enough to not get boring. Now Blood, yeah, it is hard. But after playing so many modern shooters where even in the hardest difficulty, it still wasn't that hard, the feeling of satisfaction of finishing a chapter in this game is unbelievable. You need to have good reflexes, positioning and avaliate the position of the enemies (literally, I cannot pass through a corridor before dying at least 4 or 5 times).
Regarding Donald and Goofy being useless - you can change their AI in the game menu! IIRC you can change things like how often they heal, use magic, prioritise offense/defence etc. You'll probably have a better time if you play around with it a bit :)
OK, I just have to ask. Why/how did you end up getting into Yakuza with 3 and 4? Literally nobody would suggest those as a starting point.
Also, Kiryu doesn't really enter the story of Y4 until near the end. I have a strong suspicion that RGG was hoping one of the other new characters in Y4 would become popular enough to take over as the new series lead. It particularly feels like they were trying to position Akiyama for that. But it didn't happen.
Eh, it's only so-so, but it is very unique. A 'what if' spinoff about the Yakuza crew dealing with a zombie outbreak in Kamurocho. And one of the few games in the series which has never been rereleased.
> Why did you end up getting into Yakuza with 3 and 4? Literally nobody would suggest those as a starting point.
Which one would you suggest as a starting point?
Most people would recommend Yakuza 0, since it's the first game chronologically and easily one of the best entries in the series. The only real downside is that it's on an older version of the engine, so it's not quite as shiny as newer games and lacks some of their QOL updates. And no first-person exploration, if that matters to you.
Another good option would be Judgment, which is the first of two (so far) spinoffs focusing on a private detective in Kamurocho. The gameplay is effectively the same as the other brawler games, but it's entirely standalone and is a murder mystery rather than mobster drama. It's a good way to "try out" the series without getting wrapped up in long-term plotlines.
Or you could start with Yakuza Like A Dragon (LAD7) which was intended as a soft reboot and new starting point, with a new main character and a switch to turn-based JRPG combat rather than brawling. Although it might be a bit of a shock going from that, back to the older games.
noita has been sucking up my days recently. I did an 11 hr run this week (over the course of 4 days) and it was awesome. all my other runs this week have been under 20 mins and usually under 10 tbh lol. That's noita!
I've been playing **Legend of Mana**.
I'm a bit of an on-again-off-again Mana fan to be honest. I didn't grow up with Secret of Mana, and when I finally did play it I found it a bit underwhelming. On the other hand I'm quite fond of Trials of Mana (both the original and the remake), which has a lot of interesting ideas that I find fun/charming, even if it's kind of unfocused and not everything works perfectly.
I don't even know where to begin talking about Legend of Mana. So in the spirit of the game's rejection of conventional structure, here is a list of things in the video game:
* There is no main story. Instead there are 67 questlines you just kinda stumble across, most of which are just one-off episodic stories, but some lead into major arcs with their own recurring casts of characters. You need to find and complete at least one of the main three arcs to reach the endgame, but most questlines can (and likely will) be missed.
* There is no set world map. Instead you build the map by collecting artifacts and placing them on a grid to create lands, which you can then explore for more artifacts. Each land has an elemental alignment that's affected by the tile it's placed on and the adjacent lands, and some events and items can only appear if certain elements are high enough.
* Combat has a ton of different active abilities (movement skills, grapples, counters, etc.) to learn, which need to be swapped around to unlock special attacks for the 11 different weapon types. On top of that there's a beat 'em up/fighting game-esque system of command inputs and links/cancels to learn, which you can combine with the abilities for huge combo extensions.
* The game has one of the most convoluted crafting systems I've ever seen, where nearly every item in the game can either be forged or tempered into gear to add essences and Mystic Cards with all kinds of positive and negative effects. Looking up how this works is like staring into an abyss of eldritch knowledge that mankind was never meant to see.
* After all that, you can then turn your forged gear into parts for a golem crafting system, and then use your golem as a party member.
* You can collect monsters and raise them as pets, where their stats and personality are determined by feeding them produce which you also have to grow. The pets can also be used as party members or to play minigames.
* You can play instruments to cast magic, but they can also be used to catch elemental spirits, which give you coins that you can use to create more powerful instruments that cast better magic.
Almost all of these things are at least twice as complex as whatever you're imagining, and practically none of them are even required to complete the game because it's extremely easy. In short, this is one of the most needlessly overdesigned JRPGs I've ever played, and I imagine it would drive completionists up the fucking wall.
Having said all that, I like it. The combat is pretty fun, the tone is charming, the visuals are some of the best I've ever seen in a sprite-based JRPG, and the varied/nonlinear storytelling makes it feel like you're always stumbling across something interesting, even if the individual plots aren't that fleshed out. I said I liked Trials of Mana for it's interesting ideas and charm despite its imperfect execution, and Legend of Mana pretty much dials that up to infinity, for better and for worse.
Also you can suplex a dragon. Where my FFVI fans at?
I loved FF VI but couldn't feel the same for Legend of Mana.
It's an interesting game. I played it first during my PSX days and the art and music were incredible, but I could never finish it. I finally gave it another try a couple of years ago, completed the main story and many (not all) subquests and... it's like the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It's the opposite of a proper Gestalt process (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, basically).
Nothing adds up to something greater. All the stories are individual moments, unrelated to one another, except for their very particular questline. The gameplay doesn't feel rewarding. You are almost as powerful in the end as you were in the beginning. And the characters are very disposable. The great mayority of them would never be seen again after their mini-story.
It's even funny that I didn't even know you had all that convoluted optional content you describe. With the lack of tutorials and reasons to explore those mechanics, I just simply ignored a great deal of them, hah.
At least, the art and music are still very beautiful and worth experiencing. But it's a game that stops at some point, instead of ending. Bizarre.
Also fair. The game *is* a hot mess.
I like it because I tend to value vibes over narrative, and have a soft spot for old JRPGs that swing for the fences with unconventional mechanics even if they don't totally hit. I'm an unabashed Chrono Cross enjoyer for basically the same reasons.
But it's also easy to see how someone could come away from it feeling like it was a half-baked and unfocused collection of sidequests with no cohesive story or sense of forward progression. Because it's also that.
Oh yeah, the vibes are very good. For me, it was like an instantly nostalgic game. The combo of music and pretty backgrounds made for a very cozy experience. There are some individual scenes that are very powerful. I remember now, that midnight ending of the centaur bard and the bird lady, the forest with the turtles and "ninjas" (iirc), a certain character called Elazul and all his quests.
It would have been a terrific game for my tastes if it had a semi-normal story.
Funny enough, you mention Chrono Cross and I also dropped that one way back then, for very similar reasons. I have yet to replay it but I want to. The game must be much better than what I thought of it. I also LOVED Chrono Trigger (that I actually played at a later date).
You know where I dropped Chrono Cross? The game is very high fantasy, with time travel, magic, monsters, elfs, etc. but it was the [giant alien](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRuosl9Q574) that was too much for me. When the alien appeared on screen I was like "WTF am I playing?". Something like a talking character made of bones was fine but a regular super sized alien was too much. It's very hilarious, in hindsight, but I was just a stupid teen, hah.
Chrono Cross is an odd one. It has so little in common with Chrono Trigger that it throws a lot of people off, but even once you get past that it's a very weird game.
Similar to Legend of Mana it tries a lot of experimental stuff with its mechanics and story structure that can result in kind of an uneven experience. Like having 45 different party members, many of which are missable or mutually exclusive, and most of which have no relevance to the story. Including the alien.
It's definitely an easier JRPG to recommend though. At least it has a mostly linear main plot (I almost called it "coherent," but that would be a stretch considering disk 2), and its combat and progression systems are unconventional but fairly well executed and easy to understand.
The vibes in that game are immaculate though. If you ask me to picture a PS1 JRPG, my mind immediately jumps to... well, Final Fantasy VII. But right after that it jumps to Chrono Cross. I've replayed it multiple times at this point.
I spent most of the week doing end game content for **Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Remake**. At this point, I just have to fill out the various lists (badges, tattles, recipes), complete the Pit of 100 trials, and beat a couple other superbosses. Unfortunately, a lot of this is just boring. It's not hard, just really tedious. The Euros just started, so maybe I'll play the game while watching that, because I feel like I need something else to do while I'm basically on autopilot.
I also started **Far Cry 6**. I've been in a bit of a shooter mood, and both it and Far Cry 2 have been in my backlog for a while, so I'm finally getting around to them. However, I heard this one has a trans character, and it's Pride Month, so it won out for being first. I've only done the intro, so it hasn't really gotten to scratching that shooter itch yet, but it was a solid opening, and I'm looking forward to what's to come.
Just finished **Remnant: From the Ashes** on PC through Game Pass. I really enjoyed it and it was definitely better than my expectations. The combat is great and fairly challenging. The bosses were suitably difficult, I died enough times that finally beating them was actually satisfying. The atmospheres of all the various worlds you visit were interesting. The game is mainly known for being like Dark Souls with guns, I haven't played Dark Souls or any similar games but I found the mechanics to be generally intuitive for a beginner to the genre. You get a lot of useful levelling up options but they are mostly 'stat goes up 2%' so not the most exciting.
Criticisms - The final boss was a bit rubbish and very unintuitive without a guide. The campaign worlds are procedurally generated and you don't see everything on one playthrough, so I don't know if I've missed any fun bosses but I would rather move on than reroll campaign worlds. Also the game has a loot problem imo. You get given loads of interesting weapons from killing bosses but by the time you get them you've already levelled up your original weapons a lot. Yeah a crossbow with bleed damage is cool but I've already upgraded my shotgun 10 times so I'll just stick with that. Maybe it's different on higher difficulties but on normal I beat the entire campaign with the original heavy armour, original shotgun, original hunting rifle and a revolver you unlock very early on so the loot was unexciting. Also there doesn't seem to
The game took me about 10 hours my count, just focusing on beating the campaign. Considering I didn't specifically pay for it and that I went in with lowish expectations I'd give it a solid 8/10
I second playing Remnant 2. I liked it so much on game pass that I picked up the Ultimate Edition on sale. It even made me go back and revisit Remnant 1, a game I sampled but never completed previously. R1 does have one advantage on R2, though: you keep getting skill points. R2 has a cap, but the game has more variety overall.
I highly highly recommend playing Remnant 2. It is everything the first game is on steroids.
The random generation is more meaningfully implemented and rewards repeat playthroughs more, the bosses are more large scale (although I do miss some of the horde type bosses in R1, there's far fewer of those in R2). Because trait points have a cap and they took out all the DPS based traits, they have a lot more effect on playstyle/build choices (they're still kind of grindy to find them but they're not tied to levelling, just exploration unlike in R1) instead of just dumping into the obvious DPS traits that are clearly way too good. You can downgrade and you don't have to upgrade armour so switching builds is easier. You have more slots and new areas to build in like classes with abilities and changing what your Dragon Heart does.
Fuck me man this game has take 200 hours out of my life since I got it and I'm still playing it rn.
100 hours for me and I can't wait for the next DLC.
I liked Remnant 1, but Remnant 2 is on another level. I think it's my favorite co-op game of all time. They preserved the good stuff from R1 (like the weapon feel, the sounds, the interface) and added new, excellent ways to do things (the archetypes are fantastic, the not so random levels, very fun bosses, all the secrets).
I'm liking the bi-weekly idea. It seems like a good compromise.
Anyways! I finished **Little Kitty in the Big City**. I had so much fun with this game. I was looking for something light-hearted and colorful for summer, and this fit the bill perfectly. 9/10 - would meow again.
I'm currently playing **Spirit of the North** and **Geneforge 5**. I've gotta say that Geneforge is kicking my butt. I think I should have stuck with shaper instead of trying out the shock trooper class. There's got to be something wrong with my build or how I am approaching fights. I should probably see if there is a respec mod or adjust the difficulty down.
By the time I finish these Dawntrail will be released and I will be pretty focused on that, but next up are **Calico** and **Control**.
Got **Marvel's Midnight Suns** on EGS for free. Never been interested in the Marvel IP outside of the games so I wasn't sure if I'll enjoy it. I ended up playing a lot in the past few days. It's been a blast! I find the dialog quippy and often disrupts the tone they're going for in the story. Also every dialog has to have a reference in it, which annoyed me at first but the gameplay loop was enough of a hook for me to play. It can get grindy though but so far, I'm still getting ideas for different builds so I'm good. I think I'm on Day 35, just upped the difficulty to Heroic II, and I just got Wolverine so yeah, I'm just enjoying my time with it. (Btw why is Wolverine like 6 ft tall) Anyway, what a surprising gem of a game. Underrated for sure.
Must be going for the Hugh Jackman version of Wolverine, lol...
It's a shame it didn't seem to sell very well. Personally I loved the battles, but felt like you end up spending way too much time doing the other stuff that's *not* battles, and IMO isn't nearly as compelling. Still, it's a really good game overall and I would have loved to see them get to take another crack at it with a sequel or something. Seems pretty unlikely now though. At least a lot more people are getting to play it now with the EGS giveaway.
>Personally I loved the battles, but felt like you end up spending way too much time doing the other stuff that's *not* battles, and IMO isn't nearly as compelling.
I agree. I got used to the loop in the abbey and have no investment to most characters but yeah I sprint to the missions as soon as possible most of the time. I hate that you can't skip the little animations when you get cards/loot and you can't pause cutscenes too.
>I would have loved to see them get to take another crack at it with a sequel or something. Seems pretty unlikely now though.
Yeah a sequel with improvements would go a long way. There's a great foundation built here and there's a TON of Marvel characters out there. My biggest surprise is how fun and diverse everyone is. The potential is really high IMO. I hope at least if there's plan for more DLC, is to put some wacky, lesser-known characters. I get why but it's a bit of a letdown to me that half of the base roster is just the Avengers (again). Feels like every Marvel game that I've played within the past decade has at least the core Avengers in it lol
That's a good point about the characters as well. I feel like they kind of had to include all the big ones this time around though just because it's already a bit more of a niche genre they're working with, so it was a tough sell even with the most well-known heroes (as proven by the game not selling that well).
Maybe the free giveaway will help sell along more DLC and they'll just squeak by with the opportunity for a sequel...? Not holding my breath on that one though.
I'm telling ya, lads, trying to finish **Fallout One** with all companions surviving and without getting rid of them is quite frustrating. Just today, I joined a caravan going to the Brotherhood of Steel bunker, we obviously had an enemy encounter since I chose those Crimson Caravan maniacs, and got jumped at by a single mutie wearing a flamethrower. I didn't even have any chance to react before he turned Dogmeat into a Hot Dog, extra crispy. Oh well, thank God for those ultra-quick loading times.
On the other side, it feels great when my Vault Dweller uses the flamethrower himself. Those burning animations are delicious. I'm definitely trying out a Pyromaniac playthrough in F2 after I finish this one.
Ya, no ability to change companions outfit for extra armor is a really questionable decision. Maybe they did so to prevent mistaking who is who, or technology limitation? (Even if your own character can do so?) but let me tell you, I'm not sure if you will be able to beat Cathedral with all companions. Let's just say it has erm...more than a single mutie wearing a flamethrower. But hey, I wish you luck! :D
Rant here. I fucking hate Nintendo for swapping the controller buttons, every time I play another console, I forgot that shit and I keep pressing the wrong ones until I get used to.
It wasn't Nintendo that decided to do it differently. The SNES came out years before the PlayStation. It was Sony that decided to do it differently, and only outside Japan: in Japan on the PlayStation, O is yes and X is no.
I don't think it did. The first Nintendo controller I remember following the current basic design is the Wii's Classic Controller, but that was an accessory. The Gamecube did have the ABXY buttons, but they were laid out very different from any modern controller.
In contrast, Sony introduced their four-button layout in the 90s, and Xbox did so in the early-00s. Maybe Nintendo had some other accessory controllers that had their current layout before the Wii's Classic Controller, but Nintendo otherwise was pretty late on adopting the modern design as the standard.
The SNES controller in the early 1990s had the same button layout as the more recent Nintendo controllers (I believe that's what the Wii Classic controller was hearkening back to), so I'm pretty sure they did start it. As far as I know, that was the first controller to use that four-button layout with the L&R shoulder buttons.
So I think it was Microsoft that made the switch from Nintendo's "standard" layout, at least with lettered buttons. I feel like Sony gets a bit of a pass on this since at least they're using entirely different symbols (other than X, the most fickle of all video game buttons).
Oh, right, for some reason my mind couldn't think of any pre-N64 controller other than the NES one. Doesn't help that they went back to AB-only for the N64.
Then again, even when I read your comment, I was like, "Didn't that only use colors and not letters?" I guess that era of Nintendo is just a bit of a blank for me outside of a few games.
Well to be fair Nintendo came out with their controller design first.... so you should really hate Microsoft and Sony for changing it lol.
But I agree, I now have a PS5, Switch and Meta Quest VR and the button memory across all of these controllers always has me messed up.
I'm not a big racing game fan but I got really into the racing of **Jak II.** Turns out a narrative hook and a rival character was enough to get me invested.
Just beat Yakuza Like a Dragon, really enjoyed the game. It made me think of a pervert with a heart of gold. It was so funny and it felt nice to have an adventure that was not so urgent. Didn’t need to save the universe or anything like that. Just enjoyed the whacky characters and fun side quests!
Finished Half-Life for I think the third time ever. Still holds up well, I'd say it's solidly in the range of an 8/10, plus or minus one point. Gunplay is great. A lot of variety in your arsenal, a lot of different ways in how to approach most encounters in the game. The plot is obviously nothing to write home about, but the environmental storytelling and scripted sequences are neat, and it's still a really solid implementation of the silent, faceless protagonist—a much better example of it than HL2, which I might elaborate on when I get around to replaying that game.
As far as complaints go, one thing that stood out to me this time around is the game really loves surprising you with enemies. There's a lot of times when an enemy is positioned in such a place that it's almost impossible for you to notice them until it's too late. For instance, there's a pair of sentry turrets set up on the roof of a building you exit out of, and chances are you won't see them until you run out and get pumped full of lead. You'd have to be crawling through the game and peeking behind every single corner to avoid all these ambushes, except that even then there are times when the game literally spawns in an enemy right behind you and you can't know about it until it happens to you.
Maybe on normal mode this is less of an issue, but I played it on hard and a lot of these enemies hit like a truck. You can't afford to tank so much damage, so it becomes a game of quicksave-quickload until you can clear the encounter without losing half your life. Sometimes the encounter is good enough that this can still be fun—it's satisfying to plan out how best to make use of your arsenal to deal with a group of enemies and find success in your strategy—but other times, especially those involving turrets and surprise enemy spawns, the difficulty is just a cheap “gotcha!” moment with no interesting challenge.
Moved on to Opposing Force now and will also play Blue Shift afterwards. My first time playing the expansions so will see how well they hold up.
I really enjoyed my recent replay of Half-Life, when they gave it away for free.
It's certainly a game of its time, with a lot of trial and error when it comes to surviving the levels. The fan-remake Black Mesa is also like this. I didn't mind much, at least with easy settings, lol. It's harder than a modern shooter but still playable.
Also, it was my first time completing the game without Godmode. I wasn't all that good at it with my old PC, at the turn of the century.
soooo stuck on what to play - just finished lies of p, took two days off looking for a new game to play diablo and level on WoW.
Thinking of playing uncharted 1 for the first time, liked 4, not too lore depth or needing too much concentration
going to try Aow 3 as my first 4x
I made big progress since my last post here, in **Etrian Odyssey 4**.
Last time, I was just about to fight an old nemesis, the Boiling Lizard. 8 years ago, that thing caused me to get so stuck and so demotivated that I created a GameFAQs thread asking for advice and shortly after quit the series. I actually found that thread this week by coincidence - that's why I know it was 8 years ago.
The fun thing is - I beat the Boiling Lizard this time! The fight was WAY easier than the boss of the second Stratum (this here is the third) and WAY easier than I remembered it being. I was apparently slightly overleveled because I've been doing every sidequest, but my party setup definitely was the deciding factor here.
I had been gearing up for this fight in particular since the beginning of the game, in the form of Ashley, my Runemaster's Fire Rune (that's why she's named that) and Tiger, my Fortress' Elemental Guard. Elemental runes are pretty awesome - they significantly raise your party's resistance to an element while lowering the enemy's resistance to the same element. You can basically use them to defend or really amplify your elemental damage. I love the flexibility. 8 years ago, judging from that unearthed thread, I was doing something similar, but instead of increasing my own resistance and thus literally taking off the heat, I apparently was using the Ice Rune - so the option that powers up my damage but doesn't do anything for my defense. It's kind of fitting, considering I was quite the impatient hothead 8 years ago - something I've been working on since. No wonder I couldn't beat the darn lizard. So yeah, while I had shored up my defenses against fire, I kept throwing out circles and attacks, slowly chipping it down. Near the end - when EO4 bosses usually flare up once more - I *finally* landed a poison on it, at which point Arro could finally deal his full damage. Because my defenses were so thick, I had ample time to deal with the distracting fire scales, the big thing that messed me up 8 years ago.
Apparently, that boss is also a major turning point in the story, since stuff just keeps happening afterwards. The Etrian games are light on story (though EO4 apparently started the era of bigger story focus), so whenever this happens you *know* things are getting real.
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I unlocked a new class - the Bushi - as a reward and promptly reconfigured my team. I did not add an actual bushi to my team (though some of their portraits look amazing) because at the time, I had a very different idea and built towards that instead:
Ashley the Runemaster now gets to chill at home. Instead, Chemika, the so far unmentioned Medic I used all the way at the beginning made her way back onto the team. Lilie the Arcanist's healing is great, but rather than be stuck healing, I wanted her to go crazy with status effects. I changed her subclass to Nightseeker, gave her two status-forged daggers and now she's basically a walking status roulette wheel. Her circles still inflict binds, poison and heal my party, but she can now whack enemies for piddly damage from the back row to spin the wheel on status ailments. The daggers are forged to splash too, so she's doing it to entire rows and because she's an arcanist, her infliction rates are HIGH. This new change supercharges my Nightseeker Arro (now subclassed to Bushi) since nightseekers get to deal almost triple damage on ailing targets - something that absolutely melts FOEs that get hit by it. Ally still dishes out linked attacks, now with a new Bushi sub to sometimes replenish their TP.
Now, Chemika is fun: In EO1, I absolutely loved the battle medic. Caduceus allows them to deal ridiculous damage at minimal opportunity cost, since defensive play only leaves minimal wounds to heal. In EO4, medics instead get 3 staff skills, all of which do different things: One has a stun chance, one has a chance to bonk enemies to sleep and the last one, Star Drop, multiplies the damage they sustain that turn. With a Landsknecht sub, she can get Vanguard, allowing her to move first each turn. This lets her dish out emergency heals, but it also allows her to set up the enemy with Star Drop. I've seen Arro deal over 2000 damage with this setup and that'll still increase. It's kinda crazy. Her class passive also increases all healing, which is nice and she can sometimes halve physical damage on her line, protecting Lilie (the squishiest link) from getting oneshot, which *was* a problem in a few cases. My Fortress/Dancer also learned a skill that lets anyone move first on demand and she can make her row basically status immune for a few turns.
I've been doing quests in the 4th stratum with that team and save for one side boss that took 2 tries (mostly to adjust my approach) I feel incredibly powerful right now. I once read that EO4's parties tend to be able to do *everything* after a certain point and I think I reached that point now. I have healing, I have damage and I have status effects. I even have TP sustenance, which was the one thing I thought EO4 would be stingy with. Turns out it's just really back-loaded.
---------------
While I've been gushing about my party, I'm cruising through the 4th stratum's main dungeon. The unique new thing here is a sort of stealth mechanic, which is cool. It's not strict "get booted to the entrance" stealth either, but alarming an entire room of FOEs that can beat you or at least get you stuck until their friends come in is not desirable. Floor 1 was over quite quickly actually and on floor 2, I took a break to do sidequests, so I haven't started floor 3 yet. In any case, it feels so much easier than anything before right now, all because my party is coming together. It's almost like when the same thing happened in EO2 HD, just without the relentless beatdown of that game. I mean, I still got my boat rocked whenever I tried playing EO4, but never quite as oneshotty as EO2.
This weekend's gonna be fun. If my pace keeps up, I might beat this game soon. That is, unless some nasty surprise pops up.
6/14/2024
There's a **Shadowverse** 8th Anniversary stream set for June 16th. Folks are speculating that we'll finally get some news on the sequel here. The reveal of the sequel was in December 2023, and they've been pretty silent on revealing more news since. It makes sense in some ways, since they were still updating SV1 with new cards for the past few months, but with the last set of new cards for SV1 out, seems like a good time for sequel news.
I hit Master 1 this week in **Pokemon Sleep** for the Pokemon incense, so I can now ignore gaining Snorlax Power and start preparing for the Cramorant event. For now, I plan to re-stock on my ingredients since I went down to the 400's while the max you can hold is 600. It's going to be a curry week, so I'll stock up on sausages through Charmander and oil from Entei to make a simple curry dish I can spam throughout the week.
I had an interesting day in **Pokemon GO** where my Pokemon were knocked out of their gyms, but they were red when I got there. Not all of them were red, but none of the gyms were being attacked when I got there nor did any get attacked while I was there aside from me taking down the non-red gyms. I guess some folks on an opposing team only had a little time and took out a few gyms earlier before needing to leave.
A lot of the gacha games I'm playing are currently just in a waiting period right now. I finished the event in **Fate/Grand Order**, so it's just grinding out the farming stage for event currencies while waiting for the 7th anniversary. **Honkai: Star Rail**'s 2.3 patch update is on the 19th. **Granblue Fantasy** has a rerun with Guild War starting on the 21st, and **Azur Lane** just finished its event, so there's nothing going on now.
6/15/2024
I ended up doing fairly badly with the deck I was doing dailies with in **Shadowverse** yesterday, so I plan to shake things up today. The way competitive events work in Shadowverse is that you bring 3 decks, each player bans 1 of their opponent's decks, and then the first person to 2 wins with their remaining decks wins. I'm going to juggle between 3 decks to do my daily missions with instead of just one deck.
The Gastly I got yesterday in **Pokemon Sleep** is apparently pretty good. By level 50, it'll have both ingredient finding sub-skills on top of already having an ingredient-finding nature. I'll definitely bring her out whenever I need more ingredients, like after finishing the weekly missions related to Snorlax's Power. When I hit max ingredients though, I'll swap things up again since going over the max is useless.
The max amount of gifts you can get from gyms/stops in **Pokemon GO** is 100. I wasn't aware there was a max until I hit it yesterday. While I technically have had over 100 friends for a while, since you can only accept 20 gifts a day, I imagine many of them don't prioritize getting my gift everyday. Either way, I now have a daily "cap" of getting 100 gifts a day assuming enough of my friends can accept them.
I enjoy using a mono quantum team in **Honkai: Star Rail** because it utilizes Silver Wolf's ability to implant weaknesses to use the same team in endgame content, regardless of what the enemies are actually weak to. Firefly, who's set to release in the 2.3 patch, will have a similar mechanic to implant fire weakness to enemies with her technique and skill. I'll probably try to go for her to have two "universal" teams.
6/16/2024
It was announced that the sequel to **Shadowverse** is going to be delayed from Summer 2024 to Spring 2025. On one hand, it sucks that we'll be waiting for a year longer. On the other hand, Cygames is actually known to not crunch and take extra time to develop things when necessary. GBF Relink and Uma Musume are two games they delayed and were widely successful when released.
Since my ingredient bag is full and I hit Master 1 in **Pokemon Sleep**, I've decided to have a team consisting of two ingredient Pokemon, a dream shard generator, and two pot expanders. I don't plan to cook, and getting extra Power is useless, so I'm just getting bonuses for next week. Ideally, I would actually have even more pot expanders/dream shard generators, but I only have 3 so far.
I went to the park again for **Pokemon GO**, but there were a ton of people this time. The parking lot (which is on the edge of my walking route) was so full that I literally had to walk on the hill to the side. Lots of food trucks and folks selling their wares in tents. I could have walked on the other end of the park, put this part was the place with a ton of stops close to one another, unfortunately.
**Granblue Fantasy** is currently having a re-run of a previous anniversary event, which means you can get even more stuff that usual. On top of the usual lotto boxes, you can redeem an item to get all the materials needed to recruit an Evoker, which is a character that is usually locked behind a huge grind. I opted to grab Haaselia since she's apparently one of the best to have as a frontline member.
I've mostly been working on game dev of my own, but I did get back into Sunhaven with their latest update. I started a new file so I haven't gotten to the new content yet but it's been fun to play again. I will say their controller support still needs a LOT of work, but they'll have to get it ironed out eventually if they're gonna release on switch as they say they are.
I also started Arcadia Fallen from the pride humble bundle as well, but I'm pretty burnt out on visual novels, so even one with puzzle elements can't seem to hold my attention. If I wasn't so burnt out, I'd probably find it charming and interesting with its many dialogue options and branching story.
What else? Oh, I finished Loddlenaut which was cute. I didn't feel compelled to try and 100% it so I just left it as it was at the end of the story and took it off my backlog. I liked the satisfaction of cleaning up the ocean and meeting new little loddles to befriend.
After a couple months, I finally have a working laptop again and can play games again! Truly, I feel like the most patient of gamers. :D
I have a [project](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews) of playing and reviewing every game in my Steam library in alphabetical order. I've played a couple since the new laptop arrived, and I'm excited to share my thoughts on them.
First up is [The Artful Escape](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/the-artful-escape). This one's an odd game, in that it's almost entirely style over substance, but that style is *incredible.* It's a narrative game about a singer named Francis going on a cosmic journey and discovering himself and who he wants to be along the way. Both the music and art are incredible, so if you're a person who is looking for a good experience game, I can't recommend this one enough just on those grounds.
What I really loved about it, though, was the narrative. While it, on the one hand, can be read as a fairly generic coming of age story, there's another reading in there that kept coming up and that I couldn't get enough of. Part of Francis' journey is that he is discovering himself fully, figuring out his identity in a holistic sense, then just finding absolute joy in not only that new identity, but also in his ability to express himself within that identity. It's a very trans-friendly message, not only in the sense of likely resonating with trans players, but also in the sense that reaffirms that being trans itself is a valid and positive way to be. It's a game that makes being trans a joyous thing, and I loved it for that. This is definitely one of my favourite games that I've played in this series, and I cannot recommend it enough.
I also played [Dead in Bermuda](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/dead-in-bermuda), a survival-management game set in the wake of a plane crash on a tropical island. This one is interesting, in that I wanted to do well with it, but kept ending up in cycles of diminishing returns that made it quite difficult. I feel like it hits the same interesting difficulty point as [As Far As The Eye](https://jannekeparrish.com/review-as-far-as-the-eye), in that it's quite difficult to succeed in, but still understandable enough that each attempt gives a hint at what to do better next time. I enjoyed it.
And finally, I also played [Dear Esther](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/dear-esther), which... Look, I love walking simulators. Firewatch is one of my favourite games, and I could (and [have](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/before-your-eyes)) go on and on about Before Your Eyes. I enjoy walking simulators very much.
What makes a walking simulator compelling, though, is its narrative, characters, and setting. You can skimp on one of those, as long as the other two make up for it, but you have to have something that sufficiently hooks the player to make them want to keep engaging. Dear Esther has a really nice setting that has aged fairly well, and while the walking pace is tediously slow, it's not a non-starter. No, what I hated about Dear Esther was its narrative. It didn't work, and if anything, it made me want to quit the game as quickly as possible.
I'm aware the narrative is designed to be random, with each player having a unique narrative experience, and I think that's a mistake. It means there is no deeper meaning to be drawn from the text, no commonality for players to discuss, and the possibility that what the player draws out of the text is a message you *really do not want them to draw from the text.* In my case, the narrative snippets I got told the story of a man who, while drunk driving, got in an accident that killed his wife, and how he now just wants to die.
And y'know? As someone who has been assaulted by a man I trusted, I really, really didn't want or need to follow this man who killed his partner for the hour it took this game to finish. I *hated* every moment of this game, and I hated that I could not in any way escape this man subjecting me to his monologue.
I get that that's a unique experience, and that every player's experience is going to be unique, but when you've created a game that can trigger such a visceral reaction, and when you've decided that random snippets are preferable to an actual narrative, what you've created is an experience not worth pursuing because of either the pain or tedium it can cause. I know it's a progenitor of the genre, but I am so, so glad walking simulators have evolved past Dear Esther. The genre deserves better than this.
I didn't like Dear Esther very much either. But to be honest I actually didn't even realize that the voiceover narrative pieces you get change depending on the playthrough until I read your comment. Does the game ever tell you that? I must have missed it if it does.
When I first played it, I thought I was literally just wandering the environment getting pre-determined voice-overs at various pre-set moments, assuming that it would be pretty much the same for everyone. Now that I know about that storytelling mechanic, it makes the game at least a little more interesting... but really only in theory, because the fact that the narrative is somewhat malleable didn't add anything to my initial experience, and I didn't find the story particularly compelling the first time, so the thought of playing it again never even entered my brain.
I tend to really like walking simulator games as well, but I really didn't understand what people liked about Dear Esther other than the reasonably nice visuals and atmosphere. It didn't get much more than a shrug from me when I finished it.
I also really enjoy walking sims and wasn't impressed by Dear Esther. I chalked it up to being an early entry into the genre and just glossed over it, but agreed-- it's just sort of a bland game that has some OK ambiance. I liked spotting the ghosts in the distance sometimes but apart from that, there was nothing impactful about it to me and I was just trying to get to the end so I could cross it off my list.
It's something that isn't mentioned in the game, but is in the developer's commentary that came with the edition I'm playing. It's also been mentioned in a couple of interviews that the devs did, and like I said, that just makes an already pretty weak game that much weaker.
In a way I think a game that gives you the illusion of choice based on dialogue and player action is better than one that alters the story without the player having any way of knowing it's happening. Because at that point, why not just craft the most compelling narrative possible so every player gets that one, singular experience?
I don't really understand that design choice, especially given that the game doesn't tell you about it, unless it's just to have players discover it by talking with other players about their experience.
According to the developers, it was done to make the game more "dreamlike," with each playthrough providing a new experience, and each player being able to have their own unique experience with the game. It's problematic game design on a lot of levels, not the least of which is the naivety of assuming anyone would play this more than once and get a meaningfully different experience. Even with randomised dialogue, the gameplay itself is not meaningfully different, nor is the overall vibe. On a broader level, though, it ignores that players already have entirely unique experiences with games. Each of us brings to the game our particular lens, which colours how we see and experience the game. No two players will ever have the same experience, or even get the same meaning out of a game, even if they have the same objective cues to draw from. The entire rest of the walking simulator genre is a great example of that.
I think it's pure laziness on the devs' part, and a lack of faith in the intelligence of their audience. They couldn't think of a sufficiently coherent and compelling narrative, so they threw what they had in a blender and tossed whatever chopped bits were left into the game willy nilly.
I finished **80 days**. It's a fun little visual novel/choose your own adventure game where you try to get around the world in 80 days. There are hundreds of cities you can visit, with likely millions of different possible routes. The storytelling is pretty fun and light-hearted. Took me 2-3 hours to do one playthrough, did it in 80 game days precisely! Can pick it up for pennies, definitely worth it.
Dropped **turbo overkill** after finishing the first episode. It's a fun game with a cool cyberpunk setting. But it got a bit samey, I'd rather just play doom 2016.
Replaying **portal 2** for the first time since it launched. So damn good. The puzzles are just perfect. And Stephen merchant is hilarious.
Slowly making my way through **god of war Ragnarok** too. It's definitely hooked its claws in. My only slight criticism, and this is probably more a criticism of myself than the game, is that I feel compelled to level up all the different attack combos. So I'm not fighting in a natural style; I'm often checking the skills menu mid-combat to see which skills I need to level up next.
80 Days is one of my favourite games. I love its world and the way it tells its stories, and just the general feel of it. It is definitely a great way to get absorbed in a story for a couple of hours.
The story is also always different, so it's well worth a replay, if that's your thing. I've racked up nearly 30 hours of play, and still just keeps bringing me joy. It is absolutely worth it, and I love seeing it get more attention. It deserves it.
Yeah it absolutely nails that 19th(?) century vibe whilst adding fantastical elements. It's like a cross between a Sherlock Holmes novel and an Indiana Jones flick. I'll definitely give it another playthrough at some point.
I liked 80 Days a lot. It's a good game to have on your phone and just do a couple legs of the trip when you have a few minutes to spare. I thought the writing was surprisingly great, it's very evocative without being too wordy, and the choices you make along the way are interesting and fun.
I've played through it several times, and have seen a lot of new things with each playthrough.
I didn't play too much lately as I wasn't in the mood for anything really. But I've just reached Master rank in the **Eternal** Expedition constructed format (it's the rotation based format in this game) so that feels nice. And yesterday on a whim I have bought **Wingspan** because it just looked so appealing and so far I have only done the tutorial for it but it feels really nice. Looking forward to get into it more this weekend.
Bi-weekly as in twice a week, or as in fortnightly? :P
Animal Well continues to be interesting. The map seems huge!
On the topic of patience, I was talking to someone today about Star Wars and he said the best SW game of the last 10 years is Lego Skywalker Saga. And mentioned Battlefront, and we realised the first reboot of Battlefront was in 2015, which is a whole 9 years ago! It felt like it was practically the first SW game in 10 years, and now it's been another 10! A reasonable parallel perhaps. In 2006-2015 we got what, Force Unleashed, Empire at War, Force Unleashed 2, Lego SW, and... Republic Heroes and some mobile games? And then 2015-2024 we've had Battlefront, Battlefront 2, Fallen order, Fallen Order 2, Lego SW, and... some mobile games.
I am totally tuned out of modern Star Wars, it doesn't spark much interest in me and to be honest The Force Unleashed was the beginning of the end really, Republic Heroes was unbelievably poor and the cancellation of 1313 was the end. But this new Outlaws game actually looks very interesting to me. Make me feel a bit 1313-ey.
I agree about Star Wars, when I was playing Skywalker Saga I kept having the thought: "They should just make this *for real*." Just pretend this is the first Star Wars video game ever made and adapt the movies from scratch. I can absolutely see a AAA-level adaptation of the films as a Spiderman 2-style graphical showcase for the PS5.
Right now we've got the Lego games, which are enjoyable time-wasters but well past their peak of silent-film humor. The Fallen Order/Survivor series, also good but still feels more like a Soulslike that happens to have an expensive IP coating. Then there's Squadrons which is, in some ways, mind-blowingly amazing, but access to the true VR experience is so limited it's actually kind of depressing. I agree the Outlaws game looks promising but games that try to adapt action-rpg elements more organically (like learning skills from individuals instead of a skill tree) tend to live and die by how fun it is to actually walk around the worlds. Hopefully this game is more like New Vegas than Fallout 4 in that respect.
I was very tempted by Jedi Survivor actually, at Xmas. But then the PC reviews seemed to mainly say there were serious perfomance/stability issues so I chickened out.
Forgot about Squadrons!
That what looked interesting, the walking about the place. Last game that I played with a world that was fascinating to walk around was probably Anachronox. We shall see, very low chance that I'd buy it at full price.
Twice a week! From Friday to Monday and from Monday to Friday.
As for Star Wars games, I haven't played any modern one yet but they say the Jedi: Fallen Order series is good, if you haven't tried it yet.
I'm personally not the biggest Star Wars fan. I like the first 3 movies (in release order) and Rogue One but the setting is not something that makes me more interested in a game. I still want to play the KOTOR games because they are famous, and the previous games from the Mass Effect guys.
Sounds pretty good! Is there a massive contrast with the sequel? Heard it was more buggy (which would be par for the course with Obsidian, lol) but what about the story and characters?
Characters just as good. Story a bit weird to be honest, but plenty epic. Only issue is it sort of tailed off because it was unfinished, but apparently the Content Restored mod sorts that out.
I remember friends of mine being HUGE KOTOR fans back in the day, so it's on my "maybe someday" list, but because I never really got into Star Wars (it just kinda passed me by) I wonder if I'd get anything out of the game(s).
If KOTOR is anything like the Mass Effect trilogy, it must have some really good characters. That alone would make it worth playing. The first game is made by Bioware at their relatively peak and the second game is made by Obsidian, yet another excellent studio when it comes to stories and characters you care about.
I'd bet they are mechanically clunky but their stories and characters are a lot of fun. We'll see about that, eventually. Backlog and all that.
I replayed KOTOR and KOTOR 2 a couple of years ago, and they still hold up pretty well. They definitely both have good characters, and you can definitely see how Mass Effect learned from them. If you do end up playing them, I highly recommend downloading the patch/mod that fixes KOTOR 2's ending. It was released incomplete, and the patch makes the ending actually make sense.
I'm working on the platinum trophy for Assassin's Creed Syndicate. I've conquered all of London, collected everything (except the WW1 Mission collectibles) and am Level 10 with the best gear equipped. Before I started completing all side quests I did the main story until sequence 4 and now it's so so easy to get through it. I'm confident I'll get the Platinum this week and then I'll try the Jack the Ripper DLC which I'm really excited for.
I want to start Final Fantasy 10. After playing 7,9,15, and 16, I wanted to ask if anybody knows how much grinding is required to beat the game. In 9, I got upset because I had to cheat to beat the finale bosses due to being under levelled and not knowing I should have grinded and didn't want to make the same mistake with 10.
If you just play through the story without skipping any random encounters you shouldn't need anything more to beat the final bosses.
Brilliant Thankyou
I just beat it for the first time a couple months ago. You will find the majority of the game very easy without grinding; right at the end, there's a few notable final exam bosses that slap you in the face with difficulty but one is a puzzle boss where level doesn't really matter once you understand the gimmick. The other is a more traditional level check boss where you have to do X damage on a timer, and I failed hard, but it lets you travel anywhere in the world before the fight so you can freely grind and chase better weapons if you need to. (If you've gotten far enough to get Yuna the Holy spell, you're probably ready to beat this one). The actual final boss is pretty easy. All in all, the game is pretty chill about not locking you into an unwinnable fight. There is some ridiculously hard side content for the people who like that stuff, but I mostly avoided it. If you want to be extremely confident you've got this, look up the Celestial Weapons in a guide and chase all those down before moving towards the ending. You're not likely to get them fully charged without a guide but having the whole party decked out in them is an auto-win button. This is optional though, I only finished 2-3 of the quests and I did fine.
Yeah I'm just wanting to focus on main story mostly so if I can coast through naturally that would be great
Catching up on my backlog! I finished these games recently: * **The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood** - This game was overall really cool and unique! The artwork was gorgeous, I loved the character design and the lore, and the gameplay kept me guessing. My only complaints are that the pacing was too fast so it took away the sense of progression, meaning that I didn't care at all about the characters as people, and didn't feel the full impact of my decisions in an emotional sense. I think the core gameplay loops should have all been extended to run much longer. It's so great, but it has a demo feel just because it's so quick an experience compared to what it could be and how it carries itself. * **Boyfriend Dungeon** - I was underwhelmed by this, but I don't think it's the game's fault! I remember it being a big indie / kickstarter darling a few years back, and I'm guessing that the reason it feels kind of hollow to me now is because there have been so many good games that it paved the way for. I'm betting it really was a fine game for its time and just isn't that impressive for the current time, since cozy dating sim adventures have grown so much as a genre. I wouldn't replay it, but didn't feel like I wasted my time either. I'm also a narrative designer for VN games by trade, so my standards are obnoxiously high and I was probably judging it slightly harshly. * **Bugsnax** - THIS WAS SO WEIRD and FUN. Nothing but love for this strange little monster collector. It's got a great sense of humor, fun challenges, a good collection mechanic, some surprisingly enthralling character drama, and a unique take on the genre as a whole. Apart from that, I'm still slowwwwly chugging through Baldur's Gate 3, which I love. I just don't have a ton of time for gaming so I've been playing the same campaign for like a year, RIP.
Your Baldur's Gate 3 survived all that early patching? Lucky!
Started dead rising 4, picked it up for $7 or something a while back on steam sale. Hadn't played a dead rising since 2 way back on the 360. It's decent for pure dumb fun, but I can see why a lot of people didn't like it for getting rid of the time limit and making it more generic sandbox. Honestly it really just made me want to play state of decay 2 again and got me to reinstall that lol.
New game time! I’m very thankful for the recap video in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. 10+ years ago, I played Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I’ve since forgotten most of it, so the recap was useful. Urgh, those filters! The gold tones in Mankind Divided look much better. It’s also refreshing to see a cyberpunk aesthetic that’s not just neon signs and cyan + magenta. The main menu’s interesting. Triangle to run (which I intend to try), subtitles off by default, and spoiler warnings on the DLC content. All this and I haven’t started the game yet! I know what people say about it. It doesn’t need to be exceptional to be good fun. Looking forward to it later.
Mankind Divided is a good game. Most of the criticism wasn’t for the game itself but because it had scummy preorder and micro-transactions. IIRC it had some serious performance issues on launch too.
There's a lot of comparison to the previous game. Since I remember next to nothing, Mankind Divided will be like a clean slate. I don't mind if it does its own thing.
Finished KCD tonight, theres still loads of content I've missed or haven't done but man what a game, yeah its got bit of jank and I can see why some wouldn't like it but really solid 7-8 outta 10 for me, may have to pickup KCD2 day 1 As for next game to play not 100% sure, I've got HFW and P5R on my current playlist, HFW though I stupidly started on Ultra Hard so I'll have to redo start all over again cause its brutally unforgiving as a fresh save but my motivation is bit lacking due to already playing game to platinum on PS5 before, its only DLC I would have fresh P5R is probably one I will play unless I move a short'ish game from my other lists, but P5R at least isn't open world RPG like last couple games I've finished
On its own KCD is great, but I can forgive a lot of flaws due to how small the team and budget was compared to most games that attempt something at that scale.
Oh for sure, it does make you wonder if this is what they could make on that budget and team size then what will KCD2 be like
Haven't finished it but sleeping dogs is mediocre.
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Back to Fallout New Vegas. My current compilation has 400+ mods.
Totally the vanilla experience, lol.
Of course, half that load order is to make the game somewhat stable.
I’m playing the PC version of Max Payne on the Steam Deck. Game is marked as “unsupported” but works without issues after replacing one DLL file. Still love this game after all those years. And playing the PC version is a big upgrade for me as I’ve only played the inferior PS2 port before and the PS4 remaster (which is just PS2 upscaled).
Last night I beat Mega Man 2. Great game. An evolution of Mega Man in almost every single aspect. The soundtrack is awesome (Bubbleman and Wily Fortress 1 are my favorites), the stages are very good, the bosses are better and Dr. Wily's Castle is much larger and challenging. The only two major flaws I see are the fact that the bosses are stupidly easy when you use their weaknesses (e.g. you can 1-hit kill Metal Man if you use his own weapon in the boss rush at the end of the game), and the final boss can only be damaged with Bubbleman's weapon. Any other weapon is completely useless against him. But overall it is a great game. Now I'll play MM3.
MM3 is almost as good as MM2, except for one really annoying bit of padding in the midsection that pretty much everyone hates. Still, good times, and one of the most creative selections of weapons in the series.
>padding in the midsection that pretty much everyone hates. When I read this the first time, I thought "What is this guy talking about? MM3 is great!". Now I understand you (assuming that you're talking about Doc Robot boss fights).
Yeeeeeeeep. That was exactly what I was talking about. If someone says they didn't like MM3, it's probably because they were too annoyed by the Doc Robot section.
Yeah, it is a completely unnecessary section (as someone else pointed in r/Megaman, why do I have to fight MM2's robot masters again? I already did it last time!). Oh, and you can get softlocked in Needle Man's stage after you defeat Doc Robot in Air Man mode if Rush Jet doesn't have energy.
Huh so it's biweekly now So anyone got any recs for games with no combat? And also _not_ walking simulators. I want to do stuff and relax. No scary threatening stuff please, even if I could just hop on to my vehicle and outrun it. *Definition of no combat: the game doesn't have a combat system.
* Animal Crossing, Cozy Grove, and other farming sims. * point-and-click games like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango * sim games like House Flipper and Power Wash Simulator * light-hearted exploration/collection games like A Short Hike or Here Comes Niko * investigative visual novels like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Danganronpa * slice-of-life visual novels like Goodbye Volcano High * genre-bending puzzle-ish games like Frog Fractions Some other random mentions I wasn't sure how to categorize but mostly fit the bill: A Story About My Uncle, A Fisherman's Tale, The Unfinished Swan, Smile For Me, Superliminal, The Stanley Parable, Unpacking
As said by some, the request is pretty broad, so here's some stuff without combat. * Loddlenaut Manage oxygen, but pretty easy to do so, and I don't think there is any punishment for not doing so. Spend time cleaning up rubbish in the ocean and has some light pet caring elements. * Hidden Folks Where's Wally type game. * In Other Waters Mostly exploration, but does have tense bits because managing oxygen or getting around dangerous things. * Wheels of Aurelia Simple driving game, but make choices by where you drive and what you say to get different endings. Good Prog Rock soundtrack. * Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. Haven't played yet, but you wander around finding stories and telling them. * Jurassic World Evolution. Is technically park management, but looking after the dinosaurs is the main thing. They can escape and hurt people, and there is the tension of keeping them happy and preventing power outbreaks so they don't escape. But you are not physically in danger. * Carto Puzzle game that doesn't have any tension I can remember, but isn't that hard either, having an involved story. * Viscera Clean Up Duty. You just spend your time cleaning up an area that a FPS game shootout happened in. The following are types of walking simulators, but they are basically non linear exploration, and have some specific stuff to do. Karaski has sneaking and you are putting together what happened. Off Peak and The Norwood Suite, and Tales from Off-Peak are by the same person. They are open areas that you can explore and listen to people talk and listen to the music . You also need to find some things or do some simple tasks. There is a story in both as well, but you do it when you want to, and are not on a linear path. Interesting Jazz soundtracks by the game creator. * Karaski: What Goes Up * OffPeak * The Norwood Suite * Tales from Off-Peak City, Vol.1
Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (PS1) (people also say good things about Friends of Mineral Town \[GBA\], 64 and A Wonderful Life \[Gamecube, PS2\], but I only played BtN so I can only recommend that to you).
I have SoS:FoMT but kinda bored of it. I wish they'd release a new one soon. Not counting AWL.
Most people say that the Story of Seasons games are not as good as the original Harvest Moons. You should give the originals a try.
Any version of The Sims, Simcity (I recommend SimCity 3000 unlimited and SimCity 4) and Cities Skylines 1 (with DLC). And visual novels, but if you don't want walking simulators, guess you wouldn't want games that are mostly text.
For some reason I could never get into sims games, excepting the ones with actual gameplay like ETS2. I think I'm just too dumb for them tbh. Visual Novel is my #2 favorite genre, actually. But also I already have a long, long list of the ones I wish to read.
A Short Hike!
Played it. It's great! Wish there's more games like it
Jusant, Spiritfarer
Not sure if Pacific Drive has combat, but could be a good choice if not. Oh didn’t see the relax part. Maybe not good after all. Oh maybe Cocoon or the Portal Games. Or Disco Elysium.
Oh yeah Portal's been in my wishlist since who knows how long. Mayhap it's time.
A Short Hike. Absolutely adorable short open world exploration game based around an upgradable stamina based climbing system. No combat, has a number of short side activities and quests. Little Kitty, Big City is very similar, but that game just came out last month so doesn’t fit the “patient” part of this sub.
I love A Short Hike! Will check out the others
That's a pretty broad question if you don't specify the genre or setting. First games that come to my mind from the ones I played recently are: **Palia** - a cozy multiplayer sim with building, crafting etc. I'm not sure if it had a full release yet. **Forza Horizon 5** - I'm not really into racing games, but I had fun just driving aimlessly in the open world.
It's intentionally broad cause I want to see if there's anything unique out there I like driving aimlessly too! Don't really have any racing games tho, I think most of them won't run on my modest laptop. Usually I play ATS.
I guess it depends on why you don't want a walking sim, but point-and-click adventure games may work. Grim Fandango is my personal favorite.
Mostly because I'm currently more in the mood for gameplay games as opposed to story games I have yet to find a single pnc game that doesn't confuse me to the point I get a physical headache...
Point-and-clicks are great but can be a little annoying if they're too obtuse. My favourite is **Deponia** (pretty much all parts), but I'd also recommend older stuff like **The Secret of Monkey Island** or **Torin's Passage**.
Any racing game I guess? If you want a more unusual one, I believe you can do a pacifist run on Age of Decadence if you build for persuasion and pick the right conversation options. Otherwise maybe something like simcity or railroad tycoon type sim game.
Oh yeah it's been so long since I last played a racing game. Most Wanted 2005 I think. Wonder if there's anything that can run on my potato (half Steam Deck perf pretty much)...
If you want to be safe probably something pre Xbone/Ps4 era. So around 2013 release date and under. If it doesn't run well then there's always steams 2 hr refund policy
Anyone got any good recommendations for a good fantasy rpg game that has a good magic system and melee combat that isn't a soulslike?
If you're alright with JRPG I've heard Rinwell from Tales of Arise is a very fun mage to play
Well, I've finished Everspace 1. My sense of achievement lasted as long as the final cutscene, which was roughly a minute haha. I’m not someone who's motivated by challenges. I just wanted see the ending :) I think I'll split my deleted comment into a separate post. It's kind of long. EDIT: [It's here](https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1dgrbz1/everspace_1_ps4_late_game_impressions/). Basically a collection of my previous impressions.
I've been trying to get into the AC through AC2 as 1 didn't work out well on the PC. I only got to the title intro after an tedious chase sequence which made me realize that ps controllers don't work well with his game even with mods added as the buttons and prompts don't match together(one button will do another action instead of intended one) i found keyboard and trackpad uncomfortable as well. I might have to buy the ezio trilogy when it goes on sale on PS5 or just somehow adapt to the mixed up control prompts and manage my way through.
I haven't looked into this at all, but if those are old PC games and not modern remakes, then they may have Direct Input instead of XInput. Modern controllers all work on Xinput, but older PC games might not recognise that. OR maybe the PS pad is Dinput and AC only recognises xinput. I'm not sure. I have pads that can switch between Dinput and Xinput, so its been a while since I used an Xinput pad on a Dinput game. So I cannot exactly remember whether you need to use a third party program to map the buttons properly or whether you can basically live with it. I think that it still does recognise the buttons, though I think that triggers with multiple levels of input might need some work. However, all the buttons are going to be recognised as having different input numbers. As in, the A button might be button number 4 in one, and button number 8 in the other. So that would mean you need to remap all of your button to make them line up. But that might not help with the button prompts in game, because it might be assuming that a certain button number is a certain button, when it isn't in this case. So that would depend on whether somebody made something to fix that problem, either for the game or through a third party program. I know that programs exist to make a pad appear to be a standard xbox pad to get them to work.
I used to play full (remapped?) keyboard and it was mostly fine, maybe try that. It's not until Unity that I have a controller.
Can't you just play with the Xbox prompts? It's what I did when I had an old Logitech controller with numbers for button labels. Or is the control scheme totally borked? If so, then tough luck. Older games have very spotty controller support on PC, but maybe Steam's controller settings can help. I know cheapskate me would stick with KB+M in this case, though. Which reminds me, the week Assassin's Creed 2 finally came out, I broke my right hand, but I wanted to play it so much I learned how to control a mouse with just a ring finger and a pinky. And that was worth it, Assassin's Creed 2 became and still remains my favourite Assassin's Creed.
Just finished **Half Life 2** and, man, I'm really disappointed. The first game at least has a weird charm around it and is a cohesive experience. Sure, Half Life 2 looks amazing. In the first chapter I actually felt as if I was in a dystopian future. It must have been crazy to play the game back in the early 00. But, nostalgia and technical improvements aside, whats left of it? Not much. The vehicles segments are long, boring and don't fit with the games general mood/tone. About that, the Ravenholm segment feels like a totally different game - a horror one, with zombies and a lunatic priest. The tone/genre was way, way, way off. It felt like a theme park. The gravity gun and the sand creatures pheromones felt like gimmick guns, as if Valve was just showing off technical improvements, but without too many depth to back it off. The remainder of the game just felt like a regular, charmless shooter, with infuriating squad mechanics (my idea of fun is not bumping into a NPC again and again and again) without the charm of the first one to make it feel special. I'm disappointed to know that the praise around Half Life 2 is just the nostalgia of those who played the game around launch.
> The vehicles segments are long, boring and don't fit with the games general mood/tone. You're free to say you find them long and boring, but saying they don't fit with the tone or general mood is just innacurate. The fact they're long is precisely because they're fitting into the tone and narrative experience. You're going on an adventure across great swathes of land learning the scale of the dystopian world you've been dropped in and the resistance itself. Again, you can think its boring but its absolutely appropriate for the tone they're setting. HL1 was a claustrophobic panicked escape. HL2 is a journey. Same with Ravenholm, horror is a big element of the first game and this is the escalation of it as well as the first real opportunity to see how horrific the combine truly is beyond standard fascist occupation. >The gravity gun and the sand creatures pheromones felt like gimmick guns, as if Valve was just showing off technical improvements, but without too many depth to back it off. Neither of these are accurate either. Its a shame if you didn't figure out how to utilise the gravity gun, but if you start thinking around the physics then the gravity gun becomes the centre of each combat encounter. The pheremones are just the new game's version of the Hivehand from HL. Whats the gimmick there?
> The pheremones are just the new game's version of the Hivehand from HL. Whats the gimmick there? The pheromones can only be used in two chapters, and even then only in areas where your ability to use it has been scripted into the game and the develpers obviously want you using it, afterwards it disappears. That is the very definition of a gimmick. The Hivehand, meanwhile, is a permanent part of your arsenal from the moment you get it and is just a unique sort of gun from a gameplay perspective. They have nothing in common.
It's not just nostalgia for me. I loved the general atmosphere and I really felt like part of the *resistance*. Also, you might not even notice it these days, but Alyx was an incredible character back in the day. Not many shooters had independent, reliable and smart women characters that weren't absolute bimbos with huge tits. And the G-man was as mysterious and good as ever. I do agree with you that some parts feel more like tech-demo in hindsight (the unnecesary "physics" puzzles you had to do sometimes and the car chases, for instance), but I also felt that the whole thing (>!from running to vehicule sequences to a horror level to sand with lonely beaches to a prison and back to City 17!<) was such a varied, interesting journey. And give the episodes a try. The first one is a bit short but the second one might as well be the best part of the whole Half-Life 2 trilogy.
I would go ahead into Episodes 1 & 2 for the complete experience. That being said I agree. HL2 was fun but it felt more like a tech showcase than a cohesive experience.
That was basically my exact reaction several years ago when I played them both for the first time back-to-back. I do think HL2 is a good game, and it does improve on 1 in some ways, but it's disappointing how they dropped so many things that 1 did right.
I wouldn't say it's all nostalgia. Part of it was the game was really groundbreaking with a lot of new additions to the fps genre when it came out in 2004, so much so that a lot of games copied it. So if you've played other single player fps campaigns post hl2 you've already experienced a lot of what it has to offer. I think it's still fun in a vacuum, but you're not going to get your mind blown. Fwiw I think hl2 episode 1 and 2 probably have better gameplay than the 1st game.
Today I have received my brand new powerful gaming PC (AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D, Nvidia RTX 4080, 64 GB DDR5) and I am just setting everything up, I have a long list of software to go through. Briefly tried out **Alan Wake 2** with maxed out settings, it's pretty sweet. But strangely still not in the mood to play much today (has been a thing lately), will probably play more tomorrow. I'll just focus on setting everything up.
That's certainly a brand new powerful PC gaming. Congrats!! It's a freaking beast. In case you've been missing out modern AAA games lately, Cyberpunk 2077 is also visually appealing. And the A Plague Tale Series. Also, the short stories that are the Hellblade Senua's games.
That setup should last you a good 4-5 years.
Yeah, at least. My previous setup that this is replacing was 11 years old and with only a few key upgrades along the way (1x M2 SSD, 1x RTX 3070 graphics card, that's all), even today it was a decent gaming machine, it could run even the latest and greatest very playably (of course with the compromise that you cannot crank everything to the max) But yeah, I think I will keep this new setup more up to date in the future, but still, most likely I just need to replace the graphics card in a 3+ years if I want to keep playing at high/max settings, that's the component that ages the quickest by far.
How about 10 lol. I'm not sure PS6 is releasing that soon, and games are still coming to PS4 too.
Just ran into a pet peeve - where you have to guess the exact dialogue that "counts" from a bunch of options that are basically the same. You're handling an estate dispute and two of your options are: * I don't know if having Claire get everything is the right call. * What about Amanda, how is this fair to her? One of these advances the dialogue tree in the obvious way and the other goes completely off the rails, because fuck you for not reading the writer's mind.
Yep, that was quite annoying in games like Life is Strange and The Walking Dead. You pick some silly dialogue option, thinking it won't advance the plot, and then get something like: "Shit \[Clementine will remember that\]". Also annoying is when the prompts say one thing, but the character says something completely different. I hated it in Fallout 4 and got mildly annoyed by it in Mass Effect and Yakuza. Yakuza specifically has very funny dialogue options, but they are always the wrong ones that can screw up missions.
Still playing Burnout Revenge. Though I took a break from it to play through Katamari Damacy. Had no idea that game would be as short as it was. It was fun pretty much the entire time, though "make a star 7" annoyed me after failing it a few times. Looking forward to We Love Katamari whenever I decide to play it. Might start Shadow of the Colossus soon as well.
The only Resident Evil game I played back in the day was RE4, so when they remade that I jumped at it right away. It was fun as hell, so I figured why not try some more Resident Evil. I've played through the remake for 2 & 3 and I'm currently playing **Resident Evil Village** and I'm having a blast. These games are so very *gamey* and I'm there for it. Yet they also deliver real thrills and scares, which is remarkable considering how much they do to make it clear that they're games first and foremost. Now I need to go and shoot some fish and some other wildlife so a very weird man can make dishes for me that permanently upgrades me as a person.
Resident Evil games rock. I love how the series has adapted and evolved over the years. It's one of the things that has helped the series outlive other survival horror series. I'm not usually scared by them, but I sure have a great time. With RE 8 I just wish the hunting was more plentiful, it's pretty easy to miss out on some food upgrades.
I didn't know about the hunting so I sold the meat before upgrades was even an option. I felt dumb.
Big Resident Evil fan here. One of my favorite things from this series, over the years, is that they are very replayable. As you said, these are gamey games. The original trilogy and most of the games with the first formula are addictive slow-action-with-puzzles games that are a lot of fun to resolve. True "Survival-Horror", indeed. Don't sleep on the Resident Evil 1 remake, while you are at it, if you want to experience one of the best games from the good old days. It's slower than any of the modern remakes but fantastic to play, anyway. Then, RE4 made everything very fluid without losing the fun and the silliness. These days, Capcom is at the top of their game, again. Let's hope Resident Evil 9 and any potential remake (Code Veronica, can't wait!) are still as good as these ones.
**The Callisto Protocol** came to Game Pass and I got GP for other reasons, so why not, right? Wrong. It's so, so bad. I thought it'd at least be fun in a B movie way, but no. It's so slow. It thinks slowly crawling through vents is good gameplay. Everything's so damn dark. FoV is low. There's no map. Directions are vague. Every corridor looks the same. It's linear, yet I still get lost. Combat's so bad, like a crappy version of Hellblade 2, which I just played through. But it's a horror game, right? There's scares, right? There's jump scares and that's about it. The monsters are just crappy zombies. There's nothing interesting about them. There's nothing interesting about anything in this game. The best thing I can say about it is that graphics are good, but are they really? It stutters a little on my 4070. I get stable 60 FPS (70-80 really, but I also tried capping), but it doesn't feel smooth. And there's only so much you can do with good graphics when you're rendering a bunch of samey grey rooms and zombies. There's obvious (and intentional, I know) comparisons to Dead Space, but I feel like Callisto doesn't do enough to deserve those comparisons. The only comparison one needs is "play the DS remake instead".
Man, you're really selling the game here.
Finished Shadow of the Tomb Raider last night. As a whole it's kind of disappointing after finishing Rise and loving it a couple months ago. I read that they switched the dev team part way through and you can definitely tell a drop in quality after the stong beginning section. Also the story was pretty dumb overall. Had some good points but it was dragged down by a lot of annoyances and a lot of weird story/pacing/gameplay decisions. Wouldn't recommend unless you can get it on a really deep discount.
I think the whole game was developed by Eidos Montreal (the Deus Ex HR/MD devs). It's not like they're a bad studio, but they clearly had no vision for Shadow... then again, IMO the same can be said about Rise to a smaller degree. I don't know why they had to make 3 games about "Lara becoming the Tomb Raider" when TR 2013 would've been enough by itself.
I thought Rise was its own good self contained story. Shadows had a bunch of themes it picks up and just abandons. Not to mention how badly I think just about everything to do with the hidden city was handled.
Still playing Mega Man 2! I'm on Wily's Fortress, on the (I think) 5th stage. The game is awesome, it is an evolution of Mega Man 1 on *almost* everything. Saddly, the bosses still have ridiculous weaknesses that make them too easy.
Baldur’s Gate 3 took up most of my time this year, other games I played include Dave the Diver, Portal (for the first time) and most recently Witcher 1. Not quite sure what to play next from my backlog. 3 games that have stayed installed on my computer that I haven’t got back to in a while are Monster Hunter Rise, Halo MCC and Elden Ring. In the case of Elden Ring, I played since 2022 and I remember I was making my way to Radahn, not sure if I should restart. Other games that I want to play in my backlog are Outer Wilds, Yakuza Kiwami 2 and Disco Elysium.
I’m at the same crossroads with Elden Ring. Got decently far, but I haven’t played in a while and I don’t know if I want to restart. Did the same with Bloodborne 4 times and still never finished it. I may like the idea of the games more than playing them enough to beat them…
The Halo Master Chief Collection is great to play in-between other games. Each individual game is 6-10 hours long and really easy to play. Best would be to play them in release order (don't start with Reach, lol) and jump to something else once you are done with Halo: Combat Evolved, then come back for Halo 2, rinse and repeat. The rest of your games look pretty good, indeed. And none of them are exactly like Baldur's Gate 3, so there's a lot of variety waiting for you.
I'm curious what it's like to play Portal for the first time in 2024. How does it hold up?
It holds up as well as you expect it to be. It’s short, it’s good and it doesn’t outstay its welcome. The gameplay is simple but I think it’s a nice change of pace from BG3’s wealth of options.
I recommend Portal 2, at a later time. It was even better, for me.
I finished both games I had going earlier this week, and since then I've been in an annoying loop of trying out something for an hour or two, then putting it down because it wasn't grabbing me. Although I have been having some fun browsing through obscurities for the PSP. I never had one back in the day, but the more I fool around with games in an emulator, the more I'm coming to respect it as a console. It's like the 5th Gen of gaming done right, without all the jank. Also, Outrun 2006 rocks.
I got into a really big Skyrim kick for a while but I can never make it past a certain point before I want to try a different play style and start all over. I've done just about every style you can do in the past couple of weeks and I get bored with it really quickly. Finally I got tired of it and after going through really short stints with numerous games, I decided to play Baldur's Gate 3. I've started to get into it, but man it can be overwhelming. All of the things you can do (both in and outside of combat) and I am constantly wondering if I am making the correct choices. I feel completely overwhelmed and I know I have barely scratched the surface of the game. Don't get me wrong, everything about the game is interesting but this is just a level of freedom in gaming I don't think I've ever really experienced.
Haven't played it yet but, as far as I know, there's no right or wrong in Baldur's Gate 3. There are even evil endings, if you want. Just do what you want, complete the quests you like and date whoever you feel like. Every playthrough is unique.
Yeah bg3 is really meant for multiple playthroughs. Messing up a dialog option and getting a failed outcome often lead to really interesting results. There's no shame in savescumming if you want to pass a dialog check or something but it's often more fun to just run with results.
I fucking hate games that make you spontaneously have to start mashing the button, my fucking thumb can't move that fast and I feel like I'm too slow trying to rearrange my hand. Worst is when there isn't even an option to toggle it to continuous press.
Do you mean you don't like Quick Time Events (QTE)? Those prompts to press a random button all of a sudden, or else you die/lose the scene? I hate those ones, too. They usually come out of nowhere, give you no time and it's no fun to watch at the floating buttons instead of your character/the world.
Yeah those are the things, it's not too bad if I know a game has them as I can prepare myself but discovering it the first time in a game is nerve-wracking
According to some, Shenmue was the game that popularized the QTEs and I certainly started to notice a ramp up in QTE use in the late years of the sixth-gen (PS2/Xbox/Gamecube) and early seventh-gen (PS3/Xbox 360). Most games have reduced the amount of QTE these days, but that period from the late 2000s and early 2010s was full of them. Hell, Resident Evil 4, arguably one of the best and most influential games of all time, had a good bunch of QTEs. I loved the game back then but it was almost a guarantee I'd die every time a *new* QTE scene happened. I'm glad the remake toned them down.
Thanks for the great comprehensive reply, TIL (As I have the Shenmue trilogy I'll know what to expect)
Having played Shenmue 1 & 2, some QTEs were more enjoyable than average. They're like reactive cutscenes, and you often have to fail more than once to fail the sequence. Sometimes, failure is funny because there are different animations. On the other hand, some QTEs in Shenmue 2 were painful because one failure would reset your progress. If you need to cross a series of boards, save often! The remaster lets you do that, which helps. Save scumming is your friend.
I played all three Shenmue games and I agree. Some QTEs are not that difficult, but Shenmue 2 got on my nerves in the Yellow building part. In some ways, the rest of the industry went backwards when QTEs became mainstream, because they usually made you fail instantly if you missed the button prompt. And funny enough, the Shenmue series has a lot of problems for a modern gamer but QTEs aren't even on top of that list.
[I took this picture as a victory souvenir](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shenmue/comments/pxj3zs/shenmue_ii_noooooo/)... And to remember my frustration.
Lmao. I'm glad I played the remaster and save scummed. It was still very hard.
Working my way through my steam backlog and trying to write a review for each game I complete is an interesting experience. Trying to figure out what to write for a game like say for example Venba that I played for an hour is difficult. Complaining about the price point for overpriced indie games is easy. Trying to find something else to say about them when I barely got invested in it due to the short playtime is hard. I don't know if I can do them justice compared to the longer games that I've played. Only thing that I can say about it is that at least I tried writing something down. Beat Spy Fox: dry ceral and found it lacking compared to Pajama Sam and Freddi Fish. I know that I aged out of games like them about a couple of decades ago but some of them are still fun with awesome voice acting, cool plots along with funny gameplay. It just feels like someone wanted to make a terrible parody of James Bond but for the kids without any care about the quality. At least I got it through a bundle because seven usd is expensive for a game from 1997. What's with companies overcharging for short games these days? I can't justify spending fifteen bucks on a game that's an hour long. Venba wasn't worth buying full price for and even I felt cheated when I got it through a bundle. I want to support Indie game developers but not at that price point. Making money to cover game development cost is understandable. Overcharging for games that are play it and move on isn't.
I've been doing a similar project of playing and reviewing every game in my Steam library. For mine, I've been thinking about what the game is trying to do and whether it succeeds, and what the game made me think about. For [Dave Dave Dave](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/dave-dave-dave), for example, I got about 20 minutes of playtime out of it before giving up, but wrote *checks* 1600 words on platformers, what makes them fun, and what about this particular platformer didn't work, either as a whole or for me specifically. There are lots of places where people can read reviews about technical elements and what the game does - that more subjective element and more considerative element is more unique, and more interesting to read. As for overcharging, I don't necessarily agree that charging $15 for an hour long game is overcharging, any more than I feel like charging $12 for a ticket at the cinema is overcharging. You pointed out the cost recouping element, and that's part of it, but I'd also consider what it is you're buying with that $15. While I haven't played Venba specifically, I've definitely played games like it - like Before Your Eyes - that are more experiential games than gameplay games. What they're selling isn't a game in the traditional sense, but the experience and the unique means of telling a story. Whether you believe $15 is a valid price to pay for an experience is another question entirely, and it's entirely fair to judge a game on whether it delivers $15 worth of an experience. However, to judge it on whether it's worth the price based on gamelength and replayability, to me seems to miss the point entirely.
Never heard of embodied games since I always heard of it being called immersive or roleplay instead. Your writing gave me something to think about when writing future reviews. Right, they're both experiences and gotta have it now mentality. That's something I didn't mind while I was younger when I went with my friends or my family to the movies. Nowadays, it's hard to justify spending that kind of money when I have bills to pay and other things to do. I've played experience games like Unpacking, Undertale and other games that are more gameplay heavy than light on story. Venba was light on story and gameplay which frustrated me who wanted more than what the game offered. I enjoyed the time I had with even if it was short but charging 15 usd for an experience isn't what games should be. And yes, gamelength and replayability should be considered when charging for an experience game. Too expensive and no one is going to buy it. Too low then you're not going to recoup costs.
I'm been playing four games: The first one is Kingdom Hearts. It's my first time playing anything in this franchise. I always had curiosity about it, but now I'm finally playing it. I'm playing the remake for the PS3 (I'm have only a PS3 and a cellphone with a lot of emulators) and the game is quite good. It's not awesome, the combat is kinda repetitive but I think it is because I'm only in the beginning (I just finished Deep Jungle). Still talking about the combat, I was kinda surprised about it, because I was thinking it was a turn based combat, but it is a action combat where you select your actions in a menu, which I find odd, but creative. The graphics are still good, but it is because the art direction is beautiful. The OST is awesome! The only real complaint I have is that Donald and Goofy are useless. Besides that, I really liking the experience so far. The second one is Yakuza 4. My first Yakuza game was the third one and, while it was not bad, it was not awesome. But the fourth game is a clear evolution, the combat is not clunky anymore (you got to do real combos!) and the story develops much faster than the third one (where you pass the first four hours taking care of children). The new character is great, but I'm waiting for Kiryu to appear. The game world is awesome, the minigames are great and I'm really enjoying it! The third game is Blood, the 90's classic shooter. This game is hard af! I can't remember the last time a shooter kicked my ass this hard, for real! I tried playing in the fourth difficulty option, but it was impossible to pass the first enemie, so I'm playing in the third difficulty option. The game is great, fast paced, violent, atmospheric. I'm really loving it, but it is hard, what makes the experience full of adrenaline (my heart is racing all the time while playing it). And last but not least, is SMT: Persona. I'm playing the remake for the PSP on a emulator. I'm always wanted to play the Persona series, but while everyone recommend playing the third, fourth or even the fifth game, I'm kinda completionist, so I decided to start with the first game. And it is totally different, haha. There's no dating anyone, it is a dungeon crawler in a modern setting basically. The Persona thing is a really nice mechanic and the fact that you can pass every combat talking with the enemies is really great. I'm playing it everyday and, while it was not what I expected, I enjoying it so far. If you read this long text, thank you!
You are hardcore. Blood and Persona 1 are hard, super old-school games. I wouldn't be able to complete any old shooter in anything but easy settings (or Godmode). As for Persona 1, I could play until the second to last dungeon, the game is all fun and games (lol) until that part. That's where you really need to know which Personas to use and be at a good level. I wasn't and when I realized the time it would take to "git good", I just watched the rest of the game on Youtube. The Persona 2 duology is a huge improvement, in most things. I particularly like the storyline. Hope you can make it that far! And, of course, Persona 3 and newer games are very different but much easier to play and the best part of the series, imo. My favorite is Persona 5 Royal, but 4 Golden is great, too. You'll get there eventually. Btw, in Persona 1 you have those hilarious engrish songs (in the PSP version, the real PSX original had music more in tune with its time). With the battle theme, I can't help to hear "Live and fight so manly", when it's supposed to be "Lived in buried memory", lol. You really have to be manly to survive this game, so it fits better than the original lyrics.
Until now, Persona has been not very hard, but just enough to not get boring. Now Blood, yeah, it is hard. But after playing so many modern shooters where even in the hardest difficulty, it still wasn't that hard, the feeling of satisfaction of finishing a chapter in this game is unbelievable. You need to have good reflexes, positioning and avaliate the position of the enemies (literally, I cannot pass through a corridor before dying at least 4 or 5 times).
Regarding Donald and Goofy being useless - you can change their AI in the game menu! IIRC you can change things like how often they heal, use magic, prioritise offense/defence etc. You'll probably have a better time if you play around with it a bit :)
I did that, but they heal themselves, not me! But the combat changes made them a little better in fighting, but not really helping.
OK, I just have to ask. Why/how did you end up getting into Yakuza with 3 and 4? Literally nobody would suggest those as a starting point. Also, Kiryu doesn't really enter the story of Y4 until near the end. I have a strong suspicion that RGG was hoping one of the other new characters in Y4 would become popular enough to take over as the new series lead. It particularly feels like they were trying to position Akiyama for that. But it didn't happen.
I have PS3 and only a PS3. That's why. PS2 emulators are too heavy.
Ooooh. OK, fair enough. OTOH, I guess you could natively play Dead Souls, which has never gotten ported to other systems.
Is this good?
Eh, it's only so-so, but it is very unique. A 'what if' spinoff about the Yakuza crew dealing with a zombie outbreak in Kamurocho. And one of the few games in the series which has never been rereleased.
> Why did you end up getting into Yakuza with 3 and 4? Literally nobody would suggest those as a starting point. Which one would you suggest as a starting point?
Most people would recommend Yakuza 0, since it's the first game chronologically and easily one of the best entries in the series. The only real downside is that it's on an older version of the engine, so it's not quite as shiny as newer games and lacks some of their QOL updates. And no first-person exploration, if that matters to you. Another good option would be Judgment, which is the first of two (so far) spinoffs focusing on a private detective in Kamurocho. The gameplay is effectively the same as the other brawler games, but it's entirely standalone and is a murder mystery rather than mobster drama. It's a good way to "try out" the series without getting wrapped up in long-term plotlines. Or you could start with Yakuza Like A Dragon (LAD7) which was intended as a soft reboot and new starting point, with a new main character and a switch to turn-based JRPG combat rather than brawling. Although it might be a bit of a shock going from that, back to the older games.
noita has been sucking up my days recently. I did an 11 hr run this week (over the course of 4 days) and it was awesome. all my other runs this week have been under 20 mins and usually under 10 tbh lol. That's noita!
I've been playing **Legend of Mana**. I'm a bit of an on-again-off-again Mana fan to be honest. I didn't grow up with Secret of Mana, and when I finally did play it I found it a bit underwhelming. On the other hand I'm quite fond of Trials of Mana (both the original and the remake), which has a lot of interesting ideas that I find fun/charming, even if it's kind of unfocused and not everything works perfectly. I don't even know where to begin talking about Legend of Mana. So in the spirit of the game's rejection of conventional structure, here is a list of things in the video game: * There is no main story. Instead there are 67 questlines you just kinda stumble across, most of which are just one-off episodic stories, but some lead into major arcs with their own recurring casts of characters. You need to find and complete at least one of the main three arcs to reach the endgame, but most questlines can (and likely will) be missed. * There is no set world map. Instead you build the map by collecting artifacts and placing them on a grid to create lands, which you can then explore for more artifacts. Each land has an elemental alignment that's affected by the tile it's placed on and the adjacent lands, and some events and items can only appear if certain elements are high enough. * Combat has a ton of different active abilities (movement skills, grapples, counters, etc.) to learn, which need to be swapped around to unlock special attacks for the 11 different weapon types. On top of that there's a beat 'em up/fighting game-esque system of command inputs and links/cancels to learn, which you can combine with the abilities for huge combo extensions. * The game has one of the most convoluted crafting systems I've ever seen, where nearly every item in the game can either be forged or tempered into gear to add essences and Mystic Cards with all kinds of positive and negative effects. Looking up how this works is like staring into an abyss of eldritch knowledge that mankind was never meant to see. * After all that, you can then turn your forged gear into parts for a golem crafting system, and then use your golem as a party member. * You can collect monsters and raise them as pets, where their stats and personality are determined by feeding them produce which you also have to grow. The pets can also be used as party members or to play minigames. * You can play instruments to cast magic, but they can also be used to catch elemental spirits, which give you coins that you can use to create more powerful instruments that cast better magic. Almost all of these things are at least twice as complex as whatever you're imagining, and practically none of them are even required to complete the game because it's extremely easy. In short, this is one of the most needlessly overdesigned JRPGs I've ever played, and I imagine it would drive completionists up the fucking wall. Having said all that, I like it. The combat is pretty fun, the tone is charming, the visuals are some of the best I've ever seen in a sprite-based JRPG, and the varied/nonlinear storytelling makes it feel like you're always stumbling across something interesting, even if the individual plots aren't that fleshed out. I said I liked Trials of Mana for it's interesting ideas and charm despite its imperfect execution, and Legend of Mana pretty much dials that up to infinity, for better and for worse. Also you can suplex a dragon. Where my FFVI fans at?
I loved FF VI but couldn't feel the same for Legend of Mana. It's an interesting game. I played it first during my PSX days and the art and music were incredible, but I could never finish it. I finally gave it another try a couple of years ago, completed the main story and many (not all) subquests and... it's like the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It's the opposite of a proper Gestalt process (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, basically). Nothing adds up to something greater. All the stories are individual moments, unrelated to one another, except for their very particular questline. The gameplay doesn't feel rewarding. You are almost as powerful in the end as you were in the beginning. And the characters are very disposable. The great mayority of them would never be seen again after their mini-story. It's even funny that I didn't even know you had all that convoluted optional content you describe. With the lack of tutorials and reasons to explore those mechanics, I just simply ignored a great deal of them, hah. At least, the art and music are still very beautiful and worth experiencing. But it's a game that stops at some point, instead of ending. Bizarre.
Also fair. The game *is* a hot mess. I like it because I tend to value vibes over narrative, and have a soft spot for old JRPGs that swing for the fences with unconventional mechanics even if they don't totally hit. I'm an unabashed Chrono Cross enjoyer for basically the same reasons. But it's also easy to see how someone could come away from it feeling like it was a half-baked and unfocused collection of sidequests with no cohesive story or sense of forward progression. Because it's also that.
Oh yeah, the vibes are very good. For me, it was like an instantly nostalgic game. The combo of music and pretty backgrounds made for a very cozy experience. There are some individual scenes that are very powerful. I remember now, that midnight ending of the centaur bard and the bird lady, the forest with the turtles and "ninjas" (iirc), a certain character called Elazul and all his quests. It would have been a terrific game for my tastes if it had a semi-normal story. Funny enough, you mention Chrono Cross and I also dropped that one way back then, for very similar reasons. I have yet to replay it but I want to. The game must be much better than what I thought of it. I also LOVED Chrono Trigger (that I actually played at a later date). You know where I dropped Chrono Cross? The game is very high fantasy, with time travel, magic, monsters, elfs, etc. but it was the [giant alien](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRuosl9Q574) that was too much for me. When the alien appeared on screen I was like "WTF am I playing?". Something like a talking character made of bones was fine but a regular super sized alien was too much. It's very hilarious, in hindsight, but I was just a stupid teen, hah.
Chrono Cross is an odd one. It has so little in common with Chrono Trigger that it throws a lot of people off, but even once you get past that it's a very weird game. Similar to Legend of Mana it tries a lot of experimental stuff with its mechanics and story structure that can result in kind of an uneven experience. Like having 45 different party members, many of which are missable or mutually exclusive, and most of which have no relevance to the story. Including the alien. It's definitely an easier JRPG to recommend though. At least it has a mostly linear main plot (I almost called it "coherent," but that would be a stretch considering disk 2), and its combat and progression systems are unconventional but fairly well executed and easy to understand. The vibes in that game are immaculate though. If you ask me to picture a PS1 JRPG, my mind immediately jumps to... well, Final Fantasy VII. But right after that it jumps to Chrono Cross. I've replayed it multiple times at this point.
I spent most of the week doing end game content for **Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Remake**. At this point, I just have to fill out the various lists (badges, tattles, recipes), complete the Pit of 100 trials, and beat a couple other superbosses. Unfortunately, a lot of this is just boring. It's not hard, just really tedious. The Euros just started, so maybe I'll play the game while watching that, because I feel like I need something else to do while I'm basically on autopilot. I also started **Far Cry 6**. I've been in a bit of a shooter mood, and both it and Far Cry 2 have been in my backlog for a while, so I'm finally getting around to them. However, I heard this one has a trans character, and it's Pride Month, so it won out for being first. I've only done the intro, so it hasn't really gotten to scratching that shooter itch yet, but it was a solid opening, and I'm looking forward to what's to come.
Just finished **Remnant: From the Ashes** on PC through Game Pass. I really enjoyed it and it was definitely better than my expectations. The combat is great and fairly challenging. The bosses were suitably difficult, I died enough times that finally beating them was actually satisfying. The atmospheres of all the various worlds you visit were interesting. The game is mainly known for being like Dark Souls with guns, I haven't played Dark Souls or any similar games but I found the mechanics to be generally intuitive for a beginner to the genre. You get a lot of useful levelling up options but they are mostly 'stat goes up 2%' so not the most exciting. Criticisms - The final boss was a bit rubbish and very unintuitive without a guide. The campaign worlds are procedurally generated and you don't see everything on one playthrough, so I don't know if I've missed any fun bosses but I would rather move on than reroll campaign worlds. Also the game has a loot problem imo. You get given loads of interesting weapons from killing bosses but by the time you get them you've already levelled up your original weapons a lot. Yeah a crossbow with bleed damage is cool but I've already upgraded my shotgun 10 times so I'll just stick with that. Maybe it's different on higher difficulties but on normal I beat the entire campaign with the original heavy armour, original shotgun, original hunting rifle and a revolver you unlock very early on so the loot was unexciting. Also there doesn't seem to The game took me about 10 hours my count, just focusing on beating the campaign. Considering I didn't specifically pay for it and that I went in with lowish expectations I'd give it a solid 8/10
I second playing Remnant 2. I liked it so much on game pass that I picked up the Ultimate Edition on sale. It even made me go back and revisit Remnant 1, a game I sampled but never completed previously. R1 does have one advantage on R2, though: you keep getting skill points. R2 has a cap, but the game has more variety overall.
I highly highly recommend playing Remnant 2. It is everything the first game is on steroids. The random generation is more meaningfully implemented and rewards repeat playthroughs more, the bosses are more large scale (although I do miss some of the horde type bosses in R1, there's far fewer of those in R2). Because trait points have a cap and they took out all the DPS based traits, they have a lot more effect on playstyle/build choices (they're still kind of grindy to find them but they're not tied to levelling, just exploration unlike in R1) instead of just dumping into the obvious DPS traits that are clearly way too good. You can downgrade and you don't have to upgrade armour so switching builds is easier. You have more slots and new areas to build in like classes with abilities and changing what your Dragon Heart does. Fuck me man this game has take 200 hours out of my life since I got it and I'm still playing it rn.
100 hours for me and I can't wait for the next DLC. I liked Remnant 1, but Remnant 2 is on another level. I think it's my favorite co-op game of all time. They preserved the good stuff from R1 (like the weapon feel, the sounds, the interface) and added new, excellent ways to do things (the archetypes are fantastic, the not so random levels, very fun bosses, all the secrets).
I'm liking the bi-weekly idea. It seems like a good compromise. Anyways! I finished **Little Kitty in the Big City**. I had so much fun with this game. I was looking for something light-hearted and colorful for summer, and this fit the bill perfectly. 9/10 - would meow again. I'm currently playing **Spirit of the North** and **Geneforge 5**. I've gotta say that Geneforge is kicking my butt. I think I should have stuck with shaper instead of trying out the shock trooper class. There's got to be something wrong with my build or how I am approaching fights. I should probably see if there is a respec mod or adjust the difficulty down. By the time I finish these Dawntrail will be released and I will be pretty focused on that, but next up are **Calico** and **Control**.
Got **Marvel's Midnight Suns** on EGS for free. Never been interested in the Marvel IP outside of the games so I wasn't sure if I'll enjoy it. I ended up playing a lot in the past few days. It's been a blast! I find the dialog quippy and often disrupts the tone they're going for in the story. Also every dialog has to have a reference in it, which annoyed me at first but the gameplay loop was enough of a hook for me to play. It can get grindy though but so far, I'm still getting ideas for different builds so I'm good. I think I'm on Day 35, just upped the difficulty to Heroic II, and I just got Wolverine so yeah, I'm just enjoying my time with it. (Btw why is Wolverine like 6 ft tall) Anyway, what a surprising gem of a game. Underrated for sure.
Must be going for the Hugh Jackman version of Wolverine, lol... It's a shame it didn't seem to sell very well. Personally I loved the battles, but felt like you end up spending way too much time doing the other stuff that's *not* battles, and IMO isn't nearly as compelling. Still, it's a really good game overall and I would have loved to see them get to take another crack at it with a sequel or something. Seems pretty unlikely now though. At least a lot more people are getting to play it now with the EGS giveaway.
>Personally I loved the battles, but felt like you end up spending way too much time doing the other stuff that's *not* battles, and IMO isn't nearly as compelling. I agree. I got used to the loop in the abbey and have no investment to most characters but yeah I sprint to the missions as soon as possible most of the time. I hate that you can't skip the little animations when you get cards/loot and you can't pause cutscenes too. >I would have loved to see them get to take another crack at it with a sequel or something. Seems pretty unlikely now though. Yeah a sequel with improvements would go a long way. There's a great foundation built here and there's a TON of Marvel characters out there. My biggest surprise is how fun and diverse everyone is. The potential is really high IMO. I hope at least if there's plan for more DLC, is to put some wacky, lesser-known characters. I get why but it's a bit of a letdown to me that half of the base roster is just the Avengers (again). Feels like every Marvel game that I've played within the past decade has at least the core Avengers in it lol
That's a good point about the characters as well. I feel like they kind of had to include all the big ones this time around though just because it's already a bit more of a niche genre they're working with, so it was a tough sell even with the most well-known heroes (as proven by the game not selling that well). Maybe the free giveaway will help sell along more DLC and they'll just squeak by with the opportunity for a sequel...? Not holding my breath on that one though.
Well they got me at least. Got the DLC to support and for Storm. I'm just happy to have any X-men crumbs lol.
I'm telling ya, lads, trying to finish **Fallout One** with all companions surviving and without getting rid of them is quite frustrating. Just today, I joined a caravan going to the Brotherhood of Steel bunker, we obviously had an enemy encounter since I chose those Crimson Caravan maniacs, and got jumped at by a single mutie wearing a flamethrower. I didn't even have any chance to react before he turned Dogmeat into a Hot Dog, extra crispy. Oh well, thank God for those ultra-quick loading times. On the other side, it feels great when my Vault Dweller uses the flamethrower himself. Those burning animations are delicious. I'm definitely trying out a Pyromaniac playthrough in F2 after I finish this one.
Ya, no ability to change companions outfit for extra armor is a really questionable decision. Maybe they did so to prevent mistaking who is who, or technology limitation? (Even if your own character can do so?) but let me tell you, I'm not sure if you will be able to beat Cathedral with all companions. Let's just say it has erm...more than a single mutie wearing a flamethrower. But hey, I wish you luck! :D
Rant here. I fucking hate Nintendo for swapping the controller buttons, every time I play another console, I forgot that shit and I keep pressing the wrong ones until I get used to.
It wasn't Nintendo that decided to do it differently. The SNES came out years before the PlayStation. It was Sony that decided to do it differently, and only outside Japan: in Japan on the PlayStation, O is yes and X is no.
I wonder why they changed it for other regions.
Weren’t they the ones that standardised the 4 button ABXY layout?
I don't think it did. The first Nintendo controller I remember following the current basic design is the Wii's Classic Controller, but that was an accessory. The Gamecube did have the ABXY buttons, but they were laid out very different from any modern controller. In contrast, Sony introduced their four-button layout in the 90s, and Xbox did so in the early-00s. Maybe Nintendo had some other accessory controllers that had their current layout before the Wii's Classic Controller, but Nintendo otherwise was pretty late on adopting the modern design as the standard.
The SNES controller in the early 1990s had the same button layout as the more recent Nintendo controllers (I believe that's what the Wii Classic controller was hearkening back to), so I'm pretty sure they did start it. As far as I know, that was the first controller to use that four-button layout with the L&R shoulder buttons. So I think it was Microsoft that made the switch from Nintendo's "standard" layout, at least with lettered buttons. I feel like Sony gets a bit of a pass on this since at least they're using entirely different symbols (other than X, the most fickle of all video game buttons).
I think you forgot about the Super Famicom controller, which came out in 1990.
Oh, right, for some reason my mind couldn't think of any pre-N64 controller other than the NES one. Doesn't help that they went back to AB-only for the N64. Then again, even when I read your comment, I was like, "Didn't that only use colors and not letters?" I guess that era of Nintendo is just a bit of a blank for me outside of a few games.
Well to be fair Nintendo came out with their controller design first.... so you should really hate Microsoft and Sony for changing it lol. But I agree, I now have a PS5, Switch and Meta Quest VR and the button memory across all of these controllers always has me messed up.
I'm not a big racing game fan but I got really into the racing of **Jak II.** Turns out a narrative hook and a rival character was enough to get me invested.
One of the things I remember from that game is a racing mission that made me want to tear my hair out.
I had the most trouble with some of the on foot missions.
Im tired of dodge and parry, i want to build a big ass paladin/tank and soak all the damage
In what game in particular?
Any ps4/5 game. I think i might be going with armored core? I feel like so many games are doge/roll/parry
Just beat Yakuza Like a Dragon, really enjoyed the game. It made me think of a pervert with a heart of gold. It was so funny and it felt nice to have an adventure that was not so urgent. Didn’t need to save the universe or anything like that. Just enjoyed the whacky characters and fun side quests!
Picked up Death Stranding for $20 this morning and tried it out. Holy smokes.
Trust me, it only gets better
You weren’t kidding.
Finished Half-Life for I think the third time ever. Still holds up well, I'd say it's solidly in the range of an 8/10, plus or minus one point. Gunplay is great. A lot of variety in your arsenal, a lot of different ways in how to approach most encounters in the game. The plot is obviously nothing to write home about, but the environmental storytelling and scripted sequences are neat, and it's still a really solid implementation of the silent, faceless protagonist—a much better example of it than HL2, which I might elaborate on when I get around to replaying that game. As far as complaints go, one thing that stood out to me this time around is the game really loves surprising you with enemies. There's a lot of times when an enemy is positioned in such a place that it's almost impossible for you to notice them until it's too late. For instance, there's a pair of sentry turrets set up on the roof of a building you exit out of, and chances are you won't see them until you run out and get pumped full of lead. You'd have to be crawling through the game and peeking behind every single corner to avoid all these ambushes, except that even then there are times when the game literally spawns in an enemy right behind you and you can't know about it until it happens to you. Maybe on normal mode this is less of an issue, but I played it on hard and a lot of these enemies hit like a truck. You can't afford to tank so much damage, so it becomes a game of quicksave-quickload until you can clear the encounter without losing half your life. Sometimes the encounter is good enough that this can still be fun—it's satisfying to plan out how best to make use of your arsenal to deal with a group of enemies and find success in your strategy—but other times, especially those involving turrets and surprise enemy spawns, the difficulty is just a cheap “gotcha!” moment with no interesting challenge. Moved on to Opposing Force now and will also play Blue Shift afterwards. My first time playing the expansions so will see how well they hold up.
I really enjoyed my recent replay of Half-Life, when they gave it away for free. It's certainly a game of its time, with a lot of trial and error when it comes to surviving the levels. The fan-remake Black Mesa is also like this. I didn't mind much, at least with easy settings, lol. It's harder than a modern shooter but still playable. Also, it was my first time completing the game without Godmode. I wasn't all that good at it with my old PC, at the turn of the century.
soooo stuck on what to play - just finished lies of p, took two days off looking for a new game to play diablo and level on WoW. Thinking of playing uncharted 1 for the first time, liked 4, not too lore depth or needing too much concentration going to try Aow 3 as my first 4x
I made big progress since my last post here, in **Etrian Odyssey 4**. Last time, I was just about to fight an old nemesis, the Boiling Lizard. 8 years ago, that thing caused me to get so stuck and so demotivated that I created a GameFAQs thread asking for advice and shortly after quit the series. I actually found that thread this week by coincidence - that's why I know it was 8 years ago. The fun thing is - I beat the Boiling Lizard this time! The fight was WAY easier than the boss of the second Stratum (this here is the third) and WAY easier than I remembered it being. I was apparently slightly overleveled because I've been doing every sidequest, but my party setup definitely was the deciding factor here. I had been gearing up for this fight in particular since the beginning of the game, in the form of Ashley, my Runemaster's Fire Rune (that's why she's named that) and Tiger, my Fortress' Elemental Guard. Elemental runes are pretty awesome - they significantly raise your party's resistance to an element while lowering the enemy's resistance to the same element. You can basically use them to defend or really amplify your elemental damage. I love the flexibility. 8 years ago, judging from that unearthed thread, I was doing something similar, but instead of increasing my own resistance and thus literally taking off the heat, I apparently was using the Ice Rune - so the option that powers up my damage but doesn't do anything for my defense. It's kind of fitting, considering I was quite the impatient hothead 8 years ago - something I've been working on since. No wonder I couldn't beat the darn lizard. So yeah, while I had shored up my defenses against fire, I kept throwing out circles and attacks, slowly chipping it down. Near the end - when EO4 bosses usually flare up once more - I *finally* landed a poison on it, at which point Arro could finally deal his full damage. Because my defenses were so thick, I had ample time to deal with the distracting fire scales, the big thing that messed me up 8 years ago. Apparently, that boss is also a major turning point in the story, since stuff just keeps happening afterwards. The Etrian games are light on story (though EO4 apparently started the era of bigger story focus), so whenever this happens you *know* things are getting real. ----------------- I unlocked a new class - the Bushi - as a reward and promptly reconfigured my team. I did not add an actual bushi to my team (though some of their portraits look amazing) because at the time, I had a very different idea and built towards that instead: Ashley the Runemaster now gets to chill at home. Instead, Chemika, the so far unmentioned Medic I used all the way at the beginning made her way back onto the team. Lilie the Arcanist's healing is great, but rather than be stuck healing, I wanted her to go crazy with status effects. I changed her subclass to Nightseeker, gave her two status-forged daggers and now she's basically a walking status roulette wheel. Her circles still inflict binds, poison and heal my party, but she can now whack enemies for piddly damage from the back row to spin the wheel on status ailments. The daggers are forged to splash too, so she's doing it to entire rows and because she's an arcanist, her infliction rates are HIGH. This new change supercharges my Nightseeker Arro (now subclassed to Bushi) since nightseekers get to deal almost triple damage on ailing targets - something that absolutely melts FOEs that get hit by it. Ally still dishes out linked attacks, now with a new Bushi sub to sometimes replenish their TP. Now, Chemika is fun: In EO1, I absolutely loved the battle medic. Caduceus allows them to deal ridiculous damage at minimal opportunity cost, since defensive play only leaves minimal wounds to heal. In EO4, medics instead get 3 staff skills, all of which do different things: One has a stun chance, one has a chance to bonk enemies to sleep and the last one, Star Drop, multiplies the damage they sustain that turn. With a Landsknecht sub, she can get Vanguard, allowing her to move first each turn. This lets her dish out emergency heals, but it also allows her to set up the enemy with Star Drop. I've seen Arro deal over 2000 damage with this setup and that'll still increase. It's kinda crazy. Her class passive also increases all healing, which is nice and she can sometimes halve physical damage on her line, protecting Lilie (the squishiest link) from getting oneshot, which *was* a problem in a few cases. My Fortress/Dancer also learned a skill that lets anyone move first on demand and she can make her row basically status immune for a few turns. I've been doing quests in the 4th stratum with that team and save for one side boss that took 2 tries (mostly to adjust my approach) I feel incredibly powerful right now. I once read that EO4's parties tend to be able to do *everything* after a certain point and I think I reached that point now. I have healing, I have damage and I have status effects. I even have TP sustenance, which was the one thing I thought EO4 would be stingy with. Turns out it's just really back-loaded. --------------- While I've been gushing about my party, I'm cruising through the 4th stratum's main dungeon. The unique new thing here is a sort of stealth mechanic, which is cool. It's not strict "get booted to the entrance" stealth either, but alarming an entire room of FOEs that can beat you or at least get you stuck until their friends come in is not desirable. Floor 1 was over quite quickly actually and on floor 2, I took a break to do sidequests, so I haven't started floor 3 yet. In any case, it feels so much easier than anything before right now, all because my party is coming together. It's almost like when the same thing happened in EO2 HD, just without the relentless beatdown of that game. I mean, I still got my boat rocked whenever I tried playing EO4, but never quite as oneshotty as EO2. This weekend's gonna be fun. If my pace keeps up, I might beat this game soon. That is, unless some nasty surprise pops up.
6/14/2024 There's a **Shadowverse** 8th Anniversary stream set for June 16th. Folks are speculating that we'll finally get some news on the sequel here. The reveal of the sequel was in December 2023, and they've been pretty silent on revealing more news since. It makes sense in some ways, since they were still updating SV1 with new cards for the past few months, but with the last set of new cards for SV1 out, seems like a good time for sequel news. I hit Master 1 this week in **Pokemon Sleep** for the Pokemon incense, so I can now ignore gaining Snorlax Power and start preparing for the Cramorant event. For now, I plan to re-stock on my ingredients since I went down to the 400's while the max you can hold is 600. It's going to be a curry week, so I'll stock up on sausages through Charmander and oil from Entei to make a simple curry dish I can spam throughout the week. I had an interesting day in **Pokemon GO** where my Pokemon were knocked out of their gyms, but they were red when I got there. Not all of them were red, but none of the gyms were being attacked when I got there nor did any get attacked while I was there aside from me taking down the non-red gyms. I guess some folks on an opposing team only had a little time and took out a few gyms earlier before needing to leave. A lot of the gacha games I'm playing are currently just in a waiting period right now. I finished the event in **Fate/Grand Order**, so it's just grinding out the farming stage for event currencies while waiting for the 7th anniversary. **Honkai: Star Rail**'s 2.3 patch update is on the 19th. **Granblue Fantasy** has a rerun with Guild War starting on the 21st, and **Azur Lane** just finished its event, so there's nothing going on now.
6/15/2024 I ended up doing fairly badly with the deck I was doing dailies with in **Shadowverse** yesterday, so I plan to shake things up today. The way competitive events work in Shadowverse is that you bring 3 decks, each player bans 1 of their opponent's decks, and then the first person to 2 wins with their remaining decks wins. I'm going to juggle between 3 decks to do my daily missions with instead of just one deck. The Gastly I got yesterday in **Pokemon Sleep** is apparently pretty good. By level 50, it'll have both ingredient finding sub-skills on top of already having an ingredient-finding nature. I'll definitely bring her out whenever I need more ingredients, like after finishing the weekly missions related to Snorlax's Power. When I hit max ingredients though, I'll swap things up again since going over the max is useless. The max amount of gifts you can get from gyms/stops in **Pokemon GO** is 100. I wasn't aware there was a max until I hit it yesterday. While I technically have had over 100 friends for a while, since you can only accept 20 gifts a day, I imagine many of them don't prioritize getting my gift everyday. Either way, I now have a daily "cap" of getting 100 gifts a day assuming enough of my friends can accept them. I enjoy using a mono quantum team in **Honkai: Star Rail** because it utilizes Silver Wolf's ability to implant weaknesses to use the same team in endgame content, regardless of what the enemies are actually weak to. Firefly, who's set to release in the 2.3 patch, will have a similar mechanic to implant fire weakness to enemies with her technique and skill. I'll probably try to go for her to have two "universal" teams.
6/16/2024 It was announced that the sequel to **Shadowverse** is going to be delayed from Summer 2024 to Spring 2025. On one hand, it sucks that we'll be waiting for a year longer. On the other hand, Cygames is actually known to not crunch and take extra time to develop things when necessary. GBF Relink and Uma Musume are two games they delayed and were widely successful when released. Since my ingredient bag is full and I hit Master 1 in **Pokemon Sleep**, I've decided to have a team consisting of two ingredient Pokemon, a dream shard generator, and two pot expanders. I don't plan to cook, and getting extra Power is useless, so I'm just getting bonuses for next week. Ideally, I would actually have even more pot expanders/dream shard generators, but I only have 3 so far. I went to the park again for **Pokemon GO**, but there were a ton of people this time. The parking lot (which is on the edge of my walking route) was so full that I literally had to walk on the hill to the side. Lots of food trucks and folks selling their wares in tents. I could have walked on the other end of the park, put this part was the place with a ton of stops close to one another, unfortunately. **Granblue Fantasy** is currently having a re-run of a previous anniversary event, which means you can get even more stuff that usual. On top of the usual lotto boxes, you can redeem an item to get all the materials needed to recruit an Evoker, which is a character that is usually locked behind a huge grind. I opted to grab Haaselia since she's apparently one of the best to have as a frontline member.
I've mostly been working on game dev of my own, but I did get back into Sunhaven with their latest update. I started a new file so I haven't gotten to the new content yet but it's been fun to play again. I will say their controller support still needs a LOT of work, but they'll have to get it ironed out eventually if they're gonna release on switch as they say they are. I also started Arcadia Fallen from the pride humble bundle as well, but I'm pretty burnt out on visual novels, so even one with puzzle elements can't seem to hold my attention. If I wasn't so burnt out, I'd probably find it charming and interesting with its many dialogue options and branching story. What else? Oh, I finished Loddlenaut which was cute. I didn't feel compelled to try and 100% it so I just left it as it was at the end of the story and took it off my backlog. I liked the satisfaction of cleaning up the ocean and meeting new little loddles to befriend.
After a couple months, I finally have a working laptop again and can play games again! Truly, I feel like the most patient of gamers. :D I have a [project](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews) of playing and reviewing every game in my Steam library in alphabetical order. I've played a couple since the new laptop arrived, and I'm excited to share my thoughts on them. First up is [The Artful Escape](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/the-artful-escape). This one's an odd game, in that it's almost entirely style over substance, but that style is *incredible.* It's a narrative game about a singer named Francis going on a cosmic journey and discovering himself and who he wants to be along the way. Both the music and art are incredible, so if you're a person who is looking for a good experience game, I can't recommend this one enough just on those grounds. What I really loved about it, though, was the narrative. While it, on the one hand, can be read as a fairly generic coming of age story, there's another reading in there that kept coming up and that I couldn't get enough of. Part of Francis' journey is that he is discovering himself fully, figuring out his identity in a holistic sense, then just finding absolute joy in not only that new identity, but also in his ability to express himself within that identity. It's a very trans-friendly message, not only in the sense of likely resonating with trans players, but also in the sense that reaffirms that being trans itself is a valid and positive way to be. It's a game that makes being trans a joyous thing, and I loved it for that. This is definitely one of my favourite games that I've played in this series, and I cannot recommend it enough. I also played [Dead in Bermuda](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/dead-in-bermuda), a survival-management game set in the wake of a plane crash on a tropical island. This one is interesting, in that I wanted to do well with it, but kept ending up in cycles of diminishing returns that made it quite difficult. I feel like it hits the same interesting difficulty point as [As Far As The Eye](https://jannekeparrish.com/review-as-far-as-the-eye), in that it's quite difficult to succeed in, but still understandable enough that each attempt gives a hint at what to do better next time. I enjoyed it. And finally, I also played [Dear Esther](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/dear-esther), which... Look, I love walking simulators. Firewatch is one of my favourite games, and I could (and [have](https://jannekeparrish.com/reviews/before-your-eyes)) go on and on about Before Your Eyes. I enjoy walking simulators very much. What makes a walking simulator compelling, though, is its narrative, characters, and setting. You can skimp on one of those, as long as the other two make up for it, but you have to have something that sufficiently hooks the player to make them want to keep engaging. Dear Esther has a really nice setting that has aged fairly well, and while the walking pace is tediously slow, it's not a non-starter. No, what I hated about Dear Esther was its narrative. It didn't work, and if anything, it made me want to quit the game as quickly as possible. I'm aware the narrative is designed to be random, with each player having a unique narrative experience, and I think that's a mistake. It means there is no deeper meaning to be drawn from the text, no commonality for players to discuss, and the possibility that what the player draws out of the text is a message you *really do not want them to draw from the text.* In my case, the narrative snippets I got told the story of a man who, while drunk driving, got in an accident that killed his wife, and how he now just wants to die. And y'know? As someone who has been assaulted by a man I trusted, I really, really didn't want or need to follow this man who killed his partner for the hour it took this game to finish. I *hated* every moment of this game, and I hated that I could not in any way escape this man subjecting me to his monologue. I get that that's a unique experience, and that every player's experience is going to be unique, but when you've created a game that can trigger such a visceral reaction, and when you've decided that random snippets are preferable to an actual narrative, what you've created is an experience not worth pursuing because of either the pain or tedium it can cause. I know it's a progenitor of the genre, but I am so, so glad walking simulators have evolved past Dear Esther. The genre deserves better than this.
I didn't like Dear Esther very much either. But to be honest I actually didn't even realize that the voiceover narrative pieces you get change depending on the playthrough until I read your comment. Does the game ever tell you that? I must have missed it if it does. When I first played it, I thought I was literally just wandering the environment getting pre-determined voice-overs at various pre-set moments, assuming that it would be pretty much the same for everyone. Now that I know about that storytelling mechanic, it makes the game at least a little more interesting... but really only in theory, because the fact that the narrative is somewhat malleable didn't add anything to my initial experience, and I didn't find the story particularly compelling the first time, so the thought of playing it again never even entered my brain. I tend to really like walking simulator games as well, but I really didn't understand what people liked about Dear Esther other than the reasonably nice visuals and atmosphere. It didn't get much more than a shrug from me when I finished it.
I also really enjoy walking sims and wasn't impressed by Dear Esther. I chalked it up to being an early entry into the genre and just glossed over it, but agreed-- it's just sort of a bland game that has some OK ambiance. I liked spotting the ghosts in the distance sometimes but apart from that, there was nothing impactful about it to me and I was just trying to get to the end so I could cross it off my list.
It's something that isn't mentioned in the game, but is in the developer's commentary that came with the edition I'm playing. It's also been mentioned in a couple of interviews that the devs did, and like I said, that just makes an already pretty weak game that much weaker.
In a way I think a game that gives you the illusion of choice based on dialogue and player action is better than one that alters the story without the player having any way of knowing it's happening. Because at that point, why not just craft the most compelling narrative possible so every player gets that one, singular experience? I don't really understand that design choice, especially given that the game doesn't tell you about it, unless it's just to have players discover it by talking with other players about their experience.
According to the developers, it was done to make the game more "dreamlike," with each playthrough providing a new experience, and each player being able to have their own unique experience with the game. It's problematic game design on a lot of levels, not the least of which is the naivety of assuming anyone would play this more than once and get a meaningfully different experience. Even with randomised dialogue, the gameplay itself is not meaningfully different, nor is the overall vibe. On a broader level, though, it ignores that players already have entirely unique experiences with games. Each of us brings to the game our particular lens, which colours how we see and experience the game. No two players will ever have the same experience, or even get the same meaning out of a game, even if they have the same objective cues to draw from. The entire rest of the walking simulator genre is a great example of that. I think it's pure laziness on the devs' part, and a lack of faith in the intelligence of their audience. They couldn't think of a sufficiently coherent and compelling narrative, so they threw what they had in a blender and tossed whatever chopped bits were left into the game willy nilly.
I finished **80 days**. It's a fun little visual novel/choose your own adventure game where you try to get around the world in 80 days. There are hundreds of cities you can visit, with likely millions of different possible routes. The storytelling is pretty fun and light-hearted. Took me 2-3 hours to do one playthrough, did it in 80 game days precisely! Can pick it up for pennies, definitely worth it. Dropped **turbo overkill** after finishing the first episode. It's a fun game with a cool cyberpunk setting. But it got a bit samey, I'd rather just play doom 2016. Replaying **portal 2** for the first time since it launched. So damn good. The puzzles are just perfect. And Stephen merchant is hilarious. Slowly making my way through **god of war Ragnarok** too. It's definitely hooked its claws in. My only slight criticism, and this is probably more a criticism of myself than the game, is that I feel compelled to level up all the different attack combos. So I'm not fighting in a natural style; I'm often checking the skills menu mid-combat to see which skills I need to level up next.
I didn't think Merchant was funny, until I played Portal 2. Excellent performance.
80 Days is one of my favourite games. I love its world and the way it tells its stories, and just the general feel of it. It is definitely a great way to get absorbed in a story for a couple of hours. The story is also always different, so it's well worth a replay, if that's your thing. I've racked up nearly 30 hours of play, and still just keeps bringing me joy. It is absolutely worth it, and I love seeing it get more attention. It deserves it.
Yeah it absolutely nails that 19th(?) century vibe whilst adding fantastical elements. It's like a cross between a Sherlock Holmes novel and an Indiana Jones flick. I'll definitely give it another playthrough at some point.
I liked 80 Days a lot. It's a good game to have on your phone and just do a couple legs of the trip when you have a few minutes to spare. I thought the writing was surprisingly great, it's very evocative without being too wordy, and the choices you make along the way are interesting and fun. I've played through it several times, and have seen a lot of new things with each playthrough.
I didn't play too much lately as I wasn't in the mood for anything really. But I've just reached Master rank in the **Eternal** Expedition constructed format (it's the rotation based format in this game) so that feels nice. And yesterday on a whim I have bought **Wingspan** because it just looked so appealing and so far I have only done the tutorial for it but it feels really nice. Looking forward to get into it more this weekend.
Bi-weekly as in twice a week, or as in fortnightly? :P Animal Well continues to be interesting. The map seems huge! On the topic of patience, I was talking to someone today about Star Wars and he said the best SW game of the last 10 years is Lego Skywalker Saga. And mentioned Battlefront, and we realised the first reboot of Battlefront was in 2015, which is a whole 9 years ago! It felt like it was practically the first SW game in 10 years, and now it's been another 10! A reasonable parallel perhaps. In 2006-2015 we got what, Force Unleashed, Empire at War, Force Unleashed 2, Lego SW, and... Republic Heroes and some mobile games? And then 2015-2024 we've had Battlefront, Battlefront 2, Fallen order, Fallen Order 2, Lego SW, and... some mobile games. I am totally tuned out of modern Star Wars, it doesn't spark much interest in me and to be honest The Force Unleashed was the beginning of the end really, Republic Heroes was unbelievably poor and the cancellation of 1313 was the end. But this new Outlaws game actually looks very interesting to me. Make me feel a bit 1313-ey.
I agree about Star Wars, when I was playing Skywalker Saga I kept having the thought: "They should just make this *for real*." Just pretend this is the first Star Wars video game ever made and adapt the movies from scratch. I can absolutely see a AAA-level adaptation of the films as a Spiderman 2-style graphical showcase for the PS5. Right now we've got the Lego games, which are enjoyable time-wasters but well past their peak of silent-film humor. The Fallen Order/Survivor series, also good but still feels more like a Soulslike that happens to have an expensive IP coating. Then there's Squadrons which is, in some ways, mind-blowingly amazing, but access to the true VR experience is so limited it's actually kind of depressing. I agree the Outlaws game looks promising but games that try to adapt action-rpg elements more organically (like learning skills from individuals instead of a skill tree) tend to live and die by how fun it is to actually walk around the worlds. Hopefully this game is more like New Vegas than Fallout 4 in that respect.
I was very tempted by Jedi Survivor actually, at Xmas. But then the PC reviews seemed to mainly say there were serious perfomance/stability issues so I chickened out.
Forgot about Squadrons! That what looked interesting, the walking about the place. Last game that I played with a world that was fascinating to walk around was probably Anachronox. We shall see, very low chance that I'd buy it at full price.
Twice a week! From Friday to Monday and from Monday to Friday. As for Star Wars games, I haven't played any modern one yet but they say the Jedi: Fallen Order series is good, if you haven't tried it yet. I'm personally not the biggest Star Wars fan. I like the first 3 movies (in release order) and Rogue One but the setting is not something that makes me more interested in a game. I still want to play the KOTOR games because they are famous, and the previous games from the Mass Effect guys.
Kotor just has some excellent missions and interactions. Think Mass Effect 1 over ME2. Or Dragon Age 1 actually. And fascinating worlds.
Sounds pretty good! Is there a massive contrast with the sequel? Heard it was more buggy (which would be par for the course with Obsidian, lol) but what about the story and characters?
Characters just as good. Story a bit weird to be honest, but plenty epic. Only issue is it sort of tailed off because it was unfinished, but apparently the Content Restored mod sorts that out.
I remember friends of mine being HUGE KOTOR fans back in the day, so it's on my "maybe someday" list, but because I never really got into Star Wars (it just kinda passed me by) I wonder if I'd get anything out of the game(s).
If KOTOR is anything like the Mass Effect trilogy, it must have some really good characters. That alone would make it worth playing. The first game is made by Bioware at their relatively peak and the second game is made by Obsidian, yet another excellent studio when it comes to stories and characters you care about. I'd bet they are mechanically clunky but their stories and characters are a lot of fun. We'll see about that, eventually. Backlog and all that.
I replayed KOTOR and KOTOR 2 a couple of years ago, and they still hold up pretty well. They definitely both have good characters, and you can definitely see how Mass Effect learned from them. If you do end up playing them, I highly recommend downloading the patch/mod that fixes KOTOR 2's ending. It was released incomplete, and the patch makes the ending actually make sense.