What are you playing?

[Bebpo]

We Know the Devil - Interesting VN, it's pretty weird and the reviews say it's not reaaaally a horror game, so I'll see how this ends up.

The soundtrack is fucking amazeballs though. Absolutely worth the 2 hours or whatever the story length for the music. Damnnnn

[Bebpo]

So the Crash 4 video from the state of play which looks great got me to load the trilogy remaster back up. I remember you guys saying #2 was the best of the original three games. I started up Crash 2 and...I didn't recognize the hub at all, then I didn't recognize the levels. Then I tried Crash 3 and same thing and I realized I don't think I ever played anything besides Crash 1 and CTR back on PS1 

Wonder if I should play Crash 2/3 in that case for the first time before Crash 4.

[HardcoreRetro]

They're like 5 hours a piece. You can knock one of em out in a single afternoon. Time gets doubled if you go for the completionist route.

[Bebpo]

I'll probably sit down and try to play through all 3 games before Crash 4 comes out. I don't even remember if I ever beat the original it's been so many years. I recognize the early stages and I remember playing it for sure for weeks so I probably did, but eh long enough ago it's essentially like playing a new game.

Speaking of old mascot platformers I still need to play on the remasters, I still gotta play Jak 3 at some point and Ratchet 2/3 and the Sly Cooper games. Also I never played any of the Spyro games and I have the remake and it looks visually damn nice so I should probably play that.

[tiesto]

How was the PS2 Crash? I watched my ex play it for a bit and it didn't seem too bad, but it seems all but forgotten nowadays.

[porkbun]

Legend of Kage 2 - have not heard about this or the original arcade game until a week ago. Reminds me of arcade Shinobi, except with quicker gameplay - can't say no to cool Ninja games.

Every time I think I'm done with the DS, I still find something down the line... the last great Nintendo system, exclusive library for a lifetime

The original gets pretty repetitive.  It's basically a loop of 5 short stages.  Cool music though.

[Svejk]

Legend of Kage 2 - have not heard about this or the original arcade game until a week ago. Reminds me of arcade Shinobi, except with quicker gameplay - can't say no to cool Ninja games.

Every time I think I'm done with the DS, I still find something down the line... the last great Nintendo system, exclusive library for a lifetime

The original gets pretty repetitive.  It's basically a loop of 5 short stages.  Cool music though.

Damn... I never knew there was a sequel on the DS!    I need to check that out... 
Speaking of DS, I got back into Professor Layton: Diabolical Box... Got stuck on a puzzle, but got past it and moving along.  want to get to the 3rd one, as I've read it's the best of the main DS trilogy.  Playing DS emulator on my Note is the bee's knees.

[Bebpo]

Speaking of remasters of PS1 platformers one of the youtube videos I was looking at had a side link to that Medieval remake and I was like "wait, did that come out?" and looked it up and apparently it did last year? I don't even remember the game coming out or anyone talking about it. I guess going by reviews it's because it wasn't particularly good.

I never played the originals of that. Like I probably played 20 mins of the first game on some demo disc but never the actual full game.

[Nintex]

Keep getting drawn back into DOOM 64.

Up to level 11 or 12 now. Not sure how big this game is, but I'm in hell now. Or rather, a more gothic interpretation of it. Game still manages to surprise. In level 6 or so I was dropped into a dark pit and just mauled by enemies.
By squinting and sheer luck you can find the staircase to safety. The game just riddled with jump scares, flickering lights in hallways(and the type of bright flashing white strobes that get you epilepsy) and other such attractions.
Also backtracking and puzzles that go several layers deep. Pretty weird that a game everyone assumed was just another port of DOOM is actually entirely different.

It's like if one of those many Rayman 2 ports was actually more like Mario 64 and nobody knew about it because it was Rayman 2 NGage or something.

[Bebpo]

Spider-Man PS4 is greaaaat. Swinging feels good and feels like a fun addicting sandbox game with a ton of collectibles and mini-events. Good warmer up for going into Tsushima/Legion in the next few months for more sandbox gaming. Also looks amazing on PS4 Pro. Image quality is insanely nice that I can live with the 30fps.

Combat is fun but still getting the hang of it. Enjoy the smaller fights but the base waves of combat was kinda a bit much the couple I've done. Usually some brute or rocket guy who is the problem while everyone else is fine. The gadgets are great and help though.

Really like the suit system and giving a point to all the side stuff through it and the suit mods and the gadget mods. I like that there's a shitton of basically skill tree stuff to unlock as you progress.

Only thing I don't like is I stumbled across a secret photo location and looked up what they are and apparently there's 50 and there's zero way to track the ones you've done since it doesn't mark them on your map even after you've completed them? That sounds...really stupid. This is the kind of game where I'll probably do everything 100% on the map, but this seems iffy.

Also is there no day/night cycle and it just changes based on the mission you're on? That's not terrible,but for how dang good the lighting looks it'd be nice if it just had a 24 hour day/night cycle.

[Bebpo]

Finished We Know the Devil. Kinda flew over my head until I looked up an explanation of what is actually going on. Liked it after understanding that. Will run the other endings (only about 40 mins a playthrough).

[Freyj]

@Bebpo the Spider-Man DLC is largely forgettable, doesn’t really do anything interesting story wise and refills the map with more of the same open world checkbox stuff you’ve been doing (3 times no less) so YMMV but I wish I’d just ignored it altogether and been happy with shelving the game after the credits rolled

[Bebpo]

Yeah, that's what I've read. Still, I like the filler side stuff on the map and it's fun, so I'll probably be ok playing some more hours of them. Already picked the 3 DLCs up, so might as well give them a shot. Not expecting anything besides a bunch of filler side mini-games and some cutscenes.

[Bebpo]

Also when I was looking up about the DLCs, I saw a huge bunch of threads on different sites after DLC2 released saying people complained at launch that the game/combat in Spider-Man was too easy, so they did a total rebalance of the combat for the whole when DLC2 came out and all the threads were saying they wen't too far the other way and now the game is too hard/cheap and git gud.

This...explains things. Like Insomniac games are usually pretty mainstream easy, so I was wondering why I died like 4-5 times in the tutorial and once in one of the early street thugs tutorials. Like the brute tracking on melee is pretty insane and kills you in 2-3 hits.

Anyhow once I got some gadgets and skills it was manageable and I'm actually finding it fun how the combat really keeps me on my toes. I'm playing it almost like a real time w/pause rpg where every second I'm pausing the combat with the weapon wheel and switching between gadgets as their cooldowns run off and firing them like an rpg when spells/skills cooldown. Meanwhile I'm having to prioritize which enemies to take out, keep moving and juggle between gambling building focus and healing. It's moderately strategic though I feel the more gadgets I get and they more they are leveled up + more skills I get the easier and easier it'll become since I'll have more stuff to fire off and defensive abilities. I'm playing on the 3rd difficulty of the starting 4 which is the default one.

Also finding the right suit powers helps. The basic focus building one is pretty good with tougher enemies since it lets me do focus attacks on them pretty regularly. Meanwhile for tiny gang mini-stuff on the map the web blast attack that fires webs in every direction usually instant KOs almost everyone and makes them zero effort. I'd like to use the stealth one from the noir suit and stealth more like Arkham, but so far not finding stealth that useful vs just taking out everyone quick.

[paprikastaude]

Legend of Kage 2 - have not heard about this or the original arcade game until a week ago. Reminds me of arcade Shinobi, except with quicker gameplay - can't say no to cool Ninja games.

Every time I think I'm done with the DS, I still find something down the line... the last great Nintendo system, exclusive library for a lifetime

The original gets pretty repetitive.  It's basically a loop of 5 short stages.  Cool music though.

DS game isn't exactly a masterclass in level design, but usually throws in unique bosses with decent patterns just in time.

[Bebpo]

Finished all the routes and true ending in We Know the Devil. That was good, would make a neat short film. Would recommend it.

Definitely one of the best LGBT games I've played in how it handles those issues even if it's only over a short story of time. There's some good writing in there.

[Nintex]

Continued my playthrough of Astral Chain and up to File 8 now.

I really consider this a sleeper hit, so much content and so stylish.
Drawing from Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell and hundreds of other pop-culture / cyberpunk / anime / manga / video game inspirations.
Also lots of gameplay systems to dive into that are 90% optional. Visuals and sound are on point too. Platinum Games really hit it out of the park this gen.

[Rman]

TLOU2

This game is long.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just got Abby. This another 15 hour thing with her now?

[close]

[tiesto]

Playing more Dawn of Ys... I'm up to the boss of the ice mountain, which is the most challenging boss in the game by far and requires a bit of a grind. So I'm in the midst of doing that grind... This game is a bit more challenging than most of the other Ys games, you don't pay attention you can easily lose a TON of health rather quickly. Took some time to watch the LI Retro Uplink panels so I'll be back to hardcore gaming over this week, got my NES repaired so I'm gonna go ham on that system for a bit.

[Bebpo]

TLOU2

This game is long.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Just got Abby. This another 15 hour thing with her now?

[close]

spoiler (click to show/hide)

Shorter, about 2/3rds the length of the Ellie bit

[close]

[Bebpo]

I'm glad I'm playing Spider-Man while playing other games too because I'm starting to feel like Spider-Man is better in small doses. The movement is great, combat is fine, story/cutscene stuff is great, but in terms of stuff to do on the map...it doesn't feel like there's a lot of meaningful content and it's getting repetitive in a way that I haven't felt about a sandbox game in a while and I'm getting burnt out at around 25% completion. Then again because I do lots of side stuff instead of progressing the main story like 75% of the side-content categories are still locked so maybe I just need to focus on the story for a while and progress to unlock more varied stuff to do besides backpacks, landmark photos, crime events, bases (the bases are lame) and sidequests.

[Bebpo]

Alright, did some more story missions and yeah, the story campaign stuff is good. Nice mix of stealth, combat, puzzle, talking, swing chases. Unlocked the research stations which seem to have a little variety so that's nice. Will keep playing the campaign until I've unlocked most of the side stuff on the map and then start doing more side stuff. Finished all the towers and most of the backpacks/landmarks already.

Enjoying mixing up the suit powers, like using stealth power for initial stealthing and then bullet proof taking on big mobs with guns and battle focus on big mobs with non-guns.

[kingv]

There is a point at which the campaign just takes off and gets really exciting. It’s definitely my favorite song exclusive.

[kingv]

Sounds good Positive Touch. Metroid 2 indeed holds up really well. The remake on 3DS is also quite good and just before that launched some fans made a remake too, AM2R or something like that.
And yeah, time is fucking crazy. When I was 18 or so Ocarina of Time was a 'retro' game included with the GameCube.

Now Metroid Prime 2002 (18 years) is much older than OOT was when it re-released on GameCube in 2003(< 5 years).
The 'long' wait between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion that made everyone wonder if Metroid would ever return was only 8 years.
It has been 13 years since Metroid Prime 3 released.

Played some Astral Chain today. Up to file 5 now. Still a really fun game and from the vibe I'm getting I should be about halfway through.

I feel like the jump from n64 to GameCube was enormous though. The ps2/cube/Xbox were just miles ahead of the consoles they replaced in a way that ps3 and ps4 generation aren’t. Xbox games are looking a little long in the tooth now, but playing actually n64 games on an n64 is like not that fun for me anymore. The frame rates are just too awful in general

[Don Rumata]

I feel like the jump from n64 to GameCube was enormous though.

I mean yeah, going from one to the other was pretty mind blowing.



I think it's part of the reason why people chasing that "high" again, with every new console launch, are eternally disappointed.

[Bebpo]

I think it's part of the reason why people chasing that "high" again, with every new console launch, are eternally disappointed.

If you told me we could have visuals like Spider-Man going from PS3 I never would've believed that (though tbf this is PS4 Pro). I still can't get over how insane the image quality is. Incredibly clean and the spider-suits are so detailed. Sure it's 30fps, but the game looks better than anything I could've imagined. Probably best looking game on PS4.

[Don Rumata]

Sure, but the point is we went from barely being able to discern humans on screen (cue FF8 Squall meme) to basically having amazing models with facial animations and everything. (see Silent Hill 1 --> Silent Hill 3)
Comparably, we won't really get that jump again.

RDR2 is eye meltingly good looking, but compared to RDR1, it's just not that mind blowing of a jump, because the fundamentals were already laid.

[Bebpo]

idk, I feel like each gen by the end has been a very large leap. Going from God of War II to III or FFX to FFXIII. Going from blurry or jaggy 720p ps3 to sharp clean 1080p games were all big leaps to me.

I actually feel this leap to PS5 will be the smallest just because if you don't have a 4k set there's not much more you can go beyond modern stuff like Spider-Man and Last of Us outside 60fps and some better lighting. I'm still rocking a 1080p tv so I'm biased there.

[Svejk]

I'm all about the "next gen leap" when it comes to lighting and sound.  Lighting makes all the difference, IMO. Lighting is totally the new polygonzzz. 

[Positive Touch]

Sure, but the point is we went from barely being able to discern humans on screen (cue FF8 Squall meme) to basically having amazing models with facial animations and everything. (see Silent Hill 1 --> Silent Hill 3)
Comparably, we won't really get that jump again.

RDR2 is eye meltingly good looking, but compared to RDR1, it's just not that mind blowing of a jump, because the fundamentals were already laid.

see i just finished RDR2 and went to replay RDR1, and i'd make the opposite conclusion. in my memories 1 looked amazing, but playing it today i see that even the most busted budget-ass game nowadays wouldn't look this "bad." the environment looks empty, the colors are washed out, and the animations look stiff. the best part are the character models, but even they look like puppets compared to modern graphics. the leap looks unreal.

[Pissy F Benny]

RDR2 in 4k  

[Freyj]

Just finished Trails of Cold Steel 3 wrapping up my catch up of Kiseki that started in Dec 2019 with finally finishing SC after a decade break. Turbo saved my interest in the series.

Graphics upgrade in CS3 was much appreciated. One of those weird jumps where the 2D in Zero / Ao aged considerably better than the rough PS2/3 era look of CS1/2. Rean looks particularly goofy in the old engine, PS1 Ape Escape head ass.

Combat wise it’s neat to see the Orbment / Quartz system expanded from what it began as to setting up legit builds and I think the Break system sort of works, but the way that bosses heal now makes boss fights tedious as hell if you don’t nuke them with -Delay orders and a stockpile of 200 CP SCrafts. That aspect alone was enough to get me to drop the difficulty and just finish the game.

Don’t have too much to say on story beats as CS3 is half a game but I do hope that we’re done with the half assed Persona school settings. There’s enough chatter in the games without adding the school sections on the front of each Chapter. Sitting down for a 3-4 hour session and not entering combat once is kind of brutal.

Did have the best moment in the series so far though:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

facetiming with Valimar, hell yeah

[close]

[Don Rumata]

Sure, but the point is we went from barely being able to discern humans on screen (cue FF8 Squall meme) to basically having amazing models with facial animations and everything. (see Silent Hill 1 --> Silent Hill 3)
Comparably, we won't really get that jump again.

RDR2 is eye meltingly good looking, but compared to RDR1, it's just not that mind blowing of a jump, because the fundamentals were already laid.

see i just finished RDR2 and went to replay RDR1, and i'd make the opposite conclusion. in my memories 1 looked amazing, but playing it today i see that even the most busted budget-ass game nowadays wouldn't look this "bad." the environment looks empty, the colors are washed out, and the animations look stiff. the best part are the character models, but even they look like puppets compared to modern graphics. the leap looks unreal.

I'm not saying there isn't a jump, mind you, of course RDR2 or Last of Us 2 or Control, or whatever, on PS360 weren't really immaginable, but my argument is on the PS1 era, much more fundamental graphical features were missing, that got filled in one go, on the next one, after that, it was essentially polishing up the fidelity of those aspects.

Like, Last of Us 2's faces are a big leap over Last of Us 1's, but on PS1, realistic characters barely had faces at all, so there was just a basic aspect that couldn't be explored at all (if not with CGI cinematics) and that were solved very abruptly (again, Silent Hill 3 had incredible facial animations in real time graphics).
Same with character models not being made out of disjointed blocks, pixels not warping all over the place, not to mention a draw distance above 2 meters out.
I think the jump between MGS1 and MGS2 illustrates this probably better than anything else. Snake went from having no eyes or fingers, to the game having extra shit like melting ice cubes. 

Didn't have a N64 at the time, but maybe that was a different deal, it being more powerful and all, so maybe from it to the Game Cube, the jump didn't feel as big.

[Positive Touch]

ah ok i see what you're saying. yeah we'll never see a leap like that again because man ps1 polygons were dogshit. i remember hating on most of those old titles because even with the 3D it still looked like a step down from the amazing stuff they were doing at the end of the 16 bit era. it didn't help that by the end of the 90s pc graphics were so far ahead of the consoles. console graphics looked like shitty low rez picasso paintings. then the ps2 is announced and man the graphics were such a step ahead. i think there's as many polygons in mgs1 snake as there are in mgs2 snake's eye lol.

[paprikastaude]

PS4Bone wasn't a huge jump, but still made games much more visually pleasing in hindsight. AAA in particular like God of War shits all over PS360. PS2/XB/GCN classics still look good mostly, especially in HD emulators. But PS360 is just hideous as this weird stepping stone into HD. Everything is shit brown or has ugly filters, overblown reflections and creepy ass character models, shitty bald dudes or women wearing hoodies. I guess it didn't help that good Japanese games were gone in that generation, while many classics from the prior gen were stylized Japanese games instead of shooters and WRPGs.

[Don Rumata]

Yeah PS360 was a weird black hole of good aesthetics, for the most part.
I blame the overuse of some techniques like bloom and AO, but in general we went through a patch of really ugly games.
Changing generation was a bit like a fog clearing up.

This is even in Western games, like Infamous, or that Journey to the West title from Ninja Theory, supposedly representing a lush naural environment, that ends up looking like a radioactive wasteland, due to the colors and lighting.

(Image removed from quote.)

Look at the horrid bloom, absurd atmospheric fog, saturation... 

TBH even best in class titles like Last of Us had to deal with that shit:

Look at the AO on the car, or the general amount of saturation in every color.

I'm glad we're beyond that.

[Pissy F Benny]

Next gen we bring the ugly back

[Don Rumata]

Next gen we bring the ugly back

Halo Infinite doesn't even have animated foliage. 
A good start.

[HardcoreRetro]

I hope it does the Halo 5 thing where the enemies run at half the frame rate. Looked great.

[naff]

Sounds good Positive Touch. Metroid 2 indeed holds up really well. The remake on 3DS is also quite good and just before that launched some fans made a remake too, AM2R or something like that.
And yeah, time is fucking crazy. When I was 18 or so Ocarina of Time was a 'retro' game included with the GameCube.

Now Metroid Prime 2002 (18 years) is much older than OOT was when it re-released on GameCube in 2003(< 5 years).
The 'long' wait between Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion that made everyone wonder if Metroid would ever return was only 8 years.
It has been 13 years since Metroid Prime 3 released.

Played some Astral Chain today. Up to file 5 now. Still a really fun game and from the vibe I'm getting I should be about halfway through.

I feel like the jump from n64 to GameCube was enormous though. The ps2/cube/Xbox were just miles ahead of the consoles they replaced in a way that ps3 and ps4 generation aren’t. Xbox games are looking a little long in the tooth now, but playing actually n64 games on an n64 is like not that fun for me anymore. The frame rates are just too awful in general

that's because it was

rough #'s in gflops:

4th - 5th gen: (i think snes was about 2.5mflops?) so ~80x increase?

5th - 6th gen: ~0.2 (n64, not sure abt psx) -> ~7 (ps2/xbox/gc). ~35x increase

6th - 7th gen: ~7 -> 240. Again ~35x increase, huge improvements in storage and other hardware speeds.

7th - 8th gen ~240 -> 1.2/1.8 Teraflops. 4-5x increase. same hdds, ram, bus speeds etc. consoles are now just closed system pc's.

you'd have to be blind to not see the drastic changes in how improved hardware continues to affect games, increases in gpu power especially are still big but we're def in the era of diminishing returns relative to the insane improvements that were being made before.

[Bebpo]

The negative suit in Spider-Man animates so crazy nice. It looks like a goddamn CG movie in cutscenes.

[Thirty-Ought-Six]

Beat Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. It was surprisingly fun and creative, very nostalgic but they went above and beyond just doing that. There is a great sense of progression as you gain more and more forms, with the peak of the game probably being the volcano, when you have lion, frog, and ice equipment that enable lots of clever ideas and hidden secrets you could go look for in previous areas. The only thing bringing it down a little is the last two areas

spoiler (click to show/hide)

the castle and the dark zone have the worst design in the game imo, with bad stealth section, bad blocked view of the screen section, and just generally none of the nicely interconnected maps of previous sections.

[close]

[archnemesis]

I also really enjoyed Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, but you're absolutely right about the drop in quality towards the end. I even dropped it.

[Nintex]

Ok Astral Chain, you did not require a puzzle game to move cars or carrying boxes to a specific spot STRANDING(tm) gameplay.

I feel like a lot of Platinum Games suffer from this, at some point they are worried there's not enough variety or enough content after the first half and they start padding the game with half-baked ideas.
Which is ultimately why their games land in the 8/10 zone for me and seldom in the 9/10 or 10/10 zone. This game has enough gameplay variety by itself and would be long enough without these sections.

[BIONIC]

Ok Astral Chain, you did not require a puzzle game to move cars or carrying boxes to a specific spot STRANDING(tm) gameplay.

I feel like a lot of Platinum Games suffer from this, at some point they are worried there's not enough variety or enough content after the first half and they start padding the game with half-baked ideas.
Which is ultimately why their games land in the 8/10 zone for me and seldom in the 9/10 or 10/10 zone. This game has enough gameplay variety by itself and would be long enough without these sections.

That’s mostly with File 8. Although I still enjoyed it for the most part, it’s pretty much padding central. The remaining files have a nice brisk pace.

[Nintex]

Ok Astral Chain, you did not require a puzzle game to move cars or carrying boxes to a specific spot STRANDING(tm) gameplay.

I feel like a lot of Platinum Games suffer from this, at some point they are worried there's not enough variety or enough content after the first half and they start padding the game with half-baked ideas.
Which is ultimately why their games land in the 8/10 zone for me and seldom in the 9/10 or 10/10 zone. This game has enough gameplay variety by itself and would be long enough without these sections.

That’s mostly with File 8. Although I still enjoyed it for the most part, it’s pretty much padding central. The remaining files have a nice brisk pace.

Good to hear, I was worried it would be downhill from here. Luckily I've nearly completed all the side chores. Doing the picture match now, which is actually a decent one.

[Mr Gilhaney]

https://twitter.com/NoidedLung/status/1293322178704941063

i really like this game

[tiesto]

Trudging my way through the final dungeon in Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys. Gonna attempt to beat it on Thursday. The boss fights in this game are really good, especially when you're dodging a ton of bullets and attacks and firing back with your fire magic... this is where the Ys reputation for amazing bosses started imo.

[The Sceneman]

Finally getting around to getting through The Evil Within 2, up to chapter 14/17. The game expands on the lore of the first game very well and is more technically sound, but I dont think its as good as the first game. It is much more survival focused and more akin to old school resi than RE4 and I just preferred the flow, challenge and design of the first game. Consensus online seems divided as well. It's still a good game but I just cant really put my finger on why I'm not loving it.

Mainly I've been playing Slay the Spire almost daily. I'm trying to master the Ironclad class but I still suck, cant beat the "true" final boss yet. Skill ceiling on this game is insane plus runs are very luck based. Hard to put down for this reason, a la MtG

[Akala]

I really like Slay the Spire as well but I am pretty terrible at it. 

[kingv]

I’ve played a lot of slay the spire but never beaten it. I think I’ve only gotten to the final boss one time and it wrecked me.

[Nintex]

Completed Astral Chaingelion

spoiler (click to show/hide)

So... the ending is fucking crazy and doesn't really resolve anything apart from the main characters. It basically boils down to a number of humongous and epic boss fights.
This is certainly a hidden gem but sometimes it has a bit of an identity crisis between:
- Epic Platinum Games action RPG
- Animu weeb game
- Kids game

Luckily it goes to mode 1 far more than it goes to kids game. But it's weird to have really simple mind numbing challenges that require you to walk 5 steps and then a 5 stage boss fight.
I got it because I'm a big fan of Platinum Games, especially Nier: Automata. This game is much better than W101, which is my least favorite Platinum Games-game but not as good as Nier Automata (obviously).
All things considered I like this more than Bayonetta 2 actually. 

Perhaps one of the best looking games on the Switch. It's so stylish but at times there's so much shit on screen you can't see what's going on. 

[close]

[demi]

So it basically would have been better on a real platform, agreed

[MMaRsu]

I’ve played a lot of slay the spire but never beaten it. I think I’ve only gotten to the final boss one time and it wrecked me.

I've beaten it twice but after that I kinda had my fill

Risk of Rain 1.0 is really good though, just came back to that after not playing for a few months and they have some nice new maps and more characters to unlock

[demi]

I've been playing Yakuza Kiwami 2 and it re-affirms that people who suck Y0's cock are stupid because even this game shits on Y0

[Bebpo]

I haven’t played 0 yet, but 2 is pretty great yeah.

Still not sure whether I want to play 4 next or skip the Kiryu saga and jump to 7 (and maybe play Judgement) and come back later.

[tiesto]

Completed Astral Chaingelion

spoiler (click to show/hide)

So... the ending is fucking crazy and doesn't really resolve anything apart from the main characters. It basically boils down to a number of humongous and epic boss fights.
This is certainly a hidden gem but sometimes it has a bit of an identity crisis between:
- Epic Platinum Games action RPG
- Animu weeb game
- Kids game

Luckily it goes to mode 1 far more than it goes to kids game. But it's weird to have really simple mind numbing challenges that require you to walk 5 steps and then a 5 stage boss fight.
I got it because I'm a big fan of Platinum Games, especially Nier: Automata. This game is much better than W101, which is my least favorite Platinum Games-game but not as good as Nier Automata (obviously).
All things considered I like this more than Bayonetta 2 actually. 

Perhaps one of the best looking games on the Switch. It's so stylish but at times there's so much shit on screen you can't see what's going on. 

[close]

I loved the art style and especially soundtrack of Astral Chain... but it left me wanting in certain areas. Combat was pretty fun once you got the hang of simultaneously controlling your character and your robot. But so much of the game elements felt repetitive - especially the long treks through the astral plane in every level, or the really pointless and unnecessary filler quests. The last battle was also obnoxious and I couldn't really get a decent strategy down for him aside from just spamming healing items.

I'd say my Platinum ranking is like this:
1. Nier Automata
2. Vanquish
3. Bayonetta
4. Bayonetta 2
5. Astral Chain
6. Wonderful 101

Haven't played Infinite Space, TMNT, or Transformers though.

BTW, this song fucking RULED:

[paprikastaude]

Streets of Rage 4. As someone who has internalized the SoR2 moveset, this game feels like taking off the training weights in Dragonball 

[MMaRsu]

SoR4 is pretty great, against my expectations. Although I do really miss a more mobile moveset with some characters.

[Pissy F Benny]

Skate 1 is on sale on Xbox and it’s so fucking good, the little skate park you start in shits all over anything in skate 3