What are you playing?

[Rufus]

I've been wanting to catch up on GOG games for a while. First one was Project Eden, a 2001 vintage from Core Design. It's essentially Lost Vikings, but in 3D. You control four special operatives in a futuristic dystopia, each of which has unique abilities. Switching between them as you solve the increasingly involved puzzles can be laborious, especially when the pathfinding fails and you have to take manual control of someone. 
It's heavy on puzzles, light on action, but what action is there can be pretty annoying. Thankfully it's not very punishing, as there is no way to get a game over. You just get set back to a checkpoint (which also function as healing stations) and have to retread your steps. The worst that can happen is that you forget what you were doing or how to get back to where you were killed.

Probably my favourite game of theirs, though I've only played this and their Tomb Raider series.

The other game that I'm still in the middle of is Gorky 17, also known as Odium in NA. Turn based strategy crossed with survival horror style resource scarcity (and monster design). I had to start it over pretty early in as I wasn't conversing my ammo enough the first go around. Now that I know what I'm facing it's a lot smoother. I initially thought that it had random encounters, but you actually just get ambushed at specific points. Once you know what spots trigger an encounter it becomes a lot easier.

The developer, Metropolis Software would go on to make this piece of shit (and then get bought by CD Project):

[a slime appears]

Yeah I don't know what the PAL market is like for N64 but in NTSC-land those games are starting to take off in terms of price. I became friends with the owner of a local retro game store and he says that N64 games are by far his biggest sellers. Pissed that it was my brother and not me who bought a sealed Conker's BFD back in the day for $2

N64 already took off. You've got the high demand games hitting $60 and the rare games are all $100+. The market was good 5 years ago.

[Bebpo]

Persona 5 - About 50 hours in now (I'm hearing 80 hours, so figuring maybe 3 dungeons left; I don't waste a lot of time), and I just want to gush all about this game.  But I'll wait until I finish it.  But yeah, making a game that lived up to P4, was just as stylish, characters just as memorable, etc... without feeling like a clone, so many years later with all the Persona hype was going to be near impossible, but they pulled it off.  Game is a fantastic sequel that lives up to everything you want from a Persona 3/4 sequel and doesn't feel derivative of them, but an actual next step major sequel. 

It's the best written game of 2016, the main story is kind of background and it's more episodic with each episode revolving around a character and a story dungeon, but every story arc has been great so far dealing with modern societal issues of abuse with far more maturity than videogames usually deserve.  Also the cast really feels like college-age and everyone graphically looks college-age and the story seems college-age, so they really should've just set it in college but Japan will never get out of high school so it's HS, but it definitely feels like Persona 3/4 grown up.

[as an aside P5 made me try to think of ANY Japanese games that take place in college and I can't come up with anything.  Not sure why Japan isn't interested in college settings and high school is the cutoff]

The only negatives people will notice are the game is too easy, it's not baby Nintendo easy, but mainstream rpg easy like SMT4 and the music is great jazzy stuff but it's not vocal pop songs of P3/P4 and some people might be bummed about it.  Also load times out of battle are a couple of seconds too long.

[tiesto]

Exist Archive has a really fun battle system (it's basically Valkyrie Profile), and another typical Sakuraba soundtrack, but the blatant asset reuse is laughably bad. I'm about 10 hours in, hunting everyone's Essence Crystals now, and there's been like 3 maps, and 10 different enemies, just all palette swapped to oblivion. It's a shame since if this game had some more variation of backgrounds and enemies, it could be really good. Still, it's much better than the abysmal Star Ocean 5.

[Bebpo]

Played Forza Horizon 3 all night.  Unlocked 3 of the 4 festivals.  You know, I've never enjoyed a single Forza game.  I remember trying Forza 1, Forza Horizon 1, Forza 2 and Forza 3 and the games were all too sim for me (don't really like GT anymore either; I'm more into Burnout-style arcade racers).  At first Forza Horizon 3 wasn't grabbing me and the controls in races still felt too sim-like.  I was winning races but I kinda hate that I'd need to drive like GT and slow down before turns, turn and then speed up after the apex.  In my arcade racers I just wanna powerslide through turns.

But after a bunch of hours, I found myself really enjoying the off-road stuff.  Taking jumps with dune buggies or racing through jungles or water with trucks, the game reminds me A LOT and feels like a spiritual successor to Sega Rally 2006 which I loved since I love Rally games (that and Rallisport Challenge 2 are the best).  I don't love FH3, but it's pretty good and I played like 4-5 hours straight and couldn't put it down.  I feel like unlocking more races by unlocking festivals is a bit of a grind at this point, and I wish the head 2 head racing cars gave you fans since that's all I care about so I can unlock more races, but there's a good amount of them and they're fun.  The city/road stuff does feel like playing GT or Sega GT with some more interesting/exotic tracks/locations.  I like the drivatar stuff, but the game has like 40 menu items which is a little overwhelming and I haven't looked through half the menus.  The non-skippable dialogue bits everytime you look at something for the first time annoys me to no end to the point where I sorta avoid looking at things I'm probably not interested in anyways.  I hate non-skippable dude talk in games.  Dirt 3 was so bad with that.

The game looks pretty nice, I find FH3's version of Australia actually kind of...boring looking tbh.  Driving around in SF in Watchdogs 2 is more scenic and makes me want to use photo mode more.  It's like dirt road plains, some small little couple of houses towns, a generic skyscraper city, some beaches/jungles yawn.  I'm still kind of bummed I missed out on Forza Horizon 2 because Italy/France seem like they'd be a lot more scenic to drive through.  Like Test Drive Unlimited's Hawaii was a lot more virtual traveling interesting for me to drive around than FH3's map.  Also radio stations are kind of weak, especially coming from Watchdogs 2's great radio stations, but that's what custom playlists are for.

Also on the PC performance is broke.  At 30fps it looks great and I can run it even at 4k which basically looks like photomode playable, but there's bad input lag that the 30fps Xbox One version doesn't have that makes driving feel sluggish.  On the other hand, if you drop the settings down and make it uglier than the Xbox One version you can run 1080p/60fps with constant framerate drops/choppiness/slowdown.  Game can't hold 60fps no matter how low you set everything, will run 60fps but then when things happen like special effects or certain areas like the city it'll drop down to 45-55fps which causes stutter/judder.  Still, silky smooth 60fps dashboard cam is pretty glorious, especially taking crazy jumps at high speed.  So I'm enjoying it a lot at 60fps and just deal with lots of slowdown in races and in the city.  I thought I'd grown more accustomed to 30fps in games these past years, but for racing games, trying both here I'd rather have an Xbox 360 looking game that runs 60fps than a Xbox One looking game that runs 30fps.  For a lot of genre 30fps is fine, but yeah jumping between the two here just reminds me that for racers & fighters 60fps makes such a huge difference.  FPS too.

[Momo]

Osiris new dawn

[Beezy]

Horizon 1 and 2 were too sim for you? Jesus, Bebpo.

[MMaRsu]

Haha Forza Horizon 1 is nothing like a sim lol

[MMaRsu]

Horizon 1 and 2 were too sim for you? Jesus, Bebpo.

I'm guessing he associates the term 'sim' with 'slow boring ass racer that's nothing like a proper arcade racing game'. If so, I don't blame him.

Thats true

[Bebpo]

I feel like Forza Horizon's handling/physics is just Forza mainline's handling/physics when set to arcade, kind of like how Gran Turismo has an "arcade mode" but setting the handling to arcade doesn't turn it into Burnout or NFS.  Which is fine, I mean what I get from FH is it's for people who want to experience the feeling of driving real cars in off-road open sandbox environment and mess around.  Like how GT/Forza is for people who want to experience driving real cars on race tracks. 

For me arcade racers are fine with only having like 1-3 cars playable, because the fun is the arcade racing, turbo boosting, powersliding, etc... the cars aren't realistic depictions of how those cars really are.  When I play FH I keep pressing for the turbo/nitro boost and it's not there  :'(  Watchdogs 2 has turbo boost and I like the racing there even if the controls are kind of bad.

So to me Horizon isn't an arcade racer, but it's not a full on sim either, it's a halfway between the two although I'd put it closer to sim than arcade.

Also when I played Horizon 1, I only played an hour or two and shelved it so I was using whatever the starting class was.  In Horizon 3, I felt the controls/gameplay was not arcade at all for the first hour or two until I upgraded my car from A class to S1 class.  Made a world of difference, not only are you going fast with S1 cars, but they handle much more responsively and are just way more fun to drive.   So basically Horizon has the GT problem of starting you with junky slow cars.  Which imo is kind of a trademark of sim-ish racers.

[MMaRsu]

I bought a month of gold for 1EURO

Who wants to play some multiplayer Xbox 360 games like TTT2?

or halo or cod or sumthin

[tiesto]

Look what came in the mail 

[demi]

well play it fucker.

[Positive Touch]

FFFFUUUUUUUUUU jealous

[demi]

Just finished Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition. Not as feels as Unravel, but there are some feels to be found here. As a metroidvania it's pretty average.

[a slime appears]

Decided to check out the Forza Horizon 3 demo on PC.

110fps/1440p with every setting maxed out. Praise be to PC gaming.

[Momo]

I bought Elite finally, my dreams of being a space taxi soon to be realized

[Bebpo]

Man, Horizon 3 sure gets grindy.  Messing around online/offline, I think the game is at its best when you don't have to think about SP progression.  I imagine post-game, you just have a big sandbox map to drive around with, filled with constant user created missions and a great online mode to join up in packs and race around the environment.  I did some online championship stuff and it was a lot of fun, although me being lvl.17 and everyone else being lvl.400+ everyone's cars were super turned 150 HP more than my car so in about 3 seconds they all disappeared and I never saw them again, but thankfully since the ranking goes by XP earned, by doing good racing I still ended up gettign 4th overall out of 8 or 10. 

One thing I dislike is how the actual game races are geared toward whatever car your in, so even though you get 100s of cars there's not much point in using them.  I try to mix it up and use different cars every race or two, but the fact you can't upgrade from a race menu without going back to the festival means if I want to set a race to a new car I got, it'll be that car stock and the car will probably control like shit which isn't that fun. 

I doubt I'll keep playing until 25 million fans, that's pretty nuts and from what I'm reading Horizon 3 is the most grindy of the three Horizon games.  I'm almost at getting the final area unlocked at 2 million fans, probably just stick to multiplayer roaming & racing after that.  I think my overall feel at this point is Horizon 3 is a great community racing game that you can play for months if not years, the littlebigplanet of racers, but the SP has some annoying flaws that bring it down.

Otoh Watchdogs 2 is pretty much the best thing ever and I never want it to end.  It's like the opposite of grind when there's so much content but it's all so good.  I hope they put real effort into the DLC stuff, I'd totally buy the season pass if it's the same quality as the main game but several hours of good missions and side content.

[Beezy]

In FH3, you get more exp per event as you progress. 25 mil fans isn't nuts at all.

[tiesto]

Played a few hours worth of FF15, it's surprisingly fun so far. Quests seem a bit fetch-y, like I was afraid of, but it's not like there's a ridiculous amount of them, and some of the higher level hunts are fun. Story hasn't really kicked in too much, but I do like the whole 'road trip' / route 66 vibe. Reminds me of taking drives down to Florida when I was little.

Combat and performance are much smoother than the Duscae/Platinum demos. Driving around and listening to classic FF tunes is great too, and the soundtrack seems to have a decent variety, it's not ALL generic Shimomura violins (sorry not into her or violin heavy battle music). Surprised that so far they pulled it off so far, let's see if/when it all falls apart.

[Bebpo]

In FH3, you get more exp per event as you progress. 25 mil fans isn't nuts at all.

Yeah, noticing that.  I'm at 3 million now and getting like 125,000 per race.  Once I started getting the S2 Modern Super Cars & Hyper cars, the street racing got even better.  Really fun driving at 170+mph and surprisingly doable.  Rally cars great fun for off-road and supercars for street.  Now that I've unlocked all the festivals and I'm just upgrading them to get more events, I'll see how long it keeps me glued to it. 

[archie4208]

>Get last place in a race
>Gain 100k fans

[demi]

Finished Costume Quest 2 - that was a thing, I guess.

[MMaRsu]

Finished Costume Quest 2 - that was a thing, I guess.

Ive had that game for a long time on PS4..is it any good?

[The Sceneman]

got sonic and knuckles xbla for like $1.50 for a distraction and an easy 200/200

The bassline on this track is straight fire

[Momo]

Wrong bassline friend!

[MMaRsu]

Best Sonic and Knuckles song and yall cant even deny it



 

S&K is amazing by the way

Actually this is also pretty great

[demi]

Got the platinum on Everybody's Gone to the Rapture - Very dumb story ROFL. Honestly a waste of time but when your dick says GET DAT PLAT you pull it out and keep hammering away.

[Momo]

Best Sonic and Knuckles song and yall cant even deny it



 

Second best, I always liked act 2 better

[Stoney Mason]

Playing Divinity Original Sin - Enhanced Edition with a friend. That game is challenging I like the combat. Never played it before.

[Bebpo]

Tried Smash Bros Wii U kinda fun.  I wish the game had a real SP mode since I have no friends to play with  

Forza Horizon 3 up to 7 million+ fans now.  At stage 3-4 of the festivals.  Still like it, but don't love it in SP campaign.  Some of the bucket lists are really fun ideas, some are kind of annoying.  Sure is a pretty game.  Will probably pass on the snow expansion and I don't think I'll play another Forza game after this.  But I'm enjoying it enough I'll finish the SP side and play some multi. 

Watchdogs 2 still amazing.  It's like we got GTAVI already without waiting another 4+ years

Persona 5 gonna start the next arc up.  Each story chapter is pretty standalone and about 10 hours long so it's perfect for taking breaks between each chapter.

[chronovore]

Mad Max was $8 on PSN, so that's looming next for me.

[Bebpo]

Mad Max was $8 on PSN, so that's looming next for me.

Be warned, MM is a game that you really want to love.  Incredible art direction, nice car combat and feel of driving around, cool post apocalyptic hideouts to collect collectibles at, ok visceral combat.

but, it's the most repetitive sandbox game since like AC1.  There's about 6 things to do in the world and you do those between 20-50 times across the map.  I still enjoyed the game enough to do almost everything because the atmosphere was so, so good.  Yet I also felt really bored a lot and it feels like a 100 hour game even when it's like 30 hours.  I don't think I'd really recommend it to any friends because as beautiful and atmospheric as it is, it just wastes too much of your life.

[chronovore]

Mad Max was $8 on PSN, so that's looming next for me.

Be warned, MM is a game that you really want to love.  Incredible art direction, nice car combat and feel of driving around, cool post apocalyptic hideouts to collect collectibles at, ok visceral combat.

but, it's the most repetitive sandbox game since like AC1.  There's about 6 things to do in the world and you do those between 20-50 times across the map.  I still enjoyed the game enough to do almost everything because the atmosphere was so, so good.  Yet I also felt really bored a lot and it feels like a 100 hour game even when it's like 30 hours.  I don't think I'd really recommend it to any friends because as beautiful and atmospheric as it is, it just wastes too much of your life.

I'm willing to bet I get $8 worth of play out of it, but I will keep you warning at the forefront of my mind when I get to the "should I keep beating this dead horse" stage of ennui which always gets me somewhere pre-completion in open-world games.

[demi]

fuck mad max

[Momo]

what's wrong with mad max?

[demi]

its ubiGaming jacked up to 100

[Momo]

 

[Hitler Stole My Potato]

I picked up the PC version of Mad Max just days after I bought it for the PS4 and haven't really touched either.  I'm prepared for it to suck but I still want to give it a shot.

And speaking of rebuying shit I already own, I bought Doom again but it's constantly crashing to the desktop.  I can eventually get it up and running but it seems really random.  Anyone else have this problem?

[Rufus]

And speaking of rebuying shit I already own, I bought Doom again but it's constantly crashing to the desktop.  I can eventually get it up and running but it seems really random.  Anyone else have this problem?

Check the Steam forums and pcgamingwiki.net to see if it's a common issue.

[chronovore]

Did I mention that I'm re-re-replaying BULLY on PS4? Only the barest luster has worn from this jewel. Rockstar's GTA III-era indoor camera is worse than I remembered. Its need to quickly resolve wall collision is at odds with the player's spatial awareness and ability to navigate. The PS4 version of the game also drops the "Scholarship Edition" additional Music and Biology classes which were banal and frustrating, respectively. The preps and jocks currently have execute-on-sight orders against poor Jimmy Hopkins.

[The Sceneman]

Its kinda criminal how we never got Bully 2 

Anyhow I just got the 1000/1000 in South Park Stick of Truth. Superb. Now to climb back on my backlog/cheev ratio. Gonna try and force myself to complete Faery: Legends of Avalon for that crispy 200/200. Got the game mega cheap as I was in the mood for some self deprecation

[chronovore]

Its kinda criminal how we never got Bully 2 

Yeah, the only "leak" we had about it was the soundtrack composer spilling that he'd been working on it. Considering how secretive R* is about their development, it wouldn't surprise me if he received the stern end of the yardstick. Now we know they've been largely focused on GTA Online content and Red Dead Redemption: 2Red2Dead, I suspect the composer was working on something for an internal pitch that didn't go anywhere.  :'(

The game does so much right, and better than that-era GTA did:

• brawling engine
• contextual music cues
• missions and school classes unlock additional abilities
• repercussions for time-of-day
• subtle stealth mechanic (usually with nondestructive results, i.e. mission failure)
• skateboard anytime for faster travel
• instant-travel buses
• did I mention dat brawling engine?

I'd pay the robbery prices of a collector's edition if I could play through Jimmy Hopkins' college years.

[The Sceneman]

Yeah, Bully was really ahead of it's time in terms of game design I think. GTAIV which came out years after had this hi-tech slickly rendered 3d world with no actual cool game stuff inside it. A sequel with today's tech would be holy shit good, but they'd definitely need stylistic art rather than realistic.

2RED2DEAD If the online is as good as Redemption1 its gonna be incredible. Although I will admit a lot of the online fun came from all the paid DLC packs, and now that the model has been flipped pretty hard it'll be interesting to see how it all pans out

[Take My Breh Away]

I got a GTX 1060 recently

The struggle is now that GeForce experience sets everything to Ultra instead of tweaking it just right for 60FPS. Booted Witcher 3 and it gets 60FPS everywhere outside Novigrad (Where it hovers between 45-60). Probably need to kill Hairworks. 

[Rufus]

Hairworks looks weird on Geralt anyway. Too stringy.

[seagrams hotsauce]

Bully is really special. It really takes me back to high school and it's actually still pretty good. There are a few kind of messy parts that were par for the course in that era of Rockstar, but nothing game breaking and tbh it's kind of endearing. I fully admit I'm donning nostalgia goggles but it's just really charming to me. It's also a very late-fall-early-winter game for me, gonna reinstall and play through it this month

[a slime appears]

I got a GTX 1060 recently

The struggle is now that GeForce experience sets everything to Ultra instead of tweaking it just right for 60FPS. Booted Witcher 3 and it gets 60FPS everywhere outside Novigrad (Where it hovers between 45-60). Probably need to kill Hairworks.

Kill Hairworks, huge performance sink. It's only for the big boys; 1080+.

(also remove GeForce experience)

[chronovore]

Bully is really special. It really takes me back to high school and it's actually still pretty good. There are a few kind of messy parts that were par for the course in that era of Rockstar, but nothing game breaking and tbh it's kind of endearing. I fully admit I'm donning nostalgia goggles but it's just really charming to me. It's also a very late-fall-early-winter game for me, gonna reinstall and play through it this month

Yeah, it holds a special place in my heart as well, and I'm willing to overlook any number of tiny problems to appreciate its larger achievement: Two years after Rockstar North's GTA San Andreas, a tiny studio showed the big boys how to make a crafted, compact experience with their same engine, yet offered so many well-considered tweaks on the formula. It's just gold.

Also I agree that it's a fall/winter game, especially since the early game pulls you through the beginning of a standard school year.

[Bebpo]

Almost done with Forza Horizon 3.  Saw the first credit roll.  At 16 million fans now.  Will have unlocked all the races on the map probably next session.  Around 13 hours now.  Game on PC is the worst optimzed game since Arkham Knight, but at this point I can get it to run 60fps for 2 hours and then it's a stuttery 60fps that gets worse and worse i think there's a memory leak or something that builds up over time.

I liked the game, but didn't love it.  8/10.  The whole arcade-sim is better than boring sim but not as fun as arcade.  I had more fun actually racing with Bizarre's Blur (incredibly underrated game) and this game is no PGR for me.   

Australia is kinda boring map in this game from a visual variety style but the graphics and time of day change/weather is real nice.  I love that it has REAL NIGHT meaning nighttime is pure black outside your headlights.  Too many games just use grey.  It's super cool racing at night.  I feel like SP campaign/sandbox-wise there's not the kind of variety I expect from a sandbox like Burnout Paradise or something, pretty much all you do is race either in sprints or circuits or sometimes you do a couple second skill or speed thing, there's also bucket challenge which is a sprint or skill or speed thing. 

The single player campaign has like ZERO curve to it because you set the difficulty every race and you still win if you get last place lol.  There's no sense of progression like a SP racer where the races get more challenging as you go.  It's just the same thing over and over and once you've got the driving down you can figure out where you stand on AI level and then it's all kinda the same. 

Since it's Arcade-sim and it's like an arcade racer where you collect hundreds of cars like GT/Forza and upgrade and tune them up and drive with cool cockpit view, I think I'd like Horizon 3 more if it had VR headset support + if I was using a FF wheel with a clutch shifter and pedals.  I feel like the game works best when you immerse yourself and get this semi-realistic  experience driving around on streets and off-road in real cars.  Doing it in VR so like when it's night you look around and just see a total pitch dark world would be really immersive.

The multiplayer is really good, but I'm just not into MP.  I think it's very cool that you can make race challenges for SP that appear on other people's sandbox map, you can race people's ghosts on a hundred tracks and you can do real MP with a pack of 8 people where you race to the start of the race and then do a race and repeat.  Also like the idea of when you're not playing, your AI car enters other people's games and so when you play SP all of the other racers in SP races are ghosts of other humans with their unique looking car decals.  But they still race like dumb CPU but at least it changes up the look.

idk, it's got a lot of good, the graphics are nice, sound is good (don't like the radio stations), handling is solid/good for arcade-sim, has lots of cars lots of tinkering that you can actually feel when you tune or upgrade, pitch dark night is awesome, MP is great, but when it comes down to the 15-25 hours of SP campaign, is just alright, kinda all feels similar and there's no sense of progression and it's not the most interesting map, so...8/10.  I probably won't play another Horizon game after this, but if they make some changes to the SP, I may jump back in.

[Bebpo]

Alright, so at some point around 21 million fans, Forza Horizon 3 finally clicked with me.  It was doing an off-road SUV championship, driving around in cockpit view, smashing through fields and rivers and controller rumbling non-stop while skill chaining for minutes straight.  It was damn fun and I hadn't really play an SUV off-road racer like this before.  Then I did some circuit with super spec'd out go-karts and it was a lot of fun and a totally different experience.  Then some guy joined my session for co-op and we did a bunch of championships in Rally cars Imprrezas & Celicas.  Playing on co-op and not having a rewind ability changes everything.  Makes races much more intense.  Then did night street racers in hyper cars that were too damn fast and basically have to feather the throttle at half-speed the whole time.

And I hit 25 million fans and unlocked the final festival somewhere in all that, but I didn't care.  It was just fun driving all these different types of cars around different types of tracks.  The gorgeous skies and weather effects created some beautiful moments of driving and I got addicted to driving nothing but cockpit view and after fans disappeared at 25 million, it all became about auctions and collecting car after car after car and trying them all out.  Like I didn't even have to be doing a race, just free roaming around with a new car is fun because they all feel kinda different and unique.

What started as a couple hour session, ended up being a 6 hour session until almost 2am.  Basically all my sessions with Forza Horizon 3 always went for at least 3-4 hours because the game is just hard to put down.  It's tough finding a stopping spot because there's always some race around the corner or some new car you want to try.  I've probably put about 20-25 hours into the game in the last week.

At the end of the day, I realize that while Horizon 3 doesn't have a lot of variety in the events/races/stunts it offers, the real variety is all the different car types.  Racing a street/offroad circuit with a street car is totally different experience than with a bouncy SUV truck which is totally different than a light high flying buggy.  Racing all these different cars in different weather types and times of days makes for races that often feel fresh and are fun.

Anyhow, my game glitched out in the last hour and wouldn't let me continue championships because everytime I started one and went to the 2nd race it thought I was in a co-op championship and would lock me out.  So that was kinda annoying, but just picked off remaining exhibitions.  Of the stunts, I found some of the longer downhill drift zones a lot of fun, the speed stuff was kinda ok.  Not sure how long I'll keep playing it, but probably at least a few more long sessions.  Now that I don't care about fans, it's fun just doing street races with ghost cars and getting money since money & xp are all that matters now.  Got up to about lvl.74 I think at this point now.

[Bebpo]

Can't...stop...playing.  Argh, I have a problem with this game.



That's one of my favorite tracks.  I like all the cross-country/off-road truck/SUV races.  Definitely my favorite track type in the game and then Rally tracks after that and street racing last.  When you're driving off-road and there's no defined path and it's night and raining and cockpit view you can't see shit and your camera keeps pointing up in the air as you keep bouncing and flying and it's just total chaos but super fun.  There really aren't any good off-road racers these days (and I really loved Motorstorm & Excite Truck), so while I can get my race tracks in a million other games, and my Rally in Dirt Rally and stuff, the off-road is where Horizon shines imo.

Btw, I'm kinda surprised how few tracks there are in the game.  For a big sandbox racers, 63 tracks is ok, but I think by about 15 hours in I'd raced them all through various championships.  Been a while since I've stumbled on an all new track though I know I'm still missing a few.  Yeah, the same tracks are different depending on the car type, but the world feels big enough that you'd think there'd be like 100 tracks or something.  63 sounds like a ton, but I'm at the point now where I recognize and kinda of know the track layout for most of them upon starting a race in them.

Damn, was checking the forza hub to download my screenshots and it said my gametime is 28 hours :|  Think I gotta take a break from this for a week or two.

[Bebpo]

Got PS VR and messed around with some stuff for a few hours:

-General thoughts: hardware seems pretty similar to my Oculus DK2, still kinda uncomfortable and after 30-60 mins or so my neck starts hurting slightly from the weight of it. Same mess of cables as Oculus and Vive. I really can't see VR taking off to total mainstream as long as all these VR devices need huge amounts of cables plugged into each other. Until we get wireless strong enough to carry the signals needed I don't see wide acceptance (or phone VR maybe will be it).

-Holoball: Figured this would be a good test of range of motion with 2 moves and headset standing. Actually worked really well! Was a ton of fun and played like 20-30 mins straight with no problems. Sometimes I'd lose track the ball goes when I hit it but that's not a controller thing, just a perception thing. Game like this could be really fun with online multiplayer.  Coming from using Vive's motion controllers I expected the worst going to move, but couldn't really tell much of a difference here.

-Trackmania Turbo: Great! Looks fantastic and is a lot of fun. My only issue is I thought it would be the normal game with VR but it's a seperate campaign thing with slower less exciting courses. Also why can't you change cameras? I was looking forward to playing high speed Trackmania in 1st person cam with VR. Since someone in the thread said Sony certification can fail you in VR if you're giving motion sickness I'm a little concerned Sony Cert will make PS VR they toned down VR compared to PC. My favorite part of VR with the Rift was games that would actually make me feel vertigo, like make me feel I'm on a moving rollercoaster even if my seat isn't moving. But those were the fast and exciting demos.

-Until Dawn: Rush of Blood: Fun. It's mostly what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a modern House of the Dead arcade shooter on a mine-cart. The move controls work but the accuracy seems kinda flimsy, I had like 37% accuracy at the end of the first stage. Or maybe it's because unlike most gun games where you aim with one gun carefully, here you are just going crazy with two guns. Graphically it's a little weak because the low-resolution doesn't work as well with realistic graphics, but the first stage was fun. I liked the rollercoaster bits the best, the shooting gameplay doesn't seem up with Sega or Namco's light gun games, that part seems kinda generic.

-Rez Infinite. Did the first two areas. It's Rez. New perspective is neat, but it's just Rez, I dunno I'm over anything Rez that isn't area 5 (although looking forward to the new Area X). Controls were good with the headset aiming or DS aiming. Move aiming was slow and lethargic.

-Shin Godzilla Demo. Kinda cool even if it's like 2 mins long. Godzilla is kinda scary in VR which is exactly what I'm looking for in VR. I want carnival ride stuff that gives me thrills.

-Dangan Ronpa VR demo. Was kinda of nice usage of 3d with the 3d text pop outs. Graphics were a little too low to make the cell-shaded anime thing really work. But this style definitely has potential.

-Joyroom VR. Japanese karaoke to 360 cam live action FMV footage that looks like a VCD thanks to the resolution.

-Call of Duty Jackal Demo thing. Didn't care for it after I got flying. Controls seemed kinda sucky. Was boring.

-Driveclub VR. Awful. Only game so far I regret purchasing. Combining the low resolution of modern VR screens with realistic graphics that are held back by modern hardware just looks ugly as hell. It's like the PS1 of VR. Couldn't enjoy this at all because of how totally ugly it was and I like Driveclub. If you make a VR game, you gotta go stylized, and preferably bright & colorful. I'd rather play a port of Sega's VR racing than Driveclub VR.

Overall, was a fairly good first impression. The hardware and controllers with the right games work great and are a ton of fun. It's just gonna be all about the software and separating the hits from the misses. Again, was surprised move controllers worked a lot better than I expected having played a bunch of Vive at a friends and the headset tracks well.  Headset seems about on par with the Oculus DK2 I have, not as nice looking as Vive.  The best stuff I played on Vive were the most bright & colorful stylized games like the Defend your castle bow & arrow thing by Valve.  That's the stuff most games should go for until we can get these VR screens up a lot higher in resolution.

I still feel like real quality VR is still another 3-5 years away, but as an early adapter gimmick it can be fun.

Still have Rigs, Battlezone, Batman, Thumper, VR worlds, Where we Lie to try out next time I give it a shot. Might pick up Eagle Flight too.

[Positive Touch]

fzero snes sucks. the computer cheats worse than Mario kart, and I swear some difficulties are unwinnable with certain cars

[MMaRsu]

so uh

I've been getting into F-Zero GX with an emu

And it's... kinda shitty.

I've been watching Game Center CX where they're on F-Zero SNES, and it seems better somehow.

The third chapter has a really shitty track that I'm not gonna bother with. The story seems really pointless.

I did the ruby cup or whatever, it was pretty cool. Sand Ocean was awesome.

I tried sapphire cup and then it really hit me. The tracks in this game are fucking trash.

The environments are too busy, and the tracks themselves are extremely hit and miss.

It's mostly the tracks though. I mean you can't have shitty tracks in a racing game.

Ofcourse the story is pointless. This game is all about either time trials and beating those over and over or racing against friends.

[Himu]

Persona 5 - About 50 hours in now (I'm hearing 80 hours, so figuring maybe 3 dungeons left; I don't waste a lot of time), and I just want to gush all about this game.  But I'll wait until I finish it.  But yeah, making a game that lived up to P4, was just as stylish, characters just as memorable, etc... without feeling like a clone, so many years later with all the Persona hype was going to be near impossible, but they pulled it off.  Game is a fantastic sequel that lives up to everything you want from a Persona 3/4 sequel and doesn't feel derivative of them, but an actual next step major sequel. 

It's the best written game of 2016, the main story is kind of background and it's more episodic with each episode revolving around a character and a story dungeon, but every story arc has been great so far dealing with modern societal issues of abuse with far more maturity than videogames usually deserve.  Also the cast really feels like college-age and everyone graphically looks college-age and the story seems college-age, so they really should've just set it in college but Japan will never get out of high school so it's HS, but it definitely feels like Persona 3/4 grown up.

[as an aside P5 made me try to think of ANY Japanese games that take place in college and I can't come up with anything.  Not sure why Japan isn't interested in college settings and high school is the cutoff]

The only negatives people will notice are the game is too easy, it's not baby Nintendo easy, but mainstream rpg easy like SMT4 and the music is great jazzy stuff but it's not vocal pop songs of P3/P4 and some people might be bummed about it.  Also load times out of battle are a couple of seconds too long.

i've heard it's because HS is so hard and stressful so people need a time away. By comparison, college in Japan is apparently light and not really stressful. whereas for us, college is a time of self discovery and stress compared to hs.

[Bebpo]

Tried some Wii U stuff, sometimes when I go a while without playing a Nintendo console it's kind of charming to go back to one.  Yoshi's Wooly World is like the most gorgeous charming art design ever.  Gameplay seemed cute too, reminded me of the Yoshi DS egg throwing game I really liked at the DS launch.  Seems easy and effortless but nice and laidback.  Captain Toad Tracker is great!  Like I wasn't a huge fan of these levels in 3d World so I didn't pick this up at launch, but I'm surprised how highly enjoyable this is.  Just a very polished fun puzzle game with very nice graphics again thanks to fantastic art design.  It's kinda sad that this is the first time Nintendo has a nice looking IQ console and nobody bought it because graphically I'm impressed.  I'm fine with Switch being similar level of tech since with the simple art styles Nintendo uses, it still looks fantastic.

i've heard it's because HS is so hard and stressful so people need a time away. By comparison, college in Japan is apparently light and not really stressful. whereas for us, college is a time of self discovery and stress compared to hs.

Sure, but if HS is hard and stressful, why would people want to relive it over and over again in Japanese media?  Whereas college is nicer time, so you would think people would enjoy playing games set during that time? 

[Himu]

Tried some Wii U stuff, sometimes when I go a while without playing a Nintendo console it's kind of charming to go back to one.  Yoshi's Wooly World is like the most gorgeous charming art design ever.  Gameplay seemed cute too, reminded me of the Yoshi DS egg throwing game I really liked at the DS launch.  Seems easy and effortless but nice and laidback.  Captain Toad Tracker is great!  Like I wasn't a huge fan of these levels in 3d World so I didn't pick this up at launch, but I'm surprised how highly enjoyable this is.  Just a very polished fun puzzle game with very nice graphics again thanks to fantastic art design.  It's kinda sad that this is the first time Nintendo has a nice looking IQ console and nobody bought it because graphically I'm impressed.  I'm fine with Switch being similar level of tech since with the simple art styles Nintendo uses, it still looks fantastic.

i've heard it's because HS is so hard and stressful so people need a time away. By comparison, college in Japan is apparently light and not really stressful. whereas for us, college is a time of self discovery and stress compared to hs.

Sure, but if HS is hard and stressful, why would people want to relive it over and over again in Japanese media?  Whereas college is nicer time, so you would think people would enjoy playing games set during that time?

HS is so stressful that their media as a coping mechanism for HS schooled kids. As in, school is oppressive in Japan and a lot of their media is about making school into a fantasy. So you get a normal, dumb school girl in Usagi becoming a princess from the moon. Or you have High Schoolers defeat demons and save the world at night while being regular school students by day. It's basically made to be wish fulfillment. By comparison, college in Japan is apparently light and comparatively easy compared to the competition fueled middle school, high school, and college entrance exams. It's why Love Hina is about Keitaro trying to get into Tokyo U more than it is about him actually attending.

[archie4208]

I beat the first chapter in Dragon Quest Builders.  I enjoy it because I have zero creativity and being told what to do appeals to me. 

Then I learned your shit doesn't carry over to chapter 2 and I'm done with it for awhile. 

[Bebpo]

Haha, yeah that's exactly what happened with me & dqb